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book_n	great_a	life_n	write_v	5,211	5	5.2860	4	true

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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A64099	The rule and exercises of holy dying in which are described the means and instruments of preparing our selves and others respectively, for a blessed death, and the remedies against the evils and temptations proper to the state of sicknesse : together with prayers and acts of vertue to be used by sick and dying persons, or by others standing in their attendance : to which are added rules for the visitation of the sick and offices proper for that ministery.; Rule and exercises of holy dying. 1651	Taylor, Jeremy, 1613-1667.	1651 (1651)	Wing T361A; ESTC R28870	213,989	413

abundanti perdimus we spend as if we had too much time and knew not what to do with it We fear every thing like weak and silly mortals and desire strangely and greedily as if we were immortal we complain our life is short and yet we throw away much of it and are weary of many of its parts We complain the day is long and the night is long and we want company and seek out arts to drive the time away and then weep because it is gone too soon But so the treasure of the Capitol is but a small ●state when Caesar comes to finger it and to pay with it all his Legions and the Revenue of all Egypt and the Eastern provinces was but a little summe when they were to support the luxury of Marc. Antony and feed the riot of Cleopatra But a thousand crowns is a vast proportion to be spent in the cottage of a frugal person or to feed a Hermit Just so is our life it is too short to serve the ambition of a haughty Prince or an usurping Rebel too little time to purchase great wealth to satisfie the pride of a vain-glorious fool to trample upon all the enemies of our just or unjust interest but for the obtaining vertue for the purchase of sobriety and modesty for the actions of Religion God gave us time sufficient if we make the outgoings of the Morning and Evening that is our infancy and old age to be t●ken into the computations of a man Which we may see in the following particulars 1. If our childhood being first consecrated by a forward baptisme it be seconded by a holy education and a complying obedience If our youth be chast and temperate modest and industrious proceeding through a prudent and sober Manhood to a Religious old age then we have lived our whole duration and shall never die but be changed in a just time to the preparations of a better and an immortal life 2. If besides the ordinary returns of our prayers and periodical and festival solemnities and our seldom communions we would allow to religion the studies of wisdom those great shares that are trifled away upon vain sorrow foolish mirth troublesome ambition buisy covetousnesse watchful lust and impertinent amours and balls and revellings and banquets all that which was spent vitiously all that time that lay fallow without imployment our life would quickly amount to a great sum Tostatus Abulensis was a very painful person and a great Cleark and in the dayes of his manhood he wrote so many books and they not ill ones that the world computed a sheet for every day of his life I suppose they meant after he came to the use of reason and the state of a man and Iohn Scotus died about the two and thirtieth year of his age and yet besides his publike disputations his dayly Lectures of Divinity in publike and private the Books that he wrote being lately collected and printed at Lyons do equal the number of volumes of any two the most voluminous Fathers of the Latine Church Every man is not inabled to such imployments but every man is called and inabled to the works of a sober and a religious life and there are many Saints of God that can reckon as many volumes of religion and mountains of piety as those others did of good books S. Ambrose and I think from his example S. Augustine divided every day into three tertia's of imployment eight hours he spent in the necessities of nature and recreation eight hours in charity and doing assistance to others dispatching their bu●sinesses reconciling their enmities reproving their vices correcting their errors instructing their ignorances transacting the affairs of his Diocesse and the other eight hours he spent in study and prayer If we were thus minute and curious in the spending our time it is impossible but our life would seem very long For so have I seen an amorous person tell the minutes of his absence from his fancied joy and while he told the sands of his hour-glasse or the throbs and little beatings of his watch by dividing an hour into so many members he spun out its length by number and so translated a day into the tediousnesse of a moneth And if we tell our dayes by Canonical hours of prayer our weeks by a constant revolution of fasting dayes or dayes of special devotion and over all these draw a black Cypresse a veil of penitential sorrow and severe mortification we shall soon answer the calumny and objection of a short life He that governs the day and divides the hours hastens from the eyes and observation of a merry sinner but loves so stand still and behold and tell the sighs and number the groans and sadly delicious accents of a grieved penitent It is a vast work that any man may do if he never be idle and it is a huge way that a man may go in vertue if he never goes out of his way by a vitious habit or a great crime and he that perpetually reads good books if his parts be answerable will have a huge stock of knowledge It is so in all things else Strive not to forget your time and suffer none of it to passe undiscerned and then measure your life and tell me how you finde the measure of its abode However the time we live is worth the money we pay for it and therefore it is not to be thrown away 3. When vitious men are dying and scar'd with the affrighting truths of an evil conscience they would give all the world for a year for a moneth nay we read of some that called out with amazement inducias usque ad mane truce but till the morning and if that year or some few moneths were given those men think they could do miracles in it And let us a while suppose what Dives would have done if he had been loosed from the pains of hell and permitted to live on earth one year Would all the pleasures of the world have kept him one hour from the Temple would he not perpetually have been under the hands of Priests or at the feet of the Doctors or by Moses chair or attending as neer the Altar as he could get or relieving poor Lazars or praying to God and crucifying all his sin I have read of a Melancholy person who saw hell but in a dream or vision and the amazement was such that he would have chosen ten times to die rather then feel again so much of that horror and such a person cannot be fancied but that he would spend a year in such holinesse that the religion of a few moneths would equal the devotion of many years even of a good man Let us but compute the proportions If we should spend all our years of reason so as such a person would spend that one can it be thought that life would be short and trifling in which he had performed such a religion served God with so

checked with the stiffnesse of a tower or the united strength of a wood it grew mighty and dwelt there and made the highest branches stoop and make a smooth path for it on the top of all its glories So is sicknesse and so is the grace of God When sicknesse hath made the difficulty then Gods grace hath made a triumph and by doubling its power hath created new proportions of a reward and then shews its biggest glory when it hath the greatest difficulty to Master the greatest weaknesses to support the most busie temptations to contest with For so God loves that his strength should be seen in our weaknesse and our danger Happy is that state of life in which our services to God are the dearest and the most expensive 5. Sicknesse hath some degrees of eligibility at least by an after-choice because to all persons which are within the possibilities and state of pardon it becomes a great instrument of pardon of sins For as God seldom rewards here and hereafter too So it is not very often that he punishes in both states In great and finall sins he doth so but we finde it expressed onely in the case of the sin against the Holy Ghost which shall never be forgiven in this world nor in the world to come that is it shall be punished in both worlds and the infelicities of this world shall but usher in the intollerable calamities of the next But this is in a case of extremity and in sins of an unpardonable malice In those lesser stages of death which are deviations from the rule and not a destruction and perfect antinomy to the whole institution God very often smites with his rod of sicknesse that he may not for ever be slaying the soul with eternall death I will visit their offences with the rod and their sin with scourges Neverthelesse my loving kindenesse will I not utterly take from him nor suffer my truth to fail And there is in the New Testament a delivering over to Satan and a consequent buffeting for the mortification of the flesh indeed but that the soul may be saved in the day of the Lord. And to some persons the utmost processe of Gods anger reaches but to a sharp sicknesse or at most but to a temporall death and then the little momentany anger is spent and expires in rest and a quiet grave Origen S. Austin and Cassian say concerning Ananias and Sapphira that they were slain with a sudden death that by such a judgement their sin might be punished and their guilt expiated and their persons reserved for mercy in the day of judgement And God cuts off many of his children from the land of the living and yet when they are numbred amongst our dead he findes them in the book of life written amongst those that shall live to him for ever and thus it happened to many new Christians in the Church of Corinth for their little undecencies and disorders in the circumstances of receiving the holy Sacrament S. Paul sayes that many amongst them were sick may were weak and some were fallen asleep He expresses the divine anger against those persons in no louder accents which according to the stile of the New Testament where all the great transactions of duty and reproof are generally made upon the stock of Heaven and Hell is plainly a reserve and a period set to the declaration of Gods wrath For God knowes that the torments of hell are so horrid so insupportable a calamity that he is not easy and apt to cast those souls which he hath taken so much care and hath been at so much expence to save into the eternal never dying flames of Hell lightly for smaller sins or after a fairly begun repentance and in the midst of holy desires to finish it But God takes such penalties and exacts such fines of us which we may pay salvo contenemento saving the main stake of all even our precious souls And therefore S. Augustine prayed to God in his penitential sorrowes Here O Lord burn and cut my flesh that thou mayest spare me for ever For so said our blessed Saviour Every sacrifice must be seasoned with salt and every sacrifice must be burnt with fire that is we must abide in the state of grace and if we have committed sins we must expect to be put into the state of affliction and yet the sacrifice will send up a right and un●roubled cloud and a sweet smell to joyn with the incense of the Altar where the eternal Priest offers a never ceasing sacrifice And now I have said a thing against which there can be no exceptions and of which no just reason can make abatement For when sicknesse which is the condition of our nature is called for with purposes of redemption when we are sent to death to secure eternal life when God strikes us that he may spare us it shewes that we have done things which he essentially hates and therefore we must be smitten with the rod of God but in the midst of judgement God remembers mercy and makes the rod to be medicinal and like the rod of God in the hand of Aaron to shoot forth buds and leaves and Almonds hopes and mercies and eternal recompences in the day of restitution This is so great a good to us if it be well conducted in all the chanels of its intention and designe that if we had put off the objections of the flesh with abstractions contempts and separations so as we ought to do were as earnestly to be prayed for as any gay blessing that crowns our cups with joy and our heads with garlands and forgetfulnesse But this was it which I said that this may nay that it ought to be chosen at least by an after-election for so said S. Paul If we judge our selves we shall not be condemned of the Lord that is if we judge our selves worthy of the sicknesse if we acknowledge and confesse Gods justice in smiting us if we take the rod of God in our own hands and are willing to imprint it in the flesh we are workers together with God in the infliction and then the sickness beginning and being managed in the vertue of repentance and patience and resignation and charity will end in peace and pardon and justification and consignation to glory That I have spoken truth I have brought Gods Spirit speaking in Scripture for a witnesse But if this be true there are not many states of life that have advantages which can out-weigh this great instrument of security to our final condition Moses dyed at the mouth of the Lord said the story he died with the kisses of the Lords mouth so the Chaldee Paraphrase it was the greatest act of kindesse that God did to his servant Moses he kissed him and he died But I have some things to observe for the better finishing this consideration 1. All these advantages and lessenings of evil in the