God will give thee to exercise any vertue to do him any service or thy self any advantage be careful that thou losest not this for to eternal ages this never shall return again 9. Or if thou peradventure shalt be restored to health be carefull that in the day of thy thanksgiving thou mayest not be ashamed of thy self for having behaved thy self poorly and weakly upon thy bed it will be a sensible and excellent comfort to thee and double upon thy spirit if when thou shalt worship God for restoring thee thou shalt also remember that thou didst do him service in thy suffering and tell that God was hugely gracious to thee in giving thee the opportunity of a vertue at so easie a rate as a sicknesse from which thou didst recover 10. Few men are so sick but they believe that they may recover and we shal seldom see a man lie down with a perfect persuasion that it is his last hour for many men have been sicker and yet have recovered but whether thou doest or no thou hast a vertue to exerâ—ise which may be a handmaid to thy patience Epaphroditus was sick sick unto death and yet God had mercy upon him and he hath done so to thousands to whom he found it useful in the great order of things and the events of universal providence If therefore thou desirest to recover here is cause enough of hope and hope is designed in the arts of God and of the Spirit to support patience But if thou recoverest not yet there is something that is matter of joy naturally and very much Spiritually if thou belongest to God and joy is as certain a support to patience as hope and it is no small cause of being pleased when we remember that if we recover not our sicknesse shall the sooner sit down in rest and joy For recovery by death as it is easier and better then the recovery by a sickly health so it is not so long in doing it suffers not the tediousnesse of a creeping restitution nor the inconvenience of Surgeons and Physitians watchfulnesse and care keepings in and suffering trouble fears of relapse and the little reliques of a storm 11. While we hear or use or think of these remedies part of the sicknesse is gone away and all of it is passing And if by such instruments we stand armed and ready dressed before hand we shall avoid the mischiefs of amazements and surprize while the accidents of sicknesse are such as were expected and against which we stood in readinesse with our spirits contracted instructed and put upon the defensive 12 But our patience will be the better secured if we consider that it is not violently tempted by the usual arrests of sicknesse for patience is with reason demanded while the sicknesse is tolerable that is so long as the evil is not too great but if it be also eligible and have in it some degrees of good our patience will have in it the lesse difficulty and the greater necessity This therefore will be a new stock of consideration Sicknesse is in many degrees eligible to many men and to many purposes SECT VI. Advantages of Sicknesse 1. I Consider one of the great felicities of heaven consists in an immunity from sin then we shall love God without mixtures of malice then we shall enjoy without envy then we shall see fuller vessels running over with glory and crowned with bigger circles and this we shall behold without spilling from our eyes those vessels of joy and grief any signe of anger trouble or a repining spirit our passions shall be pure our charity without fear our desire without lust our possessions all our own and all in the inheritance of Jesus in the richest soil of Gods eternall kingdom Now half of this reason which makes heaven so happy by being innocent is also in the state of sicknesse making the furrows of old age smooth and the groans of a sick heart apt to be joyned to the musick of Angels and though they sound harsh to our untuned ears and discomposed Organs yet those accents must needs be in themselves excellent which God loves to hear and esteems them as prayers and arguments of pity instruments of mercie and grace and preparatives to glory In sicknesse the soul begins to dresse her self for immortality and first she unties the strings of vanity that made her upper garment cleave to the world and sit uneasily First she puts off the light and phantastic summer robe of lust and wanton appetite and as soon as that Cestus that lascivious girdle is thrown away then the reins chasten us and give us warning in the night then that which called us formerly to serve the manlinesse of the body and the childishnesse of the soul keeps us waking to divide the hours with the intervals of prayer and to number the minutes with our penitential groans Then the flesh sits uneasily and dwells in sorrow and then the spirit feels it self at ease freed from the petulant sollicitations of those passions which in health were as buisie and as restlesse as atomes in the sun alwayes dancing and alwayes busie and never sitting down till a sad night of grief and uneasinesse draws the vail and lets them dye alone in seâ—ret dishonour 2. Next to this the soul by the help of sicknesse knocks off the fetters of pride and vainer complacencies Then she drawes the curtains and stops the lights from coming in and takes the pictures down those phantastic images of self-love and gay remembrances of vain opinion and popular noises Then the Spirit stoops into the sobrieties of humble thoughts and feels corruption chiding the forwardnesse of fancy and allaying the vapours of conceit and factious opinions For humility is the souls grave into which he enters not to die but to meditate and iâ— terre some of its troublesome appendages There she sees the dust and feels the dishonours of the body and reads the Register of all its sad adherencies and then she layes by all her vain reflexions beating upon her Chrystall and pure mirrour from the fancies of strength and beauty little decayed prettinesses of the body And when in sicknesse we forget all our knotty discourses of Philosophy and a Syllogisme makes our head ake and we feel our many and loud talkings served no lasting end of the soul no purpose that now we must abide by and that the body is like to descend to the land where all things are forgotten then she layes aside all her remembrances of applauses all her ignorant confidences and cares onely to know Christ Iesus and him crucified to know him plainly and with much heartinesse and simplicity And I cannot think this to be a contemptible advantage for ever since man tempted himself by his impatient desires of knowing and being as God Man thinks it the finest thing in the world to know much and therefore is hugely apt to esteem himself better then his brethren if he knowes some
he is to do is to secure his hold which he can do no way but by prayer and by his interest And by this Argument or instrument it was that Socrates refreshed the evil of his condition when he was to drink his aconite If the soul be immortall and perpetuall rewards be laid up for wise souls then I lose nothing by my death but if there be not then I lose nothing by my opinion for it supports my spirit in my passage and the evil of being deceived cannot overtake me when I have no being So it is with all that are tempted in their faith If those Articles be not true then the men are nothing if they be true then they are happy and if the Article fails there can be no punishment for beleeving but if they be true my not beleeving destroyes all my portion in them and possibility to receive the excellent things which they contain By faith we quench the fiery darts of the Devil but if our faith be quenched wherewithall shall we be able to endure the assault therefore seiz upon the Article and secure the great object and the great instrument that is the hopes of pardon and eternall life through Iesus Christ and do this by all means and by any instrument artificiall or inartificiall by argument or by stratagem by perfect resolution or by discourse by the hand and ears of premisses or the foot of the conclusion by right or by wrong because we understand it or because we love it super totam materiam because I will and because I ought because it is safe to do so and because it is not safe to do otherwise because if I do I may receive a good and because if I do not I am miserable either for that I shall have a portion of sorrows or that I can have no portion of good things SECT IV. Acts of faith by way of prayer and ejaculation to be said by sick men in the dayes of their temptation LOrd whither shall I go thou hast the words of eternall life I beleeve in God the Father Almighty and in Jesus Christ his onely Son our Lord c. And I beleeve in the Holy Ghost c. Lord I beleeve help thou mine unbelief I know and am perswaded by the Lord Jesus that none of us liveth to himself and no man dieth to himself For whether we live we live unto the Lord and whether we die we die unto the Lord whether we live therefore or die we are the Lords If God be for us who can be against us He that spared not his own Son but delivered him up for us all how shall he not with him give us all things Who shall lay any thing to the charge of Gods elect It is God that justifieth who is he that condemneth It is Christ that died yea rather that is risen again who is even at the right hand of God who also maketh intercession for us If any man sin we have an Advocate with the Father Jesus Christ the righteous and he is the propitiation for our sins This is a faithfull saying and worthy of all acceptation that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners O grant that I may obtain mercy that in me Jesus Christ may shew forth all long-suffering that I may beleeve in him to life everlasting I am bound to give thanks unto God alway because God hath from the beginning chosen me to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth whereunto he called me by the Gospel to the obtaining of the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God even our Father which hath loved us and hath given us everlasting consolation and good hope through grace Comfort my heart and stablish me in every good word and work The Lord direct my heart into the love of God and into the patient waiting for Christ. O that our God would count me worthy of this calling and fulfill all the good pleasure of his goodnesse and the work of faith with power That the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ may be glorified in me and I in him according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ. Let us who are of the day be sober putting on the brest-plate of faith and love and for an helmet the hope of salvation For God hath not appointed us to wrath but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ who died for us that whether we wake or sleep we should live together with him Wherefore comfort your selves together and edifie one another There is no name under heaven whereby we can be saved but onely the Name of the Lord Jesus And every soul which will not hear that Prophet shall be destroyed from among the people God forbid that I should glory save in the Crosse of Jesus Christ. I desire to know nothing but Jesus Christ and him crucified For to me to live is Christ and to die is gain Cease ye from man whose breath is in his nostrils for wherein is he to be accounted of But the just shall live by faith Lord I beleeve that thou art the Christ the Son of God the Saviour of the world the resurrection and the life and he that beleeveth in thee though he were dead yet shall he live Jesus said unto her Said I not to thee that if thou wouldest beleeve thou shouldst see the glory of God O death where is thy sting O grave where is thy victory the sting of death is sin and the strength of sin is the Law But thanks be to God which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Lord make me stedfast and unmoveable alwayes abounding in the work of the Lord For I know that my labour is not in vain in the Lord. The Prayer for the grace and strengths of faith O Holy and eternall Jesus who didst die for me and for all mankind abolishing our sin reconciling us to God adopting us into the portion of thine heritage and establishing with us a covenant of faith and obedience making our souls to rely upon spirituall strengths by the supports of a holy belief and the expectation of rare promises and the infallible truths of God O let me for ever dwell upon the rock leaning upon thy arm beleeving thy word trusting in thy promises waiting for thy mercies and doing thy commandements that the Devil may not prevail upon me and my own weaknesses may not abuse or unsettle my perswasions nor my sins discompose my just confidence in thee and thy eternall mercies Let me alwayes be thy servant and thy disciple and die in the communion of thy Church of all faithfull people Lord I renounce whatsoever is against thy truth and if secretly I have or do beleeve any false proposition I do it in the simplicity of my heart and great weaknesse and if I could
preserve thee in the faith and fear of his holy Name to thy lives end and bring thee to his everlasting Kingdom to live with him for ever and ever Amen Then let the sick man renounce all heresies and whatsoever is against the truth of God or the peace of the Church and pray for pardon for all his ignorances and errors known and unknown After which let him if all other circumstances be fitted be disposed to receive the Blessed Sacrament in which the Curate is to minister according to the form prescribed by the Church When the rites are finished let the sick man in the dayes of his sicknesse be imployed with the former offices and exercises before described and when the time drawes neer of his dissolution the Minister may assist by the following order of recommendation of the soul. I. O Holy and most Gracious Saviour Jesus we humbly recommend the soul of thy servant into thy hands thy most mercifull hands let thy Blessed Angels stand in ministery about thy servant and defend him from the violence and malice of all his ghosâ—ly enemies and drive far from hence all the spirits of darknesse Amen II. LOrd receive the soul of this thy servant Enter not into judgement with thy servaant spare him whom thou hast redeemed with thy most precious blood deliver him from all evil and mischief from the crafts and assaults of the Devil from the fear of death and from everlasting death Good Lord deliver him Amen III. IMpute not unto him the follies of his youth nor any of the errors and miscarriages of his life but strengthen him in his agony let not his faith waver nor his hope fail nor his charity be disordered Let none of his enemies imprint upon him any afflictive or evil phantasme let him die in peace and rest in hope and rise in glory Amen IIII. LOrd we know and beleeve assuredly that whatsoever is under thy custody cannot be taken out of thy hands nor by all the violences of hell robbed of thy protection preserve the work of thy hands rescue him from all evil for whose sake thou didst suffer all evil Take into the participation of thy glories him to whom thou hast given the seal of Adoption the earnest of the inheritance of the Saints Amen V. LEt his portion be with Abraham Isaac and Iacob with Iob and David with the Prophets and Apostles with Martyrs and all thy holy Saints in the arms of Christ in the bosome of felicity in the Kingdom of God to eternall ages Amen These following prayers are fit also to be added to the foregoing offices in case there be no communion or entercourse but prayer Let us Pray O Almighty and eternall God there is no number of thy dayes or of thy mercies thou hast sent us into this world to serve thee and to live according to thy lawes but we by our sins have provoked thee to wrath and we have planted thorns and sorrows round about our dwellings and our life is but a span long and yet very tedious because of the calamities that inclose us in on every side the dayes of our pilgrimage are few and evil we have frail and sickly bodies violent and distempered passions long designes and but a short stay weak understandings and strong enemies abused fancies perverse wils O Dear God look upon us in mercy and pity let not our weaknesses make us to sin against thee nor our fear cause us to betray our duty nor our former follies provoke thy eternall anger nor the calamities of this world vex us into tediousnesse of spirit and impatience but let thy Holy Spirit lead us thorow this vally of misery with safety and peace with holiness and religion with spirituall comforts and joy in the Holy Ghost that when we have served thee in our generations we may be gathered unto our Fathers having the testimony of a holy conscience in the communion of the Catholike Church in the confidence of a certain faith and the comforts of a reasonable religious and holy hope and perfect charity with thee our God and all the world that neither death nor life nor Angels nor principalities nor powers nor things present nor things to come nor height nor depth nor any other creature may be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen II. O Holy and most gracious Saviour Jesus in whose hands the souls of all faithfull people are laid up till the day of recompence have mercy upon the body and soul of this thy servant and upon all thy elect people who love the Lord Jesus and long for his coming Lord refresh the imperfection of their condition with the aids of the Spirit of grace and comfort and with the visitation and guard of Angels and supply to them all their necessities known onely unto thee let them dwell in peace and feel thy mercies pitying their infirmities and the follies of their flesh and speedily satisfying the desires of their spirits and when thou shalt bring us all forth in the day of Judgement O then shew thy self to be our Saviour Jesus our Advocate and our Judge Lord then remember that thou hast for so many ages prayed for the pardon of those sins which thou art then to sentence Let not the accusations of our consciences nor the calumnies and aggravation of Devils nor the effects of thy wrath presse those souls whâ—ch thou lovest which thou didst redeem which thou doest pray for but enable us all by the supporting hand of thy mercy to stand upright in judgement O Lord have mercy upon us have mercy upon us O Lord let thy mercy lighten upon us as our trust is in thee O Lord in thee have we trusted let us never be confounded Let us meet with joy and for ever dwell with thee feeling thy pardon supported with thy graciousnesse absolved by thy sentence saved by thy mercy that we may sing to the glory of thy Name eternall Allelujahs Amen Amen Amen Then may be added in the behalf of all that are present these ejaculations O spare us a little that we may recover our strength before we go hence and be no more seen Amen Cast us not away in the time of age O forsake us not when strength faileth Amen Grant that we may never sleep in sin or death eternall but that we may have our part of the first resurrection and that the second death may not prevail over us Amen Grant that our souls may be bound up in the bundle of life and in the day when thou bindest up thy Jewels remember thy servants for good and not for evil that our souls may be numbred amongst the righteous Amen Grant unto all sick and dying Christians mercy and aids from heaven and receive the souls returning unto thee whom thou hast redeemed with thy most precious blood Amen Grant unto thy servants to have faith in the Lord Jesus a daily meditation of death a contempt of the world a longing desire after heaven patience
in our sorrows comfort in our sicknesses joy in God a holy life and a blessed death that our souls may rest in hope and my body may rise in glory and both may be beatified in the communion of Saints in the kingdom of God and the glories of the Lord Jesus Amen The blessing Now the God of peace that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus that great shepherd of the sheep thorough the blood of the everlasting covenant make you perfect in every good work to do his will working in you that which is pleasing in his sight to whom be glory for ever and ever Amen The doxology To the blessed and onely Potentate the King of kings and the Lord of Lords who only hath immortality dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto whom no man hath seen nor can see be honour and power everlasting Amen After the sick man is departed the Minister if he be present or the Major dome or any other fit person may use the following prayers in behalf of themselves I. ALmighty God with whom do live the spirits of them that depart hence in the Lord we adore thy Majesty and submit to thy providence and revere thy justice and magnifie thy mercies thy infinite mercies that it hath pleased thee to deliver this our brother out of the miseries of this sinful world Thy counsels are secret and thy wisdom is infinite with the same hand thou hast crowned him and smitten us thou hast taken him into regions of felicity and placed him among Saints and Angels and left us to mourn for our sins and thy displeasure which thou hast signified to us by removing him from us to a better a far better place Lord turn thy anger into mercie thy chastisements into vertues thy rod into comforts and do thou give to all his neerest relatives comforts from heaven and a restitution of blessings equall to those which thou hast taken from them And we humbly beseech thee of thy gracious goodnesse shortly to satisfie the longing desires of those Holy souls who pray and wait and long for thy second coming Accomplish thou the number of thine elect and fill up the Mansions in heaven which are prepared for all them that love the coming of the Lord Jesus that we with this our Brother and all other departed this life in the obedience and faith of the Lord Jesus may have our perfect consummation and blisse in thy eternall glory which never shall have ending Grant this for Jesus Christ his sake our Lord and onely Saviour Amen II. O Mercifull God Father of our Lord Jesus who is the first fruits of the resurrection and by entring into glory hath opened the kingdom of heaven to all the beleevers we humbly beseech thee to raise us from the death of sin to the life of righteousnesse that being partakers of the death of Christ and followers of his Holy life we may be partakers of his Spirit and of his promises that when we shall depart this life we may rest in his arms and lie in his bosom as our hope is this our brother doth O suffer us not for any temptation of the world or any snares of the Devil or any pains of death to fall from thee Lord let thy H. Spirit enable us with his grace to fight a good fight with perseverance to finish our course with holiness and to keep the faith with constancie unto the end that at the day of judgement we may stand at the right hand of the throne of God and hear the blessed sentence of Come ye blessed children of my Father receive the kingdom prepared for you from the beginning of the world O blessed Jesus thou art our Judge and thou art our Advocate even because thou art good and gracious never suffer us to fall into the intolerable pains of hell never to lye down in sin and never to have our portion in the everlasting burning Mercy sweet Jesu Mercy Amen A prayer to be said in the case of a sudden surprise by death as by a mortal wound or evil accidents in childebirth when the forms and solemnities of preparation cannot be used O Most gracious Father Lord of heaven and earth Judge of the living and the dead behold thy servants running to thee for pity and mercy in behalf of our selves and this thy servant whom thou hast smitten with thy hasty rod and a swift Angel if it be thy will preserve his life that there may be place for his repentance and restitution O spare him a little that he may recover his strength before he go hence and be no more seen but if thou hast otherwise decreed let the miracles of thy compassion and thy wonderfull mercy supply to him the want of the usual measures of time and the periods of repentance and the trimming of his lamp and let the greatnesse of the calamity be accepted by thee as an instrument to procure pardon for those defects and degrees of unreadiness which may have caused this accident upon thy servant Lord stirre up in him a great and effectual contrition that the greatnesse of the sorrow and hatred against sin and the zeal of his love to thee may in a short time do the work of many dayes and thou who regardest the heart and the measures of the minde more then the delay and the measures of time let it be thy pleasure to rescue the soul of thy servant from all the evils he hath deserved and all the evils that he fears that in the glorifications of eternity and the songs which to eternal ages thy Saints and holy Angels shall sing to the honour of thy mighty Name and invaluable mercies it may be reckoned among thy glories that thou hast redeemed this soul from the dangers of an eternall death and made him partaker of the gift of God eternall life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen If there be time the prayers in the foregoing offices may be added according as they can be fitted to the present circumstances SECT VIII A peroration concerning the contingencies and treatings of our departed friends after death in order to their buriall c. WHen we have received the last breath of our friend and closed his eyes and composed his body for the grave then seasonable is the counsell of the son of Syrach Weep bitterly and make great moan and use lamentation as he is worthy and that a day or two lest thou be evil spoken of and then comfort thy self for thy heavinesse But take no grief to heart for there is no turning again thou shalâ— not do him good but hurt tâ—y self Solemn and appointed mournings are good expressions of our dearnesse to the departed soul and of his worth and our value of him and it hath its praise in nature and in manners and publike customs but the praise of it is not in the Gospel that is it hath
dipped in tears and all the daughters of Musick be brought low Let God commence a quarrell against him and be bitter in the accents of his anger or his discipline then God tries your faith Can you then trust his goodnesse beleeve him to be a Father when you groan under his rod Can you rely upon all the strange propositions of Scripture and be content to perish if they be not true Câ—n you receive comfort in the discourses of death and heaven of immortality and the resurrection of the death of Christ and conforming to his sufferings Truth is There are but two great periods in which faith demonstrates it self to be a powerfull and mighty grace and they â—re persecution and the approaches of death for the passive part and a temptation for the active In the dayes of pleasure and the night of pain faith is to fight her agonisticon to contend for mastery and faith overcomes all alluring and fond temptations to sin and faith overcomes all our weaknesses and faintings in our troubles By the faith of the promises we learn to despise the world choosing those objects which faith discovers and by expectation of the same promises we are comforted in all our sorrowes and enabled to look thorow and see beyond the cloud but the vigor of it is pressed and called forth when all our fine discourses come to be reduced to practice For in our health and clearer dayes it is easy to talk of putting trust in God we readily trust him for life when we are in health for provisions when we have fair revenues and for deliverance when we are newly escaped but let us come to fit upon the margent of our grave and let a Tyrant lean hard upon our fortunes and dwell upon our wrong let the storm arise and the keels tosse till the cordage crack or that all our hopes bulge under us and descend into the hollownesse of sad misfortunes then can you believe when you neither hear nor see nor feel any thing but objections This is the proper work of sicknesse faith is then brought into the theatre and so exercised that if it abides but to the end of the contention we may see that work of faith which God will hugely crown The same I say of hope and of charity or the love of God and of patience which is a grace produced from the mixtures of all these they are vertues which are greedy of danger And no man was ever honoured by any wise or discerning person for dining upon Persian Carpets nor rewarded with a crown for being at ease It was the fire that did honour to Mutius Scevola poverty made Fabritius famous Rutilius was made excellent by banishment Regulus by torments Socrates by prison Cato by his death and God hath crowned the memory of Iob with a wreath of glory because he sate upon his dunghil wisely and temperatly and his potsheard and his groans mingled with praises and justifications of God pleased him like an Anthem sung by Angels in the morning of the resurrection God could not choose but be pleased with the delicious accents of Martyrs when in their tortures they cryed out nothing but Holy Iesus and blessed be God and they also themselves who with a hearty resignation to the Divine pleasure can delight in Gods severe dispensation will have the transportations of Cherubins when they enter into the joyes of God If God be delicious to his servants when he smites them he will be nothing but ravishments and extasies to their spirits when he refreshes them with overflowings of joy in the day of recompences No man is more miserable then he that hath no adversity that man is not tryed whether he be good or bad and God never crowns those vertues which are onely faculties and dispositions but every act of vertue is an ingredient into reward And we see many children fâ—irly planted whose parts of nature were never dressed by art nor called from the furrowes of their first possibilities by discipline and institution and they dwell for ever in ignorance and converse with beasts and yet if they had been dressed and exercised might have stood at the chairs of Princes or spoken parables amongst the rulers of cities Our vertues are but in the seed when the grace of God comes upon us first but this grace must be thrown into broken furrowes and must twice feel the cold and twice feel the heat and be softned with storms and showers and then it will arise into fruitfulnesse and harvests And what is there in the world to distinguish vertues from dishonours or the valour of Caesar from the softnesse of the Egyptian Eunuchs or that can make any thing rewardable but the labour and the danger the pain and the difficulty Vertue could not be any thing but sensuality if it were the entertainment of our senses and fond desires and Apicius had been the noblest of all the Romans if seeding a great appetite and despising the severities of temperance had been the work and proper imployment of a wise man But otherwise do fathers and otherwise do mothers handle their children These soften them with kisses and imperfect noises with the pap and breast milk of soft endearments they rescue them from Tutors and snatch them from discipline they desire to keep them fat and warm and their feet dry and their bellies full and then the children govern and cry and prove fools and troublesome so long as the feminine republike does endure But fathers because they designe to have their children wise and valiant apt for counsel or for arms send them to severe governments and tye them to study to hard labour and aâ—â—lictive contingencies They rejoyce when the bold boy strikes a lyon with his hunting spear and shrinks not when the beast comes to affright his early courage Softnesse is for slaves and beasts for minstrels and uselesse persons for such who cannot ascend higher then the state of a fair ox or a servant entertained for vainer offices But the man that designes his son for noble imployments to honours and to triumphs to consular dignities and presidences of counsels loves to see him pale with study or panting with labour hardned with sufferance or eminent by dangers and so God dresses us for heaven He loves to see us strugling with a disease and resisting the Devil and contesting against the weaknesses of nature and against hope to believe in hope resigning our selves to Gods will praying him to choose for us and dying in all things but faith and its blessed consequents ut ad officium cum periculo simus prompti and the danger and the resistance shall endeare the office For so have I known the boysterous north-winde passe thorough the yielding aire which opened its bosome and appeased its violence by entertaining it with easie compliance in all the regions of its reception But when the same breath of Heaven hath been
discover it would dash it in pieces by a solemn disclaiming it for thou art the Way the Truth and the Life and I know that whatsoever thou hast declared that is the truth of God and I do firmly adhere to the religion thou hast taught and glory in nothing so much as that I am a Christian that thy name is called upon me O my God though I die yet will I put my trust in thee In thee O Lord have I trusted let me never be confounded Amen SECT V. Of the practise of the Grace of Repentance in time of the Sicknesse MEn generally do very much dread sudden death and pray against it passionately and certainly it hath in it great inconveniences accidentally to mens estates to the settlement of families to the culture and trimming of souls and it robs a man of the blessings which may be consequent to sickness and to the passive graces and holy contentions of a Christian while he descends to his grave without an adversary or a tryal and a good man may be taken at such a disadvantage that a sudden death would be a great evil even to the most excellent person if it strikes him in an unlucky circumstance But these considerations are not the onely ingredients into those mens discourse who pray violently against sudden deaths for possibly if this were all there may be in the condition of sudden death something to make recompence for the evils of the over-hasty accident For certainly it is a lesse temporal evil to fall by the rudenesse of a sword then the violences of a Feaver and the axe is much a lesse affliction then a strangury and though a sicknesse tries our vertues yet a sudden death is free from temptation a sicknesse may be more glorious and a sudden death more safe the deadest deaths are best the shortest and least premeditate so Caesar said and Pliny called a short death the greatest fortune of a mans life For even good men have been forced to an undecencie of deportment by the violences of pain and Cicero observes concerning Hercules that he was broken in pieces with pain even then when he sought for immortality by his death being tortured with a plague knit up in the lappet of his shirt And therefore as a sudden death certainly loses the rewards of a holy sicknesse so it makes that a man shall not so much hazard and lose the rewards of a holy life But the secret of this affair is a worse matter men live at that rate either of an habitual wickednesse or else a frequent repetition of single acts of killing and deadly sins that a sudden death is the ruine of all their hopes and a perfect consignation to an eternal sorrow But in this case also so is a lingring sicknesse for our last sicknesse may change us from life to health from health to strength from strength to the firmnesse and confirmation of habitual graces but it cannot change a man from death to life and begin and finish that processe which sits not down but in the bosom of blessednesse He that washes in the morning when his bath is seasonable and healthful is not onely made clean but sprightly and the blood is brisk and coloured like the first springing of the morning but they that wash their dead cleanse the skin and leave palenesse upon the cheek and stiffnesse in all the joynts A repentance upon our death-bed bed is like washing the coarse it is cleanly and civil but makes no change deeper then the skin But God knowes it is a custom so to wash them that are going to dwell with dust and to be buried in the lap of their kinred earth but all their lives time wallow in pollutions without any washing at all or if they do it is like that of the Dardani who washed but thrice in all their life time when they are born and when they marry and when they die when they are baptized or against a solemnity or for the day of their funeral but these are but ceremonious washings and never purifie the soul if it be stained and hath sullied the whitenesse of its baptismal robes * God intended we should live a holy life * he contracted with us in Jesus Christ for a holy life * he made no abatements of the strictest sense of it but such as did necessarily comply with humane infirmities or possibilities that is he understood it in the sense of repentance which stil is so to renew our duty that it may be a holy life in the second sense that is some great portion of our life to be spent in living as Christians should * a resolving to repent upon our death-bed is the greatest mockery of God in the world and the most perfect contradictory to all his excellent designes of mercy and holinesse for therefore he threatned us with hell if we did not and he promised heaven if we did live a holy life and a late repentance promises heaven to us upon other conditions even when we have lived wickedly * It renders a man uselesse and intolerable to the world taking off the great curb of religion of fear and hope and permitting all impiety with the greatest impunity and incouragement in the world * by this means we see so many 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Philo calls them or as the prophets pueros centum annorum children of almost an hundred years old upon whose grave we may write the inscriptions which was upon the tomb of Similis in Xiphilin Here he lies who was so many years but lived but seven * and the course of nature runs counter to the perfect designes of piety and * God who gave us a life to live to him is only served at our death when we die to all the world * and we undervalue the great promises made by the Holy Jesus for which the piety the strictest unerring piety of ten thousand ages is not a proportionable exchange yet we think it a hard bargain to get heaven if we be forced to part with one lust or live soberly twenty years But like Demetrius Afer who having lived a slave all his life time yet desired to descend to his grave in freedom begged manumission of his Lord we lived in the bondage of our sin all our dayes and hope to dye the Lords freed man * but above all this course of a delayed repentance must of necessity therefore be ineffective and certainly mortal because it is an intire destruction of the very formality and essential constituent reason of religion which I thus demonstrate When God made man and propounded to him an immortal and a blessed state as the end of his hopes and the perfection of his condition he did not give it him for nothing but upon certain conditions which although they could add nothing to God yet they were such things which man could value and they were his best and
in the abolition of all my sins so shall I praise thy glories with a tongue not defiled with evil language and a heart purged by thy grace quitted by thy mercy and absolved by thy sentence from generation to generation Amen An act of holy resolution of amendment of life in case of recovery O Most just and most mercifull Lord God who hast sent evil diseases sorrow fear trouble and uneasinesse briars and thorns into the world and planted them in our houses and round about our dwellings to keep sin from our souls or to drive it thence I humbly beg of thee that this my sicknesse may serve the ends of the Spirit and be a messenger of spirituall life an instrument of reducing me to more religious and sober courses I know O Lord that I am unready and unprepared in my accounts having thrown away great portions of my time in vanity and set my self hugely back in the accounts of eternity and I had need live my life over again and live it better but thy counsels are in the great deep and thy footsteps in the water and I know not what thou wilt determine of me If I die I throw my self into the arms of the Holy Jesus whom I love above all things and if I perish I know I have deserved it but thou wilt not reject him that loves thee But if I recover I will live by thy grace and help to do the work of God and passionately pursue my interest of Heaven and serve thee in the labour of love with the charities of a holy zeal and the diligence of a firm and humble obedience Lord I will dwell in thy temple and in thy service religion shall be my imployment and alms shall be my recreation and patience shall be my rest and to do thy will shall be my meat and drink and to live shall be Christ and then to die shall be gain O spare me a little that I may recover my strength before I go hence and be no more seen Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven Amen SECT VIII An Analysis or resolution of the Decalogue and the speciall precepts of the Gospel describing the duties injoyned and the sins forbidden respectiuely for the assistance of sick men in making their confessions to God and his Ministers and the rendring their repentance more particular and perfect I THou shalt have none other Gods but me Duties commanded are 1. To love God above all things 2. To obey him and fear him 3. To worship him with prayers vows thanksgivings presenting to him our souls and bodies and all such actions and expressions which the consent of Nations or the Lawes and Customs of the place where we live have appropriated to God 4. To designe all to Gods glory 5. To enquire after his will 6. To beleeve all his word 7. To submit to his providence 8. To proceed toward all our lawfull ends by such means as himself hath appointed 9. To speak and think honourably of God and recite his praises and confesse his Attributes and perfections They sin against this Commandement 1. Who love themselves or any of the creatures inordinately and intemperately 2. They that despise or neglect any of the Divine precepts 3. They that pray to unknown or false gods 4. They that disbeleeve or deny there is a God 5. They that make vows to creatures 6. Or say prayers to the honour of men or women or Angels as Pater nosters to the honour of the Virgin Mary or S. Peter which is a taking a part of that honour which is due to God and giving it to the creature it is a religion paid to men and women out of Gods proper portion out of prayers directed to God immediately and it is an act contrary to that religion which makes God the last end of all things for this thâ—ough our addresses to God passes something to the creatures as if they stood beyond him for by the intermediall worship paid to God they ultimately do honour to the man or Angel 7. They that make consumptive oblations to the creatures as the Collyridians who offered cakes and those that burn incense or candles to the Virgin Mary 8. They that give themselves to the Devil or make contracts with him and use phantastic conversation with him 9 They that consult Witches and Fortune-tellers 10. They that rely upon dreams and superstitious observances 11 That use charmes spels superstitious words and characters verses of Psalms the consecrated elements to cure diseases to be shot free to recover stolne goods or inquire into secrets 12. That are wilfully ignorant of the lawes of God or love to be deceived in their perswasions that they may sin with confidence 13. They that neglect to pray to God 14. They that arrogate to themselves the glory of any action or power and do not give the glory to God as Herod 15. They that doubt of or disbeleeve any article of the Creed or any proposition of Scripture or put false glosses to serve saecular or vitious ends against their conscience or with violence any way done to their reason 16. They that violently or passionately pursue any temporall end with an eagernesse greater then the thing is in prudent account 17 They that make religion to serve ill ends or do good to exil purposes or evil to good purposes 18. They that accuse God of injustice or unmercifulnesse remissenesse or cruelty such as are the presumptuous and the desperate 19. All hypocrites and pretenders to religion walking in forms and shadows but denying the power of godlinesse 20. All impatient persons all that repine or murmur against the prosperities of the wicked or the calamities of the godly or their own afflictions 21. All that blaspheme God or speak dishonourable things of so Sacred a Majesty 22. They that tempt God or rely upon his protection against his rules and without his promise and besides reason entring into danger from which without a miracle they cannot be rescued 23. They that are bold in the midst of judgement and fearlesse in the midst of the Divine vengeance and the accents of his anger II. Comm. Thou shalt not make to thy self any graven image nor worship it The morall duties of this commandement are 1. To worship God with all bodily worship and externall forms of addresse according to the custom of the Church we live in 2. To beleeve God to be a spirituall and pure substance without any visible form of shape 3. To worship God in wayes of his own appointing or by his proportions or measures of nature and right reason or publike and holy customes They sin against this Commandement 1. That make any image or pictures of the Godhead or fancy any likenesse to him 2. They that use images in their religion designing or addressing any religious worship to them For if this thing could be naturally tolerable yet it is too neer an intolerable for a jealous God to suffer 3.
no direct and proper uses in religion For if the dead did die in the Lord then there is joy to him and it is an ill expression of our affection and our charity to weep uncomfortably at a change that hath carried my friend to the state of a huge felicity But if the man did perish in his folly and his sins there is indeed cause to mourn but no hopes of being comforted for he shall never return to light or to hopes of restitution therefore beware lest thou also come into the same place of torment and let thy grief sit down and rest upon thy own turf and weep till a flower springs from thy eyes to heal the wounds of thy spirit turn thy sorrow into caution thy grief for him that is dead to thy care for thy self who art alive lest thou die and fall like one of the fools whose life is worse then death and their death is the consummation of all infelicities The Church in her funeralls of the dead used to sing Psalms and to give thanks for the redemption and delivery of the soul from the evils and dangers of mortality And S. Chrysostome asks to what purpose is it that thou singest Return unto thy rest O my soul c. if thou doest not believe thy friend to be in rest and if thou doest why doest thou weep impertinently and unreasonably Nothing but our own losse can justly be deplored and him that is passionate for the losse of his money or his advantages we esteem foolish and imperfect and therefore have no reason to love the immoderate sorrows of those who too earnestly mourn for their dead when in the last resolution of the inquiry it is their own evil and present or feared inconveniences they deplore the best that can be said of such a grief is that those mourners love themselves too well Something is to be given to custom something to fame to nature and to civilities and to the honour of the deceased friends for that man is esteemed to dye miserable for whom no friend or relative sheds a tear or payes a solemn sigh I desire to dye a dry death but am not very desirous to have a dry funeral some flowers sprinkled upon my grave would do well and comely and a soft shower to turn those flowers into a springing memory or a fair rehearsal that I may not go forth of my doors as my servants carry the entrails of beasts But that which is to be faulted in this particular is when the grief is immoderate and unreasonable and Paula Romana deserved to have felt the weight of S. Hieroms severe reproof when at the death of every of her children she almost wept her self into her grave But it is worse yet when people by an ambitious and a pompous sorrow and by ceremonies invented for the ostentation of their grief fill heaven and earth with exclamations and grow troublesome because their friend is happy or themselves want his company It is certainly a sad thing in nature to see a friend trembling with a palsie or scorched with feavers or dried up like a potsheard with immoderate heats and rowling upon his uneasie bed without sleep which cannot be invited with musick or pleasant murmurs or a decent stillnesse nothing but the servants of cold death poppy and wearinesse can tempt the eyes to let their curtains down and then they sleep onely to tast of death and make an essay of the shades below and yet we weep not here the period and opportunity for tears we choose when our friend is fallen asleep when he hath laid his neck upon the lap of his mother and let his head down to be raised up to heaven this grief is ill placed and undecent But many times it is worse and it hath been observ'd that those greater and stormy passions do so spend the whole stock of grief that they presently admit a comfort and contrary affection while a sorrow that is even and temperate goes on to its period with expectation and the distances of a just time The Ephesian Woman that the souldier told of in Petronius was the talk of all the town and the rarest example of a dear affection to her husband she descended with the corps into the vault and there being attended with her maiden resolved to weep to death or dye with famine or a distempered sorrow from which resolution nor his nor her friends nor the reverence of the principal citizens who used the intreaties of their charity and their power could perswade her But a souldier that watched seven dead bodies hanging upon trees just over against this monument crept in and a while stared upon the silent and comely disorders of the sorrow and having let the wonder a while breath out at each others eyes at last he fetched his supper and a bottle of wine with purpose to eat and drink and still to feed himself with that sad prettinesse His pity and first draught of wine made him bold and curious to try if the maid would drink who having many hours since felt her resolution faint as her wearied body took his kindnesse and the light returned into her eyes and danced like boyes in a festival and fearing lest the pertinaciousnesse of her Mistresse sorrows should cause her evil to revert or her shame to approach assayed whether she would endure to hear an argument to perswade her to drink and live The violent passion had layed all her spirits in wildness and dissolution and the maid found them willing to be gathered into order at the arrest of any new object being weary of the first of which like leeches they had sucked their fill till they fell down and burst The weeping woman took her cordial and was not angry with her maid and heard the souldier talk and he was so pleased with the change that he who first lov'd the silence of the sorrow was more in love with the musick of her returning voice especially which himself had strung and put in tune and the man began to talk amorously and the womans weak heart and head was soon possessed with a little wine and grew gay and talked and fell in love and that very night in the morning of her passion in the grave of her husband in the pompes of mourning and in her funeral garments married her new and stranger Guest For so the wilde forragers of Lybia being spent with heat and dissolved by the too fond kisses of the sun do melt with their common fires and die with faintnesse and descend with motions slow and unable to the little brooks that descend from heaven in the wildernesse and when they drink they return into the vigor of a new life contract strange marriages the Lioness is courted by a Panther and she listens to his love and conceives a monster that all men call unnatural and the daughter of an equivocal passion and of a