with a greater diffusion If it be made to stand stil it putrefies and all this we doe For 4. In all the processe of our health we are running to our grave we open our own sluces by vitiousness and unworthy actions we powre in drink and let out life we increase diseases and know not how to bear them we strangle our selves with our own intemperance we suffer the feavers and the inflammations of lust and we quench our soules with drunkennesse we bury our understandings in loads of meat and surfets and then we lie down upon our beds and roar with pain and disquietness of our soules Nay we kill one anothers souls and bodies with violence and folly with the effects of pride and uncharitablenesse we live and die like fools and bring a new mortality upon our selves wars and vexatious cares and private duels and publike disorders and every thing that is unreasonable and every thing that is violent so that now we may adde this fourth gate to the grave Besides Nature and Chance and the mistakes of art men die with their own sins and then enter into the grave in haste and passion and pull the heavy stone of the monument upon their own heads And thus we make our selves like water spilt on the ground we throw away our lives as if they were unprofitable and indeed most men make them so we let our years slip through our fingers like water and nothing is to be seen but like a showr of tears upon a spot of ground there is a grave digged and a solemn mourning and a great talk in the neigbourhood and when the daies are finished they shall be and they shall be remembred no more And that 's like water too when it is spilt it cannot be gathered up again There is no redemption from the grave inter se mortales mutua vivunt Et quasi cur sores vitäi lampada tradunt Men live in their course and by turns their light burns a while and then it burns blew and faint and men go to converse with Spirits and then they reach the taper to another and as the hours of yesterday can never return again so neither can the man whose hours they were and who lived them over once he shall never come to live them again and live them better When Lazarus and the widows Son of Naim and Tabitha and the Saints that appeared in Jerusalem at the rusurrection of our blessed Lord arose they came into this world some as strangers onely to make a visit and all of them to manifest a glory but none came upon the stock of a new life or entred upon the stage as at first or to perform the course of a new nature and therefore it is observable that we never read of any wicked person that was raised from the dead Dives would fain have returned to his brothers house but neither he nor any from him could be sent but all the rest in the New Testament one onely excepted were expressed to have been holy persons or else by their age were declared innocent Lazarus was beloved of Christ those souls that appeared at the resurrection were the souls of Saints Tabitha raised by S Peter was a charitable and a holy Christian and the maiden of twelve years old raised by our blessed Saviour had not entred into the regions of choice and sinfulnesse and the onely exception of the widows son is indeed none at all for in it the Scripture is wholly silent and therefore it is very probable that the same processe was used God in all other instances having chosen to exemplifie his miracles of nature to purposes of the Spirit and in spirituall capacities So that although the Lord of nature did not break the bands of nature in some instances to manifest his glory to succeeding great and never failing purposes yet besides that this shall be no more it was also instanced in such persons who were holy and innocent and within the verge and comprehensions of the eternall mercy We never read that a wicked person felt such a miracle or was raised from the grave to try the second time for a Crown but where he fell there he lay down dead and saw the light no more This consideration I intend to you as a severe Monitor and an advice of carefulness that you order your affairs so that you may be partakers of the first resurrection that is from sin to grace from the death of vitious habits to the vigour life and efficacy of an habituall righteousnesse For as it hapned to those persons in the New Testament now mentioned to them I say in the literall sense Blessed are they that have part in the first resurrection upon them the second death shall have no power meaning that they who by the power of Christ and his holy Spirit were raised to life again were holy and blessed souls and such who were written in the book of God and that this grace happened to no wicked and vitious person so it is most true in the spirituall and intended sense You onely that serve God in a holy life you who are not dead in trespasses and sins you who serve God with an early diligence and an unwearied industry and a holy religion you and you onely shal come to life eternall you onely shall be called from death to life the rest of mankind shall never live again but passe from death to death from one death to another to a worse from the death of the body to the eternall death of body and soul and therefore in the Apostles Creed there is no mention made of the resurrection of wicked persons but of the resurrection of the body to everlasting life The wicked indeed shall be haled forth from their graves from their everlasting prisons where in chains of darknesse they are kept unto the judgement of the great day But this therefore cannot be called in sensu favoris a resurrection but the solennities of the eternall death It is nothing but a new capacity of dying again such a dying as cannot signifie rest but where death means nothing but an intolerable and never ceasing calamity and therefore these words of my text are otherwise to be understood of the wicked otherwise of the godly The wicked are spilt like water and shall never be gathered up again no not in the gatherings of eternity They shall be put into vessels of wrath and set upon on the flames of hell but that is not a gathering but a scattering from the face and presence of God But the godly also come under the sense of these words They descend into their graves and shall no more be reckoned among the living they have no concernment in all that is done under the sun Agamemnon hath no more to do with the Turks armies invading and possessing that part of Greece where he reigned then had the Hippocentaur who never had a beeing and Cicero hath no more interest in the
crime yet she did infinitely remove all sacrilege from her thoughts and delighted to see her estate of a clear and disintangled interest she would have no mingled rights with it she would not receive any thing from the Church but religion and a blessing and she never thought a curse and a sin farre enough off but would desire it to be infinitely distant and that as to this family God had given much honour and a wise head to Govern it so he would also for ever give many more blessings And because she knew that the sins of Parents descend upon Children she endevoured by justice and religion by charity and honour to secure that her chanel should convey nothing but health and a faire example and a blessing 10. And though her accounts to God was made up of nothing but small parcels little passions and angry words and trifling discontents which are the allayes of the piety of the most holy persons yet she was early at her repentance and toward the latter end of her daies grew so fast in religion as if she had had a revelation of her approaching end and therefore that she must go a great way in a little time her discourses more full of religion her prayers more frequent her charity increasing her forgiveness more forward her friendships more communicative her passion more under discipline and so she trimm'd her lamp not thinking her night was so neer but that it might shine also in the day time in the Temple and before the Altar of incense But in this course of hers there were some circumstances and some appendages of substance which were highly remarkable 1. In all her Religion and in all her actions of relation towards God she had a strange evenness and untroubled passage sliding toward her ocean of God and of infinity with a certain and silent motion So have I seen a river deep and smooth passing with a still foot and a sober face and paying to the Fiscus the great Exchequer of the Sea the Prince of all the watry bodies a tribute large and full and hard by it a little brook skipping and making a noise upon its unequall and neighbour bottom and after all its talking and bragged motion it payd to its common Audit no more then the revenues of a little cloud or a contemptible vessel So have I sometimes compar'd the issues of her religion to the solemnities and fam'd outsides of anothers piety It dwelt upon her spirit and was incorporated with the periodicall work of every day she did not believe that religion was intended to minister to fame and reputation but to pardon of sins to the pleasure of God and the salvation of souls For religion is like the breath of Heaven if it goes abroad into the open aire it scatters and dissolves like camphyre but if it enters into a secret hollownesse into a close conveyance it is strong and mighty and comes forth with vigour and great effect at the other end at the other side of this life in the daies of death and judgment 2. The other appendage of her religion which also was a great ornament to all the parts of her life was a rare modesty and humility of spirit a confident despising and undervaluing of her self For though she had the greatest judgment and the greatest experience of things and persons that I ever yet knew in a person of her youth and sex and circumstances yet as if she knew nothing of it she had the meanest opinion of her self and like a fair taper when she shin'd to all the room yet round about her own station she had cast a shadow and a cloud and she shin'd to every body but her self But the perfectnesse of her prudence and excellent parts could not be hid and all her humility and arts of concealment made the vertues more amiable and illustrious For as pride sullies the beauty of the fairest vertues and makes our understanding but like the craft and learning of a Devil so humility is the greatest eminency and art of publication in the whole world and she in all her arts of secrecy and hiding her worthy things was but like one that hideth the winde and covers the oyntment of her right hand I know not by what instrument it hapned but when death drew neer before it made any show upon her body or reveal'd it self by a naturall signification it was conveyed to her spirit she had a strange secret perswasion that the bringing this Childe should be her last scene of life and we have known that the soul when she is about to disrobe her self of her upper garment sometimes speaks rarely Magnifica verba mors propè admoâ—a excutit sometimes it is Propheticall sometimes God by a superinduced perswasion wrought by instruments or accidents of his own serves the ends of his own providence and the salvation of the soul But so it was that the thought of death dwelt long with her and grew from the first steps of fancy and feare to a consent from thence to a strange credulity and expectation of it and without the violence of sicknesse she died as if she had done it voluntarily and by design and for feare her expectation should have been deceiv'd or that she should seem to have had an unreasonable feare or apprehension or rather as one said of Cato sic abiit è vitâ ut causam moriendi nactam se esse gauderet she died as if she had been glad of the opportunity And in this I cannot but adore the providence and admire the wisdome and infinite mercies of God For having a tender and soft a delicate and fine constitution and breeding she was tender to pain and apprehensive of it as a childs shoulder is of a load and burden Grave est tenerae cervici jugum and in her often discourses of death which she would renew willingly and frequently she would tell that she fear'd not death but she fear'd the sharp pains of death Emori nolo me esse mortuam non curo The being dead and being freed from the troubles and dangers of this world she hop'd would be for her advantage and therefore that was no part of her feare But she believing the pangs of death were great and the use and aids of reason little had reason to fear lest they should doe violence to her spirit and the decency of her resolution But God that knew her fears and her jealousie concerning her self fitted her with a death so easie so harmlesse so painlesse that it did not put her patience to a severe triall It was not in all appearance of so much trouble as two sits of a common ague so carefull was God to remonstrate to all that stood in that sad attendance that this soule was dear to him and that since she had done so much of her duty towards it he that began would also finish her redemption by an act of a rare providence and a singular mercy Blessed be
A Funerall Sermon PREACHED At the Obsequies of the Right Honble and most vertuous Lady THE LADY FRANCES Countesse of CARBERY Who deceased October the 9th 1650. at her House GOLDEN-GROVE in CARMARTHEN-SHIRE By JER. TAYLOR D. D. LONDON Printed by I. F. for R. Royston at the Angel in Ivie-lane M.DC.L To the right Honorable and truly Noble Richard Lord Vaughan Earle of Carbery Baron of Emlim and Molinger Knight of the Honorable Order of the Bath My Lord I Am not asham'd to professe that I pay this part of service to your Lordship most unwillingly for it is a sad office to be the chief Minister in a house of mourning and to present an interested person with a branch of Cypresse and a bottle of tears And indeed my Lord it were more proportionable to your needs to bring something that might alleviate or divert your sorrow then to dresse the hearse of your Dear Lady and to furnish it with such circumstances that it may dwell with you and lie in your closet and make your prayers and your retirements more sad and full of weepings But because the Divine providence hath taken from you a person so excellent a woman fit to converse with Angels and Apostles with Saints and Martyrs give me leave to present you with her picture drawn in little and in water-colours sullyed indeed with tears and the abrupt accents of a reall and consonant sorrow but drawn with a faithfull hand and taken from the life and indeed it were too great a losse to be depriv'd of her example and of her rule of the originall and the copie too The age is very evil and deserv'd her not but because it is so evil it hath the more need to have such lives preserv'd in memory to instruct our piety or upbraid our wickednesse For now that God hath cut this tree of paradise down from its seat of earth yet so the dead trunk may support a part of the declining Temple or at least serve to kindle the fire on the altar My Lord I pray God this heap of sorrow may swell your piety till it breaks into the greatest joyes of God and of religion and remember when you pay a tear upon the grave or to the memory of your Lady that Deare and most excellent Soule that you pay two more one of repentance for those things that may have caus'd this breach and another of joy for the mercies of God to your Dear departed Saint that he hath taken her into a place where she can weep no more My Lord I think I shall so long as I live that is so long as I am Your Lordships most humble Servant TAYLOR A Funerall Sermon c. 2 SAMUEL 14. 14. For we must needs die and are as water spilt on the ground which cannot be gathered up again neither doth God respect any person yet doth he devise means that his banished be not expelled from him WHen our blessed Saviour and his Disciples viewed the Temple some one amongst them cried out Magister aspice quales lapides Master behold what faire what great stones are here Christ made no other reply but foretold their dissolution and a world of sadness and sorrow which should bury that whole Nation when the teeming cloud of Gods displeasure should produce a storm which was the daughter of the biggest anger and the mother of the greatest calamity which ever crush'd any of the sons of Adam The time shall come that there shall not be left one stone upon another The whole Temple and the Religion the ceremonies ordained by God and the Nation beloved by God and the fabrick erected for the service of God shall run to their own period and lie down in their severall graves Whatsoever had a beginning can also have an ending and it shall die unless it be daily watered with the purles flowing from the fountain of life and refreshed with the dew of Heaven and the wells of God And therefore God had provided a tree in Paradise to have supported Adam in his artificiall immortality Immortality was not in his nature but in the hands and arts in the favour and superadditions of God Man was alwaies the same mixture of heat and cold of dryness and moisture ever the same weak thing apt to feel rebellion in the humors and to suffer the evils of a civil warre in his body naturall and therefore health and life was to descend upon him from Heaven and he was to suck life from a tree on earth himself being but ingraffed into a tree of life and adopted into the condition of an immortall nature But he that in the best of his daies was but a Cien of this tree of life by his sinne was cut off from thence quickly and planted upon thorns and his portion was for ever after among the flowers which to day spring and look like health and beauty and in the evening they are sick and at night are dead and the oven is their grave And as before even from our first spring from the dust of the earth we might have died if we had not been preserved by the continuall flux of a rare providence so now that we are reduced to the laws of our own nature we must needs die It is naturall and therefore necessary It is become a punishment to us and therefore it is unavoidable and God hath bound the evil upon us by bands of naturall and inseparable propriety and by a supervening unalterable decree of Heaven and we are fallen from our privilege and are returned to the condition of beasts and buildings and common things And we see Temples defiled unto the ground and they die by Sacrilege and great Empires die by their own plenty and ease full humors and factious Subjects and huge buildings fall by their owne weight and the violence of many winters eating and consuming the cement which is the marrow of their bones and Princes die like the meanest of their Servants and every thing finds a grave and a tombe and the very tomb it self dies by the bigness of its pompousness and luxury Phario nutantia pondera saxo Quae cineri vanus dat ruitura labor and becomes as friable and uncombined dust as the ashes of the Sinner or the Saint that lay under it and is now forgotten in his bed of darkness And to this Catalogue of mortality Man is inrolled with a Statutum est It is appointed for all men once to die and after death comes judgment and if a man can be stronger then nature or can wrestle with a decree of Heaven or can escape from a Divine punishment by his own arts so that neither the power nor the providence of God nor the laws of nature nor the bands of eternall predestination can hold him then he may live beyond the fate and period of flesh and last longer then a flower But if all these can hold us and tie us to conditions then we must lay our heads down upon a
present evils of Christendome then we have to doe with his boasted discovery of Catilines conspiracie What is it to me that Rome was taken by the Gaules and what is it now to Camillus if different religions be tolerated amongst us These things that now happen concern the living and they are made the scenes of our duty or danger respectively and when our wives are dead and sleep in charnel houses they are not troubled when we laugh loudly at the songs sung at the next marriage feast nor do they envy when another snatches away the gleanings of their husbands passion It is true they envy not and they lie in a bosome where there can be no murmure and they that are consigned to Kingdomes and to the feast of the marriage supper of the Lamb the glorious and eternall Bride-groom of holy souls they cannot think our marriages here our lighter laughings and vain rejoycings considerable as to them And yet there is a relation continued stil Aristotle said that to affirm the dead take no thought for the good of the living is a disparagement to the laws of that friendship which in their state of separation they cannot be tempted to rescind And the Church hath taught in generall that they pray for us they recommend to God the state of all their Relatives in the union of the intercession that our blessed Lord makes for them and us and S. Ambrose gave some things in charge to his dying brother Satyrus that he should do for him in the other world he gave it him I say when he was dying not when he was dead And certain it is that though our dead friends affection to us is not to be estimated according to our low conceptions yet it is not lesse but much more then ever it was it is greater in degree and of another kind But then we should do well also to remember that in this world we are something besides flesh and bloud that we may not without violent necessities run into new relations but preserve the affections we bear to our dead when they were alive We must not so live as if they were perished but so as pressing forward to the most intimate participation of the communion of Saints And we also have some waies to expresse this relation and to bear a part in this communion by actions of intercourse with them and yet proper to our state such as are strictly performing the will of the dead providing for and tenderly and wisely educating their children paying their debts imitating their good example preserving their memories privately and publikely keeping their memorials and desiring of God with hearty and constant prayer that God would give them a joyfull resurrection and a mercifull judgement for so S. Paul prayed in behalf of Onesiphorus that God would shew them a mercy in that day that fearfull and yet much to be desired day in which the most righteous person hath need of much mercy and pity and shall find it Now these instances of duty shew that the relation remains still and though the Relict of a man or woman hath liberty to contract new relations yet I doe not finde they have liberty to cast off the old as if there were no such thing as immortality of souls Remember that we shall converse together again let us therefore never doe any thing of reference to them which we shall be asham'd of in the day when all secrets shall be discovered and that we shall meet again in the presence of God In the mean time God watcheth concerning all their interest and he will in his time both discover and recompense For though as to us they are like water spilt yet to God they are as water fallen into the sea safe and united in his comprehension and inclosures But we are not yet passed the consideration of the sentence This descending to the grave is the lot of all men neither doth God respect the person of any man The rich is not protected for favour nor the poor for pity the old man is not reverenced for his age nor the infant regarded for his tenderness youth and beauty learning and prudence wit and strength lie down equally in the dishonours of the grave All men and all natures and all persons resist the addresses and solennities of death and strive to preserve a miserable and an unpleasant life and yet they all sink down and die For so have I seen the pillars of a building assisted with artificiall props bending under the pressure of a roof and pertinaciously resisting the infallible and prepared ruine Donec certa dies omni compage solutâ Ipsum cum rebus subruat auxilium till the determin'd day comes and then the burden sunk upon the pillars and disorder'd the aides and auxiliary rafters into a common ruine and a ruder grave so are the desires and weak arts of man with little aides and assistances of care and physick we strive to support our decaying bodies and to put off the evil day but quickly that day will come and then neither Angels nor men can rescue us from our grave but the roof sinks down upon the walls and the walls descend to the foundation and the beauty of the face and the dishonours of the belly the discerning head and the servile feet the thinking heart and the working hand the eyes and the guts together shall be crush'd into the confusion of a heap and dwell with creatures of an equivocall production with worms and serpents the sons and daughters of our own bones in a house of durt and darkness Let not us think to be excepted or deferred If beauty or wit or youth or Nobleness or wealth or vertue could have been a defence and an excuse from the grave we had not met here to day to mourn upon the hearse of an excellent Lady and God only knows for which of us next the Mourners shall go about the streets or weep in houses {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} We have liv'd so many years and every day and every minute we make an escape from those thousands of dangers and deaths that encompasse us round about and such escapings we must reckon to be an extraordinary fortune and therefore that it cannot last long Vain are the thoughts of Man who when he is young or healthfull thinks he hath a long thread of life to run over and that it is violent and strange for young persons to die and naturall and proper onely for the aged It is as naturall for a man to die by drowning as by a feaver And what greater violence or more unnaturall thing is it that the horse threw his Rider into the river then that a drunken meeting cast him into a feaver and the strengths of youth are as soon broken by the strong sicknesses of youth and the stronger intemperance as the weaknesse of old age by a cough or an asthma or a continuall
that goodness of God who does so carefull actions of mercy for the ease and security of his servants But this one instance was a great demonstration that the apprehension of death is worse then the pains of death and that God loves to reprove the unreasonablenesse of our feares by the mightinesse and by the arts of his mercy She had in her sickness if I may so call it or rather in the solemnities and graver preparations towards death some curious and well-becoming feares concerning the finall state of her soul But from thence she pass'd into a deliquium or a kinde of trance and as soon as she came forth of it as if it had been a vision or that she had convers'd with an Angel and from his hand had receiv'd a labell or scroll of the book of life and there seen her name enrolled she cried out aloud Glory be to God on high Now I am sure I shall be saved Concerning which manner of discoursing we are wholly ignorant what judgment can be made but certainly there are strange things in the other world and so there are in all the immediate preparations to it and a little glimps of heaven a minutes conversing with an Angel any ray of God any communication extraordinary from the Spirit of comfort which God gives to his servants in strange and unknown manners are infinitely far from illusions and they shall then be understood by us when we feel them and when our new and strange needs shall be refreshed by such unusuall visitations But I must be forced to use summaries and arts of abbreviature in the enumerating those things in which this rare Personage was dear to God to all her Relatives If we consider her Person she was in the flower of her age Iucundum cum aetas slorida ver ageret of a temperate plain and naturall diet without curiosity or an intemperate palate she spent lesse time in dressing then many servants her recreations were little seldom her prayers often her reading much she was of a most noble and charitable soul a great lover of honourable actions and as great a despiser of base things hugely loving to oblige others and very unwilling to be in arrear to any upon the stock of courtesies and liberality so free in all acts of favour that she would not stay to hear her self thank'd as being unwilling that what good went from her to a needfull or an obliged person should ever return to her again she was an excellent friend and hugely dear to very many especially to the best and most discerning persons to all that convers'd with her and could understand her great worth and sweetnesse she was of an Honourable a nice and tender reputation and of the pleasures of this world which were laid before her in heaps she took a very small and inconsiderable share as not loving to glut her self with vanity or to take her portion of good things here below If we look on her as a Wife she was chast and loving fruitfull and discreet humble and pleasant witty and complyant rich and fair and wanted nothing to the making her a principall and a precedent to the Wives of the world but a long life and a full age If we remember her as a Mother she was kinde and severe carefull and prudent very tender and not at all fond a greater lover of her Childrens soules then of their bodies and one that would value them more by the strict rules of honour and proper worth then by their relation to her self Her Servants found her prudent and fit to Govern and yet open-handed and apt to reward a just Exactor of their duty and a great Rewarder of their diligence She was in her house a comfort to her dearest Lord a Guide to her Children a Rule to her Servants an example to all But as she related to God in the offices of Religion she was even and constant silent and devout prudent and materiall she lov'd what she now enjoyes and she fear'd what she never felt and God did for her what she never did expect Her fears went beyond all her evil and yet the good which she hath receiv'd was and is and ever shall be beyond all her hopes She liv'd as we all should live and she died as I faiâ— would die Et cum supremos Lachesis perneverit annos Non aliter cineres mando jacere meos I pray God I may feel those mercies on my death-bed that she felt and that I may feel the same effect of my repentance which she feels of the many degrees of heâ— innocence Such was her death that she did not die too soon and her life was so usefull and so excellent that she could not have liv'd too long Nemo parum diu vixit quâ— virtutis perfectae perfecto functus est munere and as now in the grave it shall not be inquired concerning her how long she liv'd but how well so to us who live after her to suffer a longer calamity it may be some ease to our sorrows and some guide to our lives and some security to our conditions to consider that God hath brought the piety of a yong Lady to the early rewards of a never ceasing and never dying eternity of glory And we also if we live as she did shal partake of the same glories not only having the honour of a good name and a dear and honour'd memory but the glories of these glories the end of all excellent labours and all prudent counsels and all holy religion even the salvation of our souls in that day when all the Saints and amongst them this excellent Woman shall be shown to all the world to have done more and more excellent things then we know of or can describe Mors illos consecrat quorum exitum quâ— timent laudant Death consecrates and makes sacred that person whose excellency was such that they that are not displeased at the death cannot dispraise the life but they that mourn sadly think they can never commend sufficiently FINIS a 2 Tim. 1.18 {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} Eccle 1 Cor. 15. 18. 1 Thess. 4. 16. Rev. 14.13 John 5.24 2 Cor. 5. 8. 6. 1 Thes. 5.10 Prov. 2. 17.