Selected quad for the lemma: water_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
water_n	air_n	earth_n	element_n	15,514	5	10.0914	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A45359	A private letter of satisfaction to a friend concerning 1. The sleep of the soul, 2. The state of the soul after death, till the resurrection, 3. The reason of the seldom appearing of separate spirits, 4. Prayer for departed souls whether lawful or no.	Hallywell, Henry, d. 1703?	1667 (1667)	Wing H465; ESTC R18021	32,635	88

and temper which is dearer to God than any thing in the world Nay he can never do it for it is as possible for the Sun to withhold his beams from shining upon the earth and leave the disconsolate world to an eternal night of sorrow and darkness as for God the Sun of Heaven to be divided from that which is his own life and suspend his kindly influence from the tender productions of his Nature I can sooner believe that darkness should desert it's black and pitchy caverns and sport with light and the day or that the Elements should change their natures and the Frame and beauteous order of things be tumbled into an eternal confusion as once to entertain a thought that God should be unkind and severe to the pious breathings of an innocent and harmless Soul There being therefore in the world so many truly Religious persons who affectionately pant and aspire after a greater communication of the life of God and yet are denied those opportunities of perfecting their minds which others enjoy by reason of that place and station assigned them by the wise and unerring Providence of God in this transitory life there being likewise so great a part of the world lying yet under a squallid barbarity wholly oppressed and loaden with the ruines of their broken Natures whom yet the Son of God thought not unworthy his care and love surely it would be a great eye-sore and blemish in Heavens righteous Oeconomy and dispensation in the World if there were really no time or means allowed for the recovery of these lapsed Souls whose condition though it be very sad and calamitous yet it is not desperate nor are they sunk below the compassions of their Maker but still lye under a benign aspect and though the Sun of Righteousness seem to set in a cloud and leave their Hemisphere to a night of darkness yet there is hopes that there will come a time if it be not already wherein he will rise again with healing in his wings and visit the desolate and dejected regions of the world with his chearing heat and vigour and their entangled pinions be again set loose and their plumes freely dispread in the open and boundless tracts of Immortality and Joy It is not the will and pleasure of God that any innocent person should perish and therefore we may conclude that there is some time and place where the young and tender efformations of God's holy life in the more harmless Pagans and such who lived in the dark and ignorant age of the world shall be brought to their due measure of maturity and perfection For to think they are damned is not suitable to that everlasting Goodness which is the source and root of the Divine Perfections And that they are not immediately translated into Heaven properly so called will appear from the Oeconomy of Providence in the world and the Nature of the thing it self As an Appendix to this we may add That Heaven is rather a State than a Place and consists in the frame and temperament of a mans mind and spirit and if we could imagine a degenerate and sinful person taken up into Heaven unless God did likewise miraculously change and alter the present temper and disposition of his mind it would be a pain and affliction to him and he would be no more capable of dwelling in that glorious brightness than Owls and Night-birds to face the Sun and steadily behold that amazing lustre When the benign Creator of all things produced the glorious Fabrick of Heaven and Earth and replenished all the empty regions of the World and the vast capacities of immense Space with diverse sorts and degrees of Beings he so wisely ordered and disposed every thing that nothing should act beyond it's sphere but proportionately to those powers and faculties it became invested with for so the order and frame of the world required Thus the beasts of the field cannot live perpetually in the water nor fish in the air because the vital congruities of the one are adapted to the gross and more compacted body of the Earth the other to the fluid and yielding Element of the Water The Angels which are an Order of Spirits above the rank of Humane Souls cannot actuate and inform a terrestrial body nor can man in his earthly state become an inhabitant of the thinner tracts and regions of purest Aether When therefore in the beginning God created Mankind foreseeing that they would not alwayes continue in the immortal mansions of Paradise but eat and dye and instruct themselves by unhappy experiments in the frail and imperfect fate of this lower World he fitted them with such vital powers and congruities as might capacitate them for action that so the revolutions of the wheel of Providence though wide and seemingly intricate and perplext may at last appear equal and unerring There being then a peculiar Crasis or congruity required to inform that heavenly Body which shall be the reward of departed Saints at the Day of God and that not to be awakened but by a long and regular depuration of the Mind and perfect submission and resignation to the will of God we cannot rationally imagine that any one should pass immediately from the Body to those regions of Light and Glory before this Divine Principle be sufficiently invigorated and the others perfectly laid asleep And to think that God will immediatly call forth into act this Aethereal congruity of life in the soul of every pious Man departed this life is to set the miraculous power of God at a very cheap and easie rate Besides that it despoils the Nature of the Creature and renders useless and ineffectual such Faculties as without this supernatural check and controul would in their due time awake for the orderly accomplishment of that to whose production we entitle the immediate operation of the Divinity Nor doth it less entrench upon the Wisdom of God by drawing such a Scheme of things wherein God must continually unbare his arm and upon every occasion exert his eternal power for the effecting of that which would certainly arise in it's order and proportion by the attempts and operations of rational agents accompanied with the concurrence and assistance of divine grace and benediction For so we see that God works in men now and we may as well think that God should take every man immediately into heaven upon his first embracing the Gospel and by his infinite power make him a perfect Saint as that he should do the same for them upon their death-beds or upon their dis-union from their bodies Farr be it from us to entitle such precarious and unaccountable actions to the Deity but rather believe that the constancy and immutability of his Nature is such that he alwayes works orderly and according to those Laws and Rules he hath placed in the World unless a visible and certain good of a part or the whole Creation intervene and cannot so advantageously be effected