Selected quad for the lemma: heaven_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
heaven_n	day_n	lord_n	rest_v	6,842	5	10.0919	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A31451	The certainty of salvation to them who dye in the Lord a sermon preached at the funeral of the Right Honourable, George Lord Delamer, at Boden, in the county-palatine of Chester, September the 9th, 1684 / by Zachary Cawdrey ...	Cawdrey, Zachary, 1616-1684.	1684 (1684)	Wing C1645; ESTC R36290	20,346	38

THE CERTAINTY OF SALVATION To Them who Dye in the LORD A SERMON PREACHED At the FUNERAL of the Right Honourable GEORGE Lord DELAMER AT BODEN In the County-Palatine of CHESTER September the 9th 1684. By ZACHARY CAWDREY Rector of BARTHOMLY in the said County-Palatine of CHESTER LONDON Printed for Peter Gillworth Book-seller in New-Castle in Staffordshire and James Thursion Book-seller in Nantwich 1684. TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE AND PIOUS LADY ELIZABETH Lady DELAMER Madam THough the time allowed me to prepare for the bearing that part I sustained at the Funeral of your Honoured Lord was but short that worthy Person to whom that Province was first committed falling sick some days before the solemnizing of it yet the Deference I bare to the Memory of that Great Good Man and the hopes of being serviceable to the Glory of God and the Good of some who might be present in so numerous an Auditory prevailed with me to attempt the Discharge of it as well as I could And it seems some favourable Auditors of that plain Sermon then preached which your own Retirement through Sorrow did not permit your Honour to hear have given you that account of it that your Honour judges it may be of use and benefit to others to read to excite them to live in the Lord that they also may dye in the Lord and be eternally happy If therefore when your Honour shall have read this Discourse your self it shall appear to your pious Judgment likely to be further useful to that good end for which I preached it and your Honour now desires the publishing of it I humbly submit it to your Honours pleasure and disposal And as I shall follow it with my Prayers to God that it may prosper to the encouragement of humble and pious persons who shall read it so also shall I beg of him in whose sight the death of his Servants is precious that he will build up a lasting Monument to the Memory of your Pious Lord by causing his Lordship that now is and the rest of his Generous Off-spring always to imitate this their great Domestick Exemplar that so your Honour may still be a Naomi Ruth 1.20 and that the Remainder of your Days may be blessed in them as your many Years have been wherein you lived with your most excellent and pious Consort MADAM I am Your Honours Most humble Servant ZACHARY CAWDREY THE CERTAINTY OF SALVATION To them who dye in the Lord. REV. 14.13 And I heard a Voice from Heaven saying unto me Write Blessed are the Dead that dye in the Lord from henceforth Yea saith the Spirit that they may rest from their Labours and their Works do follow them IT is an Article of the common Creed of all Mankind that it shall be far better with pious and vertuous Persons and far worse with the vicious and ungodly after this Life than it can possibly be whilst they are in the Body For it is generally believed that this present Life is appointed by God the Supream Judge to be the time of Trial and Probation wherein Men work out for themselves either Eternal Salvation or Damnation It was such even to Adam in Paradise Now if we enquire into the Rise of this common Persuasion at least as to the first part of it about the future happiness of those who are esteemed good Men we shall find that it is not Natural Reason which in its Consequences draws Men into this Belief For Reason will easily convince a considerate person who shall set himself to weigh things seriously and wisely that Humane Nature is sunk into a state below the degree which was due to it according to the scale and distances of the Creatures from one another and is fallen from its primitive temper to affect and do things very Brutish and unbecoming a Rational Being And seeing this proneness to unseemly Actions and Affections is found to be common to all Men of all Ages and Climates or Places it cannot be reasonably conjectured how this Degeneracy of Humane Nature could have come into the World but by the Miscarriage of the first common Parents of all Mankind Besides it is plain to every Man who reflects upon his own Life that he himself hath actually sinned both frequently and heinously against the In-written Law of his own Conscience So that no Man's Reason can secure to himself that God the Righteous Judge will advance him to Bliss hereafter seeing he hath come short of the Glory of God his Maker Rom. 3.23 which ought to be the great end and design of every Man So that though Reason can evince the Immortality of the Soul and that God will judge the World in Righteousness according to their Works and consequently can prove that an Hell and state of Torments doth abide the notoriously debauched and wicked persons yet cannot Reason prove that there remains an Heaven or state of Bliss for any seeing all Men are Sinners From whence then comes it to pass that men of all Religions Heathens Mahumetans Jews and Christians have imbibed a Belief that certainly there is a Reward for the Righteous and that after this Life the Pious the Just the Loyal the Temperate the universally Kind and Obliging and who delight in all other holy and humble persons shall enter into Peace and Bliss If I be able to judge there can be no other Rise of this common Belief and Hope but the Tradition universally carried down from the first Fathers of Nations to their Posterity whom their Parents instructed that though Mankind by the Miscarriage of their first Parents was fallen from their primitive Innocency and had forfeited all Right to Happiness as well as the fallen Angels had done according to the Law and first Covenant of their Creator yet God condescended to make a New Covenant with Man in his lapsed State through the Mediation of that promised Seed of the Woman who by having his Heel bruised by suffering the Curse due to our Sin should break the Serpent's head and defeat the design of the fallen Angels who aimed at the universal destruction of all Mankind And in that Covenant God promised also through the Intercession of the promised Seed to accept graciously of the sincere though imperfect Services of Men and to reward them with an eternal Happiness So that in every Nation they that feared God and worked Righteousness should be accepted with him Act. 10.35 And this Patriarchal Creed about the efficacy of the Propitiation of the promised Seed the Christ to abolish the guilt of Sin and the prevalency of his Intercession as Mediator of the New Covenant to make accepted the Services of sincere and humble Penitents was not only carried down by Catechetical Instruction to all the Families of the Earth but they were taught also to make a Confession of that Faith and to protest that Hope by the offering of Sacrifices till the promised Seed should come to be actually offered as a Propitiation for Sin and to

suffer any thing which may promote the Knowledge Fear and Faith and Love of God and of our Lord Jesus Christ And who exercise universal Charity towards all Men even Enemies with special delight in all holy and good Men 1 Cor. 13.1 And lastly Those who make God's Favour in Christ Jesus here and Communion with him in a Vision of Peace hereafter the Inheritance and Happiness which they chuse and desire before all things both in this World and in the World to come Psal 73.25 and Gal. 6.8 These I say these penitent believing mortified devoted charitable and heavenly-minded persons are according to the Conditions of the New Covenant in Christ so as to receive from him the Benefits of Justification Peace Increase of Grace Acceptance in their Duties and Adoption and Resurrection unto Glory So then they who persevere in the Exercise of those Graces of Repentance Faith Devotedness to God's Service c. to the end of their days these dye in the Lord they dye with a Right and Title according to the terms of the New Covenant to that Crown of Glory which Christ hath purchased and as a Righteous Judge will give unto them at that day the day of death A second Term to be explain'd is this From henceforth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which is an Epocha or Date and to me seems best sixed at the death of the Saints So that the sense is They who dye in the Lord are blessed from the very Instant of their death without any suspension of their Happiness through the sleep of their Souls or on account of their passage through or stay in Purgatory or any other middle state intervening betwixt the bodily Life and the Happiness of departed holy Souls This plain sense is both agreeable to the Scriptures and seems to be the sense of the Church of England about this Text in that she appoints it to be read at the Interment of the Dead So that I shall cleave to this plain sense waving all critical Enquiries after any other though I am not ignorant that some Expositors begin this Date from the ceasing of Persecution for some time under the Emperors Trajan Antoninus or some other mild Heathen Emperors Other Expositors fix it from the renewing of Persecutions under Decius or Dioclesian or other bitter Persecutors Others again fix it from the time of ceasing Persecution under the Emperors or Rome-Heathen till the Renewal of Persecution again under Rome-Papal But though Expositors thus differ about some critical Notes of time yet they all agree that at their death the Saints are happy I shall therefore stick to that sense Thirdly I must explain what are the Labours from which they who dye in the Lord are said to rest I answer All Conditions which are burthensome to the inward or outward Man to Body or Soul are Labours Such therefore are Sickness Pain Loss Reproach Disappointment Banishments Imprisonments Tormenting Deaths Such also are those passions of Fear Anger Sorrow Envy Inordinate Desire Suspiciousness and Anxiety of Mind Such also are all Compassions and Sufferings in Soul for the Miseries of others whether our private Friends and Relations or our Country or the Church of God Add to these Christians being subject to Temptations either to sin or to doubt of God's Mercy to their Souls are Labours also I say all these both Sufferings Passions Compassions and Temptations are Labours Here therefore I shall before I come to handle the main Proposition speak a little to two other Truths here supposed and they are these First That even good Men who live in the Lord do not till they dye in the Lord rest from all their Labours Secondly That bad Men who do not live in the Lord and consequently cannot dye in the Lord such do not rest from their Labours when they dye but the bitterest of their Labours follow them even beyond the Grave First That good Men have not a Rest from their Labours on this side the Grave It is true that Faith and Patience do much correct the malignity and bitterness of their Sufferings but even the best of God's Children have their Labours here For Who can doubt but it is a labour and burthen even to a good Man to be under pining sickness and pain to be subjected to the persecutions of slanderous Tongues and Pens to be deprived of their Estates Liberty or Country Who doubts but that Anger Sorrow Fear and Anxiety of Mind are yet a greater burthen and labour if a good Man in his weakness falls under the impression of any of them So also it is no small burthen when Friends are miserable or disobliging What a great part of a good Man's heart and bowels are carried away by the loss of a dear Joseph the Imprisonment of a Simeon the Ravishment of a Dinah or Tamar the Incest of an Amnon or the Rebellion of an Absalom What a burthen of heart to good Men are their sorrows and fears for the Church of God through the divisions of Brethren and the Contentions of a Paul and Barnabas or through the Apostacies of some eminent for Profession of Godliness to either damnable Errors or rending Schisms or downright Prophaness and Debaucheries Such labours and sufferings also to a good Man are their fears and sorrows for the Land of their Nativity suffering or like to suffer through Wars Famine or Pestilence And lastly What a labour and burthen is it to a good Man to be assaulted with inward Corruptions or outward Temptations and to wrestle and combat with his spiritual Adversaries and his own Doubts Now there are few or none of these but may be put into the Inventory of most or all good Men. So that they may well say to their own Souls in the Language of the Prophet Micah 2.10 Arise ye and depart this is not your Rest for it is defiled So that no pious persons ought to reckon it a mark of God's displeasure or rejection if they suffer here and have not an Heaven upon Earth seeing all holy Men who have gone before them to Heaven were made perfect by Sufferings and so also their Sufferings may be instrumental in the hand of God's Spirit to prepare them and make them meet for the Inheritance of the Saints in Light The second Proposition here supposed is That bad Men even when they dye do not rest from their Labours They are no more free from Sufferings on this side the Grave than good Men are their Sicknesses and Pains be as sharp and vehement their Bones being full of the Iniquities of their Youth Job 12.11 their Children may be rebellious as Sennacherib had Adramelech and Sharezer or they may dye soon if they be hopeful like Jeroboam's Abijah Their Names and Reputations may be torn in pieces by their black-mouth'd Fellow-sinners and they usually are highly tormented with fears and anxiety of Mind and with rage and envy at other Men. But one of the chiefest torments of wicked Men on this side Hell