little to great from nakedness to ornament from emptiness to plenty from unity to multitude from death to life be a Sadducee no more shame not thy understanding and reproach not the weakness of thy Faith by thinking that Corn can be restored to life and Man cannot especially since in every Creature the obediential capacity is infinite and cannot admit degrees for every Creature can be any thing under the power of God which cannot be less than infinite But we find no obscure foot-steps of this mystery even amongst the Heathens Pliny reports that Appion the Grammarian by the use of the Plant Osiris called Homer from his Grave and in Valerius Maximus we find that Aelius Tubero returned to life when he was seated in his Funeral pile and in Plutarch that Soleus after three days burial did live and in Valerius that Aeris Pamphilius did so after ten days And it was so commonly believed that Glaucus who was choked in a Vessel of honey did rise again that it grew to a Proverb Glaucus poto melle surrexit Glaucus having tasted honey dyed and lived again I pretend not to believe these stories to be true but from these instances it may be concluded that they believed it possible that there should be a Resurrection from the dead and natural reason and their Philosophy did not wholly destroy their hopes and expectation to have a portion in this Article For God knowing that the great hopes of Man that the biggest endearment of Religion the sanction of private Justice the band of Piety and holy Courage does wholly derive from the Article of the Resurrection was pleased not only to make it credible but easie and familiar to us and we so converse every night with the Image of death that every morning we find an argument of the Resurrection Sleep and Death have but one mother and they have one name in common Soles occidere redire possunt Nobis cum semel occidit lux brevis Nox est perpetua una dormienda Catul. Charnel-houses are but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Coemeteries or sleeping-places and they that die are fallen asleep and the Resurrection is but an awakening and standing up from sleep but in sleep our senses are as fast bound by Nature as our Joints are by the Grave-cloaths and unless an Angel of God waken us every morning we must confess our selves as unable to converse with men as we now are afraid to die to converse with Spirits But however Death it self is no more it is but darkness and a shadow a rest and a forgetfulness What is there more in death what is there less in sleep For do we not see by experience that nothing of equal loudness does awaken us sooner than a mans voice especially if he be called by name and thus also it shall be in the Resurrection We shall be awakened by the voice of a man and he that called Lazarus by name from his Grave shall also call us for although S. Paul affirms that the trumpet shall sound and there shall be the voice of an Arch-Angel yet this is not a word of Nature but of Office and Ministry Christ himself is that Arch-Angel and he shall descend with a mighty shout saith the Apostle and all that are in the grave shall hear his voice saith S. John So that we shall be awakened by the voice of a Man because we are only fallen asleep by the decree of God and when the Cock and the Lark call us up to prayer and labour the first thing we see is an argument of our Resurrection from the dead And when we consider what the Greek Church reports That amongst them the bodies of those that die Excommunicate will not return to dust till the Censure be taken off we may with a little faith and reason believe that the same power that keeps them from their natural Dissolution can recall then to life and union I will not now insist upon the story of the Rising Bones seen every year in Egypt nor the pretences of the Chymists that they from the ashes of Flowers can re-produce from the same materials the same beauties in colour and figure for he that proves a certain Truth from an uncertain Argument is like him that wears a wooden leg when he hath two sound legs already it hinders his going but helps him not the Truth of God stands not in need of such supporters Nature alone is a sufficient Preacher Quae nunc herba fuit lignum jacet herba futura Aeriae nudantur aves cum penna vetusta Et nova subvestit reparatas pluma volucres Night and Day the Sun returning to the same point of East every change of Species in the same matter Generation and Corruption the Eagle renewing her youth and the Snake her skin the Silk-worm and the Swallows the care of posterity and the care of an immortal name Winter and Summer the Fall and Spring the Old Testament and the New the words of Job and the Visions of the Prophets the Prayer of Ezekiel for the resurrection of the men of Ephraim and the return of Jonas from the Whales belly the Histories of the Jews and the Narratives of Christians the Faith of Believers and the Philosophy of the reasonable all join in the verification of this Mystery And amongst these heaps it is not of the least consideration that there was never any good man who having been taught this Article but if he served God he also relied upon this If he believed God he believed this and therefore S. Paul says that they who were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 were also 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they who had no hope meaning of the Resurrection were also Atheists and without God in the world And it is remarkable what S. Augugustine observes That when the World saw the righteous Abel destroyed and that the murderer out-lived his crime and built up a numerous Family and grew mighty upon Earth they neglected the service of God upon that account till God in pity of their prejudice and foolish arguings took Enoch up to Heaven to recover them from their impieties by shewing them that their bodies and souls should be rewarded for ever in an Eternal union But Christ the first fruits is gone before and himself did promise that when himself was lifted up he would draw all men after him Every man in his own order first Christ then they that are Christ's at his coming And so I have done with the second Particular not Christ only but we also shall rise in Gods time and our order But concerning this order I must speak a word or two not only for the fuller handling the Text but because it will be matter of application of what hath been already spoken of the Article of the Resurrection 3. First Christ and then we And we therefore because Christ is already risen But you must remember that the Resurrection and Exaltation of Christ was the reward
natural and therefore health and life was to descend upon him from Heaven and he was to suck life from a Tree on Earth himself being but ingraffed into a Tree of Life and adopted into the condition of an immortal Nature But he that in the best of his days was but a Cien of this Tree of Life by his sin was cut off from thence quickly and planted upon Thorns and his portion was for ever after among the Flowers which to day spring and look like health and beauty and in the evening they are sick and at night are dead and the oven is their grave And as before oven from our first spring from the dust on earth we might have died if we had not been preserved by the continual flux of a rare providence so now that we are reduced to the Laws of our own Nature we must needs die It is natural and therefore necessary It is become a punishment to us and therefore it is unavoidable and God hath bound the evil upon us by bands of natural and inseparable propriety and by a supervening unalterable Decree of Heaven and we are fallen from our privilege and are returned to the condition of Beasts and Buildings and common things And we see Temples defiled unto the ground and they die by Sacrilege and great Empires die by their own plenty and ease full Humours and factious Subjects and huge Buildings fall by their own weight and the violence of many Winters eating and consuming the Cement which is the marrow of their bones and Princes die like the meanest of their Servants and every thing finds a Grave and a Tomb and the very Tomb it self dies by the bigness of its pompousness and luxury Phario nutantia pondera saxo Quae cineri vanus dat ruitura labor and becomes as friable and uncombined dust as the ashes of the Sinner or the Saint that lay under it and is now forgotten in his bed of darkness And to this Catalogue of mortality Man is inrolled with a Statutum est It is appointed for all men to once die and after death comes judgment And if a Man can be stronger than Nature or can wrestle with a Decree of Heaven or can escape from a divine punishment by his own arts so that neither the Power nor the Providence of God nor the Laws of Nature nor the Bands of eternal Predestination can hold him then he may live beyond the fate and period of Flesh and last longer than a Flower But if all these can hold us and tie us to conditions then we must lay our heads down upon a turf and entertain creeping things in the cells and little chambers of our eyes and dwell with worms till time and death shall be no more We must needs die That 's our Sentence But that 's not all We are as water spilt on the ground which cannot be gathered up again Stay 1. We are as water weak and of no consistence always descending abiding in no certain place unless where we are detained with violence and every little breath of wind makes us rough and tempestuous and troubles our faces every trifling accident discomposes us and as the face of the waters wafting in a storm so wrinkles it self that it makes upon its forehead furrows deep and hollow like a grave so do our great and little cares and trifles first make the wrinkles of old age and then they dig a grave for us And there is in Nature nothing so contemptible but it may meet with us in such circumstances that it may be too hard for us in our weaknesses and the sting of a Bee is a weapon sharp enough to pierce the finger of a child or the lip of a Man and those Creatures which Nature hath left without weapons yet they are armed sufficiently to vex those parts of men which are left defenceless and obnoxious to a Sun-beam to the roughness of a sowre Grape to the unevenness of a Gravel-stone to the dust of a Wheel or the unwholsom breath of a Star looking awry upon a sinner 2. But besides the weaknesses and natural decayings of our bodies if chances and contingencies be innumerable then no man can reckon our dangers and the praeternatural causes of our deaths So that he is a vain person whose hopes of life are too confidently encreas'd by reason of his health and he is too unreasonably timerous who thinks his hopes at an end when he dwels in sickness For men die without rule and with and without occasions and no man suspecting or foreseeing any of deaths addresses and no man in his whole condition is weaker than another A man in a long Consumption is fallen under one of the solemnities and preparations to death but at the same instant the most healthful person is as neer death upon a more fatal and a more sudden but a less discerned cause There are but few persons upon whose foreheads every man can read the sentence of death written in the lines of a lingring sickness but they sometimes hear the passing-bell ring for stronger men even long before their own knell calls at the house of their mother to open her womb make a bed for them No man is surer of to morrow than the weakest of his brethren and when Lepidus and Aufidius stumbled at the threshold of the Senate and fell down and dyed the blow came from Heaven in a cloud but it struck more suddenly than upon the poor slave that made sport upon the Theatre with a praemeditated and fore-described death Quod quisque vitet nunquam homini satis cautum est in horas There are sicknesses that walk in darkness and there are exterminating Angels that fly wrapt up in the curtains of immateriality and an uncommunicating nature whom we cannot see but we feel their force and sink under their Sword and from Heaven the vail descends that wraps our heads in the fatal sentence There is no age of man but it hath proper to it self some posterns and outlets for death besides those infinite and open ports out of which myriads of men and women every day pass into the dark and the land of forgetfulness Infancy hath life but in effigie or like a spark dwelling in a pile of wood the candle is so newly lighted that every little shaking of the taper and every ruder breath of air puts it out and it dies Childhood is so tender and yet so unwary so soft to all the impressions of Chance and yet so forward to run into them that God knew there could be no security without the care and vigilance of an Angel-keeper and the eyes of Parents and the arms of Nurses the provisions of art and all the effects of Humane love and Providence are not sufficient to keep one child from horrid mischiefs from strange and early calamities and deaths unless a messenger be sent from Heaven to stand sentinel and watch the very playings and sleepings the eatings and drinkings of the Children
a spiritual law-suit and it can never be ended every man is right and every man is wrong in these things and no man can tell who is right or who is wrong For as long as a word can be spoken against a word and a thing be opposite to a thing as long as places are hard and men are ignorant or knowing but in part as long as there is money and pride in the world and for ever till men willingly confess themselves to be fools and deceiv'd so long will the saw of contention be drawn from side to side That which is not cannot be numbred saith the Wise man no man can reckon upon any truth that is got by contentious learning and whoever troubles his people with questions and teaches them to be troublesome note that man he loves not peace or he would fain be called Rabbi Rabbi Christian Religion loves not tricks nor artifices of wonder but like the natural and amiable simplicity of Jesus by plain and easie propositions leads us in wise paths to a place where sin and strife shall never enter What good can come from that which fools begin and wise men can never end but by silence and that had been the best way at first and would have stifled them in the Cradle What have your people to do whether Christs body be in the Sacrament by Consubstantiation or Transubstantiation whether Purgatory be in the centre of the earth or in the air or any where or no where and who but a mad man would trouble their heads with the intangled links of the phantatick chain of Predestination Teach them to fear God and honour the King to keep the Commandments of God and the Kings Commands because of the oath of God learn them to be sober and temperate to be just and to pay their debts to speak well of their neighbours and to think meanly of themselves teach them charity and learn them to be zealous of good works Is it not a shame that the people should be fill'd with Sermons against Ceremonies and Declamations against a Surplice and tedious Harangues against the poor aëry sign of the Cross in Baptism These things teach them to be ignorant it fills them with wind and they such dry nurses it makes them lazy and useless troublesome and good for nothing Can the definition of a Christian be that a Christian is a man that rails against Bishops and the Common Prayer-book and yet this is the great labour of our neighbours that are crept in among us this they call the work of the Lord and this is the great matter of the desir'd reformation in these things they spend their long breath and about these things they spend earnest prayers and by these they judge their brother and for these they revile their Superiour and in this doughty cause they think it fit to fight and dye If S. Paul or S. Anthony S. Basil or S. Ambrose if any of the primitive Confessors or glorious Martyrs should awake from within their curtains of darkness and find men thus striving against Government for the interest of disobedience and labouring for nothings and preaching all day for shadows and Moon-shine and that not a word shall come from them to teach the people humility not a word of obedience or self-denial they are never taught to suspect their own judgment but always to prefer the private Minister before the publick the Presbyter before a Bishop Fancy before Law the Subject before his Prince a Prayer in which men consider not at all before that which is weighed wisely and considered and in short a private spirit before the publick and Mas John before the Patriarch of Jerusalem if I say S. Paul or S. Anthony should see such a light they would not know the meaning of it nor of what Religion the Country were nor from whence they had deriv'd their new nothing of an institution The Kingdom of God consists in wisdom and righteousness in peace and holiness in meekness and gentleness in chastity and purity in abstinence from evil and doing good to others in these things place your labours preach these things and nothing else but such as these things which promote the publick peace and publick good things that can give no offence to the wise and to the virtuous For these things are profitable to men and pleasing to God 2. Let not your Sermons and Discourses to your people be busie arguings about hard places of Scripture if you strike a hard against a hard you may chance to strike fire or break a mans head but it never makes a good building Philosophiam ad syllabus vocare that 's to no purpose your Sermons must be for edification something to make the people better and wiser wiser unto salvation not wiser to discourse for if a hard thing get into their heads I know not what work you will make of it but they will make nothing of it or something that is very strange Dress your people unto the imagery of Christ dress them for their funerals help them to make their accounts up against the day of Judgment I have known some Persons and some Families that would religiously educate their Children and bring them up in the Scriptures from their cradle and they would teach them to tell who was the first man and who was the oldest and who was the wisest and who was the strongest but I never observ'd them to ask who was the best and what things were requir'd to make a man good the Apostles Creed was not the entertainment of their pretty talkings nor the Life of Christ the story of his bitter Passion and his incomparable Sermon on the Mount went not into their Catechisms What good can your flocks receive if you discourse well and wisely whether Jephthab sacrificed his daughter or put her into the retirements of a solitary life nor how David's numbring the people did differ from Joshua's or whether God took away the life of Moses by a Apoplexy or by the kisses of his mouth If Scholars be idly busie in these things in the Schools custom and some other little accidents may help to excuse them but the time that is spent in your Churches and conversation with your people must not be so thrown away 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that 's your rule let your speech be grave and wise and useful and holy and intelligible something to reform their manners to correct their evil natures to amend their foolish customs to build them up in a most holy faith That 's the second rule and measure of your preachings that the Apostle gives you in my Text. 3. Your speech must be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 salutary and wholesome and indeed this is of greatest concerne next to the first next to the truth and purity of that doctrine for unlesse the doctrine be made fit for the necessities of your people and not only be good in it self but good for them you lose the
to his deeds whether they be good or whether they be evil I conclude with the words of Caius Plinius Equidem beatos puto quibus Deorum munere datum est aut facere scribenda aut scribere legenda he wrote many things fit to be read and did very many things worthy to be written which if we wisely imitate we may hope to meet him in the Resurrection of the just and feast with him in the eternal Supper of the Lamb there to sing perpetual Anthems to the honour of God the Father Son and Holy Ghost To whom be all honour c. FINIS A Funeral Sermon Preached at the OBSEQUIES Of the Right Honourable and most Vertuous Lady The Lady FRANCES Countess of CARBERY Who deceased October the 9th 1650. at her House Golden-Grove in Caermarthen-shire By Jeremy Taylor D.D. LONDON Printed for R. Royston Bookseller to the Kings Most Excellent Majesty 1666. To the RIGHT HONOURABLE And TRULY NOBLE Richard Lord Vaughan Earl of Carbery Baron of Emlim and Molinger Knight of the Honourable Order of the Bath My Lord I Am not ashamed to profess that I pay this part of Service to your Lordship most unwillingly for it is a sad office to be the chief Minister in a house of mourning and to present an interested person with a branch of Cypress and a bottle of tears And indeed my Lord it were more proportionable to your needs to bring something that might alleviate or divert your sorrow than to dress the Hearse of your Dear Lady and to furnish it with such circumstances that it may dwell with you and lie in your Closet and make your prayers and your retirements more sad and full of weepings But because the Divine providence hath taken from you a person so excellent a woman fit to converse with Angels and Apostles with Saints and Martyrs give me leave to present you with her Picture drawn in little and in water-colours sullyed indeed with tears and the abrupt accents of a real and consonant sorrow but drawn with a faithful hand and taken from the life and indeed it were too great a loss to be deprived of her example and of her rule of the original and of the copy too The age is very evil and deserved her not but because it is so evil it hath the more need to have such lives preserved in memory to instruct our piety or upbraid our wickedness For now that God hath cut this tree of Paradise down from its seat of earth yet so the dead trunk may support a part of the declining Temple or at least serve to kindle the fire on the Altar My Lord I pray God this heap of sorrow may swell your piety till it breaks into the greatest joys of God and of Religion and remember when you pay a tear upon the Grave or to the memory of your Lady that Dear and most excellent Soul that you pay two more one of repentance for those things that may have caused this breach and another of joy for the mercies of God to your Dear departed Saint that he hath taken her into a place where she can weep no more My Lord I think I shall so long as I live that is so long as I am Your Lordships most humble Servant Jer. Taylor Pietati Memoriae Sacrum MOnumentum doloris singularis paris fati conditionis posuit Richardus Comes Carberiensis sibi vivo mortem nec exoptanti nec metuenti Et dilectissimae suae Conjugi Franciscae Comitissae in flore aetatis casibus puerperii raptae ex amplexibus Sanctissimi amoris Fuit illa descendat lachrymula Amice Lector fuit inter castissimas prima inter Conjuges amantissima Mater optima placidi oris severae virturis conversationis suavissimae vultum hilarem fecit bona conscientia amabilem forma plusquam Uxoria Claris orta Natalibus fortunam non mediocrem habuit erat enim cum Unicâ Germanâ Haeres ex asse Annos XIII Menses IV supra Biduum vixit in Sanctissimo Matrimonio cum SUO quem effusissimè dilexit sanctè observavit quem novit Prudentissimum sensit Amantissimum virum Optimum vidit laetata est Enixa prolem numerosam pulchram ingenuam formae Spei optimae quatuor Masculos Franciscum Dominum Vaughan Johannem Althamum quartum immaturum foeminas sex Dom Franciscam Elizabethas duas Mariam Margaretam Althamiam post cujus partum paucis diebus obdormiit Totam prolem Masculam si demas abortivum illum foeminas omnes praeter Elizabetham alteram Mariam superstites reliquit Pietatis adeóque Spei plena obiit ix Octobr. MDC.L Lachrymis suorum omnium tota irrigua conditur in hoc coemeterio ubi cùm Deo Opt. Max. visum fuerit sperat se reponendum Conjux moestissimus intereà temporis luctui sed pietati magis vacat ut in suo tempore simul laetentur Par tam Pium tam Nobile tam Christianum in gremio Jesu usque dum Coronae adornentur accipiendae in Adventu Domini AMEN Cum ille vitâ defunctus fuerit Marmor loquetur quod adhuc tacere jubet virtus Modesta interim vitam ejus observa leges quod posteà hîc inscriptum amabunt colent Posteri Ora abi A Funeral Sermon c. SERM. VIII 2 Sam. XIV 14. For we must needs die and are as water spilt on the ground which cannot be gathered up again neither doth God respect any person yet doth he devise means that his banished be not expelled from him WHen our Blessed Saviour and his Disciples viewed the Temple some one amongst them cried out Magister aspice quales lapides Master behold what fair what great stones are here Christ made no other reply but foretold their dissolution and a world of sadness and sorrow which should bury that whole Nation when the teeming cloud of Gods displeasure should produce a storm which was the daughter of the biggest anger and the mother of the greatest calamity which ever crush'd any of the Sons of Adam The time shall come that there shall not be left one stone upon another The whole Temple and the Religion the Ceremonies ordained by God and the Nation beloved by God and the Fabrick erected for the Service of God shall run to their own Period and lye down in their several Graves Whatsoever had a beginning can also have an ending and it shall die unless it be daily watered with the Purles flowing from the Fountain of Life and refreshed with the Dew of Heaven and the Wells of God And therefore God had provided a Tree in Paradise to have supported Adam in his artificial Immortality Immortality was not in his Nature but in the Hands and Arts in the Favour and Superadditions of God Man was always the same mixture of Heat and Cold of Dryness and Moisture ever the same weak thing apt to feel rebellion in the humours and to suffer the evils of a civil war in his body