Selected quad for the lemma: death_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
death_n	cross_n	die_v	sin_n	4,523	5	4.7646	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

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

effectual means found out for our preservation For it benefits and preserves us two wayes either as a scourge vvhen vve have offended or as a Bridle lest vve should offend As a scourge since it is the hand of a Father vvhich often corrects an offendor for his faults but it is an Executioner that slowly and only once punishes As vve use fire or vvater for the cleansing and purging away of filth and dross So doth God make use of afflictions to take away that of our sins And it is deservedly a scourge upon us at this time Lipsius for vve Belgians had before offended and being corrupted vvith vvealth and pleasures vve Ran on Headlong in the Way of Vice But our God gently warnes and recalls us and scourges us with some stripes that forewarned by these we may return to our selves and to him He takes away our Estates we abused them to Luxury our liberty because we enlarg'd it to licentiousness And vvith this gentle Ferula of Calamities he doth as it were expiate and purge away our offences A gentle one indeed for how slight a satisfaction is this They say the Persians when they are to punish some Illustrious and great Person use to stripp him of his Robes and Tiara and hanging them up they scourge these instead of the Man So doth this Father of ours vvho in every of his chastisements overpasses us and touches onely upon our Bodies our Lands our Goods and our ourward Enjoyments This Chastisement serves us also for a bridle vvhich he opportunely casts over us when he sees vve are about to offend As Physitians do sometimes advisedly breath a vein not because we are sick but that we may not be so by these Calamities God doth vvithdraw from us some such things as would otherwise become incentives and fewel to our Vices For he vvho gave a being to all things doth vvell understand their Natures nor doth he judge of their Diseases by the Complexion and Pulse but by the Heart and Reins Doth he see the Genius of the Hetrurians to be over-haughty and raised He rules them by a Prince The Helvetians easy and quiet He indulges them liberty The Venetians of a temper betwixt both He fits them vvith a middle vvay of Government and vvill possibly change all these hereafter as the persons shall vary their Conditions Nevertheless we complain and vvhy say vve are vve longer harras'd vvith vvar than others and vvhy are vve crush'd under a heavier Yoke of servitude Thou Fool and now really sick Art thou vviser than thy Maker Tell me vvhy doth the Physitian prescribe more Wormwood or Hellebore for this than for that Man Is it not because his Disease or Constitution requires it Think the same here possibly he sees this people more stubborn and therefore to be subdued by stripes that other more tractable and apt to be reduced with the shaking of the Rod. But you do not think so It may be so Our Parents vvill not trust a Knife or Sword in the Hand of their Child though he cry for it as foreseeing his hurt Why then should God indulge us to our destruction since vve are truly Children and neither know how to ask those things which are expedient for us nor how to part vvith those that will be fatal to us You may therefore lament if you please and as much as you please but you shall notwithstanding drink of that cup of sorrowes vvhich that Heavenly Physitian presents you with and vvhich he hath not unadvisedly filled so full for you CHAP. X. Of punishment the Third End that it is good both in respect of God Men and him that is punished PUnishment I confess respects evil Men but is no evil it self For First it is good if you respect God whose eternal and immoveable law of Justice doth require that the crimes of Men be either amended or removed out of the vvay Now chastisement amends those that can be vvashed out and those vvhich cannot punishment takes away It is good also in respect of Men amongst vvhom no society could stand and continue if all things vvere permitted vvith impunity to turbulent and desperate spirits As the punishment of petty Thieves and Murtherers conduces to every Mans private security So does that of the greater and most famous ones to that of the publick welfare Those divine animadversions upon Tyrants and the great riflers of the World ought necessarily sometimes to intervene that there may be examples to admonish us That there is a wakeful Eye Of justice which doth all descry And vvhich to other Potentates and people may cry out Thus warn'd by others miseries Learn justice and the Gods not to despise It is good Thirdly if you consider those very persons that are punished For it is for their sakes since it is not so properly a revenge or an utterly destroying judgement as a gentle cohibition and restraint from Sin or to speak it fully vvith the Graecians a punishment not a revenge for that Gracious Diety Never consults his Anger that from thence He may severest punishments dispense As that Impious Poet said piously As Death is sometimes sent in Mercy to good Men before they sin So to the incorrigeable vvicked in the midst of their Sins because they are so devoted to them that unless they be cut off they cannot be divorced God therefore stops their unbridled course and vvhile they are commiting sin for the present and designing others for the future he mercifully takes them away To conclude all punishment is good as it respects justice as on the contrary impunity is evil which makes Men sinful that is miserable Men to continue so longer Boetius said well wicked Men are more happy under punishment than if Justice should inflict none at all upon them and he gives ohis reason because some good is come amongst them to wit punishment which in all the heap of their other crimes they never yet had CHAP. XI Of a fourth End which pertains either to the Conservation and defence of the Vniverse or its Ornament The Explication of each THese are the three certain evident Ends vvhich I have pass'd vvith a sure and steady Foot the fourth remains vvhich I must adventure upon with a doubtful one For it is more remov'd and obscure than that our humane capacities should perfectly reach it I discover it only through a Cloud and I may guess and offer at it but never certainly know and attain to it The End vvhich I mean hath a double respect and regards either the conservation or the beauty of the Universe I therefore suppose it is for its conservation because that God who made and disposed all things by an excellent wisdom did so make them that he bounded every of them within a certain number measure and weight Nor can any particular Creature transgress these limits vvithout the weakning or ruine of the vvhole Thus those great bodies the Heavens the Earth the Sea have their bounds thus every Age