arbitrary business but of Divine Authority and Institution of highest necessity in the Church so esteemed and so used by all good Christians The modern neglect and indifferency to it either argues the Clergy miserably embased in all points from their ancient dignity or the minds and actions of Christians to become very degenerous and licentious unholy and unthankful not to be mended till the majesty of Religion and the double honour of the Ministry be restored 11. Lay to heart upon the whole matter drawing all the beams of my discourse and your meditations into one point arising from this or the like Funeral-occasions in what posture thou art for death how furnished fitted and prepared I once told this Noble Gentleman two months before he died when I saw his tedious cough very importune and his dispiritings so great that I could say little to him Sir you have nothing so much concerns you as to prepare and to dare to die Ask thy soul O poor mortal not what goods thou hast laid up for many years not what beauty and virtue thou hast married not what honours thou enjoyest not what lands thou possessest or expectest but what preparation thou hast made to meet thy God what defensative to encounter death how far the power of sin is weakned how far the progress of grace is advanced what viaticum aeternitatis provision for eternity thou hast made A Christian must not onely look to Augustus his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Sueton. in vita Augusti a gentle and civil or well-natured death but to a gracious a comfortable death for himself and also hopeful and exemplary to others about him The last lightnings or coruscations of a good Christian should be if his natural spirits permit his brightest as the preludium of eternity 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 He should adorn his death as the last act of his life with speaking good of God with telling all about him what the Lord hath done for his soul what experiences of trials and conflicts of comforts and refreshings by Christ his Word and Spirit I allow any mans or womans death-bed to be their pulpit let them then turn preachers as much as they can let them shew forth the loathsome and deadly deformities of sin the worth and excellencies they have found in Christ and his grace the benefit found in his Word Spirit Ministrations and true Ministers that so the surviving world may be the better for those nayles which as Masters of the Assemblies as now candidates and expectants yea percipients of Heaven dying Christians do happily fasten in the minds memories and consciences of their weeping auditors The best Sermons are those that dying men and women preach before their own Funerals Gen. 29. Deut. 32. 1 Kings 2.1 Joshua 23. John 14 15 16 and 19. Chapters 1 Sam. 25.37 as Jacob Moses Joshua and David did yea our blessed Lord Jesus most expressed his inmost and sublimest sense to his Disciples a little before he died as to heavenly comforts prayers and praises A Christian should avoid what possibly may be to die like Nabal as if his heart were first quite dead as a stone within him I mean when God gives spirits and strength to express themselves None are such Infidels as not to believe these dying Orators who are got beyond our pulpit-strains and affected forms above all human fears and flatteries all studies of sides and factions Illum vita nondum dissimulatio deseruit Sueton. in vita Tiberii then or never they are in good earnest Few with Tiberius can be such hypocrites as to act a part only of piety when they are going off the stage of life If we are grafted in the tree of life we shall bear some good fruits living or dying I know the best experiments of grace and the surest both 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signes and indications of sincerity are from a good conscience kept up in our lives not hudled up in haste a little before death as goods in a scare-fire only upon the alarm of sickness and death but wisely leisurely gravely and practically methodised and digested yea expressed in our health in the humble and impartial constancy of attending holy duties private and publique in orderly waiting on the true and duly ordained Ministry of Christ in his Church in frequent devout and fervent partakings of the Lords Supper in righteous holy charitable and exemplary lives toward all men which are both useful to mankind by good works and acceptable to God in all humility adorning the Christian and reformed Religion highly magnifying the glory of the grace of God in Jesus Christ An humble heart and an holy life are the best cordials in our deaths for without peace and holiness as the Apostle tells us no man shall see God And Heaven it self will not be welcome to us if holiness be not Heb 12.14 Nec coelum ipsum placebit cui sanctitas displicet for its happiness is no other but perfected holiness then we shall be such as we would be hereafter when we like to be such as God would have us here 12. Last of all The neerer the more remarkable and emphatick any object of death or Funeral-occasion is the more we should lay it to heart As when great wise valiant and honest men like mighty Cedars of Lebanon fall by death either natural or violent by open hostility or treachery as Abner died 2 Sam. 9.33 whose Biere David himself followed honoring by a most generous example that virtue loyalty and fortitude which he found in an enemy toward him nor doth he do it in a courtly formality but with ample publick and unfeigned sorrow even to weeping looking upon that sad and shameful accident as a great reproach and affront to his own party and cause as a dehonesting of his own honour and that Religion which he professed to remove so great a scandal and dishonour from his person conscience Kingdom and profession as attends all treacherous murtherings even of reconciled enemies and rivals David himself doth Abner this honour at his burial to follow the Biere 1. So in the deaths of such excellent Princes as have been or were like to be the Patres patriae Fathers of their Country maintainers of law and justice provident for the publick good in peace and plenty Patrons of learning virtue and established Religion wise and valiant assertors when need requires of their own honour and their peoples safety merciful dispensers of such favours and remissions as may abate the rigors of law with regard to human surprises and infirmities and yet neither weaken the hands of justice nor strengthen the hands of malicious offenders Such Kings and Princes yea any soveraign Magistrates under any title as Joshua and other Judges that are not wholly degenerate from their dignity duty and place are to be duly lamented and their deaths are seriously to be laid to heart because they do not only shew us the
higher form of life are scarce among Solomons living who lay things to heart that is Altâ mente reponunt they deeply and devoutly seriously and solemnly rationally and religiously consider resolve and ponder in intimis animi recessibus the inward recesses of their soules or consciences the whole purport of such occasions what they mean in all their aspects They make as it were a speculative Anatomy and intellectual dissection of the dead yea and of death it self in all its forms and fashions in its causes and effects its antecedents concomitants and consequences They look upon the face of it which is neer at hand and the long train or extent of it which reacheth to Eternity This is the Lecture that the living read upon the dead and many lessons they learn from them because they are men that have an heart which is wise and understanding duely weighing in the scale of true reason and divine wisdom every occurrence and event of providence which hath any remark or signal character upon it as the death of any man or woman young or old infant or decrepit hath to such as have an heart able to apply it notwithstanding this frequency of such spectacles which with many men and women takes away the sense and regard of them though such persons need every day a memento mori some spectacle or remembrancer as King Philip had daily to put them in mind that they are but men Philippe memento te esse mortalem How necessary is it for them to remember their latter end to consider in what a vain shadow they live or rather die in their life because they are without an heart as silly birds not aware of the snares of sin the pits of death and hell over which they carelesly and confidently passe every moment Frequencie of Funerals doth not lessen the right use and influence of them to such living as know how to lay them to heart They doe not as women and children or country clowns only start amain when some sudden and unexpected death befals any as if it were the discharging of a great cannon near them which they never dreamed of but as valiant Commanders who finding that an hot battery and frequent shot slayes men round about them wisely consider that they may be the next mark whom death will hit which thought is so far from discouraging or appalling a man of a good heart that is pious and generous that it onely summons him to muster up all the fortitude and strength of his soul that whether he live or die he may do neither like a fool or a coward or a beast but like a valiant man and a good Christian who being engaged in a good Canse having a good God and a good conscience doubts not to make a good end when God shall call him out of this life to a better The Living that is the wise and considerable sort of mankind are the only persons who have hearts to consider all things as they ought to reflect upon their own hearts to commune with them to try and examine their state and tempers their defects and disorders their extravagancies and necessities The Living are they that duely consider the true interests and eternal concernments of their hearts and spirits their soules and consciences far beyond those of their bodies senses or fortunes The Living doe upon such occasions of mortality in se descendere make sober retreats home looking to themselves and searching into the penetralia animae their hearts above all Which they know to be as the rudder or steerage of the soule and of the whole man of all thoughts words and actions the card or compass by which our momentary and eternal course is shaped They know the infinite importance of a well or ill constituted and managed heart They find that verified which our Saviour tells us That out of the heart of man proceed evil thoughts murders Matth. 15.18 adulteries fornications thefts false witness blasphemies c. That God chiefly requires and regards this as the Gemme of the man most precious in it self most proper and proportionate for God That all beauty strength wit estate honour offered to God without the Heart is but the sacrifice nay the sacriledge and affront of fools and hypocrites Therefore it is frequently inculcated from Heaven and in the Scripture Prov. 23.26 to all sorts of men under all dispensations of Religion to Jew and Gentile Give me thy heart an honest and good heart Psal 51. a pure and peaceable heart an humble and contrite heart God will not despise yea in this he delights all things else are loss and dung in comparison Nothing else in man is worthy of God and yet nothing less worthy of him that is Gen. 6.5 naturally less fit and prepared for him What God complained long ago is verified in every mans experience That every imagination of the thoughts of mans heart was evil and that continually The 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 distempers diseases yea and deaths of the heart of man are as many as dangerous and as desperate as those of the body yea infinitely more For the bodies diseases doe but kill us as to mans society and to a moments life on earth but the diseases of the heart kill us as to the life of God and an eternal happiness of conservation in Heaven The living God who delights not in the death of a sinner nor yet in a dead heart which is the first death of a sinner as a gracious Father and compassionate Physitian hath discovered to us the many plagues which are in our hearts the sicknesses to which they are subject by the surfets they take of the world and their senses Sometimes the Heart swels with the tumor of intolerable pride sometimes it burns withcholerick inflammations sometimes it is scorched with passionate calentures of inordinate lusts sometimes it is almost drowned like hydropick and overgrown bodies with its sensual luxuries and fulness even to abominable fedities sometimes it hath such a gout as it is in great pain at any the least motion for God or any good motion from him sometime it pines away in a Consumption amidst all its sensible pleasures plenty and honours not finding any satisfactory solid and durable good in them all Sometimes the heart is shaken with paralytick tremblings and terrors like Earthquakes which seem to arise from the dark and pestilent vapors in it self sometimes it hath not only fits of the stone refractory tempers but a petrified habitude of a hard and stony heart which nothing doth soften neither mercy nor judgment love nor wrath bounty nor patience of God Sometimes the heart falls into Lethargick and Apoplectick stupors like Nabals and Achitophels it growes remorseless benummed stupid senselesse dull and dead within men past fear or feeling of any thing either sharp and pungent in the Law or spiritful and reviving in the Gospel Solomon who was a great King of hearts and had a
very large soveraign knowledge of them Eccl. 8.11 beyond any meer man tells us that the hearts of the sons of men are not onely full of folly 1 Kings 8.38 Eccl. 9.3 and set upon evill and sick of several sorts of plagues but frenzy fury and madness are in their hearts while they live which is a distemper not easily if ever perfectly cured But if any thing as to humane applications be likely to work any good upon the worst mens hearts Job 41.7 if any dart or weapon can reach and pierce these Leviathans whose natural proneness and customary habits in sin are so closely fixed and hardened to all manner of sin without any remorse it is such as Death brings with it not as it is pictured to scare children but as it is really it self and perceived among all sorts of men good or bad sparing none surprising any one even in the pride hardness deadness and damnableness of his heart Nothing in life is a more consummated fear then that which death carries with it It is called the King of terrors Job 18.14 Isa 14.9 11 12. Ezek. 32.27 Rex longimanus whose Scepter or sword reacheth all even Kings themselves such as were most impatient not to have all men living stoop down to their Scepter and Empire even these mighty Cedars and Colosses of Monarchs hath death subdued in a short time with a little labour and brought them down to the pit and bound them in chaines of darkness in the prison and dungeon of the grave triumphing over these Triumphers with an ironick Epinicion as the Prophet expresseth How art thou faln Art thou also become weak as we who wert a terror in the land of the living with thy sword lying in vain under thy head while thine iniquities are upon thy bones This representation of death to the living should be laid to Heart by all men and will be so by all such as truly live and not only breath There is a great difference between vixit and fuit being and living he lives that liveth wisely and worthily As bene valere is vivere health is the life of life so much more bene vivere est vita vitalis to live well is the welfare of life For as every disease of the body is a partial death to such a degree of health and life as is wanting so every sinful distemper of the rational heart of man is so far a deadness as it is a disorder upon it Which God seeks to cure and conquer by setting before us frequent spectacles of mortality which not to lay to heart and to entertain meerly with a specious formality with a childish historick or histrionick indifferency is the way firmare morbum corroborare mortem to increase the diseases and confirm that death which is upon mens hearts who are yet living in a vain shadow or shew of life only which is to these filly inconsiderate and sinful fooles not only mortalis and moriens but mortua yea mortifera vita a mortal and dayly dying but a dead yea a deadly and killing life while they live onely to beasts to men to their bodies and to a moment but are dead to soules to their own hearts to Gods Spirit and to Eternity as to their present impenitent state and posture of heart God by the Prophet complaines That the righteous perish and no man laid it to heart Yea when he sent many messengers and promiscuous executioners of death among the Jewes Isa 57.1 Aezek 14.21 his four sore judgments yet they laid not those terrors to heart nor considered their latter end that they might fear before God and live no more presumptuously Our blessed Lord at once reproacheth and threatneth those that had not so laid to heart the death of those on whom the tower of Siloa fell and whose blood Pilate mingled with their sacrifices Luke 13.4 that except they repent they should likewise perish Deaths must be so laid to heart that by the sadness of the countenance the heart may be made better Eccl. 7.3 as Solomon speaks The house of laughter may afford the heart of a fool more seeming pleasure for a season but the house of mourning affords a wise mans heart more solid and durable profit Luke 17.37 who like the Eagle will chuse to be there where the body not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 yea the dead corps is as our Saviour speaks in an higher sense where the Eagle-eye of a believer quick and clear seeing afar off eagerly hastens firmly seizeth pertinaciously holdeth and greedily feedeth upon Christs blessed body and blood which is given to die for us as the only food of our soules in its infinite merits As we must not take the name of God in vain by profane swearing blaspheming or jesting nor may we receive his grace in vain as to the meanes the monitions and motions of his Spirit within us or without us So neither may we passe by the dead as the Priest and Levite did by the wounded and half-dead traveller without much regard as if we were unconcerned Gods dispenpensations in this kind must not be in vain to us though we cannot doe the dead any good yet we may get good from them and by them yea account must be given as of other things so of this Thou must not only reddere rationem vitae tuae but alienae give an account of thy own life but of anothers too who may sin at the charge of thy soule while as Eli thou neglectest to hinder or reprove or give them good example or it may be soothest and encouragest them in sin or whose pious life is set before thee as an excellent pattern but ill followed by thee yea further we must reddere rationem mortis alienae give account to God of anothers death not only whom we unjustly slay Gen. 9.5 or neglect to save deliver asmuch as is justly in our power God will require the blood of these both for man and beast but further we must give account of anothers death which we see or hear of and doe not consider which we celebrate onely but lay it not to heart in piety when we are not warned or moved at all when custome as of sinning so of seeing the dead takes away all due sense when being touched with so sharp a spur as that of anothers death should be to thee thou art like a dull jade or tired hackney not at all affected or moved to mend thy pace not one sinners sigh or Christians tear no sad reflection or penitent remorse no quickened endeavours or confirmed resolutions in order to prepare more intentively for death for judgment and eternity only thou joggest on after the wonted rate and carriers pace of a formal and cold-hearted Christian Which evil defects arguments of a dead and unaffected heart either totally or gradually are the lesse excusable in men because the uses or advantages to be
unreasonable irreligious and divelish A carrionly carkass of a man is aromatick a very perfume in comparison of a dead and rotting soul The body becomes dead and so dissolves by the souls parting from it but the soul by Gods being separated from it first out of its own choise next by Gods penal deserting of it The soul is the salt the light and life of the body so is God of the soul Anima animae the very soul of our souls I mean his grace love and spiritual communion separation from this is the souls death here and hereafter For from the power wrath and vengeance of God the damned are not separated who are dead not to their being but to their well being or happiness to the union at and fruition of God in love The soul apart from God in grace or glory is not only an orphan or a widow condemned to eternal sorrow and desolation for nothing can maintain or entertain wooe wed or indow the soul to the least degree of happines or to any allay of misery when once God hath quite forsaken it But it is emortua conclamata in heaven earth and hell proclaimed as starke dead in Law and Gospel Matth. 13.42 to justice and mercy so represented in Scripture as the horridest expression or the blackest colour to set forth its misery and horror its regret and torpor its weeping and wailing its gnashing and despair Doth then such a thick cloud of horror hang over the face and state of a dead body which is senseless of its own death and deformity of its noysome grave and dark dungeon Sapiens ignis subtilis vermis carpit nutrit urit reficit Chrysol O what a world of horror must lie upon a dead soul when deservedly cast out of God's blessed presence when it feels its death and lives only to die when it feels it is plunged in a dead Sea which is boundless and bottomlesse where the worm dies not and the fire goeth not out because it is as Crysologus calls it a subtil fire and ingenious worm which burns but consumes not devours but destroyes not Who can dwell with everlasting burnings saith the Prophet in an extasie of holy horrour Isa 33.14 Who can live in everlasting dyings Who can abide his own everlasting rottings Is it a gradual and lingring death to want food raiment light liberty fit company Is it a total death to the body to want the little spark of the soul which is the breath and spirit of life to the body What is it then to the soul to want that God who is the breather of that breath of life and Inspirer of that spirit We want a word beyond death to expresse that state Lay it then to heart Phil. 3.11 and consider what cause we have to be humble to tremble and fear exceedingly to escape most solicitously and diligently that second and eternal death if by any means we may attain the resurrection of the dead to life eternal 3. Lay to heart upon the sight of a dead body and the meditation of a dead soul whence it is that these fears and faintings sicknesses and sorrows deaths and darknesses sordidnesse and desolation corruption and condemnation have thus mightily prevailed over the highest mountains as the flood over the most noble beautiful and excellent of all Gods works under heaven even over mankind good and bad great and small Eccles 2.16 wise and foolish upon which nature the great and only God had set such characters of special glory enduing it with a diviner spirit so making man as Moses saith a living spirit or a spirit of life And this after counsel and deliberation Faciamus hominem Sanctius his animal mentisâ— capaâ—ius aliâ—e Gen. 2.7 As in re magni momenti a matter of greater concern and weight then heaven and earth and all the host of them They were made ex tempore as it were Nudo verbo Let there be and there was But man was made ex consilio after Gods own Image full of beauty health honour riches wisedome the Spirit of the living God given him in an extraordinary beam Whence is this lapse to earth to dust to a sad and wretched a decaying and dying condition both temporal and eternal Sure not from the impotencie or envy of the blessed Creator whose omnipotent goodnesse is inconsistent with such infirmities nor yet from the frailty and inconsistency of the subject matter which he raised to so goodly a fabrick little lower then the Angels Psal 49.12 as man was made who should have been as long immortal as Angels had he continued a man that is Rom. 6.23 rational and religious enjoying the Image of God on him which forbids and excludes as all shadow of sin and defection so of all death or mutation to worse No. The Psalmist tells us after the history of Genesis Man being in honour did not so abide but is become like to the beasts that perish by the frailty of his will which fell from adherence to God as the durable and supreme Good Sin hath levelled us to beasts to death to devils to hell This death in all sizes and degrees from the least ache and dolour to the compleatnesse of damnation is the wages of fin So the Apostle oft tells us Rom. 5.17 by one mans offence death entred and reigned over all The soul that sins that shall die Ezek. 18. Sin is the source of all our sorrows the lethalis arundo poysoned arrow whose infection drinks up the spirits and eats up the health flesh bodies and soules of mankind No wonder we die since we sin at such a rate the wonder is that we live any one of us one moment How much more is the miracle of Gods love and mercy that hath by Christs death and merits brought forth to light eternal life and offered it to all penitent and believing sinners as purchased and prepared for them Because sin once lived in us we must once die and till sin be dead or mortified in us we cannot hope for life eternal Through death then thou wilt best see the face of thy sin What Poet what Painter what Orator whose colours are most lively can expresse the amazement horrour and astonishment that seized on the looks and hearts of Adam and Eve Rom. 27. 2 Tim. 1.10 when they had the dreadful prospect of their first great sin and curse written with the blood and pourtrayed on the face of their dead son Abel who in that primitive paucity of mankind was barbarously slain by his brother Cain Who can expresse or conceive the woful lamentation they made over their dead son in whom they first beheld the beauties of life swallowed up by the deformities of death Is death then so dreadful so dismal so deformed so putid O think what that sin is which thou so embracest and huggest The fountain of bitternesse is more bitter then the stream Our madness and misery is
Sun yet have I lived to see both their lives ended all their humane hopes and joys and honours buried in the dust the one before she was 27. years old the other before he had compleated four and twenty So great and neer experiments are these two for the confirmation of those two verses used to display the excellent emptiness and glorious nothingness of this world and present life of which subject as many pens and wits have largely descanted so none have expressed more in few words then he that made this distich Punctum bulla vitrum glacies flos fabula fumus Vmbra cinis somnus vox sonus aura nihil Thus in prose No point is more concise no bubble more pompously swelling and suddenly vanishing no glass more brittle no ice more self-dissolving no flower more fair and fading no tale more short and fabulous no shadow less substantial Introitus exitus lugubris Cum nascimur mundi hospitio excipimur initium a lacrymis auspicamur cum lacrymis extinguimur Cyp. Ordimur vitam lacrymis claudimus omnes Quisque suis natus sic sepelitur aquis no ashes more easily scattered and never to be recollected no sleep or dream more delighting and deceiving no voice more vanishing no sound more transient no breath more soft and unseen in sum nothing is a truer emblem of absolute and perfect nothing then this poor life which is begun as St. Cyprian and many observe continued and ended with tears An Egyptian reed on which if the heart of man leanes it soon fails and the defeats of it pierce the very soul O what a small thread is this on which we poor wretches hang the weight of our eternal state the great interests of our immortal souls while we delay our repentance multiply our sins dayly and hourly adding burthen to a crazy vessel which is leakey with its own infirmities and already over-laden with its pondus mortalitatis body of death O ye sons and daughters of men who are lifted up filled and stretched to the highest pitch and uttermost extents of pride self-conceit vain-glory who have already deified your selves in your owne imaginations of your heaven upon earth your humane happinesses who expect that all that see you should admire and adore you as creatures so compleatly blest that the Angels or Gods themselves have cause to envy you when you are so fair so fine so young so lovely so witty so nobly descended so mightily befriended so invested with honour so fortified with power so furnished with estate so attended with servants so lodged in sumptuous palaces so surrounded with all manner of pleasures so over-flowing with all sensible contents of life See see in this and the like sad spectacles of vanity mortality and misery What a perfection of folly 1 Tim. 6.17 what an apparent madnevs it is for you to be high-minded to be proud of any thing you enjoy here to trust in your uncertain riches and not in the living God You may as justly swell and look big and magnifie your selves for taking up some rich Jewels in a shop or for seeing and handling some fine and pretious wares a little while in your hand which you must shortly lay down and leave behind you and then when thou art driven from the living and thy soul taken from thee Luke 12.19 Thou egregious fool whose shall all these things be Experience hath taught us that a dead hand is an excellent means by rubbing it on wens and tumours of the body to allay disperse and as it were mortifie that irregular and deformed excrescency The same receipt of a dead hand might serve if duly applied to our souls for it would be a very soveraign remedy as against all that is in the world 1 John 2.16 which is of a puffing and exalting nature as the lust of the eyes the lust of the flesh and the pride of life so against all those flatuous and high imaginations of our hearts For the world passeth away and the lust thereof but he that doth the will of God abideth for ever 1 John 2.17 Yea in every Funeral there is as it were a special hand of providence Dan. 5.5 like that which Balshazzar saw upon the wall which not only wrote his fate but weighed him as it were in a ballance 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Stobae and shewed him by his own terrors and tremblings how much he was too light in God's esteem and in his own mistaken fancies of earthly felicity It is among the mementos of the ancient Greeks Being momentany and mortal it well becomes all mankind to be very lowly minded Mich. 6.8 to walk humbly before their God Not to lay much weight upon so small pillars as our legs and sinews are not to build upon so loose a foundation which like quick-sands or quagmires in a short time swallow and bury up the building which is set upon them How ridiculous would he be that should bestow much time to hew and square and polish cakes of ice in order to build himself a splendid and perspicuous palace which he should fancy to be like the Chrystal Firmament and comparable to the etherial mansions of heaven Magno conatu nugas agimus Truly such are the industrious self-cheats of those who fancy to themselves rare felicities or real fulness in this life Isa 44.20 Hos 12.1 Edunt tanquam hodie morituri Aedificant tanquam semper victuri so greedily feeding on the East-wind and ashes the pleasures of sense which blast our fouls and abase them as if they had but one day to live and yet so solicitous for the morrow as if they were to live here for ever No man takes the true dimensions of life who doth not as Pythagoras did the Pyramids measure it by the shadows of death Nor do we begin truly to live as rational and religious creatures till we lay to heart the true state and proportion of this life of which we are but Tenants at will having no lease much less see simple or inheritance but are at the will of the Lord to be turned out of house and home at a moments warning Blessed God! If we laid this to heart as we should what manner of men and women should we be in all humble holy 2 Pet. 3.11 1 Cor. 7.21 Frui utendis summa est dementia Aug. and heavenly conversation as St. Peter writes using this world as if we used it not at least enjoyed it not For as St. Austin observes it is extream fatuity to enjoy that as ours which is but lent us for a very little yea for no time but from one moment to another The very ancient Heathens will rise up against Christians in this point which they notably studied variously and wittily expressed yea and in many things modestly practised 5. Add to the thoughts of lifes frailty and vanity the certain uncertainty and inevitable necessity of death A subject adorned by
not be forced no man taking his life from him yet he yielded to doe the lowest homage to death as a man not without great horror of that cup yea humbling himself even to the death of the crosse and to the prison of the grave for a short time that by dying he might overcome death in its own fort 1 Cor. 15. By grapling with this Dragon he pulled out his sting and made him cast forth his poyson so far as to be innoxious now and not very terrible to those that fly to this Jesus for protection and life John 11.25 who is the resurrection and the life to believers and holy livers who maketh light to grow up to the righteous out of their darkness and life out of his death To others indeed that are either Infidel Heathens or unchristian Christians which have but forms and no power of godliness on whose hearts the death of Christ hath not yet wrought as a corrasive against sin and a cordial against death to these Death still appears as a direful Comet or blazing star in his full magnitude truculent threatning formidable inevitable infinitely to be dreaded because he threatens them with a total and entire death not onely to their estates and honours pleasures power friends and bodies but as to their soules as to that after and eternal life If death prevailed so far upon the Son of God how far will its vastations reach upon those that are the children of the flesh only that is of the Devil and properly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 sons of death If the living Lion thus died what must become of those that are but as dead dogs A gracious Christian as Jonathan did Sauls javelin avoids the stroak of death as to the main it may graze on his body but it toucheth not his soul Col. 3.3 when his life is hidden with Christ in God A natural man though while he lived he blessed himself yet dies wholly Death like the flood prevaileth over his highest tops and mountains it gnaweth upon them as sheep Nothing is left him for ever of which it may be said In this he lives as in the houses of the Egyptians there was none in which there was not one dead yea the first born For his children they shal follow the generation of their fathers and never see light if they follow their evil steps His lands which he called after his name in a few years they are alienated his lamp quite extinct and his memorial perisheth For his fair and costly Monument Et habent sua fata Sepulchra These in revolutions of time Psal 49.19 either by the rough hand of war overturning all things or by the gentle and leisurely thawings of peace melt and moulder away till they bury themselves in their own dust which were designed as repositories and conservatories of their Masters As for their souls they never lived the life of God nor can they hope to live in light with him so that eternal death feedeth for ever upon the whole man devouring every-limb of body and faculty of soul as the Lions did the accusers of Daniel before ever they come to the ground O how sad how mad is that security among Christians which sleeps on the top of a mast in so dangerous a sea that dares to live in known and presumptuous sins amidst these infinite and hourly adventures of death playing over the head of that mine where he knows is daily sapping under him and within him nor doth a man know in what moment it may be sprung to his utter dissipation We know not at what hour of the day Mat. 24.42 43. or watch of the night this notable Thief will come to break up our house of clay and spoil us of all our goods together with our lives and he is but the Vancourrier of our Judge whose counsel is holy and wholsome advising all his disciples to watch and pray lest we be surprised at unawares by the arrests of Death and Judgment Nothing concerns a wise man or evidenceth a good man more then to be never so imployed as he shall not dare to die that like an honest and able debtor he may confidently walk at all hours of the day in every street of the City where he dwells and where he owes a debt which he is able and willing to pay whereas the lewdnesse and riot of impenitent sinners makes them like bankrupt debtors shift and shark hide and skulk up and down in by-wayes and at twilight for fear of those Creditors whom they are neither able nor willing to satisfie and yet they cannot long escape the Bayliffs and Jaylors hand nor by any artifices avoid that prison out of which is no redemption till a man hath paid the uttermost farthing that is never unlesse while we are in the way we agree with our merciful Creditor Mat. 5.29 who is ready upon our humble request to forgive us all that we owe him like that gracious and generous Master in the Gospel Mat. 18.27 6. Lay to heart what little cause any mothers child of us hath to presume to sin and to procrastinate our repentance since we have no cause to presume of life till to morrow to neglect agreeing with our adversary while we are yet in the way that is under the meanes offer and capacity of reconciliation and happy accord to adventure so precious and momentary an opportunity upon which depends our everlasting fate in weal or woe Ex hoc momento pendet aeternitas never stirring up any Sympathies in our souls toward our Saviours death nor any compassions to our selves as to our own mortality never to return any holy Ecchoes or humble Amens either to the precepts or promises terrors or comforts of Gods word but as if stark deaf and quite dead so we are utterly dumb and unmoved as to all that is thundred and lightned from heaven 2 Cor. 5.20 2 Cor. 6.1 to all that Gods Embassadors those Boanerges and Barnabasses sonnes of thunder or of consolation daily cry unto us with infinite counsels and reproofs Sermons and prayers inviting and beseeching men to pity themselves to flee from the wrath that is to come to disarm Death and defeat the Devil of his expected prey There is no rock that Ministers should more avoid thenthis of giving people any encouragement to delay their repentance which no man may upon good grounds do e that hath not any assurance of his life nor any insurance against death Nor doth any thing usually more contribute to this vulgar presumption and dilatories then the courting and complementing with the dead and living too in Funeral Sermons making them rather Panegyricks and Harangues of commendation to the dead then serious summons and alarms to the living when neither the life nor the death of the interred gave any pregnant evidences of such grace and comfort as deserves either the commendation or imitation of the living No Funeral Sermons as I
daily crucified for thee Canst thou fancy or desire greater benefits then those that accrew to thee and are offered thee by Christ who hath taken away the sting of death 1 Cor. 15. which is sin that when thou diest in the Lord thou art sure to be eternally blessed with the Lord Vitam non amittimus sed mutamus Hieron for true Christians doe not lose but exchange life by death Like a turning chatr which serves for a door so death natural is but a moving us out of one room which is an ontward antecamera chamber or common gallery or base court into another which is most ample and nobly furnished with all company and other accomplishments befitting the Majesty Palace and presence of the King of Heaven Death is but a transition or passage from grace to glory the taking of the candle of our soules out of a dark and close lanthorn of our bodies to set it on a fair candlestick in a stately chamber till the body be restored fitter for it crystalline celestial incorruptible When Christians defer their repentance and comming to Christ they forget the priviledges and benefits which are enjoyable only by them both in life and death at resurrection and judgment to come There being no other name under heaven by which we may be saved in any of these exigents Acts 4.12 which will in after-years overtake us all O bethink thy self and say in thy heart with David What shall I render to the Lord for all his mercies Psal 116.12 What shall I return to my blessed Saviour who hath redeemed me by his precious blood from so many and so great deaths I will devote both soul and body to him as a living and acceptable sacrifice Rom. 12.2 which is but my reasonable service Though I have done foolishy ungratefully unchristianly and desperately hitherto yet I will adde no more drunkenness to thirst or iniquity to sinne since he hath by his meritorious passion both redeemed my life from the death in sin and my death from the penal horrors for sin Yea in this he hath made my death better then my life that while I live I shall sin by daily defects and infirmities but when I die sin shall wholly die in me This one cordial is in every good Christians death that his sin shall not be immortal but as he shall be ever with the Lord so he shall never sin more against him 9. Lay to heart upon this and the like sad occasions to what good end or purpose thou hast hitherto lived for many yeares as a man or a Christian in the sphear of reason in the bosome of the Church and in the light of true Religion Bethink thy self how many hours dayes weeks moneths yeares God hath given thee since thou cam'st to be master of reason and instructed in Religion knowing good and evil as a space of repentance and opportunity to shew thy fear love duty and obedience to God that thou mightst be capable of his eternal rewards There are in every year eight thousand seven hundred seventy five hours if we should allow the greater half of these for sleep and necessary attending our bodies take but four thousand houres for our work and business of consequence how poor account can most men women of ripe age but not yet come to yeares of discretion give of all these in a whole year Not one hour in seven which is as a Sabbatical hour in every day not one hour in ten which is but the Tithe of our time is generally devoted to God or any good duty Nay many are weary of doing nothing Mark 11.20 and how solicitous to ravel out their time in the most impertinent and excessive pastimes they can imagine They are like to doe very well who know not what to doe with themselves and their time Phil. 3.19 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 When they have most leisure to intend their spiritual and eternal improvement then are they most lavish of their precious houres Debuisti boc tempus non perdere So Pliny the elder checked his Nephew for losse of time when he saw him walking in the streets and indisposed thereby to read or note any thing Canst thou not tell how to spend this or that long day Wouldst thou adde spurs to the wings of time I will tell thee the very waste and seeming superfluity of thy time would serve thy turn for an eternal happiness to work out thy salvation Those lost shreds of hours which thou flingest away lazing and laughing and chatting and visiting stretching yawning and playing and fooling so long till from doing nothing art tempted to doe evil things idleness being the Devils anvil Incus Diaboli desidia Cavene te Diabolus inveniat oriosum Hieren Pro. 17.16 These parings and rags I say of thy precious time which is infinitely more precious then the finest gold is a price put into thy hand if thou be not an egregious fool of which infinite gain and advantage may be made for ever In this and that good hour which thou prodigally losest not knowing how to spend it thou mightest be seeking thy lost-self thy lost soul thy lost conscience thy lost God thy lost Saviour who came into the world to seek and to save that which is lost O what might not be done in that chain and circle which St. Jerom commends to Laeta Orationem lectio lectionem meditatio meditationē oratio sequebatur Hieron of dispensing time nay if we wrought but now and then a link of grace O what prayers what tears what meditation what contrition what compunction what godly sorrow what ingenuous shame what self-abhorrence what self-despairs might be wrought upon thy heart as to the reflection of thy sins past Yea what fear of God what reverence of the Divine majesty power wisedome justice goodness evident in his works providences word What breathings sighings and seekings after God! What purposes vowes holy resolutions thou mightst take up and begin What hatred and loathing of sin as the greatest abasing of a reasonable creature what search into and admiration of the mystery of Christ crucified what longing after him what faith in him what sense of thy want of him what zeal for him what humility meekness charity holy industry sense of Gods savour sweet influence of his Spirit power against corruptions comforts against death hopes of heaven delight in well-doing joy in God! What serious considerations of the deformity and danger by sin of the beauty and benefits by Christ of the vanity of the world the certain uncertainty of dying These meditations and many such like effects of our thoughts and reflexions of things might be the happy fruits of thy true of thy holy considerations and sober endeavours if thou wert worthy of one moment of that life which thou art so weary of and wastest so impertinently a little portion of which will be one day when thy distresses and terrors come upon
make up compleat authority the want of which as we have no cause much to rejoyce in or little to lament so posterity both in Church and State will unfeignedly deplore 3. Yea when any men or women that are eminently good and gracious wise and worthy are taken away either immaturely in their strength or very many of them in a little times these are Gods warnings which are to be laid to heart for the death of the righteous poor or rich is pretious in the fight of the Lord and should be so in the sense of all good men they many times portend some great evil to come when God pulls off his chief Jewels it is a sign he means shortly to strip and undress a Church or Nation of their ornaments and defences When men take off the principal and noblest parts of a fair ship the main-masts rudders prow and upper decks it argues that they intend to break it quite in pieces or to take it much lower and abase it So is it when God pulls up those repagula sluces and banks which either keep off inundations of judgements or dayly discharge the superfluities of epidemick sins by their prayers and tears for the sins of the people When Lot is out of Sodom and Noah shipped in Gods Ark then fire and flood is to be expected 4. When our Parents Fathers or Mothers are taken away though in a good old age as Jacob yet they may frigidam suffundere cast cold water by their deaths upon the varieties heats luxuries and confidences of their young heirs and successors who are prone to live as if they could never die out of this world when yet they see their roots die sure the branches cannot be everlasting It was a notable Instance of filial sympathy which a son of the Duke of Montpensier shewed who coming to his fathers monument in Italy at Puzzolo where he had in the French wars died being killed by ill air and inconveniencies the young Gentleman could not bear the memory of his dead father but amidst infinite passions and tears dies upon his fathers Tomb Guicciardin Hist lib. 5. p. 261. as Guicciardin reports of certainty Yea although estates honours and inheritances do descend upon men by the death of any yet they may lay this to heart that the more talents thou hast the greater account thou must give to God Luke 12.48 It is not considerable as to true internal and eternal comfort what lands moneys honours and titles a man hath but how wisely and nobly how piously and charitably he useth all things The accession of estate is but more fewel cast upon a fire that will at last consume riotous and inordinate livers A man needs not much to be holy and happy for a man may maintain all the vertues at a cheaper rate then any one vice nothing of competency is too little for a virtuous mind and nothing of plenty is sufficient to a vain and vicious spender As dumbness had been a mercy to swearers to profane and filthy speakers so had poverty been riches to many a riotous liver whose making was his marring Luke 15.13 as the Prodigals having his portion in his own hand utterly undid him The more honour and estate any one is master of the more he had need be master of himself of his lusts and passions for riotous expenses will end with Dives his gluttony in eternal poverty and such extream necessities as shall everlastingly want a drop of comfort there being no hope that God will bestow upon those men or women the blessings of eternity which have been such debauched abusers of these blessings which are momentary such as have not been faithful stewards to Gods glory and the worlds good in the little comparatively of this worlds unrighteous mammon as our Saviour tells us how can they expect Buke 16.11 when they come to die that they should be trusted with eternal riches or honours which are the rewards of well doing and recompenses of comely suffering 5. If an excellent wife or husband are parted by death who long lived or were likely to live as turtles in a peaceful sweetness and unspotted society being of one mind and one heart in the Lord joying each others joyes and grieving one anothers griefs who had nothing to envy or desire beyond that love and content which they mutually enjoyed save only the love of God and the fruition of their blessed Saviour in the Kingdom of heaven A blessed pair who so lived that they were dayly ready and preparing to die having nothing to give them any regret at death but only the leaving each other in such a solitude for a season as none but God could supply I need not tell these how they ought to lay to heart eithers death in point of humanity the care must be not to lay it too much to heart 1 Thes 4.13 not to sorrow as meer men and women without hope lest they be swallowed up with too much grief A moderate mourning in such occasions is neither uncomly nor unholy nor unwholesome but as the overflowings of land-floods is beneficial to low grounds when they seasonably abate and leave them dry for if waters stay too long on the richest bottomes they make them cold squallid course and barren Non amissi sed ' praemissi the like effects follow moderate and excessive sorrows upon any worldly occasion whatsoever They must consider each other not as lost but as gone a little before in the same way to happiness 6. So in the loss of children dear by nature deserving by duty especially if our only child more if in the prime and pregnancy of their age most if the hopes and honour of their families the props and pillars of their houses these wounds in the delights of our eyes are prone to go too deep to our hearts to fester and gangrene to something of irreligous discontent and sowrness toward God as if like Jonah Jonah 4.9 we did well to be angry with God and frown upon heaven for the loss of a gourd which had its being from God as St. Austin says of his pregnant son who died at 14. but its sin and mortality from thy self nor can any parents tell how sharp a thorn that child might prove in their eyes and hearts afterward which now seems so fair sweet and lovely a flower to their eyes In such cases not only the highest cordials of divine comforts and Christian hopes but the strictest charms of Gods commands must be applied lest we turn Gods physick into our poyson and by a sullen stubbornness turn a fathers cqastisement to the sharp punishment of an enemy remember God is so much beforehand with us by his bounty that his withdrawings can never be an injury to us He as the spring and occan hath more right in any streams then the channel through which they pass as all runs to him so they come from him So that after Job's example
the feet of plebeian petulancy and mechanicke insolency under which Incubusses in many places it is miserably faln No my grief is partly that I have not so improved the opportunities of his life and my interest with him as possibly I might and should had I been aware though I confess for some months past I was jealous he would ere long deprive me and all the world of all capacities to serve him which is the other part of my sorrow this fear made me add of late such frequencies to my visits as I thought not unacceptable still aiming to catch those mollissima tempora fandi seasonable advantages in respect of his urgent infirmities as might do him most good in being his remembrancer for the main matters of life and death that one thing necessary his eternal interests in comparison of which all things of Houses Lands Honours Wife Children Crowns and Kingdoms are as losse and dung He seemed not to expect a long life since he could judge what it was to live by I know not what secret presage he would oft say in the height and vigor of his youth He should not live beyond his Mothers age who died under 27. and he under 24. God you see hath verified what was foretold I believe more beyond all their expectations that knew him then his own who certainly had some secret monition which I hope he did not wholly neglect though possibly he did not so much regard it as the event would have required having the hopes and flattering confidences of youth and spirit yet attending him This possibly encouraged him as is usual the more earnestly to pursue those allowed contentments of life which he conceived might most contribute to his honour and happiness then it may be he would have done if he had foreseen the speedy and impendent period of his life and how much more necessary for his true interests the eternal peace and happiness of his soul the gracious improvements of his short time had been beyond the most deserving consort and most splendid fortune in the world the enjoyment of which God soon deprived him of and I hope so far weaned his heart from them and raised it above them as became one that was shortly to leave them after he had but a few months beheld them not without much anxiety and bodily infirmity A great and remarkable instance to confute all the glory hopes and confidence of us poor mortals who at our best estate are altogether vanity Psal 39.5 6. disquieting our selves in a vain shadow till we turn meer shadows and cyphers to this world Let young sparks and Gallants of both sexes see their faces in the pieces of this sometime so fair and fulgent now broken and defaced glass or mirroir If parentage and descent if Nobility and honour if youth and bravery if courtly splendors and grandeurs if an ample fortune and revenue if human friendships and highest favours if neerest alliance to a person he thought most deserving of his love and most capable to make him happy in the highest point of human felicity if experience of virtuous love conjugal respect extraordinary tenderness and passionate prudence which he had to comfort him in his long and killing infirmity immediately succeeding his so desired nuptials if any one or all of these endearments and decoyes of life had signified any thing to the preserving of it or could have been advantaged by the care and skill of excellent Physitians this young and noble Gentleman had not now been the subject of my discourse and your attention of all our sorrows and tears yea stupors and astonishments for I assure you he is an object not lightly to be laid to all our hearts and especially to the hearts of all his neerest kindred and relations Warning all that have seen Isa 40.6 1 Tim. 6.17 or shall hear or read the sudden blastings of this goodly flower which is as all flesh but grass not to trust in this vain world not in uncertain riches Amos 6.3 Quamvis a Diis immortabibus prope absumus mortales tardè tamen ad Deorum cognitionem cultum usum accedimus nisi aut maris tempestatibus jactati aut terrae motibus perculsi aut vitae infirmitatibus vexati aut mortis terroribus attoniti potius quà m adducti honours beauties loves relations selves not to put far from them the evil day which is indeed never far from them even in their sense that is the day of sickness death and judgement and in Gods sense it is then most upon them when they live least to God and their consciences and most to their sinful lusts and pleasures Such as are conscious their days and hearts are evil toward God may justly fear his hand against them to cut them off from the land of the living I know as one of the ancients notably observed although we are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 neer of kin to God and he is not far from any of us as the Apostle preacheth to the Athenians Acts 17.27 in being and bounty in mercies or in judgements yea he is neerest to us round about and within us intimior intimo nostri as St. Bernard by his omniscience and exact advertence of all our ways words thoughts and deeds yet we naturally affect a reserve a strangeness and distance yea an enmity toward God that if possible he may not be in all our thoughts who is as the Psalmist saith about our beds and spieth out all our paths Psal 139.2 that we may live without him in this world withoutwhom we can neither live move nor have our being It is very late very slowly Isa 51.13 and but seldome that we come to the sense service and use of God unless scared by tempests at Sea or dreadful earthquakes or bodily sufferings or the terrours of death It is a long time before the conceited 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 self-sufficiency of youth which swims in plenty pleasure and honour Acts 14.17 can fancy any necessity of having or owning a God forgetting the Lord that made them and casting his commands behind their backs Not that God is wanting to give them many witnesses of himself and by many cords of a man to draw them to him but the headiness pride and presumption of our own hearts our lusts and humours is such that like Sampson we break all these cords of love and divine Philanthropy the bonds of nature providence reason conscience Religion and Baptism in sunder So that it is a mercy of God if at any time he stops the fleetness of our youthful passions which are prone to run wilde and counter to Gods blessed will to our own consciences and welfare I hope this noble young Gentleman had a serious and humble yea a gracious and thankful sense of Gods merciful severities and indulgent afflictions We are certainly undone if God be not better to us then we would have him if as a wise father he doe not give us
he died of that scrophulous humor abounding in him which we call the Struma or Kings evil full of little and great knots or kernels in his lungs and entrails some as big as pullets eggs some larger and adherent to the backbone on both sides his lungs so full of that caseous or cheese-like substance that they were swelled and inflamed to a quantity too big for his brest and breathing so that he died on the suddain presently after he had spoken and removed himself with much seeming strength and earnestness the heart being suddenly suffocated and wasted on one side or Auricle for want of due refreshing and however the lungs began in some folds to be putrified yet neither my self nor any other perceived either while he lived though I spake very neer him any thing offensive in his breath or unsavoury from his pectorals or vitals This was the disease and languor of which this poor Gentleman died and I know by most assured experience it hath befaln such as have been both for unspotted virtue and exquisite handsomeness inferiour to no persons living in their times In a word the means which providence permitted to put an end to this noble Gentlemans days was such as might well deserve the pity of all but not the reproach of any good Christian who being at last thus truly and fully informed will in all respects carry themselves as becometh humanity and Christianity modesty and veracity A more solicitous confutation of any vulgar surmises and false reports were to give them too much reputation credulity not duly informed is venial though applied to calumnies but clearly convinced it becomes venomous and mortal because malicious How miserable a people are we whose civil and religious fewds are such that men are made to live and die to be saved and damned not as the mercy and justice of God wills but as human adherencies or antipathies list to censure No party no passion here sways with me I abhor to flatter or calumniate any man in Court or Country I follow no dictates but those of experience impartiality certainty upon which ground I presume no ingenuous man or woman can envy or deny me to apply even to the now dead body of this noble Gentleman these sweet persumes and honest spices made up of nothing but evident truth comely civility just honour and upright conscience which last office I perform not so much a friend and servant to him as to truth and the God of truth to whose merciful dispose we leave his soul for ever His Corps or bodily remains are brought you see to be deposited with you his kind friends his loving neighbours his honest tenants in reversion and his worthy Country-men to be laid up with the mortal reliques of his excellent Mother and other his noble Ancestors to whom he is gone before his Father or Grandfather by a preproperous fate inverting the usual and by most parents desired methods of mortality I need not tell your ingenuity to my worthy Country-men and you of this place what causes you have more then other men to lay this death to heart and to stand still at this dead Corps as the men of Judah and Israel did that came to the place where Asahel fell down and died as of a person eminently related as to many other 2 Sam. 2.23 so to a principal noble Family in this County the experience of whose piety hospitality charity and love of learning poor and rich have had long experience and some constant living monuments among you in this village besides that to which they have committed their urns and bones their dust and ashes as it were to your safe custody How far you are injured or detrimented by this noble persons death depends much on the piety vertue and honour of their minds and actions who now enjoy or may after succeed to those honours and revenews to which he was Heir apparent which he now neither wants nor envies nor desires How far you are or may be bettered by his death and these endeavours for your good depends much upon your care and conscience to lay to heart those many instances of improving a Funeral which I have told you wherein Gods grace upon your humble prayers and honest endeavours will enable you to live as becomes those that remember dayly they must die and appear before God For which last agony and great appearance the Lord in mercy fit us all for his sake who died for us Jesus Christ the righteous To whom with the Father and holy Spirit be everlasting glory for ever Amen Phil. 1.21 To me to live is Christ and to die is gain Id agamus ut vita sit jucunda morbus non injucundus mors verò jucundissima A PRAYER in order to prepare for DEATH O Lord the everlasting God the only giver and preserver of all life natural spiritual temporal and eternal who hast breathed into these our vile bodies of dust the breath of life even pretious and immortal souls by which we are capable to know to love to live with and enjoy Thee for ever as the only Supream Good who only art an object adequate to the vast capacities and sufficient to satisfie those infinite desires of living happily to eternity which thou hast planted in us Thou hast justly passed upon all mankind for our sinful falling from thee which is the present death of our souls as to an holy and happy life the irrevocable decree of once dying and after that appearing before thy judgement both which will certainly ere long overtake us all Blessed Lord the terrors of death and of judgement of our present mortality and our deserved misery are infinite upon us very fearful we are because very sinful and loth because unfit to die a natural death but we are wholly confounded and even swallowed up with the thoughts and dread of that black Abyssus an eternal death If the death of our bodies by the soules separation be so horrid and grievous to us O what must the death of our souls be which consists in an utter separation from thy love and favour shutting us up in the chains of eternal darkness and under the pains of everlasting burnings We confess how just cause we have to be ashamed to live and yet afraid to die having no hope of the least degree of life or happiness in our death as from our selves where our own consciences have already passed a sentence of death and an expectation of thy just vengeance to destroy us In which sad state of dying and despairing we should have both lived and died if thou hadst not made us who were dead in sins and trespasses to hear thy voice in Jesus Christ that we might live As thou hast been a God of great goodness and long-suffering to us not willing we should die in our sins but repent of them and live so as a most merciful Father thou hast made a new and living way to the throne of thy grace
by the meritorious death and passion of the Lord of life and glory the great and promised Messias thy beloved Son our blessed Saviour Jesus Christ who by suffering death hath both overcome death and satisfied thy justice for us freeing all true believing and penitent sinners from the sting curse and fear of death both temporal and eternal bringing by his glorious Gospel life and glory honour and happiness to light We beseech thee O heavenly Father for his sake who hath tasted death for us all to magnifie thy infinite mercy upon us before we go from hence and be no more seen O be better to us then ever we should be to our selves or we are utterly lost Bestow upon us all those graces and gifts which may both teach and help us to lead an holy life and die an happy death Prevent us graciously and follow us effectually with the motions and operations of thy holy Spirit which may excite and inable us speedily and throughly to mortifie the life and power of every sin in us even while it is called to day lest death and hell prevent us in our delays and presumptions Sanctifie to us all those occasions monitions and warnings by which thy providence presents the thoughts and state of death to us as the truest glass of all earthly glory that we may so lay them to heart as to die dayly to all inordinate love of our selves and of this world which at best is loss and dung in comparison of the excellency of our Lord Jesus Christ in whom thy love to us is better then life it self Thou hast by thy power given us our lives in this vain world by thy providence thou hast preserved them by thy patience thou hast spared them to this day notwithstanding we have with many sins and much unthankefulness provoked thee to our hurt yea by thy holy Word thou hast shewed and offered to us the way and reward of a better life upon our turning to thee with all our hearts from dead works to serve the living God O teach us so to number our days as to apply our hearts to true wisedom to value this pretious moment not to mispend it yea to redeem it because the days past have been evil and upon this moment depends our eternal fate O thou that hast made our moment here though it be sinful not wholly miserable but hast sweetned it with many mercies let not our eternity be miserable and sinful It is one great comfort in our mortality as to this life that we consider our sins shall not be immortal in us O let not sin die with us but before us as a work of choise and grace not of infirmity force and necessity We humbly lay hold on that eternal life which is thy gift through Jesus Christ our Lord. As we every day grow elder so Lord make us every day somewhat better as neerer to our graves so fitter for heaven teach us to live every day as if it were our last that we may never live in any such way wherein we cannot meet death comfortably make us such as thou wouldst have us while we live that we may find thee such as we would have thee when we die that when we come to die we may have nothing else to do but to resign our bodies to thy custody and our souls to thy mercy who having made this life on earth common to the bad and good the just and the unjust hast certainly prepared another state in which shall be infinite difference and everlasting distinction of recompenses to such as fear thee and such as fear thee not O enable us to do our duty and we are sure to receive thy rewards write thy name in our hearts and we need not doubt but our names are written in heaven even in thy Book of Life Sweeten the bitter thoughts of death to us by our faith and hope in the meritorious death the victorious resurrection and glorious ascension of Jesus Christ for our sakes let us find by our holiness and newness of life by our being dead with Christ and living to him that we are passed from death to life That our departure hence may be a joyful passage to a better life which consists in the vision and fruition of thy self O blessed Creator who must needs be better then all things thou hast made and as more necessary so infinitely more useful sweet and comfortable to us O that we may be willing and fitted to leave all to come to thy self that we may with all the blessed Angels and Saints for ever in heaven see love praise admire adore and enjoy thee O holy Father Son and Spirit the only true God To whom be glory and honour life and power thanks and dominion for ever Amen Februarii 17. Anno 1657. Observationes habitae In Dissectione Corporis Illustrissimi Nobilissimi Viri D. ROBERTI RICH coram Medicinae Doctoribus Chirurgis infra subscriptis 1. INventi sunt Pulmones substantiâ duriores quam secundùm naturam mole longè majores quam pro ratione pectoris toti ferè scrophulosi caseosâ materiâ magna ex parte purulentâ referti Superiori parte lobi dextri lacuna reperta est pure plena ad quantitatem cochlearis unius 2. Aqua collecta in sinistra cavitate Thoracis ad fesque librae quantitatem vel circiter 3. Auricula dextra Cordis major erat sinistrâ proportione ferè quintuplici 4. Mesenterium refertum glandulis scrophulosis aliquibus magnitudinem Ovi Gallinacei aequantibus aliis minoribus materiâ quadam sebaceâ plenis cum purulentiae guttis hinc inde sparsis in aliquibus 5. In substantia Panchreatis glandulae peregrinae huic annexus tumor scrophulosus grandis ad hepar usque protensus Orisicium Venae Portae comprimens 6. Vesicula fellis exteriùs albicans flaccida aliquam quantitatem fellis dilutioris continens 7. Hepar colore Albidiori substantiâ debito majori 8. Splen satìs laudabilis nisi quòd hinc inde granulis scrophulosis refertus 9. Inte Musculos Lumbares glandulae duae ingentes scrophuloae à quinta vertebra sinistrae partis una ad Inguen usque se protendebat ex dextra parte altera non adeo longa Fran. Prujean Geor. Bates Tho. Coxe Robertus Lloyd J. Goddard Theophilus Garancieres Edward Arris Chirurgus John Soper Chirurgus I Have judged my publishing of this Funeral-Sermon upon the immature death of the Son the fittest occasion I am ever like to have while I live to present those who can look upon eminent goodness without evil eyes with a short Epitome of the Mothers worth as it was long since in way of Epitaph composed by a person whose ambition is That justice might be done to the dead as well as to the living Vicious minds and manners like dead carkasses are then best when so buried that nothing may appear to posterity of their noysome and contagious fedities But exemplary and meritorious
FUNERALS MADE CORDIALS IN A SERMON Prepared and in part Preached at the solemn Interment of the Corps of the Right Honorable ROBERT RICH Heire apparent to the Earldom of WARWICK Who aged 23. died Febr. 16. at Whitehall and was honorably buried March 5. 1657. at Felsted in Essex By JOHN GAUDEN D. D. of Bocking in Essex Therefore I hated life for all is vanity and vexation of spirit Eccles 2.17 But the things that are not seen are eternal 2 Cor. 4.18 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Plato LONDON Printed by T. C. for Andrew Crook and are to be sold at the Green Dragon in St. Pauls Church-yard 1658. TO The Right Honorable the Lady FRANCES RICH. Madam THough I am justly tender of exasperating so vehement and unfeigned a grief as your Ladiship hath constantly expressed to the noble Mr. Rich both living and languishing dying and dead by my applying any such Balsame as may seem to renew your wound and pain yet knowing that your Ladiships greatest comforts next those of divine infusion arise from those proportions which your just sorrows bear to your generous affections which are now become the occasion and measure of your affliction I thought it would neither be offensive to your honour nor unbeseeming my respects if I justified your exceeding grief by representing to the world how diservedly you have loved and how worthily you have mourned for that Gentleman of whose honour and happiness even from his infancy I was most seriously ambitious Hence it is that I have adventured to dedicate to your Name this Funeral Cordial which was first devoted to adorn the Christian Interment and revive the honored Name of your dear Husband that since You lived not long together in your marriage yet You might at least be inseparable in this monument which aims not to add any further secular pomp to his dust much less to gratifie the impertinent curiosity of this or after ages touching his life sickness disease or death but rather to advance the glory of God in his unsearchable ways also to summon such as yet survive him to consider their latter ends that they may betimes even in youth remember their Creator and apply their hearts to true saving and eternal wisdom To these great and good ends I presume your Ladiships passionate piety will permit me to improve so sad a dispensation of providence whose aspect not only looks to your Ladiship but to all that stand within the view reach and terror of so sharp a stroak which deserves to be so far laid to heart by all spectators until they find their hearts mollified and mended through that gracious virtue which may by fear of death and grief for sin make way for faith in Christ and love of God Certainly a penitent and pious use is the best that can be made of such dreadful monitions that no seeming splendor of prosperity no vain confidences of youth and life no cumulations of worldly contents no momentary honours and imaginary pleasures should either blind or divert any of us from dayly taking a serious prospect of our sins and our souls of our death and judgement of our God and Saviour Nothing in all my lifes observation except one unparallel'd instance hath ever faln out of more pregnant and potent influence to abate the presumption of human vanity worldly confidence and earthly glory than the sudden Eclipse and fall of this great Star which was but lately risen to its lustre and conspicuity The contemplation of his so early death is no small warning to us that are yet living especially to those who most dally with death while they affect a dilatory indifferency as to any practise of repentance and true piety being afraid of nothing so much as of being good too soon as if they could be too soon in a capacity of happiness I know the folly and madness of many who have had not only ingenuous but religious breeding is usually such that though they please themselves in being civil and accomplist toward men yet they make no scruple of being neglective rude affrontive yea insolent toward God and therein cruel to their own souls forgetting at once both their moment and God's eternity which desperate frolick usually holds with many not only during the adventerous extravagancies of their youth and spring which is the chief hour of temptation and power of darkness but it extends by the hardning habits and deceitfulness of our sinful hearts to our Autumn and decline God knows our vicious accesses to the vanities and inordinacies of life are early and speedy but our gracious recesses in order to an holy life and happy death are very flow and late if ever unless special grace prevent the best of nature and God's good Spirit perfect the best of our educations Madame I write not at this rate out of a Censorian vanity to reproach others but out of an humble sense of my own infirmities and out of a Christian sympathy to others impendent miseries Alas 't is too evident that many persons otherways of excellent useful parts do live amidst the offers of eternal life and the terrors of eternal death as if they had never laid to heart either their own or any others death no nor the death of their blessed Saviour by the price of whose blood they have been both meritoriously Sacramentally redeemed from their vain conversation It is both a sad and shameful thing to consider that the least and last thoughts of many titularly Christians are devoted to their God their Saviour and their Souls These grand concernments are late unwelcome and but hardly admitted after the surfeits of sensual pleasures the crowds and pester of worldly affairs the importunities of ambitious designs and other busie vanities which so ingross the whole man and time that there is little place allowed in most mens and womens hearts or space in their lives which are always upon the confines and brink of death for that great point of wisedom and work of salvation which consists in beginning betimes to resist and retrench those evils to which our depraved hearts do naturally prompt us that so we might with greater speed and less impediment advance to that Supream and immutable good to which as we are invited and beseeched by the tender mercies and love of God in Christ so by the principles of true reason and religion and no less by the real interests of our own safety honour and eternal felicity The promoting of all which being my main design in publishing this grave piece I hope both your Ladiships great sadness and passion and my own deep resentments for the dead may be sufficient Apology for my freedom both of tongue and pen toward the living not only my natural genius prompting me but my conscience commanding me specially in publique and sacred remonstrances to speak and write out that is to use such honest Parrhesie as will least smother wholesome truths or flatter secure sins Nothing is more deformed
highest place and state of celestial honour next the Divine Essence far above all Angels is neer of kin even to the dead bodies and dust of his servants whom he will raise up again at the last day and take them to he ever with the Lord. But it will be a work more worthy of you and me to carry on this Corps and Funeral till we bring them to our own hearts where possibly we may find too much of the house and state of the dead You see the wisedome of Solomon or rather of God by his penitential pen teacheth us how to turn Funerals into Cordials Indeed nothing is more thrifty then true piety Religion is a good husband of all opportunities tempers providences John 6.12 Jam. 5.13 events and dispensations towards our selves or others it followes the frugal care and counsel of Christ Let nothing be lost Is any man merry saith St. James let him sing Psalms is any man afflicted let him pray Not only our own passions but others may be improved by holy Sympathies mourning with those that mourn Rom. 12.15 and weeping with those that weep as well as rejoycing with those that joy It is a Stoical and Cynical sowreness yea a putid and barbarous stupidity in any Christian to forget he is a man Mollissima corda Humano generi dare se ratura fatetur Quum lachrymas dedit Juv. having an heart fitted in the softness of nature beyond all other creatures with bowels of compassion with aptitude to be affected with others afflictions and to testifie this by our Tears which indicate an harmony of hearts moved by a secret symphony to an unison of affections Ezek. 11.19 Grace is so far from stupifying or petrifying mens hearts that it takes away the heart of sin and gives a heart of flesh it softens us not only to God and our selves but to others also nothing is further from a true and genuine Christian then either putid affectation or stupid in affectedness I mean that surly apathy and senseless indolency of soul which argues a spirit and conscience rather scorched and seared in the furnace of private lusts and particular factions than steeped in the blood of Jesus Christ or suppled with the gentle oyl of Catholick and Christian charity which is the greatest ornament and improvement of every true Christian We have this receipt how to make a right use of the Dead from Solomons great experience and exact observation of things whose accurate palate was not glutted or confounded nor the edge of his taste blunted or dulled by the luxurious gusto the delicacy plenty and variety of all things to which he applied his heart whose wisedom remained with him That wisedome which God gave him upon his wise choise of wisedom rather then of riches honour 2 Chron. 1.10 revenge long life or pleasure The desire of wisedome is the surest way to obtain it for the soule by unfeigned desires like a chrystal glass is polished and prepared for it that it easily receives the beams of wisedome into its self which like the Sun shine equally upon all men and are alike receptible by all where the gross and opacous temper the carnal and earthly lusts the dull and dirty disposition of mens soules being wiped off or purged and refined there is no inward impediment or cloud to hinder This is one great Instance that Solomons wives millions of concubines with his other proportionable equipage and provisions of sensual pleasures had not exhausted his wisedome in that he now as a Prince and Preacher makes this wise choise That it is better to goe to the house of mourning then to the house of feasting 1. Better in many and great respects chiefly for this that it sadly and solemnly sets forth to us the end of all men 2. A consideration worthy of the living who are infinitely concerned in the same fate and state attending them 3. And which they may then turn to a good account when they seriously lay the matter and manner the occasion and solemnity of Funerals to their hearts 4. Which they will doe if they are truly living in a rational prudent and religious way of life 5. For then they must needs be very sensible what need their hearts have of such applications even of death and the house of mourning to them And what advantages a wise man one that hath an humble holy and gracious heart may gain by such warnings and alarms which in many regards are proper to be laid to heart by all those that are truly living to God and his grace yea even such as are yet only living as beasts to their senses and as men to civil conversation being dead to the wisedom life of God these may hence learn to know God and themselves yea they may be excited and enabled to live to his glory and to work out their own salvation with fear and trembling 1. This choise and receipt of Solomon is considerable in general as to its chief ingredient the house of mourning or the condition of the dead which 2. will be best set forth if we consider the persons to whom he applies it the living whose duty and wisdome it is not to despise those spectacles and instances of mortality 3. Consider that part of the living to which he would have this medicine applied their heart whose pestilent distempers stand in need of such applications 4. The vertues ends and uses for which this receipt is sacred and soveraign to be laid to the hearts of the living which are all wrapped up in this one expression For it is the end of all men When I have given you this account of the Text in order to the religious benefit of the living I shall answer your wonted curiosity and expectation in giving you some account also of the Dead upon whose occasion we are now met that I may at once doe Him and you so much right as truth and justice first next my love and honour to him together with my charity to you command me to doe apart from all sinister fears or flatteries without any partiality or oblique passion toward the living or the dead which depraved distempers can at no time become me or any Minister of Christ and least of all now when I have set before me and am to set forth to you such a sad and serious prospect of the dead as ought to mortifie all our impotent passions and inordinate affections My first endeavour must be to set forth to you in general this part of Solomons wisedome which we may call a kind of sacred Necromancie or Necromathy by which he had learned himself and instructs others to make an holy use of the Dead rather to goe to the house of mourning in the blackest attire and representations of it which are at Funerals then to goe to the house of feasting or to frequent those Festivals either civil or sacred which invited poor mortals to more mirth and jollity of
that we fear to die but not to sin when as all the sad aspects and events of death rise from sin which is the Marah and Meribah the Stygian spring or lake whence our waters of bitterness and strife doe flow not to be healed but by that sacred wood of Christs cross cast into them not in the natural relique but in that mystical merit of him that hung upon it and bare our sins 1 Pet. 2.24 Pro. 19.4 That sin which thou as a fool makest a mock of how canst thou O poor bubble thus play with poyson dally with a dragon sport with a devil and caper over hell Wilt thou die in thy sinful smiles and pleasures Is it not horrid to be smothered in down-beds or drowned in malmsy as the Duke of Clarence was Will it not be bitterness in the latter end Remember this stream of Jordan in which thou swimmest runs to the dead sea The end of all these things as St. Rom. 6.23 Phil. 3.19 Rom. 1.33 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Paul tells us is destruction and death in all senses For these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience and sons of death Peccati deformitatem foetorem reputa as a Commentator observes on this Text. As a dead carkass is to thee loathsome and to be cast out of thy presence so is a soul a sinner that is dead in sin and impenitence while he lives Wouldest thou disarm the terrour power Morticinia non erant sacrificia and sting of death slay thy sin let it not die monte incruentâ a natural death by age and infirmity but a violent one by mortifying and crucifying Sinne must not die with us but before us Deut. 14.21 Nothing that died of it self was to be offered to God as a sacrifice No companion worse when we goe to our long home then sin if it be yet living in us and with us in the love power pleasure and purpose of sinning This worm will never die after death Now is the time to dy to sin while thou livest Now or never ohn 8.21 Lay this to heart lest thou die for ever in thy sins as Christ tells the Jewes for want of timely dying to them For in the sins a man hath committed and not repented of Ezek. 18.24 he shall surely die saith the Lord again again by the Prophet Ezekiel Nor is sin truly repented of unless it be mortified at least in the full and unfeigned resolutions of a believing humble contrite and penitent though dying sinner The will here shall be accepted for the deed and the purpose bears the value of the practise Wheresoever the black characters of sin are washed from the soul by penitent tears 2 Cor. 8.12 and the blood of Christ the lively image of God will appear as the face of the dry land did when the flood was fully asswaged The tyranny of death shall no more prevail when once the dominion of sin is taken away which hath no right but is a meer usurpation upon the reasonable creature 4. Quà m fugax fallax quam certa incerta quam procax procellosa Bern. Lay to heart the frailty and vanity the misery and momentariness of this short sinful and sorrowful life how fallacious and fading how short and vncertain how troublesome and importune this gleam and storm of life is as St Bernard speaks How specious a bubble how delightful a dream how goodly a nothing it is for a reasonable soule to intend to delight in to dote upon to rest and root its happinesse in Wilt thou set thine heart saith the Prophet on that which is not Job 7.17 wilt thou lay out and lavish thy thoughts in such things as have no worth and bear no price in that Country whither thou goest so that when thy vain and vexatious life fails all thy thoughts must perish Psal 146.4 when this little cock-boat of thy carkass comes a ground and splits Magno viatico breve iter non ornatur sed opprimitur Sen. all thy voyage is lost all thy good things with which thou wert not more adorned then incumbred and rather childishly pleased then really profited these sink with thee and are swallowed up in the Abyssus of forgetfulnes never to be buoyed up again nor enjoyed any more by thee as is expressed by Christ in the parabolical history of Dives Luke 16.19 Luke 12.19 which is too oft verified by sad experience of rich men In order to shew you the vanity of all things in this world that you call great or good high or honorable sacred or civil I shall not need beyond your own fresh experience to tell you Right Honorable and Beloved of those strange revolutions and excentrick motions which have befaln the highest Orbs of this British world which have shaken Heaven and Earth Church and State turning the Sun into darkness and the Moon into blood to the terror and astonishment of all the world at home and abroad They are as beasts without understanding who learn not wisedom and humility by those Paradoxes of providence which have posed the wise exhausted the rich debased the honorable diminished the great onely the gracious heart reads these riddles and the spiritual man understands God's meaning in all these intricacies which are like Ezekiels wheels full of dreadful and yet orderly confusions very perplexed in their motions yet evidently guided by that spirit within them Ezek. 1.20 which is wise and wonderful in all its ways These are publick lectures of the vanity and vexation of life which God hath taught us all in this Nation with the sound of the drum trumpet lessons that are written with the point of the sword as their pens and the blood of these Nations as their inck They that run may read and they that live the life of sober men and good Christians will learn Gods meaning to be this That the rich man should not glory in his riches nor the strong man in his strength Jer. 6.23 24. nor the wise man in his wisedom nor the great man in his greatness nor Princes in their Thrones 1 Cor. 1.32 but he that glories should glory in the Lord that he knows his blessed will in order to a better life Look a little lower to this Noble Gentleman whose Corps are here before us and his most Noble Mother who Ires in her dust not far from us There have seldom been afforded in any age in any one family greater instances by which to confute the confidences of poor mortals as to any thing desireable or enjoyable in this life Nothing of education honour estate comliness greatness of relations ampleness of worldly enjoyments could be modestly wished beyond what they seemed to enjoy both of them in the flower of their age in the conspicuity of grand fortunes and honours in the probability of long enjoying all those happinesses which are attainable under the
hold them in many cases very fit and of excellent use so they ought to be serious severe and wholly circumcised as to all danger of sowing pillows under the elbows of the living or of dawbing with any untempered mortar and no lesse from whiting the Sepulchres of the dead as if there were no rottenness in their bones Preachers should in no point of their Embassy be more rigid exact precise and punctual Matth. 3.2 Matth. 4.17 then in urging that which was Christs and his forerunners first Text and Sermon Repent for the Kingdome of God is at hand As the Roman Legate or Consul Marcus Popilius circumscribed with a wand he had in his hand the person and answer of the proud King Antiochus Valerius Max. in M. Popilio when he desiring time to resolve of war or peace which was offered him was confined to give his definitive answer before he stirred a step out of that litle circle So concise and peremptory are Gods commands and so must be our conjureings and requirings of all men every where to repent and turn to the Lord Acts 17.30 Acts 3.26 Gen. 27.2 Heb. 3.11 young as well as old even daily exhorting them while it is called to day because as Isaac said they know not the day of their deaths nor we of ours and if they die in their sins unwarned God wil require their blood at our hands Ezek. 33.6 A dreadful account as Chrys cals it Can you blame us Ministers O Christian people if we be quick and importune in calling upon you if we seem religiously rude and piously uncivil with you even pulling and snatching and haling you while you are lingring as the Angels did Lot out of Sodom or as fire-brands out of the fire Our deferring to call upon you and your delayings to repent these run the hazard of your and our souls You must therefore forgive those kind and charitable injuries we sometimes seem to doe you by our Christian importunities Currat poenitentia nè praecurrat poena Amb. which are but the effects of our fidelity to you to our own souls and to God St. Ambrose's counsel is excellent Let repentance make haste lest vengeance overtake thee True repentance only can bring thee to the City of refuge Christ Jesus where thou mayst be safe against the pursuits of death and wrath Seneca in his concise and witty way can tell us how necessary it is to be as passengers on the shore that expect a fair wind and passage by Sea alwayes in readiness to have our packs and truncks packed up that we may answer the first summons of the Master or Pilot who when he calls to be gone will stay for no mans occasions If Heathens had such principles of prudence who saw but one side of death and that but darkly in a very distant narrow view as to Eternity O how should Christians who have so great discoveries take the alarm of every night and sleep which is a shadow of death of every morn renewing which is the dawning of Eternity the gallicinium cock-crowing of the resurrection of every infirmity in their own feeling of every other Funeral and death they see or hear of of every history they read which alwayes closeth with the worke of death drawing this black vail of burial and oblivion over all the pomp and glory strength and victory pleasures and passions of the world and those great men in it who in their greatest glistering are but gloeworms shining a while in this night of mortality and then extinct for ever yea every hour which men live is a monitor of death being no sooner lived out but they are so much dead so is every meal they eat which is but a daily subsidy given to the body to relieve its daily expences and decays which are the secret depredations and essayes of death We should take yea and make many occasions to reflect soberly upon this meditation and lay death to heart that the defensative of repentance may the better work upon our souls before death hath taken the suburbs of our bodies by age and sickness which are not the constant procedures of death nor may any man rationally expect it will deal with him upon such termes of Treaty or Parly No 't is oft upon the snap and sudden with us and may be so to the ablest and youngest He or She. Sometimes indeed death plays with smaller shot upon us and hews us down with many little chops But 't is frequent that he batters us all in pieces with one great and sudden Cannon and blows us up at once by a storm either of inward Apoplectick stroaks or outward violences as the wind overthrew the house on Jobs children against which there is no foresight no warning or defence Death doth not alwayes so befriend either Physicians gaines or their patients designs as to vouchsafe them the benefit of a lingring sickness or a leisurely death How infinitely then doth it concern us to be alwayes in procinctu in our harnesse never to wake or sleep but with the compleat armour of our soules upon us or rather within us Gen. 6. Sure it was pitiful padling work to be building of boats or hewing down trees to make ships and vessels of then when the flood began to be poured down upon the Old world of ungodly men who so long neglected their temporal and eternal safety by delaying their repentance when they had Gods warning by Noahs preaching for an hundred years 1 Pet. 3.19 2 Pet. 2.5 that of so many millions of mankind which in that generative and vivacious age had peopled and overstock'd the earth there should be but eight persons found fit to be preserved alive in the Ark which afforded room for birds beasts and serpents but not for wicked and impenitent men who had refused the voice of God calling them so long so oft to repentance as he now doth every where by that Tuba Evangelii Trumpet of the Gospel which is but the Praecentor first peal and noise of the last Trumpet The one calls us so to prepare for Death that we may stand with comfort in the day of Judgment the other will call us out of a state of death to the eternal doom of that last day of Judgment The state and tenour of a Christians life should be a continued course of repentances well begun and daily renewed never intermitted because of daily failings All the parenthesis of businesse as to secular affairs should not interrupt the series nor confound the care of a Christians Repentance and daily proficiency Blessed God! What pity 't is that men women can find time for every thing else under the Sun and none for their repentance which is the work of works 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Opus operosissimum the first rough-hewing and foundation of the great building of our eternal salvation Hast thou time to dresse undresse thy body to eat and drink and sleep to
preach his revealed will which is our sanctification by our repenting and amending according to the tenour of the Gospel Such as deaffen their ears harden their hearts and turn their backs on God and the meanes of grace all the time of their strength and health will find it very hard to see or seek his face in the disorder darkness and clouds of sickness which is the twilight and evening of Death As in civil conversation no man may so presume of Gods providence as to neglect honest industry so in religious respects no man may hope for grace that doth not rationally duely and conscienciously apply to the use of those meanes which God hath appointed in his Church All blessings temporal and eternal which are acquirable by and offered to reasonable creatures are ordinarily the effects of Gods mercy and mans industry not of miracles or omnipotence The meanes of grace given by God in his Church are never barren or ineffectual but to those who neglect to attend them and use them as they may and ought to doe if they look upon them as from God and in order to their soules good which is to be attained by this or no way 7. In order therefore to promote and speed by Gods assistance our repentance while we are yet in life and health we should lay to heart specially at the summons of another death What infinite patience and long-suffering it is that hitherto God hath shewed toward thee for many years of vanity sin and desperate folly Rom. 2.4 in which he hath spared thee notwithstanding thou hast daily provoked him to his face yet thou art not to this day cut off from the land of the living nor is the door of mercy and repentance shut upon thee How many have been cut off by the sword by sudden death and by lingring sickness here one there another while thou art reprieved Should not this forbearance of God lead thee to repentance Is it not enough in all conscience and too much in all reason and gratitude thus far to have offended a God that is loth to destroy thee giving thee space to repent Wilt thou after the hardness of thy heart and vain confidence of life still treasure up wrath against the day of wrath The time past may suffice to give thee sufficient experience how unwilling God is thou shouldest die 1 Pet. 4.3 and how willing thou shouldst repent and live Ezek. 33.11 For it is of the Lords mercy that thou art not consumed Thou mightest have been the corps now to be put into the grave Lam. 3.22 where is no device or wisedome of counsel or repentance or preaching Eccl. 9.10 or praying O turn no longer the grace of God into wantonness which is offered in Christ by his Ministers Breve sit quod turpiter audes Of a short precious and uncertain moment the least part is too much to be lavished in those wayes Jude 4. which are not only unprofitable but pernicious Our whole lives after the vanity of childhood and youth are too little to be spent in well-doing Isa 20.15 and in undoing what hath been either vain or wicked To live as if we had made a covenant with death and hell is not onely a fool-hardiness but a madness which hath by infinite sad and horrid instances been fearfully punished but not yet sufficiently cured in mankind Eccl. 8.12 Though a sinner live an hundred years twice told yet it shall not be well with him Eccl. 11.9 Though young and strong men please themselves in the delights of their eyes and desires of their own hearts yet they must know that for all these things God will bring them to judgment A mans debts and dangers are not the lesse because he is not presently arrested nor sees the books and specialties which are against him or the Serjeants which will arrest him 'T is high time to cease to offend that God who is willing to remit all our former arrears and debts upon our return to him begging his pardon and resolving to live worthy of such grace Doe not then feed any longer on ashes it is a deceived heart that turneth thee aside Isa 44.20 Jonah 2.8 Phil. 2.12 Heb. 2.9 so that thou canst not deliver thy soul nor say Is there not a lye in my right hand Take heed of following lying vanities lest thou forsake thy own mercies which are offer'd us but from moment to moment so as every minute of time that passeth every clock that striketh calls upon thee in the wise man's counsell Eccles 9.10 Whatever thine hand findeth to do do it with all thy might And what hast thou to do but to work out thy salvation with feare and trembling as the Apostle calls upon the Philippians All without this is time and labour lost 8. Lay to heart upon the sight and reflexions of death the infinite want thou hast of such a Saviour who may be able and willing to redeem thee a captive to sin and held all thy life in the fear of death from both these miserable bondages Lay to heart the infinite grace transcendent love and mercy of Christ Heb. 2.9 who is offer'd thee as a sufficient Saviour to all purposes Who hath tasted death for every man and hath overcome death as well as satisfied for the death of the whole world excluding none nor excepting any but putting all into a capacity of life and salvation upon their faith and repentance John 5.40 John 6.37 40. Ver. 54. John 8.52 John 11.25 Mark 16.15 so that whoever will come to him and believe in him shall not die but have eternal life yea though he die as to the body yet he shall continue to live in the happiness of his soul and his body shall be raised to live in glory and immortality by Christ who hath wrought this for us by his death and brought it to light by his Gospel which is commanded to be preached to every rational creature under heaven Lay then to heart that is seriously and alone ponder with thy self what Christ hath done and suffered for thee what he hath deserved of thee what he expects from thee as a man Christian for whose sake he hath died Wouldst thou have greater instances of his love to thee John 10.11 John 15.13 then thus to die for thee Shall not thy unthankful and sinful importunity be satisfied with that which hath satisfied divine justice stopped the Devils mouth conquered death and purchased life eternal to every true believer It wrought up blessed Ignatius's heart to an ambitious zeal of Martyrdome that he might shew his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 reciprocal love to Christ when he deeply considered and oft repeated Christ my love hath been crucified 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Doth it become thee to neglect despise sinne against such love any longer Canst thou trample that blood under feet which hath been shed for thee Wouldst thou have him
thee as an armed man attended with death and judgment sin and hell an evil conscience and an angry God then I say one day or hour will be as earnestly desired by thee as one drop of water was by Dives and it may be as justly and certainly be denied thee the common fate of riotous Prodigals following thee in this to be reduced to a morsel of bread after sottish profusenesse and shameful luxury We unjustly quarrel with God and nature as Seneca observes that our life is so short when indeed our care is too little to live well which is the onely true life It is one thing to be a man and another to live as a man It was a true fig-tree which was barren and cursed by Christ Maximam partem hominum brutum occupat In most men for a long time the beast in them overlayes the man Sensual lusts are night and day the imperious Incubusses or Ephialtae of their reason What one said with much salt to an Epicure Deus tuus est porcorum Deus is verified in most people during their youth and in many long after even through the whole course of their life They own no other God then the God of swine reverencing the Divine Majesty no more then hogs doe nor expecting more from him then may serve their bellies which is the God they serve as the Apostle speaks nor returning more acknowledgment or service to him yea they live tanquam poeniteret non pecudes natos as if they only repented they were not made only beasts with bodies In titles perhaps noble in estates splendid in words rational and in formalities civil yea perhaps religious in shews but in deeds they are debasers of their native and divine dignity Victa libidine succed it ambitio victa ambitione succedit avaritia victa avaritia succedit superbia vitium inter ipsas virtutes timendum Hieron dethroners of reason despisers of their God and true Religion doting on sensible objects all their lives by a continued succession of vices and inordinate defires and delights which succenturiate or supply the places decayes and recesses of one another as St. Jerome observes till they have wasted life and spirits and time and talents to the very last snuff mean time they have done nothing unde constet vixisse worthy of themselves their relations their God the Church of Christ or their Country From youthful and extravagant lusts they run to pride from pride to hypocrisie from hypocrisie to ambition from ambition to covetousness from covetousness to sacriledge from sacriledge to Atheism from Atheism to stupidity or despair Mean time they have at first it may be with great mirth jollity next with affected gravity and severity not only bought and sold planted and builded married and given in mariage but it may be griped and oppressed killed and possessed subverted and sacrificed all things sacred and civil as much as they could to their own lusts but have never yet had leisure all this while to live or to act any thing but dead works Let them ask their own souls and consciences not quà m fortiter feliciter but quam sanctè justè quid praeclarè quid egregiè fecisti Nay let them ask apart from flatteries Quid non turpiter quid non pudendum quid non poenitendum fecisti What have they done conscienciously justly honestly valiantly for God for the Truth for their own soules or their neighbours good Nay what have they done which in the inward aspect of conscience and many times to outward view of all men is not vile impious to be ashamed of to be repented of They have it may be with Caesar Borgia and Lewis the 11th had much art and Policie but no true piety and charity in them much self-seeking but nothing of self-denying which is the truest touchstone of a Christian constitution They may have been prosperous and yet not pious they may have conquered others but yet not themselves which is the noblest victory They may have gotten much and yet shall be sure to lose all for want of that one thing necessary a good conscience which is the end of living and the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 only provision for an eternal life A temper of soul which is rightly instructed and guided by the written word of God only sanctified accordingly by his holy spirit practically conformed to his blessed example in all manner of holy conversation this this temper purged by faith in the blood of Christ and so accepted by Gods mercy and dignation through Christs merits makes a good conscience the getting and preserving of which is the main end of life as to our private concern next Gods glory and this alone will bring a man peace in his latter end this alone dares look death and divels in the face to others that have a forme of godliness yet deny the power of it 2 Tim. 3.5 John 3.19 to whom the light of Christian Religion is come and they love darkness more then light their condemnation will be the greater 9. Lay to heart the sameness or variety of aspects wherein death represents to thee the faces and fates of all men living and dying either so alike Eccles 2.16 that as the fool dieth so dieth the wise man as the wicked so the righteous as to the kind and manner of death by sickness pains violence Vide Psal 73.12 Behold these are the ungodly who prosper in the world they increase in riches c. Job 21.7 Wherefore do the wicked live become old yea are mighty in power Jer. 12.1 2. Wherefore doth the way of the wicked prosper why are all they happy that deal very treacherously c. John 7.24 Psal 73.15 suddenness in all shapes or figures of death Besides thou maist observe the frequent riddles and Paradoxes not only of mens lives but of their deaths The righteous and godly that eschew evil and do good who fear God and walk uprightly before him who chuse to suffer rather then sin these are oft persecuted and oppressed with poverty prison banishment and distresses while they live yea and their innocency is many times persecuted to the death by violent and unjust men whereas these live and thrive a long time yea and end their days in prosperous impiety to the great scandal of many that are godly and infinite incouragement of wicked doers as Job David and Jeremiah complain Take heed you judge not as Christ forewarns his Disciples by outward appearance or the fight of thine eyes but judge righteous judgement lest thou condemn the generation of God's people many Prophets Apostles Martyrs and Confessors who have most what been sufferers yea lest thou condemne that Just One Christ himself who died as a Malefactor by popular suffrages and the sentence of a timerous judge nay take heed lest thou condemn the righteous God as if he were unjust in his providences and permissions Take heed thy heart fret not against God nor be
large extents of deaths dominion and soveraignty above all Psal 8.6 for even these Gods Dii umbratiles die like men but they are frequently attended as the succession of months in the year with some alteration of weather many times for the worse So that where any people is blessed with good Kings and gracious Princes it is happy if they do serò in caelum redire in this part of deity Immortality come neerest to the Gods by living long and happily with their people and going as late as may be to Heaven For as good Princes are by good Subjects justly esteemed inter publica gentis bona praecipua Dei dona the chiefest worldly blessings that God can give mankind so their death must needs be reckoned inter luctus epidemicos publica damna among the greatest losses and grounds of most publique sorrow Although they die as Moses Joshua and David in good old ages full of days and honour as Augustus did among the Romans Optimum esset è Republicâ Rom. Severum aut non nasci aut nunquam denasci of whom it might truly be said as was of Severus the Emperor It had been happy for the Empire if either he had never been born or never had died for as he attained the Empire with much war and blood so he setled it with so much justice wisedom and honour for a long time that it was a felicity not possible to survive him But if good and hopeful Princes be cut off immaturely by death as Josiah among the Jews 2 Chro. 35.25 and our pious K. Ed. the 6. no wonder if they go to their graves by water with infinite sad hearts and weeping eyes becoming the piety and humanity of their people Hence the mourning of Hadadrimmon in the valley of Megiddon became not only a Proverb Zach. 12.11 but the highest pattern for publick lamentation at the sad fate and death of an excellent Prince And not without cause may this be a superlative grief because it ever follows where the Shepheard is smitten the sheep are either scattered or wounded or shrewdly warned of God to humble themselves under his mighty hand and unsearchable judgements Matth. 26.31 2. Yea when great and eminent Priests or Prophets of God and his Church as Samuel Jehojada John Baptist James die a natural death or are slain who kept up the majesty of Religion the beauty of holiness and the order of Gods worship being the chariots and horsemen of Israel as Eliah was So among Christian Churches 1 Kings 2.12 such Ministers as have been exemplary in their lives potent in their true doctrine severest exactors of discipline upon themselves burning and shining lights that have been valiant for the truth not popular not partial but unblameable venerable and admirable in all things filling that sphear in which God and the Church had orderly set them either as Bishops or Presbyters by preaching praying writing living and governing the Church worthy of their holy order and function So as did those ancient and renowned Bishops Polycarp of Smyrna Ignatius of Antioch St. Ambrose of Milan St. Cyprian of Carthage St. Athanasius of Alexandria St. Chrysostome of Constantinople St. Iraeneus of Lions St. Austin of Hippo St. Gregory of Rome with infinite other worthy of their successions in that name and order in all Churches and ages sufficient in my judgement to vindicate the office degree name dignity and use of Bishops every where and no where more then in England which had of late as worthy Bishops as ever the Church enjoyed in any place or age since the Apostles When I say such Fathers of the Church die who were in their times as was said of St. Ambrose the Munimenta ornamenta urbis orbis defence and ornaments of their Churches and Countrys the personal death of such Fathers ought to be laid greatly to heart such as was that not long ago of the most learned pious industrious humble indefatigable and Apostolick Bishop Bishop Vsher the late Lord Primate of Armagh As also that of the most eloquent and venerable and painful Bishop of Norwich Doctor Hall with many others now at rest in the Lord of whom the world was not worthy which sought to bury them in silence indignities poverty and obscurity before they were dead or any way had ill deserved of this Church and State or the reformed Religion of which they were most able defenders How much more when the very Function order and degree of that Catholick race the primitive Apostolick and most excellent government of the Church by Bishops comes in any Christian or reformed Church to be destroyed extirpated and buried as it were with the burial of an Ass cast into the graves of the common people and exposed to be trodden under the feet of plebeian contempt Which venerable Order though sixteen hundred years old in the Catholick Church and above 1400 in * In the Council of Arles in France before the first great Nicene Council about the year of Christ 230. three Brittish Bishops were present and subscribed viz. Eborius of York Restitutus of London Adelphius of Colchester as Bishop Vsher observes in his De prim Eccl. Brit. Sirmondus Concil Gall. Tom. 1. p. 9. Lucius the King of the Britans as Bede tells us Hist l. 1. c. 4. received the faith by such as were sent from Elcutherius the 12th Bishop of Rome from the Apostles as Heâ—sippus tells us in Euseb l. 4. c. 22. As Calvin in Epist ad Sadoletum de Necessi Refor Eccles Zanchius Epist ad Elizab Regin am Angl. in Epist ad Grindal Archiep. Cant. Isaac Casaub Epist ad Reg. Jacob. ante Exer. Baron Moulin Ep. ad Epis Winto Beza Epist ad Grindal Archiep. Cant. Pet. Martyr ad Juelli Apolog. praefat Isa 57.1 Psal 116.15 these British Churches yet died not of old age or onely inward decays in the vitals but by force and outward violence which government in its due constitution no Christian or reformed Church not wholly under a democratick or popular spirit yea no one eminent reformed Divine but did highly approve and desire the happiness to enjoy as hath been made evident by their writings But no testimony new or old no reason or Scripture no sense of justice or civility no publick honour of Church or State can preserve where men are resolved to destroy good and all This is certainly a just ground of great and better lamentation to those that lay to heart the licentious fedities indignities insolencies popular confusions and all sorts of irreligions which must necessarily follow the want of due government in any Church yea and the extirpation of that which is not more reverend for its primitive Institution and Catholick descent from the Apostles then for its excellent use and admirable constitution carrying with it the truest and best proportions as well as benefits of grave and authoritative government in which order and counsel
God is to be blessed taking as well as giving Consider again that parents sins are oft visited by childrens immature deaths 1 Kings 14.13 as was threatned against Eli yea sometimes hopeful childron are cut off because some good thing was found in them as in Jereboam's childs case Sometimes they are the Idols of jealousie which take up parents hearts too much and therefore are taken away from them that there might be less distance between them and God their heavenly Father Vnicum bonum verum summum immutabile immarcessibile quod amittere non potes quamdiu amare non desinis Aug. who hath the wisedom of a father and the tenderness of a mother weaning us oft from those brests which we were too fond of and out of which we sucked more wind then wholesome nourishment All losses are mercies which end in the souls gain nor can that be a losse in any creature-comfort if it finds recompenses in his love who is the only immutable and unloseable good As for vain or vicious parents who are rather peremptores quam parentes when their children are taken away from their contagion I know not how they can have any greater summons from heaven or motives on earth to move their hearts to speedy repentance and preparation for death then when they see their prime branches lopped off as presages that the whole bulk of the tree root and branch shall ere long be hewn down and without repentance cast into unquenchable fire 7. Last of all in the death of such as are remarkable for nothing but their sin and wickedness for the dissoluteness of their lives the stupidity or despair of their deaths dying unawares and cut off by unexpected stroaks of heaven because their sin was great before God it may be a violent immature and preposterous fate yea it may be flagrante crimine as Absalom in his unnatural rebellion against his Prince and parents 2 Sam. 18. or possibly by the hand of human justice or by private duels or by their own debaucheries which are a self-assasination even these are not lightly to be laid to heart in any family kindred or acquaintance or neighbourhood because they are like Gods thunderbolts not every days terror nor striking every one therefore the more to be dreaded by all though the punishment falls but on one Poena ad unum terror ad omnes though the ruine falls upon the head but of one yet the news may justly make the ears to tingle and hearts to tremble of all that see and hear of it No man does deserves or suffers from God or man or himself so bad but the same might be exemplified in thee and me to the astonished world we might be the beacons on fire that should scare all the Country far more then any house on fire can do We read of David though otherways of a mind great and gracious 2 Sam. 18.33 full of courage and constancy becoming the majesty of a pious King yet he takes the dreadful fate of his son Absalom so to heart the three streams of parental penitent and pious affections meeting in one current that he forgets the comfort of victory his own and the publick safety the suppressing of so dangerous and popular a rebellion the restitution of his throne and dominion which my young Master under the colour of doing speedier and better justice or reforming publick disorders had almost snatched from him not without the ready applause and assistance of vulgar levity giddiness vileness and ingratitude to such a Prince yet all these weighty concernments sink in Davids soul and only grief swims uppermost publikely manifesting its either excess or just violence in words too high indeed for any Tragedy and never heard from any father or son in the case of a Kingdom Would God I had died for thee O Absalom my son my son The loss of a good child is tolerable of a wicked one is intolerable especially if bad by neglect or example 2 Sam. 12.23 because he is eternally lost David comforted himself He should go to that Infant whose innocency gave hopes of its safety though it were the fruit of his sin but in Asaloms desperate case he deplores geminam aeternam mortem a double and eternal death and this alone may serve to justifie the so great passions of Davids soul in that particular Yet besides this Absaloms sins and sufferings made secret reflexions upon the fathers offences which had not only occasioned but deserved such unnatural fires to burn in his own bowels which were only to be quenched with their own blood nor had David been only excessive in his rebellious presumings against God but defective too in his reproving of his sons hence sad effects of paternal indulgence toward dangerous and comminitting children whose sins are imputable in great part to their parents 1 Sam. 3.13 and so their sufferings on all sides are but the punishments of such unzealous fondnesses as Eli used to the ruine of himself and his sons yea of his whole house by intolerable toleration of such impieties as will certainly overthrow roof and foundation root and branch of any family under heaven Would we have less cause to mourn in the death of any one we love endeavour to make them as good as we can while they are with us however having done our duty and expressed the best evidences of a true and faithful love to them in order to their eternal good we shall with more comfort and patience bear their death which many times gives us greater regrets for our own neglect of that Christian duty and holy love which we owe to the souls of our relations then for their corporal absence the one being reparable the other never either in this or the world to come I have now finished these instances of particular cases in which the death of any is to be laid to heart proportionably to the weight of the becasion whose circumstances or manner of dying as the feathers of some birds are sometimes as heavy as their bodies and substances It were too much for me to drive this discourse which in the whole texture of it is pathetick and applicative to a further thinness or fineness like leaf-gold by multiplied uses which are there necessary where as in the riveting or clinching of nails we suspect the doctrines have not taken good hold on the hearers minds and hearts of which in this case I am not very jealous as to the most of you whose affections may be read in your attention There are only three Uses which I conceive may not impertinently be added as advantages to or deductions from the main of that I have hitherto set down 1. Vse To reprove the unchristian barbarous and inhuman temper of those hearts which are made of flint not flesh who are so far from laying to heart with any humble mortifying and compassionating reflexions the death of any that they either carry it with
conference with such an humble ejaculation O how infinite is the mercy of our heavenly Father that hath given us poor sinners such gracious promises to lay hold on Afterward I was sent for to him and went betimes that morning before he departed which was at four afternoon His weakness then was great and urgent yet his calmness to speak and hear was better then I had found before Then he deplored as I formerly touched the vain hopes of living which he had had and that it was so late There was now no delay to be made no time to be lost in impertinent visiting and cold how-do-yous I craved therefore his patience privacy and leave to doe my duty as a Minister of Christ in order to his souls present good Then I did according to the wisedome that God gave me demand many things of him in the cleerest exactest and shortest method which I could whereby to receive from him such a confession of his sins and of his serious repentance of his deep sense of the want of Christ as a Saviour of owning the excellent worth that is in Christ of the full and free grace of God offered by Christ of his humble desires and hopes of it also his patience and preparedness to die if God would have it so And in general of his firm perswasion that those things were true which he had been taught by me and other Ministers of the Church of England out of Gods word To all the whole series of my questions discourse he severally answered with such prayers tears such deep sighs such fervent Amens and such pathetick expressions as I could expect in his weak condition To my last query concerning his belief of the Truths of God in his Word he replyed with a vehemency of voice and spirit Do I believe them yes Sr. I thank God I do believe them as most gracious and glorious truths and I hope my heavenly Father will make them good to my soul This last expression my heavenly Father he oft used as alone so to me and others A sweet name and title used oft in the private devotions which his pious and noble Mother had wrote with her own hand as the effusions of her devout soul After this my private discourse with him about a quarter of an hour his noble friends joyned with me in prayer to God for him to which he was composedly intent and fervent In the afternoon soon after he had againe spoken in his dying agonies some like passionate pious and humble words to me as best befits the mouth of a dying Christian he calmly and suddenly expired without any great contest with death Far be it from me who never flattered him or any man living except my self to commend him now dead and gone after those riotous Hyperboles and envied excesses which the Greek and Roman Orators used at the Funeral piles or busta of their deceased friends Nor will I scatter upon his herse those flowers which ancient Fathers and other Christian Orators used gravely and more deservedly in their Funeral Sermons Orations and Epitaphs applied to many holy men and women of old who died either young as Nepotian whom St. Jerome so highly commends or elder as Martyrs Confessors and eminent professors of Christ crucified it was but pious and prudent that their light both living and dead should so shine before men Matth. 5.16 both Christians and Heathens that all might see their good works and glorifie God These were set forth by their accurate yet honest eloquence that they were Virtutum thesauri gratiarum gazae humanarum perfectionum cumuli c. treasures of virtue magazeens of grace heaps of divine perfections in the midst of human imperfections No Sancta illa anima nec laudes quaerit nec cupit humanas Hieron I better understand the proportions of modesty gravity and verity which become both living and dead Great applauses never so much deserved as St. Jerome speaks can do the dead no good and may do the living much hurt when they seem not so eminently deserved I am severely confined to the bounds of soberness and truth therefore I shall say no more then this that as I hope he was not far from the Kingdom of Heaven in his health Mark 12.34 so I trust his long sickness brought him not only neerer to it in the graces of true faith unfeigned repentance with charity patience humility and willing submission to Gods will living and dying I well know that the rack and skrew of sickness and killing infirmitie do commonly squeeze or force something of such expressions out of every one which sound to the tune of Christianity the best verification of which is former frequent and faithful experiments in health enjoyed in a mans own conscience and given also to others by walking humbly with God and keeping constant communion with Christ in all good duties and good works the one affords nourishment the other fruits of grace Yet I conceive I may without any offence to God or good men say thus much That if sinite parvulos ad me venire suffer little ones to come unto me Mark 10.14 be applicable to Infant graces if the indulgent tenderness of Christ Matth. 11.28 bidding the weary laden with corporal and spiritual infirmities to come to him and promising them rest if that sweet promise worthy of our blessed Saviours beniguity to mankind have any spirits and life in it for a poor dying and dejected yet believing and trembling sinner to lay hold of Matth. 12.20 The smoaking flax he will not quench nor break the bruised reed if these be significant to poor sinners in their contrite state I may without presumption or turning grace into wantonness hope that they were made good to this Gentleman whose honour health hopes happiness and heart too were so long under the burdens and breakings of Gods hand in his sickness so early in his life and so suddenly casting him down from the highest pinnacle of worldly happiness where he fancied most to settle himself Certainly there are many times great comforts spiritual cordials secretly infused with Gods bitter potions Zach. 4.10 which keep up our spirits under them and mend us by them I know God despiseth not the day of small things if sincere nor shall faith like a grain of Mustard-seed Matth. 17.20 be in vain to remove mountains of sin if it be true and lively sown on Christ and growing in him growing up and fructifying to him But I have done with the Anatomizing of his soul to you as far as I had time opportunity and skill I could also give you a true and full account of the Anatomy of his body as it was dissected the next day by six able Physitians and two skilful Surgeons my self being an eye witness whose testimony under their hands is hereafter printed in their own words The account of their discovery amounts to no more then this That
ad infernum deprimit both as to the living and the dead Many are raised up to Heaven by the magnificence of the Burnings or Buryings whose souls are sunk down to Hell by the ponderous weight of their unrepented and unreformed sins When sorrow affects too much state and wraps up the sharpness of death in soft paradoes mixing too much sensual sweet with the wormwood and bitterness of that cup which is offered to all mens lips the good effects of Funerals are much defeated as to the living the house of mourning is so far from being better in such an equipage that it is worse then the sober house of feasting for it flatters the dead and living too making men deaf to Gods warning-pieces which are shot off at their ears and levelled at their hearts They are like wool-sacks or mounds of earth 1 John 2.16 which disarm the great cannon-shot which should batter down the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the strong holds of sin the lust of the eyes the lust of the flesh the pride of life Empty and adulatory pomp set up as it were by the higher ground of mens stately Funerals and Tombs what God intends to pull down namely those high and exalted imaginations with which poor sinful mortals are pestered and poysoned who are then best when they see themselves and others at the worst and then nearest to grace and glory too when they see themselves as in their graves reduced to their dust and ashes and in their very best estate Psal 39.5 as the Psalmist speaks to be but altogether vanity 2. Which is the great lesson that the great God intends to teach men by such pregnant instances of their mortality which the living will learn i. e. such as live not only to sense but to true reason and not only to reason but to true religion not only to a moment but eternity The aym of these severe Lectures is to bring sinful man down to the dust within sight of the grave and prospect of judgment and hell it self that so he may be a meet object for Gods grace and mercy It is a shrewd sign of a heart dead in sins and trespasses stupid in sensual security buried in worldly lusts and vain pleasures dead as the Apostle sayes of some widows even while they live 1 Tim. 5.6 not to lay to heart the departures of those who are snatcht out of the land of the living to a state and place whence they shall not return to a terra incognita a land which is far off a black Abyssus covered with profound darkness of which no discovery hath ever been made by any that went thither so as to give Survivers any Geographical map or account of it Which terrible summons like the decimating of souldiers to die one after another cannot but infinitely affect the sober and serious living to whose benefit only the death and Funerals the solemnities and obsequies civil and religious prayers and Sermons too may and ought to be duely improved For to the Dead they reach not nor can they turn to any account further then such civil honour and respect as is due to their place name and merit yet surviving or to their corps which rest in hope of a refurrection and so deserve an handsome and Christian interment But as to any advantage to be made for the benefit of their soules for redeeming them from Purgatory for abating their purgative paines for shortning or supplying their Pennance or obtaining remission for any sin or punishment in which they are engaged being once dead this must be let alone for ever There is no ground of hope to relieve them in any kind no Scripture no Catholick doctrine no precept no promise that gives any footing for Prayers or Sacrifices Masses or Dirges Oblations or Emptions Remissions or Redemptions by which to benefit the dead they are vain solaces to the living and none at all to the dead arising first from the suggestions of the impotent grief and passion in survivors next from an unwarranted charity and benevolence to the dead At last policy and covetousness grew so cunning in the darkness and superstition of times as to make no small advantages by the vulgar easiness and prodigality sliding by insensible degrees from those memorials of benediction for their piety and constancy in religion from the gratulations for their happy and hopeful delivery out of a dangerous and naufragous Sea and for their hoped arrival at a safe and happy heaven together with a Catholick comprecation for the consummation and plenary bliss at the resurrection of them and all Saints departed in the true faith of Christ See the excellent Primate of Arm. of praying to and for the dead in his Jesuites Challenge From these commendable customes I say of pious Antiquity of which Epiphanius and others give us an account degenerous posterity warped not onely to praying both for and to the dead but indeed to make a notable mystery and trade of preying upon the devotion and simplicity of the living uses and ends which we find neither Solomon nor any Prophet Apostle or Evangelist nor Christ himself any where teaching nor in the least kind intimating to the living either in order to give such honour or help to the dead neither of which either our blessed Saviours love of his compleater Saints or his charity to the more defective dead who had not fully done their pennance here and so stood in need of some grains of allowance from the charity of such as survived them or his Apostles care would have failed to have taught the Primitive Church by word or Epistle or example if such prayers had been available to the living or for the dead No they may be profitable fancies to the Romanists and plausible enough to their bigot and bountiful disciples but they are not justifiable in true religion by Old or New Testament nor by any practise in the first and best Centuries No known advantages can redound to the dead from the living nor other advantages to the living from the dead but only the laying their death seriously and devoutly to heart the use that wise Solomon and the wiser God here commends to us all 3. And this upon very great and pregnant reasons if we consider 1. The state of the living in respect of their hearts 2. The proper vertues which are derivable from the dead and fit to be applied to the hearts of the living 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Et vivens dabit ad cor suum The wise and considerate living will upon such occasions not only gape at the ceremony glory in the pomp talk of the person discourse of the disease and manner of death after a vulgar and easie fashion much less will they rejoyce in anothers death though an enemy or triumph in the advantages which accrew to them thereby after a malicious and covetous rate Such as lie under the power of these depraved distempers of soul and are of no