Selected quad for the lemma: soul_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
soul_n	body_n	life_n	separation_n	6,353	5	10.2058	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A90298	Immoderate mourning for the dead, prov'd unreasonable and unchristian. Or, Some considerations of general use to allay our sorrow for deceased friends and relations but more especially intended for comfort to parents upon the death of their children. By John Owen, chaplain to the right honourable Henry Lord Grey of Ruthen.	Owen, John, chaplain to Lord Grey of Ruthin.	1680 (1680)	Wing O825aA; ESTC R231417	48,707	156

to heart the death of our Friends and Relations and to pine away meerly for sorrow that they are gone whereas they are now freed from all the sorrow and contagion of bodily distempers and have escaped those sore burthens which we are like to feel and suffer if we stay here Methinks we should rather comfort our selves as we may well suppose David did to think that our Relations when they are dead and gone are past the shock and fury of a Disease that they have endured one brunt for all that they have charg'd that Enemy home which we so much fear and must expect every day to encounter withal so that considering how we that are left behind are to run the Gantlet through Troops of sorrow and to pass the Pikes of a thousand Diseases 't is highly unreasonable to mourn and sorrow for the dead they being past all possibility of Diseases and far removed from this Climate of Sickness and Death Sixthly Another thing which might restrain Davids sorrowing for the loss of his Child might be this consideration That it was releas'd from the great pains and miseries which it lately felt and endured 'T is certain and indubitable that the Soul does not quit its Mansion of the Body without great strivings and reluctancy and though it be consider'd that the Child was but in its Infancy and newly in possession of life and that the Soul and Body had contracted but a late acquaintance and that the Friendship was very new yet where there is such a strict Conjunction as there is between the Soul and the Body though but for a moment of time the separation cannot be without great grief and sorrow where there is such a close union and intimacy there is no parting without pain and trouble and consequently though the Soul of the Child was now just enter'd into its New Tenement yet it was so firmly setled and had taken that deep rooting that it could not be remov'd or ejected out of possession without great disturbance And therefore to see a Child strugling for life and to have only breath enough to intitle it to life could not but wonderfully affect and produce great Agonies of sorrows in the hearts of the Spectators And we may observe that men have naturally that compassion as to pity even a Brute when it lies in pain and misery and look upon it as an act of mercy to dispatch it out of the way And therefore David seeing his Child in that extream anguish and distress in that sickness to Death and that there was no way to ease and relieve it could not but reflect upon it as a singular mercy of God to take away the Child and to put an end to such a painful and miserable life David could not forbear weeping and sadly lamenting over his Child when he saw it in the pangs of Death and in those frightful Convulsions which were precedaneous to its dissolution But when it pleas'd God to seal up its breath and to give it a happy Issue out of this troublesome World then David began to be better satisfied and to be somewhat comforted with the consideration that God had in mercy released his Child from that pain and misery which it lately underwent and the sight whereof would have pierc'd the hardest heart living So that all those that have the sad opportunity of standing by their Relations and Friends when they are upon their sick Beds and in the approaches of Death and there to observe what a tumult and commotion nature is in at that time and with what pain and trouble the Soul and Body take their leave one of the other must needs conclude their parting and separation to be a more dismal and amazing sight than a Divorce between the most desperate Lovers Let us but be present with our Friends in the heat and rage of their Distemper or in the ultimate efforts of life and we shall then see a tremendous and ghastly spectacle which is hardly to be related without tears and cannot be seen without horror and astonishment O the hollow sighs and the deep sobs and pierceing groans of our dying Friends which are enough to wound any heart living and to strike that dread upon us that the sound of their cries and groans shall never be forgotten and can we pretend to pity them when we see them in so much anguish and distress and in the depths of misery and shall we so contradict our pretences to sorrow and our compassion for them in the bitterness of Death as to be troubled when they are out of misery and to deplore their going to rest Shall we weep and mourn to see our Friends upon the Rack and in great torment and shall we take on the more when they are past the sense and feeling of any pain How can we reconcile this Posthumous Passion to common reason Or can we think to perswade people that we lov'd our Relations dearly when they see us grieve when they were in misery but to grieve more when they are stept into happiness In a word we may yield to the meltings of nature or the tenderness of our affections and gratify our compassions in mourning for our Friends when they are in great misery and the Agonies of Death For a compassionate grief is both natural and reasonable and if we have any spark of good nature we cannot but be mollify'd at the mournful accents of the most despicable Creature when 't is in pain and great extremities But then to mourn excessively for our Friends when they are out of pain and the bitterness of Death is past is both unreasonable and unchristian unreasonable because they have endured and pass'd the worst and are perfectly discharg'd from those troubles and sorrows which those that remain alive are subject unto and 't is unchristian because it gives occasion to people to suspect our belief of a Resurrection and a future Life and that we are not really perswaded that our Friends are removed for the better and much for their advantage And therefore the Apostle in the first to the Thessal 4. ch and 13. v. admonishes Christians not to grieve and take on for the dead as others which have no hope lest they should by that means scandalize their Religion and render their belief of a Resurrection suspected and dubitable so that we are concern'd as Christians and as we tender the reputation of our Christian Faith not to be lavish of our tears nor over profuse in our expences of sorrow for the dead lest we should be suspected of believing our Friends happier here than they will be hereafter But we should rather in a manner rejoice at the departure of those who have liv'd well and innocently and die in the Lord Forasmuch as the Apostle tells us they shall rest from their labours and have all tears wip't away from their Eyes Revel 7. 17. And we should as our Church wisely directs us in the office for the Burial of

yet there may be ways of unhallowing Marriage and turning that into a sin which was at first ordained for the greatest Blessing For if only Interest or Humour or Lust be the chief foundation and ingredient of our Choice or if some sinful pre-ingagement or lewd Amours make Marriage necessary for the hiding our shame or if any of these things do cause a Contract or make up the match we may expect that God in justice may blast and curse the fruits of our Body for the sin of our Soul and for the sins of our flesh too An instance whereof we have in Gods decreeing the death of Davids Child which though it was born in Marriage yet God utterly dislik'd the Conjunction the first occasion and grounds thereof being laid in Adulterous Embraces David making no scruple to murder the Husband that he might obtain the Wife But when David heard that heavy sentence against his Child that he should surely die for his sin might not he have confest himself altogether in the fault and desired to suffer wholly himself and have said as in another Case 1 Chron. 21. 17. It is I have sinned and done evil indeed but as for this Lamb this Innocent Babe what has it done Let thy hand be upon me or my Fathers House and not on this Child that that should be plagued I say one would think that David should have set himself to deprecate Gods displeasure against his Child upon his account and desired to have sustained the burthen of his own sin But the sentence was gone out and what was written was written and there was no reversing the Decree And therefore all they that intend to change their condition and desire that they may leave their Inheritance to their Children had best look to it and have a care that they do not make Lust or any sinful Pre-ingagement a Preamble and Introduction to Marriage for fear God disappoint them in their hopes and desires and either write them Childless or take away their Children in wrath for their folly and wickedness For though God spared David and gave him a grant of his own life that he should not die yet there is no begging the life of his Child the Prophet reading its Destiny the Child that is born shall surely die So that for people to couple together in a scandalous and sinful way and to make Lust the basis and foundation of Marriage is to murther their Children in the Womb and in a manner to predestinate them to destruction But then when David heard that his Child should not live but was under a sentence of Death and that according to the words of the Prophet it presently fell sick and was desperately ill How then did he behave himself Truly like a very kind and indulgent Father for it was no sooner struck with sickness but David besought God for the Child And David fasted and went in and lay all night upon the Earth and the Elders of the House arose and went to him to raise him up from the Earth but he would not neither did he eat bread with them in the 16 and 17. v. of this Chapter Here we see David in a sad and mournful posture expressing all the symptoms and signs of a mighty sorrow and being earnest in Prayer to God for it which if all Parents would do the like upon the same occasion when their Children are sick or any ways afflicted they would find their Prayers to be a more efficacious way than all the Drugs of the Apothecary or the numberless prescriptions of the Physicians for the recovery of their Children For the effectual fervent Prayer of the Righteous availeth much But then we may consider that David had great reason to bewail the sickness of the Child as first being the effect and punishment of his sin and secondly upon the account of natural affection First He had a great deal of reason to grieve and be troubled at the sickness of his Child it being sent as a punishment for his own personal sin and therefore when he saw it in misery and pain and great anguish and considered that it suffered all this principally for his sake that he had the greatest hand in bringing all this trouble and sorrow upon it and that he was the great Actor in the Tragedy and this his sin occasion'd this great scene of sorrows How could he do otherwise than lay the sickness of it to heart and take on bitterly to think that by the murder of Vriah he had caus'd the Death of his Child and that by committing folly with Bathsheba he had brought such an affliction upon their Issue I say such a consideration must needs wound David to the very heart and cause him to make great Lamentations over the Child And truly the same sorrows would become even the best Parents and it might not be amiss for them to make some like Reflections For the Parents are generally apt to impute the Distempers the Sickness the Death of their Children either to want of due care in their Nurses or to the badness of the Air or the unwholesomness of the Season or ill diet or the irregular course of the Physician I say though we are apt to ascribe the sickness and Death of our Children to these outward and secondary Causes yet we should do well to suspect our sins as the cause of their misery and sufferings and to believe that there is something more than ordinary in the afflictions of such harmless and innocent Creatures Surely the Parents have sin'd though these poor Lambs suffer and therefore it is good and convenient that all Parents do examine themselves and see whether they need go any further than themselves to find out the true cause and original of those many weaknesses and distempers which they see in their Children and for which they seem so much concern'd and troubled How mightily are some Parents troubled to see their Children grow crooked and deform'd and yet little consider that possibly their Children are the unhandsomer for their being so proud of themselves and glorying in their Beauty others are griev'd to see their Children prove such Punies so feeble and infirm and of such a weak Constitution and do not reflect upon the debaucheries of their life and how they have lost their strength in Dalilahs Lap. And it is a general complaint and observation that every Age declines more and more in strength and virility and that the latter Generation of men are dwindled almost into Pigmies in comparison of what they were formerly and yet men do little consider that Luxury and riotous Living may be assigned as the grand Causes and Reasons of this great Degeneracy And we also see that new and strange Diseases do creep up daily and multiply and invade humane Bodies and yet we seldom impute these decays and breakings of nature to the vices of our Progenitors Whereas we have just reason to grieve at the sight of those many Diseases which

the dead give hearty thanks to God that it hath pleased him to deliver our Dear Friends and Relations out of the miseries of this sinful World which may furnish us with another consideration that might possibly incur into Davids mind and help to suspend and allay his sorrowing for his dead Child and that is this That it was remov'd far above the power of sin and temptation We at present as the Apostle Paul complains carry about us a Body of sin and death We are subject to manifold sins and temptations and have brought with us into the World those corruptions which in time will ripen into and sally forth in great actual transgressions Job makes a kind of wonder at it that any man should think he can be perfectly pure and innocent in this body of flesh For what is man that he should be clean or he that is born of a woman that he should be righteous Job 15. 14. and so David tells us Psal 51. 5. That sin is the Inheritance of our Parents that we are infected with it in the Womb and that we are born with propensions to evil Behold I was shapen in iniquity and in sin did my Mother conceive me So that the seeds of disobedience are lodged in our nature and the ground-work of sin is laid deep within us and there is nothing wanting but time and opportunity to make it bring forth in abundance So that when our Children die very young and go early to their Graves we may comfort our selves with this consideration that we lose them in good time and before they have added any actual to original sin and that if they had liv'd much longer they would have contracted a new and further guilt and perhaps have advanc'd in sin as they did in Years for 't is certain that the strength of nature gives strength to our sins too and 't is only Age that qualifies and fits us for great and notorious wickedness So that that sin which was only in Embryo in our infancy comes within a few years to a perfect shape and our propensions to evil in a small process of time are reduced to real and visible acts My meaning is that although there is a natural aptness and proclivity in Mankind to sin and err from the Laws of our Maker yet sin does lie hid and brooding in the time of our infancy and is only hatcht into perfection by the addition of longer time and although we have all the principles of wickedness inherent in us at the very first moment of our Nativity yet we are too impotent to commit evil and to offend God at that rate as when we come to a full stature in Years and knowledge We may be full of bad inclinations when we are young and Children but 't is only Age that can make us capable of doing mischief and to be workers of iniquity and we cannot so highly provoke God when we are ignorant and childish and know nothing of him as when we come to the perfect use of reason and to know his will and yet run Counter to it And therefore the Death of our Children may be a happy prevention of their sining and if they live so long as to receive the benefit of Baptism and to be regenerate and born anew of Water and the Holy Ghost and so be made lively members of Christs Church we are bound to thank God for the mercy of their Regeneration and that they had their sins wash'd away in the laver of Holy Baptism so as that they go much purer out of the World than they came into it whereas if they had liv'd longer in the World they would have contracted a greater guilt and had more sins to answer for they would have been continually liable to temptations and in danger of falling into great and grievous sins and to be corrupted by the bad examples which abound in all places of the World And therefore there is no reason why Parents should so much lament their Childrens leaving them so soon if they do seriously consider that 't is a naughty World we live in and that mens love and practice of wickedness is exceeding great and that 't is impossible to escape all the pollutions that are in it and if they do further consider how much humane nature is tainted with original sin and corruption which prompts us on to evil continually and what a subtile and vigilant Adversary we have who is always seeking to beguile and destroy us and how thick set the World is with snares and temptations I say if this consideration did but enter into our minds it would be of great force and power to asswage our Passion and to allay our sorrow for the death of our Friends and Relations it being a very comfortable thing to contemplate the happiness and priviledge of those that have shook of the clogs and fetters of the flesh and let fall their Bodies the troublesome Mantles of their Souls and are now expatiating in Regions of Bliss and Happiness and live in the pure Element of Goodness and where 't is impossible that any temptation should approach or sin have any Dominion over them Lastly Another thing which might stop Davids sorrowing for the loss of his Child might be this consideration that it was the will of God it should be so He considered that it was altogether foolish and in vain to enter into any controversie with God about his dealings with his Child or to stand expostulating the justice of God in taking it away For he was convinc'd that Gods will ought to be a Law unto us and that there is no need of disputing the Righteousness and Equity thereof it being always rul'd and determin'd by his wisdom and justice and goodness For though God be of an infinite and uncontroulable power and can do whatsoever he pleases both in Heaven and Earth yet there is a Maxime in Theology as well as Policy That the King of Heaven can do no wrong It must be acknowledg'd by us all that our life and being is the gift and blessing of God and so is the life of our Children too and therefore when God does in mercy give us Children so he may with justice take them away For may not he dispose of his gifts and do with his own as he pleases God lent us Children for a little time on purpose to please us shall we be troubled when he resumes them to himself or griev'd when he requires them back we are to observe that there is a great difference between Gods way of disposing his gifts and that of mens For though it be common with men to make a Deed of Gift and to transfer their own right to a thing wholly to another so as to lose all propriety in it yet God does not make the same disposition of his gifts in that absolute manner but when he gives us Riches or Honour or Children or any other gifts he does not make over to us all