turn his blessing into a curse Yea the same God who best knows the price of his own favours as he makes no small estimation of age himself so he hath thought fit to call for an high respect to be given to it by men out of an holy awe to himself Thou shalt rise up before the hoary head and honour the face of the old man and fear thy God I am the Lord. Hence it is that he hath pleased to put together the Ancient and the Honourable and hath told us that an hoary head is a crown of glory if it be found in a way of righteousness And lastly makes it an argument of the deplored estate of Jerusalem that they favoured not the Elders As therefore we too sensibly feel what to complain of so we well know what priviledges we may challenge as due to our age even such as nature it self hath taught those heathens which have been in the next degree to savage If pride and skill have made the Athenians uncivill yet a yong Lacedemonian will rise up and yeeld his place in the Theatre to neglected age §. 3. The advantages of old age 1. Fearlesnesse It is not a little injurious so to fasten our eyes upon the discommodities of any condition as not to take in the advantages that belong to it which carefully laid together may perhaps sway the balance to an equall poise Let it be true that old age is oppressed with many bodily griefes but what if it yeeld other immunities which may keep the scales even whereof it is not the least that it gives us firm resolution and bold security against dangers and death it selfe For the old man knowes how little of his clew is left in the winding and therefore when just occasion is offered sticks not much upon so inconsiderable a remainder Old age and orbity as Cesellius professed were those two things that emboldened him And when Castritius refused to deliver the hostages of Placentia to Carbo the Consul and was threatned with many swords hee answered those menaces with his many yeares And that wee may not disdain home-bred instances and may see that brave spirits may lodge in cottages In my time a plain Villager in the Rude Peake when theeves taking advantage of the absence of his family breaking into his solitary dwelling and finding him sitting alone by his fire side fell violently upon him and one of them setting his dagger to his heart swore that he would presently kill him if he did not instantly deliver to them that money which they knew he had lately received the old man looks boldly in the face of that stout Villain and with an undaunted courage returnes him this answer in his Peakish Dialect Nay even put fro thee sonne I have lived long enough but I tell thee unlesse thou mend thy manners thou wilt never live to see halfe my daies put fro thee if thou wilt What young man would have been so easily induced to part with his life and have been so ready to give entertainment to an unexpected death Surely the hope and love of life commonly softens the spirits of vigorous youth and disswades it from those enterprises which are attended with manifest perill whereas extream age teacheth us to contemn dangers §. 4. The second advantage of old age Freedome from passions Yet a greater priviledge of age is a freedome from those impetuous passions wherewith youth is commonly over-swayed for together with our naturall heat is also abated the heat of our inordinate lusts so as now our weaker appetite may easily be subdued to reason The temperate old man in the Story when one shewed him a beautifull face could answer I have long since left to be eyesick And that other could say of pleasure I have gladly with drawn my self from the service of that imperious mistresse What an unreasonable vassalage our youthfull lusts subject us unto we need no other instance then in the strongest and wisest man How was the strongest man Sampson effeminated by his impotent passion and weakned in his intellectuals so far as wilfully to betray his own life to a mercenary Harlot and to endure to hear her say Tell mee wherewith thou mayest be bouud to doe thee hurt How easily might he have answered thee O Delila Even with these cords of brutish sensuality wherewith thou hast already bound me to the losse of my liberty mine eyes my life How was the wisest man Solomon besotted with his strange Wives so as to be drawn away to the worship of strange gods And how may the firre trees howle when the Cedars fall who can hope to be free from being transported with irregular affections when wee see such great precedents of frailty before our eyes From the danger of these miserable miscarriages our age happily secures us putting us into that quiet harbour whence we may see young men perillously tossed with those tempests of unruly passions from which our cooler age hath freed us §. 5. The third advantage of age experimentall knowledge Adde hereunto the benefit of experimentall knowledge wherewith age is wont to enrich us every dram whereof is worth many pounds of the best youthly contentments in comparison whereof the speculative knowledge is weak and imperfect this may come good cheap perhaps costs us nothing that commonly we pay deare for and therefore is justly esteemed the more precious If experience be the mistresse of fools I am sure it is the mother of wisedome neither can it be except we be too much wanting to our selves but the long observation of such variety of actions and events as meet with us in the whole course of our life must needs leave with us such sure rules of judgement as may be unfailing directions for our selves and others In vain shall this be expected from our younger yeares which the wise Philosopher excludes from being meet Auditors much lesse Judges of true morality In regard whereof well might the old man say Yee young men think us old men fooles but we old men know you young men to be fooles Certainly what value soever ignorance may put upon it this fruit of age is such as that the earth hath nothing equally precious It was a profane word and fit for the mouth of an Heathen Poet That Prudence is above Destiny But surely a Christian may modestly and justly say That next to Divine Providence Humane Prudence may challenge the supreme place in the administration of these earthly affairs and that Age may claim the greatest interest in that Prudence Young Elihu could say Multitude of yeers should teach wisdom And the wise man Oh how comely a thing is judgement for gray hairs and for ancient men to know counsel Oh how comely is the wisdom of old men and understanding and counsel to men of honour In regard whereof the Grecians had wont to say that young men are for Action old men for Advice And among the Romans we
better eyes 239 Sect. 3. Comfort from the better object of inward sight ib. Sect. 4. The ill offâ—ices done by the eyes 241 Sect. 5. The freedome from temptations by the eye and freedome from many sorrows 243 Sect. 6. The chearfulnesse of some blind men 247 Sect. 7. The supply which God gives in other faculties 248 Sect. 8. The benefit of the eyes which once we had 252 Sect. 9. The supply of one sense by another 255 Sect. 10. The better condition of the inward ear 258 Sect. 11. The grief that arises from hearing evill things 260 Comforts against barrennesse 261 Sect. 1. The blessing of fruitfulnesse seasoned with sorrows 261 Sect. 2. The paines of child-bearing 263 Sect. 3. The misery of ill disposed and undutifull children 265 Sect. 4. The cares of Parents for their children 267 Sect. 5. The great grief in the losse of children 273 Comforts against want of sleep 276 Sect. 1. The misery of the want of rest with the best remedy 276 Sect. 2. The favor of freedom from pain 280 Sect. 2. The great favour of health without sleep 281 Sect. 4. Sleep is but a symptome of mortality 284 Sect. 5. No use of sleep whither we are going 286 Comforts against the inconveniencies of old age 287 Sect. 1. The illimitation of age and the miseries attending it 287 Sect. 2. Old age is a blessing 292 Sect. 3. The advantages of old age 1 Fearlesness 295 Sect. 4. The next advantage of old age Freedom from impetuous passions of lust 298 Sect. 5. The third advantage Experimentall knowledge 301 Sect. 6. Age in some persons vigorous and well-affected 306 Sect. 7. The fourth advantage of age near approach to our end 308 Comforts against the fears and pains of death 311 Sect. 1. The fear of death naturall 311 Sect. 2. Remedy of feare acquaintance with death 313 Sect. 3. The misapprehension of death injurious 315 Sect. 4. Comfort from the common condition of men 318 Sect. 5. Death not feared by some 320 Sect. 6. Our deaths-day better then our birth-day 322 Sect. 7. The sting of death pull'd out 323 Sect. 8. Death but a parting to meet again 324 Sect. 9. Death but a sleep 326 Sect. 10. Death sweetned to us by Christ 330 Sect. 11. The painfulnesse of Christs death 332 Sect. 12. The vanity and miseries of life 334 Sect. 13. Examples of the courageous resolutions of others 338 Sect. 14. The happy advantages of death 341 Comforts against the terrours of Judgement 347 Sect. 1. Aggravations of the fearefulnesse of the last Iudgment 347 Sect. 2. Comfort from the condition of the elect 350 Sect. 3. Awe more fit for thoughts of judgment then terrour 354 Sect. 4. In that great and terrible day our Advocate is our Iudge 356 Sect. 5. Frequent meditation and due preparation the true remedy of fear 361 Comforts against the fears of spirituall enemies 364 Sect. 1. The great power of evill spirits and their restraint 364 Sect. 2. The fear of the number of evil spirits and the remedy of it 368 Sect. 3. The malice of the evill spirits and our fears thereof remedied 373 Sect. 4. The great subtilty of evill spirits and the remedie of the feare thereof 376 The universal Reeeipt for all Maladies 385 I Have perused this excellent Treatise intituled The Balm of GILEAD containing in it many singular medicines and soverain Salves compounded and made up with so many sweet and spirituall Ingredients of holy and heavenly consolations as may be sufficient and effectual being rightly applied to cure and heal all sicknesses and sores of body and mind caused by the fearfull apprehension of imminent dangers or the sense of present evils unto which I subscribe my probatum est and do allow it to be Printed and Published JOHN DOVVNAME THE COMFORTER Comforts for the sick Bed The Preface WHat should we do in this vale of teares but bemoan each others miseries Every man hath his load and well is he whose burthen is so easie that he may help his neighbours Hear me my son my age hath waded through a world of sorrowes The Angel that hath hitherto redeemed my soul from all evill and hath led me within few paces of the shore offers to lend thee his hand to guide thee in this dangerous foard wherein every error is death Let us follow him with an humble confidence and bee safe in the view and pity of the wofull miscarriages of others § 1. Aggravation of the misery of sicknesse Thou art now cast upon the bed of sicknesse roaring out all the day long for the extreamity of thy pain measuring the slow houres not by minutes but by groanes Thy soule is weary of thy life through the intolerable anguish of thy spirit Of all earthly afflictions this is the soarest Job himself after the sudden and astonishing newâ—â— of the losse of his goods and children could yet beare up and blesse the God that gives and takes but when his body was tormented and was made one boyle now his patience is retched so farre as to curse not his God but his Nativity The great King questioning with his Cup-bearer NEHEMIAH can say Why is thy countenance sad seeing thou art not sick as implying that the sick man of all other hath just cause to be dejected worldly crosses are aloofe off from us sicknesse is in our bosome those touch ours onely these our selves here the whole man suffers what could the body feele without the Soule that animates it how can the soule which makes the body sensible choose but be most affected with that pain whereof it gives sense to the body Both partners have enough to doe to encounter so fierce an enemy The sharper assault requires the more powerfull resistance Recollect thy self my son and call up all the powers of thy soul to grapple with so violent an enemy § 2. 1 Comfort from the freedom of the soul. Thy body is by a sore disease consined to thy bed I should be sorry to say thou thy self wert so Thy soul which is thy self is I hope elsewhere That however it is content to take a share in thy sufferings soares above to the heaven of heavens and is prostrate before the throne of grace suing for mercy and forgivenesse beholding the face of thy glorious Mediator interceding for thee wo were to us if our souls were coffin'd up in our bosomes so as they could not stirre abroad nor goe any further then they are carried like some snail or tortoise that cannot move out of the shell Blessed be God he hath given us active spirits that can bestirre themselves whiles our bodies lie still that can be so quicke and nimble in their motions as that they can passe from earth to heaven ere our bodies can turn to the other side and how much shall we be wanting to our selves if we doe not make use of this spirituall agilitie sending up these spirits of ours from this dull clay of our
bodies to those regions of blessednesse that they may thence fetch comfort to alleviate the sorrows of their heavie partners Thus doe thou my sonne imploy thy better part no paines of the worse can make thee miserable That spirituall part of thine shall ere long be in blisse whiles this earthen peece shall lye rotting in the grave Why shouldst thou not even now before thy separation improve all the powers of it to thy present advantage Let that still behold the face of thy God in glory whiles thy bodily eyes look upon those friends at thy bed side which may pity but cannot help thee § 3. 2 Comfort from the author of sicknesse and the benefit of it Thou art pained with sicknesse Consider seriously whence it is that thou thus smartest Affliction commeth not out of the dust couldst thou but heare the voyce of thy disease as well as thou feelest the stroke of it it saith loud enough Am I come up hither without the Lord to torment thee The Lord hath said to me Goe up against this man and afflict him Couldst thou see the hand that smites thee thou couldst not but kisse it Why man it is thy good God the Father of all mercies that layes these stripes upon thee Hee that made thee he that bought thee at so deare a rate as his owne blood it is he that chastiseth thee and canst thou think he would whip thee but for thy good Thou art a Father of children and art acquainted with thine owne bowels Didst thou ever take the â—od into thy hand out of a pleasure that thou tookest in smiting that flesh which is derived from thine owne loines Was it any ease to thee to make thy child smart and bleed Didst thou not suffer more then thou inflictedst Couldst thou not rather have been content to have redeemed those his stripes with thine own Yet thou sawest good reason to lay on and not to spare for his loud crying and many teares and canst say thou hadst not loved him if thou hadst not been so kindly severe And if we that are evill know how to give loving and beneficiall correction unto our children how much more shall our Father which is in heaven know how to beat us to our advantage so as wee may sing under the rod with the blessed Psalmist I know O Lord that thy judgements are right and that of very faith fulnesse thou hast afflicted me Might the child be made arbiter of his own chastisement do we think he would award himself so much as one lash yet the wiser parent knowes he shall wrong him if he doe not inflict more as having learned of wise Solomon Thou shalt beat him with the rod and shalt deliver his soul from hell Love hath his stroaks saith Ambrose which are so much the sweeter by how much they are the harder set on Dost thou not remember the message that the two sisters sent to our Saviour Lord behold hee whom thou lovest is sick Were it so that pain or sicknesse or any other the executioners of Divine justice should be let loose upon thee to tyrannize over thee at pleasure on purpose to render thee perfectly miserable there were just reason for thy utter disheartening now they are stinted and goe under commission neither can they bee allowed to have any other limits then thy own advantage Tell me whether hadst thou rather be good or be healthfull I know thou wouldst bee both and thinkst thou mayst well be so Who is so little in his owne favour as to imagine hee can be the worse for faring well But he that made thee lookes farther into thee then thine owne eyes can doe he sees thy vigour is turning wanton and that if thy body be not sick thy soul will if he therefore finde it sit to take downe thy worse part a little for the preventing of a mortall danger to the better what cause hast thou to complain yea rather not to be thankfull When thou hast felt thy body in a distemper of fulnesse thou hast gone to sea on purpose to make thy self sick yet thou knewest that turning of thy head and stomach would bee more painful to thee then thy former indisposition why should not thine alâ—wise Creator take liberty to cure thee with an afflictious remedy § 4 3 Comfort from the vicissitudes of health Thou art now sick Wert thou not before a long time healthfull Canst thou not be content to take thy turns If thou hadst had more daies of health then houres of sicknesse how canst thou think thou hadst cause to repine Had the divine Wisedome thought sit to mitigate thy many daies pain with the ease of one hour it had been well worthy of thy thanks but now that it hath before-hand requited thy few painfull houres with yeares of perfect health how unthankfully dost thou grudge at the condition It was a foule mistake if thou didst not from all earthly things expect a vicissitude they cannot have their being without a change As well may day be without a succession of night and life without death as a mortall body without sits of distemper and how much better are these momentany changes then that last change of a misery unchangeable It was a wofull word that Father Abraham said to the damned glutron Son remember that thou in thy life time receivedst thy good things and Lazarus evill things but now he is comforted and thou art tormented Oh happy stripes wherewith we are here chastened of the Lord that we may not bee condemned with the world Oh welcome feavers that may quit my soule from everlasting burnings § 5 4 Comfort Sicknesse better then sinfull health Thou complainest of sicknesse I have known those that have bestowed teares upon their too much health sadly bemoaning the feare and danger of Gods disfavour for that they ayled nothing and our Bromiard tels us of a devout man in his time that bewailed his continued welfare as no small affliction whom soon after God fitted with pain enough The poore man joyed in the change and held his sicknesse a mercy neither indeed was it otherwise intended by him that sent it Why are we too much dejected with that which others complain to want why should we finde that so tedious to us which others have wished There have been Medicinal Agues which the wise Physitian hath cast his Patient into for the cure of a worse distemper A secure and lawless health how ever Nature takes it is the most dangerous indisposition of the soul if that may be healed by some few bodily pangs the advantage is unspeakable Look upon some vigorous Gallant that in the height of his spirit and the heat of his blood eagerly pursues his carnal delights as thinking of no heaven but the free delectation of his sense and compare thy present estate with his Here thou liest groaning and sighing and panting and shifting thy weary sides complaining of the heavie pace
with the expectation of that blessednesse which if thy torments were no lesse then those of hell would make more then abundant amends for all thy sufferings §. 12. 11. Comfort The favour of a peaceable passage out of the world Thou art sick to die having received the sentence of death in thy selfe thy Physitian hath given thee up to act this last part alone neither art thou like to rise any more till the generall resurrection How many thousands have died lately that would have thought it a great happinesse to die thus quietly in their beds whom the storme of warre hath hurried away furiously into another world snatching them suddenly out of this not suffering them to take leave of that life which they are forced to abandon whereas thou hast a fair leasure to prepare thy self for the entertainment of thy last guest to set both thine house in order and thy soule It is no small advantage my son thus to see death at a distance and to observe every of his paces towards thee that thou maist put thy selfe into a fit posture to meet this grim messenger of heaven who comes to fetch thee to immortality That dying thus by gentle degrees thou hast the leasure with the holy Patriarch Iacob to call thy children about thee to bequeath to each of them the dear legacy of thy last benediction and that being incompassed with thy sad friends now in thy long journey to a far country though thine and their home thou maist take a solemn farewell of them as going somewhat before them to the appointed happy meeting place of glory and blessednesse That one of thine own may close up those eyes which shall in their next opening see the face of thy most glorious Saviour and see this flesh now ready to lie down in corruption made like to his in unspeakable glory Comforts for the sick Soul § 1. The happiness of a deep sorrow for sin THy sin lies heavie upon thy soul Blessed be God that thou feel'st it so many a one hath more weight upon him and boasteth of ease There is musick in this complaint the Father of mercies delights to hear it as next to the melody of Saints and Angels Go on still and continue these sorrowful notes if ever thou look for sound comfort It is this godly sorrow that worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of Weep still and make not too much haste to dry up these tears for they are precious and held fit to be reserved in the bottle of the Almighty Over-speedy remedies may prove injurious to the Patient and as in the body so in the soul diseases and tumors must have their due maturation ere there can be a perfect cure The inwards of the Sacrifice must be three times rinsed with water One ablution will not serve the turn but when thou hast emptied thine eyes of tears and unloaded thy brest of leasurely sighs I shall then by full commission from him that hath the power of remission say to thee Son be of good comfort thy sins are forgiven thee § 2. Comfort from the welgrounded declaration of pardon Think not this word meerly formal and forceless He that hath the keys of hell and of death hath not said in vain Whose sins ye remit they are remitted The words of his faithful Ministers on earth are ratified in heaven Onely the Priest under the Law had power to pronounce the Leper clean had any other Israelite done it it had been as unprofitable as presumptuous It is a precious word that fell from Elihu When a mans soul draweth nigh to the grave and his life to the destroyer if there be a messenger of God with him an interpreter one among a thousand to shew unto that man his uprightness then he i. e. God is gracious unto him and saith Deliver him from going down into the pit I have found a ransom Behold this is thy case my son the life of thy soul is in danger of the Destroyer through his powerful temptations I am howsoever unworthy a messenger sent to thee from heaven and in the Name of that great God that sent me I do here upon the sight of thy serious repentance before Angels and men declare thy soul to stand right in the Court of heaven the invaluable ransom of thy dear Saviour is laid down and accepted for thee thou art delivered from going down into the pit of horrour and perdition § 3. Aggravation of the grievous condition of the Patient and remedies from mercy applied Oh happie message thou saist were it as sure as it is comfortable But alas my heart findes many and deep grounds of fear and diffidence which will not easily be removed That smites me whiles you offer to acquit me and tells me I am in a worse condition then a looker on can imagine my sins are beyond measure hainous such as my thoughts tremble at such as I dare not utter to the God that knows them and against whom onely they are committed there is horrour in their very remembrance what will there then be in their retribution They are bitter things that thou urgest against thy self my son no adversary could plead worse But I admit thy vileness be thou as bad as Satan can make thee It is not either his malice or thy wickedness that can shut thee out from mercy Be thou as foul as sin can make thee yet there is a fountain opened to the house of David a bloody fountain in the side of thy Saviour for sin and for uncleanness Be thou as leprous as that Syrian was of old if thou canst but wash seven times in the waters of this Jordan thou canst not but be clean thy flesh shall come again to thee like to the flesh of a little childe thou shalt be at once sound and innocent Be thou stung unto death with the fiery serpents of this wilderness yet if thou canst but cast thine eyes to that Brazen Serpent which is erected there thou canst not fail of cure Wherefore came the Son of God into the world but to save sinners Adde if thou wilt whereof I am chief thou canst say no worse by thy self then a better man did before thee who in the right of a sinner claimeth the benefit of a Saviour Were it not for our sin what use were there of a Redeemer Were not our sin hainous how should it have required such an expiation as the blood of the eternal Son of God Take comfort to thy self my son the greatness of thy sin serves but to magnifie the mercy of the Forgiver to remit the debt of some few farthings it were small thank but to strike off the scores of thousands of talents it is the height of bounâ—y Thus doth thy God to thee he hath suffered thee to run on in his books to so deep a sum that when thy conscious heart hath proclaimed thee bankrupt he may infinitly oblige thee
with the measure of that penitence which is accepted of thy God rather turn thine eies from thy sins and look up to heaven and fasten them there upon thine all-sufficient Mediator at the right hand of Majesty and see his face smiling upon thine humbled soul and perfectly reconciling thee to his eternall Father as being fully assured That being justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ By whom also wee have accesse by faith into this grace wherein we stand and rejoyce in the hope of the glory of God §. 7. Complaint of the want of faith satisfied Yea there there thou sayest is the very core of all my complaint I want that faith that should give me an interest in my Saviour and afford true comfort to my soule and boldnesse and accesse with confidence to the throne of grace I can sorrow but I cannot beleeve My griefe is not so great as my infidelity I see others full of joy and peace in beleeving but my earthen heart cannot raise it selfe up to a comfortable apprehension of my Saviour so as me thinks I dwell in a kinde of disconsolate darknesse and a sad lumpishnesse of unbeleef wanting that lightsome assurance which others professe to finde in themselves Take heed my son lest whiles thou art too querulous thou prove unthankfull and lest whiles thine humblenesse disparages thy self thou make God a loser Many a man may have a rich mine lying deep in his ground which he knowes not of There are shels that are inwardly furnished with pearles of great price and are not sensible of their worth This is thy condition thou hast that grace which thou complainest to want It is no measuring of thy selfe by sense especially in the time of temptation Thou couldst not so feelingly bemoan the want of faith if thou hadst it not Deny it if thou canst thou assentest to the truth of all the gracious promises of God thou acknowledgest he could not be himselfe if he were not a true God yea truth it self Thou canst not doubt but that he hath made sweet promises of free grace and mercy to all penitent sinners thou canst not but grant that thou art sinfull enough to need mercy and sorrowfull enough to desire and receive mercy Canst thou but love thy selfe so well as that when thou seest a pardon reached forth to thee to save thy soule from death thou shouldst doe any other then stretch forth thy hand to take it Lo this hand stretched forth is thy faith which so takes spirituall hold of thy Saviour that it cals not thy sense to witnesse As for that assurance thou speakest of they are happy that can truly feel maintain it and it must be our holy ambition what we may to aspire unto it but that is such an height of perfection as every traveller in this wretched pilgrimage cannot whiles he is in this perplexed and heavy way hope to attain unto It is an unsafe and perillous path which those men have walked in who have been wont to define all faith by assurance Should I lead thee that way it might cost thee a fall so sure a certainty of our constant and reflected apprehension of eternall life is both hard to get and not easie to hold unmovably considering the many and strong temptations that we are subject unto in this vale of misery and death Should faith be reduced to this triall it would be yet more rare then our Saviour hath foretold it For as many a one boasts of such an assurance who is yet failing of a true faith hugging a vain presumption in stead of it so many a one also hath true faith in the Lord Iesus who yet complaines to want this assurance Canst thou in a sense of thine owne misery close with thy Saviour canst thou throw thy self into the arms of his mercy canst thou trust him with thy soul and repose thy self upon him for forgivenesse and salvation canst thou lay thy self before him as a miserable object of his grace and mercy and when it is held forth to thee canst thou lay some though weak hold upon it Labour what thou mayst for further degrees of strength daily set not up thy rest in this pitch of grace but chear up thy self my son even thus much faith shall save thy soul Thou believest and he hath said it that is Truth it self He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life § 8. Complaint of the weakness of faith satisfied I know thou sayest that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners And that whosoever believeth in him shall not perish but have eternal life Neither can I deny but that in a sense of my own sinful condition I do cast my self in some measure upon my Saviour and lay some hold upon his All-sufficient Redemption But alas my apprehensions of him are so feeble as that they can afford no sound comfort to my soul. Courage my son were it that thou lookedst to be justified and saved by the power of the very act of thy faith thou hadst reason to be disheartened with the conscience of the weakness thereof but now that the vertue and efficacie of this happie work is in the object apprehended by thee which is the infinite merits and mercy of thy God and Saviour which cannot be abated by thine infirmities thou hast cause to take heart to thy self and chearfully to expect his salvation Understand thy case aright Here is a double hand that helps us up towards heaven our hand of Faith lays hold upon our Saviour our Saviours hand of mercy and plenteous redemption lays hold on us our hold of him is feeble and easily loosed his hold of us is strong and irresistible Comfort thy self therefore in this with the blessed Apostle When thou art weak then thou art strong when weak in thy self strong in thy Redeemer Shouldst thou boast of thy strength and say Tush I shall never be moved I should suspect the truth and safety of thy condition now thou bewailest thy weakness I cannot but encourage and congratulate the happie estate of thy soul. If work were stood upon a strength of hand were necessary but now that onely taking and receiving of a precious gift is required why may not a weak hand do that as well as a strong as well though not as forcibly Be not therefore dejected with the want of thine own power but comfort thy self in the rich mercies of thy blessed Redeemer § 9. Complaint of inconâ—tancy and desertion answered Now thou saist Sometimes I confess I finde my heart at ease in a comfortable reliance on my Saviour and being well resolved of the safety of my estate promise good days to my self and after the banishment of my former fears dare bid defiance to temptations But alas how soon is this fair weather over how suddenly is this clear skie over-clouded and spread over with a sad darkness and I return to my former heartlesness
I could be ascertained of mine election to life I could be patient so I might be sure But wretched man that I am here here I stickâ— I see others walk confidently and comfortably as if they were in heaven already whereas I droop under a continual diffidence raising unto my self daily new arguments of my distrust could my heart be setled in this assurance nothing could ever make me other then happie It is true my son that as all other mercies flow from this of our election so the securing of this one involves all other favours that concern the well-being of our souls It is no less true that our election may be assured else the holy Ghost had never laid so deep a charge upon us to do our utmost endeavour to ascertain it and we shall be much wanting to our selves if hearing so excellent a blessing may be attained by our diligence we shall slacken our hand and not stretch it forth to the height to reach that crown which is held out to us But withal it is true that if there were not difficulty more then ordinary in this work the Apostle had not so earnestly called for the utmost of our endeavour to effect it Shortly the truth is in all Christianity there is no path wherein there is more need of treading warily then in this on each side is danger and death Security lies on the one hand Presumption on the other the miscarriage either way is deadly Look about thee and see the miserable examples on both kindes some walk carelesly as if there were no heaven or if there were such a place yet as if it nothing concerned them their hearts are taken up with earth neither care nor wish to be other then this world can make them The god of this world hath blinded their mindes that believe not Some others walk proudly being vainly puft up with their own ungrounded imaginations as if they were already invested with their glory as if being rapt up with the chosen vessel into the third heaven they had there seen their names recoâ—â—ded in the book of life where as this is nothing but an illusion of that lying spirit who knows the way to keep them for ever out of heaven is to make them believe they are there It must be thy main care to walk even in a jusâ— equidistance from both these extremes and so to compose thy self that thon maist be resolute without presumption and careful without diffidence And first I advise thee to abandon those false Teachers whose trade is to improve their wits for the discomfort of souls in broaching the sad doctrines of uncertainty and distrust Be sure our Saviour had never bidden his disciples to reâ—joyce that their names are written in heaven if there had not been a particular enrolment of them or if that Record had been alterable or if the same Disciples could never have attained to the notice of such inscription Neither is this a mercy peculiar to his domestick followers alone but universal to all that shall believe through their word even thou and I are spoken to in them so sure as we have names we may know them registred in those eternal Records above Not that we should take an Acesius his Ladder and climb up into heaven and turn over the book of Gods secret counsels and read our selves designed to glory but that as we by experience see that we can by reflections see and read those Letters which directly we cannot So we may do here in this highest of spiritual objects The same Apostle that gives us our charge gives us withal our direction Wherefore saith he brethren give all diligence to make your calling and election sure 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as divers copies read it by good works For if ye do these things ye shall never fall For so an entrance shall be ministred to you abundantly into the everlasting Kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Lo first our Calling then our Election not that we should begin with heaven and thence descend to the earth it is enough for the Angels on that celestial Ladder of Jacob to both descend and ascend but that we should from earth ascend to heaven from our Calling to our Election as knowing that God shews what he hath done for us above by that which he hath wrought in us here belowe Our Calling therefore first not outward and formal but inward and effectual The Spirit of God hath a voice and our soul hath an ear that voice of the Spirit speaks inwardly and effectually to the ear of the soul calling us out of the state of corrupt Nature into the state of Grace out of darkness into his marvellous light By thy calling therefore maist thou judge of thine election God never works in vain neither doth he â—ver cast away his saving graces what ever become of the common But whom he did predestinate them also he called and whom he called them he justified and whom he justified them also he glorified This doubtless thou saist is sure in it self but how is it assured to me Resp. That which the Apostle addes as it is read in some copies By good works if therein we also comprehend the acts of believing and repenting is a notable evidence of our election But not to urge that clause which though read in the vulgar is found wanting in our editions the clear words of the Text evince no less For if ye do these things ye shall never fall here is our negative certainty And for onr positive So an entrance shall be ministred unto you abundantly into the everlasting Kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ Lo if we shall never fall if we shall undoubtedly enter into the Kingdom of Christ what possible scruple can be made of the blessed accomplishment of our election What then are these things which must be done by us Cast your eyes upon that precious chain of graces which you shall finde stringed up in the fore going words If you adde to your faith vertue and to vertue knowledge and to knowledge temperance and to temperance patience and to patience godliness and to godliness brotherly kindness and to brotherly kindness charitie If you would know what God hath written concerning you in heaven look into your own bosom see what graces he hath there wrought in you Truth of grace saith the divine Apostle will make good the certainty of your election Not to instance in the rest of that heavenly combination do but single out the first and the last Faith and Charity For Faith how clear is that of our Saviour He that believeth in him that sent me hath everlasting-everlasting-life and shall not come into condemnation but hath passed from death to life Lo what access can danger have into heaven All the peril is in the way now the believer is already passed into life This is the grace by which Christ dwells in our hearts and
death another trembles to expect it one beggs for life another will sell it dearer here one would rescue one life and loseth two there another would hide himself where he findes a merciless death here lies one bleeding and groaning and gasping parting with his soul in extremity of anguish there another of stronger spirits kills and dies at once here one wrings her hands and tears her hair and seeks for some instrument of a self-inflicted death rather then yeeld her chaste body to the lust of a bloody ravisher there another clings inseparably to a dear husband and will rather take part of the murtherers sword then let go her last embraces here one tortured for the discovery of hid treasure there another dying upon the rack out of jealousie Oh that one man one Christian should be so bloodily cruel to another Oh that he who bears the image of the merciful God should thus turn fiend to his own flesh and blood These are terrible things my son and worthy of our bitterest lamentations and just fears I love the speculation of Seneca's resolutely-wise man that could look upon the glittering sword of an executioner with erected and undazeled eyes and that makes it no matter of difference whether his soul pass out at his mouth or at his throat but I should more admire the practice whiles we carry this clay about us nature cannot but in the holiest men shrink in at the sight and sense of these tyrannous and tragical acts of death Yet even these are the due revenges of the Almighties punitive justice so provoked by our sins as that it may not take up with an easier judgement Dost thou not see it ordinary with our Physitians when they finde the body highly distempered and the blood foul and inflamed to order the opening of a vein and the drawing out of so many ounces as may leave the rest meet for correction Why art thou over-troubled to see the great Physitian of the world take this course with sinful mankinde Certainly had not this great Body by mis dieting and wilful disorder contracted these spiritual diseases under which we languish had it not impured the blood that runs in these common veins with riot and surfets we had never been so miserable as to see these torrents of Christian blood running down our chanels Now yet as it is could we bewail and abandon our former wickedness we might live in hope that at the last this deadly issue might stop and dry up and that there might be yet left a possibility of a blessed recovery § 7. The woful miseries of Pestilence allaid by consideration of the hand that smites us Thou art confounded with grief to see the pestilence raging in our streets in so frequent a mortality as breeds a question concerning the number of the living and the dead That which is wont to abate other miseries heightens this The company of participants It was certainly a very hard and sad option that God gave to King David after his sin of numbring bring the people Chuse thee whether seven yeers famine shall come unto thee in thy Land or three moneths flight before thine enemies or three days pestilence We may believe the good King when we hear him say I am in a great strait Doubtless so he was but his wise resolutions have soon brought him out Let us fall now into the hand of the Lord for his mercies are great and let me not fall into the hand of man He that was to send these evils knew their value and the difference of their malignity yet he opposes three days pestilence to seven yeers famine and three months vanquishment so much oddes he knew there was betwixt the dull activity of man and the quick dispatch of an Angel It was a favour that the Angel of death who in one night destroyed an hundred fourscore and five thousand Assyrians should in three daies cut off but seventy thousand Israelites It was a great mercy that it was no worse We read of one City shall I call it or Region of Cayro wherein eighteen hundred thousand were swept away in one years pestilence enow one would think to have peopled the whole earth and in our own Chronicles of so generall a mortality that the living were hardly sufficient to bury the dead These are dreadfull demonstrations of Gods heavy displeasure but yet there is this alleviation of our misery that we suffer more immediatly from an holy just mercifull God The Kingly Prophet had never made that distinction in his wofull choyce if he had not known a notable difference betwixt the sword of an Angell and an enemy betwixt Gods more direct and immediate infliction and that which is derived to us through the malice of men It was but a poor consolation that is given by a victorious enemy to dying Lausus in the Poet Comfort thy selfe in thy death with this that thou fallest by the hand of great Aeneas but surely we have just reason to â—aise comfort to our souls when the pains of a pestilentiall death compasse us about from the thought and intuition of that holy and gracious hand under which we suffer so as we can say with good Eli It is the Lord. It is not amisse that we call those marks of deadly infection Gods Tokens such sure they are and ought therefore to call up our eyes and hearts to that Almighty power that sends them with the faithfull resolution of holy Iob Though thou kill me yet will I trust in thee It is none of the least miseries of contagious sicknesse that it bars us from the comfortable society and attendance of friends or if otherwise repaies their love and kinde visitation with death Be not dismaid my son with this sad solitude thou hast company with thee whom no infection can indanger or exclude there is an invisible friend that will be sure to stick by thee so much more closely by how much thou art more avoided by neighbours and will make all thy bed in thy sickness and supply thee with those cordialls which thou shouldst in vain expect from earthly visitants Indeed justly doe we style this The sicknesse eminently grievous both for the deadlinesse and generality of the dispersion yet there is a remedy that can both cure and conâ—ine it Let but every man look well to the plague of his own heart and the Land is healed Can we with David but see the Angell that smites us and erect an Altar and offer to God the sacrifices of our praiers penitence obedience we shall hear him say It is enough The time was and that time may not be forgotten when in the dayes of our late Soveraigne our Mother City was almost desolated with this mortall infection When thousands fell at our side and ten thousands at our right hand upon the publique humiliation of our soules the mercy of the Almighty was pleased to command that raging disease in the height of its fury
alone shall free-denizen thee in the best of forain States and shall entertain thee in the wildest desarts § 4. The advantage that hath been made of removing Thou art cast upon a forraign Nation Be of good chear we know that flowers removed grow greater and some plants which were but unthriving and unwholsome in their own soyl have grown both safe and flou rishing in other Climates Had Joseph been ever so great if he had not been transplanted into Egypt Had Daniel and his three companions of the Captivity eveâ— attained to that Honour in their native Land How many have we known that have found that health in a change of air which they could not meet with at home In Africk the South-winde clears up and the North is rainy Look thou up still to that hand which hath translated thee await his good pleasure Be thou no stranger to thy God it matters not who are strangers unto thee § 5. The rigâ—â— that we have in any country and iâ— God Thou art a banished man How canst thou be so when thou treadest upon thy Fathers ground The earth is the Lords and the fulness of it In his right where ever thou art thou mayst challenge a spiritual interest All things saith the Apostle are yours and you are Christs and Christ is Gods No man can challenge thee for a stranger that is not thy Fathers childe Thine exile separates thee from thy friends This were no small affliction if it might not be abundantly remedied That was a true word of Laurentius That where two faithful friends are met God makes up a third But it is no less true That where one faithful spirit is there God makes up a second One God can more then supply a thou sand friends § 6. â—he praâ—tice of voluntary travel Thy banishment bereaves thee of the comfort of thy wonted companions Would not a voluntary travel do as much Dost thou not see thousands thaâ— do willingly for many yeers change their Country for forraign Regions taking long farewells of their dear friends and comerades some out of curiosity some out of a thirst after knowledge some out of covetous desire of gain What difference is there betwixt thee and them but that their exile is voluntary thy travel constrained And who are these whom thou art so sorry to forgo Dost thou not remember what Crates the Philosopher said to a young man that was beset with parasitical friends Young man said he I pity thy solitude Perhaps thou mayst be more alone in such society then in the Wilderness such conversation is better lost then continued if thou canst but get to be well acquainted with thy self thou shalt be sorry that thou wert no sooner solitary § 7. All arâ— pilgrims Thou art out of thy Country Who is not so We are all pilgrims together with thee Whiles we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord Miserable are we if our true home be not above that is the better Country which we seek even an heavenly And thither thou mayst equally direct thy course in whatsoever Region This center of earth is equidistant from the glorious circumference of heaven if we may once meet there what need we make such difference in the way Comforts against the loss of the Senses of Sight and Hearing § 1. Comfort from the â—â—o inâ—ard â—ghts of â—ason â—nd faith THou hast lost thine eyes A loss which all the world is uncapable to repair Thou art hereby condemned to a perpetual darkness For the light of the body is the eye and if the light that is in thee be darkness how great is that darkness Couldst thou have foreseen this evil thou hadst anticipated this loss by weeping out those eyes for grief which thou must forgo There are but two ways by which any outward comfort can have access to thy soul The Eye and the Ear one of them is now fore-closed for ever Yet know my son thou hast two other inward eyes that can abundantly supply the want of these of thy body The eye of Reason and the eye of Faith the one as a Man the other as a Christian Answerable whereunto there is a double light apprehended by them Rational and Divine Solomon tells thee of the one The spirit of man is the Candle of the Lord searching all the inward parts of the belly The beloved Disciple tells thee of the other God is light and we walk in the light as he is in the light Now these two lights are no less above that outward and visible light whereof thou art bereaved then that light is above darkness If therefore by the eye of Reason thou shalt attain to the clear sight of intelligible things and by the eye of Faith to the sight of things supernatural and Divine the improvement of these better eyes shall make a large amends for the lack of thy bodily sight § 2. The supply of better eyes Thy sight is lost Let me tell thee what Antony the Hermite whom Ruffinus doubts not to style blessed said to learned though blinde Didymus of Alexandria Let it not trouble thee O Didymus that thou art bereft of carnal eyes for thou lackest onely those eyes which Mice and Flyes and Lyzards have but rejoyce that thou hast those eyes which the Angels have whereby they see God and by which thou art enlightned with a great measure of knowledge Make this good of thy self and thou shalt not be too much discomforted with the absence of thy bodily eyes § 3. The better object of our inward sight Thine eyes are lost The chief comfort of thy life is gone with them The light is sweet saith Solomon and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun Hath not God done this purposely that he might set thee off from all earthly objects that thou mightst so much the more intentively fix thy self upon him and seek after those spiritual comforts which are to be found in a better light Behold the Sun is the most glorious thing that thy bodily eyes can possibly see thy spiritual eyes may see him that made that goodly and glorious creature and therefore must needs be infinitely more glorious then what he made If thou canst now see him the more how hast thou but gained by thy loss § 4. The ill officer done by the eyes Thou art become blinde Certainly it is a sore affliction The men of Jabesh-gilead offered to comply with the Tyran of the Ammonites so far as to serve him but when he required the loss of their right eyes as a condition of their peace they will rather hazard their lives in an unequal War as if servitude and death were a less mischief then one eyes loss how much more of both For though one eye be but testis singularis yet the evidence of that is as true as that of both yea in some cases more for when we would take a perfect
Write this man childless As on the contrary it is a special favour of God that the barren hath born seven And it is noted by the Psalmist as a wonder of Gods mercy That he maketh the barren woman to keep house and to be a joyful mother of children It is pity he was ever born that holds not children a blessing yet not simple and absolute but according as it may prove She hath a double favour from God that is a joyful mother of children many a one breeds her sorrow breeds her death There is scarce any other blessing from God seasoned with so much acrimony both of misery and danger Do but lay together the sick fits of breeding the painful throws of travel the weary attendances of nursing the anxious cares of education the fears and doubts of mis-guidance the perpetual solicitude for their provision the heart-breaking grief for their miscarriage and tell me whether thy bemoaned sterility have not more ease less sorrow §. 2. The pains of child-bearing It is thy sorrow then that thou art not fruitful Consider that thou art herein freed from a greater sorrow In sorrow shalt thou bring forth children Do but think upon the shrieks and torments that thou hast seen and heard in the painful travels of thy neighbours One thou hast seen wearying the days and nights in restless pangs and calling for death in a despair of delivery Another after the unprofitable labours of Midwives forced to have her bowels ransackt by the hand of another sex One hath her dead burden torn from her by piece-meal another is delivered of her life and birth together One languisheth to death after the hand of an unskilful Midwife another is weary of her life through the soreness of her brests All these sorrows thou hast escaped by this one In these regards how many whom thou enviest have thought thee happier then themselves §. 3. The misery of ill-disposed and undutiful children Thou art afflicted that thou art not a mother Many a one is so that wishes she had been barren If either the childe prove deformed and mis-shapen or upon further growth unnatural and wicked what a Corrosive is this to her that bore him Rebecca thought it long to be after her marriage twenty yeers childless her holy husband at sixty yeers age prays to God for issue by her his devotion as the Jewish Doctors say carried him to Mount Moriah for this purpose that in the same place where his life was miraculously preserved from the knife of his Father it might by the like miracle be renewed in his posterity God hears him Rebecca conceives but when she felt that early combat of her strugling twins in her womb she can say If it be so why am I thus And when she saw a childe come forth all clad in hair and after saw his conditions no less rough then his hide do we not think she wished that part of her burden unborn Certainly children are according to their proof either blessings or crosses Hast thou a childe well disposed well governed A wise Son maketh a glad Father Hast thou a childe disorderly and debauched A foolish son is the heaviness of his Mother and the calamity of his Father Hast thou a son that is unruly stubborn unnatural as commonly the cions over-rule the stock He that wasteth his Father and chaseth away his Mother is a son that causeth shame and bringeth reproach And if such a son should live and die impenitent what can be answerable to the discomfort of that Parent who shall think that a piece of himself is in hell § 4. The cares of parents for their children Thou hast no children As thou hast less joy so thou hast loss trouble It is a world of work and thoughts that belongs to these living possessions Artemidorus observes that to dream of children imports cares to follow Surely as they are our greatest cares so they bring many lesser cares with them Before thou hadst but one mouth to feed now many And upon whom doth this charge lie but upon the Parent not Nature onely but Religion casts it upon him For if any provide not for his own especially for those of his own house he hath denied the Faith and is worse then an infidel Dost thou not see that many suckers growing up from the root of the tree draw away the sap from the stock and many rivulets let out from the main Chanel leave the stream shallow So it must be with thee and thine But this expence is not more necessary then comfortable I remember a great man coming to my house at Waltham and seeing all my children standing in the order of their age and stature said These are they that make rich men poor But he straight received this answer Nay my Lord these are they that make a poor man rich for there is not one of these whom we would part with for all your wealth Indeed wherefore do we receive but to distribute and what are we but the Farmers of those we leave behinde us And if we do freely lay out of our substance before-hand for their good so much of our rent is happily cleared It is easie to observe that none are so gripple and hard-fisted as the childless whereas those who for the maintenance of large Families are inured to frequent disbursements finde such experience of Divine providence in the faithful managing of their affairs as that they lay out with more chearfulness then they receive Wherein their care must needs be abated when God takes it off from them to himself and if they be not wanting to themselves their faith gives them ease in casting their burden upon him who hath both more power and more right to it since our children are more his then our own He that feedeth the young ravens can he fail the best of his creatures Worthy Mr Greenham tels us of a Gentlewoman who comming into the cottage of a poor neighbour and seeing it furnished with store of children could say Here are the mouthes but where is the meat but not long after she was paid in her own coyne for the poor woman coming to her after the buriall of her last and now onely childe inverted the question upon her Here is the meat but where are the mouthes Surely the great House-keeper of the world whose charge we are will never leave any of his menialls without the bread of sufficiency and who are so fit to be his Purveyors as the Parents for their own brood Nature hath taught the very Birds to pick out the best of the graines for their young Nature sends that moisture out of the root which gives life to the branches and blossomes Sometimes indeed it meets with a kinde retaliation some Stork-like disposition repaies the loving offices done by the Parents in a dutifull retribution to their age or necessity But how often have we seen the contrary
know that Senators take their name from age That therefore which is the weakness of old mens eyes that their visual spirits not uniting till some distance they better discern things further off is the praise and strength of their mental eyes they see either judgements or advantages afar off and accordingly frame their determinations It is observed that old Lutes sound better then new and it was Rehoboam's folly and undoing that he would rather follow the counsel of his green heads that stood before him then of those grave Senators that had stood before his wiser father Not that meer Age is of it self thus rich in wisdom and knowledge but Age well cultured well improved There are old men that do but live or rather have a being upon earth so have stocks and stones as well as they who can give no proof of their many yeers but their gray hairs and infirmities There are those who like to Hermogenes are old men whiles they are boys and children when they are old men These the elder they grow are so much more stupid Time is an ill measure of age which should rather be meted by proficiency by ripeness of judgement by the monuments of our commendable and useful labours If we have thus bestowed our selves our Autumn will shew what our Spring was and the colour of our hair will yeeld us more cause to fear our pride then our dejection §. 6. Age in some is vigorous and well affected We accuse our Age of many weaknesses and indispositions But these imputations must not be universal Many of these are the faults of the person not of the age He said well As all Wine doth not turn sowre with age no more doth every Nature Old Oil is noted to be clearer and hotter in Medicinal use then new There are those who are pettish and crabbed in youth there are contrarily those who are milde gentle sociable in their decayed yeers There are those who are crazie in their prime and there are those who in their wane are vigorous There are those who ere the fulness of their age have lost their memory as Hermogenes Cornivus Antonius Caracalla Georgius Trapezuntiâ—s and Nizolius There are those whose intellectuals have so happily held out that they have been best at the last Plato in his last yeer which was fourscore and one died as it were with his Pen in his hand Isocrates wrote his best Piece at ninety four yeers And it is said of Demosthenes that when death summoned him at an hundred yeers and somewhat more he bemoaned himself that he must now die when he began to get some knowledge And as for spiritual graces and improvements Such as be planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God They also shall bring forth more fruit in their age and shall be fat and well liking § 7. The fourth advantage of Age Neer approach to our end But the chief benefit of our Age is our neer approach to our journeys end for the end of all motion is rest which when we have once attained there remains nothing but fruition Now our Age brings us after a weary race within some breathings of our goal for if young men may die old men must A condition which a meer carnal heart bewails and abhors complaining of Nature as niggardly in her dispensations of the shortest time to her noblest creature and envying the Oaks which many generations of men must leave standing and growing No marvel for the worldling thinks himself here at home and looks upon death as a banishment he hath placed his heaven here belowe and can see nothing in his remove but either annihilation or torment But for us Christians who know that whiles we are present in the body we are absent from the Lord and do justly account our selves forraigners our life a pilgrimage heaven our home how can we but rejoyce that after a tedious and painful travel we do now draw neer to the threshold of our Fathers house wherein we know there are many mansions and all glorious I could blush to hear an heathen say If God would offer me the choice of renewing my age and returning to my first childhood I should heartily refuse it for I should be loth after I have passed so much of my race to be called back from the goal to the bars of my first setting out and to hear a Christian whining and puling at the thought of his dissolution Where is our faith of an heaven if having been so long sea-beaten we be loth to think of putting into the safe and blessed harbour of immortality Comforts against the fears and pains of death §. 1. The fear of Death natural THou fearest death Thou wert not a man if thou didst not so The holiest the wisest the strongest that ever were have done no less He is the King of fear and therefore may and must command it Thou mayst hear the man after Gods own heart say The sorrows of death compassed me And again My soul is full of troubles my life draweth nigh to the grave I am counted with them that go down to the pit as a man that hath no strength free among the dead Thou mayst hear good and great Hezekiah upon the message of his death chattering like a Crane or a Swallow and mourning as a Dove Thou fearest as a man I cannot blame thee But thou must overcome thy fear as a Christian which thou shalt do if from the terrible aspect of the messenger thou shalt cast thine eyes upon the gracious and amiable face of the God that sends him Holy David shews the way The snares of death prevented me In my distress I called upon the Lord and cried unto my God he heard my voice out of his Temple and my cry came before him even into his ears Lo he that is our God is the God of salvation and unto God the Lord belong the issues of death Make him thy friend and Death shall be no other then advantage It is true as the Wise man saith that God made not Death but that through envie of the devil Death came into the world But it is as true that though God made him not yet he is pleased to employ him as his messenger to summon some souls to judgment to invite others to glory and for these later Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his Saints And what reason hast thou to abominate that which God accounts precious §. 2. Remedy oâ— fear Acquaintance with death Thou art afraid of death Acquaint thy self with him more and thou shalt fear him less Even Bears and Lions which at the first sight afrighted us upon frequent viewing lose their terrour snure thine eyes to the sight of death and that face shall begin not to displease thee Thou must shortly dwell with him for a long time for the days of darkness are many do thou
in the mean time entertain him let him be sure to be thy daily guest Thus the blessed Apostle I protest by our rejoycing which I have in Christ Jesus I die daily Bid him to thy board lodge him in thy bed talk with him in thy closet walk with him in thy garden as Joseph of Arimathea did and by no means suffer him to be a stranger to thy thoughts This familiarity shall bring thee to a delight in the company of him whom thou didst at first abhor so as thou shalt with the chosen vessel say I have a desire to depart and to be with Christ which is best of all § 3. The misapprehension of death injurious Thou art grievously afraid of death Is it not upon a mistaking Our fears are apt to imagine and to aggravate evils Even Christ himself walking upon the waters was by the Disciples trembled at as some dreadful apparition Perhaps my son thou lookest at death as some utter abolition or extinction of thy being and Nature must needs shrink back at the thought of not being at all This is a foul and dangerous misprision It is but a departing which thou callest a death See how God himself stiles it to the father of the faithful Thou shalt go to thy Fathers in peace thou shalt be buried in a good old-age And of his holy grand-childe Israel the Spirit of God says When Jacob had made an end of commanding his sons he gathered up his feet into the bed and yeelded up the ghost and was gathered unto his people Lo dying is no other then going to our Fathers and gathering to our people with whom we do and shall live in that other and better world and with whom we shall re-appear glorious Let but thy faith represent death to thee in this shape and he shall not appear so formidable Do but mark in what familiar terms it pleased God to confer with his servant Moses concerning his death Get thee up into this mountain Abarim unto mount Nebo which is in the land of Moab and behold the land of Canaan which I give unto the children of Israel for a possession And die in the mount whither thou go est up and be gathered to thy people as Aaron thy brother died in mount Hor and was gathered to his people Lo it is no more then Go up and die Should it have been but to go a days journey in the Wilderness to sacrifice it could have been no otherwise expressed oâ—â—s if it were all one to go up to Sinai to meet with God and to go up to Nebo and die Neither is it otherwise with us onely the difference is that Moses must first see the land of Promise and then die whereas we must first die and then see the promised Land § 4. Comfort from the common condition of men Thou art troubled with the fear of death What reason hast thou to be afflicted with that which is the common condition of mankinde Remember my son the words of Joshua the victorious Leader of Gods people Behold this day saith he I am going the way of all the earth If all the earth go this way couldst thou be so fond as to think there should be a by-path left for thee wherein thou mayst tread alone Were it so that Monarchs and Princes that Patriarchs Prophets Apostles were allowed any easier passage out of the world thou mightst perhaps finde some pretence of reason to repine at a painfull dissolution but now since all goe one way and as the wise Philosopher saies those which are unequall in their birth are in their deaths equal there can be no ground for a discontented murmure Grudge if thou wilt that thou art a man grudge not that being a man thou must die It is true that those whom the last day shall finde alive shall not die but they shall bee changed but this change of theirs shall be no other then an analogicall death wherein there shall be a speedy consumption of all our corrupt and drossie parts so as the pain must be so much the more intense by how much it is more short then in the ordinary course of death Briefly that change is a Death and our Death is a change as Job stiles it the difference is not in the pain but in the speed of the transaction Fear not then the sentence of death remember them that have been before thee and that come after for this is the sentence of the Lord over all flesh §. 6. Death not feared by some Thou fearest death So doe not infants children distracted persons as the Philosopher observes Why should use of reason render us more cowardly then defect of reason doth them Thou fearest that which some others wish O death how acceptable is thy sentence to the needy and to him whose strength faileth that is now in the last age and is vexed with all things and to him that despaireth and hath lost patience Wherefore is light given saith Iob to him that is in misery and life unto the bitter in soul which long for death but it commeth not and dig for it more then for hid treasures which rejoyce exceedingly and are glad when they can finde the grave How many are there that invite the violence of death and if hee refuse it doe as Ignatius threatned he would doe to the Lions force his assault Death is the same to all the difference is in the disposition of the entertainers Couldst thou look upon death with their eyes he should be as welcome to thee as he is unto them At the least why shouldst thou not labour to have thy heart so wrought upon that this face of death which seems lovely and desirable to some may not appear over-terrible to thee §. 6. Our death day better then our birth day Thou art afraid to die Couldst thou then have been capable of the use of reason thou wouldst have been more afraid of comming into the world then thou art now of going out for why should we be more afraid of the better then of the worse Better is the day of death then the day of ones birth saith the Preacher Eccles. 7. 2. Better every way Our birth begins our miseries our death ends them Our birth enters the best of men into a wretched world our death enters the good into a world of glory Certainly were it not for our infidelity as wee came crying into the world so wee should goe singing out of 〈◊〉 And if some have solemnized their birth-day with feasting and Triumph the Church of Old hath bestowed that name and cost upon the deaths-day of her Martyrs and Saints §. 7. The sting of death pulled out Thou abhorrest death and fleest from it as from a Serpent But doest thou know that his Sting is gone What harme can there be in a Sting-lesse Snake Hast thou not seen or heard of some delicate Dames that have
carried them thus corrected in their bosome for coolnesse and for the pleasure of their smoothnesse The sting of death is sinne Hee may hisse and winde about us but he cannot hurt us when that sting is pulled out Look up O thou beleeving soul to thy blessed Saviour who hath pluckt out this sting of death and happily triumphs over it both for himself and thee O death where is thy sting O grave where is thy victory §. 8. Death is but aparting to meet again Thy soul and body old companions are loth to part Why man it is but the forbearing their wonted society for a while they doe but take leave of each other till they meet againe in the day of Resurrection and in the mean time they are both safe and the better part happy It is commendable in the Jews otherwise the worst of men that they call their grave Beth Chajim the house of the living and when they return from the buriall of their neighbours they pluck up the grasse and cast it into the aire with those words of the Psalmist They shall flourish and put forth as the grasse upon the earth Did wee not beleeve a Resurrection of the one part and a re-uniting of the other wee had reason to be utterly daunted with the thought of a dissolution now wee have no cause to bee dismayed with a little intermission Is it an Heathen man or a Christian such I wish he had been whom I hear say The death which wee so fear and flee from doth but respite life for a while doth not take it away the day will come which shall restore us to the light again Settle thy soul my sonne in this assurance and thou canst not bee discomforted with a necessary parting § 9. Death is but a sleep Thou art afraid of death When thou art weary of thy dayes labour art thou afraid of rest Hear what thy Saviour who is the Lord of life esteems of death Iohn 11. 11. Our friend Lazarus sleepeth And of Jairus his daughter The maid is not dead but sleepeth Neither useth the Spirit of God any other language concerning his servants under the Old Testament Now shall I sleep in the dust saith holy Job And of David When thy days be fulfilled and thou shalt sleep with thy fathers Nor yet under the New For this cause many are weak and sickly among you and many sleep saith the Apostle Lo the Philosophers of old were wont to call sleep the brother of death but God says death is no other then sleep it self A sleep both sure and sweet When thou liest down at night to thy repose thou canst not be so certain to awake again in the morning as when thou layest thy self down in death thou art sure to wake in the morning of the Resurrection Out of this bodily sleep thou mayst be affrightedly startled with some noises of sudden horrour with some fearful dreams with tumults or alarms of War but here thou shalt rest quietly in the place of silence free from all inward and outward disturbances whiles in the mean time thy soul shall see none but visions of joy and blessedness But Oh the sweet and heavenly expression of our last rest and the issue of our happie resuscitation which our gracious Apostle hath laid forth for the consolation of his mournful Thessalonions For if we believe saith he that Jesus died and rose again even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him Lo our belief is antidote enough against the worst of death And why are we troubled with death when we believe that Jesus died And what a triumph is this over death that the same Jesus who died rose again And what a comfort it is that the same Jesus who arose shall both come again and bring all his with him in glory And lastly what a strong Cordial is this to all good hearts that all those which die well do sleep in Jesus Thou thoughtst perhaps of sleeping in the bed of the grave and there indeed is rest but he tells thee of sleeping in the bosome of Jesus and there is immortality and blessedness Oh blessed Jesu in thy presence is the fulness of joy and at thy right hand are pleasures for evermore Who would desire to walk in the world when he may sleep with Jesus § 10. Death sweetned to us by Christ. Thou fearest death It is much on what terms and in what form death presents himself to thee If as an enemy as that is somewhere his style the last enemy death thy unpreparation shall make him dreadful thy readiness and fortitude shall take off his terrour If as a messenger of God to fetch thee to happiness what reason hast thou to be afraid of thine own bliss It is one thing what death is in himself a privation of life as such Nature cannot chuse but abhor him Another thing what he is by Christ made unto us an introduction to life an harbinger to glory Why would the Lord of Life have yeelded unto death and by yeelding vanquisht him but that he might alter and sweeten Death to us and of a fierce Tyrant make him a Friend and Benefactor And if we look upon him thus changed thus reconciled how can we chuse but bid him welcome § 11. The painfulness of Christs â—eath Thou art afraid of the pangs of death There are those that have died without any great sense of pain some we have known to have yeelded up their souls without so much as a groan And how knowest thou my son what measure God hath allotted to thee Our death is a Sea-voyage so the Apostle I desire to lanch forth wherein some finde a rough and tempestuous passage others calm and smoothe such thine may prove so as thy dissolution may be more easie then a fit of thy sickness But if thy God have determined otherwise Look unto Jesus the Authour and Finisher of our faith the Son of God the Lord of glory see with what agonies he conflicted what torments he endured in his death for thee Look upon his bloody sweat his bleeding temples his furrowed back his nailed hands and feet his racked joynts his pierced side Hear his strong cries consider the shame the pain the câ—rse of the Cross which he underwent for thy sake Say whether thy sufferings can be comparable to his He is a cowardly and unworthy Souldier that follows his General sighing Lo these are the steps wherein thy God and Saviour hath trod before thee Walk on courageously in this deep and bloody way after a few paces thou shalt overtake him in glory For if we suffer with him we shall also reign together with him §. 12. The vanity and miseries of life Thou shrinkest at the thought of death Is it not for that thou hast over-valued life and made thy home on earth Delicate persons that have pampered themselves at home are loth to stir abâ—â—ad especially
upon hard and unâ—â—uth voyages Perhaps it is so with thee wherein I cannot but much pity thy mistaking in placing thy contentment there where a greater and wiser man could finde nothing but vanity and vexation Alas what can be our exile if this be our home What woful entertainment is this to be enamoured on What canst thou meet with here but distempered humours hard usages violent passions bodily sicknesses sad complaints hopes disappointed frequent miscarriages wicked plots cruel menaces deadly executions momentany pleasures sauced with lasting sorrows lastly shadows of joy and real miseries Are these the things that so bewitch thee that when death calls at thy door thou art ready to say to it as the Devil said to our Saviour Art thou come to torment me before the time Are these those winning contentments that cause thee to say of the world as Peter said of Mount Tabor Master It is good for us to be here If thou have any faith in thee and what dost thou profess to be a Christian without it look up to the things of that other world whither thou art going and see whether that true life pure joy perfect felicity and thâ— eternity of all these may not be worthy to draw up thy heart to a loâ—ging desire of the fruition of them and a contemptuous disvaluation of all that earth can promise in comparison of this infinite blessedness It was one of the defects which our late Noble and learned Philosopher the Lord Virulam found in our Physitians that they do not studie those remedies that might procure 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the easie passage of their Patients since they must needs die thorow the gates of death Such helps I must leave to the care of the skilful Sages of Nature the use whereof I suppose must be with much caution lest whiles they endeavour to sweeten death they shorten life But 〈◊〉 me prescribe and commend to thee my son this true spiritual means of thine happie Euthanasia which can be no other then this faithful disposition of the labouring soul that can truely say I know whom I have believed I have fought a good fight I have finished my course I have kâ—pt the faith Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness which the Lord the righteous Judge shall give me at that day § 13. Examples of courageous resolutions in others Thou startest back at the mention of death How canst thou but blush to read of that Heathen Martyr Socrates who when the message as death was brought to him could applaud the news of most joyful Or of a Cardinal of Rome who yet expected a tormenting Purgatory that received the intimation of his approaching death with Buâ—na nuova buona nuova O che buona nuova è questa Is not their confidence thy shame who believing that when our earthly house of this Tabernacle is dissolved we have a building of God an house not made with hands eternal in the heavens yet shrinkest at the motion of taking the possession of it Canst thou with dying Mithridates when he took his unwilling farewel of the world cry out oh light when thou art going to a light more glorious then this thou leavest then the Sun is more weak then a Rush-Candle It is our infidelity my son it is our meer inâ— idelity that makes us unwilling to die Did we think according to the cursed opinion of some fanatick persons that the soul sleeps as well as the body from the moment of the dissolution till the day of Resurrection Or did we doubt lest we should wander to unknown places where we cannot be certain of the entertainment or did we fear a scorching trial upon the emigration in flames little inferiour for the time to those of hell there were some cause for us to tremble at the approach of death But now that we can boldly say with the Wise man ` The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God and there shall no torment touch them In the sight of the unwise they seemed to die and their departure is taken for misery and their going from us to be utter destruction but they are in peace Oh thou of little faith why fearest thou Why dost thou not chide thy self as that dying Saint did of old Go forth my soul go boldly forth what art thou afraid of Lo the Angels of God are ready to receive thee and to carry thee up to thy glory neither shalt thou sooner have left this wretched body then thou shalt be possessed of thy God after a momentany darkness cast upon nature thou shalt enjoy the beatifical vision of the glorious God Be not afraid to be happie but say out of faith that which Jonah said in anger It is better for me to die then to live § 14. The happy advantages of death I am afraid to die This is the voice of Nature but wilt thou hear what Grace saith To me to live is Christ and to die is gain If therefore meer Nature raign in thee thou canst not but be affrighted with death But if true grace be prevalent in thy soul that guest shall not be unwelcome Was ever any man afraid of profit and advantage Such is death to the faithful Whosoever he be that findes Christ to be his life shall be sure to finde Death his gain for that he is thereby brought to a more full and neer communion with Christ whereas before he enjoyed his Saviour onely by the dim apprehension of his Faith now he doth clearly and immediately enjoy that glorious presence which onely makes blessedness This is it which causeth death to change his Copie and renders him who is of himselfe formidable pleasing and beneficiall I desire to depart and to be with Christ saith the man who was rapt up to the third heaven Had it been onely departing surely he had had no such great edge to it but to depart and be with Christ is that which ravisheth his soule When the Heathen Socrates was to die for his Religion he comforted himselfe with this That hee should goe to the place where he should see Orphaeus Homer Musaeus and the other Worthies of the former ages Poor man could he have come to have knowne God manifested in the flesh and received up into glory and therein that glorified flesh sitting at the right hand of Majesty could he have attained to know the blessed order of the Cherubim and Seraphim Angels Archangels Principalities and Powers and the rest of the most glorious Hierarchy of heaven could he have been acquainted with that celestiall Chore of the Spirits of just men made perfect could he have reached to know the God and Father of Spirits the infinitely and incomprehensibly glorious Deity whose presence transfuses everlasting blessednesse into all those Citizens of glory and could he have known that he should have an undoubted Interest instantly upon his dissolution in that
life having spoiled principalities and powers hath made a shew of them openly triumphing over them on his Crâ—ss Lo all the powers of hell were dragg'd after this glorious Conquerour when he was advanced upon that Triumphant Chariot Look therefore my son upon these hellish forces as already vanquished and know that in all things we are more then Conquerours through him that loved us Onely do thou by the power of thy faith apply unto thy self this great work that thy victorious Saviour hath done for the salvation of all the world of believers § 4. The great subtilfy of evil spirits and the remedy of the fear of it Power without malice were harmless and malice without power were impotent but when both are combined together they are dreadful But whereas Malice hath two ways to execute mischief either Force or Fraud the malice of Satan prevails more by this latter so as the subtilty of these malignant spirits is more pernicious then their power In regard of his power he is a Lion in regard of his subtilty he is a Serpent yea that old Serpent whose craft must needs be marvellously increased by the age and experience of so many thousand yeers So much the more careful ought we to be my son Lest Satan should get an advantage of us This is that he seeks and if our spiritual wisdom circumspection be not the more will be sure to find It is a great word and too high for us which the Apostle speaks For we are not ignorant of Satans devices Alas he hath a thousand stratagems that our weak simplicity is never able to reach unto The wisest of us knows not the deceitfulness of his own heart much less can he dive into the plots of hell that are against us We hear and are fore-warned of the wiles of the Devil but what his special machinations are how can we know much less prevent Even the children of this world saith our Saviour are in their generation wiser then the children of light how much more crafty is their Father from whom their cunning is derived Be as mean as thou wilt my son in thine own eyes say with Agur the son of Jakeh Surely I am more brutish then any man and have not the understanding of a man I neither learned wisdom nor have the knowledge of the holy But what ever thou art in thy self know what thou art or mayst be in thy God Consider what the man after Gods own heart sticks not to profess Thou through thy Commandments hast made me wiser then mine enemies for they are ever with me Lo the spirit of wisdom is ours and he who is the eternal Wisdom of the Father is made unto us wisdom as well as righteousness And he who over-rules hell hath said The gates of hell shall not prevail against his Church What are the gates of hell but the deep plots and consulâ—tations of those infernal powers The Serpent is the known embleme of subtilty The Serpents of the Egyptian Sorcerers were all devoured by Moses his Serpent wherefore but to shew us that all the crafty counsels and machinations of hellish projectors are easily destroyed by the power and wisdom of the Almighty when all was done it was the Rod of God that swallowed them all and was yet still it self when they were vanquished So as that whereby Satan thought to have won most honour to himself ended in his shame and loss What an infinite advantage did the powers of darkness think to have made in drawing our first Parents by their subtil suggestions into sin and thereby into perdition as imagining either mankinde shall not be or shall be ours the incomprehensible wisdom and mercy of our God disappointed their hopes and took occasion by mans fall to raise him up to a greater glory and so ordered it that the Serpents nibbling at the heel cost him the breaking of his head What Trophees did that wicked spirit think to erect upon the ruines of miserable Job and how was he baffled by the patience of that Saint and how was that Saint doubled both in his estate and honour by his conquering patience How confidently did the subtilty of hell say concerning the Son of God exhibited in the flesh This is the heir come let us kill him and the inheritance shall be ours How sure work did they think they had made when they saw him through their subtil procurement nailed to the Cross and dying upon that tree of shame and curse when they saw him laid dead under a sealed and guarded Grave-stone And now behold even now begins their Confusion and his Triumph now doth the Lord of Life begin to trample upon Death and hell and to perfect his own glory and mans redemption by his most glorious resurrection And as it was with the Head so it is with the members when Satan hath done his worst they are holier upon their sins and happier by their miscarriages God findes out a way to improve their evils to advantage and teaches them of these Vipers to make soverain Treacles and safe and powerful Trochisces Shortly the temptations of Satan sent out from his power malice subtilty are no other then fiery darts for their suddenness impetuosity penetration If we can but hold out the shield of faith before us they shall not be quenched onely but retorted into the face of him that sends them and we shall with the chosen vessel finde and profess that in all things we are more then conquerours through him that loved us and in a bold defiance of all the powers of darkness shall say I am perswaded that neither death nor life nor Angels nor Principalities nor powers nor things present nor things to come nor height nor depth nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord To whom be all honour glory praise power and dominion now and for evermore The Vniversal Receit for all Maladies THese are my son special compositions of wholsome Receits for the several Maladies of thy soul wherein it shall be my happiness to have suggested unto thee such thoughts as may any whit avail to the alleviation of thy sorrows But there is an universal Remedy which a skilfuller Physitian hath ordained for all thy grievances and I from his hand earnestly recommend to thee Is any among you afflicted let him pray Lo here the great and soverain Panpharmacum of the distressed soul which is able to give ease to all the fore-mentioned complaints Art thou castâ— down upon thy sick bed Call for the Elders of the Church and let them pray This was Hezekiah's receit when he was sick unto death He turned his face to the wall and prayed This was David's receit Have mercy on me O Lord for I am weak O Lord heal me for my bones are vexed Take therefore the