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A63941 A funerall sermon preached at the obsequies of the Right Hon[oura]ble and most vertuous Lady, the Lady Frances, Countesse of Carbery who deceased October the 9th, 1650, at her house Golden-Grove in Carmarthen-shire / by Jer. Taylor ... Taylor, Jeremy, 1613-1667. 1650 (1650) Wing T335; ESTC R11725 24,363 41

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turfe and entertain creeping things in the cells and little chambers of our eyes and dwell with worms till time and death shall be no more We must needs die That 's our sentence But that 's not all We are as water spilt on the ground which cannot be gathered up again Stay 1. We are as water weak and of no consistence alwaies descending abiding in no certain place unlesse where we are detained with violence and every little breath of winde makes us rough and tempestuous and troubles our faces every trifling accident discomposes us and as the face of the waters wafting in a storm so wrinkles it self that it makes upon its forehead furrows deep and hollow like a grave so doe our great and little cares and trifles first make the wrinkles of old age and then they dig a grave for us And there is in nature nothing so contemptible but it may meet with us in such circumstances that it may be too hard for us in our weaknesses and the sting of a Bee is a weapon sharp enough to pierce the finger of a childe or the lip of a man and those creatures which nature hath left without weapons yet they are arm'd sufficiently to vex those parts of men which are left defenselesse and obnoxious to a sun beame to the roughness of a sowre grape to the unevenness of a gravel-stone to the dust of a wheel or the unwholsome breath of a starre looking awry upon a sinner 2 But besides the weaknesses and naturall decayings of our bodies if chances and contingencies be innumerable then no man can reckon our dangers and the praeternaturall causes of our deaths So that he is a vain person whose hopes of life are too confidently increased by reason of his health and he is too unreasonably timorous who thinks his hopes at an end when he dwels in sicknesse For men die without rule and with and without occasions and no man suspecting or foreseeing any of deaths addresses and no man in his whole condition is weaker then another A man in a long Consumption is fallen under one of the solemnities and preparations to death but at the same instant the most healthfull person is as neer death upon a more fatall and a more sudden but a lesse discerned cause There are but few persons upon whose foreheads every man can read the sentence of death written in the lines of a lingring sicknesse but they sometimes hear the passing bell ring for stronger men even long before their own knell cals at the house of their mother to open her womb and make a bed for them No man is surer of tomorrow then the weakest of his brethren and when Lepidus and Aufidius stumbled at the threshold of the Senate and fell down and dyed the blow came from heaven in a cloud but it struck more suddenly then upon the poor slave that made sport upon the Theatre with a praemeditated and foredescribed death Quod quisque vitet nunquam homini satis cautum est in horas There are sicknesses that walk in darknesse and there are exterminating Angels that fly wrapt up in the curtains of immateriality and an uncommunicating nature whom we cannot see but we feel their force and sink under their sword and from heaven the vail descends that wraps our heads in the fatall sentence There is no age of man but it hath proper to it self some posterns and outlets for death besides those infinite and open ports out of which myriads of men and women every day passe into the dark and the land of forgetfulnesse Infancie hath life but in effigie or like a spark dwelling in a pile of wood the candle is so newly lighted that every little shaking of the taper and every ruder breath of air puts it out and it dies Childhood is so tender and yet so unwary so soft to all the impressions of chance and yet so forward to run into them that God knew there could be no security without the care and vigilance of an Angel-keeper and the eies of Parents and the armes of Nurses the provisions of art and all the effects of Humane love and Providence are not sufficient to keep one child from horrid mischiefs from strange and early calamities and deaths unlesse a messenger be sent from heaven to stand sentinell and watch the very playings and the sleepings the eatings and the drinkings of the children and it is a long time before nature makes them capable of help for there are many deaths and very many diseases to which poor babes are exposed but they have but very few capacities of physick to shew that infancy is as liable to death as old age and equally exposed to danger and equally uncapable of a remedy with this onely difference that old age hath diseases incurable by nature and the diseases of childhood are incurable by art and both the states are the next heirs of death 3 But all the middle way the case is altered Nature is strong and art is apt to give ease and remedy but still there is no security and there the case is not altered 1 For there are so many diseases in men that are not understood 2 So many new ones every year 3 The old ones are so changed in circumstance and intermingled with so many collaterall complications 4 The Symptoms are oftentimes so alike 5 Sometimes so hidden and fallacious 6 Sometimes none at all as in the most sudden and the most dangerous imposthumations 7 And then the diseases in the inward parts of the body are oftentimes such to which no application can be made 8 They are so far off that the effects of all medicines can no otherwise come to them then the effect and juices of all meats that is not till after two or three alterations and decoctions which change the very species of the medicament 9 And after all this very many principles in the art of Physick are so uncertain that after they have been believed seven or eight ages and that upon them much of the practise hath been established they come to be considered by a witty man and others established in their stead by which men must practise and by which three or four generations of men more as happens must live or die 10 And all this while the men are sick and they take things that certainly make them sicker for the present and very uncertainly restore health for the future that it may appear of what a large extent is humane calamity when Gods providence hath not onely made it weak and miserable upon the certain stock of a various nature and upon the accidents of an infinite contingency but even from the remedies which are appointed our dangers and our troubles are certainly increased so that we may well be likened to water our nature is no stronger our abode no more certain If the sluces be opened it falls away and runneth apace if its current be stopped it swels and grows troublesome and spils over