his departure did most remarkably resemble Sir Spencer Compton's a person so singularly qualified by grace and nature and education that however his extraction was highly noble I may confidently say it was the lowest thing in him who dyed at Bruges about the time wherein the man of our desires expir'd at Compton Never did I hear of a more heavenly valediction to all the contentments of the earth then was given by these two at their dissolutions Never yet did I heare of any two farewells so much alike Never were any more admired by those that saw them whilst they were going or more desired when they were gon How your excellent husband behav'd himself I have but partly related in the conclusion of my Sermon For though I may not dissemble so great a truth as my strong inclinations both to think and speak of him to his advantage yet in my last office of friendship I did religiously set so strict a watch over my tongue as that I rather came short in many points of his commendation then went beyond him in any one And could I have had the possibility to have kept him company in his sickness which I as earnestly endeavour'd as he desir'd it but his sickness was too short and my journey too long for either of us either to give or to receive that satisfaction I might have perfected that account which many witnesses enabl'd me to give in part Having thus far spoken of him to you I must only speak of you to others For such as reject what they deserve I think it a Panegyrick sufficient to make it known they will have none Having dedicated my papers to a person of your endowments for whom to approve is to patronize them I also dedicate your person with the hopefull particles of your self to the peculiar protection and grace of God And as the heirs of that Family which you were pleased by adoption to make your own have already been Lords of that seat for more then eighteen Generations which I can reckon so that the person whom I commemorate may inherit also that other blessing as an addition to that blessing which God hath given him in your self conserred in favour upon Jonadab the son of Rechab Not to want a man to stand before him for ever is no less the hope then the prayer of him who think's himself obliged as well to be as to write himself Your most importunate servant at the throne of Grace THOMAS PIERCE THE LIFELESNES of LIFE on the hether side of IMMORTALITY A SERMON Preached at the Funerall of M. EDWARD PEYTO JOB XIV I. Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live and is full of Trouble NOw you have listen'd unto the Text Cast your Eyes upon the shrine too For That doth verifie This by no less then an Ocular Demonstration You see the Reliques of a Person full of honour indeed but not of years he having had his December I may say in June and reaching the end of his Journey as 't were in the middle of his Course So that if I should be silent upon the mention onely of this Text Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live That very Hearse would present you with a kind of visible Sermon Yet something I must say in honour and Duty unto the Dead and something too for the use and benefit of the Living that as Death already hath been to Him so it may be also to us Advantage That some at least who are here present may go from Hence when I have done if not the wiser or more intelligent yet at least the more considerate and the better Resolved for coming hither I need not be teaching my weakest Brethren what common Experience hath taught us All either the Misery or the shortness or the uncertainty of our Dayes But yet recounting how many Souls do perish for ever in their Impieties not so much by wanting Knowledge as by abounding in the Thoughtlessness of what they know I shall not sure be unexcusable having * S. Peter for my example if I tell you those things which you know already An Honest Remembrancer is as needfull as the most Eloquent Instructer to be imagin'd because we do less want the Knowledge than the consideration of our Duties Saint Peter hath magnified the office no less than three times together in that Epistle which he composed a * little before his Dissolution I will not saith he be negligent to put you alwayes in Remembrance though ye know these things and be established in the Truth Yea I think it meet as long as I am in this Tabernacle to stir you up by putting you in Remembrance Again saith he I will endeavour that you may be able after my Decease to have these things alwayes in Remembrance When I consider that these words were by †divine inspiration and that they were written for our Instruction yea and inculcated upon us no less than thrice in one Breath methinks they tacitely reprove us for having such wanton and Itching Ears as will be satisfied with nothing but what is New Whereas the Thing that is to us of greatest moment is not the study of more Knowledge but the making good use of the things we know Not the furnishing of our Heads with a Richer Treasure of Speculations but the laying them up within our Hearts and the drawing them out into our Lives Men would not live as they are wont were they sufficiently a mindfull that they are men Did they but often enough consider how short a time they have to live how very b often they are in Deaths before they dye how much their short time of life is more c uncertain than it is short how very shortly they are to render a strict Account unto The Iudge I say not of every evill work but even of every d idle word and of each unprofitable howre they would not make so many Demurrs in the important work of their Reformation The uncertainty of their Time would make them watchfull over their wayes that how suddenly soever they may be caught by the common Pursevant of Nature yet it may not be by a surprise That they may not die with the Fool's motto Non e putâram in their mouthes Now to consider my present Text in the most usefull manner that I am able I must bespeak your best Attention not so much to the dogmaticall as to the Applicatory part of my Meditations It being chiefly in my design to shew what Profit we are to reap from all such melancholy Solemnities as by many deep Mourners are sown in Tears What kind of Influences and Virtues from the great brittleness of our Lives are to be shed upon the Practice and Conduct of them What kind of Consectaries and Uses should flow from the one upon the other I shall not therefore wear out my little Time in any such
of knowledge and learning wise and eloquent in their instructions Rich men furnished with ability and living peaceably in their habitations There be of them that have left a name behind them if their prayses might be reported And some there be who have no memoriall who have perished as though they had never been and are become as though they had never been born and their children after them But these were mercifull men whose righteousness hath not been forgotten * their bodyes are buried in peace but their name liveth for evermore for the people will tell of their wisdom and the congregation will shew forth their praise Our honour'd Brother now departed I will not say the unhappy but the now-blessed occasion of this solemnity as he deserves a noble Eulogie so he needs none at all He being one of those few of my particular acquaintance of whom I have seldome or never heard an ill word spoken But in this one thing he had the least resemblance unto his Saviour who was hated by many despised by more and basely forsaken almost by all This is therefore no commendation on which our Saviour proclaims a Woe Woe be to you when all men speak well of you Nor do I say that this worthy Gentleman was ill spoken of by none he was sure too worthy to be so befriended by the world I onely say that I have seldom or never heard it And he was so much the less obnoxious to the dishonesty of the Tongue because as far as his Quality would give him leave he ever delighted in that obscurity which most young Gentlemen are wont to shun For although his extraction we know was noble and his fortune extremely fair though his naturall parts and abilities were truly great as well as greatly improved by art and industry he having been Master of many Languages and I am sure well vers'd in great variety of Learning yet still his modesty and his meekness were so much greater then all the rest that in a perfect contrariety to the vainglorious and hypocriticall he ever turn'd his worst side outward The late retir'dness of his life made him so blameless and inoffensive that I suppose it hath ditted the mouth of envie It was no doubt an effect of those two virtues I mean his modesty and his meekness that he so constantly observed that Apostolicall Precept Iames 1. 19. For he if any man living was swift to hear but slow to speak And when he thought it his turn to speak it was rather much than in many words As the speech of Menelaus describ'd by Homer so perfectly free were his discourses from the fault of impertinence or superfluity So far was he from sitting down in the chair of the scornfull as too many of his quality are wont to do nay so far from walking in the counsels of the ungodly from the time that he found them to be such that he made it his care and chiefest caution in his later years more especially not so much as to stand in the way of sinners For as much as I could judge of him who had the happiness to know him for many years he was a true Nathanael * an Israelite indeed who though he had many Imperfections as one who was born of a woman yet he had sure no guile as being also regenerate and born of God Methinks I hear him now speaking to all that knew him as Samuel did to all Israel I have walked before you from my childhood to this day Behold here I am witness against me before the Lord whose Oxe have I taken or whose Ass have I taken or whom have I defrauded whom have I oppressed or of whose hand have I received any bribe to blind mine eyes therewith and I will restore it To which methinks I hear the Answer which was made to Samuel in the next verse thou hast not defrauded nor oppressed us 'T is this that speaks a man right honest which is a nobler title then right honourable though I may say very truely that he had many due titles of honour too For not to speak of his Ancestors who came in hether with the Conquest and that from the city Poitou in France from whence they derived the name of Peyto I think it more for his honour to have been many wayes * good to wit a good husband and a good father a good master and a good friend a good neighbour and a good land-lord a good christian and a good man And which is a sign of more goodness then all the rest he never thought he was good enough especially in the first and the two last particulars It is an excellent ingredient in that religious composition which he had sent before him to bless his soul and left behind him in memory to perfume his name too that having been charged with a debt whether by his Father's last will and testament or by the condition of the times or by both together he was ever in some pain till he had paid that debt or at least had made provision for it because untill he had done justice he knew he could not so well shew works of mercy and that was doubtless a pregnant token of walking humbly with his God The three grand Duties which God requires in the sixth chapter of Micah at the ninth verse The end of Christ's coming into the world was to make us live soberly righteously and godly in this present world Tit. 2. 13. the first implying our whole duty towards our selves the second towards our neighbour the third towards our God That extraordinary person of whom I speak doth seem to me as well as others to have reached those ends He was so eminently sober that I believe he was never known to have sinn'd against his own body in any kind so eminently righteous that as I said he was in pain till he had rendred to every man his due Being so sober and so righteous he is inferred to have been so godly too as to have liv'd in opposition to those bare professors of Christianity who having a form of godliness deny the power of it for give me leave to tell you what is not every day considered that the most materiall part of godliness is morall honesty Nor was there any thing more conspicuous in the holy life of our blessed Lord The second Table is the touchstone of our obedience unto the first And to apply what I say unto the honourable person of whom I speak we may conclude him to have lived the life of faith because we find him to have dyed the death of the righteous To pass on therefore towards his death as the fittest transition unto his buriall I am enabled to say of him by such as were eye and ear witnesses that he abundantly injoyed that {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} that happy calmness of death which the Emperour Augustus was wont to pray for I say he
have said as well in respect of wisdome and by consequence as well in respect of long life For as the fear of the Lord is solid wisdom and to depart from Evil is understanding so Honourable Age is not that which standeth in the length of Time nor that is measured by number of years but wisdom is the gray hair unto men and an unspotted life is old age To be devoted like Anna to the House of God so as to serve him night and day with fasting and prayers and not to content our selves with that which is meerly lawfull or barely enough to serve turn as men do commonly reason within themselves but to study the things that are †more excellent to streine hard towards * perfection to forget those things that are behind and to reach forth unto those things that are before pressing on towards the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Iesus this is to amplisie our lives and to frustrate the malice of our mortality and as the want of stature many times is supply'd in thickness so this is to live a great deal in the little time of our duration Ampliat Aetatis spaâ—ium sibi Vir bonus hoc est Vivere bis Vitâ posse priore srui As we are thus to provide against the shortness so in like manner we must provide against the uncertainty of our time And the way to do that is to distrust the future and to lay hold upon the present so to live every houre as if we were not to live the next Having a short time to live our time to repent cannot be long And not assured of the * morrow 't is madness not to repent to-day when we see many persons of the most promising countenance and the most prosperous constitution not onely snatched by an early but sudden death why should we not seriously consider that we may be of their number having no promise of the contrary either within or without us †What happens to any man may happen to every man every man being encompassed with the same conditions of mortality 'T is true indeed that we may live till we are old but 't is as true that we may dye whilst we are young and therefore the later possibility should as well prevail with us for a dispatch of our repentance as the former too too often prevails upon us for a delay Nay if we procrastinate our repentance in hope of living till we are old how much rather should we precipitate it for fear of dying whilst we are young if yet it were possible to precipitate so good and necessary a work as a solid impartiall sincere repentance For as to repent whilst we are young can never do us the least harm so it may probably do us the greatest to post it off till we are old Nay it may cost us the loss of heaven and a sad eternity in hell if we deferr our repentance I do not say till we are old but if we deferr it being young till we are one day older then now we are And shall we deferr it beyond to-day because we may do it as well to-morrow This is madness unexpressible For as 't is true that we may so 't is as true that we may not Our knowledge of the one is just as little as of the other Or rather our ignorance is just as much And shall we dare to tempt God by presuming upon that which we do not know Are heaven and hell such triviall things as to be put to a bare adventure shall we play for salvation as it were by filliping cross or pile implicitly saying within our selves if we live till the morrow we will repent and be saved but if we dye before night we will dye in our sins and be damned for ever shall we reason within our selves that though we know our own death may be as sudden as other men's yet we will put it to the venture and make no doubt but to fare as well as hitherto we have done what is this but to dally with the day of judgement or to bewray our disbelief that there is any such thing It s true we may live untill the morrow and so on the morrow we may repent But what is this to the purpose that 't is certain we may whilst 't is as doubtfull whether we shall Is it not good to make sure of happiness by repenting seriously at present rather then let it lye doubtfull by not repenting untill anon Methinks we should easily be persuaded to espouse that course which we are throughly convinced doth tend the most to our Advantage When the rich worldling in the Parable was speaking placentia to his soul * soul take thine ease alleaging no other reason than his having much goods for many years nothing is fitter to be observed then our Saviour's words upon that occasion Stulte Thou Fool this night shall thy soul be required of thee then whose shall those things be which thou hast provided However the men of this world have quite another measure 〈◊〉 and do esteem it the greatest prudence to take 〈◊〉 pleasure whilst they are young reserving the work 〈◊〉 mortification for times of sickness and old age when 't will be easie to leave their pleasures because their pleasures will leave them yet in the judgement of God the Son the word and wisdom of the Father 't is the part of a blockhead and a fool to make account of more years then he is sure of dayes or hours He is a sot as well as a sinner who does adjourn and shift off the amendment of his life perhaps till twenty or thirty or fourty years after his death 'T is true indeed that Hezekiah whilst he was yet in the confines and skirts of death had a * lease of life granted no less than fifteen years long but he deferred not his repentance one day the longer And shall we adventure to live an hour in an impenitent estate who have not a lease of life promised no not so much as for an hour shall we dare enter into our beds and sleep securely any one night not thinking how we may awake whether in heaven or in hell we know 't is timely repentance which must secure us of the one and 't is finall impenitence which gives us assurance of the other What the Apostle of the Gentiles hath said of wrath may be as usefully spoken of every other provoking sin †Let not the Sun go down upon it Let us not live in any sin untill the Sun is gone down because we are * far from being sure that we shall live till Sun rising How many Professors go to sleep when the Sun is down and the curtains of the night are drawn about them in a state of drunkenness or adultery in a state of avarice or malice in a state of sacriledge or rebellion in a state of
injoy'd it in both acceptions of the word For first however he was sick of a burning Feaver which carried him up like Elias in a fiery Chariot yet he had this rare happiness which is the priviledge of a few that he even injoyed his whole disease without the least taint of deliration That knot of union betwixt his body and his soul was not violently broken but very leasurely untyed they having parted like two friends not by a rude falling-out but a loving farewell Thus was his Euthanasia in the first acception of the word But he had it much more as to the second For Two things there are which are wont to make death terrible The first is suddenness and the second is sin He was so arm'd against the first that he did not onely take care for the setting his outward house in order to the end that nothing in this world might trash his flight towards a better but he also sent for the Divine to imp the wings of his devotion and farther told his Physician that God had sent him his summons so well was he arm'd against the first of those Phobera and that by the help of our English Litanie which prompt's us to pray against sudden Death and which he commanded one of his servants to assist him with upon his death bed bestowing upon it when he had done a great deal of holy admiration Again so well was he prepared against the second that for the tenderness of his conscience and his deep resentment of all his sins those of the times more especially in which he deplored his unhappiness that he had had a great share till God was pleased in much mercy to shew him that errour of his judgement by which the errour of his practice was bred and cherish'd Next for his hatred of himself in the remembrance of them though we may say that in comparison with many others alive and dead he had kept himself unspotted from the world then for his steadfast resolutions of better life of making ample satisfaction for every ill that he had done and so of bringing forth fruits †worthy of repentance if God should be pleas'd to inlarge his time and last of all for his sollicitude that all his * family might live in the fear of God and redeem those opportunities which he seem'd at least unto himself to have sometimes lost or neglected I say in all these respects he appears to me as well as to others a more then ordinary Example But some may say that sick persons are ever sorry for their sins but it is many times a sorrow squeez'd out by sickness And as soon as they recover they do relapse too To which I answer that though it is often so in others yet in this exemplary Christian it could not be so For First it was a mark of his sincerity that he look'd upon his failings as through a Macroscope which made them seem nearer and very much greater then they were He warn'd all those who stood about his sick bed to beware of those sins which the world call's little and of the no-little sins which the world calls none yea from the least * appearances and opportunities of sin It was his own expression that all the sins of his former life did even kick in his very face yet he remembred the †labourer who went late into the Vineyard and was rewarded He also made some reflexions upon the * thief on the cross that his faith might steer an even course betwixt the Scylla of despair and the Charybdis of presumption Secondly it was another good token of his sincerity that he was not meerly a death-bed penitent whose repentance too too often is but a {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} a sorrow according to the world but as diverse persons can well witness he began the great work in his time of health so as his sickness did but declare his having been a * new creature by †change of mind and that he did not fall back but * press forward towards the mark and persevere in so doing unto the * end Thirdly it was another mark of his sincerity that he insisted on the nature of true repentance which still importeth an amendment and reformation of life Nor had he a willingness to recover his former health unless to the end he might demonstrate his renovation by that carefullness that fear that indignation that vehement desire that zeal yea that revenge which S. Paul hath recorded as the effects of a godly sorrow in his Corinthians Abhorring and deploring those desperate notions of repentance which the world is so commonly mistaken in Fourthly it was a comfortable token of his sincerity that he was obstinate in his Prayers against the precept of his Physician and resolv'd to pour out his soul though to the prejudice of his body As if he were piously ambitious of being too strong for his own infirmities when a reverend Divine who was standing by would fain have done that office for him at least as a Deputy to his lungs onely that he might not spend his few spirits as yet left in him he made him this resolute and hasty but pious answer that whilst a tongue was in his head whereby to speak and whilst he had breath in his body to move and animate his tongue and whilst he had lungs in his brest to supply his breath he would shew forth the goodness and the glory of God who had been pleas'd to do so great things for him And in a mercifull Answer to all his Prayers which he continued to the amazement of all that heard him after some conflicts which he had had with the ghostly enemy that so he might be happier in a victorious then he could possibly have been in an untempted innocence God was pleased very signally to reveal himself to him to speak peace unto his conscience to fill him inwardly with joy in the holy Ghost to give him some glimmerings and fore-tasts of the glory to be revealed That I may use his own words which as he came out of a trance he was observed to speak he had a ravishing glimps of the Beatifick vision meaning thereby as I interpret that God had refreshed his drooping soul with his unspeakable comforts saying unto his soul I am thy salvation or this day salvation is come to thy house So that now being placâ—d above the levell of temptations and exempted from the fear of what the * red dragon could do unto him he cheerfully lifted up his head and first his eyes upon Iesus the author and finisher of his faith and for the joy that was set before him expected the Advent of death as of a very dear friend Fifthly it was another great sign that his heart was right towards God and therefore not treacherous to himself that he extended his care to the souls of others with as
man Dye in Health and may lodge him in Heaven or in Hell before he hath the leasure to cry for Mercy Thus our †Houses of Clay as Eliphaz the Temanite did fitly call them do seem as false and as frail as the Apples of Sodom which being specious to the Eye did fall to crumbles by every Touch The frame of our building is not onely so frail but as some have thought so ridiculous that if we contemplate the body of man in his condition of Mortality and by reflecting upon the soul do thereby prove it to be Immortall we shall be tempted to stand amazed at the inequality of the Match but that to wonder at our Frailty were but to wonder that we are Men Yet sure if We that is our souls for our bodies are so far from being Us that we can hardly call them Ours are not capable of corruption our Bodies were not intended for our Husbands but for our Houses whose Dores will either be open that we may go forth or whose Building will be ruinous that needs we must we cannot by any means possible make it the place of our Continuance for though our bodies as saith our Saviour are not so glorious as the Lillies yet saith Job they are as frail And by that time with David they wax old as doth a garment how earnestly with S. Paul shall we groan to be cloath'd upon to be cloathed with New apparell whilst that the old is turning for when Christ shall come in the clouds with his holy Angels at once to restore and to reform our Nature he shall change our vile bodies that they may be fashioned like unto his glorious body But here I speak of what it is not what it shall be though it shall be glorious yet now 't is vile though it shall be immarcescible yet now 't is fading though it shall be a long life 't is now a short one It is indeed so short and withall so uncertain that a we bring our years to an end like as a Tale that is told Death come's so hastily upon us that we never can b see it till we are blind We cannot but know that it is short for we c fade away suddenly like the grass And yet we know not how short it is for we pray that God will a teach us to number our Dayes This we know without teaching b that even then when we were born we began to draw towards our End Whether sleeping or waking we are alwayes flying upon the wings of Time And even this very Instant whilst I am speaking doth set us well on towards our Journey's end whether we are worldly and therefore study to keep Life or Male-Contents and therefore are weary of its possession the King of Terrours will not fail either to meet or overtake us And whilst we all are c Travelling to the very same Countrey I mean the Land of forgetfulness without considering it as an Antichamber to Heaven or Hell although we walk thither in d severall Rodes 't is plain that he who lives longest goes but the farthest way about and that he who dyes soonest goes the nearest way home I remember it was the humour I know not whether of a more Cruell or Capricious e Emperour to put a Tax upon child-births to make it a thing excizeable for a man to be born of a woman As if he had farm'd Gods Custom-house he made every man fine for being a Man which as it was a great Instance of his Cruelty so 't was as good an Embleme of our frailty our state of Pilgrimage upon Earth For we arrive at this World as at a forraign and strange Country where I am sure it is proper although not just that we pay Tole for our very landing And then being landed we are such transitory Inhabitants that we do not so properly dwell here as f sojourn All the meat we take in is at God's great Ordinary and even the breath which we drink is not our own but His which when he taketh away we dye and are turn'd again into our Dust Insomuch that to expire is no more in effect then to be honest 't is to restore a Life which we did but borrow a {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} And well it were if it were no worse for if the life of man were pleasant it would the less disgrace it that it is short A short life and a b Merry is that which many men applaud But as the son of a woman hath but a few dayes to live so it follows in the Text that even those few dayes are full of Trouble And indeed so they are in whatsoever Condition a man is plac'd for if he is poor he hath the trouble of pains to get the goods of this World If he is rich he hath the trouble of Care to keep his Riches the trouble of Avarice to increase them the trouble of fear to lose them the trouble of sorrow when they are lost And so his Riches can onely make him the more illustriously unhappy If he lives as he ought he hath the trouble of self-denyalls the trouble of c mortifying the flesh with the affections and lusts the trouble of being in d Deaths often the trouble of e crucifying himself and of f dying daily If to avoid those Troubles he lives in pleasure as he ought not he hath the trouble of being told that he is g dead whilst he lives the trouble to h think that he must dye the trouble to fear whilst he is dying that he must live when he is dead that he may dye eternally Not to speak of those troubles which a man suffers in his Nonage by being weaned from the breast and by breeding teeth in his boyage and youth by bearing the yoke of subjection and the rigid discipline of the Rod in his manhood and riper years by making provision for all his Family as servant-Generall to the whole Nor to speak of those Troubles which flow in upon him from every quarter whether by Losses or Affronts Contempts or Envyings by the anguish of some Maladies and by the loathsomness of others rather then want matter of trouble he will be most of all troubled that he hath a nothing to vex him In his sober Intervalls and Fits when he considers that he must dye and begins to b cast up the accounts of his sins it will be some trouble to him that he is without chaslisement whereby he knowes he is a c Bastard and not a son It will disquiet him not a little that he liveth at rest in his possessions and become his great Cross that he hath prosperity in all things Not onely the sting and the stroak but the very Remembrance of Death will be bitter to him so saith Jesus the son of Sirach chap. 41. vers.
1. Thus we see the child of man or the man who is born of a woman is so full of Trouble to the brim that many times it overflow's him On one side or other we all are troubled but some are troubled on d every side Insomuch that they themselves are the greatest Trouble unto themselves and 't is a kind of death to them that they cannot dye We find King David so sick of Life as to fall a wishing for the wings of a Dove that so his soul might fly away from the great Impediments of his Body He confessed his Dayes were at the longest but a e span and yet he complained they were no shorter It seems that Span was as the span of a wither'd Hand which the farther he stretched out the more it griev'd him He was f weary of his groaning His soul did g pant after Heaven and even thirsted for God And he might once more have cryed though in another sense Woe is me that I am constrain'd to dwell with Meseck and to have mine habitation among the Tents of Kedar I remember that Charidemus in Dio Chrysoslom compared man's Life unto a Feast or Banquet And I the rather took notice of it because the Prophet Elijah did seem in some sense to have made it good Who after a first or second Course as I may say of living as if he had surfetted of Life cryed out in hast It is enough and with the very same breath desired God to take away for so faith the Scripture 1 Kings 19. 4. He went into the Wilderness a solitary place and there be sate under a Iuniper in a melancholy posture and requested of God that he might dye in a very disconsolate and dolefull manner even pouring forth his soul in these melting Accents It is enough now O Lord take away my life for I am no better then my Faâ—hers And if the Dayes of Elijah were full of trouble how was Iob overwhelmed and running over with his Calamity when the b Terrours of God did set themselves in aray against him how did he c long for destruction O saith he that I might have my request that God would grant me the thing that I long for Even that it would please him to destroy me that he would let loose his hand and cut me off How did he d Curse the Day of his Birth and the Night wherein he was conceived Let that Day be darkness let the shadow of Death stain it let a cloud dwell upon it let blackness terrifie it And for the Night let it not be joyned unto the dayes of the year Let the stars of the twilight thereof be dark neither let it sâ—e the dawning of the day And what was his reason for this unkindness to that particular Day and Night save that they brought upon him trouble of being a Man borne of a woman for we find him complaining a little after why dyed I not from the Womb why did I not give up the ghost when I came out of the Belly And then for the Life of our blessed Saviour who is call'd by way of Eminence The Son of Man as I observ'd before that it was short so must I here put you in mind that it was full of Trouble He was therefore call'd by way of Eminence Vir Dolorum a A Man of sorrows The Prophet adds he was b acquainted with Grief For the whole Tenor of his Life was a continuation of his Calamities The Time would fail me should I but mention the hundredth part of those men whose short Time of life hath seemed long to them even because they have felt it so full of Trouble But enough hath been said concerning the Doctrine of the Text And it lyes upon us to make some use First then let us consider that if man as born of a woman hath but a short time to live It concerns us to take up the prayer of David that God will teach us to know our End and the number of our Dayes that we like c Hezechiah may be fully certified how short our Time is It concerns us to take up the Resolution of Job All the Dayes of our appointed time incessantly waiting till our change cometh It concerns us not to say with the rich man in the parable we will pull down our Barns and build greater and there we will bestow all our fruits ' and our goods much less may we say with that other Worldling Souls take your Ease eat drink and be merry for you have much goods laid up for many years for alas how can we know silly creatures as we are but that this very Night nay this very minute either they may be taken from us or we from them there is such a fadeingness on their parts and such a fickleness on ours But it concerns us rather to say with Job Naked came we into the world and naked shall we go out of it Or it concerns us rather to say with David that we are strangers upon Earth and but so many sojourners as all our Fathers were for whilest we consider we are but strangers we shall as * Strangers and Pilgrims abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul And so long as we remember we are but sojourners upon earth we shall pass the time of our sojourning here in fear And behaving our selves among the Gentiles as a chosen Generation a Royall Priesthood an holy Nation a peculiar People we shall shew forth his praise who hath called us out of Darkness into his marvellous Light Secondly let us consider that since our Life is uncertain as well as short inasmuch as we know not how short it is it concerns us immediately to labour hard in the Improvement of this our span into Eternity to employ our very short and uncertain Time in making a seasonable provision against them both I mean it's shortness and its uncertainty For shall we be lavish even of that which is so easily lost and of which we have so very little and every minute of which Little does carry so great a weight with it as will be either a kind of Pulley to help raise us up to Heaven or else a Clogg to pull us down to the lowest Hell Of whatsoever we may be wastefull we ought to be charie of our Time which doth incontinently perish and will eternally be reckoned on our account Perâ—unt imputantur the Epigrammatist could say of his pretious Hours Now the way to provide against the shortness of our Life is so to live as to dye to the greatest Advantage to be imagin'd and so to dye as to live for ever What Tobit said to Tobias in respect of wealth Fear not my son that we are made poor for thou hast much wealth if thou fear God and depart from all sin and do that which is pleasing in his sight He might