Selected quad for the lemma: death_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
death_n	day_n	die_v	king_n	6,051	5	3.6079	3	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A26588	A discourse of wit by David Abercromby ...	Abercromby, David, d. 1701 or 2.	1686 (1686)	Wing A82; ESTC R32691	73,733	250

great Volumes wherein we may read the wonderful effects of Gods infinite Power and Wisdom but you shall see no Characters there that express the Contingency of things to come and the occasional determinations of our free Wills For what connexion can any rational man imagine between the Aspects of the Stars and a Childs being one day either a King or an Emperour or to dye such a death We know neither the Nature Properties nor Influences of the Celestial Bodies how can then a man not a meer Fool presume to determine their contingent Effects Astronomy indeed is somewhat better grounded But how many things are we yet here ignorant of the quantity of the natural year shall never be exactly determined because we can never know the critical Minute of the Suns first step backward from one Tropick towards the other The new Kalender is not as yet perfect and may one day stand in need to be corrected a second time We can give but a very uncertain account of the Nature of Comets and debate often about their hight periods movement and bulk whether the light of the fixed Stars be innate or only borrowed from the Sun we are not as yet certain We do but guess at their real distance from us and among themselves We speak rashly and perhaps upon not very good grounds of their wonderful Rapidity and Swiftness I shall say nothing of an infinite number of other things that we can give no rational account of as for Instance of Antipathy Sympathy Poisons and of that sort of Remedies we call Specificks If I chance to meet with two men I never saw before I find my self more inclin'd to serve the one than the other but why I am to seek As soon as the Lamb cometh into the World it flyeth from before the Woolf as from a known Enemy Now by what kind of Impulse or Impression it behaves it self so rationally I shall willingly learn from any of the Modern or Antient Philosophers The strange effects of Poysons are but too well known whereof some are quick some are slow some cold and others hot But they all agree in this that they destroy at length the structure of our Bodies I remember to have been present at the overture of a Lady that had certainly been poyson'd which nevertheless we could not affirm by any visible Impressions made upon her inward Parts the alteration made by this subtile Poyson being quite insensible I am of opinion that in this Life we shall never reach to a perfect knowledge of such odd pieces of Wonder Let us then acknowledge that there is no true Philosophy in the World but Sceptisism not that I take Scepticks here for men that doubt of every thing yea and of their own Existency too for 't is perhaps a vulgar Error to believe that there were ever any such in the World and withall not meer Fools I mean then by Scepticks those that are come to such a pitch of Knowledge as to doubt rationally of every disputable matter because seeing nothing under one light only and looking narrowly into the reasons of both sides they discover but some few or more degrees of probability without the very Twilight of Evidence SECT VIII The Character of a great Wit 1. That there are few great Wits 2. Who are not to be reckoned among the great Wits 3. The truest notion of a great Wit 4. That great Wits are Wary in their decisions and not at all Dogmatical 5. The difference between Aristotle and Descartes 6. Thomas Aquinas upon what account to be most esteemed 1. I Doubt if I may not say of great Wits what Cicero says somewhere of great Orators that scarce one was seen in an Age For as Aristotle calls little men comely but not beautiful so likewise I take the most part of those that the World admires most to be but jolly Wits des esprits jolly as not throughly deserving because of some considerable deficiency a more honourable Title or rather not filling in all sense what is in rigour meant by a great Wit For I conceive none to be such who has received but one Talent though in a just measure Thus a man may be an excellent Poet a skilful Astronomer a good Geomatrician a subtile Logician and yet unfit for all other Sciences such an one then can be reckoned but among the jolly Wits and that is Honour enough for him I do far less judge those to be great Wits who understand nothing but what is beyond common Sense and Understanding as these Metaphysical Whymsies abstracted Idea's and Airy Notions that fill the empty heads of some speculative Virtuoso's Neither could I ever have a great Opinion of such as preferring themseves before the rest of the World condemn whatever flows not from their own Pen or whatever is beyond the reach of their short Capacity For this is no more than what the duller sort are equally capable of I am likewise somewhat out of conceit with most of our Modern Philosophers who will have none to be really Witty and Ingenious but such as understand perfectly Mechanism or the Texture and Structure of things or how to knit weave and knead one Corpuscle with another For at this rate Apothecaries Smiths and Bakers and the rest of the Mechanical Tribe are to be accounted true Philosophers Yet I ever conceived Philosophy to be something beyond the reach of this common sort and would be very loath to become either a Smith or a Baker in order to gain the Honourable Name of a true Philosopher I have a great respect and I am forced to it by the very name for what we call in England Divines yet I look not upon them as great Wits because if they be good Christians they must renounce the use of their Wit and believe the most inconceivable Mysteries of Religion upon no better ground than the Simplest sort that is upon the surest of all the Authority of a Divine tho' obscure Revelation I conceive then to be short no other Notion of a great Wit than what Sceptisism affords me Not that I mean a man that doubts of every thing but rather one that can show demonstratively the incertitude of all disputable matters those of Faith with which we meddle not laid aside The doubts of such men are not meer Negative ones for those are groundless but rational positive and grounded upon such reasons as may demonstrate our little Capacity and Insight into most disputable things So as the greatest Wit of Angels consists in knowing the greatest Wit in Men consists in doubting whoever than after a due consideration of any difficulty in what Subject soever seeth the Pro and the Con or whatever may be find for maintaining either part of the contradiction so clearly that he is forced to ballance his understanding in the middle by an almost equal Weight of counterpoizing Reasons This Man I say and no other may assume to himself without Usurpation the Name of a

can I be other replyed she since I know certainly that you are in a greater danger then ever you was in the Holland Wars because my second pretended Husband as I am credibly inform'd is resolved to murther you that he may enjoy me again I hear indeed he is going for Burgundy but I know he will make but a short stay there So you may easily judge that loving you as tenderly as I do I shall never have a moment of Rest either by Night or Day till I be rid of my too well grounded fear by preventing someway this designed blow which at once would kill two and be the occasion of a deserved though shameful death to a third the Executioner himself your Rival Her Husband being extreamly surprised at this discourse knew not what to resolve upon but being near concern'd in the case and loving her more than his life he took a suddain resolution to do whatever she would put him upon This subtile Lady taking notice of this yielding humour he was in spoke to him thus again or to this effect you seem to be in doubt what you have to do You must then resolve for I know your Rivals Humour and there is no middle either to kill or be killed and all wise men methinks will prefer the former before the latter Now because I cannot suffer you to expose your self to the least hazard I shall furnish you this Night with the fittest Opportunity that can be devised of doing your self and me too a most important piece of Service Your Rival then will come about Six of the Clock as he hath given me notice by a Letter to take his leave of me before his departure for Burgundy which civility I shall not only admit but invite him likewise in your presence to Supper under pretence of a pretended Reconciliation to be made up between him and you The Gentleman comes as he had promis'd and yielded with all his heart to their Civil offers being now almost fully perswaded that as in Holland and Flanders he had had all things in Common with his Friend this juncture would furnish him with an overture to the like privacy at home which was all that he either aim'd at or car'd for Before the Gentleman came to take his leave of the Lady they had contrived and agreed upon the manner of his Death which was to press upon him several Healths and when he should be almost insensible of what was doing about him to dissolve some Strong and Heady Soporifick in his Wine that so they might the more easily strangle him the Servants being first dispatcht out of doors upon pretended Errants The murther thus executed without resistance or noise the Lady took after this manner her measures for concealing this horrid fact and hiding the Body from the eyes of the World She desired her Husband to take it upon his shoulders while she would bear up the Legs upon hers for his greater ease in carrying it Thus they went quietly along together about Midnight by a back door through the Garden straight to the River that wash't the very walls thereof But as they were thus in their March the Lady tyed dexterously in more than one part the dead Mans Cloaths with those of her living Husbands which he as being intent upon the compleating of the business could neither mistrust nor be sensible of They were come near to the River when she told him to go as near as he could and being now upon the very brink of the precipice she most unmercifully thrust him over and so both headlong down together into the River Thus she got her self rid of both her Husbands at once whom it seems she had equally dislik't It may be yet somewhat to my purpose to tell you that being returned home she made a great stir among her Servants as if she had known nothing of the matter and ask't them often if they had not met with her Husband and the other Gentleman for that she fear'd they had challenged one another and had gone to some remote place agreed upon to put an end by the Sword to their old Quarrels But though this was for a while the general opinion of the Town the two Bodies being found two Months after by some Fisher-men bound together and the Lady being upon suspicion apprehended and according to the Laws of that Country in such doubtful cases threatned with extraordinary Tortures if she would not confess her crime She made at length a full discovery of the whole matter And suffered by the order of the Justice what she had well deserved an infamous Death 3. Let us make here but this one reflection Could there be a greater wickedness than this and at the same time a greater abuse of Wit whereby we see clearly that this weaker Sex has nothing of real Weakness when they resolve upon a design whether bad as this was or good as that of Judith who in my judgement cheated not Holofernes so subtilely out of his life as this Woman did her two Husbands out of theirs I pretend not by this discourse to puff Women up with Pride for they are but too proud already my design only is to show that they ought not to be undervalued by Men as if they were little better than Fools and had no kind of real Wit since their very Malice and Tricks do demonstrate the contrary But nevertheless though it may be allowable to call some Women fine Wits because of some peculiar vivacity they are gifted with yet few of them can pretend to be great Wits such a Character requiring a constant temper of the Soul which they because of their changeable humour are not capable of I shall not perhaps be justly styled impertinent if I say that since Wit depends most upon the perfection of our Souls they have not received from God so perfect Souls as Men because by Gods special appointment they are to obey and Men to command they are to be Servants and Men their Masters Now 't is conformable to the Wisdom of that all wise being that as they are inferiour to us by the condition of their State so they should be likewise far short of Men as to the innate endowments of the Mind Yet I deny not but that God may and does sometimes lodge a Soul of the First Hierarchy I mean a most perfect one in a Womans body but this is not usual and seldom happens but when he pleases to make choice of Women to rule over great Empires and whole Nations which hinders not the generality of them from falling far short of those eminent abilities that men are deservedly esteemed for I conceive the French to be more sensible of the truth of this Doctrine than most other Nations because by their Salick Law Women can claim no right among them to the Soveraign command I shall not say it would perhaps prove to our great advantage to put the same affront upon them by giving place to