Selected quad for the lemma: death_n
Text snippets containing the quad
|
ID |
Title |
Author |
Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication) |
STC |
Words |
Pages |
|
A93329
|
A mission of consolation. Usefull for all afflicted persons. / By W.S.
|
Slingsby, William, fl. 1653.
|
1653
(1653)
|
Wing S3997; Thomason E1552_1; ESTC R209477
|
20,370
|
163
|
remaining in the simplicity of his divine nature without the Word being made flesh and being as it were unmade himself as the Apostle warrants us to say by taking that flesh upon him which was become as it were mans prison so far was it from being worthy to be the receptacle of God When we consider then how God chose this way of commiserating our nature not to purg it by his power but by the very infirmity thereof by taking the passibleness of it upon him we cannot deny the suffering part to be the most beneficial property of it since God made use of that onely for the restauration of it wherefore the feeling that portion of human nature upon us which is the most ennobled by Gods election and preference cannot rightly be accounted a prejudiced condition whereupon we may conclude that the blessing of being Christians may easily reconcile us to the Obligation of being sufferers for what can be the reason why Christ when by his pains he took away the sting of sin could not also take off the points of suffering in this life which are but thorns of that plant but because his passions had infused such a quality into our pains as might produce this strange effect in our nature to make our root the less capable of bearing fruit by the excrescense and growth of these sprigs out of it for temporal afflictions spring out of sin as out of the root thereof and nothing drieth up and infecundateth so much the radicall fructifying vigor of this root as the springing up of temporal miseries and distresses so as the fruit of sin which is death is killed the soonest by the fertility of sufferings in this life Since Christ hath then by the virtue of his Crown of thorns imparted this faculty of the asperities of our life of taking off the growth as his did the guilt of sin we need not wonder why he hath left all these temporal bitternesses upon our nature which he himself took expresly to taste in our nature so as we may be said to become the more Christians the more we are called to be patients Which position we shall finde the more clearly demonstrated to us the farther we advance into the principles of Christianity Saint Paul when he wrot to the Romans in those times when in a paralel of our cases the Christians were partly immured up in prisons and partly expelled to the adjoyning fields thought it seemeth to sweeten their condition to them by representing that mortification and sufferance was their calling and profession for he asketh them as of a notorious thing whither they know not this to be the constitution of christianity saying Rom 6. 3. Are you ignorant that all we who are baptised in Christ Jesus in his death we are baptised Intimating that our first incorporation into the bodie of Christ is in effect an expiration of this world and a translation by the virtue of the death of Christ into such a sort of life as he hath patterned to us by the inception progress and consummation of his life And the Apostle presseth thus the proof of this assertion Rom. 6. 4. For we are buriâ—d together with him in baptism into death to evince this position that our mundanity is drowned and buried in our Christning and that the life of Christ which was a continued part of mortification is to be as it were our breath and animation And while we are in this spiritual manner buried in the life of Christ that is covered and inclosed with indignities and oppressions we are acting that part we took upon us in baptism where we isted our selves into that militia which was erected by him who killed death by dying and hath left the same discipline to all his souldiers to destroy death by dying to the world mortifications therefore must needs be the proper duties of that service a christian is upon and his pay is conditioned rather upon his suffering than his acting as the Apostle proceedeth to testifie For if we become complanted to the similitude of his death we shall be also of his resurrection So in a Christians case the wages of death is life for if he die here by a privatioÌ„ of the carnal life of this world he performeth the condition of life everlasting For which reason S. Paul who was the great commander of the Gentiles in this militancy wherby this kinde of dying death is swallowed up in Victory hath left us his discipline in 1 Cor. 15. I die dayly and he giveth us those orders To be the followers of him as he was of Christ whom he began not to follow untill he was overthrown in the command he had in this world and was as it were resuscitated by the same hand that had killed him We may remember he was revived by what is destructive to this life by being almost famished and illuminated by this worlds darkness and restored to corporal light onely to see how much he vvas to suffer for that Name for which all the sufferings he had in his head were to be imployed but in a manner far differing from this design for they were assigned to be enjoyed by himself not to be dispensed to others by his hand so as this seemeth the gratification of his Christianity the having of all that treasure of crosses he had prepared for other Christians appropriated to his own use whereof he grew so sensible as in gratitude to this his preference he returned his I do exceedingly abound in joy in all our tribulation But let us look upon his master and ours Christ Jesus in his own time of tribulation and we may represent him to our selves in the first instant of his conception accepting this Order from his father which he gave to his follower S. Paul of Acts 9. 15. I will shew him how great things he must suffer for my Name before the Gentiles and Kings and the children of Israel In which commission he laboured three and thirty years wherein all we are acquainted with of his life is either laborious or incommodious or in extremity dolorous and painfull It seems the holy Ghost did not think any thing worthy to stand upon record for Christ that was not eminently suffering and therefore passed over in silence those parts of his life which we may suppose to have been the least distressfull If we look upon his way that is drawn out to us from his cradle to his Cross we shall finde that he fore-saw in all ages more than the persons themselves who are under them can do He truly bore all our labours and our griefs All the anxieties and contristations that now oppress you were in a sharper degree pressing upon his heart and since he was content to aggravat all his sufferings by taking on him the sense of your grievances may not you very easily alleviate all your heavinesses by taking into your minde the resentment of sufferings which were designed for your succor in your
A MISSION OF CONSOLATION Usefull For all afflicted Persons By W. S LONDON Printed by W. B. for John Williams and are to be sold at the sign of the Crown in Paul's Church-yard 1653. To the READER Reader LEt the Author of this small Volume who hath practised some years in the most exact in prison school of patience invite thee unto a serious perusual hereof that you may thereby partake in some measure of the benefit of his sufferings he esteeming it a great glorie in a Christian under persecution for his conscience sake to impart to others the good uses he makes in time of his affliction that they may by such example apprehend the Cross to be the lighter and so take it up with more alacrity and chearfulness and also conceive the miseries assigned us here on earth the less insupportable This Mission of Consolation this small first born child for so it is will after you have well view'd it smile upon you like a pleasant Infant full of health and tell you that it is no Paradox to say there is virtue in a prison which indeed hath a Sympathy onely with virtue for untill a Person so richly endued enters the grate it lies clouded and obscured but then breaks forth and shews its splendour A prison is in my observation one of the narrow and troublesome passages which a Christian findes in the straigt way that leads to heaven Let not the spurious issue of the now adulterated press discourage you in reading for that is become an ambodexter in this age Printing with one hand Truth with another error be satisfied that this relishes not of any upstart or unsound opinion but will well become thy pocket or thy chamber if thou art afflicted or persecuted for preserveing to thy self a good conscience It shews thee in the enterance thy first estate as man the Sons of Adam full of impuritie and pollution and born in a capacitie of onely bearing sorrow and travail But in the second part it doth most admirably repair thy condition leading thee into a covenant with thy Redeemer And in the third it instructs thee how to fit and prepare thy self for so divine and heavenly society If thou findest content in reading requite the Authour with thy good wishes not further inquiring after him but let the effect of thy prayers onely finde him out W S. A MISSION OF CONSOLATION Of the covenant of sufferings as men the Sons of Adam TO the first covenant of sufferance you know we all give our voice by a natural instinct before we have scarce enjoyed so much as light for it and our eys may be said to set their mark to it before we are able to set our hands to this Article of eating in the sweat of our brows for our eys pay their sweat which is their tears for what we taste even before we be able to receive bread for it and as we grow into a state to set our hands to the covenant of labour we know there is scarce any thing we relish much that doth not cost us sweat and contention nay we are of such a constitution that we can have no kinde of delectation the which some want and suffering must not precede to affect us with the gust of it so as we are sentenced to pay a great fine of pain before hand for all those fleeting and transitory pleasures which at best do but run over our senses and so pass away and leave them again in their drouth and privation And most commonly the advance of all our pain and passion rendreth us nothing of what they negotiate So as a man when he looketh upon himself in the best reflexes his temporary wishes can make him shall finde this brand and stigmate of Adam upon on his forehead Gen. 3. 19. Thou shalt eat in the sweat of thy brows And this is a mark which God stamped upon Adam of another kinde of signification than that he set upon Cain for this directeth to all things that occur to man in this life to strike him and wound his temporal estate in some kinde or other in so much as all the Creatures do in their several manners execute this sentence upon the Sons of Adam not alowing themselves to be enjoyed by them without stinging them in some sort either with the anxietie of their appetite to them preceding fruition or the distaste of satiety following it or with vexation of a deprivement of them during the Order of their affections to them So as we may well say that every thing we finde now assaults our felicity in this life in some sort to kill it and to revive to us the memory of our covenant of sufferance we entered into as soon as we entered into light For which reason the wise man proclaimeth elegantly the tenour of it saying Eccles. 40. 1. Great travel is created for all men and a heavie yoak upon the children of Adam from the day of their coming forth of their mothers womb until the day of their burying in the mother of all their cogitations and fears of the heart imaginations of things to come and the day of their ending from him that sitteth upon the glorious state unto him that is humbled in earth and ashes Neither need we look back upon the defaced images of all conditions in the dead prints of History we have such living figures of them before our eys as must needs imprint upon our thoughts a lively character of the deplorable estate of all mortals whereby out of the ruines of houses whereof you lament the demolishments you may pick up some materials to build in your mindes this frame of the instable constructure of the greatest strength of humane happiness and thus your friends may in their fall some way support your virtue and your patience when you consider how incident it is to the vicissitudes of the world to expose unto us that changeable scene whereof Solomon reporteth this to us Eccles. 10 and 7. I have seen servants upon horses and Princes walking upon the ground as servants And in such capital letters as these you may now reade the articles of the covenant of sufferance which man is engaged in whereof Job maketh a manifest is signed even by all the Princes of the earth for we finde this under their hands in all records of them in some part of their lives Job 14 1. Man born of a woman and living a short time is replenished with many miseries In so much that after man by sin had made miserie for himself in this life it seemeth a mercie of God to have joyned death with it before which even the light of nature is sufficient to shew the Philosophers that none can be counted happy And in order to this proof we mark that Cain he who first abused death by imploying it to make sin was thought worthy of no less a punishment than the protraction of life which he had made so afflicting by his fearing