Selected quad for the lemma: sin_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
sin_n	body_n	death_n	separation_n	3,748	5	10.7337	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A25316	The evidence of things not seen, or, Diverse scriptural and philosophical discourses, concerning the state of good and holy men after death ... by that eminently learned divine Moses Amyraldus ; translated out of the French tongue by a Minister of the Church of England.; Discours de l'estat des fidèles après la mort. English.	Amyraut, Moïse, 1596-1664.; Minister of the Church of England.	1700 (1700)	Wing A3036; ESTC R7638	98,543	248

face of God but even the memory of ever having seen him or learned any thing of him either in the Tabernacle or in the World If he understands by seeing the face of God seeing him as he is seen in Heaven how could David make this wish or holy aspiration if he were of this opinion that sleep should lock up the eyes of his understanding for so long a time Certainly this was not the opinion of David nor any of the faithful of that time or age their common opinion was that which is plainly expressed in the Book of Ecclesiastes That when man dies the body returns to the dust from whence 't was taken and the Soul returns to God that gave it Now to believe that the Spirits of the faithful can be with God without having any knowledg of his presence or enjoying one beam of his happiness is a thing altogether without reason or probability At such times as God promises some particular assistance to his faithful ones he says I will be with you And 't is also their common and ordinary wish for those to whom they wish grace and benediction the Lord be with you If God then cannot be with any person without giving him some taste of his favours how can our spirits be with God without enjoying some gracious effect of his presence Certainly though we had no other proof of the state of the faithful after death than those words of our Saviour to the Thief that was Converted upon the Cross this day shalt thou be with me in Paradise they would be sufficient unless we were willingly blind to assure us that they are at rest but 't is such a rest as is accompanied with much content and joy For that the word to day ought to be taken in the ordinary and common sense to signify the time that was immediately to follow the death of our Lord whilst his Soul remained separate from his body is a thing that cannot be doubted unless by those that out of jocundness of humours abuse their reason In what place of the New Testament doth our Saviour or any one else use it in any other sense And although the Author of the Epistle to the Hebrews having met with it in Psal 95. 7 8. to day if you will hear his voice harden not your hearts Understands it of the time of the Preaching of the Gospel of Salvation is there any probability that in imitation of him we should expound those words of Jesus Christ after this manner Verily verily I say unto thee that in the day of the Resurrection I will receive thee to a participation of my own glory in Paradise If such comments be allowed will there be any thing certain either in the word of God or Language of men Doth it not plainly appear that our Lord seeing this Thief in anguish of Spirit through the fear of the judgment of God the execution whereof he expected according to the common sense and apprehension of Conscience immediately after death was willing to comfort him by the assurance of the pardon of his sins and hope of happiness which his Soul should enjoy assoon as it was separated from his Body Either the Spirit of Christ being dislodged from the body ascended into Paradise or not If it did not ascend thither our Lord promised nothing but that the Soul of this person should on that very day be present with his Deity in Heaven Now though our Lord were God blessed for ever there is no probability that he had any regard to his Deity in the speaking of those words For besides that his Divinity was not then so clearly Revealed as that from thence he should begin to give knowledg of what he was to that man who can doubt but that seeing both their Bodies in one and the same condemnation he was willing to raise the hope of this Wretch who in the midst of his anguish discovered some faith and expectation from him by the assurance that he gave him that within a few moments their spirits should be well near in the same Condition in a place of bliss and happiness But let it be granted that he understands his Divinity So it is in my opinion that it cannot come into a sound mind that Christ should promise to the Soul of this person to give it from that same hour the enjoyment of Paradise and yet notwithstanding it should have no knowledg of the glory thereof or the happiness that doth attend it Moreover it had been much more to the purpose to have been content to have consented to be mindful of him when he came into his Kingdom as he desired then by great words to give him occasion to hope for content and happiness near at hand and afterwards fill this Soul which he had made so desirous of happiness with nothing but darkness and forgetfulness If the spirit of our Lord ascended into Paradise doubtless it was not to sleep there for the little time of its separation from the body but to receive inexpressible Consolations in the bosom of his Father Otherwise to what purpose was it to transport it on high Had it not been more to the purpose to leave it buried in the same Tomb with the Body to the end that it might be there united again when the time should come Now if the Soul of Christ could be sensible of some Contentments after death ours may be sensible of them also And no inconsistance will be found between their separation from the Organs of their Bodies and the use of their Powers and Capacities But what need is there of so many Texts and of so much discourse in a case so plain that nature it self seems to have taught it us For certainly it is not more generally believed among men that their Souls are immortal and subsist after the Body than it is generally acknowledged that they subsist with knowledg and sense either of some felicity for those that lived in the practice of Piety and Vertue or of some punishment for those that have given up themselves to Impiety and Vice From thence comes the hopes of the Elysian fields among the Pagans and the fear of the Torments of Hell From thence is preserved among the Jews the expectation of Paradise and the fear of the bottomless Pit Thence is produced among the Turks the opinion of their Paradise and the fear of an infernal state and that without attending the Resurrection immediately after the dissolution of the Body and the separation of the Soul Lastly thence comes among Christians to some a belief of Purgatory to others a hope of a better life than this and to others dreadful frights concerning what will betide them after death when they are not in their Consciences assured of the forgiveness of their sins I say that nature it self teaches it Because things that are so universal and concerning which there is no controversy among Nations whose inclinations are divers whose professions are different and

very far from the place whereof he had raised in them very strange and pleasant hopes and expectations And this good God which hath had so much care by all means to provide for the comfort of our faith would not have commanded us to embark with so much Courage and Resolution upon a Sea so troublesome and full of darkness and Abysses as is death if he had not clearly shewed us the Haven where our Souls must arrive after such troublesome agitations The other point which concerns the quality and degree of the blessedness of those Souls that are gathered together in Heaven will put us to some little more trouble whether it be seriously to search what may be said concerning it from the word of God which speaks not so plainly of it or whether it be to contain our selves modestly within the bounds of what it hath revealed and of what we can comprehend by the Analogy of Faith without passing the limits of it I shall endeavour notwithstanding to do the one and the other I must lay down here for the foundation of our discourse that the Souls of the faithful are put by death into a state of perfect sanctification seeing they enter into Heaven For nothing enters there that doth pollute or foul In short seeing that sin either in Bodily affections such as the Schools call the Irascible and Concupiscible or in the habits of the mind it self and in the evil dispositions of the understanding and will death must enfranchise them from subjection to the one and the other For first of all the Soul being delivered from the body it can be no longer subject to its affections and that among others is the reason why we die that the affections and desires of our members which have not been perfectly mortified by the grace of God which we receive here below might entirely be extinguished by the destruction and dissolution of the members themselves which 't is like the Apostle would signify when he says the body is dead because of sin that is to say mortal or subject to death to the end that sin might be extinguished Moreover as to what concerns the habits of the Spirit as it was that of God that began to dissipate them here below to the end that he might introduce those that are better so it is he himself that doth altogether cleanse us of them after death and impress upon us a perfect and compleat sanctity Now compleat Holiness doth necessarily suppose some perfection of knowledg For we are so framed that the love and affection of our wills is generated by the light that is in our understandings and this Frame or Constitution being essential to our Souls and by consequence absolutely inseparable from them in what place or in whatsoever state they be it must be that they be such as well after as before their separation from the Body for it cannot be conceived either that we can love those things that we do not at all understand or that we cannot love those which we do know to be truly lovely or that we love more or less in proportion to the knowledg we have of them In the mean time the perfection of knowledg depends of two things the one is the object which is presented to us the other is the manner in which we receive it the object may have the advantage of being presented to us after an excellent manner but if we be not well disposed to receive it the effect which it ought to produce in our Souls is not produced at all And on the other side we may be well disposed to receive it but if it be not presented to us in good manner we cannot derive those lights from it which otherwise we might Now as to the disposition of the faculties of our Souls we do here suppose that after death they will be perfectly well constituted since they will be delivered from sin by the extinction of the lusts and desires of the Body and be rendred incomparably more strong and luminous than naturally they could be by the presence of the Holy Ghost It remains now that we consider what may be the objects that present themselves to the contemplation of Souls thus qualified and prepared It seems to me that we may boldly say they are necessarily of three kinds The first are such as our Souls may have had some knowledg of whilst we lived and whereof we continue to retain the memory The second contain those works of God which are presented to their eyes The third are the persons that will there be seen and the Communion which they will have on high with those other Spirits which are found there Now as touching memory I think there is no person which doth not easily conceive that we have two sorts thereof For their is one that consists in the retention of things sensible and singular with their circumstances and particularities according to which our memories received the images of them which we recal in our Fantasy when occasions are presented or our Spirits engage themselves in the search of them for there is no person that knows not by experience what it is to review his memory there to recover the Idea's or Images of diverse sensible things which are there laid in reserve almost as a person passes his eyes over the Books in his Closet to find one there that he hath present use of But there is another also which consists in things more universal and which have their foundation in reason and discourse For there never were men which have not or might not make this Observation in themselves that after having as it seemed so forgotten certain conclusions which at some other times we had known that at the first attempt they did not present themselves to our thoughts but when we come attentively to consider the principles whereon they depend immediately we find the foot-steps of our reasonings and without any great difficulty return to the consequences that we had drawn from them in such manner that there is a like difference between a man that never knew science and another that hath had knowledg of it but the discontinuance of Meditating thereon hath a little obscured the Idea's thereof in his mind as there is between a man which never was in a Country and another who after having exactly known it hath been a stranger to it for some few years the one finds much difficulty in obtaining the knowledg of it and if he wander never so little from the beaten rode behold him utterly bewildred the other immediately recollects himself and the least thing which presents it self before his eyes replaces in his memory the Situation of the whole Country and if I may so say repaints in his mind the Map of a Province As to what concerns this first sort of memory 't is a corporeal faculty in us whereof I desire no other argument but that 't is found among beasts 'T is very true that as the

it Touching the Body 't is beyond comparison more easy to tell what it will not be then what it will be For we see very clearly what things it must necessarily be delivered from but we do not see in the same manner the things wherewithal it must be endued on that very happy day There are in us two sorts of infirmities whereof the one are so very natural that we should have been subject to them though we had continued in the state of our integrity The others are so far natural that we are subject to them from the womb and from the first principles of our being and yet notwithstanding they have come upon us since the constitution of our nature and had never come into the world but in consequence of sin with regard to these last such as is the deformity of members the ugliness of the visage the want or weakness of any sense maladies wounds ill proportion of stature and to conclude liableness to death since they have no other cause nor original but sin it must necessarily be that sin being entirely and absolutely abolished all these infirmities will necessarily cease of themselves So that though we had nothing else to expect from the Resurrection it must however replace us in a condition not less excellent in what appertains to the constitution of the Body than was the condition of Adam at the hour of his Creation For 't is neither agreeable to the wisdom or mercy nor it may be to the justice of God that having absolved our whole and entire persons from all kind of sin by justification and having delivered our Souls from all evil habits by Sanctification he should notwithstanding leave on our Bodies some trace of those infirmities which had never come there but for the punishment of sin or which are necessary and indubitable dependances of it Imagine you then the most beautiful man upon earth and the most perfectly composed endued with the most lively and vigorous and exquisite senses that can be imagined free him from the danger of all kinds of incommodities in his health make his vigour always equal and flourishing and suppose you that no consequence of years can ever alter or change him and to conclude give him assurance that he shall continue so everlastingly and you will after a sort have conceived the first beginnings of the perfection which we expect in the happy Resurrection Touching the first sort of infirmities which are absolutely natural they consist in the desire of meat drink and sleep and in all those things which are either in some manner like unto them or depend upon them For without doubt Adam desired all this and this desire in a State so Holy and Perfect as was his is an indubitable argument of need and need a necessary consequence of the estate of nature in which he was placed and which the Holy Scripture expresses by this manner of speech he was made a living Soul that is to say that in this respect he was like to other Animals in which the living Soul which the Scripture also attributes unto them derives all these things in consequence to his being Now we ought also to be delivered from these kind of infirmities For the Heavens whither we aspire are not an Habitation agreable to these things although it be said that we shall be there at the Table with Abraham Isaac and Jacob that we shall there be satisfied with the fatness of the House of God and moistened with the Rivers of his pleasures that doth not mean nevertheless that we must make feasts there or to take it according to the Letter that Rivers of pleasure do actually run there But because as long as we are here below we conceive nothing almost but under the Images of things which we see the Scripture accommodating it self unto us as we do to Children doth as it were cover the Heavenly pleasure under the shadow of those that are earthly And as to what concerns generation For as much as it was not instituted in nature unless first of all for the multiplication of single persons for the peopling of the universe and afterwards for the preservation of the species when death removed the individuals the necessity of these two causes then ceasing 't is no wonder that our Saviour hath told us that in that respect we shall be like the Angels Now 't is no disadvantage to be deprived of these things when we have no need of them But to subsist in our being and to exercise perfectly the Operations which are agreeable to our most noble faculties and nevertheless to be delivered from that condition that makes all these base and wretched Actions of our Bodies absolutely necessary is without lying an Estate that ought to be judged very advantageous by those that are compounded more of Spirit than Body and have a Soul a little roused and generous if therefore you add this to those other perfections of which I have made mention you will yet much advance the excellence of that Estate whereof I have formed the Idea In the mean time all these infirmities have their root in us in that we have a Body compounded of the Elements in the same manner as are the Bodies of all other Animals and in that we are endued with a Soul sensitive and vegetative as they speak which hath faculties altogether like to the faculties of the Souls of beasts unless peradventure we be above them in some higher degree of perfection and this composition of the Elements and of a Soul vegetative and sensitive in the constitution of our essence is a cause that although the providence of God should hinder as it did in our integrity our being sick or wounded so it is that our Bodies in themselves would be capable of the impression of the causes of all these alterations and that although God should perpetually preserve us from death nevertheless the constitution of our Body in it self would be perishable and mortal for that the first man had been exempt from all these evil accidents and immortal if he had persevered in his innocence would have proceeded from the care of the Divine Providence and not from the temperature of his Body 'T is therefore necessary that although our Bodies be raised again and remade of the same matter of which they are now compounded the constitution of them must nevertheless be so changed that nothing must remain of all its natural qualities or of that Animal life which we have in common with Creatures endued with sense and destitute of Reason Let us therefore oppose a little those things that depend on this natural complexion of our Bodies to those qualities that are contrary unto them and so let us Endeavour to come to some knowledg of the perfection of the Estate that we expect our Bodies are now in their nature capable of all sorts of evil accidents and impressions which cause incommodity and grief unto them then they shall be so