with the first by calling for the Elders by confessing their Sins by promising Repentance and by Prayers for good things requisite as well for the body as for the Soul Discourse of Extream Unction pag. 48. It is also the duty of those that are acquainted with the sick instead of vain and frivolous discourses of Common Affairs which have no relish with those that are in great pain to Minister as far as they are able to their Spiritual Wants to direct instruct and any other way to help them to set their Souls in order and to trim their Lamp See what Care the Holy Prophet used to his Enemies Psal. 35. 13 14. When they were sick my clothing was sackcloth I humbled my soul with fasting and my prayer returned into my own bosom I behaved my self as though he had been my friend or brother I bowed down heavily as one that mourneth for his Mother Those means which he used for their Recovery were an argument of the sincerity of his own Religion as well as of his most affectionate Sympathy and tenderness to them When you visit the sick you see in them the prospect of your own Mortal Estate You see how soon their Complexion their Temper their Sociableness and all that agreeableness of Humour which was pleasing to you is gone and changed In their broken feeble expressions in their wan and pale looks and in their fallen Countenances you behold that man in his best Estate is altogether vanity Psal. 39. 5. and how when God with rebukes does correct man for Iniquity he makes his beauty to consume away like a moth ver II. then you see that all flesh is grass and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field Isa. 40. 6. How many times do you see those whom you love strugling with pains strong and bitter even as death it self and you cannot though you never so earnestly desire it afford to them the least Relief not a moments ease nor the smallest interval of rest but when your hearts have sunk within you with the doleful and unintermitted accents of their Groans and Sighs how often have you prayed to God and he has appear'd to your help and theirs There may be many Cases wherein much speaking may do your afflicted Friends no good at all but there is no Case wherein your prayers may not be of great advantage either to preserve them with you or to obtain for them some Gracious discoveries of the Love of God or a more easie passage both which are very great Mercies What wonders have been wrought in all Ages by the power of the United Intercession of Believers when they have carried their sick to Christ. What numbers are there of perfect Souls in Heaven that can Witness to the Truth of this and how many deliver'd Captives are on Earth that can now with joy set their Seal to it and say with Transport truly God is a God hearing prayers The continued prayers of the Church for Peter did procure his Enlargement and an Angel was dispatcht to break his Chains and to send him to carry the welcom news to the then praying Church that their prayers were heard and he was deliver'd Many there are now alive that owe their Lives to this whereof I am one The Mercy of God which alone could help me and that was implored and sought by your prayers has brought me from the very Grave In all future occasions try this method for you know it is available and successful Is any afflicted let him pray himself is any so overwhelm'd that he cannot well perform it Let him call for the Elders of the Church and let them pray over him and the prayer of Faith shall save the sick Jam. 5. 14 15. He is to use this course as a means for the recovery of his Health for though we cannot with any Modesty pretend to the prayer of Faith here mentioned that is of a certain perswasion that the person for whom we pray shall be raised up yet we ought to pray in this Faith that it is pleasing to God when we express our dependance upon him by asking those things which we need that every good thing comes from him and therefore health and deliverance from death that though he does not alwayes give that particular thing which we ask yet 't is sometimes denied because we do not ask and that as he never gives the greatest Blessings of all which are those of a good mind but in answer to prayers So sometimes he does not send bodily good things because he is not prayed to for them And there is no less Reason for Prayer when God raiseth up the sick by Blessing ordinary means than when it was done by a supernatural Gift Discourse of Extream Unction pag 46. Inf. 2. There is great Reason to Fear and Reverence God For as he presides over all the Revolutions of Empires and Nations their Original their Growth their Prosperities and Decayes so he does likewise over particular persons in their Life and Death His knowledge and his Government reaches to all things for their Existence depends upon his Will It is in his power to destroy or to save He is the God in whose hand our Life is We lye at his Mercy and according as he Wills we must either be Healthful or Sick Live or Dye His are our times on his pleasure our present happiness and our future welfare depends He sits upon the flouds and orders with a steady and uniform design All that appears most uncertain and changeable to us He can either make the Waters of Affliction to drown us or say unto them as unto the waves of the Sea hitherto shall you go and no further even then when their swelling Pride threatens us with total desolation He has appointed his Sun to measure out our time and knows when shall be the last concluding day When those that are now living shall dye and by what sort of death and where after that they shall be placed whether in Happiness or Wo. He knows when the last Trumpet shall sound and when the dead shall be rais'd Of him therefore should we stand in Awe as having that voice continually in our ears Deut. 32. 39 40. See now that I even I am he and there is no God with me I kill and I make alive I wound and I heal neither is there any that can deliver out of my hand for I lift up my hand to heaven and say I live for ever What an abundance of diseases are at his beck what abundance of Arrows are in his Quiver what abundance of sins do we commit which cause him to bend his bow and provoke him to set us up as marks of his displeasure He can strike the most consident and secure sinners dead in a moment or with long abiding pains fill them with so great anguish and vexation that they shall chuse strangling and death rather than Life Alass what are we to this Great
separation of the Body and the Soul which yet is painful and sad enough They that are under the Power of this Spiritual Death taste not the Goodness of God they hear not his loudest Calls they tremble not at his most dreadful Threats they are not drawn with his Love nor start at his approaching Wrath. They are very sick indeed but they feel not their Sickness their Ignorance has deprived their Souls of all knowledg of their own Miseries they are in a state of Death and Insensibility and their Case is the more sad because they are like to fall under the Power of eternal Death and tho their temporal Life is prolonged for a Season yet we may say of them as of Malefactors under the Sentence of the Law for their Crimes they are dead Men though there be a Reprieve or a delay of Execution for a little space And if any of you as I hope there are many here are delivered from a state so dangerous and so miserable what Thanks and Praise should you give to God who hath quickned you when you were dead in Trespasses and Sins Eph. 2. 1. especially considering that you had no Inclinations no foregoing Dispositions to this spiritua Life You contributed nothing to your own Regeneration no more than a Carcass in the Grave can raise it self and live again no more than dry Bones can move of their own accord or clothe themselves with Skin and Flesh. When he passed by and saw you in your Blood Ezek. 16. 6. then he said vnto you Live The Hour is come in which they that are in the Grave shall hear the Voice of the Son of God and they that hear shall live Joh. 5. 25. How many of your Friends your Neighbours and your Fellow-Citizens are there in whom there are no Signs of Life at all that notwithstanding all their Civility and fair Carriage their Attendance upon the Word and the performance of several outward Duties have only a likeness to the Living but no real Life And why should God be so good to you and not to the rest of Men You were once the Children of Wrath and Enemies as well as they Were there any peculiar Excellencies in you more than in others to recommend you to his Favour No he has been merciful to you because he will be merciful and you may say as 't is in Eph. 2. 4 5. God who is rich in Mercy for his great Love wherewith he loved us even when we were dead in Sins hath quickned us together with Christ. 'T is a very great Mercy for those that have been sick to be restored to Health but you are delivered from a worse Death and have obtained a better Resurrection in as much as the second Death to which they were obnoxious is infinitely more painful and dreadful than the first What a Mercy do you enjoy to be brought from a state of Wrath and Condemnation into a state of Peace and Favour from the Guilt of your Sins which made you dead in Law you are freed in your Justification and from the Power of Sin which would have kept you in continual Slavery you are delivered by the sanctifying Influences and Operations of the blessed Spirit you have cause to be thankful for your selves and for your Relations too if God has given the same Mercies unto them you may invite your Neighbours and your Friends to a Participation of your Comforts and say as the Father of the Prodigal Come and rejoice with me for this my Son was lost and is now found was dead and is now alive To raise your Thankfulness consider what a condition you would have been in had not God blessed you with a part in the first Resurrection You whose Eyes are now fix'd on Heaven and Glory had been still slumbering as unconverted Sinners are on the very brink of Hell you had then been without all relish of that word which first produced and which does every day maintain your Life and which is sweeter to you than Honey or the Honey-Comb Psal. 19. 10. You had now been without all Esteem and Value of that dearest Redeemer who purchased for you this Happiness at a very dear price and that you might live was himself content to die you had then been without that reviving hope of seeing him for ever that smooths your way and guides your Steps and upholds your Spirits thô you meet with many a sharp and bitter Cross. You would now perhaps have been prophaning his Sabbaths vilifying his Ordinances tearing his Name to pieces with execrable Oaths you might not have known what is the Sweetness of a sincere and hearty Prayer what is the Blessedness of a Soul whose Sins are pardoned and how honourable is the Priviledg of having the great God for a Father and Christ for a Mediator You are delivered from spiritual Diseases which are worse than all bodily Distempers for Pride and Envy Impatience and Discontent and Ambition and Revenge are worse than even the worst of Pains than the Stone the Cholick the Strangury or the like These cause a momentany Trouble but the evil Habits the corrupt Inclinations and the disorderly Motions that bear sway in that poor Soul that is dead in Sin tend to an everlasting Misery Continually adore and magnify the Power of your Saviour that made your Hearts at length to yield to his own terms though they gave him a very great Opposition Bless the Skill and Wisdom of your gracious Physician that cures all the Diseases of your old Nature that is not in any part of it sound and healthful It is easy to kill and ruin and destroy that we can all do too well but who can recover and save but he alone And if he was to be admired when on Earth He heal'd the Sick and made the Blind to see the Lame to walk and the Dead to live He is much more now to be adored and his Power is not less miraculous when it displays its vertue in Regeneration and when he makes all the boisterous unruly passions of Nature to be still and quiet than in commanding the Seas and the Winds These things should be the matter of your Praise and Wonder as they will be the cause of Praise and Wonder to his Saints for ever and if David is thankful here when he says O Lord thou hast brought my Soul from the Grave what matter of greater Thankfulness is it when a Christian can say O Lord thou hast brought up my Soul from Hell from the Power of Satan from the House of Bondage and from the Neighbourhood of the second Death Long Life is in it self a Blessing and for which we may very lawfully pray I say 't is in it self a Blessing for it may be clog'd with those Miseries that may make it to be as a Curse As if a Man were to live long only to row in Galleys or to dig in Mines or to pine in a Dungeon or to live in Pain and Torment or
to languish on a sick Bed for many Years together without help or ease As we do not say a Ship that has been in a Storm for many days has failed long but the Ship has been long tost So life attended with innumerable Vexations and heavy Crosses were not so truely to be called Life as one continued Act of Dying To live to see nothing but Desolations to hear nothing but ill Tidings and to feel nothing but Pain these and many other things would make a long Life to be an Affliction and such as these made Jeremy to say Why died I not from the Womb To have Life and to have no Comfort with it to have such Diseases it may be as will not allow us to take any Delight in what we eat and drink in the Society of our Friends and good People or good Books when we have no other Language but Complaints no other work but to sigh and to groan and it may be Pains which we cannot bear Life with these Companions looks but as a poor and sorry thing but Life as it includes a Recovery from Sickness a Recovery from Distempers that hindred us either from the doing or the receiving good so indeed it is a Blessing and may be prayed for thô when we do so we must request it 1 st With great Submission to the soveraign Disposer of Life and Death to do with us so as may serve most his Interest and Kingdom in the World 2 dly We must in the desires of long Life propose to our selves great and honourable ends Some desire to live long that they may with more Freedom indulge and gratify their Appetites Some that they may get great Estates make some stately Buildings and Houses that they design to call by their own Names and hoping thereby to perpetuate their Memory These are the Desires of Men in whose Hearts the World bears too great a Sway and who are little acquainted with the Nature of Religion for this will teach us to make the Glory of God the Edification and Profit of our Neighbour and the Welfare of our own Souls the only end in our Desires of long Life and then we must inform our selves in the right Notion of long Life We commonly think that 70 or 80 is the duration of a long Life but it is not to be measured by the number of Years so much as by our Proficiency in Heavenly Wisdom He has lived long and well too that has attain'd to the end of Living that has got that Knowledg and those Graces which enable him to live to the Glory of God here and to enjoy him for ever and a Sinner that is an hundred Years old will be accurst Isai. 65. 20. if he arrive not to this he has been indeed a great while but has not truly lived at all And though the best are but Loiterers and have not that esteem of time which its real Preciousness does require at their Hands Yet he that hath an hundred Years time and loseth it all lives not so long as he that hath but twenty and bestows it well It is too soon to go to Hell at an hundred Years old and not too soon to go to Heaven at twenty Baxter's Saints Rest p. 613. Barely to live is a thing no way considerable for Birds and Flies and Gnats and other Animals live as well as we nay and many of them have a more delicate Pleasure in Life as wanting the Bitterness of our Griefs and the Fears of a sad Futurity but we then desire long Life aright when we beg it for this reason that we may live to God 't is what is very desirable in this respect though we ought not to promise it to our selves for we must always work with Zeal and Fervor as not knowing but we may have only a little time wherein to work I believe there is scarcely one among us all but hopes to live long and to attain to the Years of some of our old Progenitors and does not question but he shall do so When we see very aged People even in our dangerous Youth we hope that we shall live till our greener Heads be cover'd with the Winter and the Snow of Age. 'T is indeed a thing greatly to be desired where one is planted in the Vineyard of God not to be removed thence till the time of Harvest and not to have our Fruit blasted with rude and unseasonable Weather but that we may come to the Grave in a full Age Like as a Shock of Corn cometh in his season Job 5. 26. It was indeed a Blessing more insisted on and more largely promised in the Old Testament than 't is in the New for that Oeconomy was chiefly managed with respect to temporal Advantages and Prosperity They had in many Promises the Discovery of another happy Life though not so clear and distinct as that which the Gospel gives to us yet they had the Belief of it and their Belief was without doubt confirmed by the Translation of Enoch and the Rapture of Elias for they might easily think that God would not remove two Men so very good and so very useful unless it were to place them in a better State than that was which they had on Earth Long Life is a great Blessing but not such an one as God is always pleased to give to the best of Men Good Josiah the Glory of all the Kings in those Days did not live so long as many other worse than he All Israel was forced to lament his early Death whom to have seen alive would have been their greatest Joy Our good King Edward the 6 th that was in his tenderest Youth so great a Scholar so good a Christian and so excellent a King so hearty an Enemy to the Pope and so sincere and true Friend to the Reformation and so great a Promoter of it he died alas very young The Divine Providence is mysterious in its Conduct and far above our Thoughts For what Good might two such great and holy Men have done the one in Israel and the other in England They did much Good in the few years while they lived and might have done abundance more had they lived very long these excellent Kings were soon taken away whilst many Tyrants have waxed grey amidst the Hatred and the Curses of the People When we think of two such excellent Men as Mr. Joseph Allein and Mr. John Janeway and how soon they died that were less in Degree but as great in Grace as the former two we must needs be silent and adore the Providence that we do not understand we must needs conclude that there is something much better to be enjoyed in the next World than long Life in this otherwise such holy Men so full of Self-denial so very laborious for the Glory of God and the Good of Souls should have lived very long They were taken away by Sickness from that Work in which their Souls delighted and which in
their Hands thrived very much The Tears and Prayers of their Hearers and their Friends that would have had them to flourish with perpetual Youth and that were very sorrowful to see Men that filled them with such great hopes taken away could not stay them here any longer nor would God have them to stay longer from their happiness It is indeed a Mercy to those that are good fit for Heaven to have an early Deliverance from such an evil World as this where there is so much Sorrow and Disorder and Temptations and Sins to be taken away from the Evil to come and from many sad Objects that such as live longer may be troubled to see to be fully assured that God is their God and Heaven their Home Jesus Christ did leave the World as one says and ascend to Glory about the 33 d or 34 th year of his Age to teach us in the prime of our Years to despise this World when we are best able to enjoy it and to reserve our full Vigour for Heaven and for his Love Yet though this be a way to promote a Man's own Happiness yet it must be received as a Mercy from God when any one lives not only to promote his own Salvation but the Good of others also Some will say What need we to pray for long Life what need we sollicite God to no purpose or tire him with our Prayers for we shall not live a day beyond our time nor die a moment sooner Do you not think your selves concern'd to eat and to drink and to procure to your selves other Gratifications of Life notwithstanding this And why should you not think your selves under an equal Obligation to use those other Means that are necessary to preserve Life as Prayer to God for his Blessing seeing Man lives not by Bread alone Mat. 4. 4. You find that Hezekiah by his Prayers to God obtained fifteen years more after he had received the first Summons of Death And Paul by the Prayer of the Corinthians was delivered after he had received the Sentence of Death 2 Cor. 1. 9 10 11. And whatsoever may be in the Decrees of God yet I am sure he may justly deny us what we will not take the pains to beg tho the longest Life that we can hope to live will be some hundreds of years shorter than the Lives of Men before the Flood for their long Lives are rather to be ascribed to some extraordinary Priviledg than to the ordinary Course of Nature The World was then to be replenished with Inhabitants which could not be so speedily done but by an extraordinary multiplication of Mankind neither could that be done but by the long Lives of Men. Again Arts and Sciences were then to be planted for the better effecting whereof it was requisite that the same Men should have the Experience and Observation of many Ages As also the Food wherewith they were nourished before the Flood may well be thought to be more medicinal and haply the Influence of the Heavens was at that time in that Climate where the Patriarchs lived more favourable and gracious Hakewell Apol. p. 38. If Deliverance from the Grave be a great Mercy and greatly to be acknowledged then it is a very evil thing in haste and passion to wish for Death There are several People when any thing falls out that crosses their Inclinations or Designs will presently say I wish I were dead I wish I were in the Grave and out of such a troublesom World as this But do you know what it is to die it is to appear before the eternal God and to render an Account of all that you have thought or spoke or done it is to be judg'd to Heaven or Hell and that for ever I cannot forget here that sad Story that is mentioned by Bellarmine and quoted from him He speaks of a Man notoriously worldly-minded whom he went to visit on his Death-bed and when he did him duly to provide for another World answer'd him Sir I have much desired to speak with you but it is not for my self but in behalf of my Wife and Children for my self I am going to Hell neither is there any thing that I would desire in my own behalf And this he spake saith he with such Composedness as if he had been but going to the next Town or Village The Ignorance of this miserable Person suffer'd him to be in no Commotion nor Horror at all but what a doleful Change did he feel in his Thoughts and Apprehensions when he came to that real Hell and to those Flames of which he spake in so cold a manner People make very little of dying and those that are poor usually die with the least concern for they imagine that having suffer'd so many Miseries in this World they shall be very happy in the next Life is a very dear Enjoyment and it is a wonder any should desire in haste to be deprived of it but it is usually then when they are in very great and almost insupportable Pain or under the fear of Evils that seem to be greater than what they are able to bear Thus the Children of Israel being in great straits wish'd they had died in Egypt Exod. 16. 3. Thus the meekest of all other Men press'd by the Calamities that he had in view says Numb 11. 14 15. I am not able to bear all this People alone because it is too heavy for me and if thou deal thus with me kill me I pray thee out of hand if I have found favour in thy sight and let me not see my Wretchedness Thus Elijah 1 King 19. 4. and Job chap. 6. 8 9. and Jonah the Sun beat upon his Head and he fainted and he wished in himself to die and said It is better for me to die than to live chap. 4. 8. but by a Mercy of God not inferiour to his former Deliverance he was reserv'd to another Repentance and to more peaceable Days Thus even good Men have sinned through the pressure of some very great Affliction and Calamity In this they followed the Motions of their sensitive Nature and not those of Grace the tediousness of their Trouble and the weight of the Cross that they groaned under made them with too much eagerness and haste to pray for Death which is always reckoned to be the last Refuge of the Miserable But God is not used to grant these fretful and passionate Desires he will make them to know their own Folly and the Justice of his Soveraign Authority he will have them not only to serve him but to wait till he dismiss them from their Service and all their Haste shall not make their Sun decline till he see it is their time to die And it is indeed a piece of Arrogance unsuitable to the Condition of a Creature to desire it just at such a particular Season as if we knew the most convenient time to depart and were not in this as
in all our other Actions to be regulated by the Will of God and not by our own But indeed when a Man that has been very faithful and laborious in his Generation is by Pain rendred altogether unfit for Service when the Strength and Vigour which he laid out for God is wasted and decayed by old Age or a tedious Distemper when his Candle that has long burnt to enlighten others burns with a feeble and almost undiscerned Light he may then desire to die as a poor weary Man to go to Bed But the Saints of God do even then desire it with Calmness and Deliberation if they be not in a raging Disease for then it is impossible they have much ado to bring their Hearts to be sincerely and freely willing to depart Their Fears and Temptations and remaining Inclinations to the Body and their Friends on Earth render it a Work of Difficulty There are great Strugglings in that Moment between Nature and Grace between Faith and Sense though at last their Grace gets the Victory and so they long to be with Christ. If Deliverance from the Grave be so great a Mercy then Self-murther is a very great Sin The Law that forbids us to kill does extend to this as well as to the Murder of another Man this is a violating of that Soveraign Power that is in God and a taking upon us to dispose of our Life which is not our own but his 'T is an usurping upon his Providence which has determined when and after what manner we are to die and though 't is very likely there are several Accidents of Life that are worse than Death it self yet it is that Eternity that comes after Death that is most formidable and into which no Man ought to throw himself and when we are reduced to such a condition that to live seems to be far worse than to die yet even then the Unalterableness of our State afterwards should be a most powerful Restraint especially if we are uncertain where we are then to go It is against that Patience and Trust which we ought to repose in God It is a woful sort of dying to die in the doing of such a thing as this which he has most severely prohibited to tear our Souls from our Bodies with our own hands in such an ignominious and shameful manner and because of our Distress to pass Sentence upon our selves as not fit to live and then to be our own Executioners A Soul at Death should be in the Exercise of Grace and in a quiet and humble Resignation but in this case 't is in Fear and Horror and Discontent and what the Romans magnifi'd so much for Gallantry and an Heroick Spirit was the real Effect of Weakness and Cowardise as it is much more Heroical to sustain and meet a coming Danger than to retreat and fly from it It was from a Meanness of Spirit that Cato chose to kill himself because he could not see the Empire flourish under Cesar whom he did not love and however such Acts may be extoll'd by Heathen Historians they are not so by that Scripture which is the Rule of our Faith and the Guide of our Actions and which furnishes us with no Examples of those that did this Samson only excepted whose case had several things in it very singular but such as were very bad Men as Saul and Achitophel and Judas and as we would not have our portion with them in the other World so it is to be wish'd and endeavoured that our end may not be like to them in this But so great is the Love of Life and so strong the fear of Death in the most so dark the Knowledg of Futurity and so great our Unwillingness to go from a World with which we are well acquainted to that which we never saw that few Men are in danger of Self-murther till some great Affliction and overwhelming Pain and by the means of that some great Perplexity seize their Spirits I think few are in danger of it till their Griefs are unspoakably great or their Minds in that Anguish that is as the sad Foretaste of Hell till all their Thoughts are in hurry and Confusion and as then they are no way capable of being bettered by those Advices that seem proper to restrain them so it concerns you that are at ease and are able to pursue the Business and Affairs of Life and of Religion to pray earnestly to God that he withdraw not his Protection and the Guard of his Providence from you that he do not leave you to thick and gross Darkness nor to the Power of Satan who will push you forward to things that are most sinful and unwarrantable Pray hard that violent Tentations and overwhelming raging Pains may never overtake your for how evil soever Self-murther seem to you now you know not what you may be then prest to do pray earnestly that you may never be without the sense or hope of the Divine Favour for if which God forbid you once lose that woe unto you then you will be like a Ship without Sails or Rudder in a Storm you may be swallowed up or driven on the Rocks and broken to pieces It is Distress and violent Sorrow that exposes Men to the Commission of this Sin Saul fell not upon his Sword and killed himself till God had forsaken him and till he knew not what to do though it was his own Sin that brought him so low Cicero tells us indeed of one Cleombrotus who reading the Discourse of Plato concerning another more happy Life after this which could not be attained but by Death did thereupon kill himself to attain that Happiness but if that be true it is a thing that most rarely happens that any that have either hope of Heaven or Assurance of going thither are so impatient of being absent from it as to kill themselves to go thither And it may be you will be ready to ask me If they have no hope of being better when they die why do they long for Death or attempt to kill themselves They should rather strive to live that they may be better prepared for another World It is a Question that has been ask'd me by some People and seeing it is perhaps what you seldom have met withal I will give you an Answer to it and if it do not appear very rational yet I am sure it will contain that which has been the real Apprehensions of People under those Temptations I say then Men may desire to destroy themselves though they have no well grounded Expectation of Happiness after Death 1. Because of that Pain of Body and that Anguish of Soul which is intolerable to them they have no natural nor spiritual Rest nor Prospect of either and this fills them with Amazement and Horror and in that Amazement there is nothing which they will not dare to do 2. Because they may reckon that they are already as in Hell and that if they
longing Soul It is then upon the Mount and sees his smiling Face and would fain always see it it is loth to come down to the meaner Employments of this World and when the necessary Affairs of the present Life call it away it comes from the pleasant Work shining with brighter Grace and Holiness It is a thing of more Honour to You than a thousand honourable Titles that You keep up constantly the worshipping of God and reading the Scriptures in your Families Morning and Evening and indeed it is an Arrogance in those to call themselves Christians who neglect so sacred and so considerable a part of our holy Religion And your good Example in the due practice of these excellent Things will have a powerful Influence upon your Children and what you now do they will also do if they live to have Families and the sight of Religion in you will convey to them a greater Approbation and a more easy practice of it God has bless'd you with a numerous and an hopeful Offspring whose present and future Welfare I do with an undissembled Affection most heartily desire By their Seriousness their Ingenuity and their good Inclinations they give us cause to expect that though they are now as Olive-plants round about your Tables yet that they will hereafter refresh the Hearts of many more besides your own Families And that as it is expressed in Psal. 144. 12. Your Sons may be as Plants grown up in their Youth that your Daughters may be as Corner-Stones polished after the Similitude of a Palace I question not but the Prayers that you send up to Heaven for them will procure the Blessing of the Divine Providence which is the richest and the best Inheritance It is a Blessing of God that you have so many living Images of your selves in whom you see your own Life renewed And you are so happy as to have your Quivers full of them May they all live to be your Comfort and to maintain Religion in the World God has been pleas'd to give You several Instances of the Vanity of this World by the Deaths of several of your Relations some of which died in their most hopeful Youth and in the Flower of their Age whilst their Friends promised themselves a long Comfort and Delight in their Conversation who had they lived might have been of great use to their Country and to the Church of God And one Relation you lost by a way that was very afflicting to you but advantagious to him He died unseasonably as to us for we needed his Prayers and his good Example but his Death was seasonable as to himself for I do not doubt but he was prepared for it He died much beloved and greatly bewailed Those that knew him could not but esteem and value him for the Assableness and Civility of his Temper the Conscientiousness of his Dealings the Sincerity and Heartiness of his Expressions the good Order that he kept in his Family and for that Uprightness and unaffected Religion that appeared to all that observed his Conversation I may without any shew of Flattery say he was one of those good Men for whom many would have died could they have exchanged their meaner Lives for his more serviceable Life He died by a may somewhat terrible to Flesh and Blood but which by Faith he overcame His Zeal for the Liberties of this City and which he shewed whilst he was in an honour able Station rendred him obnoxious to those Persons then in Authority who gave liberty to their Revenge to fall upon those who knew not how to flatter or commend or promote their Arbitrary Designs It was a thing below him to use such sneaking and such unchristian Arts for Honour or for Safety There is nothing can satisfy his Friends for the loss of so excellent a Citizen so good a Man and so sincere a Friend but the consideraon of that Providence which tho it be mysterious and severe for the present yet will hereafter appear to have been very wise and very good to all those that love God Tho the Loss his Friends sustained by his removal from them be great yet it cannot but be a Satisfaction to them to consider that he was happy in his Death He is gone to that God that as he said himself knew his Innocence and to a Place where there are no false Accusations and where he and his holy Friends shall never part again This and much more than what I have said is due to the Memory of so great and so good a Man whom it is impossible for a true Lover of his Country ever to forget My Zeal to the remembrance of those Persons which I have mentioned and whom I honoured and esteemed together with the Respect that I ought to express to them has drawn me to a much greater Length than what I at first intended and tho when I consider the multitude of your Affairs both publick and domestick I am afraid I have too much presum'd upon your Time in this Dedication yet the Experience that I have often had of your Candour makes me to believe that you will forgive even so criminal a Presumption God has given you plentiful Estates and which is as great a Mercy Hearts to use them You have often been Eyes to the Blind and Feet to the Lame There are many hundreds whom your Charities have refresh'd the Blessing of those that were ready to perish has often come upon you And you have made the Hearts of the Desolate to sing for Joy And it is no small support of your Prosperities to have many praying for you to God and who are the more earnest as having been greatly obliged by you I do now thank you for all the many Kindnesses that I have received from you both in my former Health and in my late sore Affliction I thank you for Visiting me in my low Estate tho the greatness of my Pain and the anguish of my Thoughts allowed me not to take such notice of so great an Honour as otherwise I should have done I have often said when I was greatly afflicted That I should neither see you nor any others of my Friends till the great Day and till the Heavens were no more And God alone by his Soveraign Goodness hath brought me from the lowest Pit It was to manifest my Thankfulness to my great Deliverer that I preached the following Sermons in a Place where were many of my Friends many that had prayed for me many that had continued their Kindnesses to me when I could no way be serviceable to them and to whom I can make no other Requital than by praying for them and endeavouring to live to the Glory of that God for whose sake both you and they so kindly remembred me In these Discourses you will find a Relation of some part of my Affliction It is impossible to relate the whole of it for my Sorrows were beyond expression I have not here
God but as Chaffe before the Wind but as Thorns and Briars before a Consuming Fire but by a reverential awe of him we may lay hold of his Strength and be at Peace Look up to his Heavens and that vastly extended Firmament that is above and then reflect and think how great is he that made all this Creation with a Word Look to his Law and consider how holy he is in his Precepts and Threatnings and then look to your selves and consider how Sinful and how Vile you are Look upon the strange punishments and miseries under which many of your Fellow-creatures groan and be not high-minded but fear because the God that afflicts them may perhaps very shortly do the same to you and let it fill you with the most awful thoughts when you consider how great is his power how severe his Justice and how unspotted is his Holiness How easie is it for him to bring you to the Grave if he do but withdraw sleep from your eyes so that you have no rest for three or four nights or for one Week Then there is a stop put to all your present projects and then all the Comfort of the World is gone For all Affairs depend upon Activity and Vigour and this will cease when sleep does no longer refresh your Spirits as it us'd to do All your apprehensions will change when you have lost this support of weak nature this onely prop of Comfortable Life God can make the strongest and most healthful persons quickly to feel Sickness and Diseases He can quickly turn a pleasant fruitful Land into barrenness and the most beautiful Habitations into Dust and Ashes We should greatly beware of provoking him of whose Mercy we stand in need and whose Wrath we cannot bear He can quickly change all our Joy into Mourning and our Day into Night and our Light into the shadow of Death When he frowns all the stateliness of Buildings all the Glory of Nations all the Pomp and Splendour of the World is gone How soon can he lay waste a flourishing Countrey with War or Plague or Famine he can quickly turn the house of Joy into an house of Mourning and deprive us of what is most pleasant in our Eyes and blast all our hopes You have seen that by letting loose an unruly Element of Fire he turn'd this City in two or three dayes into an heap of Ruins and by filling the Air with contagious Vapors sent many thousands in a very little time into the Grave and he can by letting loose any one Humour in your bodies make you a burden to your selves and to be weary of a World in which you can no longer live as you us'd to do Inf. 3. There is great Reason that under any Sickness or Distress that befalls us we should submit our selves to this God that brings even to death and back again If you be plagued all the day long and chasten'd every morning Psal. 73. 14. whilest others are in no trouble and if you feel your strength decay whilest theirs is firm let no murmuring thoughts fill your Minds because you are the Creatures of God and he may do with you what he will Keep a remembrance of his absolute Soveraignty alwayes imprinted on your Hearts Job 33. 12 13. God is greater than man why dost thou strive against him for he giveth not account of any of his matters Whatever he doth is therefore good and holy because he does it And when he chastens us very sore we should lay our Mouthes in the dust and bear with Patience his Indignation because we have sinned against him We must not yield our selves to our Miseries but to him that sends them and that you may submit in Great and Heavy Trials you must have recourse to the Promises of the Gospel the Mercy of God and the Righteousness of Christ the Merit of his Sufferings and the Efficacy of his Intercession and if you believe you will be established for without Faith in Christ there is no Hope and without Hope no Submission How can this be done if a man have no prospect of advantage by it either in this or the next World for no man can possibly submit to be for ever Miserable It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the Salvation of the Lord Lam. 3. 26. Inveigh not therefore against the Rod though it smart very much but look to the hand in which it is to that Wisdom that has the disposal of it and to those sins that have deserv'd it Look not upon your Evils as the product of Chance or Fortune but as the effect of an Holy Providence which though it is many times very severe yet is alwayes very just Adore this Providence with an humble Silence and Veneration You do not know which is better for you Health or Sickness Affliction or Deliverance he onely knows that knows all things and it will be very grateful to him if you give a chearful entertainment to his Order and Decree If he please who is your Gratious Creator and your Father he can therefore afflict you that he himself may be your Cordial and revive your fainting spirits from the very Grave but if not your Religion should teach you to approve of all the messages he sends you and by a quiet Resignation to put your Souls into his hands when he signifies by the Progress and Increase of your Distemper that your Race is finisht and that it is now your time to die And in order to this you must lay up a good store against that Evil day For you may be warned from the World with long Chronical Diseases that by their Acuteness and Violence may be as so many several Deaths complicated together And then when you have no hope of bodily ease any more then will be the great Tryal of your Faith Several Men will with great hardiness and resolution bear very great pains so long as there is the least hope of Life but to be patient and submissive in the deepest Sorrows and in the view of certain death this is what none can rightly attain to but those that Believe and not all those neither but such whose Faith is deeply rooted has for a long time flourisht and Conquer'd overwhelming doubts and so is of more than an ordinary growth This is that which rendred the Patience of our Blessed Redeemer so very remarkable that when he was lead to the slaughter where he knew he was to suffer violent and great pain from barbarous and cruel men yet even then he opened not his mouth and when he knew there was unspeakable bitterness in that Cup which he was going to drink yet notwithstanding all the Wormwood and the Gall that was in it and though his Innocent Nature did recoil a little yet he drank it off saying with an entire freedom of Choice and a full Acquiescence Father not my Will but thine be done And this was the fruit of a mighty trust
as not to leave us the use or enjoyment of some good or at least of our selves Death extinguisheth our Life and by this means overthrowing the very Foundations of our Enjoyments doth at the same time despoil as of all other good things altogether Daille sur Coloss. 2. 13. Life is the most excellent Gift of God but Death is an Enemy to Nature and cannot be lov'd for it self 't is the fruit of Sin Rom. 5. 12. 'T is the wages thereof Rom. 6. 23. For if Adam had persever'd in his Innocent Condition he had enjoyed a Glorious Immortality without those pains and that Death which is now our Lot The Philosophers indeed thought that death was natural to Man and all the discourses they grounded upon this false principle are so vain and empty that they onely serve to shew in the General how weak Man is seeing the greatest productions of the wisest Men are so mean and Childish Pascal pensees S. 30. Death is the matter of the Threat and therefore a punishment though Believers whose Faith is in exercise may quietly submit to it as a passage to Eternal Glory We give it indeed many soft names and seem to make nothing of it in our ordinary discourse we speak of nothing with more unconcernedness and with less Fear but it ceases not to be an Enemy though we give it never so many fair Characters Men at a distance from it can make a sleight matter of it but its nearer approaches if attended with the due sense of Futurity will make the boldest and the stoutest Man to tremble it will strike a damp into his Spirits mingle Gall and Wormwood with his Wine and Bitterness with his sweetest Joys Death is not the less formidable for being unavoidable but rather more so as a certain Evil is more an Evil than that which is only probable and which may never happen but do we consider what it is for the Union that is between the body and the Soul to be dissolv'd what it is to see Corruption what it is to have this Body turn'd into a Carkass without Life and Motion what it is to have this Body which we have tended with so long a Care which we have maintain'd at so vast a Charge of Meat and Drink and Time to have this Body in which we have slept and liv'd at Ease laid into the cold Grave and there in a loathsome manner to putrifie and consume away it cannot but occasion very great Commotions when the day is come that the two Friends who have been so long acquainted and so dear to one another must part Death is an evil to be prayed against for as such it cannot be the Object of desire And the old saying of Augustin is not unworthy of our Observation That if there were no bitterness in Death the Constancy of Martyrs would not be so remarkable Therefore says the Apostle 2 Cor. 5. 4. We would not be uncloathed but clothed upon It is promised as a favour to Ebedmelech that though he sustained many other losses yet he should have his life for a prey Jer. 39. 18. and Paul then whom none had a greater desire and esteem of Glory yet reckons it a Blessing for a good Man to be kept alive For he sayes of Epaphroditus Phil. 2. 27. He was sick nigh unto death but God had mercy on him And we find the Holy Men of Old very earnest for their Lives Return O Lord deliver my soul O save me for thy mercies sake For in death there is no remembrance of thee in the Grave who shall give thee thanks Psal. 6. 4. 5. Psal. 39. 13. Oh spare me that I may recover strength before I go hence and be no more Psal. 102. 24. I said O my God take me not away in the midst of my dayes And what doleful Expressions did Hezekiah use upon the news of his approaching death Isa. 38. 10. I said in the cutting off of my dayes I shall go to the gates of the Grave I am deprived of the residue of my years I said I shall not see the Lord even the Lord in the land of the living I shall behold man no more with the inhabitants of the Earth Reason 2. When a Man dyes 't is to him as an end of all the World He is no more considered as a Member of that Community to which he did once belong When his Eyes are once clos'd by Death he is no more to behold the Sun Moon and Stars which he now sees nor his Fields and Gardens his Shops and Houses his Estate and Lands As the waters fail from the Sea and the flood decayeth and drieth up So man lieth down and riseth not till the heavens be no more Job 14. 11 12. He quits for ever all those Earthly things on which he once set his Heart and when he is asleep in his Bed of dust he will not awake to pursue secular Affairs and Business which took up so much of his time and labour He must no more frequent his Exchange not read Books nor discourse with his Relations and Friends as he us'd to do among the Living here The first sound that he will he will hear will be the Voice of the Last Trumpet Arise ye dead and come to judgment The first sight that he will see will be the Mighty Judge in the Clouds and the Heavens and the Earth all in one flame All that little share of the World which he called his own will be undiscern'd and buryed in the vast ruins and desolations of the Great Day When a Man dyes 't is with him as an End of the World all the Affairs of Peace and War of Trade and Commerce and Gain and Riches all his projects and designs his large reaches his forecast his â—â—â—ughtfulness about News or about providing for his own Name or for posterity all these things are at an end with him for ever It would put a mighty Change upon the Face of things and the Circumstances of particular persons if they knew certainly the World would be at an end in four or five years or in so many Moneths and no man knows but it may be so as to him because before or at that time Death may cut him off and then he has no more to do with this Earth or with the Sons of Men. As the cloud is consumed and vanisheth away so he that goeth down to the grave shall come up no more He shall return no more to his house neither shall his place know him any more Job 7. 9 10. Reason 3. Because when we dye our Everlasting state is to be determin'd l After Death the Judgment The moment of our departure hence will pass us over to the Righteous Tribunal of God It will make us either to shine with the Angels above or to set with the Devils It will either fix us in a joyful Paradise or in an intolerable state of Wo. So that we may say with Nieremberg how
Prolongation of Life is not in this respect so great a Mercy For they think that it is a most easie thing to be ready for Death and Judgement they think that a few Prayers at last a few Tears and Cryes to God with a Confession of their Miscarriages and a few Resolutions against what they once did amiss will put them into a good frame and serve their turn and so the time that was given them wherein to prepare for another World is lost and unimproved because they understand not the greatness of their Work nor the preciousness and value of that Time which is given them to do it in They ought to Remember if they have been near to death how that nearness changed their Thoughts and that they then found by the hurry and confusion of their Apprehensions that Sickness was no proper season wherein to begin an holy Course or to repair the disorders of an ill one Of all men in the World those who are recover'd from a Sickness that found them in their Impenitence have most Reason to be thankful because had they died in that Condition they had died for ever what thanks owe they to God that they are under Hope in the use of Means yet upon his Earth and not in Hell And there are two things with respect to our dying which render the Continuance of our Life a great Mercy First The small Acquaintance which we have with the Future state and the necessity we are under to get as lively apprehensions of it as we can There are many strange Vicissitudes in this World many changes that we see in Countreys when Kingdoms pass from one to another in Families when the number is either increased or diminished and we suffer many changes in our Bodies from Sickness to Health and from Health to Sickness again but there is no change that is so great as this by Death It is a thing of which we know but little and none of the Millions of Souls that have past into the invisible World have come again to tell us how it is All that go hence remain fixed in their own state some expecting and others fearing the Resurrection and the Great Day We have but very obscure apprehensions of that separated state we know but little of the Great All-comprehending Spirit and little with clearness and full satisfaction of our own Souls When we know something of Spirits by their effects and the discoveries they make of themselves and would more fully know their nature and have adequate Conceptions of them we are like little Children that see the Image and Representation of some delightful object in a Glass and then turn the glass hoping to see it in its full dimensions but by that means lose the sight of it altogether so it is with us in our most Critical Inquiries into Spiritual and Immaterial Substances Nevertheless it is very desireable to know in what condition our Souls will be when they leave the Body and what is the nature of that abode into which we must go but which we never saw Into what Regions we must then take our flight and after what manner this will be done When that Soul which touch't and wrought by our hands spoke by our tongue and heard by our Ears shall have her present Organs taken from her and pass from sensible objects on Earth to a spacious unseen World When as in the twinkling of an Eye our spirits will go from this lower state through the Aiery Region and the visible Heavens soaring till they come to the Throne of God All the Animal Actions of Nourishment and Growth all the Sensations that arise from outward and Material objects will cease and these spirits will be more vigorous and Active than now they are When Death comes it leaves the body though far different from what it was yet still in our view We see where it is and what Qualities it is invested with how it is disposed of we know and are able to give some exact Account of its Condition of this we have a more distinct Apprehension but none of a separated Soul but what is very imperfect 'T is certain the Soul will then preserve the Faculties that are natural to it viz. to Understand to Will to Remember as 't is represented to us under the Parable of Dives and Lazarus So long as 't is lodged here it sees and perceives Corporal things by the Organs of the Senses and reasons upon the Images that are labour'd in the Phantasie but there are in our Souls Idea's purely intellectual and which have in them nothing Material as the Contemplations of the Nature of God and of his Attributes We little know how the People of the disembodied Societies Act and Will and Understand and communicate their Thoughts to one another What Conception can we have of a separated Soul but that 't is all thought and that either in the Calmness of an elevated Joy or the bitterness of overwhelming Anguish according to the state in which it is and the sentence that is past upon it When a Mans Body is taken from him by Death he is turn'd into all Thought and Spirit either infinitely more pleas'd or more amaz'd than he could be in this World How great will be its thoughts when it is without any hinderance from these material Organs that now obstruct its operations In that Eternity as one expresses it the whole power of the Soul runs together one and the same way In this World the soul sends out Parties of it self divers wayes or to several ends the Judgment may be pleased in the main and yet the Affections disturbed or these more still and yet the Judgment dissatisfied and disturbed One thought goes out in high discontent another flyes after it recalls and reconciles it On the other side one thought leaps out of the Soul with pleasure another reproves daunts and dejects it with a correction of its haste But in Eternity the soul is united in its motions which way one Faculty goes all go and the Thoughts are all Concentred as in one whole Thought of Joy or Torment Beverley Great Soul of Man pag. 292. These things cannot but occasion great variety of thoughts in every Considering Man and the soul especially when it looks toward that World and thinks it self near it can no more cease to be Inquisitive about it than it can cease to be a soul. We may indeed be too curious in this matter though it seems to be a Curiosity that is most excuseable because it concerns a mans self his own soul and his own Eternity and when we have searched as deep as we can we must confess our Ignorance and say with the Prophet upon another occasion Lord thou knowest In these Contemplations we must make the Word of God our onely Guide and it is a Mercy greatly to be acknowledged that God allows us time wherein to Converse with that Gospel that has brought life and
much pain in this but this is not the common Lot You know that the poor Man at the Pool of Bethesda had an Infirmity thirty eight years Jahn 5. 5. You are told in Luke 13. 16. of a Woman that was a Daughter of Abraham whom Satan had bound eighteen years and when so malicious and cruel a Spirit had the management of her Bonds no doubt but he made them very strong It was without doubt a painful Distemper as appears vers 11. she was bound down and could in no wise lift up her self If you enquire of those that usually attend the Dying or if you look upon the Weekly Bills you 'l find there by what painful Diseases Men go to the Grave By the Stone or the Gout raging Fevers or Cholick or which is of all others most formidable and which more generally die of every Week than of any other Distemper i. e. Convulsions Or if they die not by these yet by others that by their length are as grievous and as uneasie Your bodily Pains may be protracted to a very long duration for it is a most false Maxim that if your Pain be long it will not be sharp and that if it be sharp it will not be long It is a saying to which dayly Experience gives a Confutation For how many are there that are groaning under Pains both very long and very sharp Fevers burn us Agues shatter us Dropsies drown us Phrensies unman us the Gout tortures us Convulsions rack us Epilepsies fell us Collicks tear us and there is no considerable Disease which is not very troublesom in it self however Religion may sanctify and sweeten it Boyle occas Refl Sect. 2. Med. 3. What a vain thing is our Body and how vain are the Projects of Men for the preservation of it How many are their Cares and Designs about it It is for this that Commerce and Navigation is maintained to bring home Foreign Drugs for Physick and Sawces of other Countries to raise our Appetites Pearls and Jewels for Ornament and Splendor The greatest part of Men are imployed meerly for the service of the Body Physicians by profession are obliged to study what may repair its defects and contribute to our ease and health the Husbandman labours all the year that the Ground may yield us Corn and Bread and Fruit Some build us Houses others beautify and furnish them Butchers are employed to kill the Creatures for us and Cooks to dress them and yet these Bodies are lyable all the while to pains which none of all these can remove To sicknesses of which no Perfumes no costly Raiment no pleasant Relishes can make us to lose the bitter Sense and the Thoughts of them ought to lessen greatly all that inordinate Concern which we have for what is only mortal for its being so makes it to be very vain We must use our selves to hardship and relinquish our too great tenderness and delicacy For he is the wisest Man who knowing he is once to suffer as we all are does learn betimes to do it Let us therefore keep our Bodies pure and clean and chast First Let us use a great Moderation in all those Accommodations that relate only to them Such as Houses Gardens Estates or the like that they be not too expensive or take up too much of our time or of our delight That they be not designed as the Trophies of our Pride or the means of Vain-glory or to get a Name We that have Souls to save have something else to do than to follow needless Superfluities When we were sick we knew that we were too much unwilling to leave the World Let us not paint it with more alluring colours lest we be still more in love with it and more loath to leave it For shall we more easily part with things sumptuous and splendid than with things that are meaner and less suited to a fleshly Mind and Life We are Pilgrims and shall we be so industrious to plant and build and sow in a strange Country when we confess we are distant from our home What Man would set himself to adorn his Inn from which he may dislodge the next morning and it may be never see it any more Secondly Let us use a great Moderation in our Apparel When you dress your selves remember that you dress a Body that will shortly be a Carcass without Beauty Life and Motion Consider how soon all the Sprightliness of your Eyes all the Pleasure of your Looks will be gone the Cold of Death will quickly freeze that Blood which now circulates with so brisk a motion in your Veins and Sickness in a few days may so change you even you that are most curious about your Body that you will not desire even to look upon your self When pain and trouble has sunk your Eyes and hollowed your Cheeks and turned your once delightful red into a decaying pale how seldom then will you visit that Glass to which you now go so often and at which you stay so very long What will your softest Raiment and your finest Cloaths avail a decaying Body which God hath clothed with the Garment of Heaviness Let the Consideration of this be a powerful Motive to excite you not to go to the highest Excesses of a luxurious Age but after the Fashion of the grave the modest and the religious part of People that allow to themselves some large portions of their Time to adorn their Souls with those Graces that make them shine with real worth and do not spend it all to set the Body off What is this Body but a Lump of animated Clay a poor ruinous Habitation that has a thousand decays ready to come upon it and whilst we are contriving how to repair it for many years it may be we have not then a Month to live And what is it when the Soul that gave it all its pleasant sensations all its comlyness and lustre is fled away If we look but upon a Friend an hour after he is dead how is his Countenance changed There is nothing then to be seen in him that did attract our Eyes before You then no more see any Smiles in that Face where you have before seen the signs of Chearfulness and Joy Where is his former Comeliness and Beauty his ancient Grace or his lovely Features You can then take no delight in being with him you have then no mind to look upon that very person that it may be a while ago was the Delight of your Heart and the Comfort of your Life Will all the Finery in the World procure for us a sweeter slumber in the Dust Why should we set our selves with so much application to regard our Bodies Is it to much purpose to paint a little Dust and Ashes Those light impressions that we make upon it the next Wind blows away Think but how vain and short your Life is and this will greatly suppress your inclination to Vanity Look upon your Watches and
have good hope that they will be so but if you are immoderate in your Recreations your Eating Drinking or your Apparel 't is very likely they will be so and what flames will it add to your misery to think that you were the Cause of their Everlasting destruction And how will you bear it to hear their Cries and bitter Expressions when they shall Curse you for not having given to them good Instructions and seasonable Warnings and an holy Example by which they might have been enabled to fly from the Wrath to come You may now do much more good by practising one Command than by causing to learn all the Ten And though you be so poor that you have no Riches or Estate to leave them yet you may leave your Prayers and your good Example to the next Generation We commonly say of a rich covetous Miser That he will never do any good whilst he lives and we may say of him and all others that are not true Christians That they will never do any good when they are dead for when they dye they are like Nero they leave abundance of poison behind them they infected the Air with their Oaths and Blasphemies when they lived and when they are gone the Contagion spreads and their ill President meeting with corrupt Nature which inclines all Men to what is bad does convey its Venome to several others that they left behind What an Impression many times does an unbecoming Word leave upon the Hearer for many years after Much more does the Remembrance of an ill Example Thus their evil Works prove Factors for the Devil and inlarge his Kingdom when they are rotting in the Grave Whereas if you be zealous for God the remaining Flames of your Zeal may awaken some luke-warm and slothful Christian to do what you have done For he may thus argue If that holy Man prayed so hard and strove so much what cause have I to pray and strive for I have a Soul to save as well as he And as the Gate was strait to him so will it be to me and as 't is impossible to handle Perfumes without bearing away part of the scent so it should be to converse with you without savouring of your Goodness You should so live that others may reap the benefit of your holy Life when you are gone As the Earth does not lose the Vertue of its Beams when the Sun is set that Heat and Warmth and Vegetation which it has given to Herbs and Plants does remain and its Influence is felt when it is no longer to be seen thus you will be as Herbs and Flowers which when they are gathered are medicinal and yield juices healthful and necessary to the Body or as the Corn which when it is cut down is serviceable for Food and Nourishment Thus every Man may so contrive it that he may be serviceable to the World when he does not live in it any more Thus the Apostles spread a most diffusive Light by their Holiness and Doctrin which all the Malice of Hell and all the Rage of Tyrants has not been able to extinguish but though they shone with an extraordinary Brightness yet every Believer is a Child of Light every Believer is a Star of great use and benefit tho one Star differeth from another Star in Glory tho he be never so obscure yet he may be beneficial as a Pearl or a Diamond tho it be set in Lead does not cease to be of great Value Thus your Name will be as sweet Ointment delightful and dear to others Whereas if we be wicked we shall have the same Fate with Jehoram who died without being desired 2 Chron. 21. 20. Thus I say our Examples will do more good than many bare Instructions As Souldiers will be more animated and forward when they see one Example of couragious Fighting before their Eyes than by a thousand Rules that teach them the Policies and Designs of War Thus I have shewed you what Improvement those that are recovered and brought from the Grave ought to make of it and what mischief will ensue if they do it not and indeed it is a Mercy to the World that the Lives of ill Men are so short for as one hath lately observed the World is very bad as it is so bad that good Men scarce know how to spend fifty or sixty years in it but how bad would it probably be were the Life of Man extended to six seven or eight hundred years If so near a prospect of the other World as forty or fifty years cannot restrain Men from the greatest Villanies what would they do if they could as reasonably suppose Death to be at three or four hundred years off If Men make such Improvements in Wickedness in twenty or thirty years what would they do in hundreds and then what a blessed place would this World be And to excite you to be the more careful in the improving of your Sickness Let me add these three following Considerations Cons. 1. How many are dead since you were first ill How many excellent Ministers whom you must never hear again How many of your dearest Friends are now in the cold Grave with whom you cannot now discourse and whose Faces you shall never see till the Great Day Many have sunk in a Calm and several among us have outliv'd a Storm Many have perished with less pain and less violent diseases than those which some of us have had This should engage us to make suitable returns to that God who has spared us when he hath taken them away Cons. 2. This Improvement of our Sickness and Recovery will exempt us from the Number of those hateful People that are not only no better but a great deal worse when they are brought out of Distress than they were before and 't is generally thought that of a thousand People that make large Promises in their Sickness there are scarce fifty that keep their Word and perform their Vows when they are recovered Those good Purposes which they had were the Product of their Fears and when those are over their intended Goodness does also vanish away Cons. 3. This good Improvement of your new Life may ingage God to prolong your time to an honourable old Age. For though we can merit nothing at his Hands yet if we labour hard in his Service it may be he will not cause our Sun to go down at Noon but continue us in his Vineyard till the Evening of the Day I now proceed briefly to consider the fourth Verse Ver. 4. Sing unto the Lord O ye Saints of his and give thanks at the Remembrance of his Holiness From these Words I shall insist on this Proposition That Person that has received wonderful Deliverance from Death ought not only to praise God himself but to excite and call upon others to praise God with him And all the Servants of God should be most willing to joyn in the return of thanks for any Mercy
PRACTICAL DISCOURSES ON Sickness Recovery IN Several SERMONS As they were lately preached in a Congregation in London BY TIMOTHY ROGERS M. A. After his Recovery from a Sickness of near two years continuance LONDON Printed for Thomas Parkhurst at the Bible and Three Crowns at the lower End of Cheapside Jonathan Robinson at the Golden Lion in St. Paul's Church-yard and John Dunton at the Raven in the Poultrey MDCXCI To the Right Worshipful Sr. WILLIAM ASHURST AND Sr. THOMAS LANE Knights And Aldermen of the City of London Most Honoured AFter I had once resolved to let the following Discourses see the Light in hope that they might be some way serviceable to the Glory of God and the Good of Men especially of the Sick or such as are recovered I had no doubtful Thoughts to whom they should be address'd You were the Persons that I first thought upon and it is to You that I am obliged in a more than ordinary manner Therefore I take this occasion to make my Acknowledgments and to testify my Gratitude It was from your Kindness that in troubled and uneasy Times I did obtain many a pleasant and quiet Retreat In both your Houses in the Country I always met with a chearful Entertainment and had there an opportunity of Study which together with the benefit of your Conversation and a leisure to think without being diverted by the noise and burry of the disagreeing World made me to relish a very sensible Delight in being there It is to me and others a thing very observable that the Honours which you have received both from the King and your Fellow-Citizens have made no Alteration in your former ingaging Tempers and Carriage You are still as free as pleasant and as affable to your meaner Friends as you were before Whereas we daily see many Persons whom a little Honour or Advancement changes from all the good Qualities they once possess'd to Loftiness and Pride whom an high Station fills with as high Thoughts and who cannot from their more exalted Condition look upon such as are below them without Contempt and Scorn And tho this may not cause them to lose some outward Civilities from those that are dazled with their shining Grandure yet they do thereby lose all that Reverence and Esteem in the Minds of Men which other wise they might expect You are for the great Zeal you have manifested to the Good of your Country and more especially to the Liberties and Priviledges of this City justly beloved and the more so because you were always steadily resolved to promote the true Interest of both even in such a Season when some that had either no English Blood in their Veins or no true Love to their Country in their Hearts were willing easily to part with those excellent Rights which cost their Forefathers very dear who were in some sense worse than Esau for he sold his Birthright but they were willing to surrender and to give theirs away for nothing It comforts us when from our low Ground we look up to your higher Sphere and see you so well to fill your Orbs with Light And we daily pray that you may long shine there for the Common Good and that we may long be refresh'd with those Influences which have already been so comfortable to us You have now through the Providence of God an honourable Station but before that you were most honorably descended You derived your Birth not only from Families that had done worthily in Ephratah and were famous in Bethlehem but from such as were the Friends of God of a strict Piety and of an unblamable Religion some of which are now Citizens of a better Corporation even of that which is in Heaven What a Comfort is it to the Children of good Parents that they can pray to their Fathers and their Mothers God In Yours you have beheld the Amiableness of Religion represented to the Life in their good Example and the Holiness of their Conversation You may fire your Souls if at any time they begin to cool by the pleasant remembrance of that which they did for God You can remember with what Constancy and Fervour they prayed with what Reverence they read the Word and heard it preach'd with what Seriousness and Frequency they spoke to you of heavenly Things and of the Life to come with what watchfulness they managed their Prosperity with what Patience they bore Afflictions with what Meekness they forgave their Enemies with what Readiness they entertained all those whom they judged sincerely to name the Name of Christ. You see those who are yet alive worshipping and serving God and you can though not without sorrow for your own loss remember those who are dead and gone with what Faith they lived and with what Hope they died Give me leave humbly to desire you to continue to set often before your Eyes their heavenly Example and to keep the same good Order in your Families that they kept and to read the Scriptures with as much Frequency and Seriousness as they read them to be as conscientious in all the Duties of Religion as they were that so They and You may meet with Joy in the Great Day The Thoughts of Death as it is an Entrance into an Unalterable and Eternal State will very much promote all this It will help us to have our most delightful Conversation with those Persons with whom we desire and hope to be found when our Lord comes It will regulate our use of lawful Things and guide us in the management of our Pleasures and our Recreations it will keep both our Bodies and our Souls in a readiness for private Prayer the serious and reverent and lively performance of which will greatly promote our Growth in Gracê We give to our Friends large Portions of our Time every day and we should devote some part of it to converse with God and that not in a cold manner but endeavour to warm our Souls with a deep sense of our Wants and with some suitable foregoing Meditations This is that Duty to which you are no Strangers and You and all others that are in earnest for your Souls will preserve this as a strong Defence against all your spiritual Enemies and the manifold Snares and Temptations of the World for it brings to our Assistance the Help of God and of our blessed Redeemer There is no Pleasure that we have in our Friends or in our Diversions that is comparable to that Joy which an holy Soul finds in its humble and reverent Approaches to the Throne of Grace where God and the Soul meet together where God by his Spirit kindles heavenly Desires and where the Soul upon the Wings of those Desires takes its flight from this lower World when the Soul complains of the burden of Sin and God by his free and gracious Pardon takes the Burden off when the Soul pants and breaths for the living God and he is pleas'd to meet and to satisfy the
us the desire of Food and that drives away those diseases that would lessen and abate our Appetite And it is in the sense of his Providence that we ask his Blessing before we eat and return him thanks afterwards For were it not for his Gracious Influences our Faculties would quickly lose their proper Vertues and we should notwithstanding all our Care quickly dye All Sicknesses are at his disposal for it is he that kills and that makes alive he bringeth down to the grave and bringeth up 1 Sam. 2. 6. When he pleases to withdraw his most Common Blessings we droop and Languish and pine away Thousands of Diseases stand in a readiness waiting for his Command and when our sins make him to give the word they fall upon us with a mighty Violence and in a few restless dayes and nights change our Countenances break off our purposes and stain all our Pride and glory Fools because of their transgression and because of their iniquities are afflicted Their soul abhorreth all manner of meat and they draw nigh unto the gates of death Psal. 107. 17 18. God has fixed the bounds of our habitations and the very time of our stay and when it shall be that they must know us no more We are but Dust and Ashes and how soon can the mighty power of our great Creator blow away the most strong and healthful with more ease than we can our breath scatter a little dust All things in this lower World have their Rise their Progress and Decay by the Decree of God and so have the Lives of men There is a time wherein to be born and a time wherein to dye and both known to him though upon wise Reasons hid from our knowledge God does with great Wisdom cast a Veil of thick night upon all future Events that so we may without needless and diverting Curiosity perform our present duty He shews this Dominion that he hath over the Lives of Men in these two things First In the large difference which his Providence makes amongst those persons whose outward Circumstances seem to be much alike One sick man by the use of some mixtures or applications immediately recovers and another that with the most exact observance takes the same Physick consumes his days in tedious Sorrows and in the flouds of his own Tears is carried Mourning to the Grave Secondly He shews his Soveraign disposal of the Lives of Men in ordering the different Seasons and times of their Death One is cut down in his early Spring and in his blooming greener Youth and his Sun is covered with darkness almost as soon as it begins to rise whilest another weathers out the Storms and grows to a mature and full Age. One does but peep as it were into the World takes a short view of it and is commanded out again and is at his Journeys end in the morning of his Life and another is allow'd to travel till the shadows of the Evening are stretched out according to their most regular advances and till the Threescore and Ten that is the usual date of Long Life is expired One is quickly summoned to the Great Tribunal and judged whilest another has a longer space wherein to prepare for his Tryal and his Final doom 'T is the Divine Providence that sees and orders not onely the larger portions of the lives of Men such as Infancy and Childhood and Youth and Manhood but as God numbers the Hairs of our Heads so known to him are all the minutes and hours and days and particularities of our Life and every moment of our Time He has set us our bounds that we cannot pass and with respect to his Appointment no man dyes before his Time Though a man that dyes by an acute Disease or a violent Death dyes before that time which he might have reach'd in an ordinary Course and before old Age which we reckon to be the most seasonable time wherein to dye Bloody and deceitful men are said not to live out half their dayes that is according to the General Limit and Order of Providence as to the Age of Man viz. Seventy or Eighty years And indeed every Wicked Man in some sense dyes before his time because he is not sit to dye like Fruit that is gather'd before it be fully ripe I now proceed to some Application And from this Doctrine we may Infer First If God be the Soveraign disposer of Life and Death then the Friends of the Sick do them the greatest kindness when they recommend their Case to him And to this they are obliged by the Communion which they have with them in the same Humane Nature they are also in the body in such a body as is liable to as many pains as they see in others They may be plunged into the same distresses and need the same favour to be shewed to them Regard I beseech you your afflicted Friends with great tenderness and pity for whatsover their Case is your sins may bring you as Low and you have no assurance that what has happen'd to them may not be your own Lot before you come to the period of this miserable Life It is also the duty of the Sick themselves in the first assaults of Pain with great Humility and Contrition of Spirit to betake themselves to God as their onely helper and with a fervour suitable to the sadness of their Case to request of him Faith and Patience Repentance and Mortification and the pardon of sin and earnestly to pray that if it may be their sickness may not be very long nor very sharp For long and sore afflictions are so great Tryals of Humane Nature that they may very well be prayed against and I suppose no man thinks himself obliged to desire an heavy Cross. As to what concerns the Sick Man himself he is to put his Affairs into the best order he can upon the first warning the first beginning of his Illness for indeed in most Distempers those increasing pains that attend them will not allow him to do it afterwards Thus Job advises Chap. 33. 26. that When a man is chastened with pain upon his bed he shall pray unto God and he will be favourable to him and he shall see his face with joy But he that never begins to pray till he be almost at the last Gasp will not be able to make such a strong and fervent Prayer as is like to reach to Heaven As for them that try the Physitian till he gives them over and never till then seek the Prayers of the Church they have but little Reason to hope for help from God to whom they have no recourse till they are driven by the last extremity For they shew that if they could have had Relief without him they cared not to be beholden to him for it In which Case it is just with God to suffer the Sickness to be mortal which perhaps had not been so if Applications had been made to him
betray you to death or to long pain Seek chiefly to the Soveraign disposer of all things who can either cure you without means or make those that you try to be available knowing that without him not all the Cordials in the World can for one moment stay the departing Life Of which many Physitians are so sensible that they frequently tell you that by the blessing of God they hope to do you good Indeed they had need be men of Prayer that by their means Religio Medici might be as famous in reallity as it has been in scorn And though I pretend to no great skill in these affairs yet I have some Experience as to what I say I have often found the Insufficiency of all things that have been prescrib'd and that they have not given me the least Ease in my violent and sharp pain and how what I have taken with a design to help me has increased my Disease and made it more painful Therefore having severely smarted my self for my folly in expecting too much from humane help I may be allowed to warn others that they may not fall into the same snare and to desire them to trust more in God and less in Men. We may be as guilty of Idolatry in giving Men too much of our Trust as if we bowed before a Graven Image and it is an evil to which Men are as prone as to any other sin An Instance whereof is that which Suidas saith that the Book which Solomon wrote of Physick was affixed upon the Gate into the Entry of the Temple and because the People boasted too much in it neglecting the Lord Hezekiah caused them to pull away this Book and bury it and the Talmud saith that Hezekiah did two memorable things first he hid the Book of Physick which Solomon had written and secondly he brake the brasen Serpent which Moses made Weemes Exerc. div pag. 120. Indeed men do as that King said unto Hazael 2 King 8. 8. Take a present in thine hand and go meet the man of God and enquire of the Lord by him saying shall I recover of this disease They seek for Recovery first of all as that which would bring them the most acceptable News which made the Prophet use such Ambiguity in his Speech Verse 10. For 't is likely that 't was no dissimulation because his Sickness was not in it self Mortal yet he should surely dye that is by the Treachery of Hazael The hope of Recovery is so grateful to the Patient that Physitians are not a little tempted to conceal the danger when it is visible to all but to the Sick Man and of how ill Consequence is this I cannot better express it than in the Words of an Honourable person for whom men of all the Learned professions have a just value For my part sayes he who take the prognosticks of Phytians to be but Guesses not Prophesies and know how backward they are to bid us Fear till our condition leave them little hopes of us I cannot but think that Patient very ill advis'd who thinks it not time to entertain thoughts of death as long as his Doctor allows him any hopes of Life for in case they should both be deceiv'd 't would be much easier for the mistaken Physitian to save his Credit than for the unprepared Sinner to save his Soul Boyle Occasional Reflections Sect. 2. pag. 222. Our safest Course in all our Troubles and Sicknesses is to Go to Jesus Christ who has an Omnipotent Vertue and Ability to help as when he was on Earth he healed all manner of Diseases and among the rest a person that had suffered many things of many Physitians and was nothing bettered but rather grew worse Mark 5. 26. So he has still the same power and Compassion and though Thousands have shared in the Gracious effects of his Bevenolence yet he has still the same Charity and the same All-sufficient Fulness from whence to relieve us as the Sun after it has by its Light and Quickning influences given Being and Refreshment to so many several Creatures in the World suffers no diminution of its own Light and Heat and is no less Communicative and Beneficial to this very day then it was many hundred years ago The whole of what I have spoken upon this Head is onely to keep our spirits from placing an undue reliance on the Creatures when our Trust is chiefly to be fix'd on our Glorious and powerful Creator One would think it strange and yet so it is that when God has by some sharp and severe stroak beaten off our hold from those props whereon we us'd to lean in the time of our Careless Health when he has confin'd us to a solitary state and we can no longer have our Antient Friendships nor our former hope yet even in distress it self so great is our adherence to Creatures we substitute to Our selves new Reeds whereon to lay some strength and our vain trust does not expire but with our latest breath I would not have any part of what I have said to reflect in the least upon those worthy Physitians who in the time of my woful Calamity gave me their Charitable Visits though God was not pleas'd to succeed the Endeavours they used yet I hope and pray that he may reward them for their labour and their diligence As also Those that gave me their kind help when I was not able to help my self I owe to them all great Respect and Thanks and none can take it ill if I say what to his Glory I ought to say that God onely was my Physitian and my Deliverer and to him is all the praise due He hath torn and he hath healed he hath smitten and he hath bound me up he hath revived me and I live in his sight Hos. 6. 1. So that I may say with David Psal. 103. 1 2 3 4. Bless the Lord O my soul and all that is within me bless his holy name Bless the Lord O my soul and forget not all his benefits Who forgiveth all thine Iniquities and healeth all thy diseases who redeemeth thy Life from destruction who crowneth thee with Loving-kindness and tender mercies Who satisfieth thy mouth with good things so that thy Youth is renewed like the Eagles Observ. 2. To be brought up from the Grave and to be kept alive from going down to the Pit is a Mercy greatly to be acknowledged and for which we ought to be very thankful And thaâ— upon these following Accounts Reason 1. Because Life is the dearest of all our present Blessings All Happiness is usually represented by the name of Life and all Misery by the name of Death Other Evils take from us each of them some part of our Comforts Death bereaves us of them all Bondage deprives us of Liberty Banishment of our Countrey Sickness afflicts our Bodies shame or Infamy our Souls pain troubleth our Senses poverty incommodateth our Life but there is no Calamity so great
many things are to pass in that Moment In the same is our Life to finish our Works to be examined and we are then to know how it will go with us for ever and ever In that Moment I shall cease to Live in that Moment I shall behold my Judge in that moment I must answer for all my publick and my secret Actions for all that I have ever thought or spoke or done for all the Talents the Time the Mercies the Health the Strength the Opportunities and the Seasons and Dayes of Grace that I have ever had for all the Evil that I might have avoided for all the good I might have done and did not and all this before that Judge who has beheld my wayes from my Birth to the Grave before that Judge who cannot be deceiv'd and who will not be impos'd upon Little can he that has not been brought near to Death and Judgement know what Thoughts the diseased have when they are so Little very little does a Soul in Flesh know what it is to appear before the Great God This is so great and so strange a thing that they onely know it who have receiv'd their final Sentence but they are not suffer'd to return to tell us how it is or what passes then and God sees it fit it should be concealed from us who are yet on this side the Grave But who does not tremble to think of this mighty Change and of this Moment that is the last of Time and the beginning of Eternity that includes Heaven and Hell and all the Effects of the Mercy and Justice of God See Moral Essayes Vol. 4. Lib. 1. Chap. 9. Who does not tremble when he Considers that Infinite and Holy Majesty before whom the Angels cover their Faces that Considers his Omniscience and his Greatness and the mighty Consequences of that Sentence how sudden it is and how irresistible and that it is an irrevocable Decree and by a Word of this Mighty Judge we live or dye for ever It is no wonder if the thoughts of it make us shrink and quiver It is a greater wonder that when some or other whom we know are almost every week going to such a place and state as this we who are not yet cited to the Bar are no more concerned and use no more endeavors to be ready for it 't is a wonder that we put no higher a value on that Gospel that teaches us how we may avoid Condemnation 't is a wonder that we prize no more that Gracious Redeemer who alone can plead our Cause and that we labour and strive no more to be partakers of his Righteousness by which we may be Justify'd It is no wonder if this prospect throw men into strange Agonies as it frequently does those who are dying Many people will say when they hear the Complaints of the Sick and their Long Continued Groans It were well if God would take their souls away from their pained Languishing Bodies it were well indeed if that could put an end to their present and their future pain But do they not know that they must go into Eternity and be judged after death Oh my Friends when you come to the Borders of the Grave when you are within an Hour or two's distance from your Final Judgment and your unalterable state what a mighty Change will it cause in your thoughts and your apprehensions You will then know and feel it Then when the Perspective is turn'd and the other World begins to appear very great and this very little This that I have represented to you is a part of that which we call dying Death is that which the Philosophers have talk't of with great Contempt and with lofty Speeches but I believe they commonly talk't so confidently when they thought themselves far from it and I am sure they did so because they had not a distinct knowledge of Futurity For had they consider'd their own sins and the nature of their last Trial with the Consequents of it this would have lower'd all their Pride and Glory they would have changed their Language had they look't upon Death as the Conclusion of Time and the beginning of Eternity and not onely as a going out of this but as an entrance into a state that would never Change It is a great Mercy and greatly to be acknowledg'd that God allows us so much time wherein to prepare our selves for this final and irrevocable doom It is an instance of his Patience that is truly Divine that notwithstanding our many repeated Sins he has not cut us off It is his great Mercy that gives us leave to appear in his Courts before we appear at his Tribunal and that he affords us such large notice and warning that so we may be ready for our Last Tryal whereon so very much depends The Conclusion I May say to you this Evening as Christ to the People concerning John Mat. 11. 7. What came you out to see As for those who came hither out of a Curiosity onely to see one of whom they have it may be heard much discourse Let them know that though by reason of my long and sore Affliction I have been a wonder unto many yet now I can say with some hope that God is my strong Refuge As for those that came with an expectation of hearing something new and diverting that might please their Fancies or gratifie their Ears onely they find themselves by this time mightily disappointed But Those of you that came with a more serious Intention know that you see a Person that has by his own Sins and the Righteous Displeasure of God been for a long Season as in the very Grave and yet by the Power and Goodness of God brought from thence again You see a poor Reed that has been shaken indeed by the Wind but which the Grace of God has kept from being broken to pieces 'T is to you to whom I would principally direct my Speech 't is your Prayers which I would beg that so you would desire of God that the Deliverance which he has so far advanced may be compleated by the same Hand and Mercy that has hitherto reviv'd me You that have Health have cause to praise him for his Mercy and I that have been long sick have cause to praise him who has been my Physitian and my Helper O magnifie the Lord with me and let us exalt his name together Psal. 34. 3. Let us as we join our Prayers so unite our Praises to this mighty Lord. Do you praise him for keeping you from violent overwhelming pains and I will Praise him for mitigating those that I laboured under and though he chastened me sore yet he has not deliver'd me over to death And so by this means we shall bring an acceptable Sacrifice to his Altar and it may be that through Jesus Christ he will receive as an odour of a sweet smell this our Evening Sacrifice The End of the First Sermon Practical
immortality to light and with that Saviour who is the great Prophet and Teacher of the Church who came from Heaven and is now gone thither and we may fully rest and Acquiesce in the discoveries that he has given us of that Countrey for he knew it very well was very faithful in the discharging of his office and does not impose upon us any thing that is either false or incredible by our Holy Prayers we are to maintain a Commerce with him and with that World and by our frequent going thither in our Meditations we may gain a clearer knowledge of it Though there are no bounds on which our thoughts can terminate but onely the Revelations which God has been pleas'd to make in his own Word What is above those Heavens and that Firmament that we see there 's none can tell us but God and our Saviour who are there For when Men have abstracted their Thoughts with as much industry as they can from All that is material and sensible when they have refin'd their Understandings to the greatest spirituality and pored never so long upon the state of separation they will still remain in the dark about it And he is the most happy Man who in the sincere performance of the Duties of Religion can resign his Soul to Christ in Death and trust him though he is to be removed to a strange and a new World For immediately after he is loos'd from the Body he will understand more in an instant then all the most Learned in this World have ever understood by the labour and diligence of many years Secondly That which renders the continuance of Time to us wherein to prepare for Death a great Mercy is because we are to dye but Once and upon the well or ill doing of it depends our future Happiness or Misery It is a great Mercy that we have time wherein to make ready for our last Combat for if we lose the Battle once we are overthrown for ever it must not be fought over again It is a Mercy that we have leisure to compleat our journey well for we must never travel over the same Road again There will be no second Edition wherein to Correct our former Errors when a period is once put to the last Line of Life Oh what Faith what Courage what Strength is necessary to Conquer the Fears of Death and Death it self If men fail in their Trades they may by the kindness of their Friends be set up again if they have suffer'd Losses by Shipwrack by Fire or by Plunder they may be repaired but a Soul once lost will remain so for ever 'T is a long long Eternity that succeeds our Time if we should live on Earth as many Hundred years as the most Aged live Months it would bear no proportion with that vast and endless duration Whoever compares the shortness of our present state with the continuance of that into which we enter when we are to dye cannot but esteem the being brought back from the Grave to be a great Mercy If you have been careless of hearing at one season you may hear the Word again at another if you have heretofore been cold in your Prayers you may now excite your Hearts and pray with more fervour but if you once dye ill you must never mend so concluding a Miscarriage All the Tears we shed cannot give Life to the Body from which the Soul is fled All the Anguish of Miserable Souls cannot procure for them another Tryal They that are once cut down must never be planted by the Rivers side any more There is hope of a tree if it be cut down that it will sprout again and that the tender branch thereof will not cease though the root thereof wax old in the earth and the stock thereof die in the ground yet through the scent of Water it will bud and bring forth boughs like a plant But man dieth and wasteth away yea man giveth up the ghost and where is he Job 14. 7 8 9 10. Reason 5. Those who are brought up from the grave have cause to be thankful because by that means they have more opportunity to be serviceable to the Glory of God and to be useful in the World Meerly to live is not a thing very desireable considering how many Miserie 's there are in Life to what Evils and Inconveniences our Bodies are obnoxious and that the pains which they may suffer may be both very long and so secret that none can understand either what they are or how to remove them But it is a most desirable thing to Live when we can thereby obtain the Ends that are truly Great and Noble For First Hereby a man may do good to others He may teach the Ignorant reduce the wandring and by the sincerity of his Counsel by the zeal of his Prayers and the Lustre and Holiness of a good Example advance the power of Religion Our Lives are not our own they are Gods by a double title both of Creation and Redemption they are to be us'd for him who preserves or takes them away as he will Not onely Ministers but every private Christian is obliged by the Name he bears and by the Relation that he has to the holy Society of Believers and to the Kingdom of Christ whereof he is a Subject to enlarge it by all good ways that he can and every man is the more obliged to this when God has bestow'd a new Life upon him When we are near to the Gates of the Grave and look back and see with how little Zeal and Diligence we had spent our time and how little we had done for him who blest us all our dayes then we are enclined most earnestly to beseech him that he would grant us another Tryal and that then we would improve it much better than we did our former time and when he does grant us what we have askt then it should be our great indeavour not to frustrate and disappoint the designs of his Goodness and Mercy Then must we teach transgressors his way telling them how dreadful thing it is to fall into the hands of the living God Then we may tell the Healthful what Sickness is what we have found it to be by our own Experience then we may tell them how it makes very uneasie and troublesome Companions of our now beloved Bodies How it deprive us of all our Pleasures and Recreations in the day and of our rest at night That all their Friendships Conversations and Merryments without true Religion are altogether vain and not onely so but they leave a sting of guilt behind when the sweetness that once allur'd is gone away We may warn them to provide for the dayes of darkness and for the many Miseries of Life that will sooner or latter overtake them When we are Recover'd we can tell the Diseased of the Goodness and the Power of God that they can never be so distressed but that it is still
in his power to help them and a Word of his Mouth can heal them when other Physitians are of no value We can then by what we felt our selves tell them something of the Evil effects and bitterness of Sin Though what we feel in some Cases is far more then what we can express We can after our Sickness excite all our Acquaintance to Fear and to love God to fear him who can in a few dayes bring them very low and to love him who can quickly raise the lowest up again A Man has much more to do on Earth than to secure his own Salvation The World the Church the Nation to which he belongs do all claim a part in him The Converted and the Unconverted his Relations and Friends the good and the bad do all need and require his help and it is a Mercy greatly to be acknowledged that God renewes our strength and opportunity that we may do some service for him before we dye There are many Duties to be performed here which cannot be done in another World Psal. 88. 11. His loving kindness cannot be declared in the Grave nor his Faithfulness in destruction Psal. 6. 5. In death there is no remembrance of thee in the grave who shall give thee thanks Psal. 115. 17. The dead praise not the Lord neither any that go down into silence Now it is a blessed and a glorious priviledge to praise him here on Earth for though he be praised among the glorify'd it is without any propogation of praise to the name of God for that is the Priviledge of the Saints on Earth where they make known his name to those that knew it not before or make it more known to those that knew it As also to advance the Kingdom of Christ in the World to which the dead contribute nothing at all and to give good Examples by the sincerity and inoffensiveness of their Carriage for in heaven there is no need of good Examples There is no Evil Person to be reduced and all there are possest of their Happiness Vid. Hook 's Priviledge of the Saints on Earth beyond those in Heaven in regard of many duties pag. 12. Here it is that we may feed the Hungry cloath the Naked visit the Sick lodge the poor that have no dwelling place Here it is by our Sympathy that we may weep with those that weep and in some respect imitate the kind Incarnation of our Saviour by putting on the Wants and Miseries of others But in Heaven there is no Miserable person to relieve no opportunity to shew our Mercy and Compassion to the afflicted and yet this Grace is one of the fairest Lineaments of the new Creature and which causes in us a near resemblance of our Heavenly Father Here we may pray for the Sick the Tempted and the Persecuted but there is an happy freedom from Sickness and Temptation While we live we may by Intercession and Prayers for our Friends do them good but in that World for ought we know such an Intercession ceases and we are sure there is neither Command Example or Promise in all the Scripture to encourage us to make our Application to the Saints departed for the Relief of our wants that Homage is alone due to Christ the Great and onely Mediatour whose Mediation is founded on the excellency of his Person and the Ransom that he gave to God 'T is here on Earth that the strong in Faith may assist the weak 't is here they may speak words of Comfort and Refreshment to the weary soul whereas above they all rest from their Labours 'T is here they must strengthen the weak hands and Confirm the feeble knees and say to them that are of a fearful heart be strong fear not Isa. 35. 3 4. 'T is here that the fathers to their children must make known his truth Isa. 38. 19. and endeavour that his name may be celebrated from Generation to Generation and that the people which shall be created may praise the Lord. Psal. 102 18. 'T is here that in the midst of sore Tryals we must exercise our Faith for there it will be turned into sight and full Assurance 'T is here that we must wait in hope for there the good which we expect will be possest 'T is here that we must love our Enemies and bless them that Curse us And this Faith and Hope and love are greatly serviceable to the Propagation of the Gospel 'T is here on Earth that we must acquire and use these Graces and exercise the Gifts which God hath given us for the common good For whether there be prophesies they shall fail whether there be tongues they shall cease whether there be knowledge it shall vanish away 1. Cor. 13. 8. What a Mercy is it to have Life and time wherein to perform so many good Works for the advantage of our Neighbours What a Mercy is it for a Magistrate to live that he may shine with more brightness and fill his higher Orb with clearer Light That he may by his own good Example and by his discouraging of Prophaneness and Irreligion promote the Kingdom of Christ as well as contrive for the Honour of his own Dominions What a Mercy is it to a Minister that he may live to speak in the name of God to bring the glad tidings of Salvation and to be long employed in bringing home poor wandring sinners to Jesus Christ To unfold the Mysteries of the Gospel and the unsearchable riches of Grace and Mercy that are therein and to use the Talents that are given him for his Masters Glory How much more desireable is it to such an one to be speaking in the Pulpit than to be silent in the Grave and to have all his knowledge that he acquired with painful Labour and waking Thoughts to be as it were buried with him or at least not to be of any further use to the World What a Mercy is it to a Parent that he may Live to educate his his children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord that he may instruct and Antidote them against the Contagions of this World where Evil Examples are so numerous and good ones so very rare to give them warning of the dangers which he himself narrowly escap'd and to acquaint them betimes with the wayes of God and by his conduct and prudent advice and frequent Exhortations and constant prayers to recommend them frequently to the blessing of Providence and to fortifie them against the rashness and haste and folly of their Careless Age. 'T is easie indeed for those that are faithful in their several stations to desire Death as a Traveller desires the shadow of a Rock in a weary land and as a Labourer after a days hard labour is glad of the approaching Night that he may go to bed 'T is a piece of self-denial for very Holy Men to be content to Live and to stay on Earth when they have a well-grounded hope of Heaven To stay in
the midst of hard service Tentations and Tryals and to endure the heat of the day when they might have their Reward especially if they be afflicted with tedious bodily pains for to serve God with chearfulness in the midst of pain is a noble effect of Faith It is a very Generous thing to desire to Live when they have no pleasure in Life but as it gives them an occasion to be serviceable to the Church It is not altogether so with those who are in full health and Ease For as their strength is greater so their work on that account is more delightful and may be done with more vigour There is not amore Remarkable Instance in History than that of our Apostle Phil. 1. 21 22 23. For to me to live is Christ and to die is gain But if I live in the flesh this is the fruit of my labour yet what I shall chuse I wot not For I am in a strait betwixt two having a desire to depart and to be with Christ which is far better Nevertheless to abide in the flesh is more needful for you Was there ever seen any thing in the World greater then the frame and behaviour of this Apostle this Holy Man of God this Angel in Flesh we might have called him but that he speaks of dying 'T is no great matter for a Man to desire to Live and to be serviceable who is under Doubts and Fears about his Salvation 't is what he ought chiefly to desire that he may renew his Evidences and work out his Salvation with more diligence But this was not the case of Paul he knew that to dye would be his gain It was as it were put to his choice whether he would go to Christ to that dear Master who had loved him and whom he had lov'd or stay below in this World a World that had given him very coarse and rude Entertainment that had afflicted and scorn'd and vilified and persecuted him wherever he came And yet this poor weary Traveller is willing still to travel for the good of others when he might have been at home He is willing to stay amidst the reproaches and pains and sorrows of this Earth when he might have gone to Heaven where he would have had a Crown of Glory and have been in the midst of Joyes and Hallelujahs He might have gone to Triumph and Victory but for the sake of his Neighbours and his Friends he is willing to renew the Combat He had been long tost on a very stormy Sea and might now if he had so pleased have gone into the Port but for their sakes he is willing from the very Harbours Mouth to put to Sea and to abide new dangers and storms again No Soul excepting that of Christ was ever sired with a greater Zeal for God and the Salvation of others than this of Paul There is a different behaviour visible in Hezekiah who when it was told him by the Prophet Isa. 38. 1 2. Thus saith the Lord Set thine house in order for thou shalt die and not live He turned his face to the wall and prayed and wept sore ver 3. One would have thought it should not have been an unwelcom Message to a good man especially to one who could reflect upon his Sincerity and appeal to God about it to one that as we may Imagine might have been after so pure and so sincere a Life accustom'd to the Thoughts of so great a Change that knew that the setting of his Sun was that it might rise again in a glorious Immortality It is a wonder to see those Cheeks bedewed with Tears which one would have thought should have been adorn'd with smiles as a Soldier is glad to be discharged from long duty or after having long maintained a Place with great Hardships to have the Siege raised and to be set at Liberty But there are Three Reasons usually assign'd for it First Though he was a very good Man yet he was still but a Man had those Humors and Passions which are usually put into a great agitation upon the thoughts of sudden Death The Body and the Soul have been so long Acquainted that they are loth to part Secondly Because he had no Issue he was descended from David and in a probability as he might think of having the Messiah come of him according to the Flesh. And Thirdly He desired to Live longer for the Reformation of the Church For his Age is reckoned to be then but 39 and that he dyed at 54. We ought to be very thankful when God brings us from the Grave and will use us in his service He needs us not if a thousand such as we are should dye how quickly can he supply our places with such as may be more faithful and on whom he will bestow more Grace and better Gifts When he took away such great Men as Moses Aaron and Elias he found others to put in their steeds and the Church and the Interest of Christ will not dye with us Those that are most devoted to the service of God would not have the opportunities even of difficult obedience taken from them too soon Having often dishonoured God in the time of their Health they would still serve him though it be in pain Indeed though Believers may sometimes earnestly desire to go to Heaven when this World through their languishing Afflictions and sore Tryals is become uneasie to them yet God will have them to serve him here on Earth tho' it be with much trouble Christ prays not that he would take his disciples out of the World Tho' they were presecuted and hated in it Joh. 17. 15. And this may give us some Light into one of the most mysterious parts of the Providence of God why he suffers his servants to conflict with violent pains when he could ease them with a word why he suffers them to make their Couches to swim with Tears when he could quickly wipe all their Tears away why he suffers them to groan long in Misery when if he pleas'd he could translate them to Heaven without a sigh 'T is that they may live to serve him even in these Afflictions and by the Experiences which they have of his Faithfulness be encouraged more and more to trust in him He could at their first Conversion give them the Reward and as soon as they are adopted to be his Sons make them actual Possessors of that Inheritance to which they are Heirs Or he could strengthen their Sanctification and compleat their Grace that they should not complain and mourn as they now do for the hardness of their hearts their deadness and unbelief It is not that he takes delight in their Grief or that he finds an Harmony in their Groans 'T is because even they shall feel the bitterness of sin they shall know the way to Life to be strait and narrow that so they may at length wonder more at the riches and freeness of his Grace that
meet with Joy It will be a welcom day indeed when their Looks their Expressions their Carriage will all be changed for the better There will be no appearance of any thing that is dismal and grievous and it will be more welcom to us because we and our friends so suitable so loving and so perfect shall never part again Oh what a comfortable thought is this Oh what will our praises be when we are there where there will be no more sickness no more death for ever We shall behold what we were in our Mortal State how vain and how short-lived and what we are when we are made Immortal There will be no more restless and weary dayes nor nights as restless as the day not a sigh nor a groan will be heard in all the blessed place above What would one that is in great pain give for ease most readily would he give all he has in the World but upon our first entrance into that Land of pleasure and of health all our Diseases will be cured and so fully cured that we shall never Relapse nor be diseased again There will be no pain This to those that are at ease may seem a little part of Heaven but to those of us that have been in long and terrible sickness 't is a very sweet and reviving Consideration In this World one affliction is scarce past till another comes usually there is breach upon breach and a new sorrow treads upon the heels of the old one as one wave upon another We have scarcely dryed our eyes for one loss but another comes that will make us weep again but in the Heaven which we hope for there is no Language but that of Praise Here we are alwayes either bewailing our own Miseries or those of our Friends and Neighbours but there it will not be so God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes and there shall be no more death neither sorrow nor crying neither shall there be any more pain for the former things are passed away Rev. 21. 4. Oh what a joy will it be to us to be past death that is so terrible and to be for ever past it The ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with sons and everlasting joy upon their heads tĥey shall obtain joy and gladness and sorrow and sighing shall flee away Isa. 35. 10. We praise God indeed here and we have Cause to praise him but our Victories are not so compleat as to make a perfect Triumph we have one great Battel yet to fight and one great Gulph to shoot and a dark and a solitary way to go This is that which is grievous to our thoughts but oh what a joy will it be to us when we are past death and have dyed well who can express the mighty pleasure of it When the deliver'd Soul can say I that have been so furiously tempted so violently assaulted so siercely shaken by the blast of the terrible one shall be so no more all the Rage of Satan shall not come near me nor give me an unquiet thought for ever And I that griev'd and was disconsolate with tedious and uncommon pain shall never droop nor languish any more What a reviving prospect will it be when we stand on the other side of the Grave when the terrible forerunners of Death and Death it self shall be no more Then we may say indeed Oh death where is thy sting oh grave where is thy victory What consternation fear and perplexity fill'd the hearts of the poor Israelites when they were going out of Egypt when they were environed with rocks with their Enemies behind and with the Sea before They were in great trouble and knew not what to do But how different were their looks and Apprehensions when they beheld the Sea to give way and by an unheard of Miracle stand as a Wall on either hand till they past thorough How delightful was it to them when they were on the firm Land to see those very Enemies that Pharaoh and those Cruel Masters that had for so many years kept them in cruel bondage to find a grave in that Element which yielded and made a way for them Exod. 15. 1 2. So will it be with us when we shall see all our diseases all our Fears all our Temptations all our sinking thoughts to be destroy'd for ever The day of our death that will convey us to the blessed State will be better to us then the day of our birth that brought us into such an evil World as this Our Eyes will then no more behold grievous objects our Ears will no more hear any sad or doleful news Here we have many National and Personal Deliverances but alass we sin again and so bring upon our selves new Judgements But there which every sincere Soul reckons to be a great part of Heaven we shall sin no more for ever I that am now speaking come to you as from the Grave and can give you an account of Pain and Sickness but am not able to give you so distinct an Account of the Holy Cheerful Employment that is above But if one were to come to you from Heaven if he were but enabled to tell what he felt and your Capacities enlarged to understand the pleasing Narrative how would your glad hearts melt with an Admiring Joy and your Souls be raised to Praise and Wonder they will be much more raised and more joyful when you have your compleat and final Deliverance Then you shall say with those in Rev. 5. 12 13. Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honour and glory and blessing And again Blessing honour glory and power be unto him that sitteth upon the Throne and unto the Lamb for ever and ever The End of the Second Sermon The Third SERMON PSAL. 30. ver 3 4. O Lord thou hast brought up my Soul from the Grave thou hast kept me alive that I should not go down to the Pit Sing unto the Lord O ye Saints of his and give Thanks at the remembrance of his Holiness IF Deliverance from the Grave be so great a Mercy and for which we ought to be very thankful what cause have they to be thankful that are delivered from a Death in Sin As the Soul is much better than the Body so the Mercies that are bestowed upon it are much more valuable and without this spiritual Resurrection temporal Deliverance and Salvation would not be so great a Mercy A Soul under the Dominion and reigning Power of Sin is in a far more deplorable Condition than a Body that is consuming in the Grave the one suffers under a sort of innocent Misery which it cannot help the other suffers under a wilful Obstinacy and Impotence contracted by its own fault How sad a prospect is it to see Men far from God in whom alone there is Life a Separation from whom is far more terrible than the
I may but I have had no Rest at all then nor the next nor the next scarce any discernable Sleep I am sure none that was refreshing for above three quarters of a year together And if at any time I rested a little that little Rest was all the while disturb'd with terrible and amazing Dreams and when I awaked I always found my self in strange and unexpressible Pain in Anguish and Bitterness such as nothing in this World is able to represent even as to its lowest degrees And judg you into what Confusions and Disorders this alone would throw a Man if it were single My Disease and my Fears and sad Apprehensions came upon me as a Whirlwind like the rushing of many mighty Waters strange and horrible Pains and great Fears so that it was as an universal Storm from which there was no retreat I said with Hezekiah Isa. 38. 12 13. Mine Age is departed and is removed from me as a Shepherd's Tent I have cut off like a Weaver my Life He will cut me off with pining Sickness from day even to night wilt thou make an end of me I reckoned till morning that as a Lion so will he break all my Bones from day even to night wilt thou make an end of me I was continually full of restless Pain and amazing Thoughts I often said I am now cut off I am come to the End of my Journey I am going to the Grave there was but a Step but a Minute as it were between me and Death nay how often have I been by most terrible Convulsions in the very Jaws of Death They were to me as a Den of Lions and are as painful and as terrible as if a Man were actually torn to pieces And in all these not the least help nor prospect of Relief and these returning every day for many weeks or rather one continued Convulsion-fit and that always with a very quick and cutting Pain it never came upon me but as a Giant or an armed Man and whenever that was I thought my self in the very Moment of my Separation from the Body I thought my self very often just going to the Bar of God I was in Death often often as in the very Agonies and Pangs of Death but I could not die I seemed to have the strength of Brass it seemed to me as if I had been raised up by Almighty Power only that I might be capable to suffer Pains very strange and very terrible I sunk as in the deep Mire Psal. 69. 2. I saw indeed sometimes the Light of Day but it was never refreshing nor comfortable to me for I was often saying with Job chap. 3. 23 24. Why is Light given to a Man whose way is hid and whom God hath hedged in For my Sighing cometh before I eat and my Roarings are poured out like Water I was not in Safety neither had I Rest neither was I quiet yet trouble came For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me and that which I was afraid of is come unto me I often said I shall never see the World till it be in Flames never see my Friends or Acquaintance nor they me till the Heavens be no more and till the vast Appearance of the great Day Thus my Feet stumbled on the dark Mountains and all was hideous Darkness Woe and Desolation with me Sometimes by the Greatness of my Trouble I was even stifled with Grief that I could not for a great while speak a Word and when I spoke it was in a mournful manner for many Months I could not breath without a mighty Pain and as soon as with Difficulty I had breath'd every Breath was turn'd into a Groan and every Groan was big with a very deep Sorrow I was weary with my Groaning Psal. 6. 6. All the Night made I my Bed to swim and watered my Couch with Tears Nay the Sadness and the stinging Particularities that I apprehended in my afflicted Case made me to weep even till I had no more power to weep Psal. 88. 3. My Soul was full of Troubles and my Life drew nigh to the Grave c. I saw the Grave as beneath me continually opening to swallow me up I often said in my self I shall no more see the Congregations or Assemblies of God's-People I shall never any more enter into his Court nor sing his Praise I shall no more speak in his Name nor experience his loving-kindness in the Land of the Living any more These were some of my Thoughts and this was my inexcusable Infirmity and my Unbelief Those that are in Health will scarcely perhaps credit what I say they will think I am a melancholy Man and aggravate my Trouble and set it out more than needs or than it was and that in the whole there was a great deal more of Fancy than of Reality but I pray God they may never taste one drop of that bitter Cup whereof I was made to drink for if they should they 'l find it whatever Names they now give it to be then full of real Miseries As I have spoke nothing but what I fully believe to be true so I have spoke the more of it that it may be of some use to others that though Trouble and Distresses fall upon them which are very strange and very perplexing or such as rarely happen that they would hope even in the Depths for they may see by me that nothing is too hard for God There are few that having been so near to Death revive again few that have been near it so long together and fewer that after they have recovered are willing to speak of what they then saw and felt but methinks it is not unnecessary to shew to what woful Miseries we are obnoxious in this World and how many ways God has wherewith to correct and punish the Sins of Men. Most People are unwilling to speak of such things as these because others are unwilling to hear such doleful Relations they invent some other Discourse to put it off but their hearing of it is better than to feel it and this may help them to avoid manifold Mischiefs before it be too late You think it may be that I have spoke a great deal and your Attention may be wearied but I'lassure 't is many hundred times below what I felt Great Griefs as well as mighty Joys exceed all our Words and Bitterness is not to be described Never was any I believe nearer to Death not to die never was any compass'd with a greater Danger never any had less hope of an Escape than I and yet the Mercy of a God that is Omnipotent has relieved me And as 't is commonly said that Musick sounds best upon the Water so by setting our Sorrows and our Mercies together our Praise may be more harmonious You may in this behold the Severity and the Goodness of God his Severity in continuing on me so many smart Strokes for so long a space and his Goodness
in giving me help when no Power on Earth was able to give me the least Relief His Severity in continuing my Pain for so many long and doleful Months without any Mitigation and his Goodness in bringing me back when I was as in the Grave His Severity in withholding his Blessing from all those innumerable Means that were used with a design to help me so as that nothing that was intended for my Cure could any way promote it and 't was his Goodness that he himself became my Physician and that I did not continue to groan under the same Miseries as many Years as I did Months Remembring my Asfliction and my Misery the Worm-wood and the Gall my Soul hath them still in Remembrance Lam. 3. 19 20. The Storm indeed is in a great measure over blessed be God but I cannot without trembling call it to mind nor dare I think very long upon it I was brought very low as low as Calamity and Distress could make me but the Lord has kept me he has turned again my Captivity and I am really as in a Dream though it is a more pleasant one than any I ever had during my long Sickness and Calamity I can scarce believe that I am at so much ease as I now am I can scarce believe that I am in this Assembly of which I confidently thought I had taken my leave for ever When I look back upon the rough Waves and the stormy Seas I am ready to say Can it be that God has brought me safe to Land After I had conversed with the Dead am I now among the Living am I now with People under Hope blessed be the Name of the Lord I am It is a great Mercy to me and it is the more so as it was unexpected and above the Power of Nature contrary to all my hopes and above all humane help Those that have heard my Groans and seen my Agonies and heard of my Affliction cannot but wonder at it I often said that I could not be delivered without a Miracle and God himself has wrought it He has shewed Wonders to the dead Psal. 88. 3. For the raising them up is so from a case very sad and sadder than by any Words can be express'd has the Lord delivered me and certainly so terrible a Visitation so dreadful a Disease and so heavy a Judgment and so gracious a Rescue from it should never be forgotten To be rescued from Death from so great a Death is a very great Mercy Psal. 71. 19 20. Psal. 116. 3 4 5 6. It was by the Soveraign Goodness and meer Mercy and Grace of God that I obtained this Deliverance all this he did for a most unworthy Sinner for an impatient and fretful Sinner too is not this wonderful Mercy with a witness a Mercy never to be forgotten as long as I have a Day to live and I may say to you Come and bless the Lord with me come and help me to praise his Holy Name But on this I shall insist more when I come to that place that we ought not only to praise God our selves but to exhort others also to give Thanks at the Remembrance of his Holiness I have cause to do so for how many has he suffered to sink when the Waves were not so high against them as those that rowl'd over me the Storms and the Winds that blew them down not so fierce in some respect against them as they were against me and yet they are covered in the Grave whilst I though sorely weatherbeaten have outlived the Storm How many are there dead since I was ill many excellent and Holy Men are now silent in the Dust who were more knowing more useful more zealous and better qualified than ever I am like to be and yet God has spared a poor Shrub whilst he has torn up some of the Cedars of our Lebanan by the Roots Therefore to quicken my self and in some measure to excite others who have been recovered after long and sore Affliction O let us all agree to remember such reviving Mercies as God is pleased to vouchsafe us when he brings us from the Grave Let not a day pass wherein you do not call to Mind what he has done When you awake then remember what a great Mercy your Sleep is and what you would once have given even all the World if you had had it for one Hour of sound Rest Never bow your Knees in Prayer but call to mind his Mercy that has loosed your Bonds mitigated your Distress and enabled you to pray When you enter into such Assemblies as this on his Holy Day then remember what sad Sabbaths those were when you were confined to your sick Beds and could do nothing but if you had so much hope send your sorrowful Requests to beg the Prayers of others and when instead of singing his Praises as you now do you could only sigh and groan when you are with others speak of his excellent Goodness and when you are alone delight to meditate upon it let nothing no Tentations no Diversions or Business draw you to forget so merciful a God and so gracious a Benefactor If you have any remaining Pains left let these make you thankful that you have no more and that you are not as you once were 'T is much easier to think of our Wounds when they are in some measure healed than to bear their Smart when they are upon us and when you see others seized with Sickness and with manifold Calamities of this vain Life then bless God that you have a shining Sun whilst they are overtaken with a rainy Day I speak to those of you that have been sick having been so my self with what care and Compassion did this good God remember us He remembers his tender Mercies and his loving-kindnesses for they have been ever of old Psal. 25. 6. If we any way help the meanest of his Servants in their Distress he forgets not our Work and Labour of Love which we have shewed to his Name Heb. 6. 10. He remembers the Service we have done him so as to reward it he remembers the Sincerity of our Endeavours and Desires so as to encourage us and we should keep in our Minds his Bounties and his Love to us that we may serve him more and especially those that come to revive us after a long Misery and to bring us out of a State that seemed altogether helpless and unrelievable There is not a Moment of our time wherein he does not load us with his Benefits and there should scarce a Moment go from us without some Ejaculation or Breathing after him He has not been as a barren Wilderness to us and we should give him Thanks whilst as with the Joy of Harvest we reap the Fruits of his Bonignity There is not any the greatest or the least Deliverance that we obtain but 't is first produced and then carried on by his alone care Let us that are recovered remember
the Gift that he has given us for there is none more excellent among all natural things than the Gift of Life and whilst we hug and embrace this dear Enjoyment let us not forget the Donor of it Let us remember God who is the Fountain of our Life and lets us also remember that gracious Mediator by whose Death this and all other Mercies were purchased for us and by whose effectual Intercession they are bestowed and made our own Could they that were cured of Fevers Palsies Blindness Lameness and other Distempers by Christ here on Earth ever forget so skilful and so tender a Phisician doubtless where-ever they came they spake of him where-ever they met him they gave him Thanks and we should be no less thankful than they seeing his Goodness his Power and his Compassion has been the same to us that it was to them for as one says he shews his Power in the Greatness his Wisdom in the Seasonableness his Truth in the Constancy his Grace in the Freeness the Riches of his Mercy in the Fullness of his Blessings and Deliverances How great is the sum of all his Thoughts and his Benefits to us they are altogether innumerable and too many for us to remember but however we ought to suffer nothing to make us forget such as are greater and more eminent There are two great Changes that we ought always to remember when we are changed from a Death of Sin to a Life of Grace and when we are brought from the Grave to the Health and comfortable Enjoyment of this natural Life for in the Beginning and in the Consummation of our Deliverances there is nothing on which we should with more delight fix our Thoughts than on the Goodness and the Power of God who alone is able to save us from our Distresses and who is most willing to do so when we call upon him The End of the Third Sermon The Fourth SERMON PSAL. 30. ver 3 4. O Lord thou hast brought up my Soul from the Grave thou hast kept me alive that I should not go down to the Pit Sing unto the Lord O ye Saints of his and give Thanks at the remembrance of his Holiness I Now proceed to enquire after what manner we must remember our Deliverance from Sickness and Death And this we may do three ways 1. Remember them with an Admiration of God that he should be so good to you Admiration is the first of all the Passions next to Pleasure and Pain When an Object is perceiv'd that hath nothing new in it we consider it indifferently and without any commotion of the Soul but the Mercies that we have from above are new to us every Morning and to be admired for their being so Lam. 3. 23. When we are intent upon the Creature we may be guilty of an excess of Admiration which by immoderate fixing of the animal Spirits in the Brain may hinder their usual Influx into other parts of the Body and be very hurtful to the Health Natural History of the Passions p. 90. But when God is our Object and Things Divine raise this Motion in our Souls there is no danger of Excess There are two things that may cause us to admire the Goodness of God that he will bestow any of his Mercies upon us 1. The vast and immense Distance that is between him and us his unspeakably glorious Majesty and Greatness and our own poor mean being that is in it self very low and does appear much more so when compared with him When we consider the large extent of his Dominions the splendor of his Court the numerousness of his Attendants the glory of his Heaven the brightness of his Sun the beauty of his Earth and the largeness of the whole Creation and then from the sight of these behold our little selves have we not cause to say Lord what is Man that thou art mindful of him or the Son of Man that thou visitest him Psal. 8. 4. Is it not a wonderful thing that so great a God will take care of us when he needs not our Services nor all the Duties we are able to perform If we were to set in Darkness for ever he would shine with a Light as bright and clear as he he now does It is a mighty Condescension in him to pity our Distress to help our Weakness to cure our Wounds to solace our Hearts to pacify our Souls and refresh our Bodies and when we are dying to revive us and to bring us from the Grave So that we may say with David 2 Sam. 7. 18. Who am I O Lord God and what is my House that thou hast brought me hitherto Ver. 19. Is this the manner of Man O Lord God How freely dos he do us good when we could lay no Obligation at all upon him 2. Another thing that causes us to admire him for the Mercies that he bestows upon us is Not only that we are inconsiderable Creatures but guilty too and have deserved the contrary at his Hands We are not only as Jacob says less than the least of all his Mercies but we are worthy of his greatest and most severe Punishments We not only deserve to be plagued all the day long and to be chastned every morning Psal. 73. 14. but we deserve to be the Objects of his Fury for evermore We murmur and think it hard to be laid upon a Sick-bed but alas we have all deserved to be laid on a Bed of Flames We groan and with impatient Complaints express our Sorrows when he for holy and gracious Ends casts us into a fiery Furnace Whereas were not the Lord infinitely merciful to us our milder Sufferings might have been our Hell Every medicinal and gentle Stroak of our Heavenly Father might have been the Lash of Devils that would have shewed us no Mercy Alas where had you and I been long ago had God dealt with us according to our Sins I should not have been speaking to you nor you hearing me in this Place with hope We should have been all silent in the Grave or all in Torments in a worse Place 'T is our Self-love and our heinous Pride that makes us to be so impatient in our Sickness and so unthankful when we are recovered We think we are injured when we are afflicted and that we have but what we merit when we are delivered But what Miseries and Desolations have our Sins deserved our Original Corruption and all that impure Offspring that has descended from it How many thousand times do we sin every day How much Evil do we commit that we ought to forbear and how much Good that we ought to perform do we let alone Who is there among us that hath those serious and abiding and lively Thoughts of God that he ought to have Who is there that in his Trade and worldly Business maintains his Commerce with Heaven and with spiritual and pious Ejaculations Who is it that by constant Exercises of Religion makes
his Family as a Little Church when he is at home and that by an unintermitting Diligence and Watchfulness antidotes himself against the Contagions of bad Examples and vain Company and the Temptations of an evil World when he is abroad Who is it that walks so circumspectly as to be unblameable and without Offence Who is it that is so couragious in his Reproofs so zealous of good Works so tender of his own Salvation and of the Salvation of others as he ought to be Our neglect of many thousand Duties calls for long and severe Punishments at the Hands of God And it is a Subject of great Wonder that he will be gracious even to any of the Sons of Men. And what reason has every one that is delivered from Sickness and Pain and Death to bless his holy Name and to say What am I O Lord God that thou shouldst visit and uphold and refresh so great so inexcusable so wilful a Sinner as I have been What am I a poor Worm of the Earth that thou shouldst so mercifully regard me What am I that I should live by thy Goodness when I have so often deserved to die by thy Justice What am I that when I had spent so much of my Time to little purpose thou shouldst give me still more time that he should again put me into his Vineyard when I had loiter'd in it for so long a space and when I had misimproved many thousand Talents and knew not what to answer for them he should pass by and remit my former Debts and put into my Hands a new Stock What am I that his Dew should remain upon my Branches when he might have said of me as of the barren Fig-tree Cut it down why cumbreth it the ground any longer O what Grace is this that a God whom I had so frequently and so heinously provoked should spare me to recover Strength That when I had mock'd him with so many cold and lazy Prayers he should give me opportunity to pray again when I had so often misimproved his Sabbaths and his Gospel and the Offers of his Son that he should continue to me the Blessings of his holy Day the Invitations of his Word and the Calls of Christ that so I may repent of my careless Hearing my Lukewarmness and my Unbelief In the humble sense of our own Unworthiness let us contemplate and admire that God that brings us from the Grave Many People will say If we were humbled and if we did repent God would soon help us This is very true but if God should never be merciful to us till we are prepar'd for Mercy his Mercy and his Help I am afraid would come very late For as we may say It is of the Lord's Mercies that we are not consumed because his Compassions fail not so 't is of the Lord's Mercy that we are delivered and he is gracious because he will be so 2. When we are delivered from Sickness and from the Grave we must remember that Deliverance so as to excite our selves to more Fervour and Affection Before all our Duties we should stir up our selves and that is to be done by an intense and serious application of our Minds to that particular thing which we go about by considering aright the Nature and Consequence of a well-performed Duty Thus when we are going to pray we should say Remember O my Soul to what a glorious God thou dost approach and with what humble Self-abhorrence thou shouldst look unto his Majestick Throne Remember thy own Vileness thy Sins thy Miseries and thy Wants and what need thou hast of a Mediator to make thy poor and thy mean Oblation to be an acceptable Sacrifice what need thou hast of wrestling and striving that thou mayst obtain a Blessing Thus when we give Thanks we may say Remember O my Soul the excellent Perfections of God and the Benefits which thou hast received their Seasonableness their Worth and all the wonderful Particulars they are attended with This excitation of our selves is not acquirable by a few cold and transient Thoughts 't is not one Sally of Religious Meditations now and then but a continuance of these Acts arguing and pleading the Case with our own Souls till the Fire of our Love and Thankfulness begin to burn We should think of the Mercies of God till our Hearts under the sense of his Goodness begin to melt and warm till all that is within us move and stir with holy Elevations towards him Then will the Holy Spirit cherish our Endeavours And when we are with all the Skill we can tuning our Harps he will come in to our Assistance and make the Musick more harmonious and our Praise more sweet and by his vital Influences banish all that Coldness that does usually damp and clog our Hearts in the Duties of Religion There is a great advantage in Soliloquies and a Man may in this Work talk to himself without the reproach of folly This is a means to quiet and appease a rising Storm Psal. 42. 5. and this is the way to make us look upon it with Delight and Thankfulness when 't is past and gone We know that those Sermons which do but explain Truths to us and present them only in their native Excellency and Reasonableness do not equally affect us as those do that are pressed with a fervent and lively Application Nor do those Mercies which we only remember make so much impression as those which we often call to mind and as often urge upon our Hearts When we come before God we must make his Altar smoak with burning Frankincense we must cover it with our chearful Praises and a flaming Love Our knowledg of his Persections is obscure and weak but our Sense causes us very distinctly to feel his Benefits and therefore all our Affections should ascend towards him When his Sun shines full upon us our Hearts should open at his Coming smell with a sweeter Savour upon the being visited with his comfortable Beams As upon our being brought from the Grave and restor'd to Health there is a new Strength in our Bodies so there must be a new Vigour in our Souls and as we discover a very great Earnestness in our Petitions when we want a Mercy so there ought to be as much Fervor in Acknowledgment and return of Thanks when we have received it 3. After we are delivered from the Grave we ought to remember such a Mercy with very great Sincerity i. e. there ought to be a Correspondence between our outward Expressions and the more undiscernable Motions of our Hearts There must be in our Understandings an high Esteem of him who is the Author of all our Good a most deliberate and free choice of him as our Happiness and this Esteem and this Choice is the genuine Product of a real Admiration There is nothing indeed more common than for People on the smallest occasions to say I thank God for this or that but the manner in which
bring upon us more heavy Punishments than what we have yet felt The Miseries that some of us have undergone have been such as the very remembrance of them is amazing and their Terror inexpressible But how terrible soever they have been yet God has more Arrows in his Quiver more Thunder in his Clouds more Judgments under his Command Let us therefore take that Advice of our Lord John 5. 14. Behold thou art made whole sin no more lest a worse thing come unto thee There are those here that would not for the enjoyment of all the Greatness of the World undergo that Anguish and Tribulation for one Week which distress'd them for many Weeks and Months together O let us sin no more lest the Clouds return after the Rain lest after one Storm is ceas'd another begin to blow Let us improve our present Calm to the Glory of our Helper lest another Earthquake come The best Security from future Miseries is to profit by the former We cannot take a better Medicine to sortify us against Evils to come than by remembring and improving such as are already past We are escaped with our Lives O let us not for the Lord's Sake look back with Affection upon our old Sins lest we that are now Monuments of Mercy be made Monuments of Justice Let us sin no more lest the Bones be broken again that are but newly set and lest the Wounds that seem to he healed bleed afresh and lest that Almighty and loving Physician that has once helped us depart and help us no more Let us sin no more for after such a deep distress and such a miraculous deliverance how hateful will our Sins be and if we knew not what to do in our former trouble what shall we do in the next and more terrible Visitation Woe unto us if we should provoke him to let us fall into longer and more violent and more irrecoverable troubles What a dreadful place is that Josh. 24. 20. If ye forsake the Lord then he will turn and do you hurt and consume you after that he hath done you good We that are now alive may set up our Ebenezer and say Hitherto the Lord hath helped us in his wrath he hath remembred mercy Oh let us not force him to do as Gideon with the Men of Succoth Judg. 8. 7. To tear us with thorns and bryars of the wilderness In other storms we have been like the Passengers that were in the Ship with Paul Act. 27. 44. Tho we have suffered Shipwreck yet in one way or other our Lives have been saved and with much difficulty we have escaped to Land Oh let us beware lest in the next storm that comes he suffer us to be cast away the Furnace into which we have been thrown has been very hot Let us desire God to purge us from our dross lest he cause one to be made for us that is seven times hotter Surely some of us have felt enough of the bitterness of Sin Oh let us not force him that does not willingly grieve the Children of Men to mingle for us another bitter Cup have the stroaks that made us to groan in the perplexity of our Souls been so very small that we should force him by our disobedience to send many more and to turn his Rods into Scorpions Lev. 26. 23 24. If ye will not be reformed by these things but will walk contrary to me then will I also walk contrary to you and will punish you yet seven times for your sins Jer. 7 8 9 10. Will you come and stand before me and say you are delivered to do all these abominations I even tremble at the mentioning of these things and God grant that neither you nor I may ever know any thing of them by our own experience If we will not for the love of him yet for the love of our selves our own Souls and Bodies Let us sin no more Fourthly Another way whereby we ought to improve the Mercy of Gods having brought us from the Grave is by trusting in him for the time to come We have greatly dishonoured him in our former straits by our own unbelief Let us in all future occasions give glory to him by our Faith Let us remember in the most violent and pressing troubles the years of the right hand of the Most High Let us after the wonderful experience of the great things that he has done for us such as our Forefathers could hardly tell us of but which we have seen in our days with respect both to the Nation and our selves let us never question his Goodness nor dispute his Power saying Can God provide for us can he deliver us Let us never murmur nor repine or despair again Having tasted how good the Lord is and being fortified with the sweet experiences of his Lovingkindness let us meet every new strait and danger with a greater Courage and never admit the least doubt of Gods Ability or of his Willingness tohelp us He that has delivered us from the paw of the Lion and of the Bear from the Pains of Hell and from the Agonies of Death can still save us tho in outward appearance we be like to perish His Faithfulness and Truth his gracious Nature and his promise will yield us in all our troubles a most comfortable and strong Support 2 Cor. 1. 9. We had the sentence of death in our selves that we should not trust in our selves but in God which raiseth the dead who delivered us from so great a death and doth deliver in whom we trust that he will yet deliver us When our Sense and Reason can discern nothing but Miseries and Desolation let our Faith lead us to that Rock that is higher than us to that God whose Wisdom is never at a loss and whose Hand can with ease and speed accomplish that which our Flesh and our Blood will tell us is impossible to be done Do not affront your great Deliverer by thinking that he who has wrought such great Miracles for us by his own Power will not compleat what he has so magnificently begun and so far advanced or that he will not perfect that which concerns us or that he will forget the Work of his own Hands We place a trust in those persons of whom we have had a tryal in matters of difficulty and much more do we owe to God whose Mercy and Faithfulness we have experienced when none was able to give us the least relief but he alone He is a sure and a tryed Friend we our selves have found him to be so Let us not be jealous of his future Care nor grieve him with unreasonable suspicions of his Love and this is a more needful caution because our base and corrupt Hearts upon every sudden and approaching danger are apt to resume new distrusts and doubts and we then feel the stirring of our old unbelief and when the Waves begin to rise we question the Care of our Master and give him
cause to upbraid us as he did his Disciples Why are ye afraid O ye of little Faith But this will be most inexcusable in us whom God hath brought to the very grave and back again The remembrance and experience of so great a Mercy should for ever preserve us from the least distrust of our Benefactor Psal. 56. 13. Thou hast delivered my Soul from Death wilt not thou deliver my feet from falling that I may walk before thee in the Land of the Living Psal. 23. 6. Surely Goodness and Mercy shall follow me all the days of my Life Psal. 63. 7. Because thou hast been my help therefore in the shadow of thy Wings will I rejoice Psal. 71. 20. Fifthly Preserve those serious Thoughts now which you then had when you were near unto the Grave What a cold damp did the sight of death bring upon all our former joys What a low and contemptible thing did this so much adored World seem to be when we were just about to leave it How little charming then were all its gayest Smiles and how little terrible all its frowning Threats There did not appear then to be any thing that was enticing in a great Name and Reputation in pompous Honours or in vast Treasures We saw then that all our fellow Creatures and all that we our selves are apt to doat upon was very vanity All the Contentments and Satisfactions of our Appetites and all the Pleasures that we had ever taken in eating or drinking in our Travels or in our Recreations did all pass away like a Vision in the night Then we saw indeed the great worth of Faith and Patience and Self-denial and a Conquest of this World Then we could heartily wish that instead of all the vain Books we read we had more delighted in the Book of God That instead of all our unprofitable knowledge we had known Christ and him crucified That instead of all our Contrivances for this Body and the present state we had spent all our strength and our whole vigor to get Heaven and Eternal Life Then we were apt to say Oh that we had heard his Word with more attention whilst we had our day and whilst the joyful voice was sounding in our ears Oh that we had prayed in our Closets with more fervour whilst God called us to seek his Face Oh that we had bewailed our Sins with a more sincere and hearty Sorrow when we were called to the Duties of Repentance and Humiliation Let us do all those things now which we then wisht we had done Let it for ever dash all our confident and foolish Projects for this World remembring how by a sudden stroak all our Purposes were broke asunder Let us not trust too much in mortal Men for we can remember the time when as to us all the help of Man was vain Let us now prize all those divine Truths embrace those Promises and fear those threats which we then saw to be very true What did we then think of time when our glass was even running out and our day covered with the shadows of the night There was nothing in all the World that did appear to be of so great a value let us now prize it at the rate we then did What Company was it which we then most admired Whom did we esteem the most excellent and happy People Were they those that trample on the Laws of God that prophane his Sabbaoths that scorn his Word that defie his Threats and dare venture to go to an Eternal Hell or those that are afraid to sin that season their Entertainments with Spiritual Discourse that are sober in their Lives fervent in their Prayers conscientious in all their Dealings and that are going to Sion with their faces thither Surely these were the Men that we call'd Blessed and these are the Persons to whom we should now joyn our selves and have the most delightful Conversation and the greatest Familiarity Sixthly Perform all those things now which in your Distress you you resolved to do if God would but bring you from the Grave Psal. 116 13 14. I will take the cup of salvation and call upon the name of the Lord I will pay my vows unto the Lord now in the presence of all his people When a Man seems to be just entring into Eternity then 't is a common thing to say If God would but give me another Trial if he will but save my Life and give me another year and another day of Grace I will amend my ways and serve him more and be better than ever I was When we have not enjoyed those opportunities that we now do have we not said within our selves If God will trust us again with his Gospel and the priviledges of his open Sanctuary we will acknowledge his Goodness and be more fruitful It concerns us to see that the Resolutions that were form'd in our Hearts in the day of our distress do not expire with our departing Trouble In Sickness and the Neighbourhood of Death Sin does appear to be quite another thing than we took it to be in the time of our careless Health its Aspect then is very formidable and its Wounds very deep In whatsoever disguise it may come to us hereafter let us in the fear of God and by his Grace couragiously resist it for it is the worst of Enemies and when it wraps it self in false and alluring colours let us remember what an hideous and frightful Look it had when Sickness took the mask away Let it still appear as an odious and abominable thing to us When we were near to Death what Seriousness what Zeal what Holiness did we then vow to God Was not this our Language If I may have but a few more Talents bestowed upon me I will emprove them better than I did before I will hear his Word with more Reverence and read it with more Care I will with more frequency and impartiality it search and try my own Soul Now the time is come that you wish'd for Let it appear that your serious resolutions were not the fruits of Fear but of Love Let not our sense of God and of Eternity decline as our Troubles wear away God will not be mockt He will observe and punish our hypocritical Intentions if all that we promise him in our Distresses prove but as Chaff before the Wind and as the Dew of Morning which is exhaled and scattered with the Rising Sun God has losed our Bonds but it is that we may be tied faster to himself Let us shine with as great a brightness as we hoped to do and said we would if God would but recruit our dying Lamp and pour in fresh Oyl again Oh let us now improve our Time as we then intended to improve it and let us among our other expences remember that we are then most prodigal when we waste this Treasure and that we give our Friends and Companions too much when we give them a great deal
that they see bestowed on others It is not enough that we have an inward and a silent Gratatitude we must publish with the voice of thanksgiving and tell of all his wondrous Works Psal. 26. 7. I shall not die but live and declare the work of the Lord Psal. 118. 17. And the grateful Leper Luke 17. 15. when he saw that he was healed turned back and with a loud voice glorified God The poor Man was so full of Joy in the sense of the newly received benefit that he could not forbear telling others what Mercies he had received So says the Prophet Psal. 116. 14. I will pay my vows unto the Lord now in the presence of all his People And there are these several things that should cause our mutual Praise to God upon any great Deliverances First Our mutual Praises will warm our Hearts better than if they were single When many Beams of the Sun are united they give a stronger Light and burn with a greater force and many small Rivers united run with a swifter Course to pay their common Tribute to the Sea When many joyn together in the same Prayers the Cry is more loud and the Flame of our Desires ascends with a quicker and a more speedy motion and when many Voices joyn in the same Psalms of Praise then as in a Consort of Musick our Praise is more harmonious and moer sweet and then it is that we find our Love and our Joy much moer kindled than when we are alone The praising of God for our Mercies in publick will make others call to mind their own Mercies and they and we shall both agree to yield our common Thanks to this Mighty Lord. Let all the people praise thee O God yea let all the people praise thee And greatly to blame are those who do not openly manifest their Sense of Gods Goodness but are as silent as to any publick acknowledment of it as if they were in the very Grave Secondly This mutual giving thanks will greatly incourage others to trust and hope in God The Experience that we have had of his Goodness may be of great use to them that when they come to be in straits they may wait upon him and strengthen their Patience by remembring how gracious he has been to us and that seeing he is ever faithful and unchangeable he will be so to them for his Arm is not shortned that it cannot save The Righteous Psal. 14. 27. shall compass me about for thou hast dealt bountifully with me They that fear thee will be glad when they see me Psal. 119. 74. Glad to see that God has compassion for the desolate and the miserable Glad to see that he does not shut up his Bowels in a perpetual Displeasure nor forget the Work of his own Hands What Encouragement have they still to pray when they see in our Deliverance that their Prayers are heard and when they are very low to consider That this or that poor man cryed and the Lord heard him and saved him out of all his troubles Psal. 34. 6 They have the same promises to plead and late Examples before their Eyes of his Goodness and his Readiness to save It is a very merciful dispensation of God that he will not have all his Servants under Troubles and Afflictions at the same time Some will he suffer to be at ease that they by their advice their prayers and their seasonable pity and their love they may minister to the wants of others whom he has bound with the cords of Afflictions All Churches are not persecuted at the same time nor all in the same Churches that so those who are whole may bind up the wounds of others Thus when the poor Protestants in Germany were under low Circumstances it pleased God to set Edward the Sixth upon the Throne in England under whose most excellent Government many Ministers and People that were forced to leave their own Country found a secure shelter and retreat And when the Massacre was in Ireland God was pleased to save this Land from so terrible a Judgement And whilst France is at this day groaning under a most cruel and barbarous Persecution we by a wonderful Providence have Ease and Liberty and are in a capacity to give relief to our distressed Brethren He does not fail to give us now and then some instances of his Wrath for our Sin in long and severe Tryals yet neither does he fail to raise up some wonderful Monuments of his Mercy after such Severities That the Consideration of the former may teach us to walk with an holy Fear and the Consideration of the latter may keep us from being overwheml'd in the greatest straits Our being publickly thankful for our deliverance from great dangers may fortifie the hearts of others against all unreasonable fears and dispondence Thirdly Because they are by the Profession of Christianity to have a Communion with one another in all their Prosperities and in all their Troubles to grieve in their Afflictions and to rejoyce in all their Mercies They are all of the same Body and one part cannot be at case whilst another in is pain nor can one mourn whilst another does rejoyce they participate in their mutual Sorrows and their Joys they cannot see one of their Brethren sitting alone and keeping silence but they condole with him for his sadness and when they see him watering his Couch with tears their Eye does affect their Heart and mingle their tears with his they cannot laugh whilst another groans nor be sad when another is exalted and delivered For as you cannot touch one string of an Instrument but all the rest sound so no part of the Body of Jesus Christ can be well or ill affected but the rest discover their sense either of its joy or grief The Saints of God have a similitude of Nature and inclinations of the same kind all the World over they have a Conformity to their blessed Lord who has a great tenderness and pity for the whole Body of the Church The Wicked that are not of the Family are no way troubled when Sion is in the dust nor have they any pleasure when it is rebuilt A private Spirit does but relish its own joys and weep for its own griefs but those that are good Christians are glad to hear that it fares well with the Servants of God tho such as they never saw and when others are affflicted tho in Foreign Countries yet their Groans tho at a great distance do reach their Hearts Thus it was with our Apostle Col. 2. 1. 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Rogers's Sermon Preached upon the Death of a young Gentleman Entituled Early Religion or the way for a young Man to remember his Creator Mr. Shower's Sermon at Madam Anne Barnadistons Funeral Mr. Lee's Joy of Truth The Character of a Williamite Written by a Divine Dr. Robert's Key to the whole Bible In Folio A Continuation of Morning Exercises Questions and Cases of Conscience practically resolved by sundry Divines in the City of London in October 1682. Casuistical Morning Exercises the 4th Volumn by several Ministers in and about London Preached in October 1689. The Vanity and Impiety of Judicial Astrology whereby Men undertake to foretel future Contingencies especially the particular Fates of Mankind by the Knowledge of the Stars by Francis Crow M. A. A New Martrology Or The Bloody Assizes now exactly methodiz'd in one Volume comprehending a compleat History of the Lives Actions Tryals Sufferings Dying Speeches Letters and Prayers of all those eminent Protestants who fell in the West of England and else where from the year 1678 to 1689. the Third Edition with large Additions Early Piety exemplified in the Life and Death of Mr. Nathaniel Mather who having become at the age of 19. an instance of more than common Learning and Vertue changed Earth for Heaven October 17. 1688. The second Edition with a prefatory Epistle by Mr. Mathew Mead. Mr. Oake's Funeral Sermon Mr. Kent's Funeral Sermon both Preached by Mr. Samuel Slater An Antidote against Lust Or A a Discourse of Uncleaness shewing its various kinds great Evil the temptations to it and most effectual cure by Robert Carr Minister of the Gospel Poetical Fragments by Richard Baxter Published for the use of the Afflicted The Second Edition Reformed Religion Or Right Christianity described in ' its Excellency and Usefulness in the whole Life of Man written by M. Barker Minister of the Gospel Daniel in the Den by Stephen Jay Rector of Chinner in Oxfordshire The Trajedies of Sin together with Remarks upon the Life of the Great Abraham by the same Author * Mr. Joseph and Mr. Benjamin Ashurst †Alderman Cornish I. Obs. Inf. 1. Inf. 3. Inf. 4. Obs. 2. Rea. 1. Rea. 2. Rea. 3. Rea. 4. 1. * Vide M. Amyraut Disc. de Lestat des Fideles Apres La Mort. pag. 15. c. 2. Rea. 5. 1. * Vide Chrys. in Loc. * Fuller 's Life out of Death p. 4. 2. Rea. 6. Iâ—â— Infer 2. Infer 3. Object Answ. Infer 4. Infer 5. Infer 6. I. II. III. IV. V. VI. VII VIII IX 1. 2. II. 2. 3. III. Obs. 1. II. III. IV. V. Mr. Thomas Kentish