deceitfulness and hypocrisie without the least consideration how short a time they have to live and how very much shorter then they imagine Yet unless they believe they can dream devoutly and truly repent when they are sleeping they cannot but know they are damn'd for ever if the day of the Lord shall come upon them as a thief in the night and catch them napping in their impieties Consider this all ye that forget God least he pluck you away and there be none to deliver you Consider it all ye that forget your selves That forget how few your dayes are and how full of misery Consider your bodies from whence they came and consider your souls whether it is that they are going Consider your life is in your breath and your breath is in your nostrils and that in the management of a moment for the better or for the worse there dependeth either a joyfull or a sad eternity If our Time were certain as well as short or rather if we were certain how short it is there might be some colour or pretence for the posting off of our Reformation But since we * know not at what hour our Lord will come this should mightily ingage us to be hourely standing upon our †watch And this may suffice for the subject of our second Consideration Thirdly let us consider that if our dayes which are few are as full of trouble it should serve to make us less fond of living and less devoted to self-preservation and less afraid of the cross of Christ when our Faith shall be called to the severest Trialls * O death saith the son of Sirach acceptable is thy sentence unto the needy and to him that is vexed with all things The troubles incident to life have made the †bitter in soul to long for death and to * rejoyce exceedingly when they have found the grave If the Empress †Barbara had been orthodox in believing mens souls to be just as mortall as their bodies death at least would be capable of this applause and commendation that it puts a conclusion to all our troubles If we did not fear him who can cast both body and soul into hell we should not need fear them who can destroy the body onely because * there is no inquisition in the grave †There the wicked cease from troubling and there the weary are at rest There the Prisoners lie down with Kings and counsellers of the earth The servant there is free from his master There is sleep and still silence nor can they hear the voice of the oppressor Mors Bona si non est Finis tamen Illa Malorum But we have farther to consider the threefold Antithesis which we ought to oppose to the three Clauses in the Text for as man who is born of a woman hath but a short time to live and is full of trouble so man as regenerate and born of God hath a long time to live and is full of bliss A life so long that it runs parallel with eternity and therefore without a Catachresis we cannot use such an expression as length of time It is not a long but an endless life it is not time but eternity which now I speak of Nor is it a wretched eternity of which a man may have the priviledge as he is born of a woman but an eternity of bliss which is competent to him as born of God And of this bliss there is such a fullness that our Heads are too thick to understand it Or if we were able to understand it yet our hearts are too narrow to give it entrance Or if our hearts could hold it yet our tongues are too stammering to express and utter it Or if we were able to do that yet our lives are too short to communicate and reveal it to other creatures In a word it is such as not onely eye hath not seen nor ear heard but it never hath entred into the heart of man to conceive Incomprehensible as it is 't is such as God hath prepared for them that love him 1 Cor. 2. 9. If we compare this life with the life described in the Text it will severall wayes be usefull to us for it will moderate our joyes whilst we possess our dear friends and it will mitigate our sorrows when we have lost them for it will mind us that they are freed from a life of misery and that they are happily translated to one of bliss Nay if we are true lovers indeed and look not onely at our * own interest but at the interest of the parties to whom we vow love we even lose them to our advantage because to theirs Lastly it sweetens the solemn farewell which our souls must take of our mortall bodies we shall desire to be dissolved when we can groundedly hope we shall be with Christ we shall groan and groan earnestly to be uncloathed of our bodies with which we are * burdened if we †live by this faith that we shall be cloathed upon with our house from heaven we shall cheerfully lay down our bodies in the dust when 't is to rest in his peace who will certainly raise us by his power that we may rest and reign with him in glory THus have I done with my Text though but in the middle of my Sermon and but briefly considered it in its Antithesis because it is not pertinent any otherwise then by affording to such as are Mourners a use of comfort And because I am confident that there are many such here when I consider how many losses lye wrapt in one not onely wearers of black but serious Mourners whose very souls and insides are hung with sable and whose unaffected sorrows do call for comfort I shall raise you matter of reall joy from the ground and occasion of all your sorrows For there is yet another Text upon which I must give you another Sermon A Text I say whose matter and form have been divided by God and Nature The inward form is ascended to him from whom it came down but the outward matter still lyes before us And well may that person become our Text who was himself a living Sermon since the integrity of his life was truly doctrinal and the resplendent piety of his death a very pertinent application I am sure 't is well known in another place and therefore I hope 't is believed in this that I am none of their number who use to scatter abroad their Eulogies upon every man's Hearse meerly as customary offerings or things of course No those alone are my seasons wherein to make narratives of the dead when it may righteously be done for the use and benefit of the living You know that Jesus the son of Sirach doth set himself solemnly to the work and that with an {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} Let us now praise famous men Men renowned for their power men
1. Thus we see the child of man or the man who is born of a woman is so full of Trouble to the brim that many times it overflow's him On one side or other we all are troubled but some are troubled on d every side Insomuch that they themselves are the greatest Trouble unto themselves and 't is a kind of death to them that they cannot dye We find King David so sick of Life as to fall a wishing for the wings of a Dove that so his soul might fly away from the great Impediments of his Body He confessed his Dayes were at the longest but a e span and yet he complained they were no shorter It seems that Span was as the span of a wither'd Hand which the farther he stretched out the more it griev'd him He was f weary of his groaning His soul did g pant after Heaven and even thirsted for God And he might once more have cryed though in another sense Woe is me that I am constrain'd to dwell with Meseck and to have mine habitation among the Tents of Kedar I remember that Charidemus in Dio Chrysoslom compared man's Life unto a Feast or Banquet And I the rather took notice of it because the Prophet Elijah did seem in some sense to have made it good Who after a first or second Course as I may say of living as if he had surfetted of Life cryed out in hast It is enough and with the very same breath desired God to take away for so faith the Scripture 1 Kings 19. 4. He went into the Wilderness a solitary place and there be sate under a Iuniper in a melancholy posture and requested of God that he might dye in a very disconsolate and dolefull manner even pouring forth his soul in these melting Accents It is enough now O Lord take away my life for I am no better then my Faâ—hers And if the Dayes of Elijah were full of trouble how was Iob overwhelmed and running over with his Calamity when the b Terrours of God did set themselves in aray against him how did he c long for destruction O saith he that I might have my request that God would grant me the thing that I long for Even that it would please him to destroy me that he would let loose his hand and cut me off How did he d Curse the Day of his Birth and the Night wherein he was conceived Let that Day be darkness let the shadow of Death stain it let a cloud dwell upon it let blackness terrifie it And for the Night let it not be joyned unto the dayes of the year Let the stars of the twilight thereof be dark neither let it sâ—e the dawning of the day And what was his reason for this unkindness to that particular Day and Night save that they brought upon him trouble of being a Man borne of a woman for we find him complaining a little after why dyed I not from the Womb why did I not give up the ghost when I came out of the Belly And then for the Life of our blessed Saviour who is call'd by way of Eminence The Son of Man as I observ'd before that it was short so must I here put you in mind that it was full of Trouble He was therefore call'd by way of Eminence Vir Dolorum a A Man of sorrows The Prophet adds he was b acquainted with Grief For the whole Tenor of his Life was a continuation of his Calamities The Time would fail me should I but mention the hundredth part of those men whose short Time of life hath seemed long to them even because they have felt it so full of Trouble But enough hath been said concerning the Doctrine of the Text And it lyes upon us to make some use First then let us consider that if man as born of a woman hath but a short time to live It concerns us to take up the prayer of David that God will teach us to know our End and the number of our Dayes that we like c Hezechiah may be fully certified how short our Time is It concerns us to take up the Resolution of Job All the Dayes of our appointed time incessantly waiting till our change cometh It concerns us not to say with the rich man in the parable we will pull down our Barns and build greater and there we will bestow all our fruits ' and our goods much less may we say with that other Worldling Souls take your Ease eat drink and be merry for you have much goods laid up for many years for alas how can we know silly creatures as we are but that this very Night nay this very minute either they may be taken from us or we from them there is such a fadeingness on their parts and such a fickleness on ours But it concerns us rather to say with Job Naked came we into the world and naked shall we go out of it Or it concerns us rather to say with David that we are strangers upon Earth and but so many sojourners as all our Fathers were for whilest we consider we are but strangers we shall as * Strangers and Pilgrims abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul And so long as we remember we are but sojourners upon earth we shall pass the time of our sojourning here in fear And behaving our selves among the Gentiles as a chosen Generation a Royall Priesthood an holy Nation a peculiar People we shall shew forth his praise who hath called us out of Darkness into his marvellous Light Secondly let us consider that since our Life is uncertain as well as short inasmuch as we know not how short it is it concerns us immediately to labour hard in the Improvement of this our span into Eternity to employ our very short and uncertain Time in making a seasonable provision against them both I mean it's shortness and its uncertainty For shall we be lavish even of that which is so easily lost and of which we have so very little and every minute of which Little does carry so great a weight with it as will be either a kind of Pulley to help raise us up to Heaven or else a Clogg to pull us down to the lowest Hell Of whatsoever we may be wastefull we ought to be charie of our Time which doth incontinently perish and will eternally be reckoned on our account Perâ—unt imputantur the Epigrammatist could say of his pretious Hours Now the way to provide against the shortness of our Life is so to live as to dye to the greatest Advantage to be imagin'd and so to dye as to live for ever What Tobit said to Tobias in respect of wealth Fear not my son that we are made poor for thou hast much wealth if thou fear God and depart from all sin and do that which is pleasing in his sight He might
injoy'd it in both acceptions of the word For first however he was sick of a burning Feaver which carried him up like Elias in a fiery Chariot yet he had this rare happiness which is the priviledge of a few that he even injoyed his whole disease without the least taint of deliration That knot of union betwixt his body and his soul was not violently broken but very leasurely untyed they having parted like two friends not by a rude falling-out but a loving farewell Thus was his Euthanasia in the first acception of the word But he had it much more as to the second For Two things there are which are wont to make death terrible The first is suddenness and the second is sin He was so arm'd against the first that he did not onely take care for the setting his outward house in order to the end that nothing in this world might trash his flight towards a better but he also sent for the Divine to imp the wings of his devotion and farther told his Physician that God had sent him his summons so well was he arm'd against the first of those Phobera and that by the help of our English Litanie which prompt's us to pray against sudden Death and which he commanded one of his servants to assist him with upon his death bed bestowing upon it when he had done a great deal of holy admiration Again so well was he prepared against the second that for the tenderness of his conscience and his deep resentment of all his sins those of the times more especially in which he deplored his unhappiness that he had had a great share till God was pleased in much mercy to shew him that errour of his judgement by which the errour of his practice was bred and cherish'd Next for his hatred of himself in the remembrance of them though we may say that in comparison with many others alive and dead he had kept himself unspotted from the world then for his steadfast resolutions of better life of making ample satisfaction for every ill that he had done and so of bringing forth fruits †worthy of repentance if God should be pleas'd to inlarge his time and last of all for his sollicitude that all his * family might live in the fear of God and redeem those opportunities which he seem'd at least unto himself to have sometimes lost or neglected I say in all these respects he appears to me as well as to others a more then ordinary Example But some may say that sick persons are ever sorry for their sins but it is many times a sorrow squeez'd out by sickness And as soon as they recover they do relapse too To which I answer that though it is often so in others yet in this exemplary Christian it could not be so For First it was a mark of his sincerity that he look'd upon his failings as through a Macroscope which made them seem nearer and very much greater then they were He warn'd all those who stood about his sick bed to beware of those sins which the world call's little and of the no-little sins which the world calls none yea from the least * appearances and opportunities of sin It was his own expression that all the sins of his former life did even kick in his very face yet he remembred the †labourer who went late into the Vineyard and was rewarded He also made some reflexions upon the * thief on the cross that his faith might steer an even course betwixt the Scylla of despair and the Charybdis of presumption Secondly it was another good token of his sincerity that he was not meerly a death-bed penitent whose repentance too too often is but a {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} a sorrow according to the world but as diverse persons can well witness he began the great work in his time of health so as his sickness did but declare his having been a * new creature by †change of mind and that he did not fall back but * press forward towards the mark and persevere in so doing unto the * end Thirdly it was another mark of his sincerity that he insisted on the nature of true repentance which still importeth an amendment and reformation of life Nor had he a willingness to recover his former health unless to the end he might demonstrate his renovation by that carefullness that fear that indignation that vehement desire that zeal yea that revenge which S. Paul hath recorded as the effects of a godly sorrow in his Corinthians Abhorring and deploring those desperate notions of repentance which the world is so commonly mistaken in Fourthly it was a comfortable token of his sincerity that he was obstinate in his Prayers against the precept of his Physician and resolv'd to pour out his soul though to the prejudice of his body As if he were piously ambitious of being too strong for his own infirmities when a reverend Divine who was standing by would fain have done that office for him at least as a Deputy to his lungs onely that he might not spend his few spirits as yet left in him he made him this resolute and hasty but pious answer that whilst a tongue was in his head whereby to speak and whilst he had breath in his body to move and animate his tongue and whilst he had lungs in his brest to supply his breath he would shew forth the goodness and the glory of God who had been pleas'd to do so great things for him And in a mercifull Answer to all his Prayers which he continued to the amazement of all that heard him after some conflicts which he had had with the ghostly enemy that so he might be happier in a victorious then he could possibly have been in an untempted innocence God was pleased very signally to reveal himself to him to speak peace unto his conscience to fill him inwardly with joy in the holy Ghost to give him some glimmerings and fore-tasts of the glory to be revealed That I may use his own words which as he came out of a trance he was observed to speak he had a ravishing glimps of the Beatifick vision meaning thereby as I interpret that God had refreshed his drooping soul with his unspeakable comforts saying unto his soul I am thy salvation or this day salvation is come to thy house So that now being placâ—d above the levell of temptations and exempted from the fear of what the * red dragon could do unto him he cheerfully lifted up his head and first his eyes upon Iesus the author and finisher of his faith and for the joy that was set before him expected the Advent of death as of a very dear friend Fifthly it was another great sign that his heart was right towards God and therefore not treacherous to himself that he extended his care to the souls of others with as