large extents of deaths dominion and soveraignty above all Psal 8.6 for even these Gods Dii umbratiles die like men but they are frequently attended as the succession of months in the year with some alteration of weather many times for the worse So that where any people is blessed with good Kings and gracious Princes it is happy if they do serò in caelum redire in this part of deity Immortality come neerest to the Gods by living long and happily with their people and going as late as may be to Heaven For as good Princes are by good Subjects justly esteemed inter publica gentis bona praecipua Dei dona the chiefest worldly blessings that God can give mankind so their death must needs be reckoned inter luctus epidemicos publica damna among the greatest losses and grounds of most publique sorrow Although they die as Moses Joshua and David in good old ages full of days and honour as Augustus did among the Romans Optimum esset è Republicâ Rom. Severum aut non nasci aut nunquam denasci of whom it might truly be said as was of Severus the Emperor It had been happy for the Empire if either he had never been born or never had died for as he attained the Empire with much war and blood so he setled it with so much justice wisedom and honour for a long time that it was a felicity not possible to survive him But if good and hopeful Princes be cut off immaturely by death as Josiah among the Jews 2 Chro. 35.25 and our pious K. Ed. the 6. no wonder if they go to their graves by water with infinite sad hearts and weeping eyes becoming the piety and humanity of their people Hence the mourning of Hadadrimmon in the valley of Megiddon became not only a Proverb Zach. 12.11 but the highest pattern for publick lamentation at the sad fate and death of an excellent Prince And not without cause may this be a superlative grief because it ever follows where the Shepheard is smitten the sheep are either scattered or wounded or shrewdly warned of God to humble themselves under his mighty hand and unsearchable judgements Matth. 26.31 2. Yea when great and eminent Priests or Prophets of God and his Church as Samuel Jehojada John Baptist James die a natural death or are slain who kept up the majesty of Religion the beauty of holiness and the order of Gods worship being the chariots and horsemen of Israel as Eliah was So among Christian Churches 1 Kings 2.12 such Ministers as have been exemplary in their lives potent in their true doctrine severest exactors of discipline upon themselves burning and shining lights that have been valiant for the truth not popular not partial but unblameable venerable and admirable in all things filling that sphear in which God and the Church had orderly set them either as Bishops or Presbyters by preaching praying writing living and governing the Church worthy of their holy order and function So as did those ancient and renowned Bishops Polycarp of Smyrna Ignatius of Antioch St. Ambrose of Milan St. Cyprian of Carthage St. Athanasius of Alexandria St. Chrysostome of Constantinople St. Iraeneus of Lions St. Austin of Hippo St. Gregory of Rome with infinite other worthy of their successions in that name and order in all Churches and ages sufficient in my judgement to vindicate the office degree name dignity and use of Bishops every where and no where more then in England which had of late as worthy Bishops as ever the Church enjoyed in any place or age since the Apostles When I say such Fathers of the Church die who were in their times as was said of St. Ambrose the Munimenta ornamenta urbis orbis defence and ornaments of their Churches and Countrys the personal death of such Fathers ought to be laid greatly to heart such as was that not long ago of the most learned pious industrious humble indefatigable and Apostolick Bishop Bishop Vsher the late Lord Primate of Armagh As also that of the most eloquent and venerable and painful Bishop of Norwich Doctor Hall with many others now at rest in the Lord of whom the world was not worthy which sought to bury them in silence indignities poverty and obscurity before they were dead or any way had ill deserved of this Church and State or the reformed Religion of which they were most able defenders How much more when the very Function order and degree of that Catholick race the primitive Apostolick and most excellent government of the Church by Bishops comes in any Christian or reformed Church to be destroyed extirpated and buried as it were with the burial of an Ass cast into the graves of the common people and exposed to be trodden under the feet of plebeian contempt Which venerable Order though sixteen hundred years old in the Catholick Church and above 1400 in * In the Council of Arles in France before the first great Nicene Council about the year of Christ 230. three Brittish Bishops were present and subscribed viz. Eborius of York Restitutus of London Adelphius of Colchester as Bishop Vsher observes in his De prim Eccl. Brit. Sirmondus Concil Gall. Tom. 1. p. 9. Lucius the King of the Britans as Bede tells us Hist l. 1. c. 4. received the faith by such as were sent from Elcutherius the 12th Bishop of Rome from the Apostles as Heâ—sippus tells us in Euseb l. 4. c. 22. As Calvin in Epist ad Sadoletum de Necessi Refor Eccles Zanchius Epist ad Elizab Regin am Angl. in Epist ad Grindal Archiep. Cant. Isaac Casaub Epist ad Reg. Jacob. ante Exer. Baron Moulin Ep. ad Epis Winto Beza Epist ad Grindal Archiep. Cant. Pet. Martyr ad Juelli Apolog. praefat Isa 57.1 Psal 116.15 these British Churches yet died not of old age or onely inward decays in the vitals but by force and outward violence which government in its due constitution no Christian or reformed Church not wholly under a democratick or popular spirit yea no one eminent reformed Divine but did highly approve and desire the happiness to enjoy as hath been made evident by their writings But no testimony new or old no reason or Scripture no sense of justice or civility no publick honour of Church or State can preserve where men are resolved to destroy good and all This is certainly a just ground of great and better lamentation to those that lay to heart the licentious fedities indignities insolencies popular confusions and all sorts of irreligions which must necessarily follow the want of due government in any Church yea and the extirpation of that which is not more reverend for its primitive Institution and Catholick descent from the Apostles then for its excellent use and admirable constitution carrying with it the truest and best proportions as well as benefits of grave and authoritative government in which order and counsel
many pens illustrated by frequent Funerals meeting us every moment and at every turn yet seldom laid to heart but as a cloud it passeth over our heads without showring down any softning drops on our souls These discourses as hail on the hills rattle in every Funeral Sermon and exhortation upon our ears and heads but seldome enter and pierce into our hearts They are like Ghosts or Fantasms that appear and vanish scaring us a little but they touch us not at all notwithstanding the heapes upon heapes which are very ten and twenty years made up of our dead friends kindred and acquaintance who are no sooner removed out of our sights but they are gone out of our memories as to any pious improvement Xerxes is reported to have wept when seeing his vast Army which made a million of fighting men he considered how one century of years would mow them all down as so many flowers or spires of grass in a field The softness of Christians hearts should go beyond the savageness of such an Heathen He considered the breaking of the box but he was not sensible of those sweet resentments that savour of life unto life which a wise and gracious heart extracts out of the objects and meditations of death He beheld the carkasses of so many Lions but he found no honey in any of them He had only the eyes of experience sense and reason but not of grace and religion which looks through the dark mist and medium of death to the prospect of a true and eternal life That great Persian Commander as the Roman Emperors after him Quos nec spectasset quisquā nec spectatuus esset Ludi Seculares Suet. in Claud. when they caused to be proclaimed at their greatest secular Interludes and most solemn Pageants which were presented but once in an hundred years Come and see those shows which no man living ever did see heretofore nor shall ever see again These men I say had the Moon and Stars of common reason and experience to shew them their own and other mens mortality but they wanted the beams of the Sun of righteousness the light of God's word in the Scriptures which every where sets so many afterisks or memorable notes of emphasis and terror upon Death In the day that thou eatest thou shalt die Gen. 2. An Oracle which presently began to be fulfilled as soon as the condition was forfeited just as the sea ebbs from the very first minute of its recess or abatement though sensim pedetentim by silent steps and almost insensible degrees according to the patience and indulgence of a long-suffering God Yet as the candle is dying or consuming as soon as it is lighted or burning and the hour-glass is emptying as soon as it is running so the life of man ran to waste and the exhaustings of death so soon as it ceased to have communion and supplies of immortal influx from the God of life When the intercourse between the spring and the current is once stopped and obstructed the constancy fulness and perennity of the stream presently decays and as it drieth up it dies A sinful man is presently surrounded with a thousand deaths every moment Mille modi mortis c. and though we can die but one death in the conquest or completion yet how many legions of deaths are ever marching in array against us both as to the menacing preparation without us and the disposition or infirmity within us which expose us to die on every side There is not only mors in urna but in olla in victu vestitu halitu death in our coffins and urns but in our cups and pots in our meats and drinks and in our bodies and bowels yea in our breath and bread which we use as the breath staff of life the short reciprocations returns of which are the constant supports of our lives and the chief antemuralia defensatives against death Thus the Philosophers discoursed when death striking upon their hard and flinty hearts Poena ad unum terror ad omnes they saw by the sparks or strictures of reason their own mortal condition But the Divine Oracles are like Thunderbolts falling here and there and neer to every one of us though their execution light not presently on our heads Heb. 9.27 yet the terror and contrition should upon our hearts because it is by an unrepealable decree appointed for all men once to die and after that the judgement Death as a great drag-net fetches all into its capacious bosome this King of terror as Job calls death is verè Rex Catholicus truely a Catholick King reigning over all Pallida mors aequo pulsat pede pauperum tabernas Regumque turres Hor. as the Apostle Paul expresses it even those that most glory in their royal priveledges and titles No Emperor hath any Empire over it nor against it any more then the Brittish King Canutus of Kent had against the seas incroaching upon his Throne Or then that cunning Prince Lewis the 11th of France who as Phil. Commines reports fenced himself Phil. de Com. Histor of France but in vain with holy reliques surrounding his body and bed to see if he could scare away death with those 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 holy terriculaments Kings that have a just power of life and death as to their subjects have no power over their own to prolong their lives or protract their deaths one moment Kings are conquered and cow'd by death Potentates are impotent in this conflict for they assist they very enemy and are traytors to themselves and if no other force doth the force of their own infirmities will certainly destroy them No Protectors can protect themselves or others from this civil war this intestine enemy which is unavoidable irresistable which hath all the engines for battering and arts of undermining us Non domus fundus c. neither house nor land nor father nor friend nor favour nor power nor Courts nor Crowns nor the surest defensative under heaven against men which is a valiant and faithful Army these are all as bulrushes and straws in the way of death which is the way of all the living Death in this absolute empire and unlimited soveraignty using not only jure suo its own right but jure divino God's right as the executioner of his just irrevocable and dreadful sentence upon all mankind Among whom none ever was sufficient to answer that Question Psal 89.48 What man is he that liveth and shall not see death Shall he deliver his soule from the hand of the grave Yea when the Son of the everliving God who is God co-essential and immortal with his Father appeared among men as one of us in the form of sinful flesh Death though he had no just claim against him because no guile or sin was found in him Phil. 2.8 1 Pet. 2.22 John 10.18 yet used its prerogative And though this blessed Messias could
preach his revealed will which is our sanctification by our repenting and amending according to the tenour of the Gospel Such as deaffen their ears harden their hearts and turn their backs on God and the meanes of grace all the time of their strength and health will find it very hard to see or seek his face in the disorder darkness and clouds of sickness which is the twilight and evening of Death As in civil conversation no man may so presume of Gods providence as to neglect honest industry so in religious respects no man may hope for grace that doth not rationally duely and conscienciously apply to the use of those meanes which God hath appointed in his Church All blessings temporal and eternal which are acquirable by and offered to reasonable creatures are ordinarily the effects of Gods mercy and mans industry not of miracles or omnipotence The meanes of grace given by God in his Church are never barren or ineffectual but to those who neglect to attend them and use them as they may and ought to doe if they look upon them as from God and in order to their soules good which is to be attained by this or no way 7. In order therefore to promote and speed by Gods assistance our repentance while we are yet in life and health we should lay to heart specially at the summons of another death What infinite patience and long-suffering it is that hitherto God hath shewed toward thee for many years of vanity sin and desperate folly Rom. 2.4 in which he hath spared thee notwithstanding thou hast daily provoked him to his face yet thou art not to this day cut off from the land of the living nor is the door of mercy and repentance shut upon thee How many have been cut off by the sword by sudden death and by lingring sickness here one there another while thou art reprieved Should not this forbearance of God lead thee to repentance Is it not enough in all conscience and too much in all reason and gratitude thus far to have offended a God that is loth to destroy thee giving thee space to repent Wilt thou after the hardness of thy heart and vain confidence of life still treasure up wrath against the day of wrath The time past may suffice to give thee sufficient experience how unwilling God is thou shouldest die 1 Pet. 4.3 and how willing thou shouldst repent and live Ezek. 33.11 For it is of the Lords mercy that thou art not consumed Thou mightest have been the corps now to be put into the grave Lam. 3.22 where is no device or wisedome of counsel or repentance or preaching Eccl. 9.10 or praying O turn no longer the grace of God into wantonness which is offered in Christ by his Ministers Breve sit quod turpiter audes Of a short precious and uncertain moment the least part is too much to be lavished in those wayes Jude 4. which are not only unprofitable but pernicious Our whole lives after the vanity of childhood and youth are too little to be spent in well-doing Isa 20.15 and in undoing what hath been either vain or wicked To live as if we had made a covenant with death and hell is not onely a fool-hardiness but a madness which hath by infinite sad and horrid instances been fearfully punished but not yet sufficiently cured in mankind Eccl. 8.12 Though a sinner live an hundred years twice told yet it shall not be well with him Eccl. 11.9 Though young and strong men please themselves in the delights of their eyes and desires of their own hearts yet they must know that for all these things God will bring them to judgment A mans debts and dangers are not the lesse because he is not presently arrested nor sees the books and specialties which are against him or the Serjeants which will arrest him 'T is high time to cease to offend that God who is willing to remit all our former arrears and debts upon our return to him begging his pardon and resolving to live worthy of such grace Doe not then feed any longer on ashes it is a deceived heart that turneth thee aside Isa 44.20 Jonah 2.8 Phil. 2.12 Heb. 2.9 so that thou canst not deliver thy soul nor say Is there not a lye in my right hand Take heed of following lying vanities lest thou forsake thy own mercies which are offer'd us but from moment to moment so as every minute of time that passeth every clock that striketh calls upon thee in the wise man's counsell Eccles 9.10 Whatever thine hand findeth to do do it with all thy might And what hast thou to do but to work out thy salvation with feare and trembling as the Apostle calls upon the Philippians All without this is time and labour lost 8. Lay to heart upon the sight and reflexions of death the infinite want thou hast of such a Saviour who may be able and willing to redeem thee a captive to sin and held all thy life in the fear of death from both these miserable bondages Lay to heart the infinite grace transcendent love and mercy of Christ Heb. 2.9 who is offer'd thee as a sufficient Saviour to all purposes Who hath tasted death for every man and hath overcome death as well as satisfied for the death of the whole world excluding none nor excepting any but putting all into a capacity of life and salvation upon their faith and repentance John 5.40 John 6.37 40. Ver. 54. John 8.52 John 11.25 Mark 16.15 so that whoever will come to him and believe in him shall not die but have eternal life yea though he die as to the body yet he shall continue to live in the happiness of his soul and his body shall be raised to live in glory and immortality by Christ who hath wrought this for us by his death and brought it to light by his Gospel which is commanded to be preached to every rational creature under heaven Lay then to heart that is seriously and alone ponder with thy self what Christ hath done and suffered for thee what he hath deserved of thee what he expects from thee as a man Christian for whose sake he hath died Wouldst thou have greater instances of his love to thee John 10.11 John 15.13 then thus to die for thee Shall not thy unthankful and sinful importunity be satisfied with that which hath satisfied divine justice stopped the Devils mouth conquered death and purchased life eternal to every true believer It wrought up blessed Ignatius's heart to an ambitious zeal of Martyrdome that he might shew his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 reciprocal love to Christ when he deeply considered and oft repeated Christ my love hath been crucified 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Doth it become thee to neglect despise sinne against such love any longer Canst thou trample that blood under feet which hath been shed for thee Wouldst thou have him
daily crucified for thee Canst thou fancy or desire greater benefits then those that accrew to thee and are offered thee by Christ who hath taken away the sting of death 1 Cor. 15. which is sin that when thou diest in the Lord thou art sure to be eternally blessed with the Lord Vitam non amittimus sed mutamus Hieron for true Christians doe not lose but exchange life by death Like a turning chatr which serves for a door so death natural is but a moving us out of one room which is an ontward antecamera chamber or common gallery or base court into another which is most ample and nobly furnished with all company and other accomplishments befitting the Majesty Palace and presence of the King of Heaven Death is but a transition or passage from grace to glory the taking of the candle of our soules out of a dark and close lanthorn of our bodies to set it on a fair candlestick in a stately chamber till the body be restored fitter for it crystalline celestial incorruptible When Christians defer their repentance and comming to Christ they forget the priviledges and benefits which are enjoyable only by them both in life and death at resurrection and judgment to come There being no other name under heaven by which we may be saved in any of these exigents Acts 4.12 which will in after-after-years overtake us all O bethink thy self and say in thy heart with David What shall I render to the Lord for all his mercies Psal 116.12 What shall I return to my blessed Saviour who hath redeemed me by his precious blood from so many and so great deaths I will devote both soul and body to him as a living and acceptable sacrifice Rom. 12.2 which is but my reasonable service Though I have done foolishy ungratefully unchristianly and desperately hitherto yet I will adde no more drunkenness to thirst or iniquity to sinne since he hath by his meritorious passion both redeemed my life from the death in sin and my death from the penal horrors for sin Yea in this he hath made my death better then my life that while I live I shall sin by daily defects and infirmities but when I die sin shall wholly die in me This one cordial is in every good Christians death that his sin shall not be immortal but as he shall be ever with the Lord so he shall never sin more against him 9. Lay to heart upon this and the like sad occasions to what good end or purpose thou hast hitherto lived for many yeares as a man or a Christian in the sphear of reason in the bosome of the Church and in the light of true Religion Bethink thy self how many hours dayes weeks moneths yeares God hath given thee since thou cam'st to be master of reason and instructed in Religion knowing good and evil as a space of repentance and opportunity to shew thy fear love duty and obedience to God that thou mightst be capable of his eternal rewards There are in every year eight thousand seven hundred seventy five hours if we should allow the greater half of these for sleep and necessary attending our bodies take but four thousand houres for our work and business of consequence how poor account can most men women of ripe age but not yet come to yeares of discretion give of all these in a whole year Not one hour in seven which is as a Sabbatical hour in every day not one hour in ten which is but the Tithe of our time is generally devoted to God or any good duty Nay many are weary of doing nothing Mark 11.20 and how solicitous to ravel out their time in the most impertinent and excessive pastimes they can imagine They are like to doe very well who know not what to doe with themselves and their time Phil. 3.19 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 When they have most leisure to intend their spiritual and eternal improvement then are they most lavish of their precious houres Debuisti boc tempus non perdere So Pliny the elder checked his Nephew for losse of time when he saw him walking in the streets and indisposed thereby to read or note any thing Canst thou not tell how to spend this or that long day Wouldst thou adde spurs to the wings of time I will tell thee the very waste and seeming superfluity of thy time would serve thy turn for an eternal happiness to work out thy salvation Those lost shreds of hours which thou flingest away lazing and laughing and chatting and visiting stretching yawning and playing and fooling so long till from doing nothing art tempted to doe evil things idleness being the Devils anvil Incus Diaboli desidia Cavene te Diabolus inveniat oriosum Hieren Pro. 17.16 These parings and rags I say of thy precious time which is infinitely more precious then the finest gold is a price put into thy hand if thou be not an egregious fool of which infinite gain and advantage may be made for ever In this and that good hour which thou prodigally losest not knowing how to spend it thou mightest be seeking thy lost-self thy lost soul thy lost conscience thy lost God thy lost Saviour who came into the world to seek and to save that which is lost O what might not be done in that chain and circle which St. Jerom commends to Laeta Orationem lectio lectionem meditatio meditationē oratio sequebatur Hieron of dispensing time nay if we wrought but now and then a link of grace O what prayers what tears what meditation what contrition what compunction what godly sorrow what ingenuous shame what self-abhorrence what self-despairs might be wrought upon thy heart as to the reflection of thy sins past Yea what fear of God what reverence of the Divine majesty power wisedome justice goodness evident in his works providences word What breathings sighings and seekings after God! What purposes vowes holy resolutions thou mightst take up and begin What hatred and loathing of sin as the greatest abasing of a reasonable creature what search into and admiration of the mystery of Christ crucified what longing after him what faith in him what sense of thy want of him what zeal for him what humility meekness charity holy industry sense of Gods savour sweet influence of his Spirit power against corruptions comforts against death hopes of heaven delight in well-doing joy in God! What serious considerations of the deformity and danger by sin of the beauty and benefits by Christ of the vanity of the world the certain uncertainty of dying These meditations and many such like effects of our thoughts and reflexions of things might be the happy fruits of thy true of thy holy considerations and sober endeavours if thou wert worthy of one moment of that life which thou art so weary of and wastest so impertinently a little portion of which will be one day when thy distresses and terrors come upon
a childish and stupid indifferency or with a vulgar formality or in some cases with a proud unchristian and unmanly insolency rejoycing and triumphing in the death of those who possibly were thought their betters or equals or rivals or enemies As Ahaz in his distresses sinned yet more against the Lord 2 Chro. 28.22 so do some men and women too amidst those Funerals which concerned them most to lay to heart How doth covetousness ambition envy and lasciviousness make many men and women unfeignedly rejoyce in the death of Parents Children Husbands Wives Rivals and Princes that they can hardly suppress their odious joys and unseasonable contentments from breaking forth into such abhorred expressions as Vitellius a most ungenerous Prince and profligate person used when after the battel ended which in civil wars as that was makes even victory it self sad and ashamed was heard to say when he rode amidst the now putid and unburied carkasses of the slain Citizens The smell of dead strangers corps is pleasing Bonus odor hostis occisi at melior civis but most of dead Roman Citizens being my enemies A speech which Suetonius brands with a stigma of just-infamy so infinitely distant from the clemency of Julius Caesar Quique dolet quoties cogitur esse ferox who ever in the chase commanded to spare the Roman Citizens and was unfeignedly grieved to use necessary severities which are next door to cruelty Poor mortals forget in their revengeful impatiencies military jollities and victorious triumphs how soon the wheel may come about and the same measure may be meeted to them Judg. 1.6 which they meet to others Adoni-Bezek may live to see his own thumbs and great toes one off Should not we tremble before the great and terrible God when we see his judgments so executed that our selves are sometimes made the sad executioners of them upon others who it may be in Gods sight are not greater sinners then our selves 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Stobaeus Matth. 5.28 They that joy in anothers calanity or insult in their death though just doe adopt a murther and commit man-slaughter in their hearts as Christ speaks of Adultery As a Judge who pleaseth his private spite and malice in that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 most depraved passion which sucks honey out of anothers gall while he justly condemnes a malefactor to die he may be a just Judge according to the Law of man but is unrighteous according to the Gospel of Christ which commends charity and compassion tenderness and bowels to Christians beyond all burnt sacrifices Gods High Court of Justice will judge even judges themselves and Death will in a few years not only conquer but triumph over those that are lifted up above the fate and pitch of poor mortals in their gloryings over an others ruines Let him that stands upon a mountain never so high and fast remember the day of death is coming he shall also fall and perish like one of the Princes Yet mens sins are not to be measured by the evil or seeming calamity of their death but by the open wickedness and impieties of their lives The same fate may befall good and bad they may die in peace as it is said of Josiah who are slain in warre and of Zedekiah 2 Kin. 22.20 Jer. 34.5 who died blind and in captivity The death of men is the more to be laid to heart by how much less they deserved it from men and more from God It serves to exhort and excite every one of us to search and try our own hearts Vse 2 to examine how far this or another Funeral is gone beyond our eyes and eares so as it is or shall be laid to our hearts What fear what trembling what holy purposes and what humble resolutions are raised in thee What sins mortified what vanities left what neglects repaired what graces increased what improving of life what preparings for death by a constant and conscientious use of all duties opportunities and means proper for so great ends as aym at eternity Your mourning with never so great pomp and state yea with unfeigned grief out of humane and momentary reflexions onely is not that just improvement which God expects As Fullers earth cleanseth spots of cloaths and Wood-ashes rince foul vessels so should the contemplation of anothers death their dust and ashes help to cleanse our souls In vain do you wear black mourning on your bodies if you still keep pullatas atratas animas black and sullied soules soyled and scorched with the inordinate flames of lust pride malice covetousness c. which are the soot of hell These sine black garments are but in stead of courser sackeloth the fittest coverings indeed for your bodies of sin and death but they must put you in mind to get your soules cloathed in white garments the robes of Christs righteousness for justification and sanctification without which thou wilt follow this corps to thy grave also with cause enough and too much for such everlasting mournings as admit no comforters or comforts Let thy mourning be not only civil formal and humane but Christian humble penitent Acts 20.25 As Jacob to the Angel so let not a Funeral goe without a blessing as Felix at St. Pauls Preaching so let thy heart tremble at these visible as well as audible instructions of death and judgment to come Retine to thy closet after these Solemnities and earnestly pray to God to give thee Funeral graces that by an holy Christian Chymistry thou mayst extract spirits out of dead bones Doe not play with Death lest it bite or sting thee next as that serpent did a merry Greek of old who jestingly putting his hand into the jawes of a Lion that was figured of stone for an ornamental statue in one of the Temples of the Gods was so stung with a scorpion which lay in the mouth of that Lion that he presently died having first laughed with his companions at that monition he had the night before in his dream as he told them that he should next day be destroyed by a Lion which beast never haunted that place and so he thought himself most secure Death many times lies then nearest us and in wait for us when we least mind the monitions or credit the warnings which may by providence be given us I cannot but make use of this Text as a just vindication of this and the like religious solemnities at Christian Burials Vse 3 against those severe Aristarchus'es and super-reforming Reformers who cast most supercilious browes and use very severe invectives against all Funeral Sermons and much more against all Scriptures read exhortations and prayers used by and to the living at the graves and interments of the dead by which tetrick austerities they seem to me not only to reproach the piety prudence and charity of this deserved famous and well reformed Church in its sacred offices and appointments on such occasions which were seriously approved happily
then parasitick preachers or mealy-mouthed Ministers He that speaketh or writeth which is a silent preaching a speech without noise or words without a voice in Christs name and authority to sinful and secure mortals had need be in very good earnest fervent in spirit unflattering in speech charitably serious yea kindly severe with all meekness of wisedom For Preachers of the Gospel are ordained of God to be Antiparasites purposely to crosse and encounter that pleasing but pernitious humor in mankind which loves to deceive and flatter even to the death both themselves and others the itching sores which others love to scratch we must wound that we may heal them and if ever we the so despised Ministers of Christ dare to own our selves in our authority and commission which is divine or none it should be at Funerals when standinng as it were upon the Tombs and urns of the dead we have more then ordinarily the higher ground above the the living all whose pleasures profits pride power and pomp should be then like the Moon under our feet when as Gods Heraulds or lesser Angels we summon all that hear or read us to Death and Judgement the due and timely preparing for which is the great lesson Ministers have to preach and people to practise For which purpose I have used such pathetick freedom of expressing my self as may by Gods blessing be useful and so acceptable to many but justly offensive to none that either are truly wise or would be good and happy in Gods way and method which is grace and holiness The ensuing discourse is now as your Honour easily perceives much inlarged beyond the Horary limits of a Sermon exceeding in length wosi of the ancient Orations I wish it might equal them in usefulness weight and worth For in recollecting and ruminating my meditations they easily multiplied and in transcribing my notes as I had prepared them I added with Baruch Jer. 36.32 many like words to what I had preached and had penned but omitted being necessarily and so excusably contracted in the Pulpit but now more dilated in the Press according to my own design and the desire of others who have a great empire over me What then was in my preaching more massive and rough hewen than I intended I have now malleated and polished not only to an ampler but I hope to a more august proportion That it may be somewhat answerable to those great respects of love and honour which I have not only to this noble Gentleman but to his honorable Relations and particularly to his most virtuous Mother The few years of whose mortal life as he oft foretold in my hearing he should not exceed so he did not attain to equal them God verifying his presages by his immature death being so far distant from his excellent Mother that she might be said to die in her April but he her only child in the February of his age as many years sooner as a month hath weeks Due regard to both their memories also to Your Ladiships honour who had neerest relation to him and so greatest affection for him These next my highest and more religious designs may I hope not only excuse the gravity and prolixity of this Epistle to so young a Lady but also patronise my thus publishing my self Madame Your HONOURS most humble Servant J. GAUDEN March 15. 1657. The ERRATA thus to be mended PAge 3. line 23. read stone for sin p. 4. l. 14. r. millenary of wives and concubines p. 15. l. 20. r. revolve for resolve p. 23. l. 27. r. wasting for washing p. 52. l. 36. r. convictions for corrections p. 58. l. 25. r. immoderate for moderate p 105. l. 28. r. O my for to my l 34. hlot out the experience p. 120. l. 6. r. parcreatis l. 16. r. Inter. l. 17. r. scrophulosae Books published by Dr. Gauden A Defence of the Ministry of England Of Tythes Three Sermons upon publike occasions FUNERALS MADE CORDIALS ECCLES 7.1 It is better to goe to the house of mourning then to the house of feasting for that is the end of all men And the living will lay it to his heart YOu have hitherto right Honorable and Christian Auditors either added to the Solemnity of this Funeral by the honour of your presence and attendance or enjoyed the pomp and ceremony of it as civil spectators You have all contributed what you can to cloath this Sceleton with a robe of State and to hold up the long train of death till it hath carried its prey to the grave which is its den and Throne where after a most savage and Cyclopick manner it doth at once triumph over us and gnaw upon us till it hath quite devoured not only our flesh but our very bones yea our names and memories if they be only written in the dust and not registred in heaven if our record be only among men here below and not with the most high God above as holy Job speaketh Job 16.19 You have indeed made a very ample and stately Commentary as to your civil respects upon this Corps and that Text Eccl. 12.5 Man goeth to his long home and the mourners goe about the streets It now remains to see what improvement may be made of so sad an occasion to your own interests the inward religious spiritual and eternal advantages of your soules Hitherto you have acted as men according to the rules of honour and methods of secular Heraldry but you now seem as Christians by your earnest and patient attention further to expect something from Me as an Herald of Diviner Honour as a Minister of Christ and his Church whereby to advance this Solemnity to Sanctity this pageantry to piety this ceremony or shadow which follows the dead to some substance and reality of benefit as to the living That it may not be fulfilled in you what was spoken by Christ Mat. 8.22 not without a sharp and just reproach to the young man Let the dead bury their dead while we are more solicitous and pleased to follow a dead friend and relation to the grave then to follow Christ who will set us beyond the confines of death and mortality in a state of grace and glory of honour and immortality Your humane and civil respects to the remains of the dead are worthy of you both as men and Christians Religion being no enemy to the sense and expression of what honour is decent and due both to the living and dead whose very dust as Christians is sacred and their carcasses so far consecrate as they have been Temples of the holy Ghost 1 Cor. 6.19 and are yet in Gods special care and custody as precious reliques 1 Cor. 15.42 never to be lost but reparable to a state of incorruption candidates of heaven and expectants in a silent but assured hope of eternal glory with their blessed Saviour whose once dead but now risen and glorified body sitting at Gods right hand that is in the
ad infernum deprimit both as to the living and the dead Many are raised up to Heaven by the magnificence of the Burnings or Buryings whose souls are sunk down to Hell by the ponderous weight of their unrepented and unreformed sins When sorrow affects too much state and wraps up the sharpness of death in soft paradoes mixing too much sensual sweet with the wormwood and bitterness of that cup which is offered to all mens lips the good effects of Funerals are much defeated as to the living the house of mourning is so far from being better in such an equipage that it is worse then the sober house of feasting for it flatters the dead and living too making men deaf to Gods warning-pieces which are shot off at their ears and levelled at their hearts They are like wool-sacks or mounds of earth 1 John 2.16 which disarm the great cannon-shot which should batter down the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the strong holds of sin the lust of the eyes the lust of the flesh the pride of life Empty and adulatory pomp set up as it were by the higher ground of mens stately Funerals and Tombs what God intends to pull down namely those high and exalted imaginations with which poor sinful mortals are pestered and poysoned who are then best when they see themselves and others at the worst and then nearest to grace and glory too when they see themselves as in their graves reduced to their dust and ashes and in their very best estate Psal 39.5 as the Psalmist speaks to be but altogether vanity 2. Which is the great lesson that the great God intends to teach men by such pregnant instances of their mortality which the living will learn i. e. such as live not only to sense but to true reason and not only to reason but to true religion not only to a moment but eternity The aym of these severe Lectures is to bring sinful man down to the dust within sight of the grave and prospect of judgment and hell it self that so he may be a meet object for Gods grace and mercy It is a shrewd sign of a heart dead in sins and trespasses stupid in sensual security buried in worldly lusts and vain pleasures dead as the Apostle sayes of some widows even while they live 1 Tim. 5.6 not to lay to heart the departures of those who are snatcht out of the land of the living to a state and place whence they shall not return to a terra incognita a land which is far off a black Abyssus covered with profound darkness of which no discovery hath ever been made by any that went thither so as to give Survivers any Geographical map or account of it Which terrible summons like the decimating of souldiers to die one after another cannot but infinitely affect the sober and serious living to whose benefit only the death and Funerals the solemnities and obsequies civil and religious prayers and Sermons too may and ought to be duely improved For to the Dead they reach not nor can they turn to any account further then such civil honour and respect as is due to their place name and merit yet surviving or to their corps which rest in hope of a refurrection and so deserve an handsome and Christian interment But as to any advantage to be made for the benefit of their soules for redeeming them from Purgatory for abating their purgative paines for shortning or supplying their Pennance or obtaining remission for any sin or punishment in which they are engaged being once dead this must be let alone for ever There is no ground of hope to relieve them in any kind no Scripture no Catholick doctrine no precept no promise that gives any footing for Prayers or Sacrifices Masses or Dirges Oblations or Emptions Remissions or Redemptions by which to benefit the dead they are vain solaces to the living and none at all to the dead arising first from the suggestions of the impotent grief and passion in survivors next from an unwarranted charity and benevolence to the dead At last policy and covetousness grew so cunning in the darkness and superstition of times as to make no small advantages by the vulgar easiness and prodigality sliding by insensible degrees from those memorials of benediction for their piety and constancy in religion from the gratulations for their happy and hopeful delivery out of a dangerous and naufragous Sea and for their hoped arrival at a safe and happy heaven together with a Catholick comprecation for the consummation and plenary bliss at the resurrection of them and all Saints departed in the true faith of Christ See the excellent Primate of Arm. of praying to and for the dead in his Jesuites Challenge From these commendable customes I say of pious Antiquity of which Epiphanius and others give us an account degenerous posterity warped not onely to praying both for and to the dead but indeed to make a notable mystery and trade of preying upon the devotion and simplicity of the living uses and ends which we find neither Solomon nor any Prophet Apostle or Evangelist nor Christ himself any where teaching nor in the least kind intimating to the living either in order to give such honour or help to the dead neither of which either our blessed Saviours love of his compleater Saints or his charity to the more defective dead who had not fully done their pennance here and so stood in need of some grains of allowance from the charity of such as survived them or his Apostles care would have failed to have taught the Primitive Church by word or Epistle or example if such prayers had been available to the living or for the dead No they may be profitable fancies to the Romanists and plausible enough to their bigot and bountiful disciples but they are not justifiable in true religion by Old or New Testament nor by any practise in the first and best Centuries No known advantages can redound to the dead from the living nor other advantages to the living from the dead but only the laying their death seriously and devoutly to heart the use that wise Solomon and the wiser God here commends to us all 3. And this upon very great and pregnant reasons if we consider 1. The state of the living in respect of their hearts 2. The proper vertues which are derivable from the dead and fit to be applied to the hearts of the living 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Et vivens dabit ad cor suum The wise and considerate living will upon such occasions not only gape at the ceremony glory in the pomp talk of the person discourse of the disease and manner of death after a vulgar and easie fashion much less will they rejoyce in anothers death though an enemy or triumph in the advantages which accrew to them thereby after a malicious and covetous rate Such as lie under the power of these depraved distempers of soul and are of no
higher form of life are scarce among Solomons living who lay things to heart that is Altâ mente reponunt they deeply and devoutly seriously and solemnly rationally and religiously consider resolve and ponder in intimis animi recessibus the inward recesses of their soules or consciences the whole purport of such occasions what they mean in all their aspects They make as it were a speculative Anatomy and intellectual dissection of the dead yea and of death it self in all its forms and fashions in its causes and effects its antecedents concomitants and consequences They look upon the face of it which is neer at hand and the long train or extent of it which reacheth to Eternity This is the Lecture that the living read upon the dead and many lessons they learn from them because they are men that have an heart which is wise and understanding duely weighing in the scale of true reason and divine wisdom every occurrence and event of providence which hath any remark or signal character upon it as the death of any man or woman young or old infant or decrepit hath to such as have an heart able to apply it notwithstanding this frequency of such spectacles which with many men and women takes away the sense and regard of them though such persons need every day a memento mori some spectacle or remembrancer as King Philip had daily to put them in mind that they are but men Philippe memento te esse mortalem How necessary is it for them to remember their latter end to consider in what a vain shadow they live or rather die in their life because they are without an heart as silly birds not aware of the snares of sin the pits of death and hell over which they carelesly and confidently passe every moment Frequencie of Funerals doth not lessen the right use and influence of them to such living as know how to lay them to heart They doe not as women and children or country clowns only start amain when some sudden and unexpected death befals any as if it were the discharging of a great cannon near them which they never dreamed of but as valiant Commanders who finding that an hot battery and frequent shot slayes men round about them wisely consider that they may be the next mark whom death will hit which thought is so far from discouraging or appalling a man of a good heart that is pious and generous that it onely summons him to muster up all the fortitude and strength of his soul that whether he live or die he may do neither like a fool or a coward or a beast but like a valiant man and a good Christian who being engaged in a good Canse having a good God and a good conscience doubts not to make a good end when God shall call him out of this life to a better The Living that is the wise and considerable sort of mankind are the only persons who have hearts to consider all things as they ought to reflect upon their own hearts to commune with them to try and examine their state and tempers their defects and disorders their extravagancies and necessities The Living are they that duely consider the true interests and eternal concernments of their hearts and spirits their soules and consciences far beyond those of their bodies senses or fortunes The Living doe upon such occasions of mortality in se descendere make sober retreats home looking to themselves and searching into the penetralia animae their hearts above all Which they know to be as the rudder or steerage of the soule and of the whole man of all thoughts words and actions the card or compass by which our momentary and eternal course is shaped They know the infinite importance of a well or ill constituted and managed heart They find that verified which our Saviour tells us That out of the heart of man proceed evil thoughts murders Matth. 15.18 adulteries fornications thefts false witness blasphemies c. That God chiefly requires and regards this as the Gemme of the man most precious in it self most proper and proportionate for God That all beauty strength wit estate honour offered to God without the Heart is but the sacrifice nay the sacriledge and affront of fools and hypocrites Therefore it is frequently inculcated from Heaven and in the Scripture Prov. 23.26 to all sorts of men under all dispensations of Religion to Jew and Gentile Give me thy heart an honest and good heart Psal 51. a pure and peaceable heart an humble and contrite heart God will not despise yea in this he delights all things else are loss and dung in comparison Nothing else in man is worthy of God and yet nothing less worthy of him that is Gen. 6.5 naturally less fit and prepared for him What God complained long ago is verified in every mans experience That every imagination of the thoughts of mans heart was evil and that continually The 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 distempers diseases yea and deaths of the heart of man are as many as dangerous and as desperate as those of the body yea infinitely more For the bodies diseases doe but kill us as to mans society and to a moments life on earth but the diseases of the heart kill us as to the life of God and an eternal happiness of conservation in Heaven The living God who delights not in the death of a sinner nor yet in a dead heart which is the first death of a sinner as a gracious Father and compassionate Physitian hath discovered to us the many plagues which are in our hearts the sicknesses to which they are subject by the surfets they take of the world and their senses Sometimes the Heart swels with the tumor of intolerable pride sometimes it burns withcholerick inflammations sometimes it is scorched with passionate calentures of inordinate lusts sometimes it is almost drowned like hydropick and overgrown bodies with its sensual luxuries and fulness even to abominable fedities sometimes it hath such a gout as it is in great pain at any the least motion for God or any good motion from him sometime it pines away in a Consumption amidst all its sensible pleasures plenty and honours not finding any satisfactory solid and durable good in them all Sometimes the heart is shaken with paralytick tremblings and terrors like Earthquakes which seem to arise from the dark and pestilent vapors in it self sometimes it hath not only fits of the stone refractory tempers but a petrified habitude of a hard and stony heart which nothing doth soften neither mercy nor judgment love nor wrath bounty nor patience of God Sometimes the heart falls into Lethargick and Apoplectick stupors like Nabals and Achitophels it growes remorseless benummed stupid senselesse dull and dead within men past fear or feeling of any thing either sharp and pungent in the Law or spiritful and reviving in the Gospel Solomon who was a great King of hearts and had a
unreasonable irreligious and divelish A carrionly carkass of a man is aromatick a very perfume in comparison of a dead and rotting soul The body becomes dead and so dissolves by the souls parting from it but the soul by Gods being separated from it first out of its own choise next by Gods penal deserting of it The soul is the salt the light and life of the body so is God of the soul Anima animae the very soul of our souls I mean his grace love and spiritual communion separation from this is the souls death here and hereafter For from the power wrath and vengeance of God the damned are not separated who are dead not to their being but to their well being or happiness to the union at and fruition of God in love The soul apart from God in grace or glory is not only an orphan or a widow condemned to eternal sorrow and desolation for nothing can maintain or entertain wooe wed or indow the soul to the least degree of happines or to any allay of misery when once God hath quite forsaken it But it is emortua conclamata in heaven earth and hell proclaimed as starke dead in Law and Gospel Matth. 13.42 to justice and mercy so represented in Scripture as the horridest expression or the blackest colour to set forth its misery and horror its regret and torpor its weeping and wailing its gnashing and despair Doth then such a thick cloud of horror hang over the face and state of a dead body which is senseless of its own death and deformity of its noysome grave and dark dungeon Sapiens ignis subtilis vermis carpit nutrit urit reficit Chrysol O what a world of horror must lie upon a dead soul when deservedly cast out of God's blessed presence when it feels its death and lives only to die when it feels it is plunged in a dead Sea which is boundless and bottomlesse where the worm dies not and the fire goeth not out because it is as Crysologus calls it a subtil fire and ingenious worm which burns but consumes not devours but destroyes not Who can dwell with everlasting burnings saith the Prophet in an extasie of holy horrour Isa 33.14 Who can live in everlasting dyings Who can abide his own everlasting rottings Is it a gradual and lingring death to want food raiment light liberty fit company Is it a total death to the body to want the little spark of the soul which is the breath and spirit of life to the body What is it then to the soul to want that God who is the breather of that breath of life and Inspirer of that spirit We want a word beyond death to expresse that state Lay it then to heart Phil. 3.11 and consider what cause we have to be humble to tremble and fear exceedingly to escape most solicitously and diligently that second and eternal death if by any means we may attain the resurrection of the dead to life eternal 3. Lay to heart upon the sight of a dead body and the meditation of a dead soul whence it is that these fears and faintings sicknesses and sorrows deaths and darknesses sordidnesse and desolation corruption and condemnation have thus mightily prevailed over the highest mountains as the flood over the most noble beautiful and excellent of all Gods works under heaven even over mankind good and bad great and small Eccles 2.16 wise and foolish upon which nature the great and only God had set such characters of special glory enduing it with a diviner spirit so making man as Moses saith a living spirit or a spirit of life And this after counsel and deliberation Faciamus hominem Sanctius his animal mentisâ— capaâ—ius aliâ—e Gen. 2.7 As in re magni momenti a matter of greater concern and weight then heaven and earth and all the host of them They were made ex tempore as it were Nudo verbo Let there be and there was But man was made ex consilio after Gods own Image full of beauty health honour riches wisedome the Spirit of the living God given him in an extraordinary beam Whence is this lapse to earth to dust to a sad and wretched a decaying and dying condition both temporal and eternal Sure not from the impotencie or envy of the blessed Creator whose omnipotent goodnesse is inconsistent with such infirmities nor yet from the frailty and inconsistency of the subject matter which he raised to so goodly a fabrick little lower then the Angels Psal 49.12 as man was made who should have been as long immortal as Angels had he continued a man that is Rom. 6.23 rational and religious enjoying the Image of God on him which forbids and excludes as all shadow of sin and defection so of all death or mutation to worse No. The Psalmist tells us after the history of Genesis Man being in honour did not so abide but is become like to the beasts that perish by the frailty of his will which fell from adherence to God as the durable and supreme Good Sin hath levelled us to beasts to death to devils to hell This death in all sizes and degrees from the least ache and dolour to the compleatnesse of damnation is the wages of fin So the Apostle oft tells us Rom. 5.17 by one mans offence death entred and reigned over all The soul that sins that shall die Ezek. 18. Sin is the source of all our sorrows the lethalis arundo poysoned arrow whose infection drinks up the spirits and eats up the health flesh bodies and soules of mankind No wonder we die since we sin at such a rate the wonder is that we live any one of us one moment How much more is the miracle of Gods love and mercy that hath by Christs death and merits brought forth to light eternal life and offered it to all penitent and believing sinners as purchased and prepared for them Because sin once lived in us we must once die and till sin be dead or mortified in us we cannot hope for life eternal Through death then thou wilt best see the face of thy sin What Poet what Painter what Orator whose colours are most lively can expresse the amazement horrour and astonishment that seized on the looks and hearts of Adam and Eve Rom. 27. 2 Tim. 1.10 when they had the dreadful prospect of their first great sin and curse written with the blood and pourtrayed on the face of their dead son Abel who in that primitive paucity of mankind was barbarously slain by his brother Cain Who can expresse or conceive the woful lamentation they made over their dead son in whom they first beheld the beauties of life swallowed up by the deformities of death Is death then so dreadful so dismal so deformed so putid O think what that sin is which thou so embracest and huggest The fountain of bitternesse is more bitter then the stream Our madness and misery is
that we fear to die but not to sin when as all the sad aspects and events of death rise from sin which is the Marah and Meribah the Stygian spring or lake whence our waters of bitterness and strife doe flow not to be healed but by that sacred wood of Christs cross cast into them not in the natural relique but in that mystical merit of him that hung upon it and bare our sins 1 Pet. 2.24 Pro. 19.4 That sin which thou as a fool makest a mock of how canst thou O poor bubble thus play with poyson dally with a dragon sport with a devil and caper over hell Wilt thou die in thy sinful smiles and pleasures Is it not horrid to be smothered in down-beds or drowned in malmsy as the Duke of Clarence was Will it not be bitterness in the latter end Remember this stream of Jordan in which thou swimmest runs to the dead sea The end of all these things as St. Rom. 6.23 Phil. 3.19 Rom. 1.33 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Paul tells us is destruction and death in all senses For these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience and sons of death Peccati deformitatem foetorem reputa as a Commentator observes on this Text. As a dead carkass is to thee loathsome and to be cast out of thy presence so is a soul a sinner that is dead in sin and impenitence while he lives Wouldest thou disarm the terrour power Morticinia non erant sacrificia and sting of death slay thy sin let it not die monte incruentâ a natural death by age and infirmity but a violent one by mortifying and crucifying Sinne must not die with us but before us Deut. 14.21 Nothing that died of it self was to be offered to God as a sacrifice No companion worse when we goe to our long home then sin if it be yet living in us and with us in the love power pleasure and purpose of sinning This worm will never die after death Now is the time to dy to sin while thou livest Now or never ohn 8.21 Lay this to heart lest thou die for ever in thy sins as Christ tells the Jewes for want of timely dying to them For in the sins a man hath committed and not repented of Ezek. 18.24 he shall surely die saith the Lord again again by the Prophet Ezekiel Nor is sin truly repented of unless it be mortified at least in the full and unfeigned resolutions of a believing humble contrite and penitent though dying sinner The will here shall be accepted for the deed and the purpose bears the value of the practise Wheresoever the black characters of sin are washed from the soul by penitent tears 2 Cor. 8.12 and the blood of Christ the lively image of God will appear as the face of the dry land did when the flood was fully asswaged The tyranny of death shall no more prevail when once the dominion of sin is taken away which hath no right but is a meer usurpation upon the reasonable creature 4. Quà m fugax fallax quam certa incerta quam procax procellosa Bern. Lay to heart the frailty and vanity the misery and momentariness of this short sinful and sorrowful life how fallacious and fading how short and vncertain how troublesome and importune this gleam and storm of life is as St Bernard speaks How specious a bubble how delightful a dream how goodly a nothing it is for a reasonable soule to intend to delight in to dote upon to rest and root its happinesse in Wilt thou set thine heart saith the Prophet on that which is not Job 7.17 wilt thou lay out and lavish thy thoughts in such things as have no worth and bear no price in that Country whither thou goest so that when thy vain and vexatious life fails all thy thoughts must perish Psal 146.4 when this little cock-boat of thy carkass comes a ground and splits Magno viatico breve iter non ornatur sed opprimitur Sen. all thy voyage is lost all thy good things with which thou wert not more adorned then incumbred and rather childishly pleased then really profited these sink with thee and are swallowed up in the Abyssus of forgetfulnes never to be buoyed up again nor enjoyed any more by thee as is expressed by Christ in the parabolical history of Dives Luke 16.19 Luke 12.19 which is too oft verified by sad experience of rich men In order to shew you the vanity of all things in this world that you call great or good high or honorable sacred or civil I shall not need beyond your own fresh experience to tell you Right Honorable and Beloved of those strange revolutions and excentrick motions which have befaln the highest Orbs of this British world which have shaken Heaven and Earth Church and State turning the Sun into darkness and the Moon into blood to the terror and astonishment of all the world at home and abroad They are as beasts without understanding who learn not wisedom and humility by those Paradoxes of providence which have posed the wise exhausted the rich debased the honorable diminished the great onely the gracious heart reads these riddles and the spiritual man understands God's meaning in all these intricacies which are like Ezekiels wheels full of dreadful and yet orderly confusions very perplexed in their motions yet evidently guided by that spirit within them Ezek. 1.20 which is wise and wonderful in all its ways These are publick lectures of the vanity and vexation of life which God hath taught us all in this Nation with the sound of the drum trumpet lessons that are written with the point of the sword as their pens and the blood of these Nations as their inck They that run may read and they that live the life of sober men and good Christians will learn Gods meaning to be this That the rich man should not glory in his riches nor the strong man in his strength Jer. 6.23 24. nor the wise man in his wisedom nor the great man in his greatness nor Princes in their Thrones 1 Cor. 1.32 but he that glories should glory in the Lord that he knows his blessed will in order to a better life Look a little lower to this Noble Gentleman whose Corps are here before us and his most Noble Mother who Ires in her dust not far from us There have seldom been afforded in any age in any one family greater instances by which to confute the confidences of poor mortals as to any thing desireable or enjoyable in this life Nothing of education honour estate comliness greatness of relations ampleness of worldly enjoyments could be modestly wished beyond what they seemed to enjoy both of them in the flower of their age in the conspicuity of grand fortunes and honours in the probability of long enjoying all those happinesses which are attainable under the
not be forced no man taking his life from him yet he yielded to doe the lowest homage to death as a man not without great horror of that cup yea humbling himself even to the death of the crosse and to the prison of the grave for a short time that by dying he might overcome death in its own fort 1 Cor. 15. By grapling with this Dragon he pulled out his sting and made him cast forth his poyson so far as to be innoxious now and not very terrible to those that fly to this Jesus for protection and life John 11.25 who is the resurrection and the life to believers and holy livers who maketh light to grow up to the righteous out of their darkness and life out of his death To others indeed that are either Infidel Heathens or unchristian Christians which have but forms and no power of godliness on whose hearts the death of Christ hath not yet wrought as a corrasive against sin and a cordial against death to these Death still appears as a direful Comet or blazing star in his full magnitude truculent threatning formidable inevitable infinitely to be dreaded because he threatens them with a total and entire death not onely to their estates and honours pleasures power friends and bodies but as to their soules as to that after and eternal life If death prevailed so far upon the Son of God how far will its vastations reach upon those that are the children of the flesh only that is of the Devil and properly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 sons of death If the living Lion thus died what must become of those that are but as dead dogs A gracious Christian as Jonathan did Sauls javelin avoids the stroak of death as to the main it may graze on his body but it toucheth not his soul Col. 3.3 when his life is hidden with Christ in God A natural man though while he lived he blessed himself yet dies wholly Death like the flood prevaileth over his highest tops and mountains it gnaweth upon them as sheep Nothing is left him for ever of which it may be said In this he lives as in the houses of the Egyptians there was none in which there was not one dead yea the first born For his children they shal follow the generation of their fathers and never see light if they follow their evil steps His lands which he called after his name in a few years they are alienated his lamp quite extinct and his memorial perisheth For his fair and costly Monument Et habent sua fata Sepulchra These in revolutions of time Psal 49.19 either by the rough hand of war overturning all things or by the gentle and leisurely thawings of peace melt and moulder away till they bury themselves in their own dust which were designed as repositories and conservatories of their Masters As for their souls they never lived the life of God nor can they hope to live in light with him so that eternal death feedeth for ever upon the whole man devouring every-limb of body and faculty of soul as the Lions did the accusers of Daniel before ever they come to the ground O how sad how mad is that security among Christians which sleeps on the top of a mast in so dangerous a sea that dares to live in known and presumptuous sins amidst these infinite and hourly adventures of death playing over the head of that mine where he knows is daily sapping under him and within him nor doth a man know in what moment it may be sprung to his utter dissipation We know not at what hour of the day Mat. 24.42 43. or watch of the night this notable Thief will come to break up our house of clay and spoil us of all our goods together with our lives and he is but the Vancourrier of our Judge whose counsel is holy and wholsome advising all his disciples to watch and pray lest we be surprised at unawares by the arrests of Death and Judgment Nothing concerns a wise man or evidenceth a good man more then to be never so imployed as he shall not dare to die that like an honest and able debtor he may confidently walk at all hours of the day in every street of the City where he dwells and where he owes a debt which he is able and willing to pay whereas the lewdnesse and riot of impenitent sinners makes them like bankrupt debtors shift and shark hide and skulk up and down in by-wayes and at twilight for fear of those Creditors whom they are neither able nor willing to satisfie and yet they cannot long escape the Bayliffs and Jaylors hand nor by any artifices avoid that prison out of which is no redemption till a man hath paid the uttermost farthing that is never unlesse while we are in the way we agree with our merciful Creditor Mat. 5.29 who is ready upon our humble request to forgive us all that we owe him like that gracious and generous Master in the Gospel Mat. 18.27 6. Lay to heart what little cause any mothers child of us hath to presume to sin and to procrastinate our repentance since we have no cause to presume of life till to morrow to neglect agreeing with our adversary while we are yet in the way that is under the meanes offer and capacity of reconciliation and happy accord to adventure so precious and momentary an opportunity upon which depends our everlasting fate in weal or woe Ex hoc momento pendet aeternitas never stirring up any Sympathies in our souls toward our Saviours death nor any compassions to our selves as to our own mortality never to return any holy Ecchoes or humble Amens either to the precepts or promises terrors or comforts of Gods word but as if stark deaf and quite dead so we are utterly dumb and unmoved as to all that is thundred and lightned from heaven 2 Cor. 5.20 2 Cor. 6.1 to all that Gods Embassadors those Boanerges and Barnabasses sonnes of thunder or of consolation daily cry unto us with infinite counsels and reproofs Sermons and prayers inviting and beseeching men to pity themselves to flee from the wrath that is to come to disarm Death and defeat the Devil of his expected prey There is no rock that Ministers should more avoid thenthis of giving people any encouragement to delay their repentance which no man may upon good grounds do e that hath not any assurance of his life nor any insurance against death Nor doth any thing usually more contribute to this vulgar presumption and dilatories then the courting and complementing with the dead and living too in Funeral Sermons making them rather Panegyricks and Harangues of commendation to the dead then serious summons and alarms to the living when neither the life nor the death of the interred gave any pregnant evidences of such grace and comfort as deserves either the commendation or imitation of the living No Funeral Sermons as I
thee as an armed man attended with death and judgment sin and hell an evil conscience and an angry God then I say one day or hour will be as earnestly desired by thee as one drop of water was by Dives and it may be as justly and certainly be denied thee the common fate of riotous Prodigals following thee in this to be reduced to a morsel of bread after sottish profusenesse and shameful luxury We unjustly quarrel with God and nature as Seneca observes that our life is so short when indeed our care is too little to live well which is the onely true life It is one thing to be a man and another to live as a man It was a true fig-tree which was barren and cursed by Christ Maximam partem hominum brutum occupat In most men for a long time the beast in them overlayes the man Sensual lusts are night and day the imperious Incubusses or Ephialtae of their reason What one said with much salt to an Epicure Deus tuus est porcorum Deus is verified in most people during their youth and in many long after even through the whole course of their life They own no other God then the God of swine reverencing the Divine Majesty no more then hogs doe nor expecting more from him then may serve their bellies which is the God they serve as the Apostle speaks nor returning more acknowledgment or service to him yea they live tanquam poeniteret non pecudes natos as if they only repented they were not made only beasts with bodies In titles perhaps noble in estates splendid in words rational and in formalities civil yea perhaps religious in shews but in deeds they are debasers of their native and divine dignity Victa libidine succed it ambitio victa ambitione succedit avaritia victa avaritia succedit superbia vitium inter ipsas virtutes timendum Hieron dethroners of reason despisers of their God and true Religion doting on sensible objects all their lives by a continued succession of vices and inordinate defires and delights which succenturiate or supply the places decayes and recesses of one another as St. Jerome observes till they have wasted life and spirits and time and talents to the very last snuff mean time they have done nothing unde constet vixisse worthy of themselves their relations their God the Church of Christ or their Country From youthful and extravagant lusts they run to pride from pride to hypocrisie from hypocrisie to ambition from ambition to covetousness from covetousness to sacriledge from sacriledge to Atheism from Atheism to stupidity or despair Mean time they have at first it may be with great mirth jollity next with affected gravity and severity not only bought and sold planted and builded married and given in mariage but it may be griped and oppressed killed and possessed subverted and sacrificed all things sacred and civil as much as they could to their own lusts but have never yet had leisure all this while to live or to act any thing but dead works Let them ask their own souls and consciences not quà m fortiter feliciter but quam sanctè justè quid praeclarè quid egregiè fecisti Nay let them ask apart from flatteries Quid non turpiter quid non pudendum quid non poenitendum fecisti What have they done conscienciously justly honestly valiantly for God for the Truth for their own soules or their neighbours good Nay what have they done which in the inward aspect of conscience and many times to outward view of all men is not vile impious to be ashamed of to be repented of They have it may be with Caesar Borgia and Lewis the 11th had much art and Policie but no true piety and charity in them much self-seeking but nothing of self-denying which is the truest touchstone of a Christian constitution They may have been prosperous and yet not pious they may have conquered others but yet not themselves which is the noblest victory They may have gotten much and yet shall be sure to lose all for want of that one thing necessary a good conscience which is the end of living and the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 only provision for an eternal life A temper of soul which is rightly instructed and guided by the written word of God only sanctified accordingly by his holy spirit practically conformed to his blessed example in all manner of holy conversation this this temper purged by faith in the blood of Christ and so accepted by Gods mercy and dignation through Christs merits makes a good conscience the getting and preserving of which is the main end of life as to our private concern next Gods glory and this alone will bring a man peace in his latter end this alone dares look death and divels in the face to others that have a forme of godliness yet deny the power of it 2 Tim. 3.5 John 3.19 to whom the light of Christian Religion is come and they love darkness more then light their condemnation will be the greater 9. Lay to heart the sameness or variety of aspects wherein death represents to thee the faces and fates of all men living and dying either so alike Eccles 2.16 that as the fool dieth so dieth the wise man as the wicked so the righteous as to the kind and manner of death by sickness pains violence Vide Psal 73.12 Behold these are the ungodly who prosper in the world they increase in riches c. Job 21.7 Wherefore do the wicked live become old yea are mighty in power Jer. 12.1 2. Wherefore doth the way of the wicked prosper why are all they happy that deal very treacherously c. John 7.24 Psal 73.15 suddenness in all shapes or figures of death Besides thou maist observe the frequent riddles and Paradoxes not only of mens lives but of their deaths The righteous and godly that eschew evil and do good who fear God and walk uprightly before him who chuse to suffer rather then sin these are oft persecuted and oppressed with poverty prison banishment and distresses while they live yea and their innocency is many times persecuted to the death by violent and unjust men whereas these live and thrive a long time yea and end their days in prosperous impiety to the great scandal of many that are godly and infinite incouragement of wicked doers as Job David and Jeremiah complain Take heed you judge not as Christ forewarns his Disciples by outward appearance or the fight of thine eyes but judge righteous judgement lest thou condemn the generation of God's people many Prophets Apostles Martyrs and Confessors who have most what been sufferers yea lest thou condemne that Just One Christ himself who died as a Malefactor by popular suffrages and the sentence of a timerous judge nay take heed lest thou condemn the righteous God as if he were unjust in his providences and permissions Take heed thy heart fret not against God nor be
arbitrary business but of Divine Authority and Institution of highest necessity in the Church so esteemed and so used by all good Christians The modern neglect and indifferency to it either argues the Clergy miserably embased in all points from their ancient dignity or the minds and actions of Christians to become very degenerous and licentious unholy and unthankful not to be mended till the majesty of Religion and the double honour of the Ministry be restored 11. Lay to heart upon the whole matter drawing all the beams of my discourse and your meditations into one point arising from this or the like Funeral-occasions in what posture thou art for death how furnished fitted and prepared I once told this Noble Gentleman two months before he died when I saw his tedious cough very importune and his dispiritings so great that I could say little to him Sir you have nothing so much concerns you as to prepare and to dare to die Ask thy soul O poor mortal not what goods thou hast laid up for many years not what beauty and virtue thou hast married not what honours thou enjoyest not what lands thou possessest or expectest but what preparation thou hast made to meet thy God what defensative to encounter death how far the power of sin is weakned how far the progress of grace is advanced what viaticum aeternitatis provision for eternity thou hast made A Christian must not onely look to Augustus his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Sueton. in vita Augusti a gentle and civil or well-natured death but to a gracious a comfortable death for himself and also hopeful and exemplary to others about him The last lightnings or coruscations of a good Christian should be if his natural spirits permit his brightest as the preludium of eternity 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 He should adorn his death as the last act of his life with speaking good of God with telling all about him what the Lord hath done for his soul what experiences of trials and conflicts of comforts and refreshings by Christ his Word and Spirit I allow any mans or womans death-bed to be their pulpit let them then turn preachers as much as they can let them shew forth the loathsome and deadly deformities of sin the worth and excellencies they have found in Christ and his grace the benefit found in his Word Spirit Ministrations and true Ministers that so the surviving world may be the better for those nayles which as Masters of the Assemblies as now candidates and expectants yea percipients of Heaven dying Christians do happily fasten in the minds memories and consciences of their weeping auditors The best Sermons are those that dying men and women preach before their own Funerals Gen. 29. Deut. 32. 1 Kings 2.1 Joshua 23. John 14 15 16 and 19. Chapters 1 Sam. 25.37 as Jacob Moses Joshua and David did yea our blessed Lord Jesus most expressed his inmost and sublimest sense to his Disciples a little before he died as to heavenly comforts prayers and praises A Christian should avoid what possibly may be to die like Nabal as if his heart were first quite dead as a stone within him I mean when God gives spirits and strength to express themselves None are such Infidels as not to believe these dying Orators who are got beyond our pulpit-strains and affected forms above all human fears and flatteries all studies of sides and factions Illum vita nondum dissimulatio deseruit Sueton. in vita Tiberii then or never they are in good earnest Few with Tiberius can be such hypocrites as to act a part only of piety when they are going off the stage of life If we are grafted in the tree of life we shall bear some good fruits living or dying I know the best experiments of grace and the surest both 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signes and indications of sincerity are from a good conscience kept up in our lives not hudled up in haste a little before death as goods in a scare-fire only upon the alarm of sickness and death but wisely leisurely gravely and practically methodised and digested yea expressed in our health in the humble and impartial constancy of attending holy duties private and publique in orderly waiting on the true and duly ordained Ministry of Christ in his Church in frequent devout and fervent partakings of the Lords Supper in righteous holy charitable and exemplary lives toward all men which are both useful to mankind by good works and acceptable to God in all humility adorning the Christian and reformed Religion highly magnifying the glory of the grace of God in Jesus Christ An humble heart and an holy life are the best cordials in our deaths for without peace and holiness as the Apostle tells us no man shall see God And Heaven it self will not be welcome to us if holiness be not Heb 12.14 Nec coelum ipsum placebit cui sanctitas displicet for its happiness is no other but perfected holiness then we shall be such as we would be hereafter when we like to be such as God would have us here 12. Last of all The neerer the more remarkable and emphatick any object of death or Funeral-occasion is the more we should lay it to heart As when great wise valiant and honest men like mighty Cedars of Lebanon fall by death either natural or violent by open hostility or treachery as Abner died 2 Sam. 9.33 whose Biere David himself followed honoring by a most generous example that virtue loyalty and fortitude which he found in an enemy toward him nor doth he do it in a courtly formality but with ample publick and unfeigned sorrow even to weeping looking upon that sad and shameful accident as a great reproach and affront to his own party and cause as a dehonesting of his own honour and that Religion which he professed to remove so great a scandal and dishonour from his person conscience Kingdom and profession as attends all treacherous murtherings even of reconciled enemies and rivals David himself doth Abner this honour at his burial to follow the Biere 1. So in the deaths of such excellent Princes as have been or were like to be the Patres patriae Fathers of their Country maintainers of law and justice provident for the publick good in peace and plenty Patrons of learning virtue and established Religion wise and valiant assertors when need requires of their own honour and their peoples safety merciful dispensers of such favours and remissions as may abate the rigors of law with regard to human surprises and infirmities and yet neither weaken the hands of justice nor strengthen the hands of malicious offenders Such Kings and Princes yea any soveraign Magistrates under any title as Joshua and other Judges that are not wholly degenerate from their dignity duty and place are to be duly lamented and their deaths are seriously to be laid to heart because they do not only shew us the
make up compleat authority the want of which as we have no cause much to rejoyce in or little to lament so posterity both in Church and State will unfeignedly deplore 3. Yea when any men or women that are eminently good and gracious wise and worthy are taken away either immaturely in their strength or very many of them in a little times these are Gods warnings which are to be laid to heart for the death of the righteous poor or rich is pretious in the fight of the Lord and should be so in the sense of all good men they many times portend some great evil to come when God pulls off his chief Jewels it is a sign he means shortly to strip and undress a Church or Nation of their ornaments and defences When men take off the principal and noblest parts of a fair ship the main-masts rudders prow and upper decks it argues that they intend to break it quite in pieces or to take it much lower and abase it So is it when God pulls up those repagula sluces and banks which either keep off inundations of judgements or dayly discharge the superfluities of epidemick sins by their prayers and tears for the sins of the people When Lot is out of Sodom and Noah shipped in Gods Ark then fire and flood is to be expected 4. When our Parents Fathers or Mothers are taken away though in a good old age as Jacob yet they may frigidam suffundere cast cold water by their deaths upon the varieties heats luxuries and confidences of their young heirs and successors who are prone to live as if they could never die out of this world when yet they see their roots die sure the branches cannot be everlasting It was a notable Instance of filial sympathy which a son of the Duke of Montpensier shewed who coming to his fathers monument in Italy at Puzzolo where he had in the French wars died being killed by ill air and inconveniencies the young Gentleman could not bear the memory of his dead father but amidst infinite passions and tears dies upon his fathers Tomb Guicciardin Hist lib. 5. p. 261. as Guicciardin reports of certainty Yea although estates honours and inheritances do descend upon men by the death of any yet they may lay this to heart that the more talents thou hast the greater account thou must give to God Luke 12.48 It is not considerable as to true internal and eternal comfort what lands moneys honours and titles a man hath but how wisely and nobly how piously and charitably he useth all things The accession of estate is but more fewel cast upon a fire that will at last consume riotous and inordinate livers A man needs not much to be holy and happy for a man may maintain all the vertues at a cheaper rate then any one vice nothing of competency is too little for a virtuous mind and nothing of plenty is sufficient to a vain and vicious spender As dumbness had been a mercy to swearers to profane and filthy speakers so had poverty been riches to many a riotous liver whose making was his marring Luke 15.13 as the Prodigals having his portion in his own hand utterly undid him The more honour and estate any one is master of the more he had need be master of himself of his lusts and passions for riotous expenses will end with Dives his gluttony in eternal poverty and such extream necessities as shall everlastingly want a drop of comfort there being no hope that God will bestow upon those men or women the blessings of eternity which have been such debauched abusers of these blessings which are momentary such as have not been faithful stewards to Gods glory and the worlds good in the little comparatively of this worlds unrighteous mammon as our Saviour tells us how can they expect Buke 16.11 when they come to die that they should be trusted with eternal riches or honours which are the rewards of well doing and recompenses of comely suffering 5. If an excellent wife or husband are parted by death who long lived or were likely to live as turtles in a peaceful sweetness and unspotted society being of one mind and one heart in the Lord joying each others joyes and grieving one anothers griefs who had nothing to envy or desire beyond that love and content which they mutually enjoyed save only the love of God and the fruition of their blessed Saviour in the Kingdom of heaven A blessed pair who so lived that they were dayly ready and preparing to die having nothing to give them any regret at death but only the leaving each other in such a solitude for a season as none but God could supply I need not tell these how they ought to lay to heart eithers death in point of humanity the care must be not to lay it too much to heart 1 Thes 4.13 not to sorrow as meer men and women without hope lest they be swallowed up with too much grief A moderate mourning in such occasions is neither uncomly nor unholy nor unwholesome but as the overflowings of land-floods is beneficial to low grounds when they seasonably abate and leave them dry for if waters stay too long on the richest bottomes they make them cold squallid course and barren Non amissi sed ' praemissi the like effects follow moderate and excessive sorrows upon any worldly occasion whatsoever They must consider each other not as lost but as gone a little before in the same way to happiness 6. So in the loss of children dear by nature deserving by duty especially if our only child more if in the prime and pregnancy of their age most if the hopes and honour of their families the props and pillars of their houses these wounds in the delights of our eyes are prone to go too deep to our hearts to fester and gangrene to something of irreligous discontent and sowrness toward God as if like Jonah Jonah 4.9 we did well to be angry with God and frown upon heaven for the loss of a gourd which had its being from God as St. Austin says of his pregnant son who died at 14. but its sin and mortality from thy self nor can any parents tell how sharp a thorn that child might prove in their eyes and hearts afterward which now seems so fair sweet and lovely a flower to their eyes In such cases not only the highest cordials of divine comforts and Christian hopes but the strictest charms of Gods commands must be applied lest we turn Gods physick into our poyson and by a sullen stubbornness turn a fathers cqastisement to the sharp punishment of an enemy remember God is so much beforehand with us by his bounty that his withdrawings can never be an injury to us He as the spring and occan hath more right in any streams then the channel through which they pass as all runs to him so they come from him So that after Job's example
established and used for above an hundred yeares by the most noble wise and religious persons in this Nation of all degrees with no small benefit of piety to the living especially the common people but they crosse also the permissions yea the Institutions even of God himself in his holy word as by Solomons pen here so by the Apostles afterward injoyning us to Preach and so to pray in season and out of season to doe all things to edification and with decency becomming Christians as well as men especially in such eases as most affect the living in reference both to their own others mortal state which dasheth all faith hope and holy industry of a godly life the best men being of all men most miserable 1 Cor. 15.19 if there be not a frequent and full Antidote against our dying and sorrowing condition duely applyed from the holy word of God as to the happy and hopeful state of such as live and die in the Lord 1 Cor. 14 26 40 2 Tim. 4.2 both as to their spirits which return to God and their bodies which rest in hopes of an happy resurrection to glory For which purpose we see the Scripture hath furnished the Church with as many clear 1 Thess 4.13 See the long discourse of the Resurrection 1 Cor. 15. large and pregnant places to establish the faithful in that Article of their faith the bodies resurrection as any other point whatsoever There needs no other Form of Liturgy of exhortation or consolation or prayer or gratulation or benediction or comprecation then what is guided by and grounded upon the Scripture Nor was there other prescribed or used in the Church of England by any discreet Minister If such sad occasions may nay must in many respects be duely and devoutly laid to heart by the living as I have shewed you what hinders I beseech you but that Sermons instructions exhortations consolations and prayers too may be used at them in order to apply them most neerly to and work most effectually upon the hearts of the living And then especially when the hearts of men and women of parents and children of neighbours and friends yea of enemies and strangers too are most prone to be moved and affected to good purpose some being softened by common sympathies of humanity others steeped in teares by their more indeared relations and tender affections the whole assembly being as it were in the bath and furnace more pliable humble and melting then at any other time If we Christians only brought the eyes the hearts and senses of beasts to these Funeral-occasions it were venial to give our children parents friends husbands wives kindred and our selves no other honour or comfort then the burial of an asse or of a dead dog would afford and require or if we came together only as so many Gymnosophists Brachmans and Philosophers or so many Heathens Indians and meer men without hope and not as Christians who have much to learn to hear to say to pray and to practice upon these texts of mortality not only as to natural death but as to the spiritual and eternal death as to judgment to come as to a resurrection and after recompenses their scrupulous restraint were excusable but blessed be God what a field of excellent matter as to saith and manners as to hope and comfort in reference to both dead and living Christians is there to be gone through to be beaten oft over from the Scriptures suggestion and direction that the living the living might duely effectually and frequently lay those things to heart which are presented to them by every Funeral-occasion but not easily improved by the generality of people if they have nothing else but a dumb shew and silent procession at their Funerals Object But some are afraid of superstition lest we pray for the dead or praise God on their behalf beyond that ancient gratulation for their departure in the faith and that comprecation for a blessed consummation of the Kingdome of Christ and all his Church at and after the Resurrection which is under a divine promise upon all good Christians hopes hearts and future expectations blessings certainly no less lawful to be prayed for as the ancient Churches did then desired and expected by all the faithful living as I believe they are by all the Saints departed Answ To these Objecters I answer Let them forbear Funeral Sermons exhortations and prayers till they get more wit to understand their own good and more charity then to grudge others their Christian liberty either to do or get good in such wayes as Gods word and the customes of this Christian well reformed Church allow us This Indulgence I easily grant to such as are simply and honestly scrupulous but to others that are rudely captious and contemptuous yea ridiculously clamorous and contumacious against any thing which they doe not form and fancy though they give no reason why they scruple or condemn it my answer is as that of our Saviour to the Pharisees You hypocrites Matth. 16.3 can you discern the face of the sky and can you not discern the signs of the times Are you so fearful of praying for the dead that you will not pray for and with the living Can you endure the pomp of a Funeral and not the piety of it Can you bear with Trumpets Banners Escucheons and not with the word of God with Sermons and Prayers which sanctifie all things in themselves lawful and expedient Is not sanctity the best part of Christians Solemnities who in all temporal things must look to things eternal Are you so afraid of superstition that you grudge us our devotions and holy exercises as God gives us more signal calls and occasions Can you endure Heraldry and not the Liturgy in this part of it which sets forth very handsomely and fully to the living out of the lively oracles of God those most pertinent places and excellent truths which make most for the good hope comfort and instruction of the living both in respect of their dead relations and themselves Take heed you swallow not camels while you strain at gnats If you think a dead Christian that dies in the faith of Christ and in the compass of our charity differs not from a dead Heathen or a dead beast if their spirits goe all one way with their bodies to the dust if neither they dying nor you living have any lively hope of a resurrection without which all your faith living is but dead and in vain if you know not how to make a holy rational and religious use of their death much good may you have with those dumb shewes which you have lately taken up with your silent solemnities and processions at the Funerals of your Christian friends much comfort may you have in your burnt wine and biscuits in your black cloaks and ribbands in your mourning gloves and boxes of sweet-meats which good you somtimes get gape for at Funerals These are toyes
he died of that scrophulous humor abounding in him which we call the Struma or Kings evil full of little and great knots or kernels in his lungs and entrails some as big as pullets eggs some larger and adherent to the backbone on both sides his lungs so full of that caseous or cheese-like substance that they were swelled and inflamed to a quantity too big for his brest and breathing so that he died on the suddain presently after he had spoken and removed himself with much seeming strength and earnestness the heart being suddenly suffocated and wasted on one side or Auricle for want of due refreshing and however the lungs began in some folds to be putrified yet neither my self nor any other perceived either while he lived though I spake very neer him any thing offensive in his breath or unsavoury from his pectorals or vitals This was the disease and languor of which this poor Gentleman died and I know by most assured experience it hath befaln such as have been both for unspotted virtue and exquisite handsomeness inferiour to no persons living in their times In a word the means which providence permitted to put an end to this noble Gentlemans days was such as might well deserve the pity of all but not the reproach of any good Christian who being at last thus truly and fully informed will in all respects carry themselves as becometh humanity and Christianity modesty and veracity A more solicitous confutation of any vulgar surmises and false reports were to give them too much reputation credulity not duly informed is venial though applied to calumnies but clearly convinced it becomes venomous and mortal because malicious How miserable a people are we whose civil and religious fewds are such that men are made to live and die to be saved and damned not as the mercy and justice of God wills but as human adherencies or antipathies list to censure No party no passion here sways with me I abhor to flatter or calumniate any man in Court or Country I follow no dictates but those of experience impartiality certainty upon which ground I presume no ingenuous man or woman can envy or deny me to apply even to the now dead body of this noble Gentleman these sweet persumes and honest spices made up of nothing but evident truth comely civility just honour and upright conscience which last office I perform not so much a friend and servant to him as to truth and the God of truth to whose merciful dispose we leave his soul for ever His Corps or bodily remains are brought you see to be deposited with you his kind friends his loving neighbours his honest tenants in reversion and his worthy Country-men to be laid up with the mortal reliques of his excellent Mother and other his noble Ancestors to whom he is gone before his Father or Grandfather by a preproperous fate inverting the usual and by most parents desired methods of mortality I need not tell your ingenuity to my worthy Country-men and you of this place what causes you have more then other men to lay this death to heart and to stand still at this dead Corps as the men of Judah and Israel did that came to the place where Asahel fell down and died as of a person eminently related as to many other 2 Sam. 2.23 so to a principal noble Family in this County the experience of whose piety hospitality charity and love of learning poor and rich have had long experience and some constant living monuments among you in this village besides that to which they have committed their urns and bones their dust and ashes as it were to your safe custody How far you are injured or detrimented by this noble persons death depends much on the piety vertue and honour of their minds and actions who now enjoy or may after succeed to those honours and revenews to which he was Heir apparent which he now neither wants nor envies nor desires How far you are or may be bettered by his death and these endeavours for your good depends much upon your care and conscience to lay to heart those many instances of improving a Funeral which I have told you wherein Gods grace upon your humble prayers and honest endeavours will enable you to live as becomes those that remember dayly they must die and appear before God For which last agony and great appearance the Lord in mercy fit us all for his sake who died for us Jesus Christ the righteous To whom with the Father and holy Spirit be everlasting glory for ever Amen Phil. 1.21 To me to live is Christ and to die is gain Id agamus ut vita sit jucunda morbus non injucundus mors verò jucundissima A PRAYER in order to prepare for DEATH O Lord the everlasting God the only giver and preserver of all life natural spiritual temporal and eternal who hast breathed into these our vile bodies of dust the breath of life even pretious and immortal souls by which we are capable to know to love to live with and enjoy Thee for ever as the only Supream Good who only art an object adequate to the vast capacities and sufficient to satisfie those infinite desires of living happily to eternity which thou hast planted in us Thou hast justly passed upon all mankind for our sinful falling from thee which is the present death of our souls as to an holy and happy life the irrevocable decree of once dying and after that appearing before thy judgement both which will certainly ere long overtake us all Blessed Lord the terrors of death and of judgement of our present mortality and our deserved misery are infinite upon us very fearful we are because very sinful and loth because unfit to die a natural death but we are wholly confounded and even swallowed up with the thoughts and dread of that black Abyssus an eternal death If the death of our bodies by the soules separation be so horrid and grievous to us O what must the death of our souls be which consists in an utter separation from thy love and favour shutting us up in the chains of eternal darkness and under the pains of everlasting burnings We confess how just cause we have to be ashamed to live and yet afraid to die having no hope of the least degree of life or happiness in our death as from our selves where our own consciences have already passed a sentence of death and an expectation of thy just vengeance to destroy us In which sad state of dying and despairing we should have both lived and died if thou hadst not made us who were dead in sins and trespasses to hear thy voice in Jesus Christ that we might live As thou hast been a God of great goodness and long-suffering to us not willing we should die in our sins but repent of them and live so as a most merciful Father thou hast made a new and living way to the throne of thy grace
by the meritorious death and passion of the Lord of life and glory the great and promised Messias thy beloved Son our blessed Saviour Jesus Christ who by suffering death hath both overcome death and satisfied thy justice for us freeing all true believing and penitent sinners from the sting curse and fear of death both temporal and eternal bringing by his glorious Gospel life and glory honour and happiness to light We beseech thee O heavenly Father for his sake who hath tasted death for us all to magnifie thy infinite mercy upon us before we go from hence and be no more seen O be better to us then ever we should be to our selves or we are utterly lost Bestow upon us all those graces and gifts which may both teach and help us to lead an holy life and die an happy death Prevent us graciously and follow us effectually with the motions and operations of thy holy Spirit which may excite and inable us speedily and throughly to mortifie the life and power of every sin in us even while it is called to day lest death and hell prevent us in our delays and presumptions Sanctifie to us all those occasions monitions and warnings by which thy providence presents the thoughts and state of death to us as the truest glass of all earthly glory that we may so lay them to heart as to die dayly to all inordinate love of our selves and of this world which at best is loss and dung in comparison of the excellency of our Lord Jesus Christ in whom thy love to us is better then life it self Thou hast by thy power given us our lives in this vain world by thy providence thou hast preserved them by thy patience thou hast spared them to this day notwithstanding we have with many sins and much unthankefulness provoked thee to our hurt yea by thy holy Word thou hast shewed and offered to us the way and reward of a better life upon our turning to thee with all our hearts from dead works to serve the living God O teach us so to number our days as to apply our hearts to true wisedom to value this pretious moment not to mispend it yea to redeem it because the days past have been evil and upon this moment depends our eternal fate O thou that hast made our moment here though it be sinful not wholly miserable but hast sweetned it with many mercies let not our eternity be miserable and sinful It is one great comfort in our mortality as to this life that we consider our sins shall not be immortal in us O let not sin die with us but before us as a work of choise and grace not of infirmity force and necessity We humbly lay hold on that eternal life which is thy gift through Jesus Christ our Lord. As we every day grow elder so Lord make us every day somewhat better as neerer to our graves so fitter for heaven teach us to live every day as if it were our last that we may never live in any such way wherein we cannot meet death comfortably make us such as thou wouldst have us while we live that we may find thee such as we would have thee when we die that when we come to die we may have nothing else to do but to resign our bodies to thy custody and our souls to thy mercy who having made this life on earth common to the bad and good the just and the unjust hast certainly prepared another state in which shall be infinite difference and everlasting distinction of recompenses to such as fear thee and such as fear thee not O enable us to do our duty and we are sure to receive thy rewards write thy name in our hearts and we need not doubt but our names are written in heaven even in thy Book of Life Sweeten the bitter thoughts of death to us by our faith and hope in the meritorious death the victorious resurrection and glorious ascension of Jesus Christ for our sakes let us find by our holiness and newness of life by our being dead with Christ and living to him that we are passed from death to life That our departure hence may be a joyful passage to a better life which consists in the vision and fruition of thy self O blessed Creator who must needs be better then all things thou hast made and as more necessary so infinitely more useful sweet and comfortable to us O that we may be willing and fitted to leave all to come to thy self that we may with all the blessed Angels and Saints for ever in heaven see love praise admire adore and enjoy thee O holy Father Son and Spirit the only true God To whom be glory and honour life and power thanks and dominion for ever Amen Februarii 17. Anno 1657. Observationes habitae In Dissectione Corporis Illustrissimi Nobilissimi Viri D. ROBERTI RICH coram Medicinae Doctoribus Chirurgis infra subscriptis 1. INventi sunt Pulmones substantiâ duriores quam secundùm naturam mole longè majores quam pro ratione pectoris toti ferè scrophulosi caseosâ materiâ magna ex parte purulentâ referti Superiori parte lobi dextri lacuna reperta est pure plena ad quantitatem cochlearis unius 2. Aqua collecta in sinistra cavitate Thoracis ad fesque librae quantitatem vel circiter 3. Auricula dextra Cordis major erat sinistrâ proportione ferè quintuplici 4. Mesenterium refertum glandulis scrophulosis aliquibus magnitudinem Ovi Gallinacei aequantibus aliis minoribus materiâ quadam sebaceâ plenis cum purulentiae guttis hinc inde sparsis in aliquibus 5. In substantia Panchreatis glandulae peregrinae huic annexus tumor scrophulosus grandis ad hepar usque protensus Orisicium Venae Portae comprimens 6. Vesicula fellis exteriùs albicans flaccida aliquam quantitatem fellis dilutioris continens 7. Hepar colore Albidiori substantiâ debito majori 8. Splen satìs laudabilis nisi quòd hinc inde granulis scrophulosis refertus 9. Inte Musculos Lumbares glandulae duae ingentes scrophuloae à quinta vertebra sinistrae partis una ad Inguen usque se protendebat ex dextra parte altera non adeo longa Fran. Prujean Geor. Bates Tho. Coxe Robertus Lloyd J. Goddard Theophilus Garancieres Edward Arris Chirurgus John Soper Chirurgus I Have judged my publishing of this Funeral-Sermon upon the immature death of the Son the fittest occasion I am ever like to have while I live to present those who can look upon eminent goodness without evil eyes with a short Epitome of the Mothers worth as it was long since in way of Epitaph composed by a person whose ambition is That justice might be done to the dead as well as to the living Vicious minds and manners like dead carkasses are then best when so buried that nothing may appear to posterity of their noysome and contagious fedities But exemplary and meritorious
vertues must never wholly die nor be buried in oblivion because to the injury both of the dead and the living The name of the wicked justly rots but the name of the righteous ought to be had in everlasting remembrance It is fit they should be quite forgotten who never did any thing worthy of memory or imitation Nor is it less fit to remember those with eternal honour who did all things with honour and in reference to Eternity Commendation is the least reward due to Vertue Imitation is the highest commendation of it just commendation and imitation make the most noble and durable Monument for it Which good ends are aimed at by this following Inscription dedicated to the Mothers Vrne at the Sons Funeral that seeing how Holy the Parent or Root was mankind may conjecture how hopeful the Son or Branch might be and how happy themselves may be by imitating both of Them in those things which were praise-worthy in Them That God in all may have the glory of all as infinitely above all Piae Memoriae Sacrum Quam a Posteris meritò exigit Nobilissima Heroina ac Domina D. ANNA RICH. Illustrissimâ Devonienfis Comitis Familiâ oriunda Warwicensis Filio Haeredi connubio juncta Ingens utriusque Gentis decus ornamentum Praestantissimum verae Nobilitatis Nobilissimarumque virtutum exemplar Optatissimis Animi Corporisque dotibus Supra Invidiam Laudemque cumulata Animi excelsi constantis generosi Nec Aulae splendore nec Sortis suae fastigio elati Ingenii vividi elegantis splendidi Ad summa pulcherrimaque nati Genii benigni amoeni mitissimi Ad infimorum usum suaviter demissi Sermonis politi Rerum pondere magis quà m verborum numero copiosi Gestus decori gratissima Majestatis Comitatisque temperie venerandi Amoris puri invicti stupendi Amicitiae cordatae fidae amicissimae Vitae Admirationi quà m Laudi proximae Conscientiae probè instructae Christique sanguine perpurgatae Pietatis non vulgaris non fictae non verbosae Quanta quanta fuit Tota vera solida sincera Ad speciem plausum populumve Nihil datum Ad Deum ad Christum omnia Quicquid praeclari dixeris Viator cogitaverisve Par esse non potes meritis nedum nimius Id enim omne quâ Fuit Fecitque superavit Illa Quantum Res verba superant effectusque Cogitata Aureus reverâ Pudicitiae Formae Nodus unio fulgentissimus Candoris Judicii Nodus unio fulgentissimus Acuminis prudentiae Nodus unio fulgentissimus Humilitatis honoris Nodus unio fulgentissimus Gravitatis dulcedinis Nodus unio fulgentissimus Sublimitatis patientiae Nodus unio fulgentissimus Rationis pietatis Nodus unio fulgentissimus Humanae divinaeque pulchritudinis Nodus unio fulgentissimus Sexum Aetatem Spem vota Amicorum Faecundissima virtute supergressa Cui ad summam Mortalium Claritatem Nihil defuit Nec ipse poteris ultra desiderare Lector Praeter Vitam in Terris diuturniorem Quum enim Annos Nondum 27. numerasset Caelo Matura Spectatissimos Parentes Nobilissimum Conjugem Integerrimos Fratres Numerosissimos Amicos Charissimum Filiolum unicum castissimi Amoris pignus Mortales denique omnes Amplissimam sibi virtutum Messem pollicentes Pio certè pretiosoque Numini placido felicique Sibi Solis Invidis laeto Caeteris acerbo tristissimóque FATO Infanda tam praesentis quam posterae aetatis Jactura deseruit Aug. 24. 1638. Hoc Devotissimi pectoris monumentum Lubens Maerensque posuit J. G. AN EPITAPH UPON The LADY RICH. POssest of all that Nature could bestow All we can wish to be or reach to know Equal to all the patterns which our mind Can frame of good beyond the good we find All beauties which have power to bless the sight Mixt with transparent vertues greater light At once producing love and reverence The admiration of the soul and sense The most discerning thoughts the calmest breast Most apt to pardon needing pardon least The largest mind and which did most extend To all the Lawes of Daughter Wife and Friend The most allow'd example by what line To live what path to follow what decline Who best all distant vertues reconcil'd Strict cheerful humble great severe and mild Constantly pious to Her latest breath Not more a Pattern in Her life then death The Lady RICH lies here More frequent Tears Have never honour'd any Tomb then Hers. SIDNEY GODOLPHIN THE SUMMARY OF THE SERMON OF Funeral Solemnities civil and religious Page 1 1 Of Feasting its danger and disadvantages p. 6 2 Of the House of Mourning its advantages p. 8 Of Holy Necromancy learning from the dead p. 9 The Honour paid antiently to the dead p. 11 3 Who the living are in the Text p. 12 No advantages from the livings devotion to the dead Romish Superstition p. 13 4 How the living may be benefitted by the dead p. 15 5 The Hearts decays dangers distempers p. 17 Account to be given of others deaths p. 21 6 Fourteen considerations rising from the death of any to be laid to heart by the living 1 Of our mortal and vile bodies in their health sickness decay death p. 24 Not to be preferred before our souls p. 26 How little cause we have to be proud of our selves or to flatter others 2 Consid By way of analogy the putid horror and fedity of a dead soul p. 27 3 Consid The fedity and horror of sin as the meritorious cause of all deaths p. 29 4 Consid The vanity of this life and all things in it set forth in the pregnant instance of this noble Gentleman 5 Consid Of the certain uncertainty of death Its Catholick Empire p. 37 6 The danger of delaying Repentance p. 42 The pious importunity of Ministers urging speedy Repentance p. 44 Impenitence riseth from unbelief p. 47 Death-bed Repentance less certain and less comfortable to our selves and others p. 50 Vulgar pleas for delaying repentance answered p. 54 Of rational and religious living how far in our power p. 57 7 Consid Of God's patience and long suffering to us p. 59 8 Lay to heart the death of Christ the onely antidote against the curse and terror of death p. 61 9 Consâ—d The chiefe end of our lives unprofitable and pernicious waste of a short and pretious life p. 63 10. Consid The seeming samenesse of mens deaths after their various lives Arguments for an after life or being p. 67 11 The folly of Christians uncharitable and excessive passions as to any concerns of this life p. 70 12 The wisedom of Christians moderation in all things in their passion or grief for the dead p. 74 Of timely disposing our selves to die when we are sick p. 74 Why sick men are more attended by Physitians then Divines p. 75 13 Consider how prepared thou art at present for death of adorning the last act of a Christians life p. 77 All Christians may be preachers on their death-beds p. 78 14 What deaths are most emphatick and chiefly to be laid to heart p. 79 1 Of Kings and Soveraign Magistrates p. 80 2 Of chief-Priests Prophets and Ministers of God's Church p. 81 3 Of any gracious and eminent Christian p. 83 4 Of neer Relations as Parents Husbands Wives Children p. 85 5 Of such as have been very wicked and die in their sin p. 87 Of David's mourning so passionately for Absalom p. 88 Three Vses 1 Reproving such hearts as are senseless and unconcerned in any ones death or joy in it p. 89 2 Vse exam How we have improved this and the like spectacles of death p. 91 3 Vse vindicating religious as well as civil Solemnities at Christians burials p. 92 Lastly An account of this noble Personage Mr. ROBERT RICH from his cradle to his coffin His education domestick Academick forraign His temper of body and mind His health sickness disease death p. 92 The conclusion A Prayer preparatory for death p. 115 The judgement of six Doctors in Physick and two Chirurgeons upon the dissection of the Corps p. 120 An Epitaph upon His noble Mother added as an honour to the Funeral urne and memory of this Her onely Child