Selected quad for the lemma: death_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
death_n	word_n	work_n	world_n	671	4	4.0250	3	false

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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A30854	The life of the Right Reverend Father in God, Edw. Rainbow, D.D. late Lord Bishop of Carlisle to which is added, a sermon preached at his funeral by Thomas Tully, his lordship's chaplain, and chancellor of the said diocess of Carlisle; at Dalston, April the 1st. 1684.	Banks, Jonathan.; Tully, T. (Thomas), 1620-1676.	1688 (1688)	Wing B669; ESTC R13606	38,322	158

grace and perfection of the Will Could they but secure unto us the Vnum necessarium the blessed Hopes of an immutable Felicity in the next World when we leave them behind us and bid them Adieu for ever which is the only Foundation whereupon we may build a firm peace and uninterrupted comfort I grant they were richly worth all the Care Anxiety and Toil we expend in the prosecution of them But alas they are meer Emptiness and nothing so phantastical and airy that they delude our Embraces when we think to enjoy them most As for Riches the Eye is not satisfied with them Eccles 4. 8. thô we labour and bereave our Souls of good first to procure and then to keep them and after the Poor Wretch hath spent himself in drudging for them he shall leave them in Jer. 17. 11. the midst of his days and at his end shall be a Fool. And pray what is Honour that Idol of Worldly men We know that an Idol is nothing in 1 Cor. 8. 4. the World so is Honour too too thin and too airy to yield any solid real satisfaction It puffs a man up indeed and blows him a little bigger than his Neighbour but the Timpany renders him uneasie both to himself and others and when God sends him a Thorn in the Flesh it pricks the Bladder and the gawdy Bubble vanisheth This is Pharaoh and all his multitude Ezek. 31. 18. And as for Pleasures such I mean as the Voluptuary calls so why grant the Epicure which yet he rarely meets with a lucky concurrence of all that can possibly advance a delight the Spirits are presently exalted into a Rapture and so the goodly Transport dies in a moment leaving Penitential Nature to repair the damage and Prodigal expence of a short Extravagance What profit then hath he that hath Eccl. 5. 16. laboured for the Wind So little Satisfaction can the Creatures afford which themselves groan and travel in pain under the bondage of Vanity the primitive Curse of Sin. Indeed had Man been created like the Angels in Heaven all Soul and Spirit and not tyed to the cumbersom luggage of a Body he had then been free from all the Troubles and Calamities which attend a Mortal State. But since we are doom'd to dwell in these Houses of Clay whose foundation is in the dust Every man in his best Estate is altogether Vanity And yet while we do Sojourn in these tottering Tabernacles the Natural Respect we bear to the Noble Guest that lodges in them puts us to a vast expence and trouble in Repairing the Decays and patching up the Ruines of them This indeed is but good Husbandry But when I observe the prodigal and luxurious Ornament some bestow upon this mean Cottage I can hardly hold from asking them Socrates his Question What do you mean to make your Prison so strong And yet when they have done all the Tenure of them is but for life under an Arbitrary Lord and how soon that Lease may expire we none of us know perhaps this Night may our Souls be required of us However at the furthest the Age of Man is threescore years and ten or if he Psal 90. 10. come to fourscore years yet is his strength then but labour and sorrow so soon passeth it away and we are gone Thus much concerning the Blessedness of their Estate who dye in the Lord in their being delivered from the Toyl and Fatigue the Emptiness and Dissatisfaction of things below The second and last Topic I purposed to shew it from was that positive and superabundant satisfaction that glorious recompence of Reward which they shall meet with in another World couched in these words and their works do follow them When Man apostatized from the Allegiance he owed his Maker he fell under the Power and Dominion of Sin and Sin delivered over the Captive Rebel to the Bondage and Tyranny of Death which gnawed revengfully upon his Flesh in the Grave and tortured his polluted Soul upon the Eternal Rack of Anguish and Despair in Hell Hell originally prepared for the Arch-Rebel of Heaven the great Leviathan of Sin and his Accursed Train but now become the common Gaol of Men and Devils Such a Prince of Terrors is Death when arm'd with the poysonous Sting of Sin. But the Captain of our Salvation has conquered Death and disarm'd it of that power it had got over us by Sin. See how the Apostle triumphs over it in the Lesson appointed for this Solemnity O Death 1 Cor. 1● 55 56. where is thy Sting O Grave where is thy Victory The Sting of Death is Sin and the strength of Sin is the Law i. e. There is nothing makes Death like a Serpent able to hurt us but Sin without which the Grave is but a Bed wherein we take a long Lethargic Sleep And that which impowers Sin to do us mischief is the Law which prohibits it and consequently involves us in the Curse due to our Guilt But thanks be to God who giveth us Ver. 5● the Victory thrô our Lord Jesus Christ Blessed be the Father of Mercies who by what Christ hath ●one for us hath gotten us the Victory over Sin and by this happy Conquest has made Death only a Silent passage to a glorious Immortality where they who dye in the Lord shall for ever for ever enjoy such Divine Transports of Soul 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which it is not lawful for a man to utter 2 Cor. 12. 4. said the Eloquent S. Paul when the over flowing sense of them rapt him into Extasie Blessed Souls which always behold the Face of God in whose presence is fulness of Joy for evermore A sight even a bare sight able to transform us into his own likeness and make our Faces like the face of Moses too bright and dazling for any mortal Eye to look upon We shall be like him for we shall see him as he is 1 Joh. 3. 2. Blessed are those that-stand before the Lamb of God in his Throne of Glory that are admitted into the Society of the Cherubims and Seraphims those sprightly Choiristers of Heaven where nothing is heard but the voice of Joy and Gladness There 's no Sin to stain their white Robes of Purity or eclipse the glorious Emanations of Light which they receive from the Sun of Righteousness no Jealousies or Fears to disturb their Enjoyments neither can any imperfection taint that state where God shall be all in all 1 Cor. 15. 28. Surely now the Blessedness of dying in the Lord is so ravishing a Contemplation as even to make S. Johns Wish the language of all our Souls Come Lord Jesus come Rev. 22. 20 quiokly And indeed the happiness of our future Life is not fully and sensibly revealed unto us but seems on purpose to be hid with Christ in Col. 3. 3. God that we might not be too restless and impatient under the burden of Mortality

longer than the Aegyptian Pyramids have continued the memory of their ambitious and vainglorious Founders Dr. Rainbow listned with some pleasure to that Motion of the good Archbishop as being desirous to be freed from the Inquietudes which his legal Dispute with his Metropolitan in the above-mentioned Case of Dilapidations did create him But herein he met with too potent an Adversary to be successful a great Lady with whom he had formerly had some acquaintance and a just respect But when she had forfeited his Esteem and that of all good Men by the prostitution of her Honour our good Bishop did not then think himself obliged notwithstanding her greater Quality to pay her those Regards he had formerly done And when she after that offered him Civilities he was so far from laying hold on such opportunities to advance his Fortunes by her mediation that he declined her very Company contemning the most innocent Favours of such a Person who had forgotten her Noble practices in the addition of new Titles and those purchased at a dear rate with the loss of her Fame This slight from our pious Prelate the Lady so highly resented that partly out of particular Pique and partly out of a design to prefer an Uncle of hers to the Bishoprick of Lincoln thò far unfit to be placed in so much Light she hindered the Translation of Dr. Rainbow thither Albeit the pious Archbishop so far prevailed over that Ladies Interest as to get an Irish Bishop designed before for Carlisle and with the thoughts whereof he had been well enough contented to be placed in the stead of that Ladies Uncle who was thereby gently laid aside Our Prelate was not much displeas'd at this turn of Assairs thò he had wished the contrary for the above-mentioned Reason to which another might be added That the Bishop of Lincoln's Palace at Bugden was so situated as to be near Cambridge and not far distant from London in which respect he could not have wished to have been better fixed than there for the enjoyment of his Relations and intimate Acquaintance yet when he first considered in his cooler by whose interest he was frustrated of his expectations and that the Bishoprick of Lincoln besides its vast extent which still increased the Cure of Souls and consequently made that greater burthen ballance the greater Revenue it had as he thought a greater inconvenience that that Revenue superior to the other of Carlisle which notwithstanding was far from tempting our Prelate to a removal to Lincoln consisted much in Pensions from the Clergy so that he used to say That that Bishop was maintained out of the poor Clergy mans Mouths Dr. Edward Rainbow had continued nigh Twenty years in the exercise of his Episcopal Function thô often indisposed and especially in his later years with the Stone and the Gout two Diseases of so acute a pain that they would not only pose the patience or rather pretended apathy of the proudest Stoical Philosopher but put even a Christian one to fly from Second Causes to the First of all for his support under that torment more cruel than the dispatching and devouring Flames He had been Bishop I say so long when in March 1683. his Pains occasioned as was supposed by the Gout in the Stomach increased and the more they augmented the more did our Pious Bishop apply himself to the Physician of Souls as looking upon the Bodily health to be in a declining condition albeit to preserve it he neglected not to consult Physicians for the Body too but in vain When he was therefore ascertained that Death was approaching him with how much chearfulness and with what a true Christian Magnanimity did he look the King of Terrors in the Face He prepared to receive him not as an Enemy but as a welcom Friend who was to conduct him out of this Vale of Tears into the Mansions of Eternal Joy far above all the Regions of Instability He saw his Course was almost finished and he longed to be at the Goal During this his last Sickness not one idle or impertinent word fell from him He had in his Life-time before this last Arrest of his Body by Distempers learned a perfect resignation of himself to the Divine Will and Pleasure of Almighty God and therefore received the approaches of Death with that humble submission to the Divine Will and with that calmness and serenity of mind which are not often found but in Persons of a Primitive Piety He had indeed begged of God that he might over-live Lady-day because it would much conduce to the Prosit of his then Consort and since Mournful Widow And this seems to have been granted to him since he survived the Return of that time no more than one day Another Petition he also made That his Reason and Senses might continue to the last moment of his Life which was also granted evidencing thereby That he was no mean Favourite in the High Court of Heaven For he lived till Wednesday March 26. 1684. in the Evening and yet did he not mispend his precious Hours His care for Secular concerns which was never so great as to merit the Title of Fondness was now taken off by a more pressing and laudable one and that which was to be entertained in the preparation for and contemplation of a Future and Eternal state Hence the last Moments wherein he enjoyed the use of his Tongue were spent in a most Pious manner Prudent Counsel to those that were about him Holy Meditations upon his own Condition at that time fervent Prayers and Supplications to the King of Mercy were the happy employments of his Heavenly Soul and all these performed with so much zeal and fervour that it seem'd already to be upon the Wing towards Heaven Towards Even on Wednesday above-mentioned being got into Bed and finding himself very weak he called for Prayers which being concluded and observing his Speech to fail he spake these Words to the Company which were then with him It hath pleased God to take away my Speech and I am heavy and dull I desire you all to Pray for me That God would assist me with his Grace After this he lay quietly and slumbred sometimes till Eleven a Clock at Night when a starting Fit which formerly in his Sickness had troubled him at times seiz'd him sharply for some time then he lay quietly a while thô sensible as might be perceived to the last and so breathed out his last Breath yielding up his Spirit to God the Auth●●● of it and leaving all the Spectators of this his happy End dissolv'd in Tears at this long Separation in going to inherit I hope a Crown of Glory which God hath prepared for all them which unfeignedly love and sincerely serve him Thus dy'd that Right Reverend and Pious Prelate Dr. Edward Rainbow late Bishop of Carlisle about Eleven of the Clock at Night on Wednesday March 26. 1684. at the Age of near Seventy six years and was

of being Interr'd among the meanest of those that own the same common Saviour and Redeemer will testifie to all Posterity As for the Pageantry of Funeral Pomp and the Artificial voice of Monuments he looked not upon them as Ensigns of Honour but rather as Trophies erected by Death in memory of that fatal Victory Sin got over us in the Garden of Eden when we became like the Beasts that perish But thô his Merit and Vertue do loudly call for all the Justice Oratory can do them yet I dread to disturb his Sacred rest by prophaning the Religion of his last peremptory dying Command that I should to express my self in his own words be very sparing in any Character of him But yet the Modesty of the dead must not rob the living of the comfortable and happy Influence the manner of his death may have upon every one that hears it My Text leads me directly to that And indeed his was such a Ravishment to all that beheld it that their Hearts grew warm within them ready to break out into that pathetic Expression of the Apostle Let us also go that we Joh. 11. 16. may die with him And whenever thou O God the Lord to whom belong the Issues of Life and Death shalt call us to follow him O let us die the death of this righteous person Num. 23. 10. and let our last end be like his 'T was admirable to observe with what submissive Humility and chearful Devotion he received his last Sickness as the Messenger of Death How steadily he maintained a Divine temper of Mind without the impertinent and vain interruption of Secular Concerns vigorous Ejaculations fervent Prayers holy Meditation seasonable prudent and pious Advice were the constant Employment of his heavenly Soul till his weak and languishing Voice concluded the Period of his life with this pious and submissive Expression God has now taken from me the use of my Tongue but I desire you all to employ yours in Prayers to him for me This sweet disposition of Spirit was so pleasing to God that he therefore seemed to dissolve his earthly Tabernacle without either pain or sickness on purpose that the Troubles of a Body might not interrupt the Calmness and Serenity of his Soul. Thus he lived Copying out through the whole tenor and series of his Actions the Noble draught St. Paul has left of a good Bishop 1 Tim. 3. adorning his Sacred Function with the glorious variety of all those Graces which qualifie the Man of God to bear the Character of Ambassador from Heaven And thus he died in the Lord. Is not he then blessed Yea saith the Spirit And this leads me in the second place to shew wherein the blessedness of that Estate consists And First In being delivered from the toyl and fatigue the emptiness and dissatisfaction of things below To read the many Noble Discourses the Heathen Philosophers have transmitted to Posterity of the emptiness and insignificancy of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the outward enjoyments of Life those Toys and Bables upon which we fool away the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the precious time God has put into our hands to secure unto our Selves a blessed Eternity were sufficient to give any thinking man an Eternal disgust against them So little happiness could those refined Wits and great Masters of Reason find in the fluttering Pomp of temporal Grandure But if you are not satisfied with the Authority of the Heathen thô herein they uttered the genuine Oracles of Nature why then let us refer the Determination of the Point to Solomon a person peculiarly qualified to be Judge in the Case both in respect of the Excellent Spirit of Wisdom that was in him and because he is one that stuck not to gratifie his Curiosity in trying all Experiments of that Nature for he gave his heart Eccl. 1. 17. to know madness and folly as well as wisdom And what was the result of all Why after this glorious and potent Monarch had made Silver in Jerusalem as Stones for abundance and 1 King. 10. 27. 1 King. 11. 3. had taken him a thousand Wives and Concubines erected him Magnificent Buildings planted him delicious Vineyards fruitful Orchards pleasant Gardens adorn'd with Lillies more splendidly arrayed than he himself in all his glory after he had gotten him great Possessions Numerous choice of Men Singers and Women Singers and the delights of the Sons of Men and denied himself nothing that his Eyes desired nor withheld his heart from any Joy and having thus contracted unto himself an Epitomy of the Worlds glory he might well ask What can the man do that cometh after the King yet this King confesseth that when he had looked on all the works that his Eccl. 2. from ver 1. to ver 13. hands had wrought and on the labour that he had laboured to do behold all was vanity and vexation of Spirit and there was no profit under the Sun. Believe it if Solomon whom both Nature and Art so highly conspired to divert and please yet Nauseated all as Vanity 't were but common Prudence in us to set our Hearts at rest who have neither the thousandth part of Solomons Grandeur nor of his Wit neither to improve the small stock we have to the best advantage Yet say we had all the Kingdoms of the World and the glory of them as they were most artificially drawn to the life in a tempting Landskip presented by Satan to our Saviours Imagination yet since all that is in the World is but either the lust of the flesh the lust of the eyes or the pride of life i. e. Pleasure Riches and Honour as we are told by S. John who liv'd long enough in the World to know what it afforded 'T is the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Grand Fundamental Error and folly of our whole lives to look for any happiness in the Enjoyment of them Human Beatitude consists in the gratification of those Faculties which make Man i. e. Intellect and Will the perfective qualifications of which are Truth in the Understanding and Rectitude or Holiness in the Will. Now could any of the fore-mentioned Enjoyments make a man either more Wise or more Vertuous than his Neighbour Could they secure us from being impos'd upon by false Notions Ignorance and Error and Enlighten the darkness of our Minds with clear Conceptions of Truth that Secret of the Most High GOD with certain knowledge of the admirable Works of Nature and GOD the Mysterious Author of them or with Prudence in the rational Conduct of our Actions which would be the Glory and Ornament of our Understanding Could they redeem us from the shameful Captivity of sordid Appetites and Vile Affections which like Rebel Vassals dethrone the Sovereign Goodness that should Reign within us Could they restore again that generous Magnanimity Temperance Justice and Universal Complacency in what is good and honourable to its Empire in the Soul which would be the

nor break the Prison of our Bodies to redeem our Souls into the glorious liberty of the Sons of God. Dii coelant homines ut vivere durent quam sit dulce Mori So then the same blessed Providence of God which in mercy to his Church continued our Departed Father so long among us has now in mercy to himself translated him to the Church Triumphant and exchanged his Mitre for a Crown for a far more exceeding and eternal weight of Glory And he who turn'd many to Righteousness now shines as the Stars for ever and ever Thus I have done with the Doctrin of my Text and shall only beg your patience for a short Practical Inference or two and then you shall see this Right Reverend Prelate pay his last Debt to the Law Dust thou art and unto Dust thou shalt Gen. 3. 19. return The first Inference shall be for such as are more particularly concern'd in the Loss of a great and worthy Friend a dear and kind Relation which I draw from the Consideration of the blessed Estate of those that are departed in the Lord And 't is this in the Apostles words that ye sorrow not as others 1 Thess 4. 13. which have no hope Were we Heathens and looked upon Death as the Annihilation of our Souls or Sadducees who deny that there is Luke 20. 27. any Resurrection or Papists who dream of a frightful place called Purgatory we might then justly either bewail the utter perishing of the Dead or the Misery of their State. But since we believe the Spirit that they are blessed in resting from their labours and that their works follow them what reason have we to lament the End of that Life which is the Period of our Misery and the beginning of a happy Eternity Ay but said the Jews when our Saviour wept over the Sepulchre of his Friend Lazarus See how he Joh. 11. 36. loved him Alas they mistook the cause of our Saviours Tears which flowed only from his Compassion to poor Lazarus who was now again to lanch into the deep after he had weathered the Harbour where his Soul was at Rest 'T is like indeed we would have been glad to have enjoyed him longer he was so kind a Friend but is it not preposterous to commemorate the kindness of a Friend with so high an Argument of Ill nature as to repine at his being happy sooner than we expected God was more merciful to him than it seems we should have been that would have kept him longer out of Abraham's Bosom only that we might have hugged him in our own Could he but look down as low as us he would certainly say Daughters of Jerusalem weep not for me but weep for your selves I am comforted having received the Wages of my Labours in the Evening of my days but you are tormented that have the heat and burden of the day to bear Wherefore comfort one another with 1 Thess 4. 18. these words The other Inference is the common concern of all that hear me taken from the Consideration of the toil and labour of this World viz. to wean us from too passionate love of it 'T is so Childish an Infirmity to doat upon Shadows and catch at them that methinks we should blush when we are become men not to have put away such Childish things but still to walk on in a vain shadow and disquiet our selves in vain But thô we have all of us sufficiently experienced the Cheats and disappointments of a false uneasie World yet the Magnetism of the Earth does so powerfully attract our Affections that thô we live long and see not the Grave yet we are apt to complain with Theophrastus of the shortness of our days and are still crying O spare me a little as if we were in love with impotence and pains and loath to retire to the only place where the weary be at rest But if all Arguments drawn from the Vanity of what we pursue be ineffectual to convince us of the folly of it yet certainly 't is a Perfidiousness below the Ingenuous Spirit of a Christian basely to Espouse his Soul to what he most solemnly renounced in his Baptism That were equally our Sin in prevaricating with God who will not be mocked and our Misery too in meanly placing our Affections upon the Sordid things below that bear no proportion to the Appetites of a Rational Agent because they are too capacious and sublime ever to be satisfied with any thing less than the full Display of GOD himself in the glory of all his Attributes But this I say Brethren the time is 1 Cor. 7. 29. short it remaineth that both they that weep be as thô they wept not and they that buy as thô they possessed not and they that use this World as not abusing it for the fashion of this World passeth away And I pray God give us Grace so to pass thrô things Temporal that we finally lose not things Eternal for the sake of Jesus Christ who is the Resurrection and the Life To whom with the Father and the Eternal Spirit of Grace be ascribed all Power Glory and Praise for Ever and Ever Amen FINIS