of many And seeing they that sow plentifully shall reap plentifully 2 Cor. 9.6.7 8 9 10 therefore put it not off till your last Will or til your recovery from travell but while you have opportunity do good to all but especially to the houshold of faith Doe something for the poore according as God hath blessed you in your estate and as you can obtain your husbands consent unlesse you have a considerable allowance at your own disposal I say do some such eminent work of charity 2 Cor. 8.24 as may give a proof of the truth of your love to Christ and though it cannot expiate any former sins Christ onely can do that yet may in a sense recompence what hath been defective in this kind and may cause the poore while you live to give you a disciples reward Mat. 10.41 42. and to blesse you in the name of the Lord and may also enable you the better when after the resurrection you shal be examined whether you have cloathed the naked fed the hungrey Mat. 25.35 36 37 c visited the prisoners c. to give up your account with joy and not with grief In the next place alienate your heart and affections from all things below heaven Heb. 1â— â— cast off every weight of worldly desires and begin to part with that in your affections which you may shortly part with in person Look upon all your comforts as dying comforts upon your body as a dying body upon your house and estate as fading vanities which you must shortly forsake Let not your care about any of these take up that time Lamen 1.9 and those thoughts which you had need at this season to imploy otherwise And that you may the more clearly rid your hands of these things let me advise you whenever your are with child if you have any thing considerable of your own to dispose to make your Will betimes Isa 50.4 Gal. 6.10 set your house in order and then commit your Relations to the blessing of God all other things to the pleasure of his providence And if there be any thing in your mind to speake to any whom you love by way of exhortation advice admonition or reproof doe it speedily and with all your might Leave as strict a charge as you can upon all that belong to you to live soberly righteously and godlily Your last words to them if seriously and heartily uttered with prayer to God for his Blessing may stick more in their minds then many a Sermon which they have carelesly heard When the Patriarchs drew near their end they gave many grave and pious instructions to their Relations which are therefore left upon record that those that fear God might imitate them that so they may die the death of those righteous persons Num. 23.10 See the 14 15 16 and 17. cap. of John and their latter end be like theirs Our Saviour Himself when he saw the hour of his sufferings to approach spent his time wholly in comforting teaching and establishing disciples in instituting and administring the Sacrament of his Supper and in prayer for them and all his people to the end of the world Yea thus the Saints and Martyrs in all ages have left us innumerable examples of their pious and mooving Speeches when they were going hence Thus a Candle when t is at the last point and ready to go out gives a sudden flash and a clearer shine So you should endeavour that your last words may be your best words Rev. 2.19 and your last works your best works Having thus eased your heart as much as may be from all other cares and made this faire progresse in your preparation what remains but that you look Death in the face suffering no day to passe without serious thoughts upon your latter end that so by frequent meditation you may make death more familiar and lesse terrible to you Yea that by a right understanding of the nature of death you may be willing to be dissolved with Paul and ready to say with old Simeon Luk. 2.29 Now Lord let thy servant depart in peace for mine eyes have seen thy salvation Wherefore look upon Death not as represented to a Sinner by blind and fearful Nature but as represented in the Scriptures to a Believer sweetned conquered and altered by the Death of Christ Well then Death hath its harbingers sickness and pain which are commonly more troublesome then Death it self It brings a dissolution of the frame of Nature a putrefaction of the Body in a land of darkness Job 10.22 a departure of the soul into an unknown estate in another world But what is there in all this hurtful All the messengers and forerunners of death which torment and destroy our bodies cannot hinder a Believer from rejoycing and saying with David Ps 119.54 Thy statutes are my songs in the house of my pilgrimage And well may they sing on their sick beds yea on their death-beds whom the Lord himself doth attend Gen. 49.18 to make their beds in their sickness Old Jacob fainting under a three-fold burthen of sickness of age the care of his posterity refresheth himself by turning to the Lord and waiting for his salvation As for the dissolution of the frame of Nature it impairs not your blessedness nor can cause a disunion from Christ Nor life nor death nor any other thing can separate us from the love of God which is in Jesus Christ our Lord. Rom. 8 39 As when Christ died though the comforting influences of his Divine Nature were suspended or less visible yet the hypostatical Union remained inseparable So in our death the local separation between body and soul is not a final disunion much less can there be a cutting off the mystical Union of our persons with Christ Therefore though wicked men die in themselves and die without Christ as they lived out of him yet the servants of God die in Christ Rev. 14.13 1 Thes 4.14 Rom. 14. â— 7 8. Phil. 1.23 they die to the Lord yea into the Lord viz. so as to be more nearly joyned to him then before There is in every member of Christ a divine Nature not subject to death or dissolution Therefore though as the children of Men they die yet as the children of God they live Though as the children of Adam they return to the earth yet as the members of Christ they return to God And though their bodies die because severed from their soul yet it liveth in death because it is still joyned to the Lord. God is the God of Abraham yet not the God of the dead Every Atome and unknown scattered parcel of a believers dust are deposited in the hands of a faithful Creator So that though they be dead yet their life is hid with Christ in God And as for the darkness and putrefaction of the Grave it matters not its putrefaction must be that the garments of
things and holy is his name And whence is this to me that the grace of Christ should come to me MEDITATION 7. Rebecca conceived Gen. 25.22 23. and the children strugled within her and she said If it be so why am I thus that is if I am heard of God in my request and am with child by his blessing whence is this strugling this painful conflict and strange unquietness of the fruit of my womb And she went to enquire of the Lord and the Lord said unto her Two nations are in thy womb c. So when I look into my self and observe the commotions that are in the womb of my heart I conclude Surely there are two nations within me the flesh with all its motions lucting against the spirit and its grace Gal. 5.17 and the Spirit with its gracious influences alway striving against the sinfulness of my carnal part Now blessed be God that seeing sin will yet keep possession that it hath no quiet abode within me but meets with reluctancy and opposition from my spirituall part But oh wretched creature that I am how often is evil present and prevalent with me how many are those pangs of sorrow those sighs and grones that my mischievous and restless corruptions cause within me But if it be so that the power of the most High hath overshadowed me and true grace be implanted in my soule then I shall seek to the Lord that he would cause the better part in me to be the more prevailing part that he would water and give encrease to these tender beginnings and give me at last a safe and happy deliverance from this body of death MEDITATION 8. If men strive and hurt a woman with child Exod. 21.22 23. so that her fruit depart from her and yet 〈◊〉 mischief follow he shall be surely punished c. Women with child are liable to many dangers A fall a bruise an accidentall stroke a fright a strain the taking somewhat that proves expulsive or the disappointment of somewhat they longed for these and such other contingencies are noxious to them and often-times cause abortion or the mischance of her fruit departing from her Such was the case of the Church when it was with child with many Converts Rev. 12.2 3. the great red Dragon watched the destruction of her and of her fruit And thus is with every repenting soul What security soever there be among those careless women that are at ease Isa 32.9 10 11. how little inward care or sorrow they feel while they forget God how unacquainted soever with the hurt and smart of sin or Satans striving with them before they are acquainted with God yet no sooner do they espouse themselves to Christ and conceive purposes of holy living and begin to be fruitful in any grace but they shall have many adversaries in the world and especially the god of this world striving against them to afright them to tempt them to receive such principles company suggestions as may quench their graces or to deprive them of that Spiritual food they long for or to intice them to straine their consciences or some way or other to cause them to fall that they may be wounded bruised c. and the fruit of grace depart from them But oh my soul hath God such care of the unborn infant as to provide a speciall law in its behalfe and will he not much more take care of that grace which he hath begotten in my Soul Oh my God keep me that the Evill One touch me not MEDITATION 9. In sorrow shalt thou bring forth Children As the first general curse Gen. 3.16 In dying thou shalt dy brought not onely the pains of death but intended also all the miseries of our life so this particular curse upon women brings not only pain in travel but comprehends all the infirmities of Child-bearing I find that the child in my womb brings many weaknesses and aches upon me but oh how sad and deplorable are those deeper sicknesses and maladies which I have brought upon it It s body partaking of my substance partakes unavoidably of my natural pollution It s Soul though it come immediately from the Father of Spirits yet I know not how is upon its infusion into this tender infant subjected to the common misery of the Children of Adam who having lost the image and likenesse of God sinne and corruption must needs follow I am an unclearne vessel Psal 58.3 sa 48.8 and how can any clean thing come out of me Oh my soul what need have I to be sanctified throughout both in Body and Soul and Spirit And Oh my God repair by thy grace what sin hath made so defective in me and mine MEDITATION 10 Our blessed Saviour and Great Prophet Jesus Christ foretelling the miseries that should shortly come on Judea Jerusalem sayes Wo unto them that are with Child Mat. 24.19 Lu. 23.29 and to them that give suck in those days And in another Evangelist Behold the dayes are coming in the which they shall say Blessed are the barren and the wombs that never have and the paps that never gave suck And indeed of all persons none more miserable in the time of War than women with child or women that give suck because their care is double and their persons uncapable of flying and shifting for their lives as those who are single may and do And of all murthers none more horrible in all its circumstances 2 Kin. 8.12 Lam. 5.11 then to rip up women with child Wherefore oh my soul let me be thankfull to my God that there is peace in our borders and any quietness and safety in my habitation and that I am free from those terrours and affrights with which many others in a time of common calamity are undone Oh how many Women with their unborn infants have been butchered in many places in ages past and martyred by blood-thirsty Papists in these later ages of which histories are too plentiful And if there be now any in my condition in any place especially among Christians that is exposed daily to the rage of a devouring Sword the Lord be pleased either to restrain the Enemy and the Avenger Psal 8.2 Rev. 6.10 or to avenge the cause of the murthered that according to thy own Law they may not go unpunished but may give life for life Yea Lord hear the crie of the oppressed and give their adversaries blood to drink for they are worthy MEDITATION 11. My little children of whom I travel in birth again till Christ be formed whithin you Where any place is blest with a painfull Minister and Pastour after Gods own heart Gal. 4.19 they have in them much of the Apostle's temper For when I consider their painfull studies their sighes and teares their spending their spirits in ardent Prayers and laborious Preaching their compassionate exhortations passionate supplications and their giving themselves wholly to these things 1
trouble Give not way to immoderate passion the vehemency whereof may much distemper and endanger you in that condition For if by these or any other follies there happen a mischance or the death of both the mother and the child unborn as too often it hath happened surely the bloud of the child shall be required at their hands their own bloud also shall be upon their own heads Now judge how much guilt and danger lies upon careless wanton women who will not observe that moderation and prudential care their condition calls for I say how much sin and misery lies upon them if they perish by their own negligence and heedless irregularity Hos 4.2 Psal 9.12 Jer. 26.15 Ps 51.14 Of all sins none more crying then Murther of all murthers none more desperate then Self-murther and of all self-murthers none more detestable then to murther her self and child at once this I say they are inexcusably guilty of who by any of the courses above-mentioned or any other course do hasten their own death and render the birth of their child difficult or impossible CHAP. IX Preparation for death the duty of those women with child who never yet repented THat this must not be delayed I have already shewed in the Epistle to the Reader I shall now shew you how it must be performed not to insist largely upon this common Theme which every Funeral Sermon and devotional Treatise do present us with considering very briefly the heads of such principal duties as may not safely be omitted by them that would be at any certainty concerning their future estate If you be unconverted and have lived in pleasure been ignorant carelesse and impenitent then consider that it is now high time to awake out of sleep Rom. 13 1â— Ps 90.12 Deut. 32.29 and to number your dayes and consider your latter end You have no peculiar priviledge that can exempt you from the lot of many others Be you never so great and rich strong and healthy have you been the mother of never so many children have you abundance of all things for your conveniency together with the most skilful and famous Midwife yet neither these nor any other helps can deliver you from going down to the pit Therefore seeing it must needs be proper to expect death let me ask you how are you provided for immortality What earnest have you of any inheritance in Heaven If you hope that God will pardon you and accept you yet what reason can you render of the hope that is in you 1 Pet. 3.15 if because he is merciful then how have you applied your self to him for mercy have you constantly sought him diligently pleased him c For if the righteous shall scarcely be saved 1 Pet. 4.18 where shall the ungodly appear Luk. 13.24 If many who strive to enter shall not be able how impossible then must salvation needs be to the negligent In a word if Pharisees Hypocrites Votaries and those that have done many good and mighty works shall be shut out how much more shall they be excluded that never had either the form or power of godliness that lived in gross ignorance and prophaneness so that their sins are open before hand 1 Tim. 5.24 Well you will say What shall we do to be saved and to inherit eternal life I answer You should first look over the ten Commandements and consider what sins are there forbidden and what duties are there required For by the law comes the knowledge of sin Ro. 3.20 1 Joh 3.4 If you have some brief expositor by you it will much help I knew one that when he was at the Vniversity and had serious thoughts of his ways took M. Bifield his 6. Treatises a little book of small Price but of excellent use wherein there is such an enumeration of sins against the several commandments 2 Cor. â—â— 5 6. as descends to all particulars fit to be expressed in print and having in several sheets of paper transcribed it and all along inserted what particular sins he could remember And he found that it brought many sins to his remembrance which otherwise he had well-nigh forgotten set apart a day of fasting in secret on purpose and there spread them before the Lord with mourning and with supplication and found very much comfort therein Now though I prescribe not this particular course to every one yet I say a serious comparing our lives with the rule of holinesse is the one thing necessary to lay a right foundation of repentance Well when you thus have spent some good time in searching and trying your ways and have discovered greater and greater abominations in your heart and life Then spend also some thoughts about the unreasonablenesse unprofitablenesse unthankfulnesse and iniquity of every sin Consider what wrong sin does to the honour of Gods Attributes and of his Law His Holiness requires nothing but what is good his Wisdome what is fit and his Mercy what is comely and beneficial for us Shall we break such a Law wherein Holiness Wisdome and Mercy appears If any thing be difficult he offers the help of his Grace to all that bewail their weaknesse And whatever his Law be yet surely he is our Creator and therefore by all bonds of Reason and Nature we owe obedience to him whose we are Again consider the injury done to Christ by piercing him with our Sins by despising his Bloud that onely and costly remedy and dishonouring his Name as if he were not sufficient to save or as if his Grace gave liberty to Sinne. Also consider the perjury every sinner is guilty of in violating our Baptismal engagement and making slight account of all other renewed stipulations we have made to God since What shall I say of the shame and mischief sin brings upon us in this life It deprives of Gods Image Favour and gracious Presence robs us of that primitive innocency righteousness with which the humane Nature was at first dignified above all sublunary creatures and degrades us to a condition in many respects worse then that of the beasts that perish Psal 49.12 20. Eccles 3.18 yea it makes us children of the Devil and children of wrath it fills the creature with vanity under which it groans and travels in pain it fills our life with crosses our family with troubles our bodies with diseases our consciences with disquiet Sin makes travel painful death dreadful and hell intolerable so that it is a boundless and endless evil And should not such considerations as these awaken you May it not trouble you to consider with your self thus If I die with all this load of sin upon me it will surely sink me deep enough into the burning lake And alas if I live till the full time of my travel come which is very uncertain yet how little a while is it before that fatal hour may sever my soul from my body My soul which is invisible and
trust is able to raise us and will raise us hereafter out of our graves how much easier is it to him to raise us out of our present danger and affliction Wherefore God himselfe is pleased to satisfie us once for all to tell us that women with child cannot be so hard put to it but he can deliver them For when he would expresse his all sufficient Power in giving the Israelites such a deliverance as they scarce could believe or expect thus he doth express it Jer. 31.8 I will gather them from the coasts of the earth and with them the blind and the lame the woman with child and her that travelleth with child together That is though in your return from captivity so long a journey to Jerusalem you may think of many impossibilities as We being poor and helplesse how is it possible but that teeming and labouring women must miscarry and perish by the way Oh saith God I can strengthen them give them a speedy easy delivery and make them even in that condition without long stay and losse of time able to go forward till they come into their own Land So then I say If your apprehensions of danger in your travell do any way discourage your faith Zechariah 8.6 Job 5.9 Rev. 15.3 yet let Gods alsufficiency put life into it If to be delivered be marvellous in your eyes yet it is not marvellous in mine eyes saith the Lord of hosts But though we all acknowledge this in the notion D. Preston of Gods attributes p. 196. yet how few are there whose hearts are possessed with the power of this truth As it is one thing to hear a thing in the notion as for a man to think what he would do if he were a Pilot or a Captain and another thing to have it in the reall managing as when he is brought to fight So it is here It is one thing to say I believe God is Almighty and another to thing rest upon it For not onely the stub born Israelites did distrust God in the wilderness and weak women as Martha and Mary John 11.21 questioned Christs power to raise Lazarus because he had been four dayes dead but no less a man then Moses himself questions how God could provide for six hundred thousand in the wilderness Wherefore Numb 11. strive with your unbelief give to God the glory of his Power Wisdome and Mercy fix the apprehensions thereof deeply upon your heart and pray to the Author and Finisher of Faith to help your unbelief Conclude with the wife of Manoah after you have mourned and prayed with any hope of acceptation Surely if the Lord had meant to destroy us he would not have accepted a sacrifice at our hands Labour for the faith of those men and women of old of whom it is written that by faith out of wekness they were made strong and women received their dead to life Yet let not the thoughts of Gods all sufficiency pass without one improvement more which I shall give you in the words of a singular Divine If God be All sufficient then learn to be content with God alone for all destrable comforts are in him as the effects are in the cause as when Christ promises that If any leave house Mark 10.28 29 30. or Brethren or Sisters c. for his sake and the Gospel they shall receive an hundred fold now in this life Houses Brethren and Sisters c. They shall receive the very same things that is they shall find the comfort of all these things in God Therefore consider what heaven is Do you think that there you shall have a worse condition then here you have a variegated appetite full of multiplicity you want many comforts and conveniences but when you come to Heaven you do not lay aside your nature but desire still And yet there you shall have none but God alone so that if all this vanity were not to be found in him you could not be happy even in Heaven it self Therefore he saith that he will be all in all Wherefore comfort your selves with these words CHAP. XIV Patience in the midst of their pains the duty of traveling women I Know very well that 't is far more easie to prescribe patience to others then to exercise it to our selves And therefore if I tell women in this condition that it would become them to be less clamorous and vociferous in their outcries and scrieches they will soon reply that if we knew what they endured we would not much blame them (a) Gen. 3.16 Jer. 13.21 ch 20.23 ch 30.6 ch 49.24 ch 50.43 Isa 21.3 Hos 13 13 Micah 4.9 10 Isa 13.8 John 16.21 1 Thes 5.3 Psal 48.6 Rev. 12.2 I grant indeed that the pains of a woman in travel are alwayes expressed in Scripture as the fittest comparison to set forth the greatest pains imaginable as may be seen in the places quoted in the margin And that the same word in the Original signifies both pains in travel and pangs of death as critical Annotators do observe on Isa 26.17 Psal 18.4 Psal 116.3 And that in Scripture the time of travell is commonly expressed by crying out Isa 26.17 chap. 42.14 And therefore I would not have any pious women to mis-interupt me as if I counted it no less then sinful to utter their complaints and outcries in the midst of their torments but I would think it commendable in any of them if they would so arm themselves with patience before-hand that they might abate somewhat of those dreadfull groans and cryes which do so much discourage their friends and relations that are near them and do much amaze the hearts and weaken the hands of those standers by that they become the less helpful to them But this is a small matter to what I intend Give your self what liberty and ease you will by pouring out your groans so you look to the chief thing that is that your heart be all the while in a believing praying humble patient submissive frame To help your patience herein you must know that my meaning is not that you should read meditate or perform any laborious duty at that time but what I now mention as useful to you in that case you must consider of before that hour and so possess your mind with the grounds and principles of patience that patience may then have in you its perfect work To which end consider that Sin is the procuring cause of all sufferings therefore if we understood felt considered the weight desert filth and future evil of sin how could we have the face to complain of any evil but that or to make any other outcry but that of the Apostle O wretched man that I am who shall deliver me from this body of death How emphatical are those words of the Prophet Why should a living man complain a man for the punishment of his iniquities That is seeing you are but a creature a
plentifull are Histories of the ancient practices of many Nations especially the Romans in appropriating the office of chief Priest to their Kings and Emperours as an honour not befitting any meaner person Yea among Christians the Prince of Anhalt and other persons of honour have ambitiously accepted and happily performed the Ministerial Office And no doubt but one reason why the Ministry is of no higher esteem is because divers selfish needy persons seek the Priesthood meerly for maintenance and so are tempted by their indigency to unsuitable courses and dishonourable shifts and are uncapable of being so beneficent as they would or should be and also are the less regarded because extracted from the meanest of the people And no doubt this is one reason why the Nobility and Gentry are more feared then loved more envied then esteemed because they mind their own honour but not at all the honour of God they love their â—ase their pomp their lusts and excess of riot but as for the tranquillity or atility of the Church they are meer Gallio's Just it is with God that they should be of mean parts and illiterate Ign oramusses as many of them are seeing if they had eit her parts or learning they would scorn to employ them for the service of God in his Church Therefore till I can hear or imagine any reason to the contrary I shall here propose it as a thing commendable in any person of quality be they never so great to entertain such thoughts in their minds of devoting their child to God as did Hannah And I doubt not but if any of them who are less mancipated to the common follies would cease a while to idolize themselves and suffer reason and conscience to speak 2 Cor. 8.8 they would consider better of it But this I speak not by commandement And therefore it is not a Precept but a counsel Much less should any be so far besotted with Popish perswasions or Jesuitical delusions as to think a child not dedicated to the Lord unless it be dedicated to a Monastick life Though Sampson Judg. 13.5 while yet in the womb was appointed to be a Nazarite yet not by his parents choice but by the command of the Angel Therefore let them onely take such a course as have the like warrant Well then by dedicating it to God I mean that which is the indispensable duty of all Christian parents viz. partly in purposing while the child is yet in the womb that if it safely enter into the land of the living and come to years of maturity they will use all possible endeavors that it may be the Lords Eph. 6.5 by bringing it up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord partly by serious prayers to God in its behalf that it may be separated to him from the womb Thus I say should every mother beg of God that as it is mine by nature so it may be thine by grace that as I have received from thee so thou wouldst be pleased to accept my dedication of it to thee again Some women have such prayers and purposes when their travel fills them with pain and threatens them with danger but if once delivered they mind them no more Wherefore let your duty herein take an earlier date that it may make better impression in your heart And assure your self if you thus purpose and desire that your child may be set apart for God and become holy to the Lord it shall be with you as with David 2 Sam. 7.12 13 14 15. he dedicated much for the Temple and purposed to build an house for God though he lived not to accomplish his desire yet he lived in his son and was blessed with a Solomon who did afterwards happily accomplish it so I say Whether you live or not yet because it is in your heart as soon as ever the child was in your womb to devote it to the Lord this is doubtless thank-worthy with him you shall be blessed in your posterity Ps 35.13 and your prayes shall return into your own bosome For either your child shall live long in the land and enjoy the fruit of your early prayers or enter with you into Heaven where you shall enjoy him in glory for ever having your joy herewith augmented that God took him so soon CHAP. VIII Care of her own health the duty of a woman with child THough care of the body may seem to be a matter of so small moment as scarce to deserve a chapter by it self yet the truth is it is a duty of so great concernment that it must not be excluded but distinctly considered by child-bearing women Certain we are that life and health must be reckoned among those talents which God doth intrust them with Because the health of the body contributes much to perfect all operations of the mind but women with child have a far greater reason to be mindful of their health viz. not onely for their own sakes but the good of the infant that is yet unborn If therefore some grave Authors have thought it necessary Charon of Wisdome that the Father himself should observe divers rules of temperance both in body and mind if he expect towardly and comely children Magirus Phys How much more requisite is it that the mother who contributes far more to the body and disposition of the child then the Father because the child for many moneths receives such nourishment as the womb where it lies affords I say how much more doth it concern her to use all possible caution and discretion to keep her self in a healthy and well-ordered plight that she may afford the better nutriment to the fruit of her womb I question not but their care herein is as effectual to the strength of their child as the warmth of the Sun and inriching the soil is to any fruit And as fruit that ripens kindly is gathered the easier and comes off without tearing the branch on which it grows so the child the more strength it receives from the mother as the root and the more vigorous it grows by all additional helps the easier and speedier will its passage into the world be Dr. Gouge of Domest Duties p. 516. This is one reason say Expositors if not the chief reason why the Angel layes so strict a charge upon the wife of Manoah when she was with child with Sampson to abstain from wine and strong drink because he was to de a Nazarite and therefore must not have his temper and constitution infected with a natural liking to that which he was prohibited the use of By which you may perceive what influence the meat drink desires and delights of the mother have upon the future disposition of the child Wherefore learn it as a special duty to forbear all excess in meats and drinks use no violent recreations take no needless journies incumber not your body with much labour nor your mind with much anxious care sorrow and