when he is ignorant of himself There was a Fable among the Heathens which wise men understood to contain in it great Philosophy In the midst of this sad discourse it will please you perhaps if I relate it and it will please you a great deal more for to learn and live by it After Jupiter had made the world he thought that men would not be restrained from sin without rewards and punishments and so he made two great barrels the one full of good things the other full of bad to be sent down among men as there was occasion Pandora being very desirous to know what was in these barrels did one day broach them and all the good things flew out towards heaven and all the bad towards hell Hope only and Fear remained in the bottom of these Casks the former in that of Evil things and the latter in that of Good When this was done Jupiter threw down these empty Tubs to the earth and all mortals ran at the rareness of the sight to see what they could find in them Some looked into the one and some into the other and though both of them were empty yet they thought verily that the one was full of good and the other full of evil And ever since it came to pass that here below we have nothing but a fancy or conceit of Good mixed with fear and jealousie and a meer conceit of Evil with some hope in the compound of it The Morral of it is this That the things of this world are but empty Goods and inconsiderable Evils They are our own opinions that trouble us with the shadow of evil and that flatter us on the other side with a fair shew of Good All substantiall Good is in heaven and all dreadfull misery is in hell If we go to heaven we are well enough whatsoever we lose if we fall into sin and so into hell we cannot be well though we should enjoy all the world and while we stay here below there is no good thing we enjoy but is accompanied with fear and no evil we suffer but is attended with Hope And there is no hope like that which is laid up in Heaven of enjoying a bliss sincere and pure without any allay at all Let us turn our minds then toward these heavenly things which they did but dream of in the dark ages of the world Let us heartily believe the Gospel which hath brought to light eternal life And then we shall think our selves happy enough if we lose not those things and perhaps the death of our friends and such like crosses befall us that we may not lose them The Almighty Goodness draws our thoughts and affections by these means from transitory comforts and calls them up thither where we hope our Friends are arrived See saith he here is your Home here is your resting place here is the immortal Inheritance that never fades away If you love your selves mind the way hither and suffer nothing to turn you out of it Whatsoever cross befalls you take it up and carry it along with you Let it only spur you to make the more hast to Eternal joyes Where when we are once seated aloft amidst those glorious objects which then shall incompass us with what contempt as an ingenious Person * M. Malh to the Princess of Conty speaks shall we look down upon this Morsel of earth which men have divided into so many Kingdoms or upon this drop of water whereof so many Seas are composed How shall we smile to see men so busie about the necessities of a Body to which we no sooner give one thing but it asks another and so disquieted through a weakness of spirit which daily troubles them as to unwish that to day which the day before they wished for Enter if it be possible into these generous thoughts before hand Begin to speak of the World as you will do when you have forsaken it Acknowledge it to be a place where you must daily lose something till you have lost all And by these and the like Meditations let your soul assuredly conceive that having had its Original from Heaven it is one of the number of those which must one day return thither In the mean time when the daies of Mourning come and sorrow will not be denyed its place let me recommend this advice to every man As soon as it is possible II. Our tears should be kept for that which is the cause of death and all our tears Turn thy sorrow for thy friend into sorrow for thy sins Remember that thy tears may be due to some other thing and the cure of that will cure all thy other griefs If thou art not a Christian then it is thy duty to mourn neither for one thing nor other but only to bewail thy self Let the dead bury the dead as our Saviour said do thou presently follow after thy Lord with tears Take no care of funerals think of no earthly thing but only how thou mayest be a Christian And if thou art so then thou oughtest to rejoyce that thy sins are pardoned and that thou hast not the greatest cause of grief and this joy sure will swallow up all thy sorrows There is scarce any thing so considerable in our bodies that is seen as our tears for they are the most notable expressions of what is in our hearts The hands as Ant. Guevara observes do work the feet do walk the tongue speaks but it is the heart only that weeps The eyes are but the spunges of the heart through which its affections are drained and dried up An afflicted heart hath neither hands to labour nor feet to walk nor can it find a tongue to speak but tears are all that it hath to tell you what it wants And therefore we ought to reserve these for some greater thing than our dead friends which our heart ought much to be affected withall As our Saviour said to the women of Jerusalem when he was going to the most cruel sufferings so might our friends say to us when they are a dying Weep not for us but weep for your selves if you be dead while you are alive Mourn more than you do if you have not yet mourned for your sins and amended them But if you have then rejoyce in the favour of God and bless him for his Son Jesus who is better to thee than ten Sons or all thy friends which thou lamentest Are our sins dead as well as our friends have we buried them in the grave of our Lord are we risen again to an heavenly life Let us go then to God and pray to him and praise him and this will give us ease But if we be troubled for sin then sure we shall not add another sin by immoderate sorrow and forgetfulness of Gods goodness If it be sin we hate then bitter complaints and discontents must all be hated Would you indispose your self to pray to praise God and meditate in his
the World But he was taken away will some say before his time else I should be content I shall answer this as Photius doth who accords with Basil the great Epist 234. before mentioned 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Let me hear no such word I beseech you a word too bold to be spoken and more bold to be thought Before the time do you say Then why was he not thought to come before the time when he came out of his mothers Womb There is no reason for it but this that it was the will and pleasure of God that he should be born at such a time And must God appoint the time of his birth and we set the time of his death Did the Workman give him a being in good time and take him to himself not knowing the fittest season From a drop he made him to become a lump of flesh He formed the flesh into parts he brought him into the light and he kept him in his infancy and childhood Was any of these out of due time Why then should it be out of season when he translated him to another life Let us do therefore as David did who prayed and wept as long as he could hope the decree of God was not absolute concerning his childs death but when he saw that it was irreversible he comforted himself Let us alway say as Job doth The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away and blessed be the Name of the Lord. And let this be further considered to the enforcing of this truth that if the will of the Lord must be born then it must be done And his will is that we should take all things patiently yea chearfully from his hands And therefore if we mourn immoderately what do we but only add sin unto our pain As there is a time to laugh so there is a time to weep But there is no more time to weep superfluously than there is to laugh idly and profusely Both in the one and in the other we must be wholly subject to the Will of God But that Will of God as I said is very wise in every thing and therefore he intends to turn our mourning into laughter and by every sad thing that doth befall us to make our hearts glad He alwaies gives something better than he takes away if we would but seek after it and ofttimes he takes one thing away that we may seek after the better But alas our blindness is so great that we value not that which brings us profit unless it be sweet to our taste We let our passion judge and not our reason and therefore we think there is no good in a bitter cup and no danger in a pleasant draught We lament and mourn when we ought to think our selves great gainers and we rejoyce and leap when perhaps a cross of the greatest burden hath befaln us Let us stay a while therefore and expect the end of things before we mourn too much And let us but desire to be cured rather than pleased to have our souls amended rather than our fancy humoured and we shall have great reason to thank God for every thing that comes to us And he rules it better than we could do VI. And this will lead me to another consideration concerning the Goodness of God in all that he doth Ask thy self therefore Doth not God do all things for our good Do we wish better to our selves than God doth Hath not He the greatest care of all his creatures to see that it be well with them Did he make them for any other end than that they might be happy Is there the least Sparrow as I said before that falls to the ground without our Fathers Providence Then Mankind must needs be under a greater love and none of them can die by chance but by his direction And above all other men He hath a singular care over the persons of good Christians the very hairs of whose heads are all numbred If not so much as an hair can drop off without Him much less can any body of them fall into their graves but He hath a hand in it But still He hath a more speciall Providence over such Christians as are Fatherless and Widdows helpless and destitute of all succour And therefore as it was his goodness that took their friends away so much more will his goodness take care of them whom he hath left none else to take care of He considers us not only as his children but as children placed in the midst of such and such circumstances as desolate and sad as left only to his Providence and tuition And therefore it is that the Psalmist saith Psa 10 14. Thou art the helper of the Fatherless And in another place A Father of the fatherless Psa 68.5 and a Judge of the widdow is God in his holy babitation Psa 69.23 I am poor and sorrowfull let thy salvation set me up on high Yea and all good men are full of compassion to such persons So that The blessing of those that are ready to perish come upon them Job 29 12 14. and they cause the widdows heart to sing for Joy It is an excellent saying of the Royal Philosopher Antoninus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. Lib. 2. Sect. 11. worthy to be engraven upon our minds If there be a God then nothing can be hurtfull to us for he will not involve us in evil But if either there be none or he take no care of mens matters what shall I live for in a World that is without a God or without a Providence But there is a God and he cares for men also and hath put it into their power not to fall into those things which are truly evil And for the rest that befall us if any thing of them had been evil he would have provided that we should have been able not to have faln into that neither But if this great person had known also that God leaves us not alone to our own power when he sends any thing upon us but that he hath a peculiar love to his servants when they are in trouble and affords them his assistance He would have said on this sort If we be not alone without God then nothing need discomfort us for he is the God of all comfort If we be alone then we had need to be most discomforted for that and never endure in a condition without God But we are not alone and we are least alone when we are alone and have him most when we have other things least Therefore he hath put it into our power not to be troubled but to go to him for comfort in all that befalls us and if there were no comfort in him for us in such cases then they should not have befaln us Let us not therefore mourn as long as we have a God and as long as all things make us seek for our comfort in him VII Grief will
time and this Thou wast as much without them then as now thou art why shouldst thou not be as much contented now as then All the difference between those that want a thing and those that lose it is only this that they who lose it once had that which they that want it never had Now shall we be the more troubled because we once had it one would think that their trouble should be the greatest that neither have it nor ever had it We have reason to be more pleased that we had it if there were any good in it and if there was none then we have no reason to be displeased that we have it not Say hadst thou rather never have enjoyed thy friends than now be deprived of them Was thy condition worse or better heretofore If it was but equall to thy present then thou hast reason to be equally pleased Remember how thou wast then and be so now If it was worse then why shouldst thou be now worse troubled If it was better then why didst thou change it seeing thou knewest that all must die No question it is better to have enjoyed a good thing than never to have known it And therefore seeing thou art no worse now than thou wast once but hast been better than once thou wast be not more troubled than thou wast once yea be less troubled We may be worse But secondly compare thy present condition with what thou maist be This is not the worst that may befall thee in such a world of miseries Suppose then that thou shouldst lose all thy children as Job did and then lose thy whole estate that the Sea should swallow one part and the fire burn another and theeves rob thee of a third and bad debtors quite undo thee Suppose after all this that a fire should begin to burn in thy own bones and that should break into boils and they should break into scabs and thou shouldst be poor even to a Proverb as that holy man was Must thou not be contented then But how is that possible seeing thou canst not be contented now If such a showr of tears fall from thine eyes for this little loss then sure thou wilt make a flood or a deluge But what wilt thou do at last after all thy lamentations Wilt thou kill thy self Then it seems thou takest death to be the end of all troubles and I wonder thou shouldst be so troubled at that which hath eased thy friend of them Or what else wilt thou do comfort thy self Try how thou canst do that now for if thy stomack refuse cordials in this distemper never expect that it will digest them when thou wilt be far more sick and apt to vomit them up again If Job had cursed the day wherein he was born at the first breach that God made upon his estate what expressions of grief below a great sin had he left for himself when he sate upon the dunghill The good man took the first losses so patiently that all the rest which befell him could not move him to greater impatience Do thou remember him and say to thy soul Come be quiet this is not the worst that may betide us we have no such cause to cry as we may have Let us learn Patience against a time when we may have more need of it And then if we should be brought to the very dust and fall as low as the dung of the earth yet there is another way of considering what may be besides this We may be better We may be as happy again as now we account our selves miserable Our sorrow may be turned into joy as our joy hath been turned into sorrow Weeping may endure for a night but joy may come in the morning according as I have said in the former discourse And so it was with Job whom God blessed in his latter end Job 42.12 more than in his beginning We have seen the end of the Lord saith the Apostle James that the Lord is very pitifull Jam. 5.11 and of tender mercy But then this pity of his is to be obtained only by Patience If we cannot be contented it is needfull we may think that he should teach us it still by greater losses We have more than we want Thirdly Compare what thou hast lost with what thou hast not lost God leaves commonly more than he takes He takes away thy children perhaps but thou hast thy Husband and he is better than ten sons Or if thou hast lost thy Husband also yet thou hast thy self and why should a living man complain And thou hast God himself whom nothing can take away from thee Or if thou hast him not yet thou maist have him and who knows but that therefore thou hast lost thy friends because thou hast not him God hath taken them away that thou maist seek after him Wouldst thou have been willing that all thou hast should have been lost rather than this one friend Shall God raise him from the dead and all the rest go into his Tomb Wilt thou have all or else take comfort in none Then God may well take away all and let thee have something to cry for Yea who is there destitute of all friends and comforters Job himself was not so spoiled that they had robbed him of his friends Though they did add indeed to his grief yet it was their mistake and not their want of love And if we should have no better then we may give God thanks that he lets us see more than all our friends Yea it is a great mercy that God gives us time to cease our grief and trouble And perhaps we have riches and a pleasant dwelling delightfull walks c. Or if we have not and can bear that patiently then we may soon learn how to bear this Do the poor people of Norway weep when they eat Barthol cent 4. Hist An. cap. 16. because their bread is made of the barks of trees and sometimes of chaff not of Corn as ours is If there were no trees nor chaff nor no such thing to fill their mouths they might well cry but as long as we have what is needfull we should be content for nothing is so needfull as that Let us not then weep because we have not so many friends as we had for we have more than we deserve Let us not mourn as though we were desolate when we want but one no more than we complain of hunger when we have all variety of chear except one dish that we love most But We have more than many others Fourthly Let us compare our selves if you please with others In other cases this is a thing we love to do though there be so much danger in it that it may undo us If we be guilty of any fault then we comfort our selves in comparisons and think that we are not so bad as others Now that which we are apt to do when we do ill we