Selected quad for the lemma: death_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
death_n	bear_v	life_n	sin_n	5,504	5	4.4990	4	false

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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A28278	A sermon preached before the honourable House of Commons, at St. Margaret's Westminster, January 30th,1698/9 by Ofspring Blackall ...	Blackall, Offspring, 1654-1716.	1699 (1699)	Wing B3053; ESTC R13120	15,662	33

Neither hath this Man sinned nor his Parents that is they have not either of them so sinned as that he should be born blind for a Punishment of his own or their Sin but he was therefore born blind that the Works of God should be made manifest in him From the Words thus explained I shall take Occasion very briefly to do these two Things I. To shew that the temporal Evils which befall Men are not always inflicted upon them as Punishments for Sin II. To shew what other wise Ends of Providence the temporal Evils and Afflictions that befall good Men do serve for I. I shall shew that the temporal Evils which befall Men are not always inflicted upon them as Punishments for Sin Neither hath this Man sinned nor his Parents that he should be born blind says our Saviour And what was true in his Case is undoubtedly true in a great many others And the Holy Scripture it self furnishes us with several Examples of this kind But that of Job being one of the most remarkable ones I shall at present instance only in that Where first of all we may take notice of the Character that is given of him by the Holy Spirit of God Job 1.1 That Man was perfect and upright and one that feared God and eschewed Evil. So far was he from being a greater Sinner than others that on the contrary there was none upon Earth at that time so good as he Hast thou says God himself considered my Servant Job that there is none like him in the Earth Job 1.8 Certainly then if any Man could even merit to be exempted even from the common Miseries and Calamities of Humane Life it was he And yet it pleased God to order it quite otherwise And in him that Observation of the Wise Man was strictly verified That there be Just Men unto whom it happeneth according to the Work of the Wicked Eccles 3.14 For if in the next place we take notice of the Afflictions which befell this good Man I believe we may truly say that there is no Example of any the greatest Sinner that ever lived that was so hardly dealt by as he was Sometimes indeed a mighty Oppressor is forced to disgorge his ill gotten Wealth and is on a sudden from the greatest Plenty reduced to the most Miserable Want Sometimes again a notorious Sinner who escapes in his own Person is punished very severely in his Children and has his Punishment multiplied by enduring in the Misery of every one of them whom he loves as himself as much Pain and Torment as he would do if the Calamity that befell them had befallen himself And again The Punishments that are inflicted upon Men in this Life by the divine Providence are commonly single either miserable Want and Poverty or some painful Sickness or noisom Disease or perhaps a violent or untimely Death And when any of these Evils befalls any Man we can scarcely forbear crying out A Judgment A Judgment Surely this Man was a great Sinner or else he would not have been so afflicted What then should we have thought of a Man in whom all these Miseries and Afflictions were united as they were in Job Who was one Day Job 1.3 the greatest of all the Men of the East having seven thousand Sheep and three thousand Camels and five hundred Yoke of Oxen and five hundred she Asses and a very great House-hold Job 1.21 and the next day was bereft of all his Substance Job 1 2 4 5. and left as naked as he came out of his Mothers Womb who was one Day blessed with ten hopeful Children who were very obedient to their Father and very loving to one another and the next Day was deprived of them all at once and that too by a violent Death Job 1.19 by the Fall of an House upon their Heads And it added not a little to the Greatness of these Afflictions that they came all upon him suddenly when no such Evils were foreseen or could reasonably be feared and that they happened all at the same time the Messenger of one ill piece of News having scarcely told his Tale Job 1.16 17 18. before he was succeded by another the Messenger of a worse But hitherto he had suffered only in his Estate and in his Children but it was not long before he was brought to suffer likewise in his own Person Job 2.6 and that too in the worst Manner that the Devil himself could devise in such a Manner as perhaps no other Man either before or since hath ever suffered being smitten all over with sore Boyls Job 2.6 7. from the sole of his Foot unto his Crown so that he had not one sound Part in his whole Body And who would not have thought this Evil especially when added to all the others aforementioned a sufficient indication of God's high Displeasure against him Who that had seen such a miserable Object as he then was would not have concluded as his Friends then did Job 4.7 c. 8.3 4.11.6 that all these Calamities were certain Expressions and sure Tokens of God's severest Vengeance upon him for some great and crying sins well known to God although concealed from the World 'T is true indeed all this while his own Life was spared Job 2.6 the Devil had no Permission from God to touch that and he was not as some notorious Sinners sometimes are taken off by an untimely Death But his Affliction was not the less but much the greater for this for though an untimely Death to such as live in Ease and Plenty and Prosperity and Sin may be justly reckoned a Misfortune yet most certainly to such as are good Men and yet are in extreme Want or Pain or Misery it is a great Happiness to be delivered out of their sad and wretched state tho' it be by Death And so this good Man thought it would have been to him and therefore as patient as he was Job 3.2 c. could not forbear cursing the Day wherein he was born to endure such Misery and heartily wishing for Death to put an End to it Wherefore saies he is Light given to him that is in Misery and Life unto the bitter in Soul Which long for Death but it cometh not and dig for it more than for hid Treasures Which rejoyce exceedingly and are glad when they can find the Grave Job 3.20 21 22. Thus you see that all those Miseries and Calamities of Life which when they singly befal Men are sometimes Acts and Expressions of the divine Vengeance upon them for some great and crying Sins did all together befall this good Man of whom yet in the midst of his Calamity God himself gives this excellent Character Job 2.3 And the Lord said unto Satan hast thou considered my Servant Job that there is none like him in the Earth a perfect and an upright Man one that feareth God and escheweth Evil And still he holdeth fast

and troublesom World and born again unto a new and endless Life of unspeakable Felicity Eccles 7.1 so that to them the Day of their Death was in truth much better than the Day of their Birth And upon both these Accounts we also might very well celebrate this Day of the Martyrdom of our late Pious and Gracious Soveraign K. CHARLES I. as his Birth Day and keep it as one of our highest Festivals had he fallen as the ancient Martyrs did by the Hands of Infidels or Strangers or by any other Hands than our own But this is our Unhappiness and indeed a most just Cause of the bitterest Grief and deepest Humiliation to us that we can never think of his exemplary Piety and Goodness without at the same time reflecting upon our own great Wickedness And that the more we admire his Vertues the more we must condemn our Selves through whose Iniquity it thus happened to him For tho' the Justice of God may be easily cleared and vindicated in suffering the best of Men to be grievously afflicted to be reviled and persecuted and even to be barbarously murthered by the Hands of the Wicked tho' I say these Dispensations of Providence so far as they are the Acts of Providence are both just in themselves and ordained to wise and good Ends this will by no means serve to excuse those wicked Men who are the Means and Instruments of the Afflictions of the Righteous because every Act is to be judged of by its self and not by the Effects which may follow from it but are not the natural Consequences thereof And if we may not do Evil that Good may come and our Damnation is just if we do that which is Evil tho' we design Good by it as the Apostle Teaches Rom. 3.8 much less may we allow our selves to do Evil only because God can bring Good out of it and much more will our Damnation be just if we do Evil with an evil Design altho' God can turn our Injury into Good to them to whom we meant it for Evil or may otherwise so order it that it shall produce very beneficial Effects to Mankind For who can think that the Persecutors of the Apostles and first Christians were the less to blame because God in his Wisdom so contrived it that the Blood of the Martyrs became the Seed of the Church and the most effectual means of Spreading Christianity in the World Or who will go about to excuse from the greatest sin that ever was committed the Betrayers and Murderers of our Lord because what they did Acts 2.23 4.28 was what God himself had fore-ordained for the accomplishing the Redemption of Mankind And therefore by the same Reason Altho' the sufferings of our late Martyred Soveraign did without all Doubt conduce much to his own spiritual Advantage and to the increasing the Glory of his Celestial Crown And He by his pious Deportment under them became an excellent Example to all others who are or shall be called to the like sufferings And while we consider these Advantages thereof both to him and us we may justly commemorate the same with Joy and Thankfulness and might reasonably keep this as we do the Days of other Saints with Feasting and Rejoycing yet when we consider on the other Hand who were the Means and Instruments of his Afflictions this opens quite another Scene and brings a black Cloud upon this most glorious Day and justifies the Wisdom of that Authority which has commanded us to keep it in a quite different manner even with Weeping and with Fasting and with Mourning because there is no Way to expiate a National Guilt but by a National Repentance For tho' it may charitably be believed nay tho' it be certainly true that there was not an actual consent of all the People perhaps not of an Hundredth Part of the People even of that Generation to this Act of great Wickedness and horrid Barbarity by which the Protestant Religion hath received the greatest Wound and Reproach and the People of England the most unsupportable Shame and Infamy Stat. 12. Car. 2. c. 30. yet when 't is consider'd that it was done by those who had then by the Help and Affistance of better meaning Men attained to an uncontroulable Power and that it was done under the Name and Authority of a Parliament tho' the Party which called themselves so and which passed the Ordinance for erecting that prodigious and unheard of Tribunal which they called An High Court of Justice for Tryal of his Majesty were not a tenth Part of the whole And when 't is further considered that a great many of those who did not give an actual consent thereto by their Voices gave too great a consent thereto by their Silence and by their not endeavouring in time to hinder it The whole Nation I fear can hardly be thought guiltless Nay and even we also who live now so many Years after the Act is done may yet be justly thought to give too great a consent to it and to be in some sort Partakers with our Fathers in the Guilt of shedding this righteous Blood if we can speak of this villainous Act or of the Preparations to it without Abhorrence Nay more If we do not heartily grieve and mourn at the Remembrance thereof for if you look into Ezek. 9.4 5 6. you will see that even in the Judgment of God himself they which do not mourn for the sins of others and especially for the publick Abominations that are done in the midst of the City or Nation to which they belong are Partakers therein And besides It may be also considered That tho' we who live now were not any of us of the number of those that were actually concerned in this villainous Act of murthering the Lord 's Anointed being perhaps not then Born or not of competent Age to be concerned in such Matters yet 't is an usual thing with God and what he has expresly threatned to visit the Sins of the Fathers upon the Children Exod. 34.7 and upon the Childrens Children unto the third and to the fourth Generation And if he sometimes does this for private and personal sins much more may we reasonably think he often does the same for such sins as are publick and national because tho' one Generation passes away and another comes the Nation never dies the Nation is still the same in this Age that it was in the last and will be the same in the next And this Threatning of God I think has been in some measure verified upon us For we have already felt many stroaks of the divine Vengeance as we have great Reason to believe upon this very Account 'T is reasonable I say to think this because some of the Judgments which have befallen us since have been the natural Effects and Products of this Days Wickedness for such I think we must all allow to be those many Years of Anarchy and Confusion which immediately succeeded this bloody Tragedy and also to name no more those dismal Fears and Apprehensions that we have since been in of Popery and Arbitrary Power occasioned in great measure by the Expulsion of the Royal Seed and Education in a Foreign Country and Religion That these will be the last Expressions of God's Anger against us for this great sin we hope but at the same time we have much greater Reason to fear they will not so long as all the same Wickednesses do abound which have drawn down those many heavy Judgments of God upon us which we have already felt And we can have no reasonable Assurance that we shall not be punished yet seven times more for our Iniquities unless now by a sincere Repentance and a thorough Reformation of our Lives and an unfeigned Humiliation of our Souls and an utter Detestation of all such villainous Practices for the future we endeavour to appease the Anger of God and to move him to Compassion towards us This then let us do and then let us Pray as we are taught in our Litany and we may reasonably hope God will hear our Prayer Remember not Lord our Offences nor the Offences of our Fore-Fathers Neither take thou Vengeance of our Sins Spare us good Lord spare thy People whom thou hast redeemed with thy precious Blood and be not angry with us for ever Amen FINIS Books Printed for Walter Kettilby at the Bishops-Head in St. Paul's Church-Yard GReat Men's Advantages and Obligations to Religion Represented in a Sermon Preached before the King in the Chapel in St. James's July 17th 1698. By Henry Hesketh Chaplain in Ordinary to his Majesty A Sermon Preached before the Right Honourable the Lord-Mayor the Aldermen and Governours of the several Hospitals of the City of London at St. Bridget's Church on Wednesday in Easter-Week 1698. being one of the Anniversary Spittle-Sermons By Thomas Lynford D. D. and Chaplain in Ordinary to his Majesty A false Faith not Justified by care for the Poor Prov'd in a Sermon Preach'd at St. Paul's Church August 28. 1698. By Luke Milbourn a Presbyter of the Church of England Mysteries in Religion Vindicated Or the Filiation Deity and Satisfaction of our Saviour asserted against Socinians and others with occasional Reflections on several late Pamphlets By Luke Milbourn a Presbyter of the Church of England