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	life_n	sin_n	9,880	5	5.5192	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A61998	A sermon at the funeral of the virtuous lady, and honoured, Ann, late wife of Thomas Yarburgh, Esq . Preached on Monday, the 10th day of July, 1682. By Matthew Sutcliffe.	Sutcliffe, Matthew, 1637 or 8-1707.	1682 (1682)	Wing S6205B; ESTC R222127	17,195	23

A SERMON AT THE FUNERAL OF The Virtuous Lady and Honoured ANN late Wife of Thomas Yarburgh Esq Preached on Monday the 10th day of July 1682. By MATTHEW SVTCLIFFE LONDON Printed for Thomas Cockerill at the Three Legs in the Poultrey over-against the Stocks-Market 1682. JOB 14.1 Man that is born of a woman is of few days and full of trouble WHEN the Royal Psalmist looked upon these aspectable Heavens and beheld there the glory of God written in Characters of Light he admires that grace that first made Man a little lower than the angels Psal 8.5 and crowned him with glory and honour and that Providential care which is mindful of him and visi●… him every moment Such an infinite distance there is betwixt God and man that it is a wonder God will spend a thought upon us Lord Psal 134.3 4. what is man that thou takest knowledg of him or the son of man that thou takest account of him Man is like to vanity his days are as a shadow that passeth away His being in this world hath nothing firm and solid but is like a shadow which depends upon a cause that is always in motion the light of the Sun and is always changing till it vanisheth in the darkness of the night The consideration whereof made the same Psalmist in another place break forth in that pathetical exclamation How vain a thing is man How vain indeed in every act and scene of his life from his first entrance to his exit He is begotten in sin formed in darkness brought forth in pains His first voice is Cryes no sooner is he disclosed from his Maternal Cells into the open air but he weeps and no wonder seeing his birth is his unhappy entrance upon the valley of tears where he is attended with so many miseries as nothing but the shortness of his abode there could make tollerable that so this compendious Draught of Man might in all its parts be exactly conformable to the wretched Original which holy Job hath exposed to our view in the words of the Text Man that it born of a woman is of few days and full of trouble These words comprehend a picture of Man in Minature but very like and to the life He is born of a Woman that 's his Original and as from thence he receives his being so together with it his weakness and infirmities he liveth here a few days but in so short a time he endureth a multiformous multitude of miseries In each step of Man's progress we read his vanity He is vain in his procreation born of a woman there is nothing more mean nothing more abject And lest the thoughts of that pleasure his senses may furnish him withal from corporeal objects should exalt him in his very ingress into life he is sadly warned of his departure out of it he must not expect many days for he shall live but a few And lest he should flatter himself that this short space of time which is allowed him he shall enjoy free to himself he is here told that even that time shall be taken up with misery and sorrow His sew days are full of trouble 1. Let us consider Man in his Original or first entrance into the World and in respect of that How mean and abject is he What came we from at first and originally but from nothing There was a time when we were not having alone a potential being a being not yet in being but wrapt up in the causes of it yea there was a time when we were not in any secondary causes but alone in the Omnipotency of God who was able to make us out of nothing And that which came from nothing can surely be no excellent thing in it self or if it have any excellency it hath it from another even from that Almighty Efficient which did produce it to whom the glory of it is due But we must consider Man in his natural or more immediate Original or in his procreation Man that is born of a woman He is the sinful Off-spring of sinful Progenitors To be born of a woman imports both the sinfulness and the weakness of our Nativity We are all conceived in sin and before we enjoy the light we are spotted and stained in our Originals and before we enter upon the scene of life we receive that infection which wraps up in it the seeds of death The Infant of a day old is not without sin and the continuation of his life is but a multiplication of that first guilt Wherefore holy David had just cause to deplore so sensibly the corruption of his nature which bears equal date with life it self Psal 51.5 Behold I was shapen in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me And how can he be free from sin that is born in sin Job 25.4 How can man be justified with God Or how can he be clean which is born of a woman Sin hath possessed our reins and covered us in our mothers womb Eph. 2.3 We are all born children of wrath and heirs of vengeance Indeed our Nature as it proceeded from God in our primitive creation was perfectly pure and undefiled but as it comes now by natural generation propagated from Adam it is corrupted and unsound All the good we possess in our life and in our faculties in our senses and in our understanding we received from God our Creator the chief Fountain of all good but the vicious pollution which hath infected and depraved all these proceeded not from that most pure Author of our beings but from Original sin committed by the wilful prevarication and apostacy of man from his Maker Let the consideration of this teach us humility and repress in us the poyson of pride the first sin that ever sprung out in our natures next to Infidelity and last in rooting out Consider O man thy Original that thou wast born void and destitute of all holiness and in a state of pollution and by reason thereof a child of wrath without any possibility to escape eternal damnation by any merit or power of thy own but must needs sink down to Hell and be made fewel for eternal burnings and canst thou find any thing in thy self whereof to be proud Let us therefore look back to the vileness of our Original and be humbled let us lament and bewail our most wretched estate by nature and consider seriously how deeply our first Parents have engaged us in sin and misery Before we had any possession of felicity or could claim any interest in it we had forfeited it in Adam We had a punishment before we had a being We are all of us here born in the last age of the world but we dyed in the first This is the portion left us by our Parents Original sin and a corrupt inclination in our natures unto all evil And sin being the cause and forerunner of death it hath so sown and involved the seeds of it in our

tarry with us Or if they like true servants could continue yet we like frail Masters must vanish This I say brethren the time is short 1 Cor. 7.29 30 31. it remaineth both that they that have wives be as they that have none and they that weep as those that weep not and they that rejoyce as those that rejoyce not and they that buy as those that possess not and they that use this world as those that use it not for the fashion of this world passeth away And in reference to the sufferings and afflictions of this life it teacheth us to bear them with patience and true Christian magnanimity because they are but short and can endure but a little while Therefore we should not fear them before they come nor shrink under them or be discouraged when they are come seeing we know they cannot last long but must shortly have an end The time of trouble in the holy Scripture is called sometime a day of trial and sometime an hour of temptation And as our blessed Lord said to the three Disciples Could ye not watch with me one hour So may he say to us all so often as we faint under affliction Could ye not suffer with me one hour It was the comfort Athanasius gave to the Church in his time against the cruel violence of Julian the persecuting Apostate That he should be but Nubicula cito transitura a little stormy cloud that should quickly pass over and it is certainly true concerning all our troubles and the instruments of them that if we wait a while upon our God with patience we shall see them no more And then Olim hac meminisse juvabit our sufferings here shall add to the weight of our joy hereafter and that by way of remembrance 2 Cor. 4.17 For our light affliction which is but for a moment worketh for us a most superlative eternal abundance of glory 3. I come now to the third and last thing we are to consider in the text which is the quality of mans duration and full of trouble Trouble is a disquiet or commotion of the mind arising from the sense of some good thing which we cannot attain or cannot keep or of some evil which is either felt or feared But I understand it here of the things which trouble us those afflictions and crosses either inward or outward which are real troubles and disquietments to which our lives are subject For as this holy man saith Job 5.6 Although affliction cometh not forth of the earth neither doth trouble spring out of the ground yet man is born to trouble as the sparks flye upwards And agreeably the Wise man hath observed of man all his days are sorrow and his travel grief And if any man desire me to give him an example of this I may call upon the whole World to give an example to the contrary Now the meritorious or procuring cause of all our trouble is sin for as all trouble is from God as the primary efficient Cause so he never inflicts it without a just reason Never came Judgment from God but some provocation from man went before The hand of Divine Justice never makes man smart without a cause David might complain of his cruel and malicious Enemies They persecute me without a cause No man could ever challenge God of this he is provoked every moment and wo were it for us if he should strike so often as he is provoked The objective cause is in those circumstances of the world which are such as it cannot be otherwise In hoc posi●…i sumus we are so placed and in such circumstances as we cannot avoid being in trouble Sorrows encompass our whole life as the earth is inviron'd with the Seas yea as the Sea is vaster than the Earth so our happiness is exceeded by our infelicity Few and evil have the days of my pilgrimage been said that Patriarch he speaks not a word of any good ones and Job saith Our few days are full of trouble so sull of troubles as if there were no room for any comforts to crowd in Indeed if we put our happiness in one ballance and our misery in the other we shall find a mighty difference this last far outweighing the former VVe drink misery we do but taste of happiness we journey in misery we do but walk in happiness nay which is more our misery is positive and dogmatical our happiness is but disputable and problematical All men call troubles by the name of troubles but happiness changeth the name according to the man that either thinks himself or is thought by others to have it Nay there is scarce any happiness that hath not in it so much of false and baseimoney as that the allay is more than the Metal All our felicity is like an Island floating in the Sea it is now in such a point to morrow in another and the next day quite overwhelmed Troubles break in upon us from the world as waters from the Channels and God sends down others from above as waters from the Clouds so that there are undique flu●●us troubles on every side And this being the universal Condition of humane life we may the less wonder if this pious deceased Gentlewoman whose Funeral we are now met together to solemnize had her share in it since none how holy soever could ever obtain a total exemption from trouble She injoyed indeed a fair and happy freedom from outward troubles and the causes of them but it pleased God who dispenseth all things most wisely to imbitter the serenity of her external condition with some inward troubles which are more pressing and insupportable Yet was she not alone in this nor suffered more than the dearest Servants of God have before been exercised withal How often doth the man after Gods own heart complain in the bitterness of his Spirit Thine arrows stick fast in me Psal 38.2 3. and 69.1 2. and 88.6 7. and thine hand presseth me sore There is no soundness in my flesh because of thine anger neither is there any rest in my bones because of my sin And again Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit in darkness in the deeps thy wrath lieth hard upon me and thou hast afflicted me with all thy waves And holy Job Job 6.4 and 7.20 The arrows of the Almighty are within me the poyson whereof drinketh up my spirit the terrors of God set themselves in array against me And Why hast thou set me as a mark against thee so that I am a burthen to my self And it was a bitter complaint of the good King Hezekiah I reckoned till morning Isa 38.13 14 17. that as a lion so will he break all my bones from day even to night wilt thou make an end of me Like a Crane or a Swallow so did I chatter I did mourn as a Dove It is not therefore always a mark of Gods wrath to be in trouble but it is often a

natures that as the Apostle saith The body is dead already because of sin Rom. 8.10 The Officers and Serjeants of Death Dolours Infirmities and Diseases have seized already upon our bodies and marked them out for lodgings which shortly must be the habitations of death Not only is the sentence pronounced against us Thou art dust Gen. 3.19 and to dust thou shalt return but it is already begun to be executed Our carcasses are bound by the Officers of Death and our life is but like that short time which is granted to a condemned Criminal betwixt his Judgment and his Execution And this brings me to 2. The second thing we have to consider in the Text Man's duration or abode in the world which is very short he is of few days Tho the hope of life may so bewitch us that in our false imagination we conceit there is more solidity and continuance in one year that is before us than in ten that are passed by us the time that is past being vanished like a thought but that which is to come we are apt to think it longer than indeed in experience we shall find it yet the Spirit of God who best knows how short and vain our life is calls the time we have to abide here but a few days And if we judg aright he that liveth longest hath no more for the days that are past are dead already and those that are yet to come are uncertain so that no more is left to us we can be said to live but the present moment which immediately flyes away to give place to another that by a succession of fleeting moments our vain life may be prolonged But that the days of man upon earth are few I shall further shew you by illustrating it in an instance or two 1. Our days are few if they be compared with God and presented to measure with Eternity If the days of our life be set in comparison with the duration of Gods Eternity they bear no proportion to it but vanish in the consideration as nothing Therefore David confesseth unto God Psal 39.4 Thou hast made my days as an hand bredth and mine age is as nothing before thee And in another Psalm he saith Psal 102.25 26 27. Of old O God thou hast laid the foundations of the earth and the heavens are the work of thy hands They shall perish but thou shalt endure yea all of them shall wax old like a garment as a vesture shalt thou change them and they shall be changed but thou art the same and thy years shall have no end And agreeable is that of holy Job Job 10.5 Job 36 26. Are thy days as the days of a man Are thy years as mans days And again God is great we know him not neither can the number of his years be searched out Therefore he is called the living God as St. Acts 14.15 Paul in his Sermon to the Lystrians opposeth to their vain Idols the living God I need not make man worse than he is nor his condition more miserable than it is but could I if I would As a man cannot flatter God or over praise him so neither can he undervalue man Job 7.3 He is made to p●ssess months of vanity But Gods Eternity is interminabilis vitae tota simul perfecta possessio The Living God is a simple absolute and eternal Being There is no similitude will bear any proportion in illustrating this comparison of our days with God A furlong is a great journey to a Snail to a Horse or a Hound it is nothing A Ship with a fair Wind will sail a great way in a day but what is that to the Voyage of the Sun that every day surrounds the world In all these there is an intermediate necessity of place time and motion which belongs not to the infinite Eternity of God Thus we are bounded and bound up with time but God is Eternity and into that Time never entered For Eternity is not all everlasting flux of Time but time is a short Parenthesis in a long Period and Eternity had been the same that it is tho Time had never been at all 2. Our days are few if they be compared with what we our selves shall have after this life They bear no proportion to that Eternity of Joys or Misery which shall succeed them This mortal life is very short if we compare it with the life to come which shall never have an end The difference betwixt this life and that to come is somewhat resembled by the difference betwixt a Lease for years and an Estate in Fee-simple the one runs on still but the other expires at a certain period So are our days but few if we compare them to that eternity of days we expect in Heaven For this corruptible 1 Cor. 15.53 must put on incorruption and this mortal must put on immortality There is Eternity which hath neither beginning nor end which is the duration of God and there is Perpetuity that which the Scripture calls everlasting Life the state of our Souls in Glory This hath a time to begin but it shall out-live time and be when time shall be no more Now what a minute is the life of the durablest Creature to this Everlastingness What a minute is a Mans life in respect of the Sun 's or a Tree's The duration of the World is but a minute to Eternity Man's life is but a minute to the World Occasion is but a minute to our life and yet we scarce apprehend a minute of that occasion if we do not lay hold on this opportunity wherein we may receive good and become blessed In both these respects it is manifest That our days on earth are very few of which the Patriarch Jacob being sensible confessed Few and evil have the days of my pilgrimage been And holy Job tho he was a man of sorrows and a great part of his life-time was swallowed up by many bitter calamities on which score one would think he should rather complain of the tediousness than of the shortness of his life for sorrow makes time long Minutes seem Hours and Days Months to the miserable Our imagination makes the day of our sorrow like Joshua's day when the Sun stood in Gibeon the Summer of our delight is too short but the Winter of our adversity goes slowly on yet notwithstanding this he concludes That mans days are few he cometh forth as a flower and is cut down he fleeth also as a shadow and continueth not Whereunto is exactly consonant that of the Evangelical Prophet Isa 40 6 7. All flesh is grass and all the goodliness thereof as the flower of the field the grass withereth the flower fadeth Nay the Scripture sometimes to insinuate how short our time is vouchsafes not to number it by days but calls our whole life a Day Long life is a Summer day short life is a Winter day joyful life is a