apt to grieve And besides what a folly is it thus to die with continual grief for him who if he did grieve to die his grief continued but a little while He died but once why should we die alwaies It is certain we must die but of all deaths let us not die with grief and much less for grief about that which we see we cannot avoid our selves But let us be furthest of all from making our life a perpetual death and grieving for that which by grief we may so soon run our selves into Weep no more for thy friend than thou wouldst have had him weep for thee IX Ask thy self again Whether two friends do not think that one of them must die first Do we not see that in the common course of things one man goes before another to his grave Who then if it had been permitted to thy choice wouldst thou have appointed to be the leader unto the other Wouldst thou have given thy self the preheminence and resolved to have shewn him the way Then death it seems is a good thing for if it were evil we can scarce believe thy self-love is so little as to wish it might be thy portion before another And if it be good then thou maiest soon satisfie the pretence of loving them better than thy self by being glad that they enjoy it before thy self Or wouldst thou have had both gone together and been enclosed in the same Coffin and interred in the same grave Then it seems it is no such great matter to die as thou makest it seeing thou art so willing to die also And if it be no great matter for thee to live then no more was it unto him If the sorrow of living without him be greater than the sorrow of dying with him why then was not he desirous that thou shouldst die And why did he pray for thy life and health when he died And if he would not have thee to die also when he died why dost thou then live in a kind of death and enjoyest not thy self nor the pleasures of life Either resolve to die also or else to live as a man should do If his death be so sad thou wilt not be able to bear thy own X. Ask thy self How can I take my own death Certain it is that thou must die also but if thou canst not part with a friend how canst thou part with thy self How wilt thou endure that soul and body should be separated if thou canst not shake hands with another body distinct from thine Are not they the most ancient friends Is not their union most strict and close Can two men cleave so together as thy soul embraces its companion What then wilt thou do when their bonds shall be untied if thou canst not bear the rupture of lessr cords of love What wilt thou think when thy soul sits on thy lips and give thy body a farewell kiss if thou canst not close the eyes of thy friend without so many tears Will thy soul mourn after thy body is dead as thou dost now lament the death of thy friend Will it groan and sigh to think of the hole where its flesh lies Will it sight to think that its old companion is then become the companion of worms If not then let it not groan so heavily for a less matter that is now befaln it If it will then why art thou troubled for thy friend and not for thy own self to think how sad thou must one day be The fear of thy own death must more than equall thy sorrow for the death of another man And how canst thou have time to think of any thing else if thou dost fear it Or if thou dost not fear it how canst thou fall under thy sorrow who hast overcome so great a sear Dost thou intend to go crying out of the World If not then be not now dismayed at that which thou must bear so valiantly thy self Then do not mourn so much for the loss of anothers life which will but put self-love into a most piteous case when thou comest to yield up thy own Death is no strange thing as I have said for we must all die But then why should we mourn so much if it be such an usuall thing If we mourn excessively it is a sign we think not of the commonness of it and then how shall we take our own death seeing it is such a stranger to our thoughts Let us but comfort our selves upon solid grounds against our own departure and I will warrant you that shall cure all our other lamentations Let us but dare to die our selves and we shall not dare to cry so much for any mans death Isidore of Pelusium thinks that our Saviour Lib. 23 Epist 173. did not mourn for his friend Lazarus because he was dead for he knew that he was going to raise him from the dead but because he was to live again And to come from the haven where he was arrived back again into the waves and storms from the crown which he enjoyed to a new encounter with his enemies If thou dost not believe his interpretation yet dost thou believe the thing Dost thou seriously consider that the misery of this world is so great that we should rather weep that we are in it than that others are gone out of it Then I ask thee again whether when thou art dead and well thou wouldst willingly live again If not then thou knowest what to say to thy self concernning thy friends death If thou wouldst then it seems thou canst be contented with this grief and I will not go about to comfort thee seeing thou lovest life with all the miseries thou createst to thy self But the very truth is we are so sensible of our bodies and have so little feeling of our souls or divine things that it is ready to make us think we are not when our bodies are dead This makes death such a terrible thing this makes both our own and others death so heavy because it seems as if there were an extinction of us That which we feel not nor have any sense of within us is as if it was not And therefore if we feel not heavenly things and perceive not that we have a soul we shall receive death as if it was the loss of our selves and then who can but be sad Let us live therefore in a sense of such things as may make us die willingly and think that we our selves are not lost and then we shall not think that we have lost our good friends nor lay their death so much to heart Nor wilt thou be able to help others to bear their sorrows XI Ask thy self likewise How wilt thou be able to comfort others if thou canst not comfort thy self It should seem by thy tears that thou art very ambitious of the name of a friend but if thou be not able to comfort thy friend what is he the better for thee And
patient That little sadness will banish and chase away all the greater that else would seize on thee hereafter There will be little to do when death comes if thou constantly dost this Thy soul will be so loose from them that thou wilt not give a shrike none will hear the strings crack when you are separated Death will not be a breaking of your society but a fair and easie untying of it Nothing will happen to you but what you have looked for long before and you shall be able to say This is not the first time that I have seen my dear friend dead Yea think with thy self that thou seest thy own body laid in the grave and that thou feelest thy self as cold as a clod of Earth Think that thou art turned into rottenness and dirt and that thou art forgotten by thy neighbours If thy soul can endure these thoughts then why should it be troubled at the death of another This is a kind of death to be so separated from thy body in thy thoughts It is all one not to be in the body and not to feel that thou art in it Raise thy mind then up toward heavenly things fix thy thoughts on God and the life to come think that thou seest thy self in heaven among the Saints of God and while thy soul is there it is not in thy body here below This kind of death differs from that which will be hereafter in this only that then thou wilt be more perfectly out of thy body But if there be no trouble in this separation which thou now makest even whilest thou art in it There will be far less trouble one would think quite to part with it and to get from it We must not let false opinions live And the way to be dead to these earthly things is to change our opinion of them and to see them to be what indeed they are empty and unsatisfying changeable and unconstant Of this I have spoken before in the former discourse but seeing in it a thing so great and fundamental to our contentment let me again present you with it We are the cause of our own grief by magnifying the things of the world to such a value that the loss of them shall be worth so many tears We think that they are happy who are rich and honourable though they be never so wicked and unskilful how to live 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. L. 1 cap. 19. We presently cry up a man for wise and what not Who to use Arrianus his phrase is preferred by Caesar though it be but to be Groom of his close-stool And on the contrary we despise vertue if it be in a thread-bare coat and count him a fool who is unfortunate No wonder then that we cry and whine like children when we lose any of these worldly things seeing we think our selves more happy than men in the enjoyment of them We think that we are undone when we part with that which we have such an high opinion of and there is no way to make us think that all is safe but by altering of that foolish opinion We expect what cannot be and will not be content with what may easily be We cannot make the things of this world to be still and quiet but may make our selves so and the way to that quietness is well to consider their inconstancy and that our happiness is in something better It was a good rule which Pythagoras gave to all his Schollars and is the same that I would have you learn 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Do not walk in the high way i. e. Do not follow the common opinions be not led by vulgar and popular apprehensions Rectifie the ordinary conceits which you have carelesly entertained of things and judge of them as they are in themselves and not as they are reputed of If we would do thus then that which is the cause of our sorrow would be the cause of our tranquillity because nothing hath left us but that which we knew would not stay with us We mourn now because things are so inconstant but then we should not mourn because we knew them to be inconstant If we could make it good that any of these things are ours then I might avouch it that they would never have left us But if they were not ours why are we offended that God doth what he will with his own And besides shall we who are so inconstant oblige all things besides our selves to constancy Shall we whose desires are so restless and uncertain expect that all things but only we should be stable and quiet No let us look into our selves and we shall find so much difficulty to settle them that we shall not wonder that other things are unsettled And again if things be so mutable why should we not think as I have already said that they will one day change to what we would have them But suppose they should what are we the better If our opinion be not turned too we shall be as much afraid to lose them again seeing they are so unconstant as now we are desirous to have them by the benefit of their inconstancy We must therefore alter our esteem of things now else we shall only change our trouble but not be rid of it when things are changed Adeo nihil est miserum nisi cùm putes c. So certain it is that nothing is miserable but when we think it is so and that nothing will make us happy unless we think that we are happy And we had better think so now than stay to be taught this lesson by the dear experience of a great many troubles Let thine estate be never so prosperous yet if thine heart be unmortified thou wilt never be the nearer but rather the further off from settlement For they that have the greatest abundance are the soonest disturbed by every trisle because they are not used to have any thing go contrary to their humour But if thou wilt take any comfort from the unconstancy of things let it be this That if thou thinkest thy self therefore unfortunate because those things are gone that were joyful then thou mayst think thy self happy enough seeing the things that are unpleasant are going away also And think I beseech you once more and be of this opinion That there is nothing better in this world to thee than thy self As long therefore as thou hast thy self why shouldst thou be troubled especially if thou thy self thinkest never the worse of thy self because thou art poor and destitute of friends For these take away nothing of thy self nor can any thing in the world deprive thee of thy self And as Boethius well saith This is the condition of humane nature that it then only excels all things here when it knows it self but when it doth not it is below the very Beasts For it is natural for them to be ignorant but for a man it is the basest vice especially
A Consolatory DISCOURSE To prevent Immoderate GRIEF For the Death of our FRIENDS LONDON Printed by R.W. for Francis Tyton at the three Daggers in Fleet-street neer the Inner Temple gate 1671. A Consolatory Discourse to prevent Immoderate Grief for the Death of our Friends SECT I. Wherein is shown the need of a Consolatory Discourse against the lost of our friends The need of this discourse IT is left upon record by St. Hierom concerning Paulina that though she was a Lady whose passions were under admirable government in other things yet when any of her children dyed she was oppressed with so great a sorrow that he had much ado to save her from being drowned in the floods of it But it is not so great a wonder that a person of the tenderer sex should feel such a tempest as that David a man of war who had overcome so many enemies should himself be overcome with grief for a disobedient son It is said that a Lacedaemonian woman having sent five sons to a battle stood at the Gates of Sparta to expect the event and when she met one coming from the Camp she askt him what was done All thy five sons said the man are slain Away thou fool answered she again I enquired not of this but of the issue of the fight When he told her that her Countrymen had got the better then farewell my sons said she and let us rejoyce that Sparta is saved But David it seems had not attained to this faeminine courage 2 Sam. 18.24 for he sate between the gates waiting for news of the success and when he heard of the loss but of one son and he a Traitor to his Countrey he could not contain himself till he came into the house but went up to the chamber over the gate to lament his son V. 33. as though he had lost the day by losing him Nay he could not refrain so long till he came into the chamber but he watered the stairs with his tears and wept as he went up saying O my son Absalom my son my son Absalom Would God I had dyed for thee O Absalom my son my son This lamentation of his cannot but call to mind the tears which Achilles another great warriour shed over the grave of his friend Patroclus where 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Homer speaks he wept most horribly as if he would have killed himself This love is such a powerful thing that if it hath placed any object in our heart we can scarce suffer it to be taken from us without rending and tearing our hearts in pieces Such a strange union doth it make between two persons that we can scarce give that man any welcome that brings us the news of a separation And therefore some of the ancient Carthaginians as I remember knowing how hard it is to love those who bring us the tydings of the death of them that we love would never send such a message but by the hand of some condemned man whom they were never like to see again I am ready here to interrupt my discourse and in the very beginning to fall into a passion with my self when I think how patiently we can suffer our souls to be divided from God whom we pretend to love O Love how great things should we do if we did but Love how angry should we be at the temptation which would draw him from us whom our souls Love Antonius Guevara had a Neece who was so passionately in love with a little Bitch that at the death of it she fell into a Feaver Fpist ad famil pars 21. and was fain to keep her bed The good man did well rather to chide than to comfort her and to write a Satyr rather than a consolatory letter to her but yet in that strange passion of hers we may clearly see how incident it is unto us to take heavily the loss of what we love Now there is no greater love than that which is between near kindred and friends and no man that knows the pleasure of it would disswade any from such love and yet it is necessary that we should not mourn for them as if we loved nothing else which will render it perhaps an acceptable piece of service unto some if I endeavour to ease them of this kind of sorrow and though I have touched but lightly upon other maladies in the foregoing Treatise yet I apply some particular plaisters to this great and general sore SECT 2. Wherein is shown that we may grant nature leave to ease it self by moderate tears and two Advices are given to keep us from making an ill use of this Grant We may mourn moderately YOu must not think that it is in my design to take away your trouble by taking you off from all love and friendship for that would be as ridiculous as the device to cure drunkenness by cutting up all the Vines I would not have a man to love none but himself out of a fear that he should be troubled at the loss of them as much as at the loss of himself This would be to cure one evil by a greater and to ease men of a short trouble by letting them want the constant easement and sweetest comfort of our lives which is our friends Neither do I intend to write like a Stoick and stupifie all your passions so that you should not mourn at all for that is an impossible thing if we have any love Grace doth not root out nature nor quite dry up all our tears but it rather makes our hearts more moist and tender and causes it to express it self in a becoming affection unto others as David and that Lady may teach us They are sturdy not generous that are void of all grief they are rather hard than constant rather unexperienced than reasonable that forbid all sadness But it is my design to bring you to a moderation both in love and in sorrow that you may do as much as becomes good friends but no more than becomes good men Not to be sensible of evils is not to be men not to bear them patiently is not to be Christians It is neither to be hoped nor to be desired that we should shed no tears at all but it is both necessary and attainable that we should let them flow In measures Lacrymandum est Sencea Epist 63 sed non plorandum We may weep but we must not mail and lament We must be natural but we must be also reasonable We must approve our selves both to men and unto God that they may see we are loving friends and that he may see we are his dutiful children Est enim quaedam dolendi modestia For there is a dertain modesty even in mourning and it is as unseemly to weep immoderately as it is not to weep at all And let none think that by this concession unto nature and decency the wound will be made incurable and that it is easter
how didst thou deserve to have the friend which thou hast lost If thou art able or hast ever given any comfort unto others administer then the same cordials to thy self Why should not that satisfie thee which thou expectedst with so much reason should satisfie them What thou wouldst say to another if his friend was dead that say to thy self And if thou wouldst wonder that he should reject all comfort then do not make thy self a wonder Didst thou never tell any man that it is a shame to be impatient when we can cure our selves That they suffer nothing but what God and nature have appointed that we must all expect such losses that no body knows whose turn is next Take then thy own counsell and be not such a Physitian as cannot cure himself at all Is thy distemper different from theirs Are there not the same griefs and maladies in their minds Then the same medicine will cure thee that thou gavest them Or if it would not cure them then thou wast much too blame that didst not seek a better both for them and thee Or is thine some strange loss the like to which never any suffered Then this may comfort thee that thou shalt never suffer the like again For it would be more strange if a thing that never came before should twice fall upon one man It it be so strange to thee then thy courage will be as strange to others If thou art drawn into an example of sufferings then thou maist render thy self an example to all of patience and contentedness And so Seneca saith of the Brother of Drusus that though Drusus dyed in the midst of his embraces and with his kisses warm upon his mouth though he dyed in the very height of his fortune with the most war-like Nations dead at his feet yet he not only put a measure to his own grief but taught all the Army how to be moderate also And indeed he could not have stopt the tears of others unless he had been of so brave a spirit as first to stop his own If thou art a friend therefore unto any let them all learn of thee how to be well satisfied Comfort thy self as thou hast comforted others or else as thou dost intend to comfort them And let it be seen by thy worthy behaviour toward thy self that thou art worthy to be a friend to another person Death doth sometime befriend us XII Ask thy self again Whether friends only be mortal Do none die but they that love us Must not all our enemies and they that hate us die also Death then that makes thee sad may give thee comfort As it puts an end to some comforts so it is the common end of all miseries Though we may not wish for the death of any yet it is no harm to think that they must die who hate us and their rage shall not last for ever If nothing can cease their malignity yet death can It hath done us then no such wrong but what it can repay us with the same hand that did it Though we have now no friend yet shortly we may have no enemy neither This was one support to the Christians under their persecutions that though their enemies like Saul did breath out nothing but threatnings and slaughters against them yet their breath was but in their nostrils and might soon evaporate and vanish away Julian called the Apostate had done more hurt to the Christians than the ten Persecutions if death had not suddenly wounded him with one of his arrows The Marian flames had devoured in all likelyhood a great many more bodies if death had not shortned her reign and so extinguished the fires We have no reason then to look upon it as unkind which may do us so many courtesies not to accuse that of cruelty to us which destroys the cruelty of others towards us XIII And now may you not well make one question more to your selves Contentment hath more to say for it self than grief hath and say Is there not more reason to be comforted than there is to be sad If there be as certainly there is what should hinder your comfort if you live by reason If you do not live by it then nothing that a man can say will comfort you Nothing will chear us unless we think of it and make it our own by meditation neither will any thing sadden us unless we think of it also Seeing then they are our own thoughts that make us either sad or merry and we have more comfortable thoughts than heavy we cannot but be of good chear if we will not be enemies to our selves All that we can say for our sadness is that we have lost a friend a very dear and perhaps only friend But you have heard that there are more in the world and that you have not lost this and that you have more comforts remaining than are taken away and that if you had none but God you had enough and if you will read again what hath been said twenty other reasons will offer themselves to chear for one that arises to make you sad If there was no reason at all to be sad then none need spend any time in giving comfort But if they be very few in compare with others and we are made to follow the most and strongest reasons then he is not to be pityed who notwithstanding the small reason of his sorrow will not be of good comfort The greatest cause that I know of this sort of trouble is when many that we love die soon after one another So it hapned to that Prince which the L. Mountaigne speaks of who received the news of his Elder Brothers death L. 1. Essay cap. 2. whom he highly esteemed with a great deal of constancy and shortly after the tidings of his younger Brothers decease in whom he placed much hope did not alter the smoothness of his countenance But when one of his servants dyed not long after that he suffered himself to be so far transported that he quitted his former resolution and gave up himself to all grief and sorrow The reason of this was not from the love that he bare to his person more than the rest but as he well faith because being top full of sorrow before the next flood must needs break the banks or overflow all the bounds of patience In Dialog cui tit Guilielmus And so Hier. Cardan tells us that after he had partiently born many reproaches and the cruel infamous death of a son of great hopes and the dangerous sickness of another son and the death of his Parents and Wife with many other evils yea and after he wrote a Book of Consolation against all these evils yet he was overcome with grief at the death of an English youth whom he brought from Dover with him as he passed from Scotland in the time of Edward the sixth And he gives the sam reason for it that the other doth
are none of our own no more than any thing in this world Let these two things then settle themselves in our minds which will lead us into the right way of fortifying our souls both against this and all other trouble First Never think that the things which thou wantest will cure thee for they will rather make the wound wider and inlarge thy wants The more we have the more we desire still to have and the way to think we have enough is not to desire to have too much It is very well observed by Plutarch 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that it seems to us as if our clothes did give us heat when as they are cold of themselves and in a great heat we shift our clothes to make us cool Just so do men think that the things without them will afford them content and that if they had a sumptuous house and had riches at command and were encompassed with servants and had their friends to bear them company they should live most sweetly and deliciously when as experience teaches us that we are still desirous of some change in one thing or other about us It is the heat of our own bodies that keeps us warm which our clothes do only contain and keep in that it may not fly abroad and disperse in the air and so is it the liveliness and strength of our own spirit that must make us live merrily and which gives all the pleasure and grace to these outward things which minister to our comfort They can only help to maintain and increase our delights but our delight must arise from a more certain cause within our selves Add one heap of riches to another build great houses invite to thy self friends and lovers unless thou dost free thy self from thy own desires unless thou dost put an end to thy fears and cares and such like things thou dost but like him that administers Wine to a man in a Feavour or Honey to a Cholerick person or meat to him that is troubled with the Collick which do not strengthen but destroy them The less we have the better it is unless we desire but a little And therefore it is of absolute necessity that we form to our selves such strong principles as will moderate our desires and make them reasonable But then let me tell you in the second place That a good Book and a Treatise of the Principles of Contentment may be without us as well as any thing else We think that we have good reasons of being quiet which will comfort us upon all occasions But where are they In our Book That is no more ours than our money that bought it unless the Book be in our heart We must labour to write these truths on our souls and turn them into the reason of our minds Things of faith we must make as if they were things of reason and things of reason we must make as sensible as if they beat continually upon our eyes and ears Let us colour and die our souls with these notions or else they will do us but little good If this Book lie by us and not in us it will be little better than wast Paper 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Arrian L 2. cap. 9. c. saith Epictetus For it is one thing to have Bread and Wine in a Cup-board and another thing to have them in our body When they are eaten and drunk they turn into flesh and blood and make us lusty and strong but when they lie by us we think indeed we have them but they afford us no nourishment or refreshment at all Even so it is in these things If we inwardly digest them and turn them as it were into the substance of our souls they will make us of a lively complexion but else we may be pale with fear and pine away with grief and it is not their fault but our own And as he that doth not eat when he should may have no stomack when he is weak but presently vomit up his food again So he that minds not these things till he be sick of his troubles and in great need of comfort will find his soul it is most likely very impatient of the remedy and it will be a trouble to him but to read that which will quiet him Thus I observe it was with a very great man a person indowed with an extraordinary measure of wisedom who rejected himself in a time of sorrow all those counsels that he had skilfully administred to others Julius Scaliger I mean who writing to a friend of his to comfor her in her Mourning * Epist 67. ad Marg. Vitelliam beseeches her to remember how far it is from common Prudence Not to lay down that grief for our own sake which we have taken up for the sake of another and that it is not the part of a sound judgement to accuse the fates as if they had done us wrong and to take a severe punishment for it upon our selves Consider also where is that person we Weep for If in Heaven what need is there of our howlings If in misery why do we add loss to loss evil to evil and because he is miserable against our will make our selves freely and willingly miserable But this above all things I would have you keep in mind that you have nothing which you have not received and therefore you owe thanks even now for what you had to him from whom you received it and ought not to reproach him for calling home his own For all the benefits bestow'd on Mortals are like all things here stand withering and cannot last for ever nay unsteady inconstant and never equal If therefore we enjoy any of them we must place it among our felicities that we were owners of it And when by the severe Laws of the Vniverse it is snatcht from us we must refresh our selves with the remembrance of it as if it were present and not vex and torment our selves because of its absence Many things like to these and perhaps better he saith he could suggest if he thought it needful And yet this very Counselour I observe when his turn came to weep was strangely overcome with sorrow for the death of a little son of his but a child of great hopes He cries out lamentably and bewailes himself without measure saying In illo vivebam in illo interii * Oratio in luctu Audesti si ii I lived in him and in him I dyed I know he is happy and therefore I do not bewail him in my self but my self in him by whose fall I am faln also I say I bewail my self who die a new kind of way and am killed by anothers death And then reckoning up the arguments whereby his friends studied to comfort him the very same wherewith he thought he could comfort others he despises them all as not worth a straw telling them that they expressed indeed a great deal of humanity to him but not much