Selected quad for the lemma: death_n
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A29270
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A sermon preacht in Madrid, July 4, 1666. s.n. occasioned by the sad and much lamented death of his late Excellency Sir Richard Fanshaw Knight and Baronet ... / by Henry Bagshaw.
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Bagshaw, Henry, 1632-1709.
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1667
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Wing B431; ESTC R9009
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17,214
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42
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IMPRIMATVR Tho. Tomkym R. R. in Christo Patri ac Domino Domino Gilberto Divina Providentia Archi-Episcopo Cantuariensi a Sacris Domesticis A SERMON PREACHT IN MADRID JVLY 4. 1666. S. N. OCCASIONED By the Sad and much Lamented Death of his late Excellency Sir RICHARD FANSHAW Knight and Baronet of his Majesties Most Honourable Privy Council and his Embassador in Ordinary to that COURT Where falling Sick of a Violent Feaver June 14th 66. He ended his Life the 26th day of that Moneth in the Third Year of his Negotiation in that place and the 59th Year of his AGE By HENRY BAGSHAW M. A. Student of Christ-Church Oxon and his late Excellencies Chaplain in that EMBASSIE London Printed for G. Beadle and T. Collins and are to be sold at their Shop at the Middle-Temple-Gate in Fleet-street 1667. To the Honourable my Lady FANSHAW the Widow of his late Excellency my Lord Embassador FANSHAW Madam HOw ready I am to receive your Commands but withall how unfortunate in obeying them may be easily judged by the coming forth of this Treatise where I find I have only made my weakness publick when I intended service and being so much divided betwixt my duty to the Dead and my obligations to the living yet I am in neither able to pay However I may presume to venture the Worlds tryal in subjects of this nature where I have ample Merit and great virtue to describe for so men can charge me with poverty of words but not with falsehood and though my Labours be mean yet I know such a Fate attends Worth that it not only secures its own Fame but protects others that speak of it To tell your Ladiship whom I design by this is to injure my Lords Memory and your goodness since both of you require from me a particular acknowledgement though both be above my testimony I should not here be willing to waken your griefs nor recall to your remembrance past accidents were I not sufficiently convinced of your Faith in an affliction This is a School wherein you have been long with my Lord bred up but whereas it might be imputed to the strength of your love that you could with him govern all other misfortunes it must be now meerly ascribed to the strength of Religion that you can without him conquer the last A severe Blow sensibly felt by lookers on but much more by your self that placed all your glory in his life and yet to be able to kiss the Rod in all that tenderness of passion which both your Sex and affection had raised this argues a high temper of a Christian and makes me doubt which is greater the loss or your constancy in bearing it Yet that courage you show in suffering is not more eminent than the Noblenesse of your cares which as they signally appeared in my Lords life time so afterwards in your performance of all rights to his body when you bore along through strange Lands that Image of Sorrow as if you would have an exercise of your love and your patience together This was a Travel taught Friends Grief and Enemies Reverence when they reflected upon the Greatness of the Person there represented and the Piety of the Conveyer that the Wisdome of a State should be shut up in a Hearse and the Joyes of your Ladiship there enclosed But there are other particulars I could mention wherein you are as nearly concerned for whatever praise is due to a Devout Life to an Exemplary Discipline to a Loyal Love or a Resolute Faith that your Ladiship may justly challenge of all which I could give the world pregnant proofs but that I know as it is the comfort of your grief to read my Lords Character so 't is the affliction of your Virtue to read your own Therefore laying aside this Theme in compliance to your will yet in what relates to my self I shall heg leave to publish to the World the great sense I have of those many favours I have received both from my Lord and your Ladiship who have alwayes lived with an equal love as to your selves and with as equal a concern to oblige others amongst whom none more reckons himself a Debtor than Madam Your Ladiships most Obliged Faithful Servant Henry Bagshaw A Funeral SERMON Preached in MADRID July 4. 1666. At the Interment of Sir Richard Fanshawe his Majesties Ambassador there HEB. 12.11 Now no Chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous but grievous nevertheless afterwards it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness to them which are exercised thereby THe Discipline of breeding up Christians under a Scourge and the way of planting a Church by laying its Foundation in Tears are Methods so little tempting in themselves that they have no virtue to raise Followers no more than Fire and Sword sent by an Enemy can people Towns which are properly design'd to destroy the Inhabitants But if you look up to the Soveraign Master of that Discipline and the Glorious Blessing annext to that way of planting all the seeming horrours in Religion are remov'd The Whip Christ now uses drives Man into the Temple that would not enter it before the Death he denounces prepares mans way for a Crown that would not otherwise receive it so that we may joyfully walk in a weeping Track that leads us to a Grave and a Grave open'd by our Saviour for a Triumph 'T is this Discipline the Apostle commends throughout this Epistle to the Christian Jews scattered in the world who needed an extraordinary light to discover the priviledge of Sons in such a Dispensation as being acquainted before with no other inheritance in this life but that of Temporal Promises and therefore thought it Bastardy to suffer Which Opinion of theirs he confutes in the sixth seventh and eighth verses of this Chapter and clearing to them the Doctrine of the Cross confirms them in a new Principle of Gospel-Government as in the words of my Text Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous but grievous nevertheless afterwards it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness to them which are exercised thereby The words contain in them these parts 1. The unpleasant Nature of Chastisement to mans apprehension Now no Chastening seemeth to be joyous but grievous 2. The time this unpleasantness lasts 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for the present which indeed is no time but an instant that dies with naming it 3. The end and reward of Chastisement It yieldeth afterwards the peaceable fruit of righteousness 4. The Qualification of the persons that receive it they are said to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 we render it exercis'd but it signifies such that are approv'd and try'd in all the Combats of affliction Men that have got art and strength by their frequent meetings of that Adversary to repel its force and foil all its designs I shall not prosecute these parts as they lie thus severally but form out of them all these two Propositions which shall be the
how to act that are unable to prescribe our own remedy But a sober considerer will be far from taxing the Orders of Divine Providence which he knows should he oppose it is a fruitlesse work because they are unconquerable should he judge it is an absurd action because their end is not known Let us first understand our own disease before we scruple at the Physick given us let us first find out the evil of Death before we quarrel at the Dispensation Otherwise we do but bruitishly repine and besides affront God at our own peril like a foolish people I have read of Saavedra Hisp De Gothis that shot their Arrows at Heaven when it Thundred but those Arrows instead of appeasing the noyse turned Instruments of Heavens Justice by coming down upon their heads to punish their presumption Whoever he be that complaineth let me ask him if Grief can allow Reason a hearing what evil is there in this accident that should breed any murmuring in his soul Can the chastening be thought grievous to the person departed or to us left behind To him Then Rest must be Torment and Immortality a Penance But alas we consider not how a good mans sighs go away with his breath and his tears are sealed up with his eyes whose soul now freed from the dregs and contagion of body can have no trouble without you 'l call pity one which may be raised in Saints above should they behold the mistakes of us Mortals below Lies then the burden of this affliction upon us So Interest pleads in our Grief and not Love But wherein are we properly losers when God sends this and the like Tryals meerly to exercise us for Glory The Storm that frighted S. Peter in the Ship had not its blacknesse from the grossnesse of Air without but from a dark Cloud within because his Master was asleep there Now his and our Master is uncapable of sleep for when he arose he threw off all the weaknesse of Humanity He is now watchful and vigilant over every accident that befalls us whence we may look upon the bitterest storm of an affliction since Mercy governs it with as pleasant a regard as we look upon Dew or seasonable showres that refresh the Earth with their fall I need not I hope fetch Reasons from Phylosophy to cure the distemper of our passions which Scripture can with more truth and fulnesse supply us with out of the abundance of its store The old Heathens derived their cure of Death both from the necessity of that blow as likewise from the period it put to Sense and lastly from a wandring Immortality the Soul by it enjoyed Necessity they thought would give Reason such a Law so as to cause its submission A destroying of Sense would remove their fears and a wandring Immortality be a sufficient object of desire The first of these is indeed so convincing as may silence our complaints but the two last that annihilate one part of our being and leave the other imperfect are but poor reliefs to support us either at our own or our friends departure Christianity affords us better Medicines to heal our wound by setting before us no Airy Phantome or Apparition of good but a substantial happinesse wherein the body shal share with the soul in a Beatifick vision and sensetaste of those divine joys that shall fill the understanding so that it makes a perfect object received by a compleat subject when God shall be the reward and the whole man enjoy him But we are apt to make melancholly reflections upon that scene of mortality Death presents us in a pale look sunk eyes breathless body and a dark vault to which it must be carry'd All these are but Artificial figures of its loss to delude our Sense no real tokens of it and therefore a right Faith is not mov'd with that spectacle which dwels upon another scene of lasting colours for therein is shown the endless spring and Vigour of a Resurrection This is the great stay of a Christians Hope and the corner-stone of our building which were it wanting all our Preaching would be vain and all your Mourning desperate But being grounded in the truth of it We hence learn to perswade as you should learn to rejoyce with that expectation This is that state will truly instruct us in the knowledge of our Natures whereas the Life we have here and the Death that follows it are but ill Schools to teach it us Life that swells us with an opinion of good is but a false Dress to hide its Imperfections Death that breaks mans Frame and disorders his dust is a false Dress too to hide the Glory of his rising but a Resurrection that instates us in a full fruition of Bliss that takes away all our corruption and a proness of falling into it again this breaks forth upon a devout Soul in such beauty and lustre that it makes all the Apprehensions of good in this Life all the Fears of Evil in Death to vanish before it What is there then here in comparison of this state can be worth a minutes desire when the Life we prize so much begins in Tears continues with Cares and ends with Torments What is there in Death if we reflect on this glory can claim a minutes discomfort when death we lament so much has but a sick stomach in swallowing its prize and will ere long throw it up upon a Land of Immortality Go then and bee discontented that thou hast left here deposited thy Friend thy Husband thy Father thy Master Is it not madness like his Grief that is troubled he has put his Mony to the Exchangers to receive his own again with Usury For it is but a little while wee stay here and while we stay God tries how we use and how we surrender our Talents which if we can give a good account of at the day of Death that great day of collecting Gods rents We shall then be taken up into the Clouds that now seem to us so dark and there behold the brightness of those Saints wee have here mournfully lamented There wee shall joyntly with them sing Praises making this no small part of our Song that God would use so severe a method to bring us together One Word in the close We are now leaving this Land and our Offices together Suffer me at the end of my Preaching to make a plain but true profession before a Great Judge to whom wee must all give an account of our Actions that I have endeavour'd according to my poor ability a faithful discharge of my Function throughout the whole course of this Service To God I leave the judgment of my heart To you I leave the tryal of my Passions the errours of my Nature the weaknesse of my performance but if God uses to accept the heart these other Infirmities I hope Man will pardon Now to God the Father to God the Son and to God the Holy Ghost bee ascribed all Honour Praise Might Majesty and Dominion both now and for evermore Amen FINIS