speak and because in it all our certainty does consist We must take our waters as out of a torrent and sudden shower which will quickly cease dropping from above and quickly cease running in our chanels here below This instant will never return again and yet it may be this instant will declare or secure the fortune of a whole eternity The old Greeks and Romans taught us the prudence of this rule but Christianity teaches us the Religion of it They so seized upon the present that they would lose nothing of the dayes pleasure Let us eat and drink for to morrow we shall die that was their philosophy and at their solemn feasts they would talk of death to heighten the present drinking and that they might warm their veins with a fuller chalice as knowing the drink that was poured upon their graves would be cold and without relish Break the beds drink your wine crown your heads with roses and besinear your curled locks with Nard for God bids you to remember death so the Epigrammatist speaks the sence of their drunken principles Something towards this signification is that of Solomon There is nothing better for a man then that he should eat and drink and that he should make his soul enjoy good in his labour for that is his portion for who shall bring him to see that which shall be after him But although he concludes all this to be vanity yet because it was the best thing that was then commonly known that they should seize upon the present with a temperate use of permited pleasures had reason to say that Christianity taught us to turn this into religion For he that by a present and a constant holiness secures the present and makes it useful to his noblest purposes he turns his condition into his best advantage by making his unavoidable fate become his necessary religion To the purpose of this rule is that collect of Tuscan hieroglyphics which we have from Gabriel Simeon Our life is very short beauty is a cosenage money is false and fugitive Empire is odious and hated by them that have it not and uneasy to them that have victory is alwayes uncertain and peace most commonly is but a fraudulent bargain old age is miserable death is the period and is a happy one if it be not sowred by the sins of our life but nothing continues but the effects of that wisdom which imployes the present time in the acts of a holy religion and a peaceable conscience for they make us to live even beyond our funerals embalmed in the spices and odours of a good name and entombed in the grave of the Holy Jesus where we shall be dressed for a blessed resurrection to the state of Angels and beatified Spirits 5. Since we stay not here being people but of a dayes abode and our age is like that of a flie and contemporary with a gourd we must look some where else for an abiding city a place in another countrey to fix our house in whose walls and foundation is God where we must finde rest or else be restlesse for ever For whatsoever ease we can have or fancy here is shortly to be changed into sadnesse or tediousnesse it goes away too soon like the periods of our life or stayes too long like the sorrows of a sinner it s own wearinesse or a contrary disturbance is its load or it is eased by its revolution into vanity forgetfulness and where either there is sorrow or an end of joy there can be no true felicity which because it must be had by some instrument and in some period of our duration we must carry up our affections to the mansions prepared for us above where eternity is the measure felicity is their state Angels are the Company the Lamb is the light and God is the portion and inheritance SECT III. Rules and Spiritual arts of lengthening our dayes and to take off the objection of a short life IN the accounts of a mans life we do not reckon that portion of dayes in which we are shut up in the prison of the womb we tell our years from the day of our birth and the same reason that makes our reckning to stay so long sayes also that then it begins too soon For then we are beholding to others to make the account for us for we know not of a long time whether we be alive or no having but some little approaches and symptoms of a life To feed and sleep and move a little and imperfectly is the state of an unborn childe and when it is born he does no more for a good while and what is it that shall make him to be esteemed to live the life of a man and when shall that account begin For we should be loath to have the accounts of our age taken by the measures of a beast and fools and distracted persons are reckoned as civilly dead they are no parts of the Common-wealth not subject to laws but secured by them in Charity and kept from violence as a man keeps his Ox and a third part of our life is spent before we enter into a higher order into the state of a man 2. Neither must we think that the life of a Man begins when he can feed himself or walk alone when he can fight or beget his like for so he is contemporary with a camel or a cow but he is first a man when he comes to a certain steddy use of reason according to his proportion and when that is all the world of men cannot tell precisely Some are called at age at fourteen some at one and twenty some never but all men late enough for the life of a man comes upon him slowly and insensibly But as when the Sun approaches towards the gates of the morning he first opens a little eye of Heaven and sends away the spirits of darknesse and gives light to a cock and calls up the lark to Mattins and by and by gilds the fringes of a cloud and peeps over the Eastern hills thrusting out his golden horns like those which decked the browes of Moses when he was forced to wear a vail because himself had seen the face of God and still while a man tells the story the sun gets up higher till he showes a fair face and a full light and then he shines one whole day under a cloud often and sometimes weeping great and little showers and sets quickly so is a mans reason and his life He first begins to perceive himself to see or taste making little reflections upon his actions of sense and can discourse of flies and dogs shells and play horses and liberty but when he is strong enough to enter into arts and little institutions he is at first entertained with trifles and impertinent things not because he needs them but because his understanding is no bigger and little images of things are laid before him like a cock-boat to a whale
of a cloud and the meeting of a vapor by the fall of a chariot and the stumbling at a stone by a full meal or an empty stomach by watching at the wine or by watching at prayers by the Sun or the Moon by a heat or a cold by sleeplesse nights or sleeping dayes by water frozen into the hardnesse and sharpnesse of a dagger or water thawd into the floods of a river by a hair or a raisin by violent motion or sitting still by severity or dissolution by Gods mercy or Gods anger by every thing in providence and every thing in manners by every thing in nature and every thing in chance Eripitur persona manet res we take pains to heap up things useful to our life and get our death in the purchase and the person is snatchâ—ed away and the goods remain and all this is the law and constitution of nature it is a punishment to our sins the unalterable event of providence and the decree of heaven The chains that confine us to this condition are strong as destiny and immutable as the eternal laws of God I have conversed with some men who rejoyced in the death or calamity upon others and accounted it as a judgement upon them for being on the other side and against them in the contention but within the revolution of a few moneths the same man met with a more uneasy and unhandsom death which when I saw I wept and was afraid for I knew that it must be so with all men for we also shall die and end our quarrels and contentions by passing to a final sentence SECT II. The Consideration reduced to practice IT will be very material to our best and noblest purposes if we represent this scene of change and sorrow a little more dressed up in Circumstances for so we shall be more apt to practice those Rules the doctrine of which is consequent to this consideration * It is a mighty change that is made by the death of every person and it is visible to us who are alive Reckon but from the spritefulnesse of youth and the fair cheeks and full eyes of childehood from the vigorousnesse and strong flexure of the joynts of five and twenty to the hollownesse and dead palenesse to the loathsomnesse and horrour of a three dayes burial and we shall perceive the distance to be very great and very strange But so have I seen a Rose newly springing from the clefts of its hood and at first it was fair as the Morning and full with the dew of Heaven as a Lambs fleece but when a ruder breath had forced open its virgin modesty and dismantled its too youthful and unripe retirements it began to put on darknesse and to decline to softnesse and the symptomes of a sickly age it bowed the head and broke its stalk and at night having lost some of its leaves and all its beauty it fell into the portion of weeds and out-worn faces The same is the portion of every man and every woman the heritage of worms and serpents rottennesse and cold dishonour and our beauty so changed that our acquaintance quickly knew us not and that change mingled with so much horrour or else meets so with our fears and weak discoursings that they who six hours ago tended upon us either with charitable or ambitious services cannot without some regret stay in the room alone where the body lies stripped of its life and Honour I have read of a fair young German Gentleman who living often refused to be pictured but put ofâ— the importunity of his friends desire by giving way that after a few dayes burial they might send a painter to his vault and if they saw cause for it draw the image of his death unto the life They did so and found his face half eaten and his midriffe and back bone full of serpents and so he stands pictured among his armed Ancestours So does the fairest beauty change and it will be as bad with you and me and then what servants shall we have to wait upon us in the grave what friends to visit us what officious people to cleanse away the moist and unwholsom cloud reflected upon our faces from the sides of the weeping vaults which are the longest weepers for our funeral This discourse will be useful if we consider and practise by the following Rules and Considerations respectivly 1. All the Rich and all the Covetous men in the world will perceive and all the world will perceive for them that it is but an ill recompence for all their cares that by this time all that shall be left will be this that the Neighbours shall say he died a rich man and yet his wealth will not profit him in the grave but hugely swell the sad accounts of Doomsday And he that kills the Lords people with unjust or ambitious wars for an unrewarding interest shall have this character that he threw away all the dayes of his life that one year might be reckoned with his Name and computed by his reign or consulship and many men by great labors and affronts many indignities and crimes labour onely for a pompous Epitaph and a loud title upon their Marble whilest those into whose possessions their heirs or kinred are entred are forgotten and lye unregarded as their ashes and without concernment or relation as the turf upon the face of their grave A man may read a sermon the best and most passionate that ever men preached if he shall but enter into the sepulchres of Kings In the same Escurial where the Spanish Princes live in greatnesse and power and decree war or peace they have wisely placed a coemeterie where their ashes and their glories shall sleep till time shall be no more and where our Kings have been crowned their Ancestours lay interred and they must walk over their Grandsires head to take his crown There is an acre sown with royal seed the copy of the greatest change from rich to naked from ciâ—led roofs to arched coffins from living like Gods to dye like Men. There is enough to cool the flames of lust to abate the heights of pride to appease the itch of covetous desires to â—ully and dash out the dissembling colours of a lustful artificial and imaginary beauty There the warlike and the peaceful the fortunate and the miserable the beloved and the despised Princes mingle their dust and pay down their symbol of Mortality and tell all the world that when we die our ashes shall be equal to Kings and our accounts easier and our pains or our crowns shall be lesse * To my apprehension it is a sad record which is left by Athenaeus concerning Ninus the great Assyrian Monarch whose life and death is summed up in these words Ninus the Assyrian had an Ocean of gold and other riches more then the sand in the Caspian sea he never saw the stars and perhaps he never desired
arts of religion and mortification suppresse the trouble of that fancy till at last being told that she was dead and had been buried about fourteen dayes he went secretly to her Vault and with the skirt of his mantle wiped the moisture from the Carkasse and still at the return of his temptation laid it before him saying Behold this is the beauty of the woman thou didst so much desire and so the man found his cure And if we make death as present to us our own death dwelling and dressed in all its pomp of fancy and proper circumstances if any thing will quench the heats of lust or the desires of money or the greedy passionate affections of this world this must do it But withall the frequent use of this meditation by curing our present inordinations will make death safe and friendly and by its very custom will make that the King of terrours shall come to us without his affrighting dresses and that we shall sit down in the grave as we compose our selves to sleep and do the duties of nature and choice The old people that lived neer the Riphaean mountains were taught to converse with death and to handle it on all sides and to discourse of it as of a thing that will certainly come and ought so to do Thence their minds and resolutions became capable of death and they thought it a dishonourable thing with greedinesse to keep a life that must go from us to lay aside its thorns and to return again circled with a glory and a Diadem 2. He that would die well must all the dayes of his life lay up against the day of death not only by the general provisions of holinesse and a pious life indefinitely but provisions proper to the necessities of that great day of expence in which a man is to throw his last cast for an eternity of joyes or sorrows ever remembring that this alone well performed is not enough to passe us into Paradise but that alone done foolishly is enough to send us to hell and the want of either a holy life or death makes a man to fall short of the mighty price of our high calling In order to this rule we are to consider what special graces we shall then need to exercise and by the proper arts of the Spirit by a heap of proportioned arguments by prayers and a great treasure of devotion laid up in Heaven provide before hand a reserve of strength and mercy Men in the course of their lives walk lazily and incuriously as if they had both their feet in one shoe and when they are passively revolved to the time of their dissolution they have no mercies in store no patience no faith no charity to God or despite of the world being without gust or appetite for the land of their inheritance which Christ with so much pain and blood had purchased for them When we come to die indeed we shall be very much put to it to stand firm upon the two feet of a Christian faith and patience When we our selves are to use the articles to turn our former discourses into present practise and to feel what we never felt before we shall finde it to be quite another thing to be willing presently to quit this life and all our present possessions for the hopes of a thing which we were never suffered to see and such a thing of which we may sail so many wayes and of which if we fail any way we are miserable for ever Then we shall finde how much we have need to have secured the Spirit of God and the grace of saith by an habitual perfect unmovable resolution * The same also is the case of patience which will be assaulted with sharp pains disturbed fancies great fears want of a present minde natural weaknesses frauds of the Devil and a thousand accidents and imperfections It concerns us therfore highly in the whole course of our lives not onely to accustome our selves to a patient suffering of injuries and affronts of persecutions and losses of crosse accidents and unnecessary circumstances but also by representing death as present to us to consider with what arguments then to fortifie our patience and by assiduous and fervent prayer to God all our life long call upon God to give us patience and great assistances a strong faith and a confirmed hope the Spirit of God and his Holy Angels assistants at that time to resist and to subdue the devils temptations and assaults and so to fortifie our hearts that it break not into intolerable sorrows and impatience and end in wretchlessenesse and infidelity * But this is to be the work of our life and not to be done at once but as God gives us time by succession by parts and little periods For it is very remarkable that God who giveth plenteously to all creatures he hath scattered the firmament with stars as a man sowes corn in his fields in a multitude bigger then the capacities of humane order he hath made so much varietie of creatures and gives us great choice of meats and drinks although any one of both kindes would have served our needs and so in all instances of nature yet in the distribution of our time God seems to be strait-handed and gives it to us not as Nature gives us Rivers enough to drown us but drop by drop minute after minute so that we never can have two minutes together but he takes away one when he gives us another This should teach us to value our time since God so values it and by his so small distribution of it tells us it is the most precious thing we have Since therefore in the day of our death we can have but still the same little portion of this precious time let us in every minute of our life I mean in every discernable portion lay up such a stock of reason and good works that they may convey a value to the imperfect and shorter actions of our death-bed while God rewards the piety of our lives by his gracious acceptation and benediction upon the actions preparatory to our death-bed 3. He that desires to die well and happily above all things must be carefull that he do not live a soft a delicate and voluptuous life but a life severe holy and under the discipline of the crosse under the conduct of prudence and observation a life of warfare and sober counsels labour and watchfulnesse No man wants cause of tears and a daily sorrow Let every man consider what he feels and acknowledge his misery let him confesse his sin and chastise it let him bear his crosse patiently and his persecutions nobly and his repentances willingly and constantly let him pity the evils of all the world and bear his share of the calamities of his Brother let him long and sigh for the joyes of Heaven let him tremble and fear because he hath deserved the pains of hell let him commute his eternall
is a portion in the inheritance of Jesus of which he now talks no more as a thing at distance but is entring into the possession When the veil is rent and the prison doors are open at the presence of Gods Angel the soul goes forth full of hope sometimes with evidence but alwayes with certainty in the thing and instantly it passes into the throngs of Spirits where Angles meet it singing and the Devils flock with malitious and vile purposes desiring to lead it away with them into their houses of sorrow there they see things which they never saw and hear voices which they never heard There the Devils charge them with many sins And the Angels remember that themselves rejoyced when they were repented of Then the Devils aggravate and describe all the circumstances of the sin and adde calumnies and the Angels bear the soul forward still because their Lord doth answer for them Then the Devils rage and gnash their teeth they see the soul chast and pure and they are ashamed they see it penitent and they despair they perceive that the tongue was restrained and sanctified and then hold their peace Then the soul passes forth and rejoyces passing by the Devils in scorn and triumph being securely carried into the bosome of the Lord where they shall rest till their crowns are finished and their mansions are prepared and then they shall feast and sing rejoyce and worship for ever and ever Fearful and formidable to unholy persons is the first meeting with spirits in their separation But the victory which holy souls receive by the mercies of Jesus Christ and the conduct of Angels is a joy that we must not understand till we feel it and yet such which by an early and a persevering piety we may secure but let us enquire after it no further because it is secret CHAP. III. Of the state of sicknesse and the temptations incident to it with their proper remedies SECT I. Of the state of sicknesse ADams sin brought death into the world and man did die the same day in which he sinned according as God had threatned He did not die as death is taken for a separation of soul and body that is not death properly but the ending of the last act of death just as a man is said to be born when he ceases any longer to be born in his mothers womb But whereas to man was intended a life long and happy without sicknesse sorrow or infelicity and this life should be lived here or in a better place and the passage from one to the other should have been easy safe and pleasant now that man sinned he fell from that state to a contrary If Adam had stood he should not alwayes have lived in this world for this world was not a place capable of giving a dwelling to all those myriads of men and women which should have been born in all the generations of infinite and eternal ages for so it must have been if man had not dyed at all nor yet have removed hence at all Neither is it likely that mans innocence should have lost to him all possibility of going thither where the duration is better measured by a better time subject to fewer changes and which is now the reward of a returning vertue which in all natural senses is lesse then innocence save that it is heightned by Christ to an equality of acceptation with the state of innocence But so it must have been that his innocence should have been punished with an eternal confinement to this state which in all reason is the lesse perfect the state of a traveller not of one possessed of his inheritance It is therefore certain Man should have changed his abode for so did Enoch and so did Elias and so shall all the world that shall be alive at the day of judgement They shall not die but they shall change their place and their abode their duration and their state and all this without death That death therefore which God threatned to Adam and which passed upon his posterity is not the going out of this world but the manner of going If he had staid in innocence he should have gone from hence placidly and fairly without vexatious and afflictive circumstances he should not have dyed by sickness misfortune defect or unwillingnesse but when he fell then he began to die the same day so said God and that must needs be true and therefore it must mean that upon that very day he fell into an evil and dangerous condition a state of change and affliction then death began that is the man began to die by a natural diminution and aptnesse to disease and misery His first state was and should have been so long as it lasted a happy duration His second was a daily and miserable change and this was the dying properly This appears in the great instance of damnation which in the stile of Scripture is called eternal death not because it kills or ends the duration it hath not so much good in it but because it is a perpetual infelicity Change or separation of soul and body is but accidental to death Death may be with or without either but the formality the curse and the sting of death that is misery sorrow fear diminution defect anguish dishonour and whatsoever is miserable and afflictive in nature that is death death is not an action but a whole state and condition and this was first brought in upon us by the offence of one man But this went no further then thus to subject us to temporal infelicity If it had proceeded so as was supposed Man had been much more miserable for man had more then one original sin in this sence and though this death entred first upon us by Adams fault yet it came neerer unto us and increased upon us by the sins of more of our forefathers For Adams sin left us in strength enough to contend with humane calamities for almost a thousand years together But the sins of his children our forefathers took off from us half the strength about the time of the flood and then from 500. to 250. and from thence to 120. and from thence to threescore and ten so halfing it till it is almost come to nothing But by the sins of men in the several generations of the world death that is misery and disease is hastned so upon us that we are of a contemptible age and because we are to die by suffering evils and by the daily lessening of our strength and health this death is so long a doing that it makes so great a part of our short life uselesse and unserviceable that we have not time enough to get the perfection of a single manufacture but ten or twelve generations of the world must go to the making up of one wise man or one excellent Art and in the succession of those ages there happens so many changes and interruptions so many
so have I known passionate women to shrike aloud when their neerest relatives were dying and that horrid shrike hath stayed the spirit of the man a while to wonder at the folly and represent the inconvenience and the dying person hath lived one day longer full of pain amazed with an undeterminate spirit distorted with convulsions and onely come again to act one scene more of a new calamity and to die with less decency so also do very many men with passion and a troubled interest they strive to continue their life longer and it may be they escape this sickness and live to fall into a disgrace they escape the storm and fall into the hands of pyrats and instead of dying with liberty they live like slaves miserable and despised servants to a litle time and sottish admirers of the breath of their own lungs Paulus Aemilius did handsomly reprove the cowardice of the King of Macedon who begged of him for pities sake and humanity that having conquered him and taken his kingdom from him he would be content with that and not lead him in triumph a prisoner to Rome Aemilius told him he need not be beholding to him for that himself might prevent that in despite of him But the timorous King durst not die But certainly every wise man will easily believe that it had been better the Macedonian Kings should have dyed in battel then protract their life so long till some of them came to be Scriveners and Joyners at Rome or that the Tyrant of Sicily better had perished in the Adriatic then to be wafted to Corinth safely and there turn Schoolmaster It is a sad calamity that the fear of death shall so imbecill mans courage and understanding that he dares not suffer the remedie of all his calamities but that he lives to say as Liberius did I have lived this one day longer then I should either therefore let us be willing to die when God calls or let us never more complain of the calamities of our life which we feel so sharp and numerous And when God sends his Angel to us with a scroll of death let us look on it as an act of mercy to prevent many sins and many calamities of a longer life and lay our heads down softly and go to sleep without wrangling like babies and froward children For a man at least gets this by death that his calamities are not immortal But I do not onely consider death by the advantages of comparison but if we look on it in it self it is no such formidable thing if we view it on both sides and handle it and consider all its appendages 2. It is necessary and therefore not intolerable and nothing is to be esteemed evil which God and nature have fixed with eternal sancâ—ions It is a law of God it is a punishment of our sins and it is the constitution of our nature Two differing substances were joyned together with the breath of God and when that breath is taken away they part asunder and return to their several principles the soul to God our Father the body to the earth our Mother and what in all this is evil Surely nothing but that we are men nothing but that we were not born immortall but by declining this change with great passion or receiving it with a huge naturall fear we accuse the Divine Providence of Tyranny and exclaim against our naturall constitution and are discontent that we are men 3. It is a thing that is no great matter in it self if we consider that we die daily that it meets us in every accident that every creature carries a dart along with it and can kill us And therefore when Lysimachus threatned Theodorus to kill him he told him that was no great matter to do and he could do no more then the Cantharides could a little flie could do as much 4. It is a thing that every one suffers even persons of the lowest resolution of the meanest vertue of no breeding of no discourse Take away but the pomps of death the disguises and solemn bug-bears the tinsell and the actings by candle-light and proper and phantastic ceremonies the minstrels and the noise-makers the women and the weepers the swoonings and the shrikings the Nurses and the Physicians the dark room and the Ministers the Kinred and the Watchers and then to die is easie ready and quitted from its troublesome circumstances It is the same harmelesse thing that a poor shepherd suffered yesterday or a maid-servant to day and at the same time in which you die in that very night a thousand creatures die with you some wise men and many fools and the wisdom of the first will not quit him and the folly of the latter does not make him unable to die 5. Of all the evils of the world which are reproached with an evil character death is the most innocent of its accusation For when it is present it hurts no body and when it is absent 't is indeed troublesome but the trouble is owing to our fears not to the affrighting and mistaken object and besides this if it were an evil it is so transient that it passes like the instant or undiscerned portion of the present time and either it is past or it is not yet for just when it is no man hath reason to complain of so insensible so sudden so undiscerned a change 6. It is so harmelesse a thing that no good man was ever thought the more miserable for dying but much the happier When men saw the graves of Calatinus of the Servicij the Scipio's the Metelli did ever any man among the wisest Romans think them unhappy And when S. Paul fell under the sword of Nero and S. Peter died upon the crosse and S. Stephen from an heap of stones was carried into an easier grave they that made great lamentation over them wept for their own interest and after the manner of men but the Martyrs were accounted happy and their dayes kept solemnly and their memories preserved in never dying honours When S. Hilary Bishop of Poictiers in France went into the East to reproove the Arian heresie he heard that a young noble Gentleman treated with his daughter Abra for marriage The Bishop wrote to his daughter that she should not ingage her promise nor do countenance to that request because he had provided for her a husband fair rich wise and noble farre beyond her present offer The event of which was this She obeyed and when her father returned from his Eastern triumph to his Western charge he prayed to God that his daughter might die quickly and God heard his prayers and Christ took her into his bosome entertaining her with antepasts and caresses of holy love till the day of the marriage Supper of the Lamb shall come But when the Bishops wife observed this event and understood of the good man her husband what was done and why she never left
mortals with ignorant and foolish persons with Tyrants and enemies of learning to converse with Homer and Plato with Socrates and Cicero with Plutarch and Fabricius So the Heathens speculated but we consider higher The dead that die in the Lord shall converse with S. Paul and all the Colledge of the Apostles and all the Saints and Martyrs with all the good men whose memory we preserve in honour with excellent Kings and holy Bishops and with the great Shepherd and Bishop of our souls Iesus Christ and with God himself For Christ dyed for us that whether we wake or sleep we might live together with him Then we shall be free from lust and envy from fear and rage from covetousnesse and sorrow from tears and cowardice and these indeed properly are the onely evils that are contrary to felicity and wisdom Then we shall see strange things and know new propositions and all things in another manner and to higher purposes Cleombrotus was so taken with this speculation that having learned from Plato's Phaedon the souls abode he had not patience to stay natures dull leisure but leapt from a wall to his portion of immortality And when Pomponius Atticus resolved to die by famine to ease the great pains of his gout in the abstinence of two dayes found his foot at ease But when he began to feel the pleasures of an approaching death and the delicacies of that ease he was to inherit below he would not withdraw his foot but went on and finished his death and so did Cleanthes and every wise man will despise the little evils of that state which indeed is the daughter of fear but the mother of rest and peace and felicity 5. If God should say to us Cast thy self into the Sea as Christ did to S. Peter or as God concerning Ionas I have provided for thee a Dolphin or a Whale or a Port a safety or a deliverance security or a reward were we not incredulous and pusillanimous persons if we should tremble to put such a felicity into act and our selves into possession The very duty of resignation and the love of our own interest are good antidores against fear In fourty or fifty years we finde evils enough and arguments enough to make us weary of this life And to a good man there are very many more reasons to be afraid of life then death this having in it lesse of evil and more of advantage And it was a rare wish of that Roman that death might come onely to wise and excellent persons and not to fools and cowards that it might not be a sanctuary for the timerous but the reward of the vertuous and indeed they onely can make advantage of it 6. Make no excuses to make thy desires of life seem reasonable neither cover thy fear and pretences but suppresse it rather with arts of severity and ingenuity Some are not willing to submit to Gods sentence and arrest of death till they have finished such a designe or made an end of the last paragraph of their book or raised such portions for their children or preached so many sermons or built their house or planted their orchard or ordered their estate with such advantages It is well for the modesty of these men that the excuse is ready but if it were not it is certain they would search one out for an idle man is never ready to die and is glad of any excuse and a busied man hath alwayes something unfinished and he is ready for every thing but death and I remember that Petronius brings in Eumolpus composing verses in a desperate storm and being called upon to shift for himself when the ship dashed upon the rock cried out to let him alone till he had finished and trimmed his verse which was lame in the hinder leg the man either had too strong a desire to end his verse or too great a desire not to end his life But we must know Gods times are not to be measured by our circumstances and what I value God regards not or if it be valuable in the accounts of men yet God will supply it with other contingencies of his providence and if Epaphroditus had died when he had his great sicknesse S. Paul speaks of God would have secured the work of the Gospel without him and he could have spared Epaphroditus as well as S. Stephen and S. Peter as well as S. Iames Say no more but when God calls lay aside thy papers and first dresse thy soul and then dresse thy hearse Blindnesse is odious and widow-hood is sad and destitution is without comfort and persecution is full of trouble and famine is intolerable and tears are the sad ease of a sadder heart but these are evils of our life not of our death For the dead that die in the Lord are so farre from wanting the commodities of this life that they do not want life it self After all this I do not say it is a sin to be afraid of death we find the boldest spirit that discourses of it with confidence and dares undertake a danger as big as death yet doth shrink at the horror of it when it comes dressed in its proper circumstances And Brutus who was as bold a Roman to undertake a noble action as any was since they first reckoned by Consuls yet when Furius came to cut his throat after his defeat by Anthony he ran from it like a girl and being admonished to die constantly he swore by his life that he would shortly endure death But what do I speak of such imperfect persons Our B. Lord was pleased to legitimate fear to us by his agony and prayers in the garden It is not a sin to be afraid but it is a great felicity to be without fear which felicity our dearest Saviour refused to have because it was agreeable to his purposes to suffer any thing that was contrary to felicity every thing but sin But when men will by all means avoid death they are like those who at any hand resolve to be rich The case may happen in which they wil blaspheme and dishonor providence or do a base action or curse God and die But in all cases they die miserable and insnared and in no case do they die the lesse for it Nature hath left us the key of the Churchyard and custome hath brought Caemeteries and charnell houses into Cities and Churches places most frequented that we might not carry our selves strangely in so certain so expected so ordinary so unavoydable an accident All reluctancy or unwillingnesse to obey the Divine decree is but a snare to our selves and a load to our spirits and is either an intire cause or a great aggravation of the calamity Who did not scorn to look upon Xerxes when he caused 300. stripes to be given to the Sea and sent a chartell of defiance against the Mountain Atho Who did not scorn the proud vanity of Cyrus when he
change without a spiritual act of him that is to be changed nor work by way of nature or by charme but morally and after the manner of reasonable creatures and therefore I do not think that ministery at all fit to be reckoned among the advantages of sick persons The Fathers of the Councel of Trent first disputed and after their manner at last agreed that extream unction was instituted by Christ. But afterwards being admonished by one of their Theologues that the Apostles ministred unction to infirm people before they were Priests the Priestly order according to their doctrine being collated in the institution of the last Supper for fear that it should be thought that this unction might be administred by him that was no Priest they blotted out the word instituted and put in its stead insinuated this Sacrament and that it was published by Saint Iames. So it is in their Doctrine and yet in their anathematismes they curse all them that shall deny it to have been instituted by Christ. I shall lay no more prejudice against it or the weak arts of them that maintain it but adde this onely that there being but two places of Scripture pretended for this ceremonie some chief men of their own side have proclaimed those two invalid as to the institution of it for Suarez sayes that the unction used by the Apostles in S. Mark 6.13 is not the same with what is used in the Church of Rome and that it cannot be plainly gathered from the Epistle of Saint Iames Cajetan affirms and that it did belong to the miraculous gift of healing not to a Sacrament The sick mans exercise of grace formerly acquired his perfecting repentance begun in the dayes of health the prayers and counsels of the Holy man that ministers the giving the Holy Sacrament the Ministery and assistance of Angels and the mercies of God the peace of conscience and the peace of the Church are all the assistances and preparatives that can help to dresse his lamp But if a man shall go to buy oil when the Bridegroom comes if his lamp be not first furnish'd and then trimmed that in his life this upon his death-bed his station shall be without doors his portion with unbelievers and the unction of the dying man shall no more strengthen his soul then it cures his body and the prayers for him after his death shall be of the same force as if they should pray that he should return to life again the next day and live as long as Lazarus in his return But I consider that it is not well that men should pretend any thing will do a man good when he dies and yet the same ministeries and ten times more assistances are found for fourty or fifty years together to be ineffectual can extreme unction at last cure what the Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist all his life time could not do Can prayers for a dead man do him more good then when he was alive If all his dayes the man belonged to death and the dominion of sin and from thence could not be recovered by Sermons and counsels and perpetual precepts and frequent Sacraments by confessions and absolutions by prayers and advocations by external ministeries and internal acts it is but too certain that his lamp cannot then be furnished his extreme unction is onely then of use when it is made by the oil that burned in his lamp in all the dayes of his expectation and waiting for the coming of the Bridegroom Neither can any supply be made in this case by their practise of praying for the dead though they pretend for this the fairest precedents of the Church and of the whole world The Heathens they say did it and the Jews did it and the Christians did it some were baptized for the dead in the dayes of the Apostles and very many were communicated for the dead for many ages after T is true they were so and did so the Heathens prayed for an easie grave and a perpetual spring that Saffron would rise from their beds of grasse The Jews prayed that the souls of their dead might be in the garden of Eden that they might have their part in Paradise and in the world to come and that they might hear the peace of the fathers of their generations sleeping in Hebron and the Christians prayed for a joyful resurrection for mercy at the day of judgement for the hastning of the coming of Christ the kingdom of God and they named all sorts of persons in their prayers all I mean but wicked persons all but them that liv'd evil lives they named Apostles Saints and Martyrs and all this is so nothing to their purpose or so much against it that the prayers for the dead used in the Church of Rome are moct plainly condemned because they are against the doctrine and practises of all the world in other forms to other purposes relying upon distinct doctrines until new opinions began to arise about S. Augustines time and changed the face of the proposition Concerning prayer for the dead the Church hath received no commandment from the Lord and therefore concerning it we can have no rules nor proportions but from those imperfect revelations of the state of departed souls and the measures of charity which can relate onely to the imperfection of their present condition and the terrors of the day of judgement but to think that any suppletory to an evil life can be taken from such devotions after the sinners are dead may incourage a bold man to sin but cannot relieve him when he hath But of all things in the world me thinks men should be most careful not to abuse dying people not onely because their condition is pitiable but because they shall soon be discovered and in the secret regions of souls there shall be an evil report concerning those men who have deceived them and if we believe we shall go to that place where such reports are made we may fear the shame and the amazement of being accounted impostors in the presence of Angels and all the wise holy men of the world To be erring and innocent is hugely pitiable and incident to mortality that we cannot help but to deceive or to destroy so great an interest as is that of a soul or to lessen its advantages by giving it trifling and false confidences is injurious and intolerable And therefore it were very well if all the Churches of the world would be extremely curious concerning their offices and ministeries of the visitation of the sick that their Ministers they send be holy and prudent that their instructions be severe and safe that their sentences be merciful and reasonable that their offices be sufficient and devout that their attendances be frequent and long that their deputations be special and peculiar that the doctrines upon which they ground their offices be true material and holy that their ceremonies be few and their advices wary that their
separation be full of caution their judgements not remisse their remissions not loose and dissolute and that all the whole ministration be made by persons of experience and charity for it is a sad thing to see our dead go forth of our hands they live incuriously and dye without regard and the last scene of their life which should be dressed with all spiritual advantages is abused by flattery and easie propositions and let go with carelesnesse and folly My Lord I have endeavoured to cure some part of the evil as well as I could being willing to relieve the needs of indigent people in such wayes as I can and therefore have described the duties which every sick man may do alone and such in which he can be assisted by the Minister and am the more confident that these my endeavours will be the better entertained because they are the first intire body of directions for sick and dying people that I remember to have been published in the Church of England In the Church of Rome there have been many but they are dressed with such Doctrines which are sometimes uselesse sometimes hurtfull and their whole designe of assistance which they commonly yeeld is at the best imperfect and the representment is too carelesse and loose for so severe an imployment So that in this affair I was almost forced to walk alone onely that I drew the rules and advices from the fountains of Scripture and the purest channels of the Primitive Church and was helped by some experience in the cure of souls I shall measure the successe of my labours not by popular noises or the sentences of curious persons but by the advantage which good people may receive my work here is not to please the speculative part of men but to minister to practise to preach to the weary to comfort the sick to assist the penitent to reprove the confident to strengthen weak hands and feeble knees having scarce any other possibilities left me of doing alms or exercising that charity by which we shall be judged at Doomsday It is enough for me to be an underbuilder in the House of God and I glory in the imployment I labour in the foundations and therefore the work needs no Apology for being plain so it be strong and well laid But My Lord as mean as it is I must give God thanks for the desires and the strength and next to him to you for that opportunity and little portion of leisure which I had to do it in for I must acknowledge it publikely and besides my prayers it is all the recompence I can make you my being quiet I owe to your Interest much of my support to your bounty and many other collaterall comforts I derive from your favour and noblenesse My Lord because I much honour you and because I would do honour to my self I have written your Name in the entrance of my Book I am sure you will entertain it because the designe related to your Dear Lady and because it may minister to your spirit in the day of visitation when God shall call for you to receive your reward for your charity and your noble piety by which you have not onely endeared very many persons but in great degrees have obliged me to be My Noblest Lord Your Lordships most thankfull and most humble servant TAYLOR THE TABLE CHAP. I. A General preparation towards a holy and blessed death by way of consideration 1. § I. Consideration of the vanity and shortnesse of mans life ibid. § II. The consideration reduced to practise 10. § III. Rules and spiritual arts of lengthening our dayes and to take off the objection of a short life 21. § IV. Consideration of the miseries of mans life 35. § V. The consideration reduced to practise 43. CHAP. II. A general preparation towards a holy and blessed death by way of exercise 48. § I. Three precepts preparatory to a holy death to be practised in our whole life ibid. § II. Of daily examination of our actions in the whole course of our health preparatory to our death bed 55. Reasons for a daily examination ibid. The benefits of this exercise 59 § III. Of exercising charity during our whole life 67. § IV. General considerations to inforce the former practises 71. The circumstances of a dying mans sorrow and danger 72. CHAP. III. Of the temptations incident to the state of sicknesse with their proper remedies 77. § I. Of the state of sicknesse ibid. § II. Of Impatience 81. § III. Constituent or integral parts of patience 84. § IV. Remedies against impatience by way of consideration 87. § V. Remedies against impatience by way of exercise 98. § VI. Advantages of sicknesse 104. Three appendant considerations 1â—0 121 122. § VII Remedies against fear of death by way of consideration 127 § VIII Remedies against fear of death by way of exercise 134. § IX General Rules and Exercises whereby our sicknesse may become safe and sanctified 143. CHAP. IV. Of the practise of the graces proper to the state of sicknesse which a sick man may practise alone 156. § I. Of the practise of patience by way of Rule 156 157. § II. Acts of patience by way of prayer and ejaculation 167. A prayer to be said in the beginning of a sicknesse 173. An act of resignation to be said in all the evil accidents of his sickness 174. A prayer for the grace of patience 175. A prayer to be said at the taking Physic 177. § III. Of the practise of the grace of faith in time of sicknesse 178. § IV. Acts of faith by way of prayer and ejaculation to be said by sick men in the dayes of their temptation 184. The prayer for the grace strengths of faith 186. § V. Of repentance in the time of sicknesse 188. § VI. Rules for the practise of repentance in sicknesse 195. Means of exciting contrition c. 200 § VII Acts of repentance by way of prayer and ejaculation 208. The prayer for the grace and perfection of repentance 210. A prayer for pardon of sins to be said frequently in time of sicknesse 212. An act of holy resolution of amendment of life in case of recovery 214. § VIII An analysis or resolution of the Decalogue enumerating the duties commanded and the sins forbidden in every Commandment for the helping the sick man in making his confession 216. The special precepts of the Gospel enumerated 69 227. § IX Of the sick mans practise of charity and justice by way of Rule 231. § X. Acts of charity by way of prayer and ejaculation which may also be used for thanksgiving in case of recovery 238. CHAP. V Of visitation of the sick or § I. The assistance that is to be done to dying persons by the ministery of their Clergy-Guides 242. § II. Rules for the manner of visitations of the sick 245. § III. Of ministring in the sick mans confession of sins and Repentance 250 Arguments and exhortations
to move the sick man to confession of sins ibid. Instruments by way of consideration to awaken a careless person and a stupid conscience 255. § IV. Of ministring to the restitution and pardon or reconciliation of the sick person by administring the holy Sacrament 268. § V. Of ministring to the sick person by the Spiritual man as he is the Physitian of souls 282. Considerations against unreasonable fears concerning forgivenesse of sins and its uncertainty and danger 283. An exercise against despair in the day of our death 293. § VI. Considerations against Presumption 301. § VII Offices to be said by the Minister in his visitation of the sick 306. The prayer of S. Eustratius the Martyr 310. A prayer taken out of the Greek Euchologion c. 311. The order of recommendation of the soul in its agony 313. Prayers to be said by the surviving friends in behalf of them selves 318. A prayer to be said in the case of a sudden death or pressing fatall danger 321. § VIII A peroration concerning the contingencies and treatings of our departed friends after death in order to their will and buriall 322. Vigilate et Orate quia nescitis horam CHAP. I. A general preparation towards a holy and blessed Death by way of consideration SECT I. Consideration of the vanity and shortnesse of Mans life A Man is a Bubble said the Greek Proverb which Lucian represents with advantages and its proper circumstances to this purpose saying that all the world is a storm and Men rise up in their several generations like bubbles descending à Iove pluvio from God and the dew of Heaven from a tear and drop of Man from Nature and Providence and some of these instantly sink into the deluge of their first parent and are hidden in a sheet of Water having had no other businesse in the world but to be born that they might be able to die others float up and down two or three turns and suddenly disappear and give their place to others and they that live longest upon the face of the waters are in perpetual motion restlesse and uneasy and being crushed with the great drop of a cloud sink into flatness and a froth the change not being great it being hardly possible it should be more a nothing then it was before So is every man He is born in vanity and sin he comes into the world like morning Mushromes soon thrusting up their heads into the air and conversing with their kinred of the same production and as soon they turn into dust and forgetfulnesse some of them without any other interest in the affairs of the world but that they made their parents a little glad and very sorrowful others ride longer in the storm it may be until seven yeers of Vanity be expired and then peradventure the Sun shines hot upon their heads and they fall into the shades below into the cover of death and darknesse of the grave to hide them But if the bubble stands the shock of a bigger drop and outlives the chances of a childe of a carelesse Nurse of drowning in a pail of water of being overlaid by a sleepy servant or such little accidents then the young man dances like a bubble empty and gay and shines like a Doves neck or the image of a rainbow which hath no substance and whose very imagery and colours are phantastical and so he dances out the gayety of his youth and is all the while in a storm and endures onely because he is not knocked on the head by a drop of bigger rain or crushed by the pressure of a load of indigested meat or quenched by the disorder of an ill placed humor and to preserve a man alive in the midst of so many chances and hostilities is as great a miracle as to create him to preserve him from rushing into nothing and at first to draw him up from nothing were equally the issues of an Almighty power And therefore the wise men of the world have contended who shall best fit mans condition with words signifying his vanity and short abode Homer cals a man a leaf the smallest the weakest piece of a short liv'd unsteady plant Pindar calls him the dream of a shadow Another the dream of the shadow of smoak But S. Iames spake by a more excellent Spirit saying Our life is but a vapor viz. drawn from the earth by a coelestial influence made of smoak or the lighter parts of water tossed with every winde moved by the motion of a superiour body without vertue in it self lifted up on high or left below according as it pleases the Sun its Foster-father But it is lighter yet It is but appearing A phantastic vapor an apparition nothing real it is not so much as a mist not the matter of a shower nor substantial enough to make a cloud but it is like Cassiopeia's chair or Pelops shoulder or the circles of Heaven 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for which you cannot have a word that can signify a veryer nothing And yet the expression is one degree more made diminutive A vapor and phantastical or a meer appearance and this but for a little while neither the very dream the phantasm disappears in a small time like the shadow that departeth or like a tale that is told or as a dream when one awaketh A man is so vain so unfixed so perishing a creature that he cannot long last in the scene of fancy a man goes off and is forgotten like the dream of a distracted person The summe of all is this That thou art a man then whom there is not in the world any greater instance of heights and declensions of lights and shadows of misery and folly of laughter and tears of groans and death And because this consideration is of great usefulnesse and great necessity to many purposes of wisdom and the Spirit all the succession of time all the changes in nature all the varieties of light and darknesse the thousand thousands of accidents in the world and every contingency to every man and to every creature does preach our funeral sermon and calls us to look and see how the old Sexton Time throws up the earth and digs a Grave where we must lay our sins or our sorrows and sowe our bodies till they rise again in a fair or in an intolerable eternity Every revolution which the sun makes about the world divides between life and death and death possesses both those portions by the next morrow and we are dead to all those moneths which we have already lived and we shall never live them over again and still God makes little periods of our age First we change our world when we come from the womb to feel the warmth of the sun Then we sleep and enter into the image of death in which state we are unconcerned in all the changes of the world and if our Mothers or our Nurses die or a wilde boar destroy our
vineyards or our King be sick we regard it not but during that state are as disinterest as if our eyes were closed with the clay that weeps in the bowels of the earth At the end of seven years our teeth fall and dye before us representing a formal prologue to the Tragedie and still every seven year it is oddes but we shall finish the last scene and when Nature or Chance or Vice takes our body in pieces weakening some parts and loosing others we taste the grave and the solennities of our own Funerals first in those parts that ministred to Vice and next in them that served for Ornament and in a short time even they that served for necessity become uselesse and intangled like the wheels of a broken clock Baldnesse is but a dressing to our funerals the proper ornament of mourning and of a person entred very far into the regions and possession of Death And we have many more of the same signification Gray hairs rotten teeth dim eyes trembling joynts short breath stiffe limbs wrinkled skin short memory decayed appetite Every dayes necessity calls for a reparation of that portion which death fed on all night when we lay in his lap and slept in his outer chambers The very spirits of a man prey upon the daily portion of bread and flesh and every meal is a rescue from one death and layes up for another and while we think a thought we die and the clock strikes and reckons on our portion of Eternity we form our words with the breath of our nostrils we have the lesse to live upon for every word we speak Thus Nature calls us to meditate of death by those things which are the instruments of acting it and God by all the variety of his Providence makes us see death every where in all variety of circumstances and dressed up for all the fancies and the expectation of every single person Nature hath given us one harvest every year but death hath two and the Spring and the Autumn send throngs of Men and Women to charnel houses and all the Summer long men are recovering from their evils of the Spring till the dog dayes come and then the Syrian star makes the summer deadly And the fruits of Autumn are laid up for all the years provision and the man that gathers them eats and sursets and dies and needs them not and himself is laid up for Eternity and he that escapes till winter only stayes for another opportunity which the distempers of that quarter minister to him with great variety Thus death reigns in all the portions of our time The Autumn with its fruits provides disorders for us and the Winters cold turns them into sharp diseases and the Spring brings flowers to strew our herse and the Summer gives green turfe and brambles to binde upon our graves Calentures and Surâ—et Cold and Agues are the four quarters of the year and all minister to Death and you can go no whither but you tread upon a dead mans bones The wilde fellow in Petronius that escaped upon a broken table from the furies of a shipwrack as he was sunning himself upon the rocky shore espied a man rolled upon his floating bed of waves ballasted w th sand in the folds of his garment and carried by his civil enemy the sea towards the shore to finde a grave and it cast him into some sad thoughts that peradventure this mans wife in some part of the Continent safe and warme looks next moneth for the good mans return or it may be his son knows nothing of the tempest or his father thinks of that affectionate kiss which still is warm upon the good old mans cheek ever since he took a kinde farewel and he weeps with joy to think how blessed he shall be when his beloved boy returns into the circle of his Fathers arms These are the thoughts of mortals this is the end and sum of all their designes a dark night and an ill Guide a boysterous sea and a broken Cable a hard rock and a rough winde dash'd in pieces the fortune of a whole family and they that shall weep loudest for the accident are not yet entred into the storm and yet have suffered shipwrack Then looking upon the carkasse he knew it and found it to be the Master of the ship who the day before cast up the accounts of his patrimony and his trade and named the day when he thought to be at home see how the man swims who was so angry two dayes since his passions are becalm'd with the storm his accounts cast up his cares at an end his voyage done and his gains are the strange events of death which whither they be good or evil the men that are alive seldom trouble themselves concerning the interest of the dead But seas alone do not break our vessel in pieces Every where we may be shipwracked A valiant General when he is to reap the harvest of his crowns and triumphs fights unprosperously or falls into a Feaver with joy and wine and changes his Lawrel into Cypresse his triumphal chariot to an Hearse dying the night before he was appointed to perish in the drunkennesse of his festival joyes It was a sad arrest of the loosenesses and wilder feasts of the French Court when their King Henry 2. was killed really by the sportive image of a fight And many brides have died under the hands of Paranymphs and Maidens dressing them for uneasy joy the new and undiscerned chains of Marriage according to the saying of Bensirah the wise Jew The Bride went into her chamber and knew not what should befall her there Some have been paying their vows and giving thanks for a prosperous return to their own house and the roof hath descended upon their heads and turned their loud religion into the deeper silence of a grave And how many teeming Mothers have rejoyced over their swelling wombs and pleased themselves in becoming the chanels of blessing to a familie and the Midwife hath quickly bound their heads and feet and carried them forth to burial Or else the birth day of an Heir hath seen the Coffin of the Father brought into the house and the divided Mother hath been forced to travel twice with a painful birth and a sadder death There is no state no accident no circumstance of our life but it hath been sowred by some sad instance of a dying friend a friendly meeting often ends in some sad mischance and makes an eternal parting and when the Poet Eschylus was sitting under the walls of his house an eagle hovering over his bald head mistook it for a stone and let fall his oyster hoping there to break the shell but pierced the poor mans skull Death meets us every where and is procured by every instrument and in all chances and enters in at many doors by violence and secret influence by the aspect of a star and the stink of a mist by the emissions
it he never stirred up the holy fire among the Magi nor touched his God with the sacred rod according to the Laws he never offered sacrifice nor worshipped the Deity nor administred justice nor spake to his people nor numbred them but he was most valiant to eat and drink and having mingled his wines he threw the rest upon the stones This man is dead Behold his Sepulchre and now hear where Ninus is Some times I was Ninus and drew the breath of a living man but now am nothing but clay I have nothing but what I did eat and what I served to my self in lust that was and is all my portion the wealth with which I was esteemed blessed my enemies meeting together shall bear away as the mad Thyades carry a raw Goat I am gone to Hell and when I went thither I neither carried Gold nor Horse nor silver Chariot I that wore a Miter am now a little heap of dust I know not any thing that can better represent the evil condition of a wicked man or a changing greatnesse From the greatest secular dignity to dust and ashes his nature bears him and from thence to Hell his sins carry him and there he shall be for ever under the dominion of chains and devils wrath and an intollerable calamity This is the reward of an unsanctified condition and a greatnesse ill gotten or ill administred 2. Let no man extend his thoughts or let his hopes wander towards future and far distant events and accidental contingencies This day is mine and yours but ye know not what shall be on the morrow and every morning creeps out of a dark cloud leaving behinde it an ignorance and silence deep as midnight and undiscerned as are the phantasms that make a Chrysome childe to smile so that we cannot discern what comes hereafter unlesse we had a light from Heaven brighter then the vision of an Angel even the Spirit of Prophesie Without revelation we cannnot tell whether we shal eat to morrow or whether a Squinzy shall choak us and it is written in the unrevealed folds of Divine Predestination that many who are this day alive shall to morrow be laid upon the cold earth and the women shall weep over their shrowd and dresse them for their funeral S. Iames in his Epistle notes the solly of some men his contemporaries who were so impatient of the event of to morrow or the accidents of next year or the good or evils of old age that they would consult Astrologers and witches Oracles and Devils what should befall them the next Calends what should be the event of such a voyage what God had written in his book concerning the successe of battels the Election of Emperors the Heir of families the price of Merchandise the return of the Tyrian fleer the rate of Sidonian Carpets and as they were taught by the crafty and lying Daemons so they would expect the issue and oftentimes by disposing their affairs in order toward such events really did produce some litle accidents according to their expectation and that made them trust the Oracles in greater things and in all Against this he opposes his Counsel that we should not search after forbidden records much lesse by uncertain significations for whatsoever is disposed to happen by the order of natural causes or civil counsels may be rescinded by a peculiar decree of providence or be prevented by the death of the interested persons who while their hopes are full and their causes conjoyned and the work brought forward and the sickle put into the harvest and the first fruits offered and ready to be eaten even then if they put forth their hand to an event that stands but at the door at that door their body may be carried forth to burial before the expectation shall enter into fruition When Richilda the Widow of Albert Earl of Ebersberg had feasted the Emperour Henry III. and petitioned in behalf of her Nephew Welpho for some lands formerly possessed by the Earl her Husband just as the Emperour held out his hand to signifie his consent the chamber-floor suddenly fell under them and Richilda falling upon the edge of a bathing vessel was bruised to death and stayed not to see her Nephew sleep in those lands which the Emperour was reaching forth to her and placed at the door of restitution 3. As our hopes must be confined so must our designes let us not project long designes crafty plots and diggings so deep that the intrigues of a designe shall never be unfolded till our Grand children have forgotten our vertues or our vices The work of our soul is cut short facile sweet and plain and fitted to the small portions of our shorter life and as we must not trouble our inquiry so neither must we intricate our labour and purposes with what we shall never enjoy This rule does not forbid us to plant Orchards which shall feed our Nephews with their fruit for by such provisions they do something towards an imaginary immortality and do charity to their Relatives But such projects are reproved which discompose our present duty by long and future designes such which by casting our labours to events at distance make us lesse to remember our death standing at the door It is fit for a Man to work for his dayes wages or to contrive for the hire of a week or to lay a train to make provisions for such a time as is within our eye and in our duty and within the usual periods of Mans life for whatsoever is made necessary is also made prudent but while we plot and buisy our selves in the toils of an ambitious war or the levies of a great estate Night enters in upon us and tells all the world how like fools we lived and how deceived and miserably we dyed Seneca tells of Senecio Cornelius a man crafty in getting and tenacious in holding a great estate and one who was as diligent in the care of his body as of his money curious of his health as of his possessions that he all day long attended upon his sick and dying friend but when he went away was quickly comforted supped merrily went to bed cheerfully and on a sudden being surprized by a Squinzy scarce drew his breath until the Morning but by that time dyed being snatched from the torrent of his fortune and the swelling tide of wealth and a likely hope bigger then the necessities of ten men This accident was much noted then in Rome because it happened in so great a fortune and in the midst of wealthy designes and presently it made wise men to consider how imprudent a person he is who disposes of ten years to come when he is not Lord of to morrow 4. Though we must not look so far ofâ— and prey abroad yet we must be buisie neer at hand we must with all arts of the Spirit seize upon the present because it passes from us while we
much holinesse mortified sin with so great a labour purchased vertue at such a rate and so rare an industry It must needs be that such a man must dye when he ought to die and be like ripe and pleasant fruit falling from a fair tree and gathered into baskeâ—s for the planters use He that hath done â—ll his businesse and is begotten to a glorious hope by the seed of an immortal Spirit can never die too soon nor live too long Xerxes wept sadly when he saw his army of 2300000 men because he considered that within a hundred years all the youth of that army should be dust and ashes and yet as Seneca well observes of him he was the man that should bring them to their graves and he consumed all that army in two years for whom he feared and wept the death after an hundred Just so we do all We complain that within thirty or fourty years a little more or a great deal lesse we shall descend again into the bowels of our Mother and that our life is too short for any great imployment and yet we throw away five and â—hirty yeers of our fourty and the remaining five we divide between art and nature civility and customs necessity and convenience prudent counsels and religion but the portion of the last is little and contemptible and yet that little is all that we can prudently account of our lives We bring that fate and that death neer us of whose approach we are so sadly apprehensive 4. In taking the accounts of your life do not reckon by great distances and by the periods of pleasure or the satisfaction of your hopes or the stating your desires but let every intermedial day and hour passe with observation He that reckons he hath lived but so many harvests thinks they come not often enough and that they go away too soon Some lose the day with longing for the night and the night in waiting for the day Hope and phantastic expectations spend much of our lives and while with passion we look for a coronation or the death of an enemy or a day of joy passing from fancy to possession without any intermedial notices we throw away a precious year and use it but as the burden of our time fit to be pared off and thrown away that we may come at those little pleasures which first steal our hearts and then steal our life 5. A strict course of piety is the way to prolong our lives in the natural sense and to adde good portions to the number of our years and sin is sometimes by natural causality very often by the anger of God and the Divine judgement a cause of sudden and untimely death Concerning which I shall adde nothing to what I have some where else said of this article but onely the observation of Epiphanius that for 3332 years even to the twentieth age there was not one example of a son that died before his Father but the course of Nature was kept that he who was first born in the descending line did first die I speak of natural death and therefore Abel cannot be opposed to this observation till that Terah the Father of Abraham taught the people a new religion to make images of clay and worship them and concerning him it was first remarked that Haran died before his Father Terah in the land of his Nativity God by an unheard of judgement and a rare accident punishing his newly invented crime by the untimely death of his son 6. But if I shall describe a living man a man that hath that life that distinguishes him from a fool or a bird that which gives him a capacity next to Angels we shall finde that even a good man lives not long because it is long before he is born to this life and longer yet before he hath a mans growth He that can look upon death and see its face with the same countenance with which he hears its story that can endure all the labours of his life with his soul supporting his body that can equally despise riches when he hath them and when he hath them not that is not sadder if they lye in his Neighbours trunks nor more brag if they shine round about his own walls he that is neither moved with good fortune coming to him nor going from him that can look upon another mans lands evenly and pleasedly as if they were his own and yet look upon his own and use them too just as if they were another mans that neither spends his goods prodigally and like a fool nor yet keeps them avaritiously and like a wretch that weighs not benefits by weight and number but by the mind circumstances of him that gives them that never thinks his charity expensive if a worthy person be the receiver he that does nothing for opinion sake but every thing for conscience being as curious of his thoughts as of his actings in markets and Theaters and is as much in awe of himself as of a whole assembly he that knowes God looks on and contrives his secret affairs as in the presence of God and his holy Angels that eats and drinks because he needs it not that he may serve a lust or load his belly he that is bountifull and cheerfull to his friends and charitable and apt to forgive his enemies that loves his countrey and obeyes his Prince and desires and endeavours nothing more then that he may do honour to God this person may reckon his life to be the life of a man and compute his moneths not by the course of the sun but the Zodiac and circle of his vertues because these are such things which fools and children and birds and beasts cannot have These are therefore the actions of life because they are the feeds of immortality That day in which we have done some excellent thing we may as truly reckon to be added to our life as were the fifteen years to the dayes of Hezekiah SECT IV. Consideration of the miseries of Mans life AS our life is very short so it is very miserable and therefore it is well it is short God in pity to mankinde lest his burden should be insupportable and his nature an intolerable load hath reduced our state of misery to an abbreviature and the greateâ— our misery is the lesse while it is like to last the sorrows of a mans spirit being like ponderous weights which by the greatnesse of their burden make a swifter motion and descend into the grave to rest and ease our wearied limbs for then onely we shall sleep quietly when those fetters are knocked off which not onely bound our souls in prison but also eat the flesh till the very bones open'd the secret garments of their cartilages discovering their nakednesse and sorrow 1. Here is no place to sit down in but you must rise as soon as you are set for we have gnats in our chambers and worms in
ignorance and prodigious errours made ridiculous with a thousand weaknesses worne away with labours loaden with diseases daily vexed with dangers and temptations and in love with misery we are weakned with delights afflicted with want with the evils of my self and of all my family and with the sadnesses of all my friends and of all good men even of the whole Church and therefore me thinks we need not be troubled that God is pleased to put an end to all these troubles and to let them sit down in a natural period which if we please may be to us the beginning of a better life When the Prince of Persia wept because his army should all die in the revolution of an age Artabanus told him that they should all meet with evils so many and so great that every man of them should wish himself dead long before that Indeed it were a sad thing to be cut of the stone and we that are in health tremble to think of it but the man that is wearied with the disease looks upon that sharpnesse as upon his cure and remedie and as none need to have a tooth drawn so none could well endure it but he that hath felt the pain of it in his head so is our life so full of evils that therefore death is no evil to them that have felt the smart of this or hope for the joyes of a better 2. But as it helps to ease a certain sorrow as a fire drawes out fire and a nail drives forth a nail so it instructs us in a present duty that is that we should not be so fond of a perpetual storm nor doat upon the transient gaudes and gilded thorns of this world They are not worth a passion not worth a sigh or a groan not of the price of one nights watching and therefore they are mistaken and miserable persons who since Adam planted thorns round about Paradise are more in love with that hedge then all the fruits of the garden sottish admirers of things that hurt them of sweet poisons gilded daggers and silken halters Tell them they have lost a bounteous friend a rich purchase a fair farm a wealthy donative and you dissolve their patience it is an evil bigger then their spirit can bear it brings sicknesse and death they can neither eate nor sleep with such a sorrow But if you represent to them the evils of a vitious habit and the dangers of a state of sin if you tell them they have displeased God and interrupted their hopes of heaven it may be they will be so civil as to hear it patiently and to treat you kindly and first commend and then to forget your story because they prefer this world with all its sorrowes before the pure unmingled felicities of heaven But it is strange that any man should be so passionately in love with the thorns that grow on his own ground that he should wear them for armelets and knit them in his shirt and prefer them before a kingdom and immortality No man loves this world the better for his being poor but men that love it because they have great possessions love it because it is troublesome and chargeable full of noise and temptation because it is unsafe and ungoverned flattered and abused and he that considers the troubles of an overlong garment and of a crammed stomach a trailing gown and a loaden Table may justly understand that all that for which men are so passionate is their hurt and their objection that which a temperate man would avoid and a wise man cannot love He that is no fool but can consider wisely if he be in love with this world we need not despair but that a witty man might reconcile him with tortures and make him think charitably of the Rack and be brought to dwell with Vipers and Dragons and entertain his Guests with the shrikes of Mandrakes Cats and Scrich Owls with the filing of iron and the harshnesse of rending silk or to admire the harmony that is made by a herd of Evening wolves when they misse their draught of blood in their midnight Revels The groans of a man in a fit of the stone are worse then all these and the distractions of a troubled conscience are worse then those groans and yet a carelesse merry sinner is worse then all that But if we could from one of the battlements of Heaven espie how many men and women at this time lye fainting and dying for want of bread how many young men are hewen down by the sword of war how many poor Orphans are now weeping over the graves of their Father by whose life they were enabled to eat If we could but hear how many Mariners and Passengers are at this present in a storm and shrike out because their keel dashes against a Rock or bulges under them how many people there are that weep with want and are mad with oppression or are desperate by too quick a sense of a constant infelicity in all reason we should be glad to be out of the noise and participation of so many evils This is a place of sorrows and tears of great evils and a constant calamity let us remove from hence at least in affections and preparation of minde CHAP. II. A general preparation towards a holy and blessed Death by way of exercise SECT I. Three precepts preparatory to a holy death to be practised in our whole life 1. HE that would die well must alwayes loook for death every day knocking at the gates of the grave and then the gates of the grave shall never prevail upon him to do him mischief This was the advice of all the wise and good men of the world who especially in the dayes and periods of their joy and festival egressions chose to throw some ashes into their chalices some sober remembrances of their fatal period Such was the black shirt of Saladine the tomb-stone presented to the Emperour of Constantinople on his Coronation day the Bishop of Romes two reeds with flax and wax taper the Egyptian skeleton served up at feasts and Trimalcions banquet in Petronius in which was brought in the image of a dead mans bones of silver with spondiles exactly turning to every of the Guests and saying to every one that you and you must die and look not one upon another for every one is equally concerned in this sad representment These in phantastic semblances declare a severe counsel and useful meditation and it is not easy for a man to be gay in his imagination or to be drunk with joy or wine pride or revenge who considers sadly that he must ere long dwell in a house of darknesse and dishonour and his bodie must be the inheritance of worms and his soul must be what he pleases even as a man makes it here by his living good or bad I have read of a young Hermit who being passionately in love with a young Lady could not by all the
and unavoidable forgetfulnesse will be enough to be intrusted to such a bank and that if a general repentance will serve towards their expiation it will be an infinite mercy but we have nothing to warrant our confidence if we shall think it to be enough on our death-bed to confesse the notorious actions of our lives and to say The Lord be merciful to me for the infinite transgressions of my life which I have wilfully or carelesly forgot for very many of which the repentance the distinct particular circumstantiate repentance of a whole life would have been too little if we could have done more 5. After the enumeration of these advantanges I shall not need to adde that if we decline or refuse to call our selves frequently to account and to use daily advices concerning the state of our souls it is a very ill signe that our souls are not right with God or that they do not dwell in religion But this I shall say that they who do use this exercise frequently will make their conscience much at ease by casting out a daily load of humor and surfet the matter of diseases and the instruments of death He that does not frequently search his conscience is a house without a window and like a wilde untutored son of a fond and undiscerning widow But if this exercise seem too great a trouble and that by such advices religion will seem a burden I have two things to oppose against it 1. One is that we had better â—ear the burden of the Lord then the burden of a base and polluted conscience Religion cannot be so great a trouble as a guilty soul and whatsoever trouble can be fancied in this or any other action of religion it is onely to unexperienced persons It may be a trouble at first just as is every change and every new accident but if you do it frequently and accustom your spirit to it as the custom will make it easy so the advantages wil make it delectable that will make it facile as nature these will make it as pleasant and eligible as reward 2. The other thing I have to say is this That to examine our lives will be no trouble if we do not intricate it with businesses of the world and the Labyrinths of care and impertinent affairs A man had need have a quiet and disintangled life who comes to search into all his actions and to make judgement concerning his errors and his needs his remedies and his hopes They that have great intrigues of the world have a yoak upon their necks cannot look back and he that covets many things greedily and snatches at high things ambitiously that despises his Neighbour proudly and bears his crosses peevishly or his prosperity impotently and passionately he that is prodigal of his precious time and is tenacious and retentive of evil purposes is not a man disposed to this exercise he hath reason to be afraid of his own memory and to dash his glasse in pieces because it must needs represent to his own eyes an intolerable deformity He therefore that resolves to live well whatsoever it costs him he that will go to Heaven at any rate shall best tend this duty by neglecting the affairs of the world in all things where prudently he may But if we do otherwise we shall finde that the accounts of our death-bed and the examination made by a disturbed understanding will be very empty of comfort and full of inconveniencies 6. For hence it comes that men dye so timorously and uncomfortably as if they were forced out of their lives by the violencies of an executioner Then without much examination they remember how wickedly they have lived without religion against the laws of the covenant of grace without God in the world then they see sin goes off like an amazed wounded affrighted person from a lost battel without honour without a veil with nothing but shame sad remembrances Then they can consider that if they had lived vertuously all the trouble and objection of that would now be past and all that had remained should be peace and joy and all that good which dwells within the house of God and eternal life But now they finde they have done amisse and dealt wickedly they have no bank of good works but a huge treasure of wrath and they are going to a strange place and what shall be their lot is uncertain so they say when they would comfort and flatter themselves but in truth of religion their portion is sad and intollerable without hope and without refreshment and they must use little silly arts to make them go off from their stage of sins with some handsom circumstances of opinion They will in civility be abused that they may die quietly and go decently to their execution and leave their friends indifferently contented and apt to be comforted and by that time they are gone awhile they see that they deceived themselves all their dayes and were by others deceived at last Let us make it our own case we shall come to that state and period of condition in which we shall be infinitely comforted if we have lived well er else be amazed and go off trembling because we are guilty of heaps of unrepented and unforsaken sins It may happen we shall not then understand it so because most men of late ages have been abused with false principles and they are taught or they are willing to believe that a little thing is enough to save them and that heaven is so cheap a purchase that it will fall upon them whether they will or no. The misery of it is they will not suffer themselves to be confuted till it be too late to recant their errour In the interim they are impatient to be examined as a leper is of a comb and are greedy of the world as children of raw fruit and they hate a severe reproof as they do thorns in their beds and they love to lay aside religion as a drunken person does to forget his sorrow and all the way they dream of fine things and their dreams prove contrary and become the hieroglyphics of an eternal sorrow The daughter of Polycrates dreamed that her Father was lifted up and that Iupiter washed him and the Sun anointed him but it proved to him but a sad prosperity for after a long life of constant prosperous successes he was surprized by his enemies and hanged up till the dew of heaven wet his cheeks and the Sun melted his grease Such is the condition of those persons who living either in the despight or in the neglect of religion lye wallowing in the drunkennesse of prosperity or worldly cares they think themselves to be exalted till the evil day overtakes them and then they can expound their dream of life to end in a sad and hopelesse death I remember that Cleomenes that was called a God by the Egyptians because when he was hang'd a serpent grew out of his
body and wrapt it self about his head till the Philosophers of Egypt said it was natural that from the marrow of some bodies such productions should arise and indeed it represents the condition of some men who being dead are esteemed saints and beatified persons when their head is encircled with dragons and is entered into the possession of Devils that old serpent and deceiver For indeed their life was secretly so corrupted that such serpents fed upon the ruines of the spirit and the decayes of grace and reason To be cosened in making judgements concerning our finall condition is extremely easie but if we be cosened we are infinitely miserable SECT III. Of exercising Charity during our whole life HE that would die well and happily must in his life time according to all his capacities exercise charity and because Religion is the life of the soul and charity is the life of religion the same which gives life to the better part of man which never dies may obtain of God a mercy to the inferiour part of man in the day of its dissolution 1. Charity is the great chanel through which God passes all his mercy upon mankinde For we receive absolution of our sins in proportion to our forgiving our brother this is the rule of our hopes and the measure of our desire in this world and in the day of death and judgement the great sentence upon mankinde shall be transacted according to our almes which is the other part of Charity Certain it is that God cannot will not never did reject a charitable man in his greatest needs and in his most passionate prayers for God himself is love and every degree of charity that dwells in us is the participation of the divine nature and therefore when upon our death-bed a cloud covers our heads and we are enwrapped with sorrow when we feel the weight of a sicknesse and do not feel the refreshing visitations of Gods loving kindnesse when we have many things to trouble us and looking round about us we see no comforter then call to minde what injuries you have forgiven how apt you were to pardon all affronts and real persecutions how you embraced peace when it was offered you how you followed after peace when it run from you and when you are weary of one side turn upon the other and remember the alms that by the grace of God and his assistances you have done and look up to God and with the eye of faith behold him coming in the cloud and pronouncing the sentence of dooms day according to his mercies and thy charity 2. Charity with its Twin-daughters almes and forgivenesse is especially effectual for the procuring Gods mercies in the day and the manner of our death almes deliver from death said old Tobias and almes make an atonement for sins said the son of Sirach and so said Daniel and so say all the wise men of the world And in this sence also is that of S. Peter Love covers a multitude of sins and S. Clement in his Constitutions gives this counsell If you have any thing in your hands give it that it may work to the remission of thy sins for by faith and alms sins are purged The same also is the counsel of Salviâ—n who wonders that men who are guilty of great and many sins will not work out their pardon by alms and mercy But this also must be added out of the words of Lactantius who makes this rule compleat and useful But think not that because sins are taken away by alms that by thy money thou mayest purchase a license to sin For sins are abolished if because thou hast sinned thou givest to God that is to Gods poor servants and his indigent necessitous creature But if thou sinnest upon confidence of giving thy sins are not abolished For God desires infinitely that men should be purged from their sins and therefore commands us to repent But to repent is nothing else but to professe and affirm that is to purpose and to make good that purpose that they will sin no more Now almes are therefore effective to the abolition and pardon of our sins because they are preparatory to and impetratory of the grace of repentance and are fruits of repentance and therefore S. Chrysostom affirmes that repentance without almes is dead and without wings and can never soar upwards to the element of love But because they are a part of repentance and hugely pleasing to Almighty God therefore they deliver us from the evils of an unhappy and accursed death for so Christ delivered his Disciples from the sea when he appeased the storm though they still sailed in the chanel and this S. Hierome verifies with all his reading and experience saying I do not remember to have read that ever any charitable person died an evil death and although a long experience hath observed Gods mercies to descend upon charitable people like the dew upon Gideons fleece when all the world was dry yet for this also we have a promise which is not onely an argument of a certain number of years as experience is but a security for eternall ages Make ye friends of the mammon of unrighteousnesse that when ye fail they may receive you into everlasting habitations When faith fails and chastity is uselesse and temperance shall be no more then charity shall bear you upon wings of cherubins to the eternall mountain of the Lord. I have been a lover of mankinde and a friend and mercifull and now I expect to communicate in that great kindnesse which he shews that is the great God and Father of men and mercies said Cyrus the Persian on his death-bed I do not mean this should onely be a death-bed charity any more then a death-bed repentance but it ought to be the charity of our life healthfull years a parting with portions of our goods then when we can keep them we must not first kindle our lights when we are to descend into our houses of darknesse or bring a glaring torch suddenly to a dark room that will amaze the eye and not delight it or instruct the body but if our Tapers have in their constant course descended into their grave crowned all the way with light then let the death-bed charity be doubled and the light burn brightest when it is to deck our hearse But concerning this I shall afterwards give account SECT IV. General considerations to enforce the former practises THese are the generall instruments of preparation in order to a holy death It will concern us all to use them diligently and speedily for we must be long in doing that which must be done but once and therefore we must begin betimes and lose no time especially since it is so great a venture and upon it depends so great a state Seneca said well There is no Science or Art in the world so hard as to
checked with the stiffnesse of a tower or the united strength of a wood it grew mighty and dwelt there and made the highest branches stoop and make a smooth path for it on the top of all its glories So is sicknesse and so is the grace of God When sicknesse hath made the difficulty then Gods grace hath made a triumph and by doubling its power hath created new proportions of a reward and then shews its biggest glory when it hath the greatest difficulty to Master the greatest weaknesses to support the most busie temptations to contest with For so God loves that his strength should be seen in our weaknesse and our danger Happy is that state of life in which our services to God are the dearest and the most expensive 5. Sicknesse hath some degrees of eligibility at least by an after-choice because to all persons which are within the possibilities and state of pardon it becomes a great instrument of pardon of sins For as God seldom rewards here and hereafter too So it is not very often that he punishes in both states In great and finall sins he doth so but we finde it expressed onely in the case of the sin against the Holy Ghost which shall never be forgiven in this world nor in the world to come that is it shall be punished in both worlds and the infelicities of this world shall but usher in the intollerable calamities of the next But this is in a case of extremity and in sins of an unpardonable malice In those lesser stages of death which are deviations from the rule and not a destruction and perfect antinomy to the whole institution God very often smites with his rod of sicknesse that he may not for ever be slaying the soul with eternall death I will visit their offences with the rod and their sin with scourges Neverthelesse my loving kindenesse will I not utterly take from him nor suffer my truth to fail And there is in the New Testament a delivering over to Satan and a consequent buffeting for the mortification of the flesh indeed but that the soul may be saved in the day of the Lord. And to some persons the utmost processe of Gods anger reaches but to a sharp sicknesse or at most but to a temporall death and then the little momentany anger is spent and expires in rest and a quiet grave Origen S. Austin and Cassian say concerning Ananias and Sapphira that they were slain with a sudden death that by such a judgement their sin might be punished and their guilt expiated and their persons reserved for mercy in the day of judgement And God cuts off many of his children from the land of the living and yet when they are numbred amongst our dead he findes them in the book of life written amongst those that shall live to him for ever and thus it happened to many new Christians in the Church of Corinth for their little undecencies and disorders in the circumstances of receiving the holy Sacrament S. Paul sayes that many amongst them were sick may were weak and some were fallen asleep He expresses the divine anger against those persons in no louder accents which according to the stile of the New Testament where all the great transactions of duty and reproof are generally made upon the stock of Heaven and Hell is plainly a reserve and a period set to the declaration of Gods wrath For God knowes that the torments of hell are so horrid so insupportable a calamity that he is not easy and apt to cast those souls which he hath taken so much care and hath been at so much expence to save into the eternal never dying flames of Hell lightly for smaller sins or after a fairly begun repentance and in the midst of holy desires to finish it But God takes such penalties and exacts such fines of us which we may pay salvo contenemento saving the main stake of all even our precious souls And therefore S. Augustine prayed to God in his penitential sorrowes Here O Lord burn and cut my flesh that thou mayest spare me for ever For so said our blessed Saviour Every sacrifice must be seasoned with salt and every sacrifice must be burnt with fire that is we must abide in the state of grace and if we have committed sins we must expect to be put into the state of affliction and yet the sacrifice will send up a right and unâ—roubled cloud and a sweet smell to joyn with the incense of the Altar where the eternal Priest offers a never ceasing sacrifice And now I have said a thing against which there can be no exceptions and of which no just reason can make abatement For when sicknesse which is the condition of our nature is called for with purposes of redemption when we are sent to death to secure eternal life when God strikes us that he may spare us it shewes that we have done things which he essentially hates and therefore we must be smitten with the rod of God but in the midst of judgement God remembers mercy and makes the rod to be medicinal and like the rod of God in the hand of Aaron to shoot forth buds and leaves and Almonds hopes and mercies and eternal recompences in the day of restitution This is so great a good to us if it be well conducted in all the chanels of its intention and designe that if we had put off the objections of the flesh with abstractions contempts and separations so as we ought to do were as earnestly to be prayed for as any gay blessing that crowns our cups with joy and our heads with garlands and forgetfulnesse But this was it which I said that this may nay that it ought to be chosen at least by an after-election for so said S. Paul If we judge our selves we shall not be condemned of the Lord that is if we judge our selves worthy of the sicknesse if we acknowledge and confesse Gods justice in smiting us if we take the rod of God in our own hands and are willing to imprint it in the flesh we are workers together with God in the infliction and then the sickness beginning and being managed in the vertue of repentance and patience and resignation and charity will end in peace and pardon and justification and consignation to glory That I have spoken truth I have brought Gods Spirit speaking in Scripture for a witnesse But if this be true there are not many states of life that have advantages which can out-weigh this great instrument of security to our final condition Moses dyed at the mouth of the Lord said the story he died with the kisses of the Lords mouth so the Chaldee Paraphrase it was the greatest act of kindesse that God did to his servant Moses he kissed him and he died But I have some things to observe for the better finishing this consideration 1. All these advantages and lessenings of evil in the
of mercy to preserve their innocence to overcome temptation to try their vertue to fit them for rewards it is certain that sicknesse never is an evil but by our own faults and if we will do our duty we shall be sure to turn it into a blessing If the sicknesse be great it may end in death and the greater it is the sooner and if it be very little it hath great intervalls of rest if it be between both we may be Masters of it and by serving the ends of Providence serve also the perfective end of humane nature and enter into the possession of everlasting mercies The summe is this He that is afraid of pain is afraid of his own nature and if his fear be violent it is a signe his patience is none at all and an impatient person is not ready dressed for heaven None but suffering humble and patient persons can go to heaven and when God hath given us the whole stage of our life to exercise all the active vertues of religion it is necessary in the state of vertues that some portion and period of our lives be assigned to passive graces for patience for Christian fortitude for resignation or conformity to the Divine will But as the violent fear of sicknesse makes us impatient so it will make our death without comfort and without religion and we shall go off from our stage of actions and sufferings with an unhandsome exit because we were willing to receive the Kindnesse of God when he expressed it as we listed But we would not suffer him to be kinde and gracious to us in his own method nor were willing to exercise and improve our vertues at the charge of a sharp Feaver or a lingring consumption Woe be to the man that hath lost patience for what will he do when the Lord shall visit him SECT VII The second temptation proper to the state of sicknesse Fear of death with its remedies THere is nothing which can make sicknesse unsanctified but the same also will give us cause to fear death If therefore we so order our affairs and spirits that we do noâ— fear death our sickness may easily become our advantage and we can then receive counsel and consider and do those acts of vertue which are in that state the proper services of God and such which men in bondage and fear are not capable of doing or of advices how they should when they come to the appointed dayes of mourning And indeed if men would but place their designe of being happy in the noblenesse courage and perfect resolutions of doing handsome things and passing thorough our unavoidable necessities in the contempt and despite of the things of this world and in holy living and the perfective desires of our natures the longings and pursuances after Heaven it is certain they could not be made miserable by chance and change by sicknesse and death But we are so softned and made effeminate with delicate thoughts and meditations of ease and brutish satisfactions that if our death comes before we have seized upon a great-fortune or enjoy the promises of the fortune tellers we esteem our selves to be robbed of our goods to be mocked and miserable Hence it comes that men are impatient of the thoughts of death hence comes those arts of protraction and delaying the significations of old age thinking to deceive the world men cosen themselves and by representing themselves youthfull they certainly continue their vanity till Proserpina pull the perruke from their heads We cannot deceive God and nature for a coffin is a coffin though it be covered with a pompous veil and the minutes of our time strike on and are counted by Angels till the period comes which must cause the passing bell to give warning to all the neighbours that thou art dead and they must be so and nothing can excuse or retard this and if our death could be put off a little longer what advantage can it be in thy accounts of nature or felicity They that 3000 years agone dyed unwillingly and stopped death two dayes or staid it a week what is their gain where is that week and poor spirited men use arts of protraction and make their persons pitiable but their condition contemptible beeing like the poor sinners at Noahs flood the waters drove them out of their lower rooms then they crept up to the roof having lasted half a day longer and then they knew not how to get down some crept upon the top branch of a tree and some climbed up to a mountain and staid it may be three dayes longer but all that while they endured a worse torment then death they lived with amazement and were distracted with the ruines of mankinde and the horrour of an universal deluge Remedies against the fear of death by way of consideration 1. God having in this world placed us in a sea and troubled the sea with a continual storm hath appointed the Church for a ship and religion to be the sterne but there is no haven or port but death Death is that harbour whither God hath designed every one that there he may finde rest from the troubles of the world How many of the noblest Romans have taken death for sanctuary and have esteemed it less then shame or a mean dishonour And Caesar was cruel to Domitius Captain of Corfinium when he had taken the town from him that he refused to signe his petition of death Death would have hid his head with honour but that cruel mercy reserved him to the shame of surviving his disgrace The Holy Scripture giving an account of the reasons of the divine providence taking Godly men from this world and shutting them up in a hasty grave sayes that they are taken from the evils to come and concerning our selves it is certain if we had ten years agone taken seizure of our portion of dust death had not taken us from good things but from infinite evils such which the sun hath seldom seen Did not Priamus weep oftner then Troilus and happy had he been if he had died when his sons were living and his kingdom safe and houses full and his citie unburnt It was a long life that made him miserable and an early death onely could have secured his fortune and it hath happened many times that persons of a faâ—r life and a clear reputation of a good fortune and an honourable name have been tempted in their age to folly and vanity have fallen under the disgrace of dotage or into an infortunate marriage or have besottted themselves with drinking or outlived their fortunes or become tedious to their friends or are afflicted with lingring and vexatious diseases or lived to see their excellent parts buried and cannot understand the wise discourses and productions of their younger years In all these cases and infinite more do not all the world say but it had been better this man had died sooner But
horror of it then by the last dash on the pavement and he that tells his groans and numbers his sighs and reckons one for every gripe of his belly or throb of his distempered pulse will make an artificiall sicknesse greater then the naturall and if thou beest ashamed that a childe should bear an evil better then thou then take his instrument and allay thy spirit with it reflect not upon thy evil but contrive as much as you can for duty and in all the rest inconsideration will ease your pain 4. If thou fearest thou shalt need observe and draw together all such things as are apt to charm thy spirit and ease thy fancy in the sufferance It is the counsell of Socrates It is said he a great danger and you must by discourse and arts of reasoning inchant it into slumber and some rest It may be thou wert moved much to see a person of honour to die untimely or thou didst love the religion of that death bed and it was dressed up in circumstances fitted to thy needs and hit thee on that part where thou wert most sensible or some little saying in a Sermon or passage of a book was chosen and singled out by a peculiar apprehension and made consent lodge a while in thy spirit even then when thou didst place death in thy meditation and didst view it in all its dresse of fancy whatsoever that was which at any time did please thee in thy most passionate and fantastic part let not that go but bring it home at that time especially because then thou art in thy weaknesse such little things will easier move thee then a more severe discourse and a better reason For a sick man is like a scrupulous his case is gone beyond the cure of arguments and it is a trouble that can onely be helped by chance or a lucky saying and Ludovico Corbinelli was moved at the death of Henry the second more then if he had read the saddest Elegy of all the unfortunate Princes in Christendom or all the sad sayings of Scripture or the threnes of the funerall prophets I deny not but this course is most proper to weak persons but it is a state of weaknesse for which we are now providing remedies and instruction a strong man will not need it But when our sicknesse hath rendred us weak in all senses it is not good to refuse a remedy because it supposes us to be sick But then if to the Catalogue of weak persons we adde all those who are ruled by fancy we shall find that many persons in their health and more in their sicknesse are under the dominion of fancy and apt to be helped by those little things which themselves have found fitted to their apprehension and which no other man can minister to their needs unlesse by chance or in a heap of other things But therefore every man should remember by what instruments he was at any time much moved and try them upon his spirit in the day of his calamity 5. Do not choose the kind of thy sicknesse or the manner of thy death but let it be what God please so it be no greater then thy spirit or thy patience and for that you are to rely upon the promise of God and to secure thy self by prayer and industry but in all things else let God be thy chooser and let it be thy work to submit indifferently and attend thy duty It is lawfull to beg of God that thy sicknesse may not be sharp or noysome infectious or unusuall because these are circumstances of evil which are also proper instruments of temptation and though it may well concern the prudence of thy religion to fear thy self and keep thee from violent temptations who hast so often fallen in little ones yet even in these things be sure to keep some degrees of indifferency that is if God will not be intreated to ease thee or to change thy triall then be importunate that thy spirit and its interest be secured and let him do what seemeth good in his eyes but as in the degrees of sicknesse thou art to submit to God so in the kind of it supposing equall degrees thou art to be altogether incurious whether God call thee by a consumption or an asthma by a dropsey or a palsey by a feaver in thy humours or a feaver in thy spirits because all such nicety of choice is nothing but a colour to legitimate impatience and to make an excuse to murmure privately and for circumstances when in the summe of affairs we durst not owne impatience I have known some persons vehemently wish that they might die of a consumption and some of these had a plot upon heaven and hoped by that means to secure it after a carelesse life as thinking a lingring sicknesse would certainly infer a lingring and a protracted repentance and by that means they thought they should be safest others of them dreamed it would be an easier death and have found themselves deceived and their patience hath been tired with a weary spirit and a uselesse body by often conversing with healthfull persons and vigorous neighbours by uneasinesse of the flesh and the sharpnesse of his bones by want of spirits and a dying life and in conclusion have been directly debauched by peevishnesse and a fretfull sicknesse and these men had better have left it to the wisdom and goodnesse of God for they both are infinite 6. Be patient in the desires of religion and take care that the forwardnesse of exteriour actions do not discompose thy spirit while thou fearest that by lesse serving God in thy disability thou runnest backward in the accounts of pardon and the favour of God Be content that the time which was formerly spent in prayer be now spent in vomiting and carefulnesse and attendances since God hath pleased it should be so it does not become us to think hard thoughts concerning it Do not think that God is onely to be found in a great prayer or a solemn office he is moved by a sigh by a groan by an act of love and therefore when your pain is great and pungent lay all your strength upon it to bear it patiently when the evil is something more tolerable let your mind think some pious though short meditation let it not be very busie and full of attention for that will be but a new temptation to your patience and render your religion tedious and hatefull But record your desires and present your self to God by generall acts of will and understanding and by habituall remembrances of your former vigorousnesse and by verification of the same grace rather then proper exercises if you can do more do it but if you cannot let it not become a scruple to thee we must not think man is tyed to the forms of health or that he who swoons and faints is obliged to his usual forms and hours of prayer if we cannot labour yet let us love Nothing can hinder
God had made appetites of pleasure in man that in them the scene of his obedience should lye For when God made instances of mans obedience he 1. either commanded such things to be done which man did naturally desire or 2. such things which did contradict his natural desires or 3. such which were indifferent Not the first and the last For it could be no effect of love or duty towards God for a man to eat when he was impatiently hungry and could not stay from eating neither was it any contention of obedience or labour of love for a man to look Eastward once a day or turn his back when the North winde blew fierce and loud Therefore for the trial and instance of obedience God made his laws so that they should lay restraint upon mans appetites so that man might part with something of his own that he may give to God his will and deny it to himself for the interest of his service and chastity is the denyall of a violent desire and justice is parting with money that might help to inrich me and meekness is a huge contradiction to pride and revenge and the wandring of our eyes and the greatnesse of our fancy and our imaginative opinions are to be lessened that we may serve God there is no other way of serving God we have nothing else to present unto him we do not else give him any thing or part of our selves but when we for his sake part with what we naturally desire and difficulty is essential to vertue and without choice there can be no reward in the satisfaction of our natural desires there is no election we run to them as beasts to the river or the crib If therefore any man shall teach or practise such a religion that satisfies all our natural desires in the dayes of desire and passion of lust and appetites and only turns to God when his appetites are gone his desires cease this man hath overthrown the very being of vertues and the essential constitution of religion Religion is no religion and vertue is no act of choice and reward comes by chance and without condition if we onely are religious when we cannot choose if we part with our money when we cannot keep it with our lust when we cannot act it with our desires when they have left us death is a certain mortifier but that mortification is deadly not useful to the purposes of a spiritual life When we are compeld to depart from our evil customs and leave to live that we may begin to live then we dye to dye that life is the prologue to death and thenceforth we die eternally S. Cyril speaks of certain people that chose to worship the sun because he was a day God for believing that he was quenched every â—â—ght in the sea or that he had no influence upon them that light up candles and lived by the light of fire they were confident they might be Atheists all night and live as they list Men who divide their little portion of time between religion and pleasures between God and Gods enemy think that God is to rule but in his certain period of time and that our life is the stage for passion and folly and the day of death for the work of our life but as to God both the day and night are alike so are the first and the last of our dayes all are his due and he will account severely with us for the follies of the first and the evil of the last The evils and the pains are great which are reserved for those who defer their restitution to Gods favour till their death And therefore Antisthenes said well It is not the happy death but the happy life that makes man happy It is in piety as in fame and reputation he secures a good name but loosely that trusts his fame and celebritie onely to his ashes and it is more a civilitie 〈◊〉 then the base of a firm reputation that men speak honour of their departed relatives but if their life be vertuous it forces honour from contempt and snatches it from the hand of envy and it shines thorough the crevises of detraction and as it anointed the head of the living so it embalms the body of the dead From these premises if followes that when we discourse of a sick mans repentance it is intended to be not a beginning but the prosecution and consummation of the covenant of repentance which Christ stipulated with us in Baptisme and which we needed all our life and which we began long before this last arrest and in which we are now to make further progresse that we may arrive to that integrity and fulnesse of of dutie that our sins may be blotted out when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord. SECT VI. Rules for the practise of Repentance in sicknesse 1. LEt the sick man consider at what gate this sicknesse entred and if he can discover the particular let him instantly passionately and with great contrition dash the crime in pieces lest he descend into his grave in the midst of a sin and thence remove into an ocean of eternal sorrowes but if he onely suffers the common fate of man and knowes not the particular inlet he is to be governed by the following measures 2. Inquire into the repentance of thy former life particularly whether it were of a great and perfect grief and productive of fixed resolutions of holy living and reductive of these to act How many dayes and nights have we spent in sorrow or care in habitual and actual pursuances of vertue what instrument we have chosen and used for the eradication of sin how we have judged our selves and how punished and in summe whether we have by the grace of repentance changed our life from criminal to vertuous from one habit to another and whether we have paid for the pleasure of our sin by smart or sorrow by the effusion of alms or pernoctations or abodes in prayers so as the spirit hath been served in our repentance as earnestly and as greatly as our appetites have been provided for in the dayes of our shame and folly 3. Supply the imperfections of thy repentance by a general or universal sorrow for the sins not onely since the last communion or absolution but of thy whole life for all sins known and unknown repented and unrepented of ignorance or infirmity which thou knowest or which others have accused thee of thy clamorous and thy whispering sins the sinnes of scandall and the sinnes of a secret conscience of the flesh and of the spirit for it would be but a sad arrest to thy soul wandring in strange and unusuall regions to see a scroll of uncancelled sins represented and charged upon thee for want of care and notices and that thy repentance shall become invalid because of its imperfections 4. To this purpose it is usually advised by spirituall persons
learning in publike charge and by all others in their proportions 10. The ministers of religion must take care that the sick mans confession be as minute and particular as it can and that as few sins as may be be entrusted to the generall prayer of pardon for all sins for by being particular and enumerative of the variety of evils which have disordered his life his repentance is disposed to be more pungent and afflictive and therefore more salutary and medicinall it hath in it more sincerity and makes a better judgement of the finall condition of the man and from thence it is certain the hopes of the sick man can be more confident and reasonable 11. The spirituall man that assists at the repentance of the sick must not be inquisitive into all the circumstances of the particular sins but be content with those that are direct parts of the crime and aggravation of the sorrow Such as frequency long abode and earnest choice in acting them violent desires great expense scandall of others dishonour to the religion dayes of devotion and religious solemnities holy places and the degrees of boldnesse and impudence perfect resolution and the habit If the sick person be reminded or inquired into concerning these it may prove a good instrument to increase his contrition and perfect his penitentiall sorrows and facilitate his ablution and the means of his amendment But the other circumstances as of the relative person in the participation of the crime the measures or circumstances of the impure action the name of the injured man or woman the quality or accidentall condition these and all the like are but questions springing from curiosity and producing scruple and apt to turn into many inconveniencies 11. The Minister in this duty of repentance must be diligent to observe concerning the person that repents that he be not imposed upon by some one excellent thing that was remarkable in the sick mans former life For there are some people of one good thing Some are charitable to the poor out of kind-heartednesse and the same good-nature makes them easie and compliant with drinking persons and they die with drink but cannot live with charity and their alms it may be shall deck their monument or give them the reward of loving persons and the poor mans thanks for alms and procure many temporall blessings but it is very sad that the reward should be all spent in this world some are rarely just persons and punctuall observers of their word with men but break their promises with God and make no scruple of that In these and all the like cases the spirituall man must be carefull to remark that good proceeds from an intire and integrall cause and evil from every part That one sicknesse can make a man die but he cannot live and be called a sound man without an intire health and therefore if any confidence arises upon that stock so as that it hinder the strictness of the repentance it must be allayed with the representment of this sad truth That he who reserves one evil in his choice hath chosen an evil portion and colliquintida and death is in the pot and he that worships the God of Israel with a frequent sacrifice and yet upon the anniversary will bow in the house of Venus and loves to see the follies and the nakednesse of Rimmon may eat part of the flesh of the sacrifice and fill his belly but shall not be refreshed by the holy cloud arising from the altar or the dew of heaven descending upon the mysteries 12. And yet the Minister is to estimate that one or more good things is to be an ingredient into his judgement concerning the state of his soul and the capacities of his restitution and admission to the peace of the Church and according as the excellency and usefulnesse of the grace hath been and according to the degrees and the reasons of its prosecution so abatements are to be made in the injunctions and impositions upon the penitent For every vertue is one degree of approach to God and though in respect of the acceptation it is equally none at all that is it is as certain a death if a man dies with one mortall wound as if he had twenty yet in such persons who have some one or more excellencies though not an intire piety there is naturally a neerer approach to the estate of grace then in persons who have done evils and are eminent for nothing that is good But in making judgement of such persons it is to be inquired into and noted accordingly why the sick person was so eminent in that one good thing whether by choice and apprehension of his duty or whether it was a vertue from which his state of life ministred nothing to dehort or discourage him or whether it was onely a consequent of his naturall temper and constitution If the first then it supposes him in the neighbourhood of the state of grace and that in other things he was strongly tempted The second is a felicity of his education and an effect of providence The third is a felicity of his nature and a gift of God in order to spirituall purposes But yet of every one of these advantage is to be made If he conscience of his duty was the principle then he is ready formed to entertain all other graces upon the same reason and his repentance must be made more sharp and penall because he is convinced to have done against his conscience in all the other parts of his life but the judgement concerning his finall state ought to be more gentle because it was a huge temptation that hindred the man and abused his infirmity but if either his calling or his nature were the parents of the grace he is in the state of a morall man in the just and proper meaning of the word and to be handled accordingly that vertue disposed him rarely well to many other good things but was no part of the grace of sanctification and therefore the mans repentance is to begin anew for all that and is to be finished in the returns of health if God grants it but if he denies it it is much very much the worse for all that sweet natur'd vertue 13. When the confession is made the spirituall man is to execute the office of a Restorer and a Iudge in the following particulars and manner SECT IIII. Of the ministring to the restitution and pardon or reconciliation of the sick person by administring the Holy Sacrament IF any man be overtaken in a fault ye which are spiritual restore such a one in the spirit of meeknesse That 's the Commission and Let the Elders of the Church pray over the sick man and if he have committed sins they shall be forgiven him that 's the effect of his power and his ministery But concerning this some few things are to be considered 1. It is the office of the Presbyters and Ministers
for pardon and S. Iames tells that if the sick man sends for the Church and they pray over him and he confesse his sins they shall be forgiven him 15. That onely one sin is declared to be irremissible the sin against the Holy Ghost the sin unto death as S. Iohn calls it for which we are not bound to pray for all others we are and certain it is no man commits a sin against the Holy Ghost if he be afraid he hath and desires that he had not for such penitentiall passions are against the definition of that sin 16. That all the Sermons in the Scripture written to Christians Disciples of Jesus exhorting men to repentance to be afflicted to mourn and to weep to confession of sins are sure testimonies of Gods purpose and desire to forgive us even when we fall after baptisme and if our fall after baptisme were irrecoverable then all preaching were in vain and our faith were also vain and we could not with comfort rehearse the Creed in which as soon as ever we professe Jesus to have died for our sins we also are condemned by our own conscience of a sin that shall not be forgiven and then all exhortations and comforts and fasts and disciplines were uselesse and too late if they were not given us before we can understand them for most commonly as soon as we can we enter into the regions of sin For we commit evil actions before we understand and together with our understanding they begin to be imputed 17. That if it could be otherwise infants were very ill provided for in the Church who were baptized when they have no stain upon their brows but the misery they contracted from Adam and they are left to be Angels for ever after and live innocently in the midst of their ignorances and weaknesse and temptations and the heat and follies of youth or else to perish in an eternall ruine we cannot think or speak good things of God if we entertain such evil suspicions of the mercies of the Father of our Lord Jesus 18. That the long-sufferance and patience of God is indeed wonderfull but therefore it leaves us in certainties of pardon so long as there is possibilitie to return if we reduce â—he power to act 19. That God calls upon us to forgive our brother seventy times seven times and yet all that is but like the forgiving a hundred pence for his sake who forgives us ten thousand talents for so the Lord professed that he had done to him that was his servant and his domestic 20. That if we can forgive a hundred thousand times it is certain God will do so to us Our Blessed Lord having commanded us to pray for pardon as we pardon our offending and penitent brother 21. That even in the case of very great sins and great judgements inflicted upon the sinners wise and good men and Presidents of Religion have declared their sense to be that God spent all his anger and made it expire in that temporall misery and so it was supposed to have been done in the case of Ananias but that the hopes of any penitent man may not rely upon any uncertainty we find in holy Scripture that those Christians who had for their scandalous crimes deserved to be given over to Sathan to be buffetted yet had hopes to be saved in the day of the Lord. 22. That God glories in the titles of mercy and forgivenesse and will not have his appellatives so finite and limited as to expire in one act or in a seldome pardon 23. That mans condition were desperate and like that of the falling Angels equally desperat but unequally oppressed considering our infinite weaknesses and ignorances in respect of their excellent understanding and perfect choice if he could be admitted to no repentance after his infant Baptisme and if he may be admitted to one there is nothing in the Covenant of the Gospel but he may also to a second and so for ever as long as he can repent and return and live to God in a timely religion 24. That every man is a sinner In many things we offend all and if we say we have no sin we deceive our selves and therefore either all must perish or else there is mercy for all and so there is upon this very stock because Christ died for sinners and God hath comprehended all under sin that he might have mercy upon all 25. That if ever God sends temporall punishments into the world with purposes of amendment and if they be not all of them certain consignations to hel and unlesse every man that breaks his leg or in punishment loses a child or wife be certainly damned it is certain that God in these cases is angry and loving chastises the sin to amend the person and smites that he may cure and judges that he may absolve 26. That he that will not quench the smoaking flax nor break the bruised reed will not tie us to perfection and the lawes and measures of heaven upon earth and if in every period of our repentance he is pleased with our duty and the voyce of our heart and the hand of our desires he hath told us plainly that he will not onely pardon all the sins of the dayes of our folly but the returns and surprises of sins in the dayes of repentance if we give no way and allow no affection and give no peace to any thing that is Gods enemy all the past sins and al the seldom returning and ever repented evils being put upon the accounts of the Crosse. An exercise against despair in the day of our death TO which may be added this short exercise to be used for the curing the temptation to direct despair in case that the hope and faith of good men be assaulted in the day of their calamity I consider that the ground of my trouble is my sin and if it were not for that I should not need to be troubled but the help that all the world looks for is such as supposes a man to be a sinner * Indeed if from my self I were to derive my title to heaven then my sins were a just argument of despair but now that they bring me to Christ that they drive me to an appeal to Gods mercies and to take sanctuary in the Crosse they ought not they cannot infer a just cause of despair * I am sure it is a stranger thing that God should take upon him hands and feet and those hands and feet should be nailed upon a crosse then that a man should be partaker of the felicities of pardon and life eternall and it were stranger yet that God should do so much for man and that a man that desires it that labours for it that is in life and possibilities of working his salvation should inevitably misse that end for which that God suffered so much For what is the meaning and what is the extent and what are the significations
in temporall instances for he ever gave me sufficient for my life and although he promised such supplies and grounded the confidences of them upon our first seeking the kingdom of heaven and its righteousnesse yet he hath verified it to me who have not sought it as I ought But therefore I hope he accepted my endeavour or will give his great gifts and our great expectation even to the weakest endeavour to the least so it be a hearty piety * And sometimes I have had some chearful visitations of Gods Spirit and my cup hath been crowned with comfort and the wine that made my heart glad danced in the chalice and I was glad that God would have me so and therefore I hope this cloud may passe for that which was then a real cause of comfort is so still if I could disâ—ern it and I shall discern it when the veil is taken from my eyes * and blessed be God I can still remember that there are temptations to despair and they could not be temptations if they were not apt to perswade and had seeming probability on their side and they that despair think they do it with greatest reason for if they were not confident of the reason but that it were such an argument as might be opposed or suspected then they could not despair despair assents as firmly and strongly as faith it self but because it is a temptation and despair is a horrid sin therefore it is certain those persons are unreasonably abused and they have no reason to despair for all their confidence and therefore although I have strong reasons to condemn my self yet I have more reason to condemn my despair which therefore is unreasonable because it is a sin and a dishonour to God and a ruine to my condition and verifies it self if I do not look to it for as the hypochondriac person that thought himself dead made his dream true when he starved himself because dead people eat not so do despairing sinners lose Gods mercies by refusing to use and to believe them * And I hope it is a disease of judgement not an intolerable condition that I am falling to because I have been told so concerning others who therefore have been afflicted because they see not their pardon sealed after the manner of this world and the affairs of the Spirit are transacted by immaterial notices by propositions and spiritual discourses by promises which are to be verified hereafter and here we must live in a cloud in darknesse under a veil in fear and uncertainties and our very living by faith and hope is a life of mystery and secresie the onely part of the manner of that life in which we shall live in the state of separation and when a distemper of body or an infirmity of minde happens in the instances of such secret and reserved affairs we may easily mistake the manner of our notices for the uncertainty of the thing and therefore it is but reason I should stay till the state and manner of my abode be changed before I despair there it can be no sin nor error here it may be both and if it be that it is also this and then a man may perish for being miserable and be undone for being a fool In conclusion my hope is in God and I will trust him with the event which I am sure will be just and I hope full of mercy * However now I will use all the spiritual arts of reason and religion to make me more and more to love God that if I miscarry Charity also shall fail and something that loves God shall perish and be damned which if it be impossible then I may do well These considerations may be useful to men of little hearts and of great piety or if they be persons who have lived without infamy or begun their repentance so late that it is very imperfect and yet so early that it was before the arrest of death But if the man be a vitious person and hath persevered in a vitious life till his death-bed these considerations are not proper Let him inquire in the words of the first Disciples after Pentecost Men and brethren what shall we do to be saved and if they can but entertain so much hope as to enable them to do so much of their dutie as they can for the present it is all that can be provided for them an inquirie in their case can have no other purposes of religion or prudence and the Minister must be infinitely careful that he do no not go about to comfort vitious persons with the comforts belonging to Gods elect lest he prostitute holy things and make them common and his sermons deceitful and vices be incouraged in others and the man himself finde that he was deceived when he descends into his house of sorrow But because very few men are tempted with too great fears of failing but very many are tempted by confidence and presumption the Ministers of religion had need be instructed with spiritual armour to resist this fiery dart of the Devil when it operates to evil purposes SECT VI. Considerations against Presumption I Have already enumerated many particulars to provoke a drowzy conscience to a scrutinie and to a suspicion of himself that by seeing cause to suspect his condition he might more freely accuse himself and attend to the necessities and duties of repentance but if either before or in his repentance he grow too big in in his spirit so as either he does some little violence to the modesties of humilitie or abate his care and zeal of his repentance the spiritual man must allay his frowardnesse by representing to him 1. That the growths in grace are long difficult uncertain hindred of many parts and great variety 2. That an infant grace is soon dash'd and discountenanced often running into an inconvenience and the evils of an imprudent conduct being zealous and forward and therefore confident but alwayes with the least reason and the greatest danger like children and young fellows whose confidence hath no other reason but that they understand not their danger and their follies 3. That he that puts on his armour ought not to boast as he that puts it off and the Apostle chides the Galatians for ending in the flesh after they had begun in the spirit 4. that a man cannot think too meanly of himself but very easily he may think too high 5 That a wise man will alwayes in a matter of great concernment think the worst and a good man will condemn himself with hearty sentence 6. That humility and modesty of judgement and of hope are very good instruments to procure a mercie and a fair reception at the day of our death but presumption or bold opinions serve no end of God or man and is alwayes imprudent ever fatal and of all things in the world is its own greatest enemy for the more any man presumes the greater reason he hath to fear 7. That a mans