God is to be blessed taking as well as giving Consider again that parents sins are oft visited by childrens immature deaths 1 Kings 14.13 as was threatned against Eli yea sometimes hopeful childron are cut off because some good thing was found in them as in Jereboam's childs case Sometimes they are the Idols of jealousie which take up parents hearts too much and therefore are taken away from them that there might be less distance between them and God their heavenly Father Vnicum bonum verum summum immutabile immarcessibile quod amittere non potes quamdiu amare non desinis Aug. who hath the wisedom of a father and the tenderness of a mother weaning us oft from those brests which we were too fond of and out of which we sucked more wind then wholesome nourishment All losses are mercies which end in the souls gain nor can that be a losse in any creature-comfort if it finds recompenses in his love who is the only immutable and unloseable good As for vain or vicious parents who are rather peremptores quam parentes when their children are taken away from their contagion I know not how they can have any greater summons from heaven or motives on earth to move their hearts to speedy repentance and preparation for death then when they see their prime branches lopped off as presages that the whole bulk of the tree root and branch shall ere long be hewn down and without repentance cast into unquenchable fire 7. Last of all in the death of such as are remarkable for nothing but their sin and wickedness for the dissoluteness of their lives the stupidity or despair of their deaths dying unawares and cut off by unexpected stroaks of heaven because their sin was great before God it may be a violent immature and preposterous fate yea it may be flagrante crimine as Absalom in his unnatural rebellion against his Prince and parents 2 Sam. 18. or possibly by the hand of human justice or by private duels or by their own debaucheries which are a self-assasination even these are not lightly to be laid to heart in any family kindred or acquaintance or neighbourhood because they are like Gods thunderbolts not every days terror nor striking every one therefore the more to be dreaded by all though the punishment falls but on one Poena ad unum terror ad omnes though the ruine falls upon the head but of one yet the news may justly make the ears to tingle and hearts to tremble of all that see and hear of it No man does deserves or suffers from God or man or himself so bad but the same might be exemplified in thee and me to the astonished world we might be the beacons on fire that should scare all the Country far more then any house on fire can do We read of David though otherways of a mind great and gracious 2 Sam. 18.33 full of courage and constancy becoming the majesty of a pious King yet he takes the dreadful fate of his son Absalom so to heart the three streams of parental penitent and pious affections meeting in one current that he forgets the comfort of victory his own and the publick safety the suppressing of so dangerous and popular a rebellion the restitution of his throne and dominion which my young Master under the colour of doing speedier and better justice or reforming publick disorders had almost snatched from him not without the ready applause and assistance of vulgar levity giddiness vileness and ingratitude to such a Prince yet all these weighty concernments sink in Davids soul and only grief swims uppermost publikely manifesting its either excess or just violence in words too high indeed for any Tragedy and never heard from any father or son in the case of a Kingdom Would God I had died for thee O Absalom my son my son The loss of a good child is tolerable of a wicked one is intolerable especially if bad by neglect or example 2 Sam. 12.23 because he is eternally lost David comforted himself He should go to that Infant whose innocency gave hopes of its safety though it were the fruit of his sin but in Asaloms desperate case he deplores geminam aeternam mortem a double and eternal death and this alone may serve to justifie the so great passions of Davids soul in that particular Yet besides this Absaloms sins and sufferings made secret reflexions upon the fathers offences which had not only occasioned but deserved such unnatural fires to burn in his own bowels which were only to be quenched with their own blood nor had David been only excessive in his rebellious presumings against God but defective too in his reproving of his sons hence sad effects of paternal indulgence toward dangerous and comminitting children whose sins are imputable in great part to their parents 1 Sam. 3.13 and so their sufferings on all sides are but the punishments of such unzealous fondnesses as Eli used to the ruine of himself and his sons yea of his whole house by intolerable toleration of such impieties as will certainly overthrow roof and foundation root and branch of any family under heaven Would we have less cause to mourn in the death of any one we love endeavour to make them as good as we can while they are with us however having done our duty and expressed the best evidences of a true and faithful love to them in order to their eternal good we shall with more comfort and patience bear their death which many times gives us greater regrets for our own neglect of that Christian duty and holy love which we owe to the souls of our relations then for their corporal absence the one being reparable the other never either in this or the world to come I have now finished these instances of particular cases in which the death of any is to be laid to heart proportionably to the weight of the becasion whose circumstances or manner of dying as the feathers of some birds are sometimes as heavy as their bodies and substances It were too much for me to drive this discourse which in the whole texture of it is pathetick and applicative to a further thinness or fineness like leaf-gold by multiplied uses which are there necessary where as in the riveting or clinching of nails we suspect the doctrines have not taken good hold on the hearers minds and hearts of which in this case I am not very jealous as to the most of you whose affections may be read in your attention There are only three Uses which I conceive may not impertinently be added as advantages to or deductions from the main of that I have hitherto set down 1. Vse To reprove the unchristian barbarous and inhuman temper of those hearts which are made of flint not flesh who are so far from laying to heart with any humble mortifying and compassionating reflexions the death of any that they either carry it with
arbitrary business but of Divine Authority and Institution of highest necessity in the Church so esteemed and so used by all good Christians The modern neglect and indifferency to it either argues the Clergy miserably embased in all points from their ancient dignity or the minds and actions of Christians to become very degenerous and licentious unholy and unthankful not to be mended till the majesty of Religion and the double honour of the Ministry be restored 11. Lay to heart upon the whole matter drawing all the beams of my discourse and your meditations into one point arising from this or the like Funeral-occasions in what posture thou art for death how furnished fitted and prepared I once told this Noble Gentleman two months before he died when I saw his tedious cough very importune and his dispiritings so great that I could say little to him Sir you have nothing so much concerns you as to prepare and to dare to die Ask thy soul O poor mortal not what goods thou hast laid up for many years not what beauty and virtue thou hast married not what honours thou enjoyest not what lands thou possessest or expectest but what preparation thou hast made to meet thy God what defensative to encounter death how far the power of sin is weakned how far the progress of grace is advanced what viaticum aeternitatis provision for eternity thou hast made A Christian must not onely look to Augustus his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Sueton. in vita Augusti a gentle and civil or well-natured death but to a gracious a comfortable death for himself and also hopeful and exemplary to others about him The last lightnings or coruscations of a good Christian should be if his natural spirits permit his brightest as the preludium of eternity 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 He should adorn his death as the last act of his life with speaking good of God with telling all about him what the Lord hath done for his soul what experiences of trials and conflicts of comforts and refreshings by Christ his Word and Spirit I allow any mans or womans death-bed to be their pulpit let them then turn preachers as much as they can let them shew forth the loathsome and deadly deformities of sin the worth and excellencies they have found in Christ and his grace the benefit found in his Word Spirit Ministrations and true Ministers that so the surviving world may be the better for those nayles which as Masters of the Assemblies as now candidates and expectants yea percipients of Heaven dying Christians do happily fasten in the minds memories and consciences of their weeping auditors The best Sermons are those that dying men and women preach before their own Funerals Gen. 29. Deut. 32. 1 Kings 2.1 Joshua 23. John 14 15 16 and 19. Chapters 1 Sam. 25.37 as Jacob Moses Joshua and David did yea our blessed Lord Jesus most expressed his inmost and sublimest sense to his Disciples a little before he died as to heavenly comforts prayers and praises A Christian should avoid what possibly may be to die like Nabal as if his heart were first quite dead as a stone within him I mean when God gives spirits and strength to express themselves None are such Infidels as not to believe these dying Orators who are got beyond our pulpit-strains and affected forms above all human fears and flatteries all studies of sides and factions Illum vita nondum dissimulatio deseruit Sueton. in vita Tiberii then or never they are in good earnest Few with Tiberius can be such hypocrites as to act a part only of piety when they are going off the stage of life If we are grafted in the tree of life we shall bear some good fruits living or dying I know the best experiments of grace and the surest both 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signes and indications of sincerity are from a good conscience kept up in our lives not hudled up in haste a little before death as goods in a scare-fire only upon the alarm of sickness and death but wisely leisurely gravely and practically methodised and digested yea expressed in our health in the humble and impartial constancy of attending holy duties private and publique in orderly waiting on the true and duly ordained Ministry of Christ in his Church in frequent devout and fervent partakings of the Lords Supper in righteous holy charitable and exemplary lives toward all men which are both useful to mankind by good works and acceptable to God in all humility adorning the Christian and reformed Religion highly magnifying the glory of the grace of God in Jesus Christ An humble heart and an holy life are the best cordials in our deaths for without peace and holiness as the Apostle tells us no man shall see God And Heaven it self will not be welcome to us if holiness be not Heb 12.14 Nec coelum ipsum placebit cui sanctitas displicet for its happiness is no other but perfected holiness then we shall be such as we would be hereafter when we like to be such as God would have us here 12. Last of all The neerer the more remarkable and emphatick any object of death or Funeral-occasion is the more we should lay it to heart As when great wise valiant and honest men like mighty Cedars of Lebanon fall by death either natural or violent by open hostility or treachery as Abner died 2 Sam. 9.33 whose Biere David himself followed honoring by a most generous example that virtue loyalty and fortitude which he found in an enemy toward him nor doth he do it in a courtly formality but with ample publick and unfeigned sorrow even to weeping looking upon that sad and shameful accident as a great reproach and affront to his own party and cause as a dehonesting of his own honour and that Religion which he professed to remove so great a scandal and dishonour from his person conscience Kingdom and profession as attends all treacherous murtherings even of reconciled enemies and rivals David himself doth Abner this honour at his burial to follow the Biere 1. So in the deaths of such excellent Princes as have been or were like to be the Patres patriae Fathers of their Country maintainers of law and justice provident for the publick good in peace and plenty Patrons of learning virtue and established Religion wise and valiant assertors when need requires of their own honour and their peoples safety merciful dispensers of such favours and remissions as may abate the rigors of law with regard to human surprises and infirmities and yet neither weaken the hands of justice nor strengthen the hands of malicious offenders Such Kings and Princes yea any soveraign Magistrates under any title as Joshua and other Judges that are not wholly degenerate from their dignity duty and place are to be duly lamented and their deaths are seriously to be laid to heart because they do not only shew us the
any man or woman but either fear or shame or sense of honour or love or ingenuity or gratitude or hope of reward will restrain and resist even in the greatest paroxy sins of lust and temptations of the Devil If a man ascend not at first to the highest pitch of repentance namely the love of God and goodness or perfect hatred of sin to which special grace must conduct him yet he may come to the first steps and porch of it to deny the ontward acts of ungodliness and the fulfilling of worldly lusts Let a man by this negative part of repentance ceasing to doe evil first make trial in his health to leave any sin to which he hath been addicted and long captivated Let him prepare his heart thus to seek the Lord though with fear and difficulty yet the Lord will meet with such a soul and bring him beyond his feares terrours and conflicts as he did St. Austin to the confines of love through the wilderness of fiery serpents and thirst and weariness to the Land of Canaan to the state of rest in which the soul shall not only enjoy the comfort of Gods love in its delight to doe well and being enamoured with the beauty of holiness but he shall rejoyce to see the blessings of Gods grace following his first weak endeavors and dubious industry in contesting with and conquering temptations and resisting such sins as lay within the power and reach of his soule as he is a reasonable creature and an instructed baptized and inlightned Christian who furnished with such potent and moral means to do his part must not only attend the meanes but apply to doe his duty Nor shall any man have cause to complain of Gods defect as to the completion of his grace who takes care not to turn that grace into wantonness which hath appeared to him and is manifested on purpose to lead us to repentance to teach us to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts and to live soberly in this present world Labour to pull up the evil weeds of thy inordinate lusts at least keep them from being rank and luxuriant Tit. 2.11 12. attend also those meanes which are appointed of God in his Church to sow plant and water the good seeds of grace and vertue thou wilt in a short time find those wholsome and lively plants grow in thee to thy great comfort and pleasure Jucundissima est vita in dies sentire se fieri meliorem which consists not only in finding a mans self daily less vain and vicious but more serious and vertuous As it is to covetous men an infinite content to see themselves daily grow richer and to the ambitious man to be daily advancing so to a mind impatient of being poor and base in his sin it is an unspeakable joy to see himself every day mending in his judgment prayers desires designs and hearty endeavours The misery is health and life and liberty and strength and estate and pleasure and pride embase our souls toward God even to far lower degrees of ingratitude and unworthiness then we can in honour or will for shame shew toward men that have any power to punish or oblige us we abhor to seem uncivil uningenuous unthankful insolent presumptuous affrontive to such as are our betters and especially if they have merited many ways well of us only to God we offer such rude and unkind unholy and unthankful measure as we would not to a Prince to a Parent to any Superiour no nor to an equal and inferiour nor a noble enemy being so far from any thing of Christian and true Divinity which is the approportioning of our duty love respect and service to God that we forget all humanity which becoms our selves sinning not only most shamefully impudently against God but also against our own consciences and principles against our soules and bodies too even that honour and decency which we owe to our selves The first step to be a good Christian is to be a good man Right reason is the fair suburbs of Religion once cease to live as a beast without fear or understanding and thou wilt begin to delight in the dignity which becomes a man and a Christian God waits for thy essayes of repentance Isa 30.18 that he may be gracious to thee not only in pardoning thy sins but in speaking peace to thee which is far better to be perceived by thee when thou seest it was not meer slavish fear and the bastinado that compelled thee to look from sin toward God and goodness but something of a rational and religious principle becoming a man and a Christian God never failes there to apply by his special hand the sweet cordials of his love and comforts of his mercies in Christ where we apply the corrasives proper to repress our sins and those bitter pills which work to the purgative part of repentance They that cease to doe evil will so learn to doe good Maxima pars impotentiae fluit ex voluntate Aquinas Isa 1.16 It is not impotencie but unwillingnesse that holds us so long tame captives to grosse sins The least Sympathies of a sinner with his Redeemer as suffering death and agonies inexpressible upon the Cross out of love to his soul and upon the account of his sin to purchase pardon and work his redemption from hell to heaven These reflections will work more kindly upon a mans heart to repentance then all the sicknesses crosses and consternations in the world For there is no compare between a mans sin and his Saviour to those that are not wholly blind dead and buried in sin And can any rational man that takes with patience all those bitter potions those nauseous and painful applications of Physick which are prescribed by Physicians in order to remove dangerous obstructions to purge out noxious humours and correct malignant spirits thereby to prepare the way for recovering of the health of the body Can these severe disciplines for the short and uncertain good of the outward man be endured nay desired yea with great charge be purchased and shall we be impatient of those restraining and healing methods of repentance which possibly are less for a time agreable to our corrupted palats and viciated appetites yet are the meanes prescribed and dispensed by God himself as proper to heal us of our deadly sins for so all are unrepented of and to prepare us for that health which our soules may enjoy by Christ When once they are rid of those scurvy habits or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which customary and prevailing sins bring upon us daily Quò diutius peccamus eò longinquius a Deo abscedimus Greg. disposing us to all evil and indisposing to all that is good However the operation or event may be this I am sure the duty and work of Ministers is not to dispute nor dispense the the secret workings of Gods grace or to search the hidden purpose of Gods will but to declare and
fit for children not to be denied or envied you only please to give those Christians leave who may without vanity think themselves by Gods mercy as well advised and consciencious in their Religion as your selves yea and more cautious of superstition then you seem to be Eccles 7.16 Be not righteous overmuch neither make thy self over-wise who are thus of late shrunk to be over-righteous and negatively superstitious I say give us leave to use such Christian liberty and duties as God hath allowed Religion encourageth and experience of pious proficiency highly recommends to us by the vote and suffrage of your and our pious Progenitors in the Church of England which in this as many other excellent appointments hath most undeservedly and indignely suffered infinitely below its former reformed worth its admired constitution and most enviable condition through the ignorance petulancy and insolency of some pitiful pretenders God knows for the most part of plebeian spirits and mechanick proportions who undertake thus severely to catechise and discipline not only the Nobility Gentry and Commonalty of this Nation but the Clergy and Ministry of this Church which was not exceeded in all the world as if they never knew how to spell the A b c or primer of Religion for so I esteem these outward orders and exercises of it until some new Masters had lent them their sharp fescues which were first made of a Scotch scabbard This vindication as I owe to the honour of this Nation to the piety of this Reformed Church to my own calling and conscience so I cannot omit to ground it upon this Text and express it upon this occasion as very proper methods and pious means used to lay those things to heart which Solomon here commends and the wisedome of God requires of the living in their respects to the dead who in my judgment are far more becoming to the interests of both living and dead Christians committed to their graves by the sound of the Evangelical trumpet setting forth the hopes of both dead and living by reading prayer or exhortation then by those uncouth soundings of military trumpets which seem only to add to the triumphs and pomp of death but not to the hope or faith or comfort or manners of Christians If it be matter of civil state and decorum to persons of great quality yet I see no sense or reason they should justle out of the Church any offices of Christian piety befitting the dead or the living Thus I have done with the Text and am now to give you Right Honorable and Beloved some little model of this house of mourning to which you are come this day which is greater in many degrees then you are wonted to go to This sad occasion if rightly understood will make its own way to your hearts when I have given you some account of those special regards for which it doth deserve not only a more then ordinary mourning emphatick sympathies from you but to make deeper impressions upon your spirits And this I shall do briefly not tanquam conductitius orator venalis praeco or as a man professoriae linguae truncae manus as Agrippina called Seneca no I thank God I am above any such snares and servitudes of soul as will for fear or favour flatter either the dead or the living What I shall speak of the dead shall be words of soberness and truth as in the presence of God and of you his people 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as a lover of truth and virtue as an assertor of such honest and ingenuous freedom in speaking as dares to oppose and confute if need be vulgar errors and false surmises And however I am most unfeignedly sorry as a man for this sad occasion yet I am as a Minister so far glad of this present imployment because however I may be less proportionable to its dimensions and your expectations yet I have hereby the opportunity given me to express such an honour love and respect to this noble person's name and memory now dead as I confess was one of my highest ambitions in this world Not only as he stood related a Grand-child Son and Heir apparent to that Right Honorable Family whose happiness I have rather seriously wished then been able ever effectually to promote But taking him in his private sphear and personal confinements you will give me leave to own him as a Gentleman many ways endeared to my particular love care honour and prayers first by long acquaintance from his cradle to his coffin which breeds secret and tacit endearments on our hearts as Ivy that roots where it is long contiguous Next by neerer and domestick conversation he living four years in my house with his Tutor and other attendants befitting his quality at those years when being but a youth of 13 or 14 years he carried himself with so much civility modesty ingenuity and manliness as made his company both worthy and fit for men so little of petulancy pride or moroseness incident to young Gentlemen of high parts and expectations that he seemed by his gentleness candor and humility as if he were ignorant both of his own high and noble quality and also of others usual but ignoble vanities and vapourings which ill become any men but most of all those that pretend to any true honour or generous extraction The confidence of his noble parents and relations committing him thus to my care and superintendency gave me an opportunity as welcome to me as any could have befaln me which was to discharge a solemn promise I made to his most noble Mother seven years before not only with civility but with sanctity at her earnest and importune desiring of me to assure her while I lived I would not be wanting what in me lay to his honour and happiness She also then bespake his living with me when ever it should be opportune for his breeding and my reception of him Gods providence so ordered things that what was passionately desired and seriously promised in time came to pass in which I need not tell you how much the grateful memory of her most deserving virtue commanded me to contribute all the care and discretion I was capable of for the absolving of my soul to God and the dead in that particular that I might answer and follow with my best endeavours of counsels prayers and examples those thoughts of virtue piety and honour which his excellent Mother had living expressed toward him as her only child a Son I am sure of her cares and counsels prayers and tears both living and dying so oft and infinitely solicitous have I seen her noble and pious soul that this her Son might prove a person of such virtue and piety as are the only true foundations of temporal and eternal honour From my domestick care of him he was sent much at my instance and perswasion to Trinity Colledge in Cambridge continuing there two years that he might first add learning to his