Selected quad for the lemma: death_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
death_n	age_n	life_n	old_a	5,148	5	5.6715	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A44137	A discourse of the knowledge of God, and of our selves I. by the light of nature, II. by the sacred Scriptures / written by Sir Matthew Hale, Knight ... for his private meditation and exercise ; to which are added, A brief abstract of the Christian religion, and, Considerations seasonable at all times, for the cleansing of the heart and life, by the same author.	Hale, Matthew, Sir, 1609-1676.	1688 (1688)	Wing H240; ESTC R4988	321,717	542

Greatness which without it would in a little time swell into a stark Ambition or Covetousness The Evangelist tells us thar All that is in the world is the Lust of the Flesh the Lust of the Eyes and the Pride of Life that is those Lusts that are in us fasten upon their suitable objects in the World and upon them they live and grow strong and are thereby the better enabled to fight against our Souls and God shews as much Mercy when he takes away their food and starves them by an affliction as when he pardons them Therefore learn by thy affliction the Mind of God in this also and bless him as well for an affliction that prevents thee from sin as for one that leads thee to repentance 6. It may be God hath some extraordinary work to do for thee or by thee prepares thee by those afflictions with humility that thou mayst be a fit Instrument for his Glory or a fit Vessel for his Bounty A sudden access of Greatness or Wealth or Power or Eminence is apt to make thy Nature swell and look big and deny God Prov. 30.9 therefore he prepares thee with the sense of his hand to shew how he can when he pleaseth handle thee with the experience of the benefit of Dependance upon him with a condition that may teach thee to wa●k humbly with him otherwise thou wilt not be able to bear and to manage that condition he intends to put thee in with moderation with his fear with an eye unto him and to his Glory Thus he prepared David for the Crown Job for Wealth the People of Israel for Canaan that they might receive and use it with Thankfulness as from his hand with Sobriety and Faithfulness as in his presence 7. Howsoever it is of most certain and universal use to take off thy Love from this World to present it to thee as it is to take thee off from setting up Tabernacles and thy Rest here and to carry thy thoughts and thy desires to thy home and to thy Country and to make the remembrance of it frequent and sweet and that upon which thou reckonest to make thy passage through death easie and comfortable when thou shalt consider such thoughts as these I am in a body full of pains and weaknesses and diseases so that I have much ado to keep up my Cottage to be comfortable or useful to me but am busied every day to underprop it and repair it that it fall not and when I have done my best yet Old Age will come and that will be an irreparable decay and my anxious life will most surely be attended with a certain death I live in a World full of labour at the best to provide necessaries for my support in a World full of troubles dangers and calumnies If my outward contentments increase yet my cares and my fears increase with them But my condition is not such but with the Psalmist I have cause to say Psal 73.14 All the day long have I been plagued and chastned every morning and like Noah's Dove I can find here no rest for the soal of my foot My walk here is like a pilgrimage and my path is not plain and easie but narrow and deep and troublesom on either hand of me I pass through the scorns and injuries and vexations of the men of this World who if I want will not relieve me and if I have any thing they are ready to tear it from me and my way which of it self is thus troublesom is accompanied with Storms and Stumbling-blocks and fiery Assaults raised by the Prince of this World and if I take up a lodging by the way it is neither a pleasing nor a safe lodging my dangers and difficulties are greater in my Inn than they are in my Journey To what purpose go I about to set up my rest or to build Tabernacles here The time I can stay will be but short and my short stay in such a World as this cannot be pleasing nor comfortable and this is not my home but I see it at a distance I find it as it were in Landskips Revel 21. the Tabernacle of God where he shall wipe away all tears from mine eyes and there shall be no more death neither sorrow nor crying neither shall there be any more pain and then these my light afflictions which are here but for a moment shall be rewarded with an eternal weight of Glory In the confidence and strength of this expectation I will hold on my troublesom Journey with chearfulness and look upon this World as the place of my pilgrimage not of my rest and the unpleasingness of my pilgrimage shall heighten if it be possible the expectation as well as the fruition of my home and the more unwelcome the World is to me and I to it the more shall my heart undervalue and disesteem it and send forth my desires the more earnestly for my Journey 's end teach me to welcome death and to desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ which is best of all 3. Sometimes external troubles are in themselves an express token of the Love of God and they carry with them comfort and delight namely when it is a Persecution for Righteousness sake and in those both the Precepts of Christ and the Pattern of his Disciples command us up to rejoycing Mat. 5.10 11 12. Rejoyce and be exceeding glad Jam. 1.1 2. Count it all joy Acts 5.41 Rejoycing that they were accounted worthy to suffer shame for his Name Coloss 1.24 Who now rejoyce in my sufferings for you and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh 4. The fourth Consideration is of the Mercy of God and therein 1. his Patience and forbearing Mercy whiles we are in our sins 2. his Clemency and forgiving Mercy upon our Repentance 3. his Bounty and rewarding Mercy in the whole course of our lives and hopes 1. The Patience Long-suffering and Forbearance of God from our infancy God leads us as once he did Ephraim Hos 11.3 teaching us to go and taking us by the arm but we know it not and bears with the frowardness and peevishness and stubborness and wantonness of our youth and when we come to our riper age he plants us with the choicest Vine with the instruction of his Word and Providence and now he doth as justly he may expect Grapes and we bring forth no Grapes or wild ones Isa 5.2 4. and now how just were it for him to pull up the hedge of it and command the Clouds that they rain no rain upon it or to lay upon it that sad Curse Matt. 2● 19 Never fruit grow on thee more But he doth not thus but expects a second and a third and a fourth year Luke 13.8 and uses all means to mend this unfruitful and unprofitable Plant useth line upon line and precept upon precept and if his Word nor the secret whispers of his Grace will not do

operations and whose Gifts and Callings are without Repentance hath promised to be with us to the end of the World He cannot sin because his s●●d abideth in him 1 John 3.9 It is true there may be intermissions of the acting of Grace in the Heart and there may be falls in the Life but to be given over to a course of sin without repentance to be brought under the power and dominion of Sin as a King or a Ruler the Honour and Truth of God is engaged in it it shall not be 2 Thes 3.3 The Lord is faithful who shall stablish you John ●0 28 N●er shall any man pluck them out of my hand Rom. 6.14 Sin shall not have dominion over you for 〈…〉 under the Law but under Grace And these Promises of God cannot make the Heart of any one to whom they truly belong any whit the more careless or loose in his watch over himself for that very Spirit whereby those Promises are sealed to us is an active vigilant pure Spirit and puts the Heart and Life upon those Practices that do naturally and properly conduce to this very Perseverance viz. Assiduity in Duties Humble and Watchful walking before God Examination and search of the state of our Souls and Lives Jealousie over the Treachery of our own Hearts and the snares that are within us and without us a Guard upon our Affections and Senses a frequent Consideration of the Will of God of his Goodness to us in Christ of the Price wherewith we are bought of the Hope whereunto we are redeemed and all those other helps that conduce to the settling and stablishing of our Hearts and Lives in a Conformity to the Will of God and in avoiding of all those things which are contrary thereunto and consequently as contraries do would impair corrupt and destroy that Life of Grace which he hath begun in us And from hence ariseth 3. An Increase and Growth in a more exact Conformity to the Will of God than formerly This is that which is so often commended unto us by the Spirit of God Colos 2.7 Rooted and built up in him Colos 4.12 Compleat in all the will of God Phil. 1.9 that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and in all judgment 1 Cor. 15.58 abounding in the work of the Lord Heb. 13.21 make you perfect in good works to do his will Phil. 3.13 forgetting what is past and reaching forth to the things that are before Ephes 4.13 growing to a perfect man 2.16 increase of the body 2 Pet. 3.17 beware lest ye fall from your own stedfastness but grow in grace Jude 20. building up your selves in your most holy faith Prov. 4.18 Increasing more and more unto the perfect day John 15.2 Every branch that beareth fruit he purgeth it that it may bring forth more fruit And as this is the Will of God so it is as naturally the effect of this Life that is wrought in the Heart as it is the effect of natural Life in the Body for it is an active and operative Life If any quality have got the mastery in a mixt Body it doth ever more and more by degrees waste and consume the contrary qualities and assimulates the whole unto it self And although as long as our Flesh hangs about us it is impossible that a compleat and absolute conquest can be wrought of all that Sin that is in us because it is a spring of Corruption yet it is wasted weakned and decayed By this work of Grace Saul's House waxeth weaker and weaker Every habit though it be moral or natural only receiveth an augmentation and degrees by its continual actings And the Grace of God which is more operative and active in the Heart than any habit can be for it is accompanied with the immediate Power and Efficacy of the Divine Spirit never stands still but like the little Leven that was hid in the great quantity of Meal it never gives over till the whole be leavened 4. Renewed Repentance Thy corrupt Nature is a Body of Sin and Death a spring of Corruption that will ever cast up mire and dirt and Grace in thy Heart is a spring of living Waters that as often as that corrupts will be washing it again When thou hast made the chamber of thy Heart as clean as thou canst yet there will be leaks in it that will let in Corruptions enough quickly to make it as foul as ever Grace by the continual examination of thy self humbling of thy Heart before God renewing thy Covenant with him doth not only pump out the filth that would poyson and drown and dam thee but stops the decays and leaks of this thy infirm Vessel When the Grace of God at first found thee thou wast dead in trespasses and sins and it came into thee and by Repentance did exercise its own act of Life to quicken thee And that same Body of Death that did at first inclose thee is still about thee and takes all opportunities to get its old mastery of thee and by this means thou catchest many a fall and bruise but that same Life by which thou livest re-acts against those inroads of sin and death and doth conquer them so that though thy renewed sins are not thy ruine yet they ought to be thy burden though they must not make thee despair yet they cannot chuse but make thee mourn though thy Saviour hath born their Guilt yet it is but equal thou shouldest bear thy shame When thou hadst no Life in thee thou couldest not feel thy self dead But now thou hast Life in thee thou canst not chuse but be sensible of thy sickness and thy hurts which thy own folly have occasioned and judge and condemn and avoid that Folly of thine that occasioned it Though thou canst not be rid of thy sins that fight against thy Life yet thou wilt not entertain them with better Entertainment than Bread of Affliction and Water of Affliction Though thou canst not expiate for any of them yet thou canst not look upon them without indignation as Traytors against thy Life and thy Peace thou canst not look upon thy self without loathing and detestation thou canst not look unto Christ without shame and confusion that one that he hath redeemed from so great a Misery with so great a Price to so great a nearness as to be a member of himself a partaker of his Spirit a Co-heir of his Glory should so unworthily so unthankfully in his sight dishonour his Head and pollute himself Thou canst not look upon what is past without Repentance nor upon what is to come without a Resolution of more Vigilance and keeping a better Guard upon thy self And yet in the midst of all these thy perplexed thoughts thou canst not chuse but admire and bless that Mercy of Christ that when thou deniest him looks back upon thee as once on Peter and with that look sends in a Messenger that makes thee go by thy self and bewail thy Relapse that leaves

causes that have no natural connexion one with another When the Prophet that prophesied against Bethel returned back met the Lion and the Lion slew him here was a Voluntary Act in the Prophet viz. to go a Contingent Act in the meeting with the Lion a Natural Act in the Lion to kill him now because this death of the Prophet had no necessary connexion with all the causes that concurred to it neither had the journey of the Prophet any necessary connexion with the walk of the Lion that they must needs meet the death of the Prophet though it had a kind of natural connexion with the next cause that preceded it was in the estimation of Men Contingent yet in respect of that predetermination that was of all this business which was not therefore predetermined because spoken by the old Prophet who had only a revelation of That counsel the whole frame of this business was necessary yet note that this predetermination did not alter the nature of the intermediate causes the journey of the Prophet was nevertheless voluntary the meeting with the Lyon Contingent the death of the Prophet by the Lyon in effect necessary So the Divine Predetermination of Effects predetermines them in their several Causes and takes not away the truth of the denomination of Necessary Contingent and Voluntary it predetermines the being of each but the being of the first but to be necessarily because it predetermines it to depend upon a necessary cause as the Eclipse of the Sun it predetermines the being of the second but to be contingently because it predetermines it to be upon contingent and unconnexed causes it predetermines the third to be but to be voluntarily because it hath predetermined it to be upon a voluntary cause All things to him have the same necessity of being though distinguished in their manner of being which are represented to our understanding under the notions of Necessary Contingent and Voluntary 3. We have considered the influence of the First Cause upon the creature in actu primo which is giving it a being or creation and as to things Natural and Contingent in actu secundo which is Providence or Government Now concerning the relation that Man the only visible Intellectual and Voluntary being in the World hath We must premise to this consideration what hath been partly observed viz. 1. That the first disposal of every thing to its several End doth of right belong to the First Cause 2. That this End is twofold 1. In respect of the First Cause the mere fulfilling of his own Will 2. In respect of the Creatures 1. relatively one to another a Subordination of one thing to and for another as the more imperfect to the more perfect 2. absolutely the End that is planted in every thing is its own Preservation and Perfection 3. That as the implanted End of every thing is his own being and perfection so the being of things being different both in nature and degrees of Excellence so are their Perfections different the Perfection of Animate above the Inanimate the Perfection of the Sensitive above the Animate and of the Rational above the Sensitive 4. That as the several Creatures are moved to their several Preservations and Perfections as to their several Ends so they have suitable Inclinations Dispositions and Motions placed in them conducible to those Ends as the Motions of Bodies to their several stations the generation of Vegetables and their attraction of supplies of nourishment answerable to their tempers the fading of Sensitives and assimilation of the nourishment to their own nature supplying the decays thereof Natural Instincts of every species to avoid those things places and foods that are destructive providing for varieties of Seasons multiplication of their Species and infinite the like which is nothing else but that Rule Law or Means that the First Cause hath put in them for the attaining that End which he hath put in them viz. their Preservation and Perfection And this is the great Wisdom as I may call it of the Creature that it pursues that End by that Law which the First Cause hath given it Mankind hath some things in him common with other inferiour Beings and in respect thereof hath the same Natural End viz. the Preservation of his Subsistence by the same Law of Nature which he doth and may and ought to preserve as other Creatures do But if he have a higher degree of Being than other Creatures then consequently he hath these two things different from other Creatures 1. A higher End than other Creatures planted in him by the First Cause whereinto he is or should be carried 2. A higher and different Law given by the First Cause in order to that End which whiles he follows he is most wise because most conformable to the Will of his Maker and moves to a suitable End to himself by a suitable Means and which when he declines he is more bruitish than the Beast because he either moves to no End or by such a Rule by which it is impossible he should attain it The Conclusion then is That Man was by the First Cause made for an End answerable to his own Perfection by such a Rule or Law as was by the First Cause ordained to be conducible to this End That therefore all other Ends and Perfections that are below the uttermost hight and Perfection of Man may consist with this End for we are not to conceive so improvidently of the First Cause that he should put a thing in such a degree of being that the Ends and Rules incident to any consideration of him should be inconsistent with his Supream End all stood together but if by any casualty it should fall out that there were an inconsistency all the Subordinate Ends must give way to this Supream End That the pursuit of this great End whatsoever it is by this Rule is exactly conformable to the Will of the First Cause by this Man doth two works at once God's work and his own That this is the Great Business of Man the highest act of Wisdom deserves all his labour study and endeavour and all the rest of his Business in the World is either lost labour or worse if not subservient to this great End. We are therefore to enquire into these three things 1. Wherein consists the Eminence of the being of Man above other Creatures for without this we cannot know that Perfection which must be the object of his desire 2. What is this Perfection that is thus to be desired and attained 3. By what Means and how it is attainable CHAP. III. Of Man his Excellence above other Creatures THE Goodness of the Wise Creator was communicated to his Effects 1. in giving them a Being 2. in assigning to every thing a portion of Perfection in themselves answerable to the degree of their Being 3. a Motion or Desire to the attaining and conserving that Perfection and consequently of their Being which is the Vessel wherein that