Selected quad for the lemma: death_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
death_n	lament_v	young_a	youth_n	31	3	7.8358	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A41152	Contemplations upon life and death with serious reflections on the miseries that attend humane life in every station, degree and change thereof / written by a person of quality in his confinement a little before his death ... a true copy of the paper delivered to the sheriffs upon the scaffold at Tower-hill on Thursday, January 28, 1696/7 by Sir John Fenwick, Baronet.	Fenwick, John, Sir, 1645?-1697.	1697 (1697)	Wing F720; ESTC R37797	24,831	34

other end but that Men should seek them so the World often harbors in disguised Attire among them that fly the World It is not therefore Solitude and Retirement can give us Contentment but only the subduing of our unruly Lusts and Passions Now as touching that Contentment that may be found in Solitude by wise Men in the Exercise of Reading divers Books of both Divine and Prophane Authors in order to the acquiring of Knowledge and Learning it is indeed a very commendable thing but if we will take Solomon's Judgment in the Case it is all but vanity and vexation of Spirit For some are ever learning to correct their Speech and never think of correcting their Life Others by Logical Discourses of the Art of Reason dispute many times so long till they lose thereby their Natural Reason One learns by Arithmetick to divide into the smallest Fractions and yet hath not skill to part one Shilling with his Brother Another by Geometry can measure Fields and Towns and Countries But cannot measure himself The Musitian can accord his Voices and Sounds and Times together Having nothing in his Heart but Discords nor one Passion in his Soul but what is out of tune The Astrologer looks up to the Stars and falls in the next Ditch Fore-knows the future and is careless for the present hath often his Eye on the Heavens tho' his Heart be buried in the Earth The Philosopher discourseth of the nature of all other things and yet knows not himself The Historian can tell of the Wars of Thebes and of Troy but is ignorant of what is done in his own House The Lawyer will make Laws for all the World and yet observe none himself The Physitian Cures others but languishes himself under his own Malady He can find the least alteration in his Pulse but takes no notice of the burning Feaver of his Mind Lastly the Divine will spend the greatest part of his time in disputing of Faith and yet cares not to hear of Charity Will talk of god but has no regard to succour Men. These knowledges bring on the Mind an endless labour but no contentment for the more he knows the more he desires to know They pacifie not the Debates a Man feels in himself they cure not the diseases of his Mind They make him learned but they make him not good cunning but not wise The more a Man knows the more he knows that he knows not the fuller the Mind is the emptier it finds it self Forasmuch as whatsoever a Man can know of any Science in this world is but the least part of what he is ignorant of All his knowledge consisting in knowing his ignroance all his perfection in seeing his imperfections which who best knows and notes is in truth among Men the most wise and perfect In short we must conclude with Solomon that the beginning and end of Wisdom is the fear of God yet this Wisdom nevertheless is taken by the World for meer Folly and persecuted by the World as a deadly Enemy and therefore as he that fears God ought to fear no evil for that all his evils are converted to his good So neither ought he to hope for good in the World having there the Devil his professed Enemy whom the Scripture termeth Prince of this World But with what exercise soever we pass the time old Age unawares comes upon us which never failes to find us out Every Man makes account in that Age to repose himself without further care and to keep himself at ease in health But on the contrary in this age there is nothing but an after-tast of all the foregoing evils and most commonly a plentiful harvest of all such Vices as in the whole course of their Life hath held and possessed them There you have the Imbecility and Weakness of Infancy and which is worse many times accompanied with authority There you are paid for the excess and riot of your Youth with Gouts Palsies and such like Diseases which take from you Limb after Limb with pain and torment There you are recompenc'd for the anxieties of Mind the watchings and cares of Manhood with Ioss of Sight loss of Hearing and all the Sences one after another except only the sence of Pain Not one part in us but Death takes hold of to be assured of us as of bad pay-masters which seldom keep days of payment There is nothing in us which is not visible declining except our Vices and they not only live but in despite of Nature grow young again The Covetous Man hath one Foot in his Grave and is yet burying his Money as if he had hopes to find it again another day The Ambitious in his Will provides for a pompous Funeral making his vice to triumph even after his Death The Riotous no longer able to dance on his Feet danceth with his Shoulders all Vices having left him and he not able to leave them The Child wishes for Youth and this Man laments it The Young Man lives in hope of the future and this feels the evil present laments the false pleasures past and sees for the time to come nothing to hope for And is more foolish than the Child in bewailing the time he cann't recall and remembers not the evil that he suffer'd in it and more wretched than the Young Man in that after a vicious life and not being able any longer to live he must miserably die seeing nothing round about him but matter of despair As for him that from his Youth hath undertaken to combat against the flesh and the World who hath used to mortifie himself and leave the World whilst he continues in it who besides those ordinary Evils finds himself vexed with this great and incurable Disease of Old Age and yet feels his Flesh how weak soever often stronger than his Spirit what satisfaction can he take but only in this that he sees his death is at hand that his Warfare is accomplished and that he is ready to depart by Death out of this loathsome Prison wherein he has been all along rack'd and tormented I forbear to mention the almost infinite Evils wherewith Men in all Ages are afflicted as loss of Friends and Parents Banishments Exiles Disgraces and other Accidents common and ordinary in the World one complaining of losing his Children another of having them one lamenting for his Wives Death another for her Life one finding fault that he is too high in Court and others more often that they are not high enough The World is so full of Evils that it would require a World of Time to write 'em in And if the most happy Man in the World should set his Felicities and Infelicities against each other he would see cause enough to judge himself unhappy And yet perhaps another Man might judge him happy who yet if he had been but three days in his place would give it over to him that should come next And he that shall consider in all the Goods

Master of himself pushing Time forward as it were with his shoulder that he may the sooner enjoy his hoped-for Liberty In short he desires nothing more than to see the end of this Age which he looks upon as Bondage and Slavery and enter upon the beginning of his Youth And what is the beginning of Youth but the death of Infancy And the beginning of Manhood but the death of Youth Or what is the beginning of to Morrow but the death of the present Day And thus he implicitly desires his Death and judges his Life miserable and therefore cannot be reputed in a state of Happiness or Contentment Behold him now according to his wish at Liberty in that Age wherein he has his Choice to take the way of Vertue or of Vice and either to choose Reason or Passion for his Guide His Passion entertains him with a thousand Delights prepares for him a thousand Baits and presents him with a thousand Worldly Pleasures to surprize him And these are so agreeable to headstrong and unbridled Youth that there are very few that are not taken and beguiled by them of which my own Example is too evident an Instance But when the Reckoning comes to be made up what Pleasures are they They are but vicious and polluted Pleasures which ever hold him in a restless Fever Pleasures that at the best end in Repentance and like sweet Meats are of a hard digestion Pleasures that are bought with pain and in a moment perish but leave behind a lasting Guilt and long remorse of Conscience All which I wish my own too dear Experience could not witness And yet this is the very Nature if they be well examin'd of all the Pleasures of this World There is in none so much Sweetness but there is more Bitterness none so pleasant to the Mouth but it leaves an unsavoury Gusto after it I will not speak here of the Mischiefs Quarrels Debates Wounds Murthers Banishments Sickness and other Dangers whereinto sometimes the Incontinency and sometimes the Insolency of this ill-guided Age does plunge Men for the remembrance of my own Follies upon this occasion stops my mouth and fills me with remorse and shame But if those that seem Pleasures be nothing else but Displeasures if the Sweetness thereof be as an Infusion of Wormwood what then must the Displeasure be which they feel And how great the Bitterness that they taste Behold then in short the Life of a young Man who rid of the Government of his Parents and Masters abandons himself to all the Exorbitancies of his unruly Passion which like an unclean Spirit possessing him throws him sometimes into the Water and then into the Fire sometimes carries him clear over a Rock and at other times flings him headlong to the bottom But if he follows Reason for his Guide which is much the better choice yet on this hand there are wonderful Difficulties For he must resolve to fight in every part of the Field and at every step to be in conflict as having his Enemy in front in flank and on the rear never leaving to assail him and this Enemy is all that can delight him all that he sees near or far off In short the greatest Enemy in the World is the World it self which he must therefore overcome But beside the World he has a thousand Treacherous Enemies within him among whom his Passion is none of the least which waits for an occasion to surprize him and betray him to his Lusts It is God only that can make him choose the Path of Vertue and it is God only that can keep him in it to the End and make him victorious in all his combats But alas how few they are that enter into it And of those few how many that retire again So that let a Man follow the one way or the other he must either subject himself to a Tyrannical Passion or undertake a weary and continual Combat wilfully throw himself into the Arms of Destruction or fetter himself as it were in the Stocks easily carried away with the current of the Water or painfully stemming the impetuous Tide See here the happiness of the young Man Who in his Youth having drunk his full draught of the Worlds vain and deceivable Pleasures is over-taken by them with such a dull heaviness and astonishment as Drunkards the morrow after a Debauch or Gluttons after a plentiful Feast who are so over-prest with the Excesses of the former day that the very remembrance of it creates their loathing And even he that has made the stoutest resistance feels himself so weary and with this continual Conflict so bruised and broken that he is either upon the point to yield or dye And this is all the Good all the Contentment of this flourishing Age by Children so earnestly desired and by those who have experienc'd it so heartily lamented Next cometh that which is called Perfect Age in which Men have no other thoughts but to purchase themselves Wisdom and Rest It is called perfect indeed but is herein only perfect that all Imperfections of Humane Nature hidden before under the simplicity of Childhood or the lightness of Youth appear at this Age in their Perfection I speak of none in this place but those that are esteemed the wisest and most happy in the opinion of the World I have already shewed that we play'd in fear and that our short Pleasures were attended on with long Repentance But now Avarice and Ambition present themselves to us promising if we will adore them to give us perfect Contentment with the Goods and Honours of this World And surely none but those who are restrained by a Divine Hand can escape the Illusions of the one or the other and not cast themselves headlong from the top of the Pinacle But let us see what this Contentment is The Covetous Man Makes a thousand Voyages by Sea and Journeys by Land runs a thousand hazzards escapes a thousand shipwracks and is in perpetual fear and travel and yet oftentimes either loseth his time or gains nothing but Sicknesses Gouts and Oppilations In the purchase of this goodly Repose he bestoweth his true Rest and to gain Wealth loseth his Life But suppose he hath gain'd much and that he hath spoil'd the whole East of its Pearls and drawn dry all the Mines of the West will he then be at quiet and say he is content Nothing less For by all his Acquisitions he gains but more Disquiet both of Mind and Body from one travel falling into another never ending but only changing his Miseries He desir'd to have them and now fears to lose them he got 'em with burning ardour and possesses 'em in trembling cold he adventur'd among Thieves to get them and now fears by Thieves and Robbers to be depriv'd of 'em again he labour'd to dig them out of the Earth and now to secure them he hides them therein In short coming from all his Voyages he comes into a Prison and the