Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	death_n	die_v	life_n	5,110	5	5.0778	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A37030	A contemplation of mans mortalitie. Preached at Reading, by John Dashfield, M.A.	Dashfield, John.	1649 (1649)	Wing D279A; ESTC R214401	10,075	24

A CONTEMPLATION Of MANS MORTALITIE Preached at Reading BY John Dashfield M.A. Printed at London 1649 To the True-Lover of Vertue and Learning John Penrice Esquire John Dashfield wisheth all Happinesse SIR IN the view of these bleeding times I am bold to present unto you A Contemplation of Mans Mortaitie a subject indeed really intended upon the death of your most valiant and undaunted Kinsman Major William P●●chard the worlds valour who of all men chose me for his Minister at his execution and I in lew of his approbation presume to present this unto you and the rest of his friends and kindred And as Hannah when she had presented her young Son Samuel unto the Lord did make him a little coat So have I put this my little childe into a new coat and am bold to present it to your Noble Favour for protection Vouchsafe therefore to take it by the hand and I doubt not but the Ephramite shall be heard here to speake as plain at the smooth-tongued Canaanite and so I pray God to blesse your person and affaires here that you may be kept blamelesse unto the comming of our Lord Iesus Christ. And this shall ever be the prayer of him that is Yours in all Christian service John Dashfield Ovid Nec Leges metuunt Maestaque victrici Iura sub ense ●acent The Contemplation of Mans MORTALITIE Eccle. the 7 chap. part of the 36 ver Recordare novissima Remember thy end IT is the generall opinion of the best Writers perfectissimam vitam esse continuam mortis meditationem that the most perfect life is a continuall meditation of death Chrysostome expounding that place of Saint Luke Qui vult venire post me He that will follow me saith That Christ commandeth us not to beare upon our backs that heavie burthen of the Woodden Crosse but that we should alwayes set our death before our eyes making that of Saint Paul to be mans Motto Quotidie morior I die daily In the second of the Kings it is recounted that the holy King Josias did clense the people from their Altars their Groves and High Places where innumerable Idolatries did daily increase to smend which ill he placed there in their stead Bones Sculls and the ashes of dead men Whose judgement herein was very discreet for from mans forgetting of his beginning and his end arise his Idolatries and so reviving by those Bones the remembrance of what they were heretofore and what they shall be hereafter hee did make them amend that fault and reduced them from their errours God created man of the basest matter of very dust but this dust being molded by Gods own hand and inspiring it with so much wisdome counsell and prudence Tertullian calls it cura Divini ingenii but man growing proud hereupon and hoping to be a god himself God doomed him to death and wrapped him again in durty swadling clouts with this inscription Pulvis es Dust thou art and to dust thou shalt return Adam did not without some mystery cloath himself with green leaves for as Saint Ambrose hath noted it he gave as it were therein a signe and token of his vain and foolish hopes When God revealed to Nebuchadnezzar how little a while his Empire was to last he shewed him a statue of divers metalls the head gold the brest silver the bellie brasse the legges iron the feeet clay and it seems a little stone descended from the mountain lightning on the feet dashed the statue in pieces But instead of taking this as a fore-warning of his end and to have it still before his eyes he made another statue of gold from top to toe which is held to be a durable and lasting metall so that the more God sought to disdeceive him the more was he deceived with his vain hopes And this is a resemblance of that which daily hapneth unto us for God advising us that our first building is but dust our idle thoughts and vain hopes imagine it to be of gold and mans life being so short that as Nazianzene said it is no more then to go out of one grave to enter into another out of the womb of our particular mother into that of the common Mother of us all which is the earth because therefore we flatter our selves with the enjoying of a long life therefore the sonne of Syrach being desirous to cut off this errour saith In omnibus operibus tuis Recordare novissima tua in aeternum non peccabis Whatsoever thou takest in hand Remember thy end Death saith Saint Augustine in his book against the Pelagians is nothing else but a privation of life having a name and no essence As hunger is said to be the defect of food thirst lack of drink darknesse the absence of light even so death is but a name for want of life Death then having a name without essence God was not the Creator thereof neither cause nor Authour for all things that God made had Essence which terme of Essence comprehendeth that which is or that is to be born Most true it is that for the punishment of sinne God pronounceth the sentence of death against man but there is great difference between pronouncing the sentence of death and to be the cause of death They are the words of Salomon not mine Deus mortem non fecit nec laetatur in perditione vivorum God hath not made death neither hath he pleasure in the destruction of the living Creavit enim ut essent omnia c. For he created all things that they might have their being and the generations of the world are preserved But in another place he saith Invidia autem Diaboli mors intravit in orbem terrarum Through envy of the Devil came death into the world Wisdome 2.24 The Devil then being the authour of sinne is also the authour of death by sinne The Devil could incite man to sinne but he could not constrain him to yield consent Adam could keep himself well enough from tasting the Tree of life but Gods will was that he should not sinne and so consequently would not have him to die But leaving life and taking death and following then the free liberty of his will he made himself mortall so that his fault and disobedience was the cause of death to him and all men else beside From whence therefore the Apostle inferres Propterea sicut per unum hominem peccatum in hunc mundum intravit per peccatum mors c. As by one man sinne entred into the world and death by sinne so death went over all men forasmuch as all men have sinned Rom. 5.12 Nothing then more certain then death and nothing more uncertain then the time when the place where and the manner how Yet one thing to this purpose whereof I am now to speak and I know it may very well seem a novelty to many and fabulous to divers others because it is a matter very difficult to be proved nor do I purpose

to bind my self to iustifie or maintain the truth thereof albeit in my iudgement their authority that have written on the same argument may grant it for true or very likely Pliny and Marcus Varro discoursing on the time of a mans life do affirm that the learned Egyptians had found out by experience that man according to the course of nature could not live above a hundred yeares but if any one hapned to out-step that limitation it was iudged by particular influence and power of the starres a thing in natures work very strange and marvellous But passe we to the foundation of this their settled perswasion they gathered and conceived by the heart of a man which having made proof of many times by order of Anatomy they thereby attained to the knowledge of very wonderfull secrets For say they when a man-child is a full yeare old his heart poizeth the weight of two of their dram● foure when hee is two yeares old and so onward as many yeares as hee lives his heart increaseth in weight a couple of drammes yearely So that when hee commeth to the age of fifty yeares his heart weigheth then an hundred drammes but thence forward it is not more ponderous but proportionably diminisheth his weight ratably every yeare by two drammes even according as before it increased So that at the age of 100 yeares the heart by continuall decreasing becomes to be nothing in poize and then consequently the man of necessity dies if by some other accidentall occasion he dies not before because there are so many kinds of severall occasions which can and do customarily hasten death before men arrive at half the time of making this experiment in themselves We have then nothing more certain or assured then death and that onely in the will power and knowledge of God so that as the forgetfulnesse of death is the cause of a mans falling into sinne so the memory thereof turneth him quite from sinne Recordare novissima Remember thy end and thou shalt never do amisse And the Kingly Psalmist saith Cogitari dies antiquos annos aeternos in mente habui c. Ps 77.5 6. And Plato affirmes that the life of a wise man is meditation in death Therefore watch and pray for ye know not at what houre the Lord will come It is well weighed by Rapertus that after God had condemned Adam to death he bestow'd upon his wife the name of life Mater cunctarum gentium the Mother of all the living scarce had God condemned him to punishment but he by and by shewes he had forgot it and therefore did God permit the death of innocent Abel to the end that in Abel he might see the death of the body and in Cain the death of the soul for to quicken his memory From Adam we inherit this forgetfullnesse not remembring what we saw but yesterday and the generall desire of man strives all it can to perpetuate our life which if it were in our hands we would never see death But because the love of life should not rob us of our memory and that fearing as we are mortall we might covet those things that are eternall seeing that walls towers marble and brasse moulder away to dust we may ever have in our memory this rule Recordare novissima Remember thy end Many holy Saints have stiled the memory the stomack of the soul as Gregory Bernard Theodoret and God commanding Ezechiel he should notifie unto his people certain things he had revealed unto him and charging him that he should well remember himself of them he said Comede quaecunque ego do tibi Eat whatsoever I give thee And in another place he commanded him that hee should eat a booke wherein were written Lamentations and Woe c. being all Metaphors of the Prophets having things in his remembrance and this is more clearly delivered by Job nunquid sapiens replebit arbore stomachum sanum will a wise man fill his stomack with that heate that shall burne and consume him Job 15. which is to say will he charge his memory with matters of paine and torments The proportion then holds thus as the stomack is the store-house or magazine of our corporall food and keeping therein our present meat the body takes from thence its sustenance whereby it maintaines its being and its life So the memory is the magazine of the soule and setteth before our eyes the obligation wherein we stand the good which we loose and the hurt which we gaine Secondly as from the disorder and disagreement of the stomack painfull diseases doe arise and divers infirmities to the body so from the forgetfulnesse of the memory rise those of the soule for without oblivion saith Saint Basill our salvation cannot be lost nor our soules-health endangered Thirdly as when the fuell and fire shall faile mans stomack which is the oven which boyles and seasons our life we may give that of the bodies for losse so when our memory shall faile us we may give our soule for lost Therefore this advice of the sonne of Syrach is most requisite Recordare novissima Remember thy end As the first attribute of man is oblivion so the second is his basenesse and miserie In Ezechiel the King of Tyre said Deus ego sum I am a God but hee was answered hee was but a man that is base vile and miserable Eze. 28. So David ut sciant gentes quoniam homines sunt Let the Nations know that they are men that is base and vile Psal 9. And S. Paul Nonne homines estis Are ye not men 1 Cor 3.2 When we see a man sometimes swallowed up in the miseries of the body sometimes of the soule we say in the conclusion he is but a man Now if instead of the gold of the Angells there was found rust and that so fine cloth as that was not without it's moths and that incorrupted wood without it's worm what then will become of those that are but dust Qui babitant domos luteas who dwell in houses of Clay Ecclesiasticus doth advise thee to rise up betimes and not to be the last but to get thee home without delay for there thou shalt find enough to doe Preacurre in domum tuam et age conceptiones tuas Jeremie councells thee to the same sending thee to this house of clay and mud It 's worth observation God did not speake unto Moses til he had drawn his sheep aside into the desart putting his hand twice into his bosome the one hee tooke out cleare and the other leprous We have two bosomes to take care of in this life the one of our owne things the other of other mens but the meditation of our owne miserie being the more necessary wee must ever have in our mind this Reordare Remember thy end A man not knowing himselfe cannot know God Now to know himselfe the next way is to go out of himselfe and to consider the trace and track of those Alexanders and