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	live_v	time_n	6,582	5	3.7167	3	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A30416	A sermon preached at St. Dunstans in the West at the funeral of Mrs. Anne Seile, the 18th of July, 1678 by Gilbert Burnet.	Burnet, Gilbert, 1643-1715.	1678 (1678)	Wing B5871; ESTC R13574	12,193	32

his property and stretches it as far as may be Our bodies claim their share both in the necessary supplies of decaying nature and in providing for those supplies But beyond these the irregularities of diet and the vanities of dressing swallow up a great deal more The weakness of our minds makes that some diversions are necessary but modest recreations discreetly used will not serve turn Many hours must be spent in looking on a defiled Stage where the Scenes that are represented are not worse than the impressions they leave on the greatest part of the Spectators And the rest of the day is given up to gaming which perhaps is continued to the next morning Our Friends likewise may claim their share of it but certainly this ought not to be stretcht so far as the perpetual receiving and giving of those idle visits which consume so much time amounts to To redeem or buy out our time is to take as much as may be out of the hands of those unjust invaders of it and to apply it to better and nobler purposes And to give every one what is their own share reserving still the best part of it to our selves and to the noblest part of our selves our Souls It is a generous piece of kindness and friendship to assist others in their concerns upon great occasions when they need our help But if a man minds only his neighbours affairs and neglects his own he is justly censured as a busie body And what do most of those things amount to in which we are employed One great impertinency runs through our whole life and if about the greatest part of those affairs in which we toil and labour we put our Saviours Question to St. Peter to our selves What is that to thee We will be to seek for an Answer He then that will turn a manager of this great treasure Time must reduce his expence and cut off all the needless waste he must give his body such refreshments as may both preserve life and exhilarate his spirits and not oppress them with a surcharge of that which will both disorder his body and clog his mind And though all the labour of a man is for the Belly yet he must so provide for it as not to starve his Soul much less give it into the bargain for then he buyes his provisions dear He must likewise use those diversions which are necessary to keep his body in health and his mind in temper but not throw away his time so profusely on them as if he knew not how to dispose of it otherwise Besides the evaporating the Spirits into too much mirth and folly makes us unfit for more sober employments as a truant Scholar after some days of play knows not how to turn himself again to his Book It is likewise a very ill evidence of our kindness to our friends to rob them of so much of their time as the excessive humour of visiting wastes which whatever people may pretend about the obligations of civility and kindness does really flow from this That they know not how to bestow their time another way And though many looking on it as a decent way of speaking complain of these excesses yet by their extreme officiousness in them it is visible they are not much troubled at them as then he who has out-run himself and begins to grow more frugal considers the several branches of his expence and sees what he can cut off from every one of them so if we go about to redeem our time and think to apply it to better purposes we must see what portions of it we can recover out of the hands of those several consumers of it and apply what we can thus gain to nobler exercises to the serious meditations of Vertue and Religion That we may consider how we shall improve our Faculties lay out our Talents and employ our time in such services as may tend to the honour of God and the good of our Neighbours and attaining such an inward noble temper of mind as Religion requires we may walk not only blameless and harmless but as the Sons of God we may shine as lights in the world And now if we do consider how short our time and how lasting Eternity is if we consider how much we have to do and how small a portion of our time is perhaps before us which if it be quite wasted can never be recovered no not in all Eternity if we also put to the account the many accidents of sicknesses and other disorders which waste our time we must needs be convinced that it concerns us nearly to husband it as closely and carefully as we can The reason here given by St. Paul Because the days are evil is next to be considered Evil days in Scripture-stile stand either for great afflictions or publick calamities or for the declining of a mans age or the approach of death but in this place the Apostles meaning must either relate to the ill conversation of those among whom they live for an evil day and an evil time by an Hebraism stand often for the same thing Or this Phrase relates to the afflictions the scorn and other miseries the Christians lay under and the more severe persecutions which they had reason speedily to look for And in all these senses the Inference is very just That because the days are evil we ought to Redeem our time The first sence relates to the corruption of the Age and the great Immoralities of which both Jews for Gentiles were guilty were a very convincing argument to perswade Christians to consider their ways with more than ordinary carefulness That they might be upon their guard against the snares of so evil an example and resist the temptations of vice and sin when it was grown so common that men were neither ashamed nor afraid of it It was also the more necessary for Christians to look more carefully to themselves that they might shine as lights in the midst of a wicked generation and set off the glory of their Profession with a greater advantage having so black a foil placed near it And certainly this argument has all possible strength in it if we apply it to this dissolute Age in which men seem to have lost the shame as well as the sense of sin and to have delivered themselves up to work wickedness with equal degrees of Impudence and Greediness And we ought the rather to look narrowly to our selves because the Vices that have been discovered in some Pretenders to Piety seem one of the greatest grounds of those mens confidence that there is no truth in the things so much talked of This prejudice is not to be beaten down by any arguments drawn from discourse but by those undeniable and convincing experiments of a holy life and vertuous conversation And when a Plague rages so universally that few escape the Contagion we should with the greater strictness look to our selves that we

be not infected Evil communications corrupt good manners An ordinary diligence will not serve the turn where the hazard is great and the danger near If therefore we either take care of our selves or be concerned in the honour of our holy Profession we will employ our utmost care both to preserve our selves pure and undefiled and to free our Religion from the blemishes which the ill-willers of it are apt to cast upon it for they wait for our halting and are both industrious to draw us into snares and censorious enough to cast an Imputation on Religion if we do any thing unworthy of it The second sence of this Phrase relates to calamities and adversities under which the Christians did then groan and had reason rather to look for an increase than a diminution of them They who were exposed to the malice of the World had the greater reason to walk with that strictness that might maintain peace and quiet in their consciences which alone could balance all the other troubles they lay under and the interrupting of which made their lives indeed most miserable and uncomfortable of all other men They had also the more reason to walk with all possible strictness since they did not know but the malice of their enemies might very speedily put an end to their days For to be a Christian then was to die daily in its most literal sence These then who believed Eternity and were every day almost in sight of it had the greatest reason possible to look to themselves with the strictest caution It is true we are not under those circumstances the profession of our Religion is not matter of hazard to us we may be securely as religious and vertuous as we will yet we are still exposed to all those miseries and calamities which naturally follow man in this mortal life And what is the just support of a man under those trials He that can say with the Prophet unto God Thou art my hope in the evil time may well with great assurance subsume with David Wherefore should I fear in the days of evil When a man is overwhelmed with calamities and troubles what miserable comforters prove all those other things in which he formerly rejoyced they rather increase his trouble and add to his pain those perhaps who are of heavy hearts may drink till they forget poverty and remember their misery no more but when the fumes of Wine are gone and that fit of frolick mirth is over their sorrows will return on them with the greater violence They dare not ask comfort from their own hearts which are black and defiled there being no such terrible companion in misery as an evil Conscience which will be importunately putting in its accusations at every turn But on the other hand that inward peace and joy which a good Conscience affords entertains a man with a continual feast even in the midst of troubles and is Musick to him over a dinner of herbs He can look up to God and look within himself with much inward joy and though all things about him are black and dark yet those set his thoughts inward more frequently and with the greater pleasure to that most agreeable prospect which a good conscience opens to him This is a sufficient counterpoise to all other weights that hang about us and will steadily balance a man though walking on the the most slippery ground and therefore Because the days are evil we must walk circumspectly redeeming the time The last sence of this Phrase is that by the evil days are meant the approaches of death so we are commanded to remember our Creator in the days of our youth before the evil days come after which follows a most Poetical description of the decays of Old Age. When Persecutions seem'd near there was a more visible cause to look on death as approaching But if we consider how frail we are and how short a time we have all to live upon the Earth we must acknowledge it most reasonable for us so to number our days as to apply our hearts unto wisdom This that is now before our eyes with the many other spectacles of mortality which daily occur together with the decays we feel within our selves do sufficiently assure us that we must remain here but a very little while So that there is nothing in this life in which our days are both few and evil that is of any great consequence to us unless it be according to the relation it hath to another state How can he that is daily thinking of dislodging be much concerned about the house he is so soon to leave But if we believe that there is another state a just Judge and a severe account then the consideration of the shortness of our life should engage us with our utmost industry to prepare for that other state which will soon come on and never have an end since upon the improving of so short a time depend all our hopes of Eternity and if we do now walk circumspectly and redeem our time we may assuredly hope that within a very little we shall be delivered from all the frailties and miseries which sin and infirmity keep us under and shall be admitted into the presence and enjoyment of God where as we hope this our Sister now doth who after a long vertuous life led according to these Rules having attained almost to the age that in the Psalm is called the full age of a man of threescore years and ten has now entred into the rest prepared for the people of God we shall for ever rejoyce with all the companies of Angels and Saints With whom that we may eternally rejoyce let us now and all the days of our life offer up to God the Father Son and Holy Ghost all honour praise and glory Amen FINIS Mat. 4.16.5.14 Joh 1.4 5 8 9.3.19 20. 2 Cor. 4.4 6. Eph. 5.8 1 Pet. 2.9 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Mat. 5.16 Phil. 2.15 Psal. 119.6 9 30 106. Luk. 14 2● Psal. 119.11 15.24 Psal. 139.23 24. James 1.10 Psal. 119 1●3 Psal. 26.45 Mat. 5.26 2 Cor. 5.10 1 Joh. 4.18 2 Joh. 8. ver Jer. 8.9 Psal. 111.10 Prov. 16.32 1 Pet. 4.3 John 21.23 Phil. 2.15 Gal. 1.4 Phil. 2.15 1 Pet. 2.12 15. 1 Cor. 15.33 Jer. 20.10 Psal. 37.19 Amos 6.3 Eph. 6.13 Jer. 1● 17 Psal. 49.5 Prov. 31.6 Prov. 15.15 Eccles. 12.1 Psal. 90.12 Gen. 47.9