when I have enquired after and call'd together all his worth my Reader want faith to goe along with me further Let us therefore descend quickly to his declining and we shall finde an evening becomming such a day glorious even in his Sun-set Nor could we look for any other Catastrophe at the last Scene when all the rest of his life was so well Acted He lived 55 yeares to learn how to dye well for indeed his whole Age was no otherwise imployed At last Nature being over-wrought groaned under many Infirmities which with cheerefulnesse he a great while passed over till Death which would not be deferr'd further and Heaven which would no longer be without this Guest agreed together to summon him by a swouning Fit which as soone as he had retired out of his Pulpit into his Chamber suspended his spirits and had throwne him on the ground had not a luckie friend whose fortune it was to close his eyes at last then by chance rescued him from the Fall After this his Disease pursued him so close that it took him from his profession and this hee accounted Death even before Death to be forc't from his Pulpit where he would willingly have expired his soule being then nearer and on its way to heaven But Blessed Man thou mad'st thy Bed thy Pulpit and finding thy Soule upon her Wing thou didst almost after thy usuall Method betake thy selfe to thy Text which was that commanding Monosyllable Death Yet before thou didst enter upon it thou didst prepare thy few and happie Auditors by a most devout and patheticall Prayer wherein all the world was beholding to thy extensive Charitie And may thy bleeding Countrie thy disquieted Prince thy divided Brethren thy melancholy Friends and even thy peevish enemies feele those Blessings which in thy last words thou didst beg for them When thou hadst as if thou didst intend them as so many Legacies summ'd up all things which are necessary for us Thou didst bequeath thy selfe into those hands that made thee and suddenly after didst fall asleepe He that shall with a contemplative soule observe all this and yet want a Sermon to teach him how to dye well when Reverend SHUTE now very near a Saint preacheth from his Death-bed to him will hardly be brought to a true sense of saving Mortification should his blessed Angell descend and bring down instructions more immediately from GODS Mouth how he might dye to live immortallie Nor did this Man of God goe to his Grave with meane Funerals he had more true Mourners then followed the Hearse of a departed Prince Such put on an affected griefe with their dissembling blacks and at these stately Obsequies there is no circumstance which is like Sorrow but a counterfeit Solemnitie when as there wanted no Pageants of Mortality nor borrowed sadnesse to attend him to the house of Death In his Melancholy Traine which was made up of thousands besides his drooping Kindred it was hard to finde out a dry eye or a face wherein griefe did not apparently shew it selfe The Nobility and Gentry could not command their Teares or were willing to bestow that last gatefull showre in acknowledgement of those many blessings they owed him for The dejected Clergie hung downe their heads as if they had lost the credit of their Profession His sad Parishioners who for so many yeares had received the bread of life by his faithfull Ministerie looked pale and disconsolate as though they had feared a succeeding Famine And the rest of the weeping croud who had heretofore gathered up whilest he shook the Tree of Life to all that came by their Laments and Peales of sighes did witnesse that they had soules sensible of the injuries which death had done them by taking away him who alwayes stood Sentinell for all his Auditors and gave them a timely Alarum against the surprizals of their Arch-Enemy the Devill Mr. Vdall that preached his Funerall Sermon Well then might his Learned Friend have spared his Funerall Lectnre for there were no eyes present which needed pumping no hearts which were not already melted at this Buriall of their Favourite But his words were Cordiall to us when he excellently shewed how He had fought a good fight finished The Text at his Funerall his course and kept the faith and was gone to receive that Crowne of Righteousnesse which the Lord the righteous Judge had laid up for him Let us therefore wipe our eyes seeing we are so well assured of his happinesse lest we seeme to envie him his blessed repose and the reward of his righteousnesse which we have reason to hope is as certaine as that the Almighty is mercifull and that he hath prepared heaven for a Kingdome and immortality for a Crowne for all those that have fought a good fight c. Yet 't is said there want not those that dare more then doubt of his soules blisse Oh desparate uncharitablenesse even against their own selves If our God be so severe that thy well-drest soule which never went without its true Wedding-garment cannot be admitted what shall become of those who have nothing but rags of vanity and patches of pretended zeale to cloath their sinfull nakednesse O my God if there be no roome in Heaven for this good this vigilant Shepherd where shall his poore weak flock be folded when we are driven out of this life Is not the Gate of Blessednesse narrow enough but must wretched man streighten it yet farther If so much so pure Piety cannot enter how shall prophanenesse and accumulated sin struggle through That forward Intruder that will make himselfe of Gods Jurie and dares presumptuously condemne the Just and Innocent passeth a sure sentence against his own soule But Heaven and Earth whose Darling he alwayes was have lifted him above the reach of their violent malice And whilest God and Men having now divided him betwixt them shall take care the one of his Soule the other of his Fame and shall eternize him in the Register of the Saints the memory of these dregs of men who are professed enemies even to Mortality to Learning Vertue Piety almost to all those true and essentiall parts of Charity and Religion shall be odious to Posterity to which they have help'd to give a wound by their furious and unlimited zeale and practises which will be beyond the cure either of Time or Policy Yet even for these Malignant Spirits his Soule left a blessing whilest he begd of the Almighty whither he was about to goe to enlighten and amend their bloodshed eyes and to pardon their wilfull and malitious Blindnesse Thus instead of repaying the Gall of his Detractors with Bitternesse he tooke them into his Prayers and so sacrificed for their sin a benefit bestowed upon them against their will and merit Come hither then all ye that have any aime at heaven and set your selves to study the life and death of this holy man what we cannot performe by his precepts and passed Instructions let us reach at by his example and imitation Thus he may live with us in despight of Death and preach saving Doctrines though himselfe be for ever silenced Thus every pious bosome may make it selfe his Tombe which being adorned with any resemblance of his better part will more fully evidence his worth then a speaking marble whose partiall Inscrptions doe most times flatter their dead guests and are therefore justly suspected as no more then a Funerall Complement Yet it were both pity and ingratitude should that silver Trumpet which hath so often awakened us from our sinfull Lethargies be be now hudled up in common dust without some little memoriall where it is laid up Go on then and doe you whose soules were above thirty yeates obliged to him deliver him over to Posterity in your intended Monument That when aged Time hath worne out all those who have been witnesses of his matchlesse parts and Piety the stones may tell his happy story by offering this Epitaph to every Reader Here lies c.
AN ELEGIACALL COMMEMORATION OF THE Pious Life and most lamented Death and Funerals of Mr. JOSIAH SHVTE Rector of the Parish of St. MARY WOOLNOTH in Lombard-street Who left us on the 13 of June 1643. London Printed in the Yeare of our Lord 1643. To the Reader Reader I Here adventure to offer thee some Funerall Sheets privately consecrated to the happy memory of that late Reverend Divine Mr. JOSIAH SHUTE by one who had long studied him They come to thy hands now thus openly to vindicate the Subject and the Pen which lamented Him To both which Malice or Ignorance or Negligence or all of them have done a spreading Injury by scattering some corrupted Copies which are so studiously false that no Line or Sentence carries its first and native sense with it It is but Reason therefore that the faulty Presse which hath made every Page a continued Errata should redeeme the multiplyed wrongs it hath done and recant those falsities which mingle themselves almost in every word and Comma by sending abroad these more legitimate Leaves which may be commended to thee rather for the Ingenuity and Truth then the Elegancy or Art which furnish them And though the Hand that drew those Lines drawes it selfe in either thinking that it hath not dressed them fine enough to look abroad or unwilling to sin among the common Scriblers of the Times yet certainly it is pardonable in me thus to doe Him right and to present thee with this though without his leave Farewell AN Elegiacall Commemoration c. FArewell to my Teares I 'le weepe no more Let those that can finde no other expression for their griefes then what their shewring eyes afford them bewaile our departed Prophet in the silent language of a Teare and weepe out Elegies for their souls great losse Whilest I find out some other meanes to empty my full Bosome not that I would willingly part with the remembrance of our Josiah nor powre out all those sad thoughts his Death hath left there for even my Melancholy is welcome to me whilest he is the Subject of it But that I would transcribe some reverentiall conceits which my contemplative Griefe hath written on my Heart that may perhaps be better read on my Paper For within me they now have a confused Method and take up so much of me that they scarce leave roome for other thoughts which these Times fruitfull in sorrowes do continually dictate to me I may freely admire Thee now for thy modest Eares are deafe to our applause and thy well-led-life was above our Flattery So that I shall have no cause to check my selfe whilest with praise and wonder I runne over the variety of thy merit Nor shall our inquiry begin at the last Act of thy Life we will cursorily at least examine every Scene of it and wil look back upon thee even from thy Cradle to thy Grave And we shall finde Thee consecrated even from thy Infancy to the service of thy Great Master Thou wert the Sonne of a Prophet of a religious and faithfull Minister who was blessed with five more every one of which with a carefull and pious Hand he led through all their Studies till He brought them from the Schoole to the Pulpit and when as in an eminent Candlestick He had there placed them as so many burning shining Lights as if there wanted nothing to make Him perfectly happy but Heaven it selfe He left this world engaged to Him for those five happie Legacies in a full old age We will not here any further search after the religious courses of thy learned Brothers yet whilest we bemoane Thee we cannot but remember the considerable losse of thy Neighbour Mr. Shute of the Poultry Dr. Bolsworth at the Funeral recounted above 3000 Sermons which he had preached Brother who was Sainted some few yeares before Thee whose various Learning whose devout Industrie whose divine Gifts made his Life also admired and his Death lamented by all that heard of him being Brother as well to thy Desert as Blood When we take a view of Thee and examine all thy Merit we need no other description of an exact Protestant and a true Father of the Church And let those that shall hereafter have occasion to write such a Character remember Reverend Shute and make Him their Patterne We will first consider Him as a Man How well He did instruct Himselfe and preach to his owne soule And we shall here find that his ordinary conversation was a continued Lecture Hee was of Bene vixit ordinabiliter sibi sociabiliter Proximo humiliter Deo Bernard a disposition sociable yet affording Nature only such refreshments as might enable Her to assist Him in his holy imployment for they were but as so many preparatives to study To all Hee was generally affable to none severe never discovering any Austerity but against a confident Sinner Hee was knowne almost to all acquainted with but a few He kept a civill correspondence with many learned men but those that He commonly bestowed his leizure houres with He chose rather for their free and innocent friendlinesse then for any eminencie of their parts rather studying Books then Men yet conversing so much with the last that He might not be quite a stranger to the His Rectory being worth about 80 li. Per Annum times He lived in His greatest wealth was the riches of content His greatest expence next to his Bookes was his Charity and Hee could never find himself touched with any thing like Covetousnesse but when his small Treasury could not afford Him reliefe for some that were the objects of his Pity He was long happy in a grave and vertuous wife but never was indeed a Father though He often shewed himselfe so to those that were Fatherlesse He knew not how to be proud and could as ill endure a creeping Flattery In briefe He was a man of so even a spirit so happily tempered that He was Master of his Passions and had no unruly Humour predominant in Him I could lay downe out of the observation of his life so many divine so many morall rules and precepts that his very example were direction enough how we should steere our Actions and Affections But these are the sleightest pieces of his worth Let us look upon Him in his proper sphere and enquire how fit a man Hee was for his sacred Function How he was qualified to be an Embassador from the Court of Heaven and here He will be well worth our wonder for it will appeare that all those Eminencies which doe disperce and divide themselves amongst severall other men did all meet in Him what was it that any one Man might boast of of his profession which Hee himselfe was not Master of When He shewed Himselfe in his Pulpit his gravity preaching countenance did chastize every carelesse or wanton Hearer So that to wear his Picture near our Eye or Heart or to suppose Him looking upon Us were enough
into the first Essence and purity of things before the perplexing variety of humane conceipt had spent it self upon it that he might examine upon what Grounds and Reasons the antient Expositors and Fathers have founded those numerous Volumes which at this day do furnish our holy Libraries Doing this not out of a proud curiositie or to defend Errour but out of a reverend feare of assenting to the newer opinions of any how eminent soever if he found them dissonant to those ancient verities which he studiously traced by going so far backward into the unfoiled Learning and wisdome which was behinde him And then But I 'le summe up no more of his parts but will abruptly leave his many abilities in the mid-way Seeing every Sermon of his told us how generally how admirable he was qualified for they were not the elaborate Issues of many dayes so much time not being allowed him but they were the disgested quintessence of his former labours to which his leisure only gave him leave to adde little else but Meditation Method There is yet something behinde which will give more lustre to his precious Memory It is possible that we may finde his parallell if we only look upon the qualifications of Learning and strong Parts But where shall we finde so much sober integrity one so like to those first Disciples whose immediate Tutor Christ himselfe was One that so deservedly may be stiled an Apostle of our Church Herein lay his prime Excellency Let us first looke upon Him as appointed by his great Master to the cure of those soules amongst whom He expired we shall find Him continually diligent in his charge where He fixed himselfe for one and thirty years behaving Himselfe much like that Shepherd that gave his life for his sheepe for it is well knowne He spent himselfe so without intermission in his study and his Pulpit that his unstirred humours which wanted part of that immoderate exercise which his spirits had setled into Diseases which pressed upon Him so violently in his later years that he often preached in pain in faint sweats nay sometimes in Bloud of which he had many sad witnesses Nor could He be won from his station wherein his Conscience told Him his God had set Him by any richer Invitations or Livings of a greater Ostered Him by some of his Lay-friends value which he often refused as unwilling when Hee had brought his neighbours soules halfe-way to Heaven to leave them to a new Convoy who might perhaps rather direct them a crooked course or bring them back againe then helpe them forward for He would often lament the paucity of conscientious Guides He was observed to be so far from that almost epidemicall crime of Temporizing that he was looked upon as a professed though not a rigid Antagonist to the times he lived in as if he scorned to bee a Favourite to that predominant Power under which the evils he lamented seemed to him to receive their countenance and growth his well-setled soule was still kept within its religious Center and could never be conjured out by all those powerfull Charmes which Ambition scatters to enveagle the judgements and inclinations of her opposites Yet he sometimes commanded himselfe to a mannerly and civill obedience as a subject and a sonne of the Church in some indifferent things rather yeelding to the publique and a good conscience than to the wilfulnesse of his own private opinions But when at any time he saw plainly any indirect Designes on foot which some great Agents in Church and State kept going either to put new fetters upon the subjects or new disguises on Religion he could never be courted to lend his Tongue to make Apologies for their Innovations nor could be silenced from declaiming against the dangerous attempts of these first troublers of Israel And there needs no greater approbation of his uprightnesse nor a fuller conviction of the corrupt Genius of those dayes then that he and some more of his Form whose standing in the gap when superstition was rushing in drew upon them that then venerable nick name of Puritans were so long left unpreferred whilest the Dignities of the Church which shold have been the reward of Men singular for their Piety and Ability were chiefly taken up by such who rather studied preached and practiced the Politiques then Divinity And when afterwards the winds were quite turned when stormes and foule weather seemed to threaten every one that came not into the new roade he did not forsake that Anchor of a holy Resolution but rather endured sharpe blasts of envie and malice disdaing a wavering compliance to the fatall alterations of our giddie times which drew from him many a Tear private groan Nor could he refraine from a more open expression of his griefe though there was danger and suspition in his very Sighs For he would modestly and warily complaine of and bewaile the miscariages or mistakes of those above him but with a warme and warrantable Zeale be angry with such among the heady people who would not see the confusion they were violently hurrying into No bold-fac'd sinne could scape him without a seasonable reprehension No distructive Doctrines no false glosses no schismaticall Tares could be sowed by the Malice or Ignorance of any but he would carefully set himselfe to the weeding of them out betimes lest the seeds of them should prove fruitfull and scatter themselves in his well-kept Garden for such is a Parish well instructed He was so earnest a Lover of Union and right Devotion that the dividing Separatist and superstitious Papist received a wound from him at every Lecture To conclude hee was such an eager opposite to all those things that interrupted our Peace and sullied the faire Face of Truth that we must needs complaine that Truth and Peace have lost one of their chiefe Champions Nor did he encounter the divers enemies of the times with a loud violence but moderately and calmely overthrew Them having learned the experiment of breaking a Flint with more easinesse upon a cushion scorning that vain-glory and those false ends which make some partially and uncivilly raile against the present managers of our Affaires tempting on purpose the Anger and the power of those whose Interest commands them to stop their their mouthes that they may undeservedly gain the title of a Prerogative Martyr and hazard their petty preferments in expectation of some better guerdon so catching at a Dignity by their hot ambition which they were never likely to reach by their luke-warme Devotion But his Diviner Soule knew no indirect ends the Cathedrall honour never had any magnetick Influence upon his conscience his Eye and his Heart were alwayes toward Heaven as if he thence expected his Bishoprick and desired no other preferment then what was there laid up for him Being so high minded that he slighted the Miter to make himsefe sure of a Crowne It is time that I should make haste to his Mortalitie lest