Selected quad for the lemma: death_n
Text snippets containing the quad
|
ID |
Title |
Author |
Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication) |
STC |
Words |
Pages |
|
A37030
|
A contemplation of mans mortalitie. Preached at Reading, by John Dashfield, M.A.
|
Dashfield, John.
|
1649
(1649)
|
Wing D279A; ESTC R214401
|
10,075
|
24
|
to bind my self to iustifie or maintain the truth thereof albeit in my iudgement their authority that have written on the same argument may grant it for true or very likely Pliny and Marcus Varro discoursing on the time of a mans life do affirm that the learned Egyptians had found out by experience that man according to the course of nature could not live above a hundred yeares but if any one hapned to out-step that limitation it was iudged by particular influence and power of the starres a thing in natures work very strange and marvellous But passe we to the foundation of this their settled perswasion they gathered and conceived by the heart of a man which having made proof of many times by order of Anatomy they thereby attained to the knowledge of very wonderfull secrets For say they when a man-child is a full yeare old his heart poizeth the weight of two of their dramâ— foure when hee is two yeares old and so onward as many yeares as hee lives his heart increaseth in weight a couple of drammes yearely So that when hee commeth to the age of fifty yeares his heart weigheth then an hundred drammes but thence forward it is not more ponderous but proportionably diminisheth his weight ratably every yeare by two drammes even according as before it increased So that at the age of 100 yeares the heart by continuall decreasing becomes to be nothing in poize and then consequently the man of necessity dies if by some other accidentall occasion he dies not before because there are so many kinds of severall occasions which can and do customarily hasten death before men arrive at half the time of making this experiment in themselves We have then nothing more certain or assured then death and that onely in the will power and knowledge of God so that as the forgetfulnesse of death is the cause of a mans falling into sinne so the memory thereof turneth him quite from sinne Recordare novissima Remember thy end and thou shalt never do amisse And the Kingly Psalmist saith Cogitari dies antiquos annos aeternos in mente habui c. Ps 77.5 6. And Plato affirmes that the life of a wise man is meditation in death Therefore watch and pray for ye know not at what houre the Lord will come It is well weighed by Rapertus that after God had condemned Adam to death he bestow'd upon his wife the name of life Mater cunctarum gentium the Mother of all the living scarce had God condemned him to punishment but he by and by shewes he had forgot it and therefore did God permit the death of innocent Abel to the end that in Abel he might see the death of the body and in Cain the death of the soul for to quicken his memory From Adam we inherit this forgetfullnesse not remembring what we saw but yesterday and the generall desire of man strives all it can to perpetuate our life which if it were in our hands we would never see death But because the love of life should not rob us of our memory and that fearing as we are mortall we might covet those things that are eternall seeing that walls towers marble and brasse moulder away to dust we may ever have in our memory this rule Recordare novissima Remember thy end Many holy Saints have stiled the memory the stomack of the soul as Gregory Bernard Theodoret and God commanding Ezechiel he should notifie unto his people certain things he had revealed unto him and charging him that he should well remember himself of them he said Comede quaecunque ego do tibi Eat whatsoever I give thee And in another place he commanded him that hee should eat a booke wherein were written Lamentations and Woe c. being all Metaphors of the Prophets having things in his remembrance and this is more clearly delivered by Job nunquid sapiens replebit arbore stomachum sanum will a wise man fill his stomack with that heate that shall burne and consume him Job 15. which is to say will he charge his memory with matters of paine and torments The proportion then holds thus as the stomack is the store-house or magazine of our corporall food and keeping therein our present meat the body takes from thence its sustenance whereby it maintaines its being and its life So the memory is the magazine of the soule and setteth before our eyes the obligation wherein we stand the good which we loose and the hurt which we gaine Secondly as from the disorder and disagreement of the stomack painfull diseases doe arise and divers infirmities to the body so from the forgetfulnesse of the memory rise those of the soule for without oblivion saith Saint Basill our salvation cannot be lost nor our soules-health endangered Thirdly as when the fuell and fire shall faile mans stomack which is the oven which boyles and seasons our life we may give that of the bodies for losse so when our memory shall faile us we may give our soule for lost Therefore this advice of the sonne of Syrach is most requisite Recordare novissima Remember thy end As the first attribute of man is oblivion so the second is his basenesse and miserie In Ezechiel the King of Tyre said Deus ego sum I am a God but hee was answered hee was but a man that is base vile and miserable Eze. 28. So David ut sciant gentes quoniam homines sunt Let the Nations know that they are men that is base and vile Psal 9. And S. Paul Nonne homines estis Are ye not men 1 Cor 3.2 When we see a man sometimes swallowed up in the miseries of the body sometimes of the soule we say in the conclusion he is but a man Now if instead of the gold of the Angells there was found rust and that so fine cloth as that was not without it's moths and that incorrupted wood without it's worm what then will become of those that are but dust Qui babitant domos luteas who dwell in houses of Clay Ecclesiasticus doth advise thee to rise up betimes and not to be the last but to get thee home without delay for there thou shalt find enough to doe Preacurre in domum tuam et age conceptiones tuas Jeremie councells thee to the same sending thee to this house of clay and mud It 's worth observation God did not speake unto Moses til he had drawn his sheep aside into the desart putting his hand twice into his bosome the one hee tooke out cleare and the other leprous We have two bosomes to take care of in this life the one of our owne things the other of other mens but the meditation of our owne miserie being the more necessary wee must ever have in our mind this Reordare Remember thy end A man not knowing himselfe cannot know God Now to know himselfe the next way is to go out of himselfe and to consider the trace and track of those Alexanders and
his pen with a poynt in the midst of the circle the circle is equally distant from all poynts of the circle unto the poynt of the center there is therefore from all parts of the poynt and center of the earth an equall distance to the circle and circumference of Heaven what matter therefore though the bodies of the Martyrs were intombed in the entrailes of wild beasts though their ashes were scattered upon Rhodanus though their carcases were made a prey to the Fowles of the Heaven What glory was it to Martialls flye though it were buried in concreted Christall what shame to Naboth though his blood was licked up with Dogges what hurt to the Virgins in the Sack of Rome whose bodies were unburied upon earth whose soules were received into Heaven Nec viuorum culpa qui non putuerunt Aust. Lib. 1. de Civitate Dei It was neither saith S. Austine the fault of the living who had no power to burie the dead nor the punishment of the dead who had no sence of the afflictions of the living Secondly wee know not the manner of our death and it is a very trifle Job compares man to a Flower Esay to Grasse and David to a Tree Is it any great matter whether the Flower be cropt or the Grasse mowed or the Axe laid to the roote of the Tree At the death of Christ there were three Crosses upon those crosses were three persons The Thiefe blaspheming the Thiefe repenting the Sonne of GOD praying Quid similius istis crucibus quid dissimilius ist is pendentibus What more like saith Saint Austine then those crosses what more unlike then those persons Lastly we do not know the time of our death and it is good for us we doe not in nature saith Seneca pejor est Letho timor ipse Lethi The feare of death is more terrible then death Caesar had the death he desired and surely that he deserved to dye suddenly by the hands of the Senators of Rome It was the song of Zacharias that we being delivered out of the hands of our enemies might serve him without feare all the dayes of our life Men would serve God as they doe their servants with reversions In vltimis diebus mortis In the last daies of their death but God will be served In omnibus diebus vitae In all the dayes of our life Nature hath onely a Trumpet of lead but the Arke of God hath a Trumpet of silver Heare then the difference betweene Nature and Grace Nature saith O cives cives quaerenda pecunia primum virtus post nummes first seeke gold then serve God first betray Christ then buy a field of blood to burie strangers first make maâ—y beggers by usurie and oppression and then build an Hospitall of a bloody Devotion But Grace saith Quaerite primum Regnum Dei Math. 6. First seeke the Kingdome of God and all things shall be given unto you all the rubbish of the worlds treasure are but castings adjectanea as chipings and shavings compared to the pearle of Heaven Latet vltimus dies ut obseruetur omnis dies Because therefore we know not our last day wee ought to observe every day Epicures and Balaams that have lived ill Quando anima in extremis labris when the Soule sits on their Lips to take her flight then they send for their Minister to teach them to die well We may then give you a little opiat divinitie to benumme you we cannot give a cordiall to secure you We may tel you that one Thief went from the gallows to glory but then we must not conceale that as the Lord is rich in mercy so not poore in judgement Recordare novissima Remember thy end This word Recordare is the father of two good effects first it moveth man to Repentance by putting him in mind of his frailtie for being dust and ashes how dares he contest with his Creatour vae qui contradicit factori suo as it is Esay 45.9 Secondly it inclines God to mercy Memento quaeso quod sicut lutum feceris me Consider O Lord that thou madest me of earth and didst mould me up in a masse of bones sinewes and flesh and now Lord if thou shouldst lay thy heavy hand upon mee what strength is mine that it should be able to endure it If thou shalt not take pity of this poore piece of earth this crasie vessell of clay what will become of thy mercy of old and of all thy wonted kindnesse if that steele and stronger metall of the Angells was broken by thee it is no great matter if earth breake and split in sunder Nothing more properly appertaineth unto man then dust his last end and therefore the Scripture termeth death a mans returning againe unto the earth from whence he came The Flower the Leafe they have some good in them though of short continuance as colour odour beautie vertue and shade but dust and earth speaks no other good Amongst the elements the earth is the least noble and the most weake the fire the water and the aire have spirit and actitude but the earth is as it were a prisoner laden with weightinesse as with gyves If then mans end be such but earth Quid utilitatem saginando Corpore why such a deale of care in pampering the body which the wormes may devoure tomorrow Looke upon that flesh which thy father made so much of that now rotten and stinking Carkas surely this consideration should moderate thy desire of being over-dainty and so curious in cherishing thy flesh Jsaac on the night of his nuptialls placed his wives bed in the chamber where his deare and loving Mother died Tobias spent all the night with his spouse in prayer being mindfull of the harme which the devill had done to her former husbands as being advised from Heaven that he should temper with the remembrance of death the delights and pleasures of this his short and transitory life Againe if mans end be but earth why such a deale of coveting of honours and riches and rising one against another why such great and stately houses and so richly furnished Our fore-fathers lived eight hundred yeares and upwards and past over their lives in poor Cabins Cotages Esau sold his birth-right for a messe of potage but he excused his so doing for that he saw his death so near at hand En Morior quid proderunt mihi primogenita Behold I am ready to die what will birth-right profit me there is a doubt put why did the Egyptians so freely bestow their iewells and their gold and their silver on the Hebrewes The Resolution is that seeing their first begotten were all dead they made light reckoning of those things which before they so much esteemed Abulensis moves another doubt why the Gyants of the promised Land did not devoure the Jsraelites being but a Grassehoppers in comparison of their greatnesse Vnto this there is a two-fold answer the first that they came in as strangers from whom they presumed they could receive no hurt the second that God set a consuming plague amongst them Terra devorat habitatores suos The earth devoureth her Inhabitants and there is no man of what strength or metall soever that can shun deaths dart or fence his blow Not to shake this Tree for any more fruit I will but therefore strike this flint for a sparke and away Death is neare at hand as for the times I neede not tell you of them for that we all know them by wofull experience Let us then use this world as if we us'd it not for the summe of our lives saith Seneca concludes all in two words Nasci Mori to be borne and to dye Gregory Nissen treating of that place of Salomon Omnia tempus habent There is a time for all things notes that this wise man ioynes our Nasci with a Mori as being neare neighbours and indeed many times the time of death prevents the time of birth Consider what hath been said and the Lord of Heaven give you understanding in all things FINIS