Selected quad for the lemma: virtue_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
virtue_n	charity_n	faith_n	temperance_n	1,943	5	10.7125	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A91801	A sermon preached at Walden in Essex, May 29th. At the interring of the corps of the right Honorable Susanna, Countesse of Suffolke. Being a modest and short narration of some remarable passages in the holy life and death of that memorable lady. Who dyed May 19th. 1649. / By Edw: Rainbowe. D.D.	Rainbowe, Edward, 1608-1684.	1649 (1649)	Wing R141; Thomason E532_40	25,929	38

Habits or Qualities inherent in our selves or supposed so to be by others yet it is aliquid extra something without us it is that which others apply to us think or speak of us We must distinguish betwixt a Good Name fundamentally meritorious and inward and a Good Name applicatively dispensed and outward To deserve a Good Name or to have a Good Name A Good name really or a Good name onely Nominally in the eyes of God or from the tongues of Men. And so there is a threefold Good name according to a threefold condition of men There are men meerely Naturall others civilly Morall and a third sort Christian and Religious so you may have what every one of these three call a Good name for complyance either with Nature Morality or Grace First for Naturall parts as Judgement Wit Memory Strength Indowments or from great performances by them done Thus you may be said by some men to have a Good Name even for evill actions The world will speak well of you if you live according to the custome of the world Beware saith our Saviour when men speak well of you that is when you have a Good Name with the men of this world their praise is an ill sign none hath a Good Name with them except they run to the same excess of Ryot with them This Good Name is no Precious Oyntment but a stain a besmearing it makes no perfume but a stench in the nostrills of men truly nay onely morally Good Examine what Good signifies with wicked prophane men as a Good Gamster a Good Companion a Good Fellow that is a good drinker or good to drive away the precious time here how much the better the worse a Good Name here is a very eare-mark a brand a stigmatizing that is not the Good Name commended in the text the Naturall mans Good-name So a Great Name is not alwaies a Good Name as Alexanders Caesars the Babel-builders no more than his who burnt a temple to be talked of to have a Great Name Secondly the Morall mans Good Name or Fame for acts or habits morally Good either Practicall or Speculative a man may have a Good Name for excelling in his Art or Profession as a Good Physitian a Good Divine in Mechanicks a Good Engineer a Good Artificer but chiefly for the Habits of Morall Vertues as for Justice Temperance Valour Sobriety Thrift and the like for either excelling in some one or some few of these vertues a man may have a Good Name and this Good Name is very commendable in its degree and station especially if it be grounded on Reall not Counterfeit Vertues and these universall sincere not with any mixture of Vice as to have a Name for Justice Temperance Prudence or other vertues is to have a Good Name but not the Good Name here meant Thirdly and lastly to make Morall Vertues complete by the Theologicall or Christian Vertues Faith Hope and Charity this is the Christians Good Name to have Morality baptized to turne Vertue into Grace to plant all those faire Cyens on the Fruitfull stock of Faith to get first that Mother Grace of Faith and then to adde to your Faith Vertue as 2 Pet. 1. 5. Giving all diligence saith he adde to your Faith Vertue Let Faith be first in the number then adde and multiply Adde to your Faith Vertue and to Vertue knowledge and to Knowledge Temperance and to Temperance Patience and to Patience Godlinesse to Godlinesse Brotherly Kindnesse and to Brotherly Kindnesse Charity Charity in whose wombe lye all the Vertues all the Duties of the second Table he that hath and exerciseth these hath laid a good Foundation hath gained a good Report his Name shall be written Good upon that Foundation hee hath approved himselfe unto God and Men 'T is not the Praises of men but to approve himself and his Conscience to God which he seekes but yet the Generation of the Faithfull shall call him Blessed And this is that which I call the Christians Good Name That 's the first thing what is here meant by a Good Name Now that we may come nearer to the comparison Secondly why is it said Than Pretious Oyntment By Oyntment so set out under the Title of Precious is meant the Richest the most delicious pleasures In those Countries and Times these Oyntments were used for the greatest most sumptuous Delights and Refreshments whether for their fragrancy and aromaticall sweetnesse which ravished the Sence of smelling a sence of great pleasure and delight or else that they were made of healthfull ingredients and compositions of oyle and such as made the face to shine that is conduced to make them chearefull and merry or because they were also soveraign balm and medicinable to heal and strengthen or lastly because the greatest cost that might be was frequently laid out in such Oyntments as that remembred to have been bestowed on our Saviour by the woman of Bethany Mark 14. 3. Spikenard very precious which made such a fragrancy that it hath given a Good Name to that woman according to our Saviours prediction in all places where the Gospel is or hath been preached Although I might shew some other grounds for the similitude the inward fragrancy and the outward diffusion making the face to shine and making the man to shine c. yet these I pass over and many the like The meaning of drawing Precious Oyntment into the comparison is this by a Synechdoche or a comprehending many things under one word A Good Name is better than Precious Oyntment that is better than whatsoever is Delicious Pleasant or Wholsome or Costly in a word it s better than all corporall Pleasures that 's the firme assertion of the Text. And because Contraria juxta se posita c. Contraries placed together appear best place them now in the Scales Vertue Piety Grace in the one Scale Worldly Pleasures and Delights in the other and See with a sound Judgment and steddy hand which will be of most weight and price I will not here shew you the base low and unsatisfying objects of the one such as never quench the thirst of desire and in the other that by them we are carryed up to God the chiefest and only filling Good I need not tell you the one are transitory and fade in a moment that the other carry us to Eternity and remain with us there that the end of Pleasure is pain and shame What pleasure have you in those things whereof you are now ashamed that the end of Vertue and Godliness is Comfort here and Glory hereafter Si quid benè feceris cum dolore c. The saying is eminent if you do any thing well though with travell and pain the paines and travell cease and vanish but the good Conscience of the Deed and the Good Name remaine for ever But on the contrary Si quid malè feceris cum voluptate c. If you do any thing ill with Pleasure the

was I have told you before Indeed the distracted condition of her affairs and the times did still force her to defer that order and setled way for duties in her Family which she had framed in her mind and seriously intended to perform if it had pleased God to give opportunity for setling but in the mean time she desired that all whom she had power over would supply such necessary defects which she often Grieved at with their particular care in their private service of God and their frequenting the publique Ordinances If I would pursue particulars it were hard to find any shore in the wide Ocean of her Praises and yet in describing her life I need not fear flattery for truly to set out only some part of her Worth and to keep back the rest or to draw her picture with my rude pencil is far beneath the true and genuine Beauty which was in her large Soul so no fear of excess But if any should be offended at these praises which I bring for the Dead I have found two Apologies in one Epistle of St. Hierom for his praises of Asella a godly deceased noble Matron Nemo reprehendat c. saith he let no man blame me for setting forth praises due to the Virtues of the Dead it may stir up the living to contend to attain to the like Virtues Another is that which I may peculiarly assume in this place I praise her being Dead saith he lest any should think those praises which I gave her when she was Alive should have proceeded from flattery not from truth Living and Dead she hath filld me justly with that argument But if any should say why nothing but praise had she no Errours no infirmities or sins truly yes she had and as if she had desired with the Apostle only to Glory in her Infirmities as if the world were not envious or not prying enough to find them out she hath left a Catalogue of them upon record under her own hand as hath been seen since her death amongst her papers as if she had rather wished this solemnity might have been spent in rehearsing them than any of her Virtues She had written down fourty six particulars which she used to bewail as faults or infirmities or wants And perchance some might now desire to hear of them such is our own corruption that we love like impure flyes to feed on other mens sores but should I name those secret faults which she impartially laid open betwixt God and her own Soul I should much disappoint and frustrate the expectation of those And it might perchance be taken for the greatest flattery when they shall hear her secret faults to be such as might indeed have been spoken in a Pulpit whilst she was alive and would have been thought done on purpose to gain her applause compared with what most of us know to be the Plague of our own hearts But her sins and infirmities so often her bewailed and buried in the grave of Christ I doubt not but your Christian Charity will think fit to be buried with her or in a deeper Grave the grave of Oblivion whilst her Virtues and Good Name due to them shall live and flourish and find a perpetuall monument in every one of our hearts She was as all Gods Children are sometimes under great sorrow and dejection of spirit and tryed by great Temptations under which some few years ago she lay for a time and it cost her many tears which God at the last regarded and heard her Prayers delivered her out of the snare and set her on an high and sure Rock by Faith And so I shall I have done with that part of practice wherein the course of her life was seen I desire to adde something of that which might seem to fit and prepare her for or at least to attend her at her Death Indeed her whole life was that which sound Philosophers or rather sound Christians would have it A constant Meditation or Preparation for Death She was never long unprepared for that the assurance of which how great a Comfort it has been to her surviving friends is not easily imaginable For it pleased God to let the violence of her disease seise upon her choycest and most exquisite part her Intellectualls although with some short and sweet returns for three or four days before she dyed From which I desire all Christians to observe Gods dealings with her with praise to his providence and caution to themselves It is the mercy of God to the living to admonish by examples of such whom he wholly disinables in time of sickness to prepare for their eternall condition whilst they have health leisure and undisturbedness of understanding To her Soul so constantly prepared and every day waiting when he would call or knock it was not sudden but if at this instant he should summon any of us in that kind I beseech you in the fear of God let us consider whether we have our souls in like readiness and if not delay no longer But to clear up all doubts concerning her let me tell you her Behaviour on her Death-Bed was the most sweet and the most comfortable and Christian that ever I heard of and to satisfie all your Scruples this last was not it or not only it She was Twice thrown down upon the Bed of Death she might say indeed she Dyed daily by renewed acts of mortification But in a true and proper sence before this last expiring she had totally resigned up her self and expected every moment when the Angels should fetch her Soul from her body once before The story is famously known to all that knew her about six moneths ago in the moneth of November last past she having reckon'd her self to be with child and finding unusuall Symptoms such as in that case she never had experience of she thought that God did now admonish to set her house in order and to set her Soul in order for it was very probable he might finish her dayes on earth at her bringing forth She wisely and frequently pondered this in her heart and was noted to double her guard her diligence at her duties and to be ready to answer at every Call The time past which she expected should be the hour of Deliverance and after it some weeks which caused great doubting of her condition whether she had conceived at all and sometimes Physitians and those about her concluded the Contrary but no doubt did she make of being Prepared for Death of which she often discoursed and what thoughts she had of its Nearness and because she had bodily strength and went abroad she took the opportuuity of gaining Spirituall Strength to her Faith and other Graces by partaking of the Holy Communion six dayes or there abouts after that a moneth after her time she fell into the Pangs of women in travell and when the Midwife had spent all the day and could give no help but totally despaired in the