Selected quad for the lemma: world_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
world_n	death_n	sin_n	sting_n	3,612	5	12.7179	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
B18025	The councils of wisdom: or, A collection of the maxims of Solomon. Most necessary for a man wisely to behave himself. : with reflections on those maxims. / Rendred into English by T.D..; Conseils de la sagesse. English. 1683	Boutauld, Michel, 1604-1689.; Fouquet, Nicolas, 1615-1680.	1683 (1683)	Wing B3860B; ESTC R30809	78,936	219

to assure your selfe of the good will to deserve to be loved of those who ought to obey you Whatsoever name of Prince Lord or Magistrate that you bear in a Province or City believe this That you shall not have any power nor be really the Master of any thing but when you shall be the Master of Hearts But observe that to be beloved of the people the first lesson is in loving them love nothing but their persons seek nothing else by your goodness towards them but the pleasure of obliging them without interest and the honour of loving them sincerely and that without hope That of feigning love is a wicked trade and by acting the part of a friend on the stage of the World by promises and comical civilities A Man learns nothing but to deceive and betray himself In the art of gaining hearts the great secret is to love naturally and that without art without reflection it self and if I might so say without vertue Love is so much the more powerful over the will and so much the more vertuous and more admirable as it doth without vertue the good it doth and follow nothing but its instinct the nature Divine charity it self is not perfect but when it is transformed into the nature of the charitable person and that it is become his inclination and its weight Futhermore let clemency be inseparable from your person and let it enter into all your Councils Be severe in words and actions when you must be so but then have you another tongue and other hands besides your own Imploy not your hands but when you must distribute favours and let not your tongue serve you but to pronounce edicts of mercy and love Take not those for enemies who are sincerely afflicted for having displeased you And when its necessary to punish any guilty person do not give him time if possible to repent before your face and have recourse to your goodness If his tears and his grief prevent you believe that you have lost the rights of your anger and endeavour to imitate the Master of Kings and Judges who cannot punish sinners but in the time that they are proud and who doth not make the misery of any one to continue eternally but because they love eternally their malice II. MAXIM Keep thy heart with all diligence for out of it are the issues of life Prov. 4. PARAPHRASE LEt your greatest care and your chief business be to keep your Heart because it is the first spring of life When that finds it self in disorder the rest must necessarily be so also and nothing in your person nor your house can be happy whilst your heart is not Govern your passions and lusts and do not follow them Distrust your own will because it is your own enemy and that it seeks no other thing by its impatient desires and disorderly inclinations then to beget in you intestin wars and to see there confusion despair and death Keep all that in chains and let them be as so many rebellious prisonners committed to the Conduct of your reason REFLECTION THe Passions are a very wise invention of nature who was willing to give man extraordinary forces on occasions where he ought to act strongly for the repelling a dangerous evil or acquireing any good of which the conquest is painfull When these invisible fires are lighted in the veines a man is more then himselfe and he then does nothing but what seems miraculous There goes out of his heated bloud sparks and I know not what points of flame as stings which enter into the heart and by unforeseen motions push it on to bold attempts Hee runs where vehemency carries him finding nothing difficult being able to believe nothing to be invincible nor more powerfull and strong then the fire of which he feels him selfe animated The mischief is that these forces shut up in man are contrary to him These are seditious and cruel domesticks At least if they are not kept chained alwayes hee is lost if they are not his slaves he must of necessity be their victime The Passions knit to the heart of man by the eternall wisdome are as Lyons or as horses of great price fastned to the Chariot of a Conquerour When that our spirit exempt from crime without dependance on interest Master of its desires Conqueror of the world Image of the greatness and of the Majesty of God comes to appear there on drawn by them into glory and immortality there is not in nature a statelier spectacle nor more worthy to be contemplated nor admired by Angels But when it happens during the triumph that the horses break their bits they carry away their guides by force from their Master and there can be nothing seen more sad and disastrous they drag along with them all the triumph into precipices And this conqueror which the people gatherd together admired and contemplated is no more any thing but the sport of a Troop of furies and a sad example of the weakness of the vertues of the man and the vanity of his greatness The Passions are from God the excess which happens is of the sin of the first Man The work was holy pure when it went out from the hands of the Creator But the fire of hell is set thereto and our teares had not been able to quench it although wee had never ceased to weep since it was lighted The evil has lasted neer six hundred yeers already and continues to this very day and it is thence that all the mischiefs that betide us form themselves Our spirit sent from Heaven into this lower world Corpus mortis Caro peccati enters into an house built of earth into a body composed of a corruptible matter of dirt filled with the stings of sin and of death The vapours of this corruption form within us a thick dark and tempestuous cloud which covers us with horrour and obscurity Our passions wrapt up in this Cloud they heat themselves and there take fire and goe out thence like lightning and whirlwinds These turbulent fires drive on the Imagination the imagination being driven and carried away carries with it the thoughts and the will of the soul The immortal soul follows motion and goes where heat and fury leads it It takes designs and conceives blindly inconsiderate opinions foolish and deceitfull hopes and impetuous desires It runs and hazards it self and its headlong rashness stops not its selfe but when in the end it is arrived to its unhappyness lost in an abiss of crimes and teares The worst of it is that when it finds it selfe there it is ashamed to retire thence It falls there by folly and it abides there by Pride Man coverd with darkness and filled with errours plunged in filth and loaden with chains tyed by stubborness to his customes and his ignorance is a sad spectacle for Heaven who contemplates with pitty this image of God in so deplorable a condition During the estate

and the same heart Compare them from hence forth and do at the feet of the Cross before your Redeemer and your Father what you will do that day before your Judge when that you shall see the truth written in the Book where all is written Consider that this is a Mercy which has out-run your merits Ingratitude which hath follow'd Mercy and which hath been conceived in the midst of favours Justice which examins the good and the evil which weighs the goodnesses of God and the sins of man and who in the one and the other sees nothing but Infinite In fine it is an eternity where sinners shall never cease to be sinners and proud and where the Judge shall never cease to be just where his Holiness shall be the measure of his anger his anger infinitely offended the measure of their pain and his infinite beauty which they shall never see the measure of their despair I say too much in a Subject where is least need of speaking The whole History of man needs but these four words His pleasures shall end His actions shall be judged His sins shall be punished His pains shall be eternal There is not only whereof to read but to contemplate and meditate What opinion so ever the World hath of an able man if he has not yet begun to meditate thereupon he has not yet begun to be wise Youth and Folly think only on the present time Avarice on time to come Prudence and Policy remembers often what passed yesterday and foresees what will happen to morrow true Wisdom looks on one side even to the beginning of time and the creation of man and on the other side to death and eternity and from these two distant extreams it makes its time present and gives them thoughts of this day V. MAXIME When the wicked man cometh then cometh also contempt Prov. 18. PARAPHRASE THat which hinders you from making serious on Christian truths and which makes you slight the business of your conversion as least of all the affairs of a Man of wit and quality is the custome that you have contracted of living disorderly and not refusing any thing to your passions This unhappy custome is the bottom of that Gulf from whence it is rare to see any sinner go out and to enter again into the ways of repentance and salvation It is nevertheless necessary to go out from thence The Holy Fathers and the fathers spiritual will tell you means One of the best is that which Solomon presents you in the following Maxime VI. MAXIM When I perceived that I could not otherwise obtain her except God gave her me I prayed unto the Lord and besought him with my whole heart Wisd 8. PARAPHRASE DEsiring to obtain grace to overcome my evil habits and to live holily I address my self to God and I have asked it of him with all my affection and with all the endeavour that an ardent desire could produce Steep'd in tears and prostrate before His Altars where I heard his voice which called me to repentance I said unto him O Lord shed into me that Wisdom and Light which makes Man see that beauty of vertue which is in thee Thou commandest me to be chast and devout give me devotion and chastity and then command what thou pleasest REFLECTION HOpe not to receive these sorts of favors nor any other spiritual or temporal if you ask them not Without prayer there will be no change of life You would have Grace which gives the first power to be chast but according to the ordinary Laws of Wisdom you shall not have it but by the means of Prayer Grace gives the will to be and to accomplish effectually this good desire In like manner hope not for them if you ask them not strongly and with an ardent and sincere affection To pray to God feebly to have pitty on your miserable life is to pray him to defer punishing of you to the end that you might defer turning to him and this testifies that you fear that he hears you not because you fear to break the chains which tye you to the Creature and to love nothing more then it God would Deprecatus sum illum ex totis praecordiis when we pray to him that our bowels themselves should have a voyce and that there should be in us a Divine fire which should give to our groans the force to mount up to himself and to follow him as far as his justice would make him fly that he might not hear us God would be pursued solicited importuned Follow Him press Him be importunate and be constant Fear nothing but letting your self be overcome by his refusals and your not persevering Hope in his Word as the Saints have done against hope it self Etiamsi occideris me in ipso sperabo and in despight of despair Tell him when you see him with a sword in his hand to sacrifice you to his wrath and when you see the sword thrust into your Heart that from the bosom of Death even to the gates of Hell you will adore his goodness and that you will yet expect favour and you may be assured of his succours Say that the way to perish is to fly when he threatens That there is no place so sure during in wrath in the World as to be near him that it is the only way where the afflicted sinners and the dead can find safety Ad quem ibimus Verba vitae aeternae habes I am a sinner I am mortal where shall I go too but to thee Confess that he can do all that he is the Master but maintain that as all powerful as he is Indignum c. In te Domine speravi non confunda in aeternum he cannot resist the Prayers of the humble and afflicted and since all is put to trust before him desire him to regard you without pitty and to abandon a heart who sincerely confides in his protection and love Talk boldly and say with the Canaanitish Woman that he ought to be no more cruel nor more pittyless towards you then Masters towards the little Dogs of their houses that you ask not but the Crums of his table as the rest of the Saints Speak as this Woman who knew well how it was necessary to speak to a God Although he calls you an importunate Body although he pu●h you back and bids you to get out Stay Fasten your self to his feet and declare to him there you will be so long as that he hath either punish'd importunity with death or heard you In fine do well by your holy violences as that you may draw from his heart the lovely word which hath comforted so many sinners and which may oblige you to say O Mulier magna est fides tua fiat tibi sicut vis Matt. 15. Thou astonisht me oh infidel Great is thy confidence be gone then in peace what thou wilt shall be done The glory of a mortal Prince is to