likewise taken notice of by some which follows in the next verse He stood up from before his dead as if it signified that he turned his dyes from her that so he might not be overcome with grief We must not love to look on our losses nor think that it becomes us to weep as long as we can But we should learn by the manners of Gods people to do all we can to make our mourning short Yea I might teach you from Heathens themselves if examples would do us any good Plutarch in Lycurg Lycurgus ordained that none should weep above eleven daies and that they should make no Funeral solemnities 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Plut. in Solone Solon likewise took them away that so he might ease men of those howlings and lamentations which they use to make at their friends Interment Augustus as Seneca observes though he lost all his children and Nephews and was fain to adopt an heir yet he was so little moved at their death that he constantly went to the Senate and neglected no Publick affairs Pericles likewise having lost two sons of great hope within the compass of eight daies put on notwithstanding a white garment and with a great constancy of mind went to deliberate about the necessities of the Common-wealth All stories are full of such great souls that after they had conquered others at last conquered themselves also I know it will cure no man to tell him that his neighbour was cured yet these examples do commend to us the remedies which they used and give us hopes that our griefs are not incurable SECT IV. Which teaches us to consider what death is First Common Secondly Necessary Thirdly Good And if we thought more of it we should not be unwilling to part neither doth the manner of parting make any considerable difference What it is that must ease us THE cure of this distemper doth lye chiefly in a fulness of considerations wherewithall our minds must be stored Nothing can resist grief but a great mind no mind can be great that is not big with truth nothing can impregnate us with truth but serious advice and consideration in our selves and therefore we must provide our selves with sufficient Antidotes that may be ready at hand when we have need of them Our souls must be as an Apothecary and our hearts must be the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or shop where all medicines are in a readiness against any grief or malady that shall invade us If we have our remedies to gather and to compound when our sickness comes the mind will be so weak that it will not be able to make them We have least power to consider when we are full of sorrow our affections are ready to overlay our reasons and therefore we must have our medicines made before that then we may have nothing else to do but only to take them And we shall find that to have so much labour in it our stomacks being squeamish and nauseating that we shall clearly see we need have nothing else to do I. The first means is to consider what it is that we lament First then Let us seriously consider What is it that we grieve for It is soon answered that we mourn for the Death of those that we love For their Death What is that I beseech you Is death such a strange and unusuall thing that we should take it heavily Are your friends the first that ever dyed Are you the only persons that God hath singled out to be left alone Do you not see that every thing in the world can cause death Death is an usuall thing The wind the lightning the fire the smoak the dust of the earth the water our meat and drink our own passions our joy our sorrow and a thousand other things can bring us to our graves Why then should it be lamented as if it were some wonder at which all the world should be astonished Men fill the air with sighs they beat the Heavens with their groans they cloath themselves with darkness and they pour out floods as in a tempest Why what is the matter Is the Sun faln from its Orb are all the lights of Heaven extinguished are they carrying out the worlds funeral What is it then that causes this moan A friend is dead There is one man less in the world than there was O wonderfull what a prodigy is this One that was born to die is dead It had been a wonder indeed if he had not dyed Then we might have filled the earth with noises Then there had been some cause for a tumult But now it is rather a wonder that men should make such a stir at an ordinary and common thing than that a thing so common should happen unto them One would rather look to see no tears than no death and we might more easily excuse their not weeping at all than we can these dolefull lamentations Death is necessary Is it not necessary that our friends should dye yea it is so necessary that it is a thing past and cannot be recalled when men weep most for it If you can bring them back again with your tears if there be any hopes that with the noise you make they should revive to comfort you then you have leave to weep as much as you please Is there any Elijah or Elisha that can stretch forth themselves upon them and recover them to their warmth Is there any Paul or Peter or such great men that can raise them from the dead Go then and intreat them for to pitty you Beat your breasts tear your hair break your sleep with sorrow macerate your selves with fasting that they may take some compassion upon you But if all this pains be lost never put your selves into it but say Why should I have my labour for my pains And did not all those men die again that they raised Were they made immortall here upon the earth what good would it do you to have them called to life again if they must again die How would you be able to part with them then if not now What an uncomfortable life would you lead out of fear every day to fall into the same sadness How desolate would you be even in their company unless you learnt not to be troubled nor distracted And if that must be learnt then let us learn it now when it is as necessary as it would be then Do you take it ill that the Apple rots and your trees decay and your cloaths grow bear and that any thing in this world is according to its nature Why then do you bewail it with such passion that men die which is as natural to them as it is to be born Would you have God make the world anew for your sakes will you not be contented unless he make a mortall thing immortall Is it not sufficient that you know it must die and that he gave it to you that it may be
like a man in another World What was there that he did for us which we do not now receive at his hands Let us be as quiet now as we would have been on such an occasion Especially since we know our Friend still lives and we have hope to see him again Naturall affection I confess in either case will make us big with sighs and burst forth often into tears We feel we are not as we were before There is something wanting which we formerly enjoyed And it is an old acquaintance perhaps which Nature cannot but be loth to part withall Get a new Nature then and that will mend all Though the first motions be so free that they owe no tribute to reason Yet when they come we shall be carefull not to follow them If we do it will not be very far Religion and reason if we hearken to them will teach us to restrain our selves Religion as a great person * Joseph Scalig. Epist 139. ad Is Casaub speaks will not suffer us not to will what God wills And Reason will teach us to bear those things with an equall mind which do not happen to us alone and which we cannot by all our tears make not to have hapned They will not let us expect that time should take away this sickness from us That is the Remedy of vulgar spirits Sapientis est tempus ipsum antevenire dalori ipsi nascenti occurrere It is the part of a wise man to outstrip time and get before it To prevent a grief that is a growing and strangle it in the very birth And indeed from hence we conclude that it is not meer Naturall affection neither to which We commonly owe our sadness and sorrows but the freshness and presence of the cause of them For time as was said will make us forget them or if our parents had dyed a little after we were born we should never have wept when we came of age to think that they were departed It is no hard matter then for a considerate person to cease his grief seeing it depends upon such small causes And if any one shall say that it is Love to the good of the world that makes him mourn for the loss of an usefull person He hath reason to rejoyce that he loves the good of men so much For then he will labour to do much good in the world himself and he will perswade all the friends he hath remaining that they would do all the good they can and repair that loss Our friends if Good are not lost II. But let me further ask you Was thy friend Gods friend also or was he not If he was the friend of God as well as a friend of thine why should not he have his company rather than thou If he was not Gods friend then he could not be thine neither No man can love us aright that doth not love God and if he do love God why should we think much that he goes to God But supposing he was very dear to us then I say that if he was Bad thou oughtest to have mourned for him before this For then thy tears might have done some good which now are altogether unprofitable Seven daies saith the son of Sirach Eccles 22.12 do men mourn for him that is dead but for a fool and an ungodly man all the daies of his life But if he were a Good man then thou needest not mourn now for thou mayest hope to see him again if thou art Good Thus thou mayest comfort thy self My friend is not gone but gone before He is separated from us but not lost He is absent but not dead He hath taken a journey into a far Countrey and there I may go to see him What matter is it whether my friend return to me or I go to him None but this that if he be in a better place then it is better than I go to see him than that he come to see me Should we not desire to be better our selves and not to have him made worse then let us contentedly follow as fast as we can hoping there where he is to embrace again We cannot expect him in our house but he expects us in his He cannot come down to us but we may go up to him He cannot come back but we may follow after And there is no diffrence as I said between his visiting of us at our home and our going to see him at his but only this that it is a great deal better for us to see him there where he is and not where we are now our selves Let us not mourn therefore for that which cannot be but rejoyce for that which may and will be And let it comfort us that we shall come together again but in a better place than we would have it we shall have our desires fulfilled but in a more excellent manner than we desire And if in the mean time he can do us any good we may be sure we shall not want it As they are nor lost so we have had them long III. Ask your selves again Why should you mourn more for your loss than be glad for your enjoyment If there be so much reason to lament the absence of this friend then it should seem his enjoyment was very valuable Think therefore of the sweetness thou hadst in that which thou wouldst purchase again with so many tears Is there no comfort but only in things present Is it not a piece of our folly to forget what we have enjoyed Shall we only think what delight we have lost and not of what we have had We do not know whether we have lost any but only that which we had and that we may think of as much as if he were alive Of what we have enjoyed we are certain but there is no certainty of what we should have found in our friend for the time to come Think then of the time past and rejoyce that thou didst find so sweet a friend Imagine not how long thou mightest have enjoyed him but think how long thou didst It was but naturall to lose him but it was supernaturall to enjoy him All men are born to die but all men are not born to live so long before they die All men have acquaintance but all men have not friends Therefore he that hath a friend and hath him so long is to acknowledge that God is very much his friend He was not ours but was given us by God or rather he was not given but only lent We had not the propriety but only the use We have not lost any thing that was our own but only restored that which was anothers And therefore now that he is taken away we are not to be angry that God requires his own but to be thankfull that he hath lent us so long that which was none of our own And assure your selves there is nothing more unreasonable than to mourn that God gave us a
patient That little sadness will banish and chase away all the greater that else would seize on thee hereafter There will be little to do when death comes if thou constantly dost this Thy soul will be so loose from them that thou wilt not give a shrike none will hear the strings crack when you are separated Death will not be a breaking of your society but a fair and easie untying of it Nothing will happen to you but what you have looked for long before and you shall be able to say This is not the first time that I have seen my dear friend dead Yea think with thy self that thou seest thy own body laid in the grave and that thou feelest thy self as cold as a clod of Earth Think that thou art turned into rottenness and dirt and that thou art forgotten by thy neighbours If thy soul can endure these thoughts then why should it be troubled at the death of another This is a kind of death to be so separated from thy body in thy thoughts It is all one not to be in the body and not to feel that thou art in it Raise thy mind then up toward heavenly things fix thy thoughts on God and the life to come think that thou seest thy self in heaven among the Saints of God and while thy soul is there it is not in thy body here below This kind of death differs from that which will be hereafter in this only that then thou wilt be more perfectly out of thy body But if there be no trouble in this separation which thou now makest even whilest thou art in it There will be far less trouble one would think quite to part with it and to get from it We must not let false opinions live And the way to be dead to these earthly things is to change our opinion of them and to see them to be what indeed they are empty and unsatisfying changeable and unconstant Of this I have spoken before in the former discourse but seeing in it a thing so great and fundamental to our contentment let me again present you with it We are the cause of our own grief by magnifying the things of the world to such a value that the loss of them shall be worth so many tears We think that they are happy who are rich and honourable though they be never so wicked and unskilful how to live 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. L. 1 cap. 19. We presently cry up a man for wise and what not Who to use Arrianus his phrase is preferred by Caesar though it be but to be Groom of his close-stool And on the contrary we despise vertue if it be in a thread-bare coat and count him a fool who is unfortunate No wonder then that we cry and whine like children when we lose any of these worldly things seeing we think our selves more happy than men in the enjoyment of them We think that we are undone when we part with that which we have such an high opinion of and there is no way to make us think that all is safe but by altering of that foolish opinion We expect what cannot be and will not be content with what may easily be We cannot make the things of this world to be still and quiet but may make our selves so and the way to that quietness is well to consider their inconstancy and that our happiness is in something better It was a good rule which Pythagoras gave to all his Schollars and is the same that I would have you learn 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Do not walk in the high way i. e. Do not follow the common opinions be not led by vulgar and popular apprehensions Rectifie the ordinary conceits which you have carelesly entertained of things and judge of them as they are in themselves and not as they are reputed of If we would do thus then that which is the cause of our sorrow would be the cause of our tranquillity because nothing hath left us but that which we knew would not stay with us We mourn now because things are so inconstant but then we should not mourn because we knew them to be inconstant If we could make it good that any of these things are ours then I might avouch it that they would never have left us But if they were not ours why are we offended that God doth what he will with his own And besides shall we who are so inconstant oblige all things besides our selves to constancy Shall we whose desires are so restless and uncertain expect that all things but only we should be stable and quiet No let us look into our selves and we shall find so much difficulty to settle them that we shall not wonder that other things are unsettled And again if things be so mutable why should we not think as I have already said that they will one day change to what we would have them But suppose they should what are we the better If our opinion be not turned too we shall be as much afraid to lose them again seeing they are so unconstant as now we are desirous to have them by the benefit of their inconstancy We must therefore alter our esteem of things now else we shall only change our trouble but not be rid of it when things are changed Adeo nihil est miserum nisi cùm putes c. So certain it is that nothing is miserable but when we think it is so and that nothing will make us happy unless we think that we are happy And we had better think so now than stay to be taught this lesson by the dear experience of a great many troubles Let thine estate be never so prosperous yet if thine heart be unmortified thou wilt never be the nearer but rather the further off from settlement For they that have the greatest abundance are the soonest disturbed by every trisle because they are not used to have any thing go contrary to their humour But if thou wilt take any comfort from the unconstancy of things let it be this That if thou thinkest thy self therefore unfortunate because those things are gone that were joyful then thou mayst think thy self happy enough seeing the things that are unpleasant are going away also And think I beseech you once more and be of this opinion That there is nothing better in this world to thee than thy self As long therefore as thou hast thy self why shouldst thou be troubled especially if thou thy self thinkest never the worse of thy self because thou art poor and destitute of friends For these take away nothing of thy self nor can any thing in the world deprive thee of thy self And as Boethius well saith This is the condition of humane nature that it then only excels all things here when it knows it self but when it doth not it is below the very Beasts For it is natural for them to be ignorant but for a man it is the basest vice especially