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Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
truth_n	great_a	know_v	world_n	4,002	5	4.4108	4	true

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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A34359	A consolatory letter upon the death of a daughter written after a philosophical manner by a gentleman of the university to his friend in the country.	Gentleman of the university.	1698 (1698)	Wing C5930; ESTC R27913	16,502	26

the Foetus in the Womb 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and Death to be the Birth to Life truly so called to a Life of Peace and Quietness in the happy Receptacles and Mansions of Spirits where the bright Day is never intercepted by Clouds and Darkness but an eternal Serenity overspreads the whole Face of Heaven Nay the barbarous Thracians and Scythians were not altogether estranged from this piece of Ancient Wisdom Valerius Maximus reporting of them that L. 1. c. ● 12. they used Feastings and publick Rejoicings at the Funerals of their Friends because they believed that when they died their Souls were released from the troublesome Circumstances of a calamitous Life and passed into more happy and blessed Regions You see then my Friend what little Cause you have to bewail the Death and Abreption of your dear Placidia from you who is not lost but taken into a higher Place and Degree in the City of the Great King The Bird of Paradise is uncag'd that she may take her flight to her Native Land She is gone to all her Friends Relations and Acquaintance that went hence in the Fear of God and the Exercise of a good Conscience who no doubt but met her with Joy and Triumph and after the unspeakable way that separate Souls discourse congratulated her safe Arrival to the Society of blessed Spirits which is thus set forth by the Oracle when consulted touching the Soul of Plotinus and its passage to the Happy State Ad Caetum jam venis almum Heroum blandis spirantem leniter auris H●ic ubi amicitia est ubi molli fronte Cupido Laetitiâ replens liquidâ pariterque repletus Semper ab Ambrosiis foecundo è Numine rivis Vnde serena quies castorum dulcis amorum Illecebra ac placidi suavissima flamina Venti Which I find thus Englished And now you 're come to th' Happy Quire Of Heroes where their blessed Souls retire Where softest Winds do as soft Joys inspire Here dwells chast Friendship with so pure a Flame That Love knows no Satiety or Shame But gives and takes new Joys and yet is still the same Th' Ambrosian Fountains with fresh Pleasures spring And gentle Zephyrus does new Odours bring These Gifts for inoffensive Ease are lent And both conspire to make Love innocent If it were a mighty Pleasure to Socrates to think that when he left the Body he should go to Aeacus and Minos to Orpheus and Musaeus and all those Holy Souls that fill and make up the Chorus of Immortal Love What enravishing Joy What pleasing Emotions of Spirit should it beget in you to be assured that Placidia is gone to Abraham Isaac and Jacob to the Holy Prophets and Apostles and to all that have done good in their Generations but above all to Jesus who loved and redeemed her with his own Blood I know it is a common Argument and frequently made use of upon such Occasions as this to tell you that she is removed from all those Evils a Terrestrial Body is obnoxious to yet hath it great Truth and Weight in the Consideration of it For though the Days of Man upon Earth be few and his Life contracted into a narrower space than in the first Ages of the World when Nature was in her youthful Gaiety yet they are full of Misery and Calamity and every Act of Life is divided into many Scenes of Sorrow We begin our Days with weeping and the first Tribute we pay to the Light of the Sun is to present him with a Tear and watry Eyes as a sure Presage of our future Misery And if we out-live the Chances of Childhood and arrive to the Exercise of our discriminative Faculties and make our choice of that variety of Instances the World presents unto us we go from a less to a greater degree of Affliction For whereas before we could only grieve and sigh under a present Pain now our Grief is redoubled by reflecting on it and we are the more miserable by knowing that we are so Those very Diseases that carry a little Infant with quietness to its Grave force us into effeminate Ejulations and Impatience and all because our Apprehensions and Reflexive Acts are greater than a Childs Should we view Man in his declining State when his Sun is setting and leaving the Horizon of Time and we shall find old Age like a teeming Womb full of Miseries and Sorrows a rough and uneven Path wherein Death becomes a welcome Respite and breathing Place to recover our Spirits wearied with the Troubles of this Life and inables us to resume our progress to Immortality In a word corroding Cares disappointments of our Hopes and Expectations Crosses and doleful Circumstances Sicknesses and Diseases make up the summ of Humane Life Besides this when a good Person reflects upon the Depravity and Wickedness of the World the stench whereof is ready to choak him he is sensibly pained and cannot but testifie his inward Grief by his Tears But now Death removes him from all the Objects of his Dislike and Aversation and the Grave puts an end to all Humane Miseries There the wicked cease from troubling and there the weary be at rest There the Prisoners rest together they Job 3. 17 18. hear not the Voice of the Oppressor And as for Moral Evils there is an end to them likewise For holy Souls are out of the reach of the sly Tempter nor can the crooked Serpent wind himself again into the Celestial Paradise But after all it is not my Meaning nor Design to persuade you to an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or putting off natural Affection nor by a Stoical Stubbornness of Mind to become insensible of your Affliction For the better any Man is the more passive is his Constitution either for Joy or Grief and the more subject to these harmless Passions 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the best and most Heroical Persons are the readiest upon a sad Accident to overflow with Tears Thus the Son of God show'd the tenderness of his Spirit at the Grave of Lazarus and could not withhold his Tears Jesus wept Nor would I have you to forget Placidia and cast her Image quite out of you Mind as the manner of too many is who when they have interr'd the Bodies of their Friends and the Solemnity is over think themselves no more concerned in them than if they had never been For both Nature and Religion allow us to remember them with all that Esteem and Honour that is due to superior Beings whom the Lord of the Universe has grac'd with signal Marks of his Favour in the Regions of Paradise Whenever therefore you admit her into your Thoughts let it not be as she was in her earthly Tabernacle with all those Disadvantages and Alterations that Death made in it when he was pulling it down but rather represent her to your self in those bright Robes in which she converses with blessed Spirits where the external Shape faithfully answers the inward Pulchritude

A Consolatory Letter UPON THE DEATH OF A DAUGHTER Written after a Philosophical Manner By a Gentleman of the University to his Friend in the Country O Praeclarum Diem cùm ad illud Divinorum Animorum Concilium coetumque proficiscar cúmque ex hâc turbâ colluvione discedam Cic. de Senect Nostra quae dicitur vita Mors est nec unquam vivit Animus nisi compage solutus corporis Liber aeternitate potiatur Id. de Consolat London Printed for The. Bennet at the Half Moon in St. Paul's Church-yard 1698. A Consolatory Letter UPON THE DEATH of a DAVGHTER My Dear Friend NOt only our Education and the common Course of our Studies for many Years but much more the inward Frame and Agreement of Minds have by a secret Sympathy drawn our Souls into the sacred Tye of a firm and inviolable Friendship and I should dishonour and highly derogate from that Divine Vertue if I did not as well participate in your Sorrows as share in your Felicity When the last Post brought me the unfortunate News of the Death of your beloved Placidia I was equally concerned with your self for her immature Fate And because I find your great Sorrow makes you uncapable of giving your self that relief which you have frequently bestowed upon others from those several Arguments that both Religion and Philosophy furnish us withal suffer me at least now to refresh your disconsolate Mind with some of those Topicks which when sequestred from the Noise and Tumult of the World and locked in the pleasing Union of each others Soul we were wont to entertain our selves with upon such Spectacles of Mortality which I shall set down in a loose manner not being over-curious in ranking them in a distinct Order and Method The Platonists suppose the Descent of Humane Souls into Terrestrial Bodies not to be equal and alike in all For as there were some who let themselves loose without bounds or measures to all the irregular and exorbitant Motions of their congenite Bodies and in whom the Plastick Life became so infinitely invigorated as quite to suppress and silence that better Principle to whose Inspirations while they carefully attended they remained happy in the free Exertions of a higher and more intellectual Life And by this means taking their full swinge and drowning themselves in Corporeal Joys they became perfectly unfit for any other degree of Vitality but the Terrestrial and must have lain in a State of Inactivity for ever had not a Gracious Providence sent them down upon Earth to try their Fortunes once more So there are others who descended indeed somewhat from the height and summity of the Aethereal Life and experienced the Joys and Pleasures of the lower Life yet still within such bounds and limits as did not utterly incapacitate them for a Return but thereby they contracted a nearer Aptitude and Fitness of actuating a Terrestrial Body Now as the first of these are observed in these their Earthly Bodies to have a strong Proclivity to Vice and are carried headlong to all manner of Gratifications of Sense be they never so feculent and course in spight of all better Perswasions to the contrary and are very hardly and difficultly reclaimed So the other coming into the World with a good Measure of that Divine Life still awakened in them notwithstanding the Encumbrances of Flesh and Blood they make more easie Returns and more happily recover that Blessed Life to which they have a Congruity yet remaining upon their Departure from their Mortal Bodies And if this Hypothesis of theirs be true your Placidia may well be thought to be one of this latter sort there appearing even in her blooming Years such an Angelical Temper which discovered it self in a quick and lively Sense of Goodness a firm and radicated Love of Vertue of Sanctity and Purity of Innocency and a hearty Benignity Kindness and Readiness of Mind to do all the good Offices she could to all the World And for you now to bewail her Death it is to be sorry for her Return to the Possession of that blessed Life the full Enjoyment of which was greatly interrupted by her stay and continuance in this her Earthly Prison And the Scripture seems to call the Departure of a Holy Soul from its Earthly Tenement by the Name of a Return as Phil. 1. 23. having a desire 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to depart but is more fitly rendred to return viz. to a Man 's own House or Native Home as the Word is used Luke 12. 36. And to this may be imputed her hasty flight from this Earthly Region it being a merciful Providence to her that that Divine Life which shone so bright through the Veil of Mortality might not be in danger to be extinguished and oppressed by a longer Continuance under the weight and pressure of sluggish and dull Flesh and Blood Give me leave farther to repeat not as if you were ignorant of it but that I may attempt something to break and dispel that Cloud of Sorrow which seems to sit heavy upon your Brows what the Divine Plato tells us that true Philosophy is nothing but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Meditation of Death i. e. the Separation of the Soul from its close adhesion to the Body that in that abstracted and silent State it might more freely contemplate Truth and the bright Idea's of the incorporeal World And there is great Reason for this For as the same contemplative Philosopher informs us when the Body with all its Train of Lusts and Affections shall by a kind of Magical Devocation draw the Animadversion after it the Mind is filled with a kind of Tumult and struck with Amazement 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and by this means is rendred unable and uncapable to discern the Face of Truth Wherefore he that would philosophize aright and attain the Height and Perfection of Humane Nature must learn to die to the Body and separate himself from all Contagion of the Animal Life and have no farther Communication with it than pure Necessity requires For this Disjunction and Separation of the Soul from Sense and Corporeity is a Prelude to her Immortality and the raising her from this obscure Life she leads in the Body to a Capacity of conversing with the Root and Centre of all Life in more pure and defecate Regions And now in this Philosophy Placidia was an excellent and early Proficient having rarely well learned the Art of subjugating all Corporeal Motions Affections and Desires to the Imperium and Rule of the Intellectual Life never suffering any youthful Pleasures or Delights to betray her to an Action of Ignominy or Shame but using such innocent Diversions as only served for the unbending and Relaxation of the Mind for a while that it might return with fresh Alacrity and Vigour to a press Observance of the great End of her Creation She never was taken with any of those Fooleries and secular Vanities with which her Sex is the most easily