Selected quad for the lemma: death_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
death_n	apostle_n	sin_n	wage_n	4,685	5	10.8916	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A45315	Select thoughts, or, Choice helps for a pious spirit a century of divine breathings for a ravished soule, beholding the excellencies of her Lord Jesus / by J. Hall ...	Hall, Joseph, 1574-1656.; Hall, Joseph, 1574-1656. Breathings of a devout soul.	1654 (1654)	Wing H413; ESTC R19204	93,604	402

servant would have hated to take upon him the trade of a begger Service is a lawful calling beggery not so he that gave life to all creatures could take a maintenance from them without asking he that did command the fish to bring the tribute money for himself and his disciples and could multiply a few loaves and fishes for the relief of thousands could rather raise a sustenance to himself and his then beg it But here was neither need nor cause even ordinary means failed not many wealthy followers who had received cures and miraculous deliverances besides heavenly doctrine from him ministred to him of their substance neither was this out of charity but out of duty in the charge which he gave to his disciples when he sent them by payrs to preach abroad he tells them the laborer is worthy of his wages and can we think this rule doth not much more hold concerning himself had not himself and his family been furnished with a meet stock raised from hence what purse was it which Judas bore and how could he be a theif in his office if his bags were empty He therefore that could say It is a more blessed thing to give then to receive certainly would not choose when it was in his power rather to receive then give The earth is the Lords and the fulness thereof and he distributes it as he pleaseth amongst the children of men For me I hope I shall have the grace to be content with whatsoever share shall fall to my lot but my prayer shall be that I may beg of none but God XXXII What a madness it is in us to presume on our interest in Gods favor for the securing of our sinfulness from judgment The Angels were deeper in it then we mortals can ever hope to be in these houses of clay yet long since are ugly Devils and they which enjoyed the liberty of the glorious Heavens are now reserved in everlasting chains of darkness And if we look down upon earth what darling had God in the world but Israel This was his first born his lot his inheritance of whom he said Here I have a delight to dwell And now where is it O the woful desolations of that select people What is it to tell of the suffossion of her vineyards vastation of her tents the devouring of her land demolition of walls breaking down Altars burning of Cities spoyling of houses dashing in peices their children ravishing their wives killing of their Priests eating of their own children of but a span long and a thousand such woful symptomes of war the Psalmist hath said a word for all in a just but contrary sense Destructions are come to a perpetual end what destruction can be more when there is no Israel How is that wretched nation vanished no man knows whither so as it was Jezebels curse that nothing was left whereof it could be said this was Jezebel So there is not one peece of a man left in all the world of whom we can say This was of one of the tribes of Israel as for those famous Churches which were since that honored with the preaching and pens of the blessed Apostles where are they now to be lookt for but amongst the rubbish of cursed Mahumetism O that we could not be high-minded but fear XXXIII What a woful conversion is here The sting of death is sin and the sting of sin is death both meet in man to make him perfectly miserable Death could not have stung us no could not have been at all if it had not been for sin And sin though in it self extreamly heinous yet were not so dreadful and horrible if it were not attended with death How do we owe our selves to the mercy of a Saviour that hath freed us from the evil of both having pulled out the sting of death which is sin that it cannot hurt us and having taken such order with the sting of sin which is death that in stead of hurting it shall turn beneficial to us Lord into what a safe condition hast thou put us If neither sin nor death can hurt us what should we fear XXXIV How unjustly hath the presumption of blasphemous cavillers been wont to cast the envy of their condemnation meerly upon the absolute will of an unrespective power as if the damnation of the creature were onely of a supreame will not of a just merit the very name of Justice convinces them a punitive Justice cannot but suppose an offence It is not for us to rack the brains and strain the heart-strings of plain honest Christians with the subtilties of distinctions of a negative and positive reprobation of causes and consequences truths meet for the Schools It is enough that all Christian Divines the Synods both of Dort and Trent agree in this truth that never man is was can be miserable but for sin yea for his own sin The Prophet tells us so in terms Why is the living man sorrowful man suffereth for his sin Nothing can be more true then that of Bildad the Shuhite Behold God will not cast away a perfect man thy perdition is of thy self O Israel It is no less then rank blasphemy to make God the author of sin Thou art the God that hast no pleasure in wickedness neither shall any evil dwel with thee saith the Psalmist our sin is our own and the wages of sin is death he that doth the work earns the wages so then the righteous God is cleared both of our sin and our death onely his justice pays us what we will needs deserve Have I any pleasure at all saith he that the wicked should die and not that he should return from his ways and live wherefore return yea and live What a wretched thing is a willful sinner that will needs be guilty of his own death Nothing is more odious amongst men then for a man to be a felon of himself besides the forfeiture of his estate Christian burial is denied him and he is cast forth into the highway with a stake pitcht through his body so as every passenger that sees that woful monument is ready to say There lyes the carcass but where is the soul But so much more heinous is the self-felony of a wilful sinner because it is immediatly acted upon the soul and carries him with pleasure in the ways of an eternal death O Lord cleanse thou me from my secret faults keep thy servant also from presumptuous sins lest they get the dominion over me XXXV We are wont to say That we ought to give even the Devil his due and surely it is possible for us to wrong that malignant spirit in casting upon him those evils which are not properly his It is true that he is the tempter and both injects evil motions and draws them forth into act but yet all ill is not immediatly his we have enough besides of our own Every man saith

Lord What should I wait on the Lord any longer If my respects to my Saviour be for the loaves and fishes my heart is carried away with those baskets of fragments but if I can love God for his goodness sake this love shall out-last time and over-match death LVI What a wretched narrowness of heart is this which I finde in my self that when I may have all things I take up with nothing and when I may be possessed of an infinite good I please my self in grasping a little thick clay It was a large word that the Apostle said to his Corinthians Whether Paul or Apollo or Cephas or the world or life or death or things present or things to come all are yours What shall we think they were richer then their neighbors or is not this the condition of all those of whom he can say in the next words ye are Christs There there comes in all our right to this infinite wealth of our selves we are beggars in him who is Lord of all we are feoffed in all things for whiles he saith All are yours and ye are Christs and Christ is Gods he doth in effect say Christ is yours and in him God is yours for this right is mutual How else should all things be ours if God were not ours without whom all is nothing and how should God the Father be ours without that Son of his love who hath said All things that the Father hath are mine Thou O Father art in me and I in thee No man cometh to the Father but by me If then Christ be mine all is mine and if I have so oft received him and so often renued my union with him how is he but mine O Saviour let me feel my self throughly possest of thee whether the world slide or sink I am happy LVII God will not vouchsafe to allow so much honor to wicked instruments as to make them the means of removing publike evils The Magicians of Egypt could have power to bring some plagues upon the Land but had not the power to take them away Certainly there needed a greater power to give a being to the frogs then to call them off yet this latter they cannot do who prevailed in the first Moses and Aaron must be called to fetch off that judgment which the Sorcerers have brought upon themselves neither is it otherwise still Wicked men can draw down those plagues upon a nation which onely the faithful must remove The sins of the one make work for the others intercession Do we therefore smart and groan under heavy calamities we know to whom we are beholden Thus saith the Lord to this people thus have they loved to wander they have not refrained their feet therefore he will now remember their iniquity and visit their sins When they fast I will not hear their cry and when they offer burnt offrings and an oblation I will not accept them but I will consume them by the sword and by the famine and by the pestilence Do we desire to be freed from the present evils and to escape an utter desolation They are Moses and Aaron that must do it He said that he would destroy them had not Moses his chosen stood before him in the breach to turn away his wrath lest he should destroy them When our quarrel is with Heaven it is not our force or our policy that can save us Every faithful man is a favorite of the King of glory and can do more then command Legions Then is a people in some good way towards safety when they have learned to know their friends Whiles we have good mens prayers to grapple with wicked mens sins there may be hopes of recovery LVIII The ayming at a good end can be no just excuse for an unlawful act or disposition but if contentment did consist in having much it were a sore temptation to a man to be covetous since that contentation is the thing wherein the heart of man is wont to place it 's chief felicity neither indeed can there be any possible happiness without it but the truth is abundance is no whit guilty so much as of ease much less of a full joy how many have we known that have spent more pleased and happy hours under an house of sticks and walls of mud and roof of straw then great Potentates have done under marbles and cedar And how many both wise Heathen and mortified Christians have rid their hands of their cumbersome store that they might be capable of being happy Other creatures do naturally neglect that which abused reason bids us dote upon If we had no better powers then beast or fowls we should not at all care for this either white or red earth and if our graces were as great as the least of Saints we should look carelesly upon the preciousest and largest treasures that the earth can afford now our debauched reason in stead of stiring us up to emulate the best creatures draws us down below the basest of them moving us to place our happiness in those things which have neither life nor true worth much less can give that which they have not It is not for the generous souls of Christians to look so low as to place their contentment in any thing whether within the bowels or upon the face of this earth but to raise their thoughts up to the glorious region of their original and rest looking not at the things which are seen but at the things which are not seen for the things that are seen are temporal but the things which are not seen are eternal LIX The holy Psalmist knew well what he said when he called the thunder in the clouds The voyce of the Lord a voyce powerful and full of Majesty The very Heathens made this the most awful act of their Jupiter which the Spirit of God expresses in a more divine language The God of glory thundreth upon this dreadful sound it is that the Psalmist calls to the mighty ones to give unto the Lord glory and strength to give unto the Lord the glory due to his name as it were advising the great Commanders of the world when they hear it thunder to fall down on their knees and to lift up their hands and eyes to that great God that speaks to them from Heaven No man needs to bid the stoutest heart to fear when this terrible sound strikes through his ear which is able to drive even Neroes and Caligulaes into bench-holes But this mighty voyce calls for an improvement of our fear to the glory of that Almighty power whence it proceeds Perhaps the presumption of man will be finding out the natural causes of this fearful uproar in the clouds but the working by means derogates nothing from the God of nature neither yet are all thunders natural That whirlwind and thunder wherein God spake to Job that thunder and lightning wherein God spake to Moses and Israel