afterward was shee more troubled than became a Caesarean and discretion and without teares afterwards she could repeate his vertues his excellencies and those did best please her that did most remember him As no man went beyond Sylla in cruelty so not in the love of a son yet the sad story of his fatall end was almost as soone forgotten as related But what neede I goe for a precedent beyond my Text. Now the childe is dead why should I fast saies as tender as loving a father as the Scripture can shew us But some there are more stoically obstinate than wisely couragious Aug. de verb. Dom. serm 35. which barre a discreet man from the least impression of griefe Potest non dolere cor humanum defuncto charissimo melius tamen dolet sanatur cor humanum quùm non dolendo sit inhumanum I will easily beleeve that such men were never owners of a jewell of this prize or if they were so they are still otherwise the losse would have humbled their hauty confidence and have forc'd a confession of what they deny Reason hath done her part if she hath cut off and defalcated the luxuriancy and over-plus of griefe in great detriments 't is stupiditie and dulnesse not to lament at all as the excesse is madnesse the meane is safest and will gaine you the opinion of a discreet and well-tempered mourner Permittantur itaque pia corda charorum de mortibus suorum contristari dolore sanabili et consolabiles lachrymas fundant conditione mortali Aug. de verb. Dom. serm 34. quas citòreprimat fidei gaudium quâ credunt fideles quando moriuntur paululùm à nobis abire ad meliora transire I will allow that the floud-gates of your eyes may be open but not too wide nor too long and I will give you leave to sigh from the bottome of your hearts but not too often nor too much No man shall perswade mee but they are Gods children which silently suffer and with patience endure his correction humbly and contentedly submitting themselves to the wisedome of his proceedings Especially in this case when that which we take to be a punishment is a blessing for they that dye in the Lord as Saint Bernard saies ab omni peccato labore periculo liberantur are freed from all sinne Bern. de trans Mal. labour and danger of either but these that survive are not and at last must dye And so I come to Davids meditation on his owne mortality I shall goe to him Turne over the whole booke of nature Pars quarta and you shall read mortality in every page every character is written in dust and the hand of Time wipes it out sooner in this later decrepit age of the world than heretofore We cannot now say with Iacob The daies of the yeares of our Pilgrimage are 130 yeares Gen. 47.9 but we may conclude with him Few and evill are the yeares of our life we have not attained unto the dayes of the yeares of the life of our Fathers in the dayes of their Pilgrimage When first wee begin to live we begin to dye â—or Nascentes morimur or to use Saint Ambrose his words which excellently expresse our condition Vitae hujus principium mortis exordium Amb. l. 8. de voc Gent. nec augeriâ—â—â—jus quam minui incipimus If death make a thrust at us we have no defence if she assault us we cannot finde a place of security to protect us Ille licet ferro caâ—tus se condat are Mors tamen inclusum protrahet inde caput Whither can we go from the presence of death take wee the wings of the morning and flye whither wee will wheresoever we settle our selves under heaven she will be sure to finde us out And as she is unavoideable so is shee unpartiall 't is not greatnesse nor height of place that can priviledge any man from her attempts The Scripture cals Kings gods of the earth but least they should flatter themselves with the hope of immortality it immediately followes They shall dye like men Could any get a Patent for eternity these are they but a late example fresh still in our memories tells us they have it not Where are the great Commanders of the world where are the Rulers over thousands and 10000 the Princes Potentates of the earth are they not dead Goe search the grave and you shall bee no more able to distinguish betwixt their dust and the meanest beggers than Diogenes was to finde Phillip the King of Macedons bones Intervallis distinguimur exituaequamur Life makes a difference betwixt us death none neyther in the meanes of dissolution nor the ruines after shee can make a weapon of the least of the unlikeliest of things to destroy them a needle a fish-bone a raysin-stone is sufficient nay two great Princes one of India the other of Rome were slaine by a hayre A great Duke of Brittanny was prest to death in a throng Aemilus Lepidus and Aufidius great Romanes died with a stumble the one at his owne threshell the other at the senate house EtiaÌ„ cibus potus sine quibus vivere non possumus mortifera sunt Mors aequo pede c. Hor. no lesse to them than us She doth as wel besiege the palace of the King as the cottage of the Beggar as they have the same sun the same clymate the same seasons with us so have they the same infirmities the same ages and not unequall deaths If there be odds the advantage many times lyes on our sides If travell or gold or watchings or the industry of the best of Physitians could have given life this curious peece of mortality had not been yet defac'd Let this visible argument a stronger I cannot use rectifie the truth of your frailty If you desire a confirmation from Gods Word I can give it All flesh is grasse Esa 40.6 and the glory thereof as the flower of the field Here is set downe the condition as well of the noblest as the common sort their glory fades as a flower the other dyes like grasse all meet in the dust The causes of the necessitie of death which are laid upon all men are three first the decree of God Statutum est omnibus semel mori which as the law of the Medes Persians is unchangeable Secondly the composition of our flesh which is of contrarie qualities their struglings and combustions necessitate diseases they death Thirdly the sin of our soules which is the true Non mors homini accideret nisi ex paena quam praecesserat culpa Aug de verb. Dom. serm 34. Steriles dominantur avenae Virg. reall and radicall cause God in our creation sow'd in our bodies the good corne the wholsome graine of health and soundnesse sinne and disobedience came with an after-cast and sprinkled tares of sickenesse amongst the corne and they grow up together with it and
in some grounds they prosper so well that the weede overgrowes the corne and the dayes of sickenesse are more than the dayes of health and the end of them is death Gods sentence cannot bee recall'd a lease for our lives wee may have for a certaine time but not an absolute pardon The difference of the elements within us cannot be compos'd a truce they make with each other not a peace And sinne will not loose the possession of our soules we may curb her power but not take it away wee may sinne lesse but not not at all for the best man sinnes seven times a day Rom. 6.23 and the wages of sinne is death how soone wee shall receive them wee are uncertaine We know not how suddeuly wee are to travell into another countrey let us therefore bee ever readily furnisht for our journey let neither youth delight nor honour so rake up our thoughts that wee forget the maine businesse of our life to dye well We cannot pleade minoritie if we are now unprepar'd wee were of full age long since to sue out the liverie of death and if we live untill we are decrepit our soule is like our bodies if we thinke not every minute may bee our last The Poet will give no man above a day Horace Iob 7.6 Omnem crede diem tibi diluxisse supremū Iob little or no time at all Mans dayes are swifter than a weavers shuttle Iob 14.2 He commeth forth like a flower and is cut downe hee flyeth also like a shadow and continueth not Let us then so live in these houses of clay as if we were tenants at will and might bee thrust out of possession every moment not as if we could not bee remooved untill the expiration of ninety nine yeares or had a lease of three lives in them The edifice of our mortall selves is not erected upon a rocke a foundation of stone but on sand so as when the sea and tide beate and the winde rageth it is in danger continually of an utter overthrow Horace Quid brevi fortes jaculamur aevo Multa Why then in this uncertainty doe wee make a preparation as if wee should live unto the third fourth generation He is wise that can dislodge at an instant and when death knockes at his doore can unaffrightedly let her in and hath then so dispacht all his affaires that hee hath nothing to say but come Lord Iesus come quickly nothing to do but to deliver backe his soule to his Creator Whereas miserable is his condition who is marrying a wife or giving in marriage or banquetting when the inundation of an unresistable floud is ready to over whelme his unfinisht arke of himselfe History tells me of a miserable complaint one made against Death and Destiny that they should cut him off in the midst of his work when 't was halfe finisht worse is their case who are taken away in the midst of their sins nay if it be in the midst of their repentance Si maneant opera imperfecta Virg. minaeque Murorum ingentes If the tabernacle of their hearts be not thorowly finisht and season'd with repentant teares if they are not perfectly and wholely reconciled unto their God May no agency keepe us from negotiating for our soules health against the day of death that with more truth than presumption we may say with David we shall goe to her to that Heaven where shee is to those Saints and blessed soules that are her companions to the Spirit of truth the Sonne of mercy the God of glory who crown'd her with immortality and infinity of happinesse to raigne with them for evermore Thus have you heard of the sickness of Davids Childe Application his behaviour before the death of him his resolution after it and his meditation upon it Of which I must say Rom. 4.23 as the Apostle doth of Abrahams Iustification Now it is not written for him only but for us As Davids Childe was sicke so was this yongue Lady sicke of a long and lingering sicknesse but patient and quiet in her sicknesse as if shee had not been borne to dye but suffer and even at her last gaspe she carryed such cheerfulnesse in her countenance as if she had been sensible of the neerenesse of her glory Death did not appale her but the fresh vermillion of her cheekes had shee been of riper yeares might have seem'd to witnesse a joy for leaving the world so soone She was of no robustious constitution but of a fabrick and making so delicate that as in your neatest watches the Artificer breaks a wheel or two before he can work one out so nature was so curious in the workmanship of this Lady that shee was apt upon the least occasion to bee out of frame She liv'd to spend her flesh as if she had thought it too good for the worms When there was nothing almost left but bones and skin about her shee desir'd to bee in her nurses armes as if she had knowne that neerer heaven than her bed and then to be in the cradle seeming to intimate it best resembled her grave where presently into the hands of her Saviour she deliver'd a spotlesse soule that she was dead they found but when they knew not Her breath unobserved stole away like Noah's Dove out of the Arke it went forth and came in it went forth and never returned againe Now as Davids Childe was dead Optima prim fere manibus rapiuntur avaris Implentur numeris deterior suis Ovid. Hor. so is this sweet Lady and like the minute she died in never to be recal'd againe so have I seene the sweetest flowers cropt in the bud Impube corpus quale possit impia Mollire Thracum pectora Such was her delicacy that the losse of her would even force a teare from a Barbarians eie God thought this jewell of too great a price for mans use he shew'd it to testifie his richnes and presently tooke it againe for our unworthinesse She was the finest thread that ever was spun to make up fraile nature which time and age would but have sullied and made worse I never saw flesh and bloud of a purer complexion Her soule was not blotted nor scribled with blacke and fowle thoughts her hands were not polluted with any action of evill shee was never out yet but like a good Musitian tuning her pipes and organs against shee came to bear her part her tongue she had put almost three yeares to schoole to learne to speake and if I looke into her conditions I can see through lesse then three yeares a most ingenuous and sweete disposition towards so good as if she were too good to live to sin and so God tooke her she had but that one sinne we are made of Originall towards the expiation of which when shee came first into the world shee baptized her selfe with her owne teares and that little remnant of daies shee liu'd shee did perpetuall
penance and now hath undergone the last Death Now mee thinkes wee should stand all like Belshazzar when hee saw the hand-writing upon the wal Dan. 5.5 our countenances should be changed our thoughts troubled so that the joints of our loines should be loose our knees smite against one another to think upon this harmelesse innocent that here hath suffered for one sinne and that sin none of her owne to thinke now that t is we that are dead and yet shee is to be buried The multiplication of our yeares hath been but an increase of the reckoning wee must make for sinne and runs us further stil upon the score Wee have put off our innocencie long since with our infancie the elder wee grow the worse we are as our first parents were in their clothes of figge-leaves It may grieve us to see the happy estate we have outliv'd and put us in minde of the fitnesse of a reparation We may live untill we are old and old men are twice children but this last is a childishnesse of impotencie not of innocencie of such was this Ladie Mrs of whom I cannot speake the full truth but that I make an argument against mine owne purpose which is to settle Davids resolution in you to beare this losse with patience As David then resolv'd when his child was dead to fast no more so let us to weep no more let his reason be ours t is a good one We cannot bring her back againe Me thinks the thought of this should allay the impetuousness of our sorrow that it doth not profit her whose life we desire but hurts ours If griefe could doe her good every night I would wash my bed with weeping and wish my head a fountaine of water nay had I but one teare to spend after those for my sinnes shee should have it But Seneca a meere Heathen hath taught mee to hate unprofitable griefe Quae amentia est poenas à se infoelicitatis suae exigere mala sua augere what madnesse is it to revenge my crosses on my selfe wilfully to augment my griefe Is not my sorrow weightie enough but with a fresh supply of teares I must encrease the burthen of it But why so violent now you could not but perceive long since that thus it would be Could you imagine that such perfection could be of continuance Things sublimated of a superusuall goodnesse take a suddaine flight from us The brightnesse of the fire argues a vicinitie to extinction it is of longer durance when it feeds on dull grosse matter as it is lesse quick and agile so children the more forward spritely they are the lesse hope they give me of a long life But that which wee grieve for in this Lady is her blessing we toyle are full of sorrowes and must dye but shee doth rest from all labour without which with the Saducees you will denie a resurrection Cesset igitur dolor compassionis ubi oritur fides resurrectionis I would not have you ignorant brethren concerning them which are asleep that ye sorrow not even as others which have no hope for if we beleeved that Christ Iesus died and rose againe Thes 4.13.14 even so all those which sleepe in Christ will the Lord bring with him Could this yong Lady speak she would bid us not weep for her but for our selves for shee is not dead but Matt. 9.24 like the maid in the Rulers house she sleepeth Therefore comfort your hearts drive sorrow far from them for sorrow hath slaine many there is no profit therin Ecclus. 30.33 saith Iesus the son of Sirach Let us not for the greatest losse grieve too much lest we make our friends grieve for the losse of us for through immoderate sorrow death can finde an easie passage to destroy us And now to end with my Text let us with David from hence take up a meditation of our own mortalitie let us think on death but not occasion it let us assure our selves that wee shall go to her but let us not through immoderate griefe send our selves before God calls us lest we dispossesse our selves of the place where she is Let every occasion be a memorandum of our mortality I like the custome of the Egyptians who at their festivals and times of mirth had ever at the last course a deaths-head seru'd in which was a silent insinuation of the frailty of their nature A frequent iteration of this would make us understād ourselves better than we do O may the God of light unseal our eies make us see and know how subject we are to die good God imprint in our memories the thought of death bestow on our harts a preparatiō to welcom it grant that with Iob we may wait al the daies of our appointed time untill the Son of righteousness appear then be exalted into an everlasting mansion in heaven there to raign with him for evermore To whom with the Father the holy Ghost be ascribed all power c. Amen FINIS