Selected quad for the lemma: death_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
death_n	life_n	power_n	soul_n	8,115	5	4.8720	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A25209	A sermon upon the wonderful deliverance by His Majesty from assassination, the nation from invasion by Vin. Alsop.	Alsop, Vincent, 1629 or 30-1703.	1696 (1696)	Wing A2911; ESTC R23666	37,849	39

hidden ones Come say the● let us cut them off from being a Nation that the name of Israel may be no more had in remembrance Nothing less than total and final extirpation can satiate their thirst of blood but here the Providence of God steps in supersedes their conspiracies and makes them rage in their disappointments And a watchful faithful God may he securely trusted to take his own time for the defeating of their counsels 4. Providence is righteous as it is vigilant he knows how to make all their Engines recoil upon the heads of the Engineers He delights to take the sly Fowlers foot in his own snare and bring down their own violent dealing upon their own proud and projecting pates As we reckon him the most acute Disputant that does not only answer the argument but retorts it upon him that offers it and him the most skilful man at his weapon that cannot only put by a home thrust but disarm his enemy and wound him with his own Sword Thus has God magnified his wisdom in making his enemies plot against their own lives and studiously overthrow their own quiet and peace Thus Goliah's Head was cut off with his own Sword and the story is as famous as true of Alexander the VI. who inviting his Cardinals to a Feast and ordering Poyson to be mixed with their Wine while his own was free by a fatal mistake of his Cupbearer was poysoned himself with his Son Caesar Borgia by a mistake I say of the Cupbearer but none in the wise and righteous direction of Providence which made him a felo de se a self-destroyer who only designed single murder God is known by all his judgments but these especially signalize at once his wisdom and his justice when he dooms sinners to execution and makes them their own Executioners This was that subject amongst many others which the Psalmist judged worthy of our most serious meditation Psal. 9.15 16. The heathen is sunk down in the pit which they made for in the net which they hid is their own foot taken The Lord is known by the judgment which he executeth the wicked is snared in the works of his own hand Higgaion Selah which last words as Junius thinks import Res summi meditanda A matter that deserves our most serious consideration that we should lodge it in our memories treasure it in our hearts express a holy sense of it in a suitable conversation and never to question whether God can send instruments to execute his purposes of Grace and Mercy when he can make his enemies to execute his sentence upon themselves The same Theme he cultivates in Psal. 7.15 16. He made a pit and digged it and is fallen into the ditch that he made Strange Providence To be buried in the grave he digg'd for another and like Haman to be hang'd upon the Gallows which he had erected for Mordecai v. 16. His mischief shall return upon his own head and his violent dealing upon his own pate God has threatned of old and fulfilled it of late Zach. 12.3 In that day I will make Jerusalem a burdensom stone for all people All that burden themselves with it shall be cut in pieces tho all the people of the earth be gathered against it The interest of a Redeemer his Church and Gospel hath been a stone of stumbling a rock of offence in the way of enemies they have been heaving lifting with all their strength and engines to roll it away and when they have hoped they were just turning it over we know not how but it has come upon them with the greater swinge and when some have been broken by falling on it others on whom it has fallen have been grownd to powder II. The second head of discourse is to shew By what means wise and watchful providence discovers and defeats the deep laid designs of enemies formed against Israel It 's a pleasing contemplation to have the soul fixed upon the many great deliverances which God has wrought out for Israel and no finall accession to their delight to meditate upon the various ways he has chosen to deliver his people 1. As suppose a Conspiracy be laid dark and deep of which the dark night some few dark souls and the powers of darkness are only conscious secrecy is the life of the design and the death of that person against whom the design is laid Now it 's the glory of God first to bring to light and then to bring to nought such a contrivance and tho he has various ways to discover the hidden things of darkness yet sometimes he uses this He puts the conscience of one or more of the Conspirators upon the rack and torture and forces him to delate himself and his brethren in iniquity God keeps a key to every mans heart and conscience and when he pleases can open it and reveal all that hell that is within Thus the holy God put the conscience of the Arch-Traytor Judas upon the rack Mat. 27.4 and forced him to cry out I have sinned in betraying innocent blood God never so far forsakes the most desperate wretch but he keeps his hold and can take faster hold of his conscience and where he has no interest in the heart yet there he maintains some authority Some have debaucht and stupisied their consciences to a prodigious degree some to that pitch that when they are directly subserving the cause of Hell yet may fancy they are doing service to God John 16.2 They have learned to setter and bind their conscience with an oath that it shall never wince start or shrink from engaged secrecy others have superadded the abusing the holy Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ to engage their zeal perseverance and resolution in shedding the blood and massacring the body of Man perhaps of a Prince and thus that which Christ instituted to be sacramentum pietatis they impiously pervert invinculam iniquitatis 't is the expression of St. Austin These wretched miscreants presume to draw in God himself to be a confederate in their villanies and perhaps to bribe him with some share in the booty if their lusts can spare it N●y some have proceeded farther yet to draw in some profligate Priests to absolve them from what ever there may be of sin in the action for with these Debauchees Treason is none And indeed never was any design so black and devillish but a Priest might be found whose casuistical skill could sanctify it or whose sacerdotal character could absolve from it And yet when they have done all driven the nail to the head and clencht it the terrors of God breaks all their bonds asunder opens all the padlocks that were hung upon the conscience and poor Achan is compelled to confess his sin and give glory to God Jos 7.19 2. Another way of the divine wisdom to discover and defeat the counsels of confederates in wickedness is by raising contrary counsels and opposite sentiments among themselves A