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	hell_n	sin_n	6,037	5	4.6569	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A79552	Saint Chrysostome his Parænesis, or Admonition wherein hee recalls Theodorus the fallen. Or generally an exhortation for desperate sinners. / Translated by the Lord Viscount Grandison prisoner in the Tower.; Parænesis. English	John Chrysostum, Saint, d. 407.; Grandison, William Villiers, Viscount, 1614-1643.	1654 (1654)	Wing C3980; Thomason E1531_2; ESTC R208923	51,851	141

rejecting his commands and art become a slave under the outragious Empire of that Tyrannous enemy to mankind who never rests day nor night from ensnaring us our selves to fight against our own hopes and expectations of Heaven Thus hast thou flung off a light and easie burthen freed thy self from a mercifull yoke to fasten thy neck in linkes of Iron And what is both base and ridiculous hast laid a Mill-stone the Asses burthen on thy owne shoulders What wilt thou think to do in the future that at present suffers thy most miserable soul to be swallow'd in this impetuous Gulfe of lusts Nay that wilfully has brough a kind of necessity on thy self which continually compels thee to fall into deeper extreams The woman in the Gospels when she had found her lost groat call'd all her neighbours together to partake of her joy with her saying Rejoyce with me because I have found the lost groat Lu. 15. 8. Thus will I call your friends and mine together but to a different end and purpose I will not bid them rejoyce with me but grieve and weep lament be truly sorrowfull and mourn with me For our losse is grievous and insupportable greater then if we had lost never so great a treasure or Magazine of Gold or Diamonds For we have lost a friend not to be valewed who sailing with us through this vast Ocean I know not by what means is fallen overboard and sunk into the bottomlesse Gulfe of perdition If any man should offer to disswade mee from my lamentations I would answer him with this passionate expression of the Prophet Isaiah Let me alone I will weep bitterly you cannot comfort me Is 22. Such is the sorrow which draws this flood of tears from my eyes Such a sorrow as doubtlessely would not shame Saint Peter or Saint Paul to own it though in such excesse as they denyed themselves all consolation or perswasion to the contrary They who deplore the naturall decreed death of the body may perhaps find cōforters who by the strength of reason and argument may without much labour restore their d●ooping spirits to settledness tranqulity by religious precepts gently quiet and palliate their griefes But who can plead gainst his just deploring who laments the death of a soul fallen into perdition dead in sin and pierc'd with ten thousand arrows venom'd with Hells malitious poyson the beauty form and grace of most eminent Vertues and devotions lost and extinct in him These administer matter justly to provoke lawfull and lasting tears What flinty heart What rockie soul could in an agony so moving forbear lamentings or entertain an apparition of any delusion should forbid him his just sorrow At the fall of the body it is humane though not altogether rebellious to weep At the falling of a soul the extreamest lamentation is the greatest evidence of the truest piety He who had on Earth possession of Heaven in so much as hee contemn'd abhor'd and laught at the vanity of the World hee who beheld the greatest beauty but as a statue of stone or a fair picture That he who despis'd Gold as dirt pleasures and vanity as mire He it is who most unexpectedly falling into a raging feaver of burning lusts has lost his comliness and his courage is now turn'd a slave to his own bestiall appetites Shall not we then grieve for him shall we cease our lamentations till he return to himselfe again it is no more then our duty and tye of Christian charity if we have any sense of pitty or humanity in us What alas is the destruction of the body but an accomplish'd course in the order of nature yet such a losse finds dayly mourners and lamenters What ought we then to doe for his perishing soul which manifestly appears resolv'd on eternall damnation if our prayers bring him not to repentance but that he finish his course in obstinate sinning and obduratenesse of heart For in death there is no remembrance of thee in the grave who shall give thee thanks Psal. 6. How great a sin then is it against the rules and Laws of charity not to resent with the greatest pitty a soul thus everlastingly perishing Violent cries and abundance of tears cannot possibly recall the dead But frequent experience teaches us that a soule dying here in sin is not wept for in vaine For the humble requests of brotherly charity plead so effectually before the Throne of mercy that many hardned in obstinate impenitency have melted into floods of tears and have ow'd thee thanks for their contrition to the importunity of other mens prayers And by such meanes many both in our daies and the daies of our forefathers who have deserted the paths of righteousnesse and run headlong astray out of the waies of piety which is a spirituall dying at length have risen again with such heavenly alacrity their fall so hid and obscur'd by the glory of their rise that they have purchas'd the palme of recompence and crowned with the wreath of victory have triumph'd Conquerors on earth till they were summon'd to be numbred with the blessed for all eternity Yet infinite such examples prevail not with a man who wilfully continues in the flames and fires of his lusts Such a wretched perversenesse withstands his recovery and pleads an impossibility of mercy against him But if he chance to get a little way out of the fire and by degrees leave it still farther behind him the dimnesse which the flames caused will be taken from his eyes then how plainly wil he discern the way of salvation to be accessible and very plain smooth and easie having obtain'd grace for his guide And conquer'd those Troops the Devill laid in ambush for him But hee who wants the courage to undertake the combat in vain desires the conquest He may that 's willfull stay and burn in the fire nay shut the doors against himself that are open for him And whatman who is thus sotishly his own enemy can design any thing nobly and virtuously Wherfore this our common enemy makes it his onely businesse leaves nothing unattempted which may render us diffident of grace and mercy Nor needs he much labour to compasse that his end if we lie prostrate at his feet and take no counsell or resolution or order the battail against him it is an easie conquest to overcome us But he who violently breaks his fetters and betakes himself to the use of his strength with courage He I say who in so desperate a condition allows himselfe no cessation but with a continuall violence maintains the battell against him though hee have before lost the day a thousand times shall then recover his losses and gloriously triumph in his enemies overthrow When he who is dejected with despair and permits his spirits to fail and languish can never hope for conquest how can he overcome who makes no resistance at all but fearing the encounter lays down his armes and submits to his enemy CHAP.

of the future but if the catching flames last till they are joyn'd they are never to be extinguish'd and unrepenting souls departing this life presently unite their sinfull fires with the revengefull flames appointed them in Hell for all eternity Now then consider how long thou canst possibly presume on the continuance of these felicities thou here enjoyst When thou canst not promise thy selfe any length for thy life fifty years were a great space to be assur'd of but indeed we so little know our ends that wee cannot tell but this evening may be our last how then can wee relie upon so many years Time is uncertain nor can we assure our selves any thing of the future And were it so that we were certain of a long life the pleasures still are uncertain wee might expect in it which sometimes are with us again in the twinkling of an eye But were a long life assur'd thee and thy pleasures to last with it that no chance or fortune had power to interrupt the continued course of thy contents which should be still equal to thy desires What a litle would this be to everlasting ages of bliss or eternity of punishment And hereafter we must expect the like everlasting durance of both joy and sorrow which soever be our lot though here delight and sadnesse have their vicissitude in the World to come neither shall ever end And as both for continuance are endlesse so in the extremities of value both incomprehensible CHAP. VI Hell fire expos'd to the terror of the impenitent with the torments and eternity thereof O Vainly deceived man most foolishly and sottishly deluded sinner who when thou heardst speak of Hell fire believest those dreadfull flames prepar'd for the vengeance on thy impenitency ●o be no other then some materiall pile that soon with it's own violence will of it selfe consume into ashes Thou must believe in time or thy experience will teach thee too late what those fires be which are prepared in Hell for the Devills and his Angells there and for thee unlesse thou sincerely repent they are immortall unconsuming flames flames that shall never extinguish or dy So that in fine the very damn'd may promise themselves eternity but it will prove the perpetuity of endlesse shame pains and confusion While the blessed shall be cloath'd with immortality but together with infinite joy and incomprehensible glory O vild impenitent wretch meditate on what thou art for ever forfeiting a Crown of immortall honor and what thou art assured to purchase with thy obstinate impieties Endlesse miseries and plagues torments in fires can never possibly consume which shall alwaies last and still supplyed ever encrease and never diminish or extenuate No mans tongue be he never so eloquent can teach us a way to comprehend the true knowledge of such unspeakable horror Yet in this as in other things impossible to be certainly known we may regulate our conjecture by the experience wee make on things of lesse moment As for example suppose thy selfe in an overheated Bath thy skin scalding thy veines and sinewes shrinking Or burning in a violent fevour at the insufferablenesse of these pains thou maist give some probable guesse and after think thou on Hell fire Thou wilt of necessity allow neither Bath or feaver possibly to be endur'd by the greatest and most invincible fortitude and argue thy self into an apprehension by degrees of the fearfull horror thou wilt have when for thy sins thou art flung into a torrent of mercilesse flames issuing from that dreadfull tribunall where the vengeance on impenitency is prepar'd There will be howling and gnashing of teeth punishments neither to be suffer'd nor redrest or comforted for no body shall help them So vain and fruitlesse will be those lamentations which cannot avail the lamenters any thing when their complaints can profit them nothing Their torments still encreasing with their desperation in a place where their eyes can fix on nothing to promise comfort for what shall they see there but the damned their companions and a vast desolation Next to add to the horror of eternall punishments know that these fires there as they can never dye neither can they afford light for they are most peculiarly and properly described to be utter darknesse Consider what it is thus to suffer in horrid and lothsome darknesse with terrors affrightings and tremblings in all thy members this must needs cause then the infinite multitude of thy tortures which will fall on thee faster then violent fleakes of snow upon the earth shall cruciate thy soule In so hideous and over-whelming a manner that humane capacity can not well comprehend how it is possible for the soule of man to bear them and not utterly consume and annihilate in so fierce and devouring destruction To make which more evident and plaine to our understandings we may call to remembrance what frequently happens in this world we are now in How many men have fallen into violent diseases and those as lasting as violent but neither their time nor force had the power to their soules dissolution till the decay and ruine of their materiall corruptible bodies the substance of the soule being proof against the keenest arrowes of death Even so shall it be at last with the miserable bodies of the damned which will be changed into a substance that the fiercest flames shall never be able to consume and though man be compos'd of such materialls as now cannot resist the violence but yeeld to the conquest of assaulting paines when the cursed immortality of the body shall be equall to that of the soul both together must suffer to all eternity Thou oughtest Theodorus rightly to consider this undeniable truth and not to give way to any fantastick dream that would perswade thee any end or period can be propos'd to the eternity of their sufferings who shall be thus prepar'd for everlasting fire And what are the pleasures the delights and vanities thou puts't into the contrary ballance to weigh against so heavy a doom How short the time of their continuance compar'd with eternity Couldst thou suppose that Hells torments were to end in a hundred or two hundred years the fury of them for such a space might prudentially affright thee from that dissolute and wild life thou art so besotted to Then certainly the thought of their eternity must needs deterre thee and to presse this nearer to thee I begg of thee to lay thy hand to thy heart and answer me whether thou canst or not exchange blessings and pleasures eternall for as everlasting punishments or forfeit an inestimable weight of glory for a dream and all the reputed happinesse of this life are no better What fool would bee content for one pleasing moment to lead all the rest of his life in miserie who is there so sottish as would willfully forfeit all his peace for a minutes pleasure yet thou doest far exceed such frantick beasts in thy madnesse But alas I dilate in vaine upon thy