Selected quad for the lemma: water_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
water_n	air_n	element_n	fire_n	13,062	5	7.1789	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A54843	The law and equity of the gospel, or, The goodness of our Lord as a legislator delivered first from the pulpit in two plain sermons, and now repeated from the press with others tending to the same end ... by Thomas Pierce ...	Pierce, Thomas, 1622-1691.	1686 (1686)	Wing P2185; ESTC R38205	304,742	736

are to perish in the using The World it self is but a Thing whose Fashion passeth away But 't is the saddest consideration that the World 's Good things are much more dangerous than they are frail It being a Duty extremely difficult to use this World as not abusing it And yet if we omit to perform this Duty The richest Possessions upon Earth will but serve to purchase for us the largest Interest in Hell So that the Devil's Liberality amounts to This only That if we will but Idolize him he will give us whatsoever may do us Harm He will supply us with the means of being damn'd so much the deeper Was it think we for nothing or a thing by meer chance that as our Saviour chose Poverty rather than Plenty for himself so he chose such as were poor as well in Fortune as in Spirit to be inrich'd by his Grace and made Inheritors of his Kingdom Was there not think we something in it that the Primitive Excellency consisted in selling all that they had and laying it down at the Apostles Feet The least we can gather from it is This And be it spoken as impartially to the due comfort of the Poor as to the needful Humiliation of such amongst us as are Rich That Poverty though it is not exempt from All is yet obnoxious unto fewer and lesser Dangers For Riches commonly do inable us to do things to be repented whereas Poverty helps to fit us to repent of things done Indeed 't is best of the two to have Food convenient as Agur words it to be in such a mediocrity 'twixt Poverty and Plenty as not to be pinched with the former nor too much loaded with the later Agur prayed against Both but for different reasons He prayed against Poverty as apt to make him turn Thief But he prayed against Riches as apt to make him turn Atheist Now by how much it is worse to be an Atheist than a Thief by so much Riches should make a sadder and a more formidable Condition And 't was perhaps for this reason amongst some others that the most Learned of all our Kings thought Him the happiest man in England who by his Quality and Estate had a middle Station betwixt an High Constable and a Iustice of Peace For such a man is neither held to be Poor nor Rich. He has not the Indigence of the one nor the Vexation of the other Is freer from Contempt and from Envy too Has weaker Temptations and fewer Troubles This is to be fed with Food convenient And This is the Condition which Agur pray'd for But that Scarceness in it self is safer for us of the two than Superfluity we may infer from That Method which the Devil here used against our Saviour who according as his Prosperities did fall or rise did ever find his Temptations to ebb or flow And we know the lowest ebb can but leave us dry whereas the Tyde of Prosperity is apt to drown us So frail and so worthless yea and so dangerous are the Things by which the Rival of our Maker most strongly tempts us Weigh we next the Good Things not only of This but a better World wherewith the God who may despise vouchsafes to court us He does not only court us with the Promise of a Deliverance from a Bottomless Lake of Fire and Brimstone where the Worm dyeth not and where the Fire is not quenched Nor seek to win us only by Promises of a Crown immarcescible of Ioys unspeakable and endless such as our Hearts cannot hold nor our Tongues utter nor our Reasons comprehend nor our Fansies reach But farther obliges and indears us with a world of Bounties whilst we are Here. For Every man in the World has all the World in Epitome and that not only as to the sight but injoyment also until he forfeits his Birthright by the High Treason of his Debauches Till then I say he has a world both to possess and to injoy not only within but without him also The world within him is so evident and so very much resembling the world without him far beyond what the Romans had made its Hieroglyphick or Embleme that there is hardly any thing namable either in Heaven or in Earth to which there is not something analogous either in the Body or Soul of Man The Truth of which saying will soon appear to whosoever will take the pains as Augustine Mascardus has somewhere done to draw a Parallel of Particulars And then for the world without his Person 't is plain that That is within his Power For all the Earth is his walk if he please to use it He has Regions of Air wherein to Breathe Many Rivers of Water to quench his Thirst And an Element of Fire to keep him warm So that if he has an House which will but hold him and Meat as much as he can hold and as much Rayment as he can carry he has certainly as much as a man undebauch't knows what to do with and what a madness is it for him to covet more For how much worse than a Brutality must we needs have exchanged our human Nature when nothing can please us but what 's forbidden and when nothing is forbidden but what 't will mischief us to injoy How many Pleasures and Recreations has God been bountifully pleas'd to make lawful for us freely giving us the Liberty to choose as much as will do us good Musick is allow'd us to please our Ears Perfumes to gratifie our Smelling the beautiful Structure of the Universe to feed our Eyes with Admiration Rich Variety of Meats to treat our Palates with when we are hungry the most desirable Felicity of quenching our Thirst when we are dry the great and innocent Sensuality of warming our Selves when we are cold And seeing the old Rule in Logick is indisputably True That the whole Nature of every Species is in each single Individual God has made it both a needless and sensless Thing for any man to covet his Neighbour's Wife by having graciously allow'd him the happy Society of his own Now since Every man in particular does as really injoy the whole Influence of the Heavens as if It were shed upon Him alone in so much that his injoyment of Heat and Light would be no greater in case he were Monarch of all the world Can it be other than an irrational and an absurd kind of wickedness if whilst we lawfully injoy the whole benefit of the Sun we shall esteem it a want of Happiness that another man injoys it as well as we if whilst our own Cisterns are running over we shall not be able to be satisfied unless with stoln Waters Is there nothing will stay our Stomachs but the Bread of Dishonesty Will nothing content us throughout our Iourney for which God has given us so plain an High-way wherein to walk but the removing of signal Land-Marks and the breaking up of Hedges and leaping over God's Mounds and this at a time

been sweeten'd and made delicious by nothing else but the Foretasts of Life Eternal Were Life Eternal nothing better than a kind of perpetual Youth an unmovable station upon the point of One-and-twenty we may guess how much admir'd and how much coveted it would be by the Care which People take of their Embonpoint How many use their Thrid of Life as prudent Penelope did her Web when being wound up to a Real Age they unravel it again to a seeming Youth So very willing they are to live and yet so very unwilling to outlive Beauty that they will needs court Eternity by a Nursery of Colours So that when fifty or threescore years begin to be legible in their Faces characters there dug by the Plough of Time A Dash or two of their Pencil will strike off Twenty And therefore the years which they have liv'd though scarce the Childhood of Life Eternal may yet assist them in its Discovery as far as a little imperfect Guess They who fain would never dye can tell me best how sweet is life And They who fain would ne're be old can best inform me of Eternity § 17. But I must not here make a Panegyrick of Life Eternal as well because I insisted on it in considering the nature of the young man's Inquiry as because I must hasten to make Advantage of what already hath been deliver'd Since therefore Christ is so much a Master as to beget our greatest Reverence And yet a Master so full of goodness as to merit our greatest Love a Master to challenge our obedience and a Good Master to invite it A Master to keep us from Contempt and yet withal a good Master whereby to give us Familiarity A Master to set us on work and a good Master to reward us Since I say he is so good as to be willing to Allure what he is so much a Master as to be able to compel Since our Imployment is not only very proportionable to our strength but very conformable to our Nature not only tending to our Interest but even agreeable to our Desires Since our Master is Goodness it self our Service Freedom as well as Pleasure and our Wages Eternal Life Let us not serve him only for fear but let us fear him only for love Rather as a Good Master who will Reward than as a Master who can punish Let not our obedience be meerly servile and only paid to the Law of a Carnal Commandment Heb. 7. 16. But filial rather and ingenuous to the Law that is Spiritual Rom. 7. 14. Iob was objected against by Satan that he serv'd God for something and that the source of his obedience was but a mercenary Devotion Now though we cannot but have something for serving God yet that Hell may not upbraid us let us serve him for nothing more than the honour and happiness to serve him Shall we serve our Good Master from the same base Principle from which the very worst Servants will serve an ill one For shame let us not serve him as vanquish't People do serve their Tyrants or as some poor Indians do serve the Devil only to the end that he may not hurt us Will he accept of our Service think ye when we do make him our shelter but not our choice a kind of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or a meer Plank after a shipwrack He is little beholding to such a Proselyte whom only his Enemy hath made his Friend and may rather thank Hell for our Obedience when we come to him but in a Fright I would not with the Woman who was met in the way by Bishop Ivo with a Firebrand in one hand and a Bucket of Water in the other either burn up the Joys of Heaven or extinguish the Fire of Hell But so much I am of that Woman's mind that if I might have mine own wish I would have all Christian Servants to love This Master a great deal more than the Ioys of Heaven And I would have them fear his Anger a great deal more than the Pains of Hell If He did empty himself of Glory and as it were go out of Himself to give us Grace How should we empty our selves of all that is dear unto us and even go out of our selves too by Self-denials to advance his Glory O let us therefore be such generous and disinteressed Servants as to vye Obedience with his Commands In an humble kind of Contention let us indeavour to out-do and if occasion ever serve to out-suffer what he commands us Since Heaven it self is the Merchandize which in the Parable of our Lord must be sold for sweat let us more out-bid the Pharisees than the Pharisees did the Law And that our Master may say to us in his Kingdom of Glory Well done good Servants Say we to him in this of Grace Good Master what shall we do Let us not admit of Ignobler Motives for the present exciting us to our Duties than the bare doing them in this world and an Inheritance in the next A good life here and hereafter an Eternal Now the Earnest of our Service and then the Wages The very Earnest of such an Estimate but so inestimable the Wages that 't is not so fit to be describ'd as to be press'd and urg'd home on a Congregation For the Knowledge of This unlike That of other things dwells in the Heart not in the Head The way to understand the Joys of Heaven with St. Paul is with St. Paul to be rapt up thither Rapt up in zeal and affection not in fancy and speculation In the yerning of the Bowels not in the working of the Brains Let the Scepticks therefore dispute themselves to Heaven whilst we in silence are walking thither Let the Schoolmen take it in subtilty and we in deed Let the Pelagians or Socinians try to purchase Eternal Life whilst we inherit it Let the Sanguin Fiduciary possess himself of Bliss whilst we contend for it Let the Philosopher injoy it as well as he can in his Contemplations we shall best contemplate it in our Injoyment Which God of his Mercy vouchsafe unto us even for the Glory of his Name and for the worthiness of his Son our great and good Master the Lord Jesus Christ. To whom with the Father in the Unity of the Spirit be Honour and Glory both now and for ever THE INHERITANCE OF ETERNITY IS God's Free Gift After all our WORKING MARK X. 17. Good Master what shall I do that I may Inherit Aeternal Life A Quaestion set forth in such happy Terms that I conceive it will be easy to resolve it out of it self For the way to inherit Eternal Life is to receive and own Christ both as a Master and as a Good Master to obey him as the first and to love him as the second and to revere him as both together and when All is done still to ask what we shall do to believe he will reward us according to our Doings and