Selected quad for the lemma: truth_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
truth_n	know_v	life_n	word_n	4,104	5	3.9680	3	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A67616	A sermon preached at St. Margarets in Westminster at the funeral of Mrs. Susanna Gray, daughter of Henry Gray, Esq., of Enfield in Staffordshire, who on the 29 of October 1654 began her eternal sabbath.	Waring, Robert, 1614-1658.	1657 (1657)	Wing W869; ESTC R27055	15,128	48

your sight after the better part ascended above to the Heavens as we have great cause to believe and hope by the assurances of eternal life in this Virgin departed And what greater assurance can there be If in the words of the Church we are to know for a truth Preface before the Catechism and it is certain by Gods word that Children being baptized have all things necessary for their salvation and are undoubtedly saved How much more this child who was blessed with a Lois and an Eunice that gave her a Bible for the first thing to play withall and taught her first to lisp the language of Canaan before she could speak her Mothers Tongue who even with her milk suck'd in the sincerer milk of the word As they write of the blessed Virgin Mary that at three years she entred the Temple offer'd her self as a living Sacrisice at the Altar warm'd her hands and her heart at the holy flame and made Religion her pastime before the vanities of the world or the pleasures of sin could seduce her so was this Virgin brought by her Parents to the Temple as it were after her Saviours steps to ask of the Doctors the way of life even before she could firmly walk in it She learn'd Repentance ere she knew what it was to Sin She first began the life of Grace ere she attain'd the full life of Nature and had her Senses exercised in the knowledge of Good and Evil before she could distinguish the degree of bravery and Pride She yeelded her self to be regulated by Religion before she could be abused by sense or reason Her first care was not her Dress or Looks but her pensum quotidianum de flore Scripturarum as St. Hierom directs Laetal l. 2. Ep. her dayly task out of the choicest Scripture to sanctifie her memory as well as her Affections Instead of wanton Songs she repeated the Psalms which was an ability required to make a Divine in the Primitive times but was it not strange in those tender years she had not only strength and force to hold Davids Harp but to tune it when others of her soft age would call for a Companion she cryed out come Lord Jesu come quickly and I pray thee help thy servant whom thou hast redeemed with thy most precious blood What can we imagin but that she who breath'd her first air in Devotion and her last in Prayers who was sealed to eternal life by Baptisme and kept in the assurance and blessed hope thereof by a pious education had gained the Love of our Saviour much sooner than the young man who had observed all that God commanded even from his youth though not so perfectly as he conceived In summe she was brought up One of the Order of St. Pauls Virgins who from her Infancy onely cared for the things of the Lord. And here might it be safe to expostulate with the Almighty I should aske Why these Graces that are not to be received in vain by us or rather Offer'd than Given Why so fair characters that others might take copies from thus immediately blotted out and dust thrown on them VVhy doth God delight to crop such fragrant flowers in the bud ere they are fully blown Is it that the unwholsom Air or rude Touch might not fully them Indeed so we read some hastily snatched out of the world as out of a Pest-house Ne malitia corrumperet Intellectum before Malice or Vanity should infect their minds Some are taken away out of a special Love and Tenderness of God because there is some good Thing in them towards the Lord God as Jeroboams son 1 Kings 14.13 Is it to shew that we have here no abiding City that this world is but our Tyring room or stage where some Mute persons are brought in onely for Number or shew meerly to passe over the Stage and so serve to grace it even in the Passage not unlike Angelical apparitions Or is it as a devout pensive VVriter observes that God trains us as we do our children by giving them gay and precious things but demanding them immediately again to try our Submission whether we could with Abram yield up sacrifice a child at Gods call and give thanks with Job to God even when he resumes his Gifts The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away Blessed be the name of the Lord. Let not this yet discourage Parents from making their Children fit for Heaven and the society of Angels But rather shame those careless and indulgent Parents Parents indeed as the Apostle terms them afte rthe flesh as who had no share in the Soul who being forward to surrender to God in Baptism by a most holy Vow the Children they received from him are not yet afraid with Ananias and Saphira to withdraw that they had once devoted to the Lord and neglect the teaching them to keep their Vow as religiously at least as formal Nuns would VVill they not allow that Diligence that senselesse Creatures use in trayning and practising their young ones seeing we bring them forth as deformed and mishapen in the sight of God as any ugly Lumps of flesh the Bear is said to whelp Shall we deny them the labour of our Tongues to instruct them and to lick them into shape Having betray'd them to a life of Sin and Misery Ought we not in conscience in Equity procure them that other life of grace and glory Let the Duty or the Shame the Terror or the Comfort answerable to the Education of your Children move you to express your Affection in this pious Care of providing a richer stock of manners then of Fortunes and hopes of a more lasting Inheritance St. Hierom observes from Ezekiel 18.28 The Sonne shall not bear the iniquity of the Father nor the Father the iniquity of the Son That this only frees and secures the Parents in these Children that yet arrive not to the use of Reason that live not on their own score that have no proper Motion of their own but as the Parents limbs what the Parents derive to them in these the Parents negligence or sinfull Indulgence makes them who are said to live again in their Children to perish rather in their sinfull courses and to invert the threat of the Commandement that the sins of the 3 and 4 Generation shall be visited and avenged on the Parents who have propagated those sins by their loose neglect or example On the other side the joy of those shall be redoubled and multiplyed with their seed who being not more ambitious to enlarge their Family than the Houshold of the Faithfull or to propagate their own name more than Gods may with boldness present themselves with their righteous seed at the Throne of God Behold us and the Children that thou hast given us These are they that may with more comfort lose their Children at Gods Call than others enjoy them amidst other frail possessions and uncertain contents of this life seeing children so lost are not to be accounted lost Whence the Father observes Job having by his patience merited a double Restitution of all his other losses had not his Children redoubled for they are not taken away they are only secured in the hands of God and sent as pledges before us to be more happily recovered and enjoyed for ever when some shall be gathered to their Fathers and others more gloriously gather'd to their Children whom they are to follow first in their Innocence then in their Inheritance and Happiness That Kingdom of Heaven which none shall enter that are not like unto those little Children To both which God fit us and then hasten his Kingdom Even so sweet Jesu come quickly Amen FINIS

the rule of our passions and sufferings Do we dayly profess to God Thy will be done and now it appears to be particularly Gods will seeing nothing is brought to passe in Heaven or in Earth without the will of him that ruleth over all why doe we not give the Lord leave to do what he will in Heaven and Earth whom we so often standing professe the Maker of Heaven and Earth what Atheisme now possesseth us because Gods will crosseth ours to stick at last to pronounce with good Eli in as hard a case as great a loss as any we can complain of the utter ruine of his family and Excision from the Priesthood the loss of two sons and the Ark of God at once It is the Lord let him do what seemeth good unto him 3. There is yet a greater reason of thy Resignation in this Case in that God hath the propriety and right the Soveraign Dominion of all we only the short use If God recall but his own Gift what Injury what so great cause of complaint May not God as well take the Child away from the Mother to whom it was committed only to breed up in the fear of God as the Mother takes it home from the Nurse 'T is call'd to a better home what Relation or Title soever thou canst plead in the dear loss Whether thy Husband thy Child thy Father Brother or thy friend which is as thy own soul God pleads a nearer claim his Creature his Image his Member the price of his redemption c. his by many Titles his even before he was and his when he shall not be 3 Duty or Inquiry How we are from the present sense of anothers death to prepare for our own 1. Prepare by a tender and watchfull apprehension of all those Memento's and Remembrances of Mortality wherewith God and Nature dayly allarum us so that nothing is more frequently represented howsoever nothing be less thought on than death and we at last complain of a surprisal Like to the Man in the old story who had covenanted with death that he should before his last stroak give some warning with a Finger at least lift up and yet after many funerals of his friends and many parcel-funerals and decayes of his own body and senses being to die required some other Messengers and Fore-runners of his end and challenged Death for not knocking at the door before he entred only because he would not hear the knocks Amongst the many Remembrances of death So the Captain of fifty seeing the other Captains consum'd by str● foll upon his face with I pray thee let my life be precious in thy sight 2 Kings 1 13. the most sensible and sharp admonitions towards this preparation are sounded to us by the Last groans of our expiring friends as by the last Trump that Grave which buries part of our Souls with their bodies must needs call some of our thoughts that way And how few are there amongst us that have lived half the age of man that hath not out-lived half his Family or Acquaintance That continued Felicity of the Grecian Prince to pass an whole age without the losss of one Friend was a glory or boast not to be seconded by many Now the first preparative for death is the premeditation of it Death like the Basilisk losing its sting and force being first seen and viewed by us 2 Prepare not only by a weariness and contempt of life and of the world wherein you no longer find your Friend but by a more comfortable Thought of going to him and over-taking him Prepare to follow If this could so sweeten Socrates last deadly draught the Thought of passing to the society of Orpheus Homer and the ancient Sages How much more should it make us gladly embrace death that leads us to the society of Angels and takes us not away but restores us to our Friends and to the Spirits of Just men made perfect by the Vision of the most Holy One Especially if we consider that the Friends we go away to are much more than those we part from VVe are gatherd to our Fathers 3 Prepare by casting aside all that makes Death bitter or terrible unto us Now we fear death saith the Monk on Climacus for one of these two Causes either because we love this present Life or Distrust a better So Reuben Gad and Manasse did chuse their seat on this side Jordan because they saw the ground fit for pasture Num. 32 5. Some there are unwilling to leave their Pastures and Cattel for all the beasts and houses Divines or Astrologers talk of in heaven Some with St Peter confounded with the Glories and bright Honours of the world cry out in an Extasie It is good to be here let 's here fix our Tabernacle but the Text tells us He knew not what he said being dazled with the glorious light Luke 9.33 Others that with the Apostles betray a fear of storms and the danger of death though Christ be in the storm with them deserve Christs check O ye of little faith what are you afraid of So that our whole work of Preparation is reduc'd to these two points Contempt of this world Faith hopes of a better that we strive to leave the world its noise and vanities before we depart out of it Look on the earth and all his Comforts as passengers in swift streams still fleeting and parting from us or we from it and as Sojourners or Pilgrims abstain from fleshly lusts never fix our delight in a pleasant way or Inne which is suddenly to be quitted And seeing no distance can hinder us more than the banish'd Jews from turning our faces towards the heavenly Jerusalem let us that we may be able with the Martyrs of old to refuse Life in hopes of a better Resurrection lay hold on Eternal life before this life fail us lay hold by a lively faith on the hands of our Saviour stretch'd out to receive us and lay that sure foundation for the time to come of Good Works that best preparative to a good death a good life Let us not rest till we have brought our Souls to that temper of the good Heathen Summan nec metuas diem nec optes neither to fear nor desire over-passionately the day of our change or rather to this Resolution of St. Paul Phil. 1.21 22 23 24. If I live I shall do well if I die I shall do better To me to live is Christ To die is Gain And now that we may with David rise from our sorrow and wash our faces with tears of Joy in the thought of this Virgin who is not lost but gone before us to that place whither we all strive to follow Let us reflect on that principal Comfort the hopes of that life however lost on earth to us yet recover'd in heaven being hid with Christ While your Eyes overflow with tears being fixed on the Corps on the Mantle here dropt below send your thoughts beyond