Selected quad for the lemma: death_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
death_n	call_v	life_n	word_n	4,662	5	4.0526	3	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A63941	A funerall sermon preached at the obsequies of the Right Hon[oura]ble and most vertuous Lady, the Lady Frances, Countesse of Carbery who deceased October the 9th, 1650, at her house Golden-Grove in Carmarthen-shire / by Jer. Taylor ...	Taylor, Jeremy, 1613-1667.	1650 (1650)	Wing T335; ESTC R11725	24,363	41

with a greater diffusion If it be made to stand stil it putrefies and all this we doe For 4. In all the processe of our health we are running to our grave we open our own sluces by vitiousness and unworthy actions we powre in drink and let out life we increase diseases and know not how to bear them we strangle our selves with our own intemperance we suffer the feavers and the inflammations of lust and we quench our soules with drunkennesse we bury our understandings in loads of meat and surfets and then we lie down upon our beds and roar with pain and disquietness of our soules Nay we kill one anothers souls and bodies with violence and folly with the effects of pride and uncharitablenesse we live and die like fools and bring a new mortality upon our selves wars and vexatious cares and private duels and publike disorders and every thing that is unreasonable and every thing that is violent so that now we may adde this fourth gate to the grave Besides Nature and Chance and the mistakes of art men die with their own sins and then enter into the grave in haste and passion and pull the heavy stone of the monument upon their own heads And thus we make our selves like water spilt on the ground we throw away our lives as if they were unprofitable and indeed most men make them so we let our years slip through our fingers like water and nothing is to be seen but like a showr of tears upon a spot of ground there is a grave digged and a solemn mourning and a great talk in the neigbourhood and when the daies are finished they shall be and they shall be remembred no more And that 's like water too when it is spilt it cannot be gathered up again There is no redemption from the grave inter se mortales mutua vivunt Et quasi cur sores vitäi lampada tradunt Men live in their course and by turns their light burns a while and then it burns blew and faint and men go to converse with Spirits and then they reach the taper to another and as the hours of yesterday can never return again so neither can the man whose hours they were and who lived them over once he shall never come to live them again and live them better When Lazarus and the widows Son of Naim and Tabitha and the Saints that appeared in Jerusalem at the rusurrection of our blessed Lord arose they came into this world some as strangers onely to make a visit and all of them to manifest a glory but none came upon the stock of a new life or entred upon the stage as at first or to perform the course of a new nature and therefore it is observable that we never read of any wicked person that was raised from the dead Dives would fain have returned to his brothers house but neither he nor any from him could be sent but all the rest in the New Testament one onely excepted were expressed to have been holy persons or else by their age were declared innocent Lazarus was beloved of Christ those souls that appeared at the resurrection were the souls of Saints Tabitha raised by S Peter was a charitable and a holy Christian and the maiden of twelve years old raised by our blessed Saviour had not entred into the regions of choice and sinfulnesse and the onely exception of the widows son is indeed none at all for in it the Scripture is wholly silent and therefore it is very probable that the same processe was used God in all other instances having chosen to exemplifie his miracles of nature to purposes of the Spirit and in spirituall capacities So that although the Lord of nature did not break the bands of nature in some instances to manifest his glory to succeeding great and never failing purposes yet besides that this shall be no more it was also instanced in such persons who were holy and innocent and within the verge and comprehensions of the eternall mercy We never read that a wicked person felt such a miracle or was raised from the grave to try the second time for a Crown but where he fell there he lay down dead and saw the light no more This consideration I intend to you as a severe Monitor and an advice of carefulness that you order your affairs so that you may be partakers of the first resurrection that is from sin to grace from the death of vitious habits to the vigour life and efficacy of an habituall righteousnesse For as it hapned to those persons in the New Testament now mentioned to them I say in the literall sense Blessed are they that have part in the first resurrection upon them the second death shall have no power meaning that they who by the power of Christ and his holy Spirit were raised to life again were holy and blessed souls and such who were written in the book of God and that this grace happened to no wicked and vitious person so it is most true in the spirituall and intended sense You onely that serve God in a holy life you who are not dead in trespasses and sins you who serve God with an early diligence and an unwearied industry and a holy religion you and you onely shal come to life eternall you onely shall be called from death to life the rest of mankind shall never live again but passe from death to death from one death to another to a worse from the death of the body to the eternall death of body and soul and therefore in the Apostles Creed there is no mention made of the resurrection of wicked persons but of the resurrection of the body to everlasting life The wicked indeed shall be haled forth from their graves from their everlasting prisons where in chains of darknesse they are kept unto the judgement of the great day But this therefore cannot be called in sensu favoris a resurrection but the solennities of the eternall death It is nothing but a new capacity of dying again such a dying as cannot signifie rest but where death means nothing but an intolerable and never ceasing calamity and therefore these words of my text are otherwise to be understood of the wicked otherwise of the godly The wicked are spilt like water and shall never be gathered up again no not in the gatherings of eternity They shall be put into vessels of wrath and set upon on the flames of hell but that is not a gathering but a scattering from the face and presence of God But the godly also come under the sense of these words They descend into their graves and shall no more be reckoned among the living they have no concernment in all that is done under the sun Agamemnon hath no more to do with the Turks armies invading and possessing that part of Greece where he reigned then had the Hippocentaur who never had a beeing and Cicero hath no more interest in the

rheume Nay it is more naturall for young Men and Women to die then for old because that is more naturall which hath more naturall causes and that is more naturall which is most common but to die with age is an extreme rare thing and there are more persons carried forth to buriall before the five and thirtieth year of their age then after it And therefore let no vain confidence make you hope for long life If you have liv'd but little and are still in youth remember that now you are in your bigg'st throng of dangers both of body and soul and the proper sins of youth to which they rush infinitely and without consideration are also the proper and immediate instruments of death But if you be old you have escaped long and wonderfully and the time of your escaping is out you must not for ever think to live upon wonders or that God will work miracles to satisfie your longing follies and unreasonable desires of living longer to sin and to the world Goe home and think to die and what you would choose to be doing when you die that doe daily for you will all come to that passe to rejoice that you did so or wish that you had that will be the condition of every one of us for God regardeth no mans person Well! but all this you will think is but a sad story What we must die and go to darknesse and dishonour and we must die quickly and we must quit all our delights and all our sins or doe worse infinitely worse and this is the condition of us all from which none can be excepted every man shall be spilt and fall into the ground and be gathered up no more Is there no comfort after all this shall we go from hence and be no more seen and have no recompense Miser ô miser aiunt omnia ademit Una die infausta mihi tot praemia vitae Shall we exchange our fair dwellings for a coffin our softer beds for the moistned and weeping turfe and our pretty children for worms and is there no allay to this huge calamity yes there is There is a yet in the text For all this yet doth God devise meanes that his banished be not expelled from him All this sorrow trouble is but a phantasme and receives its account and degrees from our present conceptions and the proportion to our relishes and gust When Pompey saw the Ghost of his first Lady Iulia who vexed his rest and his conscience for superinducing Cornelia upon her bed within the ten months of mourning he presently fancied it either to be an illusion or else that death could be no very great evil Aut nihil est sensus animis in morte relictum Aut mors ipsa nihil Either my dead wife knows not of my unhandsome marriage and forgetfulnesse of her or if she does then the dead live longae canitis si cognita vitae Mors media est Death is nothing but the middle point between two lives between this and another concerning which comfortable mystery the holy Scripture instructs our faith and entertains our hope in these words God is still the God of Abraham Isaak and Iacob for all doe live to him and the souls of Saints are with Christ I desire to be dissolv'd saith S. Paul and to be with Christ for that is much better and Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord they rest from their labours and their works follow them For we know that if our earthly house of this Tabernacle were dissolv'd we have a building of God a house not made with hands eternall in the heavens and this state of separation S. Paul calls a being absent from the body and being present with the Lord This is one of Gods means which he hath devised that although our Dead are like persons banished from this world yet they are not expelled from God They are in the hands of Christ they are in his presence they are or shall be clothed with a house of Gods making they rest from all their labours all tears are wiped from their eyes and all discontents from their spirits and in the state of separation before the soul be reinvested with her new house the spirits of all persons are with God so secur'd and so blessed and so sealed up for glory that this state of intervall and imperfection is in respect of its certain event and end infinitely more desirable then all the riches and all the pleasures and all the vanities and all the Kingdomes of this world I will not venture to determine what are the circumstances of the abode of Holy Souls in their separate dwellings and yet possibly that might be easier then to tell what or how the soul is and works in this world where it is in the body tanquam in alienâ demo as in a prison in fetters and restraints for here the soul is discomposed and hindred it is not as it shall be as it ought to be as it was intended to be it is not permitted to its own freedome and proper operation so that all that we can understand of it here is that it is so incommodated with a troubled and abated instrument that the object we are to consider cannot be offered to us in a right line in just and equall propositions or if it could yet because we are to understand the soul by the soul it becomes not onely a troubled and abused object but a crooked instrument and we here can consider it just as a weak eye can behold a staffe thrust into the waters of a troubled river the very water makes a refraction and the storme doubles the refraction and the water of the eye doubles the species and there is nothing right in the thing the object is out of its just place and the medium is troubled and the organ is impotent At cum exierit in liberum coelum quasi in domum suam venerit when the soule is entred into her own house into the free regions of the rest and the neighbourhood of heavenly joyes then its operations are more spirituall proper and proportion'd to its being and though we cannot see at such a distance yet the object is more fitted if we had a capable understanding it is in it self in a more excellent and free condition Certain it is that the body does hinder many actions of the soul it is an imperfect body and a diseased brain or a violent passion that makes fools no man hath a foolish soul and the reasonings of men have infinite difference and degrees by reason of the bodies constitution Among beasts which have no reason there is a greater likeness then between men who have and as by faces it is easier to know a man from a man then a sparrow from a sparrow or a squirrel from a squirrel so the difference is very great in our souls which difference because it is not originally in the soul and

that goodness of God who does so carefull actions of mercy for the ease and security of his servants But this one instance was a great demonstration that the apprehension of death is worse then the pains of death and that God loves to reprove the unreasonablenesse of our feares by the mightinesse and by the arts of his mercy She had in her sickness if I may so call it or rather in the solemnities and graver preparations towards death some curious and well-becoming feares concerning the finall state of her soul But from thence she pass'd into a deliquium or a kinde of trance and as soon as she came forth of it as if it had been a vision or that she had convers'd with an Angel and from his hand had receiv'd a labell or scroll of the book of life and there seen her name enrolled she cried out aloud Glory be to God on high Now I am sure I shall be saved Concerning which manner of discoursing we are wholly ignorant what judgment can be made but certainly there are strange things in the other world and so there are in all the immediate preparations to it and a little glimps of heaven a minutes conversing with an Angel any ray of God any communication extraordinary from the Spirit of comfort which God gives to his servants in strange and unknown manners are infinitely far from illusions and they shall then be understood by us when we feel them and when our new and strange needs shall be refreshed by such unusuall visitations But I must be forced to use summaries and arts of abbreviature in the enumerating those things in which this rare Personage was dear to God to all her Relatives If we consider her Person she was in the flower of her age Iucundum cum aetas slorida ver ageret of a temperate plain and naturall diet without curiosity or an intemperate palate she spent lesse time in dressing then many servants her recreations were little seldom her prayers often her reading much she was of a most noble and charitable soul a great lover of honourable actions and as great a despiser of base things hugely loving to oblige others and very unwilling to be in arrear to any upon the stock of courtesies and liberality so free in all acts of favour that she would not stay to hear her self thank'd as being unwilling that what good went from her to a needfull or an obliged person should ever return to her again she was an excellent friend and hugely dear to very many especially to the best and most discerning persons to all that convers'd with her and could understand her great worth and sweetnesse she was of an Honourable a nice and tender reputation and of the pleasures of this world which were laid before her in heaps she took a very small and inconsiderable share as not loving to glut her self with vanity or to take her portion of good things here below If we look on her as a Wife she was chast and loving fruitfull and discreet humble and pleasant witty and complyant rich and fair and wanted nothing to the making her a principall and a precedent to the Wives of the world but a long life and a full age If we remember her as a Mother she was kinde and severe carefull and prudent very tender and not at all fond a greater lover of her Childrens soules then of their bodies and one that would value them more by the strict rules of honour and proper worth then by their relation to her self Her Servants found her prudent and fit to Govern and yet open-handed and apt to reward a just Exactor of their duty and a great Rewarder of their diligence She was in her house a comfort to her dearest Lord a Guide to her Children a Rule to her Servants an example to all But as she related to God in the offices of Religion she was even and constant silent and devout prudent and materiall she lov'd what she now enjoyes and she fear'd what she never felt and God did for her what she never did expect Her fears went beyond all her evil and yet the good which she hath receiv'd was and is and ever shall be beyond all her hopes She liv'd as we all should live and she died as I fai● would die Et cum supremos Lachesis perneverit annos Non aliter cineres mando jacere meos I pray God I may feel those mercies on my death-bed that she felt and that I may feel the same effect of my repentance which she feels of the many degrees of he● innocence Such was her death that she did not die too soon and her life was so usefull and so excellent that she could not have liv'd too long Nemo parum diu vixit qu● virtutis perfectae perfecto functus est munere and as now in the grave it shall not be inquired concerning her how long she liv'd but how well so to us who live after her to suffer a longer calamity it may be some ease to our sorrows and some guide to our lives and some security to our conditions to consider that God hath brought the piety of a yong Lady to the early rewards of a never ceasing and never dying eternity of glory And we also if we live as she did shal partake of the same glories not only having the honour of a good name and a dear and honour'd memory but the glories of these glories the end of all excellent labours and all prudent counsels and all holy religion even the salvation of our souls in that day when all the Saints and amongst them this excellent Woman shall be shown to all the world to have done more and more excellent things then we know of or can describe Mors illos consecrat quorum exitum qu● timent laudant Death consecrates and makes sacred that person whose excellency was such that they that are not displeased at the death cannot dispraise the life but they that mourn sadly think they can never commend sufficiently FINIS a 2 Tim. 1.18 {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} Eccle 1 Cor. 15. 18. 1 Thess. 4. 16. Rev. 14.13 John 5.24 2 Cor. 5. 8. 6. 1 Thes. 5.10 Prov. 2. 17.