Luk. 15.29 When he was asking of him that he would send one from the Dead to his five Brethren upon the Earth who were in hazard of coming to the same Place of Torment They have Moses and the Prophets said he let them hear them But replyed the rich Glutton if one went unto them from the Dead they will repent To which again was made that most Righteous Return If they hear not Moses and the Prophets neither will they he perswaded though one rose from the Dead So that nothing from without us is like to make Men Serious All the Funeral Parads on Earth all the Paleness that sits upon the Faces of our dead Friends and all the Solitude it leaves upon their Families serve but a little to amuse the Minds of Natural Men and e're we are aware the Impressions are gone But a right and Habitual Seriousness is the Effect of a great deal more Recollection than the Generality of Men alloweth themselves and of a great deal more Application to Almighty God than is ordinarly found with them Thence indeed comes the Work of God upon the Heart And except you think you cannot learn except you ask you cannot receive Except you seek you cannot find Except you knock it cannot be opened to you And were I able to awaken you out of your Securities and quicken your Meditations and set you forward in your Applications to Almighty God by suggesting to you any such Rouzing Considerations as this Subject may afford us I have my End and you have yours I hope in coming to this Audience There be therefore these two Serious Thoughts I would have you to weigh with me in order to this End and as arising genuinely enough from this important Subject I. Death maketh a total and final Separation betwixt us and all our Temporal Enjoyments as First From all the Stations in which we are placed Indeed by the way it is by different Stations and due Subordinations that the Societies in Heaven and Earth are governed And if any pretend by another Method to subsist it is Heteroclite and Singular and must necessarly terminat in the deepest Confusions But let us reflect all the Beauty of Order and all the Measures of a true and Temporal Felicity upon these Stations of Men and the Peaceful Effects of them throughout the World Yet as to the Men themselves it is perhaps fit enough to tell them at least to bring them to Remembrance at all Occasions of this Nature that they must drop from their Benches and as the Holy Psalmist speaking of the Highest of them Psal lxxxii v. 6 7. I have said Ye are Gods And all of you the Sons of the most High but ye shall die like Men and fall like one of the Princes And since it is so behave your selves as these that live in a continual Prospect of Death and not as such who have nothing but Worldly Projects before their Eyes Pray do not either desire these Stations while you have them not nor cajol your selves in them while you have them merely upon these following Heads with Worldly and Carnal Men as 1. To Deck your selves with Plumes of Glory to be admired of your Fellow Creatures Thus do the Vain affect the Heights of the World and whom in this place I shall only call to Mind of that Advertisement of our Blessed Lord and Saviour Matth. vi v. 2. Given with Respect unto the right Distribution of Charity When thou doest thine Alms do not sound a Trumpet before thee as the Hypocrites do in the Synagogues and in the Streets that they may have Glory of Men. Verily I say unto you they have their Reward And no other indeed can I promise them in another World But upon the contrary when they are by Death which hasteth upon them stript of all their Plumes of Glory and covered with the Beggers Mantle of common Grass they shall be brought to the Blush before the Throne of God where they have nothing to cover the Vileness and Nakedness of their Crimes and Faults and from thence to the lowest and loathsomest Pit of Miseries Neither 2. Use these your Stations Majori fastu incedere to step with a loftier paw or to exercise an higher hand over the same thy fellow Creatures For so do the Proud affect their Stations But remember Thou must ly by the side of him whom sometime thou thought unworthy to stand before thee And therefore Walk softly and Speak with an humble Voice and remember the Regions of endless Darkness and the Place of remediless Torments for the Vain and the Proud are there And 3. Use not your Stations to this purpose to act Revenge upon thine Enemy by so doing thou may prompt Revenge in him to thine own Dishonour if he chance to Survive thee to set his Foot with Indignation upon thy Breast while thou lyest upon thy Back in the Dust and so may bring him with thy self into the very same place of Torment Nor Use your Stations for no other end than to enhaunse a Naboth's Vineyard or a poor Man's Ewe-lamb Thy Possessions shall not avail thee when for an inch of the Earth thou finds thou hast lost a spann of Heaven even all the Regions of Blessedness Nor shall thy Pleasures relish with thee in the midst of these Flames thy Lusts have kindled upon thee Remember how narrow thy Lodgings are in the Grave and how scant thy Provisions are among the Damned This is the first serious Thought I have offered thee That Death shall make a total and final Separation betwixt us and all our temporal Enjoyments As from all the Stations in which we are placed so II. From all the Natural Endowments in Body or Mind with which we are blessed I speak of these as they consist in conjunction with one another in this perishing and imperfect Life For after Death the Souls of the Blessed shall be infinitely better endued when brought nearer unto God and in fellowship with the Spirits of just Men made perfect Here we see but in part and know but in part but but there we shall see as we are seen and know as we are known So after the Resurrection our Bodies shall have infinitely more perfect powers 1 Cor. xv 42. Sowen in Corruption raised in Incorruption Sowen in Weakness raised in Power Sowen a Natural raised a Spiritual body Only here as the powers of the body and faculty of the Soul exist in Conjunction with one another in this perishing and imperfect state at least in so far as they ad upon temporal beeings and objects they are quite broken of and cut short for which reason in like manner as I have already said we are to take special care not to use them to unrighteous ends In the body is it strength Use it not to Oppress but to rescue and defend the Weak as Moses would have done Exod. ii 13. betwixt the two contending Israelites Because Solomon's evil days haste upon thee Eccles xii
then understood I their end And so furth But in the 24 Vers Thou shalt guide me with thy Counsel and afterward receive me to Glory And in the 27 Vers Lo they that are far from Thee shall Parish They that is All they An Indefinite being equivalent to an Universal And since not all of them Perish but some of them Prosper in this Life we must necessarly conclude that Punishments are reserved for them in an other Except you say in the next place with the fore-mentioned Deists and Disciples of Epicurus that Almighty God exerciseth no Providence nor regardeth what is done upon the Earth If so what account shall we make of the Misgivings of the best laid Designs and Projects amongst Men and the success of those things that having less Counsel and Contrivance in them pass commonly under the Name of Accidents What Accounts can we make of many Instances in Prophane History If these disingenuous Creatures will not admit Sacred History to the benefit of Common Credit and Repute least they read their own Condemnation in the midst of it What Account can we make of the disappointment of Brennus and the Gauls in their designed surprize of the Capitol of Rome by the keckling of the Geese in Juno's Temple What Account can we make of Sardanapalus his burning himself with his own Women in a Pile of Wood who loved so much to live in the Flames of his Lusts What Account shall we make of St. Augustin his Digression which he thought not of in a Sermon against the Manichees by which Firmus a Manichee was happily Converted What shall we make at another time of his mistaking his Way by which he escaped the bloody Hands of the Donatists who lay in wait for him Or if they will carry any regatd only to the History of the Old Testiment so anciently and closly asserted by the then Learned and most Celebrated Nation of the Jews and so firmly adhered to till this very Day And what a Providence do you think was the saving of Moses in the Ark of Bulrushes Exod. ii And what a Providence that Pharaoh's Daughter should own and inhaunse him and what a Providence that his Mother was allowed to Nurse him and what a Providence that he should refuse when he came to riper Years to be called the Son of Pharaoh's Daughter that he might step up to a far more Glorious Trust thorow a Thicket of interwoven Dangers and Contradictions to be the Deliverer of the People of God What a Providence was it that Joseph was sold into Egypt and by the way of a Prison was sent to Pharaoh's Court for the safety of these very Brethren that sold him Nay what a Providence that David escaped out of the City of Keilah where he thought himself so secure when afterwards he was made to understand the Keilits would certainly have delivered him up Or if these be interpreted Accidents still and this be all the account that can be made of the singular Providences which every considering Person is able to find out in the Tract of his own Life Let us again mind these Atheâ—sts in Masquerad of the essential and inseparable Attributs of that God whom they still own in His Beeing If that God be Omniscient and infinitely Wise which they must agree to He must needs see all the wicked Actions of ungodly Men. And then if He be alse Just as He is Wise He must alse necessarly Punish them or then acquiesce in a very great Disorder in the Oeconomy of that World which He made But not to trouble the World more with that Sect of Men let us only bid them reflect upon the Quiet of their own Minds when they do that which is Good And the Resentments of a natural Conscience upon perpetrated Wickedness And remember who said Hic murus abeneus esto Nil conscire sibi And again Integer vitae scelerisque purus Non eget Mauri jaculis nec arcu c. Horat But if otherways Cur hos Evasisse putes quos diri conscia facti Mens habet attonitos c. Inven Nay these bitter Resentments of a Natural Conscience are but the Fore-runers of that Worme that never dieth in the Regions of the Damned And indeed as we have already said they pass into an irreversible and Irremediless State of Misery And if so In the next place To what purpose are all the Soul Masses that are offered up in the Church of Rome for such as pass into the State of the Dead to shorten or totally to remove their Sorrows And that according to the offerings of Charity that are made for them at least Sums of Money which are cast into the Treasury of the Church If our Saviour had meaned any such State of Life from which Redemption could have been so Purchased how should Dives have been concluded under this irreversible Condition while he lest such vast Substance behind him which might have been happily employed to so good purpose But Abraham insinuats no such thing in his Answers to Dives in the fore-cited Parable And now Christians if these things be True as I think there is enough said to evince the Truth of them That Death makes a total and sinal Separation betwixt us and all the Enjoyments of this World and concludes us under an irreversible State and Condition in an other Life How serious ought we to be improving the Advertisement my Text gives us It is the Custom of Children only to throw away Pearls for Peeble-stones and real Gold for the more glistering Counterfeit but Wise Men part with the lesser always for the greater Advantages And what Comparison is there betwixt Time and Eternity betwixt the pleasures of Sin that last but for a Season and the never ending Joyes Felicities of another Life Nay betwixt the Lusts and Passions that really toss Men amidst the Diseases they bring upon their Bodies and the resentments they break up in their Minds and Spirits and these equal and continual Satisfactions of the Blessed in the presence of God and the Societies of just Men made Perfect And to this blessed State and Conditions we are hopeful â—ur truely Great our truely Noble our truely Virtuous Friend is gone Whose Dust lyeth now before us to be returned to that Dust of the Earth out of which it was taken Not do I say this out of any Complement to His Friends and Memory but from very considerable Evidences and Grounds of Charity And therefore shall presume to set before you for your Christian Imitation some of these excellent Virtues which did most luculently shine forth in his Lise And by which there was a considerable Obedience given to some of the most important of the Gospel Precepts And this I take to be the chief Design of Funeral Discourses upon our dead Friends to make their Light so shine before Men that others seing their Good Works at least hearing of them may Glorify their Father which is in Heaven We find
all the Deliberation and Digestedness a very little time before his Death as he used to do in the time of his Health with all Demonstration of Kindness taking by the Hand all that were about him committing them to God Pardoning and praying for all his Enemies and heartily Blessing his Hopeful Son One Passage did very much instruct the Christian Magnaminity al 's wel as Moral Fortitude of his Mind when the Surprize of a very excuseable Passion made his Dearest and truely Noble Consort break out in some kind deep Resentments at her Thoughts of his parting from the World He thus expressed himself as with a Challenge Why should not I resign my Soul unto God at His pleasure All the Greatness and Wealth and numerous Circumstances of Temporal Felicity were not so much as in his View The seriousness of his Devotions al 's well as the Fortitude of his Mind left no place for such low and mean Thoughts To this add a singular Instance of that orderly and digested Regard which he payed to God all that Night over before it pleased God to call him out of this Mortal Life As oft as Prayers were offered for him the returns of which were very frequent and that most Just and Righteous Conclusion of our Requests in the Words of our Blessed Lord and Saviours form of Prayer which rectifies all our undigested Thoughts sounded in his Ears he pulled off the thin Covering of his Head with which he was abundantly discovered when it was upon him and with the profundest Devotion joyned in the Petitions thereof Here is a Chain of Virtues made mention of before you hanging about this Great and Noble Personage Virtues have always their proper Lustre where ever they are to be found but set forth a greater deal of Beauty and Glory when made Conspicuous by so high a Station like Pallas or Minerva sitting upon a Triumphal Arch and commanding the profoundest Regard from all their Votaries passing by them upon the common Level of the Earth O! What Obligations ly upon Great Men to be Virtuous provocking to Imitation the Multitudes of such as stand upon a lower Ground considerably reforming the World putting common Debauchry Dissolutness of Life to the Blush And by so doing greatly advancing the Kingdom of God But to live this Digression I say here is a Chain of Virtues Meekness and Humility Twins of Paradise fit for the Fellowship of Jesus and meet to enter into the Societies of the Blessed without which they cannot abide in these Regions of true Felicity more than Lucifer in Heaven or Adam in the Garden of Eden Justice Charity the two profitable Hand-maids of Human Society Ministering to the present Exigences of his lower World without which neither could the Poor Subsist nor the Rich be Happy Again here are Prudence Fortitude and Temperance The Philosophers have left us little to say of these only they Treat them likeways with respect to this Life and the constituting and carrying on of a Temporal Happiness and summum bonum under the Sun But in the other World our Prudence shall be swallowed up of a perfected Wisdom whereof it is but a Spice or Syre Fortitude shall lose it self in a fearless and inconcussible State And Temperance shall surrender its Dominion to a total Exemption from the use of the Creature To all these add Pure and Holy Devotion and this is a lasting Tribut payable to our Great Lord and Maker as in this World so in that which is to come And now with this Climax or Chain of Virtues in their different Positions and Gradations in their proper Exercises and Operations did our Great and Noble Friend and Fellow Christian shew himself forth in the World Having them so closs hanging about him and knit unto him that so long as he was capable of Communion with Us and the common Union of Soul and Body was allowed to subsist they shined forth with a Meridian Brightness Only the last of these as most becoming his Business of appearing before God seemed in the last place totally to possess his Soul and to shew forth a great work of God upon his Heart making him to breath forth a total Abnegation and cheerful Dereliction of all the enjoyments of this Life And in this manner did he spend his Time in the approaches of Death as he had done for a considerable time before having also received the Holy Eucharist from the Hand of one who was Worthy and had right to Celebrat and Administer it Thus did he in the strength of a firm Mind and in the returns of continual Devotions wait for the coming of his Lord uttering these Words and never any after them Into thy Hands O Lord I ecommend my Spirit Thus this Noble and Excellent Personage with this upright Job whose Patience in a most lively manner he transcribed as in the course of his Life where he wanted not singular enough tryals so most Eminently in his last Fatal Sickness was brought unto Death and to the House Appointed for all Living What was Great and Noble about Him either in the Extract or Alliances of his Family where there wants no Ground enough to Celebrat his Greatness we cannot so much consider the Subject of a Funeral as the work of a Pencil And therefore recommends you to his Escutcheon where you will find the Ensigns Armorial of the Noblest and Greatest Families of this Nation Or if there were any Faults or Failings in his Life As what Man liveth and finneth not that is as little my Business What I have already said of Him seems to speak Him more than a Penitent even a Favorite of Heaven and yet boasting of no Attainments but in the wonted Humility of his Soul throwing himself intirely upon the Merits of the Blessed Jesus the only true and solid Plea of the best of Christians And here we shall leave Him where we hope to be found in the day of our Appearrance And what now remains but the last Duty of his Noble and Honourable Blood Friends To commit his Body to the Dust since his Spirit is returned to God who gave it And Blessed are the Dead which Die in the Lord from henceforth for they rest from their Labours and their Works do follow them FINIS