Selected quad for the lemma: death_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
death_n	see_v	sin_n	soul_n	9,644	5	5.1376	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A70941	The dutiful advice of a loving sonne, to his aged father	Southwell, Robert, Saint, 1561?-1595.	1650 (1650)	Wing R160; ESTC R9131	5,339	18

The dutiful ADVICE of a loving SONNE to his aged FATHER LONDON Printed by W. B. and are to be sold by W. Sheares at the sign of the Bible over against the North-door of Pauls 1650. The dutifull ADVICE OF A LOVING SON To his AGED FATHER SIR I Humbly beseech you both in respect of the honour of God your duty to his Church and the comfort of your own soul that you seriously consider in what tearms you stand and weigh your self in a Christian ballance taking for your counterpoise the judgements of God Take heed in time that the word TEKEL written of old against Balthazar and interpreted by Daniel be not verified in you whose exposition was You have been poized in the scale and found of too light weight Remember that you are now in the weining and the date of your pilgrimage well nigh expired and now that it behoveth you to look towards your Countrey your forces languisheth your senses impair your bodie droops and on every side the ruinous Cottage of your faint and feeble flesh threateneth the fall And having so many harbingers of death to premonish you of your end how can you but prepare for so dreadfull a stranger The young man may die quickly but the old man cannot live long the young mans life by casualty may be abridged but the old mans by no physick can be long adjourned and therefore if green years should sometimes think of the grave the thoughts of old age should continually dwell in the same The prerogative of Infancy is innocency of Child-hood reverence of Man-hood maturity and of old age wisdom And seeing then that the chiefest properties of wisdom are to be mindfull of things past carefull for things present and provident for things to come Use now the priviledge of natures tallent to the benefit of your own soul and procure hereafter to be wise in well doing and watchfull in the fore-sight of future harms To serve the world you are now unable and though you were able yet you have little cause to be willing seeing that it never gave you but an unhappy welcome a hurtfull entertainment and now doth abandon you with an unfortunate fare-wel You have long sowed in a field of flint which could bring nothing forth but a crop of cares and afflictions of spirit rewarding your labours with remorse and affording for your gain eternal danger It is now more than a seasonable time to alter the course of so unthriving a husbandry and to enter into the field of Gods Church in which sowing the seed of repentant sorrow and watering them with the tears of humble contrition you may hereafter reap a more beneficial harvest and gather the fruits of everlasting comfort Remember I pray you that your spring is spent your summer over-past you are now arrived at the fall of the leaf yea and winter colours have long since stained your hoary head Be not careless saith Saint Augustine though our loving Lord bear long with offenders for the longer he stayes not finding amendment the sorer he will scourge when he comes to Judgement And his patience in so long forbearing is onely to lend us respite to repent and not any wise to enlarge us leisure to sin He that is tossed with variety of storms and cannot come to his desired Port maketh not much way but is much turmoyled So he that hath passed many years and purchased little profit hath a long being but a short life For life is more to be measured by well doing than by number of years Seeing that most men by many days do but procure many deaths and others in short space attain to the life of infinite ages what is the body without the soul but a corrupt carkass And what is the soul without God but a sepulchre of sin If God be the Way the Life and the Truth he that goeth without him strayeth and he that liveth without him dieth and he that is not taught by him erreth Well saith Saint Augustine God is our true and chiefest Life from whom to revolt is to fall to whom to return is to rise and in whom to stay is to stand sure God is he from whom to depart is to die to whom to repair is to revive and in whom to dwell is life for ever Be not then of the number of those that begin not to live till they be ready to die and then after a foes desert come to crave of God a friends entertainment Some there be that think to snatch Heaven in a moment which the best can scarce attain unto in the maintainance of many years and when they have glutted themselves with worldly delights would jump from Dives Diet to Lazarus Crown from the service of Satan to the solace of a Saint But be you well assured that God is not so penurious of friends as to hold himself and his Kingdom salealbe for the refuse and reversions of their lives who have sacrificed the principal thereof to his enemies and their own bruitish lust then onely ceasing to offend when the ability of offending is taken from them True it is that a thief may be saved upon the cross and mercy sound at the last gasp But well saith S. Augustine though it be possible yet it is scarce credible that the d●ath should find favour whose whole life deserved death and that the repentance should be more excepted that more for fear of hell and love of himself than for the love of God and loathsomness of sin crieth for mercy Wherefore good SIR make no longer delays but being so near the breaking up of your mortal house take time before extremity to pacifie Gods anger Though you suffer the bud to be blasted though you permitted the fruits to be perished and the leaves to drie up yea though you let the boughs to wither and the body of your tree to grow to decay yet alas keep life in the root for fear lest the whole tree become fewel for hell fire For surely where the tree falleth there it shall lie whether towards the South or to the North to Heaven or to hell and such sap as it bringeth forth such fruit shall it ever bear Death hath already filed from you the better part of your natural forces and left you now to the Lees and remissals of your wearyish and dying days The remainder whereof as it cannot be long so doth it warn you speedily to ransom your former losses for what is age but the Calends of death what importeth your present weakness but an earnest of your approching dissolution you are now imbarked in your final voyage and not far from the stint and period of your course Be not therefore unprovided of such appurtenances as are behovefull in so perplexed and perilous a Journey death it self is very fearfull but much more terrible in respect of the judgement it summoneth us unto If you were now laid upon your departing-bed burthened with the heavie load of your former trespasses

and gored with the sting and prick of a festered Conscience if you felt the cramp of death wresting your heart-strings and ready to make the ruefull divorce between body and soul If you lay panting for breath and swimming in a cold and pale sweat wearied with strugling against your deadly pangs O what would you give for an hours repentance at what rate would you value a days contrition Then worlds would be worth less in respect of a little respite a short truce would seem more precious than the treasures of an Empire nothing would be so much esteemed as a short trice of time which now by days and moneths and years is most lavishly misspent Oh how deeply would it wound your woefull heart when looking back into your former life you considered many hainous and horrible offences committed many pious works and godly deeds omitted and neither of both repented your service to God promised and not performed Oh how unconsolably were your case your friends being fled your senses affrighted your thoughts amazed your memory decayed and your whole mind agast and no part able to perform what it should but onely your guilty Conscience pestered with sin that would continually upbraid you with many bitter accusations Oh what would you think then being stripped out of this mortal weed and turned out both of service and house-room of this wicked world you are forced to enter into uncough and strange paths and with unknown and ugly company to be convented before a most severe Judge carrying in your Conscience your Inditement written in a perfect Register of all your misdeeds when you shall see him prepared to give sentence upon you against whom you have so often transgressed and the same to be your Umpire whom by so many offences you have made your enemies when not onely the Devil but even the Angels would plead against you and your own self in despight of your self be your own most sharp appeacher Oh what would you do in these dreadfull exigents when you saw the ghastly Dragon and huge gulph of hell breaking out with most fearfull flames when you heard the weeping wailing and gnashing of teeth the rage of those hellish monsters the horrour of the place the terrour of the company and the eternity of all those torments Would you then think them wise that should delay in so weighty matters and idlely play away the time allotted to prevent these intolerable calamities Would you then count it secure to nurse in your own bosom so many Serpents as sins and to foster in your souls so many malicious Accusers as mortal and horrible offences Would you not think one life too little to repent in for so many and so great iniquities every one whereof were enough to throw you into those unspeakable and intolerable torments And why then alas do you not at the least devote that small remnant and surplusage of these your latter days procuring to make an atonement with God and to free your Soul and Conscience from that corruption which by your fall hath crept into it Those very eyes that behold and read this Discourse those very ears that are attentive to hear it and that very understanding that considereth and conceiveth it shall be cited as certain witnesses of these rehearsed things In your own body shall you experience these deadly Agonies and in your soul shall you feelingly find these terrible fears yea and your present estate is in danger of the deepest harms if you do not the sooner recover your self into that fold and family of Gods faithfull servants What have you gotten by being so long a customer to the world but false ware suitable to the shop of such a merchant whose traffique is toyl whose wealth is trash and whose gain is miserie What interest have you reaped that might equal your detriment in grace and virtue Or what could you find in the vale of tears that was answerable to the favour of God with loss whereof you were contented to buy it You cannot now be inveigled with the passions of youth which making a partiality of things sets no distance between counterfeit and currant for these are now worn out of force by tract of time are fallen into reproof by trial of their folly Oh let not the crazie cowardness of flesh and bloud daunt the prowess of an intelligent person who by his wisdom cannot but discern how much more cause there is and how much more needfull it is to serve God than this wicked world But if it be the ungrounded presumption of the mercy of God and the hope of his assistance at the last plunge which indeed is the ordinary lure of the devil to reclaim sinners from the pursuit of Repentance Alas that is too palpable a collusion to mislead a sound and serviceable man howsoever it may prevail with sick and ill-affected judgements who would rely upon eternal affairs upon the gliding slipperiness and running streams of our uncertain life who but one of distempered wits would offer fraud to the Discipherer of all thoughts with whom dissemble we may to our cost but to deceive him is unpossible Shall we esteem it cunning to rob the time from him and bestow it on his enemies who keepeth tale of the least minutes and will examine in the end how every moment hath been im●loyed It is a preposterous kind of ●●licie in any wise conceit to fight against God till our weapons be blunted our forces consumed our limbs impotent and our best time spent and then when we fall for faintness and have fought our ●elves almost dead to presume on his mercy Oh! no no the wounds of his most sacred body so often rubbed and renewed by our sins and every part and parcel of our bodies so divers and sundry ways abused will be then as so many whet-stones and incentives to edge and exasperate his most just revenge against us It is a strange piece of Art and a very exorbitant course when the Ship is sound the Pylot well the Marriners strong the Gale favourable and the Sea calm to lie idly at the road burning so seasonable weather And when the Ship leaketh the Pylot sick the Marriners faint the Storms boysterous and the Seas a turmoyl of outragious Surges then to launch forth hoise up sail and set out for a long voyage into a far Countrey Yet such is the skill of these evening Repenters who though in the soundness of their health and perfect use of ●heir reason they cannot resolve to cut the Cables and weigh the Anchour that with-holds them from God Nevertheless they feed themselves with a strong perswasion that when they are astonied their wits distracted the understanding dusked and the bodies and souls wracked and tormented with the throbs and gripes of a mortal sickness then forsooth they will begin to think of their weightiest matters and become sudden Saints when they are scarce able to behave themselves like reasonable creatures No no if neither the Canon Civil nor the Common Law will allow that man perished in judgement should make any Testament of his temporal substance How can he that is animated with inward garboyls of an unsetled Conscience distrained with the ringing sits of his dying flesh maimed in all his ability and circled in on every side with many and strange incumberances be thought of due discretion to dispose of his chiefest Jewel which is his Soul and to dispatch the whole mannage of all eternity and of the treasures of Heaven in so short a spurt No no they that will loyter in seed-time and begin to sow when others reap they that will riot out their health and begin to cast their accounts when they are scarce able to speak th●y that will slumber out the day and enter their journey when the light doth fail them let them blame their own folly if they die in debt and be eternal beggers and fall head-long into the lap of endless perdition Let such listen to S. Cyprians lesson Let saith he the gri●vousness of our sore be the measure of our sorrow let a deep wound have a deep and diligent cure Let no mans cont●ition be l●ss than his Crime FINIS