turfe and entertain creeping things in the cells and little chambers of our eyes and dwell with worms till time and death shall be no more We must needs die That 's our sentence But that 's not all We are as water spilt on the ground which cannot be gathered up again Stay 1. We are as water weak and of no consistence alwaies descending abiding in no certain place unlesse where we are detained with violence and every little breath of winde makes us rough and tempestuous and troubles our faces every trifling accident discomposes us and as the face of the waters wafting in a storm so wrinkles it self that it makes upon its forehead furrows deep and hollow like a grave so doe our great and little cares and trifles first make the wrinkles of old age and then they dig a grave for us And there is in nature nothing so contemptible but it may meet with us in such circumstances that it may be too hard for us in our weaknesses and the sting of a Bee is a weapon sharp enough to pierce the finger of a childe or the lip of a man and those creatures which nature hath left without weapons yet they are arm'd sufficiently to vex those parts of men which are left defenselesse and obnoxious to a sun beame to the roughness of a sowre grape to the unevenness of a gravel-stone to the dust of a wheel or the unwholsome breath of a starre looking awry upon a sinner 2 But besides the weaknesses and naturall decayings of our bodies if chances and contingencies be innumerable then no man can reckon our dangers and the praeternaturall causes of our deaths So that he is a vain person whose hopes of life are too confidently increased by reason of his health and he is too unreasonably timorous who thinks his hopes at an end when he dwels in sicknesse For men die without rule and with and without occasions and no man suspecting or foreseeing any of deaths addresses and no man in his whole condition is weaker then another A man in a long Consumption is fallen under one of the solemnities and preparations to death but at the same instant the most healthfull person is as neer death upon a more fatall and a more sudden but a lesse discerned cause There are but few persons upon whose foreheads every man can read the sentence of death written in the lines of a lingring sicknesse but they sometimes hear the passing bell ring for stronger men even long before their own knell cals at the house of their mother to open her womb and make a bed for them No man is surer of tomorrow then the weakest of his brethren and when Lepidus and Aufidius stumbled at the threshold of the Senate and fell down and dyed the blow came from heaven in a cloud but it struck more suddenly then upon the poor slave that made sport upon the Theatre with a praemeditated and foredescribed death Quod quisque vitet nunquam homini satis cautum est in horas There are sicknesses that walk in darknesse and there are exterminating Angels that fly wrapt up in the curtains of immateriality and an uncommunicating nature whom we cannot see but we feel their force and sink under their sword and from heaven the vail descends that wraps our heads in the fatall sentence There is no age of man but it hath proper to it self some posterns and outlets for death besides those infinite and open ports out of which myriads of men and women every day passe into the dark and the land of forgetfulnesse Infancie hath life but in effigie or like a spark dwelling in a pile of wood the candle is so newly lighted that every little shaking of the taper and every ruder breath of air puts it out and it dies Childhood is so tender and yet so unwary so soft to all the impressions of chance and yet so forward to run into them that God knew there could be no security without the care and vigilance of an Angel-keeper and the eies of Parents and the armes of Nurses the provisions of art and all the effects of Humane love and Providence are not sufficient to keep one child from horrid mischiefs from strange and early calamities and deaths unlesse a messenger be sent from heaven to stand sentinell and watch the very playings and the sleepings the eatings and the drinkings of the children and it is a long time before nature makes them capable of help for there are many deaths and very many diseases to which poor babes are exposed but they have but very few capacities of physick to shew that infancy is as liable to death as old age and equally exposed to danger and equally uncapable of a remedy with this onely difference that old age hath diseases incurable by nature and the diseases of childhood are incurable by art and both the states are the next heirs of death 3 But all the middle way the case is altered Nature is strong and art is apt to give ease and remedy but still there is no security and there the case is not altered 1 For there are so many diseases in men that are not understood 2 So many new ones every year 3 The old ones are so changed in circumstance and intermingled with so many collaterall complications 4 The Symptoms are oftentimes so alike 5 Sometimes so hidden and fallacious 6 Sometimes none at all as in the most sudden and the most dangerous imposthumations 7 And then the diseases in the inward parts of the body are oftentimes such to which no application can be made 8 They are so far off that the effects of all medicines can no otherwise come to them then the effect and juices of all meats that is not till after two or three alterations and decoctions which change the very species of the medicament 9 And after all this very many principles in the art of Physick are so uncertain that after they have been believed seven or eight ages and that upon them much of the practise hath been established they come to be considered by a witty man and others established in their stead by which men must practise and by which three or four generations of men more as happens must live or die 10 And all this while the men are sick and they take things that certainly make them sicker for the present and very uncertainly restore health for the future that it may appear of what a large extent is humane calamity when Gods providence hath not onely made it weak and miserable upon the certain stock of a various nature and upon the accidents of an infinite contingency but even from the remedies which are appointed our dangers and our troubles are certainly increased so that we may well be likened to water our nature is no stronger our abode no more certain If the sluces be opened it falls away and runneth apace if its current be stopped it swels and grows troublesome and spils over
with a greater diffusion If it be made to stand stil it putrefies and all this we doe For 4. In all the processe of our health we are running to our grave we open our own sluces by vitiousness and unworthy actions we powre in drink and let out life we increase diseases and know not how to bear them we strangle our selves with our own intemperance we suffer the feavers and the inflammations of lust and we quench our soules with drunkennesse we bury our understandings in loads of meat and surfets and then we lie down upon our beds and roar with pain and disquietness of our soules Nay we kill one anothers souls and bodies with violence and folly with the effects of pride and uncharitablenesse we live and die like fools and bring a new mortality upon our selves wars and vexatious cares and private duels and publike disorders and every thing that is unreasonable and every thing that is violent so that now we may adde this fourth gate to the grave Besides Nature and Chance and the mistakes of art men die with their own sins and then enter into the grave in haste and passion and pull the heavy stone of the monument upon their own heads And thus we make our selves like water spilt on the ground we throw away our lives as if they were unprofitable and indeed most men make them so we let our years slip through our fingers like water and nothing is to be seen but like a showr of tears upon a spot of ground there is a grave digged and a solemn mourning and a great talk in the neigbourhood and when the daies are finished they shall be and they shall be remembred no more And that 's like water too when it is spilt it cannot be gathered up again There is no redemption from the grave inter se mortales mutua vivunt Et quasi cur sores vitäi lampada tradunt Men live in their course and by turns their light burns a while and then it burns blew and faint and men go to converse with Spirits and then they reach the taper to another and as the hours of yesterday can never return again so neither can the man whose hours they were and who lived them over once he shall never come to live them again and live them better When Lazarus and the widows Son of Naim and Tabitha and the Saints that appeared in Jerusalem at the rusurrection of our blessed Lord arose they came into this world some as strangers onely to make a visit and all of them to manifest a glory but none came upon the stock of a new life or entred upon the stage as at first or to perform the course of a new nature and therefore it is observable that we never read of any wicked person that was raised from the dead Dives would fain have returned to his brothers house but neither he nor any from him could be sent but all the rest in the New Testament one onely excepted were expressed to have been holy persons or else by their age were declared innocent Lazarus was beloved of Christ those souls that appeared at the resurrection were the souls of Saints Tabitha raised by S Peter was a charitable and a holy Christian and the maiden of twelve years old raised by our blessed Saviour had not entred into the regions of choice and sinfulnesse and the onely exception of the widows son is indeed none at all for in it the Scripture is wholly silent and therefore it is very probable that the same processe was used God in all other instances having chosen to exemplifie his miracles of nature to purposes of the Spirit and in spirituall capacities So that although the Lord of nature did not break the bands of nature in some instances to manifest his glory to succeeding great and never failing purposes yet besides that this shall be no more it was also instanced in such persons who were holy and innocent and within the verge and comprehensions of the eternall mercy We never read that a wicked person felt such a miracle or was raised from the grave to try the second time for a Crown but where he fell there he lay down dead and saw the light no more This consideration I intend to you as a severe Monitor and an advice of carefulness that you order your affairs so that you may be partakers of the first resurrection that is from sin to grace from the death of vitious habits to the vigour life and efficacy of an habituall righteousnesse For as it hapned to those persons in the New Testament now mentioned to them I say in the literall sense Blessed are they that have part in the first resurrection upon them the second death shall have no power meaning that they who by the power of Christ and his holy Spirit were raised to life again were holy and blessed souls and such who were written in the book of God and that this grace happened to no wicked and vitious person so it is most true in the spirituall and intended sense You onely that serve God in a holy life you who are not dead in trespasses and sins you who serve God with an early diligence and an unwearied industry and a holy religion you and you onely shal come to life eternall you onely shall be called from death to life the rest of mankind shall never live again but passe from death to death from one death to another to a worse from the death of the body to the eternall death of body and soul and therefore in the Apostles Creed there is no mention made of the resurrection of wicked persons but of the resurrection of the body to everlasting life The wicked indeed shall be haled forth from their graves from their everlasting prisons where in chains of darknesse they are kept unto the judgement of the great day But this therefore cannot be called in sensu favoris a resurrection but the solennities of the eternall death It is nothing but a new capacity of dying again such a dying as cannot signifie rest but where death means nothing but an intolerable and never ceasing calamity and therefore these words of my text are otherwise to be understood of the wicked otherwise of the godly The wicked are spilt like water and shall never be gathered up again no not in the gatherings of eternity They shall be put into vessels of wrath and set upon on the flames of hell but that is not a gathering but a scattering from the face and presence of God But the godly also come under the sense of these words They descend into their graves and shall no more be reckoned among the living they have no concernment in all that is done under the sun Agamemnon hath no more to do with the Turks armies invading and possessing that part of Greece where he reigned then had the Hippocentaur who never had a beeing and Cicero hath no more interest in the
indeed cannot be in simple and spirituall substances of the same species or kind it must needs derive wholly from the body from its accidents circumstances from whence it follows that because the body casts fetters and restraints hindrances and impediments upon the soul that the soul is much freer in the state of separation and if it hath any act of life it is much more noble and expedite That the soul is alive after our death S. Paul affirms Christ died for us that whether we wake or sleep we should live together with him Now it were strange that we should be alive and live with Christ and yet do no act of life the body when it is asleep does many and if the soul does none the principle is less active then the instrument but if it does any act at all in separation it must necessarily be an act or effect of understanding there is nothing else it can doe But this it can For it is but a weak and an unlearned proposition to say That the Soule can doe nothing of it self nothing without the phantasmes and provisions of the body For 1. In this life the soule hath one principle clearly separate abstracted and immateriall I mean the Spirit of grace which is a principle of life and action and in many instances does not at all communicate with matter as in the infusion superinduction and the creation of spiritual graces 2. As nutrition generation eating and drinking are actions proper to the body and its state so extasies visions raptures intuitive knowledge and consideration of its self acts of volition and reflex acts of understanding are proper to the soule 3. And therefore it is observable that S. Paul said that he knew not whether his vision and raptures were in or out of the body for by that we see his judgment of the thing that one was as likely as the other neither of them impossible or unreasonable and therefore that the soule is as capable of action alone as in conjunction 4 If in the state of blessedness there are some actions of the soule which doe not passe through the body such as contemplation of God and conversing with spirits and receiving those influences and rare immissions which coming from the H. and mysterious Trinity make up the crown of glory it follows that the necessity of the bodies ministery is but during the state of this life and as long as it converses with fire and water and lives with corne and flesh and is fed by the satisfaction of materiall appetites which necessity and manner of conversation when it ceases it can be no longer necessary for the soul to be served by phantasmes and materiall representations 5. And therefore when the body shall be re-united it shall be so ordered that then the body shall confesse it gives not any thing but receives all its being and operation its manner and abode from the soul and that then it comes not to serve a necessity but to partake a glory For as the operations of the soule in this life begin in the body and by it the object is transmitted to the soule so then they shall begin in the soule and pass to the body and as the operations of the soule by reason of its dependence on the body are animall naturall and materiall so in the resurrection the body shall be spirituall by reason of the preeminence influence and prime operation of the soule Now between these two states stands the state of separation in which the operations of the soule are of a middle nature that is not so spirituall as in the resurrection and not so animal and naturall as in the state of conjunction To all which I adde this consideration That our soules have the same condition that Christs soule had in the state of separation because he took on him all our nature and all our condition and it is certain Christs soule in the three daies of his separation did exercise acts of life of joy and triumph and did not sleep but visited the souls of the Fathers trampled upon the pride of Devils and satisfied those longing souls which were Prisoners of hope and from all this we may conclude that the souls of all the servants of Christ are alive and therefore doe the actions of life and proper to their state and therefore it is highly probable that the soul works clearer and understands brighter and discourses wiser and rejoyces louder and loves noblier and desires purer and hopes stronger then it can do here But if these arguments should fail yet the felicity of Gods Saints cannot fail For suppose the body to be a necessary instrument but out of tune and discomposed by sin and anger by accident and chance by defect and imperfections yet that it is better then none at all and that if the soul works imperfectly with an imperfect body that then she works not at all when she hath none and suppose also that the soul should be as much without sense or perception in death as it is in a deep sleep which is the image and shadow of death yet then God devises other means that his banished be not expelled from him For 2 God will restore the soul to the body and raise the body to such a perfection that it shall be an Organ fit to praise him upon it shall be made spirituall to minister to the soul when the soul is turned into a Spirit then the soul shall be brought forth by Angels from her incomparable and easie bed from her rest in Christs Holy Bosome and bee made perfect in her beeing and in all her operations And this shall first appear by that perfection which the soul shall receive as instrumentall to the last judgement for then she shall see clearly all the Records of this world all the Register of her own memory For all that we did in this life is laid up in our memories and though dust and forgetfulness be drawn upon them yet when God shall lift us from our dust then shall appear clearly all that we have done written in the Tables of our conscience which is the souls memory We see many times and in many instances that a great memory is hindred and put out and we thirty years after come to think of something that lay so long under a curtain we think of it suddenly and without a line of deduction or proper consequence And all those famous memories of Simonides and Theodectes of Hortensius and Seneca of Sceptius Metrodorus and Carneades of Cyneas the Embassadour of Pyrrhus are onely the Records better kept and lesse disturbed by accident and disease For even the memory of Herods son of Athens of Bathyllus and the dullest person now alive is so great and by God made so sure record of all that ever he did that assoon as ever God shall but tune our instrument and draw the curtains and but light up the candle of immortality there we shall find
it all there we shall see all and all the world shall see all then we shall be made fit to converse with God after the manner of Spirits we shall be like to Angels In the mean time although upon the perswasion of the former discourse it be highly probable that the souls of Gods servants do live in a state of present blessednesse and in the exceeding joyes of a certain expectation of the revelation of the day of the Lord and the coming of Jesus yet it will concern us onely to secure our state by holy living and leave the event to God that as S. Paul said whether present or absent whether sleeping or waking whether perceiving or perceiving not we may be accepted of him that when we are banished this world and from the light of the sun we may not be expelled from God and from the light of his countenance but that from our beds of sorrows our may passe into the bosome of Christ and from thence to his right hand in the day of sentence For we must all appear before the judgement seat of Christ and then if we have done well in the body we shall never be expelled from the beatificall presence of God but be domesticks of his family and heires of his Kingdome and partakers of his glory Amen I Have now done with my Text but yet am to make you another Sermon I have told you the necessity and the state of death it may be too largely for such a sad story I shall therefore now with a better compendium teach you how to live by telling you a plain narrative of a life which if you imitate and write after the copy it will make that death shall not be an evill but a thing to be desired and to be reckoned amongst the purchases and advantages of your fortune When Martha and Mary went to weep over the grave of their brother Christ met them there and preached a Funerall Sermon discoursing of the resurrection and applying to the purposes of faith and confession of Christ and glorification of God We have no other we can have no better precedent to follow and now that we are come to weep over the grave of our Dear Sister this rare personage we cannot chuse but have many virtues to learn many to imitate and some to exercise I chose not to declare her extraction and genealogy It was indeed fair and Honourable but having the blessing to be descended from worthy and Honoured Ancestors and her self to be adopted and ingraffed into a more Noble family yet she felt such outward appendages to be none of hers because not of her choice but the purchase of the virtues of others which although though they did ingage her to do noble things yet they would upbraid all degenerate and lesse honourable lives then were those which began and increased the honour of the families She did not love her fortune for making her noble but thought it would be a dishonour to her if she did not continue a Noblenesse and excellency of virtue fit to be owned by persons relating to such Ancestors It is fit for all us to honour the Noblenesse of a family but it is also fit for them that are Noble to despise it and to establish their honour upon the foundation of doing excellent things and suffering in good causes and despising dishonourable actions and in communicating good things to others For this is the rule in Nature Those creatures are most Honourable which have the greatest power and do the greatest good And accordingly my self have been a witnesse of it how this excellent Lady would by an act of humility and Christian abstraction strip her self of all that fair appendage of exteriour honour which decked her person and her fortune and desired to be owned by nothing but what was her own that she might onely be esteemed Honourable according to that which is the honour of a Christian and a wise person 2 She had a strict and severe education and it was one of Gods graces and favours to her For being the Heiresse of a great fortune and living amongst the throng of persons in the sight of vanities and empty temptations that is in that part of the Kingdome where greatnesse is too often expressed in great follies and great vices God had provided a severe and angry education to chastise the forwardnesses of a young spirit and a fair fortune that she might for ever be so far distant from a vice that she might onely see it and loath it but never tast of it so much as to be put to her choice whether she would be virtuous or no God intending to secure this soul to himself would not suffer the follies of the world to seize upon her by way of too neer a triall or busie temptation 3 She was married young and besides her businesses of religion seemed to be ordained in the providence of God to bring to this Honourable family a part of a fair fortune and to leave behind her a fairer issue worth ten thousand times her portion and as if this had been all the publike businesse of her life when she had so far served Gods ends God in mercy would also serve hers and take her to an early blessednesse 4 In passing through which line of providence she had the art to secure her eternall interest by turning her condition into duty and expressing her duty in the greatest eminency of a virtuous prudent and rare affection that hath been known in any example I will not give her so low a testimony as to say onely that she was chast She was a person of that severity modesty and close religion as to that particular that she was not capable of uncivill temptation and you might as well have suspected the sun to smell of the poppy that he looks on as that she could have been a person apt to be sullyed by the breath of a foul question 5. But that which I shall note in her is that which I would have exemplar to all Ladies and to all women She had a love so great for her Lord so intirely given up to a dear affection that she thought the same things and loved the same loves and hated according to the same enmities and breathed in his soul and lived in his presence and languished in his absence and all that she was or did was onely for and to her Dearest Lord Si gaudet si flet si tacet hunc loquitur Coenat propinat poscit negat innuit unu Naevius est and although this was a great enamell to the beauty of her soul yet it might in some degrees be also a reward to the virtue of her Lord For she would often discourse it to them that conversed with her that he would improve that interest which he had in her affection to the advantages of God and of religion and she would delight to say that he called her to her devotions he incouraged her good
crime yet she did infinitely remove all sacrilege from her thoughts and delighted to see her estate of a clear and disintangled interest she would have no mingled rights with it she would not receive any thing from the Church but religion and a blessing and she never thought a curse and a sin farre enough off but would desire it to be infinitely distant and that as to this family God had given much honour and a wise head to Govern it so he would also for ever give many more blessings And because she knew that the sins of Parents descend upon Children she endevoured by justice and religion by charity and honour to secure that her chanel should convey nothing but health and a faire example and a blessing 10. And though her accounts to God was made up of nothing but small parcels little passions and angry words and trifling discontents which are the allayes of the piety of the most holy persons yet she was early at her repentance and toward the latter end of her daies grew so fast in religion as if she had had a revelation of her approaching end and therefore that she must go a great way in a little time her discourses more full of religion her prayers more frequent her charity increasing her forgiveness more forward her friendships more communicative her passion more under discipline and so she trimm'd her lamp not thinking her night was so neer but that it might shine also in the day time in the Temple and before the Altar of incense But in this course of hers there were some circumstances and some appendages of substance which were highly remarkable 1. In all her Religion and in all her actions of relation towards God she had a strange evenness and untroubled passage sliding toward her ocean of God and of infinity with a certain and silent motion So have I seen a river deep and smooth passing with a still foot and a sober face and paying to the Fiscus the great Exchequer of the Sea the Prince of all the watry bodies a tribute large and full and hard by it a little brook skipping and making a noise upon its unequall and neighbour bottom and after all its talking and bragged motion it payd to its common Audit no more then the revenues of a little cloud or a contemptible vessel So have I sometimes compar'd the issues of her religion to the solemnities and fam'd outsides of anothers piety It dwelt upon her spirit and was incorporated with the periodicall work of every day she did not believe that religion was intended to minister to fame and reputation but to pardon of sins to the pleasure of God and the salvation of souls For religion is like the breath of Heaven if it goes abroad into the open aire it scatters and dissolves like camphyre but if it enters into a secret hollownesse into a close conveyance it is strong and mighty and comes forth with vigour and great effect at the other end at the other side of this life in the daies of death and judgment 2. The other appendage of her religion which also was a great ornament to all the parts of her life was a rare modesty and humility of spirit a confident despising and undervaluing of her self For though she had the greatest judgment and the greatest experience of things and persons that I ever yet knew in a person of her youth and sex and circumstances yet as if she knew nothing of it she had the meanest opinion of her self and like a fair taper when she shin'd to all the room yet round about her own station she had cast a shadow and a cloud and she shin'd to every body but her self But the perfectnesse of her prudence and excellent parts could not be hid and all her humility and arts of concealment made the vertues more amiable and illustrious For as pride sullies the beauty of the fairest vertues and makes our understanding but like the craft and learning of a Devil so humility is the greatest eminency and art of publication in the whole world and she in all her arts of secrecy and hiding her worthy things was but like one that hideth the winde and covers the oyntment of her right hand I know not by what instrument it hapned but when death drew neer before it made any show upon her body or reveal'd it self by a naturall signification it was conveyed to her spirit she had a strange secret perswasion that the bringing this Childe should be her last scene of life and we have known that the soul when she is about to disrobe her self of her upper garment sometimes speaks rarely Magnifica verba mors propè admoâ—a excutit sometimes it is Propheticall sometimes God by a superinduced perswasion wrought by instruments or accidents of his own serves the ends of his own providence and the salvation of the soul But so it was that the thought of death dwelt long with her and grew from the first steps of fancy and feare to a consent from thence to a strange credulity and expectation of it and without the violence of sicknesse she died as if she had done it voluntarily and by design and for feare her expectation should have been deceiv'd or that she should seem to have had an unreasonable feare or apprehension or rather as one said of Cato sic abiit è vitâ ut causam moriendi nactam se esse gauderet she died as if she had been glad of the opportunity And in this I cannot but adore the providence and admire the wisdome and infinite mercies of God For having a tender and soft a delicate and fine constitution and breeding she was tender to pain and apprehensive of it as a childs shoulder is of a load and burden Grave est tenerae cervici jugum and in her often discourses of death which she would renew willingly and frequently she would tell that she fear'd not death but she fear'd the sharp pains of death Emori nolo me esse mortuam non curo The being dead and being freed from the troubles and dangers of this world she hop'd would be for her advantage and therefore that was no part of her feare But she believing the pangs of death were great and the use and aids of reason little had reason to fear lest they should doe violence to her spirit and the decency of her resolution But God that knew her fears and her jealousie concerning her self fitted her with a death so easie so harmlesse so painlesse that it did not put her patience to a severe triall It was not in all appearance of so much trouble as two sits of a common ague so carefull was God to remonstrate to all that stood in that sad attendance that this soule was dear to him and that since she had done so much of her duty towards it he that began would also finish her redemption by an act of a rare providence and a singular mercy Blessed be
A Funerall Sermon PREACHED At the Obsequies of the Right Honble and most vertuous Lady THE LADY FRANCES Countesse of CARBERY Who deceased October the 9th 1650. at her House GOLDEN-GROVE in CARMARTHEN-SHIRE By JER. TAYLOR D. D. LONDON Printed by I. F. for R. Royston at the Angel in Ivie-lane M.DC.L To the right Honorable and truly Noble Richard Lord Vaughan Earle of Carbery Baron of Emlim and Molinger Knight of the Honorable Order of the Bath My Lord I Am not asham'd to professe that I pay this part of service to your Lordship most unwillingly for it is a sad office to be the chief Minister in a house of mourning and to present an interested person with a branch of Cypresse and a bottle of tears And indeed my Lord it were more proportionable to your needs to bring something that might alleviate or divert your sorrow then to dresse the hearse of your Dear Lady and to furnish it with such circumstances that it may dwell with you and lie in your closet and make your prayers and your retirements more sad and full of weepings But because the Divine providence hath taken from you a person so excellent a woman fit to converse with Angels and Apostles with Saints and Martyrs give me leave to present you with her picture drawn in little and in water-colours sullyed indeed with tears and the abrupt accents of a reall and consonant sorrow but drawn with a faithfull hand and taken from the life and indeed it were too great a losse to be depriv'd of her example and of her rule of the originall and the copie too The age is very evil and deserv'd her not but because it is so evil it hath the more need to have such lives preserv'd in memory to instruct our piety or upbraid our wickednesse For now that God hath cut this tree of paradise down from its seat of earth yet so the dead trunk may support a part of the declining Temple or at least serve to kindle the fire on the altar My Lord I pray God this heap of sorrow may swell your piety till it breaks into the greatest joyes of God and of religion and remember when you pay a tear upon the grave or to the memory of your Lady that Deare and most excellent Soule that you pay two more one of repentance for those things that may have caus'd this breach and another of joy for the mercies of God to your Dear departed Saint that he hath taken her into a place where she can weep no more My Lord I think I shall so long as I live that is so long as I am Your Lordships most humble Servant TAYLOR A Funerall Sermon c. 2 SAMUEL 14. 14. For we must needs die and are as water spilt on the ground which cannot be gathered up again neither doth God respect any person yet doth he devise means that his banished be not expelled from him WHen our blessed Saviour and his Disciples viewed the Temple some one amongst them cried out Magister aspice quales lapides Master behold what faire what great stones are here Christ made no other reply but foretold their dissolution and a world of sadness and sorrow which should bury that whole Nation when the teeming cloud of Gods displeasure should produce a storm which was the daughter of the biggest anger and the mother of the greatest calamity which ever crush'd any of the sons of Adam The time shall come that there shall not be left one stone upon another The whole Temple and the Religion the ceremonies ordained by God and the Nation beloved by God and the fabrick erected for the service of God shall run to their own period and lie down in their severall graves Whatsoever had a beginning can also have an ending and it shall die unless it be daily watered with the purles flowing from the fountain of life and refreshed with the dew of Heaven and the wells of God And therefore God had provided a tree in Paradise to have supported Adam in his artificiall immortality Immortality was not in his nature but in the hands and arts in the favour and superadditions of God Man was alwaies the same mixture of heat and cold of dryness and moisture ever the same weak thing apt to feel rebellion in the humors and to suffer the evils of a civil warre in his body naturall and therefore health and life was to descend upon him from Heaven and he was to suck life from a tree on earth himself being but ingraffed into a tree of life and adopted into the condition of an immortall nature But he that in the best of his daies was but a Cien of this tree of life by his sinne was cut off from thence quickly and planted upon thorns and his portion was for ever after among the flowers which to day spring and look like health and beauty and in the evening they are sick and at night are dead and the oven is their grave And as before even from our first spring from the dust of the earth we might have died if we had not been preserved by the continuall flux of a rare providence so now that we are reduced to the laws of our own nature we must needs die It is naturall and therefore necessary It is become a punishment to us and therefore it is unavoidable and God hath bound the evil upon us by bands of naturall and inseparable propriety and by a supervening unalterable decree of Heaven and we are fallen from our privilege and are returned to the condition of beasts and buildings and common things And we see Temples defiled unto the ground and they die by Sacrilege and great Empires die by their own plenty and ease full humors and factious Subjects and huge buildings fall by their owne weight and the violence of many winters eating and consuming the cement which is the marrow of their bones and Princes die like the meanest of their Servants and every thing finds a grave and a tombe and the very tomb it self dies by the bigness of its pompousness and luxury Phario nutantia pondera saxo Quae cineri vanus dat ruitura labor and becomes as friable and uncombined dust as the ashes of the Sinner or the Saint that lay under it and is now forgotten in his bed of darkness And to this Catalogue of mortality Man is inrolled with a Statutum est It is appointed for all men once to die and after death comes judgment and if a man can be stronger then nature or can wrestle with a decree of Heaven or can escape from a Divine punishment by his own arts so that neither the power nor the providence of God nor the laws of nature nor the bands of eternall predestination can hold him then he may live beyond the fate and period of flesh and last longer then a flower But if all these can hold us and tie us to conditions then we must lay our heads down upon a