things while your thoughts are filled with the images of such doleful objects If not know that you defile your Priesthood and that you must instantly clense your selves that you may be fit continually to offer up spiritnal sacrifices unto God And for a conclusion of this discourse remember what I said in the former Treatise He must write these things in his heart who would find the comfort of them That you must lay these foundations and grounds of comfort within your selves or else you will alwayes be troubled It is something within us that must satisfie our minds and not the enjoyment of any outward good and therefore we must work these principles into our hearts for even they if they be without us will not profit We either think that it is the thing that we want which will cure us when as it is without us or else that we have reasons enough to comfort us when as alas we want them also because we let them lie without us and have them not in our minds We have more wayes then one to abuse and deceive our selves At first we think that if we had what our hearts desire at this present we should never be disquieted And when by reason and experience we find it otherwise then we make a great many good principles upon which to rest our souls but they are at a great distance also from our hearts and when we should use them they are none of our own no more then any thing in this world Let these two things then settle themselves in our minds which will lead us into the right way of fortifying our souls both against this and all other trouble First Never think that the things which thou wantest will cure thee for they will rather make the wound wider and inlarge thy wants The more we have the more we desire still to have and the way to think we have enough is not to desire to have too much It is very well observed by Plutarch 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that it seems to us as if our clothes did give us heat when as they are cold of themselves and in a great heat we shift our cloaths to make us cool Just so do men think that the things without them will afford them content and that if they had a sumptuous house and had riches at command and were encompassed with servants and had their friends to bear them company they should live most sweetly and deliciously when as experience teaches us that we are still desirous of some change in one thing or other about us It is the heat of our own bodies that keeps us warms which our cloaths do only contain and keep in that it may not fly abroad and disperse in the air and so is it the liveliness and strength of our own spirit that must make us live merrily and which gives all the pleasure and grace to these outward things which minister to our comfort They can only help to maintain and increase our delights but our delight must arise from a more certain cause within our selves Add one heap of riches to another build great houses invite to thy self friends and lovers unless thou dost free thy self from thy own desires unless thou dost put an end to thy fears and cares and such like things thou dost but like him that adminsters Wine to a man in a Feavour or Honey to a Cholerick person or meat to him that is troubled with the Collick which do not strengthen but destroy them The less we have the better it is unless we desire but a little And therefore it is of absolute necessity that we form to our selves such strong principles as will moderate our desires and make them reasonable But then let me tell you in the second place That a good book and a Treatise of the Principles of Contentment may be without us as well as any thing else We think that we have good reasons of being quiet which will comfort us upon all occasions But where are they In our Books That is no more ours then our money that bought it unless the book be in our heart We must labour to write these truths on our souls and turn them into the reason of our minds Things of faith we must make as if they were things of reason and things of reason we must make as sensible as if they beat continually upon our eyes and ears Let us colour and die our souls with these notions or else they will do us but little good If this book lie by us and not in us it will be little better then waste paper Arrian L. 2. cap. 9. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. saith Epictetus For it is one thing to have bread and wine in a cup-board and another thing to have them in our body When they are eaten and drunk they turn into flesh and blood into bones and nerves and make us lusty and strong but when they lie by us we only seem to have them but they afford us no nourishment or refreshment at all Even so it is in these things If we inwardly digest them and turn them as it were into the substance of our souls they will make us of a lively complexion but else we may be pale with fear and pine away with grief and it is not their fault but our own And as he that doth not eat when he should may have no stomack when he is weak but presently vomit up his food again So he that minds not these things till he be sick of his troubles and in great need of comfort will find his soul it is most likely very impatient of the remedy and it will be a trouble to him but to read that which will quiet him Meditate therefore seriously of what hath been said A recapitulation of the chief things that have been said Think that you are not losers by your friends gains and that there is no reason to be sorrowful when they are filled with joy We love our selves indeed better then we do them and are troubled at our own loss not at theirs but then if the loss be our own we can tel better how to repair it That is our comfort that it is in our own hands to ease our selves if we be the cause of our own trouble Consider often that it is as natural to die as it is to be born That God gives us every thing upon this condition that we should be content to give it up again when be pleases to call for it That God is a loving Father and doth every thing for the best That he would have us love him more when he leaves us nothing else to love That nothing can be sad which by his grace and our care may be turned into joy That we ought to turn our sorrow into care least there be something worse to sorrow for even the sin of out immoderate sorrow That we ought to live so that we may
and lopp the Trees and wait a while and have what we desire Assure your selves it is forgetfulness of God that makes us troubled yea forgetfulness of our selves also who think we have lost our proper good when we are well enough And I think it will not unbecome me to speak to you in the words of a Heathen and bid you Be confident Arrian Epict. l. 2. cap. 16. L. 4. cap. 7. and looking up to Heaven say Hereafter I will use my self to what thou wilt I conform my thoughts wholly unto thee I refuse nothing that seems good in thine eyes Lead me whether thou wilt give me what garments thou pleasest chuse my food and provision for me c. I had alwayes rather have that to be which already is then any thing else For I think that is better which God wills then that which I. And yet upon a review of what I have writ concerning our friends death I think that there is one sort of persons that would have deserved a more particular consideration then I have given them in that discourse Widdows I mean who esteem themselves so desolate that I ought to have pittied them so much as to have addressed a few lines on purpose unto their comfort Though I do not know how to excuse my self if here I should enter upon that subject Yet there is a great person who hath spoken words of consolation to them so excellently sweet that it cannot displease you if I give you the sense of what He saith I have lost saith some sad soul not only my companion S. Chrysost upon 1 Thes Hom. 6. but my guide my stay my shield my second self I doubt not of the resurrection which Saint Paul discourses of but what shall I do in the mean time Much business I have to do but I am a fit prey for every Cormorant who hath a mind to be unjust The Servants who reverenced me before will now despise a silly woman If my husband have obliged any alas it will be soon forgotten now that he can do them no more kindness but if he did them any wrong they will be sure to take all the revenge upon me that they are able This is the thing that breeds me all my anguish and set this aside his death would not so much trouble me What shall we answer saith Saint Chrysostome unto this Truly I could easily convince them that not what they pretend but an unreasonable passion is the cause of words so sad and dolefull If this were the cause of their lamentation then they must never cease thus to bewail themselves But if after a years time all these tears are dried up then the want of their defence and comfort which will be then most sensible is not the only cause of them But let it be supposed that this is the fountain of all their sorrow and consider how much infidelity there is in it that we should think it is They that take care of us and not God It cannot chuse but provoke him to anger to see that a creature of his is more beloved then himself and therefore it is likely he took away thy husband because he was more to thee then thy God himself The holy one of Israel is very jealous and cannot endure to be so slighted that other things should have as much of our affections as his excellent goodness which is therefore to be beloved by us above all others because it expresses a love to us above all other creatures What was the reason I beseech you that Widdowhood and Orphanage were so rare in the Ancient times among good people Why did Abraham and his Sarah and Isaac live till a great old age Truly I think it was because Abraham loved God more then either of them and when God did but say unto him Kill thy Son he was as willing to do it as to offer the Sacrifice of a Lamb. But we are heavy and dull we are carried so headlong into the embraces of creatures that God is fain even against our wills to draw our affections to himself by drawing them away from us Do but love God more then thy husband and I will undertake that thou shalt not fall into Widdowhood or thou shalt not feel it when thou fallest into it And I have a good ground for what I avouch For thou hast him for thy Husband and thy defence that never dies and that loves thee infinitely more then any man can do And if this reason be not sufficient to convince thee I have a comparison that will win thy assent Tell me if thou hadst a husband who loved thee so much as if he had no soul but thine one that was as much beloved of others as he loved thee one so wise and discreet that he was as much admired as loved one so gentle and complyant as if he was but wax to thy impressions one by whom thou didst shine as the Moon doth with the rayes of the Sun and suppose thou hadst a child by this dear person who dies before he comes to his full age Wouldst thou be considerately grieved and touched with sorrow for its death while thou didst enjoy such a better love No in no wise He that is so fair and beautifull in thy eyes would supply the want of it as the Sun doth the absence of the Stars He that is more loved and esteemed would obscure and quite hide all the excellencies of the other If therefore thou lovest God more then that husband if his glory put out the lustre of all other things in thine eyes thou wilt be as little troubled at his death as before then wast for the death of thy child Yea far less one would think should thy trouble be in as much as God is infinitely more above that Husband then he above thy child And beside what is that thou receivest from thy Husband that is comparable to what the love of God gives thee Are they not pangs and labours unkind words perhaps and angry chideings Or if thou canst tell me of any goods what are they What are fine cloaths and Jewels and honours and such like things to the Son of God to the Brotherhood and Adoption to the Kingdom and eternal glory to the life of God and Coheirship with the only begotten wilt thou after all this tell me thou canst not but be passionate for the loss of thy Husband If thou wantest him thou hast God If thou wantest thy menial servants and attendants thou hast the guard of spiritual powers the dominions and principalities of heaven are thy Ministers If thou sayest thy children want a Father that cannot be seeing God is the Father of the Fatherless If thou fearest they shall want tell thy self who gave them to thee and whether the life be not more then meat and the body then rayment Or if thou fearest they shall not be so well provided as otherwise they would have been How many could I tell thee of
no friend yet shortly we may have no enemy neither This was one support to the Christians under their persecutions that though their enemies like Saul did breath out nothing but threatnings and slaughters against them yet their breath was but in their nostrils and might soon evaporate and vanish away Julian called the Apostate had done more hurt to the Christians then the ten Persecutions if death had not suddenly wounded him with one of his arrows The Marian flames had devoured in all likelihood a great many moâ—e bodies if death had not shortnâ—d her reign and so extinguished the fires We have no reason then to look upon it as unkind which may do us so many courtesies nor to accuse that of cruelty to us which destroys the cruelty of others towards us XIII And now may you not well make one question more to your selves and say Contentment hath more to say for it self then grief hath Is there not more reason to be comforted then there is to be sad If there be as certainly there is what should hinder your comfort if you live by reason If you do not live by it then nothing that a man can say will comfort you Nothing will chear us unless we think of it and make it our own by meditation neither will any thing sadden us unless we think of it also Seeing then they are our own thoughts that make us either sad or merry and we have more comfortable thoughts then heavy we cannot but be of good chear if we will not be enemies to our selves All that we can say for our sadness is that we have lost a friend a very dear and perhaps only friend But you have heard that there are more in the world and that you have not lost this and that you have more comforts remaining then are taken away and that if you had none but God you had enough and if you will read again what hath been said twenty other reasons will offer themselves to chear for one that arises to make you sad If there was no reason at all to be sad then none need spend any time in giving of comfort But if they be very few in compare with others and we are made to follow the most and strongest reasons then he is not to be pittied who notwithstanding the small reason of his sorrow will not be of good comfort The greatest cause that I know of this sort of trouble is when many that we love die soon after one another So it hapned to that Prince which the L. L. 1. Essay cap. 2. Mountainge speaks of who received the news of his Elder Brothers death whom he highly esteemed with a great deal of constancy and shortly after the tidings of his younger Brothers decease in whom he placed much hope did not alter the smoothness of his countenance But when one of his servants dyed not long after that he suffered himself to be so far transsported that he quitted his former resolution and gave up himself to all grief and sorrow The reason of this was not from the love that he bare to this person more then the rest but as he well saith because being top full of sorrow before the next flood must needs break the banks or overflow all the bounds of patience And so Hier. Cardan tells us In Dialog cui tit Guilielmus that after he had patiently born many reproaches and the cruel infamous death of a son of great hopes and the dangerous sickness of another son and the death of his parents and wife with many other evils yea and after he wrote a book of Consolation against all these evils yet he was overcome with grief at the death of an English youth whom he brought from Dover with him as he passed from Scotland in the time of Edward the sixth And he gives the same reason for it that the other doth Fatigatum multis adversis oppressit me haec extrema infaelicitas being wearied before with many griefs this last unhappiness made me fall to the ground It was not its strength but his own fore-going weaknesse that made him fall It was not heavy but it came upon the back of many other loads and so oppressed him But something hath been said to this also For holy Job was in the same condition and far worse one messenger did tread upon the heels of another to bring him tidings of his misery and yet he was patient though he himself likewise was in his own body most sadly afflicted We have the same grounds of comfort that he had and abundance more then was known in those younger times And when one cause of trouble falls upon the neck of another we can add one reason likewise unto another and so be comforted For our troubles can never be so many as the causes of our consolation are Yea one single reason of those that I have propounded will answer all Do we not know very well that all friends are mortal Then it can be no new thing if we well consider it for two or three to die after we have lost one But the loss of one doth rather mind us of the mortality of all And doth not God govern the world in the death of the last as well as of the first then there is no less wisdom and goodness in it when many die then when one He that can solidly comfort himself in the death of one will not be immoderately troubled for the loss of more If we let our grief indeed work under-ground while nothing of it appears if our hearts be loaded with it though our eyes look not heavily before others then it is no wonder if it do at last break forth when the heart is over-charged and can find no other way to ease it self But if we take a course to comfort our hearts at the very first and make them truly contented or if we let not the grief settle it self but labour to dislodge it then we shall be the better disposed to bear such another cross with the like patience For then a new trouble doth not come upon the other but only follows after it It doth not adde to the former but only comes in its stead it doth not augment but only renew our grief XIV And now is it not time to conclude these questions and to say to your selves We should not be the more troubled because we understand our trouble Why should not reason do that which little or no reason can do The more we are men shall we be the less in peace and cry like children Nay children weep while they see their parents put into the grave and within a day or two they forget their sorrows why cannot we do so also Though they know not their loss yet they know not the reasons neither why they should not be discontented for their loss Though they have little understanding of their sufferings yet they have as little knowledge of our comforts