Selected quad for the lemma: death_n
Text snippets containing the quad
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A25447
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Religio clerici
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T. A.
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1681
(1681)
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Wing A32; ESTC R200747
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38,573
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248
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reacht the Seat of their Reason and Judgment And thus such Artists as can best by tender Expressions and passionate Applications soften mellow and dissolve the loose and easie Passions of silly Women are forsooth the only able powerful men and they good Souls can Edifie under none but them When alas all this seeming effectual Operation is no better than just thus viz. the whining Holderforth and the Female Congregation being at that time tuned like two Viols exactly alike by the Magick of Enthusiastick Sympathy their Notes correspond of course and the Canting of the one immediately begets Sighs and Groans in the other I am of opinion that the highest Paroxysms of Vulgar Quakerisme have much the same Cause as Dancing to Musick in Fits of the Tarantula For I have with pity and pleasure both observ'd that the malignant Ferment hath been by degrees exhaled by their violent Sudorifick motions and when the poor Soul hath spent his Spirits and is tyred at his very heart then as he fancies the Spirit goes off and leaves working And I am inclined too to think that the cooler habits of this Religious disease in many of them are to be cured by Medicinal Drugs and a regular course of Pill Potion and Phlebotomy A timely Visitation of the Sick as 't is a charitable duty almost necessary so it belongs as properly to the Function of a Priest as to the Profession of a Physician and the careful Visits of a Ghostly Father should of right be more welcome and comfortable and accounted of higher import as the care of our Souls ought to be of dearer concern to us than that of our frail Bodies and yet with us Vbi desinit Medicus ibi incipit Theologus is a common woful practice For my own part I should think my self obliged by a timelier Assistance to minde my ghostly Patient of the dangers of his long Journey urge him to hearty Confession give him comfortable Absolution and Communicate to him the strengthening Viaticum of the Body and Blood of the Adorable Jesus How busie the restless malice of the Enemy of Mankinde may be at this time to insinuate Suggestions of Despair or presumptuous hopes of longer Life into Sick persons I know not but surely I am bound to examine the case and by seasonable Anticipations prevent at least the success of Satan's devices That the Devil by Injection can modifie our Thoughts and in a great measure rule the Faculties especially of weak sick persons who are now more retired within themselves and free from the sensible amusements and diversions of worldly objects I verily believe for he may make a very malicious and mischievous use of the advantages he hath over our Souls himself being a subtle powerful Spirit and therefore by eminency of like nature may have a very forcible Influence upon the Operations of our Spirit as to take a parallel Analogy from what appears in matter the contrary essence the Pressure or Collision of a stronger body alters we see the Figure of Extension in a weaker or as the dimension of soft Wax is by my hands now square then round and presently triangular or oblong Now the Advantages of these frequent Visits will not only be so to the Sick but will produce in us forcible habits of undaunted Indifferencie against the Fears and Apprehensions of Death in general and the nearer Approaches of it too when our selves are assaulted Our most proper Titles are Ghostly Spiritual and such like to intimate that 't is our Trade to be familiarly present and frequently assistant at Nature's grand Dissection of Soul and Body It will the better improve our Theologick Knowledge and Skill as an accurate diligence in Anatomick Exercises doth that of the Chirurgick besides that the company of a Divine Physician suits well with the Soul as she is ready to be dismantled of her walls of flesh and transmitted to the better Colony of the new Jerusalem To men of our Function the sight of Death should be no more terrible than that of our Breath and we may be ashamed that our profest hopes of the Bodies Resurrection and the immediate Felicity of our Soul falls short of the courageous Gallantry of many Heathens in braving the ghastly King of Terrours to his very face upon no better or very little more assurance of Immortality than that of surviving Fame and Glory or a fruitless Nomen crit indelebile nostrum I have known some of us that not want of Christian Charity but Courage in this point hath with-held from paying their last dutiful Offices to Sick persons and when a silly common Nurse shall attend alone in silent dismal Night-watches these men could not approach in open day without apparent damps of Consternation And yet 't is doubtless as natural to die as to live or as 't is to be born and the sight of a Coffin alters me no more than that of a Cradle Certainly if the strange appearance of the object startled us a silly Midwife hath greater reason to be scared at the odde and uncouth Circumstances that accompany Natures thrusting a Child into the world than we in duely preparing a departing man or woman for the familiar Womb of our common Mother I finde little more surprize or alteration in my self at the sight of a deceased Man than of any other dead Animal Nay why should I not on the contrary be much more amazed at this than that Since this is an absolute object of irreparable Mortality and a total Privation appears here in the other of one Moiety only and that but to the general Resurrection 'T is Opinion not Reason or Religion rules men Dying hath been the common trade and way of all flesh for almost Six thousand years and more dye by Weekly Computation than are born Nay this Champion hath made one single Field such a glorious Scene of his Pomp and Luxury that 500000 Spectacles of Mortality have been at once offered as Victims to the insatiate Fury of one bloudy Battle 2 Chron. 13. 17. And in such a small Circumscription of time and place as this I suppose we never heard nor ever shall of an equal number of Nativities To me to dye is gain saith St. Paul Phil. 1. 21. which besides an Enfranchisement and release from the many troubles of this Life and the acquisition of eternal Joy doth also import to me That by Death and Separation this Concrete becomes two distinct Essences and we are so far from vanishing into nothing that by the advantageous division of Soul and Body one single Being branches into a duplicity of Existences For our Corps thô silent and unactive in the cold Lap of common Fate looses not a whit of its title to Existence nay even in this ghastly Privation there still appear some weak remains and faint efforts of a Vegetative Soul But our Spirit shall mount up like an Eagle Isai 40. 31. on the wings of celestial activity and greedily grasp all the pleasures of
a perfect Intelligence ranging at large in the infinite Abyss of immortal Light boundless Aboads of Angels There she will clearly discern the nature of her own Essence and Faculties by reflex Intuition on her self or else perhaps see the perfect Image of her self and of all things past present and to come to her infinite satisfaction in the glorious Mirrour of the Eternal Godhead Nor will she then owe her knowledge to the gross Communications of material objects through the weak conveyances of bodily sense I could in some fits of contemplative Melancholy fall asleep assoon in a Charnel-house as in my Bed-chamber and am often so weary of dull Life that my greatest delight is in such objects as speak most to its disadvantage The state and magnificence of a Tomb or Monument steals a secret wish from me to be Tenant to that quiet silent Pomp more than the sight of a sumptuous Palace to be Lord and Master there I know that I carry a Ghost always about me and that I my self am a walking Spirit This thought allays in me those vulgar fears of the haunts and visits of Spectres And as I am not at all afraid of my self unless when God le ts loose his terrours upon my Soul and my Conscience lashes me for my sins Job 18. 11. so I am very little apprehensive of Apparitions Nay more I could wish the Communications more frequent betwixt us and the Inhabitants of the upper world It would harden our Christian Courage familiarize to us the thoughts of Separation and create in us a passionate Love of that Country from the good report of these spiritual Spies making us say with courageous Caleb Let us go up and possess it Numb 13. 30. I could I thank God stare a reputed Witch full in the face with as little terrour as I look upon a sucking Infani and boldly retort the poysonous emissions of her malicious Eyes For in this I take Balaam at his word who without doubt had tried the Experiment that there is no Enchantment against Jacob neither is there any Divination against Israel Numb 23. 23. I pretend not by the Title of this small Treatise to any extraordinary Scheme or new draught of Religion for the Clergy much less would I be thought slily to suggest any neglect or deficiency of theirs in the practice of the Old I am very very well assured that Religio Clerici is a direct Tautologie and yet I detract no more from the Sanctimonious Worth of the Clergy by the conjunction of these two terms than I deny the Sun to be the Fountain of Light when I say Lumen Solis Only I could wish that we were all not only good and vertuous but eminently and in the last degree so too and that all the lesser Christian Luminaries might more and more derive Light from us I would have all the Wisdome and Vertue that ever appeared in the guise of true Reason in the world summ'd up and amassed in a Christian Priest especially in a daily sincere contempt of this world We should strive clearly to demonstrate the certain hope we have of Eternal Felicity after Death by being very careless if at all sensible of this Life And in this let us soar a pitch beyond the highest flights of the wisest Heathens and outdo in very fact their utmost Ideas and Hyperboles The excellent Speculations of some old Philosophers arose 't is true to a very great height and their refined Reason was exercised in most divine Contemplations But alas the better and purer their Notions were of Vertue and Sanctity they became so much the more impracticable to them and they fell short in the performance of their own Rules and Dictates The Cause of this natural inability and latent impotency of their Wills they were altogether strangers to and thô they knew in effect most Doctrines of Christian Morality yet having not the Faith of Jesus nor by consequence the assistance of God's particular Grace their knowledge was but of small import and significancy nor could it in the very best of them produce actions acceptable to God unless his secret infinite Mercy gave some gracious allowances for that natural corruption which they knew nothing of and which was cured but in a poor degree by universal Grace And this Notion I have framed to my self of the Heathens Morality enclines me to believe that our Wills derived from Adam's disobedience a depravity double to that of our Intellects for as we see by these Pagans their Understanding could excellently distinguish and were in the Serpent's words as Gods knowing good and evil yet were the Imaginations of the thoughts of their hearts always evil continually Gen. 6. 5. But we Christian Priests that have successively received all the gradual Communications of Divine Grace and Sanctifications of the blessed Spirit from the Font to the Ministry of the holy Altar are doubly obliged as we transcend the best of them in the sublime Mysteries of our Faith so to outstrip them in the most excellent practices of Evangelical Morality and not them only but all others also Non possumus perficere bonam actionem sine adjutorio Gratiae is rightly opposed to Pelagius nor is the proposition only notional for besides that our Saviour tells us without me ye can do nothing Joh. 15. 5. And St. Paul that 't is God which worketh in us both to will and do Philip. 2. 13. I have often observed in my own narrow oeconomy that the clearest Convictions of Reason and strongest Moral Resolutions have proved weak and of small force against the power of most sins especially against the violent assaults of a complexional Vice We may sin and resolve to the contrary and resolve and sin again in infinitum till with Jacob we wrastle with God Gen. 32. 26. as well as resist the Devil until by violent Prayer we take Heaven by force Matth. 11. 12. and draw down the assistance of Divine Grace all our other strongest and most vigorous Efforts will prove feeble and ineffectual The very Experience of this hath confuted Pelagianisme to me better than a thousand Syllogisms I have seldome gone to Bed in the days of loosest Vanity and before I was so happy as sincerely to espouse the Predicate much less had the honour to wear the subject of this Books title without Pythagoras his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. Aur. Carm. My reason hath upon an impartial summing up that days Evidence made my own Conscience a severe Jury against me in pronouncing a perfect dislike and condemnation of such proceedings I have then made applications of as I thought strong resolves to observe its dictates for the future and this hath in some measure asswaged the smart of my minde then But alas my trial all this while being at the wrong Bar I could never obtain a true Pardon for old nor strength against new Lapses My Inclinations to sin have doubled upon me and when they felt the Curb of