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	holy_a	life_n	4,205	5	4.2274	3	false

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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A61998	A sermon at the funeral of the virtuous lady, and honoured, Ann, late wife of Thomas Yarburgh, Esq . Preached on Monday, the 10th day of July, 1682. By Matthew Sutcliffe.	Sutcliffe, Matthew, 1637 or 8-1707.	1682 (1682)	Wing S6205B; ESTC R222127	17,195	23

A SERMON AT THE FUNERAL OF The Virtuous Lady and Honoured ANN late Wife of Thomas Yarburgh Esq Preached on Monday the 10th day of July 1682. By MATTHEW SVTCLIFFE LONDON Printed for Thomas Cockerill at the Three Legs in the Poultrey over-against the Stocks-Market 1682. JOB 14.1 Man that is born of a woman is of few days and full of trouble WHEN the Royal Psalmist looked upon these aspectable Heavens and beheld there the glory of God written in Characters of Light he admires that grace that first made Man a little lower than the angels Psal 8.5 and crowned him with glory and honour and that Providential care which is mindful of him and visi●… him every moment Such an infinite distance there is betwixt God and man that it is a wonder God will spend a thought upon us Lord Psal 134.3 4. what is man that thou takest knowledg of him or the son of man that thou takest account of him Man is like to vanity his days are as a shadow that passeth away His being in this world hath nothing firm and solid but is like a shadow which depends upon a cause that is always in motion the light of the Sun and is always changing till it vanisheth in the darkness of the night The consideration whereof made the same Psalmist in another place break forth in that pathetical exclamation How vain a thing is man How vain indeed in every act and scene of his life from his first entrance to his exit He is begotten in sin formed in darkness brought forth in pains His first voice is Cryes no sooner is he disclosed from his Maternal Cells into the open air but he weeps and no wonder seeing his birth is his unhappy entrance upon the valley of tears where he is attended with so many miseries as nothing but the shortness of his abode there could make tollerable that so this compendious Draught of Man might in all its parts be exactly conformable to the wretched Original which holy Job hath exposed to our view in the words of the Text Man that it born of a woman is of few days and full of trouble These words comprehend a picture of Man in Minature but very like and to the life He is born of a Woman that 's his Original and as from thence he receives his being so together with it his weakness and infirmities he liveth here a few days but in so short a time he endureth a multiformous multitude of miseries In each step of Man's progress we read his vanity He is vain in his procreation born of a woman there is nothing more mean nothing more abject And lest the thoughts of that pleasure his senses may furnish him withal from corporeal objects should exalt him in his very ingress into life he is sadly warned of his departure out of it he must not expect many days for he shall live but a few And lest he should flatter himself that this short space of time which is allowed him he shall enjoy free to himself he is here told that even that time shall be taken up with misery and sorrow His sew days are full of trouble 1. Let us consider Man in his Original or first entrance into the World and in respect of that How mean and abject is he What came we from at first and originally but from nothing There was a time when we were not having alone a potential being a being not yet in being but wrapt up in the causes of it yea there was a time when we were not in any secondary causes but alone in the Omnipotency of God who was able to make us out of nothing And that which came from nothing can surely be no excellent thing in it self or if it have any excellency it hath it from another even from that Almighty Efficient which did produce it to whom the glory of it is due But we must consider Man in his natural or more immediate Original or in his procreation Man that is born of a woman He is the sinful Off-spring of sinful Progenitors To be born of a woman imports both the sinfulness and the weakness of our Nativity We are all conceived in sin and before we enjoy the light we are spotted and stained in our Originals and before we enter upon the scene of life we receive that infection which wraps up in it the seeds of death The Infant of a day old is not without sin and the continuation of his life is but a multiplication of that first guilt Wherefore holy David had just cause to deplore so sensibly the corruption of his nature which bears equal date with life it self Psal 51.5 Behold I was shapen in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me And how can he be free from sin that is born in sin Job 25.4 How can man be justified with God Or how can he be clean which is born of a woman Sin hath possessed our reins and covered us in our mothers womb Eph. 2.3 We are all born children of wrath and heirs of vengeance Indeed our Nature as it proceeded from God in our primitive creation was perfectly pure and undefiled but as it comes now by natural generation propagated from Adam it is corrupted and unsound All the good we possess in our life and in our faculties in our senses and in our understanding we received from God our Creator the chief Fountain of all good but the vicious pollution which hath infected and depraved all these proceeded not from that most pure Author of our beings but from Original sin committed by the wilful prevarication and apostacy of man from his Maker Let the consideration of this teach us humility and repress in us the poyson of pride the first sin that ever sprung out in our natures next to Infidelity and last in rooting out Consider O man thy Original that thou wast born void and destitute of all holiness and in a state of pollution and by reason thereof a child of wrath without any possibility to escape eternal damnation by any merit or power of thy own but must needs sink down to Hell and be made fewel for eternal burnings and canst thou find any thing in thy self whereof to be proud Let us therefore look back to the vileness of our Original and be humbled let us lament and bewail our most wretched estate by nature and consider seriously how deeply our first Parents have engaged us in sin and misery Before we had any possession of felicity or could claim any interest in it we had forfeited it in Adam We had a punishment before we had a being We are all of us here born in the last age of the world but we dyed in the first This is the portion left us by our Parents Original sin and a corrupt inclination in our natures unto all evil And sin being the cause and forerunner of death it hath so sown and involved the seeds of it in our

natures that as the Apostle saith The body is dead already because of sin Rom. 8.10 The Officers and Serjeants of Death Dolours Infirmities and Diseases have seized already upon our bodies and marked them out for lodgings which shortly must be the habitations of death Not only is the sentence pronounced against us Thou art dust Gen. 3.19 and to dust thou shalt return but it is already begun to be executed Our carcasses are bound by the Officers of Death and our life is but like that short time which is granted to a condemned Criminal betwixt his Judgment and his Execution And this brings me to 2. The second thing we have to consider in the Text Man's duration or abode in the world which is very short he is of few days Tho the hope of life may so bewitch us that in our false imagination we conceit there is more solidity and continuance in one year that is before us than in ten that are passed by us the time that is past being vanished like a thought but that which is to come we are apt to think it longer than indeed in experience we shall find it yet the Spirit of God who best knows how short and vain our life is calls the time we have to abide here but a few days And if we judg aright he that liveth longest hath no more for the days that are past are dead already and those that are yet to come are uncertain so that no more is left to us we can be said to live but the present moment which immediately flyes away to give place to another that by a succession of fleeting moments our vain life may be prolonged But that the days of man upon earth are few I shall further shew you by illustrating it in an instance or two 1. Our days are few if they be compared with God and presented to measure with Eternity If the days of our life be set in comparison with the duration of Gods Eternity they bear no proportion to it but vanish in the consideration as nothing Therefore David confesseth unto God Psal 39.4 Thou hast made my days as an hand bredth and mine age is as nothing before thee And in another Psalm he saith Psal 102.25 26 27. Of old O God thou hast laid the foundations of the earth and the heavens are the work of thy hands They shall perish but thou shalt endure yea all of them shall wax old like a garment as a vesture shalt thou change them and they shall be changed but thou art the same and thy years shall have no end And agreeable is that of holy Job Job 10.5 Job 36 26. Are thy days as the days of a man Are thy years as mans days And again God is great we know him not neither can the number of his years be searched out Therefore he is called the living God as St. Acts 14.15 Paul in his Sermon to the Lystrians opposeth to their vain Idols the living God I need not make man worse than he is nor his condition more miserable than it is but could I if I would As a man cannot flatter God or over praise him so neither can he undervalue man Job 7.3 He is made to p●ssess months of vanity But Gods Eternity is interminabilis vitae tota simul perfecta possessio The Living God is a simple absolute and eternal Being There is no similitude will bear any proportion in illustrating this comparison of our days with God A furlong is a great journey to a Snail to a Horse or a Hound it is nothing A Ship with a fair Wind will sail a great way in a day but what is that to the Voyage of the Sun that every day surrounds the world In all these there is an intermediate necessity of place time and motion which belongs not to the infinite Eternity of God Thus we are bounded and bound up with time but God is Eternity and into that Time never entered For Eternity is not all everlasting flux of Time but time is a short Parenthesis in a long Period and Eternity had been the same that it is tho Time had never been at all 2. Our days are few if they be compared with what we our selves shall have after this life They bear no proportion to that Eternity of Joys or Misery which shall succeed them This mortal life is very short if we compare it with the life to come which shall never have an end The difference betwixt this life and that to come is somewhat resembled by the difference betwixt a Lease for years and an Estate in Fee-simple the one runs on still but the other expires at a certain period So are our days but few if we compare them to that eternity of days we expect in Heaven For this corruptible 1 Cor. 15.53 must put on incorruption and this mortal must put on immortality There is Eternity which hath neither beginning nor end which is the duration of God and there is Perpetuity that which the Scripture calls everlasting Life the state of our Souls in Glory This hath a time to begin but it shall out-live time and be when time shall be no more Now what a minute is the life of the durablest Creature to this Everlastingness What a minute is a Mans life in respect of the Sun 's or a Tree's The duration of the World is but a minute to Eternity Man's life is but a minute to the World Occasion is but a minute to our life and yet we scarce apprehend a minute of that occasion if we do not lay hold on this opportunity wherein we may receive good and become blessed In both these respects it is manifest That our days on earth are very few of which the Patriarch Jacob being sensible confessed Few and evil have the days of my pilgrimage been And holy Job tho he was a man of sorrows and a great part of his life-time was swallowed up by many bitter calamities on which score one would think he should rather complain of the tediousness than of the shortness of his life for sorrow makes time long Minutes seem Hours and Days Months to the miserable Our imagination makes the day of our sorrow like Joshua's day when the Sun stood in Gibeon the Summer of our delight is too short but the Winter of our adversity goes slowly on yet notwithstanding this he concludes That mans days are few he cometh forth as a flower and is cut down he fleeth also as a shadow and continueth not Whereunto is exactly consonant that of the Evangelical Prophet Isa 40 6 7. All flesh is grass and all the goodliness thereof as the flower of the field the grass withereth the flower fadeth Nay the Scripture sometimes to insinuate how short our time is vouchsafes not to number it by days but calls our whole life a Day Long life is a Summer day short life is a Winter day joyful life is a

Sun-shine day troublesome and sorrowful life is a gloomy and tempestuous day But it seems a day is too long a term for it and therefore the Prophet calls it a moment Isa 26.20 Hide thy self for a little moment until the indignation be over-past So vain a thing is man And that our days are few will further appear if we consider those similitudes by which the holy Scriptures do sometimes set forth the vanity of this our mortal life Job 7 6 7 9. Holy Job compares it to a Weaver's Shuttle that runs swiftly through the Web to the Wind that passeth away speedily and returneth no more to a Cloud which vanisheth and is seen no more when the Sun whose influence drew it up suddenly dissipates it by its Rayes He complains also that his days were swifter than a post Job 9.25 26. they flee away they see no good He compares also the course of our life to an hungry Eagle who besides the velocity of her natural motion being incited by the eagerness of her Appetite flyeth hastily upon her Prey to a Ship sailing swiftly before the Wind which loosing from the Harbour with a prosperous Gale immediately leaves the land behind and is soon out of sight leaving no footsteps or impression behind it by which it can be discern'd that it hath been there And as it is with the passengers that sail in it whether they sit or walk or howsoever they change their actions yet do they still go on to their designed Haven So it is with us whether we eat or sleep or whatsoever we do we are still posting forward toward our end Moses compareth our life to the grass Psal 90 5 6. which in the morning flourisheth and groweth up in the evening is cut down and withereth To a Sleep which insensibly passeth away before we know what we were doing in it and to a dream of the night than which nothing is more vain or uncertain This is a true representation of the vanity of our life which like the shadow of a Dial is in perpetual motion tho its progression be by minute and imperceptible steps Our days vanish and flye away as a vapor or the morning dew and we our selves as the flower of the field soon wither away By all this we see how little the Spirit of God esteems of that whereof the sons of men esteem so much Our sin hath shortned our days and made them few and miserable The pleasures of life are worm-eaten and the glory of the flesh is but like Jonas's gourd which one day grows up and the next day is consumed by the worms If Solomon who had experimented all the pleasures this life could yield after tryal of them cryed out all is vanity and Job when he was divested of all his wealth looking back to his fore passed days was constrained to confess I have possessed months of vanity how can we look to find more comfort or felicity in this wretched life than those holy men have found before us If we seek our comfort in the perishing gain glory or pleasures of this life we shall be compelled to lament at last That we have toiled all the night and have taken nothing we have wearied our selves in vanity and it doth not profit us Since then our days are few let it be our care to spend them well and to make the best improvement of them Let us therefore pray with the Prophet Moses Psal 90.12 Lerd so teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom And the consideration of the shortness and vanity of our life will teach us true wisdom in these respects In reference to the works or actions of our life it will teach us to be wisely diligent Wisdom is requisite to direct our choice of the best business for the employment of our time For the best use we can make of this short life is to provide in it for a better For when death comes upon the stage it sweeps away all and as to the good things of this life is an utter privation of them Then the soul must go forth of this world and of all her followers in life can only be attended with good or evil If she have done good in the body her reward is great and certain in heaven but if she be surprized in sin hell shall be her share hell the lake of Gods wrath the storehouse of eternal fire a bottomless Abyss of misery where there is no evil but must be expected nor good that can be hoped And as Wisdom so Diligence is no less required of us Since we have much work to do and but little time to do it in it behoves us to beware that we squander it not away in trifling or idleness Seeing our time is short Eccl. 9 10. we must double our diligence Whatsoever thine hand findeth to do do it with thy might for there is no work nor device nor knowledg nor wisdom in the grave whither thou goest If we trifle away our days in vanity he that is the ancient of Dayes will call us to a severe account for them We should therefore be covetous of no worldly thing but Time and that not for the duration of our pleasures but to work out the salvation of our souls There is no usury so allowable as this not that men should sell time to improve money but husband time to improve grace Otherwise a long time will bring but a long and a sad reckoning When God gives us time to do the business we came for it leaves us either without imputation of idleness or without excuse Our life wears away by living and is diminished by addition every day added to it is so much taken from it Each step sets us forward to our graves and we are nearer now than when we entred the Church dores Time goeth away by minutes therefore it is not perceived the shorter steps it taketh the more insensibly it passeth Therefore as it stealeth upon us let us welcome it with good industry and as it stealeth from us let us send it away with a good Testimony Thus though it quickly leaves us it shall not leave us worse than it found us In reference to the good things of this world Phil. 4.5 it calls upon us to use moderation Let your moderation be known to all men the Lord is at hand The consideration of the fewness of our days may justly teach us to moderate both our desires and pursuits after and our enjoyments of the things of this world For why shouldst thou set thine heart upon that which is not As God said to Baruch by his Prophet Jeremy Jer. 45.4 5. I will destroy this whole land and seekest thou great things for thy self So shall we design or promise to our selves great things in this life when life it self so suddenly flyeth away Or shall we set our affections on the things of this world when they cannot

patience And Moses bids the Israelites remember all the way which God led them forty years through the wilderness Deut. 8.2 to prove them and to know all that was in their hearts Thus God dealt with Job and thus he deals with many of his servants he casts them into the Furnace of affliction that their Faith being tryed may shine the brighter Sometimes for the exercise of their Graces Rom. 5.3 4. We glory in tribulations saith the Apostle knowing that tribulation worketh patience and patience experience and experience hope Altho afflictions be in their own nature bitter and not joyous but grievous yet they are the occasions to exercise and thereby to work in us the habit of many excellent Virtues such as patience and Christian for titude and constancy under the greatest evils which begets in us a great experience of our own hearts and knowledg of our sincerity and this produceth a firm hope in the promises of God which can never fail us in the day of Evil. Thus afflictions do but give us opportunity for the Exercise of many noble acts of Religion and of many Divine Graces which otherwise there would be no place for For some virtues are principally exercised with Evil and all their strength is employed in the victory of that Wherein consists the honour of Patience but in the quiet and unmoved enduring of troubles Nusquam est patientiae virtus in prosperis Where there are no troubles patience hath nothing to do Had Job never been afflicted his Patience had wanted matter for Exercise and had never become so eminently Exemplary This and such like Virtues like Stars shine brightest in the Night Therefore Afflictions are called Gods Wine-press when they happen to good men they do but press out the Sap and Juice of Grace that is in them and make those Graces which lay hid before manifest and apparent unto others The good man being pressed with troubles brings forth the fruit of praise and thanksgiving with patience Sciut aromata odorem non nisi cum accenduntur expandunt As sweet spices disperse not their odours till they be burnt or beaten so the Servants of God who otherwise seem to be void of Spiritual strength when they are beaten with afflictions send out a sweet smelling savour of rich and manifold Graces Again troubles in good men may sometimes have a respect to Sin and that either to Sin past or future In respect to past Sins they are Medicinal Restoratives by which they are awakened to recover their health by Repentance of those Sins through which they have become spiritually sick and diseased For howsoever God giveth loose reins to the Children of wrath and delivereth them up to their own hearts desires yet he will hedg in with thorns the way of those he purposeth to save and by some sharp Rod or other will awake them from the mortal sleep of Security as he awaked Jonas by casting him into the Sea and arrested Saul in the full career of his persecution by striking him at once from his horse and from his carnal confidence in the flesh And in respect to future Sins troubles are preservatives from such Sins into which God seeth them of their weakness ready to fall if they be not prevented And so he sent an Angel of Satan to buffet St. Paul not for any Sin he had committed but for a Sin he might fall into lest he should be exalted above measure through the Abundance of his Revelations Again the Servants of God are exercised with troubles sometimes to withdraw their affections from the World and to awaken their desires and pursuits after those better and more enduring riches which are reserved in Heaven for them Should they injoy alway an undisturbed course of prosperity they would be ready to say with St. Peter when he saw the glory of Mount Tabor It is good to be here and never think of any other Heaven But when we find nothing but trouble and disquietness here then our hearts being thereby convinc'd of the vanity and vexation of all earthly things do long after that Rest which remains for the People of God There is no Rest to be found here What the Devil sought in envy and Solomon in curiosity that all men seek in vanity Mar. 12.43 Walking through these dry places they seek rest and find none Here we dwell in Mesek and meet with nothing but disquietness And they that are tossed in a tempest how do they long for a good Haven or harbor of rest The more our Pilgrimage is imbittered the more we seek this Rest But here we cannot find it the Heavens move they have no rest the Earth fructifies it hath no rest the Waters Winds Clouds are all at work they have no rest Nor is any rest allowed to man below Let us not think to set up our rest here in this tumultuous throng of troubles Where envy and strife is there is confusion and every evil work Upon this Wheel ever whirling about we are no sooner set down but some trouble or other rowseth us in the words of the Prophet Mic. 2.10 Arise and depart for this is not your rest Lastly troubles prepare the Servants of God for Salvation as Grapes must be pressed before they become Wine and Corn thrashed and ground before it make Bread And tho this seem a meer paradox to the men of the World who go on in a course of Sin and Pleasure Yet the Spirit of God hath assured us that tho no chastening for the present be joyous but greivous nevertheless afterwards it yeildeth the quiet and peaceable fruits of righteousness unto them that are exercised thereby As God sendeth afflictions to scourge us so they scourge us into the way to Him and when they have shewed us that we are nothing in our selves they also shew us that Christ is all things to us And tho they shall remove us out of the World yet they assure us that no extremity of sickness no temptations of Satan no horror of Death shall remove us from him but when we dye we shall dye in him and by that death be united unto him that dyed for us and rose again Thus God afflicts his own Servants here that he may crown them hereafter they are exercised with troubles in this present life that in that to come they may have rest in the Lord. Thus the Apostle saith When we are judged 1 Cor. 11.32 we are chastened of the Lord that we should not be condemned with the World The sorrows and troubles of the Saints prepare them for Christ and help to gather them to him Psal 126.5 6. They that sow in tears shall reap in joy He that goeth forth and weepeth bearing precious seed shall doubtless come again with rejoycing bringing his sheaves with him And that that this was the Case of this excellent person this deceased Gentlewoman whose earthly Reliques we have committed to the Grave those manifold Graces and