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book_n	write_n	write_v	year_n	544	4	4.5503	4	false

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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A30466	Some passages of the life and death of the right honourable John, Earl of Rochester who died the 26th of July, 1680 / written by his own direction on his death-bed by Gilbert Burnet ...	Burnet, Gilbert, 1643-1715.	1680 (1680)	Wing B5922; ESTC R15099	49,660	204

the Rules are both good and easie to submit to them for the recovering of his health and by following these finds a power entring within him that frees him from the slavery of his Appetites and Passions that exalts his Mind above the accidents of life and spreads an inward purity in his Heart from which a serene and calm Joy arises within him And good men by the efficacy these Methods have upon them and from the returns of their prayers and other endeavours grow assured that these things are true and answerable to the Promises they find registred in Scripture All this he said might be fancy But to this I answered That as it were unreasonable to tell a man that is abroad and knows he is awake that perhaps he is in a dream and in his Bed and only thinks he is abroad or that as some go about in their sleep so he may be asleep still So good and religious men know though others may be abused by their fancies that they are under no such deception and find they are neither hot nor Enthusiastical but under the power of calm and clear Principles All this he said he did not understand and that it was to assert or beg the thing in Question which he could not comprehend As for the possibility of Revelation it was a vain thing to deny it For as God gives us the sense of seeing material Objects by our Eyes and opened in some a capacity of apprehending high and sublime things of which other men seemed utterly incapable So it was a weak assertion that God cannot awaken a power in some mens Minds to apprehend and know some things in such a manner that others are not capable of it This is not half so incredible to us as sight is to a blind man who yet may be convinced there is a strange power of seeing that governs men of which he finds himself deprived As for the capacity put into such mens hands to deceive the World We are at the same time to consider that besides the probity of their tempers it cannot be thought but God can so forcibly bind up a man in some things that it should not be in his power to deliver them otherwise then as he gives him in Commission besides the Confirmation of Miracles are a divine Credential to warrant such persons in what they deliver to the World which cannot be imagined can be joyned to a Lye since this were to put the Omnipotence of God to attest that which no honest man will do For the business of the Fall of Man and other things of which we cannot perhaps give our selves a perfect account We who cannot fathome the Secrets of the Councel of God do very unreasonably to take on us to reject an excellent Systeme of good and holy Rules because we cannot satisfie our selves about some difficulties in them Common Experience tells us There is a great disorder in our Natures which is not easily rectified All Philosophers were sensible of it and every man that designs to govern himself by Reason feels the struggle between it and nature So that it is plain there is a Lapse of the high powers of the Soul But why said he could not this be rectified by some plain Rules given but men must come and shew a trick to perswade the World they speak to them in the Name of God I Answered That Religion being a design to recover and save Mankind was to be so opened as to awaken and work upon all sorts of people and generally men of a simplicity of Mind were those that were the fittest Objects for God to shew his favour to Therefore it was necessary that Messengers sent from Heaven should appear with such allarming Evidences as might awaken the World and prepare them by some astonishing Signs to listen to the Doctrine they were to deliver Philosophy that was only a matter of fine Speculation had few Votaries And as there was no Authority in it to bind the World to believe its Dictates so they were only received by some of nobler and refined Natures who could apply themselves to and delight in such Notions But true Religion was to be built on a Foundation that should carry more weight on it and to have such Convictions as might not only reach those who were already disposed to receive them but rouse up such as without great and sensible excitation would have otherwise slept on in their ill Courses Upon this and some such Occasions I told him I saw the ill use he made of his Wit by which he slurred the gravest things with a slight dash of his Fancy and the pleasure he found in such wanton Expressions as calling the doing of Miracles the shewing of a trick did really keep him from examining them with that care which such things required For the Old Testament We are so remote from that time We have so little knowledge of the Language in which it was writ have so imperfect an account of the History of those Ages know nothing of their Customs Forms of Speech and the several Periods they might have by which they reckoned their time that it is rather a wonder We should understand so much of it than that many passages in it should be so dark to us The chief use it has to us Christians is that from Writings which the Jews acknowledge to be divinely inspired it is manifest the Messias was promised before the destruction of their Temple which being done long ago and these Prophesies agreeing to our Saviour and to no other Here is a great Confirmation given to the Gospel But though many things in these Books could not be understood by us who live above 3000 years after the chief of them were written it is no such extraordinary matter For that of the Destruction of the Canaanites by the Israelites It is to be considered that if God had sent a Plague among them all that could not have been found fault with If then God had a Right to take away their Lives without Injustice or Cruelty he had a Right to appoint others to do it as well to execute it by a more immediate way And the taking away people by the Sword is a much gentler way of dying than to be smitten with a Plague or a Famine And for the Children that were Innocent of their Fathers faults God could in another State make that up to them So all the difficulty is Why were the Israelites commanded to execute a thing of such Barbarity But this will not seem so hard if we consider that this was to be no Precedent for future times since they did not do it but upon special Warrant and Commission from Heaven evidenc'd to all the World by such mighty Miracles as did plainly shew That they were particularly design'd by God to be the Executioners of his Justice And God by imploying them in so severe a Service intended to possess them with great horrour of Idolatry which was

and he had been preparing his Notes for his Sermon but was found dead in his Bed the next Morning These things he said made him inclined to believe the Soul was a substance distinct from matter and this often returned into his thoughts But that which perfected his perswasion about it was that in the Sickness which brought him so near death before I first knew him when his Spirits were so low and spent that he could not move nor stir and he did not think to live an hour He said His Reason and Judgment were so clear and strong that from thence he was fully perswaded that Death was not the spending or dissolution of the Soul but only the separation of it from matter He had in that Sickness great Remorses for his past Life but he afterwards told me They were rather general and dark Horrours than any Convictions of sinning against God He was sorry he had lived so as to wast his strength so soon or that he had brought such an ill name upon himself and had an Agony in his Mind about it which he knew not well how to express But at such times though he complied with his Friends in suffering Divines to be sent for he said He had no great mind to it and that it was but a piece of his breeding to desire them to pray by him in which he joyned little himself As to the Supream Being he had always some Impression of one and professed often to me That he had never known an entire Atheist who fully believed there was no God Yet when he explained his Notion of this Being it amounted to no more than a vast power that had none of the Attributes of Goodness or Justice we ascribe to the Deity These were his thoughts about Religion as himself told me For Morality he freely own'd to me that though he talked of it as a fine thing yet this was only because he thought it a decent way of speaking and that as they went always in Cloaths though in their Frollicks they would have chosen sometimes to have gone naked if they had not feared the people So though some of them found it necessary for humane life to talk of Morality yet he confessed they cared not for it further then the reputation of it was necessary for their credit and affairs of which he gave me many Instances as their professing and swearing Friendship where they hated mortally their Oaths and Imprecations in their Addresses to Women which they intended never to make good the pleasure they took in defaming innocent Persons and spreading false Reports of some perhaps in Revenge because they could not engage them to comply with their ill Designs The delight they had in making people quarrel their unjust usage of their Creditors and putting them off by any deceitful Promise they could invent that might deliver them from present Importunity So that in detestation of these Courses he would often break forth into such hard Expressions concerning himself as would be indecent for another to repeat Such had been his Principles and Practices in a Course of many years which had almost quite extinguish't the natural Propensities in him to Justice and Vertue He would often go into the Country and be for some months wholly imployed in Study or the Sallies of his Wit Which he came to direct chiefly to Satyre And this he often defended to me by saying there were some people that could not be kept in Order or admonished but in this way I replied That it might be granted that a grave way of Satyre was sometimes no improfitable way of Reproof Yet they who used it only out of spite and mixed Lyes with Truth sparing nothing that might adorn their Poems or gratifie their Revenge could not excuse that way of Reproach by which the Innocent often suffer since the most malicious things if wittily expressed might stick to and blemish the best men in the World and the malice of a Libel could hardly consist with the Charity of an Admonition To this he answered A man could not write with life unless he were heated by Revenge For to make a Satyre without Resentments upon the cold Notions of Phylosophy was as if a man would in cold blood cut mens throats who had never offended him And he said The lyes in these Libels came often in as Ornaments that could not be spared without spoiling the beauty of the Poem For his other Studies they were divided between the Comical and witty Writings of the Ancients and Moderns the Roman Authors and Books of Physick which the ill state of health he was fallen into made more necessary to himself and which qualifi'd him for an odd adventure which I shall but just mention Being under an unlucky Accident which obliged him to keep out of the way He disguised himself so that his nearest Friends could not have known him and set up in Tower-street for an Italian Mountebank where he had a Stage and practised Physick for some Weeks not without success In his later years he read Books of History more He took pleasure to disguise himself as a Porter or as a Beggar sometimes to follow some mean Amours which for the variety of them he affected At other times meerly for diversion he would go about in odd shapes in which he acted his part so naturally that even those who were on the secret and saw him in these shapes could perceive nothing by which he might be discovered I have now made the Description of his former Life and Principles as fully as I thought necessary to answer my End in Writing And yet with those reserves that I hope I have given no just cause of offence to any I have said nothing but what I had from his own mouth and have avoided the mentioning of the more particular Passages of his life of which he told me not a few But since others were concerned in them whose good only I design I will say nothing that may either provoke or blemish them It is their Reformation and not their Disgrace I desire This tender consideration of others has made me suppress many remarkable and useful things he told me But finding that though I should name none yet I must at least Relate such Circumstances as would give too great Occasion for the Reader to conjecture concerning the Persons intended right or wrong either of which were inconvenient enough I have chosen to pass them quite over But I hope those that know how much they were engaged with him in his ill Courses will be somewhat touched with this tenderness I express towards them and be thereby the rather induced to reflect on their Ways and to consider without prejudice or passion what sense this Noble Lord had of their case when he came at last seriously to reflect upon his own I now turn to those parts of this Narrative wherein I my self bore some share and which I am to deliver upon the Observations I made