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	sin_n	way_n	9,518	5	4.8304	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A45245	A sermon preached at the publick commencement at Cambridge, Sunday in the afternoon, July iij, 1698 by Francis Hutchinson ...	Hutchinson, Francis, 1661-1739.	1698 (1698)	Wing H3831; ESTC R7531	11,786	25

have lies at stake if we look about into the works of God he hath written this part of his Mind in as clear Characters as he hath his Goodness And let the Judgment of God upon the faln Angels be our first Example in this case Amongst us it is no Dispute but that there are Myriads infinite numbers of glorious Spirits banish'd by God from the Regions of Bliss When by an unjust and ungrateful Rebellion they made themselves unworthy of the Glory and Happiness he gave them he would not dishonour his Government by maintaining or suffering them to be happy in their disobedience but condemned them to such Conditions as they deserved Now by his punishing them let us weigh our Arguments against his punishing our Race Let us imagine we see so many glorious Beings falling under God's Justice from the blessedness of Heaven to the miseries they endure Let us set before our Minds the Torments they have gone thorough in so many long Ages as have past since that righteous Sentence And then let us urge our Arguments for the impossibility of God's punishing wickedness But there is no disputing against matter of Fact and whatever Arguments might be plausibly urged before the experiment as perhaps they were such as deceived the new Created Angels yet after the experiment they ought not to deceive Children For it is a plain Argument what hath been may be And what God hath done once He may do again if the case be the same because he is the same and being alwaies infinitly good he must be alwaies infinitly and equally an Enemy to unjust and unreasonable Creatures and Actions But because Men who are willing to deceive themselves will urge all the differences they can find out betwixt Angels and us we will therefore consider God's Providences and Righteous Judgments upon us Men. The Psalmist Meditating upon these Punishments in the 46. Ps 8. v. calls upon Men to behold the works of the Lord what desolations he hath made in the Earth At first when he had Created the World good and every way fitted for a happy Life He Cursed it because of sin and half spoiled such a glorious piece of Workmanship because Man did not deserve a happyer to live in For let Men call these Pains and Sorrows and Deaths that are upon us Natural Calamities that is only cheating our selves with a word and with a very improper one for those evils that are lay'd upon us by a living and thinking and governing God If they had happened by a train of unthinking causes and a fatal course of dead Nature Natural Calamities had been their proper Name but coming from a perfect Mind who does all things with Design and Judgment and Justice they are Punishments and show us very effectually that it is not contrary to his Nature to punish wickedness and disobedience For the wickedness again of Man God brought a Flood of Waters upon the World and excepting Eight Persons drowned every Soul that breathed upon the Earth Millions that knew not their Right Hand from their Left were drowned in their Mothers Arms and Fathers and Children were swept away together Men would not believe that And though God sent a Preacher to give them warning while the Ark was preparing yet still it could not enter into their Minds but that God would be more Merciful But they argued so vainly till the Flood was upon them Now these Examples are as so many Monuments set up to Teach us that we ought not to argue that God's Goodness will not suffer him to punish because he hath shown us he will and our Forefathers have found it To come still nearer even to our own Age and Sight and there will be no uncertainty If we take but the present Face of things and place before our Thoughts the Sorrows Pains and Deaths of our own or of any Generation we have Example sufficient as much as we need for abating for the different way and the commonness which lessens our Sence of it allowing for that we have the Fall and the Flood both acted over again in every Generation For in what I pray does the multitude of sorrowful Deaths that destroys every Age fall short of a Deluge They differ indeed in the way and time of destroying but there is no difference in the desolation this one thing excepted that whereas the Deluge left Eight Persons this takes the Eight also and leaves not so much as one And for the Pains and Diseases and Sorrows and Griefs that alwaies lye upon Mankind and are hasting some towards their end and actually killing others what can be a more sad prospect than this if we see it rightly So many Afflictions and Crosses such numbers of Desolate Widows and Fatherless Children such great poverty and want as many feel The sinking Hearts of Slaves and Captives and Oppressed and weary Servants The terrors of those places where they hide themselves in the Dens and Caves of the Earth for fear of their Neighbours Swords The languishing decays or the torturing pains of Mens Bodies while their Eyes fail to see their certain Death 's a coming Or the still deeper Griefs of wounded Spirits and troubled Minds where the unseen Arrows of God stick fastest and deepest of all others and even drive on many to hasten their own Deaths in hopes that way to lay down that Burden which is greater than they can bear It is a Blessing to us that the commonness of these things does in some measure harden us from the true Thoughts that this case seems to require for otherwise the multitude of Sorrows that are in the World and their nearness to our selves would draw too dark a Cloud over our lives But as this mighty Army of Afflicted Suffering Dying Men are alwaies under God's Eye and Hand let us place them at this time before our Minds And if we add to the Thought how many of these are Righteous Pious Persons who have endeavoured in the course of their Lives both to bear and to do the will of God we shall hardly forbear applying our Saviour's Speech If these things be done in the green Tree what shall be done in the dry If God laies such Judgments upon mixt multitudes what Punishments will he make use of when he shall have separated the Goats from the Sheep and set the Wicked by themselves If such Afflictions and Sorrows as these are for Medicines for Government and good uses under the time of tryal what greater Miseries must there be in store against that time when the Judge of all the Earth shall distribute Justice amongst all his Subjects His Punishments indeed will not be greater than Mens evil works deserve for he will do wrong to none but what their sins do deserve he hath given us sufficient Assurance that it is not against his Nature to inflict them And thus I have Discoursed those Three Points I proposed I am sensible how far below the Dignity of so great a Subject

God himself shall have his being This is a great thing no doubt of it and shocks Mens minds but let us consider what we have in the Knowledge of God and his Works which may further us in the Belief of it And First We are to Consider that tho' it be a wonderful thing that frail Man should continue for ever yet the eternal duration it self must really be Whether we shall be alive in it or be dead things That must run its endless course And as there must of necessity be an eternity of time and duration so through it all God Almighty must as necessarily have his being and be perfect as he is now in Wisdom Power and Goodness And tho' we may not say it is necessary yet I dare say any Man will grant it a thousand times more likely that thorough all that Eternity God will preserve a World and Creatures in being that as there are now so there may alwaies be before him Creatures who shall feel themselves happy out of his stores and Praise his bounty We may not say God will have it so because it will be any accession to his own Happiness and yet to a beneficent good being the communicating his Happiness to Creatures who should be able to know the giver looks so very like to a true pleasure and satisfaction that it is one of the things men wonder at why God began so late as six thousand Years since to Create and some rather than suppose that God would ever be without a World and such sensible Creatures before him they venture to say That there must have been other Worlds before this of ours Now not to speak of this because it is one of those many Points we are not able to Fathom we Learn so much from it certainly that the common Sence of Mankind is so far from thinking it unlikely that God should have a World and Creatures before him alwaies in being that they are for believing elder and more in the times that are past But this is only by the way We see that since Eternity must be and since God Almighty must of necessity be through it all it is easy to grant that God will also have Creatures alwaies before him The Point then comes to this Whether is most likely that God should chuse to continue Creatures before him by giving Eternity to the Souls of Men or by letting them dye and end as they do in appearance and by raising up other new ones in their places And for this point If the Souls of Men are really Abolished and end at Death I do not know but we may say that they are the only Substances in the whole compass of beings that are so The Reason why I speak thus is that Principle in Philosophy which I suppose is uncontroverted that the Destruction of all Material Beings is not a real end or abolition of their Substance and Being but a change into something else and through all their Transmutations there is not a Particle of their real Substance lost But if the Souls of Men do not live in their proper Persons they are abolished and are extinct For no body ever Dreamt of their being Changed into any other Forms that should preserve their Substance I do not lay much weight upon this but it does not seem probable that the most Excellent Substance that God hath made should be less fixt in Nature and Being than the meanest and most contemtible and if it be not then it follows strongly that the Soul does not end at Death but only suffers a natural periodical change and continues in such a State and way as God hath prepared for it But let this be as it will I build not upon it The Point I shall argue from is what the Text offers us the Mind of God towards his Creatures that is which seems most likely that God should preserve Creatures before him by continuing these or that he should suffer these to fall back out of being and raise up new ones in their stead for ever And if the Question was put concerning meer Animals whose dissolution is made without any grief or sorrow or reflections of their own Minds about it we should not need to look far for an Answer Or if it was put concerning an inanimate God i. e. concerning dead nature and a chain of causes that were supposed to have circulated Mankind into Life the causes themselves not knowing how A short Answer would have serv'd that also For no doubt but as Nature and Causes had put Man together without knowing what they did they would have let us fall again into pieces as soon as our ingredients moved that way But the question is put concerning a very living God and Beings that God hath raised to a high degree of Life and Communication with himself For we were made by that Wise Creator whom we dayly Worship He hath lay'd in our Natures the Grounds of such Understanding and Knowledge of himself and works as inables us for a Divine intercourse and Love and all the happy Passions which follow from an humble Worship and reasonable service of himself He hath given us to taste a Thousand Pleasures with Judgment and Reflection and added clear Notions of a higher happiness and of the vast difference of enjoying of it for the short Term of threescore Years and ten and of enjoying of it alwaies And after this I need not add it as another Gift for there must of necessity follow from these strong desires to continue alwaies if it may be in Life and Happiness For no Creature can be so temperately indifferent to its own Happiness as to see Life and God and his Works and not desire if it be possible to continue in Life amongst them and be Happy with them And therefore the whole Reasonable Creation groans and travels with desires of Life Even Nature in all of us makes vehement Prayers and many have added excellent Virtues and Service and Obedience and even voluntary Deaths and Martyrdoms for God's Honour in hopes to move God by them that they might not dye indeed And since God will have Creatures ever before him is it impossible to be thought that these should be they I wo' not say on the other side that in a Moral Sence it is necessary they should but I will say that one single Miracle and Promise of God should be sufficient to Satisfy all Mankind that they will For after God hath raised Creatures to such an intercourse with himself and Sence of things and and vehement necessary desires of living a turning of them out of Being when he can continue them with a word looks like a severe Act. If indeed God had not Created us not being had been no affliction but to bring such an excellent Creature so near to Happiness that he might tear away his longing Eyes from enjoying it To bring him into Being that he might have a sorrowful exit We must speak indeed with