the venerable goodness that is visible in him shall retain honour To attempt any labourious Proof of so clear a Truth as this were needless do but consult the universal practice of Mankind and read it there What Rules do the Philosophers prescribe to render our lives most satisfactory to our selves and most commendable to others with what Colours do the Oratours paint those persons they intend to Celebrate what Images do the Poets form when they design an Heroe are they any other than the Rules and Colours and Images of moral Goodness Do not Hypocrites to court the esteem of the Vulgar personate the Saint and Politians to make the People honour them pretend to Religion and why do they both put on this disguise but because they know that Wickedness bare-fac'd is in the eyes of all men most detestable and that the names of Saint and of Religion are creditable in the World Shew me that profligate Wretch who in his cool thoughts or on his Death-bed does not decline all his loose Companions and seeks out for men truly good and consciencious to whom he may intrust his Estate his Children and all that is dearest to him even his own Soul too for which he then begs their ghostly counsel What man is there so wicked who on his death-bed does not wish that he may die the death of the Righteous and that his latter end may be like his Look into the Histories and customs of Ages past see how greedily coveted how dearly purchast and how highly valued the Statues and all the little remains of Good Men have been The Heathens to express their great esteem of Goodness built Temples to Vertue and Honour and join'd these Temples together and made the former the only passage into the latter they thought Praise to Good men as just a Tribute as Sacrifice to their Gods and one of the Wisest of them wonderfully pleas'd himself in fansying how lovely and venerable how divine and transporting an Idea he should see could he but look into the breast of a Good man We have then the practice and the judgment of the whole World to confirm this truth that Vertue has always had a great and a general esteem that the gracious Person retains honour On the contrary is there not a natural shame a sense of turpitude or a confusion of face in vicious and unclean actions why else are men afraid to commit them before the most inconsiderable Spectatour and chuse darkness for a thick Mantle to cover them why else do they blush to own them wish a thousand times they had never been done and reflect on them with dissatisfaction and horrour why else do their own Consciences lash and upbraid them whereas if we will but take the pains to make up an Induction of all Christian graces we shall easily se that there is none whose friendship is more ambitiously sought none with whom men would sooner change Persons none who are accounted of more substantial worth or more generally rever'd or more influential to the good of Mankind or sooner wanted in the World or who make a nobler figure in Story than the Devout the Humble the Just the Meek the Temperate the Charitable or to express all in one word the gracious Person who therefore shall always retain honour I need not reckon up the numerous places of Holy Scripture where Goodness and Honour are link'd together how the Wise are said to inherit glory the humble and meek to be exalted how we are commanded to keep our Vessels in sanctification and honour and how God has promis'd to honour those who honour him I need not mention the primitive Dypticks or how the Church Catholick has celebrated the Festivals and honour'd the memories of the Saints and of the Martyrs I need not suggest that obvious Conclusion That if gracious Persons can draw even wicked Men to a reverential love of their Vertue much more will they engage the friendship of all that are Holy and not only of holy Men but of holy Angels too who being all ministring Spritis deputed by God to attend them the more heavenly they see any committed to their charge does grow the more respectfull attendance in all probabâ—lity they give him And there is the highest reason in the World why there should be so honourable a loveliness in a gracious Person if we consider the likeness he bears to that great God whom we Adore For as there are on all men innate impressions of God's Existence so there are also of his Attributâ—s and none ever yet in earnest believed there was a God but he also believed that God was a Being Infinite in all Perfections in Wisedom and Power Justice and Mercy Purity and Holiness Veracity and Beneficence and as these excite our Love and our Adoration to God so where ever we see any though but imperfect resemblances of his imitable perfections in the Saints here on earth where ever we see men in any measure Holy and Pure Just and Mercifull Faithfull and Beneficent we there see the image of God himself and cannot but pay them a suitable honour Thus as Goodness and Adorableness are co-eternal in God so are Sanctity and Venerableness coeval in gracious Persons Nor are we only by Grace made like to God but he is also pleas'd actually to dwell in us and to consecrate our Souls to be his Temples and as God commanded the Iews to reverence his Sanctuary the place of his residence among them where he sat between the Cherubims and a glorious Light that shin'd on the Propitiâ—toâ—y was the Symbol of his Presence So when in gracious Souls we discover all the fruits of the Spirit a kind of glory brightning their Conversation and a sacred Amiablenâ—ss breath'd on them from Heaven we are sure that God inhabits there and cannot but reverence his Temples Such Honour have all God's Saints from even wicked men from all holy persons and from the good Angels and infinitely above all thâ—se from God himself who honours them with his Image after which they are renew'd and with his Presence of which they are possest Such Honour I say have all his Saints even in this life which if we did but seriously Contemplate would stir us up to a generous emulation would encourage us to implore the Divine Grace that we may bewail all our past sins cleanse our selves from all filthiness both of Flesh and of Spirit which produce nothing in the end but Shame and Horrour and daily grow more conformable to his Likeness which is the only way to assert the dignity of our Nature and to retain honour But when once our Souls shall be divorc'd from our bodies when the name of the wicked shall rot and stink sooner than his carcase leaving no memorials bâ—hind unless it be of his sin his infamy his madness or his folly Precious then in the sight of the Lord shall be the death of his Saints
A SERMON Preached at the FUNERAL OF THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THE Lady Margaret Mainard AT Little EASTON in ESSEX On the 30th of Iune 1682. By Tho. Ken D. D. one of his Majesty's Chaplains in Ordinary LONDON Printed by M. Flesher for Ioanna Brome at the Sign of the Gun in St. Paul's Church-yard And William Clarke Bookseller in Winchester MDCLXXXII TO The Right Honourable WILLIAM Lord Mainard BARON of EASTAINS AND Comptroller of His MAJESTY'S Houshold My LORD THough I am unwilling to decline any Service which Your Lordship expects from me yet when You enjoyn'd me the Printing of this Sermon I could not obey Your Command without disputing it For I consider'd that in such an Age as this where an Exemplary Holiness is very rare I shall be thought guilty of most gross Flattery in the Character I have given of Your Incomparable Lady now in Heaven But knowing I have so many unexceptionable Witnesses to attest every Line I have said especially Your Self who best understood her value and are most sensible of her loss and being Conscious to my self that I have spoken no other throughout than the words of Truth I soon broke through all the discouragements I had either from the just Censures the World would fix on the meaness of the Discourse or from the unjust ones it might pass on my Insincerity and resolv'd to doe all that little Honour I could to her Memory and to give God the glory of her Example And I humbly beseech the Divine Goodness that what I now offer to the Publick may not be wholly unprofitable to those who reade it However I am sure it will not be unacceptable to Your Lordship or to those who were so happy to know her which will be satisfaction enough to My Good LORD Your Lordship 's most Humble and Faithfull Servant THO. KEN A SERMON Preached at the FUNERAL Of the Right Honourable The LADY MARGARET MAINARD On Prov. 11. xvi A gracious Woman retaineth honour THE World was never yet so bad but the good Man though his life was a continued Satyre to the Age he lived in did always either find or extort a Veneration from it So true is it of both Sexes which Solomon here affirms of Woman only that gracious Persons they who are in the Grace and favour of God and are strengthned by his gracious assistances they who by the covenant of Grace are enrolled in his service and in whose hearts there is a conspiration of all the Graces of his holy Spirit all which particulars are included in the word Grace and do all concur to make up a gracious Soul Such persons I say as these shall from the generality of Men gain an inward esteem and a great Opinion and for the most part an outward and a suitable respect or as the Wise man words it shall retain honour I must confess that there are many instances even in our own perverse generation wherein Vertue has rather been contemn'd and ridicul'd than Honour'd but I will mention no other than the most signal of all God Incarnate whose example though it was as perfect and unblameable as the fulness of the Godhead could render it yet his most divine Person was so far from being honoured by many of the Iews that he lay under the utmost imputations of Slander and Blasphemy which words could express and as glorious as all his Miracles were they were ascrib'd to no other than Beelzebub the Prince of the very Devils But though it be true that our blessed Lord in regard to his state of Humiliation seemed to have no form no comeliness in him yet all his Conversation had so many irradiations of Divinity in it which did abundantly evince his heavenly Extraction and it is no wonder he should suffer such contradictions of sinners it being usual for an Heroick virtue which is singly to encounter whole Legions to contend with inveterate Errours or reigning Vices to reprove and reform the World as our Saviour was to be loaded with most diabolical reproaches But Goodness has an inseparable splendour which can never suffer a total ecclipse and when it is most revil'd and persecuted it then shines brightest out of Cloud So that all who are not willfully blind who will but make use of their eyes to see must acknowledge the force of its raies This did the very Iews themselves as many as had any reliques of common ingenuity left The Multitude own'd our Saviour for a great Prophet wonder'd at his gracious words confest he had done all things well insomuch that they would have exalted him to the throne and have made him their King Pilate could find no fault in him at all and the Centurion a Heathen even when he saw him hanging on the Cross as a Malefactour cried out Certainly this was a Righteous man So that a gracious Person under the most extreme degree of Infamy and Slander shall yet retain honour shall from all that are in their right minds have at least an inward Veneration If this be verifi'd of a publique Vertue there can be less doubt of it in a private one which not being on such a stage as may provoke and affront the angry World by openly contradicting or upbraiding or chastising it passes along with a less assaulted and less envied reputation and more undisturb'dly retains honour than the former There is I know an honour which is due to all men as they are God's workmanship and have some lines of his Image in them but especially to Kings and to Magistrates whom it is our duty to honour whether they be gracious Persons or no this we are to render to the Froward and Pagan as well as to gentle and believing Masters to Princes that are Infidels and Persecutours as well as to Christian and nursing Fathers But then this honour is not paid them out of respect to any real Goodness in them but only to their Authority as they are God's ordinance as we depend on their Protection and as our Obedience is enforc'd by Law and Penalties But the honour we give to a gracious Person is purely in reference to his moral excellencies which are legible in the whole conduct of his life The former is merely civil the latter may in some sort be styl'd Religious Empire is honour'd as it resembles God's power abstracted from his Holiness and therefore it is compatible with an ungracious Person it is confin'd only to this World and reaches no farther But Graciousness is honour'd as a participation of the divine Nature appropriate to no other than Saints and which has its prospect only on Heaven The former is like Thunder and Lightning and works on our Fear the latter is like the appearance of a good Angel arraid in Beams awfull but kind which do not afflict but chear the sight and raise in us a mixt passion of Love and Veneration together and in this sense it is that the gracious Person for
up of no other than sins of Infirmity and yet even for them she had as deep an Humiliation and as Penitential a Sorrow as high a sense of the Divine forgiveness and lov'd as much as if she had had Much to be forgiven So that after a life of above Forty Years Nine of which were spent in the Court bating her involuntary failings which are unavoidable and for which allowances are made in the Covenant of Grace she kept her self unspoted from the World and if it may be affirmed of any I dare venture to affirm it of this gracious Woman that by the peculiar favour of Heaven she past from the Font unsullied to her Grave Her understanding was admirable and she daily improv'd it by reading in which she employ'd most of her time and the Books she chose were only serious or devout and her memory was faithfull to retain what she read She took not up her Religion on an implicite faith or from education only but from a well-studied choice directed by God's holy Spirit whose guidance she daily invok'd and when once she had made that choice she was immoveable as a rock and so well satisfi'd in the Catholick faith profest in the Church of England that I make no doubt but that she always liv'd not only with the strictness of a Primitive Saint but with the resolution also of a Martyr It was strange to hear how strongly she would argue how clearly she understood the force of a Consequence and how ready at all times she was to give a reason of the hope that was in her with meekness and fear Her Letters which were found in her Cabinet not to be deliver'd till after her death and very many others in the hands of her Relations sufficiently shew how good and how great she was In them this humble Saint before she was aware has her self made an exact impression of her own Graciousness They are pen'd in so proper and unaffected a Style and animated throughout with so divine a Spirit with such ardours of Devotion and Charity as might have become a Proba a Monica or the most eminent of her Sex Insomuch that her very absence was the more supportable to her friends in regard she compensated the want of her presence by writing and sent them a blessing by every return I cannot tell what one help she neglected to secure her perseverance and to heighten her graces that she might shine more and more to a perfect day Her Oratory was the place where she principally resided and where she was most at home and her chief employment was Prayer and Praise Out of several Authours she for her own use transcrib'd many excellent Forms the very choice of which does argue a most experienc'd Piety she had Devotions suited to all the primitive hours of Prayer which she us'd as far as her bodily Infirmities and necessary Avocations would permit and with David Prais'd God seven times a day or supply'd the want of those solemn hours by a kind of perpetuity of Ejaculations which she had ready to answer all occasions and to fill up all vacant intervals and if she happened to wake in the Night of proper Prayers even for mid-night she was never unprovided Thus did this gracious Soul having been enkindled by fire from Heaven in her Baptism liv'd a continual Sacrifice and kept the fire always burning always in ascension always aspiring towards Heaven from whence it fell Besides her own private Prayers she Morning and Evening offer'd up to God the publick Offices and when she was not able to go to the house of Prayer she had it read to her in her Chamber To Prayers she added Fasting till her weakness had made it impossible to her constitution and yet even then on days of Abstinence she made amends for the Omission by other supplemental Mortifications Her Devotions she enlarg'd on the Fasts and Festivals of the Church but especially on the Lord's days dividing the hours between the Church and her Closet She never fail'd on all opportunities to approach the holy Altar came with a Spiritual hunger and thirst to that heavenly Feast and Communicated with a lively with a Crucifying but yet endearing Remembrance of her Crucifi'd Saviour The Sermons she heard when she came home she recollected and wrote down out of her memory abstracts of them all which are in a great number among her Papers that she might be not only a hearer of the Word but a doer also The Holy Scripture she attentively read and on what she read she did devoutly meditate and did by Meditation appropriate to her self it was her Soul's daily Bread it was her delight and her Counsellour and like the most blessed Virgin Mother she kept all things she read and ponder'd them in her heart Who is there can say they ever saw her idle no she had always affairs to transact with Heaven she was all her life long numbring her days and applying her heart to wisedom or to describe her with her own Pen she was making it her business to fit her self for her change knowing the moment of it to be uncertain and having no assurance that her warning would be great Oh happy Soul that was thus wise in a timely consideration of that which of all things in the World is of greatest importance to us to be consider'd namely our Latter end You may easily conclude that a Saint who was always thus conversant with her Grave and had heaven always in her view must have little or no value for things below as indeed she had not she did not only conquer the World but she triumph'd over it had a noble contempt of Secular greatness liv'd several years in the very Court with the abstraction of a Recluse and was so far from being solicitous for Riches for her self or her Children that to use her own words she look'd on them as dangerous things which did only clog and press drown our souls to this earth and judg'd a Competency to be certainly the best All the temporal blessings the divine Goodness was pleas'd to vouchsafe her she receiv'd with an overflowing thankfulness yet her affections were so disengag'd her temperance and moderation so habitual that she did rather use than injoy them and was always ready to restore them to the same gracious hand that gave them but no one can express her thoughts so pathetically as her own self O says that blessed Saint since God gives us all let us not be sorrowfull though we are to part with all the Kingdom of Heaven is a prise that is worth striving for though it costs us dear Alas what is there in this World that lincks our hearts so close to it and elsewhere she affirms that All blessings are given on this condition that either they must be taken from us or we from them if then we lose any thing which we esteem a blessing we are to give God the glory and to resign it
freely She was a perfect despiser of all those vanities and divertisements which most of her sex do usually admire her chief and in a manner sole recreation was to doegood andto oblige and if we will be advis'd by one so wise to Salvation We are to seek for comfort and joy from God's ordinances and the converse of pious Christians and not to take the usual course of the World to drive away Melancholy by exposing our selves to temptations and this was really her practice insomuch that next to the Service of the Temple which she daily frequented There was no entertainment in the whole World so pleasing to her as the discourse of heavenly things and those she spake of with such a Spiritual relish that at first hearing you might perceive she was in earnest that she really tasted the Lord was good and felt all she spake Amidst all her pains and her sicknesses which were sharpe and many who ever saw her shew any one symptome of Impatience So far was she from it that she laments when she reflects how apt we are to abuse prosperity Demands where our conformity is to the great Captain of our Salvation if we have no sufferings Professes that God by suffering our Conditions to be Uneasy by that gentle way invites us to higher satisfactions than are to be met with here and with a prostrate spirit acknowledges that God was most righteous in all that had befallen her and that there had been so much mercy mixt w th his chastising that she had been but too happy Thus humble thus content thus thankfull was this gracious Woman amidst her very afflictions Her Soul always rested on God's Paternal mercy and on all his exceeding great and precious promises as on a sure and stedfast Anchor which she knew would secure her in the most tempestuous Calamities To his blessed will she hourly offer'd up her own and knew it was as much her duty to suffer his fatherly inflictions as to obey his commands Her Charity made her sympathize with all in Misery and besides her private Alms wherein her left hand was not conscious to her right she was a common Patroness to the Poor and Needy and a common Physician to her sick Neighbours and would often vvith her own hands dress their most loathsome soars and sometimes keep them in her Family and vvould give them both Diet and Lodging till they were cur'd and then cloth them and send them home to give God thanks for their recovery and if they died her Charity accompany'd them sometimes to the very grave and she took care even of their burial She would by no means endure that by the care of plentifully providing for her Children the wants and necessities of any poor Christian should be over look'd and desir'd it might be remembred that Alms and the Poors prayers will bring a greater blessing to them than Thousands a year Look abroad novv in the World and see hovv rarely you shall meet vvith a Charity like that of this gracious Woman vvho next to her own flesh and bloud vvas tender of the Poor and thought an Alms as much due to them as Portions to her Children To corporal Alms as often as she savv occasion she joyn'd spiritual and she had a singular talent in dispensing that alms to Souls she had a masculine Reason to persuade a steddy Wisedom to advise a perspicuity both of thought and language to instruct a mildness that endear'd a reproof and could comfort the afflicted from her own manifold experience of the Divine Goodness and with so condoling a tenderness that she seem'd to translate their anguish on her self And happy was it for others that her Charity was so comprehensive for she often met with objects so deplorable that vvere to be reliev'd in all these capacities so that she vvas fain to become their Benefactress their Physician and their Divine altogether or if need vvere she bid them shew themselves to the Priest or else took care to send the Priest to them Thus was it visibly her constant endeavour to be in all respects mercifull as her Father in Heaven is mercifull She could bear long and most easily forgive and no one ever injur'd her but she would heap coals of fire on his head to melt him into a charitable temper and vvould often repay the injury with a kindness so surprising that if the injurious person vvere not vvholly obdurate and brutish must needs affect him But if any one did her the least good office none could be more gratefull she vvould if possible return it a hundred-fold if she could not in kind she would at least doe it in her prayers to God that out of his inexhaustible goodness he would reward him Her Soul seem'd to possess a continued serenity at peace vvith her self at peace vvith God and at peace vvith all the World her study vvas to give all their due and she vvas exactly sincere and faithfull to all her obligations she kept her heart alvvays vvith all diligence vvas vvatchfull against all temptations and naturally considerate in all her actions her disposition vvas peacefull and inoffensive she lookt alvvays pleas'd rather than chearfull her converse vvas even and serious but yet easie and affable her Interpretations of vvhat others did or said vvere alvvays candid and charitable you should never see her indecently angry or out of humour never hear her give an ill character or pass a hard censure or speak an idle word but she opened her mouth in wisedom and in her tongue was the law of kindness If you look on her in her several Relations in her Childhood her Father the Right Honourable the Earl of Dyzart being banish'd for his Loyalty she was under the breeding of the Excellent Lady her Mother to whom she was in all respects so dutifull a Child that she protested her Daughter had never in any one instance offended her By that time the young Lady was about Eleven or twelve years old God was pleas'd to take her good Mother to himself and from that time to her Marriage this gracious Woman liv'd with a discretion so much above her years with so conspicuous a Vertue and so constant a Wariness that she always retain'd honour such an honour as never had the least Mote in it And to her honour be it spoken that in an Age when the generality of the Nation were like Children tost to and fro with every wind of Doctrine she still continued stedfast in the Communion of the Church of England and when the Priests and Service of God were driven into Corners she daily resorted though with great difficulty to the publick Prayers and was remarkably Charitable to all the suffering Royallists whom she visited and reliev'd and fed and cloth'd and condol'd with a zeal like that which the Ancient Christians shew'd to the Primitive Martyrs The silenc'd and plunder'd and persecuted Clergy she thought worthy of double honour did vow a certain Sum yearly
tenderness of His compassion he sent her as preparatives of her last conflict and as earnests of Heaven whither he intended the day following to translate her How she behav'd her self in her sickness I cannot better express than by saying that she pray'd continually and when the Prayers of the Church were read by her or when the hour of her own private Prayer came though she was not able to stand or to help her self she would yet be plac't on her Knees and when her Knees were no longer able to support her she would be put into the humblest posture she could possibly endure not being satisfied unless she gave God his entire oblation and glorify'd him in her body as well as in her spirit which were both God's own by purchase here and were both to be united in bliss hereafter On Whit-sunday she received her viaticum the most holy Body and Bloud of her Saviour and had received it again had not her death surpris'd us yet in the strength of that immortal food she was enabled to go out her journy and seem'd to have had a new transfusion of Grace from it insomuch that though her Limbs were all convulst her Pains great and without intermission her strength quite exhausted and her Head disturbed with a perpetual drousiness yet above and beyond all seeming possibility she would use force to her self to keep her self waking to offer to God her customary Sacrifice to the full to recollect her thoughts and to lodge them in Heaven where her Heart and her Treasure was as if she had already taken possession of her mansion there or as if she was teaching her Soul to act independently from the Body and practising before-hand the state of separation into which having receiv'd absolution she in a short time happily lancht for all the bands of Union being untied her Soul was set at liberty and on the wings of Angels took a direct and vigorous flight to its native Country Heaven from whence it first flew down There then we must leave her in the bosom of her heavenly Bridegroom where how radiant her Crown is how ecstatick her Joy how high exalted she is in degrees of glory is impossible to be described for neither eye hath seen nor ear heard nor has it enter'd into the heart of man to be conceiv'd the good things which God hath prepared for those that love him of all which she is now partaker We have nothing then to doe but to congratulate this Gracious Woman her eternal and unchangeable honour and as she always and in all things gave God the Glory here so that his praise was continually in her mouth for all the multitude of his Mercies and of his loving-Kindnesses towards her and is now praising him in Heaven Let us also offer up a Sacrifice of Praise for her great example her light has long shin'd before us we have seen her good works Let us therefore glorifie the father of Lights at whose beams her Soul was first lighted Blessed then for ever be the infinite goodness of God who was so liberal of his Graces to this humble Saint who made her so lively a picture of his own perfections so gracious and so honourable blessed be his merey for indulging her to us so long for taking her in his good time to himself and for that happiness she has now in Heaven To God be the glory of all that honour her graciousness did here acquire for to him onely it is due let therefore his most holy name have all the praise To our Thanksgiving let us add our Prayers also that God would vouchsafe us all his holy Spirit so to assist and sanctify and guide us that every one of our Souls may be gracious like hers that our life may be like hers our latter end like hers and our portion in Heaven like hers which God of his infinite mercy grant for the sake of his most belov'd Son To whom with the Father and the blessed Spirit be all honour and glory adoration and obedience now and for ever Amen THE END Matt. 12. 24. Isa. 53. 3. Luke 7. 16 4 22. Mark 7. 16. Iohn 6 15 18 38. Luke 23. 47. 1 Pet. 2. 17 18. 1 Tim. 6. 2. Rom. 13. 1. 2 Pet. 1. 4. Prov. 3. 35. Luke 1. 52. 1 Thess. 4. 4. 1 Sam. 2. 30. Heb. 1. 14. 1 Cor. 3. 16. Lev. 19. 30. Gal. 5. 22. Prov. 10. 7. Psa. 116. 15. Psa. 112. 6. Prov. 31. 28 31. Luke 8. 3. Matt. 27. 55. Luke 23. 27. Matt. 28. 5. Matt. 26. 13. Psa. 45. 13. 1 Pet. 3. 3. Iob 31. 1. Matt. 5. 28. Cant. 4. 16 Prov. 31. 30. Prov. 11. 22. Prov. 12. 4. 1 Cor. 11. 5. Prov. 31. 10. Prov. 31. 29. Ier. 16. 4. Iohn 11. 35. 1. Thess 4. 13. 1 James 27. 1 Pet. 3. 15. Prov. 4. 18. Prov. 31. 26. 1 Cor. 7. 32. Prov. 19. 14. Luke 10. 41 42. Eph. 6. 9. Exod. 34. 29. 1 Cor. 6. 20. Luke 16. 22. 1 Cor. 2. 9.