Selected quad for the lemma: knowledge_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
knowledge_n	darkness_n	light_n	shine_v	8,667	5	10.0024	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A96181	A prospect of eternity or Mans everlasting condition opened and applyed. By John Wells Master of Arts, sometimes Fellow of St. Johns Colledge in Oxford, and now Pastour of Olaves Jewry LONDON.	Wells, John, 1623-1676.	1654 (1654)	Wing W1294; Thomason E1476_3; ESTC R209527	171,333	437

never see a glimpse either of the light of the Creature or of the brightnesse of glory or of the irradiations of God himself the curtain shall be drawn between them and the least dawning of light for ever No star Diabolus princeps tenebrarum infernum qui est regnum tenebrarum tanta obfuscat caligine ut luci naturali ad eum non pateat aditus Ger. shall arise or cloud break to shed any lustre no gloworme light shall appear they shall not be blest with the dreadfull aspect of an eclipse 2. Principe tenebrarum The Prince of darknesse shall be their everlasting companion He who hath traded in the dark assaulted with dark temptations who leads to darknesse who dwels in the dark and abominates all light shall for ever be a fury to the damned And 3. Tenebris interioribus with the darknesse of mind The reprobates shall enjoy no more knowledge then what shall amplifie their torment they shall be cursed with a blindnesse of mind an ignorance of God a spirituall mist and cloud The Sun of righteousnesse shall not rise upon them nor blesse them with one beam No pleasing knowledge shall be set up in their minds No savoring discoveries or light Damnati in extrema falutaris Damnati erunt merae tenebrae 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 inopia versabuntur destituentur luce cognitionis divinae They shall not sparkle with any divine knowledge Here their understandings were filled with errataes and in eternity they shall be filled with blots I should further mention the horrours and griefs that shall perplex the damned for ever but I will no further wade in these bitter waters nor stretch the argument to a further terrour but will leave these few beacons fired to be a serious and an epidemicall caution to all prurient and unawakened sinners There is yet a third universality to amplifie the damneds misery and that is the universality of the persons tormenting And those are God who shall scourge the Reprobates by immediate executions He shall in reference to the damned not only lay claime to revenge and say Vengeance is mine but repay himself Heb. 10. 30. the interest of all his patience and longsuffering He shall be a consuming fire Heb. 12. 29. Non tantum instrumentaliter not only by employing instruments but shall strike with his own sword More particularly God shall torment the damned 1. By masking his own face and drawing the curtain between them and the beatificall vision after the Cant. 3. 1. sentence of death is past in the damned they shall never see Jesus Christ more 2. By shutting the door against them they shall not only be deprived of the sight of the bridegroom but they shall not enter into the bride-chamber the door of all happinesse Mat. 25. 12. shall be lockt everlastingly against them they shall never be made happy with the sight of an Angel of a glorified Saint it may be one that here was flesh of their flesh and bone of their bone 3. By powring contempt upon them God shall deride their tears Prov. 1. 26. reproach their cries neglect their lamentations he shall laugh at their calamity and despise their trembling feares their moans shall be his musick and their groanes his delight he bids them farewell with a Goye cursed Mat. 25. 41. and that shall be the language they shall have for ever 4. By emptying the Vials of his severe vengeance upon them for ever Wrath is terrible but vengeance is implacable God shall be powring out divine unmixt just yet dreadfull intolerable wrath upon them Rev. 14. 10. for ever wrath not allayed with any pity or mercy suspence or mitigation the least sparke of which could turn the whole world into a common flame Satan shall torment the damned he that hath been their parasite their pander their Angell of light who hath so often allured courted bribed and solicited them by soft and gainfull frequent and vigorous temptations shall be their everlasting Jaoler and executioner he shall make and keep open their wounds for ever And this is reward he shall compensate them for rejecting the commands of God forsaking Christ and slighting their souls and it may be at the suit of his temptations And Satan shall be to the Reprobates 1. A malicious enemy their pain shall be Satans pleasure their lamentation his satisfaction if he is capable of any 2. A powerfull enemy who can fetch bloud at every stroake he is a fallen Angel And one Angel could destroy 185. thousand in a night and Satans power for mischief is not abated 3. An implacable enemy whom neither Heu heu quales sunt Angeli infligendis poenis destinati quam immites truculenti Cyr. Alex. teares nor bloud can reconcile who hath no pity no bowels no relenting whom no rhetorick can soften And 4. An eternall enemy who will never be wearied with managing his executions In Satan Silla and Caesar meet chose famous Romans the one was ●alled the bloudy the other the perpetuall Dictatour Satan shall be a bloudy and a perpetuall tormentour The damned shall be their own tormentours What passion rage and frensie shall they expresse against themselves how shall they tear their own wounds In what miserable despair shall they curse their own vanity neglect sinfulnesse their wicked hearts and licentious companions and madness in refusing Christ and a Crown offered how shall they turn Devils Judases and Sauls to themselves How shall they abominate and loath themselves as the spawn of folly and fanaticall frensie Then shall their consciences lash and torture them their understandings burden them their memories cruciate them in gathering up all the parcels of their sinfull precipitancy They shall breath out revenge against none more then their own selves and with what thirst shall they desire to massacre their own souls The damned shall be tormented by their companions in misery thei● scrietches and cries and execrations how dolefully shall they sound We cannot here endure the groanes of a tormented patient whose disease wrings from him bitter lamentations how shall the Reprobates undergoe the bloudy blasphemies of the tortured miscreants The damned Homo homini lupus et homo homini daemon shall be as Wolves and Devils one to another Job in the middest of his calamity curseth the day of his birth Job 3. 1. Blasphemy yelling and cursing shall be all the musick of hell Shimei 2 Sam. 16. 7. shall finde cursing enough there The tender and delicate sinner which here could not endure the cry of an infant or the moan of an afflicted Saint in eternity shall be saluted with nothing but groans and terrible schricks to eternity And now I have done with the first part ●f the extremity of the damneds torment viz. the universality of it I now fall upon the second part the hight and exquisitenesse of it And this I shall demonstrate 1. Comparatively 2. Positively For the first The Scripture hath

of knowledge we may admire believe foretast and prepare for it but we shall not fadome or comprehend it while we are lockt in the lower room of this world Nor are there some Reasons deficient why eternity cannot be fully comprehended by us in this life Reas 1 God hath expresly said that the possessions of eternity are inconceivable so the Apostle 1 Cor. 2. 9. Neither Isa 64. 4. have entred into the heart of man the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Nilus things which God hath prepared for them that love him Those riches which are attendant upon the happinesse of the Saints they are above the computation of the most noble understanding nor can the large conjectures of the mind sound the bottom of them They are as the Apostle speaketh divitiae imperserutabiles unsearchable riches Ephes 3. 8. such riches as reason heightned with industry and grace cannot find out the value not search to the end of them And so the miseries of the wicked they transcend all imagination the most serious large and well-composed thoughts cannot suppose the extremity of them how much heat is inclosed in one spark of Gods wrath God himself to stop the proud and presumptuous thoughts of man hath himself given it in that the loves and losses of eternity are above the reach of our most superlative conceptions Can we span the heavens and give in the true dimensions of them count the stars and set down their number how many individuals they amount to or tell how many drops the vast Ocean is composed of how many waves the Sea is curled with or can we give the exact number of all the atomes that are in all the beams of the Sun And yet if all these impossibilities of knowledge fell within the verge of our understandings the mysteries of eternity were still wisedomes riddle the disgrace of all intellectuall capacities Aristotle saith Arist Ethic. that the Will can velle impossibilia will and desire impossibles which how true 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Greg. Nys that is I shall not dispute but of this I am sure and God himself hath affirmed that the understanding cannot intelligere aeternalia understand the things of eternity I speak of a full and accurate knowledge But the mind dressed with all ornaments of accumulative learning and let holinesse be the Pilot of it must strike sail when eternity is the theam of it God in this particular hath by his own word put a stop to mans curiosity That eternity cannot be fully conceived and comprehended by us doth not only arise from the mysteriousnesse and superlativenesse of that state Eccles 1. 8. the joyes and griefs of it being beyond our suppositions but likewise that we only have a superficiall knowledge of it ariseth from the weaknesse and obscurity of mans understanding Our poor purblind understandings cannot fadome such a depth This candle of the Lord Prov. 20. 27. as the wise man cals it burns in the sock et Adams fal hath put a theef in this candle and our continuall sins dampe the light of it Our intellectuals are like a star in a cloud or a taper burning De illa ineffabili laetitia mansione aeterna nunc ex parte narrantes tanto nobis evangelizavtmus tanquam si quis ex pelago maris aquae gustum digito suo potest auferre Ephrem behind the curtaines What we might have done had not Adams fall caused a perpetuall eclipse in our understandings by the interposition of it is uncertain but what a faint and fallacious knowledge our minds are now possessed with is sadly visible the light of our understandings being but as the light of a gloworme the Apostle saith 1 Cor. 13. 12. We see but through a glasse and darkely too what a dimnesse and duskishnesse surpriseth and in a catarix upon the choysest understanding So that the mind of man is masked with mistake and imperfection That eternity fals not within the view of our knowledg is not only so objectivè objectively from the transcendency of it but subjectivè subjectively from our own inability there is a wearinesse in our intellectuals Our understandings are to be considered in reference to eternity as our eye in reference to the siars that we see not those glorious Job 8. 9. bodies more clearly and according to their vaste proportion this ariseth not from any disappearance of or cloud before them but from the weaknesse and faintnesse of our sight there is an ocular inability Eternity receives the greatest cloud from our shattered knowledge Let us but consider our understandings 1. As being darke clouded and veiled with much ignorance 2. As being fallacious easie to be seduced and miscarry in their apprehensions Prov. 3 5. 3. As being imperfect falling short of that glorious sight they were created with 4. As being capable of receiving continuall shadows and being overcast with the commission of new sins and lastly as being finite and so crowded into a small room How impossible then can these darke-lanthornes guide us to the full knowledge of eternity No more then we can see the whole world uno intuitu in one view by the helpe of a perspective Indeed grace and industry are the 2 Pet. 3. 18. best cure for our weak and faint understandings but while grace here is of so low a stature how can knowledge be gigantique grace and knowledge alwayes bearing a proportion God leaves eternity not fully visible here to excite and inflame grace in a believer that faith and love might shine in a greater flourish The be 1 Joh. 3. 2. liever in this life shall never know how great the Summer of his felicity shall be there is more behind the curtain then that Saint which is most acquainted with God can discern Those that dig in a mine their hopes of wealth Bona regni caelestis dicere vel cogitare vel intelligere ut sunt nullus potest carne vestitus multo et majora meliora sunt quam cogitentur vel intelligantur Regnum namque dei omni fama majus omni laude melius omni scientia iunumerabilius omni gloria quae putatur excellentius Aug de trip habit and leasure whet and fleet their industry And there are many reserves in eternity which are magnetick to draw out the orient graces of the Saint and these inflame the Saints inquisitions Faith and hope sail to eternity with a full carreer as to rich but yet not fully known beatitude that which remains in the darke is but graces noble incentive The desire after naturall knowledge so inflamed that ingenuous Roman that he lost his life in searching after the cause of Vesuvius his sulphureous vomits why that hill should be the wombe of such flaming ejections and how doth this animate even grace it self and supply it with more vigorous conquests and strength that the believer cannot see the end of his happinesse cannot sum up how much the interest