Selected quad for the lemma: death_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
death_n	sin_n	sting_n	victory_n	14,564	5	9.4854	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A31401	Christian tranquility, or, The government of the passions of joy and grief in a sermon preached at Shenton in Leicestershire, upon the occasion of the much lamented death of that hopeful young gentleman, Mr. Francis Wollatson ... / by John Cave ...	Cave, John, d. 1690.	1685 (1685)	Wing C1580; ESTC R36287	20,948	37

upon the power of God to support and succour us in our most dejected and disconsolate Estate He is my strength and my defence therefore I shall not greatly be moved Psal 37.24 said David We must trust and hope that he can and will bring light out of the thickest darkness Give beauty for ashes the oyl of joy for mourning and the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness That he hath not only the goodness of a Father but the ability yea the Alsufficiency of a heavenly Father and is able to do more abundantly for us than we are able to conceive or hope This was our Apostle's stay and comfort in his most acute trouble He said unto me my grace is sufficient for thee 1 Cor 12.8 9 for my power is made perfect through weakness therefore instead of sinking under my infirmities very gladly will I rejoyce in them that the power of Christ may rest upon me But 3. This inordinacy of Trouble is considerable in its consequents or effects as 1. When it makes us impatient and fretful under our Afflictions as it did Jehoram Behold this evil is of the Lord why then should I wait on the Lord any longer 2 Kings 6.33 Hieremy and Jonah tho good men for the main and holy Prophets yet were very much to blame in this particular It was part of Jabez his Prayer and we would do well to put it into ours 1. Chron. 4.10 Lord keep me from evil that it may not grieve me i. e. that I may not be fretful under it or offensive by it that it may not so grieve me as to occasion my grieving of thee of thy holy and good Spirit 2. When it makes us insensible of and unthankful for those mercies which God is pleased to continue to us Our sorrow must not draw such a thick veil over our Hearts and Faces that we cannot see through it to contemplate or take notice of Gods manifold blessings which we still enjoy They are froward Children who if they may not have what they would throw away what they have and this often provokes their Parents to renew and sharpen their Corrections that they may cry for somewhat indeed If our behaviour be such towards our heavenly Father we provoke him to add to our present Afflictions the removal of our remaining Mercies Wherefore amongst a great deal of excellent consolatory advice which Photius the renowned Patriarch of Constantinople gave Patritius upon the Death of his beloved Daughter we find this agreeable to our occasion Photii Ep. 234. The Almighty Creator hath taken to himself a piece of his own work but he hath given or left more than he took and I pray God they may long be left and live to their Parent 's encreasing joy ' You are grieved for what you have lost take comfort in those that are still with you 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. Let us give thanks to God for what he hath taken from us that we may have a more sure hold of those he continues to us and that they may daily prove greater blessings and comforts 3. Our Sorrow hath an inordinate effect when it makes us unuseful in the Duties of our general and particular Callings when it renders us unserviceable to God to the King the Church to our Country and our Families But I must content my self as I hope by Gods Grace I have in some measure satisfied you to shew you only thus briefly when the tide of our Sorrow swells and rises too high either in the measure the manner or the effects thereof I shall only add a few words more in this dying part of my Discourse And I hope you will most regard what I say last to allay or abate your Trouble and that by perswading you 1. To the exercise of some proper Graces 2. To the practice of some seasonable Duties 1. To the exercise of some proper suitable Graces such as these following 1. Meekness and Humility a Sense of your own Unworthiness of your own if not ill yet undeservings Meekness meets an Affliction half way and Humility stoops as it were to take up the burden 2. Faith or dependance upon God This is a setling and a quieting Grace I had fainted unless I had believed said David Psal 27.13 Wait on the Lord and he shall strengthen thy heart Nothing gives such ease and relief under the Afflictions of this Life as a firm belief of the Joys of another A belief of Consolations hereafter proportionable to our patient Sufferings here 3. Repentance If we turn our Sorrow upon our Sins which most justly deserve it Godly sorrow will wash the wound clean and eat out the Venome and malignity of worldly grief as spiritual joy corrects the flatulency of carnal mirth 4. Charity Which as it covers Sin so it cures Sorrow the work of Righteousness which frequently in Holy Scripture is but another word for Charity or Bounty is peace and the effect of righteousness quietness and assurance for ever Isa 32.17 He that soweth righteousness shall reap a sure reward tho he sow in tears he shall reap in joy Tho we cannot profit the dead as some have imagined we may by our Alms and Oblations 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Damascen de defunctis yet we may much benefit and comfort our selves thereby When we come to die the remembrance of our bounty and charity the good deeds we have done for the house and the servants of our God will minister more comfort to our minds than all the Treasures we leave behind us upon Earth These are the Graces which especially I would advise you to exercise 2. The Duties I would recommend to you in short are 1. A diligent reading and hearing of the Word of God 2. Serious and seasonable Meditation 3. Fervent and devout Prayer 1. A diligent Attention to the Word read or preached This is my comfort in my affliction said David Psal 119.5 the King thy word hath quickned me And again Thy statutes have been my songs in the house of my pilgrimage Scripturarum lectio Vita est saith St. Ambrose There is comfort nay Life in reading the holy Scriptures Wherefore St. Basil stiles them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the common Refectory or Apothecaries Shop for fainting sick Souls There is a Salve for every Wound a Cure for every Malady And particularly the great Athanasius counselled his Friend when any sore Trouble seized him to betake himself to the reading of the 42d Psalm 2. Serious Religious Meditation is an excellent help to digest trouble And in such trouble as ours it concerns us especially to meditate upon the shortness of life and upon the certainty and unavoidableness of death or rather because I have spoke of this already of the shortness of death and the certainty of Resurrection That the dead bodies of our dear Relations are not lost but lodged in the grave That it will not be long before that which is sown in corruption shall be raised in incorruption and that part which is sown in dishonour shall be raised in glory When we stick our Herses with flowers and go forth to the grave with Rosemary it naturally suggests this meditation That the bones of our friends shall flourish again like an herb in the Prophet Isaiah's comparison In this sense Sunt sua fata sepulchris Death it self dies and Mortality is swallowed up of Life 3. The last duty and instrument of peace and comfort which I shall recommend to you is fervent and devout prayer and it is the Apostle James his Recipe Is any man afflicted let him pray as if this alone would effect the cure To be sure it is the most magisterial and soveraign Remedy it vents the tumor and breaths out the anguish of a throbbing Malady Pray then and pray again that God would sanctifie your Affliction so unto you that you may serve him chearfully here and that in his good time you may be happily gathered to your son and you to your brother as he is already gathered to his fathers and yours that when you rest stom your labour you may rest from your cares and vexations from all the sad accidents of short time from pain and sickness sorrow and sympathy weeping for your selves weeping with and for your beloved Friends that you may get above the Clouds and the Rain above the changeable Regions and enter into pure and eternal Joys that when you leave your Estates and Honours here you may be made partakers of a glorious inheritance with the Saints in light and sit down with Abraham Isaac and Jacob and the rest of the spirits of just men made perfect in the kingdom of heaven That when you see this Sun no more which sets as well as riseth you may behold everlasting day That you may enjoy a clear and an uninterrupted Tranquility a Rest not only without sorrow but without sleeping too without so much as a still interruption of your waking active delights If you thus cry to God out of your Bochim your Valley your depths of Tears and Trouble this and the other parts of holy devotion if they do not set you upon dry ground will keep your heads above water yea Comfort shall come riding to you upon the wings of your Clouds your loss shall be your gain and this lamented death your living and lasting advantage If you bury your worldly Affections with your dear deceased and blow up a fire of heavenly desire out of his ashes you your selves rise to a new life and do in a sense put off Mortality on this side the grave You have a part in the first Resurrection and shall have in the second Death that black that bloody King of terrors shall not have dominion over you The sting of death is sin the strength of sin is the Law But thanks be to God who hath given us the victory through Jesus Christ our Lord To whom with the Father and the Holy Ghost one immortal and only wise God be all Honour and Glory Power and Praise now and for ever Amen Blessed Lord who hast caused all holy Scripture to be written for our learning grant we may in such wise hear them read mark and inwardly digest them that by patience and comfort of thy holy Word we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life which thou hast given us in our Saviour Jesus Christ Amen FINIS

Raro quisquam erga sua bona satis cautus Curtius few are so cautious as they should be of the danger I may say the evil of their good things The Scripture presents us with many instances of this deficiency in good men How strangely did Hezekiah forget himself sa 39. 2. as soon as ever he was recovered from his sickness When he had his Treasury and his Cabinets silled with precious store what vanity and presumption doth he presently derive from it Job 29.18 Job confesseth he grew secure before his afflictions I said I shall die in my nest and shall multiply my days as the sand Psal 30.6 And holy David was puffed up with a vain confidence when he said in his prosperity he should never be moved Beloved such is our folly for the most part when the Sun shines we think not of a dark night and when the morning is fair we fear not a storm And therefore we are sometimes taken without our coat as it were without our shelter and defence We are apt to put the evil day far from us to rejoice as if we were exempted from the common Calamities of mankind and therefore conclude with Babel tho others be widows fatherless childless comfortless yet we shall see no soorow We over-prise these outward things and promise our selves that from them which never any found in them Hence it is that we are over-grieved when they are taken from us When the Judgment makes too great a report of these things to the Affections the Affections make too great a do about them We love our children but too well therefore when we lose them we grieve too much Quem res plus nimio delectavere secundae Mutatae quatient No man suffers Affliction with less patience than he who over joys his Comforts If Jonah had not been exceeding glad of his Gourd he had not fretted so unreasonably when it withered If we are not too fond of the Sunshine we shall better abide a cloudy weeping Sky if we rejoice as if we rejoiced not in the most agreeable society of our dearest Friends we shall be the better prepared to mourn as if we mourned not when the black day of separation comes And this leads me to the other part of the Apostles inference which was first in my thoughts and which alas is the word now most in season And therefore with your patient and devout attention I shall enlarge most upon it And they that weep as if they wept not That is They that are in heaviness by the sad mischances which Marriage brings with it by the death of husband wife children or the like troubles The Apostle doth not recommend a Stoical Apathy a senselessness or stupidity of disposition Job 6.12 Our strength is not the strength of stones nor our flesh of brass We have sense and feeling in us as men and women and therefore cannot but grieve at that which is offensive thereunto Yea it is noted as an evil temper of mind not to melt in the fire not to cry under the Rod but to be insensible of the smart and the end of our sufferings Thou hast smitten them Jer. 5.3 but they have not sorrowed To weep upon just occasions is not always an humane frailty It is sometimes a Christian Vertue Our blessed Saviour himself was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief We never read that he laughed but he sighed over Jerusalem and he wept over Lazarus And next to our own and other mens sins nothing hath a better title to our Tears than the death of men or women useful to the world and dear to our selves especially when they are taken off in the blossom of their hopes and promises of being common as well as private blessings God denounceth it as a Judgment against King Jehojachim They shall not lament for him Jer. 22.18 saying Ah my brother or ah his glory Sapient Veterum p. 22. It was the observation of the immortal Verulam Adolescentium summae spei mortem infinita commiseratio sequi solet nihil enim inter fata mortalium tam flebile est tamque potens ad misericordiam commovendam quàm virtutis flos immaturo exitu praecisus An infinite commiseration is wont to attend the Funerals of very hopeful Youths For no destiny is so lamentable so powerful to move or rather to command compassion as an untimely cropping of the flower of Vertue especially when it is our own by the nearest interest A plant of our own garden an off set of our own stock a branch of our Family yea of our selves when these 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Ancients stiled them these pieces of their parents are divided from them it makes a wide an a bleeding wound which needs an healing hand a word in season a word like precious Oyl or sovereign Balsom to asswage and souple it It needs a skilful and authoritative as well as a compassionate Physician And seeing such an one was our Apostle attend I beseech you not to me but to him admit his Advice follow his Directions and apply to your selves what he prescribes to his beloved Thessalonians For it will fit your case exactly 1 Thes 4.13 I would not have you ignorant brethren concerning them that are asleep that ye sorrow not even as others which have no hope As in the Text so here brethren And what a charm of kindness and pity is there in that expression Think that he speaks to you not only as to children of the same earthly and heavenly extraction but as to fellow-sufferers and his brethren in afflictions And that he is endeavouring to comfort you with the same consolation wherewith he himself hath been often comforted Be advised by him to think of your dear child not as dead but only as asleep not as gone from you for ever but only as gone before you to a sweet repose from labour and sorrow Lament over your dead you may as he is worthy but not with a passion unworthy of your selves unbeseeming your holy Faith Sorrow you may but as Christians not as Heathens who look not beyond this present state of being who have no commerce with the invisible world and no hope of a better life Weep but within the bounds of Reason and Religion which he calls a weeping as if you wept not That is no otherwise than beseems the occasion of your trouble Our sorrow ought to keep the Mean between neglect and excess not despising the chastning of the Lord nor on the other hand fainting much less murmuring when we are rebuked of him Sarah was the first that we find mourned for in Scripture and Abraham the first Mourner His Remains And Bishop Hall hath set down an Observation of the Hebrew Doctors upon Gen. 23.2 where this mourning is specified viz. That the Letter which is in the midst of the Original word which signifies Mourning is in all their Bibles written less than his