preach his revealed will which is our sanctification by our repenting and amending according to the tenour of the Gospel Such as deaffen their ears harden their hearts and turn their backs on God and the meanes of grace all the time of their strength and health will find it very hard to see or seek his face in the disorder darkness and clouds of sickness which is the twilight and evening of Death As in civil conversation no man may so presume of Gods providence as to neglect honest industry so in religious respects no man may hope for grace that doth not rationally duely and conscienciously apply to the use of those meanes which God hath appointed in his Church All blessings temporal and eternal which are acquirable by and offered to reasonable creatures are ordinarily the effects of Gods mercy and mans industry not of miracles or omnipotence The meanes of grace given by God in his Church are never barren or ineffectual but to those who neglect to attend them and use them as they may and ought to doe if they look upon them as from God and in order to their soules good which is to be attained by this or no way 7. In order therefore to promote and speed by Gods assistance our repentance while we are yet in life and health we should lay to heart specially at the summons of another death What infinite patience and long-suffering it is that hitherto God hath shewed toward thee for many years of vanity sin and desperate folly Rom. 2.4 in which he hath spared thee notwithstanding thou hast daily provoked him to his face yet thou art not to this day cut off from the land of the living nor is the door of mercy and repentance shut upon thee How many have been cut off by the sword by sudden death and by lingring sickness here one there another while thou art reprieved Should not this forbearance of God lead thee to repentance Is it not enough in all conscience and too much in all reason and gratitude thus far to have offended a God that is loth to destroy thee giving thee space to repent Wilt thou after the hardness of thy heart and vain confidence of life still treasure up wrath against the day of wrath The time past may suffice to give thee sufficient experience how unwilling God is thou shouldest die 1 Pet. 4.3 and how willing thou shouldst repent and live Ezek. 33.11 For it is of the Lords mercy that thou art not consumed Thou mightest have been the corps now to be put into the grave Lam. 3.22 where is no device or wisedome of counsel or repentance or preaching Eccl. 9.10 or praying O turn no longer the grace of God into wantonness which is offered in Christ by his Ministers Breve sit quod turpiter audes Of a short precious and uncertain moment the least part is too much to be lavished in those wayes Jude 4. which are not only unprofitable but pernicious Our whole lives after the vanity of childhood and youth are too little to be spent in well-doing Isa 20.15 and in undoing what hath been either vain or wicked To live as if we had made a covenant with death and hell is not onely a fool-hardiness but a madness which hath by infinite sad and horrid instances been fearfully punished but not yet sufficiently cured in mankind Eccl. 8.12 Though a sinner live an hundred years twice told yet it shall not be well with him Eccl. 11.9 Though young and strong men please themselves in the delights of their eyes and desires of their own hearts yet they must know that for all these things God will bring them to judgment A mans debts and dangers are not the lesse because he is not presently arrested nor sees the books and specialties which are against him or the Serjeants which will arrest him 'T is high time to cease to offend that God who is willing to remit all our former arrears and debts upon our return to him begging his pardon and resolving to live worthy of such grace Doe not then feed any longer on ashes it is a deceived heart that turneth thee aside Isa 44.20 Jonah 2.8 Phil. 2.12 Heb. 2.9 so that thou canst not deliver thy soul nor say Is there not a lye in my right hand Take heed of following lying vanities lest thou forsake thy own mercies which are offer'd us but from moment to moment so as every minute of time that passeth every clock that striketh calls upon thee in the wise man's counsell Eccles 9.10 Whatever thine hand findeth to do do it with all thy might And what hast thou to do but to work out thy salvation with feare and trembling as the Apostle calls upon the Philippians All without this is time and labour lost 8. Lay to heart upon the sight and reflexions of death the infinite want thou hast of such a Saviour who may be able and willing to redeem thee a captive to sin and held all thy life in the fear of death from both these miserable bondages Lay to heart the infinite grace transcendent love and mercy of Christ Heb. 2.9 who is offer'd thee as a sufficient Saviour to all purposes Who hath tasted death for every man and hath overcome death as well as satisfied for the death of the whole world excluding none nor excepting any but putting all into a capacity of life and salvation upon their faith and repentance John 5.40 John 6.37 40. Ver. 54. John 8.52 John 11.25 Mark 16.15 so that whoever will come to him and believe in him shall not die but have eternal life yea though he die as to the body yet he shall continue to live in the happiness of his soul and his body shall be raised to live in glory and immortality by Christ who hath wrought this for us by his death and brought it to light by his Gospel which is commanded to be preached to every rational creature under heaven Lay then to heart that is seriously and alone ponder with thy self what Christ hath done and suffered for thee what he hath deserved of thee what he expects from thee as a man Christian for whose sake he hath died Wouldst thou have greater instances of his love to thee John 10.11 John 15.13 then thus to die for thee Shall not thy unthankful and sinful importunity be satisfied with that which hath satisfied divine justice stopped the Devils mouth conquered death and purchased life eternal to every true believer It wrought up blessed Ignatius's heart to an ambitious zeal of Martyrdome that he might shew his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 reciprocal love to Christ when he deeply considered and oft repeated Christ my love hath been crucified 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Doth it become thee to neglect despise sinne against such love any longer Canst thou trample that blood under feet which hath been shed for thee Wouldst thou have him
a fire when he is so benummed and feeble with cold that he can hardly lift his hands to his head 2. Besides no man hath much cause to presume his repentance will be accepted of God when it comes perforce at the dregs and fag end of his life Lastly a man can then least relish and reflect upon such late and necessitated repentance as to the comfort and joy of his own soul for the best trial and taste of true repentance is to be had in health amidst the exercises and assaults of temptations then if it hold sound and firm it argues it to be of proof and safe Indeed there is nothing in our life so necessary to be done and so worthy of our living as our timely repenting for if life were for nothing else but an enflaming the reckonings of our sins here and our miseries hereafter it were a thousand times better never to be born or to see the Sun The great end of our life is first to remove the sordes and rubbidg of our sins next to build up our souls for God by grace to glory which two make up the compleat work of repentance which like currant coin hath two sides stampt or impressions on it the one is as cross the other is as pile the first is as turning from sin or dying to sin the other is turning to God and living to grace These are wrought by a double stamp upon the soul 1. Of fear and terrour scaring us from sin by the just apprehensions of the anger and wrath of God revealed from heaven and in the heart 2. Of love and mercy winning us to God by the beauty of holiness and the brightness of his goodness which appears in the face of Jesus Christ set forth in the Evangelical promifes The first breaks the second melts the heart The one is commonly much hidden where the other most appears to the soule either in fear or love which have their wholsome vicissitudes till the work be perfected by mortification to amendment by hatred of sin from the love of God This seasonably leisurely and seriously done doth strangely advance the souls faith comfort and hope of Gods love in Christ But it is neither an easie nor a ready thing to discerne the bright jewel of assurance as Gods love mercy and pardon there where the soul is all in dust and hurry and confusion moving and removing its lumber and rubbish A troubled water Isa 57.20 though it be pure will not shew a clear reflexion of our own or anothers face no more will a troubled spirit especially if it be foul with mire and dirt as a wicked heart is though a late repentant may find favour in Gods sight who can see our sincerity amidst all our confusions yet it is hard for us to have so clear a sight of God as may amount to that plerophory strong comfort and assurance which a dying man affected with his condition would desire even beyond life it self or a thousand worlds having now before his eyes the dismal aspect of death the black Abyssus of eternal night without bounds or bottome made up of desolation and oblivion at best and which is insinitely more horrid of damnation and eternal torments a Tophet that burns with much wood kindled by the breath of Gods displeasure which none can quench I know it is not fit to obstruct or shrink the mercies of God where there is yet any hope possibility or capacity allowed us by Gods indulgence They found Manasses in a prison and the thief on the Crosse and the prodigal son at the swine-trough by which sharp pennances God brought them first to themselves then to himself by repentance and so accepted of them I know God can and I believe sometimes he doth sanctifie sickness to the like good effects But we have no one example of death-bed repentance so much as once recorded in Scripture to give any instance of hope in that kind or to occasion the least presumption impenitently to sin away our health by putting off our turning to God till the time that we can scarce turn our selves in our bed Repentance like Poetry for it is a new making of the soul for God a composing of it to the holy meeters or measures of his Word requires solitude and recesses of mind Psal 4.4 that the heart of man may commune with it self and be still seriously reflecting upon a mans self what he is where he lives whence he is sprung whither he tends to what end he lives what he would have to make him happy whether this world can doe it where he may best know and how he may doe the will of his Maker and Preserver God what he will doe in age sickness death what relation proportion and capacity above all things under heaven he hath as a reasonable creature toward the Creator from what wisedom power and goodness all his visible and present comforts flow what duty and gratitude what justice and holiness befits him to God and man what to himself and his own future interests both as to soul and body which may without doubt be as capable of an after-happiness or misery which we call heaven and hell in their aspects to the supreme and increated good as they are here of health or sickness poverty or riches honour or disgrace joy or grief vexation or pleasure a momentary heaven or hell in reference to those creature-comforts they enjoy or want These if a man will but recollect himself and not shut the eyes of his soul he may in seeing see Gods will and apply himself to do his duty But this must be done apart and by himself when there are least diversions no distractions of body or mind that removed from the noise and tintamars both of secular incumbrances or sick annoyances he may better hear the gentle and orderly voice of God who is oftner in these silent and soft motions of reason then in those louder earthquakes and terrours of afflictions Nor can any pious and prudent Divine as the Confessor and Comforter of such a troubled spirit whose inward troubles for sin never began or were kindly entertained till the unwelcome trouble of his sickness made him a prisoner to his bed as the presage of his after-jayls the grave and hell In such cases I say no wise and worthy Minister of Christ but will be very wary how by the keyes of the Gospel he shut all disquiet for sin out of such a soule or let in the peace of God suddenly as to any particular confidences or personal assurance which in such cases must needs be very dark 'T is true in the general he may and must so temper Evangelical dispensations declaring the riches of Gods mercy and sufficiencies of Christs merits even to the chiefest of sinners as may never countenance despair as on Gods part in the least kind which is the dreadfullest fury of hell hardly allayed when once conjured up by the black art of
daily crucified for thee Canst thou fancy or desire greater benefits then those that accrew to thee and are offered thee by Christ who hath taken away the sting of death 1 Cor. 15. which is sin that when thou diest in the Lord thou art sure to be eternally blessed with the Lord Vitam non amittimus sed mutamus Hieron for true Christians doe not lose but exchange life by death Like a turning chatr which serves for a door so death natural is but a moving us out of one room which is an ontward antecamera chamber or common gallery or base court into another which is most ample and nobly furnished with all company and other accomplishments befitting the Majesty Palace and presence of the King of Heaven Death is but a transition or passage from grace to glory the taking of the candle of our soules out of a dark and close lanthorn of our bodies to set it on a fair candlestick in a stately chamber till the body be restored fitter for it crystalline celestial incorruptible When Christians defer their repentance and comming to Christ they forget the priviledges and benefits which are enjoyable only by them both in life and death at resurrection and judgment to come There being no other name under heaven by which we may be saved in any of these exigents Acts 4.12 which will in after-years overtake us all O bethink thy self and say in thy heart with David What shall I render to the Lord for all his mercies Psal 116.12 What shall I return to my blessed Saviour who hath redeemed me by his precious blood from so many and so great deaths I will devote both soul and body to him as a living and acceptable sacrifice Rom. 12.2 which is but my reasonable service Though I have done foolishy ungratefully unchristianly and desperately hitherto yet I will adde no more drunkenness to thirst or iniquity to sinne since he hath by his meritorious passion both redeemed my life from the death in sin and my death from the penal horrors for sin Yea in this he hath made my death better then my life that while I live I shall sin by daily defects and infirmities but when I die sin shall wholly die in me This one cordial is in every good Christians death that his sin shall not be immortal but as he shall be ever with the Lord so he shall never sin more against him 9. Lay to heart upon this and the like sad occasions to what good end or purpose thou hast hitherto lived for many yeares as a man or a Christian in the sphear of reason in the bosome of the Church and in the light of true Religion Bethink thy self how many hours dayes weeks moneths yeares God hath given thee since thou cam'st to be master of reason and instructed in Religion knowing good and evil as a space of repentance and opportunity to shew thy fear love duty and obedience to God that thou mightst be capable of his eternal rewards There are in every year eight thousand seven hundred seventy five hours if we should allow the greater half of these for sleep and necessary attending our bodies take but four thousand houres for our work and business of consequence how poor account can most men women of ripe age but not yet come to yeares of discretion give of all these in a whole year Not one hour in seven which is as a Sabbatical hour in every day not one hour in ten which is but the Tithe of our time is generally devoted to God or any good duty Nay many are weary of doing nothing Mark 11.20 and how solicitous to ravel out their time in the most impertinent and excessive pastimes they can imagine They are like to doe very well who know not what to doe with themselves and their time Phil. 3.19 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 When they have most leisure to intend their spiritual and eternal improvement then are they most lavish of their precious houres Debuisti boc tempus non perdere So Pliny the elder checked his Nephew for losse of time when he saw him walking in the streets and indisposed thereby to read or note any thing Canst thou not tell how to spend this or that long day Wouldst thou adde spurs to the wings of time I will tell thee the very waste and seeming superfluity of thy time would serve thy turn for an eternal happiness to work out thy salvation Those lost shreds of hours which thou flingest away lazing and laughing and chatting and visiting stretching yawning and playing and fooling so long till from doing nothing art tempted to doe evil things idleness being the Devils anvil Incus Diaboli desidia Cavene te Diabolus inveniat oriosum Hieren Pro. 17.16 These parings and rags I say of thy precious time which is infinitely more precious then the finest gold is a price put into thy hand if thou be not an egregious fool of which infinite gain and advantage may be made for ever In this and that good hour which thou prodigally losest not knowing how to spend it thou mightest be seeking thy lost-self thy lost soul thy lost conscience thy lost God thy lost Saviour who came into the world to seek and to save that which is lost O what might not be done in that chain and circle which St. Jerom commends to Laeta Orationem lectio lectionem meditatio meditationē oratio sequebatur Hieron of dispensing time nay if we wrought but now and then a link of grace O what prayers what tears what meditation what contrition what compunction what godly sorrow what ingenuous shame what self-abhorrence what self-despairs might be wrought upon thy heart as to the reflection of thy sins past Yea what fear of God what reverence of the Divine majesty power wisedome justice goodness evident in his works providences word What breathings sighings and seekings after God! What purposes vowes holy resolutions thou mightst take up and begin What hatred and loathing of sin as the greatest abasing of a reasonable creature what search into and admiration of the mystery of Christ crucified what longing after him what faith in him what sense of thy want of him what zeal for him what humility meekness charity holy industry sense of Gods savour sweet influence of his Spirit power against corruptions comforts against death hopes of heaven delight in well-doing joy in God! What serious considerations of the deformity and danger by sin of the beauty and benefits by Christ of the vanity of the world the certain uncertainty of dying These meditations and many such like effects of our thoughts and reflexions of things might be the happy fruits of thy true of thy holy considerations and sober endeavours if thou wert worthy of one moment of that life which thou art so weary of and wastest so impertinently a little portion of which will be one day when thy distresses and terrors come upon
disarmed their revenges forced them to shed teares even over their enemies corps or graves as Alexander the Great did over Darius and Julius Caesar when he saw his potent Rival Pompey the Great 's head deformedly parted from his body by treacherous villany These glasses shewed to every man their own faces in the truest and most unflattering representations Mors sola fatetur Quantula sint hominum corpuscula Some of the ancient Philosophers professed they profited most by conversing with the dead that is with good books whose Authors were long agone dead as to their bodies but living in the noble monuments of their minds Libri animorum urnae Mentium magnarum aeterna monumenta Lipsius their writings which are the urns or repositories of souls here on earth This was very elegant and very true there being as none more durable Monuments so no better Monitors Tutors and Instructers then those that are farthest remote from all passions of fear or flattery from the vices and parties of the age in which men live Nor is the frequenting of dead mens funerals less effectual to work on living mens hearts For as some Nonconformists of old the dead never speak louder then when they are most silenced nor shine brighter then in that night of darkness which is sending them to their long homes and to make their lasting beds in the cold grave that dismal house of darkness Dead men by an holy kind of Magick which is a due meditation of them and our selves doe in a sort revive to us and walk with us yea haunt us and talk with us in a dumb but potent kind of oratory Sometimes their noble deeds and good works praise them and upbraid us who are strangers yet to their worth and enemies to their holy examples Sometimes they lift up their voice like a trumpet of terrour to us in the sad riot and debaucheries and security of of their lives and in the suddenness the despair and dreadfulness of their deaths Sometimes the solemnity of their Funerals the mementoes of their Epitaphs and those Inscriptions which give Marmora animata as it were breath to their dust and a spirit or life to their marble monuments All these summon us to serious reflections that as Pliny tells us the dead sea affords some medicinals and mummy it self is become a useful drug in medicaments so great and special good use may be made of those that are recens mortui new dead among our neighbours friends acquaintance relations superiors inferiors Nulla unquam de morte hominis cunctatio longa As no mans death should be precipitated because life is invaluable and once lost is irreparable so nor is any mans death to be taken with a careless and useless indifferencie specially when it is neer us and like Balshazzars hand on the wall by the fingers of a man pointing to us Mortuorum funera viventium monita or writing as it were either some lesson for us or terrors against us some monition or instruction One of the great Egyptian Kings Sesostris as I remember commanded this to be written on his Tomb or Urn 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Whoever lookes on my Sepulchre Discite justitiam moniti ne temerite dives let him learn to be religious to fear and serve the gods The Scythians while yet Heathens and synonymous with Barbarity yet were so ingenuous to improve the Deaths of their most deserving Princes that they cut their dead bodies into little pieces which they kept about them as Jewels in precious boxes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as amulets or defensatives against vice and maladies no less then incentives to virtue and conservatives of their felicity The Ethiopians in a different manner yet to the same design were wont to put the intire bodies of their Princes exsuccated or dried by sweet spices and the Sun into glass Urns or transparent Coffins which they set in publick and most conspicuous places as Varro tells us the Romans did their Statues to be as it were the great Censors and Monitors no less then the exemplary inciters of posterity to parallel vertues 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Infinite were the inventions of ingenious Antiquity either to advance the honour of the dead or to vindicate or revenge them as much as might be done by poor mortals from mortality or at least to moderate and qualifie the impotent passions and enormous grief of Survivors Hence they not only held their Geniusses immortal which they venerated by a will-worship and is properly Superstition but they built them stately and portentous Sepulchres for their bodies in Pyramids Mausoles and the like Fabricks which were Miracles of Architecture that their dust might have as stately palaces as themselves once living enjoyed Ludos solennes Besides they instituted solemn Sacrifices and magnificent conventions mixt with activity and bravery Judg. 11. See Ludo. Caepel votum Jephtae interludes and devotion in memorial of them as Jephtah did for his daughters being sacrificed as a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 curseor Anathema so devoted to God as was not redeemable Alexander the great at the Funeral of Ephestion squandred in a profuseness of passion and prodigality fit for none but himself so many Talents as amounted to more then a million of pounds sterling Nay See Bish Vsser his Chrono Imp. Alex. M. the Roman pride and glory dared Coelum ipsum petere ambitiosà nimis stultitiâ to vye with the Gods in Heaven and by the sumptuous pomp of their Funeral Piles and the Eagles mounting from the flames of them upward to raise the vulgar credulity beyond the thoughts of their Princes mortality to the imaginations of a Deity 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Rom. vid. Lip alios Thus fearing that Heaven should not be fully planted they sent them Colonies from earth that such as had either deserved very well of mankind or were able unpunished to do much mischief by such soveraign impiety as was great but not good might fill up the lower formes of Heaven which yet wanted Gods to supply them Which fancy did not stray much from that of some Christian Fathers who conceive the fall and defalcation of Angels when they degenerated to Devils is to be repaired by substituting as many Saints or Christian Heroes into their room How the souls of all those got to Heaven whom vulgar clamours and applauses or politick Deifications or Papal Canonizations lift up thither I list not to enquire I believe many of their Spirits went no higher then their Eagles might soar I am sure popular Superstition or passion is prone to fix upon many a golden Calf this title and proclamation Exod. 32.8 These are thy Gods O Israel Nor is any thing more frequent then as Crysologus observes for the pomp of Funerals to lye and flatter Mentitur funeris pompa fallaci vanitate adulantium Multos pompa funeris ad coelum evehit quos peccati pondus
ad infernum deprimit both as to the living and the dead Many are raised up to Heaven by the magnificence of the Burnings or Buryings whose souls are sunk down to Hell by the ponderous weight of their unrepented and unreformed sins When sorrow affects too much state and wraps up the sharpness of death in soft paradoes mixing too much sensual sweet with the wormwood and bitterness of that cup which is offered to all mens lips the good effects of Funerals are much defeated as to the living the house of mourning is so far from being better in such an equipage that it is worse then the sober house of feasting for it flatters the dead and living too making men deaf to Gods warning-pieces which are shot off at their ears and levelled at their hearts They are like wool-sacks or mounds of earth 1 John 2.16 which disarm the great cannon-shot which should batter down the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the strong holds of sin the lust of the eyes the lust of the flesh the pride of life Empty and adulatory pomp set up as it were by the higher ground of mens stately Funerals and Tombs what God intends to pull down namely those high and exalted imaginations with which poor sinful mortals are pestered and poysoned who are then best when they see themselves and others at the worst and then nearest to grace and glory too when they see themselves as in their graves reduced to their dust and ashes and in their very best estate Psal 39.5 as the Psalmist speaks to be but altogether vanity 2. Which is the great lesson that the great God intends to teach men by such pregnant instances of their mortality which the living will learn i. e. such as live not only to sense but to true reason and not only to reason but to true religion not only to a moment but eternity The aym of these severe Lectures is to bring sinful man down to the dust within sight of the grave and prospect of judgment and hell it self that so he may be a meet object for Gods grace and mercy It is a shrewd sign of a heart dead in sins and trespasses stupid in sensual security buried in worldly lusts and vain pleasures dead as the Apostle sayes of some widows even while they live 1 Tim. 5.6 not to lay to heart the departures of those who are snatcht out of the land of the living to a state and place whence they shall not return to a terra incognita a land which is far off a black Abyssus covered with profound darkness of which no discovery hath ever been made by any that went thither so as to give Survivers any Geographical map or account of it Which terrible summons like the decimating of souldiers to die one after another cannot but infinitely affect the sober and serious living to whose benefit only the death and Funerals the solemnities and obsequies civil and religious prayers and Sermons too may and ought to be duely improved For to the Dead they reach not nor can they turn to any account further then such civil honour and respect as is due to their place name and merit yet surviving or to their corps which rest in hope of a refurrection and so deserve an handsome and Christian interment But as to any advantage to be made for the benefit of their soules for redeeming them from Purgatory for abating their purgative paines for shortning or supplying their Pennance or obtaining remission for any sin or punishment in which they are engaged being once dead this must be let alone for ever There is no ground of hope to relieve them in any kind no Scripture no Catholick doctrine no precept no promise that gives any footing for Prayers or Sacrifices Masses or Dirges Oblations or Emptions Remissions or Redemptions by which to benefit the dead they are vain solaces to the living and none at all to the dead arising first from the suggestions of the impotent grief and passion in survivors next from an unwarranted charity and benevolence to the dead At last policy and covetousness grew so cunning in the darkness and superstition of times as to make no small advantages by the vulgar easiness and prodigality sliding by insensible degrees from those memorials of benediction for their piety and constancy in religion from the gratulations for their happy and hopeful delivery out of a dangerous and naufragous Sea and for their hoped arrival at a safe and happy heaven together with a Catholick comprecation for the consummation and plenary bliss at the resurrection of them and all Saints departed in the true faith of Christ See the excellent Primate of Arm. of praying to and for the dead in his Jesuites Challenge From these commendable customes I say of pious Antiquity of which Epiphanius and others give us an account degenerous posterity warped not onely to praying both for and to the dead but indeed to make a notable mystery and trade of preying upon the devotion and simplicity of the living uses and ends which we find neither Solomon nor any Prophet Apostle or Evangelist nor Christ himself any where teaching nor in the least kind intimating to the living either in order to give such honour or help to the dead neither of which either our blessed Saviours love of his compleater Saints or his charity to the more defective dead who had not fully done their pennance here and so stood in need of some grains of allowance from the charity of such as survived them or his Apostles care would have failed to have taught the Primitive Church by word or Epistle or example if such prayers had been available to the living or for the dead No they may be profitable fancies to the Romanists and plausible enough to their bigot and bountiful disciples but they are not justifiable in true religion by Old or New Testament nor by any practise in the first and best Centuries No known advantages can redound to the dead from the living nor other advantages to the living from the dead but only the laying their death seriously and devoutly to heart the use that wise Solomon and the wiser God here commends to us all 3. And this upon very great and pregnant reasons if we consider 1. The state of the living in respect of their hearts 2. The proper vertues which are derivable from the dead and fit to be applied to the hearts of the living 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Et vivens dabit ad cor suum The wise and considerate living will upon such occasions not only gape at the ceremony glory in the pomp talk of the person discourse of the disease and manner of death after a vulgar and easie fashion much less will they rejoyce in anothers death though an enemy or triumph in the advantages which accrew to them thereby after a malicious and covetous rate Such as lie under the power of these depraved distempers of soul and are of no
higher form of life are scarce among Solomons living who lay things to heart that is Altâ mente reponunt they deeply and devoutly seriously and solemnly rationally and religiously consider resolve and ponder in intimis animi recessibus the inward recesses of their soules or consciences the whole purport of such occasions what they mean in all their aspects They make as it were a speculative Anatomy and intellectual dissection of the dead yea and of death it self in all its forms and fashions in its causes and effects its antecedents concomitants and consequences They look upon the face of it which is neer at hand and the long train or extent of it which reacheth to Eternity This is the Lecture that the living read upon the dead and many lessons they learn from them because they are men that have an heart which is wise and understanding duely weighing in the scale of true reason and divine wisdom every occurrence and event of providence which hath any remark or signal character upon it as the death of any man or woman young or old infant or decrepit hath to such as have an heart able to apply it notwithstanding this frequency of such spectacles which with many men and women takes away the sense and regard of them though such persons need every day a memento mori some spectacle or remembrancer as King Philip had daily to put them in mind that they are but men Philippe memento te esse mortalem How necessary is it for them to remember their latter end to consider in what a vain shadow they live or rather die in their life because they are without an heart as silly birds not aware of the snares of sin the pits of death and hell over which they carelesly and confidently passe every moment Frequencie of Funerals doth not lessen the right use and influence of them to such living as know how to lay them to heart They doe not as women and children or country clowns only start amain when some sudden and unexpected death befals any as if it were the discharging of a great cannon near them which they never dreamed of but as valiant Commanders who finding that an hot battery and frequent shot slayes men round about them wisely consider that they may be the next mark whom death will hit which thought is so far from discouraging or appalling a man of a good heart that is pious and generous that it onely summons him to muster up all the fortitude and strength of his soul that whether he live or die he may do neither like a fool or a coward or a beast but like a valiant man and a good Christian who being engaged in a good Canse having a good God and a good conscience doubts not to make a good end when God shall call him out of this life to a better The Living that is the wise and considerable sort of mankind are the only persons who have hearts to consider all things as they ought to reflect upon their own hearts to commune with them to try and examine their state and tempers their defects and disorders their extravagancies and necessities The Living are they that duely consider the true interests and eternal concernments of their hearts and spirits their soules and consciences far beyond those of their bodies senses or fortunes The Living doe upon such occasions of mortality in se descendere make sober retreats home looking to themselves and searching into the penetralia animae their hearts above all Which they know to be as the rudder or steerage of the soule and of the whole man of all thoughts words and actions the card or compass by which our momentary and eternal course is shaped They know the infinite importance of a well or ill constituted and managed heart They find that verified which our Saviour tells us That out of the heart of man proceed evil thoughts murders Matth. 15.18 adulteries fornications thefts false witness blasphemies c. That God chiefly requires and regards this as the Gemme of the man most precious in it self most proper and proportionate for God That all beauty strength wit estate honour offered to God without the Heart is but the sacrifice nay the sacriledge and affront of fools and hypocrites Therefore it is frequently inculcated from Heaven and in the Scripture Prov. 23.26 to all sorts of men under all dispensations of Religion to Jew and Gentile Give me thy heart an honest and good heart Psal 51. a pure and peaceable heart an humble and contrite heart God will not despise yea in this he delights all things else are loss and dung in comparison Nothing else in man is worthy of God and yet nothing less worthy of him that is Gen. 6.5 naturally less fit and prepared for him What God complained long ago is verified in every mans experience That every imagination of the thoughts of mans heart was evil and that continually The 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 distempers diseases yea and deaths of the heart of man are as many as dangerous and as desperate as those of the body yea infinitely more For the bodies diseases doe but kill us as to mans society and to a moments life on earth but the diseases of the heart kill us as to the life of God and an eternal happiness of conservation in Heaven The living God who delights not in the death of a sinner nor yet in a dead heart which is the first death of a sinner as a gracious Father and compassionate Physitian hath discovered to us the many plagues which are in our hearts the sicknesses to which they are subject by the surfets they take of the world and their senses Sometimes the Heart swels with the tumor of intolerable pride sometimes it burns withcholerick inflammations sometimes it is scorched with passionate calentures of inordinate lusts sometimes it is almost drowned like hydropick and overgrown bodies with its sensual luxuries and fulness even to abominable fedities sometimes it hath such a gout as it is in great pain at any the least motion for God or any good motion from him sometime it pines away in a Consumption amidst all its sensible pleasures plenty and honours not finding any satisfactory solid and durable good in them all Sometimes the heart is shaken with paralytick tremblings and terrors like Earthquakes which seem to arise from the dark and pestilent vapors in it self sometimes it hath not only fits of the stone refractory tempers but a petrified habitude of a hard and stony heart which nothing doth soften neither mercy nor judgment love nor wrath bounty nor patience of God Sometimes the heart falls into Lethargick and Apoplectick stupors like Nabals and Achitophels it growes remorseless benummed stupid senselesse dull and dead within men past fear or feeling of any thing either sharp and pungent in the Law or spiritful and reviving in the Gospel Solomon who was a great King of hearts and had a
to hide it as carrion in the earth commit it to the wormes and leave it to its own corruption Ossa vides regum vacuis exhausta medullis Vnus Pellaeo juveni non sufficit orbis Sarcophago contentus erit Even this body which was the lanthorn of so bright and noble a soul as Solomon's The Citadel or Fort of so great a strength as Sampson's who had an Army in each Arm The Throne or Metropolis of Beauty as Queen Esther's The Magazeen of so much wit and knowledge as Achitophel's The Seraglio of so much pleasure as Sardanapalus's The Bel and Dagon of so much good cheer as Dives devoured To this deformity necessity poverty rottenness baseness sordidness is it brought in a few days Blessed God! if we laid this to heart could we so much dote and pamper so much indulge and cocker our wretched bodies to the neglect prejudice detriment and destruction of our precious souls Go now O you wanton Herodiasses O you proud Jezebels O you tender delicate women whose curiosity to adorn your bodies poseth Interpreters to know what those artifices and instruments were which you used in Isaiah's time Isa 3. when luxury and curiosity were as it were under age and in their minority which now are much more ingenious adult and full grown after two thousand years improvement Lay to heart what fine dishes you dress for worms for fishes for fowls it may be for dogs to feed upon Lay to heart and consider whether your ways be equal or your hour-glasses proportionate which measure out many hours in a short day to dress your bodies and scarce allow one half hour or a few minutes in one or many days to purge to wash to prepare and adorn your souls by prayers and tears by reading and meditating by humbling and repenting by fitting and dressing them for God Whether it be not an high degree of folly and madness to bestow so much of a momentany and precious life in doing that at morning which is to be undone at night to spend the best and most of your time in a circle of vanity Not that decency and elegancy cost and comeliness are wholly denied by the severities of religion but comparatively they are by the two great Apostles in respect of the inward 1 Tim. 2.9 1 Pet. 3.3 adornings of the soul Go now O you Shee-men you delicate and effeminate Gallants of my own sex lay to heart whether it be worthy of masculine wisedome and strength of manly vertue and honour of Christian gravity and modesty to trifle out your time also in female studies of softness and luxury in being your own babies Idols and Idolaters in studying your backs and bellies your food and raiment more then any good books or any good men or any good and great design worthy of you Ad quid perditio haec To what purpose is this waste of thoughts and time of cost and pains in both sexes O lay to heart what a rotten post you guild for a moment and what a marble pillar you neglect to polish for eternity I mean your souls which are divinae particulae aurae the breath and beam of God in your original Lay to heart when either you see the deformed frowns and fedities of a newly dead body or the black flesh and sordid dust which you may see in the coffins of those that have been long dead think then how little cause you have to be proud of these rotten rags of the soule this rubbidg of mortality how injurious you are to your divine and immortal souls when you leave them to their own native decays and eternal ruines when you neglect to raise polish and improve them when you thus study by Atheistical luxuries to deprave debase and debauch them much worse being wholly or chiefly intent to the trimming feeding and pampering of your bodies as if your souls were given you only for salt to keep you sweet of which you never have so true a view and prospect as when they are represented to you in anothers death Let dead carkaesses be your looking-glasses then bring forth all the flowers of Oratory all the Poets fancies all the ornaments that art and wit can steal from all creatures and see if by these Spices Gums and odours thou canst keep thy vile body from appearing rotten and unsavoury to thee or that by those colours and adornings thou canst preserve it from death and abominable deformity Since then all these things the whole frame and goodly fabrick of our Microcosm these little Epitomies of the great world our petty and pygmy bodies in which the heaven and earth the light and darkness the celestial and elementary bodies are as it were bound up in a small volume or decimo sexto Since as St. Peter says all these things shall be dissolved 2 Pet. 3.11 What manner of persons ought we all to be in all holy conversation and godliness 2. When thou hast taken a full view of this sink of putrefaction a dead body then lay to heart and consider by way of Analogy or proportion if a dead body be such a mass of corruption such a summary of sordidness such an abstract of loathsomness to thy self and others though formerly indeared as friends and lovers to it as wives or husbands as parents or children as friends and favourites yet thou canst now no longer indure its company or sight O how foul how filthy how nasty how ugly how loathsome how abominable would a dead soul be and appear if thou couldst see it as God's pure eyes do Tully had a very good fancy and well expressed That if we could see vertue which is the rational beauty of the soul with our bodily eyes no man would be a suiter to or lover of any other beauty it would so excite attract and concenter all our affections to it By a parallel allusion I may tell you that if we could by any spectacles or opticks by our owne or others eyes heightned to a spiritual perspicacity behold as St. Bernard speaks how rueful dreadful Quam foedum quam horendū sit spectaculum Deo Angelis anima cadaverosa in peccatis mortua libidinum tabe squalida ira invidia tota deformis horrida and execrable an object the soul is to God and Angels when it is as a dead carkass naturally and impenitently dead in sin rotten with predominant vices squallid with enormous lusts dissolved into sensual pleasures and deformed with all manner of confusions and corruptions This alone would monopolize and ingross all the irascible faculties of the soul by which we hate loath abhor detest and fly from any thing Corruptio optimi est pessima no carkass is so unsavoury or pestiferous as mans Hence plagues oft follow great slaughters of men in war unburied carkasses poysoning and infecting the very air No soul but that of man can putrefie or die nor is any putrefaction like that of the divine and reasonable soul become
unreasonable irreligious and divelish A carrionly carkass of a man is aromatick a very perfume in comparison of a dead and rotting soul The body becomes dead and so dissolves by the souls parting from it but the soul by Gods being separated from it first out of its own choise next by Gods penal deserting of it The soul is the salt the light and life of the body so is God of the soul Anima animae the very soul of our souls I mean his grace love and spiritual communion separation from this is the souls death here and hereafter For from the power wrath and vengeance of God the damned are not separated who are dead not to their being but to their well being or happiness to the union at and fruition of God in love The soul apart from God in grace or glory is not only an orphan or a widow condemned to eternal sorrow and desolation for nothing can maintain or entertain wooe wed or indow the soul to the least degree of happines or to any allay of misery when once God hath quite forsaken it But it is emortua conclamata in heaven earth and hell proclaimed as starke dead in Law and Gospel Matth. 13.42 to justice and mercy so represented in Scripture as the horridest expression or the blackest colour to set forth its misery and horror its regret and torpor its weeping and wailing its gnashing and despair Doth then such a thick cloud of horror hang over the face and state of a dead body which is senseless of its own death and deformity of its noysome grave and dark dungeon Sapiens ignis subtilis vermis carpit nutrit urit reficit Chrysol O what a world of horror must lie upon a dead soul when deservedly cast out of God's blessed presence when it feels its death and lives only to die when it feels it is plunged in a dead Sea which is boundless and bottomlesse where the worm dies not and the fire goeth not out because it is as Crysologus calls it a subtil fire and ingenious worm which burns but consumes not devours but destroyes not Who can dwell with everlasting burnings saith the Prophet in an extasie of holy horrour Isa 33.14 Who can live in everlasting dyings Who can abide his own everlasting rottings Is it a gradual and lingring death to want food raiment light liberty fit company Is it a total death to the body to want the little spark of the soul which is the breath and spirit of life to the body What is it then to the soul to want that God who is the breather of that breath of life and Inspirer of that spirit We want a word beyond death to expresse that state Lay it then to heart Phil. 3.11 and consider what cause we have to be humble to tremble and fear exceedingly to escape most solicitously and diligently that second and eternal death if by any means we may attain the resurrection of the dead to life eternal 3. Lay to heart upon the sight of a dead body and the meditation of a dead soul whence it is that these fears and faintings sicknesses and sorrows deaths and darknesses sordidnesse and desolation corruption and condemnation have thus mightily prevailed over the highest mountains as the flood over the most noble beautiful and excellent of all Gods works under heaven even over mankind good and bad great and small Eccles 2.16 wise and foolish upon which nature the great and only God had set such characters of special glory enduing it with a diviner spirit so making man as Moses saith a living spirit or a spirit of life And this after counsel and deliberation Faciamus hominem Sanctius his animal mentisâ— capaâ—ius aliâ—e Gen. 2.7 As in re magni momenti a matter of greater concern and weight then heaven and earth and all the host of them They were made ex tempore as it were Nudo verbo Let there be and there was But man was made ex consilio after Gods own Image full of beauty health honour riches wisedome the Spirit of the living God given him in an extraordinary beam Whence is this lapse to earth to dust to a sad and wretched a decaying and dying condition both temporal and eternal Sure not from the impotencie or envy of the blessed Creator whose omnipotent goodnesse is inconsistent with such infirmities nor yet from the frailty and inconsistency of the subject matter which he raised to so goodly a fabrick little lower then the Angels Psal 49.12 as man was made who should have been as long immortal as Angels had he continued a man that is Rom. 6.23 rational and religious enjoying the Image of God on him which forbids and excludes as all shadow of sin and defection so of all death or mutation to worse No. The Psalmist tells us after the history of Genesis Man being in honour did not so abide but is become like to the beasts that perish by the frailty of his will which fell from adherence to God as the durable and supreme Good Sin hath levelled us to beasts to death to devils to hell This death in all sizes and degrees from the least ache and dolour to the compleatnesse of damnation is the wages of fin So the Apostle oft tells us Rom. 5.17 by one mans offence death entred and reigned over all The soul that sins that shall die Ezek. 18. Sin is the source of all our sorrows the lethalis arundo poysoned arrow whose infection drinks up the spirits and eats up the health flesh bodies and soules of mankind No wonder we die since we sin at such a rate the wonder is that we live any one of us one moment How much more is the miracle of Gods love and mercy that hath by Christs death and merits brought forth to light eternal life and offered it to all penitent and believing sinners as purchased and prepared for them Because sin once lived in us we must once die and till sin be dead or mortified in us we cannot hope for life eternal Through death then thou wilt best see the face of thy sin What Poet what Painter what Orator whose colours are most lively can expresse the amazement horrour and astonishment that seized on the looks and hearts of Adam and Eve Rom. 27. 2 Tim. 1.10 when they had the dreadful prospect of their first great sin and curse written with the blood and pourtrayed on the face of their dead son Abel who in that primitive paucity of mankind was barbarously slain by his brother Cain Who can expresse or conceive the woful lamentation they made over their dead son in whom they first beheld the beauties of life swallowed up by the deformities of death Is death then so dreadful so dismal so deformed so putid O think what that sin is which thou so embracest and huggest The fountain of bitternesse is more bitter then the stream Our madness and misery is
Sun yet have I lived to see both their lives ended all their humane hopes and joys and honours buried in the dust the one before she was 27. years old the other before he had compleated four and twenty So great and neer experiments are these two for the confirmation of those two verses used to display the excellent emptiness and glorious nothingness of this world and present life of which subject as many pens and wits have largely descanted so none have expressed more in few words then he that made this distich Punctum bulla vitrum glacies flos fabula fumus Vmbra cinis somnus vox sonus aura nihil Thus in prose No point is more concise no bubble more pompously swelling and suddenly vanishing no glass more brittle no ice more self-dissolving no flower more fair and fading no tale more short and fabulous no shadow less substantial Introitus exitus lugubris Cum nascimur mundi hospitio excipimur initium a lacrymis auspicamur cum lacrymis extinguimur Cyp. Ordimur vitam lacrymis claudimus omnes Quisque suis natus sic sepelitur aquis no ashes more easily scattered and never to be recollected no sleep or dream more delighting and deceiving no voice more vanishing no sound more transient no breath more soft and unseen in sum nothing is a truer emblem of absolute and perfect nothing then this poor life which is begun as St. Cyprian and many observe continued and ended with tears An Egyptian reed on which if the heart of man leanes it soon fails and the defeats of it pierce the very soul O what a small thread is this on which we poor wretches hang the weight of our eternal state the great interests of our immortal souls while we delay our repentance multiply our sins dayly and hourly adding burthen to a crazy vessel which is leakey with its own infirmities and already over-laden with its pondus mortalitatis body of death O ye sons and daughters of men who are lifted up filled and stretched to the highest pitch and uttermost extents of pride self-conceit vain-glory who have already deified your selves in your owne imaginations of your heaven upon earth your humane happinesses who expect that all that see you should admire and adore you as creatures so compleatly blest that the Angels or Gods themselves have cause to envy you when you are so fair so fine so young so lovely so witty so nobly descended so mightily befriended so invested with honour so fortified with power so furnished with estate so attended with servants so lodged in sumptuous palaces so surrounded with all manner of pleasures so over-flowing with all sensible contents of life See see in this and the like sad spectacles of vanity mortality and misery What a perfection of folly 1 Tim. 6.17 what an apparent madnevs it is for you to be high-minded to be proud of any thing you enjoy here to trust in your uncertain riches and not in the living God You may as justly swell and look big and magnifie your selves for taking up some rich Jewels in a shop or for seeing and handling some fine and pretious wares a little while in your hand which you must shortly lay down and leave behind you and then when thou art driven from the living and thy soul taken from thee Luke 12.19 Thou egregious fool whose shall all these things be Experience hath taught us that a dead hand is an excellent means by rubbing it on wens and tumours of the body to allay disperse and as it were mortifie that irregular and deformed excrescency The same receipt of a dead hand might serve if duly applied to our souls for it would be a very soveraign remedy as against all that is in the world 1 John 2.16 which is of a puffing and exalting nature as the lust of the eyes the lust of the flesh and the pride of life so against all those flatuous and high imaginations of our hearts For the world passeth away and the lust thereof but he that doth the will of God abideth for ever 1 John 2.17 Yea in every Funeral there is as it were a special hand of providence Dan. 5.5 like that which Balshazzar saw upon the wall which not only wrote his fate but weighed him as it were in a ballance 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Stobae and shewed him by his own terrors and tremblings how much he was too light in God's esteem and in his own mistaken fancies of earthly felicity It is among the mementos of the ancient Greeks Being momentany and mortal it well becomes all mankind to be very lowly minded Mich. 6.8 to walk humbly before their God Not to lay much weight upon so small pillars as our legs and sinews are not to build upon so loose a foundation which like quick-sands or quagmires in a short time swallow and bury up the building which is set upon them How ridiculous would he be that should bestow much time to hew and square and polish cakes of ice in order to build himself a splendid and perspicuous palace which he should fancy to be like the Chrystal Firmament and comparable to the etherial mansions of heaven Magno conatu nugas agimus Truly such are the industrious self-cheats of those who fancy to themselves rare felicities or real fulness in this life Isa 44.20 Hos 12.1 Edunt tanquam hodie morituri Aedificant tanquam semper victuri so greedily feeding on the East-wind and ashes the pleasures of sense which blast our fouls and abase them as if they had but one day to live and yet so solicitous for the morrow as if they were to live here for ever No man takes the true dimensions of life who doth not as Pythagoras did the Pyramids measure it by the shadows of death Nor do we begin truly to live as rational and religious creatures till we lay to heart the true state and proportion of this life of which we are but Tenants at will having no lease much less see simple or inheritance but are at the will of the Lord to be turned out of house and home at a moments warning Blessed God! If we laid this to heart as we should what manner of men and women should we be in all humble holy 2 Pet. 3.11 1 Cor. 7.21 Frui utendis summa est dementia Aug. and heavenly conversation as St. Peter writes using this world as if we used it not at least enjoyed it not For as St. Austin observes it is extream fatuity to enjoy that as ours which is but lent us for a very little yea for no time but from one moment to another The very ancient Heathens will rise up against Christians in this point which they notably studied variously and wittily expressed yea and in many things modestly practised 5. Add to the thoughts of lifes frailty and vanity the certain uncertainty and inevitable necessity of death A subject adorned by
Satan For this damps all indeavors and at once doth both God and a poor sinner the greatest injury that can be by belying the one and lying most foully to the other It must alwayes be asserted on Gods behalf that when ever the sinner turns from his sins with all his heart God will abundantly pardon And whoever comes to Christ shall in no sort be cast out These are most true as to Gods readiness to receive provided alwayes on mans part that he seek the Lord while he may be found and call upon him while he is near Isa 57.7 Ezek. 18. John 6.37 Isa 55.6 in the means of grace in the motions of his spirit in the corrections of mens own consciences in the enjoyments of many mercies in the lengthnings of sinners tranquillity else such a penal hardness searedness and benummedness Rom. 1.24 28. such a giving over to a reprobate sense may befall a man that he shall have no contrition though he have time nor comfort though some terrors either he shall be dumb before God not daring to speak Hos 7.14 or if he doth cry and howl as a natural man or a beast for pain and fear yet God will not hear Prov. 21.13 Pro. 1.26 27 28. or answer them yea their very prayers shall be abominable because they so long refused to hear and answer Gods cry to them setting at nought his counsel c. Therefore may the Lord justly laugh at their calamity and mock when their fear cometh as desolation and their destruction as a whirlwind These are terrible checks and coolings as to the hope of an after-crop or death-bed repentance In which at the best advance and proficiency of it especially in people of riper years and full age who have filled up the measure of their iniquity Rom. 2.5 and heaped up nothing but wrath against the day of wrath if there should be melting of this rock and softening of this milstone by the furnace of sicknesse even so far as what God will accept for true repentance who is the only searcher and judge of mens hearts yet neither he that thus confesseth and deploreth his sins nor he that as a Minister takes his confession only as it is now in humane appearance and by real experience extorted by sickness and terrours neither of them can think that it is either so ingenuous or can be so comfortable to be driven to God by the scourge of fears rather then to be drawn to him by the cords of his love so long despised Nothing of force and compulsion is so acceptable to others or so reflecting with honour and comfort to a mans self as that which flowes from the freedome of love and such adherences as arise from choise and value A forced Repentance begun on our sick beds possibly may as muskmelons and other tender plants which are bred in hot beds come to good but they must be very carefully and warily tended for a little cold chills and kills them What fruit they may bear to another world I must leave to God but as to this world I am sure there are but rare that is few examples in all experience of any whose repentance began in sickness that did ever hold long in their after health and recovery Commonly all prayers and purposes are put into the grave of forgetfulness when our selves are reprieved from it Whether it may take a better effect in heaven then usually it doth on earth I leave to all serious Christians to judge Object But I know it will be here retorted with quickness upon me by some more morose or petulant sinners who are only witty to cavil with God and delude their own soules Must we not tarry the Lords leisure when he will call us at the sixth or ninth or eleventh hour Is not repentance a grace Matth. 20.6 and so a gift of God How vain is it to step unseasonably into the water if the Angel move it not there may be a royling of the pool by us but no healing for us Did not Christ and his Apostles heal many without scruple on their sick beds as well as those that had firmer health Nor is Christ to be thought a less ready Physician to sick mens soules then their bodies Do not therefore torment us before our time suffer us to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season it will not be long before we shall be unwilling because weary or unable to sinne then we shall be much more at leisure and dispose to repent mean time God gives us not at least we have no mind to it nor indeed any power as you Preachers tell us to attain or act it of our selves for till God turn us we cannot be turned So that it seems rather a passionate and imperious way of preaching in you agreeable to your more cholerick or melancholy tempers which makes you impatient not to be presently obeyed by all men then any true Divinity you ought not to stretch mans authority by shrinking Gods mercy Answ Thus are many men ingeniosè nequam perditè periti as St. Austin speaks very acute Sophisters to deceive and damn their own others souls rather listning as Ahab to the 400 false Prophets of their own foolish hearts deceitful lusts then to one true Micaiah which is Gods Prophet 'T is most true that the life and soul of repentance which crowns it with love and endears it to God in Christ as the highest good is a special grace of God Nor is any soul so far off from him but he can easily and speedily reach them and win them to himself by the attractions of his infinite goodness and mercy discovered and offered to them in the blood of Christ Divines that understand themselves doe not prejudice or diminish the sweet and soveraign power or freedome of Gods grace which compleats mans weak endeavours and crownes all meanes with good success But yet they justly urge and inculcate upon sinners their daily duty incumbent upon them and required of them as rational creatures capable to discern and chuse good and evil sensible of feares and hopes yea and as Christians compassed with a marvellous light which convinceth them of sin and righteousness and judgment to come with offers of mercy in Christ to the highest latitude Jam. 1.21 and menaces of wrath to eternity upon their impenitency This is that which is required of them as in their power to turn from sin at least as to that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 superfluity of wickedness and excess of riot in which they knowingly wallow to greater impudicities and fedities then the sober Heathens would indulge Since then even these men can deny many acts and degrees of sin even for fear of man why cannot why doe not they deny more for fear of God Rom. 2.1 They must needs be inexcusable and without Apology yea self-condemned because it is evident there is no sin so pleasing or so prevalent upon
honour under the conduct of an excellent Governour Mr. Mole sometime Vniversity Orator whom I cannot mention without such honour and love as are due to modest and most deserving worth Next that he might add Honour to Learning especially in an age where Ignorance and Rusticity began very rudely to vie with both the famous Vniversities decrying all good Learning and useful studies to make way for pitiful raptures and silly enthusiasms that is putting out the two great lights of heaven that hedg-creeping gloe-worms might shine the better that instead of a sage Nobility a prudent Gentry a learned Clergy judicious Lawyers and knowing Physitians the honour civility piety the souls the estates the Laws and Religion the bodies and lives of this so renowned a Church and populous a Nation might be exposed to the wills and hands of John-a-Leidens and Jackstraw's to Cnipperdolins and Muncers to Hackets and Naylors to Lack-latin preachers pettifogging Barretors and impudent Mountebanks all of them perfect Impostors in their several professions A project so unchristian so inhuman so barbarous so diabolical as suted no interest but that of the kingdom of darkness which the wise and merciful God hath hitherto defeated and I hope ever will if he have any favour toward England beyond Turkey Tartary or Barbary From Cambridge he travelled a second time into France where he had been before he came to me abiding there above two years and gaining such improvements as are usually most aimed at by young Gallants because most conspicuous and generally accepted by all persons of civility and breeding who are glad to see that English roughness moroseness and surliness which commonly like rust attends Country Gentlemen of only domestick and home-spun education taken off by that politure douceur debonaireté and gentlenesse which forraigne conversation in which young Masters are least flattered contributes to Gentlemen that have any thing of candor and suppleness in their nature In all places abroad his demeanour was generally such as became a person of his years and quality which is testified to me by a Gentleman that is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 worthy of credit who attended him in all his motions During his absence in France that the world may see my respects to him were not flashy and formal but serious and real I had prepared a large volume for him against that time in which he could best bear and entertain it for even little books are great burthens to young Gallants when their overactive spirits make then most busily idle This great work I had furnished and fortified with all the strength of reason and religion of virtue and honour of grace and civility of useful humanity and solid Divinity gained by my reading or experience in order to satisfie all his relations to God and man yea to exceed all the expectations of his noble friends who could not but expect and wish an accomplished Son to repair that loss which the world had of his excellent Mother The matter of this composure I had advanced as much as I could with all the comely beauties of Oratory and majesty of language to avoid what might be all tediousness in the most curious and coy Readers of so copious a variety the whole fabrick was both founded and formed after that great and goodly model or Idea of all true worth for judicious piety and useful virtue which was most remarkable and for many years observed by me in his noble Mother that by his beholding so fair a figure and so neer an example of piety virtue and honour he might not only grow in love with it but by the secret charm of reading be transformed into it But my attending the setledness of his station and condition of life as most proper for such a present caused my deferring so long the publishing of it even untill the fatal closing of his eyes for whose sight it was chiefly designed hath now condemned it to correspond with that silence and darkness to which he is gone as to this world I now appeal to all Hearers and Readers of any Nobleness and ingenuity whether I am not excusable if I do with more then ordinary resentments of sorrow lay to heart the death of this young Nobleman to whom I was so truly devoted and justly indeared After that rate of care and kindness which the blessed St. John expressed so far to a young man of great hopes as the Ecclesiastical Histories tell us that when the good old man heard his dear depositum had deserted his breeding Euseb Histo l. 3. c. 20. and endangered his soul he not only severely reproved that Bishop for Bishops above Presbyters were so early to whose custody he had committed him but himself in his decrepit years true love never growing old or cold and infirm sought him found him followed him overtook him overcame him first with the young mans self-confusions then with his own paternal prayers and tears which never ceased till he had recovered so welcome a captive to Christ and his Church So loth was that holy man and so was I though vastly short of that beloved Disciple that either the labour of love should be lost upon any or that any we love should be lost for want of any labour for their good no defensative being too much to preserve a soul from the snares of sin and the hazzards of damnation After he was returned into England I shall but further afflict my self to tell you how amidst all the welcome receptions visits and caresses which he received or payed to his many noble and neer relations he forgot not by any juvenile or supercilious negligence to express to me and mine such civility kindness and noble gratitude as shewed both living and dying that he had a real value love and confidence of me I confess I unfeignedly deplore my loss of him not that I either hoped or expected any secular advantages by his private or publique station beyond those civil courtesies which I have oft enjoyed from his other noble relations which if I did never deserve yet I hope I did never abuse As for publique favours attainable by any mans mediation I understand my self and the times so well in the point of preferment as not to look toward any which are now rare to he seen in England for any Ecclesiastick of my proportions nor am I so vain as to seek in vain those little great things for my self further then an Evangelical and unenviable plow in a poor Country village where as in most populous and plebeian Auditories much good seed is lost much study and pains frustrated by falling on the thority stony and high-way grounds But my work and wages I hope are with Him who is a merciful Master and most impartially bountiful Patron to all faithful Labourers in his husbandry among which I beseech God I may be found one in whom ability industry and fidelity may help to keep up the authority of Evangelical Ministry from being trodden under