of the Historie that man is of the earth witnesse the like qualities of his nutriment his sinking in the water melancholy his compact flesh the drynesse of his bones the constancy of his figure and that which is not of least moment the base worldling that has fixt his eyes on the earth and by his life-preaching Gentilisme does sacrifice at Vesta's Altars and calls her the mother of gods and men it may be Lucretius read his Pedigree where hee tells of men whom the earth after certaine conversions of the heaven growne big brought forth and nursed with her owne milke But let the Poet dreame of prodigious birthes we know that God made man of the earth I doe not say as some did fetcht from the foure extremities of the earth to shew that his Dominion and the world had the same bounds but of earth First that wee might the more joy in our Ascension to heaven and glorifie our Maker for raising our heavie bodies to so high a place above the Ayre above the Fire above the Moon and though Leucippus taught {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} that the Orb of the Sunne was the supreame Orb above the Sunne above all the Starres except those that praysed him in the morning Iob. 38. The blessed Angels whose early harmony eccho'd to the harmony of the new borne world Secondly of earth that we might have from whence to raise our soules but not why to raise our Crests that great ones might not look too big on the poore but resemble in this that glorious Planet the bright eye of the World the Sun the higher it is the lesse it looks that they might consider the humble shrub lives in Mount Lebanon as well as the stately Cedar and many times lives longer alway safer that 't is somecimes in States as in nature that gives to lighter bodies the higher place that all faces are drawn in dust though some in illustrious dust that very Cyrus who in his time was writ {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} now begs his memorie as Strabo writes {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} O man I am Cyrus he that stiled himselfe great from the Empire of the earth stood but like the Embleme of inconstancie with his foot upon a Globe a slippery Globe earth upon earth he and poor Diogenes lived both but for a time and both in a time though not both in a Tub and Plutarch sayes they dyed both in one day Death you see makes no difference and Christ himselfe seemes to make none 't is noted to this purpose that on the mount there appeared with him Moses and Elias the one in his younger yeares was a mightie man in Aegypt after a leader of Gods people the other alway poore cold and hungrie cloathed with Goats haire Away then with that Knave Lisippus that must needs paint Alexander with a Thunder-bolt in his hand with Caligula that set his head on Jupiters shoulders and with Darius that by all meanes must bee a god though but for thirtie dayes better was that speculation of Philip the Macedonian who on a time falling and viewing in the dust his length cryed out Lord what a little portion of earth is not content with the whole earth he well took notice that as he had falne on the earth so hee came from the earth which is my first part and should returne to the earth which is my second {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} Rhet. 2. Arist. who knowes not that he shall dye to consult about an escape were {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} seriously to deliberate what course a man might take that the Sun should nor rise or set I have read of Temples dedicated to Feares but that no people did ever consecrate a Priest or Temple to death as being well knowne to bee inexorable who have not heard of the gates of Death who knowes not that they lye open and that for him yet because Evills that may bee farre off doe not much affect and wee while the bloud runs hot in our veines put farre from us that frozen and benumbed age as if eternall Hebe or Youth fild our Cups as Poets say shee does their Joves it will not be out of place or time in the middle of Summer to admonish of Winter 't was the Devills policy in old time to have the dead buried without the Walls out of sight that the living might not lay it to heart he that steeres well must sit at the end of his Boat and 't is the good Politician {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} when danger is farre off then to suppose it neate in this respect it cannot bee out of season this is my second part our returne to the earth The whole man came not from earth and therefore cannot returne to the earth the soule shall goe to places deputed to her the body to the earth one and the same our Mother our Nurse our House our Tombe that these two should part proceeds from causes Morall and Naturall the Morall cause is sinne that made a separation of God from the soule then followed a separation of the soule from the body for God made not Death neither taketh the Potter pleasure in bruising an earthen Pitcher two things I may safely say cannot God make a God and Sin of these take the word properly he has no Idea The Naturall causes of Death are either externall or internall exrernall O that I could number them I should then learne to number my dayes the internall cause is the mutuall conflict of contrarie qualities the brain being cold the Stomack and the Liver hot the Bones drie and the Reines moyst the soule comes from the Father of Spirits it selfe a Spirit into a body whose principles exercise naturall and irreconcileable enmitie me thinks at her first entrance into an house so divided against it selfe she should looke about her like that fellow in Libanius that comming home and finding painted on his Wall two ready and instructed Armies cries out {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} who has made my house a Military Campe The members of every mans body are at continuall Warre wee may bee at peace with forraine enemies our domestick are alway in armes 'T is false that Solinus writes of a people in Iurie that are so equally mixt their temper so arithmeticall without excesse defect or jarre ut aeternagons sit cessantibus puerperiis that there is alway the same number of people and yet no children borne Who shall make me believe that Iurie or any part or Jurie is exempted from death since life it selfe our Lord and Saviour Jesus did dye in Jurie Death erects her Trophies as well in Iuries as Greece and in Greece as Scythia her victories are here above her Captives lie below God made the face of the earth to bee inhabited sin and death the bowells this is the place of them that live that of them that have lived Thus
Michaelmas or Easter Terme Aquinas notes that buying or selling was never heard of till Abraham bought a burying place of Ephron the Sonne of Zoar and here by the way you may note that the first thing this good man bought was a burying place as if the end of his life had beene the beginning of his thoughts the River of God sayes the Psalmist is full of Water you have heard how this River keepes not within bancks but rejoyces to break out and runne downe with a mightie streame to make glad the face of the whole earth Thus much of the object in generall as the Creator I now come to the object in a more speciall notion with this restraint or appropriation thy Creator where wast thou when I laid the foundation of the earth saies God to Iob let the Poet make answer quâ non nata jacent were things that are not yet borne or conceived are that is just no where how much then dost thou owe to God that gave thee life when as yet thou couldst not aske it of him and when hee first gave thee life thou wast as thy dayes are but a span long and yet what a faire place did he make ready for thee even the wide and spacious world that when thou commest to yeares and mans stature thou mightest have elbow roome enough That God is the Creator and therefore Almighty is matter of feare and trembling but that he is thy Creator is matter of love and thankfull remembrance Did he not give thee a being yes but so he did to stocks and stones Did hee not give thee a soule and life thus much hee hath done for beasts and trees But did hee not give thee a reasonable soule to denie it were the best argument that hee did not But in that hee hath given thee a reasonable soule remember this thing that he hath done for thee The soule of Beasts is from the earth earthly the soule of man from the Father of Spirits and is spirituall the soule of Beasts is but for a time and then dyes with the body the soule of man lives after the body and returnes to God that gave it Some of the old Philosophers compare the soule of a man to a Circle for like as a Circle returnes to the first poynt and ends where it began so the soule of man returnes to God from whom it began to which may that bee well applyed which God sayes of himfelfe J am the beginning and I am the end But now though it bee true that the wise men said of old that the soule of man doth resemble a circle yet is there some disparitie and unlikenesse in the one and the other for every Circle returnes to the poynt from whence it begins but every mans soule doth not returne to God that gave it for the souls of the wicked go out from him and are lost in this world and never returne to him againe but the soules of the just are like the Dove which Noah sâ—â—t out of the Arke which finding no rest for the sole of her foot returned back againe and hee put forth his hand and received her In this doe the soules of good and bad agree that they were all created by one and the same God that they are all for a time to be united to the body that they shall all at the end of that time be separated from the body that they shall all put on the very same bodies which sometimes they put off that they shall all come to judgement and here beginnes the woefull and lamentable difference some proving Chaffe some Wheat some Sheep some Goats some being set on the right hand and some on the left some marked out to eternall death and some to eternall life now that thou maist never feele the happinesse of the one and never feele the miserie of the other take with thee this Counsell it is the Counsell of a King of Solomon the King let it bee to thee as the Signet of thy right hand and as Jewells of gold about thy neck write it upon the Nayles of thy fingers upon the palmes of thine hands upon the posts of thine house and in every corner of thy heart Remember thy Creator The fruit that will spring from this remembrance will be much and rare from contemplation of his highnesse and thy low estate will spring humilitie from thought of this that hee gave to thee not onely when thou hadst nothing but wast nothing Charlie to the poore from his mercie hope from his Iustice a true ballance feare of his Name resolution and contempt of injuries from his immensitie and illimited presence in all places watch fulnesse and warinesse in all thy ways words and actions But because there is an appoynted time for all things a time for everie purpose under the Sun my Text does not only set downe whom we must remember but the time when we must remember him and that in three particulars First in our youth Secondly in the dayes of our youth Thirdly now in the dayes of our youth First of the first It was the superstition of the old Romans primam lanuginem Diis Consecrare to consecrate the first haire of their cheeks to their gods what was superstition in them will bee good Religion in us God will have our firstlings what are they the first borne male of thy Cattell and of thy sheep thou shalt sanctifie to the Lord thy God was the old Law But now I will take no Bullock out of thine house nor Goat out of thy fold will I eate the flesh of Bulls or drinke the blood of Goats Offer unto mee praise and pay thy vowes call upon mee but marke what followes in the day of trouble not in the night not after Sunne set wee must not deferre it so long and I say call upon him early betime in the morning and if not in the morning of the day yet surely in the morning of thine age that is in thy youth How many have thought to call in the evening who have beene cald away themselves at noone and beene benighted at mid-day for we are here but for a time and then must bee gone like Travailers or wayfaring men wee must pay our debt and reckoning to Nature and then away after we have eat and drunke here or like Tenants at will who must give up our Title and Land even that small portion of earth which we carry about us when God shall call as hee cald to Abraham exi de terratua goe out of thy Land and whither then to the place that Iob in his tenth Chapter speaks of darke as darknesse it selfe where there is no order where there is no place for repentance for as the tree falleth so it lyeth Sixe dayes shalt thou labour and doe all that thou hast to doe in these thou must gather thy Manna if thou gather on the seventh it shall stinke and bring forth wormes never had man pardon of his sinne to whom
it was not sealed in this world we must be wrought here and sifted and squared for the house of God or no where for after this life shall cease the noyse of the hammer the Axe and the Chisill the day is for action whether good or ill the night commeth in which no man worketh for that reason remember thy Creator here and for this remember him here in thy youth because it is uncertaine whether thou shalt ever be old none are old which were not young many are young which shall not bee old Times and ages God as a wise dispenser has kept in his owne hands to the intent that wee might suspect a shorter thred of life and yet not despaire of a longer There is a time to be borne and a time to dye sayes Solomon marke his language here is birth and death but no talke of life as if in a new way of Philosophy he would make a passage ab extremo ad extremum sine medio as if wee were to spring immediately out of our mothers wombe out of our swadling Clouts into our winding sheet But suppose it were so that thou hadst a long lease of thy life and wert forc't to go to thy grave as a sheafe of Wheat into the Barne ripe and in a good age suppose thou hadst a promise to see thy childrens children and their Children yet were it extreame impiety to deferre thy repentance to thy later dayes to give thy beautie and youth to thy pleasure and thy wrinckles and gray haires to thy God Hast thou not read hath it not beene told thee that God will have no pleasure in thy leavings the halt the lame the bleare-eyed and the blind are these fit offerings on his Altar Besides how unjust is this to play away the strength of thine age and then to lay the burden of all thy sinnes upon thy old and decrepit age which God knowes is a burden to it selfe whose knees tremble and shake under as many diseases as sinnes O Lord that back that so stoops under threescore yeares how shall it sinke under the sins of threescore yeares the sinnes I say whose weight hee full well knowes that calls to us Come unto mee all you that are heavie laden for this I call heaven and earth and hell to witnesse for the earth sunk under the sins of Corah Dathan and Abiram the first sinne weighed the apostate Angels to hell and now is another hell to them and the sinne of man weighed downe from heaven to earth The Son of God who on the Mount of Olives sweat drops of bloud under the load of our iniquities and when hee bare them on the Crosse hee cryed out in the anguish of his soule heaven and earth bewayling the extreame weight that lay upon him for the Sunne shut his eye and the whole Land of Iurie became as a close mourner for it was wrapt in a blacke Mantle of Darknesse from the sixt even unto the ninth houre is this then a burthen for thine old age for crazie and faint limbes then let a Pigmie a Dwarfe twitch up Mount Aetna at the roots and strut away with it on his shoulders Besides all this doe but thinke of the many and certaine miseries of that age Nonius Marcellus coats three places out of Aecius Pacuvius and Titinnius where senium is put for Malum as if it were one and the same thing to be old and miserable adde hither the decay of Senses conscience of an ill-acted life the feare to dye and yet wearinesse to live with Chiliads and Iliads more of evills Ministers to the first I tremble to say the second death Beyond all this there are some vices naturall to old age as jealousie peevishnesse morositie loquacitie their present life being but a vaine repetition or memorie of their former {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} they live by memorie saies Arist. I add hither also Covetousnesse so proper to this age that the Philosopher therfore cals it {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} uncurable because {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} old age and everie impotencie breeds it whether it bee that when the gifts of body and minde faile wee catch at those of fortune as our last refuge like men halfe drowned that missing of better hold catch at strawes or weeds which reason Aquinas on that place gives or whether it be {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} which is the Philosophers one Reason in 2. of his Rhetor because old men by experience best know how necessary those eternalls are and yet how hardly got how easily lost This is that that makes them when they are even at their journies end breake their Asses backs with laying on new provision not much unlike Rivers that then runne biggest and gather most waters when they come nearest to the Sea to their owne home Lastly how hardly does gray-headed sinne leave a sinner This is that Aegyptian Tyrant that Pharaoh that will not let Israel goe it is continuance in sinne that makes an earnest sinner our first sinnes are with some reluctancy some checks some gripes our later with delight happy is hee that dashes those Brats those little ones against the Stone as it is in Psalme one hundred thirtie sixe Some Interpreters by little one doe there understand sinne in its Infancy and by the Stone the Rock the Corner stone CHRIST JESUS How hardly is the iniquity of our Heeles shooke off Cassiodorus expounds our Heeles our later Age and the difficultie proceeds partly from the Devill to insidiaberis calcaneo said God to the Serpent thou shalt lye in wait for his Heele partly from the sinner hee is an old a grave sinner hardly cureable not as if the Balme of Gilead failed not as if GOD wanted mercie for he ran to meet the Prodigall afarre off and Saint Iohn saw Ierusalem with twelve Gates open to the East three to the West three to the North three and to the South three but because God in Iustice hardens such sinners not positively but negatively that is Non impertiendo malitiam sed non impertiendo gratiam sayes Lumbard not by making them evill but by not making them good leaving them stupid bed-ridden and speechlesse sinners without sence without motion not able to doe or say so much as the Prodigall did I will rise or I would rise and goe to my Father Hence now I passe to the second particular In the dayes of thy youth Why in the dayes of our youth more than in the yeares of our youth They that have set us out the shortest time for youth allow us from foureteene to thirtie foure but this is to put us in minde of uncertaintie of life as if our youth was but for a few dayes or like as at the end of the day comes evening and then darke night so at the end of our youth comes old Age and then Death Or it may bee without violence to the Text you may take in the
dayes of thy youth for by the good actions done in thy youth and then the sense will bee give testimonie that thou Remembrest thy Creator by thy well-doing in thy youth for so may this word Dayes bee used Abraham said Moses departed full of daies Hooest sayes Aquinas plenus operibus lucis diei Neither doe I without warrant expound this Preposition in as a causall signifying by so would some have it meant in the verie first word of Genesis and so it is used in the Psalme In wisedome hast thou made them all that is by wilsedome for the Son is the wisedome of the Father And so is it used in the first of the Hebrewes {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} hee spake to us in his Sonne that is by his Son Thus I have done with the second particular In the dayes of thy youth But that is not enough the wise man addes now in the dayes of thy youth I say now for now is the Sabboth Day to the hallowing of which GOD prefixt as hee did to my Text a Remember Remember that thou keep holy the Sabboth day Secondly remember him now because no time is thine but this verie now whether any bee to come it is uncertaine and what it may bring with it as uncertaine That which is past is behinde thee and seeing thou art a Travailer on earth the further thou journyest the further thou leavest it Thirdly Rememeber thy Creator now because now in this very moment this verie Article of time does he create thy better part thy soule for by the verie same action by which it was first created is it till this day created is this minute created and shall bee created to all eternitie mistake mee not the Conservation of it in being being nothing else but the Creation of it continued since therefore God upholds thy soule in being by the same act by which hee gave it being I meane thy soule onely for hee did not in a proper sence create thy bodie and since no cause loseth its Name or Formalitie till its actuall influence or causalitie cease who sees not that when soever hee did first create it yet he now creates it hee is now thy Creator therefore thou shalt now remember him if he be thy beginning thou must make him thy end the first efficient and the last end must needes bee co-incident if hee doe for thee thou must doe for him if hee now remember thee thou must not now forget him because thou wast at first deduced from him thou must bee thus reduced to him Alcinous in his Introduction to Plato sayes of him {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} hee held GOD of a Sphaericall figure and truely though God bee of no figure yet to omit many instances hee seemes to love this figure for as a Circle returnes into it selfe and ends where it began so all things that were derived from him and what was not derived from him must end in him Ister Achelous Euphrates and Ganges all these Rivers flow from that mightie Well and after all their windings come to pay tribute and fall with a loud noyse into that mightie Well Last of all Remember you especially your Creator now because there was of late evill in your great Citie the evill of Plague but now is not because the Gyant hath now laid by his Quiver his Bow and his Arrowes because shee that did sit in Ashes is now become the glorie of Cities the seat of joy of mirth and health because now her streets her Courts of Iustice her Temples are returned from solitude to their old frequencie because now shee heares not Zim nor the Scriech-Owle by night nor the Vulture nor the Raven by day O let it not bee told in Edom let not the Hittite and the Stranger heare that Israel found a mindfull God but God an unmindfull Israel that you are still a rebellious people though his Angel past by your houses and your first-borne live that you heare not him whereas he heard for you your verie doores calling and crying Lord have mercy upon us *âŽ* Errata PAge 2 line 4. read vilescit for vile est p. 3 l. 15. r. leaving for bearing p. 4. l. 17. r. mind to that for mind that p. 5. l. 24 r. are not ascribed for doe not ascribe p. 8. l. 1. r. put for set p. 8. l. 16. del. at Arts and set it at Sciences p. 25. l. 16 r. carried for cursed FINIS