comfort or prevent an evil or cure the little mischiefs which are incident to tempted persons in their weaknesse this is the summe of the present designe as it relates to dying persons And therefore I have not inserted any advices proper to old age but such as are common to it and the state of sicknesse for I suppose very old age to be a longer sicknesse it is labour and sorrow when it goes beyond the common period of nature but if it be on this side that period and be healthfull in the same degree it is so I reckon it in the accounts of life and therefore it can have no distinct consideration But I do not think it is a station of advantage to begin the change of an evil life in It is a middle state between life and death-bed and therefore although it hath more of hopes then this and lesse then that yet as it partakes of either state so it is to be regulated by the advices of that state and judged by its sentences Onely this I desire that all old persons would sadly consider that their advantages in that state are very few but their inconveniences are not few Their bodies are without strength their prejudices long and mighty their vices if they have lived wickedly are habituall the occasions of their vertues not many the possibilities of some in the matter of which they stand very guilty are past and shall never return again such are chastity and many parts of self-deniall that they have some temptations proper to their age as peevishnesse and pride covetousnesse and talking wilfulnesse and unwillingnesse to learn and they think they are protected by age from learning anew or repenting the old and do not leave but change their vices And after all this either the day of their repentance is past as we see it true in very many or it is expiring and towards the Sun-set as it is in all and therefore although in these to recover is very possible yet we may also remember that in the matter of vertue and repentance possibility is a great way off from performance and how few do repent of whom it is onely possible that they may and that many things more are required to reduce their possibility to act a great grace an assiduous ministery an effective calling mighty assistances excellent counsell great industry a watchfull diligence a well disposed mind passionate desires deep apprehensions of danger quick perceptions of duty and time and Gods good blessing and effectuall impression and seconding all this that to will and to do may by him be wrought to great purposes and with great speed And therefore it will not be amisse but it is hugely necessary that these persons who have lost their time and their blessed opportunities should have the diligence of youth and the zeal of new converts and take account of every hour that is left them and pray perpetually and be advised prudently and study the interest of their souls carefully with diligence and with fear and their old age which in effect is nothing but a continuall death-bed dressed with some more order and advantages may be a state of hope and labour and acceptance through the infinite mercies of God in Jesus Christ. But concerning sinners really under the arrest of death God hath made no death-bed covenant the Scripture hath recorded no promises given no instructions and therefore I had none to give but onely the same which are to be given to all men that are alive because they are so and because it is uncertain when they shall be otherwise But then this advice I also am to insert That they are the smallest number of Christian men who can be divided by the characters of a certain holinesse or an open villany and between these there are many degrees of latitude and most are of a middle sort concerning which we are tied to make the judgements of charity and possibly God may do so too But however all they are such to whom the rules of holy dying are usefull and applicable and therefore no separation is to be made in this world but where the case is not evident men are to be permitted to the unerring judgement of God where it is evident we can rejoyce or mourn for them that die In the Church of Rome they reckon otherwise concerning sick and dying Christians then I have done For they make profession that from death to life from sin to grace a man may very certainly be changed though the operation begin not before his last hour and half this they do upon his death bed and the other half when he is in his grave and they take away the eternal punishment in an instant by a school distinction or the hand of the Priest and the temporal punishment shall stick longer even then when the man is no more measured with time having nothing to do with any thing of or under the sun but that they pretend to take away too when the man is dead and God knowes the poor man for all this payes them both in hell The distinction of temporal and eternal is a just measure of pains when it referres to this life and another but to dream of a punishment temporal when all his time is done and to think of repentance when the time of grace is past are great errours the one in Philosophy and both in Divinity and are a huge folly in their pretence and infinite danger if they are believed being a certain destruction of the necessity of holy living when men dare trust them and live at the rate of such doctrines The secret of these is soon discovered for by such means though a holy life be not necessary yet a priest is as if God did not appoint the Priest to minister to holy living but to excuse it so making the holy calling not onely to live upon the sins of the people but upon their ruine and the advantages of their function to spring from their eternal dangers It is an evil craft to serve a temporal end upon the death of souls that is an interest not to handled but with noblenesse and ingenuity fear and caution diligence and prudence with great skill and great honesty with reverence and trembling and severity a soul is worth all that and the need we have requires all that and therefore those doctrines that go lesse then all this are not friendly because they are not safe I know no other great difference in the visitation and treating of sick persons then what depends upon the article of late repentance for all Churches agree in the same essential propositions and assist the sick by the same internal ministeries as for external I mean unction used in the Church of Rome since it is used when the man is above half dead when he can exercise no act of understanding it must needs be nothing for no rational man can think that any ceremonie can make a spiritual
of mercy to preserve their innocence to overcome temptation to try their vertue to fit them for rewards it is certain that sicknesse never is an evil but by our own faults and if we will do our duty we shall be sure to turn it into a blessing If the sicknesse be great it may end in death and the greater it is the sooner and if it be very little it hath great intervalls of rest if it be between both we may be Masters of it and by serving the ends of Providence serve also the perfective end of humane nature and enter into the possession of everlasting mercies The summe is this He that is afraid of pain is afraid of his own nature and if his fear be violent it is a signe his patience is none at all and an impatient person is not ready dressed for heaven None but suffering humble and patient persons can go to heaven and when God hath given us the whole stage of our life to exercise all the active vertues of religion it is necessary in the state of vertues that some portion and period of our lives be assigned to passive graces for patience for Christian fortitude for resignation or conformity to the Divine will But as the violent fear of sicknesse makes us impatient so it will make our death without comfort and without religion and we shall go off from our stage of actions and sufferings with an unhandsome exit because we were willing to receive the Kindnesse of God when he expressed it as we listed But we would not suffer him to be kinde and gracious to us in his own method nor were willing to exercise and improve our vertues at the charge of a sharp Feaver or a lingring consumption Woe be to the man that hath lost patience for what will he do when the Lord shall visit him SECT VII The second temptation proper to the state of sicknesse Fear of death with its remedies THere is nothing which can make sicknesse unsanctified but the same also will give us cause to fear death If therefore we so order our affairs and spirits that we do noâ— fear death our sickness may easily become our advantage and we can then receive counsel and consider and do those acts of vertue which are in that state the proper services of God and such which men in bondage and fear are not capable of doing or of advices how they should when they come to the appointed dayes of mourning And indeed if men would but place their designe of being happy in the noblenesse courage and perfect resolutions of doing handsome things and passing thorough our unavoidable necessities in the contempt and despite of the things of this world and in holy living and the perfective desires of our natures the longings and pursuances after Heaven it is certain they could not be made miserable by chance and change by sicknesse and death But we are so softned and made effeminate with delicate thoughts and meditations of ease and brutish satisfactions that if our death comes before we have seized upon a great-fortune or enjoy the promises of the fortune tellers we esteem our selves to be robbed of our goods to be mocked and miserable Hence it comes that men are impatient of the thoughts of death hence comes those arts of protraction and delaying the significations of old age thinking to deceive the world men cosen themselves and by representing themselves youthfull they certainly continue their vanity till Proserpina pull the perruke from their heads We cannot deceive God and nature for a coffin is a coffin though it be covered with a pompous veil and the minutes of our time strike on and are counted by Angels till the period comes which must cause the passing bell to give warning to all the neighbours that thou art dead and they must be so and nothing can excuse or retard this and if our death could be put off a little longer what advantage can it be in thy accounts of nature or felicity They that 3000 years agone dyed unwillingly and stopped death two dayes or staid it a week what is their gain where is that week and poor spirited men use arts of protraction and make their persons pitiable but their condition contemptible beeing like the poor sinners at Noahs flood the waters drove them out of their lower rooms then they crept up to the roof having lasted half a day longer and then they knew not how to get down some crept upon the top branch of a tree and some climbed up to a mountain and staid it may be three dayes longer but all that while they endured a worse torment then death they lived with amazement and were distracted with the ruines of mankinde and the horrour of an universal deluge Remedies against the fear of death by way of consideration 1. God having in this world placed us in a sea and troubled the sea with a continual storm hath appointed the Church for a ship and religion to be the sterne but there is no haven or port but death Death is that harbour whither God hath designed every one that there he may finde rest from the troubles of the world How many of the noblest Romans have taken death for sanctuary and have esteemed it less then shame or a mean dishonour And Caesar was cruel to Domitius Captain of Corfinium when he had taken the town from him that he refused to signe his petition of death Death would have hid his head with honour but that cruel mercy reserved him to the shame of surviving his disgrace The Holy Scripture giving an account of the reasons of the divine providence taking Godly men from this world and shutting them up in a hasty grave sayes that they are taken from the evils to come and concerning our selves it is certain if we had ten years agone taken seizure of our portion of dust death had not taken us from good things but from infinite evils such which the sun hath seldom seen Did not Priamus weep oftner then Troilus and happy had he been if he had died when his sons were living and his kingdom safe and houses full and his citie unburnt It was a long life that made him miserable and an early death onely could have secured his fortune and it hath happened many times that persons of a faâ—r life and a clear reputation of a good fortune and an honourable name have been tempted in their age to folly and vanity have fallen under the disgrace of dotage or into an infortunate marriage or have besottted themselves with drinking or outlived their fortunes or become tedious to their friends or are afflicted with lingring and vexatious diseases or lived to see their excellent parts buried and cannot understand the wise discourses and productions of their younger years In all these cases and infinite more do not all the world say but it had been better this man had died sooner But
guilt of a new account It is a signe of a reprobate spirit and an habituall prevailing ruling sin which exacts obedience when the judgement looks him in the face At least go to God with the innocence and fair deportment of thy person in the last scene of thy life that when thy soul breaks into the state of separation it may carry the relishes of religion and sobriety to the places of its abode and sentence 7. When these things are taken care for let the sick man so order his affairs that he have but very little conversation with the world but wholly as he can attend to religion and antedate his conversation in heaven alwayes having entercourse with God and still conversing with the Holy Jesus kissing his wounds admiring his goodnesse beging his mercy feeding on him with faith and drinking his blood to which purpose it were very fit if all circumstances be answerable that the narrative of the passion of Christ be read or discoursed to him at length or in brief according to the stile of the four Gospels But in all things let his care and society be as little secular as is possible CHAP. IV. Of the practise of the graces proper to the state of sicknesse which a sick man may practise alone SECT I. Of the practise of Patience NOw we suppose the man entring upon his Scene of sorrows and passive graces It may be he went yesterday to a wedding merry and brisk and there he felt his sentence that he must return home and die For men very commonly enter into the snare singing and consider not whither their fate leads them nor feared that then the Angel was to strike his stroak till his knees kissed the earth and his head trembles with the weight of the rod which God put into the hand of an exterminating Angel But whatsoever the ingresse was when the man feels his blood boil or his bones weary or his flesh diseased with a load of a dispersed and disordered humour or his head to ake or his faculties discomposed then he must consider that all those discourses he hath heard concerning patience and resignation and conformity to Christs sufferings and the melancholy lectures of the Crosse must all of them now be reduced to practise and passe from an ineffective contemplation to such an exercise as will really try whether we were true disciples of the Crosse or onely beleeved the doctrines of religion when we were at ease and that they never passed thorow the ear to the heart and dwelt not in our spirits But every man should consider God does nothing in vain that he would not to no purpose send us Preachers and give us rules and furnish us with discourse and lend us books and provide Sermons and make examples and promise his Spirit and describe the blessednesse of holy sufferings and prepare us with daily alarums if he did not really purpose to order our affairs so that we should need all this and use it all there were no such thing as the grace of patience if we were not to feel a sicknesse or enter into a state of sufferings whether when we are entred we are to practise by the following rules The practise and acts of patience by way of rule 1. At the first addresse and presence of sicknesse stand still and arrest thy spirit that it may without amazement or affright consider that this was that thou lookedst for and were alwayes certain should happen and that now thou art to enter into the actions of a new religion the agony of a strange constitution but at no hand suffer thy spirits to be dispersed with fear or wildnesse of thought but stay their loosenesse and dispersion by a serious consideration of the present and future imployment For so doth the Lybian Lion spying the fierce huntsman first beats himself with the stroaks of his tail and curles up his spirits making them strong with union and recollection till being strook with a Mauritanian spear he rushes forth into his defence and noblest contention and either scapes into the secrets of his own dwelling or else dies the bravest of the forrest Every man when shot with an arrow from Gods quiver must then draw in all the auxiliaries of reason and know that then is the time to try his strength and to reduce the words of his religion into action and consider that if he behaves himself weakly and timerously he suffers never the lesse of sicknesse but if he turns to health he carries along with him the mark of a coward and a fool and if he descends into his grave he enters into the state of the faithlesse and unbeleevers Let him set his heart firm upon this resolution I must bear it inevitably and I will by Gods grace do it nobly 2. Bear in thy sicknesse all along the same thoughts propositions and discourses concerning thy person thy life and death thy soul and religion which thou hadst in the best dayes of thy health and when thou didst discourse wisely concerning things spirituall For it is to be supposed and if it be not yet done let this rule remind thee of it and direct thee that thou hast cast about in thy health and considered concerning thy change and the evil day that thou must be sick and die that you must need a comforter and that it was certain thou shouldst fall into a state in which all the cords of thy anchor should be stretched and the very rock and foundation of faith should be attempted and whatsoever fancies may disturb you or whatever weaknesses may invade you yet consider when you were better able to judge and governe the accidents of your life you concluded it necessary to trust in God and possesse your souls with patience Think of things as they think that stand by you and as you did when you stood by others that it is a blessed thing to be patient that a quietnesse of spirit hath a certain reward that still there is infinite truth and reality in the promises of the Gospel that still thou art in the care of God in the condition of a son and working out thy salvation with labour and pain with fear and trembling that now the Sun is under a cloud but it still sends forth the same influence and be sure to make no new principles upon the stock of a quick and an impatient sense or too busie an apprehension keep your old principles and upon their stock discourse and practise on towards your conclusion 3. Resolve to bear your sicknesse like a child that is without considering the evils and the pains the sorrows and the danger but go straight forward and let thy thoughts cast about for nothing but how to make advantages of it by the instrument of religion He that from a high tower looks down upon the precipice and measures the space through which he must descend and considers what a huge fall he shall have shall feel more by the
religion we can do the works of a holy life but upon belief of the promises we can bear our sicknesse patiently and die cheerfully The sick man may practise it in the following instances 1. Let the sick man be careful that he do not admit of any doubt concerning that which he beleeved and received from common consent in his best health and dayes of election and religion For if the Devil can but prevail so far as to unfix and unrivet the resolution and confidence or fulnesse of assent it is easie for him so to unwinde the spirit that from why to whether or no from whether or no to scarcely not from scarcely not to absolutely not at all are steps of a descending and falling spirit and whatsoever a man is made to doubt of by the weaknesse of his understanding in a sicknesse it will be hard to get an instrument strong or subtle enough to reenforce and ensure For when the strengths are gone by which faith held and it does not stand firme by the weight of its own bulk and great constitution nor yet by the cordage of a tenacious root then it is prepared for a ruine which it cannot escape in the tempests of a sicknesse and the assaults of a Devil * Discourse and argument * the line of tradition and a never * failing experience * the Spirit of God and the * truth of miracles * the word of prophecie * and the blood of Martyrs * the excellencie of the doctrine and * the necessity of men * the riches of the promises * and the wisdom of the revelations * the reasonablenesse and * sublimity the * concordance and the * usefulnesse of the articles and * their complyance with all the needs of man * and the goverment of common wealths are like the strings and branches of the roots by which faith stands firm and unmoveable in the spirit and understanding of a man But in sicknesse the understanding is shaken and the ground is removed in which the root did grapple and support its trunk and therefore there is no way now but that it be left to stand upon the old confidences and by the firmament of its own weight it must be left to stand because it alwayes stood there before and as it stood all his life time in the ground of understanding so it must now be supported with will and a fixed resolution But disputation tempts it and shakes it with trying and overthrowes it with shaking Above all things in the world let the sick man fear a proposition which his sickness hath put into him contrary to the discourses of health and a sober untroubled reason 2. Let the sick man mingle the recital of his Creed together with his devotions and in that let him account his faith not in curiosity and factions in the confessions of parties and interests for some over froward zeals are so earnest to professe their little and uncertain articles and glory so to die in a particular and divided communion that in the profession of their faith they lose or discompose their charity let it be enough that we secure our interest of heaven though we do not go about to appropriate the mansions to our sect for every good man hopes to be saved as he is a Christian and not as he is a Lutheran or of another division However those articles upon which he can build the exercise of any vertue in his sicknesse or upon the stock of which he can improve his present condition are such as consist in the greatnesse and goodnesse the veracity and mercy of God thorough Jesus Christ nothing of which can be concerned in the fond disputations which faction and interest hath too long maintained in Christendom 3. Let the sick mans faith especially be active about the promises of grace and the excellent things of the gospel those which can comfort his sorrowes and enable his patience those upon the hopes of which he did the duties of his life and for which he is not unwilling to dye such as the intercession and advocation of Christ remission of sins the resurrection the mysterious arts and mercies of mans redemption Christs triumph over death and all the powers of hell the covenant of grace or the blessed issues of repentance and above all the article of eternal life upon the strength of which 11000 virgins went cheerfully together to their martyrdome and 20000 Christians were burned by Dioclesian on a Christmas day and whole armies of Asian Christians offered themselves to the Tribunals of Arius Anthonius and whole colledges of severe persons were instituted who lived upon religion whose dinner was the Eucharist whose supper was praise and their nights were watches and their dayes were labour for the hope of which then men counted it gain to lose their estates and gloried in their sufferings and rejoyced in their persecutions and were glad at their disgraces this is the article that hath made all the Martyrs of Christ confident and glorious and if it does not more then sufficiently strengthen our spirits to the present suffering it is because we understand it not but have the appetites of beasts and fools But if the sick man fixes his thoughts and lets his habitation to dwell here he swells his hope and masters his fears and eases his sorrows and overcomes his temptations 4. Let the sick man endeavour to turn his faith of the Articles into love of them and that will be an excellent instrument not onely to refresh his sorrows but to confirm his faith in defiance of all temptations For a sick man and a disturbed understanding are not competent and fit instruments to judge concerning the reasonablenesse of a proposition But therefore let him consider and love it because it is usefull and necessary profitable and gracious and when he is once in love with it and then also renews his love to it when he feels the need of it he is an interested person and for his own sake will never let it go and passe into the shadows of doubting or the utter-darknesse of infidelity An act of love will make him have a mind to it and we easily beleeve what we love but very uneasily part with our belief which we for so great an interest have chosen and entertained with a great affection 5. Let the sick person be infinitely carefull that his faith be not tempted by any man or any thing and when it is in any degree weakned let him lay fast hold upon the conclusion upon the Article it self and by earnest prayer beg of God to guide him in certainty and safety For let him consider that the Article is better then all its contrary or contradictory and he is concerned that it be true and concerned also that he do beleeve it but he can receive no good at all if Christ did not die if there be no resurrection if his Creed hath deceived him therefore all that
discover it would dash it in pieces by a solemn disclaiming it for thou art the Way the Truth and the Life and I know that whatsoever thou hast declared that is the truth of God and I do firmly adhere to the religion thou hast taught and glory in nothing so much as that I am a Christian that thy name is called upon me O my God though I die yet will I put my trust in thee In thee O Lord have I trusted let me never be confounded Amen SECT V. Of the practise of the Grace of Repentance in time of the Sicknesse MEn generally do very much dread sudden death and pray against it passionately and certainly it hath in it great inconveniences accidentally to mens estates to the settlement of families to the culture and trimming of souls and it robs a man of the blessings which may be consequent to sickness and to the passive graces and holy contentions of a Christian while he descends to his grave without an adversary or a tryal and a good man may be taken at such a disadvantage that a sudden death would be a great evil even to the most excellent person if it strikes him in an unlucky circumstance But these considerations are not the onely ingredients into those mens discourse who pray violently against sudden deaths for possibly if this were all there may be in the condition of sudden death something to make recompence for the evils of the over-hasty accident For certainly it is a lesse temporal evil to fall by the rudenesse of a sword then the violences of a Feaver and the axe is much a lesse affliction then a strangury and though a sicknesse tries our vertues yet a sudden death is free from temptation a sicknesse may be more glorious and a sudden death more safe the deadest deaths are best the shortest and least premeditate so Caesar said and Pliny called a short death the greatest fortune of a mans life For even good men have been forced to an undecencie of deportment by the violences of pain and Cicero observes concerning Hercules that he was broken in pieces with pain even then when he sought for immortality by his death being tortured with a plague knit up in the lappet of his shirt And therefore as a sudden death certainly loses the rewards of a holy sicknesse so it makes that a man shall not so much hazard and lose the rewards of a holy life But the secret of this affair is a worse matter men live at that rate either of an habitual wickednesse or else a frequent repetition of single acts of killing and deadly sins that a sudden death is the ruine of all their hopes and a perfect consignation to an eternal sorrow But in this case also so is a lingring sicknesse for our last sicknesse may change us from life to health from health to strength from strength to the firmnesse and confirmation of habitual graces but it cannot change a man from death to life and begin and finish that processe which sits not down but in the bosom of blessednesse He that washes in the morning when his bath is seasonable and healthful is not onely made clean but sprightly and the blood is brisk and coloured like the first springing of the morning but they that wash their dead cleanse the skin and leave palenesse upon the cheek and stiffnesse in all the joynts A repentance upon our death-bed bed is like washing the coarse it is cleanly and civil but makes no change deeper then the skin But God knowes it is a custom so to wash them that are going to dwell with dust and to be buried in the lap of their kinred earth but all their lives time wallow in pollutions without any washing at all or if they do it is like that of the Dardani who washed but thrice in all their life time when they are born and when they marry and when they die when they are baptized or against a solemnity or for the day of their funeral but these are but ceremonious washings and never purifie the soul if it be stained and hath sullied the whitenesse of its baptismal robes * God intended we should live a holy life * he contracted with us in Jesus Christ for a holy life * he made no abatements of the strictest sense of it but such as did necessarily comply with humane infirmities or possibilities that is he understood it in the sense of repentance which stil is so to renew our duty that it may be a holy life in the second sense that is some great portion of our life to be spent in living as Christians should * a resolving to repent upon our death-bed is the greatest mockery of God in the world and the most perfect contradictory to all his excellent designes of mercy and holinesse for therefore he threatned us with hell if we did not and he promised heaven if we did live a holy life and a late repentance promises heaven to us upon other conditions even when we have lived wickedly * It renders a man uselesse and intolerable to the world taking off the great curb of religion of fear and hope and permitting all impiety with the greatest impunity and incouragement in the world * by this means we see so many 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Philo calls them or as the prophets pueros centum annorum children of almost an hundred years old upon whose grave we may write the inscriptions which was upon the tomb of Similis in Xiphilin Here he lies who was so many years but lived but seven * and the course of nature runs counter to the perfect designes of piety and * God who gave us a life to live to him is only served at our death when we die to all the world * and we undervalue the great promises made by the Holy Jesus for which the piety the strictest unerring piety of ten thousand ages is not a proportionable exchange yet we think it a hard bargain to get heaven if we be forced to part with one lust or live soberly twenty years But like Demetrius Afer who having lived a slave all his life time yet desired to descend to his grave in freedom begged manumission of his Lord we lived in the bondage of our sin all our dayes and hope to dye the Lords freed man * but above all this course of a delayed repentance must of necessity therefore be ineffective and certainly mortal because it is an intire destruction of the very formality and essential constituent reason of religion which I thus demonstrate When God made man and propounded to him an immortal and a blessed state as the end of his hopes and the perfection of his condition he did not give it him for nothing but upon certain conditions which although they could add nothing to God yet they were such things which man could value and they were his best and
The Rule and Exercises of holy Dying by Ier Taylor D. D. THE RVLE AND EXERCISES OF HOLY DYING In which are described The MEANS and INSTRUMENTS of preparing our selves and others respectively for a blessed Death and the remedies against the evils and temptations proper to the state of Sicknesse Together with Prayers and Acts of Vertue to be used by sick and dying persons or by others standing in their Attendance To which are added Rules for the visitation of the Sick and offices proper for that Ministery 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Isoc ad Demonic LONDON Printed for R. R. and are to be sold by Edward Martin Bookseller in Norwich 1651. To the Right Honourable and most truly Noble RICHARD Lord VAVGHAN Earl of CARBERY Baron of EMLIN and MOLINGAR Knight of the Honourable Order of the BATH My Lord I Am treating your Lordship as a Roman Gentleman did Saint Augustine and his Mother I shall entertain you in a Charnel house and carry your meditations awhile into the chambers of death where you shall finde the rooms dressed up with melancholy arts and fit to converse with your most retired thoughts which begin with a sigh and proceed in deep consideration and end in a holy resolution The sight that S. Augustine most noted in that house of sorrow was the body of Caesar clothed with all the dishonours of corruption that you can suppose in a six moneths burial But I know that without pointing your first thoughts will remember the change of a greater beauty which is now dressing for the brightest immortality and from her bed of darknesse calls to you to dress your soul for that change which shall mingle your bones with that beloved dust and carry your soul to the same Quire where you may both sit and sing for ever My Lord it is your dear Ladies Anniversary and she deserved the biggest honour and the longest memory and the fairest monument and the most solemne mourning and in order to it give me leave My Lord to cover her Hearse with these following sheets this book was intended first to minister to her piety and she desired all good people should partake of the advantages which are here recorded she knew how to live rarely well and she desired to know how to dye and God taught her by an experiment But since her work is done and God supplyed her with provisions of his own before I could minister to her and perfect what she desired it is necessary to present to your Lordship those bundles of Cypresse which were intended to dresse her Closet but come now to dresse her Hearse My Lord both your Lordship and my self have lately seen and felt such sorrows of death and such sad departure of Dearest friends that it is more then high time we should think our selves neerly concerned in the accidents Death hath come so neer to you as to fetch a portion from your very heart and now you cannot choose but digge your own grave and place your coffin in your eye when the Angel hath dressed your scene of sorrow and meditation with so particular and so neer an object and therefore as it is my duty I am come to minister to your pious thoughts and to direct your sorrows that they may turn into vertues and advantages And since I know your Lordship to be so constant and regular in your devotions and so tender in the matter of justice so ready in the expressions of charity and so apprehensive of religion and that you are a person whose work of grace is apt and must every day grow towards those degrees where when you arrive you shall triumph over imperfection and choose nothing but what may please God I could not by any compendium conduct and assist your pious purposes so well as by that which is the great argument and the great instrument of holy living the consideration and exercises of death My Lord it is a great art to dye well and to be learnt by men in health by them that can discourse and consider by those whose understanding and acts of reason are not abated with fear or pains and as the greatest part of death is passed by the preceding years of our life so also in those years are the greatest preparation to it and he that prepares not for death before his last sicknesse is like him that begins to study Philosophy when he is going to dispute publikely in the faculty All that a sick and dying man can do is but to exercise those vertues which he before acquired and to perfect that repentance which was begun more early And of this My Lord my Book I think is a good testimony not onely because it represents the vanity of a late and sick-bed repentance but because it contains in it so many precepts and meditations so many propositions and various duties such forms of exercise and the degrees and difficulties of so many graces which are necessary preparatives to a holy death that the very learning the duties require study and skill time and understanding in the wayes of godlinesse and it were very vain to say so much is necessary and not to suppose more time to learn them more skill to practise them more opportunities to desire them more abilities both of body and mind then can be supposed in a sick amazed timerous and weak person whose naturall acts are disabled whose senses are weak whose discerning faculties are lessened whose principles are made intricate and intangled upon whose eye sits a cloud and the heart is broken with sicknesse and the liver pierced thorow with sorrows and the strokes of death And therefore my Lord it is intended by the necessity of affairs that the precepts of dying well be part of the studies of them that live in health and the dayes of discourse and understanding which in this case hath another degree of necessity superadded because in other notices an imperfect study may be supplied by a frequent exercise and a renewed experience Here if we practise imperfectly once we shall never recover the errour for we die but once and therefore it will be necessary that our skill be more exact since it is not to be mended by triall but the actions must be for ever left imperfect unlesse the habit be contracted with study and contemplation before hand And indeed I were vain if I should intend this book to be read and studied by dying persons and they were vainer that should need to be instructed in those graces which they are then to exercise and to finish For a sick bed is only a school of severe exercise in which the spirit of a man is tried and his graces are rehearsed and the assistances which I have in the following pages given to those vertues which are proper to the state of sicknesse are such as suppose a man in the state of grace or they confirm a good man or they support the weak or adde degrees or minister
vineyards or our King be sick we regard it not but during that state are as disinterest as if our eyes were closed with the clay that weeps in the bowels of the earth At the end of seven years our teeth fall and dye before us representing a formal prologue to the Tragedie and still every seven year it is oddes but we shall finish the last scene and when Nature or Chance or Vice takes our body in pieces weakening some parts and loosing others we taste the grave and the solennities of our own Funerals first in those parts that ministred to Vice and next in them that served for Ornament and in a short time even they that served for necessity become uselesse and intangled like the wheels of a broken clock Baldnesse is but a dressing to our funerals the proper ornament of mourning and of a person entred very far into the regions and possession of Death And we have many more of the same signification Gray hairs rotten teeth dim eyes trembling joynts short breath stiffe limbs wrinkled skin short memory decayed appetite Every dayes necessity calls for a reparation of that portion which death fed on all night when we lay in his lap and slept in his outer chambers The very spirits of a man prey upon the daily portion of bread and flesh and every meal is a rescue from one death and layes up for another and while we think a thought we die and the clock strikes and reckons on our portion of Eternity we form our words with the breath of our nostrils we have the lesse to live upon for every word we speak Thus Nature calls us to meditate of death by those things which are the instruments of acting it and God by all the variety of his Providence makes us see death every where in all variety of circumstances and dressed up for all the fancies and the expectation of every single person Nature hath given us one harvest every year but death hath two and the Spring and the Autumn send throngs of Men and Women to charnel houses and all the Summer long men are recovering from their evils of the Spring till the dog dayes come and then the Syrian star makes the summer deadly And the fruits of Autumn are laid up for all the years provision and the man that gathers them eats and sursets and dies and needs them not and himself is laid up for Eternity and he that escapes till winter only stayes for another opportunity which the distempers of that quarter minister to him with great variety Thus death reigns in all the portions of our time The Autumn with its fruits provides disorders for us and the Winters cold turns them into sharp diseases and the Spring brings flowers to strew our herse and the Summer gives green turfe and brambles to binde upon our graves Calentures and Surâ—et Cold and Agues are the four quarters of the year and all minister to Death and you can go no whither but you tread upon a dead mans bones The wilde fellow in Petronius that escaped upon a broken table from the furies of a shipwrack as he was sunning himself upon the rocky shore espied a man rolled upon his floating bed of waves ballasted w th sand in the folds of his garment and carried by his civil enemy the sea towards the shore to finde a grave and it cast him into some sad thoughts that peradventure this mans wife in some part of the Continent safe and warme looks next moneth for the good mans return or it may be his son knows nothing of the tempest or his father thinks of that affectionate kiss which still is warm upon the good old mans cheek ever since he took a kinde farewel and he weeps with joy to think how blessed he shall be when his beloved boy returns into the circle of his Fathers arms These are the thoughts of mortals this is the end and sum of all their designes a dark night and an ill Guide a boysterous sea and a broken Cable a hard rock and a rough winde dash'd in pieces the fortune of a whole family and they that shall weep loudest for the accident are not yet entred into the storm and yet have suffered shipwrack Then looking upon the carkasse he knew it and found it to be the Master of the ship who the day before cast up the accounts of his patrimony and his trade and named the day when he thought to be at home see how the man swims who was so angry two dayes since his passions are becalm'd with the storm his accounts cast up his cares at an end his voyage done and his gains are the strange events of death which whither they be good or evil the men that are alive seldom trouble themselves concerning the interest of the dead But seas alone do not break our vessel in pieces Every where we may be shipwracked A valiant General when he is to reap the harvest of his crowns and triumphs fights unprosperously or falls into a Feaver with joy and wine and changes his Lawrel into Cypresse his triumphal chariot to an Hearse dying the night before he was appointed to perish in the drunkennesse of his festival joyes It was a sad arrest of the loosenesses and wilder feasts of the French Court when their King Henry 2. was killed really by the sportive image of a fight And many brides have died under the hands of Paranymphs and Maidens dressing them for uneasy joy the new and undiscerned chains of Marriage according to the saying of Bensirah the wise Jew The Bride went into her chamber and knew not what should befall her there Some have been paying their vows and giving thanks for a prosperous return to their own house and the roof hath descended upon their heads and turned their loud religion into the deeper silence of a grave And how many teeming Mothers have rejoyced over their swelling wombs and pleased themselves in becoming the chanels of blessing to a familie and the Midwife hath quickly bound their heads and feet and carried them forth to burial Or else the birth day of an Heir hath seen the Coffin of the Father brought into the house and the divided Mother hath been forced to travel twice with a painful birth and a sadder death There is no state no accident no circumstance of our life but it hath been sowred by some sad instance of a dying friend a friendly meeting often ends in some sad mischance and makes an eternal parting and when the Poet Eschylus was sitting under the walls of his house an eagle hovering over his bald head mistook it for a stone and let fall his oyster hoping there to break the shell but pierced the poor mans skull Death meets us every where and is procured by every instrument and in all chances and enters in at many doors by violence and secret influence by the aspect of a star and the stink of a mist by the emissions
little impertinencies and them imperfectly and that with infinite uncertainty But God hath been pleased with a rare art to prevent the inconveniencies apt to arise by this passionate longing after knowledge even by giving to every man a sufficient opinion of his own understanding and who is there in the world that thinks himself to be a fool or indeed not fit to govern his brother There are but few men but they think they are wise enough and every man believes his own opinion the soundest and if it were otherwise men would burst themselves with envy or else become irrecoverable slaves to the talking and disputing man But when God intended this permission to be an antidote of envy and a satisfaction and allay to the troublesome appetites of knowing and made that this universal opinion by making men in some proportions equal should be a keeper out or a great restraint to slavery and tyranny respectively Man for so he uses to do hath turned this into bitternesse for when nature had made so just a distribution of understanding that every man might think he had enough he is not content with that but will think he hath more then his brother and whereas it might well be imployed in restraining slavery he hath used it to break off the bands of all obedience and it ends in pride and schismes in heresies and tyrannies and it being a spiritual evil it growes upon the soul with old age and flattery with health and the supports of a prosperous fortune Now besides the direct operations of the Spirit and a powerfull grace there is in nature left to us no remedy for this evil but a sharp sicknesse or an equall sorrow and allay of fortune and then we are humble enough to ask counsell of a despised Priest and to think that even a common sentence from the mouth of an appointed comforter streams forth more refreshment then all our own wiser and more reputed discourses Then our understandings and our bodies peeping thorow their own breaches see their shame and their dishonour their dangerous follies and their huge deceptions and they go into the clefts of the rock and every little hand may cover them 3. Next to these As the soul is still undressing she takes off the roughnesse of her great and little angers and animosities and receives the oil of mercies and smooth forgivenesse fair interpretations and gentle answers designes of reconcilement and Christian atonement in their places For so did the wrastlers in Olympus they stripped themselves of all their garments and then anointed their naked bodies with oil smooth and vigorous with contracted nerves and enlarged voice they contended vehemently till they obtained their victory or their ease and a crown of Olive or a huge pity was the reward of their fierce contentions Some wise men have said that anger sticks to a mans nature as inseparably as other vices do to the manners of fools and that anger is never quite cured but God that hath found out remedies for all diseases hath so ordered the circumstances of man that in worser sort of men anger and great indignation consume and shrivell into little peevishnesses and uneasie accents of sicknesse and spend themselves in trifling instances and in the better and more sanctified it goes off in prayers and alms and solemn reconcilement And however the temptations of this state such I mean which are proper to it are little and inconsiderable The man is apt to chide a servant too bitterly and to be discontented with his nurse or not satisfied with his Physitian and he rests uneasily and poor man nothing can please him and indeed these little undecencies must be cured and stopped lest they run into an inconvenience But sicknesse is in this particular a little image of the state of blessed Souls or of Adams early morning in Paradise free from the troubles of lust and violencies of anger and the intricacies of ambition or the restlesnesse of covetousnesse For though a man may carry all these along with him into his sicknesse yet there he will not finde them and in despite of all his own malice his soul shall finde some rest from labouring in the galleys and baser captivity of sin and if we value those moments of being in the love of God and in the kingdom of grace which certainly are the beginnings of felicity we may also remember that the not sinning actually is one step of innocence and therefore that state is not intolerable which by a sensible trouble makes it in most instances impossible to commit those great sins which make death and hell and horrid damnations And then let us but adde this to it that God sends sicknesses but he never causes sin that God is angry with a â—inning person but never with a man for being sick that sin causes God to hate us and sicknesse causes him to pity us that all wise men in the world choose trouble rather then dishonour affliction rather then basenesse and that sicknesse stops the torrent of sin and interrupts its violence and even to the worst men makes it to retreat many degrees we may reckon sicknesse amongst good things as we reckon Rhubarb and Aloës and child-birth and labour and obedience and discipline These are unpleasant and yet safe they are troubles in order to blessings or they are securities from danger or the hard choices of a lesse and a more tolerable evil 4. Sicknesse is in some sense eligible because it is the opportunity and the proper scence of exercising some vertues It is that agony in which men are tried for a crown and if we remember what glorious things are spoken of the grace of faith that it is the life of just men the restitution of the dead in trespasses and sins the justification of a sinner the support of the weak the confidence of the strong the magazine of promises and the title to very glorious rewards we may easily imagine that it must have in it a work and a difficulty in some proportion answerable to so great effects But when we are bidden to beleeve strange propositions we are put upon it when we cannot judge and those propositions have possessed our discerning faculties and have made a party there and are become domestick before they come to be disputed and then the articles of faith are so few and are made so credible and in their event and in their object are so usefull and gaining upon the affections that he were a prodigie of man and would be so esteemed thâ—t should in all our present circumstances disbeleeve any point of faith and all is well as long as the Sun shines and the fair breath of heaven gently waâ—ts us to our own purposes But if you will try the excellency and feel the work of faith place the man in a persecution let him ride in a storm let his bones be broken with sorrow and his eyelids loosened with sicknesse let his bread be
dipped in tears and all the daughters of Musick be brought low Let God commence a quarrell against him and be bitter in the accents of his anger or his discipline then God tries your faith Can you then trust his goodnesse beleeve him to be a Father when you groan under his rod Can you rely upon all the strange propositions of Scripture and be content to perish if they be not true Câ—n you receive comfort in the discourses of death and heaven of immortality and the resurrection of the death of Christ and conforming to his sufferings Truth is There are but two great periods in which faith demonstrates it self to be a powerfull and mighty grace and they â—re persecution and the approaches of death for the passive part and a temptation for the active In the dayes of pleasure and the night of pain faith is to fight her agonisticon to contend for mastery and faith overcomes all alluring and fond temptations to sin and faith overcomes all our weaknesses and faintings in our troubles By the faith of the promises we learn to despise the world choosing those objects which faith discovers and by expectation of the same promises we are comforted in all our sorrowes and enabled to look thorow and see beyond the cloud but the vigor of it is pressed and called forth when all our fine discourses come to be reduced to practice For in our health and clearer dayes it is easy to talk of putting trust in God we readily trust him for life when we are in health for provisions when we have fair revenues and for deliverance when we are newly escaped but let us come to fit upon the margent of our grave and let a Tyrant lean hard upon our fortunes and dwell upon our wrong let the storm arise and the keels tosse till the cordage crack or that all our hopes bulge under us and descend into the hollownesse of sad misfortunes then can you believe when you neither hear nor see nor feel any thing but objections This is the proper work of sicknesse faith is then brought into the theatre and so exercised that if it abides but to the end of the contention we may see that work of faith which God will hugely crown The same I say of hope and of charity or the love of God and of patience which is a grace produced from the mixtures of all these they are vertues which are greedy of danger And no man was ever honoured by any wise or discerning person for dining upon Persian Carpets nor rewarded with a crown for being at ease It was the fire that did honour to Mutius Scevola poverty made Fabritius famous Rutilius was made excellent by banishment Regulus by torments Socrates by prison Cato by his death and God hath crowned the memory of Iob with a wreath of glory because he sate upon his dunghil wisely and temperatly and his potsheard and his groans mingled with praises and justifications of God pleased him like an Anthem sung by Angels in the morning of the resurrection God could not choose but be pleased with the delicious accents of Martyrs when in their tortures they cryed out nothing but Holy Iesus and blessed be God and they also themselves who with a hearty resignation to the Divine pleasure can delight in Gods severe dispensation will have the transportations of Cherubins when they enter into the joyes of God If God be delicious to his servants when he smites them he will be nothing but ravishments and extasies to their spirits when he refreshes them with overflowings of joy in the day of recompences No man is more miserable then he that hath no adversity that man is not tryed whether he be good or bad and God never crowns those vertues which are onely faculties and dispositions but every act of vertue is an ingredient into reward And we see many children fâ—irly planted whose parts of nature were never dressed by art nor called from the furrowes of their first possibilities by discipline and institution and they dwell for ever in ignorance and converse with beasts and yet if they had been dressed and exercised might have stood at the chairs of Princes or spoken parables amongst the rulers of cities Our vertues are but in the seed when the grace of God comes upon us first but this grace must be thrown into broken furrowes and must twice feel the cold and twice feel the heat and be softned with storms and showers and then it will arise into fruitfulnesse and harvests And what is there in the world to distinguish vertues from dishonours or the valour of Caesar from the softnesse of the Egyptian Eunuchs or that can make any thing rewardable but the labour and the danger the pain and the difficulty Vertue could not be any thing but sensuality if it were the entertainment of our senses and fond desires and Apicius had been the noblest of all the Romans if seeding a great appetite and despising the severities of temperance had been the work and proper imployment of a wise man But otherwise do fathers and otherwise do mothers handle their children These soften them with kisses and imperfect noises with the pap and breast milk of soft endearments they rescue them from Tutors and snatch them from discipline they desire to keep them fat and warm and their feet dry and their bellies full and then the children govern and cry and prove fools and troublesome so long as the feminine republike does endure But fathers because they designe to have their children wise and valiant apt for counsel or for arms send them to severe governments and tye them to study to hard labour and aâ—â—lictive contingencies They rejoyce when the bold boy strikes a lyon with his hunting spear and shrinks not when the beast comes to affright his early courage Softnesse is for slaves and beasts for minstrels and uselesse persons for such who cannot ascend higher then the state of a fair ox or a servant entertained for vainer offices But the man that designes his son for noble imployments to honours and to triumphs to consular dignities and presidences of counsels loves to see him pale with study or panting with labour hardned with sufferance or eminent by dangers and so God dresses us for heaven He loves to see us strugling with a disease and resisting the Devil and contesting against the weaknesses of nature and against hope to believe in hope resigning our selves to Gods will praying him to choose for us and dying in all things but faith and its blessed consequents ut ad officium cum periculo simus prompti and the danger and the resistance shall endeare the office For so have I known the boysterous north-winde passe thorough the yielding aire which opened its bosome and appeased its violence by entertaining it with easie compliance in all the regions of its reception But when the same breath of Heaven hath been
state of sicknesse are onely upon the stock of vertue and religion There is nothing can make sicknesse in any sense eligible or in many senses tolerable but onely the grace of God that onely turns sicknesse into easinesse and felicity which also turnes it into vertue For whosoever goes about to comfort a vitious person when he lies sick upon his bed can onely discourse of the necessities of nature of the unavoidableness of the suffering of the accidental vexations and increase of torments by impatience of the fellowship of all the sons of Adam and such other little considerations which indeed if sadly reflected upon and found to stand alone teach him nothing but the degree of his calamity and the evil of his condition and teach him such a patience and minister to him such a comfort which can only make him to observ decent gestures in his sicknesse and to converse with his friends and standers by so as may do them comfort and ease their funeral and civil complaints but do him no true advantage For all that may be spoken to a beast when he is crowned with hairlaces and bound with fillets to the Altar to bleed to death to appease the anger of the Deity and to ease the burden of his Relatives And indeed what comfort can he receive whose sicknesse as it looks back is an effect of Gods indignation and fierce vengeance and if it goes forward and enters into the gates of the grave is a beginning of a sorrow that shall shall never have an ending But when the sicknesse is a messenger sent from a chastising Father when it first turns into degrees of innocence and then into vertues and thence into pardon this is no misery but such a method of the Divine oeconomy and dispensation as resolves to bring us to heaven without any new impositions but meerly upon the stock and charges of nature 2. Let it be observed that these advantages which spring from sicknesse are not in all instances of vertue nor to all persons Sicknesse is the proper scene for patience and resignation for all the passive graces of a Christian for faith and hope and for some single acts of the love of God But sicknesse is not a fit station for a penitent and it can serve the ends of the grace of repentance but accidentally Sicknesse may begin a repentance if God continues life and if we cooperate with the Divine grace or sicknesse may help to alleviate the wrath of God and to facilitate the pardon if all the other parts of this duty be performed in our healthfull state so that it may serve at the entrance in or at the going out But sicknesse at no hand is a good stage to represent all the substantiall parts of this duty 1. It invites to it 2. It makes it appear necessary 3. It takes off the fancies of vanity 4. It attempers the spirit 5. It cures hypocrisie 6. It tames the fumes of pride 7. It is the school of patience 8. And by taking us from off the brisker relishes of the world it makes us with more gust to taste the things of the Spirit and all this onely when God fits the circumstances of the sicknesse so as to consist with acts of reason consideration choice and a present and reflecting minde which then God sends when he means that the sickness of the body should be the cure of the soul. But let no man so rely upon it as by designe to trust the beginning the progresse and the consummation of our piety to such an estate which for ever leaves it unperfect and though to some persons it addes degrees and ministers opportunities and exercises single acts with great advantage in passive graces yet it is never an intire or sufficient instrument for the change of our condition from the state of death to the liberty and life of the sons of God 3. It were good if we would transact the affairs of our souls with noblenesse and ingenuity and that we would by an early and forward religion prevent the necessary arts of the Divine providence It is true that God cures some by incision by fire and torments but these are ever the more obstinate and more unrelenting natures Gods providence is not so afflictive and full of trouble as that it hath placed sicknesse and infirmity amongst things simply necessary and in most persons it is but a sickly and an effeminate vertue which is imprinted upon our spirits with fears and the sorrowes of a feaver or a peevâ—sh consumption It is but a miserable remedy to be beholding to a sicknesse for our health and though it be better to suffer the losse of a finger then that the arm and the whole body should putrifie yet even then also it is a trouble and an evil to lose a finger He that mends with sicknesse pares the nails of the beast when they have already torn off part of the flesh But he that would have a sicknesse become a clear and an entire blessing a thing indeed to be reckoned among the good things of God and the evil things of the world must lead an holy life and judge himself with an early sentence and so order the affairs of his soul that in the usuall method of Gods saving us there may be nothing left to be done but that such vertues should be exercised which God intends to crown and then as when the Athenians upon a day of battell with longing and uncertain souls sate in their Common-hall expecting what would be the sentence of the day at last received a messenger who onely had breath enough left him to say We are conquerours and so died So shall the sick person who hath fought a good fight and kept the faith and onely waitâ— for his dissolution and his sentence breaths forth his spirit with the accents of a conquerour and his sicknesse and his death shall onely make the mercy and the vertue more illustrious But for the sicknesse it self if all the calumnies were true concerning it with which it is aspersed yet it is far to be preferred before the most pleasant sin and before a great secular businesse and a temporall care and some men wake as much in the foldings of the softest beds as others on the crosse and sometimes the very weight of sorrow and the wearinesse of a sicknesse presses the spirit into slumbers and the images of rest when the intemperate or the lustfull person rolls upon his uneasie thorns and sleep is departed from his eyes Certainly it is some sicknesse is a blessing Indeed blindnesse were a most accursed thing if no man were ever blind but he whose eyes are pulled out with tortures or burning basins and if sickness were always a testimony of Gods anger and a violence to a mans whole condition then it were a huge calamity but because God sends it to his servants to his children to little infants to Apostles and Saints with designes
the renewings of devotion and in the way of prayer and that is to be continued as long as life and voice and reason dwell with us SECT X. Acts of charity by way of prayer and ejaculation which may also be used for thanksgiving in case of recovery O My soul thou hast said unto the Lord thou art my Lord my goodnesse extendeth not to thee But to the saints that are in the earth and to the excellent in whom is all my delight The Lord is the portion of my inheritance and of my cup thou maintainest my lot As for God his way is perfect the word of the Lord is tried he is a buckler to all those that trust in him For who is God save the Lord or who is a rock save our God It is God that girdeth me with strength and maketh my way perfect Be not thou far from me O Lord O my strength haste thee to help me Deliver my soul from the sword my darling from the power of the dog save me from the lions mouth and thou hast heard me also from among the horns of the Unicorns I will declare thy Name unto my brethren in the midst of the Congregation will I praise thee Ye that fear the Lord praise the Lord ye sons of God J Glorifie him and fear before him all ye sons of men For he hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted neither hath he hid his face from him but when he cryed unto him he heard As the hart panteth after the water brooks so longeth my soul after thee O God My soul thirsteth for God for the living God when shall I come and appear before the Lord. O my God my soul is cast down within me all thy waves and billows are gone over me as with a sword in my bones I am reproached yet the Lord will command his loving kindnesse in the day time and in the night his song shall be with me and my prayer unto the God of my life Blesse ye the Lord in the congregations even the Lord from the fountains of Israel My mouth shall shew forth thy righteousnesse and thy salvation all the day for I know not the numbers thereof I will go in the strength of the Lord God I will make mention of thy righteousnesse even of thine onely O God thou hast taught me from my youth And hitherto have I declared thy wondrous works But I will hope continually and will yet praise thee more and more Thy righteousnesse O God is very high who hast done great things O God who is like unto thee thou which hast shewed me great and sore troubles shalt quicken me again and shalt bring me up again from the depth of the earth Thou shalt encrease thy goodnesse towards me and comfort me on every side My lips shall greatly rejoyce when I sing unto thee And my soul which thou hast redeemed Blessed be the Lord God the God of Israel who only doth wondrous things And blessed be his glorious name for ever and let the whole earth be filled with his glory Amen Amen I love the Lord because he hath heard my voice and my supplication The sorrows of death compassed me I found trouble and sorrow Then called I upon the name of the Lord O Lord I beseech thee deliver my soul. Gracious is the Lord and righteous yea our God is merciful The Lord preserveth the simple I was brought low and he helped me Return to thy rest O my soul the Lord hath dealt bountifully with thee For thou hast delivered my soul from death mine eyes from tears and my feet from falling Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints O Lord truly I am thy servant I am thy servant and the son of thine handmaid thou shalt loose my bonds He that loveth not the Lord Jesus let him be accursed O that I might love thee as well as ever any creature loved thee He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God There is no fear in love The prayer O Most Gracious and eternal God and loving Father who hast powred out thy bowels upon us and sent the son of thy love unto us to die for love and to make us dwell in love and the eternal comprehensions of thy divine mercies O be pleased to inflame my heart with a holy charity towards thee and all the world Lord I forgive all that ever have offended me and beg that both they and I may enter into the possession of thy mercies and feel a gracious pardon from the same fountain of grace and do thou forgive me all the acts of scandall whereby I have provoked or tempted or lessened or disturbed any person Lord let me never have my portion amongst those that divide the union and disturb the peace and break the charities of the Church and Christian communion And though I am fallen into evil times in which Christendom is divided by the names of an evil division yet I am in charity with all Christians with all that love the Lord Jesus and long for his coming and I would give my life to save the soul of any of my brethren and I humbly beg of thee that the publike calamity of the severall societies of the Church may not be imputed to my soul to any evil purposes II. LOrd preserve me in the unity of the holy Church in the love of God and of my neighbours let thy grace inlarge my heart to remember deeply to resent faithfully to use wisely to improve and humbly to give thanks to thee for all thy favours with which thou hast enriched my soul and supported my estate and preserved my person and rescued me from danger and invited me to goodnesse in all the dayes and periods of my life Thou hast led me thorow it with an excellent conduct and I have gone astray after the manner of men but my heart is towards thee O do unto thy servant as thou usest to do unto those that love thy Name let thy truth comfort me thy mercy deliver me thy staffe support me thy grace sanctifie my sorrow and thy goodnesse pardon all my sins thy Angels guide me with safety in this shadow of death and thy most holy Spirit lead me into the land of righteousnesse for thy Names sake which is so comfortable and for Jesus Christ his sake our Dearest Lord and most Gracious Saviour Amen CHAP. V. Of visitation of the sick or the assistance that is to be done to dying persons by the ministery of their Clergy Guides SECT I. GOd who hath made no new Covenant with dying persons distinct from the Covenant of the living hath also appointed no distinct Sacraments for them no other manner of usages but such as are common to all the spirituall necessities of living and healthfull persons In all the dayes of our religion from our baptisme to the resignation and delivery of our soul God hath appointed
pasport in the article of his death and calls thâ—s the ancient and canonicall law of the Church and to minister it onely supposes the man in the communion of the Church not alwayes in the state but ever in the possibilities of sanctification They who in the article and danger of death were admitted to the communion and tied to penance if they recovered which was ever the custome of the ancient Church unlesse in very few cases were but in the threshold of repentance in the commencement and first introductions to a devout life and indeed then it is a fit ministery that it be given in all the periods of time in which the pardon of sins is working since it is the Sacrament of that great mystery the exhibition of that blood which is shed for the remission of sins 9. The Minister of religion ought not to give the Communion to a sick person if he retains the affection to any sin and refuses to disavow it or professe repentance of all sins whatsoever if he be required to do it The reason is because it is a certain death to him and an increase of his misery if he shall so prophane the body and blood of Christ as to take it into so unholy a breast where Sathan reignes and sin is principall and the Spirit is extinguished and Christ loves not to enter because he is not suffered to inhabite But when he professes repentance and does such acts of it as his present condition permits he is to be presumed to intend heartily what he professes solemnly and the Minister is onely the Judge of outward act and by that onely he is to take information concerning the inward But whether he be so or no or if he be whether that be timely and effectuall and sufficient toward the pardon of sins before God is another consideration of which we may conjecture here but we shall know it at doomsday The spirituall man is to do his ministery by the rules of Christ and as the customs of the Church appoint him and after the manner of men the event is in the hands of God and is to be expected not directly and wholly according to his ministery but to the former life or the timely internall repentance and amendment of which I have already given accounts These ministeries are acts of order and great assistances but the sum of affairs does not relie upon them And if any man puts his whole repentance upon this time or all his hopes upon these ministeries he will find them and himself to fail 10. It is the Ministers office to invite sick and dying persons to the Holy Sacrament such whose lives were fair and laudable and yet their sicknesse sad and violent making them list-lesse and of slow desires and flower apprehensions that such persons who are in the state of grace may lose no accidentall advantages of spirituall improvement but may receive into their dying bodies the symboles and great consignations of the resurrection and into their soules the pledges of immortality and may appear before God their Father in the union and with the impresses and likenesse of their elder Brother But if the persons be of ill report and have lived wickedly they are not to be invited because their case is hugely suspicious though they then repent and call for mercy but if they demand it they are not to be denied onely let the Minister in generall represent the evil consequents of an unworthy participation and if the penitent will judge himself unworthy let him stand candidate for pardon at the hands of God and stand or fall by that unerring and mercifull sentence to which his severity of condemning himself before men will make the easier and more hopefull addresse And the strictest among the Christians who denied to reconcile lapsed persons after baptisme yet acknowledged that there were hopes reserved in the court of heaven for them though not here since we who are easily deceived by the pretences of a reall return are tied to dispense Gods graces as he hath given us commission with fear and trembling and without too forward confidences and God hath mercies which we know not of and therefore because we know them not such persons were referred to Gods Tribunal where he would finde them if they were to be had at all 11. When the holy Sacrament is to be administred let the exhortation be made proper to the mystery but fitted to the man that is that it be used for the advantages of faith or love or contrition let all the circumstances and parts of the Divine love be represented all the mysterious advantages of the blessed Sacrament be declared * That it is the bread which came from heaven * That it is the representation of Christs death to all the purposes and capacities of faith * and the real exhibition of Christs body and blood to all the puposes of the Spirit * That it is the earnest of the resurrection * and the seed of a glorious immortality * That as by our cognation to the body of the first Adam we took in death so by our union with the body of the second Adam we shall have the inheritance of life for as by Adam came death so by Christ cometh the resurrection of the dead * That if we being worthy Communicants of these sacred pledges be presented to God with Christ within us our being accepted of God is certain even for the sake of his well beloved that dwells within us * That this is the Sacrament of the body which was broken for our sinnes of that blood which purifies our souls by which we are presented to God pure and holy in the beloved * That now we may ascertain our hopes and make our faith confident for he that hath given us his Son how should not he with him give us all things else Upon these or the like considerations the sick man may be assisted in his addresse and his faith strengthened and his hope confirmed and his charity be enlarged 12. The manner of the sick mans reception of the holy Sacrament hath in it nothing differing from the ordinary solemnities of the Sacrament save onely that abatement is to be made of such accidentall circumstances as by the lawes or customes of the Church healthfull persons are obliged to such as fasting kneeling c. though I remember that it was noted for great devotion in the Legate that died at Trent that he caused himself to be sustained upon his knees when he received the viaticum or the holy Sacrament before his death and it was greater in Hunniades that he caused himself to be carried to the Church that there he might receive his Lord in his Lords house and it was recorded for honour that William the pious Arch-Bishop of Bourges a small time before his last agony sprang out of his bed at the presence of the holy Sacrament and upon