Selected quad for the lemma: death_n
Text snippets containing the quad
|
ID |
Title |
Author |
Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication) |
STC |
Words |
Pages |
|
A31402
|
The duty and benefit of submission to the will of God in afflictions discovered in two sermons delivered upon a special occasion at Stapleford in Leicester-shire / by John Cave ...
|
Cave, John, d. 1690.
|
1682
(1682)
|
Wing C1582; ESTC R30885
|
25,804
|
49
|
The Duty and Benefit of SUBMISSION to the Will of GOD in AFFLICTIONS Discovered in Two SERMONS Upon a special Occasion At Stapleford in LEICESTER-SHIRE By JOHN CAVE Rector of COLDORTON in the same County And Chaplain to the LORD-BISHOP of DURHAM Iis qui erudiuntur Tolerantia succurrit objâ—ctis molestiis generose resistens atque efficiens ne animus concidat sed pugnet propulset Doloris ictus Simpl. in Epicteâ—um Quà m pulchâ—um spectaculum Deo cùm Christianus cum dolore congreditur cùm adversùm Minas Supplicia Tormenta componitur Minut. Fel. LONDON Printed for Richard Chiswell at the Rose and Crown in St. Paul's Church-Yard MDCLXXXII TO The Right Honourable and Truly Noble THE LORD and LADY SHERARD OF STAPLEFORD Right Honourable THese two plain Sermons were composed and suited to serve a great and sad Occasion of your Honours reached at your Desires heard with your good liking and most effectually commended by your diligent Observation and Christian Practice of their Doctrine and therefore in these Respects were justly your own without the formality of a Dedication and truly I designed them so intirely for the Service of your Honourable Family that their Preachingh had been their only Publication and they had continued Yours still in the strictest Sence of Propriety if an intimation of your Honour's Desires which to me carry the force of a Command had not only allowed but obliged me to make them more common and seeing the Cross is not only the Badg but the Burthen of our Christianity and you have so many Fellow-Sufferers in the World I have reason to hope that others may find the same Support and Comfort by these seasonable Discourses which through God's Blessing they have happily afforded you And there being so many afflicting Circumstances as it is generally known in your Case your Patience and Submission will want no Advantage of Example but be able to speak more perswasively and make more Converts than these weak Sermons of mine or the Oratory of more powerful Preachers Indeed when Death comes so near us and makes so deep a Wound in Nature we need an extrordinary Assistance of Grace the Benefit of Precept and Example both all the Helps which Philosophy and Religion can furnish lest we be wearied and faint in our Minds St. Hierom writes of one Paulina a Lady of a steady and well-governed Temper in other Trials who yet could not bear her Childrens Death without an immoderate and unseemly Resentment but some allowance may be fairly made to the Tenderness of her Sex when we see Men who have naturally a greater Constancy and Courage wise Men religious Men ready to fall by the same Stroke Synesius the Bishop of Cyrene was so affected with the Death of his Children Epist 16. that in one of his Epistles he complains that the Remembrance of it like a lingring Consumption wasted him daily that all the Pleasure of his Life died with them and at last breaks out into this impatient Wailing Let me live no longer or else forget that they are dead Yea how doth the Heart of King David a Saint and a Souldier melt into a more than a Womanish Softness and bewray its Weakness and Instability in a Torrent of Tears and impotent unmanly Plaints at the Death of one Absolom Absolom a Traitor and a Rebel to his King and Father yet because a Son still must be lamented in the highest Strain of Passion My good Lord and Lady you bewail a Son who had nothing of Absolom in him but his Beauty who had all the Grace and sweetness of Courtesy of a most obliging Mind Speech and Deportment without any of the Guilt or Blemish of Flattery Affectation or Design who wanted no Accomplishment beseeming his Noble Birth and Quality but excelled in Piety to his God and Reverence to his Parents and a towardly Compliance with the other Instructors and Governours of his Youth whereby he soon became the Delight and Ornament of a learned and vertuous Society Exeter Colledg Oâ—on dear to them as a Child and honoured by them as a Patron and therefore wept over as both with a mixt Affection but not so fond as rational And indeed his obliging Qualifications procured him such a general Interest and Esteem that every one who knew him seemed to mourn all along for him as if the Loss had been only his without any Partner to share his Grief But I design not in this In Mr. Laxton's Sermon preached on the day of his Interment so much a Character of his Worth which hath been drawn already in better Colours and with more graceful Strokes than my poor Stock or Skill can supply as a just Commendation of your Honours singular Piety and Patience your deep sence of the Displeasure and yet your meek and humble Submission to the Will of the Father of Spirits in taking from you a Son of so much Delight and Hope and that in the Prime and the Blosom of his Years when he seemed to be all Life and Vigor a very severe and searching Trial. Yet I who had the unhappy Honour to be admitted into the darkest Scene of your Sorrow and to see your Vertue surprized with a most dreadful Assault soon perceived it happily succoured with such forces of Reason and Religion as assured an equal Conflict if not a Victory And I know you have often blessed God who by a wonderful Supply of his Grace hath maintained your Patience and Fortitude and with the Temptation given a way to escape and secure your Innocence And I shall earnestly pray that the God of all Consolation would be pleased still to suggest to you such Religious Considerations as may establish and encrease your present Comfort and lead you through all the obscure Passages of this Veil of Tears into the brightest Glories of Everlasting Light and Joy that the Belief of your dear Son 's happy Translation and the well-grounded Expectation of your own may mortify all your earthly Affections make you every day less concerned for what you enjoy or suffer in this World and that the Felicities of Eternity may render the good or evil things of Time very indifferent to you To these my Prayers I shall upon all Occasions add my best Endeavours to serve your Honours in promoting your highest your heavenly Interest and Benefit as becomes my Office and Obligations there being no one more truly sensible of your Honour 's Great Favours than is My Noble Lord and Lady Your Honours most Faithful Affectionate and Obedient Servant JOHN CAVE Of Submission to the Will of God HEB. xii ix We have had Fathers of our Flesh which corrected us and we gave them Reverence shall we not much rather be in Subjection to the Father of Spirits and live OUR Blessed Saviour who was himself a Man of Sorrows and acquainted with Grief bequeathed a Legacy of Sufferings unto the Heirs of his Glory and it is through manifold Tribulations that we are
them at last if they prove incorrigible but the Father of Spirits hath Potestatem vitae necis the Power of Life and Death over all his Children He bringeth to the Gates of Hell VVisd 16.13 and he bringeth back again And this further obligeth us to a patient bearing of his Will in our own Sickness our own darkest Walks in the Valley of the Shadow of Death and also in the last departure of our dearest Friends and Relatives because God is the Father of Spirits and takes no more from us than what he first gave us And hereby we do but attain to some degrees of Abraham's Faith and Patience who was not more joyful at the Birth and Growth of his only Son than ready to give him again to God in his best Age. 4. He hath the Power of the second as well as of the first Death Luke 12.15 or as our blessed Saviour expresseth it when he hath killed hath Power to cast into Hell Men after they have killed the Body have no more that they can do and our Christian Faith and Hope will bear us up under all the Threatnings and Strokes of their Cruelty and enable us to say with Comfort what the poor Lepers spake in dispair If they kill us we shall but die but who knows the Power of thine Anger 2 Kings 7.4 saith David who knows what degrees of Torment the Wrath of an incensed God can kindle after Death Temporal Judgments are to the wicked but the beginning of Sorrows or in St. Gregory Nazianzen's Expression 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Smoak of the Lord 's Anger in Hell are the Flames and the unquenchable Fire of it Take the Ashes of the Furnace Exod. 9.8 saith God to Moses and cast them into the Air and they shall be Sores and Plagues upon them such are all temporal Punishments saith the excellent Bishop Brownrig they are but the Ashes of the Furnace of Hell Fire not to be compared to those everlasting Torments A patient bearing of those Afflictions with which God chastens his Children and Servants in this Life is one good way to escape that Wrath which he reserves for his Enemies in the next Thus have I shewed you briefly what good reason we have to be subject to the Father of Spirits rather than to the Fathers of our Flesh our natural or civil Parents in regard of the greater Absoluteness and Latitude of his Dominion 4. There is one thing more which advanceth God's Scepter and awes us into a lower Submission and that is the duration and continuance of his Dominion This seems to be implied in our Apostle's present Argument in the very next Verse to my Text They verily that is the Fathers of our Flesh for a few days chastned us Their's if a severe is but a short-liv'd Empire But God who shews Mercy to thousands punisheth also to the third and fourth Generation yea His Kingdom as the Psalmist speaks is an everlasting Kingdom Psal 145.13 and his Dominion endureth throughout all Generations I might say much more of God's Soveraignty and right of Rule over us a right to give Laws and to inflict Punishments to exact Obedience and enforce Subjection But I shall proceed to shew you in The Second Sermon SEcondly That as is his Majesty such is his Mercy as he hath a more compleat and absolute Right of Dominion over us so he hath an infinitely more tender Love and Kindness for us than the Fathers of our Flesh have This is implied in their proper Characters and distinctions Fathers of our Flesh and Father of Spirits This bespeaks place by his very Name and Title which bears Signatures of Goodness altogether as illustrious as those of Power which you have seen displayed Where Flesh in Scripture is not used to describe Sin either original or actual it for the most part denotes Weakness if not the Corruption the Frailty of our Nature And Spirit is a word of a quite contrary Import and carries in the notion of it high degrees of Purity Knowledg Power and Goodness But 2. The Preheminence of God's Paternal Affection and the Advantage of his Discipline is more plainly represented in the last word of my Text Live and in the Explication of it by those following words They indeed for a few days chastned us after their Pleasure but he for our Profit If they design their Childrens Good they may either through want of Knowledg or excess of Passion mistake the measures of their Discipline but there are none of these Imperfections in the Father of Spirits His Anger which is the Product of Love is also the Subject of Wisdom and managed by both for a singular Benefit He that is the Father of Spirits knows their frame and their Frailties what Medicines they need and what they will bear and as his Wisdom prescribes and directs his Love administers and makes Application 1. He knows what Medicines they need what will prejudice their Health and what will purge their Distempers and therefore accordingly orders them pro jucundis aptissima quaeque See the Art of Contentment p. 123 130. profitable instead of pleasant things sometimes wholsom Wormwood instead of luscious Honey The same Wisdom and Goodness which denies us those things we like because they are hurtful for us doth upon the very same reason give us those distastful things which he sees profitable A wise Physician doth not only diet but if occasion be purge his Patient also And surely there is not such a Purifier such a Cleanser of the Soul as are Afflictions if we do not like disorderly Patients frustrate their Efficacy by the irregular Managery of our selves under them God afflicts no further than the Necessities of his Patients require and what is short of this is though under the shew of Compassion a real Cruelty He doth not punish willingly Lam. 3.33 1 Pet. 1.6 nor grieve the Children of Men. Now for a season if need be you are in heaviness through manifold Temptations If our Affliction be sharp and painful certainly God seeth that we have need of it otherwise he would handle us more gently The Husbandman plows not but to sow and he plows and harrows no longer than till the Clods are broken and God suffers wicked Men whom the Psalmist compares to Plowers or any other Harassers of our Ease and Content no longer to make Furrows upon the Backs or rather upon the Hearts of his Servants than till they are softned and broken and become a fit soil for his Graces to grow in For 2. He that knows our frame understands our Frailties too not only what we need but what we can bear and remembers not only that our Bodies are Dust but that our Souls also partake of the Infirmities of their Companions or rather of the Discomposures of their Instruments and therefore resolves that he will not contend for ever neither be always wrath Isa 57.16 lest the Spirit should fail before him