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
A56381	An account of the nature and extent of the divine dominion & goodnesse especially as they refer to the Origenian hypothesis concerning the preexistence of souls together with a special account of the vanity and groundlesness of the hypothesis it self : being a second letter written to his much honoured friend and kinsman, Mr. Nath. Bisbie / by Sam. Parker ...	Parker, Samuel, 1640-1688.	1666 (1666)	Wing P454; ESTC R22702	53,301	116

our due God would be obliged by the natural measures of Equity to bestow it and so our happinesse would not derive from the free grant of Divine goodness but from the prime and intrinsique Laws of Justice For if there were any natural and eternal necessity that Happinesse should wait on Vertue that the Vertuous are happy would be no thanks to the Divine favour because that cannot be an act of favour which is demanded by Justice and natural Right And therefore those passages in Scripture that seem to make our future reward just and due speak upon supposition of Gods gracious Promise and Covenant with mankind as Heb. 6. 10. For God is not unrighteous to forget your work labour of love which ye have shewed towards his Name 2 Tim. 4. 8. Henceforth is laid up for me a Crown of Righteousness which the Lord the righteous Iudge shall give me at that day and not unto me only but unto all them also that love his appearing In which and other passages the assured hope of our future reward is therefore argued from Gods Justice because 't is essentially just that he should perform his Promises and therefore although Gods Promise or Covenant were not an act of Justice but of Grace for 't is impossible for God to enter into any Covenant with his creatures but a Covenant of Grace yet its performance when made is absolutely just and necessary and that in which God cannot fail without gross deceit and falseness he having engaged his Veracity to discharge all the debts of his Grace And therefore as some learned Men have noted this Justice in Scripture is promiscuously expressed by Justice Truth and Faithfulness Rom. 3. 3 4 5. they are all used to express the same thing And 1 Ioh. 1. 9. If we confess our sins he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins Because if he be just and faithful he will perform his Promise If I were to prove the necessity of future Rewards and Punishment from the nature of any of the Divine Attributes I should rather fetch my Arguments from the Attributes of Wisdom then any else because they are as might easily be evinced so hugely useful and well-nigh necessary to the Government of the World whence the Rabins reckon Paradice and Hell among those seven Pillars upon which they say God founded the world supposing it could not subsist without them But yet no one sort of means being absolutely necessary to Almighty Power and Wisdom in order to any end God could have found out in finite ways to engage us to obedience though he had never acquainted us with future Rewards and Punishments So that whatsoever Rationalities may be drawn from the Divine Attributes to prove a future state yet it depending wholly on the Divine will and the Divine will being absolutely free we can have no rational inducements to bring us to any sufficient knowledge of it but by a clear Revelation of the Divine will and therefore God to compleat the Instances of his Goodness sent the blessed Jesus into the world to bring life and immortality to light and to encourage us to Vertue and Goodness by greater Rewards then were before proposed to mankind So that though we could enhance the expressions of Gods love and bounty to mankind to their utmost pitch and value yet we have just reason to conclude that the peculiar and unequal'd eminency of the Divine benignity consists not so much in the greatness as in the freeness of its Emanations as streaming forth from a fountain of free and self-moving Goodness Of the Preexistence of Souls THough the foregoing Discourses are as useful and important Theories as any in Divinity there being not any other Articles so universally interested in Theological Speculations as these nor any thing that has occasioned so much Errour and Ignorance in other points as false and confused conceits concerning these two grand Attributes of Dominion and Goodness Yet they cannot be more important and concerning in themselves then they will be useful and necessary for the successful management of this ensuing discourse against Preexistence because the most plausible Argument alleadged on behalf of this Hypothesis is grounded upon such mistaken notions of the Divine goodnesse as I have already I think evidently enough disproved in what I have discoursed concerning that Attribute so that I am so far before hand in the Dispute as to have prevented the strongest Objection I am liable to be Assaulted with This premised I immediately proceed 1. to give an account of the Hypothesis it self and the grounds on which it bottoms and then 2. to give in my exceptions both against it and them And that you may be sure of my faithfulness in the first I will perform it as near as I can in the very words of its most Peremptory assertours Their account then is this That the Souls of men are not then first produced when they are united to the Bodies prepared for them by generation but were created all at first in an incomparably more Blessed and Divine Condition of Life then that they are now condemned to in this sad Region of sin and misery but that at several times and occasions by their Revolt from God his righteous laws they forfeited their better life and condition and so were thrust down into these terrestial Bodies partly to be punished for their former prevarications and partly that by acting their parts well here they might recover that more happy state from which they lapsed into this And this they endeavour to prove 1. from the nature of Divine Goodness which say they is constrained alwaies to do what is best for the Souls of men being capable of eternall existence and happiness backward as well as forward and it being much better that they should have enjoyed the pleasure of their life and actions from eternal Ages then either to have layn so long in the comfortless night of nothing or to have been at first created in so mean and wretched a condition as that is which they suffer in this Region of Death and Misery and then God being infinitely good and gracious and infinite Goodness doing by the same necessity that which is best as infinite fire will necessarily burn whatever is combustible if put to it it clearly and unavoidably follows say they that they must have existed of old before they came into these Bodies 2. From the Actions of Providence which will not otherwise correspond to those holy Attributes in the Deity Righteousness and Benignity according to which he Governs and Orders the affairs of all the World And this Argument they make use of two waies viz. in respect of the place and time wherein we are born and of the temper and disposition of the body wherewith we are born As to the first of these there is no man doubts but that education institution and company are of such wonderful moment to the making us good or bad as that where vice