Selected quad for the lemma: death_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
death_n	body_n	dissolution_n	soul_n	4,521	5	5.4874	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A60942	Interest deposed, and truth restored, or, A word in season, delivered in two sermons the first at St. Maryes in Oxford, on the 24th of July, 1659, being the time of the assizes : as also of the fears and groans of the nation in the threatned, and expected ruin of the lawes, ministry, and universityes : the other preached lately before the honourable Societie of Lincolns-Inn / by Robert South ...	South, Robert, 1634-1716.; South, Robert, 1634-1716. Ecclesiasticall policy the best policy.	1660 (1660)	Wing S4733; ESTC R4025	42,795	62

sufficiently secures Government in as much as that stands or falls according to the Behaviour of the Multitude And whatsoever Conscience makes the Generality obey to that Prudence will make the rest conforme Wherefore having proved the dependance of Government upon Religion J shall now demonstrate That the safety of Governement depends upon the Truth of Religion False Religion is in its nature the greatest bane and destruction to Religion in the world The reason is because whatsoever is False is also Weak Ens and Verum in Philosophy are the same and so much as any Religion has of Falsity it loses of strength and existence Falsity it gains Authority onely from Ignorance and therefore is in danger to be known for from Being false the next immediate step is to be Known to be such And what prejudice this would be to the Civill Government is apparent if men should be awed into Obedience and affrighted from sin by Rewards and Punishments proposed to them in such a Religion which afterwards should be detected and found a meere Falsitie and Cheat For if one part be but found to be false it will make the whole suspicious And men will then not onely cast off Obedience to the Civill Magistrate but they will doe it with disdaine and rage that they have been deceived so long and brought to doe that out of Conscience which was imposed upon them out of Designe For though men are often willingly deceived yet still it must be under an Opinion of being instructed though they love the Deception yet they mortally hate it under that appearance Therefore it is no wayes safe for a Magistrate who is to build his Dominion upon the Fears of men to build those fears upon a false Religion 'T is not to be doubted but the absurdity of Ieroboams Calves made many Israelites turne subjects to Rehoboams Government that they might be Proselytes to his Religion Herein the Weaknesse of the Turkish Religion appears that it urges Obedience upon the promise of such absurd Rewards as that after death they should have Palaces Gardens Beautifull Women with all the Luxury that could be as if those things that were the occasions and incentives of sin in this world could be the rewards of Holinesse in the Other Pesides many other inventions false and absurd that are like so many chincks and holes to discover the rottenesse of the whole Fabrick when God shall be pleased to give light to discover and open their reasons to discern them But you will say What Government more sure and absolute than the Turkish and yet what Religion more false Therefore certainly Government may stand sure and strong be the Religion professed never so absurd I answer that it may doe so indeed by Accident through the strange peculiar temper and grosse ignorance of a people as we see it happens in the Turks the best part of whose Policy supposing the Absurdity of their Religion is this that they prohibit schooles of Learning for this hinders Knowledge and Disputes which such a Religion would not bear But suppose wee that the Learning of these Western Nations were as great there as here and the Alcoran as common to them as the Bible to us that they might have free recourse to search and examine the flawes and follies of it and withall that they were of as inquisitive a temper as we And who knows but as there are vicissitudes in the Government so there may happen the same also in the temper of a Nation If this should come to pass where would be their Religion And then let every one judge whether the Arcana imperii and Religionis would not fall together They have begun to totter already for Mahomet having promised to come and visit his Followers and translate them to Paradise after a thousand years this being expired many of the Persians beganne to doubt and smell the cheat till the Mufti or cheif Priest told them that it was a mistake in the figure and assured them that upon more diligent survey of the Records hee found it two thousand instead of one When this is expired perhaps they will not be able to renew the Fallacy I say therefore that though this Government continues firme in the Exercise of a false Religion yet this is by accident through the present genius of the people which may change but this does not prove but that the Nature of such a Religion of which we onely now speak tends to subvert and betray the Civill Power Hence Machiavel himself in his Animadversions upon Livy makes it appear that the Weaknesse of Italy which was once so strong was caused by the corrupt practises of the Papacy in depraving and misusing Religion to that purpose which he though himself a Papist sayes could not have hapned had the Christian Religion been kept in its first and native simplicity Thus much may suffice for the clearing of the first Proposition The Inferences from hence are two 1. If Government depends upon Religion then this shews the pestilential design of those that attempt to disjoyn the Civil and Ecclesiastical Interests setting the latter wholly out of the Tuition of the former But 't is clear that the Fanaticks know no other step to the Magistracy but through the ruin of the Ministry There is a great Analogy between the Body Natural and Politick in whith the Ecclesiastical or Spiritual part justly supplyes the part of the soul and the violent separation of this from the other does as certainly infer death dissolution as the disjunction of the body and the soul in the Natural for when this once departs it leaves the Body of the Cōmon-wealth a carcass noysom and exposed to be devoured by Birds of Prey The Ministery will be one day found according to Christs word the salt of the earth the only thing that keeps Societies of men from stench and corruption These two Interests are of that nature that 't is to be feared they cannot be divided but they will also prove opposite and not resting in a bare diversity quickly rise into a Contrariety These two are to the State what the Elements of Fire and Water to the Body which united compose separated destroy it I am not of the Papists Opinion who would make the Spiritual above the Civill State in power as well as dignity but rather subject it to the Civill yet thus much I dare affirm that the Civill which is superiour is upheld and kept in being by the Ecclesiasticall and inferiour as it is in a Building where the upper part is supported by the lower the Church resembling the Foundation which indeed is the lowest part but the most considerable The Magistracy cannot so much protect the Ministery but the Ministers may doe more in serving the Magistrate A tast of which truth you may take from the Holy War to which how fast and eagerly did men goe when the Priests perswaded them that whoever dyed in that Expedition was a Martyr Those

world shall fall down before him either in his Adoration or their own confusion 2. The reason of the doctrine may be drawn from the necessary dependence of the very Principles of government upon Religion And this I shall pursue more fully The great Business of government is to procure obedience keep off disobedience the great springs upon which those two move are Rewards and Punishments answering the two ruling affections of mans mind Hope and Fear For since there is a naturall reluctancy between the Judgment and the Appetite the former respecting what is honest the latter what is pleasing which two qualifications seldome concurre in the same thing and withall mans designe in every Action is delight therefore to render things honest also practicable they must be first represented desireable which cannot be but by proposing honesty cloathed with pleasure and since it presents no pleasure to the sense it must be fetcht from the apprehension of a future Reward For questionless duty moves not so much upon command as promise Now therefore that which proposes the greatest and most sutable rewards to obedience the greatest terrors punishments to Disobedience doubtless is the most likely to enforce one and prevent the other But it is Religion that does this which to happinesse and misery joynes Eternity And these supposing the Immortality of the soul which Philosophy indeed conjectures but only Religion proves or which is as good perswades I say these two things eternall happiness eternall misery meeting with a perswasion that the soul is immortall are without controversy of all others the first the most desireable the latter the most horrible to humane apprehension Were it not for these Civill government were not able to stand before the prevailing swing of corrupt nature which would know no Honesty but Advantage no Duty but in Pleasure nor any Law but it s own Will Were not these frequently thundred into the understandings of men the Magistrate might enact order and proclaime Proclamations might be hung upon Walls and Posts and there they might hang seen and despised more like Malefactors then Lawes But when Religion binds thē upon the Conscience Conscience will either perswade or terrify men into their practice For put the case a man knew and that upon sure grounds that he might doe an advantagious murder or Robbery and not be discovered what humane lawes could hinder him which he knowes cannot inflict any penalty where they can make no discovery But Religion assures him that no sin though concealed from humane eyes can either escape Gods sight in this world or his vengeance in the other Put the case also th●t men looked upon Death without fear in which sense it is nothing or at most very little ceasing while it is endured and probably without Pain for it seazes upon the Vitalls and benumms the senses and where there is no sense there can be no pain I say if while a man is acting his will towards sin he should also thus act his reason to despise death where would be the terror of the Magistrate who can neither threaten or inflict any more Hence an old Malefactor in his Execution at the Gallowes made no other confession but this that he had very jocundly passed over his life in such courses and he that would not for fifty yeares pleasure endure half an hours paine deserved to dye a worse death then himself questionlesse this man was not ignorant before that there were such things as lawes assizes and Gallowes but had he considered and beleived the Terrors of another world he might probably have found a fairer passage out of this If there was not a Minister in every Parish you would quickly find cause to encrease the number of Constables And if the Churches were not imployed to be places to hear Gods Law there would be need of them to be Prisons for the breakers of the Lawes of men Hence 't is observable that the tribe of Levi had not one Place or Portion together like the rest of the Tribes but because it was their office to dispence Religion they were diffused over all the Tribes that they might be continually preaching to the rest their duty to God which is the most effectuall way to dispose them to Obedience to man for he that truely feares God cannot despise the Magistrate Yea so near is the connexion between the Civill state and the Religious that heretofore if you look upon well regulated civilized heathen Nations you will find the Goverment and the Preisthood united in the same Person Anius Rexidem hominum Phaebique Sacerdos Virg. 3. Aen. If under the true worship of God Melchisedech king of Salem and Priest of the most high God Heb. 7.1 And afterwards Moses whom as we acknowledge a Pious so Atheists themselves will confess to have been a Wise Prince he when he took the Kingly Goverment upon himself by his own choice seconded by Divine institution vested the Preisthood in his brother Aaron both whose concernments were so coupled that if Nature had not yet their Religious nay their civill Interests would have made them Brothers And it was once the designe of the Emperour of Germany Maximilian the first to have joyned the Popedome and the Empire together and to have got himself choose Pope and by that meanes derived the Papacy to his succeeding Emperors Had he effected it doubtless there would not have been such scuffles between him and the Bishop of Rome the civill Interest of the State would not have been undermined by an Adverse Interest mannaged by the specious and potent pretences of of Religion And to see even amongst us how these two are united how the former is upheld by the latter the Magistrate sometimes cannot doe his own office dexterously but by acting the Minister hence it is that Judges of Assize find it necessary in their Charges to use patheticall discourses of Conscience and if it were not for the sway of this they would often lose the best Evidence in the world against Malefactors which is Confession for no man would confess and be Hanged here but to avoid being Damned hereafter Thus I have in generall shewn the utter inability of the Magistrate to attain the End of Goverment without the Aid of Religion But it may be here replyed that many are not at all moved with arguments drawn from hence or with the happy or miserable state of the Soul after death therefore this availes little to procute obedience and consequently to advance Goverment I answer by concession that this is true of Epicures Atheists some pretended Philosophers who have stifled the Notions of a Deity and the Souls immortality but the Unprepossessed on the one hand and the Well disposed on the other who both together make much the major part of the world are very apt to be affected with a due fear of these things Religion accomodating it self to the Generality though not to every particular temper