Selected quad for the lemma: death_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
death_n	child_n	father_n	life_n	5,155	5	4.4801	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A66422	A sermon preach'd before the King at Whitehall, on January 30, 1696 by John Lord Bishop of Chichester ...	Williams, John, 1636?-1709.	1697 (1697)	Wing W2729; ESTC R7460	12,789	33

wickedly Killed and that ye are not Idolaters and Persecutors as they and say If we had been in the days of our fathers we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets but you will so far outdo them that ye will Kill and Crucify those whom I shall send and reject the last tender of Divine Mercy and thereby bring upon your selves ruin as inexpressible as irreversible For think of all the Blood of Pious and Just Men that has been shed through all Ages of the World think of that of Abel and of Zacharias and all that ye can think of and yet the case will hold no comparison with what ye will do in Persecuting Killing and Crucifying the Prophets and Wise Men that shall be sent to you and also Him that sends them And if the Blood of Abel cried for vengeance and that of Zacharias was required of your Progenitors Then what will not fall upon this Generation It will be such as was not from the beginning of the creation It will be such as if all the Blood of the Prophets and of Righteous Men from Abel downward to that of Zacharias were required of you Behold I send unto you prophets and wise men c. that upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth verily these things shall come upon this generation In Discoursing upon which Argument I shall shew I. That it often happens to the Best of Men to be Opposed and Persecuted and Despitefully used in this World II. That this is consistent with the Providence of God and his Government of the World III. That in the sequel God doth right to his Providence and to their Piety and Virtue by extraordinary Events I. It often happens to the best of Men to be Opposed and Evil-Treated I shall not go about to prove that which is matter of Fact and has been the constant Observation of all Ages more or less We need not go farther for the confirmation of it than the Instances of the Text Abel and Zacharias and the rest of the Righteous Men upon Record Or than the sad Instance which this Day sets before us when a Person as Eminent for his Piety as his Character and Dignity was treated as if he had been the Off-scouring of all things and was as many of the Righteous Men of Old Persecuted and Slain And the Causes are as observable as the Fact and of which there are as many as there are Prejudices and Misunderstandings contrary Passions and Interests As long as there are Ambition and Pride Envy and Malice Covetousness on one hand or expensive Vices on another As long as there are contrary Habits which are the Principles that rule in all Mankind there will be Enmities and Oppositions and if Virtue and Religion and the Best of Men are against Persons in these Circumstances they will then retaliate the Injury and be against Virtue and Religion and the best of Men. For then it is not what the thing is in it self but what it is as to them and it often is not because it is Religion or Virtue or the Best of Men that they thus Despitefully use them but because they are opposite to their Interest or their Inclination or sometimes are to their Reproach Then it is that the Pharisees are for condemning our Saviour when they thought that the Romans would come and take away both their place and nation And especially is this of the more fatal and pernicious consequence if this Spirit be edged on by a false and mistaken Zeal and Religion is pretended to by some to face an evil design and is believed by others to be concerned in it and is in danger to suffer For then this doth as they will have it justify and establish the Contention and make it to be necessary Then they think it laudable and meritorious even to kill when in their Opinion it is to do God service It is then a Cause fit to venture their own life in and a Cause that will oblige them to take away that of another Nay it will even serve to break through the Laws of Nature it self and will have them to put those to Death whom Nature would otherwise teach to Preserve and with the hazard of their own Life to save from it Thus it was foretold by our Saviour The brother shall deliver up the brother to death and the father the child c. By these and the like means the Best of Men too often fall under the heavy hand of Violence and Oppression and if we were then to judge of them by the usage they meet with they must have been the worst of Mankind A case which hath tempted some to question and others to deny a Providence But this without reason if there be nothing in these Proceedings and Events but what is consistent with the Divine Oversight and Government of the World II. Which is the next thing to be Discoursed of The Providence of God is seen in Preserving all things in the same State and Order as at the first establishment And as he ordinarily leaves Natural Causes and necessary Agents to act according to their proper Nature and to keep to the Law and the Season at the first appointed and prescribed so he generally leaves voluntary and intelligent Beings to follow their own Inclinations and to Chuse and Resolve and Act as they shall see meet And if it happens that such Agents proceed upon wrong Principles or mistaken Measures it is no more than if in meer Natural Causes there are some Preternatural Accidents happen through the concourse of different parts of Matter together And if sometimes Good Men are left to their own Precipitance as Josiah when he was not to be disswaded from Attacking Pharaoh-Necho and Wicked Men are left to their own Perverseness and Obstinacy as Pharaoh or to their Pride as the Haughty Assyrian and they perish in it This in the Voluntary World is no more extraordinary than when there is Seed-time and Harvest in the Natural World that is that each acts according to the Nature they are of and the Condition they are in And it is no imputation upon Providence if in this way Good Men or the Best of Men fall sometimes into hard Circumstances when Causes are left to their own tendency and are as it were in their own Power For Nature is but Nature and to keep Nature in its course is an Act of Providence to keep Stated and Permanent Beings in their Station and Order and Transient in a continued Succession and Voluntary in their own Power and Liberty is a special Fruit of the Divine Providence But I confess if there were no more and that Providence were a meer Supervisor it would not be the Providence worthy of so Divine a Power nor so worthy of that Veneration we owe to it There is therefore a more noble part of it behind and that is That

that they may be deterred from such Practices the Threatning involves their Posterity with them than which nothing generally more awes Mankind And especially is this more to be observed in those cases which the Laws of Men cannot or do not reach or the Executive Power in a Government is too Weak to Punish I shall give an Instance or two of this kind omitting others viz. 1. Notorious Injustice the Oppressing of others that are not able to Help or Right themselves In this case the Providence of God doth often I dare not say always concern it self So that if Restitution be not made either the Person himself shall see it moulder away before his Eyes or is snatched away from it as the Fool in the Gospel with a This Night and then whose shall all these things be which thou hast provided Or suppose the Estate thus acquired be turned over entire to his Heir some secret Worm goes along with it that like Jonah's Gourd it withers away and he is exposed to all the Miseries of an indigent Life and ends perhaps where the Father began The Observation is not new nor rare it was Proverbial among the Heathens as is well known De male quaesitis vix gaudet tertius haeres and no Nation but can answer it in their own Language 2. Another Instance is that of Blooddsheding or Murther The Life of Man is easily taken away and what any desperate Person may Command and therefore when nothing is more Valuable or that the World in Succession more depends upon Almighty God by a special and early Law took care for the security of it Gen. 9. 6. Whoso sheddeth man's blood by man shall his blood be shed For which no satisfaction was to be allowed and nothing less than Blood was estimated as an equivalent for it where it was discovered and where it was not it was to lie upon the Place till it was some way or other Expiated and as far as could be there was an Atonement made This was the case of unknown Homicide under the Law when the Elders of the City next to the Slain were required to wash their Hands over the Heifer and to say Our hands have not shed this blood neither have our eyes seen it be merciful O Lord unto thy people Israel and lay not innocent blood unto thy people's charge and that blood shall be forgiven them So shalt thou put away the guilt of innocent blood from among you Deut. 21. 3. For Blood was said to Defile the Land Numb 35. 35. From hence it appears that innocent Blood was reputed to lie upon the Land till an Expiation was made The proper Expiation was the Blood of the Guilty himself where-ever he was to be found and in that case there was no Commutation no Substitution no Sacrifice allowed but Life was to go for Life according to the Law Numb 35. 30 31. Whoso killeth any person the murtherer shall be put to death Ye shall take no satisfaction for the life of a murtherer who is guilty of death but he shall be surely put to Death If he was not discovered then the course before spoken of in killing the Heifer and using the Rites prescribed on that occasion was to be taken And in either of those cases the Guilt went no farther It was not then imputed to the Nation it lay wholly on him that committed the Fact and who in the secret Providence of God was to Answer for it But if it were discovered and the Murtherer was suffered to escape without that condign and personal Punishment required then besides what he himself should account for to God the Supreme Judge the Charge fell upon the Place or the People and they were to Answer to God for it And this translation of the Guilt is so much the more Observable as the Fact is Aggravated by the Quality of the Person Suffering and thus Used or by the Relation the Person or Persons Offending are in It was so here when they were Righteous Men and Prophets that were Slain as Abel and Zacharias And when it was a National Act as was the Killing of Zacharias in which Fact there was a concurrence of all Qualities and Degrees as you may see it 2 Chron. 24. 17 21. And this was above all manifest in the Case here tacitly referr'd to which is the Crucifixion of our Saviour and which that infatuated People fixed the Guilt of upon themselves by an indelible Imprecation when they cried out His blood be on us and our children Matth. 27. 25. And there is somewhat like this in the Fact which gave the sad Occasion to this Day 's Assembly it was Heinous in it self Aggravated by the Quality of the Person and too great a Concurrence in the Guilt of it though not so great as to make it Universal or a National Crime God forbid it should ever be so in the Effects of it 2. But this leads me to consider the Case and that is Twofold 1. Of those that are in the same State with their Ancestors and are either Guilty of the same Facts or are of the same Temper with them As is the case of the Jews represented by our Saviour who though not Idolaters as their Forefathers before the Captivity were yet of the same rancorous temper and would in Fact be Guilty of the same Persecution of Righteous Men as they and so they might well be called their Children whose measure they were hastening to fill up This is a Case all must acknowledge and is agreeable to the common Sense of Mankind 2. There is the case of those that though Descendants from such as have been Guilty of great Crimes yet are not involved in them and so in reason may be thought not obnoxious to any Punishment for their sakes or for the sake of what has been done by Progenitors And the case is resolved in favour to such Ezek. 18. 4 20. The soul that sinneth shall die the son shall not bear the iniquity of the father c. according to the ancient Law given to that People Deut. 24. 16. The fathers shall not be put to death for their children neither shall the children be put to death for their fathers every man shall be put to death for his own sin But here we are to Observe That the stress lies upon that That the son shall not be put to death for the father this was a standing Law they were to keep to and which none but Almighty God the Great Lawgiver could reverse as he did only in some special cases such as that of Dathan and Achan Numb 16. 32. Josh 7. 24. But it is not to be denied that notwithstanding this there are Cases in which the Innocent may suffer for the Nocent Innocent Posterity I mean for their Nocent Ancestors as has been beforeshewed I acknowledge it is a difficult matter to state this Case as to all the Circumstances and Measures of it There is no constant Rule that the