friendship advis'd him to and when all those little arts and ignoble devices of entertaining him in his Palace and at his Table and making him drunk would not bring Vriah to his purpose then how basely and unworthily does he plot and contrive his Murder by giving Orders to his General to set him in the most dangerous place in the Front of the Battel which poor Innocent Vriah might possibly take for an Honour and interpret it an Argument and esteem of his greater Courage when in truth he was onely plac'd there as a mark to be shot at and to fall a Sacrifice to his Sovereigns Lust Which accordingly hapned Vriah being slain upon the spot and dying in that station where it was not likely he should live And when David had thus secretly in his heart designed Vriahs Death yet when news was brought to him that Vriah was dead he cunningly and slily pretends to look upon it as no other than a Casualty the misfortune of War saying with himself that such chances will come and bid the Messenger tell Joab that there was no reason why he should be troubled or concern'd at the Death of Vriah for there was no saving any mans life in Battel none could be priviledg'd from Death in Warlike Encounters and that the Arrows or Bullets made no distinction and that all are alike liable to destruction and that Vriah might as well fall and be slain as any other in the Army which is the sence of those very words which David caus'd to be return'd to Joab in the 25. ver of the foregoing Chapter Then David said unto the Messenger Thus shalt thou say unto Joab Let not this thing displease thee For the Sword devoureth one as well as another And lastly When David had thus dispatcht and caus'd the Innocent Husband to be made away he then takes the guilty Wife into his possession and marries her and expects to live many happy and pleasant days in mutual endearments But though David thought that the marrying her would legitimate their love and take off the old scandal of their former Embraces yet it was an act highly offensive to God and is so exprest in the last v. of the Chapter And when the mourning was past David sent and fet her to his House and she became his Wife and bare him a Son but the thing which David had done displeased the Lord. But then notwithstanding that David had committed those two horid sins of Adultery and Murder yet he had not any true sense and feeling of his guilt nor that remorse of Conscience which he should have had for sins of that Crimson die but he rubs on a considerable time without any regret or sign of repentance which insensibility and hardness of heart we may justly ascribe to his living in ease and enjoying the Charms of Bathsheba's Beauty which at first inticed him to sin and afterwards made him forget it whilst his Soul was steep'd in pleasure and triumphing in the injoyment of his new Spouse But whilst David was in his Nuptial jollity and swallowed up in fond Caresses and doting upon that Beauty which had formerly bewitcht him God stirs up his Prophet Nathan to give him some check and interruption in his solaces by propounding something that might bring his late horrid sins to his remembrance And accordingly the Prophet does his office and propounds to him the Parable of the poor man with his little Ewe-Lamb How that this was his only Companion his only Darling his Bosom Friend that he had nothing else to love and delight in nor that he could call his own but this one poor Innocent Creature and yet there was a rich man which had a numerous Flock and enough to make a Feast for any Friend or Stranger whatsoever and yet was guilty of so much incivility and injustice as to take away this single Lamb from a poor man with a pretence that he needed it to make an Entertainment which he might have done without the least wrong or detriment to himself as having such a number of his own and so many which he might well have spar'd Which Parable was no sooner propounded to David but he resents the Act with a great deal of indignation and delivers his opinion against him that should do such a fact as an unpardonable offender and that he was guilty of such a high piece of injustice that he was not fit to live For him that had enough of his own and yet to invade the right and property of a poor man and to rob him of his little All was in Davids Judgment an unsufferable wrong and injury and that he that did it deserv'd nothing less than Death for so are the words in the fifth ver of this Chapter And Davids anger was greatly kindled against the man And he said to Nathan As the Lord liveth the man that hath done this thing shall surely die And he shall restore the Lamb fourfold because he did this thing and because he had no pity So just and severe was David in condemning the robbing of a poor man and taking away the small substance he had But then when the Prophet took upon him to make a nearer Representation of the case and to bring it home to himself and point-blank to charge him with the like injustice which he had so severely condemned in another saying Thou art the man We must needs think that David was much startled when the guilt recoil'd upon himself and that his own Conscience made the rebound But then when it was brought so close to him that there was no avoiding his own self-Condemnation David presently makes an ingenuous Confession saying I have sinned against the Lord. And such we may observe are the mercies of God that his pardon follows immediately upon his Confession And Nathan said unto David The Lord hath also put away thy sin thou shalt not die in the 13. v. Howbeit in the next v. says the Prophet Because thou hast by this deed given great occasion to the Enemies of the Lord to blaspheme the Child also that is born unto thee shall surely dy Where we may observe that although God was pleased to grant him the greatest pardon of his life yet he does not give him a general pardon from other Punishments but assures him at the same time that he granted him his life that he should have such a punishment wherein he might read the nature and deserts of his sins The Child that is born unto thee shall surely die From whence it may not be unuseful to observe that God is pleased sometimes to lay the Punishment due to the Parents sin upon their Children and so here David had sinned and the Child must die for it which may be of great use and moment to make people more wary and deliberate how they enter into the Holy State of Matrimony For though it be a Divine Institution and ordained of God in Paradise and the State of Mans Innocency
has perform'd greater Cures and greater Recoveries and done greater wonders than all the Elixirs or Proprietates or Nostrums of the most skilful and renown'd Physicians It was Prayer that restored Hezekiah from a dangerous sickness and prolong'd his Days it was Prayer which supported David under all his troubles and gave him ease in his greatest extremities it was Prayer that opened the eyes of the blind and ejected the Devils and did the most glorious things to all Admiration and therefore we must apply our selves to God and depend upon our Prayers as the most proper and specifick remedy in afflictions We must be fervent and frequent and importunate in Prayers to God on the behalf of our Friends and Relations and who can tell whether God will be gracious to us that our Friends may live But then may some reply and say it was in vain for David to use Prayer or any other means it was to no purpose for him to expect the recovery of his Child or that God should answer him though he pray'd never so much For he knew that God had decreed the Death of his Child and told him in as plain words as could be by his Prophet that the Child should surely die and why then should David flatter himself so as to imagine that he could do the Child any good by his Prayers or prevail with God for his Recovery Why should he use that dubious Language as who can tell 't is possible or it may be that the Lord will be gracious to me that the Child may live Why should he stand doubting or supposing a possibility of a thing when God had positively declared the contrary To which I Answer That God declared by his Prophet Jonah the destruction of the Ninevites and prefixt the time to just forty days and this was declared with as great positiveness as the Death of Davids Child by the Prophet Nathan and the Prophet Jonah try'd and said Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown in the 3. of Jonah and 4. v. and yet after the delivery and promulgation of this sentence the Ninevites did not despond or utterly despair of Gods mercy but fell to repentance and humbling themselves and put the success to the same venture that David did and much in the same Language saying in the 9. v. Who can tell if God will return and repent and turn away from his fierce anger that we perish not And what was the Issue of their Repentance and Humiliation and using the best means they could to divert Gods Judgments Why the Issue was that by their Repentance they stav'd off the judgment and put it back as we may see in the 10. and last ver And God saw their works that they turned from their evil ways and God repented of the evil that he had said that he would do unto them and did it not And so in the 20. Ch. of the 2. of Kings God ordered the Prophet Isaiah to go and carry to Hezekiah the same message of Death and to acquaint him that he must expect no other than Death Thus saith the Lord Set thine House in order for thou shalt die and not live Could any thing be more absolute and positive than these words and yet Hezekiah instead of melancholizing himself with the thoughts of Death or expecting it every hour turned his face to the Wall and prayed unto the Lord saying I beseech thee O Lord remember now how I have walked before thee in truth and with a perfect heart and have done that which is good in thy sight and Hezekiah wept sore in the 3. ver And what good will you say could Hezekiah's praying and weeping and appealing to the Righteousness of his life do him Could that or any thing else save him and prevent his dying when God had so solemnly Decreed yes truly his Prayer and Repentance did him so much good as to prevail with God to grant him a longer Lease of his life and ordered the same Prophet that had just now told him of his Death to return forthwith and acquaint him also that he had reverst the fatal sentence Turn again and tell Hezekiah the Captain of my people Thus saith the Lord the God of David thy Father I have heard thy Prayer I have seen thy tears behold I will heal thee on the third day thou shalt go up unto the House of the Lord. And I will add unto thy days fifteen years What then shall we say that there is any change in the Divine Decrees or any inconstancy in God or that he is worse than his word when he thus positively denounces judgment and yet suspends it God forbid says the Apostle yea let God be true but every man a lyar as it is written that thou mightest be justified in thy sayings And therefore for the clearing of God from all imputation of falshood or mutability in these instances of his judgments denounced against sinners without any actual execution we are to understand that those threatnings of God in Scripture which run in an absolute form have a condition imply'd that is Nineveh shall be destroyed and Hezekiah shall die except they repent So that God does still reserve a power of revocation and puts in a conditional clause of repentance which though it be not exprest yet is always to be understood and therefore where Gods threatnings of death and destruction seem most peremptory and final we are yet to attempt the diverting and preventing them by our Prayers and repentance we are to use the means and as we say leave the success to God For who knows but the Lord may be gracious But if God will not hear our Prayers nor accept our Repentance as he did neither in the present Case of Davids Child yet we are to use the most proper means and to try all the ways imaginable to pacify Gods anger and to appease his wrath and still to go on praying and repenting as David did We are not to despond of mercy or to despair of success but at the very last push and the utmost extremity of affliction to say who can tell but the Lord will be gracious And thus I have delivered to you the just reasons why David mourn'd so exceedingly for his Child when it lay upon a Bed of sickness and languishing As first considering that his own sin was the chief and declared cause of his Child 's grievous and desperate sickness and secondly upon the account of that natural affection which is in all Parents toward their Children which moves their bowels to pity and bewail them when they are in misery and distress But then the great wonder is that the Father which was so much concern'd and deeply immerst in sorrow for the sickness of his Child should give over mourning upon the death and loss of it that his sorrow should expire and be at an end as soon as the Child was departed and had given up the Ghost But now he is dead why
appropriate to the future state would be the same fondness as to attempt to illustrate a Star with my Finger But yet for our great comfort and incouragement at present the Scripture gives us this plain notice and information of a glorious transformation as to our vile and terrestrial part How that then our vile Bodies shall be chang'd and made like unto Christs glorious Body that this mortal shall put on immortality and this corruptible incorruption How then can we that have this Hope faint in our mind or so much as shed a tear at the departure of our Friends out of this miserable Life seeing it will be so much for their advantage so very much for their preferment to leave us For they that are accounted worthy to obtain that World and the Resurrection from the Dead shall strangely exceed themselves and surpass all the excellencies of humane Nature at present and be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 equal to the Angels and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 bear the Image and Form of Christ himself And this equality to Angels and likeness to Christ is no more than what we have sure and certain grounds to hope for from the plain and positive words of Scripture and therefore we seem either not to believe or else to envy the happiness of those that depart this Life when we are in such extream Agonies of sorrow for their removal from us Wherefore let this Hope be always our support and comfort that Death is a certain advantage to our Friends that have so lived as to die the Death of the Righteous and that they are freed from the least touch or feeling of those sicknesses and pains and Diseases and Imperfections and from those toils and hardships which this mortal frail condition exposes us unto And having this Hope and belief of a better life hereafter Let us rather bless God for delivering our dearest Friends from this present evil World and taking them away from the evil to come Let us I say bless God for doing that singular favour to our Friends whom we lov'd so well as to translate them to Glory and Happiness before us and in giving them such an early possession of that Crown of Life which we all so much strive and pray to attain rather than repine at Gods Providence in not letting them stay any longer with us in this Valley of Tears Let us look upon Death rather as a mercy than a Judgment to our Friends which die in the Lord for they shall rest from their Labours and have all Tears wip't away from their Eyes and shall never know the meaning of a sorrow or trouble any more in a word Let us look upon Death as a Friend rather than an Enemy to our Relations which puts a period to the days of their Pilgrimage which are but few and evil at the best and esteem it a blessed change which is the term of their Bondage the end of their Cares the conclusion of their Sorrows and the beginning of endless Happiness and which passes them through the Gates of Death to the Kingdom of Glory FINIS * Deinde plus me habiturum autoritatis non dubitabam ad excitandum te si prius ipse consurrexissem Seneca ad Helviam * At filium unicum Q. Fabius praeterea Consularem qui jam magnas res gesserat majores cogitabat amisit neque solum non doluit quod fortissimus animus fuit sed etiam mortuo laudationem in foro dixit c. * Non enim vereor quin si minus in ipso Doloris aestu remediis utendum Homines censeant certè cùm modicè Dolor resederit ac se paulùm quasi remittere coeperit ad exstinguendas Doloris reliquias monita praeceptaque nostra adhibeantur Cicero de Consolatione Dolori tuo dum recens saeviret sciebam occurrendum non esse ne illum ipsa solatia irritarent accenderent Nam in morbis quoque nihil est magis periculosum nec perniciosum quà m immatura Medicina Seneca ad Helviam * Ita non est quod nos suspiciamus tanquam inter nostra positi mutuo accepimus Vsus fructus noster est cujus tempus ille arbiter muneris sui temperat Nos oportet in promptu habere quae in incertum diem data sunt appellatos sine querela reddere Pessimi est Debitoris Creditoris facere convitium Omnes ergo nostros quos superstites lege nascendi optamus quos praecedere justissimum ipsorum votum est sic amare debemus tanquam nihil nobis de perpetuitate immo nihil de diuturnitate eorum promissum est Sen. cap. x. ad Man
Job and 8. v. O that I might have my request and that God would grant me the thing that I long for even that it would please God to destroy me that he would let loose his hand and cut me off and in the 3. ch and 20. v. He speaks much to the same purpose Saying Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery and life unto the bitter in soul Which long for death but it cometh not and dig for it more than for hid treasures Which rejoice exceedingly and are glad when they can find the grave and in the 7. ch 3 4 and 5. vers He declares how uneasy and restless he was through the greatness and violence of his Diseases and how severely he was handled So am I made to possess months of vanity and wearisome nights are appointed to me When I lie down I say When shall I arise and the night be gone I am full of tossings to and fro unto the dawning of the day My flesh is clothed with worms and clods of dust my skin is broken and become loathsome and in the 13. ch and 14. v. He professes that he had so little joy and comfort in his life that he would esteem it a mercy to die saying My Soul chuseth Death and strangling rather than life Nay he goes further and says that he was quite out of conceit with living and would not be immortal on Earth for never so much they are his own words I loath it I would not live always let me alone for my days are vanity and in the 10. ch and the 1. v. His afflictions seem to have been so great and lasting that they almost wore out his patience and he could not endure them any longer which makes him speak like a man in great extremity and a desperate condition Saying My soul is weary of my life and so David in the 6. Ps and 6. v. utters himself in the same manner Saying I am weary with my groanings And therefore David might well cease sorrowing for the loss of his Child when he consider'd the manifold Diseases that mankind is liable unto and that it often happens and that he himself had so experienc'd it that men meet with such sorrows and afflictions that make them weary of the World and exceedingly imbitter their lives and why then should he be troubled at the death of his Child and that it did not live to be in danger of enduring all the Diseases in the Bill of Mortality And how did he know but that if it had liv'd it might have prov'd of a sickly and weak Constitution and perhaps might bring those Infirmities into the World with it as were past all Cure and might be a sorrow to the Parents and a misery to their Child as long as it liv'd And besides Children run many risques and hazards whilst they are young and come oftentimes to great mischances and either they contract a lameness by a fall or lose one Eye or both by the small Pox or are drown'd or burnt or kill'd unfortunately any of which would prove matter of greater sorrow to Parents than a bare natural Death And therefore seeing God was pleased to take it away so very young and that it dropt off with its first sickness there was a great mixture of mercy in this sad Providence and little reason to be griev'd at such an early Death when it was so natural and perhaps prevented the meeting many sad mischances and a Troop of Diseases which are incident to this frail and perishing life And truly all Parents have the same reason which we suppose David had to comfort up themselves after the loss of their Children when they die very young as considering that an early death may prevent a miserable life and that it is much better to die young than to live longer and have such Diseases grow and hang upon us as shall make life a burthen to us And indeed though we are extreamly desirous of living and are sad and melancholy when we think of dying yet we may live so long as that we may have enough of it and may meet with such sore Diseases as may rob us of all pleasure and comfort in living and spoil our taking any contentment in the greatest injoyments this World does afford us we know how the case stood with Job and how that afflictions crowded in so thick upon him that as he often professes they made him even weary of his life And there is none of us that has any priviledge or exemption or greater security from Diseases than Job nor have we Bodies of Brass or Sinews of Iron more than he but we have Bodies subject to the same Infirmities and liable to be invaded by the same Diseases if God to make an experiment of our patience shall think fit to handle us as severely as he did Job and to inflict the same Diseases upon us And therefore we need not so much desire long life and length of days as commonly we do Because it may so happen that before we run out half our race or come to the middle of our Course besides the troubles that are from without we may meet with such a numerous train of bodily afflictions that may make us more covetous of death than ever we were of life and we may live to know so much sorrow and pain before we die that like Job we may be ready to curse our Birth Day and wish that we had never been born And therefore we should not be so very unwilling to depart and leave the World at any time though never so soon because we may suppose that the longer we continue in it the worse it may be for us and although we are in health at present and enjoy our selves finely yet Diseases may within a little time overtake and grow upon us which may make our life a perfect torment to us and cause us to consume our days in misery To speak compendiously all Parents and others have little reason to ingulph themselves in sorrows for the Death of their Friends and Relations and more especially if it be early and natural because when they are taken away so soon they happily miss of those sore and grievous distempers which in running out the whole stage of life do seize upon oftentimes and render this present life extreamly bitter and unacceptable And indeed what comfort is there to see our Friends often sick or roaring with the Stone or the Gout or some acute pain or to have them of an ill habit of Body or of a broken health and to be ever crazy and lingring with some fixt and incurable Disease What pleasure is it to see our Relations rotten and unsound and patcht up with Medicines and supported with the Arts of Physick and kept alive by nice and superstitious observations of diet or what delight can we take in injoying our Friends when they cannot enjoy themselves And what reason then have we to lay so much
the title to and interest in them but reserves to himself a power of Revocation so as that he may demand them back at pleasure he only gives us the use and comfort of them for a time but never parts with the propriety or resigns up all his claim to them And besides we should consider that although God does put those Children into our power and under our jurisdiction which he is pleas'd to give us yet that Parents have not that absolute power over their Children that God has nor are they wholly at their disposal as to the great Issues of Life and Death which are only in Gods Hands And therefore though we may look upon our Children as our own as being flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone though we may appropriate them to our selves and reckon we have the best title to them of all our Possessions yet still God retains the supream right and has the first and oldest title to them and we are only deputed by God to be the Overseers and Guardians of our Children and therefore as God is pleased to commit our Children to our care for some time yet when he does not like they should be any longer under our tuition he does in mercy and kindness to them take them away when he sees it not good for them to continue with us he then to shew his Authority removes them from us and calls them home And therefore Parents would do well to consider that God has more right to their Children than themselves and that they are absolutely at his disposal but not at theirs that they have not that power of Life and Death over their Children which God has And therefore Parents have no reason to be in that Hurricane and storm of Passion upon the loss of their Children unless they are troubled that God should have his will more than they have theirs unless they are grieved that God should take upon him to dispose of their Children without their consent and liking which argues a great impiety of mind as if they thought that God was either unjust in taking away the Children from their right Owners or unmerciful in not sparing of their lives which was a greater comfort to them than all other enjoyments whereas it would be much better and tend to hush and silence all the sorrows of Parents for the loss of their Children to consider that they are but under-Proprietors of their Children and that they came first from God before they came to them and that as God is the donour of them so he may well be allow'd the disposal of them whether for Life or Death And besides it should be consider'd that Gods will is and ought to be supream and Master of ours and that we should patiently leave them to Gods will and pleasure when he does not think fit to leave them to ours It was an excellent saying and submissive speech of Jobs ch 1. 21. who when God was pleased to bereave him of all his Children by violent and unnatural Deaths and of all his Worldly goods too yet submitted to his great misfortunes with an invincible patience and mildness saying Naked came I out of my Mothers Womb and naked shall I return thither the Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away Blessed be the name of the Lord. Here is an Example beyond Example of Patience and quiet submission to the will of God in one of the greatest and severest trials imaginable here indeed is an Example fit for our imitation and should be drawn into practice upon the like occasion And it would highly become Parents and others and indeed is the duty of all to lay themselves at the will of God and with all humble Prostrations resign up their wills to his and to resign up their Children and Relations freely to him who first gave them freely to them And to say in like manner with Job God has indeed blessed us with Children but has not thought fit to continue them to us and though we could have been well content to have enjoy'd them if God had so pleas'd yet we are content to want them being he has thought it better both for them and for us to take them away The Lord has given and the Lord has taken away Blessed be the name of the Lord. Seneca will teach us otherwise in words to this purpose that we ought not to reckon all that we enjoy our own or to look upon our Children as a sure Inheritance and entailed upon us but consider that they are of the same uncertain hold and tenure as other outward blessings are that they are given us but for an uncertain time and that we must not promise to our selves any long or certain enjoyment of them if we are allow'd the use and benefit and comfort of our Children for a time 't is not fitting that we should mutter or think much to part with them when God demands his own and requires back what he only committed to us by way of lone but rather be in a readiness to part with our Children and all other blessings when God will not trust us with them any longer Having thus shew'd upon what considerations David might well cease sorrowing for his dead Child and which may be of excellent use and service to support and comfort others under the like losses and to prevent all excessive mourning for the Death of their Friends and Relations especially when they die young I shall now winde up the whole Discourse with a word or two First By way of Reproof Secondly By way of Exhortation First By way of Reproof to all those that are apt to quarrel with Providence and to entertain hard thoughts of God as if he were either unjust or unmerciful when he takes away their nearest and dearest Relations from them and do often in the bitterness of their Souls and the great anguish of their spirits charge God foolishly and speak unadvisedly with their lips and think they do well like Jonah to fret against the Almighty in that he deals with them after such a manner and will not suffer them to enjoy the desire of their Eyes and the joy of their Hearts so long as they wish and desire They assert with a great deal of sorrow that their Soul was wrapt up in the life of such and such a Child that it was an Absolom for its Beauty and a Solomon for its Wisdom and a Moses for its meekness and good nature that it was very pregnant and a great Wit and gave great and lively Specimens of future Vertue and Wisdom and therefore for God to deprive them of a Child that had naturally such Charms and whose vertuous temper and disposition did presage so much comfort to themselves and so great a benefit to the World must needs make deep and melancholy impressions upon their Spirits and put them into an extream Passion And thus Parents and others are apt to clamour against and censure the
Immoderate MOURNING FOR THE DEAD Prov'd Unreasonable and Unchristian OR Some Considerations of general use to allay our sorrow for Deceased Friends and Relations But more especially intended for Comfort to PARENTS upon the Death of their CHILDREN By JOHN OWEN Chaplain to the Right Honourable Henry Lord Grey of Ruthen 2 Cor. 6. 8. As sorrowful yet always rejoycing Detestandae sunt illae lachrymae plenae Sacrilegio Infidelitate plenissimae quae non habent modum Hieron Epist ad Paulam LONDON Printed by J. Macock for John Williams at the Crown in S t Paul's Church-Yard 1680. To the Excellent and Virtuous Lady the LADY JANE MUSTERS of the Parish of Harnsey in the County of Middlesex MADAM WHen I first heard of the Death of your Dear Child and only Son I much deplored your Loss and was greatly concern'd to think how you would bear it as considering that your affections towards him were exceeding great and surpassing the common and ordinary Love of Women and that your Heart was set so much upon him that your Life seem'd to be wrapt up in his so that he could hardly die but his Death must go near to kill you too I knew indeed your Prudence and Religion to be very great yet I much feared that upon so severe a tryal your Passion might get the start of your Reason and so far over come it as to prove a great prejudice to all wise Considerations And as I feared so I was credibly inform'd by some that were Spectators of your sorrows that you laid the Death of your Son so much to Heart and was so deeply ingulph'd in sorrows that like Rachel you refused to be comforted And the truth is you had a singular loss and therefore might very well be afforded some grains of allowance in sorrowing more than ordinary for the loss of your only Son the most intense sorrow being described and represented in Scripture by Mourning as for an only Son And therefore when I understood that you took on so heavily and continued mourning and afflicting your self at such a great rate I thought it my duty to do my best endeavours as having received so many Obligations from your Family to support part of the foundation when it was sinking with the weight of overmuch sorrow And whilst I was studying for some Counsels that might be proper for one in your case it was my misfortune to meet with the like sad Providence in the death of one of my own Children which made me more sensible of the greatness of your loss who was bereav'd of your only Child so that I had now a new work to do which was to master my own Grief and to keep those sorrows within compass which naturally arise upon the loss of our nearest and dearest Relations whereupon immediately I consulted not with flesh and blood which I knew would lean more to the side of Passion than Reason but begg'd of God that he would endue me with wisdom from above and that whilst I shewed the resentments of a man I might behave my self like a Christian and not sorrow like others without hope And being by the Divine Assistance supply'd with the Considerations in the following Discourse which wrought effectually upon me towards the mitigating of my sorrows I thought that the same remedy which I found from them might very rationally be propounded to another and probably work the same Cure upon your Ladyship which they had done upon my self And so Cicero relates of himself that being in great affliction for the loss of his Dear Daughter Tullia he was forc'd to fly to the Precepts and Arguments of some famous Philosophers for comfort and relief and to propound to himself the Examples of some Eminent Persons who had behaved themselves with great temper and moderation under the like sorrowful circumstances And notwithstanding all the wise Precepts brave Examples of others he found it so hard to be reconciled to Providence and to conquer his Grief for the loss of such an Excellent and Virtuous Daughter that he was fain to set upon writing his Book of Consolation on purpose to divert his Melancholy and to beguile the tediousness of his Sorrows And praised be God I have had the happiness to find the same benefit by Consideration which Cicero did And hope that having experimented the benefit of my own Counsels I may be better qualifi'd to win both upon your Ladyships Reason and Judgment Indeed your Ladyship has had somewhat the greater tryal as losing a Son and an only Son Quid enim utilius filio quid jucundius unico Sayes Cicero de Consolatione What is more comfortable and useful than a Son and what is more pleasant and dearer to us than an only Son And yet he tells us of Q. Fabius who lost his only Son one that was in a place of great Dignity and Honour in the Common-wealth and had got a great reputation by doing brave and excellent things and would have been more famous if he had liv'd That he was so well reconcil'd to the Death of his only Son and bore it so bravely that he stood up and made a large speech and a very trim solid and even Oration in Commendation of his Son and recited his great Vertues without lamenting his Death And he makes further mention of one Q. Martius a King who lost his only Son and Heir Apparent to the Crown and of many others as Xenophon Cassius Pericles who had the misfortune to bury and lose their Sons when they were come to be men and were persons of great worth of singular prudence and piety and of a growing fame and reputation in the World who carried it with great prudence and moderation and shewed themselves great Masters of their Passion upon these sad occasions But perhaps these Examples of a Masculine patience may seem not to suit with the softness of your Ladyships temper nor agreeable to the natural tenderness of your Sex Men being always accounted the more hardy and invulnerable and less liable to the impressions of sorrow than Women whose very constitution does give a lift and advantage to their Passions for being the weaker Vessels they cannot so well contain their resentments and support their spirits in affliction as those that are stronger And although the Poets feign that Niobe was turn'd into a Statue because of her weeping so stifly for the death and slaughter of her Children yet they make no mention of her Husband Amphion that the he was any ways concern'd at loss of them And therefore some instances of the like patience and moderation in some of your own Sex are more likely to prevail with your Ladyship and to excite you to their imitation I crave leave therefore to produce the same Examples which Seneca did to Marcia upon the very same account Now the Examples which he produces are Octavia and Livia Each of which had the misfortune to lose a Son and they were a pair of
very hopeful and pregnant Youths and of great expectations in the World Octavia she laid so much to heart the death of her Marcellus that she could not endure the least mention of his name but was ready to sink whenever she heard it and would not admit that the least word of comfort should be spoken unto her Talis sayes Seneca per omnem vitam fuit qualis in funere she mourn'd and took on at the same rate all her life-time as she did at the time of the Funeral But Livia she behaved her self quite otherwise and though she lost her Drusus who was a great man at present and rising to be a Prince yet she beheld the pompous Funeral that was made for him and how his Death was lamented by the whole Nation as a publick and general loss without falling into any great fit of Passion and as Seneca phrases it ut primum intulit tumulo simul illum dolorem suum posuit she buried all her sorrow in his Grave and laid aside her grief as soon as he was laid in the ground And having propounded these Examples to Marcia he refers it to her wisdom and discretion which of them she would chuse to follow But I dare not make any such proposition to your Ladyship or make the least question which way your choice is determined being well assured that you steer all the actions of your life by the compass of Reason and Religion So that I need not tell you that Moderation is the Christians Motto and that there is quaedam dolendi modestia A Rule of Decency to be observ'd in our very Mourning And therefore if your Ladyship will be pleased to pardon the trouble and presumption of this Dedication I shall add little more but only to make some Apology and to acquaint you with the reason why this Discourse was presented no sooner to your hands And truly I can give you no other reason but what the Excellent Cicero and Seneca have given long before to excuse their writing their Tracts of Consolation so late to their Friends viz. that I thought a Comforter would hardly be admitted or very welcome to you when you were in the Zenith of your sorrows and that it was improper as Physicians think it in other Cases to apply a Remedy or administer Physick till the Fit was over But now that your sorrows have had a considerable time to spend themselves and that the flood of your tears as may be presum'd is pretty well abated I thought that this Discourse would come at the most opportune and convenient time to have your Consideration and to put a full stop to your Mourning And now that I have given your Ladyship the reason why this Discourse came so late perhaps others may require a reason why it came so soon and why I would venture to expose it to publick especially in such a Critical Age wherein the most Correct Discourses can hardly pass muster with some captious Wits and escape their censure and reflection But the most that I can say for my self why I have publisht such a slender Discourse is this That although there is a great plenty of Authors who have written excellently well upon this subject of the great unreasonableness of intemperate Mourning for the Dead yet few have so confined themselves as to handle it with a particular respect to the loss and Death of Children which being a common and daily Calamity and the sorrows thereupon so mightily prevailing and judged to be not only natural but highly reasonable I thought with my self that it might not be amiss to endeavour to obviate this vulgar Error and to lay down such Arguments as might be a perpetual fence against all inordinate sorrowings for the loss of Children And I hope that my good intentions herein will make some Atonement for the failings of my Pen. And that it will be a great Provocation to some able and judicious Divines to set upon providing and furnishing the World with better and more substantial Arguments against this sort of Passion which is often so violent and outragious both in Parents and others upon the loss of their Children and Relations to the great scandal both of their reason and their Christian Belief I have as your Ladyship may easily see avoided all flowery Expressions or to deck up this Discourse with the paint and varnish of Oratory as considering that the plainer it was the more suitable to wait upon a Lady in Mourning But after all it must be confess'd that you have had a great affliction and a deplorable loss in the Death of your only Child and only Son But I doubt not but God will give you a better Name than that of Sons and Daughters and that by your eminent Example and practice of true Virtue and Piety you will entail a greater blessing upon your Family than if you left behind you a large and numerous Progeny Now that you and your Relations may live long to bless the World with your Excellent and Pious Examples and when you leave this troublesome Place may be translated to a Kingdom of Joy and Peace and rest Eternally in a Bosom of Blessedness is and shall ever be the Ardent Prayer of Your Ladyships Most humble and devoted Servant JOHN OWEN COMFORT FOR PARENTS UPON THE DEATH OF THEIR CHILDREN 2 Sam. xii 21 22 23. 21. Then said his servants unto him What thing is this that thou hast done Thou didst fast and weep for the Child while it was alive but when the Child was dead thou didst rise and eat bread 22. And he said While the Child was yet alive I fasted and wept for I said Who can tell whether God will be gracious to me that the Child may live 23. But now he is dead wherefore should I fast can I bring him back again I shall go to him but he shall not return to me BEfore I fall directly upon the words in the Text it may be convenient and necessary to give you some previous account of the occasion of the Death of the Child which David had by Bathsheba in the time of whose sickness David mourn'd exceedingly and was much cast down and took on heavily and after whose Death he seem'd to be comforted and to take heart which occasion'd these words that I have now read unto you Now in the Chapter immediately before this we have a sad story and relation of Davids Adultery and Murder how that from the temptation of his own idleness and Bathsheba's Beauty he committed Folly with her and drew aside the Curtains of her Husbands Retirements and when he had overcome and corrupted the Wife there is mention of the great Artifices which he used to bring Vriah the Husband to cloak and cover this foul and shameful sin of his and when Vriah out of pure Loyalty and a hearty Zeal for his service refus'd to take that ease and pleasure which David under a colour of love and
yet there may be ways of unhallowing Marriage and turning that into a sin which was at first ordained for the greatest Blessing For if only Interest or Humour or Lust be the chief foundation and ingredient of our Choice or if some sinful pre-ingagement or lewd Amours make Marriage necessary for the hiding our shame or if any of these things do cause a Contract or make up the match we may expect that God in justice may blast and curse the fruits of our Body for the sin of our Soul and for the sins of our flesh too An instance whereof we have in Gods decreeing the death of Davids Child which though it was born in Marriage yet God utterly dislik'd the Conjunction the first occasion and grounds thereof being laid in Adulterous Embraces David making no scruple to murder the Husband that he might obtain the Wife But when David heard that heavy sentence against his Child that he should surely die for his sin might not he have confest himself altogether in the fault and desired to suffer wholly himself and have said as in another Case 1 Chron. 21. 17. It is I have sinned and done evil indeed but as for this Lamb this Innocent Babe what has it done Let thy hand be upon me or my Fathers House and not on this Child that that should be plagued I say one would think that David should have set himself to deprecate Gods displeasure against his Child upon his account and desired to have sustained the burthen of his own sin But the sentence was gone out and what was written was written and there was no reversing the Decree And therefore all they that intend to change their condition and desire that they may leave their Inheritance to their Children had best look to it and have a care that they do not make Lust or any sinful Pre-ingagement a Preamble and Introduction to Marriage for fear God disappoint them in their hopes and desires and either write them Childless or take away their Children in wrath for their folly and wickedness For though God spared David and gave him a grant of his own life that he should not die yet there is no begging the life of his Child the Prophet reading its Destiny the Child that is born shall surely die So that for people to couple together in a scandalous and sinful way and to make Lust the basis and foundation of Marriage is to murther their Children in the Womb and in a manner to predestinate them to destruction But then when David heard that his Child should not live but was under a sentence of Death and that according to the words of the Prophet it presently fell sick and was desperately ill How then did he behave himself Truly like a very kind and indulgent Father for it was no sooner struck with sickness but David besought God for the Child And David fasted and went in and lay all night upon the Earth and the Elders of the House arose and went to him to raise him up from the Earth but he would not neither did he eat bread with them in the 16 and 17. v. of this Chapter Here we see David in a sad and mournful posture expressing all the symptoms and signs of a mighty sorrow and being earnest in Prayer to God for it which if all Parents would do the like upon the same occasion when their Children are sick or any ways afflicted they would find their Prayers to be a more efficacious way than all the Drugs of the Apothecary or the numberless prescriptions of the Physicians for the recovery of their Children For the effectual fervent Prayer of the Righteous availeth much But then we may consider that David had great reason to bewail the sickness of the Child as first being the effect and punishment of his sin and secondly upon the account of natural affection First He had a great deal of reason to grieve and be troubled at the sickness of his Child it being sent as a punishment for his own personal sin and therefore when he saw it in misery and pain and great anguish and considered that it suffered all this principally for his sake that he had the greatest hand in bringing all this trouble and sorrow upon it and that he was the great Actor in the Tragedy and this his sin occasion'd this great scene of sorrows How could he do otherwise than lay the sickness of it to heart and take on bitterly to think that by the murder of Vriah he had caus'd the Death of his Child and that by committing folly with Bathsheba he had brought such an affliction upon their Issue I say such a consideration must needs wound David to the very heart and cause him to make great Lamentations over the Child And truly the same sorrows would become even the best Parents and it might not be amiss for them to make some like Reflections For the Parents are generally apt to impute the Distempers the Sickness the Death of their Children either to want of due care in their Nurses or to the badness of the Air or the unwholesomness of the Season or ill diet or the irregular course of the Physician I say though we are apt to ascribe the sickness and Death of our Children to these outward and secondary Causes yet we should do well to suspect our sins as the cause of their misery and sufferings and to believe that there is something more than ordinary in the afflictions of such harmless and innocent Creatures Surely the Parents have sin'd though these poor Lambs suffer and therefore it is good and convenient that all Parents do examine themselves and see whether they need go any further than themselves to find out the true cause and original of those many weaknesses and distempers which they see in their Children and for which they seem so much concern'd and troubled How mightily are some Parents troubled to see their Children grow crooked and deform'd and yet little consider that possibly their Children are the unhandsomer for their being so proud of themselves and glorying in their Beauty others are griev'd to see their Children prove such Punies so feeble and infirm and of such a weak Constitution and do not reflect upon the debaucheries of their life and how they have lost their strength in Dalilahs Lap. And it is a general complaint and observation that every Age declines more and more in strength and virility and that the latter Generation of men are dwindled almost into Pigmies in comparison of what they were formerly and yet men do little consider that Luxury and riotous Living may be assigned as the grand Causes and Reasons of this great Degeneracy And we also see that new and strange Diseases do creep up daily and multiply and invade humane Bodies and yet we seldom impute these decays and breakings of nature to the vices of our Progenitors Whereas we have just reason to grieve at the sight of those many Diseases which
attend our Children and those great infirmities which they often labour under and the more reason to be humbled when we reflect upon our selves as the Authors of them The truth is we have laid a train of mischiefs in our Bodies by our Vices which will certainly ruine and blow up our Children we have Created Diseases in our Bodies by trespassing too much upon nature and offering great violencies to our Constitution we have broken and shattered our Bodies by great excess by hard and unseasonable Drinkings and that may be one reason why we deliver down such a weak and crasie Progeny We have turn'd our Bodies into Bogs of uncleanness and putrefaction by our lust and wantonness and that may be a very proper reason why our Children carry about them such an Hospital of Diseases We have made our Bodies Sepulchres and burying places of Wine and that may be another reason why our Children become Corpses so soon and go so early to their Graves we eat and drink destruction to our Children by our Gluttony and Drunkenness we dig their Graves as well as our own with our Teeth and by swallowing down over-much we prepare them for the devoration of the Worms and 't is not any whit probable or likely that our Children should prove sound and healthful when we distemper our Bodies and treasure up Diseases And we may consider that we do propagate Diseases many times as well as our nature and there are Diseases which our Posterity find by woful experience run in a blood And therefore it is the duty of all Parents who desire the good of their Posterity and have a regard to the welfare and happiness of their Children to be very strict and punctual in observing the Rules of temperance and sobriety and in keeping their Bodies pure and undefil'd forasmuch as by a vicious and debaucht life we store up Diseases for Posterity and transmit great evils to our Generation For 't is certain that by great excesses and impure mixtures we do corrupt our bloud and consequently must convey a taint to our Off-spring and a rotten Father seldom produces any other than a Consumptive Child and besides our Vices are as communicable to our Children as our Diseases and who knows but that God might determine to take away Davids Child for this very reason lest he should Patrissare take after his Father he being the Child of an Incontinent Father and the Issue of such unhallowed Embraces And therefore when David was devoting his Enemies he makes this one of his dreadful Curses Let the iniquity of his Father be remembred with the Lord and let not the sin of his Mother be blotted out in the 119. Ps and 14. v. And truly I fear that there are too many ungodly Fathers and Mothers in the World whose wickedness and folly is such as that their Children suffer for it deeply being cover'd with Sores and Boils and having such Diseases breaking forth as are plain marks and tokens of their Parents sins God visiting the iniquities of the Fathers upon the Children and not suffering the iniquity of the Father to be conceal'd nor the sin of the Mother to be blotted out And therefore those Parents that are conscious to themselves of any such great and foul sin as Davids was have very great reason to lament the Diseases and Death of their Children when they consider that they themselves were the great Instruments of bringing all those miseries upon their Children and that their sins have had the greatest hand in their destruction And 't is very well worth our observation that in the first Age of the World it was never seen that the Son died before the Father but the oldest always went first But then when the wickedness of men grew great and their Pride so great that they were too high for their Station and would needs be building Castles in the Air and climbing up to the Battlements of Heaven it hapned presently afterwards that Terahs Son died before his Father and there is a special note and mark set upon it as a kind of wonder in the 9. of Genesis and 28. v. And Haran died before his Father Terah in the Land of his Nativity From whence we may observe that the wickedness of a Father is enough to alter the course of nature and to shorten his Childrens days and to accelerate their Death and bring them to the dust before their time And thus I have been somewhat long on this Argument that I might represent to you the danger of a sinning Father and Mother and what a fatal mischief they do their Children by their wickedness in that they bring a Curse upon their Family and by their sin occasion the Death and ruin of an Innocent Child as is clear and manifest in this one instance of Davids Child being taken away for the sin of his Father And we may also remember what a greivous Curse God entailed upon old Eli's Family and Posterity that they should die in the Flower of their Age and be cut off in their very prime and that chiefly upon the account of old Eli. And therefore Parents had need take a care to please God and that they do commit no great offence and to keep from great transgressions that so their Children may not repent that ever they were born of them and suffer sadly for their miscarriages And indeed all Parents that desire it should be well with their Children and that they should live long and see good days are concern'd to live a pure and unspotted life to possess their Vessels in sanctification and honour not in the lust of Concupisence otherwise they may bring great miseries upon their Children and perhaps a sudden Death and if they are resolv'd to continue their debaucheries and lewd Amours they had even as good strangle their Children when they are newly born and it may be a mercy to tear them in pieces as Medea did her Brother Absyrtus rather than they should live to inherit their Phthisicks Consumptions and loathsome Diseases and to be plagu'd all their life long with the miserable effects of their Parents sins And truly all vitious and ungodly Parents have the same grounds that David had to lament over their Children when they shall see them sick of their Diseases consuming with their Lusts and expiring under the curse of their sins And therefore if Parents would but take care to live better and more vertuously possibly their Children would not prove so sickly and might live longer for 't is certain that Davids Child was sick and died so soon for the wickedness of the Father Secondly Davids great grief and mourning for his Child during the time of its sickness was very just and reasonable upon another account as being an expression of humanity and the result of a natural affection For our Religion has not like the Stoick seal'd up the fountain of tears and wip'd them away from our eyes whilst we are in this bitter Achor
and Valley of tears but has given us liberty to vent our sorrows and ease the inward griefs of our mind in a reasonable measure according to the proportions of humanity and so far as is consistent with and not contradictory to our Christian hope and therefore as to grieve immoderately is unlike a Christian so not to grieve at all is unlike a man so that Davids sorrowing for his Child when he saw it in pain and anguish was but a reasonable passion becoming him as a man in sympathizing with the sufferings of humane nature and much more becoming him as he stood in the relation of a Father whose Bowels if he had any must needs move and yearn over a sick and languishing Child And therefore it was no such real matter of wonder as the Spectators of Davids sorrows thought it to see him involv'd in tears and making his Bed on the ground and acting the part of a true Mourner whilst his Child was alive for he saw it restless and tumbling up and down for ease and could find none he saw it in great pain and anguish and that there was no helping of it he saw that Physicians were of no value and all they could do could do no good he saw the Child lie panting and heaving and bemoaning it self with sighs and groans that were unutterable he saw it in sore conflicts and strugling for life and in the pangs and Agonies of Death and how could a Father forbear weeping and making great Lamentations over a Child in such a deplorable and sad condition He saw also the Mother wringing of her hands and beating her Breast and with floods of tears running down her Cheeks and crying out What shall I do for my Child Lord spare my Child Lord be merciful to my Child He saw likewise the Attendants that stood about not well able to endure the room for the hollow sighs and sobs and the piercing groans of a Child that was drawing on and breathing out its last And lastly he saw the servants of his House very much clouded and hanging down and going mourning and heavily quis talia fando temperet à lachrymis Who can possibly forbear weeping almost at the rehearsal of such a large scene of sorrows How could a Father restrain his tears when he beheld his own flesh and blood and Bone of his Bone to be in such great affliction How could he endure to see his own Bowels torn from him without a deep and sorrowful resentment How could he look upon a Child an Innocent Child rowling about in so much pain and torment without being 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 heavy and sorrowful even to Death Would it not melt a heart of stone and draw tears from a marble to behold such a spectacle of pain and misery And therefore Davids taking on so heavily for his Child in the time of its sickness was very reasonable and justifiable too forasmuch as tears are the natural tribute which we pay to the sufferings of Mankind and much more do we owe them to our Friends and Relations and our dear Children and such as are part of our selves But then if David was such a man of sorrows and took on so grievously for his Child in the time of its sickness and whilst it was yet alive surely we may expect to find him in a desperate condition and ready to sink into the Grave with it when he heard of its departure Certainly he that was so much troubled to see his Child in pain must be in the greatest Agonies of sorrow when he hears it is dead He that could not endure to see it in misery how will he bear the loss of it He that was ready to kill himself with grief for his Child when he was sick surely cannot live when he is dead and gone and past all recovery This was that indeed which his Servants and all that were about him expected They supposed seeing their Master had laid the sickness of the Child so much to heart that he would be in strange confusions and refuse to be comforted when he heard of its Death But there was no such thing the Scene is much altered and chang'd and the expectation of his servants is much deceived for instead of extream mourning for the Child when it was dead he begins to revive and take heart and falls to his meat and takes those refreshments which he had lately refus'd Which action and carriage of David shew'd very strange and a wonder to his Servants in the 21. v. But he presently removes the wonder and tells them the reason why he mourn'd no longer but rather rejoyced at the news of the Childs Death And he said While the Child was yet alive I fasted and wept for I said Who can tell whether the Lord will be gracious to me that the Child may live but now he is dead wherefore should I fast can I bring him back again I shall go to him but he shall not return to me In which expressions David does signify and declare the reasons why his carriage upon the Death of his Child differ'd so much from what it was when it was sick and yet alive For I said who can tell whether the Lord will be gracious to me that the Child may live that is though the Child be desperately ill and past all hopes as to outward appearance yet who knows but God may hear my Prayers for him if they be made with true fervour and devotion with zeal and integrity Who can tell but upon my humble Petition and earnest Intercession for the Child God may spare him to me and give a further grant of his life and recal the black Sentence and Warrant for his Death if there be such a due application made to him For whilst there is life there is hopes and there is mercy always with God that he may be feared and supplicated unto and therefore it may be expedient and useful to continue my Prayers and to proceed in my penitential sorrows And thus did David argue the reasonableness of his sorrowing and humbling himself before God for the Child whilst it was yet alive And truly it would be an excellent and laudable thing in all Parents to follow this Example of David so as to betake themselves to Prayer and to use the deepest humiliation when their Relations and Children happen to be under the rod and hand of an afflicting Providence for there is no such effectual means for their recovery as a hearty and sincere Prayer For the effectual fervent Prayer of the righteous availeth much saith St. James in the 5. c. and 16. v. There is more vertue and efficacy in Prayer than we are ready to believe and they have a more soveraign power to cure all maladies than the best prescriptions This is the Panaceavera and the great Catholicon surpassing all those of humane Art and Invention which some have so vainly boasted to find out Prayer is the Universal Remedy and
should I fast Why should I trouble and grieve my self any longer But how oddly and strangely may some say doth this look in a Father to dry his Eyes and clear up his Countenance presently upon the death and loss of his Child Is not this a thing out of course and a very strange temper to sorrow so much for the Child when it was sick and to cease sorrowing when it was absolutely dead and gone Surely this giving over mourning at the death of so near and dear a Relation as a Child must needs proceed fromhard-heartedness or the want of natural affection and of common humanity But then we may observe that David both to excuse and justifie his not mourning for the Death of his Child nor taking on so grievously as he did before alledges these good and substantial reasons as first The consideration of the necessity of his own dying and secondly The impossibility of his Childs coming to life again And we may also suppose that he had some further considerations at that time which helpt to allay and silence his sorrows as namely First the consideration of the Childs dying in its Age of Innocency Secondly That it was gone out of a wicked and troublesome World Thirdly That it was freed from those pains and sicknesses and diseases which are incident to this mortal condition Fourthly That it was released from those pains and miseries which it underwent And fifthly That it was the will of God it should be so And it is but very reasonable to imagine that all these considerations though not verbally exprest might occur to Davids mind or any mans else upon the like emergency I begin with the first consideration that put a stop to Davids sorrowing for the loss of his Child and that was the necessity of his own dying Can I bring him back again I shall go to him David considered that Death was common to all and that 't is appointed for all men once to die What man is he that liveth and shall not see death in the 89. Ps and 48. v. And I know says Job that thou wilt bring me to death and to the House appointed for all the living and so David was convinced that he must as surely die as he was then alive and that life is but a short preamble to death and why then should he grieve and torment himself for the loss of his Child when nothing had hapned to that but what must also happen to himself and to all men living For he was only gone the way of all flesh and had paid that debt to Nature which every one must do at one time or other sooner or later His Child indeed was dead but that was but a common natural and unavoidable thing and the beaten road to the Grave and the usual way of going out of the World He considered wisely with himself that his Child was only gone before him and that he must prepare to follow that his death indeed was somewhat early and immature and sooner than ordinary but the Father must not stay long behind He saw that sometimes the buds and blossoms were nipt and fell to the ground and that ripe fruit would certainly drop off He observed that sometimes the Lambs went to the slaughter and that there was no escaping for the old Sheep And therefore it was in vain to be troubled at a thing which was past and gone and could not be helpt and which all must submit to young and old the Father as well as the Child And what though it was a Princely Babe and Heir to a Crown and if it had liv'd might have been valued at as great a rate as his Father worth ten thousand of the ordinary sort of people yet Death was no respecter of persons makes no distinction and takes the ignoble and noble the Prince and the Peasant and sweeps away all alike 't is not a Crown or a great Inheritance that will purchase life or deliver from Death 't is not a high descent or being of the Royal Blood that will priviledge or exempt from the Grave But David himself must surrender up and lay down his Scepter at the summons of the King of Terrours which had so lately cut off and prevented his Sons Inheriting the Fathers Glory the branch is now lopt off and ere long the root will be taken up and carried away And therefore 't is not long says David before I shall go to the same place and be laid equal with my Child in the dust He has only made the first hancel of my Tomb and taken the first possession of my Grave He has had the misfortune or rather priviledge to go before me but I am going apace to meet him He was snatcht away betimes and I only wait Gods leisure and look when my change will come and expect every day to be called away and therefore I do not think it reasonable to imbitter this short life or to make my self uneasy and uncomfortable the rest of my days by a great and violent sorrow for the loss of my Child when I know that I have not much longer to live and that the days of my Pilgrimage will shortly be at an end and that his condition will shortly be mine and we shall both meet together in the Grave and be fellow Lodgers in the Dust and sleep together in the same Chambers of Darkness and therefore says David why should I fast why should I macerate and wast my self why should I grieve and pine away why should I go and throw away my life in sorrowing for the Death of my Child when I know that all the sorrow in the World will do no good and that my Child has passed those Gates of Death which I my self must after a little while strive and struggle to get thorough and that he is now in his Grave out of which I cannot keep long and why then should I fast can I bring him back again I shall go to him but he shall not return to me But he shall not return to me That 's another Consideration which might well serve to pacify Davids sorrow and discontent at the loss of his Child namely the impossibility of its coming to life again or returning to the same condition as formerly I shall go to him but he shall not return to me Death is that which puts a perfect and absolute end to this present life and when we are committed to the Dust and laid up in the Grave there is no breaking forth no expecting our liberty or enlargement till the day of the general Resurrection We are Prisoners of hope sayes the Prophet that is though we have a Promise and assurance of our rising again and being delivered from the Grave yet still we are Prisoners till the time of our Redemption comes and consequently must remain in hold and under the strict custody and durance of the Grave Death is a total privation of life and à totali Privatione ad
in And truly all Parents would do well to consider how it has far'd with them what usages and entertainment they have met with in the World what reproaches and slanders what losses and vexations have faln to their share and how troublesome a passage they have had and I do not question but that upon a serious reflexion upon the Calamities in their days and their own private personal sufferings they will be ready to confess with old Jacob that the days of their Pilgrimage have been few and evil and conclude them happiest that are out of it And therefore all Parents have reason to cease mourning for the loss and death of their Children upon the same consideration which we may well suppose David made use of namely that they are past the Waves of this troublesome World and are taken away from the evil to come Fifthly Another thing which might well prevent Davids extream sorrowing for the Death of his Child might be this consideration That it was freed from those sicknesses and diseases which attend this mortal life No doubt but David upon the loss of his Child did consider what innumerable Diseases do continually accost and prey upon humane Bodies as first the many weaknesses and diseases that are natural to and attend our Infancy and Childhood as the great pain of breeding teeth the being subject to the small Pox to ingender Worms to fall into the Rickets and many other distempers which are common and peculiar to Childhood besides the many dangers that Children are apt to run into and the sad accidents that often do befal them whereby they contract either lameness or deformity or come to an untimely end And if we have the good fortune to get safe over our Childhood and to come to riper years yet as we grow strong so our diseases are stronger and in our youth our blood is hot and feavourish and quickly in a flame and our very strength of nature helps to augment our distempers and makes them prove the more fatal to us and when we come to the perfect state of Manhood our very dependance and presumption upon the strength and benefit of nature makes us bold with those Vices which oftentimes help to cut us off in the midst of our days and then if we live to old Age that is a Disease of it self and nothing but sorrow is our Portion and the pains of Death lay hold on us so that if we take a survey of our whole life and of our passage from the Womb to the Tomb we shall find that every stage and period of this mortal life is way-laid and beset with Death And we know that there are certain dangerous seasons in the Age of Man which we call Climacterical Years wherein our life is in great Controversy and we have a push for it whether we shall live or die And truly there are so many Diseases that are of course and many more that are incidental and happen between our infancy and youth that 't is a great wonder that we ever live to be men and much more that we should pass all those casualties and misfortunes which lie all along in our way to the Age of threescore Years and ten And moreover it may be considered what a great fatality Gods Judgments make what a great depopulation and vast havock of Mankind the Plague and Sword and Famine do make and that when these come they sweep away Millions as with the Besom of Destruction But then secondly If we do further observe how many sorts and kinds of Diseases there are in the World how that new Diseases daily start up and that old ones so vary and alter in their circumstances and contract such strange degrees of malignity that they become new too how also that some Diseases are acute others Chronical and that some are rackt with the Stone others tortured with the Gout some are drown'd in a Dropsie others burnt up with a Feavour and that there is scarce a man but has a Disease peculiar to himself and proper to his constitution and dies something a several way from his fellow Mortals I say whoever shall make this observation of the great swarm and multiplicity of Diseases which assault Mankind and that whereas the Diseases now mention'd do kill their thousands so there is a Consumption which kills its ten thousands and deserves the Name of Apollyon the great Destroyer of Mankind must needs grant that the life of man is in jeopardy every moment And that he is obnoxious to a great deal of misery whilst he lives But if my Courage or your Hearts would serve you to go into the Hospital and there turn over the great Volume of Diseases and see what huge havock they make to behold how the Canker has par'd off the side of one mans Face and rotted off anothers Nose and eaten out an Eye and carried away a Limb to see how the Palsy has mortified another and struck him half dead and how many either by natural or vitious Consumptions are turn'd into meer Skeletons and walking Ghosts and are only the shadows of men Here you will say are sad spectacles of mortality here are such sights of humane frailty as are enough to make the hardest heart to bleed and to squeeze tears from a stock Who can forbear weeping and lamenting to see Man that is born of a Woman become the spoils of so many Diseases and to be Anatomized and Dissected even alive Here then we may see the sad and dismal ruins of these fleshly Bodies and what miserable Creatures we are when God is pleas'd to afflict and to lay sore and grievous Diseases upon us And truly we are all subject to various and manifold Diseases which issue forth in effects according to their several kinds and qualities the matter of most Diseases lies lodg'd in our nature and brooding within us and we have the unhappiness to inherit some Diseases by traduction from our Parents and there are many more which are hatcht by our Vices and prove the most deadly and mortiferous Some Diseases are so favourable as to carry off quietly and speedily and others are more cruel and like the Tyrant multiply our Deaths and kill us by piece-meals and nothing is a truer observation than this that we no sooner begin to live but we proceed to die and are every day going forward and stepping towards the Grave But then although life be a sweet and precious thing in it self and it be natural for all men to desire to spin out the thread of life to the utmost length yet God may send those Diseases upon us which may make us weary of our lives and to wish for Death and the Grave and so we find that Job was so pester'd with Diseases that his Life was a burthen to him and he does frequently and passionately beg of God to do him the favour to dispatch him and put an end to his days as we may see in the 6. ch of
to heart the death of our Friends and Relations and to pine away meerly for sorrow that they are gone whereas they are now freed from all the sorrow and contagion of bodily distempers and have escaped those sore burthens which we are like to feel and suffer if we stay here Methinks we should rather comfort our selves as we may well suppose David did to think that our Relations when they are dead and gone are past the shock and fury of a Disease that they have endured one brunt for all that they have charg'd that Enemy home which we so much fear and must expect every day to encounter withal so that considering how we that are left behind are to run the Gantlet through Troops of sorrow and to pass the Pikes of a thousand Diseases 't is highly unreasonable to mourn and sorrow for the dead they being past all possibility of Diseases and far removed from this Climate of Sickness and Death Sixthly Another thing which might restrain Davids sorrowing for the loss of his Child might be this consideration That it was releas'd from the great pains and miseries which it lately felt and endured 'T is certain and indubitable that the Soul does not quit its Mansion of the Body without great strivings and reluctancy and though it be consider'd that the Child was but in its Infancy and newly in possession of life and that the Soul and Body had contracted but a late acquaintance and that the Friendship was very new yet where there is such a strict Conjunction as there is between the Soul and the Body though but for a moment of time the separation cannot be without great grief and sorrow where there is such a close union and intimacy there is no parting without pain and trouble and consequently though the Soul of the Child was now just enter'd into its New Tenement yet it was so firmly setled and had taken that deep rooting that it could not be remov'd or ejected out of possession without great disturbance And therefore to see a Child strugling for life and to have only breath enough to intitle it to life could not but wonderfully affect and produce great Agonies of sorrows in the hearts of the Spectators And we may observe that men have naturally that compassion as to pity even a Brute when it lies in pain and misery and look upon it as an act of mercy to dispatch it out of the way And therefore David seeing his Child in that extream anguish and distress in that sickness to Death and that there was no way to ease and relieve it could not but reflect upon it as a singular mercy of God to take away the Child and to put an end to such a painful and miserable life David could not forbear weeping and sadly lamenting over his Child when he saw it in the pangs of Death and in those frightful Convulsions which were precedaneous to its dissolution But when it pleas'd God to seal up its breath and to give it a happy Issue out of this troublesome World then David began to be better satisfied and to be somewhat comforted with the consideration that God had in mercy released his Child from that pain and misery which it lately underwent and the sight whereof would have pierc'd the hardest heart living So that all those that have the sad opportunity of standing by their Relations and Friends when they are upon their sick Beds and in the approaches of Death and there to observe what a tumult and commotion nature is in at that time and with what pain and trouble the Soul and Body take their leave one of the other must needs conclude their parting and separation to be a more dismal and amazing sight than a Divorce between the most desperate Lovers Let us but be present with our Friends in the heat and rage of their Distemper or in the ultimate efforts of life and we shall then see a tremendous and ghastly spectacle which is hardly to be related without tears and cannot be seen without horror and astonishment O the hollow sighs and the deep sobs and pierceing groans of our dying Friends which are enough to wound any heart living and to strike that dread upon us that the sound of their cries and groans shall never be forgotten and can we pretend to pity them when we see them in so much anguish and distress and in the depths of misery and shall we so contradict our pretences to sorrow and our compassion for them in the bitterness of Death as to be troubled when they are out of misery and to deplore their going to rest Shall we weep and mourn to see our Friends upon the Rack and in great torment and shall we take on the more when they are past the sense and feeling of any pain How can we reconcile this Posthumous Passion to common reason Or can we think to perswade people that we lov'd our Relations dearly when they see us grieve when they were in misery but to grieve more when they are stept into happiness In a word we may yield to the meltings of nature or the tenderness of our affections and gratify our compassions in mourning for our Friends when they are in great misery and the Agonies of Death For a compassionate grief is both natural and reasonable and if we have any spark of good nature we cannot but be mollify'd at the mournful accents of the most despicable Creature when 't is in pain and great extremities But then to mourn excessively for our Friends when they are out of pain and the bitterness of Death is past is both unreasonable and unchristian unreasonable because they have endured and pass'd the worst and are perfectly discharg'd from those troubles and sorrows which those that remain alive are subject unto and 't is unchristian because it gives occasion to people to suspect our belief of a Resurrection and a future Life and that we are not really perswaded that our Friends are removed for the better and much for their advantage And therefore the Apostle in the first to the Thessal 4. ch and 13. v. admonishes Christians not to grieve and take on for the dead as others which have no hope lest they should by that means scandalize their Religion and render their belief of a Resurrection suspected and dubitable so that we are concern'd as Christians and as we tender the reputation of our Christian Faith not to be lavish of our tears nor over profuse in our expences of sorrow for the dead lest we should be suspected of believing our Friends happier here than they will be hereafter But we should rather in a manner rejoice at the departure of those who have liv'd well and innocently and die in the Lord Forasmuch as the Apostle tells us they shall rest from their labours and have all tears wip't away from their Eyes Revel 7. 17. And we should as our Church wisely directs us in the office for the Burial of
dealings of an afflicting Providence when it comes home to them and touches them in part of themselves and such as they profess to love as dearly as their own Souls whereas 't is an utter fault in them thus to repine at the hand of God and they know not what Spirit they are of when they fall into such fits of Passion and paroxysms of discontent refusing like Rachel to be comforted because their Children and Relations are not and wish like Elijah in a pet that God would take away their life too for they are no better than those that are gone before them But is this like men or like Christians to be absorpt and swallowed up in a vortex of sorrow and to be carried away with such an Euroclydon and violent storm of Passion O the great folly and wickedness that is in the hearts of men thus to grumble at Providence and to be so much out of humour as to fall sick as Ahab did for very vexation that we cannot enjoy what we have a mind to and a great longing to possess So great and stupendous is our stubborness and obstinacy not to yield to Gods will nor submit to his pleasure but to take on and rave like mad people and to complain grievously like Laban that we have lost our Gods our greatest hopes and comforts when God has only taken away our Idols But we had best have a care that we be not so very impatient and outragious when God takes away our Relations from us and so cause and provoke him to write more bitter things against us and bereave us of all our Worldly Comforts and of the light of his favour and the supports of his Spirit which would be the greatest and sorest loss that can possibly befal us Secondly By way of Exhortation to Parents and all others who may be concern'd in the loss of Relations and Friends that they would endeavour to compose themselves to a quiet and humble and patient submission to the will of God in the severest of his dispensations that they would comport and demean themselves with that temper and moderation at the Death of their Friends as becomes Christians who profess a firm belief of a future Resurrection and a future life in glory and that they would banish all unkind and uncharitable thoughts of God when he is pleased to take away their Darlings and Favourites and quietly acquiesce in his Providence and endeavour to believe that what God doth is best both for themselves and their Relations saying with all humility and submission of Soul It is the Lord let him do what seemeth him good Thirdly It would be wisdom in all Parents and others to consider that their Children and Friends are mortal and of humane race and that they are born in order to die And so Seneca advises his Friend Marcia not to grieve or take on desperately for the loss of her Son but to consider that mortality was an appendage to humane Nature Et ex quo primum lucem vidit iter mortis ingressus est that he no sooner began to live but he began to die and that life is a constant journeying and properation to the Grave And 't is well worth our remembring what is reported of Anaxagoras that when he was warmly ingag'd in a Philosophical Disquisition and word was brought unto him that his Son was dead he did not seem in any disorder or to be discompos'd at the news but went on with his Discourse very smoothly and only made this reply That he knew that he was the Father of one that was mortal Anaxagorae inter familiares suos de natura rerum disserenti filii mortem nunciatam tradunt nihilque aliud ab eo responsum nisi se illum genuisse mortalem Cicero de Consola And therefore all persons to prevent the being so much troubled and startled at the Death of their Relations should often meditate on Death and be frequently possess'd with thoughts of their own and others mortality and when they live in a daily expectation of their own Death and those that belong unto them they cannot be amaz'd at the early Death of their Relations or sorely afflicted when it pleaseth God to take them away first For the looking upon the life of their Relations to be altogether as uncertain as their own must needs make their death more tolerable than when they reckon and depend upon their living quae multo antè praevisà sunt languidius incurrunt sayes Seneca When we think of a thing long before-hand it loses of its terror and we are not so much troubled at it when it actually comes So that if we did but consider that our Children and Relations are as mortal as our selves and that 't is no rarity for them to die before us we should not proceed to break our hearts with overmuch grief or to bury our selves in sorrow at the death of our Relations come it sooner or later But as Seneca observes In hoc omnes errore versamur ut non putemus ad mortem nisi senes inclinatosque jam urgere cum illò infantia statim juventa omnisque aetas ferat 't is a general error and popular to think that the Aged and the Decrepit must needs die first whereas the youngest are as liable to Death as they and are taken away every whit as soon And again in the same Consolatory Discourse Tot praeter Domum nostram ducuntur exequiae de morte non cogitamus tot acerba funera Nos togam nostrorum infantium nos militiam Paternae haereditatis successionem animo agitamus There are sayes he so many Funerals and spectacles of mortality pass by our doors every day and we do not regard them nor lay to heart this Death of others But we are thinking to make our Children fine and great and what great Heirs they will be after our decease But we think of nothing less than our Childrens dying which makes their death so very grievous and surprizing unto us Whereas by a due premeditation on death and forestalling it in our thoughts both our own death and that of our Relations would become less terrible and astonishing as being a thing which we every day expected and stood looking for Fourthly It would be very reasonable and prudential to command or check our passion in due time and not to let it spin out to too great a length For as Seneca tells Marcia that our tears cannot always flow nor our mourning last always Dolorem dies consumit quamvis contumacissimum a little time or a few days will exhaust the Fountain of our tears and drain it dry and overcome the most obstinate grief And Cicero says the same thing Quòd etiamsi nolis tempore tamen ipso extenuatur evanescit that is we must give over sorrowing at last whether we will or no and when we have wept so long that we can weep no more and therefore 't is a stark shame that our
believe it why do we bewail the Death of our Friends with so much bitterness and lamentation as if they were utterly lost and gone as if they were past all joys and comfort and were to perish for ever Si enim à miseriis abstrahit si in meliorem vitam inducit si neque misera ipsa est nec ullius particeps miseriae cur mala censetur sin hoc largitur ut sempiternis bonis potiamur vitamque quam mortalem habemus aeternam adipiscamur quid morte beatius esse possit that is says Cicero if we do really believe that death doth abstract and deliver us from the miseries of this World and sets us far out of harms way and that 't is an entrance and introduction to a better life then what reason have we to look upon it as such a sad and grievous thing to die But if it be further granted that Death puts us into the possession of Eternal and never-failing blessings and that it slides us from a short and fading to an Everlasting Life we are then to repute Death our best and dearest Friend in that it leads and ushers us to such Endless Happiness But if we do not believe a Resurrection why are we so rash and formal as to own an Article that we dare not rely on Ah! We little think that the greatest Atheist in the World cannot make a greater Argument against our Religion than we do our selves when we let loose the reins of our passions and refuse to be comforted for the dead and wound and pierce our hearts thorough with great and mighty sorrows thereby testifying that we little believe a Life to come or a better State than this is or that our Friends have exchang'd for the better and therefore we had best look to it and endeavour to curb and check our passions that we do not give occasion to our Enemies to blaspheme and say where is that Heaven that place of rest and blessedness which you so much talk of where is that Faith of a future Life and a judgment to come which you so zealously profess how can you perswade us that you believe what you profess seeing that upon the trial you are ready to kill your selves with very grief for the Death of your Friends and Relations and thereby give a strong suspicion that you think this World the best Paradise for your Friends to live in and the other the best only to talk of To conclude Let us endeavour to possess our hearts and minds with a firm hope and perswasion of a future State and Eternal Life and then we shall be the freer to think of our own Death and be less troubled to part with our Friends and Relations when God thinks fit to take them away Simplicius in his Comment upon Epictetus cap. 33. does rightly observe how variously we are affected at the Death of others and the Death of our own Relations 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 If we hear sayes he of the Death of anothers Wife or Children we are not much concern'd but put it off very slightly and say that their dying is no wonder at all and that there is no reason to be much troubled at it forasmuch as Death is natural and common to all But then sayes he when we happen to lose any of our own Relations we seem to have another guise opinion of Death and to change our note 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is We hear of and see the death and burial of others patiently enough and without being much troubled or inwardly concern'd but when it comes home to our selves and we lose any of our own dear Friends and Relations we are presently in a storm and rise into a supream passion and in the bitterness of our Souls cry out that we are miserable and undone and the unhappiest people in the World and that there is no loss like our loss and that none has such great afflictions as we and then there is nothing to be heard or seen but great Lamentations and Mourning and a huge Scene of sorrows In which words the Philosopher does rightly note our partiality to our selves and how that we esteem and look upon Death to be only unkind and cruel to our selves and those that belong to us and that we can hear and think kindly enough of it at a distance but when it comes nigh us and touches us in our Relations then we are all mutiny and confusion And therefore it is a great Argument of our folly and indiscretion to waver and alter so much in our opinion of Death as to entertain worse thoughts of it at one time than another For albeit the more than ordinary sympathy that is between us and our Relations may defend and justifie our sorrowing somewhat more for them than for perfect Strangers yet it is against common sense and reason that we should be so desperately disquieted at that Providence which deprives us of our Relations whereas we are so little concern'd at the common fatality of Mankind And therefore it behoves us in point of Prudence to labour to have always the same thoughts and opinions of Death and to count it no more cruel no more an Enemy when it seizeth upon our own flesh and blood than when it seizeth upon the rest of humane race And if we make no great matter of the death of others whom we see daily fall to the ground looking upon it as a natural thing for them to die so let us consider that 't is every whit as natural for our Relations to die and nothing happens to them but what is common to all flesh living And this consideration the Philosopher looks upon as very just and reasonable and prescribes it as an excellent Remedy and Antidote against all immoderate sorrowing for the loss of our dearest Friends and Relations But alas why do I urge such a poor consideration as that of Death being common to all men to asswage and mitigate our sorrows for the Dead as if any consideration in the World could do it more effectually than our Christian Hope and the belief of another and better life hereafter Some indeed may attempt and endeavour to quiet and silence their sorrows by Arguments drawn from reason and the acute sayings of Philosophers and think they may be able from meer natural courage and some bold principles to laugh at and despise Death as well as the Stoicks did in their high rants and sullen moods but no Arguments or the most stubborn Principles in the World can be of equal force with our Christian Hope for that purpose A Hope that opens to us the Casements of Heaven and represents to us in a great measure the glories of the Resurrection the exact and full knowledge whereof cannot be attain'd in this narrow state of mortality and is far transcending all humane reach and comprehension so that for me to go about to make a full and compleat description of the excellencies and perfections