Selected quad for the lemma: virtue_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
virtue_n	punishment_n	spiritual_a	temporal_a	868	5	10.1613	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A88553	The life of Adam. Written in Italian by Giovanno Francesco Loredano, a Venetian noble-man. And renderd into English by J.S.; L'Adamo. English	Loredano, Giovanni Francesco, 1607-1661.; J. S.	1659 (1659)	Wing L3067; Thomason E1909_1; ESTC R209952	36,489	95

the true foundation of all humane societies The Laws of Adam were all directed to the union and conservation of the people to the correction and direction of manners to the maintainance of obedience and fidelity towards the Prince and to the acknowledgments and devotions towards God Yet Adam would not divest himselfe of the gift received from God Almighty of the universall Empire over all things created so that he reserved to himselfe the reformation alteration and interpretation of his Laws He knew very well that all garments and all meates agreed not to men of all ages The beginnings augmentations and declinations of a disease are not cured with the same remedies With the alterations of times there 's a necessity of varying the institutions Adam divided those primitive people into many Cantons or Corporations to each of which he assigned for Super-intendent one of his sons both because he would ease himselfe of so many imployments as also because he would perpetuate the sole command in his owne line It is then no marvail that this desire is innate in the minds of the Greatest since it is an evill that hath extracted its originall from the first Man of the World Though the command was parted amongst his sons he neverthelesse reserved the Supremacy of all to himselfe partly to restraine the licentiousnesse of his sons and partly that he might not seeme to dispise that gift of the universall Empire received from God which is the most desirable in the world He that renounceth Command confesseth himselfe for the most part either unable to exercise it or unworthy to retaine it In his latter days Adam understood the progresse of his sonne Cain He had news that he lived in the Orientall parts and that he had built a Citty calling it by the name of his son Enoch But he rejoiced not knowing very well that building of Cittyes could only proceed from a soul very timerous or excessively ambitious Adam considered by his owne example how dangerous it was for one to hide himselfe He knew full well that the nature of Cain was tyrannicall and enclined to extort the goods and wealth of others and bent upon the murther and destruction of people No lesse then a Citty is sufficient to secure a wicked man All these considerations disquieted the mind of Adam so that his long life was but a daily death He grieved to see that the more men increased in number the more they multiplyed in vice That justice was abandoned of those in particular who ought most to love it That goodnesse was only known for an imaginary thing That Avarice was the first of mans affections That Luxury accompanyed by the most infamous debaucheryes tryumphed in all hearts upon which occasion it is more then probable that he many times with more then ordinary sentiments supplicated his divine Majesty to take him out of this torrent of the world wherin there was nothing but Sin and Misery Adam was ready to pay the last debt to nature having now seen the seventh generation when he called to him all his sonns and daughters which were many in number and taught them what they were to do for the service of God and salvation of their soules Children saith he the time is approaching that I must pay the Earth its tribute These hoary haires tell me that I am in the Winter of my life These limbs that can no longer sustaine themselves that I must shortly fall Thus my fin hath resolved and thus That God hath decreed which commandeth that all things returne to their principles Before therfore that I depart from you I will leave you in testimony of my affection all those records that conduce to the good either of your soules or bodyes Nor think that my words are overswayed by my affections since he that speakes is a dying Father My Children above all other things remember to love one only God Trine in person and One in essence You are obleiged to this not only by your duty but by your interest He either is no man or deserves not that name who consecrates not all his affections to that God who hath given him a beeing and that daily communicates to him temporall and spirituall blessings and who allwayes appropriates punishments to vice and rewards to virtue Know that he requires sole adoration and for this very thing I foresee that he will showre down miseryes upon my posterity yea blind progeny an infinite of miseries foolish posterity that shall so far dote as to adore the things which thou thy selfe hast formed The Idolatry I say that shall come into the world shall snatch the thunderbolts out of Gods hands and violently force his mercy to the punishment of infinite generations As also lasciviousnesse dishonesty and luxurie These Children are sinns that will constrain the fire to forsake its sphere not only to chastise sinners but also to root out the memory of them Keep your selves my Sonns keep your selves from Anger which is an undomable passion that hurries the hands to imbrue themselves in the blood of innocency it selfe And these homocides how displeasing they are to God is evinced in the example of your brother Cain Though the blood of the slain be not polluted yet it contaminates the hands and consciences of the murtherer And to shew how execrable a thing murther is note That even he is culpable that kills those who implore death Corne and Cattle and other the more esteemed sorts of things you ought not to steal no nor covet for from this is ingendered that cursed serpent of Envy which hath been the cheif cause of all humane misadventures See that ye do not too much flatter the inordinate appetites of your senses with a complacenciall indulgence for they will lead you into a thousand cursed sinns The senses are for the more part fallacious guides negligent sentinels and the ruiners of the soul These teach you pride the first of all sinns and a crime so execrable that it hath polluted heaven with its filthinesse They teach you covetousnesse which is an insatiable desire that depraving faith and goodnesse openeth a door to all wickednesse They teach you Luxury which is a furious passion that perverting the reason makes man rebell against himselfe They teach you Superfluous Gluttony which is a concatenation of a thousand Vices This transports the will fomenteth love and hatred extinguisheth the memory distracteth the understanding and is the high way to all evills In short he that obeyes his senses cannot be a lover of God The senses affect only their owne delight and many times rave giving credit to themselves alone My sonnes the mercy of God which will have his Advertisement precede his Chastisements illuminating your souls commands that I denounce your miseries The vengeance of Heaven my Children shall set open the Abysse and shall drown the earth the waters shall surmount the Hills fishes shall possesse the places of birds in brief all mankind except a small number of

punishments feares them to be much greater then they are A Hell to a soul that hath proved it shall be no greater nor more horrible To one that dreads it the torments and stripes represent themselves centuplicated Because saith God thou hast bent thy eare to the flatteries of thy wife touching and tasting the fruites of the forbidden Tree I will that thy labours curse the earth instead of cultivating it With the sudors of thy industry shalt thou spend thy days Thornes and thistles shall over-run thy feilds and like a bruit thou shalt be constrained to take herbes for thy sustentation Thou shalt not be able to eat without imploying thy hand or sweating thy brows These thy miseries shall determine with the ultimate period of thy life for I will for thy disobedience that thou returne to thy beginning and that earth become earth and dust dust How unexplicable is the mercy of God! Adam sinnes and transgresseth the precepts of his Divine Majesty and He in pronouncing the sentence of condemnation curseth the Earth What will not love make one doe What share had the earth in the faults of Adam With what demerit had it irritated the indignation of its Lord Unlesse perhaps it was cursed by God for that it did nor suddenly open a gulph to swallow him who had not known how to obey his Creator Or unlesse that God would have it cursed because it was always to serve the serpent for food It argues also the goodnesse of the Lord to remember Adam of the end of his miseryes whilst in minding him of his death he sets before him the period of his infelicity And although Death is the wages of sinne it proves notwithstanding profitable and necessary that so mans miserys and misfortunes become not immortall Mercifull God that blessest even when thou chastisest us Indeed death was a necessary act in the world that so the feare of losing the life should spur man on to all good actions and refraine him from all bad What would not man dare what would not man atempt to do if death should not cut the thread of his sensuality of his ambition How would he despise the death of the soul and his last damnation in the fall of the world that dying every moment should neverthelesse pride himselfe in a hope of immortallity It would not doubtlesse be the least of his rash attempts with the union of the mountaines to attempt a scalado upon Heaven Let the goodnesse of God therefore be for ever praised that to preserve the soul from perpetual damnation and to interrupt a lethargy of vices which would determine only with the termination of time hath decreed the dissolution of this masse of humane flesh and permitted that a momentary paine that is circumscribed by the brevity of a grone should deliver us from an eternall torment accompanyed with such dolours as the just anger of God is able to produce Scarce had the Soveraign Monarch pronounced the punishment for the sinne of Adam but making either by virtue of his Divine power or by meanes of the Angels certaine garments of beasts skins he therewith covered the nakednesse of Adam and Eve who stupifyed with Gods displeasure knew not so much as how with pardon to beg the mercy of his Divine Majesty This also is an argument of the wonderfull beneficence of God in that he would not permit that sinners thrust out of Paradise should for all that be wholly deprived of his providence as to the necessity of covering their bodies Because divine favours are of the nature of the Sunne which participates its heat and its light even to those that despise it God rendered the bodies of these wretches so miserable that without clothes they could not suffer the violences of the seasons nor cover that part of the body which is unworthy of the eye He would have these clothes of skins that so they might daily weare about them the emblematicall tokens of their mortality which being of slaughtered beasts should daily remember them of death and advert them that they dwelt under the intemperancy of a Heaven that would have dealt with them as with beasts And who knows but that God in vesting our first Parents with skins intended to describe what ought to be the habit of wise and just men condemning silkes and purples which denote onely effeminacy and pride Unlesse perhaps he would give us to understand how full of blindnesse are the counsells of men that have not recourse to God in their miseries since the vesture composed by Adam covered not all his nudity nor defended him from externall incommodityes and was inconvenient pricking the flesh and bringing paine and trouble Adam being clothed God began to upbraid him saying Behold Adam thy hopes obtained behold thy pretensions determined Thou art made just like Us omnipotent wise and all composed of goodnesse and holinesse Behold thou art become of a nature immortall not obliged to any needing of none and blessed in thy selfe Behold thy enjoyment of the knowledg of good and evill so much coveted by thy incredulity Get thee packing therefore out of the Paradise of delights and fixe thine aboad where thou wast formed cultivating that earth from whence thou hast derived thy beeing It was one of the wonted effects of Gods benignity to drive Adam out of Paradise because if he had continued amongst those delights without enioying them he would have received too much torment there being no greater punishment to be found then to be in the midst of felicityes and to be denyed the fruition Or he was dismissed from Paradice because What could God hope from him that had not power to shew himselfe continent no not with the very Trees More out of an effect of feare then disobedience it was that Adam stood immoveable when God by force took him from thence appointing him a station wherein he might command with the eye all the delights of Paradise that so daily beholding the losse of his happinesse his pennance should become more severe and his repentance more sincere It was goodnesse in God to thrust Adam out of Paradise for that he thereby removed the occasion of sinning anew there not being a greater incentive to a relapse into sinne then the being in the place where the sinne was before committed Those remembrances are no other then stimulations which enkindle the desire and hurry the will to new faults What Adams condition was expulsed Paradise many be easier imagined then described His eyes pregnant with teares his mouth full of sighs were the least expressions of his griefe His Wife insted of comforting him augmented his torments not so much for her haveing been the originall of his sinne as for the griefs which he received from her afflictions Poore Adam that didst not scarce one whole day enjoy the gifts of Gods favour His felicity being shorter then that of an Ephemeris About three of clock he was brought into the Garden at six a clock he sinned and in