dayes of thy youth for by the good actions done in thy youth and then the sense will bee give testimonie that thou Remembrest thy Creator by thy well-doing in thy youth for so may this word Dayes bee used Abraham said Moses departed full of daies Hooest sayes Aquinas plenus operibus lucis diei Neither doe I without warrant expound this Preposition in as a causall signifying by so would some have it meant in the verie first word of Genesis and so it is used in the Psalme In wisedome hast thou made them all that is by wilsedome for the Son is the wisedome of the Father And so is it used in the first of the Hebrewes {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} hee spake to us in his Sonne that is by his Son Thus I have done with the second particular In the dayes of thy youth But that is not enough the wise man addes now in the dayes of thy youth I say now for now is the Sabboth Day to the hallowing of which GOD prefixt as hee did to my Text a Remember Remember that thou keep holy the Sabboth day Secondly remember him now because no time is thine but this verie now whether any bee to come it is uncertaine and what it may bring with it as uncertaine That which is past is behinde thee and seeing thou art a Travailer on earth the further thou journyest the further thou leavest it Thirdly Rememeber thy Creator now because now in this very moment this verie Article of time does he create thy better part thy soule for by the verie same action by which it was first created is it till this day created is this minute created and shall bee created to all eternitie mistake mee not the Conservation of it in being being nothing else but the Creation of it continued since therefore God upholds thy soule in being by the same act by which hee gave it being I meane thy soule onely for hee did not in a proper sence create thy bodie and since no cause loseth its Name or Formalitie till its actuall influence or causalitie cease who sees not that when soever hee did first create it yet he now creates it hee is now thy Creator therefore thou shalt now remember him if he be thy beginning thou must make him thy end the first efficient and the last end must needes bee co-incident if hee doe for thee thou must doe for him if hee now remember thee thou must not now forget him because thou wast at first deduced from him thou must bee thus reduced to him Alcinous in his Introduction to Plato sayes of him {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} hee held GOD of a Sphaericall figure and truely though God bee of no figure yet to omit many instances hee seemes to love this figure for as a Circle returnes into it selfe and ends where it began so all things that were derived from him and what was not derived from him must end in him Ister Achelous Euphrates and Ganges all these Rivers flow from that mightie Well and after all their windings come to pay tribute and fall with a loud noyse into that mightie Well Last of all Remember you especially your Creator now because there was of late evill in your great Citie the evill of Plague but now is not because the Gyant hath now laid by his Quiver his Bow and his Arrowes because shee that did sit in Ashes is now become the glorie of Cities the seat of joy of mirth and health because now her streets her Courts of Iustice her Temples are returned from solitude to their old frequencie because now shee heares not Zim nor the Scriech-Owle by night nor the Vulture nor the Raven by day O let it not bee told in Edom let not the Hittite and the Stranger heare that Israel found a mindfull God but God an unmindfull Israel that you are still a rebellious people though his Angel past by your houses and your first-borne live that you heare not him whereas he heard for you your verie doores calling and crying Lord have mercy upon us *âŽ* Errata PAge 2 line 4. read vilescit for vile est p. 3 l. 15. r. leaving for bearing p. 4. l. 17. r. mind to that for mind that p. 5. l. 24 r. are not ascribed for doe not ascribe p. 8. l. 1. r. put for set p. 8. l. 16. del. at Arts and set it at Sciences p. 25. l. 16 r. carried for cursed FINIS
of the Historie that man is of the earth witnesse the like qualities of his nutriment his sinking in the water melancholy his compact flesh the drynesse of his bones the constancy of his figure and that which is not of least moment the base worldling that has fixt his eyes on the earth and by his life-preaching Gentilisme does sacrifice at Vesta's Altars and calls her the mother of gods and men it may be Lucretius read his Pedigree where hee tells of men whom the earth after certaine conversions of the heaven growne big brought forth and nursed with her owne milke But let the Poet dreame of prodigious birthes we know that God made man of the earth I doe not say as some did fetcht from the foure extremities of the earth to shew that his Dominion and the world had the same bounds but of earth First that wee might the more joy in our Ascension to heaven and glorifie our Maker for raising our heavie bodies to so high a place above the Ayre above the Fire above the Moon and though Leucippus taught {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} that the Orb of the Sunne was the supreame Orb above the Sunne above all the Starres except those that praysed him in the morning Iob. 38. The blessed Angels whose early harmony eccho'd to the harmony of the new borne world Secondly of earth that we might have from whence to raise our soules but not why to raise our Crests that great ones might not look too big on the poore but resemble in this that glorious Planet the bright eye of the World the Sun the higher it is the lesse it looks that they might consider the humble shrub lives in Mount Lebanon as well as the stately Cedar and many times lives longer alway safer that 't is somecimes in States as in nature that gives to lighter bodies the higher place that all faces are drawn in dust though some in illustrious dust that very Cyrus who in his time was writ {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} now begs his memorie as Strabo writes {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} O man I am Cyrus he that stiled himselfe great from the Empire of the earth stood but like the Embleme of inconstancie with his foot upon a Globe a slippery Globe earth upon earth he and poor Diogenes lived both but for a time and both in a time though not both in a Tub and Plutarch sayes they dyed both in one day Death you see makes no difference and Christ himselfe seemes to make none 't is noted to this purpose that on the mount there appeared with him Moses and Elias the one in his younger yeares was a mightie man in Aegypt after a leader of Gods people the other alway poore cold and hungrie cloathed with Goats haire Away then with that Knave Lisippus that must needs paint Alexander with a Thunder-bolt in his hand with Caligula that set his head on Jupiters shoulders and with Darius that by all meanes must bee a god though but for thirtie dayes better was that speculation of Philip the Macedonian who on a time falling and viewing in the dust his length cryed out Lord what a little portion of earth is not content with the whole earth he well took notice that as he had falne on the earth so hee came from the earth which is my first part and should returne to the earth which is my second {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} Rhet. 2. Arist. who knowes not that he shall dye to consult about an escape were {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} seriously to deliberate what course a man might take that the Sun should nor rise or set I have read of Temples dedicated to Feares but that no people did ever consecrate a Priest or Temple to death as being well knowne to bee inexorable who have not heard of the gates of Death who knowes not that they lye open and that for him yet because Evills that may bee farre off doe not much affect and wee while the bloud runs hot in our veines put farre from us that frozen and benumbed age as if eternall Hebe or Youth fild our Cups as Poets say shee does their Joves it will not be out of place or time in the middle of Summer to admonish of Winter 't was the Devills policy in old time to have the dead buried without the Walls out of sight that the living might not lay it to heart he that steeres well must sit at the end of his Boat and 't is the good Politician {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} when danger is farre off then to suppose it neate in this respect it cannot bee out of season this is my second part our returne to the earth The whole man came not from earth and therefore cannot returne to the earth the soule shall goe to places deputed to her the body to the earth one and the same our Mother our Nurse our House our Tombe that these two should part proceeds from causes Morall and Naturall the Morall cause is sinne that made a separation of God from the soule then followed a separation of the soule from the body for God made not Death neither taketh the Potter pleasure in bruising an earthen Pitcher two things I may safely say cannot God make a God and Sin of these take the word properly he has no Idea The Naturall causes of Death are either externall or internall exrernall O that I could number them I should then learne to number my dayes the internall cause is the mutuall conflict of contrarie qualities the brain being cold the Stomack and the Liver hot the Bones drie and the Reines moyst the soule comes from the Father of Spirits it selfe a Spirit into a body whose principles exercise naturall and irreconcileable enmitie me thinks at her first entrance into an house so divided against it selfe she should looke about her like that fellow in Libanius that comming home and finding painted on his Wall two ready and instructed Armies cries out {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} who has made my house a Military Campe The members of every mans body are at continuall Warre wee may bee at peace with forraine enemies our domestick are alway in armes 'T is false that Solinus writes of a people in Iurie that are so equally mixt their temper so arithmeticall without excesse defect or jarre ut aeternagons sit cessantibus puerperiis that there is alway the same number of people and yet no children borne Who shall make me believe that Iurie or any part or Jurie is exempted from death since life it selfe our Lord and Saviour Jesus did dye in Jurie Death erects her Trophies as well in Iuries as Greece and in Greece as Scythia her victories are here above her Captives lie below God made the face of the earth to bee inhabited sin and death the bowells this is the place of them that live that of them that have lived Thus
one body civill so by participation of the same specificall nature were all men as one man and like as the acts of any part of the body as theft or murder done by the hand doe not ascribe it to that part but as it is moved by that first and universall motive principle the will so is not that first sin layd to us as severall persons but as persons and individuals meeting in the same universall nature totally at once by one man depraved It is not I confesse the nature of positive Lawes to bind where they are not known or publisht so that if Cain had eaten of the forbidden fruit Enoch his son had not therefore been borne a sinner but it pleased God by a peculiar will to wrap up all men in one Adam whose will should be reputed as the will of all to come whose innocencie should be our innocencie whose sin our sin though his repentance not our repentance Let not dust and ashes wrangle and dispute how just this is how much safer is it to rest in his decree at whose right hand with the testimony of the Gentiles we proclaime that justice sits enthroned and in the infancie of time did sit when he examined nature in a true balance and weighed out to all things their being their properties their places their figures with most exact conformitie to their exemplarie cause So then you have seene how many came within the precincts of this prohibition Thou shalt not eat so many are guiltie of the breach of it and so many are sufferers Now I proceed to the sufferings Democritus and the Epicure whether flattering corrupt manners with promise of impunitie or trembling to joyne wrath with omnipotencie gave out that God was not angrie at all but that he sate in Heaven a Dispenser of good things only The Poet sang of an age that knew not whether Iove could thunder or no and wee have heard of an age when God as yet had not entered into judgement with the sons of men when death had no more name than it hath reall nature when mans labour was his pleasure his life contemplation and his dwelling Paradise But oh {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} The very name of Troy is dolefull how much more of Paradise it adds to our misery since we have lost the thing to keep the name which at this day sounds no better than to the Mariner some unhappy place in the sea famous of old for the notorious wrack of some goodly vessell Well wee are now unparadised turned out of our pleasant walks and must fall to our work we must eat our bread in the sweat of our face this is our sentence wherein consider first the act eating of bread secondly the qualification of this act in sweat of thy face Man in his innocencie had not a body intrinsecally immortall but a naturall and elementary body composed of the same principles with ours and using for the reparation of nature food though not using the very same with us hee was to eat though not to eat in sweat And though he was not as Suarez sayes in a literall sense to eat bread by reason of the toyle in tillage in sowing in reaping in grinding yet was hee as the word is meant in my text to eat bread it being taken here for all manner of sustenance and here I cannot passe by that ridiculous conceit of some Rabbins who from this very word bread doe gather that God condemned all men to jog after the plow a thing which could not stand either with the nature of man or with the wisdome of God I declare it thus The light of nature a beame of that intelligible and eternall Son was not set our by the fall of man this lighted men out of caves and rocks into societies oeconomicall and politicall Politicall have for their end {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} selfe-sufficiencie never to bee found if all men were plow-men the multitude of our defects must be supplyed by the multitude and varietie of Arts and Artificials since then God gave man a naturall appetite of a civill and sociable life which appetite being naturall is not in vaine nor yet was lost by sin for Cain an hainous sinner built the first Citie it had not so well suted either with the nature of man or with the wisdome and goodnesse of God to have adjudged all men to that one condition of life besides what had become of Sciences liberall Arts Had not been mechanicall rude and inchoate manners as courtly as old Evander found them among the wild Aborigines the whole world had been benighted darknesse had beene on the face of the earth Aegyptian darknesse and yet not felt and God himselfe had scarce found an unblemishable Levite to serve at his Altar {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} sayes the 7. of the Politicks The Plow-man is no sit Priest Thus much of the act I now come to the qualification of the act In the sweat of the face To sweat is proper to the body yet may be translated to the soule neither is it a bold metaphore Tully hath it de Oratore Commentatio stylus ille tuus multisudoris est so that Archimedes sitting still in his study did sweat as well as Marcellus his Souldiers then in the middest of Athens neither does the word face restraine the sense to bodily exercise since it is so frequent by metaphore to attribute to things incorporeall things proper to corporeall thus does Aristotle call the understanding {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} and David prayes Turne away thy face from my sins O God when as God hath neither figure nor face Thus much de signo the word or the name now de signato or the thing signified Man is a continuall Actour the Sun riseth and sets upon his action waking he moves heares discourses and when his externall senses are lockt up his vegetative facultie is at work and his fansie dreams the whole man here never rests nay let it seeme a paradox I am sure it is true there is no rest in Heaven The grand Stoick denied motion I deny rest But yet take this distinction Rest is either a meere cessation from action a simple not operation or a cessation from some action that wearied the Agent there is a great deale of difference betweene these two In the former sense God rested the seventh day from production of new species In the latter it was not possible for him to rest In the former man in all his faculties all at once is never at rest In the latter hee is in the time of sleep in this sense our God wils neither perpetuall labour nor rest it was his providence that the Heavens should move that divers parts of the earth might be disposed by the influence of divers stars upon this motion followes a necessarie vicissitude of day and night upon that a vicissitude of rest and labour these two God
hath wisely knit together intending the one for the laxation yet continuance of the other {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} The finall cause of rest is labour Arist. Ethic 10. Now penall labour there is a continuall succession of these two the end of the one is the beginning of the other the one is from justice the other from mercie Now let Anaxagoras look up and see whether heaven be {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} all of stone To be is good but to be doing is the good and end of being wee perfect our selves by action for the defects of nature are supplyed by habits and habits acquired by actions which so long as they are simply voluntarie are pleasant once forced become tedious so much as they have of constraint so much of griefe {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} Rhet. Arist. 1. Violence is beside nature and therefore hath griefe annexed to it These painfull actions which my text cals for are of the same nature with those that Aristotle cals {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} partly voluntary partly violent for as the poore man parts with his purse to a thiefe yet would not doe it but to save his life setting the lesse evill in the place of good so wee spend our spirits in some actions not because they are pleasing to the will but because they are necessarie partly to satisfie the Law partly for the attaining partly for the ornament partly for the maintenance of happinesse supposing then that we efficaciously will this end or happinesse wee necessarily will these penall actions as meanes to the end no other way to be purchased For our condition is not like that of the Lillies which are cloathed and spin not nor that of the little Lambs whom their mothers bring forth in the mountaines wrapt in naturall rags against the injuries of the aire neither is it with us as they say it was with Mercury who was borne in the morning found playing on the lute at noone and driving of oxen at night wee are first infants then boyes then youths how many are the wants of these ages and when wee come to be men wee espy more and are faine to double our paines the more our knowledge is the more intense are our desires and our desires employ our members the vast capacitie of our soules and our large wills adde much to our travaile the appetite of bruits is terminated here below ours ranges about the earth the sea the aire attempts heaven with waxen wings mounts up to Angels to God himselfe and rests not there which very unrestinesse though it be full of anxietie Non enim est absque dolore quòd aliquis perfectionem appetat Aquin. Comment on Ethic. seeme to me wonderfully to exalt man above other creatures that whereas they al disport themselves in some slender rivulets of good onely man looks to that boundlesse and bottomlesse deep the Deitie of his Maker not to be sounded not to be compast You have heard the sentence that God hath past on the sons of men and that an heavie sentence yet me thinks easier than if he had condemned us to doe nothing this {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} this {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} as Aristotle termes it contradicts not only the nature of the soule whose verie being is to be and whose well being is to be well doing but also the whole nature of things Could a man stand in Delph which Cosmographers call Vmbilicum terrae the very navell of the earth and turne his eyes to all positions of place to the right hand to the left behind before above and beneath hee should find them all meet and conspire to smother or expose this spurious or supposititious brat and shall man father it and harbour it in his bosome Goe to the little Bees thou sluggard Pullos vel triduanos ad pensam vocant they set their little ones their task at three dayes old nec insenectute in fucos degenerant neither turne they Drones in their old ages Next turne to the Ant and see her wayes what are those wayes Ask the naturall Historian Etiam per saxa silices vestigia videas semitas Thou mayest find her steps and paths upon the hardest flints So often does that little yet exemplary creature trudge this way and that way backward and forward to store her earthy granarie and keep off a winter famine Now if there be any to whom God hath dealt so liberall a portion of these temporall goods as that they need not labour to prevent either want or cold or famine even to these also do I preach In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eate thy bread they that sit on high so high that the poor below seeme {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} no bigger than Ants sayes Lucian are not alway to sit still qualitie and condition exempt not from labour but from the manner of labour and therefore does Solomon set the Spider that embleme of industrie in that she spins her Web out of her owne bowells to spin even in the Courts of Princes though she has beene often swept out for her labour Why now should the sluggard yet fold his armes why should he for fortie fiftie sixtie yeares rest those bones to whom nature owes so long a rest surely his soule is crept into his bodie to the same end that Epimenides did into his Den to sleepe out sixty yeares he forgets how long a rest he is like to take in the grave hee and all the travellers of the earth let the poore labouring man he that grinds in the Mill the hireling whose paines are trebled by the sins of great ones solace himselfe with this that this day shall end in a night not like the nights of the yeare which after a few houres give place to the day nor like that in Ogyges his time famous for nine monthes but longer and more shadie where Abel has slept almost from the foundation of the world where Israel makes not nor Aegyptian Pharaohs tire the people with building Pyramids where silent Nations sleep in beds of Clay and shall not rise nor wake nor rub their eyes till the Trumpet shall sound in their eares and heaven and earth inflamed shall light them new start up to Christs Tribunall Thus much of our sufferings the terme of suffering followes in these words Till thou returne to the earth where you may take notice of foure things the first implyed our comming from the earth the second exprest our returne to the earth First as the end of evills Secondly as it selfe an evill First of the part implyed our comming from the earth Luc. Iun. Brutus consulting with the Oracle who should be Consull received this answer That he should be Consull that first kissed his mother he by and by fell on his face kissed the earth returned home and was created Consull Romes first Consull beside the faith