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	young_a	youth_n	649	4	8.7145	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A28910	A sermon preached in the parish-church of St. Swithin, London, March 10th, 1694/5, upon the much lamented death of our most gracious Queen by Tho. Bowber ...	Bowber, Thomas, b. 1662 or 3.	1695 (1695)	Wing B3866; ESTC R17575	11,149	34

A SERMON Preached in the Parish-Church of St. Swithin London March 10th 1694 5. Upon the Much Lamented Death Of our Most Gracious Queen By THO. BOWBER M. A. Formerly of Wadham Colledge Oxon. LONDON Printed for William Rogers at the Sun over against St. Dunstan's Church in Fleetstreet 1695. To the Right Honourable Sir Iohn Summers Kt. Lord Keeper of the Great SEAL of ENGLAND and one of His Majesties most Honourable Privy Council My Lord IT needs not create Wonder in any to find your Lordships great Name in the Front of this Sermon who will but consider the Faithful Service you did and the great veneration you had for that Excellent Princess of whom in Mournful Accents it speaks The Performance how mean soever is the natural product of just Grief and Sorrow for the Common Loss of us all and therefore needs not fear a favourable acceptance from your Honour But my Lord there is another Reason that entitles this Dedication to your Lordship I must always gratefully remember a singular instance of your Favour and Kindness to me and I thought I could not better express my Gratitude than by making a publick Acknowledgment thereof The Discourse I here present your Lordship with has nothing to recommmend it but Truth and Plainness Astonishing Grief such as ours slights and disdains the mean and useless Ornaments of empty Rhetorick My chief Aim and Design in Preaching it was to make Men better to which Pious end they having so great an Example set before them for their imitation I hope it may conduce now in Submission to the importunities of several some of which for their Piety and Friendship had great influence over me it appears in publick That God Almighty may long continue your Lordship the Delight of this Kingdom for the Impartial distribution of Justice and the Reformation of the Abuses and Corruptions of the late Times is the most sincere and hearty prayer of My Lord Your Lordships most Humble Devoted and Obliged Servant THO. BOWBER 2 Chron. XXXV 24. The latter part of the Verse And all Judah and Jerusalem Mourned for Josiah MAN tho formed in respect of his Body of Corruptible Principles yet these did the Almighty so equally Poise so harmoniously Attemper that the Divine Workmanship had it not dasht itself in pieces might have been for ever free from Corruption For in so blissful a Condition God Created Man with such light of Understanding holiness of Will Affections so Regular and with such Strength and Ability to have withstood the Temptations of the Serpent that he might not only have seated himself in Immortality but have conveyed it down to his Posterity But aspiring to a more high and exalted degree of Happiness than the all-wise God had thought fit to place him in he fell from his Original Excellency and Forfeited his Incorruptibility That Decree Gen. 2. v. 17. In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely dye took then immediately Life and Vigour and an universal Mortality came into the World every one became obnoxious to Death and all past Generations are but Monuments of its Reign and Triumph The Young Dye with the Old the Rich with the Poor the Wise with the Foolish Good Josiah as well as Wicked Ahab Could Goodness or Greatness Youth or Beauty or any other Human Excellency have been any security against Death our most Incomparable Princess had still Sate upon that Throne which She sola tely Adorn'd with Her Royal Presence but to our unspeakable Grief and the Astonishment of all round about us She was quickly snatcht away by Death and no doubt in Mercy as good Josiah was that her Eyes might not see the Evil which we know not how soon may befall us without a speedy Reformation Her Prayers doubtless as well as Josiah's had a mighty Energy in them to turn away the fierce Anger of God and to encline Him to Mercy Yet whatever Benefit we we might reap from them in Her Life-time we were soon Deprived of Her and that in a time when we thought Happiness at Hand and our selves Embracing it A Lovely Scene of Affairs had but just presented itself with a very Charming Aspect a Check was given to our Enemies abroad the King to the great Rejoycing of His Royal Consort and People returned home in Safety and a Loyal Parliament Assembled ready and prepared to Execute whatever might truly tend to the Honour of the Nation and the Interest of Church and State so that the Hearts of all good Men did exceedingly Rejoyce and they already anticipated that Happiness which they expected without interruption to Enjoy This was the goodly posture of Affairs when we were all surprised by an unexpected turn of Providence And this was the State of Judah when Josiah was gathered to his Fathers the Jews then promised themselves some long Prosperity when on a sudden a fatal Arrow from the Egyptian Host cut off their King and Hopes together It was indeed said of him That he should be gathered to his Grave in peace for he had no open Enemies none that made War against him yet not harkning to the words of Pharaoh Neco who went up to War against the King of Assyria by the River Euphrates not harkning I say to his Words from the Mouth of God would needs Fight him in the Valley of Megiddo where receiving a sore Wound he was carried in a Chariot to Jerusalem where he dyed and was buried in one of the Sepulchres of his Fathers and what great Impression his Death made upon all the People is here Expressed And all Judah and Jerusalem Mourned for Josiah Which words teaching us that it hath been the Practise of the Church mournfully to Resent the Death of Religious Princes the Method I shall confine my self to in the Prosecution of them will be 1st Of all to offer some Reasons in General to show That the Death of good Princes is matter of great Mourning and Lamentation to a People or Kingdom 2dly I shall Enquire more particularly into the great Cause the Jews had to Mourn for the Death of good Josiah 3dly Upon the sad Occasion of the Death of our late most Excellent Princess I shall set before you the great reason we all have to Mourn for so Great and Irreparable a Loss 4thly and Lastly I shall apply what hath been spoken in Two or Three Natural Inferences 1st The Death of Religious Princes is matter of great Mourning and Lamentation and surely were it not so there had never been such Lamentations for their Death Recorded in the Sacred Scriptures When Moses the Servant of the Lord Dyed the Children of Israel are said to weep for him in the Plains of Moab thirty days Deut. 34. v. 8. When Samuel Dyed all the Israelites were gathered together and Lamented him 1 Sam. 25. v. 1. When Hezekiah slept with his Fathers all Judah and the Inhabitants of Jerusalem did him Honour at his Death 2 Chron. 32. v. 33. And this Mourning for

Stars that did ever Shine on the Throne of Israel or Judah There are some special remarks of his Piety In the Eighth Year of his Reign that is the Sixteenth Year of his Age for he was eight years old when he began to Reign whilst he was yet young he began to seek after the Lord Solomon also sought the Lord God of his Fathers whilst he was young but his Piety was strangely Clouded and Eclipsed in his elder years for it came to pass when Solomon was old that his Wives turned away his heart after other Gods 1 Kings 11. v. 4. But Josiah's Seeking of the Lord was as clear as the Morning as bright as the Sun it knew no Declension His Piety did surpass that of all the Kings of Israel and Judah which were before him The Holy Ghost gives this High and Honourable Character of him that like unto him there was no King before him that turned to the Lord with all his Heart and with all his Soul and with all his Might according to all the Law of Moses neither after him arose there any like him Other Kings there were in Israel and Judah of very high Elevations in Gifts and Graces whose Hearts were sincere and perfect with the Lord and lifted up in his Ways yet they had some foiles their Beauty was sullied with some spots and blemishes But this good King was unspotted in his Reputation and so innocent in his Life that we cannot charge him with any thing unbecoming his Profession Secondly He was a very Zealous Prince a Burning Lamp of Zeal for the Glory of God and Purity of his Worship the most Zealous of the Kings that did ever sit on the Throne of Israel or Judah in rooting out Idolatry In the twelfth year of his Reign he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem from the high places and the groves and the carved Images and the molten Images and they brake down the Altars of Baalim in his Presence and the Images that were on high above them he cut down and the Groves and the carved Images and the molten Images he brake in pieces and made dust of them and strewed it upon the Graves of them that had Sacrificed unto them and he burnt the bones of the Priests upon their Altars and cleansed Judah and Jerusalem 2 Chron. 34. v. 3 4 5. Of other Reforming Kings 't is noted That they took away the Altars of the strange Gods the high places brake down the Images and cut down the Groves Howbeit the High Places were not taken away they took away some but not all but this good King destroyed all the Monuments all the Reliques of Idolatry as you may read at large in the 2 Kings chap. 23. from the 4th to the end of the 20th verse Thirdly He was of a very publick Spirit for when he understood by the words of the Law That great was the Wrath of the Lord that was to be poured out upon Judah and Jerusalem because their Fathers kept not the Word of the Lord he commanded Hilkiah the Priest and others saying go enquire of the Lord for me and for them them that are left in Israel and Judah concerning the words of the book that is found And he endeavoured partly by Penitential Tears and deep Humblings of himself to allay the Divine Wrath and Indignation for his heart was tender and he did humble himself before God and partly by entering into a Covenant with God the sum and tenor of which was to walk after the Lord and to keep his Commandments and his Statutes with all his Heart and with all his Soul and to perform the words of the Covenant which are written in the Book of Moses And he caused all that were present in Jerusalem and in Benjamin to enter into the Covenant and to stand to it and the Inhabitants of Jerusalem did according to the Covenant of God the God of their Fathers as you may find it written 2 Cron. 34. verses 31 32. All this did this good King to avert were it possible imminent Judgments and threatned Desolations but he came to the Throne in such an ill time when they had so highly offended the Majesty of Heaven and so increased his Anger through their many Sins and repeated Provocations that notwithstanding all this great Reformation and the keeping of such a Passover as never was kept in Israel since the days of Samuel the Prophet yet the Lord turned not from the fierceness of his great wrath wherewith his anger was kinled against Judah because of all the provocations that Manasses had provoked him withal Fourthly Josiah was taken away when their Hopes and Expectations of some lasting Prosperity both in Church and State were advanced to the highest pitch Therefore Jeremiah thus Laments his Death The breath of our nostrils the anointed of the Lord was taken in their pits of whom we said under his shadow we shall live among the Heathen Lam. 4. v. 20. I am apt to think that this was not spoken of Zedekiah as some would have it for under such a Wicked and Idolatrous Prince they could not promise themselves any safety and when Josiah Dyed all their swelling hopes of future Prosperity expired and dyed with him then the Godly amongst them expected nothing but a Deluge of Sin and Misery to break in upon them For their splendid Reformation was only superficial a meer veil of Hypocrisie as Jeremiah who Prophesied in Josiah's Days complains Her treacherous sister Judah hath not turned to the Lord with her whole heart but feignedly or in falshood Jer. 3. v. 10. Having given some Account of the Jews great and universal Mourning for the Death of Josiah I come Thirdly To set before you the reasons of our Mourning for the Death of our late most Excellent Princess which well weighed are of force to dissolve three Kingdoms into Tears For First She was a Princess of most Illustriand Singular Piety She Sacrificed the Flower of Her Age and Time to the Service of the Great God from whom She had Her Being No Person had a greater sense of Religion or was more sincere in Her Devotions in which she was as constant as the returns of Day and Night the lofty Elevations of her Soul and her daily flights to Heaven did plainly show that Her Conversation was there also and that She had Communion and Fellowship with God the Father and with Jesus the Mediator of the New Covenant Her Life was so exactly Correspondent to Her Profession that She became the greatest Ornament and Example of true Piety that these later Ages have produced That Honourable Character given Josiah that like unto him there was no King before him may in some respect well become Her For She was the first of all the Kings and Queens that sate upon the British Throne who appointed After-noon Sermons to be Preached every Sunday at her Chapel in White-hall which She was pleased to Honour and Countenance with Her Royal Presence