Selected quad for the lemma: death_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
death_n	wont_a	word_n	world_n	24	3	3.5864	3	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A54829	A collection of sermons upon several occasions by Thomas Pierce ...	Pierce, Thomas, 1622-1691.	1671 (1671)	Wing P2167; ESTC R33403	232,532	509

perfume his Name too that having been charged with a debt whether by his Fathers last will and testament or by the condition of the times or by both together he was ever in some pain till he had paid that debt or at least had made provision for it because until he had don justice he knew he could not so well shew works of mercy and that was doubtless a pregnant token of walking humbly with his God The three grand Duties which God requires in the sixth Chapter of Micah at the ninth verse The end of Christs coming into the world was to make us live soberly righteously and godly in this present world Tit. 2. 13. the first implying our whole duty towards our selves the second towards our neighbour the third towards our God That extraordinary person of whom I speak doth seem to me as well as others to have reached those ends He was so eminently sober that I believe he was never known to have sinn'd against his own body in any kind so eminently righteous that as I said he was in pain till he had rendred to every man his due Being so sober and so righteous he is inferred to have been so godly too as to have liv'd in opposition to those professors of Christianity who having a form only of godliness deny the power of it for give me leave to tell you what is not every day consider'd The most material part of godliness is moral honesty Nor was there any thing more conspicuous in the holy life of our blessed Lord. The second Table is the touchstone of our obedience unto the first And to apply what I say unto the honourable person of whom I speak we may conclude him to have lived the life of faith because we find him to have dyed the death of the righteous To pass on therefore towards his death as the fittest transition unto his burial I am enabled to say of him by such as were eye and ear witnesses that he abundantly injoyed that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that happy calmness of death which the Emperour Augustus was wont to pray for I say he injoy'd it in both acceptions of the word For first however he was sick of a burning Feaver which carried him up like Elias in a fiery Chariot yet he had this rare happiness which is the priviledge but of few that he even i●joyed his whole disease without the least taint of deliration That knot of union betwixt his body and his soul was not violently broken but very leasurely untied they having parted like two friends not by a rude falling out but a loving farewell Thus was his Euthanasia in the first acception of the word But he had it much more as to the second For Two things there are which are wont to make death terrible The first is suddenness the second sin He was so arm'd against the first that he did not only take care for the setting his outward house in order that nothing in this world might trash his flight towards a better but also sent for the Divine to imp the wings of his devotion and farther told his Physician that God had sent him his summons so well was he arm'd against the first of those Phobera and that by the help of our English Litany which prompts us to pray against sudden death and which he commanded one of his servants to assist him with upon his death-bed bestowing upon it when he had don a great deal of holy admiration Again so well was he prepared against the second that for the tenderness of his conscience and his deep resentment of all his sins those of the times more especially in which he deplored his unhappiness that he had had a great share till God was pleas'd in much mercy to shew him that errour of his judgment by which the errour of his practice was bred and cherish'd Next for his hatred of himself in remembrance of them though we may say that in comparison with many others alive and dead he had kept himself unspotted from the world Then for his stedfast resolutions of better life of making ample satisfaction for every ill that he had don and so of bringing forth fruits worthy of repentance if God should be pleas'd to inlarge his time and last of all for his sollicitude that all his family might live in the fear of God and redeem those opportunities which he seem'd unto himself to have sometimes lost or neglected I say in all these respects he appears to me as well as to others a more than ordinary Example But some may say that sick persons are ever sorry for their sins but it is many time a sorrow squeez'd out by sickness And as soon as they recover they do relaps too To which I say that though 't is often so in others yet in this exemplary Christian it could not be so For First it was a mark of his sincerity that he look'd upon his failings as through a Microscope which made them seem nearer and very much greater than they were He warn'd all those who stood about his sick bed to beware of those sins which the world calls little and of the n●-little sins which the world calls none yea from the very least appearances and opportunities of sin It was his own expression that all the sins of his former life did even kick in his very face yet he remembred the labourer who went late into the Vineyard and was rewarded He also made some reflections upon the thief on the cross that his faith might steer an even course betwixt the Scylla of despair and the Charybdis of presumption Secondly It was another good token of his sincerity that he was not meerly a death-bed penitent whose repentance too too often is but a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a sorrow according to the world but as divers persons can witness he began the great work in his time of health so as his sickness did but declare his having been a new creature by change of mind and that he did not fall back but press forwards towards the mark and persevere in so doing unto the end Thirdly 'T was another mark of his sincerity that he insisted on the nature of true repentance which still importeth an amendment and reformation of life Nor had he a willingness to recover his former health unless to the end he might demonstrate his ren●vation by that carefulness that fear that indignation that vehement desire that zeal yea that revenge which S. Paul hath recorded as the effects of a godly sorrow in his Corinthians Abhorring and deploring those desperate notions of Repentance which the world is so commonly mistaken in Fourthly 'T was a comfortable token of his sincerity that he was obstinate in his Prayers against the precept of his Physician and resolv'd to pour out his soul though to the prejudice of his body As if he were piously