Selected quad for the lemma: spirit_n
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A30416
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A sermon preached at St. Dunstans in the West at the funeral of Mrs. Anne Seile, the 18th of July, 1678 by Gilbert Burnet.
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Burnet, Gilbert, 1643-1715.
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1678
(1678)
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Wing B5871; ESTC R13574
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12,193
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32
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MEMENTO MORI A SERMON Preached at St. Dunstans in the West AT THE FUNERAL OF Mrs. ANNE SEILE The 18th of Iuly 1678. BY GILBERT BURNET LONDON Printed by Mary Clark 1678. A SERMON On Ephes. v. 15 16. See then that you walk circumspectly not as fools but as wise Redeeming the time because the days are evil THis Text seems very proper on this occasion since what is here recommended agrees very near to the Character which I have had given me of the Person to whom we are now paying the last duties but having been a stranger to her my self and she being much better known to you all among whom she led her life I shall say no more of her But apply my self to the Text. This is an Exhortation following very naturally upon the preceding Discourse in which St. Paul had been comparing the state of Christians under the Gospel to Light opposing it to the darkness of the former superstition under Heathenism Which was made up of many mysterious Riddles and unaccountable Rites and Performances the chief design whereof was rather to darken than enlighten its blind Votaries But the Gospel being a plain and clear direction how to attain eternal life in the practice of the most excellent Rules that ever were delivered is therefore fitly as well as frequently in the New Testament compared to Light in which there are no dark secrets which must be known only to a few Priests But all is laid open and made plain to every discreet and diligent Reader And though it contains several things which are dark and mysterious as in the clearest light places at a great distance seem black yet the darkness is not in the manner of Revelation which is explicite and plain but rises from the remoteness of the object which being at such distance from us and so far above us cannot be made so visible to us as those things that are before us and lie in our way About which not only the Precepts are plain and express but the reason of them is so apparent that like publick high ways the Rule is so plain that without some art a man cannot be mistaken so that if the History of past Ages and the sad prospect of the present did not give us an unanswerable objection to the contrary one that considers the thing in it self would hardly think it possible that a man could be mistaken about it This being then laid down The Exhortation in the Text I have read does naturally follow He that walks in the dark though he stumble often it is forgiven him and if he makes but any tolerable progress in his way it is wondered at But if we should see a man stumbling who walks in full day light and if he made no considerable progress we must needs conclude him under some distemper of body or mind So how justly soever we admire the vertues of the Heathens whose Religion tended rather to corrupt than purifie them yet it will be an eternal reproach on us if we who are enlightned by so heavenly a Doctrine do not far outstrip them both in the exactness of our deportment and our constant progress in vertue I shall without any accurate Division follow the thread of my Text and offer from it such Considerations as may be most profitable and suitable to the present oâ—casion and shall consider First What is imported in this walking circumspectly or exactly and accurately Secondly The Character given of such a walk That it is the consequence of true wisdom and that the contrary is the greatest folly in the world Not as fools but as wise Thirdly That we ought to be making a daily progress in vertue Either making up what we have lost by our former idleness and folly or cutting off those superfluities of naughtiness which consume so much of our time Redeeming the time And Lastly The reason given for all this Because the days are evil To walk circumspectly according to the true notion of the word is to live with all possible strictness and accurateness Not affecting a Pharisaical Sowrness nor a nicity about some lesser matters This exactness consists not in a coarse habit sullen looks an affectation of odd gestures or a peevish scrupulosity about little things These are the arts of hypocrisie which though a discerning mind see through and despise them yet have in all Ages wrought much on the feeble and easily deceived multitudes It is true a man cannot be religious in good earnest but let him use what secresie and care soever he can to conceal it it will shine in his deportment and even in the external parts of it there will appear so much of a composed gravity tempered with a just mixture of sweetness and good nature that he will shine as a light in the world Yet there is such a variety of mens humours and dispositions some being naturally melancholy others more gay and jovial that we ought never on the one hand to be taken too much with an outward appearance how fair soever nor be on the other hand too apt to censure people for such things in their external behaviour which do perhaps rise from their natural tempers and dispositions But to walk circumspectly is a thing of far greater Importance It is in a word to govern our hearts and inward affections and our lives and outward actions by the rule of the Gospel It is not only to be so far good as to live without scandal in the world nor to quiet the clamours of Conscience which may rise upon us after some more notorious sins but it imports somewhat beyond all these That a man should dedicate himself to Religion making it his business and as the bloud circulates over the whole body in greater vessels thorough the nobler parts and in smaller ones even thorough the remotest members so the true spirit of Christianity runs through a mans whole life with a due proportion of care and application Not putting his whole strength to lesser matters and doing the greatest slightly and carelesly but applying his greatest Industry to things of chief concernment yet so as not to be too remiss in the smallest matters He therefore that would walk circumspectly must First Lay down to himself a complete Scheme of his whole life that he may form distinct rules to himself in all the parts of his business by which he shall govern his life and actions He that has not thus digested into his thoughts a clear model of what he resolves to be lives at random and cannot walk circumspectly For he knows not what it is An Architect that builds by Rule has a plane or model according to which the house must rise and without which all must be irregular and out of order If therefore we set about the raising of this spiritual building we must both lay down a regular frame of it and cast up the expence of what it rises to Therefore he that will
his property and stretches it as far as may be Our bodies claim their share both in the necessary supplies of decaying nature and in providing for those supplies But beyond these the irregularities of diet and the vanities of dressing swallow up a great deal more The weakness of our minds makes that some diversions are necessary but modest recreations discreetly used will not serve turn Many hours must be spent in looking on a defiled Stage where the Scenes that are represented are not worse than the impressions they leave on the greatest part of the Spectators And the rest of the day is given up to gaming which perhaps is continued to the next morning Our Friends likewise may claim their share of it but certainly this ought not to be stretcht so far as the perpetual receiving and giving of those idle visits which consume so much time amounts to To redeem or buy out our time is to take as much as may be out of the hands of those unjust invaders of it and to apply it to better and nobler purposes And to give every one what is their own share reserving still the best part of it to our selves and to the noblest part of our selves our Souls It is a generous piece of kindness and friendship to assist others in their concerns upon great occasions when they need our help But if a man minds only his neighbours affairs and neglects his own he is justly censured as a busie body And what do most of those things amount to in which we are employed One great impertinency runs through our whole life and if about the greatest part of those affairs in which we toil and labour we put our Saviours Question to St. Peter to our selves What is that to thee We will be to seek for an Answer He then that will turn a manager of this great treasure Time must reduce his expence and cut off all the needless waste he must give his body such refreshments as may both preserve life and exhilarate his spirits and not oppress them with a surcharge of that which will both disorder his body and clog his mind And though all the labour of a man is for the Belly yet he must so provide for it as not to starve his Soul much less give it into the bargain for then he buyes his provisions dear He must likewise use those diversions which are necessary to keep his body in health and his mind in temper but not throw away his time so profusely on them as if he knew not how to dispose of it otherwise Besides the evaporating the Spirits into too much mirth and folly makes us unfit for more sober employments as a truant Scholar after some days of play knows not how to turn himself again to his Book It is likewise a very ill evidence of our kindness to our friends to rob them of so much of their time as the excessive humour of visiting wastes which whatever people may pretend about the obligations of civility and kindness does really flow from this That they know not how to bestow their time another way And though many looking on it as a decent way of speaking complain of these excesses yet by their extreme officiousness in them it is visible they are not much troubled at them as then he who has out-run himself and begins to grow more frugal considers the several branches of his expence and sees what he can cut off from every one of them so if we go about to redeem our time and think to apply it to better purposes we must see what portions of it we can recover out of the hands of those several consumers of it and apply what we can thus gain to nobler exercises to the serious meditations of Vertue and Religion That we may consider how we shall improve our Faculties lay out our Talents and employ our time in such services as may tend to the honour of God and the good of our Neighbours and attaining such an inward noble temper of mind as Religion requires we may walk not only blameless and harmless but as the Sons of God we may shine as lights in the world And now if we do consider how short our time and how lasting Eternity is if we consider how much we have to do and how small a portion of our time is perhaps before us which if it be quite wasted can never be recovered no not in all Eternity if we also put to the account the many accidents of sicknesses and other disorders which waste our time we must needs be convinced that it concerns us nearly to husband it as closely and carefully as we can The reason here given by St. Paul Because the days are evil is next to be considered Evil days in Scripture-stile stand either for great afflictions or publick calamities or for the declining of a mans age or the approach of death but in this place the Apostles meaning must either relate to the ill conversation of those among whom they live for an evil day and an evil time by an Hebraism stand often for the same thing Or this Phrase relates to the afflictions the scorn and other miseries the Christians lay under and the more severe persecutions which they had reason speedily to look for And in all these senses the Inference is very just That because the days are evil we ought to Redeem our time The first sence relates to the corruption of the Age and the great Immoralities of which both Jews for Gentiles were guilty were a very convincing argument to perswade Christians to consider their ways with more than ordinary carefulness That they might be upon their guard against the snares of so evil an example and resist the temptations of vice and sin when it was grown so common that men were neither ashamed nor afraid of it It was also the more necessary for Christians to look more carefully to themselves that they might shine as lights in the midst of a wicked generation and set off the glory of their Profession with a greater advantage having so black a foil placed near it And certainly this argument has all possible strength in it if we apply it to this dissolute Age in which men seem to have lost the shame as well as the sense of sin and to have delivered themselves up to work wickedness with equal degrees of Impudence and Greediness And we ought the rather to look narrowly to our selves because the Vices that have been discovered in some Pretenders to Piety seem one of the greatest grounds of those mens confidence that there is no truth in the things so much talked of This prejudice is not to be beaten down by any arguments drawn from discourse but by those undeniable and convincing experiments of a holy life and vertuous conversation And when a Plague rages so universally that few escape the Contagion we should with the greater strictness look to our selves that we