Selected quad for the lemma: church_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
church_n	earth_n	heaven_n	militant_a	4,766	5	11.7120	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A39911	Hēsychia Christianou, or, A Christian's acquiescence in all the products of divine providence opened in a sermon, preached at Cottesbrook in Northampton-Shire, April the 16, 1644, at the interment of the Right Honourable, and eminently pious lady, the Lady Elizabeth Langham, wife to Sir James Langham Kt. / by Simon Ford ...	Ford, Simon, 1619?-1699.	1665 (1665)	Wing F1485; ESTC R10829	91,335	258

the world a publick Testimony of the honour I owe to both the Families to which this Excellent Personage concerne in them stood Related both tha whence she was Descended an that whereinto she was by marriage Engraffed And being thus betwixt importunity and inclination prevailed withal to run this risqu● I hope I have in the reasons 〈◊〉 both given a general account 〈◊〉 the fitness of my entituling you to the Patronage of them But withal Right Honourable there is something also of peculiar in the claim which on your Honours behalf may be made unto them For you Madam as you blessed the world with the Subject of the Narrative from your Womb so you furnished me also with the Argument of the Sermon from your mouth in a Text which among other expressions savouring of a well seasoned spirit dropped from your lips at the arrival of the sad tidings of your dear Daughters departure And I the rather chose to make it the Subject of my Discourse upon that sad Occasion because your noble Example in the often practise of the Lesson contained in it accommodated me with a notable Instance of its practicableness Q. sextius habet quod ostendat tibi beatae vitae magnitudinem desparationem ejus non faciet Ep. 64. it being a great advantage to the ingratiating of any Duty when we can by some great example deliver it as Seneca speaks in another case from the suspicion of being impossible I have formerly admired at the Temper of that noble and learned Roman Lady Cornelia Nunquam ' ego me felicem non dixerim quae Gracchos pepererim Cicero de Consol the Daughter of the great Scipio and Mother of the Gracchi of whom Tully reports that when she had lost her Son Caius a very hopeful Gentleman in his very prime and in him her twelfth Child she brake out into this gallant Expression that she would nevertheless alwaies esteem her self an happy woman in that she had had the honour to be the Mother of such Children But I have of late learned to lessen this wonder having seen her herein out-shined by one no less noble and learned than she and that is your self who in much a parallel case have demeaned your self with a far greater because a truly Christian Fortitude And indeed Madam if ever any Mother had reason to take Comfort from such a Consideration you have in that though you have survived divers of your Children yet have you withal had the happiness to see them all signally vertuous even beyond their years and consequently also the Argument of an ample Assurance of their eternal felicity in their early maturity and fitness for it In which respect how can it indeed be other than an infinite satisfaction to you that in sending so many Children to the place of happiness before you you are as it were glorified by piece meal and instead of planting Families from your bowels on earth have contributed towards the planting of Colonies in Heaven instead of recruiting the Forces of the Church Militant have furnished the Trophies of the Church Triumphant and according to the judgment of some Divines of Note supplied the vacant seats of so many of the Apostate Angels with Saints descendant from you The usual distasts taken at this kind of Providence whether from the uncomely 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 it is thought to make in nature which seems according to the Proverb to design the wearing out of the eldest first or from the disappointment of the common expectation that our liberi shall be posteri our Children live to shut our eies and receive our last breath and dying commands and keep up our Names and inherit our Estates and Honours when we are gone a kind of supplemental and subsidiary immortality which propagation in all species of Creatures seems to aim at and in a sort promise as part of amends for the Death of Individuals and whatever it is of the like nature which heightens vulgar passions are all such low and pitiful excuses of impatience and implicite blasphemies against the great Soveraign of the World that I cannot suspect the Heroical generosity of your spirit needs the assistance of any Considerations which yet both Morality and Christianity afford in great plenty to be suggested by me for the removal of them For you have made it sufficiently evident to all that know you that you are a person who do as the Philosopher saith fortius amare love your dearest temporal comforts more valiantly than so as experimenting the sweet only and not the soft impressions of that most powerful Affection And therefore without enlarging this Epistle into another Lecture of Christian submission to and Acquiescence in Divine Providence I only tender that of the following Sermon to your hands not so much in the nature of a Perswasive to your Duty as the Product of your Example And you My Lord by the dear affection which you have born to all the surviving Branches of that Noble Family and to this excellent Lady in particular ever since the decease of your noble Brother and their Father the late Earl of Huntingdon have rendred your self so much more than an Uncle to them that I fear I had not done you right had I not given your Name the very place that the Natural Father's had he lived might have claimed in this Dedication And I am withal the more hardened to this adventure which otherwise the little acquaintance I have with your Lordship might render presumptuous by the remembrance that when your Lordship rendred your self the principal attendant of these sacred Reliques to their Dormitory though the great hast of your affairs then enforced you to call for the Sermon before the day appointed and necessitated the delivery of it with some disadvantage by the surprize yet your goodness was pleased to give an ample testimony of your acceptance of my endeavours therein as having not only in some proportion discharged my Duty to the Living but also done something of Justice to the Dead And therefore I hope that what was then honoured with your acceptance when in that discomposure it had no higher ambition than to obtain your pardon may now having gained by a review something of more orderly composure though it yet fall much beneath the excellency of the Subject aspire to your Patronage also To conclude I shall ease both your Honours of the trouble this tedious Epistle hath given you when I have offered up a short Prayer on the behalf of all the surviving Relations of this excellent Lady viz. That God will enable them by his Grace to improve this sad Providence to their utmost advantage which will be best done by copying out her Vertues in their own practise considering That Domestical examples of eminent Goodness as they reflect an honourable lustre upon the Families from which they are extracted Saints adding a greater glory to any Pedigree than Princes so ought they into them especially who are