Selected quad for the lemma: death_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
death_n	adam_n	sin_n	sin_v	19,442	5	9.9710	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
B08795	Animadversions upon a fatal period, or, A brief discourse concerning the present state of the body, and the future state of the soul by Tho. Collard.	Collard, Tho.	1678 (1678)	Wing C5102A; ESTC R174032	31,547	104

making the one a blind for the better execution of the other as if all the love and mercy he expresses all the passionate invitations he makes were only to mock and delude us And as several ills saith the most judicious and ever to be admir'd Author of the Causes of the Decay of Christian Piety are hereby countenanced and authoriz'd so is all Virtue in general discouraged and disheartned these benumb us in our Christian course substract that spirit and vigour which should carry us through the weary stages of duty indeed they cut the very sinews of Industry baffle and make ridiculous all purposes of Labour the Ministers Preaching and the Peoples Hearing and Doing for what should invite a man to strive for that from which he knows he is either irreversibly precluded or else so infallibly ascertain'd of that his negligence cannot defeat him GOD has given us Rules of Life which upon the severest Penalties he requires us to study and practise and we divert from these and make it our business to trace his Counsels We are gazing at the Stars to read our Destiny and look not to our feet and by that negligence experiment the worst fate they could have portended for I think we may say our wild Phancies about Gods Decrees have in event reprobated more than those Decrees upon which they are so willing to charge their ruine and have bid fair to the damning of many whom those left salvable We often forget our Calling by contemplating our Predestination and let the Opinion of our Fate be at once the Encouragement and Excuse of our sloth than which nothing can more evacuate the purpose and design of our Christianity which Divines have truly defin'd to be not a contemplative but active Science THE Almighty interrogates the house of Israel Why will ye die and tells them in the subsequent Verse I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth wherefore turn your selves and live ye Yet some bold Inquisitors into Gods Decrees and hidden Counsels dream That his secret Will is of a very distant nature to his revealed Et Deus ita terminum seu horam mortis homini praefinierit decreto absoluto ut hâc ipsâ horâ non aliâ hoc ipso mortis genere quo homo moritur non alio mori illum simpliciter absoluteque sit necessarium and that the Soul likewise is liable to the same fatality That Myriads do what they can are from Gods eternal and immutable purpose ordain'd for death and endless misery and a very few Favourites only in comparison of the rest do what they will are predestin'd to life and immortal Glory This wounds the Credit both of the Divines and the Physicians of their Proselytes and Patients and by the clearest consequence makes the former Cheats and the later Fools But whether true or no we come now to consider THE Question here Why will ye die and the Protestation I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth may clear Gods ways of being either cruel or unequal and evidently demonstrate the Almighty's Philanthropy and his high resentment of the ruine and Perdition either of Body or Soul And first concerning the present State of the Body The present state of the Body THE Protoplast had he continued in his integrity as he might for God gave him sufficient power to stand and did not withdraw the least degree of his Grace or infuse into him any secret impulse or motion whereby he might deviate from that sacred station in which he was plac'd he had been free from death but having once eaten the prohibited fruit 't was necessary by Gods Decree but not before that Death should arrest him for it for the immutable Creator had said That in the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die Gen. 2. 17. So that we may not before the Fall altho it be true since term death with Socinus to be naturae sequela per se For as by Adam Sin enter'd into the world so death by sin Rom. 5. 12. And as it follows so death passed upon all men for that all have sinned that is All meer men that were after born were sinners born after the image and likeness of Adam that was now a sinner and had begotten no Child in his innocence Sinful men then we are all and die once we must by reason of our Fore-father's Apostasie 'T is true we read that Lazarus and others being raised from the dead without controversie died twice but the Author St. Paul doubtless of the Heb● Chap. 9. 27. speaks of the natural Law whereby it is appointed unto all ordinarily once to die so that 't is not opposite to this truth because others have died twice which by an extraordinary manner happen'd only to a few And as for those that shall be found alive at the second and sudden coming of Christ they shall be changed in a moment and in the twinckling of an eye which mutation or change shall be to them instead of death 'T is then most apparent that 't is ordinarily appointed unto men once to die and then certainly to come to judgment to be punished or rewarded according to their actions Rom. 14. 10. 2 Cor. 5. 10. OUR brittle and terrestrial Bodies we all grant must be dissolved for our Bounds are set and our lives limited within such a number of years beyond which by the ordinary course of nature we cannot pass but our Days are not so strictly and fatally limited and determin'd as if neither God nor man could extend or shorten them The fifteen years added to Hezekiah's days assure us of Gods power to prolong the life of man and Reason Experience and all History both sacred and prophane proclaim his power to shorten it And thousands of Examples too sadly evince how expert and indefatigable many are in putting a Period to their own and other mens days in the midst and prime of their strength and splendor A man may destroy him●e●● his Friend Neighbour or Enemy before he hath seen thirty years that otherwise might have seen threescore And therefore a fatal Period in the judgment of all considering men is no less than a Stoical Astrological and Mahometan Dream or at best but a popular Error as our immortal Dr. Hammond terms it in his Postscript of new Light AND we likewise confess That God does know and may foretel the very time manner and place of any mans death but 't is a simple Logician and a giddy and hot-braind Christian that from Gods Predictions and Revelations of the period of some mens lives as of Aaron Pashur Hophni and Phineas and of the holy Jesus will hence infer as W. C. most irrationally doth that therefore the very moment the very kind tho it be self-murther and place of every mans death are fatally and absolutely decreed and appointed I shall transcribe our famous Preacher's very expressions and words which indeed would have sounded better from the mouth