Selected quad for the lemma: death_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
death_n	mourn_v	young_a	youth_n	17	3	7.3819	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A64109	The rule and exercises of holy living. In which are described the means and instruments of obtaining every vertue, and the remedies against every vice, and considerations serving to the resisting all temptations. Together with prayers containing the whole duty of a Christian, and the parts of devotion fitted to all occasions, and furnish'd for all necessities.	Taylor, Jeremy, 1613-1667.; Vaughan, Robert, engraver.	1650 (1650)	Wing T371; ESTC R203748	252,635	440

immature if he lives till seventy and yet this age is as short of the old periods before and since the flood as this youths age for whom you mourn is of the present fulnesse Suppose therefore a decree passed upon this person as there have been many upon all mankinde and God hath set him a shorter period and then we may as well bear the immature death of the young man as the death of the oldest men for they also are immature and unseasonable in respect of the old periods of many generations * And why are we troubled that he had arts and sciences before he dyed or are we troubled that he does not live to make use of them the first is cause of joy for they are excellent in order to certain ends And the second cannot be cause of sorrow because he hath no need to use them as the case now stands being provided for with the provisions of an Angel and the maner of Eternity However the sons and the parents friends and relatives are in the world like hours and minutes to a day The hour comes and must passe and some stay but minutes and they also passe and shall never return again But let it be considered that from the time in which a man is conceived from that time forward to Eternitie he shall never cease to be and let him dye young or old still he hath an immortal soul and hath laid down his body onely for a time as that which was the instrument of his trouble and sorrow and the scene of sicknesses and disease But he is in a more noble manner of being after death then he can be here and the childe may with more reason be allowed to cry for leaving his mothers womb for this world then a man can for changing this world for another Sudden deaths or violent Others are yet troubled at the manner of their childes or friends death He was drowned or lost his head or dyed of the plague and this is a new spring of sorrow but no man can give a sensible account how it shall be worse for a childe to dye with drowning in half an hour then to endure a feaver of one and twenty dayes And if my friend lost his head so he did not lose his constancy and his religion he dyed with huge advantage Being Childelesse But by this means I am left without an Heir Well suppose that Thou hast no Heir and I have no inheritance and there are many Kings and Emperors that have died childlesse many Royal lines are extinguished And Augustus Caesar was forced to adopt his wives son to inherit all the Roman greatnesse And there are many wise persons that never marryed and we read no where that any o● the children of the Apostles did survive their Fathers and all that inherit any thing of Christs kingdom come to it by Adoption not by natural inheritance and to dye without an natural heir is no intolerable evil since it was sanctified in ●he person of Jesus who dyed a Virgin Evil or unfortunate Children And by this means we are freed from the greater srorows of having a fool a swine or a goat to rule after us in our families and yet even this condition admits of comfort For all the wilde Americans are supposed to be the sons of Dodonai● and the sons of Iacob are now the most scattered and despised people in the whole world The son of Solomon was but a silly weak man and the son of Hezekiah was wicked and all the fools and barbarous people all the thieves and pirates all the slaves and miserable men and women of the world a●e the sons and daughters of Noah and we must not look to be exempted from that portion of sorrow which God gave to Noah and Adam to Abraham to Isaack and to Iacob I pray God send us into the lot of Abraham But if any thing happens worse to us it is enough for us that we bear it evenly Our own death And how if you were to die your self you know you must Onely be ready for it by the preparations of a good life and then it is the greatest good that ever happened to thee else there is nothing that can comfort you But if you have served God in a holy life send away the women and the weepers tell them it is as much intemperance to weep too much as to laugh too much and when thou art alone or with fitting company dye as thou shouldest but do not dye impatiently and like a fox catch'd in a trap For if you fear death you shall never the more avoid it but you make it miserable Fannius that kild himself for fear of death dyed as certainly as Portia that eat burning coals or Cato that cut his own throat To dye is necessary and natural and it may be honourable but to dye poorly and basely and sinfully that alone is it that can make a man unfortunate No man can be a slave but he that fears pain or fears to die To such a man nothing but chance and peaceable times can secure his duty and he depends upon things without sor his felicity and so is well but during the pleasure of his enemy or a Thief or a Tyrant or it may be of a dog or a wilde bull Prayers for the several Graces and parts of Christian Sobriety A Prayer against Sensuality O Eternal Father thou that sittest in Heaven invested with essential Glories and Divine perfections fill my soul with so deep a sence of the excellencies of spiritual and heavenly things that my affections being weaned from the pleasures of the world and the false allurements of sin I may with great severity and the prudence of a holy discipline and strict desires with clear resolutions and a free spirit have my conversation in Heaven and heavenly imployments that being in affections as in my condition a Pilgrim and a stranger here I may covet after and labour for an abiding city and at last may enter into and for ever dwell in the Coelestial Jerusalem which is the mother of us all through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen For Temperance O ALmighty God and gracious Father of Men and Angels who openest thy hand and fillest all things with plenty and hast provided for thy servant sufficient to satisfie all my needs teach me to use thy creatures soberly and temperately that I may not with loads of meat or drink make the temptations of my enemy to prevail upon me or my spirit unapt for the performance of my duty or my body healthlesse or my affections sensual and unholy O my God never suffer that the blessings which thou givest me may either minister to sin or sicknesse but to health and holinesse and thanksgiving that in the strength of thy provisions I may cheerfully and actively and diligently serve thee that I may worthily feast at thy table here and be accounted worthy through thy grace to be admitted to thy

but if you desire this you must lose that and unlesse you be content with one you lose the comfort of both If you covet Learning you must have leisure and a retired life if to be a Polititian you must go abroad and get experience and do all businesses and keep all company and have no leisure at all If you will be rich you must be frugal If you will be popular you must bee bountiful If a Philosopher you must despise riches The Greek that design d to make the most exquisite picture that could be imagined fancyed the eye of Chion● and the hair of Paegnium and Tarsia's lip and Philenium's chinne and the forehead os Delphia and set all these upon Milphidippas neck and thought that he should out do both Art and Nature But when he came to view the proportions he found that what was excellent in Tarsia did not agree with the other excellency of Philenium and although singly they were rare pieces yet in the whole they made a most ugly face The dispersed excellencies and blessings of many men if given to one would not make a handsome but a monstrous fortune Use therefore that faculty which Nature hath given thee and thy education hath made actual and thy calling hath made a duty but if thou desirest to be a Saint refuse not his persecution If thou wouldest be famous as Epaminondas or Fabricius accept also of their poverty for that added lustre to their persons and envy to their fortune and their vertue without it could not have been so excellent Let Euphorion sleep quietly with his old rich Wife and let Medius drink on with Alexander and remember thou canst not have the riches of the first unlesse you have the old Wife too nor the favour which the second had with his Prince unlesse you buy it at his price that is pay thy sobriety down at first and thy health a little after and then their condition though it look d splendidly yet when you handle it on all sides it will prick your fingers 2. Consider how many excellent personages in all Ages have suffered as great or greater calamities then this which now tempts thee to impatience Agis was the most noble of the Greeks and yet his Wife bore a Childe by Alcibiades and Philip was Prince of I●urea and yet his Wife run away with his Brother Herod into Galilee and certainly in a great fortune that was a great calamity But these are but single instances Almost all the ages of the world have noted that their most eminent Scholers were most eminently poor some by choice but most by chance and an inevitable decree of providence And in the whole sex of women God hath decreed the sharpest pains of childebirth to show that there is no state exempt from sorrow and yet that the weakest persons have strengths more then enough to bear the greatest evil and the greatest Queens and the Mothers of Saints and Apostles have no charter of exemption from this sad sentence But the Lord of men and Angels was also the King of sufferings and if thy course robe trouble thee remember the swadling clothes of Jesus if thy bed be uneasy yet it is not worse than his Manger and it is no sadnesse to have a thin table if thou callest to minde that the King of heaven and earth was fed with a little breast milk and yet besides this he suffered all the sorrows which we deserved We therefore have great reason to sit down upon our own hearths and warme our selves at our own fires and feed upon content at home for it were a strange pride to expect to be more gently treated by the Divine providence then the best and wisest men then Apostles and Saints nay then the son of the Eternal God the heir of both the worlds This Consideration may be enlarged by surveying all the states and families of the world and he that at once saw Aegina and Megara Pyraeus and Corinth lye gasping in their ruines and almost buried in their own heaps had reason to blame Cicero for mourning impatiently the death of one woman In the most beauteous and splendid fortune there are many cares and proper interruptions and allayes In the fortune of a Prince there is not the course robe of beggery but there are infinite cares and the Judge sits upon the Tribunal with great ceremony and ostentation of fortune and yet at his house or in his breast there is something that causes him to sigh deeply Pittacus was a wise and valiant man but his wife overthrew the Table when he had invited his friends upon which the good man to excuse her incivility and his own misfortune said that every man had one evil and he was most happy that had but that alone And if nothing else happens yet sicknesses so often do imbitter the fortune and content of a family that a Physician in a few years and with the practise upon a very few families gets experience enough to minister to almost all diseases 3. There are many accidents which are esteemed great calamities and yet we have reason enough to bear them well and unconcernedly for they neither touch our bodies nor our souls our health and our vertue remains intire our life and our reputation It may be I am slighted or I have received ill language but my head akes not for it neither hath it broke my thigh nor taken away my vertue unlesse I lose my charity or my patience Inquire therefore what you are the worse either in your soul or in your body for what hath happened for upon this very stock many evils will disappeare since the body and the soul make up the whole man and when the daughter of Stilpo proved a wanton he said it was none of his sin and therefore there was no reason it should be his misery And if an enemy hath taken all that from a Prince whereby he was a King he may refresh himself by considering all that is left him whereby he is a man 4. Consider that sad accidents and a state of affliction is a School of vertue it reduces our spirits to sobernesse and our counsels to moderation it corrects levity and interrupts the confidence of sinning It is good for me said David that I have been afflicted for thereby I have learned thy Law And I know O Lord that thou of very faithfulnesse hast caused me to be troubled For God who in mercy and wisdom governs the world would never have suffered so many sadnesses and have sent them especially to the most vertuous and the wisest men but that he intends they should be the seminary of comfort the nursery of vertue the exercise of wisdom the tryal of patience the venturing for a crown and the gate of glory 5. Consider that afflictions are oftentimes the occasions of great temporal advantages and we must not look upon them as they sit down heavily upon us but as they

the spirits of one used to feed better yet the cheerfulnesse of a spirit that is blessed will make a thin table become a delicacy if the man was as well taught as he was fed and learned his duty when he received the blessing Poverty therefore is in some sences eligible and to be preferred before riches but in all sences it is very tolerable Death of Children or neerest Relatives and Friends There are some persons who have been noted for excellent in their lives and passions rarely innocent and yet hugely penitent for indiscretions and harmlesse infirmities such as was Paulina one of the ghostly children of S. Hierom and yet when any of her children dyed she was arrested with a sorrow so great as brought her to the margent of her grave And the more tender our spirits are made by Religion the more easy we are to let in grief if the cause be innocent and be but in any sence twisted with piety and due affections * To cure which we may consider that al the world must die therfore to be impatient at the death of a person concerning whom it was certain and known that he must die is to mourn because thy friend or childe was not born an Angel and when thou hast a while made thy self miserable by an importunate and uselesse grief it may be thou shalt die thy self and leave others to their choice whether they will mourn for thee or no but by that time it will appear how impertinent that grief was which served no end of life and ended in thy own funeral But what great matter is it if sparks fly upward or a stone falls into a pit if that which was combustible be burned or that which was liquid be melted or that which is mortal do die It is no more then a man does every day for every night death hath gotten possession of that day and we shall never live that day over again and when the last day is come there are no more dayes left for us to die And what is sleeping and waking but living and dying what is Sping and Autumne youth and old age morning and evening but real images of life and death and really the same to many considerable effects and changes Vntimely death But it is not mere dying that is pretended by some as the cause of their impatient mourning but that the childe died young before he knew good and evil his right hand from his left and so lost all his portion of this world and they know not of what excellency his portion in the next shall be * If he dyed young he lost but little for he understood but little and had not capacities of great pleasures or great cares but yet he dyed innocent and before the sweetnesse of his soul was deflour d and ravished from him by the flames and follies of a forward age he went out from the dining-rooms before he had fallen into errour by the intemperance of his meat or the deluge of drink and he hath obtain'd this favour of God that his soul hath suffered a lesse imprisonment and her load was sooner taken o●f that he might with lesser delayes goe and converse with immortal spirits and the babe is taken into Paradise before he knows good and evil For that knowledge threw our great Father out and this ignorance returns the childe thithe * But as concerning thy own particular remove thy thoughts back to those dayes in which thy childe was not born and you are now but as then you was and there is no difference but that you had a son born and if you reckon that for evil you are unthankful for the blessing if it be good it is better that you had the blessing for a while then not at all and yet if he had never been born this sorrow had not been at all but be no more displeased at God for giving you the blessing for a while then you would have been if he had not given it at all and reckon that intervening blessing for a gain but account it not an evil and if it be a good turn it not into sorrow and sadnesse * But if we have great reason to complain of the calamities and evils o● our life then we have the lesse reason to grieve that those whom we loved have so small a portion of evil assigned to them And it is no small advantage that our children dying young receive for their condition of a blessed immortality is rendred to them secure by being snatcht from the dangers of an evil choice and carried to their little cells of felicity where they can weep no more And this the wisest of the Gentiles understood well when they forbade any offerings or libations to be made for dead infants as was usual for their other dead as believing they were entred into a secure possession to which they went with no other condition but that they passed into it thorough the way of mortality and for a few moneths wore an uneasy garment And let weeping parents say if they do not think that the evils their little babes have suffered are suf●icient If they be why are they troubled that they were taken from those many and greater which in succeeding years are great enough to try all the reason and religion which art and nature and the grace of God hath produc'd in us to enable us for such sad contentions And possibly we may doubt concerning men and women but we cannot suspect that to infants death can be such an evil but that it brings to them much more good then it takes them from in this life Death unseasonable But others can well bear the death of infants but when they have spent some years of childehood or youth and are entred into arts and society when they are hopeful and provided for when the parents are to reap the comfort of all their fears and cares then it breaks the spirit to loose them This is true in many but this is not love to the dead but to themselves for they misse what they had flatterd themselves into by hope and opinion and if it were kindnes●e to the dead they may consider that since we hope he is gone to God and to rest it is an ill expression of our love to them that we weep for their good fortune For that life is not best which is longest and when they are descended into the grave it shall not be inquired how long they have lived but how well And yet this shortening of their dayes is an evil wholly depending upon opinion For if men did naturally live but twenty years then we should be satisfied if they dyed about sixteen or eighteen and yet eighteen years now are as long as eighteen years would be then and if a man were but of a dayes life it is well if he lasts till even long and then sayes his compline an hour before the time and we are pleased and call not that death