Selected quad for the lemma: death_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
death_n	act_n	action_n	angel_n	21	3	6.9223	4	false

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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A51820	A sermon preach'd before the Right Honourable Sir Robert Clayton, Lord Mayor of London, at Guild-Hall-Chappel, December 7, 1679 by Thomas Mannyngham ...	Manningham, Thomas, 1651?-1722.	1680 (1680)	Wing M502; ESTC R6536	13,854	40

the History and Example of our Blessed Saviour who has not spoken a much harsher thing in his whole Gospel than what relates to a confidence in riches and great abundance allowing onely a * Matth. 15.26 bare possibility a possibility with God with whom all things are possible for the refuge and salvation of the wealthy as it were not receiving them within the ordinary extensions of his love and tenderness but referring them to the omnipotence and last reach of his mercy What are the acclamations of Fame or the obloquies of Scorn to him who considers how intoxicating a great Reputation is how apt to raise Tumours in the imaginations of the best of men and to tincture their reflexions with pride and vain complacency who calls to mind that there is not usually a more precarious thing on earth than he who has been nursed up with flatteries and applauses who has liv'd upon publick breath and been the Idol of the admiring multitude that such an one is the Creature of every Hyperbole that he may be transform'd and fashion'd by every modish Epithite and complemented into all the absurdities of opinion and action who sadly reflects how the voluptuous and plausible with Herod in the * 12.22 Acts are often panegyric'd to Death and Hell by the officious Blasphemies of the Rabble who considers that an abused Reputation does often break more illustriously through a cloud of Infamy and let whatever happen yet a Blot on his name here may give it a fairer Character in the sight of Angels and make it more legible in the Book of Life Lastly it must be confess'd that Health is an inestimable Blessing that it was the chiefest of all Temporal Promises in the Old Testament without which no other could have been enjoyed But yet if we consider what nourishment and fewel it often administers to the grossest sensualities what dangerous temptations lie in the bosome of the healthful continually pressing for admission and how greedily they are many times entertained by those who are strong to undergo the labours of iniquity we shall be apt to acknowledge that sickness is a proper season for the exercise and acquisition of many graces or at least that 't is a happy impotence in respect of the most wasting vices we are subject to that a firm constitution of mind is often wrought from the diseases of the Body and the Soul grows more active and refin'd by still working out its own separation that the mortal part of us by a continual succession of little dissolutions may be better prepar'd to drop with ease and just maturity into that final one of death which when it meets a man in the full Tyde of his prosperity and the luxury of his Temper with what confusions it assaults his Triumphant minde with what violence it rends his strong ligaments of Life No one will more readily part with his earthly Tabernacle than he that by indispositions and long sicknesses has been taught the trouble of keeping it Tenantable he will rejoyce to sleep with his Fathers to be eased of the ruines of Adam the dishonours of Original sin and to resigne up his dust and ashes for Immortality and a glorious form Thus we have seen by what gracious arts strengths and assistances Afflictions may not onely be patiently born by the Religious but also improv'd into real comforts and heightned into all natural and spiritual advantages and this may be done not onely by persons in their private concerns but also in their relative and publick capacities and as they constitute a Church or Nation which brings me to my second General viz. II. Briefly to consider what advantage Afflictions bring to Religion as they respect a Church or Nation Those narrow Reasoners who measuring Divine Providence by the modes of humane inspection thought it trivial and perplexing for it to direct every Ordinary Agent and to mingle its concourse with particulars have notwithstanding been very generous and liberal in allowing a constant and ample superintendency over Churches and Nations and that there might be nothing wanting to the magnificence of Providence in their Government have super-added peculiar Stars and Angels for subordinate ministrations What appropriate Schemes of Government God Almighty is pleas'd to establish to himself in his presiding over those greater Bodies is no mans Province to inquire nor within his capacity to declare but however this we may be certain of and it has been confirm'd by the experience of all Ages that ordinarily Nations may expect their prosperous or their adverse seasons according as their Virtues or their Vices shall exceed And although prosperity be the Vote of Nature the thirst and instinct of the Soul insomuch that Isaiah brings in the Jews begging a kind cousenage from their Prophets * Esay c. 30 v. 10. Speak unto us smooth things prophesie deceits Torment us no longer with your Desolations and Captivities those prodigies of a distemper'd sleep but let your Dreams be a continued Pageantry of Heaven and all your Visions a Shechinah I say although this be the universal voice of Mankind and that with the Israelites we lust for a Canaan in the very wilderness are calling for new luxuries of mercy whilst we are despising the former yet the Lord graciously hears our Prayers and grants us a denyal knowing that in plenty and ease we are apt to forget our Maker but when he smites us we turn back we seek him we inquire of him we publish Fasts by Law transfer our Policies into Piety and make the depths of Empire serve Religion even so the appearance of a Comet improves Astronomy better than all the ordinary motions of the Stars and Planets and the Sun invites more eyes towards Heaven by sits Eclipse than by its constant splendour The certain vicissitude of sins and judgments mercies and provocations hath in a manner render'd all Church-History but Repetition and Tautology Thus God dealt with the ancient Jews thus with the first Christians and so he continues to deal with us and although we cannot without detestation and amazement recal those * Psal 106. numerous ingratitudes of Israel committed within the space of forty or fifty years yet if we reflect on our own Chronicle within near the same circuit of time we shall be apt to conclude the Jews but puny sinners as the horrour of Regicide seems to lessen the guilt of Murder for did not the memories and obligations of our Fathers immediately cool upon almost as great a deliverance as the Miracle of the Read-sea and did not we within a while after murmur and rebel against Moses and Aaron the best Monarchy and the best Hierarchy and in that Interregnum when our King was but gone into the midst of the Cloud to learn Afflictions and to commune with the Lord did not some of us set up a Calf in Horeb and worship that molten Image when we were brought into the promised Country 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with

wisdom of the Spleen But lo now the long-resisted notion of a Deity breaks out and kindles upon him it even haunts and persecutes his reflections 't is about his paths and about his bed and spies out all his ways If his thoughts can * Psal 139. v. 8 9 c. ascend into Heaven it is there if they go down into Hell it is there also if they take the Wings of the Morning and remain in the uttermost parts of the Sea even there they shall perceive the terrible works of the Lord and his Wonders in the Deep if peradventure darkness covers him yet behold the Lord comes riding on that Cloud and then even that darkness will be day now will his long-abused Soul grow Conscious of her own Immortality and his Minde swell with inward Argument 't will be no more accounted a vapour in the nostrils or a little spark in the moving of the heart but an eternal subject of Glory or Confusion now let him tell me if he can how ravishing the Psalms of David are beyond the Odes of Pindar or the Lunacy of Lucretius how venerable a plain Homily appears how full of Sacred Apothegm how each Paragraph contains somewhat Infinite and Immense and a Canaan distils from every Text Wherefore if now even in this his day he will be obedient to the vast infusions of his Conversion if he will constantly maintain the great Current of Repentance in its proper Channel and with all Sincerity live up to the vows of his Sickness then may he be advanced into my Second part and be numbred amongst the Righteous where Afflictions are sure to meet him again though with another face for as they are often found the best expedients to convert the obstinate from their vicious habits So Secondly They do confirm and heighten the Righteous in their course of Piety He that considers the slow progress of vertuous Habits the constant sollicitations of the World without him the continual Treacheries of his own Nature within the secret and malicious Insinuations of all the Powers of Darkness that are round him will readily confess That the frequent and most instant admonishments of Afflictions are the best Guards against Vice the surest strong Hold against all those Enemies and that the Implacable Canaanite onely defends that Land that Israel against which he fights We finde this state of Afflictions almost every where recommended by the wiser Heathens which did not proceed from any Ost●ntation of Wit was not any Rant of Stoicism but the result and sobriety of their best Reasoning and sprang from the cooler Counsels of Philosophy consonant to which we meet with a most remarkable sentence of Plato in his * Plat. 2. Repub. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. Republicks whereby you would imagine that he prophetically describ'd one of our Primitive Martyrs where he says That to approve a man heartily righteous he must be scourged tortured bound have both his eyes burnt out and in the close having suffered all evils must be Impal'd or Crucify'd Neither was it the affectation of the retir'd or a melancholy Doctrine of the Cell but grew a Maxime even amidst the softnesses of Courts and gained the Suffrage of the Noble too Let one instance out of many suffice and that of Philip King of Macedon concerning whom prophane History relates that having in one day succeeded in three notable Enterprizes he immediately implored the gods that they would be so propitious to him as to expiate that immoderate prosperity with some misfortune and temper it into a draught fit for Mortality Moreover what is more remarkable 't was chiefly from this State that most of their eminent Heroes were Canoniz'd for after they had been broken and dissipated here on earth by vast Calamities then were they plac'd amongst the Stars and their mighty Souls collected into their assigned Orbs. Even the antient Patriarchs who lived before the Mosaic Institution passed away their numerous years in Sorrows and Pilgrimages mighty Judgments or Egyptian slavery And about those times according to the best conjectures of Ecclesiastical Authors the righteous Job flourished in his Afflictions and now remains to all posterity a stupendious example of Religion and Misery Besides in the establish'd oeconomy of the Jewish State which though it was so full and pregnant of the happiness of this world that its Political appearance was nothing but the promise of a Temporal prosperity yet we finde that for the most part amongst the Jews their stoutest Leaders best Kings and noblest Prophets were most severely treated with Crosses and sharp Afflictions And now if the constancy equanimity and all the gallant worth of the best of Heathens the Righteousness of the antient Patrianchs the Valour Wisdom and Integnity of the more renowned Jews have been signaliz'd and made conspicuous chiefly by their Afflictions surely Christianity which has plac'd Immortality in a fuller light which has set an exceeding glory before us to animate our Contentions in Tribulation and has given us an infallible assurance of that astonishment of Men and Angels a Crucify'd God ought in all natural reason to be productive of infinitely more illustrious effects under its severer dispensation especially if we consider that there is not a Vertue proposed to our Imitation through the whole life of our Saviour which has not for its appendage that which the Animal man calls Misery although it proves in the event the onely winging of the Soul the highest exaltation of Humane Nature which had never been honoured with the Vnion of God if it had not been in order to suffer But yet Christianity would be a strange irrational Doctrine and as eagerly derided as the Stoical Apathy if from its Principles and Duties we should endeavour to perswade men that in Afflictions and Miseries there was a sensitive pleasure or at least no sensitive regret Virtue and Piety do not charm us into to a Lethargy do not lessen the Impressions of Pain or the resentments of Injuries they rather improve them by how much the Temperate and the Intellectual are more keen and exquisite in all their perceptions than the Sensual and Debauched so that the true Christian is altogether as sensible and as conscious of the Wounds and Indignities offered to his Nature as the Voluptuous and the Revengeful but he bears them with an entire submission to the Providence Correction or Tryal of his Heavenly Father not onely without Murmurings but with Joy * 2 Cor. 7.4 exceeding Joy by reason of that Prospect that is still before him a Prospect which shews the duration of his Misery short and vanishing the Recompence of it immeasurably great and Eternal This was St. Paul's comfort in the midst of his * 2 Cor. 11. perils fightings and jeopardies of his stripes prisons and deaths when he was a Gladiator in the world in the behalf of Christ a Spectacle and * 1 Cor. 4.9 Theatre to Men and Angels Even our blessed Saviour himself