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Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
end_n	job_n	lord_n	patience_n	2,472	5	9.2343	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A49757	Christ's power over bodily diseases Preached in several sermons on Mat. 8. 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13. And published for the instruction especially of the more ignorant people in the great dutie of preparation for sickness and death. By Edward Lawrence, M.A. minister of the gospel at Baschurch in the county of Salop.	Lawrence, Edward, 1623-1695.; Baxter, Richard, 1615-1691.	1672 (1672)	Wing L653; ESTC R223651	140,079	330

Christ So saith he 1 Cor. 15.32 I protest by your rejoycing which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord I die daily He was so acquainted with death that he made it his daily practice to put himself into a frame and posture to die and so many a Christian hath got such acquaintance with death by sickness that he lives in a continual frame and readiness to die besides his sickness makes him less fearful of men for he knows when they have killed the body they have no more that they can do they have done their worst which is no more then an ordinary disease can do and therefore as the Philosopher told the Tyrant when he threatned to kill him that a Fly could do that so Believers need not fear what men can do because they can do no more then a Fever Dropsie Consumption or any other disease can do and thus he is prepared by sickness for other afflictions End 16. To prepare them for great mercy Beloved sometimes mercies are more dangerous for Gods people then afflictions they are often worse in plenty then in poverty in credit then in disgrace more secure in health and ease then in pains and sickness This happens when our mercies are too big for our graces as when we have great credit and little humility or else when our outward mercies do most feed our inward corruptions as when riches do meet with a heart much inclined to covetousness and health and ease are given to a Christian who is apt to be idle and secure now therefore God melts his people in the Furnace of Affliction to prepare them to be vessels of mercy Hence we read Hebr. 12.11 That no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous but grievous nevertheless afterwards it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby As whilst a Childe is under the discipline of the Rod he receives the fruit of his dulness and idleness in the smarting of the Rod but afterwards he receives the fruit of his learning and education in honours and preferments So whilst Gods children are corrected with sickness and other afflictions they receive the bitter fruit of their sins of their pride frowardness security and creature-confidence c. and this is not for the present joyous but grievous but afterwards they reap the fruit of righteousness and holiness of faith fear love prayer c. and this is sweet and peaceable fruit we have a pertinent proof of this Psal 126.5 6. They that sow in tears shall reap in joy He that goeth forth and weepeth bearing precious seed shall doubtless come again with rejoycing bringing his sheaves with him As the Husbandman in a year of famine when corn is dear and seed scarce he sows he ventures it in the ground but he sows in tears he goes out with his seed weeping Ah thinks he this corn would have made so much bread for my poor wife and children or would have given so much money towards paying my rent Thus with a sad heart he sows his seed but when harvest comes and brings forth a plentiful crop then he reaps in joy and brings home his sheaves with singing shouting and rejoycing Thus it is with Gods childe in affliction as suppose in sickness his grief is great and his pains grievous yet he sows though it be in sorrow he believes in tears and hopes in tears and prays in tears well after comes the harvest of health and he reaps the fruit of faith hope and prayer and he goes about rejoycing and praising God and carrying his sheaves of mercy and comfort about with him Our Saviour speaks fully to this case Joh. 16.20 21. Ye shall be sorrowful but your sorrow shall be turned into joy A woman when she is in travel hath sorrow because her hour is come but as soon as she is delivered of the childe she remembreth no more the anguish for joy that a man is born into the world As a woman with childe when the hour of her travel is come is full of sorrow with the throws and pains of her travel but when she is delivered she forgets her sorrow and with a joyful heart falls a kissing and imbracing her childe So my Brethren when the hour of sickness or other affliction comes upon us we are full of sorrow with the pains and travels of our affliction but when we are delivered and see what mercy our affliction hath brought forth the joy and comfort of our graces and experiences and deliverances doth swallow up the sorrow of our affliction We have a special instance of the glorious chain of Gods wonderful Providence towards Joseph to confirm the truth in hand his afflictions lasted about thirteen years for he was seventeen years old when he visited his Brethren Gen. 37.2 and thirty years old when he was preferred in Pharaohs Court Gen. 41.46 Now in all this time his afflictions were sad he was parted from his tender father he was bought and sold after this unjustly defamed and imprisoned he was put like a Rogue in irons Psal 105.18 his afflictions were so great that the afflictions of Gods people were long after and ever will be to the end of the world called the afflictions of Joseph Amos 6.6 yet he was after all this raised up in great mercie and was made a blessed instrument to save the Church and Israel of God from perishing with famine We have another instance in Job I shall say no more of him but onely apply to his afflictions what the Apostle saith of his patience Ye have heard of the afflictions of Job and have seen the end of the Lord for as we read Job 42.12 The Lord blessed the latter end of Job David upon this ground incouraged himself in his afflictions because he believed a good issue out of them Psal 71.20 21. Thou which hast shewed me great and sore troubles shalt quicken me again and shalt bring me up again from the depths of the earth Thou shalt increase my greatness and comfort me on every side Consider further that sickness when sanctified exceedingly fits a man both for Spiritual and Temporal mercies for then a man comes out of sickness as one who is raised from the grave and so he is filled with the thoughts of death and eternity and this is a frame of heart which gives a kindly relish to all spiritual mercies this makes him taste God and Christ to be exceeding gracious in the likeness and enjoyment of whom he sees himself blessed and satisfied through all eternity And this also fits him for Temporal mercies for it teacheth him to use friends lands food and all his temporal injoyments for eternity he hereby learns to turn his treasures in earth into treasures in heaven This makes him at the will of God to leave father and mother and lands and life knowing that he shall receive the comfort of all in another world so he cheerfully gives to Christ in his members

to resist or remove these because the irresistible Arm and Power of God works in them and therefore he may cry in his sickness Help ●riends help riches help honours But if God do not withdraw his anger the proud helpers stoop under him Job 9.13 The places of the world are called slippery places Psal 73.18 and they that know what God is and what sin and what the creature is know by the causes the slipperiness of them and see you sliding down as fast as you are rising up And tell me you great men of the earth where is the place which you can name and say Here I can stand and cannot slip into hell I tell you there are standers by can see your magnificent buildings scituated on the borders of hell your beds made at the very mouth of hell your tables spread over the pit of hell your horses prancing with you and Coaches ratling with you at the very edge and brink of hell Ah great vanities where-ever you are the mouth of hell is gaping upon you and there are thousands of diseases and deaths to loose you in We may hence then conclude with David Psal 62.9 That men of high degree are a lye and vanity and if we weigh nothing in the balance with them they will prove lighter then nothing and vanity Thirdly The vanity of strong men Solomon tells us Prov. 20.29 The glory of young men is their strength and men are apt to be very proud of their strength that they can leap and lift and run and wrestle and fight and excel others in bodily exercises But what is all this strength when God comes upon thee by sickness and with his strong hand opposeth himself against thee Job 30 21. Thy bones are now full of marrow and strength but when a disease comes thy strength will be dried up like a Potsheard or pitcher baked and burnt in the fire Psal 22.15 therefore when thy heart is lifted up in the sense of thy bodily strength consider Hast thou an arm like God or art thou stronger then he canst thou fight with a Fever or wrestle with the Falling sickness or out-run a Consumption No no this conflict will prove like that of Jobs with the Leviathan to teach thee to remember the battel and do no more David was a man of such strength that he tells us that a bow of steel is broken by mine arms Psal 18.34 but when he came to grapple with sickness then he was so feeble and sore broken that saith he Psalm 22.14 I am poured out like water and all my bones are out of joynt Besides if thou live to it old age will creep upon thee shortly and then the keepers of the house viz. the hands and arms will tremble and the strong men viz. the limbs that support thee will bow as we read● Eccles 12.13 and at last death shall devour thy strength Job 18.13 and the very worms of the earth will be too strong for thee Let not therefore the mighty man glory in his might Jer. 9.23 for as David infers from Gods wasting men with sickness Psal 39.5 Verily every man at his best estate is altogether vanity 4. To convince us of the vanity of children these indeed are sweet comforts and it is a great mercy to be instruments in Gods way of bringing such an excellent creature as a man-childe or woman-childe into the world and I have often thought that when some do take too much pleasure in a horse or in a dog as a spaniel or the like that it 's a great blessing to parents to have such objects of their delight as their own children Hence saith Job O that I were as in months past when my children were about me Job ●9 2 6. and truely though the fare be but course yet it makes it more pleasant to have these plants about the table These are indeed sweet flowers but a sickness comes and then like a Posie they wither in thy bosome so that we must conclude with Solomon Eccles 11. ult that childehood and youth is vanity Lastly of the vanity of wealth and riches Oh how bare will sicknesses and death make a man Sirs a dead corpse is but a poor thing How poor doth a rich man go out of the world when sickness and death hath stript him of all his enjoyments and then as he came naked out of his mothers womb so naked must he return Job 1.21 Eccles 5.15 1 Tim. 6.7 look on the world with your hearts filled with the thoughts of sickness and death and then you will see the vanity of it look on thy self as stretcht on a bed of languishing see thy self lying in a Coffin or in a Grave or standing before the judgement-seat of Christ and then see how all the riches of the world appear before thee If a man look on his stately house and buildings what a pleasant dream is he in to see a sweet scituation wholesome air convenient rooms c. but let him see death coming up into the windows and then what pleasure hath he in his house after him when the number of his months is cut off in the midst So when a man is feeding himself with the pleasant thoughts of a feast let him remember that death is in the Pot and that death stands between the cup and the lip and then he will not be so apt to make his belly his God like those Phil. 3.19 So when men are proud of their Pedigrees and take pleasure in reckoning up their Kindred and telling of their Families let them take in these with the rest of their Relations saying to corruption Thou art our father and to the worms You are our mothers and sisters Job 17.14 and this will shew all to be but noble dust and rich earth and great vanity So much for the second End of Christs visiting men with sickness End 3. To fill our hearts with the sence of death Sicknesses are fit means for this purpose for sickness it self is a kinde of death for death is a privation of life a separation from that which is our life And now we know we have as it were a life in food friends and estates c. and sickness parts and separates us from these it stops the passage betwixt these and a man so that the pleasure and comfort of these cannot come to the man for his disease but the man stands as it were betweeen the two worlds at the end of this world and at the beginning of the other and all creature enjoyments are shut up from him and the great things of eternity stand open before him So that what the Apostle speaks of persecution is for the same reason true of sickness 2 Cor. 4.12 Death worketh in us when sickness comes death works apace it works away your health it works away your ease it works away your stomachs it works away your strength and at last works you into your graves