Selected quad for the lemma: heaven_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
heaven_n	aaron_n	adam_n	earth_n	19	3	5.1375	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A48777	The death of God's Moses's [sic] considered being the substance of a sermon preached at the funeral of Mr. Francis Johnson, minister of the gospel, sometimes fellow of All-Souls, and afterwards Master of University Colledge in Oxford, who died in London, October the 9th. 1677 / by J. Ll.	J. Ll.	1678 (1678)	Wing L2617A; ESTC R42135	17,380	24

succeeding Ministers of the Gospel which is one of our proper concerns to consider at this time and therefore from the notice God takes of the Death of Moses we also have taken notice of the death of his Successors and have observed that his Moseses dye But 2. Further to explain the Text and the Doctrine I shall describe Moses and prove to you that he was God's Servant and I do both these 1. By some of his actions particularly as 1. The Series of Miracles which by the Authority and Command of God he wrought in Opposition to the Aegyptians and in Defence of the Israelites Exod. 4.16 to whom as well as to Aaron he was instead of God he had the command of Heaven and the Water and Earth and the Meteors of the Air and therein as well as in other things was a clear Type of our blessed Saviour The Wind and the Sea obeyed him and seemed to have succeeded or rather exceeded Adam in his Original Power The Animals come at his Call to infest the Egyptians march in Battalia to Pharaoh's Court conquer and force him to yield and surrender without any more words upon the Kings refusal he sends an army of Sensitives to subdue him as he after victualed the Israelites with a regiment of Quails and a shower of Manna Exo. 16. He had the disposal of the King of Terrors killed and saved alive whom and what he pleased and yet even he maugre this strange authority he had over must be subject to the Empire and feel the stroke of death This great Moses also died 2. He conquered Amalek for the Israelites and yet himself used no weapon nor no hostility Ex. 11. 13. when the lifting up of his hands did more injure the Amalekites and more befriend the Israelites than the lifting up of Joshua's and his armies and there was as much fear of the falling of Moses his hand as there was of the hosts of Israel and because his hands were steady therefore Joshua discomfited Amalek and his people 12 13 v. yet for all this great service he did God and his Church he was not exempted from mortality this so triumphant conqueror and so select a Servant of God is dead 3. He fasted fourty days and fourty nights and so typified our blessed Lord whose meat and drink was to receive and do his Fathers will and one would think having lived so long notwithstanding the decayableness of nature without continued sustenance he would prove for ever after as some Jewish Rabbies fancy he did death-proof and immortal but no it was appointed also for him to dye 4. He wrote by the inspiration of God the beginning the first five Books of the holy Scriptures if they hear not Moses Luk. 16.31 says our Saviour and the Apostle when Moses is read 2 Cor. 3.15 that is that part of the Scripture which was written by him One of the Fathers seems to understand by the five words of the Apostle in the 1 Cor. 14.19 the five Books of Moses as if he were preferring the preaching the necessary injunctions of the law before the miraculous gift of tongues Moses some think was born A. M. 2373. and wrote before Homer the first Grecian writer 540 years before Sanconiathan the first Phenician writer 200 years though in Phenicia some I suppose falsly conjecture letters were first found out He was the first man the Holy Ghost ever inspired in writing yet and though he ever lives in those writings he must die 2. The second way I proposed to describe Moses and prove him the servant of God was by the Characters the Scriptures give of him and we find in the Word of God that 1. He was a man of prayer an Israelite indeed that always conquered men and prevailed with God had even what he would of him and in some sense reversed the decrees of Heaven Numb 32.10 11 14. So powerful was he in prayer that when God absolutely and peremptorily designs the ruine of a people he makes it appear by this Argument that Moses Jer. 15.1 if he were praying for them should not be able to retrieve them q. d. he who once did strangely pray my mind toward this people should now fail to do it And what a strange spirit of prayer had this second Moses whose departure from us hath brought us here this day what an unheard of fluency of tears word and matter would he altogether pour upon his hearers how would the Rhetorick of his boyling affections and most serious earnestness disturb and yet greatly recommend the oratory of his words have you not seen rivers of tears running down his eyes when he hath been confessing and praying for you with what brokenness of spirit with what self-abhorrency and with what deep reverence would he speak to God 2. Moses was a man of learning which he imployed for God Acts 22. he was versed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians which it is likely was then couched in Hieroglyphicks if as some think they had not then the use of letters which were not then invented or at least they had them not though its possible they might have had them from the Phenicians as they from Abraham So was our Moses though he made no pompous shew of it Amongst other of his excellencies in learning he was well read in controversies particularly he was an able defender of the Truth against the growing and so much improved errors of Arminianism and his learning was the more lovely and valuable because richly enameled with modesty for as 3. Moses was a modest man who could by no means be perswaded to think himself fit for so worthy an employment as God designed him Exod. 4.10 13. so was our Moses his thoughts of himself were as little and as low as were his accomplishments great and high He was so far from blurting out his knowledge in all companies or waiting his opportunity to be guilty of ostentation as some do that with too great care he hid his eminent parts from the view of all and just like Moses as his modesty was if there was any unequalness in his graces one of his most resplendent vertues So the excess of it was his most apparent infirmity How hardly was he drawn and how difficultly tolled into that wortk which he was prompted too by his free and religious education and wherein he did far surpass and excel most of the most famed Preachers and what could be the reason of this his very injurious unwillingness to be publick what but a too modest sense I speak what I know I say a too modest sense of that unfitness which from him was always at remotest distance But to hasten we find in Scripture that 4. Lastly Moses was a very meek and patient man above all the men which were upon the face of the earth amongst the many close and unkind provocations of a stubborn and refractory people and very uncivil affronts that were put upon him by the obstinate

children of Israel we find him but once guilty of any thing like a passionate word and that was when they did abundantly deserve it at least upon Gods account and sure it could not be a sinful though it were an angry expression to call them Rebels Num. 20.2 3 4 5 10. v. who were so indeed and so plainly and notoriously rebelled against their God when they repined and murmured not against Moses and Aaron only but against him too and against him most and therefore though I know some Commentators think this one of Moses his faults for which he was excluded Canaan yet with submission I cannot think so So patient was Moses thus was the Original and just like him was our Copy Fancy a man the best of meer men who formerly was followed with continual affluences of the things of this world through the whirl of Providence brought to a condition next to poor and indigent that was the desired company of the greater and more refined sort forced to converse with the poorer and more ordinary and who governed the highest rank of men in their advances in the superior liberal Arts and Sciences and chiefest Professions compelled more indeed to divert a greater noise than by want and necessity to sit amidst the cries and clamors of children and instruct them in the Rudiments of Reading and in a word not to enumerate for it would be much too tedious and too sorrowful fancy one once encompassed with all the afflictions of Job and amongst the rest that worst than all the dins of a foolish woman perfectly endued with Jobs patience too that bears all with as great an unmovedness of mind as if in the highest Apex of prosperity and then will you but begin to think equally of his patience In short none but Moses Job and Mr. Johnson would bear what he did And thus I have done with the description of Moses and of his second We now come to shew you 3. The Reasons why Gods Moseses his Ministers die and they are these 1. They have the same causes of death with others These spiritual men have bodies that contain humors fermentable into distempers as well as others and dwell in houses of clay that are tottering and decaying as others do They are not secured by their studies nor by their employment nor by their piety from the miseries of humane nature but rather the more exposed to them as I shall shew you under the next head These Angels of Churches assume lodge in and inform material vehicles compounded of divisible parts and easie separable Elements that lie open to the wind and weather sicknesses pains and casualities and often need repair and Physick which if they miss of or prove ineffectual they take their flight and leave us they are not yet immortal but must die to be so So these Stars that shine in our firmament will not always keep above our Horizon but will at length take time to set and disappear These men of God are men penetrable by the arrows of the King of terrours not priviledged nor exempted from the common fate of mortality neither their more elevated degrees of grace their more exemplary holiness nor their continued though still ripening preparedness for heaven can perpetuate their lives on earth Their zeal for holiness their warmest affections though the flames there kindled rise never so high towards God will not preserve them from colds those small introductions to all distempers nor the coolest of their spirits in opposition to the heats of passion from burning and malignant Fevers nor the most vigorous activeness for Religion from the Gout or Palsie and though their hard hearts are never so broken they may yet meet with the painful agonies of the Stone nor groans nor sighs for sin nor prayers nor praises are any Antidotes against an infectious Air though sometimes preternaturally through the Divine Goodness they correct its malignancy Though our graces are lively and though our corruptions are mortified yet we must die 2. They have more causes of dying than others they lye more in the road of diseases dangers and death their constant studies weary their flesh and tire their spirits out of their bodies their cares and fears which powerfully wast the life are greater and more consuming than those of other employments because terminated upon the souls of men and concerned about Heaven and Hell everlasting happiness and everlasting misery Their anxious cares are that all under their charge may reach the former and their continuall fears least they fall into the latter I doubt not but when we come into another world it will be found that more Ministers have dyed of their people than of diseases the unkind and undutifull carriages the irraclamable lives and the unchristian demeanors of their hearers of their communicants these are the things that kill and destroy them The single thought that some who constantly attend their ministry are like to be damned and all their pains and labours utterly lost upon them this this breaks their sleeps and their hearts too and sends them groaning against you into another world Besides they have ordinarily more enemies than others upon every little stir and disorder every fear and jealousy every ill news and disappointment in the state they are presently sought for harassed and sometimes murdered too Every storm blows at these lights and would sain extinguish them against them are mainly levelled the plots and contrivances of Earth and Hell The Divel and his agents his diligent and industrious substitutes cheifly desiring their ruine It is no wonder then that they whom all strike at whom every one wounds and whom every thing conspires to drive out of this world at length depart and leave us 3. God in great love calls them away from the miseries of this world to secure them from the evils to come Is 57.1 He will not always suffer his Ministers to be affronted his Embassadors to be abused nor his Representatives to be rudely treated by wicked and impenitent people but mercifully recall them and usually he send in their room some severe calamity to scourge the world this therefore is no wonder that God inflicts evils upon those who think the death of his Minister none and though it may be esteemed a fanaticall fancy yet it is very certain that there is no such sure prognostick of an approaching judgment as a considerable mortality of Preachers Possibly God bids them now dye in their beds that they may not hereafter be butchered and massacred by violent cruel hands However he gives them a quietus est sends death to sing requiems to their souls kindly removs them from their cares their fears and all their pains studies to receive the reward of their pious labours Ministers dye because death is better than life thereby God fixes an eternall period to all their griefs and sorrows and renders them for ever impassible And thus I have done with the doctrinal Part I