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A17129 A buckler against the fear of death; or, Pious and profitable observations, meditations, and consolations: by E.B. Buckler, Edward, 1610-1706.; Benlowes, Edward, 1603?-1676, attributed name. 1640 (1640) STC 4008.5; ESTC S101669 42,782 142

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on their prey do fasten So would they flock about me Or if I Could learn the art of popularity I might be rich in friends yet all my store Would not know how to keep Death out of doore Meditation 1. OF Proteus 't is fained that he could Transform himself to any kind of shape Into a Dove or Lamb and when he would Into a Tiger Lion Bear or Ape Or a Mountain Rock or Spring Or Earth Water Fire Air Into any forms that are Stampt in any kind of thing And Aristippus could exactly flatter He had the art of winning gainfull friends And that his fortune might be made the fatter Had all behaviours at his fingers ends He could grene when 's friend was sickly And could weep when he was sad Any humour good or bad Did become him very quickly Did I believe that metempsychosis Pythagoras did dream of I should swear That Proteus ghost to this day neither is In hell nor yet in heaven but doth wear Now a body and the base Ghost of Aristippus dwells In a thousand bodies else How could thousands have the face To personate so many humours act So many parts at once and balk no sinne Yea perpetrate with ease the bas●st fact That hell e'r punished to wind them in to great friendsh●ps though they misse Heavens favour all the while Dreaming that a great mans smile Is on earth the onely blisse And yet when that last enemie shall come And grind their aching bones with griping throes To bring their bodies to their longest home There 's not a man 'mongst all their friends that know How to take away their pain In comes ghastly Death among The midst of that friendly throng And turns them to dust again Meditation 2. THere 's none among the sacred troup of Saints Yet militant below but doth desire Gods favour most and most of all lamen●s When it is lost and alway sets a higher Estimate upon the rayes That are darted from above By the God of peace and love Then on all he here enjoyes Ne'r doth the chased hart in hottest weather When horse and hound pursue him o'r the plains And hunt him sweating twentie miles together That all his bloud is boil'd within his veins When he 's to the hardest driven Pant so much for water-brooks As a soul deserted looks For a kind aspect from heav'n Once did Elias zealous prayers climb To heav'n and made the windows there so fast This came to passe in wicked Ahabs time That one and twentie months twice told were past E'r there fell a showre of rain Or a drop of morning dew In the meadows nothing grew Nor was any kind of grain Fed by the parched mold How do ye think That thirstie drie and barren land did yawn And gape to heav'n-ward for a draught of drink Just so whene'r Gods favour is withdrawn From a soul it doth distresse her Ne'r earth thirsted more for rain Then doth she for God again To relieve her and refresh her Have you not seen a mothers wofull tears Embalm the carcase of her onely sonne How to all comfort she stops both her eares Wrings both her hands and makes a bitter moan Fain in sorrow would she swim Or be drown'd it is so deep She hath heart enough to weep Heaven full up to the brim But this is nothing to that matchlesse anguish That breaks in pieces ev'rie pious heart And makes the soul with darkest sadnesse languish If from 't a sense of Gods good will depart O how strangely David's troubled When God hid away his face Though but for a little space See how his complaints are doubled How long for ever Lord wilt thou forget me How long wilt thou thy gratious visage hide How long be angrie wilt thou never let me Enjoy thy face again shall I abide Thus for evermore bereft Of all comfort joy and peace Shall my soul ne'r dwell at ease Hast thou Lord no mercy left O once again be pleas'd to turn and give My soul a relish of thy wonted grace There 's nothing can my sadded heart relieve If thou dost hide thy comfortable face Thou in tears thy servant drown'st Thou dost fill my che●ks with furrows And my soul with ghastly sorrows Whensoever Lord thou frown'st The world doth value at a precious rate Things here below Some highly prize their sport Some jewels some a plentifull estate And some preferments in a Princes court But for life we so esteem it Above whatsoe'r is best That with losse of all the rest We are ready to redeem it But none of these Gods children do regard So much as Gods love by a thousand parts Feel they but this to 〈◊〉 't is spar'd The best and highest room in all their hearts They 〈◊〉 no wordly pelf In comparison of this Kindnesse yea to them it is Better fa●re then life it self Have they no reason for this eager thirst After Gods love and friendship sure they see Gods favour and his kindnesse is the first And chiefest good all other friendships be Most deceitfull trustlesse rain When the pangs of Death do scise us Mortall favours cannot ease us God can rid us of our pain But grant he do not yet these pains shall send Our souls to him that loves us to enjoy A painlesse life that ne'r shall see an end He whom God loves can on a death-bed say I know my Redeeme● liveth For me there 's laid up a crown When this clay-built house is down God a better mansion giveth I 'll never woo the smile of man whose breath Is in his nostrils by sinister wayes 'T will not advantage at the houre of Death All my supportment on these carnall stayes At the length will but deceive me 'T is to have a friend above 'T is Gods favour and his love Or else nothing must relieve me Lord make thy graces in my soul appear My heart from ev'rie lothsome blemish cleanse That I may clearly see thine image there For that 's an undeceived evidence Of thy favour which when I Once am certain to obtein I 'll not faint for any pain Nor will care how soon I die Sect. 5. Youth cannot protect us from the stroke of Death A Young man may die but an old man must This may die quickly that cannot live long Often are graves fill'd full with youthfull dust Though youth be jocund lustie merrie strong Yet is it subject unto Death-bed-pains 'T is mortall bloud that runnes along their veins In all appearance old mens halting feet are Mov'd to the grave-ward with the greatest speed Like that disciples which did outrunne Peter But sometimes younger men step in indeed And peradventure twentie years or more Sooner then those that looked in before Graves gape for ev'rie sort The butcher's seen Often to kill the youngest of the flock Some long to pluck those apples that are green Death crops the branches and forbears the stock Children are wrapp'd up in their winding-sheets And aged parents mourn about the streets
to you Whenever you appear Adorned with your gold and silver-laces Your presence makes the greedi'st eye good chear This consideration In time past was wont to please you Now then Madame let it ease you And afford you consolation The dy●ng woman when this speech was done After a grone or two made this replie Doth such a curtain-lecture suit with one That everie houre doth look when she should die 'T is not congruous Wer'st thou able My poore naked soul to dresse With a Saviours righteousnesse This indeed were comfortable But all the rest is not Oh! how I grieve To think upon my former vanitie Alas I feel these toyes cannot relieve Nor ease nor comfort Thus let luxurie Pitch on what it will its joyes Are but painted nor can bring us Ease when pangs of Death do wring us Much lesse can they make our dayes Eternall here Thy servant Lord beseecheth The presence of thy spirit that discovers How vain that carnall joy is which bewitcheth With pleasant poison all her sottish lovers Let not earth-delights forestall me Help thy servant to provide Pleasures that will then abide When thou sendest Death to call me Meditation 2. FArewell those pleasures which the creatures bree● These carnall comforts shall be none of mine They slink away in time of greatest need I 'll get me comforts that are more divine Such as God provideth for us By his Spirit and in his word They are such as will afford Joy unspeakable and glorious Unsanctified palates cannot find A relish in Gods service 't is their follie That nothing in it suiteth with their mind That they account religion melancholie And the cause of their misprision Is because they cannot see Things divine for yet they be In their naturall condition But sanctified souls have better eyes Each Person in the sacred Trinitie Sends comfort down and such as farre outvies The best delight that is below the skie Father Sonne and holy Ghost Be it spoke with reverence Seem to strive which shall dispense Blessings that do comfort most The Father as his title often writes Himself a God of peace and consolation He sends me comforts by those sacred lights Which bring me errands from his habitation And so firm and full and free Is each promise in his book That on whichsoe'r I look Blessed comforts I do see So firm that first the hugest hills and mountains Shall dance out of their places st●rres shall fall Streams shall run backward to their mother-fountains The earth shall tumble ere he will recall One of 's promises For why And this gives strong consolation In the middest of temptation He 's a God and cannot lie So full that there 's not any thing left out That I could wish What I would have him be God is Would I be compassed about With mercie find relief in miserie Would I by his Spirit be led And have all my sinnes for given And hereafter go to heaven All this God hath promised So free that to deserve that promis'd glory I nothing have but what his mercie gave me 'T is gratis rather then compensatorie Whatever God doth to convert or save me And if any good I do 'T is done by supplies Divine So Gods work and none of mine Grace begins and ends it too What if by nature I was made a sheep And by corruption I am gone astray Whether I think or speak or do or sleep Or wake do ever wander from the way I was set in and am ●oss'd So by lust that my soul wanders Into many by-meanders Like a sillie sheep that 's lost Yet God's my shepherd When his mercy spi'd me Wandring it brought me home and ever since It doth watch over feed defend and guide me And ever will do so till I go hence And hereafter in the even When my latest sand is runne And my pasture here is done It will fold my soul in heaven The Sonne doth comfort 'T was his errand down To preach glad tidings to the meek and turn Their wo to case to earn a glorious crown For sinners and to comfort those that mourn Broken-hearted ones to bind And to set at libertie Pris'ners in captivitie And give eye-sight to the blind There 's comfort in his wounds His sacred stripe Do heal our leprous souls of all their sores 'T is nothing but his pretious bloud that wipes Our guilt away and cancelleth our scores Six times did he shed his bloud And sure our estate did need it That so many times he did it And each drop was for our good Those circumcision-drops of 's infancie Those drops that 's anguish in the garden vented Those drops when he was scourged Jewishly Those drops when 's head with sharpest thorns was tented Those drops when his limbs were nailed To the crosse those when the fierce Souldiers spear his side did pierce Each drop for our good prevailed There 's comfort in his crosse That vile old man That hangs about us to our dying day Is crucified with him that it can Not exercise half of its wonted sway Lessened is its kingly power Surely sinne it struggles so Hath receiv'd a mortall blow And is dying everie houre There 's comfort in his death For us he dy'd For us he felt his Fathers heavie wrath And his impartiall justice satisfi'd And us his alsufficient passion hath Pluck'd from Satan vi armi● And his meritorious pain Freed us from sinnes guilt and stain And whatever else might harm us There 's comfort in his resurrection too He rose again that we might be accounted Righteous and just This no man else could do And that our sinnes whose number farre surmounted All the starres that shine in heaven All our hairs and all the sand That lies scattered on the strand For his sake might be forgiven And God the holy Ghost doth comfort bring By speciall office it is his imployment To settle in the soul a lively spring From whence doth issue such a sweet enjoyment Of divine heart-pleasing blisse As the world will not believe Nor can any heart conceive But the heart wherein it is It is this blessed Spirit that doth seal Assurance to my conscience of a share In what God in and through his Sonne doth deal To needy sinners that converted are It assures me of Gods love In the free and full remission Of my sinnes and exhibition Of those joyes that are above Let now the world that 's wont to tell a storie Of strange delights shew me but such a pleasure As to be sure of God and Christ and glory And then I 'll hug it as my choicest treasure Thus each Person of the three Is imploy'd if I do live Holy as I ought to give Joy and comfort unto me Grant a man once to be in Christ and he On sublunarie pleasures soon will trample And yet for pleasures who shews best will vie With all the world give him but one example What gets pleasure and what feeds it Whatsoe'r 'mongst earthly things To
Lord will have us die He numbers all our dayes we cannot shorten Nor lengthen them a minute Destiny Neither spinnes nor cuts the thread God a certain period sets No man shorter falls or gets Further then the bounds decreed If God vouchsafe to number out the hairs That do adorn and cloth our sinfull heads Who doubteth that his providence forbears To count our dayes If not a sparrow treads On the earth's face thus or thus But his providence awaketh For to note it sure he taketh Greater care by farre of us If any godlesse wits so curious be To talk of Hezekiah's fifteen years His sentence God did change not his decree The answer is yet Esay's tongue appears To speak not a jote the lesse Truth 't was with a supposition God doth th●eaten with condition Either 〈◊〉 expresse When Pestilence that lothsome dreadfull hag Bepatch'd with botches wanders up and down And into ev'ry houshold drops the plague Scarce any Turk in an infected town But will wise and friend afford Daily visits and imbraces They flie no contagious places Nor fear either bed or bord Their reason is Gods providence doth write Their fortunes on their foreheads neither can Their day of life be longer nor their night Of Death come sooner then God wills it Man Must yield 's ghost when God will have it For health and life if God will Save it 't is not plague can kill If not 't is not they can save it Such block-heads have not brains enough to think That as the time so God withall decrees The means of life as physick meat and drink Clothes recreations and what else he sees Needfull They themselves destroy And are to their safety strangers That runne into mortall dangers And not shun them when they may Howe'r imploy'd Lord grant I may have leisure Religiously to meditate that thou My dayes dost number and my life dost measure And make me think Lord that this very now That this twinkling of an eye Is the period thou hast set Lord grant I may ne'r forget That this moment I may die PART III. Of Deaths suddennesse THough sometimes Death doth stay till it be late At night untill our most decrepit years And when he comes doth like a King in state Send harbingers before yet Death appears Sometimes unlook'd for early in the morning And takes us up before he gives us warning When at full tide our youthfull bloud doth flow In every vein and when our pulses dance A healthfull measure when our stomachs know No qualms at all as we would say by chance Snatch'd are our bodies to their longest homes And Death is past before a sicknesse comes How many sleepie mortals go to bed With healthful bodies and do rise no more How many hungry mortals have been sed Contentedly at dinner yet before Against a second meal they wh●t their knives Death steals away their stomachs and their lives How many in the morning walk abroad For to be breath'd on by the keener air Perhaps to clarifie their grosser bloud Or else to make their rougher checks look falt But e'r they tread a furlong in the frost Death nips them so their former labour 's lost Nature is parsimonious Man may live With little but alas with how much lesse A man may die There 's nothing but may give A mortall blow small matters may undresse Our souls of clay A thousand wayes we have To send our crazie bodies to the grave The elements con●eder how they may Procure our Death the Air we suck to live It self hath poi'sned thousands in a day And made such havock that the slain did strive For elbow-room in Church-yards houses were Good cheap and onely shrowds and coffins dear If we could come to speak with Pharaoh's ghost 'T would tell how many met with sudden graves Beneath the water that a mighty host Was slain and buried by the surly waves Except a few which surfeted with store The crop-sick sea did vomit on the shore Sometimes our mother Earth as if she were So hunger-bitten that she needs must eat Her children gapes as for some toothsome cheer And multitudes one swallow down doth let Which either in her womb she doth bestow Or else doth send them to the world below That usefull creature Fire whose light and heat Doth comfort and when Earth doth penance warm us Whose cookerie provides us wholesome meat Yet mortally this element doth harm us One morning sent from heav'n such dreadfull flashes As did intomb five cities in their ashes We may remember some that have been kill'd By falls of buildings some by drunken swords By beasts both wild and tame our bloud is spill'd There 's not a creature but a death affords 'Bove fourti● childrens limbs God's anger tears In pieces with the teeth of savage bears But there 's some likelyhood that sudden Death By mean like these may easily befall us But many times we mortalls lose our breath By wayes lesse probable The Lord doth call us Upon a sudden hence by petty things Sometimes the meanest means Death's ●rrand brings Our staff of life may kill a little crumb Of bread may choke us going down aw●y A small hair in their drink hath caused some To breath their last By any thing we die Sometimes a sudden grief ●r sudden joy Have might enough to take our souls away Meditation 1. HOw weak's the thread of life that any thing How weak so e'r can break it by and by How short 's the thread of life that Death can bring Both ends of it together suddenly Well may the scriptures write the life of man As weak as water and as short 's a span How soon is water spilt upon the ground Once spilt what hand can gather 't up again Fome that doth rise to day is seldome found Floting tomorrow When the wanton rain Gets bubbles to make sport with on the water A minute breaks them into their first matter Such is our life How soon doth Death uncase Our souls and when they once are fled away Who can return them As upon the face Of thirstie ground when water 's shed to day The morrow sees it not so when we die None can revive us as we fall we lie Our life 's a vapour Vapours do arise Sometimes indeed with such a seeming power As if they would eclipse the glorious skies And muffle up the world but in an houre Or two at most these vapours are blown o'r And leave the air as clear as 't was before We look big here a little while and bristle And shoulder in the smiling world as though There were no dancing but as we would whistle So strangely domineer we here below But as a vapour in a sun-shine day We vanish on a sudden quite away Our life is like the smoke of new-made fires As we in age and stature upward tend Our dissolution is so much the nigher Smoke builds but castles in the air ascend Indeed it doth aloft but yet it must At high'st