Selected quad for the lemma: sense_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
sense_n	let_v	year_n	young_a	44	3	5.3899	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A39261	The necessity of serious consideration, and speedy repentance, as the only way to be safe both living and dying. By Clement Elis, M.A. Rector of Kirkby in Nottinghamshire	Ellis, Clement, 1630-1700.	1691 (1691)	Wing E566; ESTC R171929	98,541	214

know befal us as well as any others If we are surprized by any of these after we are become sincere Penitents they do us but little hurt they are God's Visitations indeed and for what He it may be only knows but the worst that comes to us by them is only this That we are long a dying and in such a manner as it pleaseth God But if we have not sincerely Repented before these evils seize us it is greatly to be feared we shall never be able to Repent and God only knows what will become of us Let us then be so wise as to make good use of our strength and health our senses and understanding whilst we have them Why make we not all sure now whilst we can seeing we know not how soon it will be that we cannot Now we are young we are too jovial and airy and we put all off to those years which we suppose will of course bring with them more Seriousness and when we think it will better become us to look gravely and Religiously When those years which we are wont to call the years of Discretion are come we find that a great deal of other business comes with them and now we are men and women we are engaged in the World and if we have got loose from the Vanities of Youth which do not seldome hold us fast even till we die we are become intangled in things that are but a little better and we put off all yet till old age come and make us more leisure Old age is all this while stealing insensibly upon us and we perceive it not for the throng we are in till we find our selves on a sudden grown too heavy and dull and our faculties too much decay'd and too feeble for much business And then instead of serious reflections on the state of our Souls we are rather apt to reflect with too much concern on our present bodily weakness as we are become unable to do any longer as we have done and yet have as great a mind to do as ever And hence also instead of being Penitent for our Sins we are apt to grow Passionate Peevish and Impatient and our Repentance is still put off to our last Sickness After all these delays it may be we have no Sickness at all Death gives us no warning at all of its approach but knocks us down with a sudden blow or else it sends such a Messenger for us as will not allow us to know or consider whither we are going by reason of either the stupefaction or Torment which it lays us under What remains then but that we take the Preacher's advice Ecc. XII 1. Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth while the evil days come not nor the years draw nigh when thou shalt say I have no pleasure in them But besides the uncertainty of the term of our life as to us and many disappointments which not unusually befal us in it we ought farther to consider that it is very Iust in God to cut our lives the shorter for our delaying to keep his Commandments Neither can we take a more likely course to provoke God to take us away in the midst of our days or to render them by his Iudgments intollerable to us than this bad use which we make of them When by delaying our Duty to God we make it appear that we grudge him any considerable part of our time and that we are resolved to dishonour him with as much of it and to bestow upon his Service as little of it as we can what readier way can we take to provoke him either to cut our thread of life very short or to make it very knotty to us Can we our selves when we think well of it judge it fit that he to whose goodness we owe our life and being and in whose hands our times are Psal. XXXI 15. In whose hand is the soul of every living thing and the breath of all mankind Job XII 10. should allow us just as much time as we desire to dishonour and affront him in I confess I know not what greater Presumption we can be guilty of than to resolve to rebel against God as long as we can think it safe to do so and to expect he should give us from day to day more time to do so in O let us take heed lest he take away our breath and we return to our dust ere we have begun to serve him for then be sure all these vain thoughts shall perish Psal. CVI. 4. The youngest of us is not sure to live one day longer and we who grow old are very sure that we cannot have many days more if any to live in this World nor what kind of days be they many or few they will prove to us Let us then no longer delay our Repentance because we are so little sure that we shall have any hereafter to repent in SECT V. The Second Danger of DELAY AS it is a dangerous thing to drive off our Repentance in hopes that we may have time enough hereafter to repent in So is it altogether as dangerous upon another account Because we know not if we have an hereafter whether we shall repent in it or no. I have already mention'd some things which may disable us to repent hereafter but besides this it may well be fear'd that we may be also as unwilling and every way as much indisposed to repent hereafter as we are now Is there not as much reason now to move us to keep the Commandments of God as ever there will be hereafter Is he not the same God now that he will be then one and the same unchangeable for ever Are not our Obligations and our Dependances on him the same And is not the danger of dying impenitent the same now that it will be then What reason then can we have to hope that if the consideration of these things will not move us now to Repentance it should prevail more with us hereafter How difficult or how easie soever the Duty may now seem to us or whatever it is that now affrights us from it or encourageth us to delay it we have little cause to think that it will become more easie by delay that we shall meet with fewer difficulties the longer we drive it off or fewer temptations to defer it still longer Nay 't is very certain that the longer we delay the difficulty daily more and more increaseth and very probably so will our unwillingness too for 't is not very likely that we shall be more willing to set our selves about a harder work hereafter seeing we dare not venture on it now that it is much more easie Would to God all impenitent Sinners could be brought to consider this That all the good they do themselves by delaying their Repentance is to make it every day harder for them to do a thing which they must do or else they perish That we may be