to move the sick man to confession of sins ibid. Instruments by way of consideration to awaken a careless person and a stupid conscience 255. § IV. Of ministring to the restitution and pardon or reconciliation of the sick person by administring the holy Sacrament 268. § V. Of ministring to the sick person by the Spiritual man as he is the Physitian of souls 282. Considerations against unreasonable fears concerning forgivenesse of sins and its uncertainty and danger 283. An exercise against despair in the day of our death 293. § VI. Considerations against Presumption 301. § VII Offices to be said by the Minister in his visitation of the sick 306. The prayer of S. Eustratius the Martyr 310. A prayer taken out of the Greek Euchologion c. 311. The order of recommendation of the soul in its agony 313. Prayers to be said by the surviving friends in behalf of them selves 318. A prayer to be said in the case of a sudden death or pressing fatall danger 321. § VIII A peroration concerning the contingencies and treatings of our departed friends after death in order to their will and buriall 322. Vigilate et Orate quia nescitis horam CHAP. I. A general preparation towards a holy and blessed Death by way of consideration SECT I. Consideration of the vanity and shortnesse of Mans life A Man is a Bubble said the Greek Proverb which Lucian represents with advantages and its proper circumstances to this purpose saying that all the world is a storm and Men rise up in their several generations like bubbles descending à Iove pluvio from God and the dew of Heaven from a tear and drop of Man from Nature and Providence and some of these instantly sink into the deluge of their first parent and are hidden in a sheet of Water having had no other businesse in the world but to be born that they might be able to die others float up and down two or three turns and suddenly disappear and give their place to others and they that live longest upon the face of the waters are in perpetual motion restlesse and uneasy and being crushed with the great drop of a cloud sink into flatness and a froth the change not being great it being hardly possible it should be more a nothing then it was before So is every man He is born in vanity and sin he comes into the world like morning Mushromes soon thrusting up their heads into the air and conversing with their kinred of the same production and as soon they turn into dust and forgetfulnesse some of them without any other interest in the affairs of the world but that they made their parents a little glad and very sorrowful others ride longer in the storm it may be until seven yeers of Vanity be expired and then peradventure the Sun shines hot upon their heads and they fall into the shades below into the cover of death and darknesse of the grave to hide them But if the bubble stands the shock of a bigger drop and outlives the chances of a childe of a carelesse Nurse of drowning in a pail of water of being overlaid by a sleepy servant or such little accidents then the young man dances like a bubble empty and gay and shines like a Doves neck or the image of a rainbow which hath no substance and whose very imagery and colours are phantastical and so he dances out the gayety of his youth and is all the while in a storm and endures onely because he is not knocked on the head by a drop of bigger rain or crushed by the pressure of a load of indigested meat or quenched by the disorder of an ill placed humor and to preserve a man alive in the midst of so many chances and hostilities is as great a miracle as to create him to preserve him from rushing into nothing and at first to draw him up from nothing were equally the issues of an Almighty power And therefore the wise men of the world have contended who shall best fit mans condition with words signifying his vanity and short abode Homer cals a man a leaf the smallest the weakest piece of a short liv'd unsteady plant Pindar calls him the dream of a shadow Another the dream of the shadow of smoak But S. Iames spake by a more excellent Spirit saying Our life is but a vapor viz. drawn from the earth by a coelestial influence made of smoak or the lighter parts of water tossed with every winde moved by the motion of a superiour body without vertue in it self lifted up on high or left below according as it pleases the Sun its Foster-father But it is lighter yet It is but appearing A phantastic vapor an apparition nothing real it is not so much as a mist not the matter of a shower nor substantial enough to make a cloud but it is like Cassiopeia's chair or Pelops shoulder or the circles of Heaven 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for which you cannot have a word that can signify a veryer nothing And yet the expression is one degree more made diminutive A vapor and phantastical or a meer appearance and this but for a little while neither the very dream the phantasm disappears in a small time like the shadow that departeth or like a tale that is told or as a dream when one awaketh A man is so vain so unfixed so perishing a creature that he cannot long last in the scene of fancy a man goes off and is forgotten like the dream of a distracted person The summe of all is this That thou art a man then whom there is not in the world any greater instance of heights and declensions of lights and shadows of misery and folly of laughter and tears of groans and death And because this consideration is of great usefulnesse and great necessity to many purposes of wisdom and the Spirit all the succession of time all the changes in nature all the varieties of light and darknesse the thousand thousands of accidents in the world and every contingency to every man and to every creature does preach our funeral sermon and calls us to look and see how the old Sexton Time throws up the earth and digs a Grave where we must lay our sins or our sorrows and sowe our bodies till they rise again in a fair or in an intolerable eternity Every revolution which the sun makes about the world divides between life and death and death possesses both those portions by the next morrow and we are dead to all those moneths which we have already lived and we shall never live them over again and still God makes little periods of our age First we change our world when we come from the womb to feel the warmth of the sun Then we sleep and enter into the image of death in which state we are unconcerned in all the changes of the world and if our Mothers or our Nurses die or a wilde boar destroy our
body and wrapt it self about his head till the Philosophers of Egypt said it was natural that from the marrow of some bodies such productions should arise and indeed it represents the condition of some men who being dead are esteemed saints and beatified persons when their head is encircled with dragons and is entered into the possession of Devils that old serpent and deceiver For indeed their life was secretly so corrupted that such serpents fed upon the ruines of the spirit and the decayes of grace and reason To be cosened in making judgements concerning our finall condition is extremely easie but if we be cosened we are infinitely miserable SECT III. Of exercising Charity during our whole life HE that would die well and happily must in his life time according to all his capacities exercise charity and because Religion is the life of the soul and charity is the life of religion the same which gives life to the better part of man which never dies may obtain of God a mercy to the inferiour part of man in the day of its dissolution 1. Charity is the great chanel through which God passes all his mercy upon mankinde For we receive absolution of our sins in proportion to our forgiving our brother this is the rule of our hopes and the measure of our desire in this world and in the day of death and judgement the great sentence upon mankinde shall be transacted according to our almes which is the other part of Charity Certain it is that God cannot will not never did reject a charitable man in his greatest needs and in his most passionate prayers for God himself is love and every degree of charity that dwells in us is the participation of the divine nature and therefore when upon our death-bed a cloud covers our heads and we are enwrapped with sorrow when we feel the weight of a sicknesse and do not feel the refreshing visitations of Gods loving kindnesse when we have many things to trouble us and looking round about us we see no comforter then call to minde what injuries you have forgiven how apt you were to pardon all affronts and real persecutions how you embraced peace when it was offered you how you followed after peace when it run from you and when you are weary of one side turn upon the other and remember the alms that by the grace of God and his assistances you have done and look up to God and with the eye of faith behold him coming in the cloud and pronouncing the sentence of dooms day according to his mercies and thy charity 2. Charity with its Twin-daughters almes and forgivenesse is especially effectual for the procuring Gods mercies in the day and the manner of our death almes deliver from death said old Tobias and almes make an atonement for sins said the son of Sirach and so said Daniel and so say all the wise men of the world And in this sence also is that of S. Peter Love covers a multitude of sins and S. Clement in his Constitutions gives this counsell If you have any thing in your hands give it that it may work to the remission of thy sins for by faith and alms sins are purged The same also is the counsel of Salviâ—n who wonders that men who are guilty of great and many sins will not work out their pardon by alms and mercy But this also must be added out of the words of Lactantius who makes this rule compleat and useful But think not that because sins are taken away by alms that by thy money thou mayest purchase a license to sin For sins are abolished if because thou hast sinned thou givest to God that is to Gods poor servants and his indigent necessitous creature But if thou sinnest upon confidence of giving thy sins are not abolished For God desires infinitely that men should be purged from their sins and therefore commands us to repent But to repent is nothing else but to professe and affirm that is to purpose and to make good that purpose that they will sin no more Now almes are therefore effective to the abolition and pardon of our sins because they are preparatory to and impetratory of the grace of repentance and are fruits of repentance and therefore S. Chrysostom affirmes that repentance without almes is dead and without wings and can never soar upwards to the element of love But because they are a part of repentance and hugely pleasing to Almighty God therefore they deliver us from the evils of an unhappy and accursed death for so Christ delivered his Disciples from the sea when he appeased the storm though they still sailed in the chanel and this S. Hierome verifies with all his reading and experience saying I do not remember to have read that ever any charitable person died an evil death and although a long experience hath observed Gods mercies to descend upon charitable people like the dew upon Gideons fleece when all the world was dry yet for this also we have a promise which is not onely an argument of a certain number of years as experience is but a security for eternall ages Make ye friends of the mammon of unrighteousnesse that when ye fail they may receive you into everlasting habitations When faith fails and chastity is uselesse and temperance shall be no more then charity shall bear you upon wings of cherubins to the eternall mountain of the Lord. I have been a lover of mankinde and a friend and mercifull and now I expect to communicate in that great kindnesse which he shews that is the great God and Father of men and mercies said Cyrus the Persian on his death-bed I do not mean this should onely be a death-bed charity any more then a death-bed repentance but it ought to be the charity of our life healthfull years a parting with portions of our goods then when we can keep them we must not first kindle our lights when we are to descend into our houses of darknesse or bring a glaring torch suddenly to a dark room that will amaze the eye and not delight it or instruct the body but if our Tapers have in their constant course descended into their grave crowned all the way with light then let the death-bed charity be doubled and the light burn brightest when it is to deck our hearse But concerning this I shall afterwards give account SECT IV. General considerations to enforce the former practises THese are the generall instruments of preparation in order to a holy death It will concern us all to use them diligently and speedily for we must be long in doing that which must be done but once and therefore we must begin betimes and lose no time especially since it is so great a venture and upon it depends so great a state Seneca said well There is no Science or Art in the world so hard as to
The Rule and Exercises of holy Dying by Ier Taylor D. D. THE RVLE AND EXERCISES OF HOLY DYING In which are described The MEANS and INSTRUMENTS of preparing our selves and others respectively for a blessed Death and the remedies against the evils and temptations proper to the state of Sicknesse Together with Prayers and Acts of Vertue to be used by sick and dying persons or by others standing in their Attendance To which are added Rules for the visitation of the Sick and offices proper for that Ministery 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Isoc ad Demonic LONDON Printed for R. R. and are to be sold by Edward Martin Bookseller in Norwich 1651. To the Right Honourable and most truly Noble RICHARD Lord VAVGHAN Earl of CARBERY Baron of EMLIN and MOLINGAR Knight of the Honourable Order of the BATH My Lord I Am treating your Lordship as a Roman Gentleman did Saint Augustine and his Mother I shall entertain you in a Charnel house and carry your meditations awhile into the chambers of death where you shall finde the rooms dressed up with melancholy arts and fit to converse with your most retired thoughts which begin with a sigh and proceed in deep consideration and end in a holy resolution The sight that S. Augustine most noted in that house of sorrow was the body of Caesar clothed with all the dishonours of corruption that you can suppose in a six moneths burial But I know that without pointing your first thoughts will remember the change of a greater beauty which is now dressing for the brightest immortality and from her bed of darknesse calls to you to dress your soul for that change which shall mingle your bones with that beloved dust and carry your soul to the same Quire where you may both sit and sing for ever My Lord it is your dear Ladies Anniversary and she deserved the biggest honour and the longest memory and the fairest monument and the most solemne mourning and in order to it give me leave My Lord to cover her Hearse with these following sheets this book was intended first to minister to her piety and she desired all good people should partake of the advantages which are here recorded she knew how to live rarely well and she desired to know how to dye and God taught her by an experiment But since her work is done and God supplyed her with provisions of his own before I could minister to her and perfect what she desired it is necessary to present to your Lordship those bundles of Cypresse which were intended to dresse her Closet but come now to dresse her Hearse My Lord both your Lordship and my self have lately seen and felt such sorrows of death and such sad departure of Dearest friends that it is more then high time we should think our selves neerly concerned in the accidents Death hath come so neer to you as to fetch a portion from your very heart and now you cannot choose but digge your own grave and place your coffin in your eye when the Angel hath dressed your scene of sorrow and meditation with so particular and so neer an object and therefore as it is my duty I am come to minister to your pious thoughts and to direct your sorrows that they may turn into vertues and advantages And since I know your Lordship to be so constant and regular in your devotions and so tender in the matter of justice so ready in the expressions of charity and so apprehensive of religion and that you are a person whose work of grace is apt and must every day grow towards those degrees where when you arrive you shall triumph over imperfection and choose nothing but what may please God I could not by any compendium conduct and assist your pious purposes so well as by that which is the great argument and the great instrument of holy living the consideration and exercises of death My Lord it is a great art to dye well and to be learnt by men in health by them that can discourse and consider by those whose understanding and acts of reason are not abated with fear or pains and as the greatest part of death is passed by the preceding years of our life so also in those years are the greatest preparation to it and he that prepares not for death before his last sicknesse is like him that begins to study Philosophy when he is going to dispute publikely in the faculty All that a sick and dying man can do is but to exercise those vertues which he before acquired and to perfect that repentance which was begun more early And of this My Lord my Book I think is a good testimony not onely because it represents the vanity of a late and sick-bed repentance but because it contains in it so many precepts and meditations so many propositions and various duties such forms of exercise and the degrees and difficulties of so many graces which are necessary preparatives to a holy death that the very learning the duties require study and skill time and understanding in the wayes of godlinesse and it were very vain to say so much is necessary and not to suppose more time to learn them more skill to practise them more opportunities to desire them more abilities both of body and mind then can be supposed in a sick amazed timerous and weak person whose naturall acts are disabled whose senses are weak whose discerning faculties are lessened whose principles are made intricate and intangled upon whose eye sits a cloud and the heart is broken with sicknesse and the liver pierced thorow with sorrows and the strokes of death And therefore my Lord it is intended by the necessity of affairs that the precepts of dying well be part of the studies of them that live in health and the dayes of discourse and understanding which in this case hath another degree of necessity superadded because in other notices an imperfect study may be supplied by a frequent exercise and a renewed experience Here if we practise imperfectly once we shall never recover the errour for we die but once and therefore it will be necessary that our skill be more exact since it is not to be mended by triall but the actions must be for ever left imperfect unlesse the habit be contracted with study and contemplation before hand And indeed I were vain if I should intend this book to be read and studied by dying persons and they were vainer that should need to be instructed in those graces which they are then to exercise and to finish For a sick bed is only a school of severe exercise in which the spirit of a man is tried and his graces are rehearsed and the assistances which I have in the following pages given to those vertues which are proper to the state of sicknesse are such as suppose a man in the state of grace or they confirm a good man or they support the weak or adde degrees or minister
vineyards or our King be sick we regard it not but during that state are as disinterest as if our eyes were closed with the clay that weeps in the bowels of the earth At the end of seven years our teeth fall and dye before us representing a formal prologue to the Tragedie and still every seven year it is oddes but we shall finish the last scene and when Nature or Chance or Vice takes our body in pieces weakening some parts and loosing others we taste the grave and the solennities of our own Funerals first in those parts that ministred to Vice and next in them that served for Ornament and in a short time even they that served for necessity become uselesse and intangled like the wheels of a broken clock Baldnesse is but a dressing to our funerals the proper ornament of mourning and of a person entred very far into the regions and possession of Death And we have many more of the same signification Gray hairs rotten teeth dim eyes trembling joynts short breath stiffe limbs wrinkled skin short memory decayed appetite Every dayes necessity calls for a reparation of that portion which death fed on all night when we lay in his lap and slept in his outer chambers The very spirits of a man prey upon the daily portion of bread and flesh and every meal is a rescue from one death and layes up for another and while we think a thought we die and the clock strikes and reckons on our portion of Eternity we form our words with the breath of our nostrils we have the lesse to live upon for every word we speak Thus Nature calls us to meditate of death by those things which are the instruments of acting it and God by all the variety of his Providence makes us see death every where in all variety of circumstances and dressed up for all the fancies and the expectation of every single person Nature hath given us one harvest every year but death hath two and the Spring and the Autumn send throngs of Men and Women to charnel houses and all the Summer long men are recovering from their evils of the Spring till the dog dayes come and then the Syrian star makes the summer deadly And the fruits of Autumn are laid up for all the years provision and the man that gathers them eats and sursets and dies and needs them not and himself is laid up for Eternity and he that escapes till winter only stayes for another opportunity which the distempers of that quarter minister to him with great variety Thus death reigns in all the portions of our time The Autumn with its fruits provides disorders for us and the Winters cold turns them into sharp diseases and the Spring brings flowers to strew our herse and the Summer gives green turfe and brambles to binde upon our graves Calentures and Surâ—et Cold and Agues are the four quarters of the year and all minister to Death and you can go no whither but you tread upon a dead mans bones The wilde fellow in Petronius that escaped upon a broken table from the furies of a shipwrack as he was sunning himself upon the rocky shore espied a man rolled upon his floating bed of waves ballasted w th sand in the folds of his garment and carried by his civil enemy the sea towards the shore to finde a grave and it cast him into some sad thoughts that peradventure this mans wife in some part of the Continent safe and warme looks next moneth for the good mans return or it may be his son knows nothing of the tempest or his father thinks of that affectionate kiss which still is warm upon the good old mans cheek ever since he took a kinde farewel and he weeps with joy to think how blessed he shall be when his beloved boy returns into the circle of his Fathers arms These are the thoughts of mortals this is the end and sum of all their designes a dark night and an ill Guide a boysterous sea and a broken Cable a hard rock and a rough winde dash'd in pieces the fortune of a whole family and they that shall weep loudest for the accident are not yet entred into the storm and yet have suffered shipwrack Then looking upon the carkasse he knew it and found it to be the Master of the ship who the day before cast up the accounts of his patrimony and his trade and named the day when he thought to be at home see how the man swims who was so angry two dayes since his passions are becalm'd with the storm his accounts cast up his cares at an end his voyage done and his gains are the strange events of death which whither they be good or evil the men that are alive seldom trouble themselves concerning the interest of the dead But seas alone do not break our vessel in pieces Every where we may be shipwracked A valiant General when he is to reap the harvest of his crowns and triumphs fights unprosperously or falls into a Feaver with joy and wine and changes his Lawrel into Cypresse his triumphal chariot to an Hearse dying the night before he was appointed to perish in the drunkennesse of his festival joyes It was a sad arrest of the loosenesses and wilder feasts of the French Court when their King Henry 2. was killed really by the sportive image of a fight And many brides have died under the hands of Paranymphs and Maidens dressing them for uneasy joy the new and undiscerned chains of Marriage according to the saying of Bensirah the wise Jew The Bride went into her chamber and knew not what should befall her there Some have been paying their vows and giving thanks for a prosperous return to their own house and the roof hath descended upon their heads and turned their loud religion into the deeper silence of a grave And how many teeming Mothers have rejoyced over their swelling wombs and pleased themselves in becoming the chanels of blessing to a familie and the Midwife hath quickly bound their heads and feet and carried them forth to burial Or else the birth day of an Heir hath seen the Coffin of the Father brought into the house and the divided Mother hath been forced to travel twice with a painful birth and a sadder death There is no state no accident no circumstance of our life but it hath been sowred by some sad instance of a dying friend a friendly meeting often ends in some sad mischance and makes an eternal parting and when the Poet Eschylus was sitting under the walls of his house an eagle hovering over his bald head mistook it for a stone and let fall his oyster hoping there to break the shell but pierced the poor mans skull Death meets us every where and is procured by every instrument and in all chances and enters in at many doors by violence and secret influence by the aspect of a star and the stink of a mist by the emissions
onely to play withall but before a man comes to be wise he is half dead with gouts and consumptions with Catarrhes and aches with sore eyes and a worn out body so that if we must not reckon the life of a man but by the accounts of his reason he is long before his soul be dressed and he is not to be called a man without a wise and an adorned soul a soul at least furnished with what is necessary towards his well being but by that time his soul is thus furnished his body is decayed and then you can hardly reckon him to be alive when his body is possessed by so many degrees of death 3. But there is yet another arrest At first he wants strength of body and then he wants the use of reason and when that is come it is ten to one but he stops by the impediments of vice and wants the strengths of the spirit and we know that Body and Soul and Spirit are the constituent parts of every Christian man And now let us consider what that thing is which we call years of discretion The young man is passed his Tutors and arrived at the bondage of a caytive spirit he is run from discipline and is let loose to passion the man by this time hath wit enough to chuse his vice to act his lust to court his Mistresse to talk confidently and ignorantly and perpetually to despise his betters to deny nothing to his appetite to do things that when he is indeed a man he must for ever be ashamed of for this is all the discretion that most men show in the first stage of their Manhood they can discern good from evil and they prove their skill by leaving all that is good and wallowing in the evils of folly and an unbridled appetite And by this time the young man hath contracted vitious habits and is a beast in manners and therefore it will not be fitting to reckon the beginning of his life he is a fool in his understanding and that is a sad death and he is dead in trespasses and sins and that is a sadder so that he hath no life but a natural the life of a beast or a tree in all other capacities he is dead he neither hath the intellectual nor the spiritual life neither the life of a man nor of a Christian and this sad truth lasts too long For old age seizes upon most men while they still retain the minds of boyes and vitious youth doing actions from principles of great folly and a mighty ignorance admiring things uselesse and hurtfull and filling up all the dimensions of their abode with businesses of empty affairs being at leasure to attend no vertue they cannot pray because they are busie and because they are passionate they cannot communicate because they have quarrels and intrigues of perplexed causes complicated hostilities and things of the world and therefore they cannot attend to the things of God little considering that they must find a time to die in when death comes they must be at leisure for that Such men are like Sailers loosing from a port and tost immediatly with a perpetual tempest lasting till their cordage crack and either they sink or return back again to the same place they did not make a voyage though they were long at sea The businesse and impertinent affairs of most men steal all their time and they are restlesse in a foolish motion but this is not the progress of a man he is no further advanc'd in the course of a life though he reckon many years for still his soul is childish and trifling like an untaught boy If the parts of this sad complaint finde their remedy we have by the same instruments also cured the evils and the vanity of a short life Therefore 1. Be infinitely curious you doe not set back your life in the accounts of God by the intermingling of criminal actions or the contracting vitious habits There are some vices which carry a sword in their hand and cut a man off before his time There is a sword of the Lord and there is a sword of a Man and there is a sword of the Devil Every vice of our own managing in the matter of carnality of lust or rage ambition or revenge is a sword of Sathan put into the hands of a man These are the destroying Angels sin is the Apollyon the destroyer that is gone out not from the Lord but from the Tempter and we hug the poison and twist willingly with the vipers till they bring us into the Regions of an irrecoverable sorrow We use to reckon persons as good as dead if they have lost their limbs and their teeth and are confined to an Hospital and converse with none but Surgeons and Physicians Mourners and Divines those pollinctores the Dressers of bodies and souls to Funeral But it is worse when the soul the principle of life is imployed wholly in the offices of death and that man was worse then dead of whom Seneca tells that being a rich fool when he was lifted up from the baths and set into a soft couch asked his slaves An ego jam sedeo Do I now sit The beast was so drownd in sensuality and the death of his soul that whether he did sit or no he was to believe another Idlenesse and every vice is as much of death as a long disease is or the expence of ten years and she that lives in pleasures is dead while she liveth saith the Apostle and it is the stile of the Spirit concerning wicked persons They are dead in trespasses and sins For as every sensual pleasure and every day of idlenes and useless living lops off a little branch from our short life so every deadly sin and every habitual vice does quite destroy us but innocence leaves us in our natural portions and perfect period we lose nothing of our life if we lose nothing of our souls health and therefore he that would live a full age must avoid a sin as he would decline the Regions of death the dishonors of the grave 2. If we would have our life lengthened let us begin bâ—times to live in the accounts of reason and sober counsels of religion and the Spirit and then we shall have no reason to complain that our abode on earth is so short Many men finde it long enough and indeed it is so to all senses But when we spend in waste what God hath given us in plenty when we sacrifice our youth to folly our manhood to lust and rage our old age to covetousnesse and irreligion not beginning to live till we are to die designing that time to Vertue which indeed is infirm to every thing and profitâ—ble to nothing then we make our lives short and lust runs away with all the vigorous and healthful part of it and pride and animosity steal the manly portion and craftinesse and interest possesse old age velut ex pleno
much holinesse mortified sin with so great a labour purchased vertue at such a rate and so rare an industry It must needs be that such a man must dye when he ought to die and be like ripe and pleasant fruit falling from a fair tree and gathered into baskeâ—s for the planters use He that hath done â—ll his businesse and is begotten to a glorious hope by the seed of an immortal Spirit can never die too soon nor live too long Xerxes wept sadly when he saw his army of 2300000 men because he considered that within a hundred years all the youth of that army should be dust and ashes and yet as Seneca well observes of him he was the man that should bring them to their graves and he consumed all that army in two years for whom he feared and wept the death after an hundred Just so we do all We complain that within thirty or fourty years a little more or a great deal lesse we shall descend again into the bowels of our Mother and that our life is too short for any great imployment and yet we throw away five and â—hirty yeers of our fourty and the remaining five we divide between art and nature civility and customs necessity and convenience prudent counsels and religion but the portion of the last is little and contemptible and yet that little is all that we can prudently account of our lives We bring that fate and that death neer us of whose approach we are so sadly apprehensive 4. In taking the accounts of your life do not reckon by great distances and by the periods of pleasure or the satisfaction of your hopes or the stating your desires but let every intermedial day and hour passe with observation He that reckons he hath lived but so many harvests thinks they come not often enough and that they go away too soon Some lose the day with longing for the night and the night in waiting for the day Hope and phantastic expectations spend much of our lives and while with passion we look for a coronation or the death of an enemy or a day of joy passing from fancy to possession without any intermedial notices we throw away a precious year and use it but as the burden of our time fit to be pared off and thrown away that we may come at those little pleasures which first steal our hearts and then steal our life 5. A strict course of piety is the way to prolong our lives in the natural sense and to adde good portions to the number of our years and sin is sometimes by natural causality very often by the anger of God and the Divine judgement a cause of sudden and untimely death Concerning which I shall adde nothing to what I have some where else said of this article but onely the observation of Epiphanius that for 3332 years even to the twentieth age there was not one example of a son that died before his Father but the course of Nature was kept that he who was first born in the descending line did first die I speak of natural death and therefore Abel cannot be opposed to this observation till that Terah the Father of Abraham taught the people a new religion to make images of clay and worship them and concerning him it was first remarked that Haran died before his Father Terah in the land of his Nativity God by an unheard of judgement and a rare accident punishing his newly invented crime by the untimely death of his son 6. But if I shall describe a living man a man that hath that life that distinguishes him from a fool or a bird that which gives him a capacity next to Angels we shall finde that even a good man lives not long because it is long before he is born to this life and longer yet before he hath a mans growth He that can look upon death and see its face with the same countenance with which he hears its story that can endure all the labours of his life with his soul supporting his body that can equally despise riches when he hath them and when he hath them not that is not sadder if they lye in his Neighbours trunks nor more brag if they shine round about his own walls he that is neither moved with good fortune coming to him nor going from him that can look upon another mans lands evenly and pleasedly as if they were his own and yet look upon his own and use them too just as if they were another mans that neither spends his goods prodigally and like a fool nor yet keeps them avaritiously and like a wretch that weighs not benefits by weight and number but by the mind circumstances of him that gives them that never thinks his charity expensive if a worthy person be the receiver he that does nothing for opinion sake but every thing for conscience being as curious of his thoughts as of his actings in markets and Theaters and is as much in awe of himself as of a whole assembly he that knowes God looks on and contrives his secret affairs as in the presence of God and his holy Angels that eats and drinks because he needs it not that he may serve a lust or load his belly he that is bountifull and cheerfull to his friends and charitable and apt to forgive his enemies that loves his countrey and obeyes his Prince and desires and endeavours nothing more then that he may do honour to God this person may reckon his life to be the life of a man and compute his moneths not by the course of the sun but the Zodiac and circle of his vertues because these are such things which fools and children and birds and beasts cannot have These are therefore the actions of life because they are the feeds of immortality That day in which we have done some excellent thing we may as truly reckon to be added to our life as were the fifteen years to the dayes of Hezekiah SECT IV. Consideration of the miseries of Mans life AS our life is very short so it is very miserable and therefore it is well it is short God in pity to mankinde lest his burden should be insupportable and his nature an intolerable load hath reduced our state of misery to an abbreviature and the greateâ— our misery is the lesse while it is like to last the sorrows of a mans spirit being like ponderous weights which by the greatnesse of their burden make a swifter motion and descend into the grave to rest and ease our wearied limbs for then onely we shall sleep quietly when those fetters are knocked off which not onely bound our souls in prison but also eat the flesh till the very bones open'd the secret garments of their cartilages discovering their nakednesse and sorrow 1. Here is no place to sit down in but you must rise as soon as you are set for we have gnats in our chambers and worms in
is a portion in the inheritance of Jesus of which he now talks no more as a thing at distance but is entring into the possession When the veil is rent and the prison doors are open at the presence of Gods Angel the soul goes forth full of hope sometimes with evidence but alwayes with certainty in the thing and instantly it passes into the throngs of Spirits where Angles meet it singing and the Devils flock with malitious and vile purposes desiring to lead it away with them into their houses of sorrow there they see things which they never saw and hear voices which they never heard There the Devils charge them with many sins And the Angels remember that themselves rejoyced when they were repented of Then the Devils aggravate and describe all the circumstances of the sin and adde calumnies and the Angels bear the soul forward still because their Lord doth answer for them Then the Devils rage and gnash their teeth they see the soul chast and pure and they are ashamed they see it penitent and they despair they perceive that the tongue was restrained and sanctified and then hold their peace Then the soul passes forth and rejoyces passing by the Devils in scorn and triumph being securely carried into the bosome of the Lord where they shall rest till their crowns are finished and their mansions are prepared and then they shall feast and sing rejoyce and worship for ever and ever Fearful and formidable to unholy persons is the first meeting with spirits in their separation But the victory which holy souls receive by the mercies of Jesus Christ and the conduct of Angels is a joy that we must not understand till we feel it and yet such which by an early and a persevering piety we may secure but let us enquire after it no further because it is secret CHAP. III. Of the state of sicknesse and the temptations incident to it with their proper remedies SECT I. Of the state of sicknesse ADams sin brought death into the world and man did die the same day in which he sinned according as God had threatned He did not die as death is taken for a separation of soul and body that is not death properly but the ending of the last act of death just as a man is said to be born when he ceases any longer to be born in his mothers womb But whereas to man was intended a life long and happy without sicknesse sorrow or infelicity and this life should be lived here or in a better place and the passage from one to the other should have been easy safe and pleasant now that man sinned he fell from that state to a contrary If Adam had stood he should not alwayes have lived in this world for this world was not a place capable of giving a dwelling to all those myriads of men and women which should have been born in all the generations of infinite and eternal ages for so it must have been if man had not dyed at all nor yet have removed hence at all Neither is it likely that mans innocence should have lost to him all possibility of going thither where the duration is better measured by a better time subject to fewer changes and which is now the reward of a returning vertue which in all natural senses is lesse then innocence save that it is heightned by Christ to an equality of acceptation with the state of innocence But so it must have been that his innocence should have been punished with an eternal confinement to this state which in all reason is the lesse perfect the state of a traveller not of one possessed of his inheritance It is therefore certain Man should have changed his abode for so did Enoch and so did Elias and so shall all the world that shall be alive at the day of judgement They shall not die but they shall change their place and their abode their duration and their state and all this without death That death therefore which God threatned to Adam and which passed upon his posterity is not the going out of this world but the manner of going If he had staid in innocence he should have gone from hence placidly and fairly without vexatious and afflictive circumstances he should not have dyed by sickness misfortune defect or unwillingnesse but when he fell then he began to die the same day so said God and that must needs be true and therefore it must mean that upon that very day he fell into an evil and dangerous condition a state of change and affliction then death began that is the man began to die by a natural diminution and aptnesse to disease and misery His first state was and should have been so long as it lasted a happy duration His second was a daily and miserable change and this was the dying properly This appears in the great instance of damnation which in the stile of Scripture is called eternal death not because it kills or ends the duration it hath not so much good in it but because it is a perpetual infelicity Change or separation of soul and body is but accidental to death Death may be with or without either but the formality the curse and the sting of death that is misery sorrow fear diminution defect anguish dishonour and whatsoever is miserable and afflictive in nature that is death death is not an action but a whole state and condition and this was first brought in upon us by the offence of one man But this went no further then thus to subject us to temporal infelicity If it had proceeded so as was supposed Man had been much more miserable for man had more then one original sin in this sence and though this death entred first upon us by Adams fault yet it came neerer unto us and increased upon us by the sins of more of our forefathers For Adams sin left us in strength enough to contend with humane calamities for almost a thousand years together But the sins of his children our forefathers took off from us half the strength about the time of the flood and then from 500. to 250. and from thence to 120. and from thence to threescore and ten so halfing it till it is almost come to nothing But by the sins of men in the several generations of the world death that is misery and disease is hastned so upon us that we are of a contemptible age and because we are to die by suffering evils and by the daily lessening of our strength and health this death is so long a doing that it makes so great a part of our short life uselesse and unserviceable that we have not time enough to get the perfection of a single manufacture but ten or twelve generations of the world must go to the making up of one wise man or one excellent Art and in the succession of those ages there happens so many changes and interruptions so many
of mercy to preserve their innocence to overcome temptation to try their vertue to fit them for rewards it is certain that sicknesse never is an evil but by our own faults and if we will do our duty we shall be sure to turn it into a blessing If the sicknesse be great it may end in death and the greater it is the sooner and if it be very little it hath great intervalls of rest if it be between both we may be Masters of it and by serving the ends of Providence serve also the perfective end of humane nature and enter into the possession of everlasting mercies The summe is this He that is afraid of pain is afraid of his own nature and if his fear be violent it is a signe his patience is none at all and an impatient person is not ready dressed for heaven None but suffering humble and patient persons can go to heaven and when God hath given us the whole stage of our life to exercise all the active vertues of religion it is necessary in the state of vertues that some portion and period of our lives be assigned to passive graces for patience for Christian fortitude for resignation or conformity to the Divine will But as the violent fear of sicknesse makes us impatient so it will make our death without comfort and without religion and we shall go off from our stage of actions and sufferings with an unhandsome exit because we were willing to receive the Kindnesse of God when he expressed it as we listed But we would not suffer him to be kinde and gracious to us in his own method nor were willing to exercise and improve our vertues at the charge of a sharp Feaver or a lingring consumption Woe be to the man that hath lost patience for what will he do when the Lord shall visit him SECT VII The second temptation proper to the state of sicknesse Fear of death with its remedies THere is nothing which can make sicknesse unsanctified but the same also will give us cause to fear death If therefore we so order our affairs and spirits that we do noâ— fear death our sickness may easily become our advantage and we can then receive counsel and consider and do those acts of vertue which are in that state the proper services of God and such which men in bondage and fear are not capable of doing or of advices how they should when they come to the appointed dayes of mourning And indeed if men would but place their designe of being happy in the noblenesse courage and perfect resolutions of doing handsome things and passing thorough our unavoidable necessities in the contempt and despite of the things of this world and in holy living and the perfective desires of our natures the longings and pursuances after Heaven it is certain they could not be made miserable by chance and change by sicknesse and death But we are so softned and made effeminate with delicate thoughts and meditations of ease and brutish satisfactions that if our death comes before we have seized upon a great-fortune or enjoy the promises of the fortune tellers we esteem our selves to be robbed of our goods to be mocked and miserable Hence it comes that men are impatient of the thoughts of death hence comes those arts of protraction and delaying the significations of old age thinking to deceive the world men cosen themselves and by representing themselves youthfull they certainly continue their vanity till Proserpina pull the perruke from their heads We cannot deceive God and nature for a coffin is a coffin though it be covered with a pompous veil and the minutes of our time strike on and are counted by Angels till the period comes which must cause the passing bell to give warning to all the neighbours that thou art dead and they must be so and nothing can excuse or retard this and if our death could be put off a little longer what advantage can it be in thy accounts of nature or felicity They that 3000 years agone dyed unwillingly and stopped death two dayes or staid it a week what is their gain where is that week and poor spirited men use arts of protraction and make their persons pitiable but their condition contemptible beeing like the poor sinners at Noahs flood the waters drove them out of their lower rooms then they crept up to the roof having lasted half a day longer and then they knew not how to get down some crept upon the top branch of a tree and some climbed up to a mountain and staid it may be three dayes longer but all that while they endured a worse torment then death they lived with amazement and were distracted with the ruines of mankinde and the horrour of an universal deluge Remedies against the fear of death by way of consideration 1. God having in this world placed us in a sea and troubled the sea with a continual storm hath appointed the Church for a ship and religion to be the sterne but there is no haven or port but death Death is that harbour whither God hath designed every one that there he may finde rest from the troubles of the world How many of the noblest Romans have taken death for sanctuary and have esteemed it less then shame or a mean dishonour And Caesar was cruel to Domitius Captain of Corfinium when he had taken the town from him that he refused to signe his petition of death Death would have hid his head with honour but that cruel mercy reserved him to the shame of surviving his disgrace The Holy Scripture giving an account of the reasons of the divine providence taking Godly men from this world and shutting them up in a hasty grave sayes that they are taken from the evils to come and concerning our selves it is certain if we had ten years agone taken seizure of our portion of dust death had not taken us from good things but from infinite evils such which the sun hath seldom seen Did not Priamus weep oftner then Troilus and happy had he been if he had died when his sons were living and his kingdom safe and houses full and his citie unburnt It was a long life that made him miserable and an early death onely could have secured his fortune and it hath happened many times that persons of a faâ—r life and a clear reputation of a good fortune and an honourable name have been tempted in their age to folly and vanity have fallen under the disgrace of dotage or into an infortunate marriage or have besottted themselves with drinking or outlived their fortunes or become tedious to their friends or are afflicted with lingring and vexatious diseases or lived to see their excellent parts buried and cannot understand the wise discourses and productions of their younger years In all these cases and infinite more do not all the world say but it had been better this man had died sooner But
him alone till he obtained the same favour for her and she also at the prayers of S. Hilary went into a more early grave and a bed of joyes 7. It is a sottish and an unlearned thing to reckon the time of our life as it is short or long to be good or evil fortune life in it self being neither good nor bad but just as we make it and therefore so is death 8. But when we consider death is not onely better then a miserable life not onely an easie and innocent thing in it self but also that it is a state of advantage we shall have reason not to double the sharpnesses of our sicknesse by our fear of death Certain it is death hath some good upon its proper stock praise and a fair memory a reverence and religion toward them so great that it is counted dishonest to speak evil of the dead then they rest in peace and are quiet from their labours and are designed to immortality Cleobis and Biton Throphonius and Agamedes had an early death sent them as a reward to the former for their piety to their Mother to the latter for building of a Temple To this all those arguments will minister which relate the advantages of the state of separation and resurrection SECT VIII Remedies against fear of death by way of exercise 1. HE that would willingly be fearlesse of death must learn to despise the world he must neither love any thing passionately nor be proud of any circumstance of his life O death how bitter is the remembrance of thee to a man that liveth at rest in his possessions to a man that hath nothing to vex him and that hath prosperity in all things yea unto him that is yet able to receive meat said the son of Sirach But the parts of this exercise help each other If a man be not incorporated in all his passions to the things of this world he will lesse fear to be divorced from them by a supervening death and yet because he must part with them all in death it is but reasonable he should not be passionate for so fugitive and transient interest But if any man thinks well of himself for being a handsome person or if he be stronger and wiser then his neighbours he must remember that what he boasts of will decline into weaknesse and dishonour but that very boasting and complacency will make death keener and more unwelcome because it comes to take him from his confidences and pleasures making his beauty equal to those Ladies that have slept some years in Charnel houses and their strength not so stubborn as the breath of an infant and their wisdom such which can be looked for in the land where all things are forgotten 2. He that would not fear death must strengthen his spirit with the proper instruments of Christian fortitude All men are resolved upon this that to bear grief honestly and temperately and to dye willingly and nobly is the duty of a good and of a valiant man and they that are not so are vitious and fools and cowards All men praise the valiant and honest and that which the very Heathen admired in their noblest examples is especially patience and contempt of death Zeno Eleates endured torments rather then discover his friends or betray them to the danger of the Tyrant and Calanus the barbarous and unlearned Indian willingly suffered himself to be burnt alive and all the women did so to do honour to their Husbands Funeral and to represent and prove their affections great to their Lords The religion of a Christian does more command fortitude then ever did any institution for we are commanded to be willing to die for Christ to dye for the brethren to dye rather then give offence or scandal the effect of which is this that he that is instructed to do the necessary parts of his duty is by the same instrument fortified against death As he that does his duty need not fear death so neither shall he the parts of his duty are parts of his security It is certainly a great basenesse and pusillanimitie of spirit that makes death terrible and extremely to be avoided 3. Christian prudence is a great security against the fear of death For if we be afraid of death it is but reasonable to use all spiritual arts to take off the apprehension of the evil but therefore we ought to remove our fear because fear gives to death wings and spurres and darts Death hastens to a fearful man if therefore you would make death harmlesse and slow to throw off fear is the way to do it and prayer is the way to do that If therefore you be afraid of death consider you will have lesse need to fear it by how much the less you do fear it and so cure your direct fear by a reflex act of prudence and consideration Fannius had not dyed so soon if he had not feared death and when Cneius Carbo begged the respite of a little time for a base imployment of the souldiers of Pompey he got nothing but that the basenesse of his fear dishonoured the dignity of his third Consulship and he chose to dye in a place where none but his meanest servants should have seen him I remember a story of the wrastler Polydamas that running into a cave to avoid the storm the water at last swelled so high that it began to presse that hollownesse to a ruine which when his fellowes espied they chose to enter into the common fate of all men and went abroad but Polydamas thought by his strength to support the earth till its intolerable weight crushed him into flatnesse and a grave Many men run for shelter to a place and they onely finde a remedie for their fears by feeling the worst of evils fear it self findes no sanctuary but the worst of sufferance and they that flye from a battel are exposed to the mercy and fury of the pursuers who if they faced about were as well disposed to give laws of life and death as to take them and at worst can but die nobly but now even at the very best they live shamefully or die timorously Courage is the greatest security for it does most commonly safeguard the man but alwayes rescues the condition from an intolerable evil 4. If thou wilt be fearlesse of death endeavour to be in love with the felicities of Saints and Angels and be once perswaded to believe that there is a condition of living better then this that there are creatures more noble then we that above there is a countrey better then ours that the inhabitants know more and know better and are in places of rest and desire and first learn to value it and then learn to purchase it and death cannot be a formidable thing which lets us into so much joy so much felicity And indeed who would not think his condition mended if he passed from conversing with dull
but gave command that his body should be interred not laid in a coffin of gold or silver but just into the earth from whence all living creatures receive birâ—h and nourishment and whether they must return Among Christians the honour which is valued in the behalf of the dead is that they be buried in holy ground that is in appointed coemitaries in places of religion there where the field of God is sowen with the seeds of the resurrection that their bodies also may be among the Christians with whom their hope and their portion is and shall be for ever Quicquid feceris omnia haec eodem ventura sunt That we are sure of our bodies shall all be restored to our souls hereafter and in the intervall they shall all be turned into dust by what way soever you or your chance shall dresse them Licinus the freed man slept in a Marble Tombe but Cato in a little one Pompey in none and yet they had the best fate among the Romans and a memory of the biggest honour And it may happen that to want a Monument may best preserve their memories while the succeeding ages shall by their instances remember the changes of the world and the dishonours of death and the equality of the dead and Iames the fourth K of the Scotâ— obtained an Epitaph for wanting of a Tombe and K. Stephen is remembred with a sad story because 400. years after his death his bones were thrown into a river that evil men might sell the leaden coffin It is all one in the finall event of things Ninus the Assyrian had a Monument erected whose height was nine furlongs and the bredth ten saith Diodorus but Iohn the Baptist had more honor when he was humbly laid in the earth between the bodies of Abdias and Elizeus And S. Ignatius who was buried in the bodies of Lions and S. Polycarpe who was burned to ashes shall have their bones and their flesh again with greater comfort then those violent persons who slept amongst kings having usurped their throns when they were alive and their sepulchres when they were dead Concerning doing honor to the dead the consideration is not long Anciently the friends of the dead used to make their funeral Orations and what they spake of greater commendation was pardoned upon the accounts of friendship but when Christianity seized upon the possession of the world this charge was devolved upon Priests and Bishops and they first kept the customs of the world and adorned it with the piety of truth and of religion but they also so ordered it that it should not be cheap for they made funerall Sermons onely at the death of Princes or of such holy persons who shall judge the Angels the custome descended and in the channels mingled with the veins of earth thorow which is passed and now adayes men that die are commended at a price and the measure of their Legacy is the degree of their vertue but these things ought not so to be The reward of the greatest vertue ought not to be prostitute to the doles of common persons but preserved like Laurell and Coronets to remark and encourage the noblest things Persons of an ordinary life should neither be praised publikely nor reproached in private for it is an office and charge of humanity to speak no evil of the dead which I suppose is meant concerning things not publike and evident but then neither should our charity to them teach us to tell a lie or to make a great flame from a heap of rushes and mushrooms and make Orations crammed with the narrative of little observances and acts of civil and necessary and externall religion But that which is most considerable is that we should do something for the dead something that is reall and of proper advantage That we performe their will the lawes oblige us and will see to it but that we do all those parts of personall duty which our dead left unperformed and to which the lawes do not oblige us is an act of great charity and perfect kindnesse and it may redound to the advantage of our friends also that their debts be payed even beyond the Inventary of their moveables Besides this let us right their causes and assert their honour When Marcus Regulus had injured the memory of Herennius Senecio Metius Carus asked him What he had to do with his dead and became his advocate after death of whose cause he was Patron when he was alive And David added this also that he did kindnesse to Mephibosheth for Ionathans sake and Solomon pleaded his Fathers cause by the sword against Ioab and Shimei And certainly it is the noblest thing in the world to do an act of kindnesse to him whom we shall never see but yet hath deserved it of us and to whom we would do it if he were present and unlesse we do so our charity is mercenary and our friendships are direct merchandize and our gifts are brokage but what we do to the dead or to the living for their sakes is gratitude and vertue for vertues sake and the noblest portion of humanitie And yet I remember that the most excellent Prince Cyrus in his last exhortation to his sons upon his death bed charms them into peace and union of hearts and designes by telling them that his soul would be still alive and therefore fit to be revered and accounted as awful and venerable as when he was alive and what we do to our dead friends is not done to persons undiscerning as a fallen tree but to such who better attend to their relatives and to greater purposes though in other manner then they did here below And therefore those wise persons who in their funeral orations made their doubt with an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 If the dead have any perception of what is done below which are the words of Isocrates in the funeral encomium of Evagoras did it upon the uncertain opinion of the souls immortality but made no question if they were living they did also understand what could concern them The same words Nazianzen uses at the exequies of his sister Gorgonia and in the former invective against Iulian but this was upon another reason even because it was uncertain what the state of separation was and whether our dead perceive any thing of us till we shall meet in the day of judgement If it was uncertain then it is certain since that time we have had no new revelation concerning it but it is ten to one but when we dye we shall find the state of affairs wholly differing from all our opinions here and that no man of sect hath guessed any thing at all of it as it is Here I intend not to dispute but to perswade and therefore in the general if it be probable that they know or feel the benefits done to them though but by a reflex revelation from God or some under