Selected quad for the lemma: death_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
death_n	grave_n	sin_n	sting_n	4,163	5	11.3993	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A88663	The king of terrors metamorphosis. Or, Death transform'd into sleep. A sermon preached at the funeral of Mrs. Elizabeth Nicoll, daughter to that worthy, eminently pious, and charitable citizen of London, Mr. John Walter deceased, and late wife of Mr. William Nicoll of London draper. By Thomas Lye rector of Alhal. Lumbard-street, London.	Lye, Thomas, 1621-1684.	1660 (1660)	Wing L3538; Thomason E1053_4; ESTC R207978	20,527	31

after a continuance in this Baca of teares and not desire rather to enter into our Rest Shew me a man that ever truly knew what life was and was loath to leave it and I le in him shew thee a prisoner that blesles himself in his fetters a slave that likes his chains and gally 2. There is all that in a Believers death that may tempt and inflame his desires 'T is that to a Believer which a night of rest is to the weary Labourer 2 port to the weather-beaten Mariner freedom to the fetter-gal'd Prisoner the marriage-day to the loving Spouse the day of coronation to the king Why then should not a Saint conclude with Vid Bressius Oh that my soul had the wings of a Dove to fly and make hast to that mountain of God and Paradice of eternal pleasures Or with that aged Father in Austin who when his friends endeavouring to comfort him on his bed of sickness told him they hoped he should recover answered If I shall not die at all well but if ever why not now Oh then Believers pant after an holy and an happy dismission never cease tutoring and screwing up your souls till in Gods strength you can resolve that if you might die to day you would not choose to live till to morrow Never think your souls in an hail condition so long as you are 10th to think of dying Take this only comfort from the prolonging of your dayes not that you live long but that you are in a sphear of doing your own and others souls more good and bringing your God more glory And because the quelling of the slavish fear of death and rendring of a Believer willing to depart is a business of such grand concernment give me leave to prescribe a direction or two viz. 1. If ever you desire that death should not be your fear but gain and so desirable be sure to make Christ your life This was Pauls method Phil. 1.21 23. He that would sleep in Jesus must live to him Labour to be acted by the Spirit of Christ and the immediate fruits thereof viz. faith love filial fear as thy principle Rom. 8.14 Gal. 2.20 steer by Christs word as your Compass your Rule Canon Gal. 6.16 Level at Christs glory as your highest end 1 Cor. 10.31 Our life as it gives way to death so it must make way for it As the tree falls so it still lies and as it stands so usually it falls If ever we hope to sleep sweetly in death we must walk fruitfully in life 'T is the sleep of a labouring man that is sweet Eccles 5.12 To live holily is the only way to die happily Mark the upright man and behold the just for the end of that man is peace Psal 37.37 2. Fix your eyes on the death of Christ Christ by his death hath wholly routed yea conquered death Christ precious body lying in the grave hath sweetly perfumed that house of corruption Christ by his death hath cut off all deaths succors Whereas death borrowed its sting from sin its strength from the law and curle of God Christ hath disarm'd them all of their destroying killing power 1 Cor. 15.56 So that now as he falsly thou mayst say truly the bitterness of death is past 3. Act and exert Faith to the uttermost Quartan Agues are not so much the shame of physick as the fear of death is of all natural skill and valour This is Faiths proper evil Faith alone professes this cure undertakes it and performs it throughly Faith is that that can turn fears into hopes sighs into songs tremblings into exultings Faith singles out this Giant as her chief prize and grapples with him not as a match but as a vanquisht underling sets her foot on the neck of this King of Terrors Faith concludes that a Christ hath taken all the poyson out of the cup of death and made it an wholsom potion of immortality to his people so that now their death is nothing else but the funeral of all their sins cares and sorrows and the Resurrection of their true joys and comforts 3. Is a Believers death a sleep Be exhorted to that high and Honourable duty of serving your generation before you fall asleep So did holy David Acts 13.36 write after his Copy 4. Is a Believers death no more then a sleep Adore and bless the infinite mercy and goodness of the Lord Jesus who by his death hath quite pluckt out the sting of death and soaltered both its name and nature That which was once a grim death is now to you nothing more then a sweet sleep 5. Is a Believers death a sleep Oh then prepare for death Sleep steals and creeps upon us unawares so does death To day therefore while it is called to day Boast not thy self of to morrow for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth Prov. 27.1 Thou wilt repent to morrow But what if this night thy soul should be taken from thee Luk. 12.20 Hast thou not heard of fishes taken in an evil net and of birds that are caught in a snare so are the sons of man snared in an evil time when it falleth suddenly upon them Eccles 9.12 To this end 1. Live in a constant and serious [z] Gaena Damitiani sunebris Et AEgytiorum Sceletus inter pocula meditation of approaching death This was that which Meses so earnestly plies the Throne of Grace for Psal 90.12 So teach us to number our dayes that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom Plato's Philosophy in this was true Divinity The whole sum of a wise mans life is the commentation on his death Not every sleet and stitting flash but a frequent deep and sixed Contemplation This was that which saved the soul of the young Prodigal who for several dayes an hour together sixt his eyes and thoughts on the ring with a deaths-head given him by a friend on that condition Ortelius reports of some people that they thought this duty so necessary that they used the bones of dead men instead of money that death might be continually in their eye Those sunera Pacuri are of remark in story He was used every night to be carried to his chamber as to his [a] Sie ordinandus est dies omnis tanqua vitam consum met Seu. grave and the word at the close of the solemnity was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 2. Look not on death at a distance as that that shall come certainly but as that that may comesuddenly Look on every day as thy last Do not as those that have set dayes of truce and peace in which they hang up their Armes a rusting and do not watch their beacons But rather as those that live in perpetual hazard of war and of the enemies inroad Have all things in daily readiness for service at half an hours warning on the least alarm Stand as it were centinel with musket loaded match lighted piece cockt ready to discharge Live not one hour

yet is it their trouble to conflict yea but now death puts the Saints into such a condition that they are not only without a foyle but without fighting too Thus in respect of its concomitant Rest the death of Saints may well be resembled to sleep 3. In its Consequents which are two Excitationis facilitas Virium reparatio 1. Excitationis facilitas Awaking or rising from sleep Natural sleep is not perpetual we sleep and awake again Psal 3.5 I laid me down and slept I awaked So that though the body lies for a time in the grave yet it shall awake and rise again Many i. e. all of them that sleep in the dust shall awake Dan. 12.2 Psal 17.15 Isai 26.19 John 5.28 Job 19.26 27. Hos 13.14 Rev. 10.13 A time coming when the loud Trump shall awaken the sleeping ashes and those old friends soul and body meet and embrace and never part more 2. Virium reparatio renovatio restitutio The body that was sown in weakness shall be raised in power It was sown a natural body it shall be raised a spiritual body endowed with impassibility subtilty agility clarity It is sown in dishonour it shall be raised in glory 1 Cor. 15.42 43 44. It shall be like unto Christs glorious body Phil. 3.21 shining forth and sparkling like the Sun in its midday-glory Matth. 13.43 And thus we have dispatcht the parallel betwixt a Believers death and sleep The third thing promised was the Application and Improvement of the whole to which we now address our selves 3. Application Applica ∣ tion 3 By way of Information Exhortation Dehortation Consolation Informa ∣ tion 1 1. For the Information of our Judgements in four Corollaries 1. If a Believers death be a sleep then that Aphorisme of the wise Man appears to be a great truth Eccles 7.1 The day of death is better then the day of ones birth Man is born unto trouble as the sparks fly upward Job 7.5 Sparks have a principle in themselves by which they ascend they need no directing they fly upward naturally So 't is a natural course for man as soon as he is born to verge to sorrow Our birth is nothing else but a lanching forth into a deep Ocean of sin and sorrow an intrat to act our parts in a Scene of iniquity and misery Yea but now a Believers death is his happy Exit and Epilogue his calm [r] Rev. 14.13 Port and safe Harbour after all his tollings and tempests Of this truth that Mirrour of her Sex the Lady Jane Grey discovers a clear conviction who being requested by the Lieutenant of the Tower to write her Symbol in his book before her beheading wrote thus Let the glassy condition of this life never deceive thee there is a time to be born and a time to die but the day of death is better then the day of birth 2. If a Believers death c. Hence learn The infinite power wisdom and goodness of God in that he is able and willing to turn the worst of evils into so great a good out of the deadliest poyson to make the most soveraign Antidote to turn a Moses Serpent into a Rod and with that Rod to work wonders to fetch honey and sweetness out of the carcass of a Lion nay to turn the Eater into meat Death into sleep to make that which in it self is the greatest loss to become so great a Gain Phil. 1.23 to render the King of Terrors Job 18.14 most amiable yea most useful to make that so sweet a blessing which was threatned as the saddest curse to turn an Esau's malice into courtesie and salutes his intended stabs into tears and kisses Verily this is the Lords doing and it ought to be marvellous in our eyes 3. If a Believers death c. Hence see the vast difference between an Vnbeliever and a Believer in their death Death to an unbeliever is Poena peccati so threatned Gen. 2.17 so inflicted Rom. 5.12 Their end is destruction Phil. 3.19 Death comes fiercely to them pulls them by the threat like a grim Serjeant arrests and summons them to hell where after ten hundred thousand years scorching and yelling in flames their pain is never the nearer to its period No time gives them hope of abating yea time hath nothing to do with this eternity where they shall be ever dying but never die where Divels who were here ready to tempt them when graceless to sin are as ready to pursue them now damned with torments 'T is true their bodies sleep indeed for a while but 't is as Sampson in Dalilahs lap ready to be given up as a prey to the Philistins as Sisera in Jaels Tent the hammer and nail ready to be set to the Temples or as Peter slept between his cruell Keepers bound they are and lockt up in their graves as in a strait and loathsom prison a doleful disconsolate dungeon where they lie reserved in the chains of darkness until the judgement of the great day Jud. 6.7 But now the death of a Believer is quite another thing To them 't is instar dulcis somni Death comes mildly and sweetly to the m like an humble Page with a courteous invitation to a feast of glory and proffers its service to lead and conduct them to it Be not afraid saith death though my countenance be stern my hand is soft though my pangs seem grievous yet the rest I bring is sweet To others I am death to you only a sleep and such a sleep as God gives his Beloved Psal 127.2 That which is a Grave to others is a Bed to you Isai 57.2 where your bodies shall lie as Christ did in his grave with a guard of Angels John 20.12 Believers are delivered from the sting though not from the stroke of death If death be a Serpent to Saints 't is a Serpent without a sting it has left its sting and teeth and all in the sides of Christ Hence it is that we hear the Apostle sounding out his Io triumphe and find him treading on the neck of his vanquisht enemy playing on the hole of this Aspe and with an holy kind of Sarcasm flouting at it Oh death where is thy sting 1 Cor. 15.55 56 57. Thus we see a vast difference the unbeliever dies howling the Believer singing the one takes death for a gulf of sorrow the other for a port of safety The one sighs because stript for a scourging the other sings because he layes off his cloaths to go to bed and sleep after his toyle 4. If a Believers death be a sleep in Jesus Hence conclude That even death it self dissolves not the strict union that is between Christ and a Believer [t] Aug. de Civ Dei All the faithful though dead are yet the living members of Christ Jesus As in Christs death his soul and body though severed each from other remained united to the Deity so in death Believers souls and bodies still remain united unto