Many times providence may make use of those distempered humours which the child derived from its Parent to be the instruments of death a holy person may dye in battail and be surpriz'd by every accident all these things falling alike to all Yet these examples doe not contradict a general rule viz. that Piety and Faith in Christ is a good preservative of natural life Enoch and Elias never dyed and became examples that a spotless life might possibly have been immortall CHAP. XLIV SO that the best way to secure our health is to indeavour to procure the providence of God to be our life guard but when he withdraws his protection we are exposed to the aspect of a Star the contingencies of a battel and the accidents of a humor every day and every minute we escape a thousand deaths surrounding us it is as natural for a young person to dye as an old because that is most natural which is most common and hath most natural causes but to dye with age is a very rare thing but the sins of youth are the immediate instruments of death and although a man in a consumption be under the preparations for death yet one in health may be as near it upon more fatall and less discern'd accompts by a sudden Feaver or Apoplexy c. There are some vices that carry a knife in their hand and cut of man before his time every sinfull pleasure tops off a branch from our short life Although we fly from death yet it followeth us and we doe like the poor creatures in Noahs flood when one flour drowned go to the next and so higher and higher and more and more diffracted with the horror of death and when at the uppermost story yet drown'd at last so we run from one disease and another overtakes us and we are pursued untill destroyed at last by the king of Terrors CHAP. XLV DAvid indeavours to use all the means possible to secure his life notwithstanding he had been told by Samuel he should live to wear the Crown so that the Divine determinations concerning our lives should not lessen our care to preserve our lives In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt dye the death was Adams sentence the wicked and blood thirsty man shall not live out half his days as the Patridge sitteth on eggs and hatcheth them not so he that getteth riches and not by right shall leave them in the midst of his dayes The covetous rich man shall have his soul or life taken away and then whose are all his goods Sauls disobedience Ahaziahs evil consultations Jeroboams Idolatry Benhadads curiosity Ahabs cruelty Hananiahs false Prophesie Herods vainglory Saphyras perjury the Samaritan lords infidelity the forty two childrens calumny these impieties had a particular influence upon the contracting of their days as sacred writ demonstrates CHAP. XLVI MOreover the infirmities of virtuous good men may so far provoke the Almighty as to take away their natural lives although he reward them with Eternal life as in the example of Moses and Aaron and the good Israelites that murmured the good Prophet slain by the Lion Ely and Vzziah Somtimes God cuts off children for the sinfull miscarriage of Parents as in the case of Abijah the widows child Davids child Elies children Somtimes Subjects for the Ruâ—ers Impieties as Davids Subâ—ects CHAP. XLVII ANother thing that is necessary towards the procuring the fluence of a Divine blessing with the means is to endeavour to find out the cause of the distemper I mean the supernatural cause and to learn those lessons which providence intends to teach by sickness the Prophet's quaere wherefore doth the living man complain doth plainly intimate that there is a reason there is an Achan oâ— Babylonish garment or something that causeth the thorn in the flesh and this must be removed for the Almighty doth not afflict willingly the rod hath a voice there are many ends thaâ— God aims at in all afflictions Aâ— to correct for sinfull miscarriages our minds have diseases as weâ—… as our bodies the tympany oâ— pride the feaver of passion thâ— dropsie of covetousness anâ— therefore we are fed with thâ— bread of affliction and the water of adversity the plaguâ— of the heart is many times cureâ— with the plague of the body there is a root of bitterness from whence all our troubles spring As there is a vanity lyeth hid in the best worldly good so there is a blessing lyeth hid in the worst worldly evil we should imitate the Bee gather sweet fruit out of bitter flowers CHAP. XLVIII WE should not like Baalam strike the Ass look only upon the second cause of our sickness but behold the Angel that is the immediat instrument We are very prone to attribute too much to second causes but holy Job was of another minde when his children were killed by the fall of a house he saith The Lord took them away Sometimes the Almighty takes away a person by death in mercy to the person as Abijah and Josiah and others Sometimes he removes the child to exercise the parents faith as Jobs children and in the case of Isaac One reason why our distempers are no sooner removed is because the design of it is not answered CHAP. XLIX THere are many happy intentions that Divine providence aymes at in laying sicknesses and diseases upon the bodies of men One end that Divine Goodness aimes at is to demonstrate his own glory in healing and restoring so saith our blessed Lord concerning Lazarus this sickness shall not be unto death but for the glory of God and indeed deliverance from sickness is a singular mercy both to a mans self and others Epaphroditus was sick nye unto death but God had mercy on him and on me also saith holy Paul and therfore we should bless the Lord with our souls and all that is within us should praise his holy name and that upon this account because he healeth all our diseases CHAP. L. THis consideration ellivated the holy soul of Hezekias and transported him into a divine Doxology viz. the living the living they shall praise thee as I doe this day When men are miraculously delivered from death after they have received the sentence thereof in themselves it is given to this end that thanks may be many on their behalf When our souls are delivered from going down to the grave and our eyes are enlightned that we sleep not the sleep of death then â—hould we praise the Lord in the great congregation and our songs should be unto the God of our lives CHAP. LI. ANother design of providence in sickness is to prepare men for greater sufferings it prepares us for death St. Paul whose bodily presence was weak was ready to dye for the name of Christ why should he be afraid of them that kill the body they can do no more then an Ague or a Consumption the sick-bed is the attiring room of the grave in which we should be preparing
diseases with their symptomes and nicknamed distempers and giving them some common denomination and apprehending that it being nothing else but what they have known some recover of they neglect the properest remedies until it be too late or until the distemper be complicated and hath taken deep root It costs many a man his life whilest he eyeth only the external causes of distempers It is usual to discourse thus I have left off a coate or put on a damp shift or eaten somthing that did not agree with my stomach or drank cold beer when hot or over walked my self or have been frighted or grieved or the like when at the same time the stomach is disordered by a loade of corrupt humors and a meer Quagmire the Blood inflamed the Liver and Spleen obstructed and the Lungs perished and this is not taken notice of as if a man when his house is on fire should not mind it so as to quench it but satisfie himself with this consideration that it came only by a boy throwing a squib c. And many times they will depend upon the advice of some friend or apish Doctor until cold sweats affright and then the learned Physitian is sent for when the time for purgation and bleeding is let ship and so the Physitian shares with the Patient in the infamy of miscarriage and he is sent for not to cure that he cannot because nature is spent but to try whether he can antidate resurrections Nothing destroyes more Persons then imprudent hearkning to the advise of persons of other professions and neglecting learned Physitians until it be too late CHAP. XXXII A Nother effectual ingredient in the cure of distempers and that which is most necessary is the concurring influence of a divine blessing unto God the Lord belong the issues from death and therefore it concerns us so to behave our selves that we may procure a divine Benediction The best way to procure a divine influence to cooperate with the means is by a Holy and a pious life so saith God Almighty to the Jews If you obey my statutes and hearken to my Judgments I will bless your bread and your water remove sickness from the midst of you Solomon urgeth the consideration of our health as a very strong argument to promote divine fear It shall be health our Navel and marrow to our bones Wisdom is a Tree of life to them that lay hold upon it what man is he that loveth life and many dayes let him depart from evil and do good Godliness hath the promise of the life that now is as well as of that which is to come Solomons asking of wisdom was attended with the addition of long life If the obedience of our naturall Parents hath the promise of long life annext to it much more the service of our spiritual parent especially so far as life is good life is yours saith the Apostle because you are Christs CHAP. XXXIII PIety it secures men from the power of evil Angels who have a great influence in the procuring of distempers by a Divine permission as in the case of the excommunicated Corinthian and the incestuous persons about Lots House struck blind Herod destroyed by an Angel and the evil angels sent amonst the Israelites and several other examples of the like nature and the Demoniacks in the Gospel Again Piety it usually secures men from the stroke of Humane Justice as it guards them from those flagitious impieties which expose them to the penalties of humane lawes as murders thefts and rapine And it also preserves men from the terrors of an evil conscience which makes men many times wash their hands in their own blood as Judas did Again Piety preserves life as it teacheth men temperance and moderation in the use of those means that preserve life We find in Sacred Oracles that immature death is threatned as the penalty of disobedience and that the Penmen of Holy writ doe often inculcate the benefit of the fear of God as it is attended with the promise of longaevity So that to imagine the life of man to be fixed beyond the possibility of the Almighties abbreviation or prolongation is vain and inconsistent with scripture and reason CHAP. XXXIV THe Turks dream that the manner and moment of every mans death is prefixt by the Immutable laws of fate and that his lot is written in invisible Characters in his forehead that they accompt it vanity and cowardise to arm themselves against the blows of war by defensive weapons but it is to be hop'd that Christians have learned better It being a confest verity that every natural motion hath its beginning duration and period dependent on the will of the first motive now the life of man being a natural motion our nativity and death are both order'd by divine providence for in him we live and move and have our being The natural life of man consisting in a requisite harmony of the first qualities and in a proportionate comixture of the natural heat and radical moysture which harmony is more or less according to the more or less exquisite temperament of body assigned to each single person by the free dispensation of the divine will It followeth that the continuance of every individual in this natural life dependeth upon the pleasure of the first cause as Holy Job intimates when he saith our dayes are determined and the number of our Months are with him who hath set bounds to humane nature so that no man can live beyond the durability of his specificall temperament the principles of his vitality and permissions of providence CHAP. XXXV THe only wise God hath composed our bodies like a lamp of heat and moysture hath given appetites of hunger and thirst to feed this lamp and so supply the expences of the moysture by the heat he hath given us reason and understanding to govern our appetites and the revelation of his will to guide our reason now if we through the depravation of our natures and the predominancy of temptation do suffer our appetite to dethrone our reason and give way to Ebriety Gluttoners salacity other immoralities which have a natural tendency to extinguish the lamp of life we may justly exspect to be cut off in the midst of our dayes and to dye before our time by being wicked over much as Solomon expresseth it Whereas piety and obedience like the Tree of life in paradise not only sacramentally but really conduceth to health and long life so far as it is a blessing and this it doth by impregnating our elements with the tincture of a divine benediction by meliorating our temperaments and constitutions by infusing salutiferous dispositions in the air propitious influences in the host of heaven which many times impress the seminalities of diseases upon the blood and spirits so that the period of our days and all the second causes conducing thereunto are circumscribed within the circle of a divine prenotion and limitation CHAP. XXXVI A
Leper Lord if thou wilt thou canst make me whole and Christ did it I will Be thou clean Thou art my King command deliverances for Jacob said David when the water-spouts came pouring upon him Vnto God the Lord belong the issues from Death CHAP. LXXII WHat a great impiety is it to go to Witches or Wizzards or such as have familiar Spirits nay to the Devils for cure A thing absolutely forbidden in Scripture A sad thing for a man to procure the Devils blessing with Gods curse It is called Idolatry and Whoredom It is a violation of our Baptismal Covenant Shall not a Nation seek to their God in Covenant Our Saviour abhorred to worship them and shall his members do it They use good words the better to deceive the ignorant They use charms circles spells words and other signes which have no naturall virtue nor can we with any ground pray for a blessing upon these The Devil being herein God's Ape for As God hath made a Covenant with his people and hath appointed signs and Seales upon the faithfull use of which he is present to perform what he hath promised So the Devil makes a Covenant with Witches upon which he hath given signes and tokens that if they use the one he wil perform the other Let such as are guilty in this kind repent and pray that the thoughts of their hearts may be forgiven them as the Apostle counselled Simon Magus The power of Christ is the same now in Heaven as when on earth in his hand our breath is and all our wayes in him we live and move and have our being we live not by bread alone but by the word of blessing out of his mouth Many a man loseth his life for want of asking it We are apt to blame this means and that accident but seldom say as she did Lord if thou hadst been here My Brother or Sister had not dyed the means alone are but like Elijahs staff it will not doe unlesse he come himself By fervent prayers we should invite Omnipotence to our beds sides And call for the Elders of the Church to pray for us All second causes are but the instruments in Gods hand to lengthen or shorten as He pleaseth CHAP. LXXIII THere are three general second causes of the death of all men assigned in 1 Sam. 26.10 As some inward corrupt Humour or Disease that smites the vitals extinguisheth Nature's lamp as a Lamp goeth out when the oyle it putrefied or corrupt as Asa's Gout Jehoram's bloody-flux the plague of Leprosie the womans child's Headach and those diseases mentioned in the 28. of Deuteronomy Another second cause is some external accident as a Lamp is putout by the Wind so the unbelieving lord kil'd in a crowd Ahab slain with an arrow the Captain of fifty with Lightning Jobs children with the fall of a house the good Prophet by a Lion Absolom hanged in a tree by the hair Sodem by fire the fifty two children by the Bears The old world by water the Rebels against Moses the earth swallows up CHAP. LXXIV ANother second cause is when the naturall heat and radical moysture is consumed as in old age as Jacob when a man comes to his grave in a full age as a shock of corn comes in its season as a Lamp must go out when there is no more oyle to feed it Yet Providence hath a hand in all these second causes so that men provoke God by their impieties to cut the thred of their their lives and by Piety and Obedience they may prevaile with Him to lengthen their days if he see good CHAP. LXXV ANother means towards the procuring the concurrence of a Divine blessing with the means is To act faith and a holy confidence in God with the use of proper means one touch of faith will cure our faith will make us whole therefore trust in the Lord for ever for in the Lord Jehovah is everlasting strength I had failed unless I had believed said David Faith is the best cordial in quietness and confidence lyeth our greatest strength why should we be cast down let us hope in him who is the health of our countenance What time we are afraid we should trust in God and beware of slavish fear and carnal confidence former experience is a good ground of confidence He hath delivered and in him we trust he will deliver us Stand still and see the salvation of God is good counsell towards recoery of health it is a sign of carnall confidence in the means when we are continually trying new experiments and run from one thing to another and leave rationall and experimental remedies CHAP. LXXVI REpentance and humiliation is another means towards recovery from sicknesse if we humble our selves under the mighty hand of God he will exalt us in due time the way to hasten the cure is to hasten repentance our desire of life should be in order to our preparations for death if we break off our sins by righteousness it may be a lengthning of our tranquillity Nineveh's repentance spared their lives if men will not reform then God resolves to make them sick with smiting them as the Prophet speaks The last means to procure a Divine blessing it is a patient waiting the good pleasure of God without murmuring and repining They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength God hath his times for deliverance It is goad for a man to hope and quietly to wait for the salvation of God and not to say This evil is of the Lord why should I wait for him any longer God hath his time to an hour as our Saviour intimates Father save me from this hour The Promise is that Women shall be saved in child-bearing if they continue in faith and patience and it is of force in all other dangerous distempers A meek and a quiet spirit under all Divine chastisements is a very great ornament Some make Afflictions seem amiable by a pious and a patient Deportment CHAP. LXXVII MUrmuring is a dangerous sin we have the Jews for an example who were destroyed thereby A dreadful thing when a mans body is so weak that he cannot rise up in his bed yet his corruptions are so strong as to rise into an uproar against Gods will and Authority It may be some in Sickness may let fly their discontented spirits against their children or relations but they may answer as Moses to the Israelites What are we your murmurings are not against us but against the Lord. Some men practise what Jobs wife attempted viz. curse God and dye Murmurers shall be judged at the last day as ungodly men as Jude speaks Some in sickness howl upon their beds when they should be blessing God In all sickness we should say with Naomi Truly the hand of the Lord is against me and not in a stupid senseless way cry out Indeed I am not well but I shall shake it off it is only a flight distemper I wil work
LXXXII OUr Bodies as they come out of the hands of sin are vile Bodies and before they can be made like unto Christs glorious Body This corruption must put on incorruption As they are the works of God they are wonderfully made and all our parts are exactly and curiously wrought Os homini sublime de dit c. saith the Poet. But yet sickness coms as a weavor and cuts off our thred of life as Hezekiah upon his sick-bed expresseth it nights and days passe the shuttle of our lives backwards and forwards but time quickly wears off the thred of life The Poets had a fiction answering this allusion of the Holy Ghost they tell us of three Sisters whereof one held the Distaff the second drew the Thred the third cut it off in this they shadow the State of mans life CHAP. LXXXIII WE may take notice of the vanity of our lives by our frequent returns of sicknesses and distempers It is a good observation of Pineda Abel viventium Omnium typus representatio Adam called his Son Abel which signifieth vanity Psalm 144 there is an allusion unto those names we translate it Man is like to vanity but in the Hebrew it is Adam is as Abel Adam being a common name to all men are Abels vain Moreover saith he the word Abel is translated Idol in Deut. 32.31 and the Apostle tels us that an Idol is nothing and such is our life A meer man is but meer earth the Prophet tells him so three times over with one breath Jer. 22. O earth earth earth hear the word of the Lord He is earthly in the constitution of his Body and earthly in the corruption of his mind why then should the living man complain and think it strange to meet with sick-bed tryals Sin is the mother that breedeth all our Benonies or sons of sorrow and sickness man had never tasted these sower herbs if he had not eaten the forbidden fruit yet we may like Sampson fetch meat out of this Eater and take this sickness which is so unpleasing to our flesh for the advantage of our spirit If bodily health help us to relish our outward comforts surely saving health wil sweeten the bitterest cup. One of the Antients tels us that the image of the goddess Angerona was with a muffler at her mouth placed at the Alter of Volupia to signifie that pleasure shall be their portion who bear sicknesses with patient silence and submission When Pompey was sick his subjects wore garlands and triumphed they apprehending it to conduce much to his advantage CHAP. LXXXIV A great Statesman of ours observes that we English are best when we are in black Anglica gens est optima flens in the dayes of Edward the Sixth when the sweating sickness raged in England then the Churches were thronged and the Ministers were sent to to come to such a Lord and such a Lady to pray with them and a bag of Mony sent to give away to the poor as a good Historian observes Sometimes God doth with his rod of correction as Moses with his rod in Egypt viz. work wonders although the Christian hath been pressed by sickness out of measure above strength insomuch that he hath despaired even of life and hath been ready to cry out Master save me or I perish .. Yet he hath lived to see the goodness of the Lord in the Land of the living so efficatious hath the divine blessing been that hath attended the means of restauration the concurrence of which Benediction is a thing too much neglected and the generallity look upon the successes of remedies to depend altogether upon second causes CHAP. LXXXV HIppocrates gave this Councell to Physitians when they they went to visit their Patients to consider whether there were not Divinum aliquod in morbo And Galen saith in medicina nihil exiguum O how great a blessing is health vita non est vivere sed valere And doubtless the means to procure it must be both Honorable and profitable and must be acknowledged to be so by every one that is sanae mentis and doth not want hellibore so saith the wiseman honor the Physitian with that honor due unto him for God hath created him he hath given men skill that he might be honored in his marvelous Works God hath created Medicines out of the earth with which he heals men and takes away their pains of which the Apothecaries make a confection Ecclesiasticus CHAP. LXXXVI THe Heathen did so highly value there Pharmacia that Apollo and Aesculapius esteemed by some the first founders of physick were adored as Gods for the excellency of their invention and Hippocrates amongst the Grecians and Cornelius Celsus amongst the Latines are highly commended for there improvements therein Homer doth Heroically trumpet the Physitians praise 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Were it the divine pleasure to give men a constant frame of health during there pilgrimage it were a wonderful favor for Misere vivit qui medice vivit But it can not be nature must be upheld by Art as Hippocrates in his first Aphorism 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Our bodies like standing waters will gather mud and collect ill humors so that as Hippocrates observes ultimus sanitatis gradus est morbo proximus Never was there a greater piece of folly committed by the Romans then when they banished their learned Physitians CHAP. LXXXVII THe Blessed God is pleased to stile himself Jehovah Rophe the Lord the Physitian Exodus the 15 and the holy Jesus hath his name 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ab 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 sano though chiefly in a spirituall sense from his healing nature It is observable that those words in the 147 Psal 3. in our old English translation are expressed thus viz. He giveth medicine to heal their sicknesses Health is the Prince of outward blessings the widow in the Gospel disesteemed her substance in comparison of this jewel The Physitian is therfore called manus dei to hand it to us CHAP. LXXXVIII SOme indeed there are may be called manus Diaboli both for their ignorance and baseness like that French man who gave these verses in writing to all his Patients for the cure of their diseases Sivis curari de morbo nescio Quali Accipias herbam sed Qualem nescio nec Quam Ponas nescio Quo curabere nescio Quando English thus Your pain I know not what do not fore-slow To cure with herbs but what I do not know Place them well bruised I know not where and then You shal be perfect whole I know not when It is a great priviledge to have one who will cure by friendship as well as by Physick as Seneca huic ego non tanquam medico sed tanquam amico obligatus sum although we ought in the first place to acknowledge our gratitude to the great Physitian for our recovery as the Lepers under the Law after they were cleansed were to offer their gifts to the divine Majesty