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	soul_n	torment_n	4,875	5	9.1881	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A48625	VVar and peace reconciled, or, A discourse of constancy in inconstant times containing matter of direction and consolation against publick calamities / written originally in a foreign language and translated for the benefit of the gentrie of this nation.; De constantia. English	Lipsius, Justus, 1547-1606.; Wanley, Nathaniel, 1634-1680.	1672 (1672)	Wing L2365; ESTC R610	89,515	324

or Executioner Dispatch lead him off say you scourge him cover his face and hang him up For it is my vvill it should be so O impudence But God vvills it otherwise vvho you ought to know sees more clearly into these matters and punishes for other ends The heats of passion and a certain desire of Revenge transport us from all vvhich God is most remotely distant and intends the vvarning and correction of others For he best knowes to vvhom and vvhen these things may be useful The choice of times is of great moment and for vvant of a due and seasonable administration the safest medicines do oftentimes prove fatal to us He took away Caligula in the first setting out of his Tyranny He suffered Nero to run on longer and Tiberius beyond either and this no doubt for the good of those very Men vvho then also complain'd Our vicious and uncorrected manners do often stand in need of a lasting and continued scourge though vve vvould have it straight remov'd and thrown into the Fire This is one cause of the forbearance of God vvhich respect us the other respects himself To vvhom it seems natural to proceed on to his Revenge vvith a slow pace and to recompence the delay of his punishment vvith the vveignt of it Synecius said vvell the Divine inquisition moves on slowly and by degrees And so did the Ancients vvho from this property of his feign'd God to have feet of Wool So that although you are passionately hasty of Revenge you cannot yet accuse this delay since it is so only a respite of punishment that it may be also an encrease Tell me vvere you present at a Tragedy vvould you stomach it that the Atreus there or the Thyestes in the first or second act should in a glorious garbe and vvith a stately tread pass through the Scenes That they should rule there threaten and command all I suppose you would not for you know that felicity is but short-liv'd And expect that all this grandeur should finish in a fatal Catastrophe In this Play and Fable of the World vvhy are you more offended vvith God than you vvould be vvith any Poet That wicked Man flourishes and that Tyrant lives happy Be it so but think vvithall that this is but the first Act And before possess your self inwardly vvith this that tears and sorrows press on hard to overtake those joyes This Scene shall shortly flow vvith blood and then those robes of Gold and Purple shall be rowled up and down and trampled in it For that great Master of ours is a good Poet and vvill not rashly exceed the Lawes of his Tragedy Do vve not vvillingly bear with Discords in Musick for some time because vve know that the last closures vvill end in comfort Do so here But you vvill say those miserable Creatures that have suffered under this Tyranny do not alwayes see the punishment What wonder is it For the Play is oftentimes somewhat long and they are not able to sit it out in this Theatre But others see it and fear because they see that though in this severe Court of Judicatory some Men are reprieved yet they are not pardoned And though the day of execution is prolonged yet it is not forgot Wherefore Lipsius remember this that vvicked Men are sometimes forborne but never acquited Nor is there any Man that entertains a crime into his brest but vvho also hath a Nemesis at his back for that Goddess is in pursuit of him and as I may say vvith Euripides VVith silent unsuspected pace She doth the guilty Sinner trace And though he strive with utmost hast To scape she seiseth him at last CHAP. XIV That there are divers sorts of punishments some occult and internal which accompany the crime it self and which the wicked never escape That such are more grievous than any external ones WHich notwithstanding that you may more clearly apprehend and that I may once lead you into the height of this cause You must know that Divine punishments are threefold Internal Posthumous and External Those I call Internal vvhich are inflicted on the Soul vvhile it is yet in the Body such are Anxiety Penitence Fears and a thousand pangs and stings of Conscience Those are Posthumous vvhich are inflicted upon the same Soul but then vvhen it is freed and separate from the Body Such are those torments which even the Ancients most of them vvere of opinion did await the vvicked after Death The third sort are such as touch upon the Body or the things that belong to it as Poverty Banishment Pain Diseases Death All vvhich do sometimes by the just Judgment of God concurr against the Wicked but the two former alwayes To speak of internal punishments vvhere shall we find the Man so profusely and audaciously wicked that hath not sensibly felt in his Soul some of these sharp scourges and stripes either in the Commission of his crimes or at least after he hath acted them So true is that vvhich Plato said of old that punishment treads upon the heels of sin or as Hesiod more properly it is coeval and twinns with it The punishment of evil is not only ally'd to but is bred vvithin that evil nor is there any thing in this Life that can pretend to calmness and security besides innocence alone As the Roman custome did enforce the Malefactour to bear that Cross which vvas streight to bear him So hath God impos'd upon all wicked Men this Cross of Conscience on vvhich they shall begin to suffer before their further and vvorse sufferings do begin Do you suppose that only to be punishment which we can look upon and which this Body doth sensibly undergo No. All those external things do but lightly and for no long time touch upon us they are the internal that more exquisitely torment us As we judge them to be more desperately sick who languish away under an inward waste than those that are seised vvith some visible inflammation or preternatural heats though these last are more apparent So are vvicked Men under a more grievous punishment vvho vvith so low and indiscernible procedures are lead on to their eternal Death It used to be the cruel command of Caligula so strike as that he may feel he dyes the same befalls these Men vvhom their Conscience as an Executioner doth daily torture and even kill by these slow degrees of lesser and repeated stripes Nor let the splendour or the inlarged power and vvealth of those Men impose upon you Since they are no more happy and fortunate for these than they are healthful whose Gout or Feaver rests it self upon a purple Couch Do you see a beggarly Follow represent in some Play the person of a Prince all Pompous and brave You behold him yet vvithout envy for you know how under those golden Robes his Sores and Filth and Poverty lye hid Think the same of all those great and proud Tyrants In whose Minds if they lay open to us

saith Tacitus we might behold gashes and wounds For as Bodies are torn with stripes so are the Souls of Men miserably dilacerated vvith blood lust and other impious contrivances They laugh I confess sometimes but it is no true laughter They rejoyce but their joyes are not genuine and kindly but it fares vvith them as vvith condemned vvretches in a prison who endeavour with Dice and Tables to shake out of their Memories the thoughts of their execution but are not able For the deep impression of their approaching punishment remains with them and the fearful Image of pale Death is continually before their Eyes Look now upon the Sicilian Tyrant vvith-dravving only the Veil of his outward happiness A drawn Sword hangs in a twine thread Over the wretches impious head Hear that Roman lamenting let the God's and Goddesses destroy me worse then I every day perceive my self to perish Hear that other thus sighing Am I then that only one vvho have neither Friend nor Enemy These Lipsius are the true torments and agonies of Souls to be in perpetual Anguish Sorrow Dread and which are incomparably beyond any Racks or other invented wayes for the torture of the Body CHAP. XV. That punishments after Death do await the wicked and that for the most part they are not acquitted from External ones is proved by examples ADde to these those Posthumous and External pains vvihch vve have learned from Divinity and which vvithout further discussion it will be sufficient only thus to mention Adde to those also external punishments which yet if they should be wanting since the former are inflicted who could reasonably blame the external Justice But they are not vvanting Nor was it ever at least very seldom but that publick oppressours and Men openly wicked do undergo publick and open punishments some sooner others later some in their own persons and others in those of their posterity You complain of Dionysius in Sicily that for many years with impunity he exercises his Lusts Rapine and Murthers Forbear awhile and you shall behold him inglorious exiled pennyless and from a Sceptre vvho would believe it reduc'd to a Ferula The King of that great Island shall teach School at Corinth being himself become the mockery of Fortune On the other side you resent it vvith passion that Pompey and his Army of Patricians should be vanquished in the Plains of Pharsalia and that the conquerour for some time doth wanton and even sport himself with Civill blood I do not wonder at you For I see here the helm of right reason wrested out of the hands of Cato himself and this faltering expression falls from him Divine things have much of obscurity in them But yet thou Lipsius thou Cato turn your eyes this way a little One sight shall reconcile you both to God See that ambitious Caesar that prov'd commander in his own opinion and in others too almost a God see him slain in the Senate house and by the hands of Senatours not falling by a single Death but secured by Three and twenty vvounds like some vvild beast weltring in his blood and vvhat vvould you more in Pompey's own Court and at the foot of Pompey's Statue falling a great Sacrifice to that great shade So methinks I pitty Brutus slain for and vvith his Country in the Fields of Philippi but vvithall I am some what satisfyed vvhen not long after I behold those victorious armies like gladiatours slaughtering one another at his Sepulchre and one of the Generalls Marcus Antonius vanquished both by Sea and land in the Company of three Women vvith that effeminate Arme of his scarce finding the Death he sought Where art thou now thou once Lord of all the East thou Butcher of the Roman armies the pursuer of Pompey and the Common-vvealth See how with thy bloody hand thou hangest in a Cord how being yet alive thou creepest into thy monument and how even in Death it self thou art unwilling to be divorc'd from her that vvas the cause of thy Death and then judge whether dying Brutus spent his last breath and vvish in vain Jove suffer not to scape from thee The cause of this Calamity No Brutus he vvas not hid neither did he escape No more did that other General vvho smarted for his youthful crimes not obscurely in his own person but most evidently in all his posterity Let him be the fortunate and great Caesar and truly Augustus but vvithall let him have a Iulia for his Daughter and another for his Grandchild Let him lose some of his Grandchildren by fraud others by force and let himself force others into exile and out of the impatience of these crosses let him attempt to dye by a four dayes abstinence but not be able To conclude let him live vvith his Livia dishonestly married and dishonestly detain'd and let him dye an unworthy Death by her on vvhom he so unworthily doted In summe saith Pliny that Diety and who I know not more vvhether he attain'd Heaven or merited it Let him dye and leave the Son of his Enemy to succeed him These and such like are to be thought of Lipsius as oft as complaints of injustice are ready to break from us and the Mind is presently to reflect upon these two things the slowness and the variety of punishments Is not that offendour punished now But he shall be Not in his Body Yet in his Conscience and Soul Not vvhile he lives Yet most certainly when he is dead Seldome slow punishments lame Feet forsake The wicked Wretch what hast soe're he make For that Divine Eye doth alwayes vvake and vvhen vve suppose him to sleep he doth but vvink Only see you entertain not any prejudice against him Nor go about rashly to judge him by whom shortly thy self is to be judged CHAP. XVI The Second Objection answered that all have deserved punishment in regard all have offended That Men cannot judge who is more or less culpable 'T is God only that clearly discerns betwixt crimes and therefore most justly punishes BUut say you there are some people punished that are guiltless and have no vvay deserved it For this is your Second complaint or rather Calumny Unadvised Young-man Are there then any punished vvho have not deserved it Where I beseech you are those innocent Nations to be found It is an excess of confidence yes absolute rashness and presumption to assert thus much concerning any one single person and shall you dare to justifie whole Nations But to small purpose this for I am satisfyed that all of us have sined and do still every day repeat it We are born in sin and so we live in it and to speak vvith the Satyrist the Magazeens of Heaven had been long since emptyed if its Thunder-bolts had alwayes fallen upon the Heads of such as deserved them For vve must not think that as Fishes though encreas'd and bred up in the Sea do yet retain nothing of its saltness so Men in the filthiness of this World

if those great and in our imagination eternal Bodies are destined to their destruction and change vvhat shall vve think of Cities Common-wealths and Kingdomes which must needs be as mortal as the founders of them As particular persons have their Youth Maturity Old-Age and Death So these they rise grow stand flourish and all these to that very purpose that they may fall In the reign of Tiberius one single Earth-quake overthrew twelve famous Cities of Asia and another did the like to as many Townes in Campania in the reign of Constantine and one vvarre of Attila more than an hundred Fame scarce retains the ancient Thebes of Egypt and vve scarce believe the hundred Cities of Creet But let us come to more receiv'd instances The ancients have seen and vvondered at the Ruines of Carthage Numantia and Corinth As vve do at the ignoble inglorious rubbish of Athens Sparta and those other once renovvned Cities That Lady of Sovereignty and Queen of Nations falsely Styled the Eternal City vvhere is it Overturned Rased Burnt overwhelmed She has undergone more than a single Fate and is at this Day curiously sought for but not to be found vvhere she formerly stood You see that Constantinople proud of its being the Seat of a double Empire And Venice that glories in its continuance for a thousand years Their Fate attends them And thou also our Antwerpe the Eye of Cities there vvill come a time when thou shalt be no more For that great Architect pulls down and sets up and if vve may say it doth even sport himself in the affairs of this World And as a Potter at his pleasure doth mold and unmake divers forms and representations out of this Clay I have hitherto discours'd only of Townes and Cities but even Kingdomes also and Provinces 〈◊〉 hagg'd unto the same destiny In old time the East flourish'd Assyria Egypt and Judea vvere famous for Arts and Armes that happiness of theirs hath pass'd over into Europe and even she methinks as Bodies upon the approach of a Disease trembles and seems to have some lore apprehensions of her great fall That vvhich vve may more though never sufficiently vvonder at this World vvhich hath been inhabited this Five thousand and Five hundred years doth now grow old and that vve may again applaud the old exploded Fable of Anaxarchus there arise now elsewhere and are born new Men and a new World O the vvonderful and incomprehensible Law of Necessity All things turn about in this Fatal Circle of begining and ending and there may be something in this vvhole frame that is long liv'd but nothing that is Eternal Lift up your Eyes and look round vvith me for I am not vvilling as yet to desist and contemplate the alternate courses of humane affaires not unlike the Ebbings and Flowings of the Sea Thou shalt arise and thou fall thou shalt command and thou serve be thou obscure and thou glorious and let this round of things hastening into themselves vvhirle about as long as the World it self shall endure Were you Germans Savage of old be ye now civil beyond most of the Nations in Europe vvere you Brittons rude and poor Do ye now emulate the Egyptians and Sybarites in riches and luxury Did Greece heretofore flourish Let her now lye vvast Did Italy sway the Scepter She shall now obey You Goths you Vandalls you refuse of the Barbarians forsake your Dens and in your successive courses command the Nations Come hither also you pelted Scythians and for a vvhile vvith a strong hand rule both Asia and Europe But do you your selves after a vvhile depart and resigne the Scepter to the Nation bounded by the Ocean For is it my Fancy only Or do I indeed descry I know not vvhat Sun of a new Empire arising from the West CHAP. XVII Of the Necessity that is from Fate Fate asserted the universal assent both of the Learned and of the people to it though some difference about its parts How the ancients distinguished of Fate LAngius had finished and this discourse of his had almost drawn Tears from my Eyes so clearly did it seem to represent those Mockeries that are in humane affairs Insomuch that I cryed out Alass VVhat are even vve our selves or vvhat are all these things vve sweat so much in the pursuit of What 's he that ha's a brighter Fame Or he that 's of Obscurer name Man when summ'd at highest he Is but as dreams of Shaddows be As the Lyrick Poet said truly of old Langius replyes Young Man Look then upon these things not as above but beneath you and labour to establish Constancy in your Mind by reflecting upon the inconstant and unsteady levity of all things Inconstant I say as to our sense and apprehension of them but if vve respect God and his Providence than all things succeed in an admirable and immoveable order For now laying swords aside I come to my Ensignes and shall assault that Grief of yours not with Arrowes but more formidable inventions I shall inforce against it the Ramme of Fate an Ensigne of that strength and firmness as no humane power or policy shall be ever able either to clude or resist And howsoever the Ground is slippery enough to endanger a fall Yet I shall adventure upon it though vvith a cautious slowness and as the Greeks say vvith a modest foot In the First place therefore that there is a Fate in things neither you Lipsius nor as I conceive any Nation or Age did ever doubt Here I interpos'd pardon me said I if as a Remora I stop you in this course Do you oppose me vvith Fate Weak is this Ramme Langius and such as is directed by the enervate and languid forces of the Stoicks I speak freely I despise at once both it and the destinies and vvith the Souldier in Plautus I can blow away this feeble troop vvith a single breath as vvinds do leaves from the Trees Langius vvith a severe and threatning Eye Rash and inconsiderate Young Man said he do you imagine you can clude or take away Fate You cannot unless together with it you deny the very Power and Being of a Deity For if God is Providence is if Providence than a decreed order of things and if so than a firme and establish'd Necessity of events How do you vvard this blow Or vvith vvhat Ax do you sever the Links of this Chain For vve cannot otherwise conceive of God that eternal Mind than that there should be in him an eternal knowledge and prevision of things vvhom vve believe to be fix'd firme and immutable alwaies one and the same not at all varying or altering in those things vvhich he hath once willed and beheld The Eternal Gods are not inclin'd To variations of the Mind vvhich if you acknowledge to be true as of necessity you must unless you have divested your self of all Reason and Sense you vvill then also acknowledge that all the decrees of God are firme and immoveable