Selected quad for the lemma: lord_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
lord_n	apostle_n	day_n	time_n	10,440	5	4.2046	3	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A45359	A private letter of satisfaction to a friend concerning 1. The sleep of the soul, 2. The state of the soul after death, till the resurrection, 3. The reason of the seldom appearing of separate spirits, 4. Prayer for departed souls whether lawful or no.	Hallywell, Henry, d. 1703?	1667 (1667)	Wing H465; ESTC R18021	32,635	88

which is gone abroad into the world That there is something in us that looks beyond the periods of this fleeting life and survives our ashes and is capable of acting freely and nobly when these carneous fabricks shall fall asunder and be cramm'd into their narrow Urns. The Soul of man while 't is held captive in the shackles and fetters of flesh and blood is but in a Sleep or a longer Dream and the expiration of this terrestrial period which we call Death is the expergefaction or awakening those nobler Faculties to a sense of Divinity and unmasking the intricate and perplexed apprehensions of the mind from error and falshood And hence it was that the Indian Brachmans affirmed The life of man in this World to be like the state of the Foetus in the Womb and Death to be the Birth to Life truly so called to a Life of Happiness in the Blest Reg●ons above in the quiet Plains of Heaven the Seat of the Immortal 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Genii where the winds never ruffle up a cloud to intercept the light of the Sun 's brighter face nor Snow or Showers ever pass through but an undisturbed calm and serenity of an Eternal Day overspreads the utmost limits of these Blissful Mansions Your last Question propounded is concerning the lawfulness of Praying for the Dead and Whether the mutual obligations of friendship cease when they are removed from the ruinous fabricks of their Earthly Bodies And truly methinks it is a Problem worthy your eximious and generous mind which is not contented only to make use of all the instances and opportunities of doing good to mankind in this life but your pious charity would likewise follow them into the next and if it might be make them as happy as God at first created them For as I have often heard you discourse it is a pain and affliction great as the tearing and rending our bodily life to a noble and free spirit to perswade himself that when our Piety hath committed our dead Friend's body to the Earth its common Parent and besprinkled his Hearse with a Funeral tear and it may be for some small time after breathed out a fresh gale of Sighs upon the sight of a Picture or any thing which with his last words and dying groans he recommended to us as his Memorial that then he should be banished out of our minds and no more regarded than if he had never lived in the world or were now quite extinct and put out of Being I cannot therefore attribute this unconcernedness for the state and condition of departed Souls to any thing else but to that poverty and narrowness of spirit which makes men look upon themselves as private and particular Beings sent into the world to promote and advance their self designs and little interests in contradistinction to all the rest of mankind forgetting that they are a part of Gods Creation and members of that great Body Politick which reaches from Heaven to Earth and is extended every way through the vast comprehensions of immense Space and therefore that all the Creatures ought to have a share in their love and that the more perfect their Natures are the more they ought to be widened and enlarged in Charity and an universal Benignity towards all especially towards mankind in promoting to their utmost power the completion of their happiness For although men when they go away hence become invisible to us and we are in part at loss in reference to their affairs and concerns yet nevertheless we are assured they are in Being and members of that great Society of which we our selves make a part and therefore are not to be accounted such strangers to our thoughts and devotions and if their Prayers can at all prevail and be effectual in our behalf I do not see why the Prayers and Oraisons of a Good and Holy Person upon Earth may not enter the eares of Heaven and derive a blessing upon them supposing them to stand in need of those things he desires in their behalf That separate Souls are not unmindful of us when they have left the prisons of Flesh and Blood and inherit a new and stranger freedome cannot easily be denied unless we will say that the more perfect they grow the less charity and love they retain towards those who want those degrees of felicity they have arrived unto 'T is true those holy Spirits which depart hence are seated far above the reach of Envy or Passion and the dead Wife is not troubled at the songs sung at the next Bridal Feast nor grieved to see another inherit the Joyes of her Husbands-bed but yet they are not removed so farr as to beget in them an utter oblivion of those they have left behind nor doth the augmentation of their Happiness diminish their love towards us Mortals who begin our lives with weeping as a sure presage of our future calamities and the fi●st tribute we pay to the light of the Sun is to present him with a tear and watry eyes There is then without doubt a Relation continued still which not only the laws of their Friendship but their own native goodness which dispreads it self every way when freed from the contagion of Earthly Concretions will never suffer them to rescind To this purpose Josephus brings in Abraham thus bespeaking his son Isaac before that fatall stroke design'd to let out that pure Soul into the Skies 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And St. Ambrose gave some things in charge to his dying brother Satyrus that he should do for him in the other world And as they present themselves before the Throne of Majesty in humble Petitions for us so certainly something belongs to us to do for them and we must by all those wayes we can preserve and continue the memory of our dead Friends and of all good men which can no wayes be better done than by desiring God with hearty and constant Prayer to call home his banished to him that those 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 those little particles and shreds of Divinity as Epictetus calls the Souls of men may be gathered up and re-united to the first and al comprehensive Good and when the periods of this world shall be expired they may have a joyful Resurrection and a perfect consummation of their Bliss in the Immortal Regions of Glory and Felicity Thus St. Paul prayed for Onesiphorus 2 Tim. 1.18 The Lord grant unto him that he may find mercy of the Lord in that day who 't is probable was at that time dead because the Apostle salutes the house of Onesiphorus and not Onesiphorus himself who doubtless had he been alive and part of his family would have been named particularly in the first place and not afterwards distinct from his House But I do not lay so much stress upon this If therefore the dead are in a state and capacity of being