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
A63941	A funerall sermon preached at the obsequies of the Right Hon[oura]ble and most vertuous Lady, the Lady Frances, Countesse of Carbery who deceased October the 9th, 1650, at her house Golden-Grove in Carmarthen-shire / by Jer. Taylor ...	Taylor, Jeremy, 1613-1667.	1650 (1650)	Wing T335; ESTC R11725	24,363	41

turfe and entertain creeping things in the cells and little chambers of our eyes and dwell with worms till time and death shall be no more We must needs die That 's our sentence But that 's not all We are as water spilt on the ground which cannot be gathered up again Stay 1. We are as water weak and of no consistence alwaies descending abiding in no certain place unlesse where we are detained with violence and every little breath of winde makes us rough and tempestuous and troubles our faces every trifling accident discomposes us and as the face of the waters wafting in a storm so wrinkles it self that it makes upon its forehead furrows deep and hollow like a grave so doe our great and little cares and trifles first make the wrinkles of old age and then they dig a grave for us And there is in nature nothing so contemptible but it may meet with us in such circumstances that it may be too hard for us in our weaknesses and the sting of a Bee is a weapon sharp enough to pierce the finger of a childe or the lip of a man and those creatures which nature hath left without weapons yet they are arm'd sufficiently to vex those parts of men which are left defenselesse and obnoxious to a sun beame to the roughness of a sowre grape to the unevenness of a gravel-stone to the dust of a wheel or the unwholsome breath of a starre looking awry upon a sinner 2 But besides the weaknesses and naturall decayings of our bodies if chances and contingencies be innumerable then no man can reckon our dangers and the praeternaturall causes of our deaths So that he is a vain person whose hopes of life are too confidently increased by reason of his health and he is too unreasonably timorous who thinks his hopes at an end when he dwels in sicknesse For men die without rule and with and without occasions and no man suspecting or foreseeing any of deaths addresses and no man in his whole condition is weaker then another A man in a long Consumption is fallen under one of the solemnities and preparations to death but at the same instant the most healthfull person is as neer death upon a more fatall and a more sudden but a lesse discerned cause There are but few persons upon whose foreheads every man can read the sentence of death written in the lines of a lingring sicknesse but they sometimes hear the passing bell ring for stronger men even long before their own knell cals at the house of their mother to open her womb and make a bed for them No man is surer of tomorrow then the weakest of his brethren and when Lepidus and Aufidius stumbled at the threshold of the Senate and fell down and dyed the blow came from heaven in a cloud but it struck more suddenly then upon the poor slave that made sport upon the Theatre with a praemeditated and foredescribed death Quod quisque vitet nunquam homini satis cautum est in horas There are sicknesses that walk in darknesse and there are exterminating Angels that fly wrapt up in the curtains of immateriality and an uncommunicating nature whom we cannot see but we feel their force and sink under their sword and from heaven the vail descends that wraps our heads in the fatall sentence There is no age of man but it hath proper to it self some posterns and outlets for death besides those infinite and open ports out of which myriads of men and women every day passe into the dark and the land of forgetfulnesse Infancie hath life but in effigie or like a spark dwelling in a pile of wood the candle is so newly lighted that every little shaking of the taper and every ruder breath of air puts it out and it dies Childhood is so tender and yet so unwary so soft to all the impressions of chance and yet so forward to run into them that God knew there could be no security without the care and vigilance of an Angel-keeper and the eies of Parents and the armes of Nurses the provisions of art and all the effects of Humane love and Providence are not sufficient to keep one child from horrid mischiefs from strange and early calamities and deaths unlesse a messenger be sent from heaven to stand sentinell and watch the very playings and the sleepings the eatings and the drinkings of the children and it is a long time before nature makes them capable of help for there are many deaths and very many diseases to which poor babes are exposed but they have but very few capacities of physick to shew that infancy is as liable to death as old age and equally exposed to danger and equally uncapable of a remedy with this onely difference that old age hath diseases incurable by nature and the diseases of childhood are incurable by art and both the states are the next heirs of death 3 But all the middle way the case is altered Nature is strong and art is apt to give ease and remedy but still there is no security and there the case is not altered 1 For there are so many diseases in men that are not understood 2 So many new ones every year 3 The old ones are so changed in circumstance and intermingled with so many collaterall complications 4 The Symptoms are oftentimes so alike 5 Sometimes so hidden and fallacious 6 Sometimes none at all as in the most sudden and the most dangerous imposthumations 7 And then the diseases in the inward parts of the body are oftentimes such to which no application can be made 8 They are so far off that the effects of all medicines can no otherwise come to them then the effect and juices of all meats that is not till after two or three alterations and decoctions which change the very species of the medicament 9 And after all this very many principles in the art of Physick are so uncertain that after they have been believed seven or eight ages and that upon them much of the practise hath been established they come to be considered by a witty man and others established in their stead by which men must practise and by which three or four generations of men more as happens must live or die 10 And all this while the men are sick and they take things that certainly make them sicker for the present and very uncertainly restore health for the future that it may appear of what a large extent is humane calamity when Gods providence hath not onely made it weak and miserable upon the certain stock of a various nature and upon the accidents of an infinite contingency but even from the remedies which are appointed our dangers and our troubles are certainly increased so that we may well be likened to water our nature is no stronger our abode no more certain If the sluces be opened it falls away and runneth apace if its current be stopped it swels and grows troublesome and spils over

rheume Nay it is more naturall for young Men and Women to die then for old because that is more naturall which hath more naturall causes and that is more naturall which is most common but to die with age is an extreme rare thing and there are more persons carried forth to buriall before the five and thirtieth year of their age then after it And therefore let no vain confidence make you hope for long life If you have liv'd but little and are still in youth remember that now you are in your bigg'st throng of dangers both of body and soul and the proper sins of youth to which they rush infinitely and without consideration are also the proper and immediate instruments of death But if you be old you have escaped long and wonderfully and the time of your escaping is out you must not for ever think to live upon wonders or that God will work miracles to satisfie your longing follies and unreasonable desires of living longer to sin and to the world Goe home and think to die and what you would choose to be doing when you die that doe daily for you will all come to that passe to rejoice that you did so or wish that you had that will be the condition of every one of us for God regardeth no mans person Well! but all this you will think is but a sad story What we must die and go to darknesse and dishonour and we must die quickly and we must quit all our delights and all our sins or doe worse infinitely worse and this is the condition of us all from which none can be excepted every man shall be spilt and fall into the ground and be gathered up no more Is there no comfort after all this shall we go from hence and be no more seen and have no recompense Miser ô miser aiunt omnia ademit Una die infausta mihi tot praemia vitae Shall we exchange our fair dwellings for a coffin our softer beds for the moistned and weeping turfe and our pretty children for worms and is there no allay to this huge calamity yes there is There is a yet in the text For all this yet doth God devise meanes that his banished be not expelled from him All this sorrow trouble is but a phantasme and receives its account and degrees from our present conceptions and the proportion to our relishes and gust When Pompey saw the Ghost of his first Lady Iulia who vexed his rest and his conscience for superinducing Cornelia upon her bed within the ten months of mourning he presently fancied it either to be an illusion or else that death could be no very great evil Aut nihil est sensus animis in morte relictum Aut mors ipsa nihil Either my dead wife knows not of my unhandsome marriage and forgetfulnesse of her or if she does then the dead live longae canitis si cognita vitae Mors media est Death is nothing but the middle point between two lives between this and another concerning which comfortable mystery the holy Scripture instructs our faith and entertains our hope in these words God is still the God of Abraham Isaak and Iacob for all doe live to him and the souls of Saints are with Christ I desire to be dissolv'd saith S. Paul and to be with Christ for that is much better and Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord they rest from their labours and their works follow them For we know that if our earthly house of this Tabernacle were dissolv'd we have a building of God a house not made with hands eternall in the heavens and this state of separation S. Paul calls a being absent from the body and being present with the Lord This is one of Gods means which he hath devised that although our Dead are like persons banished from this world yet they are not expelled from God They are in the hands of Christ they are in his presence they are or shall be clothed with a house of Gods making they rest from all their labours all tears are wiped from their eyes and all discontents from their spirits and in the state of separation before the soul be reinvested with her new house the spirits of all persons are with God so secur'd and so blessed and so sealed up for glory that this state of intervall and imperfection is in respect of its certain event and end infinitely more desirable then all the riches and all the pleasures and all the vanities and all the Kingdomes of this world I will not venture to determine what are the circumstances of the abode of Holy Souls in their separate dwellings and yet possibly that might be easier then to tell what or how the soul is and works in this world where it is in the body tanquam in alienâ demo as in a prison in fetters and restraints for here the soul is discomposed and hindred it is not as it shall be as it ought to be as it was intended to be it is not permitted to its own freedome and proper operation so that all that we can understand of it here is that it is so incommodated with a troubled and abated instrument that the object we are to consider cannot be offered to us in a right line in just and equall propositions or if it could yet because we are to understand the soul by the soul it becomes not onely a troubled and abused object but a crooked instrument and we here can consider it just as a weak eye can behold a staffe thrust into the waters of a troubled river the very water makes a refraction and the storme doubles the refraction and the water of the eye doubles the species and there is nothing right in the thing the object is out of its just place and the medium is troubled and the organ is impotent At cum exierit in liberum coelum quasi in domum suam venerit when the soule is entred into her own house into the free regions of the rest and the neighbourhood of heavenly joyes then its operations are more spirituall proper and proportion'd to its being and though we cannot see at such a distance yet the object is more fitted if we had a capable understanding it is in it self in a more excellent and free condition Certain it is that the body does hinder many actions of the soul it is an imperfect body and a diseased brain or a violent passion that makes fools no man hath a foolish soul and the reasonings of men have infinite difference and degrees by reason of the bodies constitution Among beasts which have no reason there is a greater likeness then between men who have and as by faces it is easier to know a man from a man then a sparrow from a sparrow or a squirrel from a squirrel so the difference is very great in our souls which difference because it is not originally in the soul and