Selected quad for the lemma: death_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
death_n	eternal_a	life_n	soul_n	14,602	5	5.1897	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A39270	The vanity of scoffing, or, A letter to a witty gentleman evidently shewing the great weakness and unreasonableness of scoffing at the Christian's faith, on account of its supposed uncertainty : together with the madness of the scoffer's unchristian choice.	Ellis, Clement, 1630-1700.	1674 (1674)	Wing E575; ESTC R3033	22,122	41

be so stubborn and impudently refractory as to persist in disputation and so unreasonable as once more to call for any farther satisfaction in a thing so heterodoxly yet so magisterially asserted we shall usually see these tall gentlemen if they can find no fair opportunity of quitting the company and running away begin to stoop by little and little even so long till the bravado dwindle into a bare It may be so and yet possibly it may be thus and no man can tell us whether it be thus or so So that whatever conquest they obtain if ever they prove masters of the field must be wholly attributed to the weakness of their adversaries nothing to their own valour and prowesse To deal clearly with you after all that I have had to this day the opportunity to hear or read from any of these great wits who are so greedy of the honour to trample upon the Faith of Christians yet as impatient as the Devil himself would be though they deserve it much more to be called Atheists I could never see any thing offered as a conclusion which would amount to any more than one of your Sceptical premises and were these all with a thousand more as good as they laid together with all the art and confidence whereof you and your partners have good store how little strength they would have to secure you from as much folly as you charge upon others or defend the most tolerable of your desperate resolutions from the just imputation of madness requires no great skill in another to teach you nor sagacity in you to learn would you be at leisure from your vanities and have patience to consider without a teacher Who knows say you whether there be an Heaven and a life to come or no Suppose now that this your question were altogether unanswerable and be it as true as you would have it that no man knows this Yet are you far from having gain'd all that which you catch at such a victory over the poor Christian that you may without the just censure of vanity crow upon your beloved dunghill of uncleanness For if none know this then none knows whether you or he hold the truer though it will be easily seen anon which of you holds the safer opinion If the Christian think there is a life to come and yet there shall be no such thing then indeed he is in an error and his hopes are vain and yet I dare not say foolish because an eternal happy life after death is a thing so desirable of all that every man would be willing to lay hold on any grounds whereon he might build any though but the weakest hope and expectation of it It you think there is no life to come and yet there be one then are you in an error by so much the more dangerous by how much your loss will prove greater he losing only some temporal joys but you eternal and yet much more foolish inasmuch as you both despised what confessedly was in it self above all things desirable and rashly exposed your self to those torments which are of all things most formidable If then no man yet know whether there shall be any such thing or not then as no man can yet say which of you is in the error so certainly the folly must fall to your lot who make him the But of your scorn who for ought that either you or any man else upon your supposition can yet tell may be as wise yea and is probably even in his choice certainly in his modest behaviour much wiser than your self But yet good Sir if you and your confederates have authority to play the fools part and yet be thought the wisest on the Stage shew us whence you have it and we have done Again you say Who knows it This is your way you are ready at posing but as slow as others in answering and indeed this is your master-piece and you know whose character the Proverbial saying hath made it One fool can ask more questions than twenty wise men can answer But suppose that in answer to your question we should affirm that we know it or at least that it may be known what we should thus affirm whether truly or no you could never be able to disprove if you say and swear we know it not that is only to contradict not confute us and the world hath seen no more for it as yet but only your word and ours If neither of us as yet have so much command over men's Faith as to be credited in a matter of so great consequence upon our bare assirmation or negation then are we yet on even ground and you have no more cause of triumph over us then we have over you If either may be credited on his word why one and not both If both much good may it do you It cannot be in the contradiction but with respect to the divided parties We say we know it and are believed you say you know it not and are believed Say we both true then are we knowing and you ignorant Say we both falsey then are you alike guilty with us in cousening the world by a lie and your lie is the more pernicious by how much greater the good is out of which you cousen it Say we truly and you falsly I need not tell you what follows But if we say falsly and you truly you have only this advantage that you are ignorant and we are deceived both equally to be pitied by others but neither have cause of glorying over the other Yet without doubt you must be the only men who have searched into Nature's mysteries and have been fitted by the advantages of Education to discover the knaveries of jugling Priests and the follies of a deluded people If your word may be taken for it thus you shall be esteemed but if your great boastings of your selves will amount to no more but a piece of arrogance too well known to be essential to men of your complexion you must still go a begging as well as we fools for Faith to believe you Suppose it yet once more to be as you say that no man knows any thing of all this yet as this will afford you no ground of glorying over others simplicity so neither will the unreasonable inferences you fetch thence when throughly examined prove either acceptable to the considering part of the world or so much as safe or honourable to your selves I shall shew you the former of these now and the later in the close of this Letter You tell us that seeing these things cannot be known It is most reasonable that men should please themselves in a free enjoyment of all things they esteem good in this world and so make to themselves as much happiness as they can here seeing that happiness which men expect after death in another world is for ought we know no better than a dream I dare not doubt but whilest you talk at this

cost me more pains than I am now at leisure to bestow upon them so would it be a work of little use to you till you be better prepared to receive it Till that malignant and heaving humour of pride and self-conceit be a little corrected your stomach will be ever boiling with disdain and beloh forth reproach and scorn on every thing that goes against it your palate will remain too bitter to taste the sweetness of the truths commended to you and your brain too much intoxicated and giddy to fix on the study and meditation of things which call for seriousness My present business is to try if I can possibly administer something whereby that humour may be made less predominant and your reason set a little more at liberty then may you perhaps be content to think that some body else besides your self may be able to speak sence and say something that may deserve the consideration of him who calls himself a wit This I shall hope in some measure to effect if I can prevail with you to read over this Letter with patience and therein the weakness of your own reasonings the folly and dangers of your ill grounded resolutions and in both the unreasonableness of your crowing over the simplicity of us Christians That you may be better able to discover the pitiful weakness of your reasonings and how whilest you labour to make us Christians seem fools you unawares argue your selves into mere brutes have but as much patience to read your own words from my pen as you expressed delight and pleasure in uttering them with your own tongue and it may be that the same things which you then thought witty when they proceeded immediately from your own dear self you may now think very foolish and ridiculous when they are though most faithfully represented to you by another Your words I have already set down but to make them look a little more with the faces of arguments and to let you see with what art and strength you reason I will once more give you them as had we been in dispute when you spake them I suppose I should have heard them from your self Christians deny themselves the pleasures of this world you mean they dare not commit all sin with greediness in hopes of an uncertain happiness in a world to come therefore Christians are very fools We know not what shall be hereafter therefore It is good to make much of our selves that is to live as we list and pamper up our lusts whilest we are here We could never yet receive any certain tidings out of that other world which Christians talk of therefore they are fools for believing there is any such thing None can tell what shall become of us when we die therefore it is folly to live as if we expected a life to come Man hath no more assurance of an Heaven than other creatures therefore it is pride only that makes him hope for Heaven All these things which Christians hope to enjoy after death are ancertain therefore it is prudence to live as long and as merrily that is loosely and lasciviously as we can in this world Now Sir do you not think you have cause enough to clap your wings and crow over us poor vanquished Christians Who is able to stand before all this mighty strength How can we chuse but confess we have been fools all this while and miserably bewitched into vain hopes by the charming voices of a company of crafty Priests and fall down and embrace the feet of you our deliverers out of this slavery But alas we must yet be fools still for all this so blind are we that we cannot see the way that you have made us to escape and what 's more than all we are so much in love with our present thraldome that we prize it above that noble freedom which you would make us In good earnest Sir If we be certain as we think we are of all those things whereof you would make us to doubt I dare say you will pronounce us in a much better condition than your selves can ever hope to be till you become such fools as we are And if we can have no certainty of them as you say and I am willing at this time for your sake to suppose then both you and we must remain uncertain still and who hath made the wisest choice can then only if you say true be determined when this life is at an end Wit changeth fashions almost as oft as cloaths and one main strain of that wit which is now most modish is with shameless impudence and in bluntest terms to declaim against those things as idle dreams and lying fables which all the world hath hitherto received as the most undoubted truths Men cannot now seem witty to themselves till they have pronounced all fools that were before them To say as much without all proof as patience of being contradicted tha the Prophet is a fool and the Spiritual man is mad and none so great a fool as he who told us so long ago that the fool hath said in his heart there is no God this is wit I do not envy the men who think it so and use it that great applause they hereby gain amongst such as had rather lose an Heaven than live soberly but I much pity the weakness of the men of this age who rather chuse to venture their whole happiness in imitation of their vices than provide for their own safety by examining their dictates The bravery of such men is to set their faces against the Heavens and bid defiance to him that made them and lest the world become so wise as to taunt them with the Proverb None so bold as blind Bayard they are resolved to teach it if they can to believe blindly what themselves cannot believe that there is no God no Heaven no Hell no life after death no Soul to be saved or damned neither punishment nor reward to be expected in a future world Now if any man may be so unmannerly as to require some proof of all this some probable reasons at least why he should believe things so repugnant to the common opinions of the world they will swear it stoutly swagger it out bravely call all men fools talk all hear nothing scrible something ask questions propound some possibilities and when this is done and some Satyrical strains of wit to close all lavished out on those who dare believe the things which these men are most afraid of if we will calmly stand like tame fools to their verdict we must all turn Atheists and Epicures but if any of us poor credulous fools have yet so much courage left us as not to be jeared and Hector'd not to be scar'd out of all our wits at once with this uncouth noise nor affrighted out of our old Faith with some dazling flashes of this new-fashioned wit and a thunder-clap of oaths in the rear thereof if we shall yet