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	life_n	think_v	5,509	5	4.3139	3	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A50543	A sermon preached at St. Martins in the Fields, at the funeral of the Reverend Doctor Hardy, Dean of Rochester, June 9th, 1670 by Richard Meggott ...	Meggott, Richard, d. 1692.	1670 (1670)	Wing M1620; ESTC R793	12,108	39

A SERMON Preached at St. MARTINS in the FIELDS AT THE FUNERAL Of the Reverend Doctor HARDY Dean of Rochester June 9 th 1670. By Richard Meggott D. D. Rector of St Olaves Southwarke and one of His Majesties Chaplains in Ordinary London Printed by E. Tyler and R. Holt for Joseph Clark at the Star in Little Brittain 1670. To the Nobility Gentry and other Inhabitants of the Parish of St. MARTINS in the FIELDS Right Honourable Worthy and Beloved WHen Epistles of this Nature are so much in Fashion that all Things in Print are thought undressed if they are without them I hope I shall not be censured for this to You now Because it is not an Affectation of Great Patrons nor an overweening Opinion of a thin Discourse but only the Condition and Relation of the Person who was the Occasion of it hath given me the Presumption You all had a Common Right in Him and he a Peculiar Interest in so many of You that in this Case to have addressed to any One might have been Interpreted to have forgotten Several It is Pitty that a Diamond should be set in Lead Could I have had my Desires this Excellent Person should have had a Proportionable Penicil to have drawn Him then You could not but have begged His Picture as Joseph of Arimathea did his Masters Body But I had neither Art nor Time for such a Piece This is so much fitter to be covered with a Curtain than hung out in Publick View that I am surprized either that you should expect it or I permit it I am not insensible that there want not some who are very industrious to represent Him very differently Concerning whom I shall say no more than that there are such Things as Envy Pride and Spight which like Smoak alwayes fly in the Faces of the fairest But while such as give him a slighty Character shall approve themselves more Serviceable to the Church and such as give Him an ill one shall appear to be without any Fault themselves I think they are neither to be wondered at nor regarded I might have said much more to his Commendation which was true I appeal to his most Venomous Enemies whether any thing I did say was false That Passage concerning his Conference with Doctor Hammond which some I hear have much questioned I had from his own Mouth as to that Objection against it that he Preached before the Lords that sat at Westminster afterwards if the Design of that Sermon and the Temper of those Times be well considered of it is rather an Argument to confirm it The best and surely the greatest part of you are so well perswaded of Him that such Vindications as these are unnecessary for your satisfaction Lest they should be burthensome to your Patience My Prayers that you may all live holily as He directed and die happily as he desired is all that shall be added by His unworthy Fellow servant Your Servant in things appertaining unto God RICHARD MEGGOTT Job 14.14 Later Part. All the Days of my Appointed Time will I wait till my Change come IT is a sad Change a sad and suddain Change This which hath now Assembled us a strong man hath changed his vigorous health for rottenness a Reverend Divine hath changed his frequented Pulpit for a Coffin an Eloquent Orator hath changed his charming Rhetorick for Silence a shining Star hath changed his Eminent Orb for the Grave and Darkness And had I waved all Text but him here had been Theam enough to have entertained your passionate and devout Attentions This was the Ancients usual practice upon such Solemnities Thus Nazienzen in his Funeral Oration for St. Basil St. Ambrose in his for his Brother Satyrus St. Bernard in his for Gerard spend their whole discourses in the lamenting and commendation of the Parties that were deceased But Christians are now grown so much worse and the hearts of men so hardned that Charity hath laid a necessity upon us of doing something else and the danger of them we are to speak to compelleth us to borrow the greatest part of that Time which was formerly employed in the Embalming of the Dead for the Benefit of the Living Before therefore I attempt any account of him whose great change is come I shall make my Address to you whose change is to come that you would prepare and provide for it To this end it is I present you with this fair Copy to write after this Excellent Example to follow Holy Job whose Practice and Language in the Case you have in the Words I have now read All the Days of my Appointed Time will I wait till my Change come The Text falleth asunder of it self into two Generals Here is Job's Dissolution and his Resolution His Dissolution in these Words My change will come His Resolution to fit himself for it before it come in these All the days of my appointed time will I wait for it But that we may the better come at it I shall choose rather to Branch it into these three Particulars 1. Here is the terme of mans life stinted it is an appointed time 2. Here is the Nature of Death intimated It is that which maketh an Alteration a huge Alteration when it cometh It is a change Lastly Here is our Duty and Employment bespoke in one for the other in life to make our selves ready for death All our days to wait for it All the days of my appointed time will I wait till my change come The first of these Severals is the stinted terme of mans Life It is an appointed time Although the Chaldee Paraphrast rendereth it by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and the Vulgar Latine militiae the days of my warfare yet when the choicest Masters of Words confess that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is also often used as Synonimous with 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 finis extremum And the Hebrew Scholiasts expound it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 tempus praecisum I shall adhere to our own Translation which calleth the Days of our abode here in this World an appointed time An appointed time It is but time at the most The Inhabitants of the intellectual World whether they be in Weale or Woe Peace or Torment have no varying nor shadow of change with them Upon this account in some Parts of Africa they put their dead Bodies into the Ground sitting a posture of rest and stay to shew that what ever place they were gone to then they should never move nor stir more from it But we are here on Earth upon other termes this is only for a time and then we must depart from it The Fathers do they live for ever And the Prophets where are they Joseph is not and Simeon is not and we alas must not we go also Our time is Appointed He that fashioned and framed our Bodies hath not observed just the same hand in all but hath made them with provident and wise Differences Some are

strong as Iron others as brittle as Glass This hath the toughness of the Oake that the slightiness of the Reed In one the Temperament of the Humors is more adjusted in another more unequal according to the duration he did intend them for What is the reason that in the same Climate Aire Diet Exercise Terentia liveth to 103 Years of Age when her Sister Fulvia dieth at 27 Gesippus with all the care and helps of Art can be preserved no longer than 35. when Thanicus lasted while above 80 Whence I say ordinarily is this diversity but from the diversity of their natural constitutions God according to his design of our longer or shorter continuance here giving to every one of us a body as it pleaseth him This is the natural terme of life called by the Schools the Time of Gods Determination so long men may live Not that every one liveth just so long and dieth no sooner No this course of Nature is often violated and prevented Some die penally by the Magistrates Sentence some die desperately making away themselves some die sottishly by their own intemperance some die mercifully are taken away from the evil to come Although none can live longer than this time yet it is very common to die sooner although they are Bounds which we cannot pass yet they are such as we may fall short of The reaching of this Terme it is not absolute but conditional it is promised as a Blessing to Piety and Publick Vertue Ex. 23.25 26. Ye shall serve the Lord your God c. And I will take sickness away from the midst of thee c. The number of thy days I will fulfil Thy days those which are thy first portion thou shalt fulfil them On the other hand it is threatned as a Curse to disorderly and wicked men Psal 55.23 That they shall not live out half their days Theirs those which otherwise they might have attained and arrived to And this is the actual Terme of life usually called the time of Gods foreknowledge Not that in any case whensoever wheresoever howsoever we go out of the World the purpose of God is made of none effect or his appointment disappointed No for the bounds which he hath set us they are not fatally immovable Then all care in this case would prove as impertinent as Beverovitius objected his Calling but only possibly attainable as appeareth by the enforcement of the fifth Commandment and the case of Hezekiah Upon susposition of and with respect to means and conditions it is that our time is appointed And that shall suffice to have been spoken to the first Part of the Text the bounds of our life upon Earth How and upon what account it is an appointed time We now go on to consider what becometh of us when this time is out and expired as it followeth in my Next Particular A change will come This good man had experienced very many changes already A change in his Estate from abundant Wealth to Poverty a change in his Family from numerous Sons and Daughters to be Childless a change in his Person from Health and soundness of Body to Diseases and painful Sores but he here expecteth another change much greater and stranger than any of them We may more than guess what that is when we find the same word Prov. 31.8 is rendred Destruction and St. Paul 1 Cor. 15.51 useth the Phrase for our Passage into the other World We shall all be changed Accordingly Codurcus here translateth it obitus my death shall come And so abate very few who think it may refer to the Restitution of his former Prosperity the generality both of Jewish Interpreters and our own have expounded it viz. of his death and that which shall succeed it his resurrection This he here calleth his change in a peculiar manner my change as if all his other changes were nothing to it This is a change a mighty change indeed wicked men change for the worse righteous men change for the better both righteous and wicked undergo a change a wonderful change and that in four Particulars First it changeth our Enjoyments for things of a quite different kind and species All these visible things which here we prize and are so fond of disappear and have no place by it Jam linquenda domus tellus c. There Nabal hath no Sheep to shear nor Ahab Vineyard to take possession of There Sampson hath no Dalilah to lie in the lap of nor Belshazar bowles to carowse and revel in There Agrippa and Berenice have no Train to attend them nor is the rich man cloathed with his Purple and fine Linnen The Spirit that is not purged and elevated above the fascinating Charmes of these that can tast and relish nothing higher how discontented must it wander seeking rest and finding none when it cometh into these Regions Esau might as well have taken Ship to have hunted for Venison upon the Waves of the Ocean or Peter have cast his Net to catch Fish in the Wilderness or upon the Mountains as to expect any gross or sensual things in the life that is hereafter There all is spiritual and of another nature That is a first change that Death maketh a change of our Enjoyments Secondly A change it is in respect of our Capacity it changeth that also Here the wicked is capable of Mercy and the unconverted sollicited to Repentance Here the Golden Scepter is held out and the Door of Hope set open But men had need take heed of wanton trifling For though now God treat with us then he will only judge us Death is the longest date of the Gospel Proclamation and after that our state is irreversable Now God standeth at our doors and knocketh but if we open not then though we stand at his door and knock he will answer I know you not Herodotus telleth us that when the Jonians who before had refused a Peace with Cyrus afterwards in their extremity made addresses to him he told them this Parable That a Musician playing a long time to the Fish that were in the River seeing they came not at him flung in a Net and caught them to whom as they lay panting upon the Bank he crieth out you should have daunced before it is too late now Let this be thought on while you are in better Circumstances that although now God delighteth not in the death of a sinner yet then he will laugh at his calamity Although now he beseecheth to be reconciled yet then he will be inexorable For that is another change that Death maketh a change of our capacity Thirdly A change it is in respect of our condition it changeth that also Here it is like our selves compounded and partaketh both of good and evil No state here so sweet but hath something to embitter it nor is there any so embittered but there is something to sweeten it The Rose hath prickles and the Nettle beareth a Flower on it But when once the