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	sin_n	wage_n	12,499	5	11.2125	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A50296	A missive of consolation sent from Flanders to the Catholikes of England.	Matthew, Tobie, Sir, 1577-1655.	1647 (1647)	Wing M1322; ESTC R19838	150,358	402

little sortable to the temporal burthens of crosses and afflictions as they cannot be conceived to be the grievances we must first complain of Nothing but sin is to be found counter-marked with these notes upon it That then is the burthen you are first advised to bring in to be delivered of this weight which the world commonly laboureth and sweateth most to charge it selfe with and yet it is truly so strangely onerous as even God and Man Christ Jesus did sweat blood under the weight thereof although he carryed but the lighter halfe of it the paine onely not the pollution This is then the first oneration whereof you must intend the demission and deliverance For they who begin with calling to Christ for alleviation of temporall burthens or solicite him to transpose their loads upon their enemies setting these articles of ease and animosity before all the rest in their Petitions doe me thinks as if the Leper in the Gospel should have sued to Christ to have given him clothes to cover him onely For when we have the uncleannesse of any foule sinne upon us to intend any thing before the deliverie from that is but to beg a covering or palliation of our distresse And we know temporall commodities doe often hide and clothe the leprosie of sin but seldome contribute to the emundation and they who lift up their hands in the first place to draw down vengeance even from him to whom it belongeth doe me thinks as if the robbed and wounded Traveller in S. Luke should have desired the good Samaritan to have followed the theeves to apprehend them and deliver them to justice before he had thought of dressing his owne wound it is but such a preposterous application to pursue even Gods enemies while we have our own sins crying out and endangering our souls and crying for revenge against us under the same notion we prosecute our enemies We must all then retaine this principle that the first exoneration we must designe is to be this of the burthen of our sinnes and when we are delivered from them our crosses will prove rather our carriages then our burthens for as death is formidable in this face and aspect of the wages of sinne and that countenance may justly fright us but when we look upon it as a debt only we must pay nature before we can passe to eternall life in this view it seemeth rather officious then offensive to us in like manner when our afflictions and crosses are charged upon us as wages of our iniquities still growing in us as in the cases of Pharaoh and Antiochus then they have an intollerable heavinesse in them but when they are considered but as fees and duties we must pay in our passage through this miserable life unto a blisfull perpetuity and that all the Saints have paid them in their pilgrimage then they appear rather serviceable then formidable unto us So hereupon I may say that when our sinnes are heaped and accumulated on our crosses pressing and holding them upon us then the charge is unsufferably grievous but when our sufferings are imposed and charged upon our sinnes and that they presse our faults so hard upon our consciences as the pressure of our offences groweth intolerable and so forceth us to come creeping humbly under our loade to this promise of releefe which Christ exhibiteth to all such labourers and loaded soules then our affliction proveth an happy surcharge that hath sunke through our hearts that other sad portage of our sinnes which before peradventure did not disease us and then the heavinesse of our crosses which remaineth will comparatively with the other we are released of seeme very easie and portable as one that should rise from being bedrid with the Palsie or Sciatica after he were cured would find a little charge to carry his blankets upon his back There is such an analogy between the weight of sinne and of sufferance as between these two different heavinesses And sure the Paralitike who went back charged with his bed upon him found lesse heavinesse then when he was caryed upon his bed So when affliction that we finde hath partly contributed to our spirituall rising and recovering out of our bed-rid habits of sinne remaineth upon us we carry it so lightly as we handle it rather as a benefit then a burthen Then we find sensibly the verity of this assertion of Jugum meum suave est Mat. 11.30 My yoke is sweet and my burthen light Jere. 48.11 onus meum leve When we have found rest for our soules all other agitations are but as the Prophet saith powring us out from vessell into vessell to purge us of our dregs and faeces which we should settle in againe it may be if we were let stand And to evidence this principle that we must first begin our addresses to God with the Prodigals Pater peccavi before we sue for casting off our rags and being apparelled with conveniencies we may consider how God doth not account himselfe so much as spoken to by us even in all our clamours untill Jerem. Thren as the Prophet saith the cloud be removed that intercepted our prayer from passing For David affirmeth this experience saying Because I held my peace my bones are as it were waxen old while I cryed all the day So as you see all Davids clamours are but as dumnesse to the eares of God so long as his sinne sleepeth within his brest though his throat grow hoarse he doth but as it were strain to cry out under water while his iniquity like waters are gone over his head Hereby we see that all vociferation while our sinnes are quiet and tacent in our affections is no more audible then silence and on the contrary we may note that God accounted Moses to have made a loud exclamation when we finde he was silent his heart being not obstructed with sinne uttered a voice which penetrated the heavens while his tongue had no part in the conveyance of it Exod. 14. And Moses removed the whole red Sea more easily with this silence Psal 3. then David could draw back those few drops of iniquity he had drunk in all the ejaculations of his voyce did not pierce the cloud untill his sighes had broken through it and then after his heart had once strucke upon that key of confession of his fin in this note of I have made my sin known unto thee and mine iniquity I have not hid then every whisper of his to God is audible for we finde him professing this also Psal 55.10 In what day soever I shall invocate thee lo I have known that thou art my God In quacunque die invocavero te ecce cognovi quia Deus meus es So as here we see the divers effects of Prayer while our sins cry the louder for our silencing them no other vociferation is made but theirs which we do not utter when they have first lifted up their voice through the organ

pains as might produce this strange effect in our nature to make our root the lesse capable of bearing fruit by the excrescence and growth of these springs out of it For temporall affliction springeth cut of sinne as out of the root thereof and nothing drieth up and infecundateth so much the radicall fructifying vigor of this roote as the springing up of temporall miseries and distresses so as the fruit of sinne which is death is killed the soonest by the fertility of sufferings in this life Since Christ hath then by the vertue of his Crown of thornes imparted this faculty to the asperities of our life of taking off the growth as his did the guilt of sinne we need not wonder why he hath left all these temporall bitternesses upon our nature which he himselfe took expresly to taste of in our nature so as we may be said to become the more Christians the more we are called to be Patients Which Position we shall find the more cleerly demonstrated to us the farther we advance into the Principles of Christianity S. Paul when he wrote to the Romans in those times when in a parallel of your cases the Christians were partly immured up in prisons and partly expelled to the adjoyning fields thought it seemeth to sweeten their condition to them by representing that Mortification and Sufferance was their calling and profession For he asketh them as of a notorious thing Whether they knew not this to be the Constitution of Christianity saying Rom. 6.3 Are you ignorant that all we who are baptised in Christ Jesus in his death we are baptised An ignoratis quicunque baptizati sumus in Christo Jesu in morte ejus baptizati sumus Intimating that our first incorporation into the body of Christ is in effect an expiration to this world and a translation by the vertue of the death of Christ into such a sort of life as he had pattern'd to us by the inception progresse and consummation of his life And the Apostle presseth thus the proofe of this assertion Rom. 6.4 For we are buried together with him in baptisme into death Consepulti enim sumus cum illo per baptismum in mortem to evince this position that our mundanity is drowned and buryed in our Christening and that the life of Christ which was a continued part of mortification is to be as it were our breath and animation And while we are in this spirituall manner buryed in the life of Christ that is covered and inclosed with indignities oppressions we are acting that part we took upon us in Baptisme where we listed our selves into that Militia which was erected by him who killed death by dying and hath left the same Discipline to all his Souldiers to destroy death by dying to the world Mortifications therefore must needs be the proper duties of that service a Christian is upon and his pay is conditioned rather upon his suffering then his acting as the Apostle proceedeth to testifie For if we become complanted to the similitude of his death we shall be also of his resurrection Si enim complantati facti sumus similitudini mortis ejus simul resurrectionis erimus so as in a Christians case the wages of death is life for if he die here by a privation of the carnall life of this world he performeth the condition of his life everlasting For which reason S. Paul who was the great Commander of the Gentiles in this militancy where by this kind of dying death is swallowed up in victory hath left us his Discipline in Quotidie morior 1 Cor. 15. I die daily and he giveth us those orders to be the followers of him as he was of Christ whom he began not to follow untill he was overthrown in the command he had in this world was as it were resuscitated by the same hand that had killed him We may remember he was revived by what is distructive to this life by being almost famished and illuminated by this worlds darknes restored to corporall light only to see how much he was to suffer for that name for which all the sufferings he had in his head were to be imployed but in a manner farre differing from his designe for they were signed to be enjoyed by himselfe not to be dispensed to others by his hand so as this seemeth the gratification of his Christianity the having all that treasure of crosses he had prepared for other Christians appropriated to his owne use whereof he grew so sensible as in gratitude to this his preference he returned his Superabundo gaudio in omni tribulatione But let us look upon his Master I doe exceedingly abound in joy in all our tribulation and ours Christ Jesus in his owne time of tribulation and we may represent him to our selves in the first instant of his conception accepting this order from his Father which he gave to his follower S. Paul of Ostendam illi quanta oporteat eum pro nomine meopati Act. 9.15 I wil shew him how great things he must suffer for my name before the Gentiles and Kings and the children of Israel ut portet nomen meum coram gentibus regibus filiis Israel In which Commission he laboured three and thirty yeeres wherein all we are acquainted with of his life is either laborious or incommodious or in extremity dolorous and painfull It seemes the holy Ghost did not think any thing worthy to stand upon record for CHRIST that was not eminently suffering and therefore passed over in silence those parts of his life which we may suppose to have been the least distressefull If we look upon his way that is drawn out to us from his Cradle to his Crosse we shall finde that temporall honour and ease were so inconsistent with Gods designe upon him as he never had any proffers of them that did not speedily procure him some sharper vexation The Star that proclaimed him King at his birth presently proved his proscription to death and that the law of suffering might seem enacted in his first step into the world it was put in execution upon innocent babes whose blood as S. Augustine saith made the first tincture of Christian martyrdome so that the cryes of the mothers and the infants followed close the voyces of the Angells that glorified him When the people thought of making him King it put him presently to flye alone into the mountaines When the evill spirits proclaimed him the Son of God the Pharisees doubled their spies upon him to traduce him and sharpned their wits to ensnare him by captious questions His entring into Jerusalem with the acclamations of Hosanna hastned the persecutions of his enemies and within few dayes the voyces of the same Jerusalem strained higher in the Pharisees aire of Crucifige whereby we may conclude that hee had so entirely assigned himselfe to sufferances and passions in this life as he did not thinke it a sufficient discharge