Selected quad for the lemma: soul_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
soul_n	death_n	sin_n	wage_n	4,853	5	11.4614	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A67184	A sermon at the funeral of the right honourable Henry, Earl of Warrington, Baron Delamer of Dunham-Massy, Lord Lieutenant of the County-Palatine of Chester, and one of the Lords of their Majesties most honourable Privy Council preached at Bowden in Cheshire / by Richard Wroe ...	Wroe, Richard, 1641-1717.	1694 (1694)	Wing W3728; ESTC R12138	16,713	33

to meet the Lord in the Air and so shall we be ever with the Lord. Assuredly they that die in him shall ever live with him yea reign with him in his Kingdom be encircled with Rays of Light and wear Crowns of Glory This is at once the great Privilege of His Religion and the main purport of the Gospel to convince Mankind that he was not made meerly for this life but design'd for an Inhabitant of a better world thereby to raise his Affections and invigorate his Endeavours after such a Blessed Attainment and where-ever this has met with a firm Belief it has given men the Victory o're the world it has taught them to overlook its transitory Enjoyments and disesteem the Evils and Miseries of it yea even life it self knowing they shall obtain a better Resurrection and be made happy in the fruition of God himself in whose presence is the fulness of Joy and at whose right hand there are pleasures for evermore But lest we we should not be drawn with these Cords of a man and refuse the Happiness offer'd to us God has been pleased to alarm men's fears with a dismal prospect of Woe and Misery that awaits sinners hereafter and the terrible denunciation of never-ending Punishments 3. Hell is positively threatned to the Reprobate and Impenitent If men will despise the tenders of God's Grace and Mercy they shall feel the effects of his Severity and Justice they that will not be happy shall lie down in sorrow For he that promised Heaven as a reward has provided Hell too as a place of vengeance and punishment It was indeed prepared for St. Mat. 25. 41. the devil and his angels being the first of God's Creatures that revolted from their obedience to him and were punished with an everlasting separation from him tumbled from the highest Heavens and reserved in Chains under the blackness of penal darkness but man by sin joining in the same Rebellion involved himself in the same guilt and became liable to share in the same condemnation and the portion of Hypocrites and Unbelievers is declared to be with the Devil and his Angels We are not only told in general That the wages of sin is death and we being Sinners Except we repent we shall perish That indignation and wrath tribulation and St. Luke 13. 5. anguish is upon every soul of man that doth evil But to Rom. 2. 9. strike the greater terror the very form of that doleful doom of Condemnation is denounced Go ye cursed into everlasting fire fire and therefore terrible and tormenting everlasting fire and therefore intolerable and more dismal still with the wretched Society of Apostate Angels and damn'd Spirits And that nothing may be wanting to convince Sinners that there is an Hell for the ungodly we have the whole judicial Process described the Judge assign'd and the manner of his appearance terrible indeed to read but more fearful to behold when he shall be reveal'd from heaven with his 2 Thes 1. 8 9. mighty angels in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God and obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his power We have the Books opened the Witnesses produced the Sentence pronounced and the Punishment described which is named the second Death and consists in the loss of God's Presence and all other Comforts and in enduring the sting of Conscience and the torments of Hell-fire for ever Thus are the two States after Death represented in Scripture vastly different from each other as opposite as North and South And how naturally consequent they are upon mens Tempers and Dispositions upon their carriage and behaviour in this life we shall see in the next deduction from the Text. That the righteousness of mens lives hath a natural tendency to happiness as their wickedness hath to misery 'T is from a principle of Nature that the Tree lies where it falls and Vertue and Vice have no less natural inclination and tendency to Happiness or Misery to Rewards or Punishments Which if so and it follows from the nature of the thing then we need not doubt but all men must necessarily be either happy or miserable hereafter since all are either good or bad here Now that this Life is the state of trial and the other of retribution we all know and believe and that according to mens behaviour here they are qualified for that state and condition they shall be put into hereafter we shall as readily grant if we consider what I take to be an undoubted truth namely That when we leave this world and go away into eternity we carry nothing with us but only the good or bad dispositions of our Souls so that we go into the other World either disposed for the enjoyment of all that is good or prepar'd for the participation of all that is opposite thereunto If our Affections are wholly set on things below and our desires carnal and sinful we are altogether unfit for the unmixt Joys and Spiritual Delights of Heaven and our sensual Inclinations and filthy propensities will sink us among the herd of wicked and impure spirits But if our Affections have been set on things above if our Souls have centred on Happiness and unweariedly pursued it in those ways and methods which God has chalk'd out for the attainment of it we shall naturally arrive at the Rest of Holy Souls and be meet to be made partakers of the Inheritance of the Saints in Light All Heaven is not hereafter nor Hell only in the infernal Regions but there is something of Heaven upon earth some foretaste of its Happiness and the first fruits of its Joys in the pleasant relishes and ravishing Sense of Virtue and the blessed Effects of an Holy Life and there are that carry with them an Hell upon earth that are tormented before the time and have kindled a fire which will never cease to burn them that are pricked with the sting of an evil Conscience and bitten with that worm which will never cease to gnaw them The Sum is They that keep close to the rules of Virtue and Purity of life and unweariedly pursue the paths of Piety they also at the same time pursue their own Happiness and are in the certain road that leads to Bliss as they that persist in Vice and run on headlong in their own evil Courses are hasting on their own ruin and posting on the broad way which leads to destruction For that which is the prevailing temper of Souls in this life will doubtless be so in the other too and they grosly mistake who imagine otherwise as they seem to do who trust to a late Repentance and commence Religious only in their last sickness as if a change of Mind and Manners could be wrought all at once and men could in one moment divest themselves of old accustomed habits and put

on new and contrary tempers and dispositions Death I know makes a great change but it is more in respect of the outward than the inner man and is a change of condition rather than of complexion And tho the putting off these mortal bodies will leave the Soul and its faculties much more free and exalt its powers and better its operations and thereby heighten and improve those minds which were before disposed to Virtue and Goodness yet I cannot conceive how it should possibly effect so great an alteration as in one moment to change the whole temper of the Soul and superinduce new habits of Virtue and strong dispositions to Goodness where there were none before Now if men carry their good or bad dispositions with them into the other world suitable to these must their portion there be since there must be likeness and correspondence between the Object and the Faculty before Happiness can result from them Happiness consisting in the agreeableness of the one to the other which unites the Soul to the Object of Bliss and endears the Enjoyment of it So that we may presume to say That a wicked man cannot be happy even in Heaven it self and were such an one caught up with St. Paul into the Third Heavens he would find himself uneasy amidst all the satisfaction of those blissful Regions as being wholly a Stranger to such pure and spiritual Joys and should God forbear to punish wicked men in the other World yet they cannot be happy there with the Joys of good men because their minds are altogether indisposed for them and even the delights of Paradise would afford no relish to their vitiated and depraved Appetites As all true happiness and satisfaction of mind springs more from an inward than an outward cause so is the happiness of Heaven to be estimated not so much from the place as the temper and disposition of its blessed Inhabitants and their fitness to be received into and made partakers of its ravishing Glories but they that have never accustomed themselves to the divine relish of true Goodness cannot taste the delights of the heavenly Manna they only that have been nourished with the true Bread of Life here are fit Guests to sit down with Christ and eat and drink with him in his Kingdom St. Paul says of the vital energy and life of Christianity Our Conversation Phil. 3. 20. is in Heaven And so must ours be before we can be in a capacity to be received into those glorious Mansions and welcomed into the blessed Society of Angels and Saints Let not any then that retain their Sins talk of going to Heaven No 't is too heavy a Clog for any to ascend with thither or suppose they could alas poor Souls how would they stay what would they do there there 's nothing to gratify their sensual Appetites nothing agreeable to their carnal Desires all the Enjoyments there are chaste and pure all the Delights spiritual and cannot be relished by unhallowed minds And if ever we hope to enter there we must predispose our Souls for it by an holy that is an heavenly Conversation and then we have trimm'd our Lamps and are ready to enter in with the Bridegroom and are cloathed in the Wedding Garment and shall be made acceptable Guests at the Table of the Lord and taste the Dainties that are there prepared Now if these things be so as the Wise-man says Righteousness tendeth to life but he that pursueth evil Prov. 11. 19. pursueth it to his own death If the paths of Piety certainly lead men to Bliss but Sin by its own fatal tendency plunges men into Misery then we see how reasonable it is to conclude That there are two opposite states of Rewards and Punishments hereafter wherein mens condition shall be correspondent to their Conversation here besides the express Revelations of God's Word that so it shall be And there is nothing can shake this Belief or make men doubt the certainty of it unless they can imagine what some have fancied that there is a third state after Death wherein men may repair and better themselves and so after some time recover their lost estate To remove this Scruple I add That there is no middle state after Death no change of Condition or altering it for the better the Tree must fall South or North and where it falls it must lie there it shall be Perhaps it may be thought that this Consequence is not necessarily enforced from the words and it may be said that possibly the Tree may fall some other way for though only South and North are mentioned yet there are more Points in the Compass And I know the Romish Commentators are very jealous of interpreting this place of a future state lest it should seem to thwart their darling Doctrine of Purgatory and Lorinus craftily endeavours thus to shuffle it off That if it should be understood in that sense it would not consist with the Notion of Limbus Patrum the place wherein they suppose the Souls of the Patriarchs to be detained till Christ by his Sufferings had overcome Death and first opened the gate of Heaven to all Believers And we cannot help it if the place be as repugnant to the Notion of the one as it is to the other and since both of them are uncertain and want proof themselves neither of them can be evidence for the other nor evade the force of the Argument drawn from these words against the being of any such middle state or place as these men fondly imagine For the force of the proof lies not in the former part its falling South or North but in the relation that its lying has to its fall which way so e're that be directed there it remains fixed and unmoveable And though I will not insist on that as a sufficient Argument that there being only two opposite extremes named therefore there cannot be a third a negative Argument from Scripture being not always conclusive yet in matters of Doctrine and Objects of Faith where the Scriptures are silent there they are not to be urged as necessary Points since Scripture is the Rule of Faith and contains every thing necessary to be believed Suffice it then to say That since Scripture mentions but two states the one of the faithful in Heaven the other of the unrighteous and impenitent in Hell we acknowledge no other we believe no more I have already accounted to you how emphatically the Scripture represents how particularly it describes the nature of both I shall here only add to it that had we no other evidence than what this Book of Ecclesiastes affords we may safely infer that all Notion of a third or middle state is utterly excluded We are told that at our dissolution The dust shall return to the Chap. 12. 7. earth as it was and the Spirit to God that gave it there 's a different place assigned for each part of our Compositum And of the