Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n
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A29118
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Elijah's nunc dimittis, or, The authors own funerall sermons in his meditations upon I Kings 19:4 ... / by Thomas Bradley ...
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Bradley, Thomas, 1597-1670.
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1669
(1669)
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Wing B4132; ESTC R7187
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60,180
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133
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are exercised under them 2. Think not strange of those fiery tryalls and that the best men are so often under them it were strange if it were not so Christianus Crucianus the Crosse is the Christians badge the Cognisance of a Disciple our Lord himself the Captain of our salvation was made perfect through sufferings he carried the Cross upon his own shoulders up Mount Calvary upon which himself was Crucified and we may not think much that come after him with Symon the Cyrenian to carry one end of it Shew me the man of any standing in the profession of Christianity that hath been constantly free from sufferings and I will say He is either a Miracle or a Monster in Religion 3. Think not the worse neither of your selves nor others in this case Crosses are not Curses nor the greatest Sufferers therefore the greatest Sinners The sufferings of the Saints are so farr from being Arguments of Gods displeasure towards them that clean contrary they are rather evidences of his love and favour So St. Paul Argues Heb. 12.6 Whom he loveth he chasteneth and correcteth every sonne whom he receiveth St. Jerom never feared his estate worse then when for three years together he lived in peace and was free from all trouble and adversity If thou faint in the time of adversity thy strength is small Remember all promises of blessings and good things made to Gods Children are made with exception of the Cross against which even grace and goodness piety and obedience holiness it self is no protection Sanctity and suffering may stand together They were holy ones of whom God spake Ps 89.32.33 Their iniquity will I visit with the rod and their sins with scourges but my loving kindness will I never take from them nor suffer my truth to faile 4. Beware of murmuring by no means suffer your hearts to break out in any evill thoughts against God and his Providence even in his most severe proceedings against you as if he dealt too hardly with you this were to charge God foolishly But let him be ever justified in his sayings and doings and clear when he is judged and to silence all clamour murmurings and mutinous thoughts In this case take with you these two considerations First See sin in all let the means by which you suffer be what it will and the Instruments of it what they can doe but look well into it and you shall finde Sinne lyes at the bottome David saw this Psal 25.18 Look upon my adversity and my trouble and forgive me all my Sinne. Jeremy saw it in his Lamentations cap. 3.39 Why doth living man complaine man suffering for his Sinnes as if he should say There is no reason for it let him consider well of it and he shall find his Sinnes are greater then his sufferings his sufferings less then his deservings Secondly See God in all though sin be the cause of all 't is God that is the Judge of all Is there any evill in the City and the Lord hath not done it And if it be the Lord let him doe what he will he neither can nor will doe unjustly When Moses told Aaron in a grievous Affliction that befell him Levit. 10. That it was from the Lord The Text sayes Aaron held his peace ver 3. he had no more to say If it be the Lords doing let him doe what is good in his eyes his will be done at well upon us as by us and as well in taking away as giving Ever say with holy Job in the like case Blessed be the Name of the Lord Job 1.22 5. In the sufferings of the Saints and servanâ—s of God here in this world let wicked and ungodly men reade their own doome and certainly conclude That they have a heavy reckoning to make to God in the day of account that great is the wrath of the Allmighty against them and fearefull the Judgements that doe await them Behold saith the Lord I visit the City upon which my name is called and doe you think to escape you shall not escape And if the righteous be scarely saved where shall the ungodly and the Sinner appeare Surely if he doe so severely scourge his own Children with Scourges he will torment them with Scorpions Solomon observed in his time Eccles 8.11 That because Judgement was not speedily executed upon evill doers therefore the hearts of the sonnes of men were wholly set upon wickedness But there is no reason for it if they knew all alas they see not that their day is comming they may make a Covenant with the Grave and with Hell be at agreement but that Covenant will not stand they may cry â—â—ace peace unto themselves where there is no peace and so sleep a while in their security but their damnation sleepeth not they may sing Requiems to their souls Ede bibe lude Eat drink and be merry but they see not the hand-writing on the Wall Mene Mene c. Thou art weighed in the ballance and art found too light they heare not the dreadfull noyse Stulte hac nocte This night shall they fetch away thy soule With what derision doth the wisedom of God speak to such Eccles 11.9 Rejoyce O young man in thy youth and let thy heart cheere thee in the dayes of thy youth and walk in the sight of thine eyes and the wayes of thine heart but remember that for all these things God will bring thee into judgement But the Lord speaks terror to them by his royall Prophet David Psal 50.21 Thus and thus hast thou done and I held my tongue and thou thoughtest me such a one as thy selfe but I will reprove thee and set thy sinnes in order before thee Beloved take this for a most certaine observation 'T is the most dangerous state in the world for a man to goe on in sinne and prosper to live in sinne and to live at ease free from adversity and affliction Ephraim is given unto Idols let him alone saith the Lord by the Prophet Hosea c. 4.17 Nolo istam misericordiam saith St. Jerom Lord let me have none of that mercy to be let alone in my sinne Scinde ure seca ut in aeternum parcas Let me suffer any thing in this life that thou shalt please to lay upon me that I may be spared in the life to come and have nothing to suffer in the other world Let all secure sinners know There is a Pit digging up for them a very significant expression of the Prophet Psal 94.13 Vntill the Pit be digged for the ungodly Now the longer the Pit is in digging the deeper it will be and the deeper it is the greater will be the fall into it and the more impossible the recovery out of it and so deep it may be that it may let the sinner down into Hell it self I conclude this Point with that Advertisement of Saint Paul which he gives to all such secure sinners Rom. 2.4 Know ye not that the patience and long
sweet is theâ—r membrance of thee to the soule that lives in bitterness I doe not think the Lord did impute it for sin to Job or Jeremy that they were so weary of their bitter Lives and did so often wish That their change might come Or that King Edward the sixth did sin when in his death bedsickness he prayd so earnestly Lord take me out of this wretched World Nor Dr. Hamond who under the tortures of the Stone whereof he dyed was so often heard to say Lord make hast though I doubt not but in all these there was implyed a tacit submission to the will of God Thirdly That a man may be taken away frâ—m the evill to come This was a mercy promised to Josiah upon his humiliation 2 Kings 22.19.20 as it was the misery of his surviving Sonne Zedekiah to see the evill which his Father was taken from and to suffer in it Wise men fore-see evill to come in the causes of it and in the â—ore-runners of it And the Lord mentions it as a mercy That he will take them away from those evills and they may without sin Pray for that mercy Isay 57.1 Fourthly That they may be freed from the burden of the flesh and the bondage of corruption inherint in it that Ground Ivie in the Wall which will never be pluckt out root and branch till the Wall be thrown down It was under the sense of this that St. Paul cryes out Rom. 7.24 O wretched man that I am who shall deliver me from the body of this death this will never be done but by the death of this body Fifthly In extremity of old age when a man becomes a burden to himselfe and others when he is fallen into those years of which David saith His life is nothing but labour and sorrow and the years of which he shall say I have no pleasure in them when not onely his body grows weak but his mind also and his intellectuall faculties faile his understanding weak his apprehension dull his memory unfaithfull his affections Childish and he becomes unserviceable not able to doe that good which he hath done and should doe when a man becomes thus superannuate he may doubtless without sin make it his suite to Almighty God To take away his soule Vse This Meditation is usefull to comfort and to confirme us against the feare of death either of our selves or our friends why should we make that the object of our feare which others have made the object of their hope and desire Holy men wise men good men men that have had a great interest in the world have been willing to lay down all and to leave all and made it their suite that they might dye in assurance of a change for a better life To help us to pass through this Gulfe with comfort and courage weigh well but these two things 1. What a world we leave behind us the Terminus à quo 2. What a world we have before us the Terminus ad quem And these two considerations will make the passage through that medium easie First For the Terminus à quo the world we leave behind us a very sink of sin a duâ—ghill of uncleanness 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The whole World lyes in wickedness as St. John speaks nothing in it but sinne and sorrow and travaile and trouble and malice and mischief and that which may well make any wise man out of love with it and even weary of it The best things in it which men make most account of have been weighed to our hands by the wisest of the Sonnes of Men and upon the tryall found To be lighter then vanity it selfe not onely vanity but vexation of spirit For first They are all transitory Secondly They are not all satisfactory Thirdly All imbitter'd with so many cross Ingredients that there is no true contentment in them nor true comfort to be taken out of them We could shew you examples of the greatest of men Kings Emperours Lords of the world such as have had as much of the glory of it and all other worldly good in it as the world could give or lend yet have seen so farr into the vanity and emptiness of it as to despise it to lay down all and take themselves unto a private and monasticall life which is a death to the world and the shaddow of death it selfe Secondly For the Terminus ad quem Consider what a world in dying we are going to it would require a world of time and words to describe it the best description of it is to describe it to be such for the transcendency of the glory of it as that it cannot be described For neither hath the eye seen nor the eare heard nor can the heart of Man comprehend the great things that God hath prepared for them that love him 1 Cor. 2.9 St. Paul shaddows it out in part Heb. 12.22 where he shows the happiness of the Church militant in their communion with the Church triumphant thus But you are come to Mount Sion and to the City of the living God the Caelestiall Jerusalem and to the company of inâ—numerable Angels And to the Assembly and Congregation of the first borne whose names are Written in Heaven and to God the Judge of all and to the spirits of just Men made perfect And to Jesus the Mediatour of the new Testament and to the blood of sprinkling which speaketh better things then the blood of Abel Here 's a description in part of the Place and Society which we shall goe to when we shall come to be joyned with the Church triumphant in glory now be you well assured that all things els there are suitable to these which must needs render it transcendently joyous and glorious O! if we could but draw the Curtaine of Heaven and look in the Sanctum Sanctorum to see the joy and glory that is there we would never care for this world more the most pretious things in it would be despised in our eyes our whole life would be nothing but a Cupio dissolvi esse cum Christo I desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ and we would long for the time when the Lord would take away our soul that we might be translated thither I reade of one Cleombrotus that hearing Plato discoursing of the immortality of the soul and the happines of the other life to come Threw himself headlong off from a high Rock to quit himself of this life that so he might enter into that other life that Plato so much commended And if a Heathen man could be so sensible of advantaging himself by his change into the other life upon those weak grounds which Plato's Philosophy could give as to hasten his own death upon the hope of it Surely we that are Christians and have better grounds to build our faith and hope upon then any Plato's Philosophy could give may with much more Comfort think on Death with much more hope and