much holinesse mortified sin with so great a labour purchased vertue at such a rate and so rare an industry It must needs be that such a man must dye when he ought to die and be like ripe and pleasant fruit falling from a fair tree and gathered into baskeâ—s for the planters use He that hath done â—ll his businesse and is begotten to a glorious hope by the seed of an immortal Spirit can never die too soon nor live too long Xerxes wept sadly when he saw his army of 2300000 men because he considered that within a hundred years all the youth of that army should be dust and ashes and yet as Seneca well observes of him he was the man that should bring them to their graves and he consumed all that army in two years for whom he feared and wept the death after an hundred Just so we do all We complain that within thirty or fourty years a little more or a great deal lesse we shall descend again into the bowels of our Mother and that our life is too short for any great imployment and yet we throw away five and â—hirty yeers of our fourty and the remaining five we divide between art and nature civility and customs necessity and convenience prudent counsels and religion but the portion of the last is little and contemptible and yet that little is all that we can prudently account of our lives We bring that fate and that death neer us of whose approach we are so sadly apprehensive 4. In taking the accounts of your life do not reckon by great distances and by the periods of pleasure or the satisfaction of your hopes or the stating your desires but let every intermedial day and hour passe with observation He that reckons he hath lived but so many harvests thinks they come not often enough and that they go away too soon Some lose the day with longing for the night and the night in waiting for the day Hope and phantastic expectations spend much of our lives and while with passion we look for a coronation or the death of an enemy or a day of joy passing from fancy to possession without any intermedial notices we throw away a precious year and use it but as the burden of our time fit to be pared off and thrown away that we may come at those little pleasures which first steal our hearts and then steal our life 5. A strict course of piety is the way to prolong our lives in the natural sense and to adde good portions to the number of our years and sin is sometimes by natural causality very often by the anger of God and the Divine judgement a cause of sudden and untimely death Concerning which I shall adde nothing to what I have some where else said of this article but onely the observation of Epiphanius that for 3332 years even to the twentieth age there was not one example of a son that died before his Father but the course of Nature was kept that he who was first born in the descending line did first die I speak of natural death and therefore Abel cannot be opposed to this observation till that Terah the Father of Abraham taught the people a new religion to make images of clay and worship them and concerning him it was first remarked that Haran died before his Father Terah in the land of his Nativity God by an unheard of judgement and a rare accident punishing his newly invented crime by the untimely death of his son 6. But if I shall describe a living man a man that hath that life that distinguishes him from a fool or a bird that which gives him a capacity next to Angels we shall finde that even a good man lives not long because it is long before he is born to this life and longer yet before he hath a mans growth He that can look upon death and see its face with the same countenance with which he hears its story that can endure all the labours of his life with his soul supporting his body that can equally despise riches when he hath them and when he hath them not that is not sadder if they lye in his Neighbours trunks nor more brag if they shine round about his own walls he that is neither moved with good fortune coming to him nor going from him that can look upon another mans lands evenly and pleasedly as if they were his own and yet look upon his own and use them too just as if they were another mans that neither spends his goods prodigally and like a fool nor yet keeps them avaritiously and like a wretch that weighs not benefits by weight and number but by the mind circumstances of him that gives them that never thinks his charity expensive if a worthy person be the receiver he that does nothing for opinion sake but every thing for conscience being as curious of his thoughts as of his actings in markets and Theaters and is as much in awe of himself as of a whole assembly he that knowes God looks on and contrives his secret affairs as in the presence of God and his holy Angels that eats and drinks because he needs it not that he may serve a lust or load his belly he that is bountifull and cheerfull to his friends and charitable and apt to forgive his enemies that loves his countrey and obeyes his Prince and desires and endeavours nothing more then that he may do honour to God this person may reckon his life to be the life of a man and compute his moneths not by the course of the sun but the Zodiac and circle of his vertues because these are such things which fools and children and birds and beasts cannot have These are therefore the actions of life because they are the feeds of immortality That day in which we have done some excellent thing we may as truly reckon to be added to our life as were the fifteen years to the dayes of Hezekiah SECT IV. Consideration of the miseries of Mans life AS our life is very short so it is very miserable and therefore it is well it is short God in pity to mankinde lest his burden should be insupportable and his nature an intolerable load hath reduced our state of misery to an abbreviature and the greateâ— our misery is the lesse while it is like to last the sorrows of a mans spirit being like ponderous weights which by the greatnesse of their burden make a swifter motion and descend into the grave to rest and ease our wearied limbs for then onely we shall sleep quietly when those fetters are knocked off which not onely bound our souls in prison but also eat the flesh till the very bones open'd the secret garments of their cartilages discovering their nakednesse and sorrow 1. Here is no place to sit down in but you must rise as soon as you are set for we have gnats in our chambers and worms in
of mercy to preserve their innocence to overcome temptation to try their vertue to fit them for rewards it is certain that sicknesse never is an evil but by our own faults and if we will do our duty we shall be sure to turn it into a blessing If the sicknesse be great it may end in death and the greater it is the sooner and if it be very little it hath great intervalls of rest if it be between both we may be Masters of it and by serving the ends of Providence serve also the perfective end of humane nature and enter into the possession of everlasting mercies The summe is this He that is afraid of pain is afraid of his own nature and if his fear be violent it is a signe his patience is none at all and an impatient person is not ready dressed for heaven None but suffering humble and patient persons can go to heaven and when God hath given us the whole stage of our life to exercise all the active vertues of religion it is necessary in the state of vertues that some portion and period of our lives be assigned to passive graces for patience for Christian fortitude for resignation or conformity to the Divine will But as the violent fear of sicknesse makes us impatient so it will make our death without comfort and without religion and we shall go off from our stage of actions and sufferings with an unhandsome exit because we were willing to receive the Kindnesse of God when he expressed it as we listed But we would not suffer him to be kinde and gracious to us in his own method nor were willing to exercise and improve our vertues at the charge of a sharp Feaver or a lingring consumption Woe be to the man that hath lost patience for what will he do when the Lord shall visit him SECT VII The second temptation proper to the state of sicknesse Fear of death with its remedies THere is nothing which can make sicknesse unsanctified but the same also will give us cause to fear death If therefore we so order our affairs and spirits that we do noâ— fear death our sickness may easily become our advantage and we can then receive counsel and consider and do those acts of vertue which are in that state the proper services of God and such which men in bondage and fear are not capable of doing or of advices how they should when they come to the appointed dayes of mourning And indeed if men would but place their designe of being happy in the noblenesse courage and perfect resolutions of doing handsome things and passing thorough our unavoidable necessities in the contempt and despite of the things of this world and in holy living and the perfective desires of our natures the longings and pursuances after Heaven it is certain they could not be made miserable by chance and change by sicknesse and death But we are so softned and made effeminate with delicate thoughts and meditations of ease and brutish satisfactions that if our death comes before we have seized upon a great-fortune or enjoy the promises of the fortune tellers we esteem our selves to be robbed of our goods to be mocked and miserable Hence it comes that men are impatient of the thoughts of death hence comes those arts of protraction and delaying the significations of old age thinking to deceive the world men cosen themselves and by representing themselves youthfull they certainly continue their vanity till Proserpina pull the perruke from their heads We cannot deceive God and nature for a coffin is a coffin though it be covered with a pompous veil and the minutes of our time strike on and are counted by Angels till the period comes which must cause the passing bell to give warning to all the neighbours that thou art dead and they must be so and nothing can excuse or retard this and if our death could be put off a little longer what advantage can it be in thy accounts of nature or felicity They that 3000 years agone dyed unwillingly and stopped death two dayes or staid it a week what is their gain where is that week and poor spirited men use arts of protraction and make their persons pitiable but their condition contemptible beeing like the poor sinners at Noahs flood the waters drove them out of their lower rooms then they crept up to the roof having lasted half a day longer and then they knew not how to get down some crept upon the top branch of a tree and some climbed up to a mountain and staid it may be three dayes longer but all that while they endured a worse torment then death they lived with amazement and were distracted with the ruines of mankinde and the horrour of an universal deluge Remedies against the fear of death by way of consideration 1. God having in this world placed us in a sea and troubled the sea with a continual storm hath appointed the Church for a ship and religion to be the sterne but there is no haven or port but death Death is that harbour whither God hath designed every one that there he may finde rest from the troubles of the world How many of the noblest Romans have taken death for sanctuary and have esteemed it less then shame or a mean dishonour And Caesar was cruel to Domitius Captain of Corfinium when he had taken the town from him that he refused to signe his petition of death Death would have hid his head with honour but that cruel mercy reserved him to the shame of surviving his disgrace The Holy Scripture giving an account of the reasons of the divine providence taking Godly men from this world and shutting them up in a hasty grave sayes that they are taken from the evils to come and concerning our selves it is certain if we had ten years agone taken seizure of our portion of dust death had not taken us from good things but from infinite evils such which the sun hath seldom seen Did not Priamus weep oftner then Troilus and happy had he been if he had died when his sons were living and his kingdom safe and houses full and his citie unburnt It was a long life that made him miserable and an early death onely could have secured his fortune and it hath happened many times that persons of a faâ—r life and a clear reputation of a good fortune and an honourable name have been tempted in their age to folly and vanity have fallen under the disgrace of dotage or into an infortunate marriage or have besottted themselves with drinking or outlived their fortunes or become tedious to their friends or are afflicted with lingring and vexatious diseases or lived to see their excellent parts buried and cannot understand the wise discourses and productions of their younger years In all these cases and infinite more do not all the world say but it had been better this man had died sooner But
change without a spiritual act of him that is to be changed nor work by way of nature or by charme but morally and after the manner of reasonable creatures and therefore I do not think that ministery at all fit to be reckoned among the advantages of sick persons The Fathers of the Councel of Trent first disputed and after their manner at last agreed that extream unction was instituted by Christ. But afterwards being admonished by one of their Theologues that the Apostles ministred unction to infirm people before they were Priests the Priestly order according to their doctrine being collated in the institution of the last Supper for fear that it should be thought that this unction might be administred by him that was no Priest they blotted out the word instituted and put in its stead insinuated this Sacrament and that it was published by Saint Iames. So it is in their Doctrine and yet in their anathematismes they curse all them that shall deny it to have been instituted by Christ. I shall lay no more prejudice against it or the weak arts of them that maintain it but adde this onely that there being but two places of Scripture pretended for this ceremonie some chief men of their own side have proclaimed those two invalid as to the institution of it for Suarez sayes that the unction used by the Apostles in S. Mark 6.13 is not the same with what is used in the Church of Rome and that it cannot be plainly gathered from the Epistle of Saint Iames Cajetan affirms and that it did belong to the miraculous gift of healing not to a Sacrament The sick mans exercise of grace formerly acquired his perfecting repentance begun in the dayes of health the prayers and counsels of the Holy man that ministers the giving the Holy Sacrament the Ministery and assistance of Angels and the mercies of God the peace of conscience and the peace of the Church are all the assistances and preparatives that can help to dresse his lamp But if a man shall go to buy oil when the Bridegroom comes if his lamp be not first furnish'd and then trimmed that in his life this upon his death-bed his station shall be without doors his portion with unbelievers and the unction of the dying man shall no more strengthen his soul then it cures his body and the prayers for him after his death shall be of the same force as if they should pray that he should return to life again the next day and live as long as Lazarus in his return But I consider that it is not well that men should pretend any thing will do a man good when he dies and yet the same ministeries and ten times more assistances are found for fourty or fifty years together to be ineffectual can extreme unction at last cure what the Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist all his life time could not do Can prayers for a dead man do him more good then when he was alive If all his dayes the man belonged to death and the dominion of sin and from thence could not be recovered by Sermons and counsels and perpetual precepts and frequent Sacraments by confessions and absolutions by prayers and advocations by external ministeries and internal acts it is but too certain that his lamp cannot then be furnished his extreme unction is onely then of use when it is made by the oil that burned in his lamp in all the dayes of his expectation and waiting for the coming of the Bridegroom Neither can any supply be made in this case by their practise of praying for the dead though they pretend for this the fairest precedents of the Church and of the whole world The Heathens they say did it and the Jews did it and the Christians did it some were baptized for the dead in the dayes of the Apostles and very many were communicated for the dead for many ages after T is true they were so and did so the Heathens prayed for an easie grave and a perpetual spring that Saffron would rise from their beds of grasse The Jews prayed that the souls of their dead might be in the garden of Eden that they might have their part in Paradise and in the world to come and that they might hear the peace of the fathers of their generations sleeping in Hebron and the Christians prayed for a joyful resurrection for mercy at the day of judgement for the hastning of the coming of Christ the kingdom of God and they named all sorts of persons in their prayers all I mean but wicked persons all but them that liv'd evil lives they named Apostles Saints and Martyrs and all this is so nothing to their purpose or so much against it that the prayers for the dead used in the Church of Rome are moct plainly condemned because they are against the doctrine and practises of all the world in other forms to other purposes relying upon distinct doctrines until new opinions began to arise about S. Augustines time and changed the face of the proposition Concerning prayer for the dead the Church hath received no commandment from the Lord and therefore concerning it we can have no rules nor proportions but from those imperfect revelations of the state of departed souls and the measures of charity which can relate onely to the imperfection of their present condition and the terrors of the day of judgement but to think that any suppletory to an evil life can be taken from such devotions after the sinners are dead may incourage a bold man to sin but cannot relieve him when he hath But of all things in the world me thinks men should be most careful not to abuse dying people not onely because their condition is pitiable but because they shall soon be discovered and in the secret regions of souls there shall be an evil report concerning those men who have deceived them and if we believe we shall go to that place where such reports are made we may fear the shame and the amazement of being accounted impostors in the presence of Angels and all the wise holy men of the world To be erring and innocent is hugely pitiable and incident to mortality that we cannot help but to deceive or to destroy so great an interest as is that of a soul or to lessen its advantages by giving it trifling and false confidences is injurious and intolerable And therefore it were very well if all the Churches of the world would be extremely curious concerning their offices and ministeries of the visitation of the sick that their Ministers they send be holy and prudent that their instructions be severe and safe that their sentences be merciful and reasonable that their offices be sufficient and devout that their attendances be frequent and long that their deputations be special and peculiar that the doctrines upon which they ground their offices be true material and holy that their ceremonies be few and their advices wary that their
onely to play withall but before a man comes to be wise he is half dead with gouts and consumptions with Catarrhes and aches with sore eyes and a worn out body so that if we must not reckon the life of a man but by the accounts of his reason he is long before his soul be dressed and he is not to be called a man without a wise and an adorned soul a soul at least furnished with what is necessary towards his well being but by that time his soul is thus furnished his body is decayed and then you can hardly reckon him to be alive when his body is possessed by so many degrees of death 3. But there is yet another arrest At first he wants strength of body and then he wants the use of reason and when that is come it is ten to one but he stops by the impediments of vice and wants the strengths of the spirit and we know that Body and Soul and Spirit are the constituent parts of every Christian man And now let us consider what that thing is which we call years of discretion The young man is passed his Tutors and arrived at the bondage of a caytive spirit he is run from discipline and is let loose to passion the man by this time hath wit enough to chuse his vice to act his lust to court his Mistresse to talk confidently and ignorantly and perpetually to despise his betters to deny nothing to his appetite to do things that when he is indeed a man he must for ever be ashamed of for this is all the discretion that most men show in the first stage of their Manhood they can discern good from evil and they prove their skill by leaving all that is good and wallowing in the evils of folly and an unbridled appetite And by this time the young man hath contracted vitious habits and is a beast in manners and therefore it will not be fitting to reckon the beginning of his life he is a fool in his understanding and that is a sad death and he is dead in trespasses and sins and that is a sadder so that he hath no life but a natural the life of a beast or a tree in all other capacities he is dead he neither hath the intellectual nor the spiritual life neither the life of a man nor of a Christian and this sad truth lasts too long For old age seizes upon most men while they still retain the minds of boyes and vitious youth doing actions from principles of great folly and a mighty ignorance admiring things uselesse and hurtfull and filling up all the dimensions of their abode with businesses of empty affairs being at leasure to attend no vertue they cannot pray because they are busie and because they are passionate they cannot communicate because they have quarrels and intrigues of perplexed causes complicated hostilities and things of the world and therefore they cannot attend to the things of God little considering that they must find a time to die in when death comes they must be at leisure for that Such men are like Sailers loosing from a port and tost immediatly with a perpetual tempest lasting till their cordage crack and either they sink or return back again to the same place they did not make a voyage though they were long at sea The businesse and impertinent affairs of most men steal all their time and they are restlesse in a foolish motion but this is not the progress of a man he is no further advanc'd in the course of a life though he reckon many years for still his soul is childish and trifling like an untaught boy If the parts of this sad complaint finde their remedy we have by the same instruments also cured the evils and the vanity of a short life Therefore 1. Be infinitely curious you doe not set back your life in the accounts of God by the intermingling of criminal actions or the contracting vitious habits There are some vices which carry a sword in their hand and cut a man off before his time There is a sword of the Lord and there is a sword of a Man and there is a sword of the Devil Every vice of our own managing in the matter of carnality of lust or rage ambition or revenge is a sword of Sathan put into the hands of a man These are the destroying Angels sin is the Apollyon the destroyer that is gone out not from the Lord but from the Tempter and we hug the poison and twist willingly with the vipers till they bring us into the Regions of an irrecoverable sorrow We use to reckon persons as good as dead if they have lost their limbs and their teeth and are confined to an Hospital and converse with none but Surgeons and Physicians Mourners and Divines those pollinctores the Dressers of bodies and souls to Funeral But it is worse when the soul the principle of life is imployed wholly in the offices of death and that man was worse then dead of whom Seneca tells that being a rich fool when he was lifted up from the baths and set into a soft couch asked his slaves An ego jam sedeo Do I now sit The beast was so drownd in sensuality and the death of his soul that whether he did sit or no he was to believe another Idlenesse and every vice is as much of death as a long disease is or the expence of ten years and she that lives in pleasures is dead while she liveth saith the Apostle and it is the stile of the Spirit concerning wicked persons They are dead in trespasses and sins For as every sensual pleasure and every day of idlenes and useless living lops off a little branch from our short life so every deadly sin and every habitual vice does quite destroy us but innocence leaves us in our natural portions and perfect period we lose nothing of our life if we lose nothing of our souls health and therefore he that would live a full age must avoid a sin as he would decline the Regions of death the dishonors of the grave 2. If we would have our life lengthened let us begin bâ—times to live in the accounts of reason and sober counsels of religion and the Spirit and then we shall have no reason to complain that our abode on earth is so short Many men finde it long enough and indeed it is so to all senses But when we spend in waste what God hath given us in plenty when we sacrifice our youth to folly our manhood to lust and rage our old age to covetousnesse and irreligion not beginning to live till we are to die designing that time to Vertue which indeed is infirm to every thing and profitâ—ble to nothing then we make our lives short and lust runs away with all the vigorous and healthful part of it and pride and animosity steal the manly portion and craftinesse and interest possesse old age velut ex pleno
him alone till he obtained the same favour for her and she also at the prayers of S. Hilary went into a more early grave and a bed of joyes 7. It is a sottish and an unlearned thing to reckon the time of our life as it is short or long to be good or evil fortune life in it self being neither good nor bad but just as we make it and therefore so is death 8. But when we consider death is not onely better then a miserable life not onely an easie and innocent thing in it self but also that it is a state of advantage we shall have reason not to double the sharpnesses of our sicknesse by our fear of death Certain it is death hath some good upon its proper stock praise and a fair memory a reverence and religion toward them so great that it is counted dishonest to speak evil of the dead then they rest in peace and are quiet from their labours and are designed to immortality Cleobis and Biton Throphonius and Agamedes had an early death sent them as a reward to the former for their piety to their Mother to the latter for building of a Temple To this all those arguments will minister which relate the advantages of the state of separation and resurrection SECT VIII Remedies against fear of death by way of exercise 1. HE that would willingly be fearlesse of death must learn to despise the world he must neither love any thing passionately nor be proud of any circumstance of his life O death how bitter is the remembrance of thee to a man that liveth at rest in his possessions to a man that hath nothing to vex him and that hath prosperity in all things yea unto him that is yet able to receive meat said the son of Sirach But the parts of this exercise help each other If a man be not incorporated in all his passions to the things of this world he will lesse fear to be divorced from them by a supervening death and yet because he must part with them all in death it is but reasonable he should not be passionate for so fugitive and transient interest But if any man thinks well of himself for being a handsome person or if he be stronger and wiser then his neighbours he must remember that what he boasts of will decline into weaknesse and dishonour but that very boasting and complacency will make death keener and more unwelcome because it comes to take him from his confidences and pleasures making his beauty equal to those Ladies that have slept some years in Charnel houses and their strength not so stubborn as the breath of an infant and their wisdom such which can be looked for in the land where all things are forgotten 2. He that would not fear death must strengthen his spirit with the proper instruments of Christian fortitude All men are resolved upon this that to bear grief honestly and temperately and to dye willingly and nobly is the duty of a good and of a valiant man and they that are not so are vitious and fools and cowards All men praise the valiant and honest and that which the very Heathen admired in their noblest examples is especially patience and contempt of death Zeno Eleates endured torments rather then discover his friends or betray them to the danger of the Tyrant and Calanus the barbarous and unlearned Indian willingly suffered himself to be burnt alive and all the women did so to do honour to their Husbands Funeral and to represent and prove their affections great to their Lords The religion of a Christian does more command fortitude then ever did any institution for we are commanded to be willing to die for Christ to dye for the brethren to dye rather then give offence or scandal the effect of which is this that he that is instructed to do the necessary parts of his duty is by the same instrument fortified against death As he that does his duty need not fear death so neither shall he the parts of his duty are parts of his security It is certainly a great basenesse and pusillanimitie of spirit that makes death terrible and extremely to be avoided 3. Christian prudence is a great security against the fear of death For if we be afraid of death it is but reasonable to use all spiritual arts to take off the apprehension of the evil but therefore we ought to remove our fear because fear gives to death wings and spurres and darts Death hastens to a fearful man if therefore you would make death harmlesse and slow to throw off fear is the way to do it and prayer is the way to do that If therefore you be afraid of death consider you will have lesse need to fear it by how much the less you do fear it and so cure your direct fear by a reflex act of prudence and consideration Fannius had not dyed so soon if he had not feared death and when Cneius Carbo begged the respite of a little time for a base imployment of the souldiers of Pompey he got nothing but that the basenesse of his fear dishonoured the dignity of his third Consulship and he chose to dye in a place where none but his meanest servants should have seen him I remember a story of the wrastler Polydamas that running into a cave to avoid the storm the water at last swelled so high that it began to presse that hollownesse to a ruine which when his fellowes espied they chose to enter into the common fate of all men and went abroad but Polydamas thought by his strength to support the earth till its intolerable weight crushed him into flatnesse and a grave Many men run for shelter to a place and they onely finde a remedie for their fears by feeling the worst of evils fear it self findes no sanctuary but the worst of sufferance and they that flye from a battel are exposed to the mercy and fury of the pursuers who if they faced about were as well disposed to give laws of life and death as to take them and at worst can but die nobly but now even at the very best they live shamefully or die timorously Courage is the greatest security for it does most commonly safeguard the man but alwayes rescues the condition from an intolerable evil 4. If thou wilt be fearlesse of death endeavour to be in love with the felicities of Saints and Angels and be once perswaded to believe that there is a condition of living better then this that there are creatures more noble then we that above there is a countrey better then ours that the inhabitants know more and know better and are in places of rest and desire and first learn to value it and then learn to purchase it and death cannot be a formidable thing which lets us into so much joy so much felicity And indeed who would not think his condition mended if he passed from conversing with dull
mortals with ignorant and foolish persons with Tyrants and enemies of learning to converse with Homer and Plato with Socrates and Cicero with Plutarch and Fabricius So the Heathens speculated but we consider higher The dead that die in the Lord shall converse with S. Paul and all the Colledge of the Apostles and all the Saints and Martyrs with all the good men whose memory we preserve in honour with excellent Kings and holy Bishops and with the great Shepherd and Bishop of our souls Iesus Christ and with God himself For Christ dyed for us that whether we wake or sleep we might live together with him Then we shall be free from lust and envy from fear and rage from covetousnesse and sorrow from tears and cowardice and these indeed properly are the onely evils that are contrary to felicity and wisdom Then we shall see strange things and know new propositions and all things in another manner and to higher purposes Cleombrotus was so taken with this speculation that having learned from Plato's Phaedon the souls abode he had not patience to stay natures dull leisure but leapt from a wall to his portion of immortality And when Pomponius Atticus resolved to die by famine to ease the great pains of his gout in the abstinence of two dayes found his foot at ease But when he began to feel the pleasures of an approaching death and the delicacies of that ease he was to inherit below he would not withdraw his foot but went on and finished his death and so did Cleanthes and every wise man will despise the little evils of that state which indeed is the daughter of fear but the mother of rest and peace and felicity 5. If God should say to us Cast thy self into the Sea as Christ did to S. Peter or as God concerning Ionas I have provided for thee a Dolphin or a Whale or a Port a safety or a deliverance security or a reward were we not incredulous and pusillanimous persons if we should tremble to put such a felicity into act and our selves into possession The very duty of resignation and the love of our own interest are good antidores against fear In fourty or fifty years we finde evils enough and arguments enough to make us weary of this life And to a good man there are very many more reasons to be afraid of life then death this having in it lesse of evil and more of advantage And it was a rare wish of that Roman that death might come onely to wise and excellent persons and not to fools and cowards that it might not be a sanctuary for the timerous but the reward of the vertuous and indeed they onely can make advantage of it 6. Make no excuses to make thy desires of life seem reasonable neither cover thy fear and pretences but suppresse it rather with arts of severity and ingenuity Some are not willing to submit to Gods sentence and arrest of death till they have finished such a designe or made an end of the last paragraph of their book or raised such portions for their children or preached so many sermons or built their house or planted their orchard or ordered their estate with such advantages It is well for the modesty of these men that the excuse is ready but if it were not it is certain they would search one out for an idle man is never ready to die and is glad of any excuse and a busied man hath alwayes something unfinished and he is ready for every thing but death and I remember that Petronius brings in Eumolpus composing verses in a desperate storm and being called upon to shift for himself when the ship dashed upon the rock cried out to let him alone till he had finished and trimmed his verse which was lame in the hinder leg the man either had too strong a desire to end his verse or too great a desire not to end his life But we must know Gods times are not to be measured by our circumstances and what I value God regards not or if it be valuable in the accounts of men yet God will supply it with other contingencies of his providence and if Epaphroditus had died when he had his great sicknesse S. Paul speaks of God would have secured the work of the Gospel without him and he could have spared Epaphroditus as well as S. Stephen and S. Peter as well as S. Iames Say no more but when God calls lay aside thy papers and first dresse thy soul and then dresse thy hearse Blindnesse is odious and widow-hood is sad and destitution is without comfort and persecution is full of trouble and famine is intolerable and tears are the sad ease of a sadder heart but these are evils of our life not of our death For the dead that die in the Lord are so farre from wanting the commodities of this life that they do not want life it self After all this I do not say it is a sin to be afraid of death we find the boldest spirit that discourses of it with confidence and dares undertake a danger as big as death yet doth shrink at the horror of it when it comes dressed in its proper circumstances And Brutus who was as bold a Roman to undertake a noble action as any was since they first reckoned by Consuls yet when Furius came to cut his throat after his defeat by Anthony he ran from it like a girl and being admonished to die constantly he swore by his life that he would shortly endure death But what do I speak of such imperfect persons Our B. Lord was pleased to legitimate fear to us by his agony and prayers in the garden It is not a sin to be afraid but it is a great felicity to be without fear which felicity our dearest Saviour refused to have because it was agreeable to his purposes to suffer any thing that was contrary to felicity every thing but sin But when men will by all means avoid death they are like those who at any hand resolve to be rich The case may happen in which they wil blaspheme and dishonor providence or do a base action or curse God and die But in all cases they die miserable and insnared and in no case do they die the lesse for it Nature hath left us the key of the Churchyard and custome hath brought Caemeteries and charnell houses into Cities and Churches places most frequented that we might not carry our selves strangely in so certain so expected so ordinary so unavoydable an accident All reluctancy or unwillingnesse to obey the Divine decree is but a snare to our selves and a load to our spirits and is either an intire cause or a great aggravation of the calamity Who did not scorn to look upon Xerxes when he caused 300. stripes to be given to the Sea and sent a chartell of defiance against the Mountain Atho Who did not scorn the proud vanity of Cyrus when he
took so goodly a revenge upon the river Cyndus for his hard passage over it or did not deride or pity the Thracians for shooting arrowes against heaven when it thunders To be angry with God to quarrell with the Divine providence by repining against an unalterable a naturall an easie sentence is an argument of a huge folly and the parent of a great trouble as man is base and foolish to no purpose he throwes away a vice to his own misery and to no advantages of ease and pleasure Fear keeps men in bondage all their life saith Saint Paul and patience makes him his own man and lord of his own interest and person Therefore possesse your selves in patience with reason and religion and you shall die with ease If all the parts of this discourse be true if they be better then dreams and unlesse vertue be nothing but words as a grove is a heap of trees if they be not the Phantasmes of hypochondriacall persons and designes upon the interest of men and their perswasions to evil purposes then there is no reason but that we should really desire death and account it among the good things of God and the sowre and laborious felicities of man S. Paul understood it well when he desired to be dissolved he well enough knew his own advantages and pursued them accordingly But it is certain that he that is afraid of death I mean with a violent and transporting fear with a fear apt to discompose his duty or his patience that man either loves this world too much or dares not trust God for the next SECT IX General rules and exercises whereby our sicknesse may become safe and sanctified 1. TAke care that the cause of thy sicknesse be such as may not sowre it in the principle and original causes of it It a sad calamity to passe into the house of mourning through the gates of intemperance by a drunken meeting or the surfets of a loathed and luxurious Table for then a man suffers the pain of his own â—olly and he is like a fool smarting under the whip which his own vitiousnesse twisted for his back then a man payes the price of his sin and hath a pure and an unmingled sorrow in his suffering and it cannot be alleviated by any circumstances for the whole affair is a meere processe of death and sorrow Sin is in the head sicknesse is in the body and death and an eternity of pains in the tail and nothing can make this condition intolerable unlesse the miracles of the Divine mercy will be pleased to exchange the eternal anger for the temporal True it is that in all sufferings the cause of it makes it noble or ignoble honour or shame tolerable or intolerable For when patience is assaulted by a ruder violence and by a blow from heaven or earth from a gracious God or an unjust man patience looks forth to the doors which way she may escape and if innocence or a cause of religion keep the first entrance then whether she escapes at the gates of life or death there is a good to be received greater then the evils of a sicknesse but if sin thrust in that sicknesse and that hell stands at the door then patience turns into fury and seeing it impossible to go forth with safety rouls up and down with a circular and infinite revolution making its motion not from but upon its own centre it doubles the pain and increases the sorrow till by its weight it breaks the spirit and bursts into the agonies of infinite and eternal ages If we had seen S. Policarp burning to death or S. Laurence rosted upon his gridiron or S. Ignatius exposed to lions or S. Sebastion pierced with arrowes or S. Attalus carried about the theatre with scorn unto his death for the cause of Jesus for religion for God and a holy conscience we should have been in love with flames and have thought the gridiron fairer then the spondae the ribs of a maritall bed and we should have chosen to converse with those beasts rather then those men that brought those beasts forth and estimated the arrows to be the rayes of light brighter then the moon and that disgrace and mistaken pageantry were a solemnity richer and more magficent then Mordecai's procession upon the Kings horse and in the robes of majesty for so did these holy men account them they kissed their stakes and hugged their deaths and ran violently to torments and counted whippings and secular disgraces to be the enamel of their persons and the ointment of their heads and the embalming their names and securing them for immortality But to see Sejanus torne in pieces by the people or Nero crying or creeping timorously to his death when he was condemned to dye more majorum to see Iudas pale and trembling full of anguish sorrow and despair to observe the groanings and intolerable agonies of Herod and Antiochus will tell and demonstrate the causes of patience and impatience to proceed from the causes of the suffering and it is sin onely that makes the cup bitter and deadly when men by vomiting measure up the drink they took in and sick and sad do again taste their meat turned into choler by intemperance the sin and its punishment are mingled so that shame covers the face and sorrow puts a veil of darknesse upon the heart and we scarce pity a vile person that is haled to execution for murder or for treason but we say he deserves it and that every man is concerned in it that he should dye If lust brought the sicknesse or the shame if we truly suffer the reward of our evil deeds we must thank our selves that is we are fallen into an evil condition and are the sacrifice of the Divine justice But if we live holy lives and if we enter well in we are sure to passe on safe and to goe forth with advantage if we list our selves 2. To this relates that we should not counterfeit sicknesse For he that is to be carefull of his passage into a sicknesse will think himself concerned that he fall not into it through a trap door for so it hath sometimes happened that such counterfeiting to light and evil purposes hath ended in a real sufferance Appian tells of a Roman Gentleman who to escape the proscription of the Triumvirate fled and to secure his privacy counterfeited himself blinde on one eye and wore a plaister upon it till beginning to be free from the malice of the three prevailing princes he opened his hood but could not open his eye but for ever lost the use of it and with his eye paid for his libertie and hypocrisie And Celius counterfeited the gout and all its circumstances and pains its dressings and arts of remedy and complaint till at last the gout really entred and spoiled the pageantry His arts of dissimulation were so witty that they put life and motion into the very
discover it would dash it in pieces by a solemn disclaiming it for thou art the Way the Truth and the Life and I know that whatsoever thou hast declared that is the truth of God and I do firmly adhere to the religion thou hast taught and glory in nothing so much as that I am a Christian that thy name is called upon me O my God though I die yet will I put my trust in thee In thee O Lord have I trusted let me never be confounded Amen SECT V. Of the practise of the Grace of Repentance in time of the Sicknesse MEn generally do very much dread sudden death and pray against it passionately and certainly it hath in it great inconveniences accidentally to mens estates to the settlement of families to the culture and trimming of souls and it robs a man of the blessings which may be consequent to sickness and to the passive graces and holy contentions of a Christian while he descends to his grave without an adversary or a tryal and a good man may be taken at such a disadvantage that a sudden death would be a great evil even to the most excellent person if it strikes him in an unlucky circumstance But these considerations are not the onely ingredients into those mens discourse who pray violently against sudden deaths for possibly if this were all there may be in the condition of sudden death something to make recompence for the evils of the over-hasty accident For certainly it is a lesse temporal evil to fall by the rudenesse of a sword then the violences of a Feaver and the axe is much a lesse affliction then a strangury and though a sicknesse tries our vertues yet a sudden death is free from temptation a sicknesse may be more glorious and a sudden death more safe the deadest deaths are best the shortest and least premeditate so Caesar said and Pliny called a short death the greatest fortune of a mans life For even good men have been forced to an undecencie of deportment by the violences of pain and Cicero observes concerning Hercules that he was broken in pieces with pain even then when he sought for immortality by his death being tortured with a plague knit up in the lappet of his shirt And therefore as a sudden death certainly loses the rewards of a holy sicknesse so it makes that a man shall not so much hazard and lose the rewards of a holy life But the secret of this affair is a worse matter men live at that rate either of an habitual wickednesse or else a frequent repetition of single acts of killing and deadly sins that a sudden death is the ruine of all their hopes and a perfect consignation to an eternal sorrow But in this case also so is a lingring sicknesse for our last sicknesse may change us from life to health from health to strength from strength to the firmnesse and confirmation of habitual graces but it cannot change a man from death to life and begin and finish that processe which sits not down but in the bosom of blessednesse He that washes in the morning when his bath is seasonable and healthful is not onely made clean but sprightly and the blood is brisk and coloured like the first springing of the morning but they that wash their dead cleanse the skin and leave palenesse upon the cheek and stiffnesse in all the joynts A repentance upon our death-bed bed is like washing the coarse it is cleanly and civil but makes no change deeper then the skin But God knowes it is a custom so to wash them that are going to dwell with dust and to be buried in the lap of their kinred earth but all their lives time wallow in pollutions without any washing at all or if they do it is like that of the Dardani who washed but thrice in all their life time when they are born and when they marry and when they die when they are baptized or against a solemnity or for the day of their funeral but these are but ceremonious washings and never purifie the soul if it be stained and hath sullied the whitenesse of its baptismal robes * God intended we should live a holy life * he contracted with us in Jesus Christ for a holy life * he made no abatements of the strictest sense of it but such as did necessarily comply with humane infirmities or possibilities that is he understood it in the sense of repentance which stil is so to renew our duty that it may be a holy life in the second sense that is some great portion of our life to be spent in living as Christians should * a resolving to repent upon our death-bed is the greatest mockery of God in the world and the most perfect contradictory to all his excellent designes of mercy and holinesse for therefore he threatned us with hell if we did not and he promised heaven if we did live a holy life and a late repentance promises heaven to us upon other conditions even when we have lived wickedly * It renders a man uselesse and intolerable to the world taking off the great curb of religion of fear and hope and permitting all impiety with the greatest impunity and incouragement in the world * by this means we see so many 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Philo calls them or as the prophets pueros centum annorum children of almost an hundred years old upon whose grave we may write the inscriptions which was upon the tomb of Similis in Xiphilin Here he lies who was so many years but lived but seven * and the course of nature runs counter to the perfect designes of piety and * God who gave us a life to live to him is only served at our death when we die to all the world * and we undervalue the great promises made by the Holy Jesus for which the piety the strictest unerring piety of ten thousand ages is not a proportionable exchange yet we think it a hard bargain to get heaven if we be forced to part with one lust or live soberly twenty years But like Demetrius Afer who having lived a slave all his life time yet desired to descend to his grave in freedom begged manumission of his Lord we lived in the bondage of our sin all our dayes and hope to dye the Lords freed man * but above all this course of a delayed repentance must of necessity therefore be ineffective and certainly mortal because it is an intire destruction of the very formality and essential constituent reason of religion which I thus demonstrate When God made man and propounded to him an immortal and a blessed state as the end of his hopes and the perfection of his condition he did not give it him for nothing but upon certain conditions which although they could add nothing to God yet they were such things which man could value and they were his best and
his knees and his face recommended his soul to his Saviour But in these things no man is to be prejudiced or censured 13. Let not the holy Sacrament be administred to dying persons when they have no use of reason to make that duty acceptable and the mysteries effective to the purposes of the soul. For the Sacraments and ceremonies of the gospel operate not without the concurrent actions and moral influences of the suscipient To infuse the chalice in to the cold lips of the Clinick may disturb his agony but cannot relieve the soul which onely receives improvement by acts of grace and choice to which the external rites are apt and appointed to minister in a capable person All other persons as fools children distracted persons lethargical apoplectical or any wayes senselesse and uncapable of humane and reasonable acts are to be assisted onely by prayers for they may prevail even for the absent and for enemies and for all those who joyn not in the office SECT V. Of Ministring to the sick person by the Spiritual man as he is the Physitian of souls 1. IN all cases of receiving confessions of sick men and the assisting to the advancement of repentance the Minister is to apportion to every kinde of sin such spiritual remedies which are apt to mortifie and cure the sin such as abstinence from their occasions and opportunities to avoid temptations to resist their beginnings to punish the crime by acts of indignation against the person fastings and prayer alms and all the instances of charity asking forgiveness restitution of wrongs satisfaction of injuries acts of vertue contrary to the crimes and although in great and dangerous sicknesses they are not directly to be imposed unlesse they are direct matters of duty yet where they are medicinall they are to be insinuated and in general signification remarked to him and undertaken accordingly concerning which when he returnes to health he is to receive particular advices and this advice was inserted into the penitential of England in the time of Theodore Arch-Bishop of Canterbury and afterward adopted into the Canon of all the Western Churches 2. The proper temptations of sick men for which a remedie is not yet provided are unreasonable fears and unreasonable confidences which the Minister is to cure by the following considerations Considerations against unreasonable fears of not having our sins pardoned Many good men especially such who have tender consciences impatient of the least sin to which they are arrived by a long grace and a continual observation of their actions and the parts of a lasting repentance many times overact their tendernesse and turn their caution into scruple and care of their duty into inquiries after the event and askings after the counsels of God and the sentences of dooms-day He that asks of the standers by or of the Minister whether they think he shall be saved or damned are to be answered with the words of pity and reproof Seek not after new light for the searching into the privatest records of God look as much as you list into the pages of revelation for they concern your duty but the event is registred in heaven and we can expect no other certain notices of it but that it shall be given to them for whom it is prepared by the Father of mercies we have light enough to tell our duty and if we do that we need not fear what the issue will be and if we do not let us never look for more light or inquire after Gods pleasure concerning our souls since we so little serve his ends in those things where he hath given us light But yet this I adde that as pardon of sins in the old Testament was nothing but removing the punishment which then was temporal and therefore many times they could tell if their sins were pardoned and concerning pardon of sins they then had no fears of conscience but while the punishment was on them for so long indeed it was unpardoned and how long it would so remain it was matter of fear and of present sorrow Besides this in the Gospel pardon of sins is another thing Pardon of sins is a sanctification Christ came to take away our sin by turning every one of us from our iniquities And there is not in the nature of the thing any expectation of pardon or signe or signification of it but so far as the thing it self discovers it self As we hate sin and grow in grace and arrive at the state of holinesse which is also a state of repentance and imperfection but yet of sincerity of heart and diligent endeavour in the same degree we are to judge concerning the forgiveness of sins for indeed that is the Evangelical forgivenesse and it signifies our pardon because it effects it or rather it is in the nature of the thing so that we are to enquire into no hidden records forgivenesse of sins is not a secret sentence a word or a record but it is a state of change and effected upon us and upon our selves we are to look for it to read it and understand it We are onely to be curious of our duty and confident of the Article of remission of sins and the conclusion of these premises will be that we shall be full of hopes of a prosperous resurrection and our fear and trembling are no instances of our calamity but parts of duty we shall sure enough be wafted to the shore although we be tossed with the winds of our sighs and the unevenness of our fears and the ebbings and flowings of our passions if we sail in a right chanel and steere by a perfect compasse and look up to God and call for his help and do our own endeavour There are very many reasons why men ought not to despair and there are not very many men that ever go beyond a hope till they passe into possession if our fears have any mixture of hope that is enough to enable and to excite our duty and if we have a strong hope when we cast about we shall finde reason enough to have many fears let not this fear weaken our hands and if it allay our gayeties and our confidences it is no harm In this uncertainty we must abide if we have committed sins after baptisme and those confidences which some men glorie in are not reall supports or good foundations The fearing man is the safest and if he fears on his death-bed it is but what happens to most considering men and what was to be looked for all his life time he talked of the terrours of death and death is the king of terrours and therefore it is no strange thing if then he be hugely afraid if he be not it is either a great felicity or a great presumption but if he wants some degree of comfort or a greater degree of hope let him be refreshed by considering 1. That Christ came into the world to save sinners
sudden refreshment and so also iâ— was in the Cave at Ephesus for by this time the souldier began to think it was fit he should return to his watch and observe the dead bodies he had in charge but when he ascended from his mourning bridal chamber he found that one of the bodies was stolne by the friends of the dead and that he was fallen into an evil condition because by the laws of Ephesus his body was to be fixed in the place of it The poor man returns to his woman cryes out bitterly and in her presence resolves to dye to prevent his death and in secret to prevent his shame but now the womans love was raging like her former sadnesse and grew witty and she comforted her souldier and perswaded him to live lest by losing him who had brought her from death and a more grievous sorrow she should return to her old solemnities of dying and lose her honour for a dream or the reputation of her constancy without the change and satisfaction of an enjoyed love The man would fain have lived if it had been possible and she found out this way for him that he should take the body of her first husband whose funeral she had so strangely mourned and put it upon the gallows in the place of the stolne thief he did so and escaped the present danger to possesse a love which might change as violently as her grief had done But so have I seen a croud of disordered people rush violently and in heaps till their utmost border was restrained by a wall or had spent the fury of the first fluctuation and watry progress and by by it returned to the contrary with the same earnestness only because it was violent ungoverned a raging passion is this croud which when it is not under discipline and the conduct of reason and the proportions of temperate humanity runs passionatly the way it happens and by and by as greedily to another side being swayed by its own weight and driven any whither by chance in all its pursuits having no rule but to do all it can and spend it self in haste and expire with some shame and much undecency When thou hast wept a while compose the body to burial which that it be done gravely decently and charitably we have the example of all nations to engage us and of all ages of the world to warrant so that it is against common honesty and publike fame and reputation not to do this office It is good that the body be kept vailed and secret and not exposed to curious eyes or the dishonours wrought by the changes of death discerned and stared upon by impertinent persons When Cyrus was dying he called his sons and friends to take their leave to touch his hand to see him the last time and gave in charge that when he had put his veil over his face no man should uncover it and Epiphanius his body was rescued from inquisitive eyes by a miracle Let it be interred after the manner of the countrey and the laws of the place and the dignity of the person For so Iacob was buried with great solemnitie and Iosephs bones were carried into Canaan after they had been embalmed and kept four hundred years and devout men carried S. Stephen to his burial making great lamentation over him And Aelian tells that those who were the most excellent persons were buried in purple and men of an ordinary courage and fortune had their Graves onely trimmed with branches of Olive and mourning flowers But when Marc. Anthony gave the body of Brutus to his freed man to be buried honestly he gave also his own mantle to be thrown into his funeral pile and the magnificence of the old funeral we may see largely described by Virgil in the obsequies of Misenus and by Homer in the funeral of Patroclus It was noted for piety in the men of Iabesh-Gilead that they shewed kindness to their Lord Saul and buried him and they did it honourably And our blessed Saviour who was temperate in his expence and grave in all the parts of his life and death as age and sobriety itself yet was pleased to admit the cost of Maries ointment upon his head and feet because she did it against his burial and though she little thought it had bin so nigh yet because he accepted it for that end he knew he had made her apologie sufficient by which he remarked it to be a great act of piety and honorable to inter our friends and relatives according to the proportions of their condition and so to give a testimony of our hopes of their resurrection So far is piety beyond it may be the ostentation and braging of a grief or a designe to serve worse ends such was that of Herod when he made too studied and elaborate a funeral for Aristobulus whom he had murdered and of Regulus for his boy at whose pile he killed dogs nightingales parrots and little horses and such also was the expence of some of the Romans who hating their left wealth gave order by their Testament to have huge portions of it thrown into their fires bathing their locks which were presently to passe thorough the fire with Arabian and Egyptian liquors and balsam of Judea In this as in every thing else as our piety must not passe into superstition or vain expence so neither must the excesse be turned into parcimony and chastised by negligence and impiety to the memory of their dead But nothing of this concerns the dead in real and effective purposes nor is it with care to be provided for by themselves But it is the duty of the living For to them it is all one whether they be carried forth upon a chariot or a woodden bier whether they rot in the air or in the earth whether they be devoured by fishes or by worms by birds or by sepulchral dogs by water or by fire or by delay when Chriton ask'd Socrates how he would be buried he told him I think I shall escape from you and that you cannot catch me But so much of me as you can apprehend use it as you see cause for and bury it but however do it according to the laws There is nothing in this but opinion and the decency of fame to be served Where it is esteemed an honour and the manner of blessed people to descend into the graves of their Fathers there also it is reckoned as a curse to be buried in a strange land or that the birds of the air devour them Some Nations used to eat the bodies of their friends and esteemed that the most honoured sepulture but they were barbarous the Magi never buried any but such as were torn of beasts the Persians besmeared their dead with wax and the Aegyptians with gummes and with great art did condite the bodies and laid them in charnell houses But Cyrus the elder would none of all this
The Rule and Exercises of holy Dying by Ier Taylor D. D. THE RVLE AND EXERCISES OF HOLY DYING In which are described The MEANS and INSTRUMENTS of preparing our selves and others respectively for a blessed Death and the remedies against the evils and temptations proper to the state of Sicknesse Together with Prayers and Acts of Vertue to be used by sick and dying persons or by others standing in their Attendance To which are added Rules for the visitation of the Sick and offices proper for that Ministery 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Isoc ad Demonic LONDON Printed for R. R. and are to be sold by Edward Martin Bookseller in Norwich 1651. To the Right Honourable and most truly Noble RICHARD Lord VAVGHAN Earl of CARBERY Baron of EMLIN and MOLINGAR Knight of the Honourable Order of the BATH My Lord I Am treating your Lordship as a Roman Gentleman did Saint Augustine and his Mother I shall entertain you in a Charnel house and carry your meditations awhile into the chambers of death where you shall finde the rooms dressed up with melancholy arts and fit to converse with your most retired thoughts which begin with a sigh and proceed in deep consideration and end in a holy resolution The sight that S. Augustine most noted in that house of sorrow was the body of Caesar clothed with all the dishonours of corruption that you can suppose in a six moneths burial But I know that without pointing your first thoughts will remember the change of a greater beauty which is now dressing for the brightest immortality and from her bed of darknesse calls to you to dress your soul for that change which shall mingle your bones with that beloved dust and carry your soul to the same Quire where you may both sit and sing for ever My Lord it is your dear Ladies Anniversary and she deserved the biggest honour and the longest memory and the fairest monument and the most solemne mourning and in order to it give me leave My Lord to cover her Hearse with these following sheets this book was intended first to minister to her piety and she desired all good people should partake of the advantages which are here recorded she knew how to live rarely well and she desired to know how to dye and God taught her by an experiment But since her work is done and God supplyed her with provisions of his own before I could minister to her and perfect what she desired it is necessary to present to your Lordship those bundles of Cypresse which were intended to dresse her Closet but come now to dresse her Hearse My Lord both your Lordship and my self have lately seen and felt such sorrows of death and such sad departure of Dearest friends that it is more then high time we should think our selves neerly concerned in the accidents Death hath come so neer to you as to fetch a portion from your very heart and now you cannot choose but digge your own grave and place your coffin in your eye when the Angel hath dressed your scene of sorrow and meditation with so particular and so neer an object and therefore as it is my duty I am come to minister to your pious thoughts and to direct your sorrows that they may turn into vertues and advantages And since I know your Lordship to be so constant and regular in your devotions and so tender in the matter of justice so ready in the expressions of charity and so apprehensive of religion and that you are a person whose work of grace is apt and must every day grow towards those degrees where when you arrive you shall triumph over imperfection and choose nothing but what may please God I could not by any compendium conduct and assist your pious purposes so well as by that which is the great argument and the great instrument of holy living the consideration and exercises of death My Lord it is a great art to dye well and to be learnt by men in health by them that can discourse and consider by those whose understanding and acts of reason are not abated with fear or pains and as the greatest part of death is passed by the preceding years of our life so also in those years are the greatest preparation to it and he that prepares not for death before his last sicknesse is like him that begins to study Philosophy when he is going to dispute publikely in the faculty All that a sick and dying man can do is but to exercise those vertues which he before acquired and to perfect that repentance which was begun more early And of this My Lord my Book I think is a good testimony not onely because it represents the vanity of a late and sick-bed repentance but because it contains in it so many precepts and meditations so many propositions and various duties such forms of exercise and the degrees and difficulties of so many graces which are necessary preparatives to a holy death that the very learning the duties require study and skill time and understanding in the wayes of godlinesse and it were very vain to say so much is necessary and not to suppose more time to learn them more skill to practise them more opportunities to desire them more abilities both of body and mind then can be supposed in a sick amazed timerous and weak person whose naturall acts are disabled whose senses are weak whose discerning faculties are lessened whose principles are made intricate and intangled upon whose eye sits a cloud and the heart is broken with sicknesse and the liver pierced thorow with sorrows and the strokes of death And therefore my Lord it is intended by the necessity of affairs that the precepts of dying well be part of the studies of them that live in health and the dayes of discourse and understanding which in this case hath another degree of necessity superadded because in other notices an imperfect study may be supplied by a frequent exercise and a renewed experience Here if we practise imperfectly once we shall never recover the errour for we die but once and therefore it will be necessary that our skill be more exact since it is not to be mended by triall but the actions must be for ever left imperfect unlesse the habit be contracted with study and contemplation before hand And indeed I were vain if I should intend this book to be read and studied by dying persons and they were vainer that should need to be instructed in those graces which they are then to exercise and to finish For a sick bed is only a school of severe exercise in which the spirit of a man is tried and his graces are rehearsed and the assistances which I have in the following pages given to those vertues which are proper to the state of sicknesse are such as suppose a man in the state of grace or they confirm a good man or they support the weak or adde degrees or minister
vineyards or our King be sick we regard it not but during that state are as disinterest as if our eyes were closed with the clay that weeps in the bowels of the earth At the end of seven years our teeth fall and dye before us representing a formal prologue to the Tragedie and still every seven year it is oddes but we shall finish the last scene and when Nature or Chance or Vice takes our body in pieces weakening some parts and loosing others we taste the grave and the solennities of our own Funerals first in those parts that ministred to Vice and next in them that served for Ornament and in a short time even they that served for necessity become uselesse and intangled like the wheels of a broken clock Baldnesse is but a dressing to our funerals the proper ornament of mourning and of a person entred very far into the regions and possession of Death And we have many more of the same signification Gray hairs rotten teeth dim eyes trembling joynts short breath stiffe limbs wrinkled skin short memory decayed appetite Every dayes necessity calls for a reparation of that portion which death fed on all night when we lay in his lap and slept in his outer chambers The very spirits of a man prey upon the daily portion of bread and flesh and every meal is a rescue from one death and layes up for another and while we think a thought we die and the clock strikes and reckons on our portion of Eternity we form our words with the breath of our nostrils we have the lesse to live upon for every word we speak Thus Nature calls us to meditate of death by those things which are the instruments of acting it and God by all the variety of his Providence makes us see death every where in all variety of circumstances and dressed up for all the fancies and the expectation of every single person Nature hath given us one harvest every year but death hath two and the Spring and the Autumn send throngs of Men and Women to charnel houses and all the Summer long men are recovering from their evils of the Spring till the dog dayes come and then the Syrian star makes the summer deadly And the fruits of Autumn are laid up for all the years provision and the man that gathers them eats and sursets and dies and needs them not and himself is laid up for Eternity and he that escapes till winter only stayes for another opportunity which the distempers of that quarter minister to him with great variety Thus death reigns in all the portions of our time The Autumn with its fruits provides disorders for us and the Winters cold turns them into sharp diseases and the Spring brings flowers to strew our herse and the Summer gives green turfe and brambles to binde upon our graves Calentures and Surâ—et Cold and Agues are the four quarters of the year and all minister to Death and you can go no whither but you tread upon a dead mans bones The wilde fellow in Petronius that escaped upon a broken table from the furies of a shipwrack as he was sunning himself upon the rocky shore espied a man rolled upon his floating bed of waves ballasted w th sand in the folds of his garment and carried by his civil enemy the sea towards the shore to finde a grave and it cast him into some sad thoughts that peradventure this mans wife in some part of the Continent safe and warme looks next moneth for the good mans return or it may be his son knows nothing of the tempest or his father thinks of that affectionate kiss which still is warm upon the good old mans cheek ever since he took a kinde farewel and he weeps with joy to think how blessed he shall be when his beloved boy returns into the circle of his Fathers arms These are the thoughts of mortals this is the end and sum of all their designes a dark night and an ill Guide a boysterous sea and a broken Cable a hard rock and a rough winde dash'd in pieces the fortune of a whole family and they that shall weep loudest for the accident are not yet entred into the storm and yet have suffered shipwrack Then looking upon the carkasse he knew it and found it to be the Master of the ship who the day before cast up the accounts of his patrimony and his trade and named the day when he thought to be at home see how the man swims who was so angry two dayes since his passions are becalm'd with the storm his accounts cast up his cares at an end his voyage done and his gains are the strange events of death which whither they be good or evil the men that are alive seldom trouble themselves concerning the interest of the dead But seas alone do not break our vessel in pieces Every where we may be shipwracked A valiant General when he is to reap the harvest of his crowns and triumphs fights unprosperously or falls into a Feaver with joy and wine and changes his Lawrel into Cypresse his triumphal chariot to an Hearse dying the night before he was appointed to perish in the drunkennesse of his festival joyes It was a sad arrest of the loosenesses and wilder feasts of the French Court when their King Henry 2. was killed really by the sportive image of a fight And many brides have died under the hands of Paranymphs and Maidens dressing them for uneasy joy the new and undiscerned chains of Marriage according to the saying of Bensirah the wise Jew The Bride went into her chamber and knew not what should befall her there Some have been paying their vows and giving thanks for a prosperous return to their own house and the roof hath descended upon their heads and turned their loud religion into the deeper silence of a grave And how many teeming Mothers have rejoyced over their swelling wombs and pleased themselves in becoming the chanels of blessing to a familie and the Midwife hath quickly bound their heads and feet and carried them forth to burial Or else the birth day of an Heir hath seen the Coffin of the Father brought into the house and the divided Mother hath been forced to travel twice with a painful birth and a sadder death There is no state no accident no circumstance of our life but it hath been sowred by some sad instance of a dying friend a friendly meeting often ends in some sad mischance and makes an eternal parting and when the Poet Eschylus was sitting under the walls of his house an eagle hovering over his bald head mistook it for a stone and let fall his oyster hoping there to break the shell but pierced the poor mans skull Death meets us every where and is procured by every instrument and in all chances and enters in at many doors by violence and secret influence by the aspect of a star and the stink of a mist by the emissions
of a cloud and the meeting of a vapor by the fall of a chariot and the stumbling at a stone by a full meal or an empty stomach by watching at the wine or by watching at prayers by the Sun or the Moon by a heat or a cold by sleeplesse nights or sleeping dayes by water frozen into the hardnesse and sharpnesse of a dagger or water thawd into the floods of a river by a hair or a raisin by violent motion or sitting still by severity or dissolution by Gods mercy or Gods anger by every thing in providence and every thing in manners by every thing in nature and every thing in chance Eripitur persona manet res we take pains to heap up things useful to our life and get our death in the purchase and the person is snatchâ—ed away and the goods remain and all this is the law and constitution of nature it is a punishment to our sins the unalterable event of providence and the decree of heaven The chains that confine us to this condition are strong as destiny and immutable as the eternal laws of God I have conversed with some men who rejoyced in the death or calamity upon others and accounted it as a judgement upon them for being on the other side and against them in the contention but within the revolution of a few moneths the same man met with a more uneasy and unhandsom death which when I saw I wept and was afraid for I knew that it must be so with all men for we also shall die and end our quarrels and contentions by passing to a final sentence SECT II. The Consideration reduced to practice IT will be very material to our best and noblest purposes if we represent this scene of change and sorrow a little more dressed up in Circumstances for so we shall be more apt to practice those Rules the doctrine of which is consequent to this consideration * It is a mighty change that is made by the death of every person and it is visible to us who are alive Reckon but from the spritefulnesse of youth and the fair cheeks and full eyes of childehood from the vigorousnesse and strong flexure of the joynts of five and twenty to the hollownesse and dead palenesse to the loathsomnesse and horrour of a three dayes burial and we shall perceive the distance to be very great and very strange But so have I seen a Rose newly springing from the clefts of its hood and at first it was fair as the Morning and full with the dew of Heaven as a Lambs fleece but when a ruder breath had forced open its virgin modesty and dismantled its too youthful and unripe retirements it began to put on darknesse and to decline to softnesse and the symptomes of a sickly age it bowed the head and broke its stalk and at night having lost some of its leaves and all its beauty it fell into the portion of weeds and out-worn faces The same is the portion of every man and every woman the heritage of worms and serpents rottennesse and cold dishonour and our beauty so changed that our acquaintance quickly knew us not and that change mingled with so much horrour or else meets so with our fears and weak discoursings that they who six hours ago tended upon us either with charitable or ambitious services cannot without some regret stay in the room alone where the body lies stripped of its life and Honour I have read of a fair young German Gentleman who living often refused to be pictured but put ofâ— the importunity of his friends desire by giving way that after a few dayes burial they might send a painter to his vault and if they saw cause for it draw the image of his death unto the life They did so and found his face half eaten and his midriffe and back bone full of serpents and so he stands pictured among his armed Ancestours So does the fairest beauty change and it will be as bad with you and me and then what servants shall we have to wait upon us in the grave what friends to visit us what officious people to cleanse away the moist and unwholsom cloud reflected upon our faces from the sides of the weeping vaults which are the longest weepers for our funeral This discourse will be useful if we consider and practise by the following Rules and Considerations respectivly 1. All the Rich and all the Covetous men in the world will perceive and all the world will perceive for them that it is but an ill recompence for all their cares that by this time all that shall be left will be this that the Neighbours shall say he died a rich man and yet his wealth will not profit him in the grave but hugely swell the sad accounts of Doomsday And he that kills the Lords people with unjust or ambitious wars for an unrewarding interest shall have this character that he threw away all the dayes of his life that one year might be reckoned with his Name and computed by his reign or consulship and many men by great labors and affronts many indignities and crimes labour onely for a pompous Epitaph and a loud title upon their Marble whilest those into whose possessions their heirs or kinred are entred are forgotten and lye unregarded as their ashes and without concernment or relation as the turf upon the face of their grave A man may read a sermon the best and most passionate that ever men preached if he shall but enter into the sepulchres of Kings In the same Escurial where the Spanish Princes live in greatnesse and power and decree war or peace they have wisely placed a coemeterie where their ashes and their glories shall sleep till time shall be no more and where our Kings have been crowned their Ancestours lay interred and they must walk over their Grandsires head to take his crown There is an acre sown with royal seed the copy of the greatest change from rich to naked from ciâ—led roofs to arched coffins from living like Gods to dye like Men. There is enough to cool the flames of lust to abate the heights of pride to appease the itch of covetous desires to â—ully and dash out the dissembling colours of a lustful artificial and imaginary beauty There the warlike and the peaceful the fortunate and the miserable the beloved and the despised Princes mingle their dust and pay down their symbol of Mortality and tell all the world that when we die our ashes shall be equal to Kings and our accounts easier and our pains or our crowns shall be lesse * To my apprehension it is a sad record which is left by Athenaeus concerning Ninus the great Assyrian Monarch whose life and death is summed up in these words Ninus the Assyrian had an Ocean of gold and other riches more then the sand in the Caspian sea he never saw the stars and perhaps he never desired
it he never stirred up the holy fire among the Magi nor touched his God with the sacred rod according to the Laws he never offered sacrifice nor worshipped the Deity nor administred justice nor spake to his people nor numbred them but he was most valiant to eat and drink and having mingled his wines he threw the rest upon the stones This man is dead Behold his Sepulchre and now hear where Ninus is Some times I was Ninus and drew the breath of a living man but now am nothing but clay I have nothing but what I did eat and what I served to my self in lust that was and is all my portion the wealth with which I was esteemed blessed my enemies meeting together shall bear away as the mad Thyades carry a raw Goat I am gone to Hell and when I went thither I neither carried Gold nor Horse nor silver Chariot I that wore a Miter am now a little heap of dust I know not any thing that can better represent the evil condition of a wicked man or a changing greatnesse From the greatest secular dignity to dust and ashes his nature bears him and from thence to Hell his sins carry him and there he shall be for ever under the dominion of chains and devils wrath and an intollerable calamity This is the reward of an unsanctified condition and a greatnesse ill gotten or ill administred 2. Let no man extend his thoughts or let his hopes wander towards future and far distant events and accidental contingencies This day is mine and yours but ye know not what shall be on the morrow and every morning creeps out of a dark cloud leaving behinde it an ignorance and silence deep as midnight and undiscerned as are the phantasms that make a Chrysome childe to smile so that we cannot discern what comes hereafter unlesse we had a light from Heaven brighter then the vision of an Angel even the Spirit of Prophesie Without revelation we cannnot tell whether we shal eat to morrow or whether a Squinzy shall choak us and it is written in the unrevealed folds of Divine Predestination that many who are this day alive shall to morrow be laid upon the cold earth and the women shall weep over their shrowd and dresse them for their funeral S. Iames in his Epistle notes the solly of some men his contemporaries who were so impatient of the event of to morrow or the accidents of next year or the good or evils of old age that they would consult Astrologers and witches Oracles and Devils what should befall them the next Calends what should be the event of such a voyage what God had written in his book concerning the successe of battels the Election of Emperors the Heir of families the price of Merchandise the return of the Tyrian fleer the rate of Sidonian Carpets and as they were taught by the crafty and lying Daemons so they would expect the issue and oftentimes by disposing their affairs in order toward such events really did produce some litle accidents according to their expectation and that made them trust the Oracles in greater things and in all Against this he opposes his Counsel that we should not search after forbidden records much lesse by uncertain significations for whatsoever is disposed to happen by the order of natural causes or civil counsels may be rescinded by a peculiar decree of providence or be prevented by the death of the interested persons who while their hopes are full and their causes conjoyned and the work brought forward and the sickle put into the harvest and the first fruits offered and ready to be eaten even then if they put forth their hand to an event that stands but at the door at that door their body may be carried forth to burial before the expectation shall enter into fruition When Richilda the Widow of Albert Earl of Ebersberg had feasted the Emperour Henry III. and petitioned in behalf of her Nephew Welpho for some lands formerly possessed by the Earl her Husband just as the Emperour held out his hand to signifie his consent the chamber-floor suddenly fell under them and Richilda falling upon the edge of a bathing vessel was bruised to death and stayed not to see her Nephew sleep in those lands which the Emperour was reaching forth to her and placed at the door of restitution 3. As our hopes must be confined so must our designes let us not project long designes crafty plots and diggings so deep that the intrigues of a designe shall never be unfolded till our Grand children have forgotten our vertues or our vices The work of our soul is cut short facile sweet and plain and fitted to the small portions of our shorter life and as we must not trouble our inquiry so neither must we intricate our labour and purposes with what we shall never enjoy This rule does not forbid us to plant Orchards which shall feed our Nephews with their fruit for by such provisions they do something towards an imaginary immortality and do charity to their Relatives But such projects are reproved which discompose our present duty by long and future designes such which by casting our labours to events at distance make us lesse to remember our death standing at the door It is fit for a Man to work for his dayes wages or to contrive for the hire of a week or to lay a train to make provisions for such a time as is within our eye and in our duty and within the usual periods of Mans life for whatsoever is made necessary is also made prudent but while we plot and buisy our selves in the toils of an ambitious war or the levies of a great estate Night enters in upon us and tells all the world how like fools we lived and how deceived and miserably we dyed Seneca tells of Senecio Cornelius a man crafty in getting and tenacious in holding a great estate and one who was as diligent in the care of his body as of his money curious of his health as of his possessions that he all day long attended upon his sick and dying friend but when he went away was quickly comforted supped merrily went to bed cheerfully and on a sudden being surprized by a Squinzy scarce drew his breath until the Morning but by that time dyed being snatched from the torrent of his fortune and the swelling tide of wealth and a likely hope bigger then the necessities of ten men This accident was much noted then in Rome because it happened in so great a fortune and in the midst of wealthy designes and presently it made wise men to consider how imprudent a person he is who disposes of ten years to come when he is not Lord of to morrow 4. Though we must not look so far ofâ— and prey abroad yet we must be buisie neer at hand we must with all arts of the Spirit seize upon the present because it passes from us while we
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
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
thou think then to be more alive then now thou art We do not die suddenly but we descend to death by steps and slow passages and therefore men so long as they are sick are unwilling to proceed and go forward in the finishing that sad imployment Between a disease and death there are many degrees and all those are like the reserves of evil things the declining of every one of which is justly reckoned amongst those good things which alleviate the sicknesse and make it tolerable Never account that sicknesse intolerable in which thou hadst rather remaine then die And yet if thou hadst rather die then suffer it the worst of it that can be said is this that this sicknesse is worse then death that is it is worse then that which is the best of all evils and the end of all troubles and then you have said no great harme against it 6. Remember that thou art under a supervening necessity Nothing is intolerable that is necessary and therefore when men are to suffer a sharp incision or what they are pleased to call intolerable tie the man down to it and he endures it Now God hath bound this sicknesse upon thee by the condition of Nature for every flower must wither and droop it is also bound upon thee by speciall providence and with a designe to try thee and with purposes to reward and to crown thee These cords thou canst not break and therefore lie thee down gently and suffer the hand of God to do what he please that at least thou mayest swallow an advantage which the care and severe mercies of God forces down thy throat 7. Remember that all men have passed this way the bravest the wisest the best men have bin subject to sicknes sad diseases and it is esteemed a prodigy that a man should live to a long age and not be sick and it is recorded for a wonder concerning Xenophilus the Musitian that he lived to 106 years of age in a perfect and continual health No story tells the like of a Prince or a great or a wise person unlesse we have a minde to believe the tales concerning Nestor and the Euboean Sibyl Old age and healthfull bodies are seldome made the appendages to great fortunes and under so great and so universal precedents so common fate of men he that will not suffer his portion deserves to be something else then a man but nothing that is better 8. We finde in story that many Gentiles who walked by no light but that of reason opinion and humane examples did bear their sicknesse nobly and with great contempt of pain and with huge interests of vertue When Pompey came from Syria and called at Rhodes to see Posidonius the Philosopher he found him hugely afflicted with the gout and expressed his sorrow that he could not hear his Lectures from which by this pain he must needs be hindred Posidonius told him but you may hear me for all this and he discours'd excellently in the midst of his tortures even then when the torches were put to his feet that nothing was good but what was honest and therefore nothing could be an evil if it were not criminal and summed up his Lectures with this saying O pain in vain doest thou attempt me for I will never confesse thee to be an evil as long as I can honestly bear thee And when Pompey himself was desperately sick at Naples the Neopolitans wore crowns and triumphed and the men of Puteoli came to congratulate his sicknesse not because they loved him not but because it was the custome of their countrey to have better opinions of sicknesse then we have The boyes of Sparta would at their Altars endure whipping till their very entrails saw the light thorow their torn flesh and some of them to death without crying or complaint Caesar would drink his potions of Rhubarb rudely mixt and unfitly allayed with little sippings and tasted the horror of the medicine spreading the loathsomnesse of his physick so that all the parts of his tongue and palate might have an intire share and when C. Marius suffered the veins of his leg to be cut out for the curing his gout and yet shrunk not he declared not onely the rudenesse of their physick but the strength of a mans spirit if it be contracted and united by the aids of reason or Religion by resolution or any accidentall harshnesse against a violent disease 9. All impatience howsoever expressed is perfectly uselesse to all purposes of ease but hugely effective to the multiplying the trouble and the impatience and vexation is another but the sharper disease of the two it does mischief by it self and mischief by the disease For men grieve themselves as much as they please and when by impatience they put themselves into the retinue of sorrows they become solemne mourners For so have I seen the rayes of the Sun or Moon dash upon a brazen vessel whose lips kissed the face of those waters that lodged within its bosome but being turned back and sent off with its smooth pretences or rougher waftings it wandred about the room and beat upon the roof and still doubled its heat and motion So is a sicknesse and a sorrow entertained by an unquiet and a discontented man turned back either with anger or with excuses but then the pain passes from the stomack to the liver and from the liver to the heart and from the heart to the head and from feeling to consideration from thence to sorrow and at last ends in impatience and uselesse murmur and all the way the man was impotent and weak but the sicknesse was doubled and grew imperious and tyrannicall over the soul and body Massurius Sabinus tels that the image of the goddesse Angerona was with a mufler upon her mouth placed upon the Altar of Volupia to represent that those persons who bear their sicknesses and sorrows without murmur shall certainly passe from sorrow to pleasure and the ease and honours of felicity but they that with spite and indignation bite the burning coal or shake the yoak upon their necks gall their spirits and fret the skin and hurt nothing but themselves 10. Remember that this sicknesse is but for a short time If it be sharp it will not last long If it be long it will be easie and very tolerable And although S. Eadsine Archbishop of Canterbury had twelve years of sicknesse yet all that while he ruled his Church prudently gave example of many vertues and after his death was enrolled in the Calender of Saints who had finished their course prosperously Nothing is more unreasonable then to intangle our spirits in wildnesse and amazement like a Partrich fluttering in a net which she breaks not though she breaks her wings SECT V. Remedies against Impatience by way of exercise THe fittest instrument of esteeming sicknesse easily tolerable is to remember that which indeed makes it
so and that is that God doth minister proper aids and supports to every of his servants whom he visits with his rod. He knows our needs he pities our sorrows he relieves our miseries he supports our weaknesse he bids us ask for help and he promises to give us all that and he usually gives us more and indeed it is observable that no story tells of any godly man who living in the fear of God fell into a violent and unpardoned impatience in his naturall sicknesse if he used those means which God and his holy Church have appointed We see almost all men bear their last sicknesse with sorrowes indeed but without violent passions and unlesse they fear death violently they suffer the sicknesse with some indifferency and it is a rare thing to see a man who enjoyes his reason in his sicknesse to expresse the proper signes of a direct and solemne impatience For when God layes a sicknesse upon us he seizes commonly on a mans spirits which are the instruments of action and businesse and when they are secured from being tumultuous the sufferance is much the easier and therefore sicknesse secures all that which can do the man mischief It makes him tame and passive apt for suffering and confines him to an unactive condition To which if we adde that God then commonly produces fear and all those passions which naturally tend to humility and poverty of spirit we shall soon perceive by what instruments God verifies his promise to us which is the great security for our patience and the easinesse of our condition that God will lay no more upon us then he will make us able to â—ear but together with the affliction he will finde a way to escape Nay if any thing can be more then this we have two or three promises in which we may safely lodge our selves and roul from off our thorns and finde ease and rest God hath promised to be with us in our trouble and to be with us in our prayers and to be with us in our hope and conâ—idence 2. Prevent the violence and trouble of thy spirit by an act of thanksgiving for which in the worst of sicknesses thou canst not want cause especially if thou remembrest that this pain is not an eternall pain Blesse God for that But take heed also lest you so order your affairs that you passe from hence to an eternall soâ—râ—w If that be hard this will be intolerable But as for the present evil a few dayes will end it 3. Remember that thou art a man and a Christian as the Covenant of nature hath made it necessary so the covenant of grace hath made it to be chosen by thee to be a suffering person either you must renounce your religion or submit to the impositions of God and thy portion of sufferings So that here we see our advantages and let us use them accordingly The barbarous and warlike nations of old could fight well and willingly but could not bear sicknesse manfully The Greeks were cowardly in their fights as most wise men are but because they were learned and well taught they bore their sicknesse with patience and severity The Cimbrians and Celtiberians rejoyce in battail like Gyants but in their diseases they weep like Women These according to their institution and designes had unequal courages and accidental fortitude but since our Religion hath made a covenant of sufferings and the great businesse of our lives is sufferings and most of the vertues of a Christian are passive graces and all the promises of the Gospel are passed upon us through Christs crosse we have a necessity upon us to have an equal courage in all the variety of our sufferings for without an universal fortitude we can do nothing of our dutie 4. Resolve to do as much as you can for certain it is we can suffer very much if we list and many men have afflicted themselves unreasonably by not being skilful to consider how much their strength and state could permit and our flesh is nice and imperious crafty to perswade reason that she hath more necessities thâ—n indeed belong to her and that she demands nothing superfluous suffer as much in obedience to God as you can suffer for necessity or passion fear or desire And if you can for one thing you can for another and there is nothing wanting but the minde Never say I can do no more I cannot endure this For God would not have sent it if he had not known thee strong enough to abide it onely he that knows thee well already would also take this occasion to make thee know thy self But it will be fit that you pray to God to give you a discerning spirit that you may rightly distinguish just necessity from the flattery and fondnesses of flesh and blood 5. Propound to your eyes and heart the example of the holy Jesus upon the crosse he endured more for thee then thou canst either for thy self or him and remember that if we be put to suffer and do suffer in a good cause or in a good manner so that in any sense your sufferings be conformable to his sufferings or can be capable of being united to his we shall reign together with him The high way of the Crosse which the King of sufferings hath troden before us is the way to ease to a kingdom and to felicity 6. The very suffering is a title to an excellent inheritance for God chastens every son whom he receives and if we be not chastised we are bastards and not sons and be confident that although God often sends pardon without correction yet he never sends correction without pardon unless it be thy fault and therefore take every or any affliction as an earnest peny of thy pardon and upon condition there may be peace with God let any thing be welcome that he can send as its instrument or condition Suffer therefore God to choose his own circumstances of adopting thee and be content to be under discipline when the reward of that is to become the son of God and by such inflictions he hewes and breaks thy body first dressing it to funeral and then preparing it for immortality and if this be the effect or the designe of Gods love to thee let it be occasion of thy love to him and remember that the truth of love is hardly known but by somewhat that puts us to pain 7. Use this as a punishment for thy sins and so God intends it most commonly that is certain if therefore thou submittest to it thou approvest of the divine judgement and no man can have cause to complain of any thing but of himself if either he believes God to be just or himself to be a sinner if he either thinks he hath deserved Hell or that this little may be a means to prevent the greater and bring him to Heaven 8. It may be that this may be the last instance and the last opportunity that ever
state of sicknesse are onely upon the stock of vertue and religion There is nothing can make sicknesse in any sense eligible or in many senses tolerable but onely the grace of God that onely turns sicknesse into easinesse and felicity which also turnes it into vertue For whosoever goes about to comfort a vitious person when he lies sick upon his bed can onely discourse of the necessities of nature of the unavoidableness of the suffering of the accidental vexations and increase of torments by impatience of the fellowship of all the sons of Adam and such other little considerations which indeed if sadly reflected upon and found to stand alone teach him nothing but the degree of his calamity and the evil of his condition and teach him such a patience and minister to him such a comfort which can only make him to observ decent gestures in his sicknesse and to converse with his friends and standers by so as may do them comfort and ease their funeral and civil complaints but do him no true advantage For all that may be spoken to a beast when he is crowned with hairlaces and bound with fillets to the Altar to bleed to death to appease the anger of the Deity and to ease the burden of his Relatives And indeed what comfort can he receive whose sicknesse as it looks back is an effect of Gods indignation and fierce vengeance and if it goes forward and enters into the gates of the grave is a beginning of a sorrow that shall shall never have an ending But when the sicknesse is a messenger sent from a chastising Father when it first turns into degrees of innocence and then into vertues and thence into pardon this is no misery but such a method of the Divine oeconomy and dispensation as resolves to bring us to heaven without any new impositions but meerly upon the stock and charges of nature 2. Let it be observed that these advantages which spring from sicknesse are not in all instances of vertue nor to all persons Sicknesse is the proper scene for patience and resignation for all the passive graces of a Christian for faith and hope and for some single acts of the love of God But sicknesse is not a fit station for a penitent and it can serve the ends of the grace of repentance but accidentally Sicknesse may begin a repentance if God continues life and if we cooperate with the Divine grace or sicknesse may help to alleviate the wrath of God and to facilitate the pardon if all the other parts of this duty be performed in our healthfull state so that it may serve at the entrance in or at the going out But sicknesse at no hand is a good stage to represent all the substantiall parts of this duty 1. It invites to it 2. It makes it appear necessary 3. It takes off the fancies of vanity 4. It attempers the spirit 5. It cures hypocrisie 6. It tames the fumes of pride 7. It is the school of patience 8. And by taking us from off the brisker relishes of the world it makes us with more gust to taste the things of the Spirit and all this onely when God fits the circumstances of the sicknesse so as to consist with acts of reason consideration choice and a present and reflecting minde which then God sends when he means that the sickness of the body should be the cure of the soul. But let no man so rely upon it as by designe to trust the beginning the progresse and the consummation of our piety to such an estate which for ever leaves it unperfect and though to some persons it addes degrees and ministers opportunities and exercises single acts with great advantage in passive graces yet it is never an intire or sufficient instrument for the change of our condition from the state of death to the liberty and life of the sons of God 3. It were good if we would transact the affairs of our souls with noblenesse and ingenuity and that we would by an early and forward religion prevent the necessary arts of the Divine providence It is true that God cures some by incision by fire and torments but these are ever the more obstinate and more unrelenting natures Gods providence is not so afflictive and full of trouble as that it hath placed sicknesse and infirmity amongst things simply necessary and in most persons it is but a sickly and an effeminate vertue which is imprinted upon our spirits with fears and the sorrowes of a feaver or a peevâ—sh consumption It is but a miserable remedy to be beholding to a sicknesse for our health and though it be better to suffer the losse of a finger then that the arm and the whole body should putrifie yet even then also it is a trouble and an evil to lose a finger He that mends with sicknesse pares the nails of the beast when they have already torn off part of the flesh But he that would have a sicknesse become a clear and an entire blessing a thing indeed to be reckoned among the good things of God and the evil things of the world must lead an holy life and judge himself with an early sentence and so order the affairs of his soul that in the usuall method of Gods saving us there may be nothing left to be done but that such vertues should be exercised which God intends to crown and then as when the Athenians upon a day of battell with longing and uncertain souls sate in their Common-hall expecting what would be the sentence of the day at last received a messenger who onely had breath enough left him to say We are conquerours and so died So shall the sick person who hath fought a good fight and kept the faith and onely waitâ— for his dissolution and his sentence breaths forth his spirit with the accents of a conquerour and his sicknesse and his death shall onely make the mercy and the vertue more illustrious But for the sicknesse it self if all the calumnies were true concerning it with which it is aspersed yet it is far to be preferred before the most pleasant sin and before a great secular businesse and a temporall care and some men wake as much in the foldings of the softest beds as others on the crosse and sometimes the very weight of sorrow and the wearinesse of a sicknesse presses the spirit into slumbers and the images of rest when the intemperate or the lustfull person rolls upon his uneasie thorns and sleep is departed from his eyes Certainly it is some sicknesse is a blessing Indeed blindnesse were a most accursed thing if no man were ever blind but he whose eyes are pulled out with tortures or burning basins and if sickness were always a testimony of Gods anger and a violence to a mans whole condition then it were a huge calamity but because God sends it to his servants to his children to little infants to Apostles and Saints with designes
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
hand of the most High No temptation hath taken me but such as is common to man but God is faithful who will not suffer me to be tempted above what I am able but will with the temptation also make a way to escape that I may be able to bear it Whatsoever things were written afore time were written for our learning that we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope Now the God of peace and consolation grant me to be so minded It is the Lord let him do what seemeth good in his eyes Surely the word that the Lord hath spoken is very good But thy servant is weak O remember mine infirmities and lift thy servant up that leaneth upon thy right hand There is given unto me a thorn in the flesh to buffet me For this thing I besought the Lord thrice that it might depart from me and he said unto me My grace is sufficient for thee For my strength is made perfect in weaknesse Most gladly therefore will I glory in my infirmities that the power of Christ may rest upon me For when I am weak then am I strong O Lord thou hast pleaded the causes of my soul thou hast redeemed my life And I said My strength and my hope is in the Lord remembring my affliction and my misery the wormwood and the gall My soul hath them still in remembrance and is humbled within me This I recall to my minde therefore I have hope It is the Lords mercies that we are not consumed because his compassions fail not They are new every morning great is thy faithfulnesse The Lord is my portion said my soul therefore will I hope in him The Lord is good unto them that wait for him to the soul that seeketh him It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord. For the Lord will not cast off for ever But though he cause grief yet will he have compassion according to the multitude of his mercies For he doth not afflict willingly nor grieve the children of men Wherefore doth a living man complain a man for the punishment of his sins O that thou wouldest hide me in the grave of Jesus that thou wouldest keep me secret until thy wrath be past that thou wouldest appoint me a set time and remember me Shall we receive good at the hand of God and shall we not receive evil The sick man may recite or hear recited the following Psalms in the intervals of his agony I. O Lord rebuke me not in thine anger neither chasten me in thy hot displeasure Have mercy upon me O Lord for I am weak O Lord heal me for my bones are vexed My soul is also sore vexed but thou O Lord how long Return O Lord deliver my soul O save me for thy mercies sake For in death no man remembreth thee in the grave who shall give thee thanks I am weary with my groaning all the night make I my bed to swim I water my couch with my tears Mine eye is consumed because of grief it waxeth old because of all my sorrowes Depart from me all ye workers of iniquity for the Lord hath heard the voice of my weeping The Lord hath heard my supplication the Lord will receive my prayer Blessed be the Lord who hath heard my prayer and hath not turned his mercy from me II. IN the Lord put I my trust how say ye to my soul flee as a bird to your mountain The Lord is in his holy temple the Lords throne is in heaven his eyes behold his eye-lids try the children of men Preserve me O God for in thee do I put my trust O my soul thou hast said unto the Lord thou art my Lord my goodnesse extendeth not to thee The Lord is the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup thou maintainest my lot I will blesse the Lord who hath given me counsel my reins also instruct me in the night seasons I have set the Lord alwayes before me because he is at my right hand I shall not be moved Therefore my heart is glad and my glory rejoyceth my flesh also shall rest in hope Thou wilt shew me the path of life in thy presence is the fulnesse of joy at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore As for me I will behold thy face in righteousnesse I shall be satisfied when I awake with thy likenesse III. HAve mercy upon me O Lord for I am in trouble mine eye is consumed with grief yea my soul and my belly For my life is spent with grief and my years with sighing my strength faileth because of mine iniquity and my bones are consumed * I am like a broken vessel But I trusted in thee O Lord I said thou art my God My times are in thy hand make thy face to shine upon thy servant save me for thy mercies sake When thou saidst seek ye my face my heart said unto thee thy face Lord will I seek Hide not thy face from me put not thy servant away in thy anger thou hadst been my help leave me not neither forsake me O God of my salvation I had fainted unlesse I had beleeved the goodnesse of the Lord in the land of the living O how great is thy goodnesse which thou hast laid up for them that fear thee which thou hast wrought for them that trust in thee before the sons of men Thou shalt hide them in the secret of thy presence from the pride of man thou shalt keep them secretly in a pavilion from the strife of tongues from the calumnies and aggravation of sins by Devils I said in my haste I am cut off from before thine eyes neverthelesse thou heardest the voice of my supplication when I cried unto thee O love the Lord all ye his Saints for the Lord preserveth the faithfull and plenteously rewardeth the proud doer Be of good courage and he shall strengthen your heart all ye that hope in the Lord. The Prayer to be said in the beginning of a sicknesse O Almighty God mercifull and gracious who in thy justice didst send sorrow and tears sicknesse and death into the world as a punishment for mans sins and hast comprehended all under sin and this sad covenant of sufferings not to destroy us but that thou mightest have mercy upon all making thy justice to minister to mercy short afflictions to an eternall weight of glory as thou hast turned my sins into sicknesse so turn my sicknesse to the advantages of holinesse and religion of mercy and pardon of faith and hope of grace and glory thou hast now called me to the fellowship of sufferings Lord by the instrument of religion let my present condition be so sanctified that my sufferings may be united to the sufferings of my Lord that so thou mayest pity me and assist me relieve my sorrow and support my spirit direct my
that the sick man make an universal confession or a renovation and repetition of all the particular confessions and accusations of his whole life that now at the foot of his account he may represent the summe totall to God and his conscience and make provisions for their remedie and pardon according to his present possibilities 5. Now is the time to make reflex acts of repentance that as by a general repentance we supply the want of the just extension of parts so by this we may supply the proper measures of the intension of degrees In our health we can consider concerning our own acts whether they be real or hypocritical essential or imaginary sincere or upon interest integrall or imperfect commensurate or defective and although it is a good caution of securities after all our care and diligence still to suspect our selves and our own deceptions and for ever to beg of God pardon and acceptance in the union of Christs passion and intercession yet in proper speaking reflex acts of repentance being a suppletory after the imperfection of the direct are then most fit to be used when we cannot proceed in and prosecute the direct actions To repent because we cannot repent and to grieve because we cannot grieve was a device invented to serve the turn of the mother of Peter Gratian but it was used by her and so advised to be in her sicknesse and last actions of repentance for in our perfect health and understanding if we doe not understand our first act we cannot discern our second and if we be not sorry for our sins we cannot be sorry for want of sorrows it is a contradiction to say we can because want of sorrow to which we are obliged is certainly a great sin and if we can grieve for that then also for the rest if not for all then not for this but in the dayes of weaknesse the case is otherwise for then our actions are imperfect our discourse weak our internall actions not discernable our fears great our work to be abbreviated and our defects to be supplied by spirituall arts and therefore it is proper and proportionate to our state and to our necessity to beg of God pardon for the imperfections of our repentance acceptance of our weaker sorrows supplies out of the treasures of grace and mercy and thus repenting of the evil and unhandsome adherencies of our repentance in the whole integrity of the duty it will become a repentance not to be repented of 6. Now is the time beyond which the sick man must at no hand defer to make restitution of all his unjust possessions or other mens rights and satisfactions for all injuries and violencies according to his obligation and possibilities for although many circumstances might impede the acting it in our lives-time and it was permitted to be deferred in many cases because by it justice was not hindred and oftentimes piety and equity were provided for yet because this is the last scene of our life he that does not act it so far as he can or put it into certain conditions and order of effecting can never do it again and therefore then to defer it is to omit it and leaves the repentance defective in an integrall and constituent part 7. Let the sick man be diligent and watchfull that the principle of his repentance be contrition or sorrow for sins commenced upon the love of God For although sorrow for sins upon any motive may lead us to God by many intermediall passages and is the threshold of returning sinners yet it is not good nor effective upon our death-bed because repentance is not then to begin but must then be finished and completed and it is to be a supply and reparation of all the imperfections of that duty and therefore it must by that time be arrived to contrition that is it must have grown from fear to love from the passions of a servant to the affections of a son The reason of which besides the precedent is this because when our repentance is in this state it supposes the man also in a state of grace a well grown Christian for to hate sin out of the love of God is not the felicity of a new convert or an infant grace or if it be that love also is in its infancy but it supposes a good progresse and the man habitually vertuous and tending to perfection and therefore contrition or repentance so qualified is usefull to great degrees of pardon because the man is a gracious person and that vertue is of good degree and consequently fit imployment for him that shall work no more but is to appear before his Judge to receive the hire of his day And if his repentance be contrition even before this state of sicknesse let it be increased by spirituall arts and the proper exercises of charity Means of exciting contrition or repentance of sins proceeding from the love of God TO which purpose the sick man may consider and is to be reminded if he does not that there are in God all the motives and causes of amability in the world that God is so infinitely good that there are some of the greatest and most excellent spirits of heaven whose work and whose felicity and whose perfections and whose nature it is to flame and burn in the brightest and most excellent love * that to love God is the greatest glory of Heaven that in him there are such excellencies that the smallest rayes of them communicated to our weaker understandings are yet sufficient to cause ravishments and transportations and satisfactions and joyes unspeakeable and full of glory * that all the wise Christians of the world know and feel such causes to love God that they all professe themselves ready to die for the love of God * and the Apostles and millions of the Martyrs did die for him * And although it be harder to live in his love then to die for it yet all the good people that ever gave their names to Christ did for his love endure the crucifying their lusts the mortification of their appetites the contradictions and death of their most passionate naturall desires * that Kings and Queens have quitted their Diadems and many married Saints have turned their mutuall vowes into the love of Jesus and married him onely keeping a virgin chastity in a married life that they may more tenderly expresse their love to God * that all the good we have derives from Gods love to us and all the good we can hope for is the effect of his love and can descend onely upon them that love him * that by his love it is that we receive the holy Jesus * and by his love we receive the Holy Spirit * and by his love we feel peace and joy within our spirits * and by his love we receive the mysterious Sacrament * And what can be greater then that from the goodnesse and love of God we receive Jesus Christ and
learning in publike charge and by all others in their proportions 10. The ministers of religion must take care that the sick mans confession be as minute and particular as it can and that as few sins as may be be entrusted to the generall prayer of pardon for all sins for by being particular and enumerative of the variety of evils which have disordered his life his repentance is disposed to be more pungent and afflictive and therefore more salutary and medicinall it hath in it more sincerity and makes a better judgement of the finall condition of the man and from thence it is certain the hopes of the sick man can be more confident and reasonable 11. The spirituall man that assists at the repentance of the sick must not be inquisitive into all the circumstances of the particular sins but be content with those that are direct parts of the crime and aggravation of the sorrow Such as frequency long abode and earnest choice in acting them violent desires great expense scandall of others dishonour to the religion dayes of devotion and religious solemnities holy places and the degrees of boldnesse and impudence perfect resolution and the habit If the sick person be reminded or inquired into concerning these it may prove a good instrument to increase his contrition and perfect his penitentiall sorrows and facilitate his ablution and the means of his amendment But the other circumstances as of the relative person in the participation of the crime the measures or circumstances of the impure action the name of the injured man or woman the quality or accidentall condition these and all the like are but questions springing from curiosity and producing scruple and apt to turn into many inconveniencies 11. The Minister in this duty of repentance must be diligent to observe concerning the person that repents that he be not imposed upon by some one excellent thing that was remarkable in the sick mans former life For there are some people of one good thing Some are charitable to the poor out of kind-heartednesse and the same good-nature makes them easie and compliant with drinking persons and they die with drink but cannot live with charity and their alms it may be shall deck their monument or give them the reward of loving persons and the poor mans thanks for alms and procure many temporall blessings but it is very sad that the reward should be all spent in this world some are rarely just persons and punctuall observers of their word with men but break their promises with God and make no scruple of that In these and all the like cases the spirituall man must be carefull to remark that good proceeds from an intire and integrall cause and evil from every part That one sicknesse can make a man die but he cannot live and be called a sound man without an intire health and therefore if any confidence arises upon that stock so as that it hinder the strictness of the repentance it must be allayed with the representment of this sad truth That he who reserves one evil in his choice hath chosen an evil portion and colliquintida and death is in the pot and he that worships the God of Israel with a frequent sacrifice and yet upon the anniversary will bow in the house of Venus and loves to see the follies and the nakednesse of Rimmon may eat part of the flesh of the sacrifice and fill his belly but shall not be refreshed by the holy cloud arising from the altar or the dew of heaven descending upon the mysteries 12. And yet the Minister is to estimate that one or more good things is to be an ingredient into his judgement concerning the state of his soul and the capacities of his restitution and admission to the peace of the Church and according as the excellency and usefulnesse of the grace hath been and according to the degrees and the reasons of its prosecution so abatements are to be made in the injunctions and impositions upon the penitent For every vertue is one degree of approach to God and though in respect of the acceptation it is equally none at all that is it is as certain a death if a man dies with one mortall wound as if he had twenty yet in such persons who have some one or more excellencies though not an intire piety there is naturally a neerer approach to the estate of grace then in persons who have done evils and are eminent for nothing that is good But in making judgement of such persons it is to be inquired into and noted accordingly why the sick person was so eminent in that one good thing whether by choice and apprehension of his duty or whether it was a vertue from which his state of life ministred nothing to dehort or discourage him or whether it was onely a consequent of his naturall temper and constitution If the first then it supposes him in the neighbourhood of the state of grace and that in other things he was strongly tempted The second is a felicity of his education and an effect of providence The third is a felicity of his nature and a gift of God in order to spirituall purposes But yet of every one of these advantage is to be made If he conscience of his duty was the principle then he is ready formed to entertain all other graces upon the same reason and his repentance must be made more sharp and penall because he is convinced to have done against his conscience in all the other parts of his life but the judgement concerning his finall state ought to be more gentle because it was a huge temptation that hindred the man and abused his infirmity but if either his calling or his nature were the parents of the grace he is in the state of a morall man in the just and proper meaning of the word and to be handled accordingly that vertue disposed him rarely well to many other good things but was no part of the grace of sanctification and therefore the mans repentance is to begin anew for all that and is to be finished in the returns of health if God grants it but if he denies it it is much very much the worse for all that sweet natur'd vertue 13. When the confession is made the spirituall man is to execute the office of a Restorer and a Iudge in the following particulars and manner SECT IIII. Of the ministring to the restitution and pardon or reconciliation of the sick person by administring the Holy Sacrament IF any man be overtaken in a fault ye which are spiritual restore such a one in the spirit of meeknesse That 's the Commission and Let the Elders of the Church pray over the sick man and if he have committed sins they shall be forgiven him that 's the effect of his power and his ministery But concerning this some few things are to be considered 1. It is the office of the Presbyters and Ministers
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
the world a longing desire after heaven patience in our sorrows comfort in our sicknesses joy in God a holy life and a blessed death that our souls may rest in hope and my body may rise in glory and both may be beatified in the communion of Saints in the kingdom of God and the glories of the Lord Jesus Amen The blessing Now the God of peace that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus that great shepherd of the sheep thorough the blood of the everlasting covenant make you perfect in every good work to do his will working in you that which is pleasing in his sight to whom be glory for ever and ever Amen The doxology To the blessed and onely Potentate the King of kings and the Lord of Lords who only hath immortality dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto whom no man hath seen nor can see be honour and power everlasting Amen After the sick man is departed the Minister if he be present or the Major dome or any other fit person may use the following prayers in behalf of themselves I. ALmighty God with whom do live the spirits of them that depart hence in the Lord we adore thy Majesty and submit to thy providence and revere thy justice and magnifie thy mercies thy infinite mercies that it hath pleased thee to deliver this our brother out of the miseries of this sinful world Thy counsels are secret and thy wisdom is infinite with the same hand thou hast crowned him and smitten us thou hast taken him into regions of felicity and placed him among Saints and Angels and left us to mourn for our sins and thy displeasure which thou hast signified to us by removing him from us to a better a far better place Lord turn thy anger into mercie thy chastisements into vertues thy rod into comforts and do thou give to all his neerest relatives comforts from heaven and a restitution of blessings equall to those which thou hast taken from them And we humbly beseech thee of thy gracious goodnesse shortly to satisfie the longing desires of those Holy souls who pray and wait and long for thy second coming Accomplish thou the number of thine elect and fill up the Mansions in heaven which are prepared for all them that love the coming of the Lord Jesus that we with this our Brother and all other departed this life in the obedience and faith of the Lord Jesus may have our perfect consummation and blisse in thy eternall glory which never shall have ending Grant this for Jesus Christ his sake our Lord and onely Saviour Amen II. O Mercifull God Father of our Lord Jesus who is the first fruits of the resurrection and by entring into glory hath opened the kingdom of heaven to all the beleevers we humbly beseech thee to raise us from the death of sin to the life of righteousnesse that being partakers of the death of Christ and followers of his Holy life we may be partakers of his Spirit and of his promises that when we shall depart this life we may rest in his arms and lie in his bosom as our hope is this our brother doth O suffer us not for any temptation of the world or any snares of the Devil or any pains of death to fall from thee Lord let thy H. Spirit enable us with his grace to fight a good fight with perseverance to finish our course with holiness and to keep the faith with constancie unto the end that at the day of judgement we may stand at the right hand of the throne of God and hear the blessed sentence of Come ye blessed children of my Father receive the kingdom prepared for you from the beginning of the world O blessed Jesus thou art our Judge and thou art our Advocate even because thou art good and gracious never suffer us to fall into the intolerable pains of hell never to lye down in sin and never to have our portion in the everlasting burning Mercy sweet Jesu Mercy Amen A prayer to be said in the case of a sudden surprise by death as by a mortal wound or evil accidents in childebirth when the forms and solemnities of preparation cannot be used O Most gracious Father Lord of heaven and earth Judge of the living and the dead behold thy servants running to thee for pity and mercy in behalf of our selves and this thy servant whom thou hast smitten with thy hasty rod and a swift Angel if it be thy will preserve his life that there may be place for his repentance and restitution O spare him a little that he may recover his strength before he go hence and be no more seen but if thou hast otherwise decreed let the miracles of thy compassion and thy wonderfull mercy supply to him the want of the usual measures of time and the periods of repentance and the trimming of his lamp and let the greatnesse of the calamity be accepted by thee as an instrument to procure pardon for those defects and degrees of unreadiness which may have caused this accident upon thy servant Lord stirre up in him a great and effectual contrition that the greatnesse of the sorrow and hatred against sin and the zeal of his love to thee may in a short time do the work of many dayes and thou who regardest the heart and the measures of the minde more then the delay and the measures of time let it be thy pleasure to rescue the soul of thy servant from all the evils he hath deserved and all the evils that he fears that in the glorifications of eternity and the songs which to eternal ages thy Saints and holy Angels shall sing to the honour of thy mighty Name and invaluable mercies it may be reckoned among thy glories that thou hast redeemed this soul from the dangers of an eternall death and made him partaker of the gift of God eternall life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen If there be time the prayers in the foregoing offices may be added according as they can be fitted to the present circumstances SECT VIII A peroration concerning the contingencies and treatings of our departed friends after death in order to their buriall c. WHen we have received the last breath of our friend and closed his eyes and composed his body for the grave then seasonable is the counsell of the son of Syrach Weep bitterly and make great moan and use lamentation as he is worthy and that a day or two lest thou be evil spoken of and then comfort thy self for thy heavinesse But take no grief to heart for there is no turning again thou shalâ— not do him good but hurt tâ—y self Solemn and appointed mournings are good expressions of our dearnesse to the departed soul and of his worth and our value of him and it hath its praise in nature and in manners and publike customs but the praise of it is not in the Gospel that is it hath