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	youth_n	zeal_n	24	3	7.6752	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A96266	The narrow path of divine truth described from living practice and experience of its three great steps, viz Purgation, illumination & union according to the testimony of the holy scriptures; as also of Thomas a Kempis, the German divinity, Thauler, and such like. Or the sayings of Matthew Weyer reduced into order in three books by J. Spee. Unto which are subjoyned his practical epistles, done above 120 years since in the Dutch, and after the author's death, printed in the German language at Frankfort 1579. And in Latin at Amsterdam 1658. and now in English.	Weyer, Matthias, 1521-1560.; Spee, J.	1683 (1683)	Wing W1525A; ESTC R231717	176,738	498

for by how much the more miserable the more anxious and the more deserted any one is so much the nearer is God to him the helping of whom he then most speedily performeth when no comfort nor help is found unto or for our desires And this is the true knot of all piety The Lord grant in his own time that thou mayest truly apprehend this in thy own self For the grace and word and promises of God do abide in man in a living sense nor can it be expressed in words how the very thing it self properly is and although all writings may give testimony of this word and of this grace yet are not they properly that very word and the very Salvation of God for the virtue and operation of these ought to be livingly expressed in us The Lord be mindful of us all thorough his mercy EPIST. XV. How Youth is to be supported during its weakness To F. S. DEarest F. We hope it will so be that the Lord will direct all to the best end and will stretch forth his helping hand to that young man to make his voluntary entrance that he may be brought to a greater firmness seeing that he is not yet exercised in the ways of the Lord and he still flourisheth in his Youth But the hand of the Lord is liberal towards young and old and is stretched forth with plenty of grace where and whensoever he shall please Therefore the Lord I hope will remember this weak one and will hear his dayly complaint and in his time will help him for when all the creatures sail and all remedies vanish away and there is no other deliverer found or invented then will God alone of necessity present himself as a Deliverer For the Lord will look back upon all such whose hearts he hath of purpose put in the wine-press of tribulations that being left nakedly poor of all evils so as they appear dryed up yet after they shall thus be subjected to his judgments they shall not want retribution but shall abound in his blessing by the communion of the blood of Christ poured forth and of his eternally prevailing merits and of the reconciliation made betwixt God his father and our miserable humane nature It would be profitable for him if he should remain with thee all the winter that so he might enjoy a further introduttion and should learn more firmly to set his feet in the ways of the Lord● now when he is yet of an infirm age and is more infirm in zeal for it is our duty to lend a hand to the weak and to be a prop to them as it was done for us in our youth although I my self have not extended my age very much yet have the bonds of death bowed me down under the judgment of the Lord in the prosecution of my misery with continued terrours The Lord have pitty on me and graciously discover to me his countenance shining with the light of grace and so enlighten the darkness of my heart EPIST. XVI A fair admonition to his Cosin German wherein he very greatly demonstrates a most tender care of his Soul hitherto had with solicitousness To M. D. W. MOst beloved Cosin I was altogether obliged to write in what state our affairs are for though hitherto for some good space of time we have been somewhat separated as to bodily presence yet I am assured in the Lord that we were so much the more diligently excited to a mutual care by an inward presence of mind The Lord knoweth how mindful I am of thee and how much care I have for thee in the midst of my most sad conversation filled with all griefs and in my constant combate But I trust in the eternal God and his providence that he will with stretched out arms lead and keep us all under his own discipline Now because I have crept thorough many dangers of mind how great the power of corrupted nature is is very plainly manifested in me by and thorough the power of God though that also is come to pass by and thorough innumerable anxieties in all which yet the glory of God every where revealeth it self upon which account I am deeply concerned with a most vehement sollicitousness for those who are my fellow-sufferers in these straights to whom the Omnipotent God will reach out his hand and seasonably set before their eyes the virtue of his grace which lyeth hid under those sufferings that at last the man may be stirred up to the desire of the true cross of Christ our Lord in which all the treasures of divine grace are known in their highest beauty without which no man can be set free from out of the chains of his nature And here indeed there is need of great caution and we must diligently adhere to the Lord both day and night for often times nature cloathed with the outward shew of good presents her self to us but if she be tumbled down into death then will her fruits be at length truly made known and the power of God will shine forth so much the more gloriously The Lord of his mercy be mindful of us all that we may wisely order our conversation and the forces of all our enemies being all overcome and broken we may at length arrive truely at the true brightness of God For the wall of separation hindering that clarity is great which it behooveth with unwearied labour to diminish thorough the benefit of the cross and with daily torture of mind to destroy Yet the eternal and merciful Lord pierceth thorough all darkness as doth the Sun and so refresheth those that are in an agony with their pains that his grace and glory never shine forth more clearly then from under sufferings although whilst we yet remain subject to vanityes and are still captives to creatures that claritude is still very much diminished for so long as we yet are busied about images the efficacy of truth which seeing it is to be without any image cannot then be united to them is very wonderfully hindred For God is but one only and to know him from the very bottom of our hearts is all the skill and is such as is never learned in an undisturbed life Dearest Cosin I do open to thee as it were the interiour bosom of my mind shewing whither all my labour tendeth and at what mark all my whole being and all my words and thoughts do aim at with grief and which I continually with tears of heart pour forth before my God and do with hope account the Lord will not reject me poor wretch but chastise in his way and will bless with increase my labour after the decease of my nature My Cosin as to what concerns those friends who have changed their dwelling their outward condition is as yet tolerable as also the outward conversation both of the Mother and of them also is full of piety even as formerly But if we look further even to the utmost power of nature

nature and possess and love and in which we live The power of death shall be known to all things living but by so much the more difficulty by how much the greater knowledge some have on this earth for at the time of death all things are to be given up to God and then all things are shut up and ended in the truth of God The Lord unite us with himself who himself is the beginning and end old and new yet is he one and immutable void of all increase in himself though in the temporary creature he is known with increase and decrease As much therefore as we depart from temporariness so much are we united with God in whom there is no time and in him who is the last and the first with an everlasting presence and in him all Multiplication and Substraction of time is taken away and made co-equal and all flesh which is spiritualized and which was wont to express it self in time doth melt away before eternity The Lord be merciful to us all as of one flesh that bidding farewel to that shadow of time we may grow in his fear and let his name be more and more sanctified over all his creatures in time and let our life perish and vanish away like smoke even as in is evidently done to all flesh together with which all things do tend to corruption whatever it was that ever sprung from it whether they were deeds or whether there were thoughts But it is not so with him who is godly for he with all his works is preserved and will grow and live to Eternity because every appetite life and desire of his is nothing else but God and therefore whatsoever is his tendeth to Eternity As on the contrary the desire and scope of a worldly man is nothing else but flesh which alone doth also move and direct him therefore the effect must perish with the cause as experience testifies for the fruit cannot be otherwise then is the root whence it is sprung May our eternal Saviour Christ Jesus purifie us that in him we may bring forth true fruit and according to the multitude of that his most abundant Grace which God hath richly poured forth upon us from the very beginning of the World we may abide permanent in him Amen EPIST. XXVIII Being a most beautiful Admonition very profitable as unto the death and departure of Nature To a Sick Man I Heartily salute thee in the Lord most dear N. as to what concerneth thy disease I hope the best of thee according to the mercy of God and that his hand was not in vain lifted up over thee For he by his Discipline will lead and conserve us that no rottenness shall grow in us but that by his judgment we be still more and more purified and cleansed from all impurity of Nature bred with us and dead still lurking in us The grace and mercy of the Lord be with thee dearest N. in that thy misery and disease which thou must bear in the flesh and may he grant to thee true submission and yielding up under his hand that with a bowed heart thou maist bear all things in obedience to him according to his holy will concerning thy miserable self that thou maist be lead in his way with perseverance to his glory and be preserved in the death of thy flesh whereby the life of the spirit may from day to day more and more increase in thee and be manifested in the heart of thy dying body Moreover I beg of the Lord that he would strengthen thy Limbs for his service so that if they become deficient as to Nature which yet must be done by continued labours in the way of the Lord that our essence may in time wax old and decrease yet through Christ they may be raised again to an eternal and fresh-springing youth in God where no fainting nor old age nor death can touch them The Lord preserve us and his mercy be present with us in all our adversity lest perhaps that prove able to hinder us in our way that our continued anxiety conjoyned with the highest danger to which in this combat we must subject our selves lest it be in vain nor draweth us back but rather may fruitfully promote us to a perpetual progression and success of his grace and of divine benediction maist thou remain recommended unto God who will free us out of this present Dungeon of this temporary flesh and imbecility according to his own acceptable will will elevate us into the sublimity of Eternity into the life of the spirit through the Resurrection of Christ to whom be the glory to all Eternity EPIST. XXIX How a purified mind ought to bear without any commotion the failings of his Neighbour with all patience To his Brother D. John W. DEarest Brother that that man is affected with such streights and with such griefs of heart that we also must suffer together with him For in that that he is alwaies subjected to sufferings nor can come at any peace is indeed not the work of man but the gift of God yea a great and eminent gift to endure the folly of another and to cover it over with an unvariable mind towards his Neighbour For though we be unduely used or handled by our Neighbour yet in truth a purified heart ought not to be moved by it but must alwaies act according to the bond of Charity which is alone its aim for in that there ariseth no suspicion of evil and although modest reason also may descend to make an excuse yet even all that too must be alwaies done without any motion of mind for as much as he is such a one as the injury and trouble of no creature can move him because he remains confirmed in that which is truly immovable Dearest Brother I therefore write thus that if that same trouble should be reiterated thou maist alwaies have this aim fixed in thy sight For although as to the creature the justice is on your part yet the mind ought to remain alwaies free without the use of this right otherwise there would arise an enmity from thence and a bitterness of heart For thus that which is earthly overwhelmeth that which is heavenly with such a blindness that it plainly seems to a man that he hath some divine right whenas yet God cannot but love nor doth he require any other thing of us according to the measure of his Justice Not as if I would willingly lay some blame upon thee do I say thus but that thy heart may not be nor that any rule should be wanting to thee if you behave your self otherwise thou wilt be obnoxious to a heavier judgement except thou proceedest with caution My Brother strive to have a mind unmoved which cannot be hindred but rather promoted by the enmity of the Creatures All things to a just man turn to good whether it be death or life or dissention or love for such a one overlooking the Creature

God will more adundantly break forth hereafter But I must possess my end and departure hence and that is now at hand yet nevertheless I stand in the communion of those forespoken of God is a perfect and a pure God with whom that one may be united many things are requisite And therefore we must not cry out too plainly although we hear and see many great matters in a certain Man for all as yet may have an ill conclusion This I say for this end that we should always abide in fear CHAP. XXXVI Containing the last Exhortation of Matthew Wyer and his Departure out of this life ANd now I shall bid you farewel for perhaps it is determined that I may speak no more I will recommend my self to the Lord. See that ye labour and walk in all conscience before God Love your brothers and sisters as your own selves and take care of them otherwise judgment will come upon you This you must do that when you shall lye as I now lye ye may lye with a quiet heart Behave your selves in all things uprightly and seek after the salvation of your Souls for salvation is of greater price then mony or all goods Mony with its goods perish together but salvation brings peace to the heart of Man Let me depart from you in freedom from my death as I hope a living motion will spring up in you I recommend you to the Lord who can freely bestow on you wisdom and understanding and all other necessaries in a hundred fold The Lord will presently give me rest I expect and wait for eternal rest I am to suffer so long as the Lord will have me If I had known this affliction before now I should have dyed for meer grief O inward desertion O desolation Wisdom 1. which now stands ready at hand I desire to be the most vile of all and only long for the crums which fall from the childrens table If I could have avoided this affliction yet I would not for my conscience hath bound me to abide by it Misery in affliction is great a man would willingly be lead with certainty but yet is he lead with uncertianty and it is as if one should journey by night and yet not know the way when besides the waters are out he may chance to fall and yet he must go forwards Yet is he secretly lead by God and when the morning arises he shall see that the business hath succeeded well enough In affliction nothing is known how that a man is sustained and taken care of but at last it is acknowledged and then it is known that God was always present even in his desertion The highest affliction doth manifest that selfishness or propriety which yet was before undiscerned and God prepareth a man for this highest of afflictions All things are snatched from me even before my face yet I know what I am to do I will beg of God a favourable death for my self O Lord behold thy miserable creature O Lord imbrace me for all things are from thee O Lord imbrace all my powers and strength and grant strength unto me in this my deepest misery Here I ly before thee like a most wretched worm All the affliction which I have hitherto suffered is nothing to this misery Having finished these words and commending his spirit into the hands of God he fell asleep in the Lord by a pleasan● and easy departure on the 25th April in the year 1560 about the 4th hour in the morning at Wesel in the year 〈◊〉 his age 39. Here end the Sayings THE EPISTLES OF M. Wyer Which he sent to his Familiar FRIENDS WRITTEN By the Author in the Low-Dutch and published after his Death Being afterwards turned into Latin and out of the Latin now at last into the English Tongue LONDON Printed for Benj. Clark in George-Yard in Lombard-street 1683. TO THE READER A brief Narrative concerning the Original of this small Treatise READER WHo art a Christian in good earnest before I shall begin to relate any thing of this little tract or of it's original or subject I am willing faithfully to exhort thee as also most earnestly to beseech thee that thou diligently callst upon God for illumination and for the opening of the Eyes of thy understanding whereby thou mayest be enabled according to his good pleasure rightly to understand that which is here proposed which being by the grace of God performed thou shalt in very deed experience that this book will be very useful and profitable unto thee seeing it is every where filled with the most excellent and choice expressions which are able to lead thee unto the true judgment of many points Nor does it only bring most notable advantage to thee only but also to all the Elect who duly and according to true knowledg have a zeal for God but to such as are perverse and behold all things with perverse and blind Eyes these things will without doubt seem to be full of dulness and foolishness O that our eyes were single then certainly we should easily perceive that these Epistles and sayings have not flowed from humane wisdome nor through the dead letter as to the more divine senses nor from the outward bark only but from the instinct of the holy Spirit and that he who wrote and spoke these to have been indeed a man divinely illuminated and a very intimate friend of God and that he learnt and drew these truths out from the book of his cross and by the means of his inward Sorrows in the School of Christ But let us make our approach nearer to the thing intended and that we may preface a few things concerning the original of this small treatise let the hearty Reader know that the aforesaid-friend of God wrote these Epistles to his familiars and friends seperated from his dwelling in divers places to every one according to his condition to stir up their zeale by no other means then the study of simplicity with no intention to have them afterwards printed and published insomuch as that after his death they being by some honest hearted searchers collected together were thus put together into one Volume But those sayings of his he himself wrote not but only uttered them orally And this was his faithful counsel that every one ought to seek the thing there where he himself had sought and found it and in which place only it can be found and gotten viz. In God the ever springing fountain of all wisdome and goodness and from whom flow these living streams neither may any one who is not willing to be deceived draw them from strange muddy Cisterns or Lakes Now by what means those his sayings were he not knowing it taken from his mouth and comprehended in one volume we shall briefly declare This most religious Matthew amongst those of his family bred up an honest young man whose name was John Spee filled with an earnest fervor and Zeale for the divine glory This person

may my Nephews exercise themselves the most they can in those endeavours that they may learn to repress their youthful and inordinate affections and appetites which will without doubt spring up in them at their own season The Lord seasonably grant to them to own the witness of their conscience against all these that being kept safe from them all they may never consent to any depraved inclination EPIST. XIX That there is a certain especial difference between the exalted rational Zeal and the Zeal that is pure and Christian To the same Person My Dr I Have recommended thy case and purpose to the Lord who can safely keep us all by his Grace and shew to us our errors for though we are for that purpose subjected to sufferings yet nothing is more wholsom for us than a discovery of our spots and defects which is not wont to be done without our indignation and opposition But if the Spirit of Christ must restore and enliven us all then plainly must there be no place left in us for bitterness of spirit against any one For this is alone the Doctrine of Christ Learn of me for I am meek and humble in heart For all hearts that are puffed up are in his time to be brought low even as alas we find it in many The Lord keep us most miserable worms for I never am frighted with greater horror than when behold my self The natural man scratcheth to himself by appropriating to him self all things whatsoever God bestows upon him out of free grace so that all thing also which are in themselves pure by this appropriation become as it were infected with poyson Now if Nature were deadned and the understanding purified then indeed such usages of Gods gifts would not be so multiplied But now that evi● which we call I is so great and our corrupt Nature through its own self-pleasing is so faln and sunk into its own self that we wait not for the time of trials with some difficulties and rest●●int and prayer together with a hope 〈◊〉 the promises of God to be fulfilled in a fit season as it hath been foretold by the Lord. The Lord be mindful of wretched me that write thus and be helpful to thee according to his own and not according to my will I also very earnestly intreat thee that thou take not in bad part this my freedom in writing to thee for my mind never desisteth from having a kindness for thee But high pride of heart and a contemning esteem of our Neighbour as also the doing him injury never is allowed a place in the Christian State but rather that which hath a fair shew of some sort of Zeal that is natural mixed with Mosaical rigour For nothing hath appeared in Christ but meer sufferings and death silence and patience even to the Cross upon which even to the last gasp of his life he signalized his obedience in which he was subjected to his Father withour murmuring also that his Majesty of his eternal Godhead he did not take up again as he might have done but rather bore in himself humanity and imbecility and abiding in hu●●●ty and contempt even to the very death he was crowned with Victory For if the external assaults of his enemies could have moved the internal nature of his eternal birth then indeed that which is immovable could have been moved by some outward violence even as alas it most commonly happneth to us that our whole humanity is shocked inwardly and outwardly when yet we do think it to be the zeal of the Lord. But before we can come to the purity of these motions as it manifested it self in Christ against them who dishonoured God and profaned his Temple certainly there are many things to be eradicated out of our fleshly part if we would be thought to be wholly burning in zeal of spirit But as I hope the Lord will in his time manifest these things to us more clearly for when we are grown old we must carry so no things with great pains which whils● youth flour sheth with a flaming zeal we cannot own and undertake Because all that is talked of death and dying to young persons they cannot in good truth come to them seeing that their bones and marrow are alwaies full of all fleshliness with that fervent vigour together with a full strength of the growing faculty and voluptuous tendency which for the sake of its own power and the glory of self-will is wont to oppose it self to God But then if any one proceed further and draweth forth all his strength even unto the top of all his age then comes decreasing that we are unwillingly lead into the will of God by a manifest other process and then those judgments seem to hang over us which once we decreed to others and that youthful life free and wanton swelling with zeal is now by the just judment of God under the decreasings of old age condemned to death but then at length succeeds understanding and discretion together with continual sufferings in the ways of the Lord even unto our death and the proper sentence pronounced to us for just as all that ought to dye that is possessed of life also is that matter here For God alone if he be truly in us is conjoyned with death but not with our life because no flesh how pure so ever it be can abide in his sight For whatever shined forth externally in Christ even that by a like death must be done inwardly in us if so be we are willing in the resurrection to be incorporated into a communion of his glory Otherwise we stick only but in the flesh of Christ though glorious contemplating alone the life of Christ's humanity not yet glorified but we hinder the growth of that fruit which through the death of Christ in the resurrection by the supernatural birth and a new life is poured forth into us with eternal grace The Lord open my mind to you for here I acknowledge my understanding to be too weak and slender EPIST. XX. An acknowledgment concerning the disputation held at Francfort between John Calvin and Justus Velsius of the power of Man or of free-will To A. G. THe Grace of our Lord and his mercy be upon thee and on all those who fear the Lord and seek his truth Most beloved A. concerning what thou didst write to me about that dispute held at Franckfort betwixt Velsius and Calvin my opinion is That Velsius did stumble therein whilst he attributed too much to the power of man for humane power is judged and condemned by the Lord if it be before a man is made partaker of the divine birth because what is new born is of God and not of man it is eternal and immortal even as he is who begat it But on the contrary Calvin failed in that point wherein he rejected all the powers of man universally which indeed I allow to be true unless that I also judge that that knowledge