separation be full of caution their judgements not remisse their remissions not loose and dissolute and that all the whole ministration be made by persons of experience and charity for it is a sad thing to see our dead go forth of our hands they live incuriously and dye without regard and the last scene of their life which should be dressed with all spiritual advantages is abused by flattery and easie propositions and let go with carelesnesse and folly My Lord I have endeavoured to cure some part of the evil as well as I could being willing to relieve the needs of indigent people in such wayes as I can and therefore have described the duties which every sick man may do alone and such in which he can be assisted by the Minister and am the more confident that these my endeavours will be the better entertained because they are the first intire body of directions for sick and dying people that I remember to have been published in the Church of England In the Church of Rome there have been many but they are dressed with such Doctrines which are sometimes uselesse sometimes hurtfull and their whole designe of assistance which they commonly yeeld is at the best imperfect and the representment is too carelesse and loose for so severe an imployment So that in this affair I was almost forced to walk alone onely that I drew the rules and advices from the fountains of Scripture and the purest channels of the Primitive Church and was helped by some experience in the cure of souls I shall measure the successe of my labours not by popular noises or the sentences of curious persons but by the advantage which good people may receive my work here is not to please the speculative part of men but to minister to practise to preach to the weary to comfort the sick to assist the penitent to reprove the confident to strengthen weak hands and feeble knees having scarce any other possibilities left me of doing alms or exercising that charity by which we shall be judged at Doomsday It is enough for me to be an underbuilder in the House of God and I glory in the imployment I labour in the foundations and therefore the work needs no Apology for being plain so it be strong and well laid But My Lord as mean as it is I must give God thanks for the desires and the strength and next to him to you for that opportunity and little portion of leisure which I had to do it in for I must acknowledge it publikely and besides my prayers it is all the recompence I can make you my being quiet I owe to your Interest much of my support to your bounty and many other collaterall comforts I derive from your favour and noblenesse My Lord because I much honour you and because I would do honour to my self I have written your Name in the entrance of my Book I am sure you will entertain it because the designe related to your Dear Lady and because it may minister to your spirit in the day of visitation when God shall call for you to receive your reward for your charity and your noble piety by which you have not onely endeared very many persons but in great degrees have obliged me to be My Noblest Lord Your Lordships most thankfull and most humble servant TAYLOR THE TABLE CHAP. I. A General preparation towards a holy and blessed death by way of consideration 1. § I. Consideration of the vanity and shortnesse of mans life ibid. § II. The consideration reduced to practise 10. § III. Rules and spiritual arts of lengthening our dayes and to take off the objection of a short life 21. § IV. Consideration of the miseries of mans life 35. § V. The consideration reduced to practise 43. CHAP. II. A general preparation towards a holy and blessed death by way of exercise 48. § I. Three precepts preparatory to a holy death to be practised in our whole life ibid. § II. Of daily examination of our actions in the whole course of our health preparatory to our death bed 55. Reasons for a daily examination ibid. The benefits of this exercise 59 § III. Of exercising charity during our whole life 67. § IV. General considerations to inforce the former practises 71. The circumstances of a dying mans sorrow and danger 72. CHAP. III. Of the temptations incident to the state of sicknesse with their proper remedies 77. § I. Of the state of sicknesse ibid. § II. Of Impatience 81. § III. Constituent or integral parts of patience 84. § IV. Remedies against impatience by way of consideration 87. § V. Remedies against impatience by way of exercise 98. § VI. Advantages of sicknesse 104. Three appendant considerations 1â—0 121 122. § VII Remedies against fear of death by way of consideration 127 § VIII Remedies against fear of death by way of exercise 134. § IX General Rules and Exercises whereby our sicknesse may become safe and sanctified 143. CHAP. IV. Of the practise of the graces proper to the state of sicknesse which a sick man may practise alone 156. § I. Of the practise of patience by way of Rule 156 157. § II. Acts of patience by way of prayer and ejaculation 167. A prayer to be said in the beginning of a sicknesse 173. An act of resignation to be said in all the evil accidents of his sickness 174. A prayer for the grace of patience 175. A prayer to be said at the taking Physic 177. § III. Of the practise of the grace of faith in time of sicknesse 178. § IV. Acts of faith by way of prayer and ejaculation to be said by sick men in the dayes of their temptation 184. The prayer for the grace strengths of faith 186. § V. Of repentance in the time of sicknesse 188. § VI. Rules for the practise of repentance in sicknesse 195. Means of exciting contrition c. 200 § VII Acts of repentance by way of prayer and ejaculation 208. The prayer for the grace and perfection of repentance 210. A prayer for pardon of sins to be said frequently in time of sicknesse 212. An act of holy resolution of amendment of life in case of recovery 214. § VIII An analysis or resolution of the Decalogue enumerating the duties commanded and the sins forbidden in every Commandment for the helping the sick man in making his confession 216. The special precepts of the Gospel enumerated 69 227. § IX Of the sick mans practise of charity and justice by way of Rule 231. § X. Acts of charity by way of prayer and ejaculation which may also be used for thanksgiving in case of recovery 238. CHAP. V Of visitation of the sick or § I. The assistance that is to be done to dying persons by the ministery of their Clergy-Guides 242. § II. Rules for the manner of visitations of the sick 245. § III. Of ministring in the sick mans confession of sins and Repentance 250 Arguments and exhortations
The Rule and Exercises of holy Dying by Ier Taylor D. D. THE RVLE 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 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Isoc ad Demonic LONDON Printed for R. R. and are to be sold by Edward Martin Bookseller in Norwich 1651. To the Right Honourable and most truly Noble RICHARD Lord VAVGHAN Earl of CARBERY Baron of EMLIN and MOLINGAR Knight of the Honourable Order of the BATH My Lord I Am treating your Lordship as a Roman Gentleman did Saint Augustine and his Mother I shall entertain you in a Charnel house and carry your meditations awhile into the chambers of death where you shall finde the rooms dressed up with melancholy arts and fit to converse with your most retired thoughts which begin with a sigh and proceed in deep consideration and end in a holy resolution The sight that S. Augustine most noted in that house of sorrow was the body of Caesar clothed with all the dishonours of corruption that you can suppose in a six moneths burial But I know that without pointing your first thoughts will remember the change of a greater beauty which is now dressing for the brightest immortality and from her bed of darknesse calls to you to dress your soul for that change which shall mingle your bones with that beloved dust and carry your soul to the same Quire where you may both sit and sing for ever My Lord it is your dear Ladies Anniversary and she deserved the biggest honour and the longest memory and the fairest monument and the most solemne mourning and in order to it give me leave My Lord to cover her Hearse with these following sheets this book was intended first to minister to her piety and she desired all good people should partake of the advantages which are here recorded she knew how to live rarely well and she desired to know how to dye and God taught her by an experiment But since her work is done and God supplyed her with provisions of his own before I could minister to her and perfect what she desired it is necessary to present to your Lordship those bundles of Cypresse which were intended to dresse her Closet but come now to dresse her Hearse My Lord both your Lordship and my self have lately seen and felt such sorrows of death and such sad departure of Dearest friends that it is more then high time we should think our selves neerly concerned in the accidents Death hath come so neer to you as to fetch a portion from your very heart and now you cannot choose but digge your own grave and place your coffin in your eye when the Angel hath dressed your scene of sorrow and meditation with so particular and so neer an object and therefore as it is my duty I am come to minister to your pious thoughts and to direct your sorrows that they may turn into vertues and advantages And since I know your Lordship to be so constant and regular in your devotions and so tender in the matter of justice so ready in the expressions of charity and so apprehensive of religion and that you are a person whose work of grace is apt and must every day grow towards those degrees where when you arrive you shall triumph over imperfection and choose nothing but what may please God I could not by any compendium conduct and assist your pious purposes so well as by that which is the great argument and the great instrument of holy living the consideration and exercises of death My Lord it is a great art to dye well and to be learnt by men in health by them that can discourse and consider by those whose understanding and acts of reason are not abated with fear or pains and as the greatest part of death is passed by the preceding years of our life so also in those years are the greatest preparation to it and he that prepares not for death before his last sicknesse is like him that begins to study Philosophy when he is going to dispute publikely in the faculty All that a sick and dying man can do is but to exercise those vertues which he before acquired and to perfect that repentance which was begun more early And of this My Lord my Book I think is a good testimony not onely because it represents the vanity of a late and sick-bed repentance but because it contains in it so many precepts and meditations so many propositions and various duties such forms of exercise and the degrees and difficulties of so many graces which are necessary preparatives to a holy death that the very learning the duties require study and skill time and understanding in the wayes of godlinesse and it were very vain to say so much is necessary and not to suppose more time to learn them more skill to practise them more opportunities to desire them more abilities both of body and mind then can be supposed in a sick amazed timerous and weak person whose naturall acts are disabled whose senses are weak whose discerning faculties are lessened whose principles are made intricate and intangled upon whose eye sits a cloud and the heart is broken with sicknesse and the liver pierced thorow with sorrows and the strokes of death And therefore my Lord it is intended by the necessity of affairs that the precepts of dying well be part of the studies of them that live in health and the dayes of discourse and understanding which in this case hath another degree of necessity superadded because in other notices an imperfect study may be supplied by a frequent exercise and a renewed experience Here if we practise imperfectly once we shall never recover the errour for we die but once and therefore it will be necessary that our skill be more exact since it is not to be mended by triall but the actions must be for ever left imperfect unlesse the habit be contracted with study and contemplation before hand And indeed I were vain if I should intend this book to be read and studied by dying persons and they were vainer that should need to be instructed in those graces which they are then to exercise and to finish For a sick bed is only a school of severe exercise in which the spirit of a man is tried and his graces are rehearsed and the assistances which I have in the following pages given to those vertues which are proper to the state of sicknesse are such as suppose a man in the state of grace or they confirm a good man or they support the weak or adde degrees or minister
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 â—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 tâ—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 buâ—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 unâ—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
unbelievers 32. To do all things that are of good report or the actions of publick honesty abstaining from all apearances of evil 33 To convert souls or turn sinners from the errour of their wayes 34. To confesse Christ before all the world 35. To resist unto blood if God calls us to it 36. To rejoyce in tribulation for Christs sake 37. To remember and shew forth the Lords death till his second coming by celebrating the Lords supper 38. To believe all the New Testament 39. To adde nothing to S. Iohns last Book that is to pretend to no new revelations 40. To keep the customs of the Church her festivals and solemnities lest we be reproved as the Corinthians were by S. Paul we have no such customs nor the Churches of God 41. To contend earnestly for the faith Nor to be contentious in matters not concerning the eternal interest of our souls but in matters indifferent to have faith to our selves 42. Not to make schisms or divisions in the body of the Church 43. To call no man Master upon earth but to acknowledge Christ our Master and law giver 44. not to domineer over the Lords heritage 45 To try all things and keep that which is best 46 To be temperate in all things 47. To deny our selves 48. To mortifie our lusts and their instruments 49. To lend looking for nothing again nothing by way of increase nothing by way of recompence 50 To watch stand in readines against the coming of the Lord 51 Not to be angry without cause 52. not at al to revile 53. not to swear 54 not to respect persons 55. to lay hands suddenly on no man This especially pertains to * Bishops * To whom also and to all the Ecclesiastical order it is enjoyned that they preach the word that they be instant in season and out of season that they rebuke reprove exhort with all long suffering and doctrine 56. To keep the Lords day derived into an obligation from a practise Apostolical 57. to do all things to the glory of God 58. to hunger and thirst after righteousnesse and its rewards 59. to avoid foolish questions 60 to pray for persecuters and to do good to them that persecute us and despitefully use us 61 to pray for all men 62. to maintain good works for necessary uses 63. to work with our own hands that we be not burdensome to others avoiding idlenesse 64 to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect 65. to be liberal and frugal for he that will call us to account for our time will also for the spending our money 66 not to use uncomely jestings 67. modesty as opposed to boldnesse to curiosity to undecency 68. to be swift to hear slow to speak 69. to worship the holy Jesus at the mention of his holy name as of old God was at the mention of Jehovah These are the streight lines of scripture by which we may also measure our obliquities and discover our crooked walking if the sick man hath not done these things or if he have done contrary to any of them in any particular he hath cause enough for his sorrow and matter for his confession of which he need no other forms but that he heartily deplore and plainly enumerate his follies as a man tells the sad stories of his own calamity SECT IX Of the sick mans practise of charity and justice by way of rule 1. LEt the sick man set his house in order before he die state his cases of conscience reconcile the fractures of his family reunite brethren cause right understandings and remove jealousies give good counsels for the future conduct of their persons and estates charm them into religion by the authority and advantages of a dying person because the last words of a dying man are like the tooth of a wounded Lion making a deeper impression in the agony then in the most vigorous strength 2. Let the sick man discover every secret of art or profit physick or advantage to mankinde if he may do it without the prejudice of a third person Some persons are so uncharitably envious that they are willing that a secret receipt should die with them and be buried in their grave like treasure in the sepulchre of David But this which is a designe of charity must therefore not be done to any mans prejudice and the Mason of Herodotus the King of Aegypt who kept secret his notice of the Kings treasure and when he was a dying told his son betrayed his trust then when he should have kept it most sacredly for his own interest In all other cases let thy charity out-live thee that thou mayest rejoyce in the mansion of rest because by thy means many living persons are eased or advantaged 3. Let him make his will with great justice and piety that is that the right heirs be not defrauded for collaterall respects fancies or indirect fondnesses but the inheritances descend in their legall and due channell and in those things where we have a liberty that we take the opportunity of doing vertuously that is of considering how God may be best served by our donatives or how the interest of any vertue may be promoted in which we are principally to regard the necessities of our neerest kinred and relatives servants and friends 4. Let the Will or Testament be made with ingenuity opennesse and plain expression that he may not entail a law-suit upon his posterity and relatives and make them lose their charity or intangle their estates or make them poorer by the gift He hath done me no charity but dies in my debt that makes me sue for a legacy 5. It is proper for the estate of sicknesse and an excellent anealing us to buriall that we give alms in this state so burying treasure in our graves that will not perish but rise again in the resurrection of the just Let the dispensation of our alms be as little intrusted to our Executors as may be excepting to lasting and successive portions but with our own present care let us exercise the charity and secure the stewardship It was a custome among the old Greeks to bury horses clothes armes and whatsoever was dear to the deceâ—sed person supposing they might need them and that without clothes they should be found naked by their Judges and al the friends did use to bring gifts by such liberality thinking to promote the interest of their dead But we may offer our 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 our selves best of all our doles and funerall meals if they be our own early provisions will then spend the better it is good so to carry our passing penny in our hand and by reaching that hand to the poor make a friend in the