A Funeral Sermon FOR M rs ESTHER SAMPSON The Late Wife of Henry Sampson D r. of Physick who Died Nov. 24. M.DCLxxxix By John Howe Minister of the Gospel Published principally for the use of such as languish under painful and Chronical Diseases LONDON Printed for Thomas Parkhurst at the Bible and Three Crowns at the lower end of Cheap-side near Mercers Chapel 1690. TO My Worthy Friend Dr. Henry Sampson SIR I Have perused the Papers which you sent me and find as far as I can recollect they contain in them the Substance of what was delivered With no more mistakes than is usual in writing from the mouth of one who is not of the slowest speakers Some things besides which the limits of the time allow'd not to be spoken having some short memorials of them by me I have added conceiving they might also contribute towards the good end you proposed to your self in so earnestly desiring this publication the assisting of their patience and their good and placid thoughts of God who are exercis'd under Long and Languishing Distempers The observations which your Profession hath occasion'd you to make in the cases of many others hath I doubt not let you see the need of somewhat to this purpose otherwise the example you have had so long before your eyes of so calm and compos'd a temper in this excellent relative of yours might have made you less apprehensive how great an addition a fretful unquiet spirit is both to the Sin and the Affliction of a Sickly State I am sensible your own affliction is great in the loss you now sustain The relief will be great and suitable which the forethoughts of that State will afford where they neither Marry nor are given in Marriage but are as the Angels of God in Heaven I am SIR In much sincerity and affection yours to serve you in the work and labour of the Gospel John Howe LUKE 13. 16. And ought not this woman being a daughter of Abraham whom Satan hath bound lo these eighteen years be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath day YOU will soon see the occasion and connexion of these words by viewing over the whole Paragraph to which they belong verse 10. And he was teaching in one of the Synagogues on the Sabbath 11. And behold there was a woman which had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years and was bowed together and could in no wise lift up her self 12. When Jesus saw her he said to her Woman thou art loosed from thine infirmity 13. And he laid his hands on her and immediately she was made straight and glorified God 14. And the Ruler of the Synagogue answered with indignation because that Jesus had healed on the Sabbath day and said unto the people There are six days in which men ought to work in them therefore come and be healed and not on the Sabbath day 15. The Lord then answered him and said Thou hypocrite doth not each of you on the Sabbath loose his Ox and his Ass from the stall and lead him away to watering 16. And ought not this woman being a daughter of Abraham whom Satan hath bound lo these eighteen years be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath day 17. And when he had said these things all his adversaries were ashamed and all the people rejoyced for all the glorious things that were done by him Inasmuch as our blessed Lord spake these words and did the thing which occasion'd them upon that which was with the Jews their Sabbath day it cannot be unfit for us to consider them upon ours they so fitly leading us to consider also another release wrought for a daughter of Abraham too on our Sabbath day It was formerly told you upon what occasion and I doubt not but you generally know upon whose account we were to divert from our usual course and Subject at this time Nor could any thing have been more suitable to the present occasion for not only was this Daughter of Abraham releas'd from her Infirmity upon the Sabbath day but the time wherein it remain'd upon Her in a great and manifold complication was as her surviving Consort hath acquainted me and who therefore recommended this Subject precisely about eighteen Years There are 't is true disagreements between our case and that case in the Text which do not therefore render both together less instructive to us but the more And to make way to what may be so you must here take notice that these Words are part of our Lords Defence of what he had done in performing this work of Mercy wherein what he says is justly severe and very clearly convictive It is very deserved and just severity that he call'd him who cavil'd in the case by his own true name thou hypocrite He under pretence of great sanctity discovers the highest enmity even against our blessed Lord himself who came being sent upon the holiest and kindest design into this World The zeal which he pretends for the observation of the Sabbath could not be the thing that he did really mean or that acted him in this case For it was not likely he could be ignorant of what was a known adjudg'd Case among the Jews as some of their own Rabbies inform us that all needful endeavours ought to be used for the cure of the sick upon the Sabbath day So as that he very well knew no rule could be broken in this case But this he reckons was somewhat plausible and he pleases himself in it that he could tell how to vent his spite against Christ and Christianity under a mock-shew of great Sanctimony And our Lord justly calls him what indeed he was when he would thus seem what he was not It was not that he cared for Religion or for any thing of real Sanctity of which a due and just observation of the Sabbath was a real part but that he had a mind as far as conveniently he could to express his displeasure at that evidence and lustre wherewith the glorious works our Lord wrought evinc'd him to be the Messiah while yet he was struck with that awe of him that he adventures not to direct his reproof to him but the people It is here by the way to be noted that they were not thus disaffected to our Lord and the Religion he was about to introduce No but this Ceremonious Bigot a Ruler of the Synagogue was the ill-pleased disaffected Person I shall not trouble you with the discussion what sort of power it was that belonged to that Office Some well acquainted with the Jewish writings say that the Ruler of the Synagogue was not wont himself to officiate as Minister in Sacris but his business was circa Sacra to regulate the Administration We consider not his Power but his ill-will and enmity against Christ and true Religion The people in the mean time throng'd after him in Multitudes and beheld the great works he wrought with joy and glorified God Only where was more
knowing he designs to touch mortally and if he touch to kill If it proceed so far as a solemn league how tragical consequences doth story abound with That of Count Matiscon pluckt away by the Devil from among divers persons of quality whom he was entertaining and at noon-day whirl'd in the air three times about the City in open view of the people to whom he in vain cried for help reported by some Historians and that of an infamous Magician of Saltzburg and divers others are instances both very extraordinary and very monitory But as to a future ruine which he finally aims to involve men in with himself he hath not faster hold of any than those that have learnt to ridicule every thing of this kind and who have put so much Sadducism into their Creed consisting of so many negatives or things they believe not that they scarce leave enough positive to admit that name as to think there is no such creature perhaps as being conscious there can be no worse than themselves But how near is he to them that think him out of the Universe 3. Since it is possible the Devil may bind even those that belong to God with some kind of bodily affliction or other it is the more to be apprehended how much worse bonds they are in which he binds those that do not belong to him Oh! that you would be serious here How many such sad cases are there amongst even them as may be feared that are called Christians concerning which it may be said here is a soul that Satan hath bound not eighteen but it may be thirty forty fifty years Oh! when shall this soul be releast that Satan hath so long bound 4. As from the Devils malice to the bodies of men we may collect his greater malice to their Souls So we may judg proportionably of Christs compassions that as they incline him to give them all sutable relief in their bodily afflictions as far as can consist with those measures which infinite wisdom hath pitcht upon for the government of this present world and as shall fall in with the design of his office of a Redeemer and Saviour to us So they much more incline him to relieve embondag'd souls for this doth most directly fall in with his design and is the proper business of his office the other may be only collateral to it and as it were to be done on the by He came not into this world to procure that men might not be sick or pained or be presently restored to health and ease But he came and died that souls might live to procure for them pardon reconciliation with God all needful assisting influences of grace and eternal life Of these therefore they may be most assured if they duly apply themselves And some encouragement to expect so much they may draw even from this instance This infirm woman in order to bodily cure did apply her self to him She came after him as others did for this purpose and did in a sort put herself in the way of his healing influence Now if any of you find your souls are yet held by the Devil in worse bonds apply your selves to the merciful compassionate Jesus there is hope in the case Oh! will you not say so much to him for a soul in bondage Lord loose this poor soul of mine that Satan hath bound for so many sad years Do but labour to know you are bound to feel your bonds Whatsoever there is of prevailing sin in you it is a bond by which the Devil holds your souls The wicked are held in the cords of their own iniquities Prov. 5. 22. And sins are said to be the works of Satan from which it is the design of the Redeemer to loose us The Son of God was for this purpose manifested that he might destroy we read it is that he might dissolve the works of the Devil q. d. that he might release and unbind souls that the Devil as yet holds in fast bonds And you may find you are so bound when upon self-reflexion you take notice you are ordinarily restrained from what you should do against the light and conviction of your own minds and judgments i. e. you find if you reflect a conviction hath taken place in your consciences you ought to love God but there is with you no such motion of soul no inclination towards him you ought in a stated course to pray and pour out your soul to him but you are bound you cannot offer at it you have no liberty for it your terrene inclination or love to vanity plucks you back you ought to walk in the ways of God but you are fetterred you cannot move a foot you ought to do the works of God but you are manacled you cannot stir and an hand Are you so bound and will you not know it What! never feel your bonds When once they are felt you will soon begin to cry and supplicate And if once you shall be brought seriously and incessantly to supplicate it may be hop't the release will follow Was our Lord so compassionate towards infirm bodies in the days of his flesh in this world and do we think he above is less compassionate to souls Can it be thought heaven hath altered him to your disadvantage Is he less kind benign and less apt to do good now he is inthroned in glory Why should you not believe he will give release unto your captiv'd embondaged souls if you implore his help and mercy with seriousness and insist upon it and do not give him over Say to him Jesus thou Son of God have mercy on me for do you not know it is his office The Spirit of the Lord was upon him to proclaim liberty to the captives and opening of Prisons to them that are bound Isa. 61. 1. What! will you be bound all your days and never lift up a cry to the great Redeemer and Saviour of Souls to give you release How deservedly should these bonds end with you in the chains wherein the Devils themselves shall for ever be bound with you 5. We may collect there is an awful regard due to the sabbath-Sabbath-day When our Lord justifies the cure now wrought on their Sabbath only on this account that it was an act of mercy towards a daughter of Abraham by the exception of such a case he strengthens the general rule and intimates so holy a day should not upon light occasions be otherwise imploy'd than for the proper end of it's appointment Tho' our day be not the same the business of it in great part is by the reason given in the fourth Commandment which being plac't among the rest of those ten words so many ways remarkably distinguisht from the other laws given the Jews and signifying that these were intended not to them alone but to mankind and given upon a reason common to man the words also not necessarily signifying more than there should be a seventh day kept as sacred to
thoughts may be suggested by them to mingle with ones own And if God afford the use of reason and speech and the supply of his own spirit one may possibly in this last juncture be a means of some good to them One may possibly say that that may abide with them and be of future advantage to them But in other respects if the related friendly by-standers cannot duly temper themselves if they are apter to receive or do more hurt than good if Christians do not labour to shew a truly Christian spirit in such a case their presence has very little eligible in it And indeed the deportment even of those that profess Christianity about their deceasing godly friends is such for the most part as if the foundations of all Religion were shaken with them and as if they had a design to shake them too if possible in such with whom they are now to part as if it were to be called in question whether what God hath said concerning another world and the blessed state of the innumerable and holy assembly above be true or no or were not doubted to be false and a solemn fiction invented to delude mortals here on earth It is little considered how opposite such a temper of Spirit as commonly appears in us is to the very design of all Christianity For doth not the whole of Christianity terminate upon Eternity and upon another State and World Now do but consider the inconsistencies that are to be found in this case between the carriage and temper of many that profess Christianity and their very profession it self They acknowledge they own that the design of Christ's appearing here in this World and of his dying upon the Cross was to bring us to God to bring the many Sons to Glory They grant that this is not to be done all at once not all in a day but it is to be done by degrees Here he takes up one and there another leaving others still to transmit Religion and continue it on to the end of time So far they agree with our common Lord and seem to approve the divine determinations in all these steps of his procedure But yet for all this if they might have their own will Christ should not have one to ascend to him of those for whom he died and himself ascended to open Heaven for them and to prepare a place for their reception as their forerunner there I say not one to ascend after him For they take up with a general approving of this design of his Very well say they it is fitly ordered his method is wise and just and kind and let him take them that belong to him when he thinks fit only let him excuse my Family let him take whom he will only let him touch no Relation of mine not my Husband Wife Child Brother Sister take whom he will but let all mine alone I agree to all he shall do well enough only let him allow me my exception But if every one be of this temper and resolution for themselves and theirs according to this tendency and course of things he shall have none at all to ascend none to bring with him when he returns Those that are dead in Jesus he is to bring with him No he should be solitary and unattended for all them They and all their Relations would be immortal upon Earth How ill doth this agree and accord with the Christian Scheme and model of things But you will say what would I perswade you to be indifferent and not to love and care for your Relatives or be unwilling to part with them No. All that I perswade to is that there be a mixture in your temper and such a mixture as that the prevailing ingredient therein may agree with the stronger and weightier reason 'T is not that I would have love extinguisht among Relatives but I would have it moderated and subdued to that degree as to admit of being governed by Superiour Greater and Nobler Considerations Do you think Christ did expect or design that his Disciples should not love him And yet he tells them If you loved me you would rejoice that I say I go to my Father And who in all this World could ever have such a loss as they of him dwelling in flesh among them Yet says he if you loved me you would rejoice that I say I go to my Father And when the Apostle visibly tending towards death by the prediction given concerning him Acts 21. 13. said to the Disciples round about him What mean you to weep and to break my Heart I am ready not only to be bound but to die for the Name of Jesus If there had not been a faulty excess in the affection they exprest certainly he would not have rebuk'd it He would not have blam'd what he thought not blame-worthy In short It were desirable if God see good to die amidst the pleasant Friends and Relatives who were not ill-pleased that we lived that living and dying breath might mingle and ascend together in Prayers and Praises to the blessed Lord of Heaven and Earth the God of our Lives If then we could part with consent a rational and a joyful consent Otherwise To die with Ceremony To die amongst the fashionable bemoanings and lamentations as if we despair'd of futurity One would say with humble submission to the divine pleasure Lord Let me rather die alone in perfect solitude in some unfrequented Wood or on the top of some far remote Mountain where none might interrupt the solemn transactions between thy glorious blessed self and my joyfully departing self-resigning Soul But in all this we must refer our selves to Gods Holy Pleasure who will dispose of us living and dying in the best the wisest and the kindest way FINIS * Vid. Maimon constitut de fundam c. 5. 9. cum Abrav N. 13 14. And as our own Dr. Lightfoot says upon that question of our Lords Is it lawful to heal upon the Sabbath day quoting divers more of theirs to that purpose he violated not the Sabbath so much as their own Cannons allow'd See his Works Vol 2. Heb. 2. 14 15. * The posie on their wedding ring John 14. 28.
power and probably more knowledge there was more too of a peevish spite and envy that the interest of our Lord was by so proper means growing in the World A sad and not a new thing that Religion should have most opposition whence it should have most of countenance and advantage to dilate and spread it self Do any of the Rulers believe on him But the people whom they despised and pronounc'd accursed for that reason were more apt and forward to receive the Gospel Joh. 7. 48 49. The more there is of light unaccompany'd with a pious Inclination the higher the more intense and fervent the finer and more subtle is the venome and malice against Christ and real Christianity But our Lord was not diverted from his kind and compassionate design by any such obstructions as these His love triumphs over them and he makes that discovery of this compassion which could not but carry the clearest conviction with it as his reproof carry'd the brightest justice Why what saith he Do not any of you loose an Ox or an Ass from the Stall on the Sabbath day and shall not I loose a daughter of Abraham 'T is like she was a Daughter of Abraham not only as being a Jewess but as being a believer as being according to Scripture language of Abrahams Seed in the Spiritual sense as well as the natural and he was the more peculiarly compassionate upon that account and yet more because her ail proceeded from the malignant influence of the Devil Shall not I loose such a one whom Satan hath bound that great enemy of mankind Why should not I shew my self so much the more a Friend by how much the more he appears an Enemy and give the earliest relief the matter can admit 'T is very true indeed his compassion was never to incline him to do unfit and unseasonable things or things that were no way subservient to his principal end But such a subserviency being supposed his relief must be with the earliest to day before morrow though it were the Sabbath day And so now you have the ground of discourse plainly in view before you That the Devil cannot be more maliciously intent to afflict those that relate to God even when it is in his power with bodily distempers than our Lord Jesus is compassionately willing to relieve them without distinction of time when it shall be consistent with and subservient to his higher and greater purposes In speaking to this I shall 1. Touch briefly upon what is here exprest in the Text the hand that Satan may have in the Afflictions yea and in the bodily distempers of men and even of them that belong to God among them 2. What hand our Lord Jesus has in their relief or releasement 3. How far we may understand or may reasonably expect his compassion to influence him in such cases 4. I shall shew that however the release be wrought it is done very mercifully towards them that belong peculiarly to God And so make use of all 1. Somewhat briefly as to that first query What hand it is supposable the Devil may have in the afflictions of men and more particularly of them that belong to God as this woman being a Daughter of Abraham was to be considered as one within the compass of Gods Covenant and not improbably as one that in the strictest sense was in Covenant with God 1. It is plain in the Text the Devil had a direct hand in her distemper called a Spirit of infirmity There were more evident and more frequent instances of this kind in that time the Devil then setting himself more openly to contend against the incarnate Son of God upon his more open appearance to rescue and recover an Apostate World from under his Dominion and Tyranny But as to more ordinary cases we may further consider 2. That the Devil is a constant enemy to mankind apt and inclin'd as far as God permits him to do men all the mischief he can 3. That as he first introduc't sin into the World so he hath by consequence all the calamities that afflict it There had been no Death Sickness or Distemper upon the bodies of men but from hence Consider the Devil therefore as the Prince and Leader of the Apostasie who first drew man into transgression and thereby render'd him liable to the Justice of his Maker turn'd his Paradise into a desart and a region of immortal undecaying life into a Valley of sickly Languishings and death it self So may he said to have had a remoter hand in binding not only this Daughter of Abraham but every child of Adam in all the Afflictions Maladies and Distempers which befall them here and finally in the bonds of Death too whereof he is said to have had the power Tho the Children of the second Adam with whom for this purpose he was partaker of Flesh and Blood and became with them a Son of Abraham and of his Seed are by being so bound releas'd and made free both from Death and the bondage of fearing it to which they were otherwise Subject all their days as we shall further see anon 4. Tho God do not ordinarily allow him more power yet we may well suppose him to have more malice against these Children of Abraham who thereby pass into the account of his own Children also being more intent upon vexing and afflicting whom he apprehends or suspects he shall never be able finally to destroy and always apt to use all the power shall be allowed him to this mischievous purpose We find that the afflictions of the people of God in other kinds and even in this kind are expresly often attributed to the Devil In other kinds Satan shall cast some of you into prison Revel 2. 10. And divers think that thorn in the flesh which the Apostle suffered 2 Cor. 12. was some acute bodily pain and he says expresly it was a messenger of Satan sent to buffet him He 't is said smote Job with the tormenting boils that afflicted him so grievously and so long and brought the other calamities upon him that you read of in his Story 5. And again it is further to be considered that whereas in all Diseases the Morbisick Matter whether immediate in Mens Bodies or remoter in the incompassing Air differs not from other matter otherwise than only in the various disposition figuration and motion of parts and particles whereof it is made up inasmuch as the Devil is called the Prince of the power of the Air we know nothing to the contrary but that he may frequently so modifie that as that it shall have most pernicious influences upon the Bodies of Men and upon those especially so far as God permits that he has any greater malice against 6. And again supposing this it is not a stranger thing that God should permit him to afflict the Bodies of them that belong to him than to disturb their minds Sure their Bodies are not more Sacred If