Selected quad for the lemma: death_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
death_n	sign_n	young_a	youth_n	23	3	7.6369	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A56385	A demonstration of the divine authority of the law of nature and of the Christian religion in two parts / by Samuel Parker ...	Parker, Samuel, 1640-1688.	1681 (1681)	Wing P458; ESTC R7508	294,777	516

distracts their thoughts There is no charm nor counsel against necessity and a terrour that is unavoidable is above the power and the relief of Philosophy and will not be vanquish't by stubborn thoughts or proud words So that it is altogether as easie to prevail with a Man to hate and abhor his own Being as to reconcile him to the thoughts of his own destruction For by the same necessity that Nature loves and desires the continuance of it self it recoils and starts back from all thoughts of its dissolution This then is upon the Epicurean Supposition a vain an useless and unreasonable advice being 't is so insuperable a contradiction to the nature of Things So that the fear of Death which is the thing I am now to represent is as certain and inexorable as Death it self and Men may as soon devest themselves of their own Natures as suppress the convulsions of this inbred passion And now when it is so incurable and yet withall so importunate and disquieting it is easie to imagine what desperately cheerfull lives those Men must live that always live under its sad and dismal apprehensions § XXII But beside this great and sovereign Antidote against the fear of Death they have several other little receits scatter'd up and down in their Writings I shall but briefly mention them because all that little force which they seem to have depends upon the former fundamental principle First say they let us be thankfull to the bounty of Nature for making our lives so long instead of repining at it for making them no longer But I say if our whole Being be at all mortal we have no reason to be at all thankfull for it and if our whole Being be worn out with this Life it is much more eligible never to have been But then say they we were admitted into Life upon this condition that we should give place to others as others have given place to us Were we so Then were we all admitted upon unacceptable terms Yes but by troubling our selves in vain we do but add one misery to another It is true but that is a fatal misery and it is as necessary to fear Death as it is to die and that is it that makes up the complaint that we are put in such a state of Being which we cannot enjoy without this continual anguish and perplexity annexed to it So that how wise or foolish a thing it is to fear Death is not at all material but whether it be unavoidable though if it be I am sure it is a very foolish thing to endeavour against it But how irksome soever Death may be yet seeing it is fatal we ought to make it as easie as we can by a voluntary compliance with it but this beside the folly that is common to all the rest that it advises to an impossibility is not so properly compliance as despair and is like the condition of a condemn'd Malefactour that goes to his Execution onely because otherwise he must be driven and whipt to it And no Man has any other comfort all his Life-time against the terrours of Death than a Thief upon the Gallows that would if it were possible counterfeit to die cheerfully because there is no remedy To the same purpose is that other advice that it is in vain to fear Death because it is natural necessary and inevitable that is because it is remediless and there lies the very agony of all our horrour that a thing so infinitely terrible should withall be so utterly unavoidable And when they tell us how strange a folly and madness it is to torment our selves with the fear of that which we are infallibly certain we can never escape they do but perswade us to the madness of despair instead of courage and resolution For how foolish or unreasonable soever this fear may be it is natural antecedent to the choice of our wills and the discretion of our understandings and so above all the rules of Prudence and prescriptions of Philosophy They can onely guide and instruct our Minds in things subject to their own election but cannot affect much less over rule the instincts of Nature In the next place we are already dead say they to so much of our Life as is past and gone so that so much as we live we die and that which we call Death is but our last Death and therefore as we fear not our Death that is past why should we that which is to come But what Child understands not the difference between Life and Death and if to live be to die notwithstanding this quibble we are troubled never the less that this new way of dying puts an end to our old way of dying and if we have been dying ever since we were born that is the thing that grieves us that we cannot be dying so for ever But Bassus Aufidius the Epicurean old Man in Seneca reconciled himself to his approaching Death with this reason because it was as absurd to fear Death as old Age which yet all Men desire to come to in that as old Age follows Youth so Death follows old Age. But if he were in good earnest satisfied it is a sign that he had lived not onely to his old Age but to his second Childhood For old Age is desirable not because it follows Youth but because it defers Death and that is it which makes it so much less valuable than Youth because it is so much nearer to Death And the Philosophers reason had been altogether as comfortable if he had preferr'd old Age before Youth because his Youth was very old it being many years since he was a young Man whereas his old Age was of a later date he having been but a little time an old Man By which device he might have proved to himself that Youth is old Age and old Age Youth Much like this is that other reasoning wherewith Gassendus himself seems so much pleased that whereas we now count our selves happy if we live to an hundred years yet if the natural course of our Life were as much shorter we should be as much satisfied with twenty and if our natural course reach't to a thousand years we should then be as much troubled to die at six hundred as now at sixty and so forward It is like all the rest of the Philosophick comforts and is so far from reconciling us to Death at any time that it is a demonstration that there is no time in which an Epicurean can or ought to be content to die and that be our lives longer or shorter yet unless they are eternal we cannot rid our selves of this importunate and intolerable evil And of the same nature is that witty saying of Seneca that a little or great circle are both equal in perfection of figure though not in quantity so is the Life of Man whether it last to twenty or to an hundred years But certainly no Man that might live to an hundred