1. Thus we see the child of man or the man who is born of a woman is so full of Trouble to the brim that many times it overflow's him On one side or other we all are troubled but some are troubled on d every side Insomuch that they themselves are the greatest Trouble unto themselves and 't is a kind of death to them that they cannot dye We find King David so sick of Life as to fall a wishing for the wings of a Dove that so his soul might fly away from the great Impediments of his Body He confessed his Dayes were at the longest but a e span and yet he complained they were no shorter It seems that Span was as the span of a wither'd Hand which the farther he stretched out the more it griev'd him He was f weary of his groaning His soul did g pant after Heaven and even thirsted for God And he might once more have cryed though in another sense Woe is me that I am constrain'd to dwell with Meseck and to have mine habitation among the Tents of Kedar I remember that Charidemus in Dio Chrysoslom compared man's Life unto a Feast or Banquet And I the rather took notice of it because the Prophet Elijah did seem in some sense to have made it good Who after a first or second Course as I may say of living as if he had surfetted of Life cryed out in hast It is enough and with the very same breath desired God to take away for so faith the Scripture 1 Kings 19. 4. He went into the Wilderness a solitary place and there be sate under a Iuniper in a melancholy posture and requested of God that he might dye in a very disconsolate and dolefull manner even pouring forth his soul in these melting Accents It is enough now O Lord take away my life for I am no better then my Faâ—hers And if the Dayes of Elijah were full of trouble how was Iob overwhelmed and running over with his Calamity when the b Terrours of God did set themselves in aray against him how did he c long for destruction O saith he that I might have my request that God would grant me the thing that I long for Even that it would please him to destroy me that he would let loose his hand and cut me off How did he d Curse the Day of his Birth and the Night wherein he was conceived Let that Day be darkness let the shadow of Death stain it let a cloud dwell upon it let blackness terrifie it And for the Night let it not be joyned unto the dayes of the year Let the stars of the twilight thereof be dark neither let it sâ—e the dawning of the day And what was his reason for this unkindness to that particular Day and Night save that they brought upon him trouble of being a Man borne of a woman for we find him complaining a little after why dyed I not from the Womb why did I not give up the ghost when I came out of the Belly And then for the Life of our blessed Saviour who is call'd by way of Eminence The Son of Man as I observ'd before that it was short so must I here put you in mind that it was full of Trouble He was therefore call'd by way of Eminence Vir Dolorum a A Man of sorrows The Prophet adds he was b acquainted with Grief For the whole Tenor of his Life was a continuation of his Calamities The Time would fail me should I but mention the hundredth part of those men whose short Time of life hath seemed long to them even because they have felt it so full of Trouble But enough hath been said concerning the Doctrine of the Text And it lyes upon us to make some use First then let us consider that if man as born of a woman hath but a short time to live It concerns us to take up the prayer of David that God will teach us to know our End and the number of our Dayes that we like c Hezechiah may be fully certified how short our Time is It concerns us to take up the Resolution of Job All the Dayes of our appointed time incessantly waiting till our change cometh It concerns us not to say with the rich man in the parable we will pull down our Barns and build greater and there we will bestow all our fruits ' and our goods much less may we say with that other Worldling Souls take your Ease eat drink and be merry for you have much goods laid up for many years for alas how can we know silly creatures as we are but that this very Night nay this very minute either they may be taken from us or we from them there is such a fadeingness on their parts and such a fickleness on ours But it concerns us rather to say with Job Naked came we into the world and naked shall we go out of it Or it concerns us rather to say with David that we are strangers upon Earth and but so many sojourners as all our Fathers were for whilest we consider we are but strangers we shall as * Strangers and Pilgrims abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul And so long as we remember we are but sojourners upon earth we shall pass the time of our sojourning here in fear And behaving our selves among the Gentiles as a chosen Generation a Royall Priesthood an holy Nation a peculiar People we shall shew forth his praise who hath called us out of Darkness into his marvellous Light Secondly let us consider that since our Life is uncertain as well as short inasmuch as we know not how short it is it concerns us immediately to labour hard in the Improvement of this our span into Eternity to employ our very short and uncertain Time in making a seasonable provision against them both I mean it's shortness and its uncertainty For shall we be lavish even of that which is so easily lost and of which we have so very little and every minute of which Little does carry so great a weight with it as will be either a kind of Pulley to help raise us up to Heaven or else a Clogg to pull us down to the lowest Hell Of whatsoever we may be wastefull we ought to be charie of our Time which doth incontinently perish and will eternally be reckoned on our account Perâ—unt imputantur the Epigrammatist could say of his pretious Hours Now the way to provide against the shortness of our Life is so to live as to dye to the greatest Advantage to be imagin'd and so to dye as to live for ever What Tobit said to Tobias in respect of wealth Fear not my son that we are made poor for thou hast much wealth if thou fear God and depart from all sin and do that which is pleasing in his sight He might
his departure did most remarkably resemble Sir Spencer Compton's a person so singularly qualified by grace and nature and education that however his extraction was highly noble I may confidently say it was the lowest thing in him who dyed at Bruges about the time wherein the man of our desires expir'd at Compton Never did I hear of a more heavenly valediction to all the contentments of the earth then was given by these two at their dissolutions Never yet did I heare of any two farewells so much alike Never were any more admired by those that saw them whilst they were going or more desired when they were gon How your excellent husband behav'd himself I have but partly related in the conclusion of my Sermon For though I may not dissemble so great a truth as my strong inclinations both to think and speak of him to his advantage yet in my last office of friendship I did religiously set so strict a watch over my tongue as that I rather came short in many points of his commendation then went beyond him in any one And could I have had the possibility to have kept him company in his sickness which I as earnestly endeavour'd as he desir'd it but his sickness was too short and my journey too long for either of us either to give or to receive that satisfaction I might have perfected that account which many witnesses enabl'd me to give in part Having thus far spoken of him to you I must only speak of you to others For such as reject what they deserve I think it a Panegyrick sufficient to make it known they will have none Having dedicated my papers to a person of your endowments for whom to approve is to patronize them I also dedicate your person with the hopefull particles of your self to the peculiar protection and grace of God And as the heirs of that Family which you were pleased by adoption to make your own have already been Lords of that seat for more then eighteen Generations which I can reckon so that the person whom I commemorate may inherit also that other blessing as an addition to that blessing which God hath given him in your self conserred in favour upon Jonadab the son of Rechab Not to want a man to stand before him for ever is no less the hope then the prayer of him who think's himself obliged as well to be as to write himself Your most importunate servant at the throne of Grace THOMAS PIERCE THE LIFELESNES of LIFE on the hether side of IMMORTALITY A SERMON Preached at the Funerall of M. EDWARD PEYTO JOB XIV I. Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live and is full of Trouble NOw you have listen'd unto the Text Cast your Eyes upon the shrine too For That doth verifie This by no less then an Ocular Demonstration You see the Reliques of a Person full of honour indeed but not of years he having had his December I may say in June and reaching the end of his Journey as 't were in the middle of his Course So that if I should be silent upon the mention onely of this Text Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live That very Hearse would present you with a kind of visible Sermon Yet something I must say in honour and Duty unto the Dead and something too for the use and benefit of the Living that as Death already hath been to Him so it may be also to us Advantage That some at least who are here present may go from Hence when I have done if not the wiser or more intelligent yet at least the more considerate and the better Resolved for coming hither I need not be teaching my weakest Brethren what common Experience hath taught us All either the Misery or the shortness or the uncertainty of our Dayes But yet recounting how many Souls do perish for ever in their Impieties not so much by wanting Knowledge as by abounding in the Thoughtlessness of what they know I shall not sure be unexcusable having * S. Peter for my example if I tell you those things which you know already An Honest Remembrancer is as needfull as the most Eloquent Instructer to be imagin'd because we do less want the Knowledge than the consideration of our Duties Saint Peter hath magnified the office no less than three times together in that Epistle which he composed a * little before his Dissolution I will not saith he be negligent to put you alwayes in Remembrance though ye know these things and be established in the Truth Yea I think it meet as long as I am in this Tabernacle to stir you up by putting you in Remembrance Again saith he I will endeavour that you may be able after my Decease to have these things alwayes in Remembrance When I consider that these words were by †divine inspiration and that they were written for our Instruction yea and inculcated upon us no less than thrice in one Breath methinks they tacitely reprove us for having such wanton and Itching Ears as will be satisfied with nothing but what is New Whereas the Thing that is to us of greatest moment is not the study of more Knowledge but the making good use of the things we know Not the furnishing of our Heads with a Richer Treasure of Speculations but the laying them up within our Hearts and the drawing them out into our Lives Men would not live as they are wont were they sufficiently a mindfull that they are men Did they but often enough consider how short a time they have to live how very b often they are in Deaths before they dye how much their short time of life is more c uncertain than it is short how very shortly they are to render a strict Account unto The Iudge I say not of every evill work but even of every d idle word and of each unprofitable howre they would not make so many Demurrs in the important work of their Reformation The uncertainty of their Time would make them watchfull over their wayes that how suddenly soever they may be caught by the common Pursevant of Nature yet it may not be by a surprise That they may not die with the Fool's motto Non e putâram in their mouthes Now to consider my present Text in the most usefull manner that I am able I must bespeak your best Attention not so much to the dogmaticall as to the Applicatory part of my Meditations It being chiefly in my design to shew what Profit we are to reap from all such melancholy Solemnities as by many deep Mourners are sown in Tears What kind of Influences and Virtues from the great brittleness of our Lives are to be shed upon the Practice and Conduct of them What kind of Consectaries and Uses should flow from the one upon the other I shall not therefore wear out my little Time in any such
accurate and logicall Analysing of the words as would but serve to divert you from the scope and drift for which the holy man Iob did make them a part of his Preaching and for which I have chosen them to be the subject of mine own but shall immediately consider them as an entire Doctrinall Proposition exhibiting to us both the frailty and frame of man and the reason of the one implicitly rising out of the other Man is born of a woman there 's his Frame He hath but a short time to live there 's his Frailty He hath but a short time to live because he is born of a Woman there is the reason of his Frailty from the condition of his Frame Nor is He attended onely with vanity but vexation of spirit As Iacob said unto Pharaoh His Dayes are evil as well as Few However empty of better Things yet from the Bottom to the Top I mean from his Birth unto his Buriall he is Repletus miseriis fill'd full of Trouble And yet by way of Application we may reflect upon the Text in a threefold Antithesis For To Man as born of a woman we may oppose the same Man as being Regenerate and born of God To the very short life he hath by Nature we may oppose the life eternall he hath by Grace And to his fullness of misery whilst he is here in the body we may oppose his Fullness of Bliss and Glory But first let Man be consider'd in his Hypogaeo that is his state of Declination as he is born of a woman and having a short time to live and that for this reason because he is born of a woman For t is a Maxime in Philosophy which never fails That Generable and Corruptible are Terms convertible It is demonstrably proved that we must one day Dye because we did one day begin to live All that is born of a woman is both mixt and compounded after the Image of the woman of whom 't is born not onely mixt of the four Elements but also compounded of Matter and Form And all things Compounded a must be dissolved into the very same principles of which at first they were compos'd Hence are those pangs and yernings of the flesh and the spirit of the Appetite and the Will of the law in the members and the law in the mind b the one Inclining towards Earth from whence 't was taken and the other towards Heaven from whence 't was sent The truth of this had been apparent if it had onely been taken out of Aristotle's Lycéum but we have it confirmed out of Solomon's Portch too for in the Day when man goeth to his c long home when the grinders cease and the windows be darkened and all the Daughters of Musick are brought low when the silver cord is once loosed and the golden Bowl broken so as the mourners are going about the streets d Then the Dust shall return to the earth as it was and the spirit shall return to God who gave it When God himself was pleased to be born of a woman he submitted to the conditions of our Mortality and had we know but a short time to live for He expir'd by Crucifixion before he was full thirty four as his younger e Brother whom we commemorate before he was full thirty three Man hath a short time indeed as he is born of a woman because he is born of a woman for as it presently follows in the verses immediately after my Text He cometh forth as a f Flower and as a flower he is cut down He flyeth also as a shadow and continueth not And therefore Epictetus did fitly argue the very great fickleness and frailty of worldly things first because they were g made and therefore had their beginning Mark is Threescore and Ten if Moses himself hath set it right Or place it further at fourscore farther yet at an hundred the life of man we see is short though it should reach the very utmost that Nature aymes at But how many wayes are there whereby to frustrate the Intentions and Ends of Nature How many are there buried before their Birth How many men's Cradles become their Graves How many rising Suns are set almost as soon as they are risen and overtaken with Darkness in the very Dawning of their Dayes How many are there like the good King Iosias like righteous Abel and Enoch and that laudable Person whom now we celebrate who are taken away †speedily from amongst the wicked as it were in the Zenith or Verticall point of their strength and lustre It is in every man's power to be Master of our Lives who is but able to despise his own Nay 't is in every one's power who can but wink to turn our beauty into Darkness and in times of Pestilence how many are there can look us Dead by an arrow shot out of the Eye into the Heart For one single way of coming into the world how many are there to go out of it before our Time I mean before Nature is spent within us Many are sent out of the world by the Difficulties and hardships of coming in We are easily cut off even by eating and drinking the very Instruments and Means of Life Not to speak of those greater slaughters which are commonly committed by Sword and Famine which yet must both give place to surfet Death may possibly fly to us as once to Aeschylus in an Eagle's wing Or we may easily swallow Death as Anacreon did in a Grape We may be murder'd like Homer with a fit of Grief Or fall like Pindarus by our Repose we may become a Sacrifice as Philemon of old to a little Iest Or else as Sophocles to a witty Sentence We may be eaten up of worms like mighty Herod Or prove a Feast for the Rats like him of Mentz A man may vomit out his Soul as Sulla did in a fit of Rage Or else like Coma may force it backwards He may perish by his strength as did Polydamas and Milo Or he may dye like Thalna by the very excess of his Injoyment He may be Provender for his Horses like Diomedes Or provision for his Hounds like Actaeon and Lucian Or else like Tullu◠Hostilius he may be burnt up quick with a flash of Lightning Or if there were nothing from without which could violently break off our Thread of Life and which by being a slender thread is very easily cut asunder we have a thousand Intesline Enemies to dispatch us speedily from within There is hardly any thing in the Body but furnisheth matter for a Disease there is not an Arterie or a Vein but is a room in Natures work-house wherein our Humors as so many Cyclops's are forging those Instruments of Mortality which every moment of our Lives are able to sweep us into our Graves An ordinary Apoplexie or a little Impostume in the Brain or a sudding rising of the Lights is enough to make a
deceitfulness and hypocrisie without the least consideration how short a time they have to live and how very much shorter then they imagine Yet unless they believe they can dream devoutly and truly repent when they are sleeping they cannot but know they are damn'd for ever if the day of the Lord shall come upon them as a thief in the night and catch them napping in their impieties Consider this all ye that forget God least he pluck you away and there be none to deliver you Consider it all ye that forget your selves That forget how few your dayes are and how full of misery Consider your bodies from whence they came and consider your souls whether it is that they are going Consider your life is in your breath and your breath is in your nostrils and that in the management of a moment for the better or for the worse there dependeth either a joyfull or a sad eternity If our Time were certain as well as short or rather if we were certain how short it is there might be some colour or pretence for the posting off of our Reformation But since we * know not at what hour our Lord will come this should mightily ingage us to be hourely standing upon our †watch And this may suffice for the subject of our second Consideration Thirdly let us consider that if our dayes which are few are as full of trouble it should serve to make us less fond of living and less devoted to self-preservation and less afraid of the cross of Christ when our Faith shall be called to the severest Trialls * O death saith the son of Sirach acceptable is thy sentence unto the needy and to him that is vexed with all things The troubles incident to life have made the †bitter in soul to long for death and to * rejoyce exceedingly when they have found the grave If the Empress †Barbara had been orthodox in believing mens souls to be just as mortall as their bodies death at least would be capable of this applause and commendation that it puts a conclusion to all our troubles If we did not fear him who can cast both body and soul into hell we should not need fear them who can destroy the body onely because * there is no inquisition in the grave †There the wicked cease from troubling and there the weary are at rest There the Prisoners lie down with Kings and counsellers of the earth The servant there is free from his master There is sleep and still silence nor can they hear the voice of the oppressor Mors Bona si non est Finis tamen Illa Malorum But we have farther to consider the threefold Antithesis which we ought to oppose to the three Clauses in the Text for as man who is born of a woman hath but a short time to live and is full of trouble so man as regenerate and born of God hath a long time to live and is full of bliss A life so long that it runs parallel with eternity and therefore without a Catachresis we cannot use such an expression as length of time It is not a long but an endless life it is not time but eternity which now I speak of Nor is it a wretched eternity of which a man may have the priviledge as he is born of a woman but an eternity of bliss which is competent to him as born of God And of this bliss there is such a fullness that our Heads are too thick to understand it Or if we were able to understand it yet our hearts are too narrow to give it entrance Or if our hearts could hold it yet our tongues are too stammering to express and utter it Or if we were able to do that yet our lives are too short to communicate and reveal it to other creatures In a word it is such as not onely eye hath not seen nor ear heard but it never hath entred into the heart of man to conceive Incomprehensible as it is 't is such as God hath prepared for them that love him 1 Cor. 2. 9. If we compare this life with the life described in the Text it will severall wayes be usefull to us for it will moderate our joyes whilst we possess our dear friends and it will mitigate our sorrows when we have lost them for it will mind us that they are freed from a life of misery and that they are happily translated to one of bliss Nay if we are true lovers indeed and look not onely at our * own interest but at the interest of the parties to whom we vow love we even lose them to our advantage because to theirs Lastly it sweetens the solemn farewell which our souls must take of our mortall bodies we shall desire to be dissolved when we can groundedly hope we shall be with Christ we shall groan and groan earnestly to be uncloathed of our bodies with which we are * burdened if we †live by this faith that we shall be cloathed upon with our house from heaven we shall cheerfully lay down our bodies in the dust when 't is to rest in his peace who will certainly raise us by his power that we may rest and reign with him in glory THus have I done with my Text though but in the middle of my Sermon and but briefly considered it in its Antithesis because it is not pertinent any otherwise then by affording to such as are Mourners a use of comfort And because I am confident that there are many such here when I consider how many losses lye wrapt in one not onely wearers of black but serious Mourners whose very souls and insides are hung with sable and whose unaffected sorrows do call for comfort I shall raise you matter of reall joy from the ground and occasion of all your sorrows For there is yet another Text upon which I must give you another Sermon A Text I say whose matter and form have been divided by God and Nature The inward form is ascended to him from whom it came down but the outward matter still lyes before us And well may that person become our Text who was himself a living Sermon since the integrity of his life was truly doctrinal and the resplendent piety of his death a very pertinent application I am sure 't is well known in another place and therefore I hope 't is believed in this that I am none of their number who use to scatter abroad their Eulogies upon every man's Hearse meerly as customary offerings or things of course No those alone are my seasons wherein to make narratives of the dead when it may righteously be done for the use and benefit of the living You know that Jesus the son of Sirach doth set himself solemnly to the work and that with an {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} Let us now praise famous men Men renowned for their power men
man Dye in Health and may lodge him in Heaven or in Hell before he hath the leasure to cry for Mercy Thus our †Houses of Clay as Eliphaz the Temanite did fitly call them do seem as false and as frail as the Apples of Sodom which being specious to the Eye did fall to crumbles by every Touch The frame of our building is not onely so frail but as some have thought so ridiculous that if we contemplate the body of man in his condition of Mortality and by reflecting upon the soul do thereby prove it to be Immortall we shall be tempted to stand amazed at the inequality of the Match but that to wonder at our Frailty were but to wonder that we are Men Yet sure if We that is our souls for our bodies are so far from being Us that we can hardly call them Ours are not capable of corruption our Bodies were not intended for our Husbands but for our Houses whose Dores will either be open that we may go forth or whose Building will be ruinous that needs we must we cannot by any means possible make it the place of our Continuance for though our bodies as saith our Saviour are not so glorious as the Lillies yet saith Job they are as frail And by that time with David they wax old as doth a garment how earnestly with S. Paul shall we groan to be cloath'd upon to be cloathed with New apparell whilst that the old is turning for when Christ shall come in the clouds with his holy Angels at once to restore and to reform our Nature he shall change our vile bodies that they may be fashioned like unto his glorious body But here I speak of what it is not what it shall be though it shall be glorious yet now 't is vile though it shall be immarcescible yet now 't is fading though it shall be a long life 't is now a short one It is indeed so short and withall so uncertain that a we bring our years to an end like as a Tale that is told Death come's so hastily upon us that we never can b see it till we are blind We cannot but know that it is short for we c fade away suddenly like the grass And yet we know not how short it is for we pray that God will a teach us to number our Dayes This we know without teaching b that even then when we were born we began to draw towards our End Whether sleeping or waking we are alwayes flying upon the wings of Time And even this very Instant whilst I am speaking doth set us well on towards our Journey's end whether we are worldly and therefore study to keep Life or Male-Contents and therefore are weary of its possession the King of Terrours will not fail either to meet or overtake us And whilst we all are c Travelling to the very same Countrey I mean the Land of forgetfulness without considering it as an Antichamber to Heaven or Hell although we walk thither in d severall Rodes 't is plain that he who lives longest goes but the farthest way about and that he who dyes soonest goes the nearest way home I remember it was the humour I know not whether of a more Cruell or Capricious e Emperour to put a Tax upon child-births to make it a thing excizeable for a man to be born of a woman As if he had farm'd Gods Custom-house he made every man fine for being a Man which as it was a great Instance of his Cruelty so 't was as good an Embleme of our frailty our state of Pilgrimage upon Earth For we arrive at this World as at a forraign and strange Country where I am sure it is proper although not just that we pay Tole for our very landing And then being landed we are such transitory Inhabitants that we do not so properly dwell here as f sojourn All the meat we take in is at God's great Ordinary and even the breath which we drink is not our own but His which when he taketh away we dye and are turn'd again into our Dust Insomuch that to expire is no more in effect then to be honest 't is to restore a Life which we did but borrow a {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} And well it were if it were no worse for if the life of man were pleasant it would the less disgrace it that it is short A short life and a b Merry is that which many men applaud But as the son of a woman hath but a few dayes to live so it follows in the Text that even those few dayes are full of Trouble And indeed so they are in whatsoever Condition a man is plac'd for if he is poor he hath the trouble of pains to get the goods of this World If he is rich he hath the trouble of Care to keep his Riches the trouble of Avarice to increase them the trouble of fear to lose them the trouble of sorrow when they are lost And so his Riches can onely make him the more illustriously unhappy If he lives as he ought he hath the trouble of self-denyalls the trouble of c mortifying the flesh with the affections and lusts the trouble of being in d Deaths often the trouble of e crucifying himself and of f dying daily If to avoid those Troubles he lives in pleasure as he ought not he hath the trouble of being told that he is g dead whilst he lives the trouble to h think that he must dye the trouble to fear whilst he is dying that he must live when he is dead that he may dye eternally Not to speak of those troubles which a man suffers in his Nonage by being weaned from the breast and by breeding teeth in his boyage and youth by bearing the yoke of subjection and the rigid discipline of the Rod in his manhood and riper years by making provision for all his Family as servant-Generall to the whole Nor to speak of those Troubles which flow in upon him from every quarter whether by Losses or Affronts Contempts or Envyings by the anguish of some Maladies and by the loathsomness of others rather then want matter of trouble he will be most of all troubled that he hath a nothing to vex him In his sober Intervalls and Fits when he considers that he must dye and begins to b cast up the accounts of his sins it will be some trouble to him that he is without chaslisement whereby he knowes he is a c Bastard and not a son It will disquiet him not a little that he liveth at rest in his possessions and become his great Cross that he hath prosperity in all things Not onely the sting and the stroak but the very Remembrance of Death will be bitter to him so saith Jesus the son of Sirach chap. 41. vers.
injoy'd it in both acceptions of the word For first however he was sick of a burning Feaver which carried him up like Elias in a fiery Chariot yet he had this rare happiness which is the priviledge of a few that he even injoyed his whole disease without the least taint of deliration That knot of union betwixt his body and his soul was not violently broken but very leasurely untyed they having parted like two friends not by a rude falling-out but a loving farewell Thus was his Euthanasia in the first acception of the word But he had it much more as to the second For Two things there are which are wont to make death terrible The first is suddenness and the second is sin He was so arm'd against the first that he did not onely take care for the setting his outward house in order to the end that nothing in this world might trash his flight towards a better but he also sent for the Divine to imp the wings of his devotion and farther told his Physician that God had sent him his summons so well was he arm'd against the first of those Phobera and that by the help of our English Litanie which prompt's us to pray against sudden Death and which he commanded one of his servants to assist him with upon his death bed bestowing upon it when he had done a great deal of holy admiration Again so well was he prepared against the second that for the tenderness of his conscience and his deep resentment of all his sins those of the times more especially in which he deplored his unhappiness that he had had a great share till God was pleased in much mercy to shew him that errour of his judgement by which the errour of his practice was bred and cherish'd Next for his hatred of himself in the remembrance of them though we may say that in comparison with many others alive and dead he had kept himself unspotted from the world then for his steadfast resolutions of better life of making ample satisfaction for every ill that he had done and so of bringing forth fruits †worthy of repentance if God should be pleas'd to inlarge his time and last of all for his sollicitude that all his * family might live in the fear of God and redeem those opportunities which he seem'd at least unto himself to have sometimes lost or neglected I say in all these respects he appears to me as well as to others a more then ordinary Example But some may say that sick persons are ever sorry for their sins but it is many times a sorrow squeez'd out by sickness And as soon as they recover they do relapse too To which I answer that though it is often so in others yet in this exemplary Christian it could not be so For First it was a mark of his sincerity that he look'd upon his failings as through a Macroscope which made them seem nearer and very much greater then they were He warn'd all those who stood about his sick bed to beware of those sins which the world call's little and of the no-little sins which the world calls none yea from the least * appearances and opportunities of sin It was his own expression that all the sins of his former life did even kick in his very face yet he remembred the †labourer who went late into the Vineyard and was rewarded He also made some reflexions upon the * thief on the cross that his faith might steer an even course betwixt the Scylla of despair and the Charybdis of presumption Secondly it was another good token of his sincerity that he was not meerly a death-bed penitent whose repentance too too often is but a {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} a sorrow according to the world but as diverse persons can well witness he began the great work in his time of health so as his sickness did but declare his having been a * new creature by †change of mind and that he did not fall back but * press forward towards the mark and persevere in so doing unto the * end Thirdly it was another mark of his sincerity that he insisted on the nature of true repentance which still importeth an amendment and reformation of life Nor had he a willingness to recover his former health unless to the end he might demonstrate his renovation by that carefullness that fear that indignation that vehement desire that zeal yea that revenge which S. Paul hath recorded as the effects of a godly sorrow in his Corinthians Abhorring and deploring those desperate notions of repentance which the world is so commonly mistaken in Fourthly it was a comfortable token of his sincerity that he was obstinate in his Prayers against the precept of his Physician and resolv'd to pour out his soul though to the prejudice of his body As if he were piously ambitious of being too strong for his own infirmities when a reverend Divine who was standing by would fain have done that office for him at least as a Deputy to his lungs onely that he might not spend his few spirits as yet left in him he made him this resolute and hasty but pious answer that whilst a tongue was in his head whereby to speak and whilst he had breath in his body to move and animate his tongue and whilst he had lungs in his brest to supply his breath he would shew forth the goodness and the glory of God who had been pleas'd to do so great things for him And in a mercifull Answer to all his Prayers which he continued to the amazement of all that heard him after some conflicts which he had had with the ghostly enemy that so he might be happier in a victorious then he could possibly have been in an untempted innocence God was pleased very signally to reveal himself to him to speak peace unto his conscience to fill him inwardly with joy in the holy Ghost to give him some glimmerings and fore-tasts of the glory to be revealed That I may use his own words which as he came out of a trance he was observed to speak he had a ravishing glimps of the Beatifick vision meaning thereby as I interpret that God had refreshed his drooping soul with his unspeakable comforts saying unto his soul I am thy salvation or this day salvation is come to thy house So that now being placâ—d above the levell of temptations and exempted from the fear of what the * red dragon could do unto him he cheerfully lifted up his head and first his eyes upon Iesus the author and finisher of his faith and for the joy that was set before him expected the Advent of death as of a very dear friend Fifthly it was another great sign that his heart was right towards God and therefore not treacherous to himself that he extended his care to the souls of others with as