is but a vanishing Smoak and its last Fire but its last Wick and its last drop of moisture So is it in the Life of Man Life and Death in Man is all one If we call the last breath by the name of Death so we must all the rest all proceeding from one place and all in the same manner One only difference there is between this Life and that which we call death That during the one we are always dying but after the other we shall always live In short As he that thinketh Death simply to be the End of Man ought not to fear it inasmuch as he who desires to live long desires to dye longer and so he who fears to dye quickly does to speak properly fear least he may not dye longer But to us who profess the Christian Religion and are brought up in a more holy School Death is a far other thing neither do we need as heretofore the Pagans did Consolations against Death For Death it self ought to be to us a Consolation against other Afflictions So that we must not only strengthen our selves as they did not to fear it but we ought also to hope it For unto us it is not only a departing from Pain and Evil but an Access unto all Good not the end of Life but the end of Death and Pain and Sorrow and the beginning of a Life that shall never have an end Better saith Solomon is the Day of Death than the Day of Birth But for what Reason Why because it is not to us a Last Day but the Dawning of an Everlasting Day No more shall we have in that glorious Light either Sorrow for the past or Expectation for the future for all shall be there present to us and that Present shall be present for ever No more shall we spend our strength in seeking after vain and painful Pleasures for there we shall be fill'd with true and substantial Delights No more shall we weary our selves in heaping together these shining Exhalations of the Earth for the inexpressible Glory of Heaven shall be ours And this Mass of Earth which ever draws us towards the Earth shall be then buried in it and consumed with it No more shall we then be Votaries to that gaudy Idol Honour nor put our Wits upon the Rack that so we may be deck'd with finer Feathers than our Neighbours Ambition will have there no place for we shall there be rais'd to that Excelling Glory and be possess'd of all those Heighths of Greatness that we shall look with scorn and with contempt upon an Earthly Diadem and smile at all the Follies of poor groveling Mortals who fight and quarrel with each other for a small spot of Earth like Children for an Apple And which is better still no more shall we have Combats in our selves Our sinful Flesh that here was our worst Enemy shall cease from troubling there and our renewed Spirits shall be fill'd with Life and Vigour Our Passion shall be buried and our Reason be restor'd to perfect Liberty The Soul deliver'd out of this foul and filthy Prison where by its long continuing it is grown into a habit of Crookedness shall again draw its own breath recognize its Ancient Dwelling and again remember its former Glory and Dignity This Flesh which thou feelest this Body which thou touchest is not Man Man is a Spark of the Divinity shot down from Heaven Heaven is his Countrey and his Native Air That he is in this Body is but by way of Exile and Confinement Man indeed is Soul and Spirit and is of a Divine and Heavenly Quality wherein there 's nothing gross nothing material This Body such as now it is is but the Bark and Shell of the Soul which must necessarily be broke before we can be hatch'd before we can live and see the Light We have it seems some Life and some Sence in us but are so very crooked and contracted that we cannot so much as stretch out our Wings much less take our flight towards Heaven until we be disburthen'd and separated from this Lump of Earth We look but 't is through false Spectacles We have Eyes but they are over-grown with Pearls We think we see but 't is but in a Dream wherein all that we see is nothing but a vain Illusion All that we seem to have and all that we seem to know is but Deceit and Vanity Death only can awake us from our Dream and restore us to true Life and Light and yet we think so blockish are we that he comes to rob us of them We profess our selves Christians and that we believe after this mortal Life a Life of Immortality That Death is nothing but a separation of the Soul and Body and that the Soul returns to its former happy abode there to joy in and enjoy the Fountain of all Bliss and that at the last day it shall re-assume its Body which shall no more be subject to Corruption With these goodly Discousses we fill our Books and in the mean while when it comes to to the point and that we are ready to enter in at this Portcullis of Seraphical Glory the very Name of Death as of some dreadful Gorgon makes us quake and tremble If we believe as we speak pray what is it that we fear To be happy To be perfectly at ease To enjoy more Content in one moment than ever was enjoy'd even by Methuselah himself in all his Nine hundred sixty nine years which was the longest mortal Life I ever read of If this be nothing that we fear then we must of necessity confess that we believe it but in part that all that we have said are only words that all our Discourses as of those hardy Trencher Knights are nothing but Vaunting and Vanity Some there are that will confidently tell you I know very well that I shall pass out of this Life into a better I make no doubt of that only I fear the mid-way step Weak Hearted Creatures They will kill themselves to get their miserable living They willingly suffer almost infinite pains and infinite wounds at another Mans pleasure and fearless go throw infinite deaths without dying and all this for things of nought for things that perish and that oft times causes them to perish with them But when they have but one step to make to be at Rest and that not for a day but for ever And not barely Rest but a Rest of that exalted Nature that Mans natural Mind can never comprehend They tremble their Hearts fail them they are afraid and yet it is nothing but fear that hurts them Let them never tell me they apprehend the pain It is but an abuse on purpose to conceal the little Faith they have No no they would rather languish of the Gout the Sciatica or any Disease whatsoever than dye one sweet Death with the least pain possible Rather piningly dye Limb after Limb out-living as it were all their Sences Motions
that ever he hath had the Evils he hath suffered to get them and having got them to retain and keep them I speak of Pleasures that may be kept and not of those that wither in a moment he will soon judge that keeping it self of the greatest Felicity in this World is full of Unhappiness and Infelicity We may well conclude then That Childhood is but a foolish Simplicity Youth a vain Heat Manhood a painful Carefulness and Old Age an uneasie Languishing That our Plays are but Tears our Pleasures Fevers of the Mind our Goods Racks and Torments our Honours gilded Vanities our Rest Inquietude That passing from Age to Age is but passing from Evil to Evil and from the less unto the greater and that always it is but one Wave driving on another until we be arrived at the Haven of Death In short Life is but a wishing for the future and a bewailing of what 's past a loathing of what we have tasted and a longing for what is yet to taste a vain memory of the state past and a doubtful expectation of the state to come And to conclude In all our Life there is nothing certain but the Certainty and Uncertainty of Death And now we are come to the end of all the Living even to the House of Death Behold this King of Terrors O my Soul and see whether or no he be so terrible as he is represented It is high time methinks for Death and I to be acquainted since I expect in a very few days not to say hours to be taken into his Arms and conducted by him to the bright Mansions of Eternity Let us now consider then whether Death be such as we are generally made to believe and whether we ought to fly from him as we do We are afraid of Death like little Children of a Vizzard or of the Images of Hecate We have a horror for Death because we conceive him not such as he is but ugly terrible and hideous such as the Painters please to represent him We fly before him because prepossess'd with such vain Imaginations and care not to inform our selves better But if we dare stand and look Death in the face we shall find him quite another thing than he is represented to us and altogether of a more amiable Countenance than our miserable Life Death makes an end of this Life and this Life is nothing but a perpetual Scene of Misery and Trouble Death then is the period of our Miseries and safe Conduct into that desired Haven where we shall ride in safety from all Winds and Storms And shall we be afraid of that which delivers us from all our fears and brings us safe into the Port of Happiness But you will say It is a Pain to dye Admit it be and so there 's pain in curing of a Wound Such is the World that one Evil cann't be cur'd but by another to heal a Contusion must be made an Incision You will say There is difficulty in the passage But if this be an Objection the Mariner must always keep at Sea and not come into Port because there is no Harbour whose Entrance is not strait and difficult There is nothing of Value or Worth to be had in this World without the Coyn of Labour and Pain The Entrance may indeed be hard but then it is our selves that make it so by carrying thither self-tormenting Spirits anxious Minds accusing Consciences and fearful expectations of meeting with the just Reward of a Debauch'd and Vicious Life But let us carry with us Calmness and Serenity of Mind with the comfortable remembrance of a Vertuous and well-spent Life and the lively hope and expectation of approaching Happiness and we shall find no Danger nor Difficulty at all But what are the pains that Death brings us And why should Death be charg'd with those pains we feel when we come to dye We accuse Death of all the Evils we suffer in ending our Lives and consider not how many more grievous and cruciating Pains and Sicknesses we have suffered in this Life in which we have even call'd upon Death to deliver us and yet all the Pains of our Life to our last moment we impute to Death whereas it ought to be ascrib'd to Life for 't is but reasonable to believe that a Life begun and continued in all sorts of pain must of necessity end so And therefore 't is only the remainder of our Life that pains us and not Death the end of our Navigation that troubles us and not the Haven that we are to enter which is nothing else but a Safeguard against all Winds We complain of Death when we should complain of Life just as if one that had been long sick and beginning to be well should accuse his Health of his last Pains and not the Relicks of his Disease Tell me then what is it else to be dead but to be no more living in the World And is it any pain not to be in the World Did we then feel pain when as yet we were not Have we ever more resemblance of Death than when we are asleep Or ever more rest than at that time Now if this be no pain why accuse we Death of the Pains our Life gives us at our departure Unless also we will fondly accuse the Time wherein we were not of the pains we felt at our Birth If our coming in be with Tears what wonder is it that our going out be such If the beginning of our being be the beginning of our pain no marvel that such is the ending But if our not being in times past hath been without pain and all our being here full of pain whom ought we in reason to accuse of our last pains the not-being to come or the remnant of the present being We generally think we dye not until we fetch our last gasp but if we mind it well we shall find that we dye every day every hour every moment We apprehend Death as a thing unusual to us and yet have nothing so common in us Our Living is but a continual Dying and look how much we live so much we dye how much we increase our Life decreases We cannot enter a step into Life but we are upon the borders of Death Who has lived a third part of his years is a third part dead who half his years is already half dead Of our Life all the time past is dead the present lives and dies at once and the future likewise shall dye The past time of our Lives is no more the future is not yet the present is and no more is Briefly This whole Life is but a Death It is as a Candle lighted in our Bodies In one the Wind makes it melt away in another it blows it quite out many times ere it be half burned in others it endures to the end Howsoever it be look how much the Candle shines so much it burns for its shining is its burning Its Light
and Actions than speedily Dye tho' immediatly to Live for ever Let them tell me no more that they would in this World learn to Live For every one is thereunto sufficiently instructed in himself and not one but is cunning in the Trade Nay rather they should learn in this World to Dye and that they may once Dye well to Dye daily in themselves so prepared as if the end of every days Work were the end of our Life Now contrariwise there is nothing to their Ears more offensive than to hear of Death Senseless People We abandon our Life to the ordinary hazzards of War for Six Pence a Day and are foremost in Assaults for a little Booty go into Places whence there is no hope of returning with danger many times both of Bodies and Souls But to free us from all Hazzards to win the precious Prize of things Inestimable to enter into Eternal Life we Faint in the passage of one Pace wherein is no Difficulty but in Opinion Yea we so Faint that were it not of necessity that we must pass and that Gods ordination that all must dye compells us hardly should we find in all the World one how unhappy or wretched soever that would ever shoot that Gulph Another will say had I liv'd till Fifty or Sixty Years I should have been Contented I should not have car'd to live longer But to dye so Young is that which troubles me I would willingly have known the World before I had left it Simple Soul In this World there is neither Young nor Old The longest Age in comparison of all that is past or all that is to come is nothing And when thou hast liv'd to the Age thou now desirest all that is past will be nothing Thou wilt still gape for that which is to come The past will yield thee but Sorrow the future but Expectation the present no Contentment And thou wilt be as unwilling to Dye then as ever thou was 't Thou fliest thy Creditor from Mouth to Month and Time to Time as unwilling to pay the last day as the first Thou seekest but to be acquitted Thou hast tasted all which the World esteemeth Pleasures Not one of them is new unto thee By drinking oftener thou shalt be never a whit the more satisfied For the Body thou carriest like the Paile of Danaus Daughter which was bored full of holes will never be full Thou mayst sooner wear it out than weary thy self with using or rather abusing it Thou desirest long Life to cast it away to spend it on worthless Delights to mis-spend it on Vanities Thou art Covetous in desiring and Prodigal in spending Say not thou findest fault with the Court or the Palace But that thou desirest longer to serve the Common-Wealth to serve thy Country to serve God He that set thee on Work knows until what Day and what Hour thou shouldest be at it He well knows how to direct his Work Should he leave thee there longer perhaps thou wouldest spoil all But if he will pay thee liberally for thy Labour as much for half a days Work as for a whole As much for having wrought till noon as for having born all the heat of the day Oughtest thou not so much the more to Thank and Praise him But if thou examin thine own Conscience thou lamentest not the cause of the Widow and the Orphan which thou hast left depending in judgment Not the Duty of a Son of a father or of a Friend which thou pretendest thou wouldest perform Not the Ambassage for the Common-Wealth which thou wert ever ready to undertake Not the Service thou desirest to do unto God who knows much better how to serve himself of thee than thou of thy self It is thy Houses and Gardens thou lamentest thy imperfect Plots and purposes and thy Imperfect Life which yet no Days nor Years nor Ages can make Perfect altho' thy self might'st do it in a moment could'st thou but think in earnest that where or when it ends it matters not provided that it ends but well Now the only way to end this Life well is to end it willingly devoting our selves with an intire Resignation to the will of GOD and not suffering our selves to be constrain'd and drawn by the force of unavoidable Destiny And then toend this Life willingly We must hope for Death not fear it To hope for Death we must certainly look after this Life for a better To look for a better Life we must fear GOD And he that truly fears GOD has nothing else he ought to fear in this World and has reason to hope for all things in the World to come To one well resolved in these Points Death must needs be sweet and agreeable Knowing that through it he is to enter into the fulness of Joy The Bitterness we may find by the straitness of the Passage will be allay'd by the Sweetness we shall find when we are enter'd in Our suffering of Ill shall be swallow'd up in the enjoyment of Good And the Sting of Death it self which is nothing but Fear shall be dead Nay I will say more He shall not only triumph over all those Evils supposed to be in Death but he shall also scorn all those Evils Men fear to meet with in this Life and look upon 'em as unconcern'd For what can he fear whose Death is his hope If you think to banish him his Country he knows he has a Country from whence you cannot banish him and that all these Countries are but Inns from which he must part in a little time If to put him in a Prison he can have none more strait than his own Body nor none more filthy or dark or more repleat of Racks and Torments Or if you think to kill him you only then compleat his hopes for Death's what he desires And for the manner of it Be it by Fire by Sword by Halter or by Ax within three years within three days within three hours it is all one to him he matters not the time nor minds the way by which he passes from this miserable Life For his Work is ended his Affairs dispatch'd and by the self-same way that he goes out he hopes to enter into a most happy and everlasting Life Men can but threaten with Death and Death is all he promiseth himself The worst that they do is but to make him dye and Death is the best thing in his account that he can hope for The Threatnings of a Tyrant to him are Promises the Swords of his greatest Enemies against him he reckons drawn in his savour forasmuch as he knows That threatening him Death they threaten him Life and the most Mortal Wounds can make him but Immortal The sum of all is He that fears GOD fears not Death and he that fears not Death fears not the worst of this Life By this reckoning perhaps some Men may say Death is a thing to be wished for And to pass from so much Evil to
CONTEMPLATIONS UPON Life and Death WITH Serious Reflections on the Miseries THAT ATTEND HUMANE LIFE In every Station Degree and Change thereof Written by a Perâ—â—◠〈◊〉 â—â—ality in his Confinement a litâ—â—â—â—â—fore his Death SHEWING The Vanity of the Desires of Long LIFE and the Fears of DEATH WITH A True Copy of the PAPER Delivered to the Sheriffs upon the Scaffold at Tower-Hill on Thursday January 28. 1696 7 By Sir JOHN FENWICK Baronet LONDON Printed for G. Larkin and Sold by most Booksellers in London and Westmistster 1697. Contemplations upon Life and Death WITH Serious Reflections on the Miseries that attend Humane Life c. NOsce te ipsum is a Lesson a Man can never learn too late And therefore tho' hitherto I have liv'd so much a Stranger to my self that I have had little leisure and less desire to think or to Contemplate a studious and sedentary Life having always been my Aversion yet the Solitary Condition I am now reduc'd to and the Melancholy Circumstances under which I lie do methinks call upon me to consider what I have been doing and what I am further shortly to do I am now under a close Confinement secluded from all Coversation with the World and deny'd the Visits of my Nearest and Dearest Relations And all this seems to be but the sad Prologue to that sadder Tragedy in which I am to be the principal Actor before I go off the Stage of this World And therefore since Death and I must shortly be better acquainted it will certainly be my Wisdom as well as my Interest to familiarize it to me before-hand And I do not know how that can be better done than by contemplating the Miseries of Life in all its various Changes and Conditions and then to look upon Death as the great Panpharmacon and Remedy of all those Evils that Life subjects us to 'T is true indeed we generally fly from Death as our worst Enemy altho' it is in truth our greatest Friend and this to a considering Man is very unaccountable I must confess it does seem strange to me and is methinks a thing to be admir'd that the poor Labourer to repose himself longs for the setting Sun that the Mariner rows with all his might to attain his wish'd-for Port and rejoyces when he can discover Land that the Traveller is never contented till he be at the end of his Journey And that we in the mean while tied in this World to a perpetual Task toss'd with continual Tempests and tired with a rough and thorny way yet cannot see the end of our Labour but with grief nor behold our Port but with tears nor approach to our Home but with horrour and trembling This Life is but a Penelope's Web in which we are always doing and undoing a Sea that lies open to all Winds which sometimes within and sometimes without never ceases to blow violently upon us a weary Journey through extream heats and colds over high Mountains steep Rocks and dangerous Desarts And thus we pass away our time in weaving at this Web in rowing at this Oar and in passing this miserable Way And yet when Death comes to end our Work and stretches out his Arms to pull us into the Port when after so many dangerous Passages and loathsome Lodgings he would conduct us to our true Home and Resting Place instead of rejoycing at the end of our Labour of taking comfort at the sight of our desired Haven and of singing at our approach to those happy Mansions we would fain begin our Work again hoise Sail to the Wind and would willingly undertake our Journey anew No more we then remember our weariness and pains our dangers and our shipwracks are forgotten We fear no more the tiresomeness of Travel nor the danger of Desarts But on the contrary we apprehend Death as an extream pain we shun it as the fatal Rock on which we are like to split we fly it as a Thief that comes to rob us of our Treasure We do as little Children who all the day complain of Illness and when the Medicine is brought them are no longer sick Or as they who all the week long run up and down the streets complaining of the pain of their Teeth and yet seeing the Barber coming to pull them out are rather willing still to endure the pain than use the Remedy And as those tender and delicate Bodies who in a pricking Pleurisie complain and cry out and cannot stay for a Surgeon and yet when they see him whetting his Launcet to cut the throat of the Disease pull in their Arms and hide them in the Bed as if he were come to kill them We fear more the Cure than the Disease the Surgeon than the Pain the Stroke than the Imposthume We have more sence of the Medicines bitterness soon gone than of a bitter long-continued Languishing We have more feeling of Death the End of our Miseries than the Endless Misery of our Life And whence proceedeth this Folly and Simplicity We neither know Life nor Death We fear what we ought to hope for and wish for what we ought to fear We call Life a continual Death and yet Death is the Entrance of a Never-dying Life Now what Good O my Soul is there in Life that thou shouldst so much desire it Or what evil is there in Death that thou shouldst so much fear it Nay what Evil is there not in Life and what Good is there not in Death Consider all the Periods of this Life We enter it in tears we pass it in sweat we end it in sorrow Great and Little Rich and Poor not one in the whole World that can plead Immunity from this Condition Man in this point is worse than all other Creatures He is born unable to support himself neither receiving in his first years any pleasure nor giving to others any thing but trouble and before the Age of Discretion passing infinite dangers Onely herein he is less unhappy than in other Ages because in this he hath no sence nor apprehension of his Misery Now can we think there is any so void of Reason that if it were granted him to live always a Child would make Choice of such a Life So then it is evident That not simply to Live is desirable but to Live Well and Happily But to proceed Grows he His Troubles likewise grow up with him Scarcely is he come out of his Nurses hands and scarce knows what it is to play but he falls under the subjection of a Schoolmaster I speak but of those which have the best Education and are brought up with the greatest care and strictness And then if he studies it is ever with Repining And if he plays it is never but with Fear This whole Age while he is under the charge of another is unto him no better than a Prison And therefore he longs for and only aspires to that Age in which freed from the Tutelage of another he may become