afraid to be Happy Indeed were our Tombs the Everlasting Repositories of our moulded Ashes and the Grave a sad Closet of Eternal Sleep a Man had some reason to tremble at the apprehensions of Death and since the Day cannot arise but through the shadows of the Night and there is no transition to Heaven and Eternal Life but through the Chambers of a Temporal Death we should be content to go that way to Glory that our Saviour went before Venerable Job under the sad Tragedy of Misery with a Triumphant kind of Joy laid up in his Bosome this joyful expectation I know my Redeemer liveth and though Worms destroy this Body yet in my Flesh shall I see God The same individual Bodies that died will be raised Marvel not at this for the hour is coming in the which all that are in the Grave shall hear his voice and come forth And the Resurrection of our Bodies is assured by Christs Testimony the veracity of Christ is witnessed by his Resurrection for Christ is the first-fruits of them that sleep As the first Fruits are a sure demonstration and evidence of the near approach and drawing on of the Harvest so the Resurrection of Christ is a sure ground of hope and comfort for assuring us that all those who dye Christs Disciples shall rise to a Blessed Immortality He shall make us partakers of his Glory and bring us into those everlasting Habitations where dwells an undisturbed Peace where neither Diseases approach the Body nor Vices have access unto the Mind where shall be life without fear of Death and Joys without mixture of Sorrow In the Primitive Times at Funerals they were wont to sing Psalms of Thanksgiving The 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Triumphant Song of St Paul O death where is thy sting O grave where is thy victory bringing them as Champions to the Grave as those that have passed the Pikes and finished their Course and kept the Faith and have conquered the World Sin and Death What cause is there now of Sorrow or Lamentation but rather of Joy and Gladness when we consider Deaths Errand it is our convoy to Heaven the dawning of an Eternal Day and Eve of a Glorious Festival the way wherein we must walk to Happiness If old Jacob when he saw the Chariots come from Aegypt his Heart did leap within him because he should see his Son Joseph We may imagine what a comfort it will be in the beatifical Vision when Adam shall see all his Grand-Children the Sons of Enos together Abraham his faithful Seed Moses his true Israelites Aaron his Spiritual Posterity John the Baptist shall see his Penitents Peter his Converts Paul his Followers the Angels shall see all their Wards God all his Sons Christ all his Members What a glorious appeaing will there be What a ravishing Heavenly Quire What an Anthem shall there be gloriously sung when the Gates of Heaven shall be as it were shut there being no more to enter and these made welcome by the mutual and ineffable embracements of God and Christ Christ now and his Believers like Joseph and Benjamin falling about each others Necks not weeping but shouting for Joy O that this confideration might have its proper operation in the Hearts and Minds of all so as to fear God and practise Religion that we may obtain a Glorious Reward for all Ornaments and Excellencies whether of Art Nature or Policy are but a dead thing unless they be animated and quickned with the power of Religion and fear of God therefore whether we aim at a Temporal or Spiritual good Religion is mainly to be magnified Many Blessings belong to the Religious which they enjoy in this Life The Riches of Grace are poured on them and the Word of Life is preach'd unto them their Thoughts are Heavenly and Hearts the Throne of the Holy Ghost their Tongues talk of the Praises of the Almighty and their Feet stand in the Temple of the Lord their Prayers are like Incense and the lifting up of their Hands as an Evening Sacrifice Who will not now become Religious to wear a Crown that never shall have an end after Death to have Angels their Companions and Saints their Fellows Heaven their dwelling Place and Pleasures of Paradise the recompence of their Reward If sumptuous and stately Buildings do delight what Habitation is so Magnificent and Glorious as the New Jerusalem If Riches what so Rich as that whose Foundation and Wall are of Precious Stones and Gates of Orient Pearls If Honour what Honour comparable to this to be Servants of the Most High the Sons of so mighty a King and Heirs of so Glorious a Kingdom where neither the Teeth of Time can consume nor Rancor of Envy deprive of Honour nor Power of Adversary spoil its Glory being endless and Incomprehensible There is no such gain as trading to Heaven to be Merchant Adventurers for Happiness all other things are nothing let this so raise your apprehensions as your Lives may be an Argument to prove it for if we do expect Salvation Mercy and Glory at the Hands of the Almighty we must be active in well doing Obedient to his Laws Confident in his Promises and Religious in his Service that so being followers of the Blessed Saints who are departed out of this Life in the Faith of Christ directing our Lives after their Good Example and particularly of this Pious Prince who has changed the Terrestrial Paradise of all his Kingdoms to be partaker of a Celestial One which is beyond the Power of Empire and grasps greater things than Authority or Command can compass his Name survives his Life and is anagram'd in the choicest Memories and stands in Renown amongst the greatest Worthies that either Pole can boast of being Embalm'd in Honour and whose Actions blossom in the Dust A voice from Heaven has declared Happiness to the Righteous Because blessed are the dead which dye in the Lord even so saith the Spirit for they rest from their labours and their works follow them NOW after the dayes of Mourning in England for the Death of Britain's Josiah the Great and Good King James the Second hath given us a day of rejoycing in the peaceable Accession to the Imperial Throne of these Kingdoms which hath been long and happily enjoyed by his Royal Ancestors and by an unquestionable Right and lineal Succession descends on his Sacred Majesty We have great cause to rejoyce when we consider our happiness that it hath pleased the Almighty God to give us for our King a Prince of the same Blood Son of Charles the Martyr and Brother to Charles the Good and Great and His Sacred Majesty has attained the Character of James the Just who is not only an Inheritor of the Crowns of his Royal Progenitors in all the Triumphs and Glories of a Coronation but of their Virtues And since the Blood of the Martyrs is the Seed of the Church it is the happiness of this Nation that the Seed of that Glorious Martyr of happy Memory is still to reign over us which turns our Tears into Joy and Exultation of Spirit praising and glorifying God for so great a Benefit We adore the Divine Goodness and acknowledge it a Miracle of Mercy by which he kept his Sacred Majesty in Store a Blessing in reserve for us who in the depth of our Affliction hath vouchsafed to bring us from Death to Life again by guiding us through the Horror of our Fears into a State of Security and Comfort by his Princely Word and Promise to follow the Example of our late Dread Sovereign in Clemency and Tenderness to his People And with equal Gratitude and hearts full of Duty and Allegiance we pay the Tribute of Thanks to his Sacred Majesty for his most Indulgent Declaration that he will take our Lives Liberties and Religion into his immediate Protection and the inviolable Steddiness of his Royal Word is that on which we rely with an intire Confidence for the Support and Enjoyment of our Establisht Religion a Religion that has been as his Majesty graciously observes and ever will be for the Maintenance of Monarchy And as our Church is the Rule to us of a pure and unspotted Loyalty so it is not possible we should lose the one since his most Illustrious Majesty is so graciously pleas'd to preserve the other And what can we desire more on this side Heaven than that we live under his auspicious Reign safe in our Religion and Properties What better pledges could we have asked for them than what we have his Sacred Word which hath made us intirely secure and hath left us nothing now to wish or pray for save only that it would please Almighty God by a merciful and over ruling Providence to defeat the Malice and to frustrate and disappoint all the Conspiracies of his Enemies And we humbly beseech the Great God the King of Kings to preserve his Sacred Majesty in Health and Happiness to prosper all his Affairs at home and abroad and make all his Subjects truly Loyal and Obedient and establish his Royal Throne many and many Years that he may long and happily Reign over us to the utmost period of Humane Nature and when the Crown shall slide from his Sacred Temples be at last translated to an Eternal Throne of Glory Amen Amen FINIS Gen. 3. 19. Gen. 2. 17. Gen. 5. Heb. 9. 27. Eccl. 12. 14. Matt. 25. 31. 32. Ib. 34. 41. M 〈…〉 25. 46. Dan. 12. 2. 18. 14. Psal 146. 4. Eccl. 2. 1 Eccl. 11. 9. Job 17. 14. Job 4. 19. Cant. 2. 3. Prov. 20. 28. Psal 19. 1. Isal 61. 8. John 25 8. 2 Chron. 8. 14. 2 Chr. 35. 24. Matt. 11. 29. 1 Pet. 5. 5. Jam. 4. 6. Tom. 2. Matt. 5. 41. Psal 112. 9. Isai 57. 2. Job 19. 25 26 27. Joh. 5. 28. John 11. 25. Acts 10. 38 39 40 41. 1 Cor. 15. 20. 1 Cor. 15. 14 15. 1 Cor. 15. 5. Revel 14. 13.
A LOYAL TEAR Dropt on the VAULT OF THE High and Mighty PRINCE CHARLES II. Of Glorious and Happy Memory 2 Chron. 35. 24. And all Judah and Jerusalem mourned for Josiah By HENRY ANDERSON M. A. Vicar of Kingsumborne in Hampshire LONDON Printed for Luke Meredith at the Kings Head in St Paul's Church-Yard 1685. TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE AND RIGHT REVEREND FATHER in GOD PETER Lord BISHOP of WINTON AND PRELATE of the GARTER MY LORD THE actings of Providence are no less various than unsearchable and it is both a pleasant and pious Employment to observe and meditate on Gods miraculous proceedings with Mankind For Providential Dispensations are discoveries of the Wisdom and Goodness of God in disposing of the conditions of his People whereby they may best glorifie him in whatever befalls them in this Temporal Life because a true Christian does as seriously study the Celestial Sphere and occurrences of Divine Providence as others do the Terrestrial Globe of this Corruptible Earth And since it has pleased Almighty God to speak to this Nation and Kingdom by the Messenger of Death in taking to his infinite Mercy our late Gracious Soveraign King Charles it must be acknowledg'd the bounty of a Divine Hand and we are bound to adore the Wisdom and Benignity of Heaven as S. Hierom suggested to Paula concerning the Death of Blaesilla whatsoever a good God doth cannot be bad therefore we must submit to the Divine Providence in translating that blessed Prince to a more glorious station to a Kingdom that cannot be shaken which is above all possibility of decay being incorruptible and fades not away Eternal in the Heavens Though the gain be his yet the loss is ours for when a good Prince dies a general damp and consternation seises the hearts of all Loyal Subjects because publick Calamity charges every Man with a rate of sorrow proportionable to the tenure of his understanding and the Memory of his late Majesty may justly oblige all his People to an excess of Tears as a signal of grief and Your Lordship comes in as a Chief Mourner who has had the Emanations of his Royal Favour which incourages my confidence to implore Your Lordships Patronage whereunto if you will vouchsafe to give the least approbation I shall not despair of the more favourable Censures of others and therefore it intreats Your Candid Interpretation and Acceptance of these Dedicatory Lines as a sincere Testimony of my Duty And that Your Lordship would be pleased to place me in the number of those that honour Your true Worth not only as to Episcopal Jurisdiction inspecting the Flock over which the Holy Ghost hath made You Overseer but also to Your Bounty and Liberality which sounds as far as your Name and displays the Ensign of Your Dignity worthy of double Honour for Your Generous and Brave Mind al must needs acknowledge and pay You Homage and Obeisance as Joseph's Brethren did to him with the greatest Veneration in which respect my most honoured Diocesan I am no less than Your Lordship's most Obedient Son and humble Servant HENRY ANDERSON A LOYAL TEAR Dropt on the VAULT OF THE High and Mighty PRINCE CHARLES II. THE frequent Objects of Mortality even of the greatest Monarchs daily presented before our Eyes should make us carefully to manage the moments of our Mortal Life Walking circumspectly not as Fools but as Wise 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 redeeming the time because it is enacted by the Statute Law of Heaven semel mori and written indelibly in the Dust That all must Dye If Adam had stood in his Primitive Glory and not fell from his Original Purity in the state of Innocency we had not known what Death or Misery had meant but continued a piece of Immortality to this very Day but Adam in an instant after he had sinned became Mortal no sooner Sin entred into his Soul but mortality and corruption immediately entered into his Body then the parcels of Dust that were bound together by the bond of innocency were shaken loose by the grosser spots of Sin our first Parents disobedience contracted and involv'd their Posterity in a Labyrinth of Miseries and our Misery is not of yesterday but as antient as the first Criminal and our perplexities almost coaeval with Humane Nature The Day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely Dye viz. thou shalt be guilty of Death and thy Body shall that very hour become Mortal subject to infinite number of Chances Diseases and Old Age continually decaying unto the last Destruction of this Bodily Mass languishing to its fatal period and hastening to the dark Cells of the Grave which are the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 dormitories and sleeping Places of the Dead till the joyful Morning of the Resurrection Death insults over the frailties of Mankind for all the Tombs and Charnels of the World are but so many Monuments of Deaths Conquests and the instability of Humane Greatness how all things on this side Heaven are fleeting and transitory If I should procure you a Painter to pencil Death he would shew you a grim Anatomy with a lean Body a pale Face and a wann Countenance c. That which hath devoured the World so many times over like Pharaoh's lean Kine is as lean as ever The Bell still toles for the voluptuous Epicure and the Earth that insatiable Grave longs for his corpulent Body to feast Worms The swift motion of the Heavens roles up the thread of our Lives and the fleet Horse on which Death runs is still posting after us Crowns nor Scepters can't secure from the Artillery of Death There is no confidence to be placed in Humane Prosperity for neither Kingdom Empire nor any Greatness whatsoever can secure their owners from ruine Behold Andronicus cloathed in Purple adored by Nations commanding the East his Temples enriched with a Royal Diadem the Imperial Scepter in his Hands and his very Shoes studded with Oriental Gemms yet pays his Life as Tribute to Death so that the Majesty of the greatest Monarchs are subject to perish Think upon this seriously that the Gates of Death are ever open and the Enemy lies continually in ambush to assault u◠nay there is not a Vein or Artery but is a Room in Natures Work-house wherein our humours as so many Cyclops's are forging those Instruments of Mortality and in an instant hurry us into our Graves Every Day Hour and Moment wears away a part of our Life and so much as is already spent so far we are already Dead So that the longest liver as the Antediluvian Patriarchs witness is no more but only longer a dying than others It is appointed saith the Apostle 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 unto Men once to dye but after this to Judgment where they shall receive for the deeds of the Body whether it be good or evil They that have done good to the resurrection of life and they that have done evil unto eternal damnation This proclaims our happiness or
him The Jews likewise who were of the greater and better sort had their Sepulchres in their Gardens that in the midst of their pleasures they might be mindful of Death and to be unto them as monitors of their mortality So while we are contriving our profits and pleasures our employments and recreations and sharing out our lives among them let us not forget how easily we may be cut off by the sudden and surprising stroaks of death Fabius the Roman Senator was suffocated with a hair in a little milk Pope Adrian by a gnat flying into his mouth Anacreon the Poet swallowed death in a grape Homer also was murder'd by a fit of grief And Sophocles died of an excess of joy Death may possibly fly to us as once to Aeschylus in an Eagles wing or fall like Pindarus by our repose or else we may be snapped in pieces by some sad accident and the thread of our Life worn away by a languishing Consumption and burnt asunder by a violent Fever benumm'd with Palsies Lethargies Epilepsies Convulsions and other innumerable diseases that cause the dissolution of our earthly Tabernacle and bring us into Job's Lineage I have said to the Grave thou art my house to Corruption thou art my Father Brother to the Worms and Sister to the Dust If we contemplate the nature of things we may see how nothing is without the Empire of death the day dies into night and the Summer into Winter the life of to day is the death of yesterday we die dayly and it is great ignorance to think the greatest Potentates are exempt from the common ruine Every little publick or personal Cross is a petty death and a Harbenger sent by that insatiable enemy of humane nature to take possession of his right An Apoplexie in the Brain an Inflammation or Quinsie in the Throat a violent eruption or sudden Rising of the Lights may quickly dispatch us and cause us in an instant to die and shut the great Gulph of Eternity and Eternity at one draught swallows up the fluency of time and is above the temporal conditions of past present and to come Man is a compound of jarring qualities heat cold drought and moisture which are always wageing an intestine war within him so that poor mortals are subject to desolation every moment For the truth of this let us search the Records of the Grave there lies the rich and the poor the wise and the foolish the learned and unlearned the Noble and Ignoble even the rubbish of a thousand generations heaped up one upon another Our very Graves were once living we dig through the veins of our Forefathers and we must shortly become earth to bury our Posterity therefore let us learn the necessity of dying for amongst all Arts and Sciences whatsoever there is none in comparison more beseeming our Christian care than that which teaches us to live righteously and godly here that afterwards we may live eternally when we depart hence and be happy in the Regions of bliss in the world to come Life is a spot of time between two Eternities and it is an act of the greatest prudence to pray for Divine Arithmetick to number our days and apply our hearts to wisdom and contemplate with our selves of the uncertainty of life that our hearts may be lifted up to desire the Heavenly inheritance It is but a small remnant of time we have to live our Days are but a span long while we turn our selves Immortality will be here Abraham had not in the Land of Canaan any Ground of his own to dwell in but only the Inheritance of a Sepulchre And this is that we may truly claim for we are Sojourners as all our Fathers were in Houses of Clay as Eliphaz the Temanite fitly calls them whose foundation is in the dust because the claims of honour can give no priviledge from the Arrests of the grim Serjeant Death Pallida mors aequo pulsat pede pauperum tabernas Regumque turres If Majesty or Greatness could have staid the violent hands of Death we had not condoled the Funeral Obsequies and mournful Solemnity of the Royal Charles but as the Painter Tymanthes being to express Agamemnon's Grief conceiv'd for the loss of his Daughter Iphigenia drew him with his Face covered over with a Vail that Men might conceive that sorrow which he could not express So in the rehearsal of our present sufferings who can express that Grief of Heart the English Nation is plung'd in for the Death of the High and Mighty Prince Charles our most Dread Soveraign who hath not a Vail cast over their Face in token of a great dejection paying the tribute of Sorrow to his Memory which they owed of Love and Allegiance to his Person Our Royal Joshua and all the Elders of our Israel the King and Kingdom put on Sable Colours as it fit for Mourners all wearing the Blacks of Sadness pouring forth their Souls into melting Accents shewing it self in Sobs and Sighs and commenting on it with Tears for a forced Separation quis talia fando Temperet à lachrymis In the fall of this Royal and Stately Cedar for as the Apple Tree among the Trees of the Wood so was He among the Sons of Men. First The Apple-Tree as it is a good flourishing and beautiful Tree and it doth not only bud and blossome but bring forth Fruit So this Royal Tree that is cut down by the Axe of Death whilst it stood was beautiful and flourishing His Converse gave his Nobles a pattern of harmless and inoffensive Mirth a sweetness and familiarity that at once gain'd Love and preserv'd Respect in all his Subjects a Nobility and Grandeur safe in its own Worth not maintaining it self by a morose distance but comporting with the greatest Majesty so that Gallantry and Bravery of Spirit and Deportment were the Buds of this Royal Tree thus Virtue and Honour become Rivals and Vice and Baseness become extinct Pure Oyl cannot mingle with Water nor the extracted quintessence of true Nobleness with the dregs of unworthiness and so Clemency sweetness of Nature and candor of Disposition were the buds and blossoms of this Royal Tree Tam bene conveniunt in una sede morantur Majestas Amor He fetter'd them with Goodness this Chain 's stronger Than that made out of Brass and doth last longer This is a double Conquest which doth bind The Soul in Chains and captivate the Mind Thus was he a mighty Sovereign in the hearts of his People ruling all his Dominions with the Scepter of his Clemency and Tenderness which is the most amiable thing to Mankind And who is it that can disparage that commendable ornament of civil and decent demeanour it being congruous to the simplicity of the Gospel which aggrandizes the renown of this mighty Monarch to the most wise and perpetuates his worth with the remembrance of honour These qualifications meeting with a brave and aspiring mind conquer'd men and