Selected quad for the lemma: life_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
life_n	death_n	eternal_a	wage_n	6,951	5	11.2154	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A96071	Divine meditations on acquaintance with God By E.W. Esquire.	Waterhouse, Edward, 1619-1670.	1653 (1653)	Wing W1045; ESTC R230808	35,949	68

love Christ when he is with those in Princes Courts cloathed in soft Rayment sat in Royal Apparel on the Throne when the people cry him up but when he is traduced when in the High Priests Hall when trampled upon then they are gone like Summer birds in Winter they are all for a Pompous Reign on earth before that more glorious Reign in Heaven and therefore they will secure themselves by might and main against all danger and diminution here Do these consider Christ had never been glorious but by sufferings nor the Church been victorious but by the red Cross How much of holy Writ do these men make Apocryphal while they entail external prosperity to Saintship and think none worthy to live but those who look upon the Cross as a curse servile supplicium What think they of those words of the Lord Jesus In the world yee Who my holy Apostles as pure Saints as any such none excepted nay to whom compared those are but as Jewish Sepulchers shall have affliction not be afflicted but have affliction in the Abstract there shall be a kind of connaturality betwixt you and affliction What judge they of Saint Pauls peremptory position All that will live godly in Christ Jesus shal suffer persecution What of Saint Peters prediction of fiery Tryals and Encouragements to prepare for them Nay what of our Saviours Benediction on those that suffer for Righteousness sake Are these Tales and Figments Are these Legends and Foysts Are these Lillies of his field not to be compared to the Solomons of their fancy in all his Royalty I trow there is no man so fond but sees self more set up then Christ in this Pageant for take away sufferings and where is Faith where Charity where Martyrdome nay where is or to what purpose that animative reference of the Holy Ghost displaying Christ glorious in witnessing a good confession before Pentius Pilate his Judg who could wash his hand and protest Christs innocency and yet durst not deliver him from the rage of the multitude No wonder they cry down Scripture and Fathers and Church Stories who cry up such wild excentrick worldly subtilties for Religion and own Christ with their mouthes as the Jewes did him on the Cross only the more to reproach him Well let these stray from the fold as wildly as they will it is thy part O holy foul to keep close to thy colours Voti tunc Curistianis crat pro Christi nomine gladio percuti S. Hie●on in vita Pauli Eremitae de Temp. Decii Christ looketh thou shouldst not only he ready to own but of need be to dyefor him thou must expect sorrows perhaps not such as with Spira will make thee despair turn thy back on Gon as Ephraim did in the day of Battel but such as may exercise thy Grace correct thine out-goings mind thee of thine end admonish thee of thy duty rouze thee to get thine Evidence ready to make thy Calling and Election sure and by a holy end prepare thee for a blessed Exchange The Promise is to be secure not exempt not that yee shall not to be assaulted but not be overcome not that ye shall not be chastned but that ye shall not be condemned not that evils shall not come neer you but that they shall not domineer over you not that ye shall not be bu●fetted by Satan but that Divine Grace shal be sufficient for you The Peace of God gained by Acquaintance with him is no plea of prescription against trouble and evil but this it doth it modifies evil so that it comes not noxiously neer a godly man as it is evil so it s kept at distance as it is a Mark of Divine love as it is a voice to reclaim as it is commanded to be Gods Monitor to us so we must welcome it as did David It is good for me that I was afflicted and pray for it as preventive Physick that keeps us from Plethorick Distempers Many men may thank God for their crosses without which they had never come to Heaven there is a most notable Story in the Legend of a blind woman who besought Saint Bridget to give her sight the Saint so called at her intreaty Quo presentor sum mundo co absen●ior sum Christo did and when she had seen four dages she desired Saint Bridget that she would take away her sight again adding this for reason The more I see of the world the less am I conversant with Christ 4. Lastly The peace in Acquaintance with God will keep thee from thr Evil of Evils Death eternal God suffers not his to fall into that pit out of which there is no redemption His as they have no part in the sin of the Damned so shall they not partake in the torment of the Damned 'T is not Go ye Blessed but Go ye Cursed into everlasting fire prepared for the Divel and his Angels And indeed this is the Mercy of Mercies this is one part of the Recompence of Vertue and Godly life that it shall not only have comfort in seeing God gloriously waving the Banner of love over it but becoming its Guard to Heaven and nullifying Satans attempts on it this is that in which the mercy of God shines as at noon tide and comfortably exalts its self above Justice as that which crowns God and renders him Beloved and admired of all that know him But perhaps O man thou art curious to know what this Death Eternal is This is a vanity and if thou beware not may be the vexation of thy spirit but if thou wouldest ken the scantling of it our blessed Lord hath defined it to be utter darkness Matth. 8.12 where is weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth it is exile from God and judgment to the society of damned spirits for ever Death Eternal what is it not that is absolute tristicity it is a living death and a dying life it is the wages of sin the sentence of Justice the utmost period of Plagues a most exquisite misery a most Merciless Torment an Eternal Passion Eternal Death it is misery to the eye for it shall not see God it is a worm gnawing on the heart for it shall consider the evil it hath done for which is inflicted that evil it suffereth it is a vexation to the senses which to augment the tortures of their condition shal be renewed and made more sensible it is an excess which shall never have end but be eternally what it is and impossible to be what it is not Death Eternal it is the region of Blasphemy the Caldron of Nimrods Nero's Judasses those chambers of ruine into which they descend who desert God by sin and are deserted by God in just Judgment Death Eternal it is a gulfe without bottom a doom beyond ransome a fire that burnes and is never extinguished and a restless craver never satisfied What shall I say other then that of the Psalmist Remember this yee that frrget

a Description of it that which forms it is the being and that which expatiates it is the wel-being of it For the more this grace for lesse it is not is meditated upon the greater are the touches of sweetnesse in the Souls visage from this lovely Pensill of the most lovely Artist GOD And therefore I shall conceive it to ascend its Zenith by these Gradations Step. 1 1. The lowest and inchoate step to this Mount is the Vnderstanding that must know him the chief good or else it will never desire him mans intellect is the Bucket by which he drawes and the Ladder at which he climbs to will and wed the object he knowes good without this 't is as impossible to love and obey as without eyes to judge of colours or without taste to discriminate Liquor and Meats God hath given the priority to this faculty as that which must season to and prepare appositely for the rest And truly this is of the foundation and reall nature of the rationall soul for from this are we determined to be worthy as to other creatures of that Supremacy and jurisdiction God hath given us over them for did not our Understandings direct us to a carriage proportionate to the natures of Creatures and things we should soon discover our follies to be too brutish either to be admired or followed and the Creation would soon renite obedience to so senslesse Governours But blessed be God he hath not left us without a witnesse of his liberality He hath informed our specious bodies with perfect souls and made a noble Lodging of State for himself that high room and top battlement our Understanding which though too vast to be filled with the little puncto's and contemptible grains of worldly nothings yet receives completion from God and those apprehensions of him which he in much condescension to us is pleased to vouchsafe us not to make us proud of our fatnesse but provident to improve fulnesse to gratitude and to serve him more compleatly who does good and is good and from whom goodnesse effluxeth to all creatures for of his fulnesse they receive fulnesse That this Understanding is the Key of Discovery and Acquaintance needs no second to confirm it for even nature tels us by the Rule that there is no desire of what we know not Ignoti nulla cupido and Scripture directs to this as the path to all gracious Intercourse with God in one passage of holy Writ I hear this asserted Psal 9.10 They that know thy Name will put their trust in thee in another He that cometh to GOD must believe that he is Heb. 11.6 Now effects imply causes as Cisterns do Springs and Rivers Seas If God be to be believed on he must be conceived of and understood by those that thus believe him for as articulation is consequent to generation so is adhaesion to assent and assent to intellect The necessity of intellect to head the will and affections which in a sort compleat acqaintance is evincible from many things from the order of God in Creation Nature which makes this as the womb at which port every thing which tends in its progresse to action enters The light natural typicall of this internall Luminary was the first Creature as that which God erected to give light to his Library the World which God compiled of nothing by a power eternal complete and indeterminable and the first tryall hee put man upon was to touch his Intellect and to try the magnetisme of that faculty which could draw all things to it and incorporate it self with every thing And if when there was no distortion if befote the mis-rule which sin and Satan brought into the Understanding this was the tendency of that Faculty It must still remain what it was as to the Nature and sacred Design of God though vayled and denegrated by accessions of sin and contractions of punishments which by understanding any thing but God and in order to God is just up on it The faculty then is the same in its nature in its imployment onely the Rose hath prickles the Swan deformed legs Death is in the pot if God doth not heal the waters and turn our Understandings to that right object Himself whom to know is life eternal And whom to glorifie as God our most excellent and onely good is the sole end of our creation Nor is the order of God in Creation the only Instance of this precedence of the Intellect but experience attests this in the whole latitude of Instances the Heavens by that instinct they have as it were and after their kind do their duty to earth Man nay their Maker by a duct which to them is in stead of Intellect do they serve times and seasons do they remit and extend influence according to the law of their first Cause and the Birds and Beasts by their sensual Energy analogous in some sort to Intelect in man direct their course and run their race not attempting to love or flye that which is not Good or Evil in their eye and pleasing or displeasing to their Natures Now if that rule of the Schools be true which neither is yet nor ever will be contradicted That the work of Nature is the work of the God of Nature Opus Naturae est opus Authe ris then what is the concurrent practice of Universal Nature according to its specifick being must be Positive and Absolute and so from him who is the Beginning and End of all things and therefore most true And so I have mounted the first Step the Vnderstanding Acquaintance imports Understanding for how shall Desire be heightned but from Knowledge and Knowledg be gained but by that Faculty Rom 10.14 which is admissive and receptive of it How can they saith S. Paul believe on him of whom they have not heard and how can they hear without a Preacher Nor is this Step consummative to our Acquaintance if here we stay pitching this as the Non ultra beyond which we will not go for God hath placed his Seat on High and the Rounds of the Ladder which reacheth him are many he will have us engaged in much colluctation many breathings and pantings before we come up to the Mount of Mercy where Peace is and Evil is not and therefore he cryes out to man Step. 2 in the second place for his Heart his Will which is the Jewel in this Cabinet of Glory This this to the Intellect is as the Sailes to the Ship takes the Winds gales and carrys it to the Port of Loss or Gain this this is the Womb in which are the Issues of life and death this this is the Paradise which we ought to guard with the Flaming Sword of an uninterrupted and earnest Zeal for as the Sailes move the Ship by reason of the wind which acts upon them and so is causal of their swelling as they of the Ships motion and according to the quantity of the