IV. That we should frequently remember our Mortality even in the midst of our most happy Circumstances here is highly necessary to fore-arm our minds against the Terrors of Death Whilst we abound with the enjoyments of this Life we are apt to put far from us the evil day and with the rich Churl in the Gospel to promise our selves many years Ease and Voluptuousness in this World So that Death generally steals upon us before we are aware and like a Thief in a frightful Vizor surprises in the midst of a deep Security and after we have strugled with him a few moments to no purpose robs us of our Lives and our Happiness together And O how terrible must Death be when it approaches a man under such Circumstances when the poor deluded wretch hath been just Singing a soft Requiem to himself Soul take thy rest and ease thou hast goods laid up for many years and many years to possess and enjoy them For Death now to pronounce that fatal sentence Thou fool this night shall thy soul be taken from thee Now when he thought all was safe and concluded himself secure of a long Lease of Life and Happiness Now before he hath given himself the leisure to think of his Dying hour or to fortifie his Heart with any wise or good Thoughts against the Terrors of this terrible one that is just now brandishing its fatal shaft at his breast How must it needs blank and amaze and confound him and what a trembling horror must it strike through his Heart to see himself thus unexpectedly hurried away one part of him to the Grave and the other to Eternity now when he thought himself so securely possessed of a long enjoyment of the good things of this Life Wherefore as we would be fore-armed against the Terrors of Death and enabled to abide his dreadful approaches with a firm and constant Mind it concerns us now while we are surrounded with the Joys and Pleasures of this Life to entertain our Minds with frequent thoughts and remembrances of him to retire now and then into the Charnel-house and there to read Lectures to our selves upon the Skelitons and Deaths Heads those emblems and representations of our approaching Mortality and from them to take such lively Pictures and Ideas of this King of Terrors as may render his grim visage and fearful addresses more familiar to us and give our thoughts a more intimate acquaintance with him and with the manner and method of his approaches with what an Army of Diseases he is wont to lay Siege to the Fort of our Life and how in despite of all the resistances of Nature he plants and quarters them in our Veins and Arteries and Stomachs and Bowels and from thence infests us all over with continual Anguish and Pain how when he hath tired and exhausted us with his continued Batteries and worn out our strength with an uninterrupted succession of wearisom Nights to sorrowful Days he at last storms the Soul out of all the out-works of Nature and forces it to retire into the Heart and how when upon this last retreat of Life he hath marked us for dead in a cold Baptism of clammy and fatal Sweats he summons our weeping Friends together to assist him in grieving us with their parting kisses and sorrowful adieus and how at length when he is weary of tormenting us any more he rushes into our Hearts and with a few mortal Pangs and Convulsions tears the Soul from thence and turns it out to seek its fortune in the wide world of Spirits where it is either seized on by Devils and carried away to their dark Prisons of Sorrow and Despair there to languish out its Life in a dismal expectation of that dreadful day wherein it must change its bad condition for a worse or be conducted by Angels to some Blessed Abode there to remain in unspeakable Pleasure and Tranquillity till the great day of its Coronation with a Glorious Resurrection If we would thus frequently survey our approaching Mortality in all the Circumstances and Appendages of it we should hereby familiarize its Terrors to our Minds so that when ever it happens to us our thoughts which have been so long accustomed to converse with it will be much less startled and amazed at it and the often remembrances we have past upon it will put us upon laying in such wise and good Thoughts and Considerations as are best able to fortifie our minds against it and to inspire us with Courage and Alacrity under it V. And Lastly Frequently to remember our Mortality in the midst of our most happy Circumstances here is highly necessary to excite and quicken us in our Preparations for Eternity and hence it is that we are so often called upon in this Militant Estate to consider our latter end Deut. 32. 29. and by the examples of the best men are invited So to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom Psal. 90. 12. and to wait till our change comes Job 14. 14. To which end also we are put in mind that Here we have no abiding City Heb. 13. 14. and that it is appointed for all men once to dy Heb. 9. 27. and that our life is even as a vapour that appears for a little time and then vanishes away Jam. 4. 14. And to this purpose the Apostle applies this consideration 1 Cor. 7. 29 30 31. Now this I say brethren i.e. of our uncertain abode and continuance here upon which he exhorts us to compose our selves to a great indifferency as to the things of this World it remains that they that have wives be as if they had none and they that weep as though they wept not and they that rejoyce as though they rejoyced not and they that buy as though they possessed not and they that use this world as not abusing it for the fashion of this world passeth away i.e. Since your time here is so very short and uncertain see you endeavour beforehand to loosen your selves from this World and to put your selves into a fit posture to leave it for 't is but a short Scene of things that will quickly be shifted and then there will an Eternal state of things succeed And indeed since to Dy well is the last Act and final Consummation of our Life it must needs highly concern us to arm and prepare our selves for it beforehand lest we lose the prize by stumbling just at the Goal and after a long Voyage miscarry within sight of Harbour For in the hour of Death we throw our last Cast for an Eternity of Happiness or Misery And how much are we concerned to throw that well upon which so vast a Stake depends O my Brethren it is a most serious thing to Die to pass this dark Entry of Eternity through which as we go right or wrong we are made or undone for ever For to carry us right through 't is not a few Death-bed sorrows or good wishes 't
is not a few extorted Promises or forced Resolutions or rack'd Confessions and Lord have mercy upon us O no to Die well is an expensive Passage which we shall never be able to defray unless we carry along with us a very great stock of Spiritual Preparations We shall have need of a strong and active Faith of a Mind well furnished with wise and good Considerations of a deep and large and a tried Repentance of an unrestrained Charity of a confirmed Patience of a profound Submission to the Will of God and a well grounded Hope of a blessed Eternity For without all these together we shall be very ill accoutred to Die and run a fearful hazard of miscarrying for ever And these are such things as do not usually spring up like Mushromes in a night and much less in the disturbed moments of a Dying hour but do ask a much larger and serener Season to grow and ripen in But if whilst we are entertaining our selves among the Joys and Pleasures of this Life we banish from our Minds the remembrance of our Mortality and look upon Eternity as a thing at a vast distance this will put us upon delaying and deferring our preparation for it For in this temper we shall be apt to conclude that we have time enough to come to begin and compleat our Repentance and that we may safely indulge our selves yet a good while longer in the free injoyment of our own hearts desires and sin on at present upon this Security that we will certainly Repent hereafter and by this easie Train do men toule themselves on through the several stages of their Sin and Life till they arrive at their Death-bed and then they begin to think of Repenting in good earnest But then alas what will they be able to do when their Thoughts are continually disturbed with the care of disposing their Affairs in this World and the frightful prospect they have of the other When their Minds are distracted with incessant Pain and uneasiness so that it is not in their power to consider so much as a quarter of an hour together when through the stupor and indisposition of the Organs of their Reason they are not able to range their scattered and unwieldy Thoughts into any of those sober Reflexions and serious Meditations that are necessary to the forming of a sincere Repentance In effect therefore for men to refer their Repentance to a Death-bed is the same thing as to retire into a Battel to Meditate or to set up a Closset to study Philosophy in in the head Quarters of an Army where most men are as capable of free and undisturbed Contemplations as they are of Repenting amidst the Tumults and Hurries of a Death-bed And yet upon this dismal extremity do men commonly cast themselves through their neglect of remembring their approaching Mortality Whereas did they but often remember and seriously reflect on it they would as soon dare eat Fire as defer their Repentance upon the uncertain hopes of futurity For alas what is vain Man that he should talk of Repenting hereafter when perhaps while the words are in his mouth the earnest of Death is in his Head or Heart or Bowels when for all he knows he may be inflamed with a Fevor with what he hath drank to day or stifled with a Surfeit with what he shall eat to morrow when he may expire his Soul with his next Breath or suck in his bane with the next Air and so many unlooked for accidents may presently put an end to all his talk of Repenting hereafter and render it impossible for ever Now of what dismal consequence would it be should I be thus surprized If while I presume upon my future Repentance I am merrily Sinning on I should all of a sudden be hurried away out of the company of my Jovial Associates into that of houling and tormented Spirits And from my Songs and Laughter into weeping and wailing and gnashing of Teeth How would it blank and amaze me to think that ever I should be so mad as to run such a desperate hazard How dare we then talk of Repenting hereafter when we consider that it is not in our power to command so much as one moment of future time When for all that we know the hope of Eternity which is now in our hands may be lost for ever and drop through our Fingers before to morrow morning And that when we lye down at night and fall asleep securely in our Sins we do not know but before the next Twilight we may awake with horror and amazement in Hell Let us seriously consider therefore that the present time only is in our power and that as for the future it is wholly in God's and that therefore when we defer our Repentance to the future we do as it were cast Lots for our Soul and venture our Everlasting hopes upon a contingency which is not in our power to dispose of For all we know this may be the Evening of our day of Trial and if it be our Life and Eternity depends upon what we are now doing Wherefore it highly concerns us by all the regard we owe to our own Everlasting safety wisely to manage this last Stake the winning or losing whereof may be our making or undoing Thus will the frequent remembrance of our Mortality put us upon laying in good store of Spiritual provisions against that great day of Expence For he who often considers the great uncertainty of Life the dreadful approaches the concomitant Terrors and the momentous issues and consequents of Death must be strangely stupified if thereby he be not vigorously excited to fore-arm and fortifie himself with all those Graces and Defences that are necessary to render his Departure hence easie and safe and prosperous And now having done with the Text I shall only crave your leave to say a few words upon this sorrowful occasion viz. The Funeral of our common Friend Sir John Buckworth who perhaps while he lived was a person as eminently known as ever any Merchant that trod the Exchange of London And indeed considering the great share he had of Intellectual Endowments He was a Gentleman that seemed to have been mark'd out by Providence to make a considerable Figure among Men. For First Nature had inrich'd him with a clear bright Mind with a quick Apprehension a prompt Memory a steady and a piercing Judgment together with a natural presence of Mind and fluency and readiness of Speech which inabled him upon all occasions easily to express his own conceptions of things in very clear and apt Language All which Natural Indowments he had vastly improved and cultivated by a long and curious Observation and Experience For as Nature had fitted him for an active Life so Providence soon introduced him upon the stage of Action For as he was born a Gentleman so he was educated a Merchant which perhaps is one of the most advantagious Academies in the World to instruct the
A SERMON Preach'd at the FUNERAL OF Sir JOHN BVCKWORTH At the Parish-Church of St. PETER's le POOR IN BROADSTREET December 29. 1687. By JOHN SCOTT D. D. LONDON Printed for Walter Kettilby at the Bishop's-Head in St. Paul's Church-Yard and Thomas Horne at the South-Entrance of the Royal Exchange in Cornhill 1688. IMPRIMATUR Guil. Needham Jan. 10. 1687. TO MY Lady Buckworth MADAM IN Obedience to Your Desires I here present You with the Discourse I delivered at the Funeral of Your Excellent Husband and my never to be forgotten Friend And indeed considering how little there is in it I have no other Apologie to make for the Publication of it but that I could not without some degree of Incivility refuse it being urged with the concurrent Requests of Your Ladiship and the rest of those my worthy Friends his dearest Relatives Not that I altogether despair of its having some good Influence upon Sober and Attentive Readers There are some Thoughts in it which are apt enough to Inspire considering Minds with good Affections and Resolutions The Text I am sure contains excellent Sense in it and the Argument is mighty Serious and Momentous and how meanly soever I have managed it some honest Reader I hope may from hence take occasion to supply my defects out of his own Meditations and so to improve it to his everlasting Advantage And as for Your Ladiship I hope the perusal of it instead of reviving Your Sorrows for Your Dear Loss may be some way Instrumental to Animate You with a firm and vigorous Resolution to pursue that Blessed State wherein This and all Your other Losses here will ere long be abundantly repaired in a most joyous and everlasting Fruition And This MADAM is my hearty Prayers as well as my hope who am Your Ladiships Obliged and Faithful Servant JOHN SCOTT ECCLESIAST xi 8. But if a man live many years and rejoyce in them all yet let him remember the days of darkness for they shall be many I Shall not trouble you with the various rendrings of these words which with a very little difference do all amount to the same sence viz. That supposing it should be a man's good fortune to live very long and exceeding happy in this world yet he ought to have great care that the Joys of this Life do not so wholly take up and ingross his thoughts as to make him forget those days of darkness which must ere long succeed this delightsome Sun-shine which days will be many more and of much longer continuance than the longest Life of happiness we can promise our selves in this World. So that all the difficulty in these words is what we are to understand by the days of Darkness which are here opposed to a long Life of Joy and Rejoycing in this World And this difficulty will be easily resolved by considering the foregoing Verse Truly the light is sweet and a pleasant thing to the Eye to behold the Sun upon which it follows But if a man live many Years i. e. supposing he should for many Years injoy this pleasant spectacle of the light of the Sun yet let him remember those days of Darkness wherein his Eyes shall behold the Sun and Light no more wherein he shall be laid up in a dark and silent Grave whence the light of the Sun is excluded and where the sight of the Eyes is extinguished or as he expresses it in the Third Verse of the next Chapter wherein those that look out at the windows are darkened So that we shall have neither visible Objects nor visive Organs but be buried out of sight in deep darkness and insensibility By the days of Darkness therefore is evidently meant all that space of time between our Death and our Resurrection wherein our Bodies shall lye mouldering in a dark Grave utterly insensible of Good or Evil till by the powerful call of God they shall at length be roused up out of this fatal slumber into a state of Everlasting Life and Activity And these days saith he shall be many though they shall not run out to an infinite duration but at length conclude in a general Resurrection yet they shall be many many more in all probability than any man now alive can hope to live in this World. The words thus explained resolve into this sence That how long and happily soever men live in this World they ought to entertain their thoughts with frequent remembrances and considerations of their approaching Mortality Which is a duty so obvious to the Consciences of all men as being founded on the plainest and most conspicuous Reasons that the men of all Ages and Nations and Religions have owned and acknowledged it Thus the Heathen Philosophers teach That our lives ought to be a Constant Meditation of Death and that even in our most pleasant and healthful moments we ought to look upon our selves as Borderers upon Eternity That we should still take care to mingle our delights with the sad remembrances of our Mortality and not suffer the Joys of this Life to divert our Thoughts from that impending Fate which ere long will set an Everlasting period both to Them and That But the necessity of entertaining our minds with frequent Remembrances of our Latter end is founded upon far more powerful motives than a company of fine Sentences and pretty Sayings of Philosophers For First It is necessary to moderate our Affections to the World. Secondly It is necessary to allay the Gaiety and Vanity of our minds Thirdly It is necessary to put us upon improving our present injoyments to the best purposes Fourthly It is necessary to fore-arm our minds against the Terrors of Death Fifthly It is necessary to excite and quicken us in our preparations for Eternity I. It 's necessary to moderate our Affections to the world while we are encompassed round with the pleasures and delights of this world they commonly so ingross our minds that we shut our eyes against all futurities and are impatient to think of any thing to come unless it be the continuance of this happy scene of things which is at present before us with which continuance we are exceeding apt to flatter our selves that so thereby we may heighten the gust of our present enjoyments to which the consideration of their leaving us or our leaving them would be apt to give a very ungrateful farewel and when our thoughts are wholly intent upon these present goods and upon the prospect of their continuance our affections must necessarily run out towards them with an immoderate ardour and greediness For now our flattering Imaginations represent them to us as standing and permanent things as a kind of immortal heaven upon earth and accordingly our affections pursue and imbrace them as the best of goods and are for dwelling upon them and building Tabernacles in them there to make their final abode as in their highest and ultimate happiness Now there is no more effectual way to rouse mens minds out of
this flattering Dream of happiness from which if they persist in it the dire experience of a woful Eternity will ere long awake them than frequently to entertain their minds with the thoughts of their departure hence For when I set my self seriously to think of my dying hour that fairly represents to my deluded mind the true state and condition of all worldly happiness Here I plainly see that I am Tenant at will to a thousand contingencies in every one of whose power it is to turn me out of the World and out of my Happiness together every moment of my life and that when I have erected this childish Castle of Cards and housed my self in it as in an imaginary Fortress of impregnable security it is in the power of every puff of wind to blow it down about my ears and bury me in its ruins In every serious prospect of my Mortality I behold all my worldly enjoyments which promised me such mountains of happiness standing round my death-bed mocking at all my foolish hopes and exposing my baffled expectations to scorn and derision and whilst in the anguish of my Soul I cry out to them O ye helpless impotent things what are now become of all your boasted comforts you that promised to be a heaven upon earth to me why do not ye now help me in this my last Extremity why do not ye quench my raging Thirst why do not ye cool my feaverish Blood why do not ye ease my labouring Heart and quiet my convulsed and tormented Bowels All the Answer they return is this Alas poor deluded fool 't is not in us to relieve or succour thee But what will ye then forsake and abandon me and shall I have nothing left of all the mighty goods you promised but only a Grave a Coffin and a Winding-sheet Alas poor deceived wretch we leave not thee but thou must leave us being summoned away by a fatal power which we can neither bribe nor resist thy body must go down into a cold dark Grave and there lye utterly insensible till the Resurrection thy Soul must pass into the Region of Spirits whither we are not permitted to follow thee and where thou wilt have nothing to live upon to all Eternity but only the Graces and Vertues of thy own mind Farewel then ye Treacherous Cheats and Impostors that promised so much and now perform so little miserable Comforters are ye all and Physicians of no value Such thoughts as these the remembrance of our Mortality will be frequently suggesting to us and if such thoughts do not cool and allay the heat of our Affections to the world we are incurably fond of being deceived and abused by it II. Frequently to remember our departure hence is very necessary to allay the Vanity and Gaiety of our own minds whilest we are encompassed with the delights of this World our minds are generally too frolick and jovial to admit of any serious impressions and if at any time any good thoughts come in to visit us as those two Angels did Lot in Sodom to warn us of the dire Fate that hangs over us our Affections like the drunken Sodomites are presently all in an uproar and will never be quiet till those unwelcome guests be thrown out that disturb our Riots and mingle harsh Discords with our jovial Airs and so long as we continue in this light vain temper there is nothing will be grateful to us but frothy mirth or loose company or gay Ideas of our selves and of our own Wit or Wealth or Beauty or Finery And thus we shall fool away our Lives in perpetual Vanity and Impertinence in rolling about from Vanity to Vanity and never be Serious till we are forced to it by some woful experience But now to fix such a Roving and Volatile temper and thereby to render it accessible and hospitable to wise and good Thoughts I know nothing more necessary than the frequent Remembrance of our Mortality for as for the future Worlds of endless Joy and Torment though they are in themselves the most serious things in the World yet being both Future and Invisible Vain and Sensual Minds are not so capable of apprehending them with that degree of certainty that is necessary to render them affecting and prevalent But that we must die we are all as certain of as of our present Existence and therefore this if any thing must move and affect us If therefore together with those gay Idea's that possess our Minds we would ever and anon mingle that of our Mortality that would soon reduce our squandered Thoughts and make us Serious in despight of our teeth As for instance when in thy night Thoughts thou art priding thy self in the Pomp and Splendor of thy outward condition think thus with thy self Alas within a little while this Bed which now is as gay and as soft as the Sleep and the Sins it entertains must be my Death-bed here I must lye a languishing sad Corps which nothing in all this World can help or ease so that though now I should go on to add House to House and Lands to Lands even till I am become the Lord of all my Horizon yet in that sad Hour all these will no more be able to relieve me than the Landskip of them upon my Walls or my Hangings then I may as successfully go to my Pictures and try to entertain my Mirth and Luxuries with them or to recreate my Ear with hearkening after painted sounds or to gratifie my Palate with the Image of a Feast as to give my self any ease or content with these gay things I am now so proud of And when at length I have groaned away my fleeting Breath I must be removed from all my company attendance into a dark lonely and desolate hole of Earth where all my present Pomp must expire and be overcast with Everlasting Darkness Again when in the Morning thou art entertaining thy Vanity with thy Beauty thy Wit or thy fine Cloaths think thus with thy self Alas fond Soul all these gay objects of thy Pride must ere long convert to Rottenness and Corruption that curled Forehead must be bedewed with clammy Sweats those sprightly Eyes must wax as dim as a sullied Mirror that charming Voice must grow as weak as the faint Echoes of a distant Valley and all those Lilies and Roses on thy Cheeks must wither into the paleness of Death and shroud themselves in the horrors of the Grave Again when in the Afternoon thou hast been entertaining thy self with Mirth or Sport or Luxury go down into the Charnel-house and there survey a while the numerous Trophies of victorious Death In these gastly Mirrors thou beholdest the true Resemblance of thy future State forty years ago that naked Skull was covered like thine with a thick fleece of curled and comely Locks those empty holes were filled with Eyes that looked as charmingly as thine those hollow Pits were blanched with Cheeks that were as smooth and