Selected quad for the lemma: death_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
death_n	aaron_n	belong_v	son_n	18	3	4.4171	3	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A65795	The middle state of souls from the hour of death to the day of judgment by Thomas White ...	White, Thomas, 1593-1676.	1659 (1659)	Wing W1836; ESTC R10159	87,827	292

as most commonly it happens then is the sin simply remitted but in part remains and in this world it is punished by evils following this debility of mind either sins or conflicts or whatsoever other griefs proceeding from them but in the future by the fruit offspring of those evils till in the last Judgment day that tepidness and as it were rust with which the soul by contagion of that sin was infected be burnt off From whence you easily see that in a perfect repentance God remembers no longer the sin but in an imperfect one accommodates and adopts the pains to the state of the soul From what hath been declared it likewise appeareth how God revengeth the sins of parents to wit external ones upon their posterity and this sometimes intri●secally when the children become themselves wicked by example of their parents but for the most part extrinsecally Which la●●er punishments are threefold first immediate as when the son of David was punished with death secondly as it were eternal as when for the same sin it was threatned that the sword should never depart from his house and likewise for the adoration of the golden calfe that they should be punished in the day of visitation For these expressions import that those very sins should cause a total destruction of that people Of which sort is likewise that prediction of Christ our Lord that all the innocent blood which had been spilt from the just Abel to his time should fall upon the Jewes The third degree is betwixt these two as a standing rule of the divine chastisements to wit to the fourth generation All this is evident in the examples which we hinted at For the punishments of Adam Moses Aaron and David also in the death of his son belong to that rank which we have called miraculous in which it was requisite they should seem to proceed not from the order of causes but the especial judgment of God But for the posterity of Adam their punishments whether internal or external are * clearly shewn in our Theology to flow from the order of causes where it is likewise evident that that sin * can never be remitted till the Resurrection and last Judgment The crime of adoring the golden Calf became in like sort almost eternal th●● is lasted till the extirpation of the whole people Which Ezekiel testifies Chap. 20. reproaching the Jews that from their departure out of Egypt they persisted by continual relapses in the sins of their forefathers who came from thence Whence it may be seen that the stiffness of neck which Moses so oft exprobrated and complained of continued in that people till their utter extermination and that as Christ our Lord assures us all the just blood spilt through the world was punished in that last generation The very same discovers it self in the sin of David whose Love to Bersheba preferred Solomon before the rest of his Children to the succession of his Crown which was the apparent cause of emulation between Absolom and Adonia● and of both their deaths and of all the crimes of Absolom From the same fountain through Solomons disorders sprung the schism of the ten tribes and all the subsequent warrs with the defection of the house of Israel from God and the corruption and wickedness of the house of Judah and consequently all their mutual chastisements and final overthrow the sons still inheriting the vices of their Parents Lastly from the same principles it appears why for the most part the sins of private persons cease in the third or fourth Generation to wit because their memory and imitation is for the most part lost the respect of kindred growing weak and the permixion of forreign blood in the several Mothers rarely suffering the great Grand-fathers blood to boyl with any notable vigour in the veins of his Great-grandchild From this explication it is easily gathered that according to the natural series of Agents and Patients the punishment of sin whether external or internal is nothing else but the increase and exaggeration of sins in those who are perverse and the decrease and diminution of them in those who amend For both the internal sin in the wicked is punished by greater sins and their external punishments are the extension●nd propagation of the sin into new subjects or into more parts of the same subject that is encreases it extensively or intensively And on the contrary in those that are good the strugglings and dolorous affections which wrestle with the affection to sin are their punishments as to the internal and their external ones are the dimintiuon of the dying sin weakly derived into other subjects The Fifteenth Accompt Three other Exceptions That they neither truly take off the punishments nor rightly make them due nor in fine make any real Purgatory FRom hence we may observe another mistake of our Divines in their model Purgatory For though they determine the sufferings there to be certain pains inflicted by torments yet when these pains cease they neither require nor think of any pleasures or at least good acts which may succeed them parallelled to which kind of Philosophy neither the whole variety of Nature nor Grace that I know of affords one experiment For in vegetativ● nature griefs are asswaged by a certain congruous and self cherishing disposition of nature and in supernatural works sin is not extinguished but by infusion of grace and affections opposite to sin To assert therefore certain pains which must be determin'd and asswaged by a pure cessations and not by the entrance and subinter mission of any contrary wholly misbecomes a Philosopher is altogether repugnant to the ground work of natural action which requires an opposition of causes severally challenging to themselves the common subject Our eleventh exception takes notice of another absurdity They affirm that in the instant of death whether in the body or out of the body I know not by an act of contrition all guilt whatsoever which during the whole life had been contracted is immediately wash'd off I urge since the efficacy of contrition is by both sides acknowledged to be such that it not only abolishes the crime but equalizes and consequently is of its own nature capable to extinguish also the punishment and the act of contrition we now treat of must needs be strong and perfect why doth it not by its equivalence supersede all punishment Certainly if it be made by the soul now discharged from the body we cannot doubt but it must be of the highest degree and much more intense and vehement then any contrition which here with ardency of affections were able even to set the very body on fire as some pious Histories relate to have happened But if it be put to be made in the body being endowed with so eminent a prerogative as not to leave uncancelled any one slight stain upon what grounds or how shall we deny it the power

in its right course it is therefore no less indubitable that it mis becomes God and ought not to be attributed to him You will object that the sacred stories overflow with Examples of chastisements which have no coherence with the crimes for which they are inflicted or at least grow not immediately out of them That David's son dy'd because he had made others blaspheme the name of the Lord That the Boys who scoffed at Elizeus were torn in pieces by a Bear That a Lyon destroy'd the disobedient Prophet and a thousand such like I answer in * the Theological Institutions it is sufficiently declared that there is then a necessity of a miracle or work beyond the usual and connatural course of causes when our good requires it should by us be thought that the order of Nature is shaken and overpower'd When this happens in order to punishments the connatural Government of men exacts that the usual connexion which is found in the ordinary series of things betwixt the fault and penalty should be omitted least the Revenge which God in those cases intends to signalize should seeme an effect of chance or Nature not of the uncontrouleable power of his Deity But these Examples are not to be drawn to the condition of ordinary punishments which are usual and customary in the common order of things The same humane frailty in point of discourse leads our Adversaries into another incongruity which it will not be amiss here to take notice of They affirm that God remits the guilt of sin but not the pain For as they experience in themselves when injur'd or exasperated a certain ●bullition or quick motion of spirits about the heart which though at the same time they forbear any violence yet can they not allay so do they perswade themselves that there is in God a certain aversion from a sinner which though upon his repentance it ceaseth yet do they conjecture that an intention of punishing him may still remain From whence they infer that all the guilt of the soul is pardon'd before it arrives at Purgatory but the pain is there notwithstanding to be endured But it seems they never consider that the passion or impetuosity spoken of is a corporeal motion unworthy a wise man much more unfit to be trans●●●'d or apply'd to God For anger in God signifies no more then an intention to punish Whence necessarily it followes that as much as is remitted of the fault so much must be remitted of the punishment Again what can the sinner be guilty of if not of sin Of an Offence say you to God But that if Punishment ensue not thereon whom doth it prejudice The Man He is concern'd only in the Pain God against whom the offence is But God can receive no prejudice And indeed in our common speech we do not use to say sin deserves guilt but punishment so that the guilt of sin is the fault it self and not a guilt or obnoxiousness to fault but to punishment Impossible therefore it is that Pains purely upon the account of sins already remitted should be undergone in Purgatory Let them therefore consider whether the passion we experience in our selves be any thing else then a beginning or first motion of the Heart to Revenge that is to annoy the Offender that is in a spiritual substance a will to punish But though a will to punish be a different thing from an aversion to sin yet is it subsequent thereto and later then it and consequently according to the nature of the thing will first of the two cease It is therefore against Nature that the aversion should be taken away and yet the will to punish remain which is wholly grounded and originally dependent upon that aversion Whence those Divines are grosly mistaken who affirm the effect that is the Will to punish ceasing the Cause that is the aversion from the sinner is taken away and deny that the cause to wit the aversion being taken away the effect to wit the Will to punish ceases Finally if need were we could in our defence muster an army of Fathers and appeal to the common sense and Judgment of Mankind You will say perhaps at least it cannot be deny'd but that there is a previous dissimilitude betwixt God and the sinner antecedently to his Will of punishing him and that therein consists the point of offence It is answered no man explicates the nature of offence by dissimilitude but by action so that if the dissimilitude act not upon the offended party it is no offence at all And besides the dissimilitude it self is not so great as that of irrational creatures for though it disfigure yet doth it not cancel the image of God within us But all other things besides Man deserve not the honour of being called his image but his foot-step Lastly this aversion is the cause of his punishing whence without it there can be no liableness to Pain in Man no appetence thereof in God The Fourteenth Accompt Of the Punishments which we meet with in the sacred Scriptures and of the remission of sins TO what we have here delivered it may be objected that nothing is more frequent in the sacred Scripture then the account of punishments inflicted after the undoubted remission of the fault We his progeny feel yet the effects of the sins of our first Father Adam whom we no wayes doubt to reign with Christ our saviour in Heaven We read that the sins of M●ses and Aaron were punished with death and yet at that same time that God familiarly conversed with them after the offence We read of the people sin which God threatens to remember in the day of Revenge and yet in the mean while acknowledg his great benificence to them and particularly his introduction of them into the Land of Promise Now Jeremiah tells us chap. 2. that the translation of the Tribe of Judah was that day of revenge Is not this saith he done unto thee because thou didst forsake the Lord thy God at that time when he led thee by the way And yet betwixt those two times how often was God reconciled to them especially in the dayes of Sa●●uel David and Solomon Of the sin of David we read that his son should dye and the sword never cease in his house yet are we confident of his being in favour with God and the text assures us that in the presence of Nathan his sin was transferred What then can be more evident than that punishment remains due after the sin is cancell'd So that it may well be concluded that mortal sins though remitted still challenge their reward in Purgatory and venial ones unrepented are there by those grudging flames to be expiated I answer Almost in all things which fall under our consideration we are forced to distinguish in the same propositions there being predicated sometimes simply sometimes secundum quid or according to some one respect or notion And