pasport in the article of his death and calls thâ—s the ancient and canonicall law of the Church and to minister it onely supposes the man in the communion of the Church not alwayes in the state but ever in the possibilities of sanctification They who in the article and danger of death were admitted to the communion and tied to penance if they recovered which was ever the custome of the ancient Church unlesse in very few cases were but in the threshold of repentance in the commencement and first introductions to a devout life and indeed then it is a fit ministery that it be given in all the periods of time in which the pardon of sins is working since it is the Sacrament of that great mystery the exhibition of that blood which is shed for the remission of sins 9. The Minister of religion ought not to give the Communion to a sick person if he retains the affection to any sin and refuses to disavow it or professe repentance of all sins whatsoever if he be required to do it The reason is because it is a certain death to him and an increase of his misery if he shall so prophane the body and blood of Christ as to take it into so unholy a breast where Sathan reignes and sin is principall and the Spirit is extinguished and Christ loves not to enter because he is not suffered to inhabite But when he professes repentance and does such acts of it as his present condition permits he is to be presumed to intend heartily what he professes solemnly and the Minister is onely the Judge of outward act and by that onely he is to take information concerning the inward But whether he be so or no or if he be whether that be timely and effectuall and sufficient toward the pardon of sins before God is another consideration of which we may conjecture here but we shall know it at doomsday The spirituall man is to do his ministery by the rules of Christ and as the customs of the Church appoint him and after the manner of men the event is in the hands of God and is to be expected not directly and wholly according to his ministery but to the former life or the timely internall repentance and amendment of which I have already given accounts These ministeries are acts of order and great assistances but the sum of affairs does not relie upon them And if any man puts his whole repentance upon this time or all his hopes upon these ministeries he will find them and himself to fail 10. It is the Ministers office to invite sick and dying persons to the Holy Sacrament such whose lives were fair and laudable and yet their sicknesse sad and violent making them list-lesse and of slow desires and flower apprehensions that such persons who are in the state of grace may lose no accidentall advantages of spirituall improvement but may receive into their dying bodies the symboles and great consignations of the resurrection and into their soules the pledges of immortality and may appear before God their Father in the union and with the impresses and likenesse of their elder Brother But if the persons be of ill report and have lived wickedly they are not to be invited because their case is hugely suspicious though they then repent and call for mercy but if they demand it they are not to be denied onely let the Minister in generall represent the evil consequents of an unworthy participation and if the penitent will judge himself unworthy let him stand candidate for pardon at the hands of God and stand or fall by that unerring and mercifull sentence to which his severity of condemning himself before men will make the easier and more hopefull addresse And the strictest among the Christians who denied to reconcile lapsed persons after baptisme yet acknowledged that there were hopes reserved in the court of heaven for them though not here since we who are easily deceived by the pretences of a reall return are tied to dispense Gods graces as he hath given us commission with fear and trembling and without too forward confidences and God hath mercies which we know not of and therefore because we know them not such persons were referred to Gods Tribunal where he would finde them if they were to be had at all 11. When the holy Sacrament is to be administred let the exhortation be made proper to the mystery but fitted to the man that is that it be used for the advantages of faith or love or contrition let all the circumstances and parts of the Divine love be represented all the mysterious advantages of the blessed Sacrament be declared * That it is the bread which came from heaven * That it is the representation of Christs death to all the purposes and capacities of faith * and the real exhibition of Christs body and blood to all the puposes of the Spirit * That it is the earnest of the resurrection * and the seed of a glorious immortality * That as by our cognation to the body of the first Adam we took in death so by our union with the body of the second Adam we shall have the inheritance of life for as by Adam came death so by Christ cometh the resurrection of the dead * That if we being worthy Communicants of these sacred pledges be presented to God with Christ within us our being accepted of God is certain even for the sake of his well beloved that dwells within us * That this is the Sacrament of the body which was broken for our sinnes of that blood which purifies our souls by which we are presented to God pure and holy in the beloved * That now we may ascertain our hopes and make our faith confident for he that hath given us his Son how should not he with him give us all things else Upon these or the like considerations the sick man may be assisted in his addresse and his faith strengthened and his hope confirmed and his charity be enlarged 12. The manner of the sick mans reception of the holy Sacrament hath in it nothing differing from the ordinary solemnities of the Sacrament save onely that abatement is to be made of such accidentall circumstances as by the lawes or customes of the Church healthfull persons are obliged to such as fasting kneeling c. though I remember that it was noted for great devotion in the Legate that died at Trent that he caused himself to be sustained upon his knees when he received the viaticum or the holy Sacrament before his death and it was greater in Hunniades that he caused himself to be carried to the Church that there he might receive his Lord in his Lords house and it was recorded for honour that William the pious Arch-Bishop of Bourges a small time before his last agony sprang out of his bed at the presence of the holy Sacrament and upon
is a portion in the inheritance of Jesus of which he now talks no more as a thing at distance but is entring into the possession When the veil is rent and the prison doors are open at the presence of Gods Angel the soul goes forth full of hope sometimes with evidence but alwayes with certainty in the thing and instantly it passes into the throngs of Spirits where Angles meet it singing and the Devils flock with malitious and vile purposes desiring to lead it away with them into their houses of sorrow there they see things which they never saw and hear voices which they never heard There the Devils charge them with many sins And the Angels remember that themselves rejoyced when they were repented of Then the Devils aggravate and describe all the circumstances of the sin and adde calumnies and the Angels bear the soul forward still because their Lord doth answer for them Then the Devils rage and gnash their teeth they see the soul chast and pure and they are ashamed they see it penitent and they despair they perceive that the tongue was restrained and sanctified and then hold their peace Then the soul passes forth and rejoyces passing by the Devils in scorn and triumph being securely carried into the bosome of the Lord where they shall rest till their crowns are finished and their mansions are prepared and then they shall feast and sing rejoyce and worship for ever and ever Fearful and formidable to unholy persons is the first meeting with spirits in their separation But the victory which holy souls receive by the mercies of Jesus Christ and the conduct of Angels is a joy that we must not understand till we feel it and yet such which by an early and a persevering piety we may secure but let us enquire after it no further because it is secret CHAP. III. Of the state of sicknesse and the temptations incident to it with their proper remedies SECT I. Of the state of sicknesse ADams sin brought death into the world and man did die the same day in which he sinned according as God had threatned He did not die as death is taken for a separation of soul and body that is not death properly but the ending of the last act of death just as a man is said to be born when he ceases any longer to be born in his mothers womb But whereas to man was intended a life long and happy without sicknesse sorrow or infelicity and this life should be lived here or in a better place and the passage from one to the other should have been easy safe and pleasant now that man sinned he fell from that state to a contrary If Adam had stood he should not alwayes have lived in this world for this world was not a place capable of giving a dwelling to all those myriads of men and women which should have been born in all the generations of infinite and eternal ages for so it must have been if man had not dyed at all nor yet have removed hence at all Neither is it likely that mans innocence should have lost to him all possibility of going thither where the duration is better measured by a better time subject to fewer changes and which is now the reward of a returning vertue which in all natural senses is lesse then innocence save that it is heightned by Christ to an equality of acceptation with the state of innocence But so it must have been that his innocence should have been punished with an eternal confinement to this state which in all reason is the lesse perfect the state of a traveller not of one possessed of his inheritance It is therefore certain Man should have changed his abode for so did Enoch and so did Elias and so shall all the world that shall be alive at the day of judgement They shall not die but they shall change their place and their abode their duration and their state and all this without death That death therefore which God threatned to Adam and which passed upon his posterity is not the going out of this world but the manner of going If he had staid in innocence he should have gone from hence placidly and fairly without vexatious and afflictive circumstances he should not have dyed by sickness misfortune defect or unwillingnesse but when he fell then he began to die the same day so said God and that must needs be true and therefore it must mean that upon that very day he fell into an evil and dangerous condition a state of change and affliction then death began that is the man began to die by a natural diminution and aptnesse to disease and misery His first state was and should have been so long as it lasted a happy duration His second was a daily and miserable change and this was the dying properly This appears in the great instance of damnation which in the stile of Scripture is called eternal death not because it kills or ends the duration it hath not so much good in it but because it is a perpetual infelicity Change or separation of soul and body is but accidental to death Death may be with or without either but the formality the curse and the sting of death that is misery sorrow fear diminution defect anguish dishonour and whatsoever is miserable and afflictive in nature that is death death is not an action but a whole state and condition and this was first brought in upon us by the offence of one man But this went no further then thus to subject us to temporal infelicity If it had proceeded so as was supposed Man had been much more miserable for man had more then one original sin in this sence and though this death entred first upon us by Adams fault yet it came neerer unto us and increased upon us by the sins of more of our forefathers For Adams sin left us in strength enough to contend with humane calamities for almost a thousand years together But the sins of his children our forefathers took off from us half the strength about the time of the flood and then from 500. to 250. and from thence to 120. and from thence to threescore and ten so halfing it till it is almost come to nothing But by the sins of men in the several generations of the world death that is misery and disease is hastned so upon us that we are of a contemptible age and because we are to die by suffering evils and by the daily lessening of our strength and health this death is so long a doing that it makes so great a part of our short life uselesse and unserviceable that we have not time enough to get the perfection of a single manufacture but ten or twelve generations of the world must go to the making up of one wise man or one excellent Art and in the succession of those ages there happens so many changes and interruptions so many
communication from an Angel or the sâ—ock of acquired notices here below it may the rather endear us to our charities or duties to them respectively since our vertues use not to live upon abstractions and Metaphysical perfections or inducements but then thrive when they have materiall arguments such which are not too far from sense However it be it is certain they are not dead and though we no more see the souls of our dead friends then we did when they were alive yet we have reason to beleeve them to know more things and better And if our sleep be an image of death we may also observe concerning it that it is a state of life so separate from communications with the body that it is one of the wayes of Oracle and prophecy by which the soul best declares her immortality and the noblenesse of her actions and powers if she could get free from the body as in the state of separation or a clear dominion over it as in the resurrection To which also this consideration may be added that men long time lived the life of sence before they use their reason and till they have sumished their head with experiments and notices of many things they cannot at all discourse of any thing but when they come to use their reason all their knowledge is nothing but remembrance and we know by proportions by similitudes and dissimilitudes by relations and oppositions by causes and effects by comparing things with things all which are nothing but operations of understanding upon the stock of former notices of something we knew before nothing but remembrances all the heads of Topicks which are the stock of all arguments and sciences in the world are a certain demonstration of this And he is the wisest man that remembers most and joyns those remembrances together to the best purposes of discourse From whence it may not be improbably gathered that in the state of separation if there be any act of understanding that is if the understanding be alive it must be relative to the notices it had in this world and therefore the acts of it must he discourses upon all the parts and persons of their conversation and relation excepting onely such new revelations which may be communicated to it concerning which we know nothing But if by seeing Sacrates I think upon Plato and by seeing a picture I remember a Man and by beholding two friends I remember my own and my friends need and he is wisest that drawes most lines from the same Centre and most discourses from the same Notices it cannot but be very probable to beleeve since the separate souls understand better if they understand at all that from the Notices they carried from hence and what they find there equall or unequall to those Notices they can better discover the things of their friends then we can here by our conjectures and craftiest imaginations and yet many men here can guesse shrewdly at the thoughts and designes of such men with whom they discourse or of whom they have heard or whose characters they prudently have perceived I have no other end in this discourse but that we may be ingaged to do our duty to our Dead lest peradventure they should perceive our neglect and be witnesses of our transient affections and forgetfulnesse Dead persons have religion passed upon them and a solemn reverence and if we think a Ghost beholds us it may be we may have upon us the impressions likely to be made by love and fear and religion However we are sure that God sees us and the world sees us and if it be matter of duty towards our Dead God will exact it if it be matter of kindnesse the world will and as Religion is the band of that so fame and reputation is the endearment of this It remains that we who are alive should so live and by the actions of Religion attend the coming of the day of the Lord that we neither be surprized nor leave our duties imperfect nor our sins uncanceld nor our persons unreconciled nor God unappeased but that when we descend to our graves we may rest in the bosome of the Lord till the mansions be prepared where we shall sing and feast eternally Amen Te Deum laudamus THE END BEsides this Rule of Holy Dying the Author hath in Print 1. The Rule of Holy Living 2. The Liberty of Prophesying 3. Episcopacie asserted 4 o 4. The History of the Life and Death of the ever blessed Iesus Christ. 4 o 5. An Apologie for Authorized and â—et forms of Lyturgie 4 o 6. A Sermon Preached at Oxon. on the Anniversary of the fifth of November 4 o 7. Together with 28. Sermons Preached at Golden grove fol. Lately published viz. SErmon 1.2 Of the Spirit of Grace Rom. 8. ver 9.10 Sermon 3.4 The descending and entailed curse cut off Exodus 20. part of the 5. verse Sermon 5.6 The invalidity of a late or death-bed repentance Ier. 13.6 Sermon 7.8 The deceitfulnesse of the heart Ierem. 17.9 Sermon 9.10.11 The faith and patience of the Saints Or the righteous cause oppressed 1 Pet. 4.17 Sermon 12.13 The mercy of the Divine judgements or Gods method in curing sinners Rom. 2.4 Sermon 14.15 Of groweth in grace with its proper instruments and signes 2 Pet. 3.18 Sermon 16.17 Of groweth in sin or the severall states and degrees of sinners with the manner how they are to be treated Iude Epist. ver 22 23. Sermon 18.19 The foolish exchange Matth. 16. ver 26. Sermon 20.21.22 The Serpent and the Dove or a Discourse of Christian Prudence Matth. 10. latter part of ver 16. Sermon 23.24 Of Christian simplicitie Matt. 10. latter part of ver 16. Sermon 25.26.27 The Miracles of the Divine Mercy Psal. 86.5 A Funerall Sermon Preached at the Obsequies of the right Honourable the Countesse of Carbery 2 Sam. 14.14 A Discourse of the Divine Institution necessity sacrednesse and separation of the Office Ministeriall Printed for Richard Royston at the Angel in Ivie-Lane * Vel quia nil rectum nisi quod placuit â—ibi ducunt Vel quia turpe putant parere minoâ—ibus quae Imberbes didicere senes perdenda fateri * Tenellis adhuc infantiae suae persuasionibus in senectute puerascunt Mamertus Concil Trid. hist lib 4. * Tertul de Monog S. Cyprian l. 1. ep 9 Sa. Athan q. 33. S. Cyril myst cat 5. Epiphan Haeres 75. Aug. de haeres c. 33. Concil Carth. 3. c. 29 * Dii majorum umbris tenuem sine pondere terram Spirantesque crocos in urna perpetuum yer Pers. Sat. 7. Otia das nobis sed qualia forat ulioâ— Meccenas Placco Virgilio que m◠〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 4 James 14. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Nihil sibi quisquam de futuro debet promittere Id quoque quod teâ—etur per 〈◊〉 anus exit
live and die well The professors of other arts are vulgar and many but he that knows how to do this businesse is certainly instructed to eternity But then let me remember this that a wise person will also put most upon the greatest interest Common prudence will teach us this No man will hire a Generall to cut wood or shake hay with a Scepter or spend his soul and all his faculties upon the purchase of a cockleshell but he will fit instruments to the dignity and exigence of the designe and therefore since heaven is so glorious a state and so certainly designed for us if we please let us spend all that we have all our passions and affections all our study and industry all our desires and stratagems all our witty and ingenuous faculties toward the arriving thither whither if we do come every minute will infinitely pay for all the troubles of our whole life If we do not we shall have the reward of fools an unpitied and an upbraided misery To this purpose I shall represent the state of dying and dead men in the devout words of some of the Fathers of the Church whose sense I shall exactly keep but change their order that by placing some of their dispersed meditations into a chain or sequell of discourse I may with their precious stones make an Vnion and compose them into a jewel for though the meditation is plain and easie yet it is affectionate and materiall and true and necessary The circumstances of a dying mans sorrow and danger When the sentence of death is decreed and begins to be put in execution it is sorrow enough to see or feel respectively the sad accidents of the agony and last contentions of the soul and the reluctancies and unwillingnesses of the body The forehead wash'd with a new and stranger baptisme besmeared with a cold sweat tenacious and clammy apt to make it cleave to the roof of his coffin the nose cold and undiscerning not pleased with perfumes nor suffering violence with a cloud of unwholsome smoak the eyes dim as a sullied mirror or the face of heaven when God shews his anger in a prodigious storm the feet cold the hands stiffe the Physitians despairing our friends weeping the rooms dressed with darknesse and sorrow and the exteriour parts betraying what are the violences which the soul and spirit suffer the nobler part like the lord of the house being assaulted by exteriour rudenesses and driven from all the out-works at last faint and weary with short and frequent breathings interrupted with the longer accents of sighes without moisture but the excrescencies of a spilt humour when the pitcher is broken at the cisterne it retires to its last sort the heart whither it is pursued and stormed and beaten out as when the barbarous Thracian sacked the glory of the Grecian Empire Then calamity is great and sorrow rules in all the capacities of man then the mourners weep because it is civil or because they need thee or because they fear but who suffers for thee with a compassion sharp as is thy pain Then the noise is like the faint eccho of a distant valley few heare and they will not regard thee who seemest like a person void of understanding and of a departing interest Verè tremendum est mortis sacramentum But these accidents are common to all that die and when a speciall providence shall distinguish them they shall die with easie circumstances but as no piety can secure it so must no confidence expect it but wait for the time and accept the manner of the dissolution But that which distinguishes them is this He that hath lived a wicked life if his conscience be alarmed and that he does not die like a Wolf or a Tigre without sense or remorse of all his wildnesse and his injury his beastly nature and desert and untilled manners if he have but sense of what he is going to suffer or what he may expect to be his portion then we may imagine the terrour of their abused fancies how they see affrighting shapes and because they fear them they feel the gripes of Devils urging the unwilling souls from the kinder and fast embraces of the body calling to the grave and hasting to judgement exhibiting great bills of uncancelled crimes awaking and amazing the conscience breaking all their hope in pieces and making faith uselesse and terrible because the malice was great and the charity was none at all Then they look for some to have pity on them but there is no man No man dares be their pledge No man can redeem their soul which now feels what it never feared Then the tremblings and the sorrow the memory of the past sin and the fear of future pains and the sense of an angry God and the presence of some Devils consigne him to the eternall company of all the damned and accursed spirits then they want an Angel for their guide and the Holy Spirit for their comforter and a good conscience for their testimony and Christ for their Advocate and they die and are left in prisons of earth or air in secret and undiscerned regions to weep and tremble and infinitely to fear the coming of the day of Christ at which time they shall be brought forth to change their condition into a worse where they shall for ever feel more then we can beleeve or understand But when a good man dies one that hath lived innocently or made joy in Heaven at his timely and effective repentance and in whose behalf the Holy Jesus hath interceded prosperously and for whose interest the Spirit makes interpellations with groans and sighs unutterable and in whose defence the Angels drive away the Devils on his death-bed because his sins are pardoned and because he resisted the Devil in his life time and fought successefully and persevered unto the end then the joyes break forth through the clouds of sicknesse and the conscience stands upright and confesses the glories of God and owns so much integrity that it can hope for pardon and obtain it too Then the sorrowes of the sicknesse and the flames of the Feaver or the faintnesse of the consumption do but untye the soul from its chain and let it go forth first into liberty and then to glory for it is but for a little while that the face of the skie was black like the preparations of the night but quickly the cloud torn and rent the violence of thunder parted it into little portions that the Sun might look forth with a watry eye and then shine without a tear but it is an infinite refreshment to remember all the comforts of his prayers the frequent victory over his temptations the mortification of his lust the noblest sacrifice to God in which he most delights that we have given him our wills and killed our appetiâ—es for the interest of his services then all the trouble of that is gone and what remains
in temporall instances for he ever gave me sufficient for my life and although he promised such supplies and grounded the confidences of them upon our first seeking the kingdom of heaven and its righteousnesse yet he hath verified it to me who have not sought it as I ought But therefore I hope he accepted my endeavour or will give his great gifts and our great expectation even to the weakest endeavour to the least so it be a hearty piety * And sometimes I have had some chearful visitations of Gods Spirit and my cup hath been crowned with comfort and the wine that made my heart glad danced in the chalice and I was glad that God would have me so and therefore I hope this cloud may passe for that which was then a real cause of comfort is so still if I could disâ—ern it and I shall discern it when the veil is taken from my eyes * and blessed be God I can still remember that there are temptations to despair and they could not be temptations if they were not apt to perswade and had seeming probability on their side and they that despair think they do it with greatest reason for if they were not confident of the reason but that it were such an argument as might be opposed or suspected then they could not despair despair assents as firmly and strongly as faith it self but because it is a temptation and despair is a horrid sin therefore it is certain those persons are unreasonably abused and they have no reason to despair for all their confidence and therefore although I have strong reasons to condemn my self yet I have more reason to condemn my despair which therefore is unreasonable because it is a sin and a dishonour to God and a ruine to my condition and verifies it self if I do not look to it for as the hypochondriac person that thought himself dead made his dream true when he starved himself because dead people eat not so do despairing sinners lose Gods mercies by refusing to use and to believe them * And I hope it is a disease of judgement not an intolerable condition that I am falling to because I have been told so concerning others who therefore have been afflicted because they see not their pardon sealed after the manner of this world and the affairs of the Spirit are transacted by immaterial notices by propositions and spiritual discourses by promises which are to be verified hereafter and here we must live in a cloud in darknesse under a veil in fear and uncertainties and our very living by faith and hope is a life of mystery and secresie the onely part of the manner of that life in which we shall live in the state of separation and when a distemper of body or an infirmity of minde happens in the instances of such secret and reserved affairs we may easily mistake the manner of our notices for the uncertainty of the thing and therefore it is but reason I should stay till the state and manner of my abode be changed before I despair there it can be no sin nor error here it may be both and if it be that it is also this and then a man may perish for being miserable and be undone for being a fool In conclusion my hope is in God and I will trust him with the event which I am sure will be just and I hope full of mercy * However now I will use all the spiritual arts of reason and religion to make me more and more to love God that if I miscarry Charity also shall fail and something that loves God shall perish and be damned which if it be impossible then I may do well These considerations may be useful to men of little hearts and of great piety or if they be persons who have lived without infamy or begun their repentance so late that it is very imperfect and yet so early that it was before the arrest of death But if the man be a vitious person and hath persevered in a vitious life till his death-bed these considerations are not proper Let him inquire in the words of the first Disciples after Pentecost Men and brethren what shall we do to be saved and if they can but entertain so much hope as to enable them to do so much of their dutie as they can for the present it is all that can be provided for them an inquirie in their case can have no other purposes of religion or prudence and the Minister must be infinitely careful that he do no not go about to comfort vitious persons with the comforts belonging to Gods elect lest he prostitute holy things and make them common and his sermons deceitful and vices be incouraged in others and the man himself finde that he was deceived when he descends into his house of sorrow But because very few men are tempted with too great fears of failing but very many are tempted by confidence and presumption the Ministers of religion had need be instructed with spiritual armour to resist this fiery dart of the Devil when it operates to evil purposes SECT VI. Considerations against Presumption I Have already enumerated many particulars to provoke a drowzy conscience to a scrutinie and to a suspicion of himself that by seeing cause to suspect his condition he might more freely accuse himself and attend to the necessities and duties of repentance but if either before or in his repentance he grow too big in in his spirit so as either he does some little violence to the modesties of humilitie or abate his care and zeal of his repentance the spiritual man must allay his frowardnesse by representing to him 1. That the growths in grace are long difficult uncertain hindred of many parts and great variety 2. That an infant grace is soon dash'd and discountenanced often running into an inconvenience and the evils of an imprudent conduct being zealous and forward and therefore confident but alwayes with the least reason and the greatest danger like children and young fellows whose confidence hath no other reason but that they understand not their danger and their follies 3. That he that puts on his armour ought not to boast as he that puts it off and the Apostle chides the Galatians for ending in the flesh after they had begun in the spirit 4. that a man cannot think too meanly of himself but very easily he may think too high 5 That a wise man will alwayes in a matter of great concernment think the worst and a good man will condemn himself with hearty sentence 6. That humility and modesty of judgement and of hope are very good instruments to procure a mercie and a fair reception at the day of our death but presumption or bold opinions serve no end of God or man and is alwayes imprudent ever fatal and of all things in the world is its own greatest enemy for the more any man presumes the greater reason he hath to fear 7. That a mans
image of the disease he made the very picture to sigh and groan It is easie to tell upon the interest of what vertue such counterfeiting is to be reproved But it will be harder to snatch the politicks of the world from following that which they call a canonized and authentick precedentâ— and Davids counterfeiting himself mad before the King of Gath to save his life and liberty wil be sufficient to entice men to serve an end upon the stock charges of so small an irregularity not in the matter of manners but in the rules and decencies of natural or civil deportment I cannot certainly tell what degrees of excuse Davids action might put on This onely besides his present necessity the Laws whose coercitive or directive power David lived under had lesse of severity and more of liberty and towards enemies had so little of restraint and so great a power that what amongst them was a direct sin if used to their brethren the sons of Iacob was lawfull and permitted to be acted against enemies To which also I adde this general caution that the actions of holy persons in Scripture are not alwayes good precedents to us Christians who are to walk by a rule and a greater strictnesse with more simplicity and heartinesse of pursuit And amongst them sanctity and holy living did in very many of its instances increase in new particulars of duty and the prophets reproved many things which the law forbad not and taught many duties which Moses prescribed not and as the time of Christs approach came so the sermons and revelations too were more evangelical and like the patterns which were â—ully to be exhibited by the Son of God Amongst which it is certain that Christian simplicity and godly sincerity is to be accounted * and counterfeiting of sicknesse is a huge enemy to this * it is an upbraiding the Divine providence * a jesting with fire * a playing with a thunderbolt * a making the decrees of God to serve the vitious or secular ends of men * it is a tempting of a judgement * a falâ—e accusation of God * a forestalling and antidating his anger * it is a cousening of men by making a God party in the fraud and therefore if the cousenage returns upon the mans own head he enters like a fox into his sicknesse and perceives himself catched in a trap or earthed in the intolerable dangers of the grave 3. Although we must be infinitely careful to prevent it that sin does not thrust us into a sicknesse yet when we are in the house of sorrow we should do well to take Physick against sin and suppose that it is the cause of the evil if not by way of natural causality and proper effect yet by a moral influence and by a just demerit We can easily see when a man hath got a surfet intemperance is as plain as the hand writing upon the wall and easier to be read but covetousness may cause a Feaver as well as drunkennesse and pride can produce a falling sickness as well as long washings and dilutions of the brain and intemperate lust and we finde it recorded in Scripture that the contemptuous and unprepared manner of reception of the Holy Sacraments caused sicknesse and death and Sacriledge and Vow-breach in Ananias and Saphira made them to descend quick into their graves Therefore when sicknesse is upon us let us cast about and if we can let us finde out the cause of Gods displeasure that it being removed we may return into the health and securities of Gods loving kindnesse Thus in the three years famine David enquired of the Lord what was the matter and God answered it is for Saul and his bloody house and then David expiated the guilt and the people were full again of food and blessing and when Israel was smitten by the Amorites Ioshuah cast about and found out the accursed thing and cast it out and the people after that fought prosperously And what God in that case said to Ioshua he will also verifie to us I will not be with you any more unlesse you destroy the accursed thing from among you But in pursuance of this we are to observe that although in case of loud and clamorous sins the discovery is easy and the remedie not diâ—ficult yet because Christianity is a nice thing and religion is as pure as the sun and the soul of man is apt to be troubled from more principles then the inâ—ricate and curiosluy composed bodie in its innumâ—rable parts it will often happen that if we go to enquire into the particular we shall never finde it out and we may suspect drunkennesse when it may be also a morose delectation in unclean thoughts or covetousnesse or oppression or a crafty invasion of my neighbours rights or my want of charity or my judging unjustly in my own cause or my censuring my neighbours or a secret pride or a base hypocrisie or the pursuance of little ends with violence and passion that may have procured the present messenger of death Therefore ask no more after any one but heartily endeavour to reform all sin no more lest a worse thing happen for a single search or accusation may be the designe of an imperfect repentance but no man does heartily return to God but he that decrees against every irregularity and then onely we can be restored to health or life when we have taken away the causes of sicknesse and a cursed death 4. He that means to have his sicknesse turn into safety and life into health and vertue must make religion the imployment of his sicknesse and prayer the imployment of his religion For there are certain compendiums or abbreviatures and shortnings of religion fitted to several states They that first gave up their names to Christ and that turned from Paganism to Christianity had an abbreviature fitted for them they were to renounce their false worshippings and give up their belief and vow their obedience unto Christ and in the very profession of this they were forgiven in Baptism For God hastens to snatch them from the power of the Devil and therefore shortens the passage and secures the estate In the case of poverty God hath reduced this dutie of man to an abbreviature of those few graces which they can exercise such as are patience contentednesse truth and diligence and the rest he accepts in good will and the charities of the soul in prayers and the actions of a cheap religion And to most men charity is also an abbreviature And as the love of God shortens the way to the purchase of all vertues so the expression of this to the poor goes a huge way in the requisites and towards the consummation of an excellent religion and Martyrdom is another abbreviature and so is every act of an excellent and heroical vertue But when we are fallen into the state of sicknesse and that our understanding is weak and troubled our bodies sick and uselesse
our passions turned into fear and the whole state into suffering God in complyance and mans infirmity hath also turned our religion into such a duty which a sick man can do most passionately and a sad man and a timorous can perform effectually and a dying man can do to many purposes of pardon and mercy and that is prayer For although a sick man is bound to do many acts of vertue of several kindes yet the most of them are to be done in the way of prayer Prayer is not onely the religion that is proper to a sick mans condition but it is the manner of doing other graces which is then left and in his power For thus the sick man is to do his repentance and his mortifications his temperance and his chastity by a fiction of imagination bringing the offers of the vertue to the spirit making an action of election and so our prayers are a direct act of chastity when they are made in the matter of that grace just as repentance for our cruelty is an act of the grace of mercie and repentance for uncleannesse is an act of chastity is a means of its purchase an act in order to the habit and though such acts of vertue which are onely in the way of prayer are ineffective to the intire purchase and of themselves cannot change the vice into vertue yet they are good renewings of the grace and proper exercise of a habit already gotten The purpose of this discourse is to represent the excellency of prayer and its proper advantages which it hath in the time of sicknesse For besides that it moves God to pity piercing the clouds making the Heavens like a pricked eye to weep over us and refresh us with showers of pity it also doth the work of the soul and expresses the vertue of his whole life in effigie in pictures and lively representments so preparing it for a never ceasing crown by renewing the actions in the continuation of a never ceasing a never hindred affection Prayer speaks to God when the tongue is stiffned with the approachings of death prayer can dwell in the heart and be signified by the hand or eye by a thought or a groan prayer of all the actions of religion is the last alive and it serves God without circumstances and exercises material graces by abstraction from matter and separation and makes them to be spiritual and therefore best dresses our bodies for funeral or recovery for the mercies of restitution or the mercies of the grave 5. In every sicknesse whether it will or will not be so in nature and in the event yet in thy spirit and preparations resolve upon it and treat thy self accordingly as if it were a sicknesse unto death For many men support their unequall courages by flattery and false hopes and because sicker men have recovered beleeve that they shall do so but therefore they neglect to adorn their souls or set their house in order besides the temporall inconveniences that often happen by such perswasions and putting off the evil day such as are dying Intestate leaving estates intangled and some Relatives unprovided for they suffer infinitely in the interest and affairs of their soul they die carelesly and surprized their burdens on and their scruples unremoved and their cases of conscience not determined and like a sheep without any care taken concerning their precious souls Some men will never beleeve that a villain will betray them though they receive often advices from suspicious persons and likely accidents till they are entered into the snare and then they beleeve it when they feel it and when they cannot return but so the treason entred and the man was betrayed by his own folly placing the snare in the regions and advantages of opportunity This evil looks like boldnesse and a confident spirit but it is the greatest timerousnesse and cowardize in the world They are so fearfull to die that they dare not look upon it as possible and think that the making of a Will is a mortall signe and sending for a spirituall man an irrecoverable disease and they are so afraid lest they should think and beleeve now they must die that they will not take care that it may not be evil in case they should So did the Eastern slaves drink wine and wrapt their heads in a vail that they might die without sense or sorrow and wink hard that they might sleep the easier In pursuance of this rule let a man consider that whatsoever must be done in sicknesse ought to be done in health onely let him observe that his sicknesse as a good monitor chastises his neglect of duty and forces him to live as he alwayes should and then all these solemnities and dressings for death are nothing else but the part of a religious life which he ought to have exercised all his dayes and if those circumstances can affright him let him please his fancy by this truth that then he does but begin to live But it will be a huge folly if he shall think that confession of his sins will kill him or receiving the holy Sacrament will hasten his agony or the Priest shall undo all the hopefull language and promises of his Physitian Assure thy self thou canst not die the sooner But by such addresses thou mayest die much the better 6. Let the sick person be infinitely carefull that he do not fall into a state of death upon a new account that is at no hand commit a deliberate sin or retain any affection to the old for in both cases he falls into the evils of a surprize and the horrors of a sudden death For a sudden death is but a sudden joy if it takes a man in the state and exercises of vertue and it is onely then an evil when it finds a man unready They were sad departures when Tegillinus Cornelius Gallus the Praetor Lewis the son of Gonzaga Duke of Mantua Ladislaus king of Naples Speusippus Giachettus of Geneva and one of the Popes died in the forbidden embraces of abused women or if Iob had cursed God and so died or when a man sits down in despair and in the accusation and calumny of the Divine mercy they make their night sad and stormy and eternall When Herod began to sink with the shamefull torment of his bowels and felt the grave open under him he imprisoned the Nobles of his Kingdom and commanded his Sister that they should be a sacrifice to his departing ghost This was an egresse fit onely for such persons who meant to dwell with Devils to eternall ages and that man is hugely in love with sin who cannot forbear in the week of the Assizes and when himself stood at the barre of scrutiny and prepared for his finall never to be reversed sentence He dies suddenly to the worst sense and event of sudden death who so manages his sicknesse that even that state shall not be innocent but that he is surprized in the