Selected quad for the lemma: death_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
death_n	earth_n	heaven_n	life_n	8,760	5	4.3162	3	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A34403	The English oracle, or, A late prophecy of the miseries that will happen this next year, 1679 by A.C.	A. C.	1679 (1679)	Wing C6; ESTC R29170	3,671	10

THE ENGLISH ORACLE OR A Late PROPHECY OF THE MISERIES that will happen this Next Year 1679. By A. C. Licensed and Entred according to Order LONDON Printed for W. M. at the Acorn in S. Paul's Church-Yard where you may be furnished with most sorts of bound or Stitched Books c. 1679. THE ENGLISH ORACLE c. HIstory the only Office of Intelligence whereat we inform our selves of the Transactions of former Ages amongst other things that it hands down to posterity relates that before that Alexander the Great left the world his Conquest some Astronomers of that Age observed a new Congeries of Stars so placed in the Heavens that they made exactly these words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 To day dies Alexander Whether we keep good correspondence with Antiquity or no or whether this may not be a lye dressed up in the specious term of authentick History I shall not dispute though I cannot but give some credit to it For since that Providence made Bonefires at his Birth lighting the vast Temple of Ephesus as a Flambeau to light Alexander into the World and so made use of an earthly Comet as a Phosphorus to usher the Rising-Sun into our lower Hemisphere what wonder that the Heavens should publish his death seeing his victorious life had made him so great that no Action of his could be sufficiently solemnized by any Prodigy of his Vassal the Earth But whether Alexander's Fate was thus written in the Heavens or no 't is certain that there are many sick-brain'd and Fop-Astrologers that are continually poring in the Skies as if the Destiny of all Mortals were written there They hunt among the Stars for Prophecies and News for future Ages as if the Firmament were but a great Volume or vast Sheet of Paper and the Stars an Alphabet in such manner disposed as if God Allmighty had written therein the Destiny of Kings and Kingdoms for these silly men to read through a Jacob's-Staff 'T is strange how presumptuously these men will pretend to be able to read God Allmighty's hardest Hand and understand his Secrets written in his abstrusest Characters by finding strange Hierogliphick Sence in the Planets whereas in reality their Intellect is so dazled by much contemplating those bright Orbs that at last they understand just nothing like those that look so long at the Sun that they look themselves blind or rather it fares with them as it did with the ancient Astronomers who by continually gazing at the Heavens at last gazed themselves into a belief that they saw strange Forms as Centaurs Bears and Scorpions whereas to every sound eye there appears no more than an azure ground studded with a few Celestial Gems These Night-Philosophers that have an Intellect as dark as the time they study in and a Brain as cloudy as the foggy Region they look through are still looking through Tubes and Opticks as if those silly Instruments could assist mortal sight to see into future Ages and discern things as far distant as the end of time they are continually peeping in the Moon and Stars as if they were so many Looking-Glasses that did represent every action motion and gesture of men below and those not only present and past but future too And indeed they are so desirous of seeing something that oftentimes they fancy that they see strange things in earnest as the Downfal of Kingdoms Subversion of Empires Civil Wars raging Plagues and a thousand such aery Fantoms like Children who by long looking on the Clouds frame to themselves Men on Horseback Chariots drawn by Lions Armies in Battel-Array and the like which those that stand by and hear them tell their Vision know to be no more than the delusions of a weak sight and a weaker Brain But yet the curiosity of man who seldom expects with patience the natural Birth of things but is still best pleased when nature by some extraordinary means miscarries and is brought to Bed of an abortive Issue before she is half out of her Reckoning receives almost every Dream for a Prophecy although the Astrologer can foretel no more of the thing he prophesies about than only that it either will be or will not As I detest the practices of these ●mpostors so I shall impose no such lies upon the world for my Predictions shall appear as infallible as theirs uncertain and as impossible to be false as 't is that the Sun should run counter Rivers slide back into their Springs and the Moon lose her way and instead of travelling from East to West wander in the unknown paths of the North. For I do not draw my Consequences as others do from between the Horns of the Moon nor pretend to have seen what I foretel written in the Forehead of Mercury or Venus nor do I deduce any thing from the dark sentences of our English Sibyl Mother Shipton or from the equivocal Writings of our modern Gypsie-Prophets but from the unvariable tenour of Providence immutable nature of things and convincing Axioms of Ethick Philosophy First therefore from these infallible Rules I draw that this following year 1679 will be infected with an universal Plague a Disease which the Latins stile morbus animi and the English generally call Vice This malignant Pest first began in the first year of the Creation of the Universe and was brought into the world by the man that first received life the protoplast Adam and he got it from a surfeit By eating too much of the fruit of Paradise he fell desperately sick of this Disease and so infected his whole progeny for the Fountain being once poysoned the streams that run from it must needs be tainted and this year this old Disease will be as rife as ever No Country Town or Family will be free from its infection You may go round London as Diogenes went about Athens with a Lanthorn and Candle at Mid-night or Mid-day to seek for a sane man and you find all either dangerously sick or far gone of this Disease nay should one of the quick sighted Spirits of Heaven take the Moon in his hand for a Torch by night and the Sun for a Light by day and search the world in every corner he would not find one single person free from all the symptoms of this Plague the Species of which are infinite and the effects various For some it sieses with a desperate Melancholy some with a cholerick Frenzy and some it turns all into proud flesh and proud humours Others it takes with a kind of a Dropsie which the Moral Physician Seneca calls Avarice This thirsty Disease and ravenous Distemper makes the greedy Patient still gape after precious Liquor but the more he drinks the dryer he grows and is never satisfied till he is choked like Midas with liquid Gold But with most this Epidemical Plague will turn to a malignant Fever known to the Latine Doctors by the name of Lues Ven●rea This lecherous Disease burns man quite up with the flames of