comfort or prevent an evil or cure the little mischiefs which are incident to tempted persons in their weaknesse this is the summe of the present designe as it relates to dying persons And therefore I have not inserted any advices proper to old age but such as are common to it and the state of sicknesse for I suppose very old age to be a longer sicknesse it is labour and sorrow when it goes beyond the common period of nature but if it be on this side that period and be healthfull in the same degree it is so I reckon it in the accounts of life and therefore it can have no distinct consideration But I do not think it is a station of advantage to begin the change of an evil life in It is a middle state between life and death-bed and therefore although it hath more of hopes then this and lesse then that yet as it partakes of either state so it is to be regulated by the advices of that state and judged by its sentences Onely this I desire that all old persons would sadly consider that their advantages in that state are very few but their inconveniences are not few Their bodies are without strength their prejudices long and mighty their vices if they have lived wickedly are habituall the occasions of their vertues not many the possibilities of some in the matter of which they stand very guilty are past and shall never return again such are chastity and many parts of self-deniall that they have some temptations proper to their age as peevishnesse and pride covetousnesse and talking wilfulnesse and unwillingnesse to learn and they think they are protected by age from learning anew or repenting the old and do not leave but change their vices And after all this either the day of their repentance is past as we see it true in very many or it is expiring and towards the Sun-set as it is in all and therefore although in these to recover is very possible yet we may also remember that in the matter of vertue and repentance possibility is a great way off from performance and how few do repent of whom it is onely possible that they may and that many things more are required to reduce their possibility to act a great grace an assiduous ministery an effective calling mighty assistances excellent counsell great industry a watchfull diligence a well disposed mind passionate desires deep apprehensions of danger quick perceptions of duty and time and Gods good blessing and effectuall impression and seconding all this that to will and to do may by him be wrought to great purposes and with great speed And therefore it will not be amisse but it is hugely necessary that these persons who have lost their time and their blessed opportunities should have the diligence of youth and the zeal of new converts and take account of every hour that is left them and pray perpetually and be advised prudently and study the interest of their souls carefully with diligence and with fear and their old age which in effect is nothing but a continuall death-bed dressed with some more order and advantages may be a state of hope and labour and acceptance through the infinite mercies of God in Jesus Christ. But concerning sinners really under the arrest of death God hath made no death-bed covenant the Scripture hath recorded no promises given no instructions and therefore I had none to give but onely the same which are to be given to all men that are alive because they are so and because it is uncertain when they shall be otherwise But then this advice I also am to insert That they are the smallest number of Christian men who can be divided by the characters of a certain holinesse or an open villany and between these there are many degrees of latitude and most are of a middle sort concerning which we are tied to make the judgements of charity and possibly God may do so too But however all they are such to whom the rules of holy dying are usefull and applicable and therefore no separation is to be made in this world but where the case is not evident men are to be permitted to the unerring judgement of God where it is evident we can rejoyce or mourn for them that die In the Church of Rome they reckon otherwise concerning sick and dying Christians then I have done For they make profession that from death to life from sin to grace a man may very certainly be changed though the operation begin not before his last hour and half this they do upon his death bed and the other half when he is in his grave and they take away the eternal punishment in an instant by a school distinction or the hand of the Priest and the temporal punishment shall stick longer even then when the man is no more measured with time having nothing to do with any thing of or under the sun but that they pretend to take away too when the man is dead and God knowes the poor man for all this payes them both in hell The distinction of temporal and eternal is a just measure of pains when it referres to this life and another but to dream of a punishment temporal when all his time is done and to think of repentance when the time of grace is past are great errours the one in Philosophy and both in Divinity and are a huge folly in their pretence and infinite danger if they are believed being a certain destruction of the necessity of holy living when men dare trust them and live at the rate of such doctrines The secret of these is soon discovered for by such means though a holy life be not necessary yet a priest is as if God did not appoint the Priest to minister to holy living but to excuse it so making the holy calling not onely to live upon the sins of the people but upon their ruine and the advantages of their function to spring from their eternal dangers It is an evil craft to serve a temporal end upon the death of souls that is an interest not to handled but with noblenesse and ingenuity fear and caution diligence and prudence with great skill and great honesty with reverence and trembling and severity a soul is worth all that and the need we have requires all that and therefore those doctrines that go lesse then all this are not friendly because they are not safe I know no other great difference in the visitation and treating of sick persons then what depends upon the article of late repentance for all Churches agree in the same essential propositions and assist the sick by the same internal ministeries as for external I mean unction used in the Church of Rome since it is used when the man is above half dead when he can exercise no act of understanding it must needs be nothing for no rational man can think that any ceremonie can make a spiritual
so have I known passionate women to shrike aloud when their neerest relatives were dying and that horrid shrike hath stayed the spirit of the man a while to wonder at the folly and represent the inconvenience and the dying person hath lived one day longer full of pain amazed with an undeterminate spirit distorted with convulsions and onely come again to act one scene more of a new calamity and to die with less decency so also do very many men with passion and a troubled interest they strive to continue their life longer and it may be they escape this sickness and live to fall into a disgrace they escape the storm and fall into the hands of pyrats and instead of dying with liberty they live like slaves miserable and despised servants to a litle time and sottish admirers of the breath of their own lungs Paulus Aemilius did handsomly reprove the cowardice of the King of Macedon who begged of him for pities sake and humanity that having conquered him and taken his kingdom from him he would be content with that and not lead him in triumph a prisoner to Rome Aemilius told him he need not be beholding to him for that himself might prevent that in despite of him But the timorous King durst not die But certainly every wise man will easily believe that it had been better the Macedonian Kings should have dyed in battel then protract their life so long till some of them came to be Scriveners and Joyners at Rome or that the Tyrant of Sicily better had perished in the Adriatic then to be wafted to Corinth safely and there turn Schoolmaster It is a sad calamity that the fear of death shall so imbecill mans courage and understanding that he dares not suffer the remedie of all his calamities but that he lives to say as Liberius did I have lived this one day longer then I should either therefore let us be willing to die when God calls or let us never more complain of the calamities of our life which we feel so sharp and numerous And when God sends his Angel to us with a scroll of death let us look on it as an act of mercy to prevent many sins and many calamities of a longer life and lay our heads down softly and go to sleep without wrangling like babies and froward children For a man at least gets this by death that his calamities are not immortal But I do not onely consider death by the advantages of comparison but if we look on it in it self it is no such formidable thing if we view it on both sides and handle it and consider all its appendages 2. It is necessary and therefore not intolerable and nothing is to be esteemed evil which God and nature have fixed with eternal sancâ—ions It is a law of God it is a punishment of our sins and it is the constitution of our nature Two differing substances were joyned together with the breath of God and when that breath is taken away they part asunder and return to their several principles the soul to God our Father the body to the earth our Mother and what in all this is evil Surely nothing but that we are men nothing but that we were not born immortall but by declining this change with great passion or receiving it with a huge naturall fear we accuse the Divine Providence of Tyranny and exclaim against our naturall constitution and are discontent that we are men 3. It is a thing that is no great matter in it self if we consider that we die daily that it meets us in every accident that every creature carries a dart along with it and can kill us And therefore when Lysimachus threatned Theodorus to kill him he told him that was no great matter to do and he could do no more then the Cantharides could a little flie could do as much 4. It is a thing that every one suffers even persons of the lowest resolution of the meanest vertue of no breeding of no discourse Take away but the pomps of death the disguises and solemn bug-bears the tinsell and the actings by candle-light and proper and phantastic ceremonies the minstrels and the noise-makers the women and the weepers the swoonings and the shrikings the Nurses and the Physicians the dark room and the Ministers the Kinred and the Watchers and then to die is easie ready and quitted from its troublesome circumstances It is the same harmelesse thing that a poor shepherd suffered yesterday or a maid-servant to day and at the same time in which you die in that very night a thousand creatures die with you some wise men and many fools and the wisdom of the first will not quit him and the folly of the latter does not make him unable to die 5. Of all the evils of the world which are reproached with an evil character death is the most innocent of its accusation For when it is present it hurts no body and when it is absent 't is indeed troublesome but the trouble is owing to our fears not to the affrighting and mistaken object and besides this if it were an evil it is so transient that it passes like the instant or undiscerned portion of the present time and either it is past or it is not yet for just when it is no man hath reason to complain of so insensible so sudden so undiscerned a change 6. It is so harmelesse a thing that no good man was ever thought the more miserable for dying but much the happier When men saw the graves of Calatinus of the Servicij the Scipio's the Metelli did ever any man among the wisest Romans think them unhappy And when S. Paul fell under the sword of Nero and S. Peter died upon the crosse and S. Stephen from an heap of stones was carried into an easier grave they that made great lamentation over them wept for their own interest and after the manner of men but the Martyrs were accounted happy and their dayes kept solemnly and their memories preserved in never dying honours When S. Hilary Bishop of Poictiers in France went into the East to reproove the Arian heresie he heard that a young noble Gentleman treated with his daughter Abra for marriage The Bishop wrote to his daughter that she should not ingage her promise nor do countenance to that request because he had provided for her a husband fair rich wise and noble farre beyond her present offer The event of which was this She obeyed and when her father returned from his Eastern triumph to his Western charge he prayed to God that his daughter might die quickly and God heard his prayers and Christ took her into his bosome entertaining her with antepasts and caresses of holy love till the day of the marriage Supper of the Lamb shall come But when the Bishops wife observed this event and understood of the good man her husband what was done and why she never left
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
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
change without a spiritual act of him that is to be changed nor work by way of nature or by charme but morally and after the manner of reasonable creatures and therefore I do not think that ministery at all fit to be reckoned among the advantages of sick persons The Fathers of the Councel of Trent first disputed and after their manner at last agreed that extream unction was instituted by Christ. But afterwards being admonished by one of their Theologues that the Apostles ministred unction to infirm people before they were Priests the Priestly order according to their doctrine being collated in the institution of the last Supper for fear that it should be thought that this unction might be administred by him that was no Priest they blotted out the word instituted and put in its stead insinuated this Sacrament and that it was published by Saint Iames. So it is in their Doctrine and yet in their anathematismes they curse all them that shall deny it to have been instituted by Christ. I shall lay no more prejudice against it or the weak arts of them that maintain it but adde this onely that there being but two places of Scripture pretended for this ceremonie some chief men of their own side have proclaimed those two invalid as to the institution of it for Suarez sayes that the unction used by the Apostles in S. Mark 6.13 is not the same with what is used in the Church of Rome and that it cannot be plainly gathered from the Epistle of Saint Iames Cajetan affirms and that it did belong to the miraculous gift of healing not to a Sacrament The sick mans exercise of grace formerly acquired his perfecting repentance begun in the dayes of health the prayers and counsels of the Holy man that ministers the giving the Holy Sacrament the Ministery and assistance of Angels and the mercies of God the peace of conscience and the peace of the Church are all the assistances and preparatives that can help to dresse his lamp But if a man shall go to buy oil when the Bridegroom comes if his lamp be not first furnish'd and then trimmed that in his life this upon his death-bed his station shall be without doors his portion with unbelievers and the unction of the dying man shall no more strengthen his soul then it cures his body and the prayers for him after his death shall be of the same force as if they should pray that he should return to life again the next day and live as long as Lazarus in his return But I consider that it is not well that men should pretend any thing will do a man good when he dies and yet the same ministeries and ten times more assistances are found for fourty or fifty years together to be ineffectual can extreme unction at last cure what the Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist all his life time could not do Can prayers for a dead man do him more good then when he was alive If all his dayes the man belonged to death and the dominion of sin and from thence could not be recovered by Sermons and counsels and perpetual precepts and frequent Sacraments by confessions and absolutions by prayers and advocations by external ministeries and internal acts it is but too certain that his lamp cannot then be furnished his extreme unction is onely then of use when it is made by the oil that burned in his lamp in all the dayes of his expectation and waiting for the coming of the Bridegroom Neither can any supply be made in this case by their practise of praying for the dead though they pretend for this the fairest precedents of the Church and of the whole world The Heathens they say did it and the Jews did it and the Christians did it some were baptized for the dead in the dayes of the Apostles and very many were communicated for the dead for many ages after T is true they were so and did so the Heathens prayed for an easie grave and a perpetual spring that Saffron would rise from their beds of grasse The Jews prayed that the souls of their dead might be in the garden of Eden that they might have their part in Paradise and in the world to come and that they might hear the peace of the fathers of their generations sleeping in Hebron and the Christians prayed for a joyful resurrection for mercy at the day of judgement for the hastning of the coming of Christ the kingdom of God and they named all sorts of persons in their prayers all I mean but wicked persons all but them that liv'd evil lives they named Apostles Saints and Martyrs and all this is so nothing to their purpose or so much against it that the prayers for the dead used in the Church of Rome are moct plainly condemned because they are against the doctrine and practises of all the world in other forms to other purposes relying upon distinct doctrines until new opinions began to arise about S. Augustines time and changed the face of the proposition Concerning prayer for the dead the Church hath received no commandment from the Lord and therefore concerning it we can have no rules nor proportions but from those imperfect revelations of the state of departed souls and the measures of charity which can relate onely to the imperfection of their present condition and the terrors of the day of judgement but to think that any suppletory to an evil life can be taken from such devotions after the sinners are dead may incourage a bold man to sin but cannot relieve him when he hath But of all things in the world me thinks men should be most careful not to abuse dying people not onely because their condition is pitiable but because they shall soon be discovered and in the secret regions of souls there shall be an evil report concerning those men who have deceived them and if we believe we shall go to that place where such reports are made we may fear the shame and the amazement of being accounted impostors in the presence of Angels and all the wise holy men of the world To be erring and innocent is hugely pitiable and incident to mortality that we cannot help but to deceive or to destroy so great an interest as is that of a soul or to lessen its advantages by giving it trifling and false confidences is injurious and intolerable And therefore it were very well if all the Churches of the world would be extremely curious concerning their offices and ministeries of the visitation of the sick that their Ministers they send be holy and prudent that their instructions be severe and safe that their sentences be merciful and reasonable that their offices be sufficient and devout that their attendances be frequent and long that their deputations be special and peculiar that the doctrines upon which they ground their offices be true material and holy that their ceremonies be few and their advices wary that their
to move the sick man to confession of sins ibid. Instruments by way of consideration to awaken a careless person and a stupid conscience 255. § IV. Of ministring to the restitution and pardon or reconciliation of the sick person by administring the holy Sacrament 268. § V. Of ministring to the sick person by the Spiritual man as he is the Physitian of souls 282. Considerations against unreasonable fears concerning forgivenesse of sins and its uncertainty and danger 283. An exercise against despair in the day of our death 293. § VI. Considerations against Presumption 301. § VII Offices to be said by the Minister in his visitation of the sick 306. The prayer of S. Eustratius the Martyr 310. A prayer taken out of the Greek Euchologion c. 311. The order of recommendation of the soul in its agony 313. Prayers to be said by the surviving friends in behalf of them selves 318. A prayer to be said in the case of a sudden death or pressing fatall danger 321. § VIII A peroration concerning the contingencies and treatings of our departed friends after death in order to their will and buriall 322. Vigilate et Orate quia nescitis horam CHAP. I. A general preparation towards a holy and blessed Death by way of consideration SECT I. Consideration of the vanity and shortnesse of Mans life A Man is a Bubble said the Greek Proverb which Lucian represents with advantages and its proper circumstances to this purpose saying that all the world is a storm and Men rise up in their several generations like bubbles descending à Iove pluvio from God and the dew of Heaven from a tear and drop of Man from Nature and Providence and some of these instantly sink into the deluge of their first parent and are hidden in a sheet of Water having had no other businesse in the world but to be born that they might be able to die others float up and down two or three turns and suddenly disappear and give their place to others and they that live longest upon the face of the waters are in perpetual motion restlesse and uneasy and being crushed with the great drop of a cloud sink into flatness and a froth the change not being great it being hardly possible it should be more a nothing then it was before So is every man He is born in vanity and sin he comes into the world like morning Mushromes soon thrusting up their heads into the air and conversing with their kinred of the same production and as soon they turn into dust and forgetfulnesse some of them without any other interest in the affairs of the world but that they made their parents a little glad and very sorrowful others ride longer in the storm it may be until seven yeers of Vanity be expired and then peradventure the Sun shines hot upon their heads and they fall into the shades below into the cover of death and darknesse of the grave to hide them But if the bubble stands the shock of a bigger drop and outlives the chances of a childe of a carelesse Nurse of drowning in a pail of water of being overlaid by a sleepy servant or such little accidents then the young man dances like a bubble empty and gay and shines like a Doves neck or the image of a rainbow which hath no substance and whose very imagery and colours are phantastical and so he dances out the gayety of his youth and is all the while in a storm and endures onely because he is not knocked on the head by a drop of bigger rain or crushed by the pressure of a load of indigested meat or quenched by the disorder of an ill placed humor and to preserve a man alive in the midst of so many chances and hostilities is as great a miracle as to create him to preserve him from rushing into nothing and at first to draw him up from nothing were equally the issues of an Almighty power And therefore the wise men of the world have contended who shall best fit mans condition with words signifying his vanity and short abode Homer cals a man a leaf the smallest the weakest piece of a short liv'd unsteady plant Pindar calls him the dream of a shadow Another the dream of the shadow of smoak But S. Iames spake by a more excellent Spirit saying Our life is but a vapor viz. drawn from the earth by a coelestial influence made of smoak or the lighter parts of water tossed with every winde moved by the motion of a superiour body without vertue in it self lifted up on high or left below according as it pleases the Sun its Foster-father But it is lighter yet It is but appearing A phantastic vapor an apparition nothing real it is not so much as a mist not the matter of a shower nor substantial enough to make a cloud but it is like Cassiopeia's chair or Pelops shoulder or the circles of Heaven 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for which you cannot have a word that can signify a veryer nothing And yet the expression is one degree more made diminutive A vapor and phantastical or a meer appearance and this but for a little while neither the very dream the phantasm disappears in a small time like the shadow that departeth or like a tale that is told or as a dream when one awaketh A man is so vain so unfixed so perishing a creature that he cannot long last in the scene of fancy a man goes off and is forgotten like the dream of a distracted person The summe of all is this That thou art a man then whom there is not in the world any greater instance of heights and declensions of lights and shadows of misery and folly of laughter and tears of groans and death And because this consideration is of great usefulnesse and great necessity to many purposes of wisdom and the Spirit all the succession of time all the changes in nature all the varieties of light and darknesse the thousand thousands of accidents in the world and every contingency to every man and to every creature does preach our funeral sermon and calls us to look and see how the old Sexton Time throws up the earth and digs a Grave where we must lay our sins or our sorrows and sowe our bodies till they rise again in a fair or in an intolerable eternity Every revolution which the sun makes about the world divides between life and death and death possesses both those portions by the next morrow and we are dead to all those moneths which we have already lived and we shall never live them over again and still God makes little periods of our age First we change our world when we come from the womb to feel the warmth of the sun Then we sleep and enter into the image of death in which state we are unconcerned in all the changes of the world and if our Mothers or our Nurses die or a wilde boar destroy our
of a cloud and the meeting of a vapor by the fall of a chariot and the stumbling at a stone by a full meal or an empty stomach by watching at the wine or by watching at prayers by the Sun or the Moon by a heat or a cold by sleeplesse nights or sleeping dayes by water frozen into the hardnesse and sharpnesse of a dagger or water thawd into the floods of a river by a hair or a raisin by violent motion or sitting still by severity or dissolution by Gods mercy or Gods anger by every thing in providence and every thing in manners by every thing in nature and every thing in chance Eripitur persona manet res we take pains to heap up things useful to our life and get our death in the purchase and the person is snatchâ—ed away and the goods remain and all this is the law and constitution of nature it is a punishment to our sins the unalterable event of providence and the decree of heaven The chains that confine us to this condition are strong as destiny and immutable as the eternal laws of God I have conversed with some men who rejoyced in the death or calamity upon others and accounted it as a judgement upon them for being on the other side and against them in the contention but within the revolution of a few moneths the same man met with a more uneasy and unhandsom death which when I saw I wept and was afraid for I knew that it must be so with all men for we also shall die and end our quarrels and contentions by passing to a final sentence SECT II. The Consideration reduced to practice IT will be very material to our best and noblest purposes if we represent this scene of change and sorrow a little more dressed up in Circumstances for so we shall be more apt to practice those Rules the doctrine of which is consequent to this consideration * It is a mighty change that is made by the death of every person and it is visible to us who are alive Reckon but from the spritefulnesse of youth and the fair cheeks and full eyes of childehood from the vigorousnesse and strong flexure of the joynts of five and twenty to the hollownesse and dead palenesse to the loathsomnesse and horrour of a three dayes burial and we shall perceive the distance to be very great and very strange But so have I seen a Rose newly springing from the clefts of its hood and at first it was fair as the Morning and full with the dew of Heaven as a Lambs fleece but when a ruder breath had forced open its virgin modesty and dismantled its too youthful and unripe retirements it began to put on darknesse and to decline to softnesse and the symptomes of a sickly age it bowed the head and broke its stalk and at night having lost some of its leaves and all its beauty it fell into the portion of weeds and out-worn faces The same is the portion of every man and every woman the heritage of worms and serpents rottennesse and cold dishonour and our beauty so changed that our acquaintance quickly knew us not and that change mingled with so much horrour or else meets so with our fears and weak discoursings that they who six hours ago tended upon us either with charitable or ambitious services cannot without some regret stay in the room alone where the body lies stripped of its life and Honour I have read of a fair young German Gentleman who living often refused to be pictured but put ofâ— the importunity of his friends desire by giving way that after a few dayes burial they might send a painter to his vault and if they saw cause for it draw the image of his death unto the life They did so and found his face half eaten and his midriffe and back bone full of serpents and so he stands pictured among his armed Ancestours So does the fairest beauty change and it will be as bad with you and me and then what servants shall we have to wait upon us in the grave what friends to visit us what officious people to cleanse away the moist and unwholsom cloud reflected upon our faces from the sides of the weeping vaults which are the longest weepers for our funeral This discourse will be useful if we consider and practise by the following Rules and Considerations respectivly 1. All the Rich and all the Covetous men in the world will perceive and all the world will perceive for them that it is but an ill recompence for all their cares that by this time all that shall be left will be this that the Neighbours shall say he died a rich man and yet his wealth will not profit him in the grave but hugely swell the sad accounts of Doomsday And he that kills the Lords people with unjust or ambitious wars for an unrewarding interest shall have this character that he threw away all the dayes of his life that one year might be reckoned with his Name and computed by his reign or consulship and many men by great labors and affronts many indignities and crimes labour onely for a pompous Epitaph and a loud title upon their Marble whilest those into whose possessions their heirs or kinred are entred are forgotten and lye unregarded as their ashes and without concernment or relation as the turf upon the face of their grave A man may read a sermon the best and most passionate that ever men preached if he shall but enter into the sepulchres of Kings In the same Escurial where the Spanish Princes live in greatnesse and power and decree war or peace they have wisely placed a coemeterie where their ashes and their glories shall sleep till time shall be no more and where our Kings have been crowned their Ancestours lay interred and they must walk over their Grandsires head to take his crown There is an acre sown with royal seed the copy of the greatest change from rich to naked from ciâ—led roofs to arched coffins from living like Gods to dye like Men. There is enough to cool the flames of lust to abate the heights of pride to appease the itch of covetous desires to â—ully and dash out the dissembling colours of a lustful artificial and imaginary beauty There the warlike and the peaceful the fortunate and the miserable the beloved and the despised Princes mingle their dust and pay down their symbol of Mortality and tell all the world that when we die our ashes shall be equal to Kings and our accounts easier and our pains or our crowns shall be lesse * To my apprehension it is a sad record which is left by Athenaeus concerning Ninus the great Assyrian Monarch whose life and death is summed up in these words Ninus the Assyrian had an Ocean of gold and other riches more then the sand in the Caspian sea he never saw the stars and perhaps he never desired
it he never stirred up the holy fire among the Magi nor touched his God with the sacred rod according to the Laws he never offered sacrifice nor worshipped the Deity nor administred justice nor spake to his people nor numbred them but he was most valiant to eat and drink and having mingled his wines he threw the rest upon the stones This man is dead Behold his Sepulchre and now hear where Ninus is Some times I was Ninus and drew the breath of a living man but now am nothing but clay I have nothing but what I did eat and what I served to my self in lust that was and is all my portion the wealth with which I was esteemed blessed my enemies meeting together shall bear away as the mad Thyades carry a raw Goat I am gone to Hell and when I went thither I neither carried Gold nor Horse nor silver Chariot I that wore a Miter am now a little heap of dust I know not any thing that can better represent the evil condition of a wicked man or a changing greatnesse From the greatest secular dignity to dust and ashes his nature bears him and from thence to Hell his sins carry him and there he shall be for ever under the dominion of chains and devils wrath and an intollerable calamity This is the reward of an unsanctified condition and a greatnesse ill gotten or ill administred 2. Let no man extend his thoughts or let his hopes wander towards future and far distant events and accidental contingencies This day is mine and yours but ye know not what shall be on the morrow and every morning creeps out of a dark cloud leaving behinde it an ignorance and silence deep as midnight and undiscerned as are the phantasms that make a Chrysome childe to smile so that we cannot discern what comes hereafter unlesse we had a light from Heaven brighter then the vision of an Angel even the Spirit of Prophesie Without revelation we cannnot tell whether we shal eat to morrow or whether a Squinzy shall choak us and it is written in the unrevealed folds of Divine Predestination that many who are this day alive shall to morrow be laid upon the cold earth and the women shall weep over their shrowd and dresse them for their funeral S. Iames in his Epistle notes the solly of some men his contemporaries who were so impatient of the event of to morrow or the accidents of next year or the good or evils of old age that they would consult Astrologers and witches Oracles and Devils what should befall them the next Calends what should be the event of such a voyage what God had written in his book concerning the successe of battels the Election of Emperors the Heir of families the price of Merchandise the return of the Tyrian fleer the rate of Sidonian Carpets and as they were taught by the crafty and lying Daemons so they would expect the issue and oftentimes by disposing their affairs in order toward such events really did produce some litle accidents according to their expectation and that made them trust the Oracles in greater things and in all Against this he opposes his Counsel that we should not search after forbidden records much lesse by uncertain significations for whatsoever is disposed to happen by the order of natural causes or civil counsels may be rescinded by a peculiar decree of providence or be prevented by the death of the interested persons who while their hopes are full and their causes conjoyned and the work brought forward and the sickle put into the harvest and the first fruits offered and ready to be eaten even then if they put forth their hand to an event that stands but at the door at that door their body may be carried forth to burial before the expectation shall enter into fruition When Richilda the Widow of Albert Earl of Ebersberg had feasted the Emperour Henry III. and petitioned in behalf of her Nephew Welpho for some lands formerly possessed by the Earl her Husband just as the Emperour held out his hand to signifie his consent the chamber-floor suddenly fell under them and Richilda falling upon the edge of a bathing vessel was bruised to death and stayed not to see her Nephew sleep in those lands which the Emperour was reaching forth to her and placed at the door of restitution 3. As our hopes must be confined so must our designes let us not project long designes crafty plots and diggings so deep that the intrigues of a designe shall never be unfolded till our Grand children have forgotten our vertues or our vices The work of our soul is cut short facile sweet and plain and fitted to the small portions of our shorter life and as we must not trouble our inquiry so neither must we intricate our labour and purposes with what we shall never enjoy This rule does not forbid us to plant Orchards which shall feed our Nephews with their fruit for by such provisions they do something towards an imaginary immortality and do charity to their Relatives But such projects are reproved which discompose our present duty by long and future designes such which by casting our labours to events at distance make us lesse to remember our death standing at the door It is fit for a Man to work for his dayes wages or to contrive for the hire of a week or to lay a train to make provisions for such a time as is within our eye and in our duty and within the usual periods of Mans life for whatsoever is made necessary is also made prudent but while we plot and buisy our selves in the toils of an ambitious war or the levies of a great estate Night enters in upon us and tells all the world how like fools we lived and how deceived and miserably we dyed Seneca tells of Senecio Cornelius a man crafty in getting and tenacious in holding a great estate and one who was as diligent in the care of his body as of his money curious of his health as of his possessions that he all day long attended upon his sick and dying friend but when he went away was quickly comforted supped merrily went to bed cheerfully and on a sudden being surprized by a Squinzy scarce drew his breath until the Morning but by that time dyed being snatched from the torrent of his fortune and the swelling tide of wealth and a likely hope bigger then the necessities of ten men This accident was much noted then in Rome because it happened in so great a fortune and in the midst of wealthy designes and presently it made wise men to consider how imprudent a person he is who disposes of ten years to come when he is not Lord of to morrow 4. Though we must not look so far ofâ— and prey abroad yet we must be buisie neer at hand we must with all arts of the Spirit seize upon the present because it passes from us while we
speak and because in it all our certainty does consist We must take our waters as out of a torrent and sudden shower which will quickly cease dropping from above and quickly cease running in our chanels here below This instant will never return again and yet it may be this instant will declare or secure the fortune of a whole eternity The old Greeks and Romans taught us the prudence of this rule but Christianity teaches us the Religion of it They so seized upon the present that they would lose nothing of the dayes pleasure Let us eat and drink for to morrow we shall die that was their philosophy and at their solemn feasts they would talk of death to heighten the present drinking and that they might warm their veins with a fuller chalice as knowing the drink that was poured upon their graves would be cold and without relish Break the beds drink your wine crown your heads with roses and besinear your curled locks with Nard for God bids you to remember death so the Epigrammatist speaks the sence of their drunken principles Something towards this signification is that of Solomon There is nothing better for a man then that he should eat and drink and that he should make his soul enjoy good in his labour for that is his portion for who shall bring him to see that which shall be after him But although he concludes all this to be vanity yet because it was the best thing that was then commonly known that they should seize upon the present with a temperate use of permited pleasures had reason to say that Christianity taught us to turn this into religion For he that by a present and a constant holiness secures the present and makes it useful to his noblest purposes he turns his condition into his best advantage by making his unavoidable fate become his necessary religion To the purpose of this rule is that collect of Tuscan hieroglyphics which we have from Gabriel Simeon Our life is very short beauty is a cosenage money is false and fugitive Empire is odious and hated by them that have it not and uneasy to them that have victory is alwayes uncertain and peace most commonly is but a fraudulent bargain old age is miserable death is the period and is a happy one if it be not sowred by the sins of our life but nothing continues but the effects of that wisdom which imployes the present time in the acts of a holy religion and a peaceable conscience for they make us to live even beyond our funerals embalmed in the spices and odours of a good name and entombed in the grave of the Holy Jesus where we shall be dressed for a blessed resurrection to the state of Angels and beatified Spirits 5. Since we stay not here being people but of a dayes abode and our age is like that of a flie and contemporary with a gourd we must look some where else for an abiding city a place in another countrey to fix our house in whose walls and foundation is God where we must finde rest or else be restlesse for ever For whatsoever ease we can have or fancy here is shortly to be changed into sadnesse or tediousnesse it goes away too soon like the periods of our life or stayes too long like the sorrows of a sinner it s own wearinesse or a contrary disturbance is its load or it is eased by its revolution into vanity forgetfulness and where either there is sorrow or an end of joy there can be no true felicity which because it must be had by some instrument and in some period of our duration we must carry up our affections to the mansions prepared for us above where eternity is the measure felicity is their state Angels are the Company the Lamb is the light and God is the portion and inheritance SECT III. Rules and Spiritual arts of lengthening our dayes and to take off the objection of a short life IN the accounts of a mans life we do not reckon that portion of dayes in which we are shut up in the prison of the womb we tell our years from the day of our birth and the same reason that makes our reckning to stay so long sayes also that then it begins too soon For then we are beholding to others to make the account for us for we know not of a long time whether we be alive or no having but some little approaches and symptoms of a life To feed and sleep and move a little and imperfectly is the state of an unborn childe and when it is born he does no more for a good while and what is it that shall make him to be esteemed to live the life of a man and when shall that account begin For we should be loath to have the accounts of our age taken by the measures of a beast and fools and distracted persons are reckoned as civilly dead they are no parts of the Common-wealth not subject to laws but secured by them in Charity and kept from violence as a man keeps his Ox and a third part of our life is spent before we enter into a higher order into the state of a man 2. Neither must we think that the life of a Man begins when he can feed himself or walk alone when he can fight or beget his like for so he is contemporary with a camel or a cow but he is first a man when he comes to a certain steddy use of reason according to his proportion and when that is all the world of men cannot tell precisely Some are called at age at fourteen some at one and twenty some never but all men late enough for the life of a man comes upon him slowly and insensibly But as when the Sun approaches towards the gates of the morning he first opens a little eye of Heaven and sends away the spirits of darknesse and gives light to a cock and calls up the lark to Mattins and by and by gilds the fringes of a cloud and peeps over the Eastern hills thrusting out his golden horns like those which decked the browes of Moses when he was forced to wear a vail because himself had seen the face of God and still while a man tells the story the sun gets up higher till he showes a fair face and a full light and then he shines one whole day under a cloud often and sometimes weeping great and little showers and sets quickly so is a mans reason and his life He first begins to perceive himself to see or taste making little reflections upon his actions of sense and can discourse of flies and dogs shells and play horses and liberty but when he is strong enough to enter into arts and little institutions he is at first entertained with trifles and impertinent things not because he needs them but because his understanding is no bigger and little images of things are laid before him like a cock-boat to a whale
onely to play withall but before a man comes to be wise he is half dead with gouts and consumptions with Catarrhes and aches with sore eyes and a worn out body so that if we must not reckon the life of a man but by the accounts of his reason he is long before his soul be dressed and he is not to be called a man without a wise and an adorned soul a soul at least furnished with what is necessary towards his well being but by that time his soul is thus furnished his body is decayed and then you can hardly reckon him to be alive when his body is possessed by so many degrees of death 3. But there is yet another arrest At first he wants strength of body and then he wants the use of reason and when that is come it is ten to one but he stops by the impediments of vice and wants the strengths of the spirit and we know that Body and Soul and Spirit are the constituent parts of every Christian man And now let us consider what that thing is which we call years of discretion The young man is passed his Tutors and arrived at the bondage of a caytive spirit he is run from discipline and is let loose to passion the man by this time hath wit enough to chuse his vice to act his lust to court his Mistresse to talk confidently and ignorantly and perpetually to despise his betters to deny nothing to his appetite to do things that when he is indeed a man he must for ever be ashamed of for this is all the discretion that most men show in the first stage of their Manhood they can discern good from evil and they prove their skill by leaving all that is good and wallowing in the evils of folly and an unbridled appetite And by this time the young man hath contracted vitious habits and is a beast in manners and therefore it will not be fitting to reckon the beginning of his life he is a fool in his understanding and that is a sad death and he is dead in trespasses and sins and that is a sadder so that he hath no life but a natural the life of a beast or a tree in all other capacities he is dead he neither hath the intellectual nor the spiritual life neither the life of a man nor of a Christian and this sad truth lasts too long For old age seizes upon most men while they still retain the minds of boyes and vitious youth doing actions from principles of great folly and a mighty ignorance admiring things uselesse and hurtfull and filling up all the dimensions of their abode with businesses of empty affairs being at leasure to attend no vertue they cannot pray because they are busie and because they are passionate they cannot communicate because they have quarrels and intrigues of perplexed causes complicated hostilities and things of the world and therefore they cannot attend to the things of God little considering that they must find a time to die in when death comes they must be at leisure for that Such men are like Sailers loosing from a port and tost immediatly with a perpetual tempest lasting till their cordage crack and either they sink or return back again to the same place they did not make a voyage though they were long at sea The businesse and impertinent affairs of most men steal all their time and they are restlesse in a foolish motion but this is not the progress of a man he is no further advanc'd in the course of a life though he reckon many years for still his soul is childish and trifling like an untaught boy If the parts of this sad complaint finde their remedy we have by the same instruments also cured the evils and the vanity of a short life Therefore 1. Be infinitely curious you doe not set back your life in the accounts of God by the intermingling of criminal actions or the contracting vitious habits There are some vices which carry a sword in their hand and cut a man off before his time There is a sword of the Lord and there is a sword of a Man and there is a sword of the Devil Every vice of our own managing in the matter of carnality of lust or rage ambition or revenge is a sword of Sathan put into the hands of a man These are the destroying Angels sin is the Apollyon the destroyer that is gone out not from the Lord but from the Tempter and we hug the poison and twist willingly with the vipers till they bring us into the Regions of an irrecoverable sorrow We use to reckon persons as good as dead if they have lost their limbs and their teeth and are confined to an Hospital and converse with none but Surgeons and Physicians Mourners and Divines those pollinctores the Dressers of bodies and souls to Funeral But it is worse when the soul the principle of life is imployed wholly in the offices of death and that man was worse then dead of whom Seneca tells that being a rich fool when he was lifted up from the baths and set into a soft couch asked his slaves An ego jam sedeo Do I now sit The beast was so drownd in sensuality and the death of his soul that whether he did sit or no he was to believe another Idlenesse and every vice is as much of death as a long disease is or the expence of ten years and she that lives in pleasures is dead while she liveth saith the Apostle and it is the stile of the Spirit concerning wicked persons They are dead in trespasses and sins For as every sensual pleasure and every day of idlenes and useless living lops off a little branch from our short life so every deadly sin and every habitual vice does quite destroy us but innocence leaves us in our natural portions and perfect period we lose nothing of our life if we lose nothing of our souls health and therefore he that would live a full age must avoid a sin as he would decline the Regions of death the dishonors of the grave 2. If we would have our life lengthened let us begin bâ—times to live in the accounts of reason and sober counsels of religion and the Spirit and then we shall have no reason to complain that our abode on earth is so short Many men finde it long enough and indeed it is so to all senses But when we spend in waste what God hath given us in plenty when we sacrifice our youth to folly our manhood to lust and rage our old age to covetousnesse and irreligion not beginning to live till we are to die designing that time to Vertue which indeed is infirm to every thing and profitâ—ble to nothing then we make our lives short and lust runs away with all the vigorous and healthful part of it and pride and animosity steal the manly portion and craftinesse and interest possesse old age velut ex pleno
abundanti perdimus we spend as if we had too much time and knew not what to do with it We fear every thing like weak and silly mortals and desire strangely and greedily as if we were immortal we complain our life is short and yet we throw away much of it and are weary of many of its parts We complain the day is long and the night is long and we want company and seek out arts to drive the time away and then weep because it is gone too soon But so the treasure of the Capitol is but a small â—state when Caesar comes to finger it and to pay with it all his Legions and the Revenue of all Egypt and the Eastern provinces was but a little summe when they were to support the luxury of Marc. Antony and feed the riot of Cleopatra But a thousand crowns is a vast proportion to be spent in the cottage of a frugal person or to feed a Hermit Just so is our life it is too short to serve the ambition of a haughty Prince or an usurping Rebel too little time to purchase great wealth to satisfie the pride of a vain-glorious fool to trample upon all the enemies of our just or unjust interest but for the obtaining vertue for the purchase of sobriety and modesty for the actions of Religion God gave us time sufficient if we make the outgoings of the Morning and Evening that is our infancy and old age to be tâ—ken into the computations of a man Which we may see in the following particulars 1. If our childhood being first consecrated by a forward baptisme it be seconded by a holy education and a complying obedience If our youth be chast and temperate modest and industrious proceeding through a prudent and sober Manhood to a Religious old age then we have lived our whole duration and shall never die but be changed in a just time to the preparations of a better and an immortal life 2. If besides the ordinary returns of our prayers and periodical and festival solemnities and our seldom communions we would allow to religion the studies of wisdom those great shares that are trifled away upon vain sorrow foolish mirth troublesome ambition buisy covetousnesse watchful lust and impertinent amours and balls and revellings and banquets all that which was spent vitiously all that time that lay fallow without imployment our life would quickly amount to a great sum Tostatus Abulensis was a very painful person and a great Cleark and in the dayes of his manhood he wrote so many books and they not ill ones that the world computed a sheet for every day of his life I suppose they meant after he came to the use of reason and the state of a man and Iohn Scotus died about the two and thirtieth year of his age and yet besides his publike disputations his dayly Lectures of Divinity in publike and private the Books that he wrote being lately collected and printed at Lyons do equal the number of volumes of any two the most voluminous Fathers of the Latine Church Every man is not inabled to such imployments but every man is called and inabled to the works of a sober and a religious life and there are many Saints of God that can reckon as many volumes of religion and mountains of piety as those others did of good books S. Ambrose and I think from his example S. Augustine divided every day into three tertia's of imployment eight hours he spent in the necessities of nature and recreation eight hours in charity and doing assistance to others dispatching their buâ—sinesses reconciling their enmities reproving their vices correcting their errors instructing their ignorances transacting the affairs of his Diocesse and the other eight hours he spent in study and prayer If we were thus minute and curious in the spending our time it is impossible but our life would seem very long For so have I seen an amorous person tell the minutes of his absence from his fancied joy and while he told the sands of his hour-glasse or the throbs and little beatings of his watch by dividing an hour into so many members he spun out its length by number and so translated a day into the tediousnesse of a moneth And if we tell our dayes by Canonical hours of prayer our weeks by a constant revolution of fasting dayes or dayes of special devotion and over all these draw a black Cypresse a veil of penitential sorrow and severe mortification we shall soon answer the calumny and objection of a short life He that governs the day and divides the hours hastens from the eyes and observation of a merry sinner but loves so stand still and behold and tell the sighs and number the groans and sadly delicious accents of a grieved penitent It is a vast work that any man may do if he never be idle and it is a huge way that a man may go in vertue if he never goes out of his way by a vitious habit or a great crime and he that perpetually reads good books if his parts be answerable will have a huge stock of knowledge It is so in all things else Strive not to forget your time and suffer none of it to passe undiscerned and then measure your life and tell me how you finde the measure of its abode However the time we live is worth the money we pay for it and therefore it is not to be thrown away 3. When vitious men are dying and scar'd with the affrighting truths of an evil conscience they would give all the world for a year for a moneth nay we read of some that called out with amazement inducias usque ad mane truce but till the morning and if that year or some few moneths were given those men think they could do miracles in it And let us a while suppose what Dives would have done if he had been loosed from the pains of hell and permitted to live on earth one year Would all the pleasures of the world have kept him one hour from the Temple would he not perpetually have been under the hands of Priests or at the feet of the Doctors or by Moses chair or attending as neer the Altar as he could get or relieving poor Lazars or praying to God and crucifying all his sin I have read of a Melancholy person who saw hell but in a dream or vision and the amazement was such that he would have chosen ten times to die rather then feel again so much of that horror and such a person cannot be fancied but that he would spend a year in such holinesse that the religion of a few moneths would equal the devotion of many years even of a good man Let us but compute the proportions If we should spend all our years of reason so as such a person would spend that one can it be thought that life would be short and trifling in which he had performed such a religion served God with so
much holinesse mortified sin with so great a labour purchased vertue at such a rate and so rare an industry It must needs be that such a man must dye when he ought to die and be like ripe and pleasant fruit falling from a fair tree and gathered into baskeâ—s for the planters use He that hath done â—ll his businesse and is begotten to a glorious hope by the seed of an immortal Spirit can never die too soon nor live too long Xerxes wept sadly when he saw his army of 2300000 men because he considered that within a hundred years all the youth of that army should be dust and ashes and yet as Seneca well observes of him he was the man that should bring them to their graves and he consumed all that army in two years for whom he feared and wept the death after an hundred Just so we do all We complain that within thirty or fourty years a little more or a great deal lesse we shall descend again into the bowels of our Mother and that our life is too short for any great imployment and yet we throw away five and â—hirty yeers of our fourty and the remaining five we divide between art and nature civility and customs necessity and convenience prudent counsels and religion but the portion of the last is little and contemptible and yet that little is all that we can prudently account of our lives We bring that fate and that death neer us of whose approach we are so sadly apprehensive 4. In taking the accounts of your life do not reckon by great distances and by the periods of pleasure or the satisfaction of your hopes or the stating your desires but let every intermedial day and hour passe with observation He that reckons he hath lived but so many harvests thinks they come not often enough and that they go away too soon Some lose the day with longing for the night and the night in waiting for the day Hope and phantastic expectations spend much of our lives and while with passion we look for a coronation or the death of an enemy or a day of joy passing from fancy to possession without any intermedial notices we throw away a precious year and use it but as the burden of our time fit to be pared off and thrown away that we may come at those little pleasures which first steal our hearts and then steal our life 5. A strict course of piety is the way to prolong our lives in the natural sense and to adde good portions to the number of our years and sin is sometimes by natural causality very often by the anger of God and the Divine judgement a cause of sudden and untimely death Concerning which I shall adde nothing to what I have some where else said of this article but onely the observation of Epiphanius that for 3332 years even to the twentieth age there was not one example of a son that died before his Father but the course of Nature was kept that he who was first born in the descending line did first die I speak of natural death and therefore Abel cannot be opposed to this observation till that Terah the Father of Abraham taught the people a new religion to make images of clay and worship them and concerning him it was first remarked that Haran died before his Father Terah in the land of his Nativity God by an unheard of judgement and a rare accident punishing his newly invented crime by the untimely death of his son 6. But if I shall describe a living man a man that hath that life that distinguishes him from a fool or a bird that which gives him a capacity next to Angels we shall finde that even a good man lives not long because it is long before he is born to this life and longer yet before he hath a mans growth He that can look upon death and see its face with the same countenance with which he hears its story that can endure all the labours of his life with his soul supporting his body that can equally despise riches when he hath them and when he hath them not that is not sadder if they lye in his Neighbours trunks nor more brag if they shine round about his own walls he that is neither moved with good fortune coming to him nor going from him that can look upon another mans lands evenly and pleasedly as if they were his own and yet look upon his own and use them too just as if they were another mans that neither spends his goods prodigally and like a fool nor yet keeps them avaritiously and like a wretch that weighs not benefits by weight and number but by the mind circumstances of him that gives them that never thinks his charity expensive if a worthy person be the receiver he that does nothing for opinion sake but every thing for conscience being as curious of his thoughts as of his actings in markets and Theaters and is as much in awe of himself as of a whole assembly he that knowes God looks on and contrives his secret affairs as in the presence of God and his holy Angels that eats and drinks because he needs it not that he may serve a lust or load his belly he that is bountifull and cheerfull to his friends and charitable and apt to forgive his enemies that loves his countrey and obeyes his Prince and desires and endeavours nothing more then that he may do honour to God this person may reckon his life to be the life of a man and compute his moneths not by the course of the sun but the Zodiac and circle of his vertues because these are such things which fools and children and birds and beasts cannot have These are therefore the actions of life because they are the feeds of immortality That day in which we have done some excellent thing we may as truly reckon to be added to our life as were the fifteen years to the dayes of Hezekiah SECT IV. Consideration of the miseries of Mans life AS our life is very short so it is very miserable and therefore it is well it is short God in pity to mankinde lest his burden should be insupportable and his nature an intolerable load hath reduced our state of misery to an abbreviature and the greateâ— our misery is the lesse while it is like to last the sorrows of a mans spirit being like ponderous weights which by the greatnesse of their burden make a swifter motion and descend into the grave to rest and ease our wearied limbs for then onely we shall sleep quietly when those fetters are knocked off which not onely bound our souls in prison but also eat the flesh till the very bones open'd the secret garments of their cartilages discovering their nakednesse and sorrow 1. Here is no place to sit down in but you must rise as soon as you are set for we have gnats in our chambers and worms in
our gardens and spiders and flies in the palaces of the greatest Kings How few men in the world are prosperous what an infinite number of slaves and beggers of persecuted and oppressed people fill all corners of the earth with groans and Heaven it self with weeping prayers and sad remembrances how many Provinces and Kingdoms are afflicted by a violent war or made desolate by popular diseases some whole countreyes are remarked with fatal evils or periodical sicknesses Gran Cairo in Egypt feels the plague every three years returning like a Quartan ague and destroying many thousands of persons All the inhabitants of Arabia the desert are in continuall fear of being buried in huge heaps of sand and therefore dwell in tents and ambuâ—atory houses or retire to unfruitful mountains to prolong an uneasy and wilder life and all the Countreyes round about the Adriatic sea feel such violent convulsions by Tempests and intolerable Earthquakes that sometimes whole cities finde a Tombe and every man â—inks with his own house made ready to become his Monument and his bed is crushed into the disorders of a grave Was not all the world drowned at one deluge and breach of the Divine anger and shall not all the world again be destroyed by fire Are there not many thousands that die every night and that groan and weep sadly every day But what shall we think of that great evil which for the sins of men God hath suffered to possess the greatest part of Mankinde Most of the men that are now alive or that have been living for many ages are Jews Heathens or Turcs and God was pleased to suffer a base Epileptic person a villain and a vitious to set up a religion which hath filled almost all Asia and Africa and some parts of Europe so that the greatest number of men and women born in so many kingdoms and provinces are infallibly made Mahumetans strangers and enemies to Christ by whom alone we can be saved This consideration is extremely sad when we remember how universal and how great an evil it is that so many millions of sons and daughters are born to enter into the possession of Devils to eternal ages These evils are the miseries of great parts of mankinde and we cannot easily consider more particularly the evils which happen to us being the inseparable affections or incidents to the whole nature of man 2. We finde that all the women in the world are either born for barrennesse or the pains of Child-birth and yet this is one of our greatest blessings but such indeed are the blessings of this world we cannot be well with nor without many things Perfumes make our heads ake roses prick our fingers and in our very blood where our life dwells is the Scene under which nature acts many sharp Feavers and heavy sicknesses It were too sad if I should tell how many persons are afflicted with evil spirits with spectres and illusions of the night and that huge multitudes of men and women live upon mans flesh Nay worse yet upon the sins of men upon the sins of their sons and of their daughters and they pay their souls down for the bread they eat buying this dayes meal with the price of the last nights sin 3. Or if you please in charity to visit an Hospital which is indeed a map of the whole world there you shall see the effects of Adams sin and the ruines of humane nature bodies laid up in heaps like the bones of a destroyed town homines precarii spiritus malè haerentis men whose souls seem to be borrowed and are kept there by art and the force of Medicine whose miseries are so great that few people have charity or humanity enough to visit them fewer have the heart to dresse them and we pity them in civility or with a transient prayer but we do not feel their sorrows by the mercies of a religious pity and therefore as we leave their sorrows in many degrees unrelieved and uneased so we contract by our unmercifulnesse a guilt by which our selves become liable to the same calamities Those many that need pity and those infinites of people that refuse to pity are miserable upon a several charge but yet they almost make up all mankinde 4. All wicked men are in love with that which intangles them in huge variety of troubles they are slaves to the worst of Masters to sin and to the Devil to a passion and to an imperious woman Good men are for ever persecuted and God chastises every son whom he receives and whatsoever is easy is trifling and worth nothing and whatsoever is excellent is not to be obtained without labour and sorrow and the conditions and states of men that are free from great cares are such as have in them nothing rich and orderly and those that have are stuck full of thorns and trouble Kings are full of care and learned men in all ages have been observed to be very poor honestas miserias accusant they complain of their honest miseries 5. But these evils are notorious and confessed even they also whose felicity men stare at and admire besides their splendour and the sharpnesse of their light will with their appendant sorrows wring a tear from the most resolved eye For not only the winter quarter is full of storms and cold and darknesse but the beauteous spring hath blasts and sharp frosts the fruitful teeming summer is melted with heat and burnt with the kisses of the sun her friend and choaked with dust and the rich Autumn is full of sicknesse and we are weary of that which we enjoy because sorrow is its biggest portion and when we remember that upon the fairest face is placed one of the worst sinks of the body the nose we may use it not only as a mortification to the pride of beauty but as an allay to the fairest outside of condition which any of the sons and daughters of Adam do possesse For look upon Kings and conquerours I will not tell that many of them fall into the condition of servants and their subjects rule over them and stand upon the ruines of their families and that to such persons the sorrow is bigger then usually happens in smaller fortunes but let us suppose them still conquerers and see what a goodly purchase they get by all their pains and amazing fears and continual dangers They carry their arms beyond Ister and passe the Euphrates and binde the Germans with the bounds of the river Rhyne I speak in the stile of the Roman greatnesse for now adayes the biggest fortune swells not beyond the limits of a petty province or two and a hill confines the progresse of their prosperity or a river checks it But whatsoever tempts the pride and vanity of ambitious persons is not so big as the smallest star which we see scattered in disorder and unregarded upon the pavement and floor of Heaven And if we would suppose the pismires had but
arts of religion and mortification suppresse the trouble of that fancy till at last being told that she was dead and had been buried about fourteen dayes he went secretly to her Vault and with the skirt of his mantle wiped the moisture from the Carkasse and still at the return of his temptation laid it before him saying Behold this is the beauty of the woman thou didst so much desire and so the man found his cure And if we make death as present to us our own death dwelling and dressed in all its pomp of fancy and proper circumstances if any thing will quench the heats of lust or the desires of money or the greedy passionate affections of this world this must do it But withall the frequent use of this meditation by curing our present inordinations will make death safe and friendly and by its very custom will make that the King of terrours shall come to us without his affrighting dresses and that we shall sit down in the grave as we compose our selves to sleep and do the duties of nature and choice The old people that lived neer the Riphaean mountains were taught to converse with death and to handle it on all sides and to discourse of it as of a thing that will certainly come and ought so to do Thence their minds and resolutions became capable of death and they thought it a dishonourable thing with greedinesse to keep a life that must go from us to lay aside its thorns and to return again circled with a glory and a Diadem 2. He that would die well must all the dayes of his life lay up against the day of death not only by the general provisions of holinesse and a pious life indefinitely but provisions proper to the necessities of that great day of expence in which a man is to throw his last cast for an eternity of joyes or sorrows ever remembring that this alone well performed is not enough to passe us into Paradise but that alone done foolishly is enough to send us to hell and the want of either a holy life or death makes a man to fall short of the mighty price of our high calling In order to this rule we are to consider what special graces we shall then need to exercise and by the proper arts of the Spirit by a heap of proportioned arguments by prayers and a great treasure of devotion laid up in Heaven provide before hand a reserve of strength and mercy Men in the course of their lives walk lazily and incuriously as if they had both their feet in one shoe and when they are passively revolved to the time of their dissolution they have no mercies in store no patience no faith no charity to God or despite of the world being without gust or appetite for the land of their inheritance which Christ with so much pain and blood had purchased for them When we come to die indeed we shall be very much put to it to stand firm upon the two feet of a Christian faith and patience When we our selves are to use the articles to turn our former discourses into present practise and to feel what we never felt before we shall finde it to be quite another thing to be willing presently to quit this life and all our present possessions for the hopes of a thing which we were never suffered to see and such a thing of which we may sail so many wayes and of which if we fail any way we are miserable for ever Then we shall finde how much we have need to have secured the Spirit of God and the grace of saith by an habitual perfect unmovable resolution * The same also is the case of patience which will be assaulted with sharp pains disturbed fancies great fears want of a present minde natural weaknesses frauds of the Devil and a thousand accidents and imperfections It concerns us therfore highly in the whole course of our lives not onely to accustome our selves to a patient suffering of injuries and affronts of persecutions and losses of crosse accidents and unnecessary circumstances but also by representing death as present to us to consider with what arguments then to fortifie our patience and by assiduous and fervent prayer to God all our life long call upon God to give us patience and great assistances a strong faith and a confirmed hope the Spirit of God and his Holy Angels assistants at that time to resist and to subdue the devils temptations and assaults and so to fortifie our hearts that it break not into intolerable sorrows and impatience and end in wretchlessenesse and infidelity * But this is to be the work of our life and not to be done at once but as God gives us time by succession by parts and little periods For it is very remarkable that God who giveth plenteously to all creatures he hath scattered the firmament with stars as a man sowes corn in his fields in a multitude bigger then the capacities of humane order he hath made so much varietie of creatures and gives us great choice of meats and drinks although any one of both kindes would have served our needs and so in all instances of nature yet in the distribution of our time God seems to be strait-handed and gives it to us not as Nature gives us Rivers enough to drown us but drop by drop minute after minute so that we never can have two minutes together but he takes away one when he gives us another This should teach us to value our time since God so values it and by his so small distribution of it tells us it is the most precious thing we have Since therefore in the day of our death we can have but still the same little portion of this precious time let us in every minute of our life I mean in every discernable portion lay up such a stock of reason and good works that they may convey a value to the imperfect and shorter actions of our death-bed while God rewards the piety of our lives by his gracious acceptation and benediction upon the actions preparatory to our death-bed 3. He that desires to die well and happily above all things must be carefull that he do not live a soft a delicate and voluptuous life but a life severe holy and under the discipline of the crosse under the conduct of prudence and observation a life of warfare and sober counsels labour and watchfulnesse No man wants cause of tears and a daily sorrow Let every man consider what he feels and acknowledge his misery let him confesse his sin and chastise it let him bear his crosse patiently and his persecutions nobly and his repentances willingly and constantly let him pity the evils of all the world and bear his share of the calamities of his Brother let him long and sigh for the joyes of Heaven let him tremble and fear because he hath deserved the pains of hell let him commute his eternall
and unavoidable forgetfulnesse will be enough to be intrusted to such a bank and that if a general repentance will serve towards their expiation it will be an infinite mercy but we have nothing to warrant our confidence if we shall think it to be enough on our death-bed to confesse the notorious actions of our lives and to say The Lord be merciful to me for the infinite transgressions of my life which I have wilfully or carelesly forgot for very many of which the repentance the distinct particular circumstantiate repentance of a whole life would have been too little if we could have done more 5. After the enumeration of these advantanges I shall not need to adde that if we decline or refuse to call our selves frequently to account and to use daily advices concerning the state of our souls it is a very ill signe that our souls are not right with God or that they do not dwell in religion But this I shall say that they who do use this exercise frequently will make their conscience much at ease by casting out a daily load of humor and surfet the matter of diseases and the instruments of death He that does not frequently search his conscience is a house without a window and like a wilde untutored son of a fond and undiscerning widow But if this exercise seem too great a trouble and that by such advices religion will seem a burden I have two things to oppose against it 1. One is that we had better â—ear the burden of the Lord then the burden of a base and polluted conscience Religion cannot be so great a trouble as a guilty soul and whatsoever trouble can be fancied in this or any other action of religion it is onely to unexperienced persons It may be a trouble at first just as is every change and every new accident but if you do it frequently and accustom your spirit to it as the custom will make it easy so the advantages wil make it delectable that will make it facile as nature these will make it as pleasant and eligible as reward 2. The other thing I have to say is this That to examine our lives will be no trouble if we do not intricate it with businesses of the world and the Labyrinths of care and impertinent affairs A man had need have a quiet and disintangled life who comes to search into all his actions and to make judgement concerning his errors and his needs his remedies and his hopes They that have great intrigues of the world have a yoak upon their necks cannot look back and he that covets many things greedily and snatches at high things ambitiously that despises his Neighbour proudly and bears his crosses peevishly or his prosperity impotently and passionately he that is prodigal of his precious time and is tenacious and retentive of evil purposes is not a man disposed to this exercise he hath reason to be afraid of his own memory and to dash his glasse in pieces because it must needs represent to his own eyes an intolerable deformity He therefore that resolves to live well whatsoever it costs him he that will go to Heaven at any rate shall best tend this duty by neglecting the affairs of the world in all things where prudently he may But if we do otherwise we shall finde that the accounts of our death-bed and the examination made by a disturbed understanding will be very empty of comfort and full of inconveniencies 6. For hence it comes that men dye so timorously and uncomfortably as if they were forced out of their lives by the violencies of an executioner Then without much examination they remember how wickedly they have lived without religion against the laws of the covenant of grace without God in the world then they see sin goes off like an amazed wounded affrighted person from a lost battel without honour without a veil with nothing but shame sad remembrances Then they can consider that if they had lived vertuously all the trouble and objection of that would now be past and all that had remained should be peace and joy and all that good which dwells within the house of God and eternal life But now they finde they have done amisse and dealt wickedly they have no bank of good works but a huge treasure of wrath and they are going to a strange place and what shall be their lot is uncertain so they say when they would comfort and flatter themselves but in truth of religion their portion is sad and intollerable without hope and without refreshment and they must use little silly arts to make them go off from their stage of sins with some handsom circumstances of opinion They will in civility be abused that they may die quietly and go decently to their execution and leave their friends indifferently contented and apt to be comforted and by that time they are gone awhile they see that they deceived themselves all their dayes and were by others deceived at last Let us make it our own case we shall come to that state and period of condition in which we shall be infinitely comforted if we have lived well er else be amazed and go off trembling because we are guilty of heaps of unrepented and unforsaken sins It may happen we shall not then understand it so because most men of late ages have been abused with false principles and they are taught or they are willing to believe that a little thing is enough to save them and that heaven is so cheap a purchase that it will fall upon them whether they will or no. The misery of it is they will not suffer themselves to be confuted till it be too late to recant their errour In the interim they are impatient to be examined as a leper is of a comb and are greedy of the world as children of raw fruit and they hate a severe reproof as they do thorns in their beds and they love to lay aside religion as a drunken person does to forget his sorrow and all the way they dream of fine things and their dreams prove contrary and become the hieroglyphics of an eternal sorrow The daughter of Polycrates dreamed that her Father was lifted up and that Iupiter washed him and the Sun anointed him but it proved to him but a sad prosperity for after a long life of constant prosperous successes he was surprized by his enemies and hanged up till the dew of heaven wet his cheeks and the Sun melted his grease Such is the condition of those persons who living either in the despight or in the neglect of religion lye wallowing in the drunkennesse of prosperity or worldly cares they think themselves to be exalted till the evil day overtakes them and then they can expound their dream of life to end in a sad and hopelesse death I remember that Cleomenes that was called a God by the Egyptians because when he was hang'd a serpent grew out of his
is a portion in the inheritance of Jesus of which he now talks no more as a thing at distance but is entring into the possession When the veil is rent and the prison doors are open at the presence of Gods Angel the soul goes forth full of hope sometimes with evidence but alwayes with certainty in the thing and instantly it passes into the throngs of Spirits where Angles meet it singing and the Devils flock with malitious and vile purposes desiring to lead it away with them into their houses of sorrow there they see things which they never saw and hear voices which they never heard There the Devils charge them with many sins And the Angels remember that themselves rejoyced when they were repented of Then the Devils aggravate and describe all the circumstances of the sin and adde calumnies and the Angels bear the soul forward still because their Lord doth answer for them Then the Devils rage and gnash their teeth they see the soul chast and pure and they are ashamed they see it penitent and they despair they perceive that the tongue was restrained and sanctified and then hold their peace Then the soul passes forth and rejoyces passing by the Devils in scorn and triumph being securely carried into the bosome of the Lord where they shall rest till their crowns are finished and their mansions are prepared and then they shall feast and sing rejoyce and worship for ever and ever Fearful and formidable to unholy persons is the first meeting with spirits in their separation But the victory which holy souls receive by the mercies of Jesus Christ and the conduct of Angels is a joy that we must not understand till we feel it and yet such which by an early and a persevering piety we may secure but let us enquire after it no further because it is secret CHAP. III. Of the state of sicknesse and the temptations incident to it with their proper remedies SECT I. Of the state of sicknesse ADams sin brought death into the world and man did die the same day in which he sinned according as God had threatned He did not die as death is taken for a separation of soul and body that is not death properly but the ending of the last act of death just as a man is said to be born when he ceases any longer to be born in his mothers womb But whereas to man was intended a life long and happy without sicknesse sorrow or infelicity and this life should be lived here or in a better place and the passage from one to the other should have been easy safe and pleasant now that man sinned he fell from that state to a contrary If Adam had stood he should not alwayes have lived in this world for this world was not a place capable of giving a dwelling to all those myriads of men and women which should have been born in all the generations of infinite and eternal ages for so it must have been if man had not dyed at all nor yet have removed hence at all Neither is it likely that mans innocence should have lost to him all possibility of going thither where the duration is better measured by a better time subject to fewer changes and which is now the reward of a returning vertue which in all natural senses is lesse then innocence save that it is heightned by Christ to an equality of acceptation with the state of innocence But so it must have been that his innocence should have been punished with an eternal confinement to this state which in all reason is the lesse perfect the state of a traveller not of one possessed of his inheritance It is therefore certain Man should have changed his abode for so did Enoch and so did Elias and so shall all the world that shall be alive at the day of judgement They shall not die but they shall change their place and their abode their duration and their state and all this without death That death therefore which God threatned to Adam and which passed upon his posterity is not the going out of this world but the manner of going If he had staid in innocence he should have gone from hence placidly and fairly without vexatious and afflictive circumstances he should not have dyed by sickness misfortune defect or unwillingnesse but when he fell then he began to die the same day so said God and that must needs be true and therefore it must mean that upon that very day he fell into an evil and dangerous condition a state of change and affliction then death began that is the man began to die by a natural diminution and aptnesse to disease and misery His first state was and should have been so long as it lasted a happy duration His second was a daily and miserable change and this was the dying properly This appears in the great instance of damnation which in the stile of Scripture is called eternal death not because it kills or ends the duration it hath not so much good in it but because it is a perpetual infelicity Change or separation of soul and body is but accidental to death Death may be with or without either but the formality the curse and the sting of death that is misery sorrow fear diminution defect anguish dishonour and whatsoever is miserable and afflictive in nature that is death death is not an action but a whole state and condition and this was first brought in upon us by the offence of one man But this went no further then thus to subject us to temporal infelicity If it had proceeded so as was supposed Man had been much more miserable for man had more then one original sin in this sence and though this death entred first upon us by Adams fault yet it came neerer unto us and increased upon us by the sins of more of our forefathers For Adams sin left us in strength enough to contend with humane calamities for almost a thousand years together But the sins of his children our forefathers took off from us half the strength about the time of the flood and then from 500. to 250. and from thence to 120. and from thence to threescore and ten so halfing it till it is almost come to nothing But by the sins of men in the several generations of the world death that is misery and disease is hastned so upon us that we are of a contemptible age and because we are to die by suffering evils and by the daily lessening of our strength and health this death is so long a doing that it makes so great a part of our short life uselesse and unserviceable that we have not time enough to get the perfection of a single manufacture but ten or twelve generations of the world must go to the making up of one wise man or one excellent Art and in the succession of those ages there happens so many changes and interruptions so many
checked with the stiffnesse of a tower or the united strength of a wood it grew mighty and dwelt there and made the highest branches stoop and make a smooth path for it on the top of all its glories So is sicknesse and so is the grace of God When sicknesse hath made the difficulty then Gods grace hath made a triumph and by doubling its power hath created new proportions of a reward and then shews its biggest glory when it hath the greatest difficulty to Master the greatest weaknesses to support the most busie temptations to contest with For so God loves that his strength should be seen in our weaknesse and our danger Happy is that state of life in which our services to God are the dearest and the most expensive 5. Sicknesse hath some degrees of eligibility at least by an after-choice because to all persons which are within the possibilities and state of pardon it becomes a great instrument of pardon of sins For as God seldom rewards here and hereafter too So it is not very often that he punishes in both states In great and finall sins he doth so but we finde it expressed onely in the case of the sin against the Holy Ghost which shall never be forgiven in this world nor in the world to come that is it shall be punished in both worlds and the infelicities of this world shall but usher in the intollerable calamities of the next But this is in a case of extremity and in sins of an unpardonable malice In those lesser stages of death which are deviations from the rule and not a destruction and perfect antinomy to the whole institution God very often smites with his rod of sicknesse that he may not for ever be slaying the soul with eternall death I will visit their offences with the rod and their sin with scourges Neverthelesse my loving kindenesse will I not utterly take from him nor suffer my truth to fail And there is in the New Testament a delivering over to Satan and a consequent buffeting for the mortification of the flesh indeed but that the soul may be saved in the day of the Lord. And to some persons the utmost processe of Gods anger reaches but to a sharp sicknesse or at most but to a temporall death and then the little momentany anger is spent and expires in rest and a quiet grave Origen S. Austin and Cassian say concerning Ananias and Sapphira that they were slain with a sudden death that by such a judgement their sin might be punished and their guilt expiated and their persons reserved for mercy in the day of judgement And God cuts off many of his children from the land of the living and yet when they are numbred amongst our dead he findes them in the book of life written amongst those that shall live to him for ever and thus it happened to many new Christians in the Church of Corinth for their little undecencies and disorders in the circumstances of receiving the holy Sacrament S. Paul sayes that many amongst them were sick may were weak and some were fallen asleep He expresses the divine anger against those persons in no louder accents which according to the stile of the New Testament where all the great transactions of duty and reproof are generally made upon the stock of Heaven and Hell is plainly a reserve and a period set to the declaration of Gods wrath For God knowes that the torments of hell are so horrid so insupportable a calamity that he is not easy and apt to cast those souls which he hath taken so much care and hath been at so much expence to save into the eternal never dying flames of Hell lightly for smaller sins or after a fairly begun repentance and in the midst of holy desires to finish it But God takes such penalties and exacts such fines of us which we may pay salvo contenemento saving the main stake of all even our precious souls And therefore S. Augustine prayed to God in his penitential sorrowes Here O Lord burn and cut my flesh that thou mayest spare me for ever For so said our blessed Saviour Every sacrifice must be seasoned with salt and every sacrifice must be burnt with fire that is we must abide in the state of grace and if we have committed sins we must expect to be put into the state of affliction and yet the sacrifice will send up a right and unâ—roubled cloud and a sweet smell to joyn with the incense of the Altar where the eternal Priest offers a never ceasing sacrifice And now I have said a thing against which there can be no exceptions and of which no just reason can make abatement For when sicknesse which is the condition of our nature is called for with purposes of redemption when we are sent to death to secure eternal life when God strikes us that he may spare us it shewes that we have done things which he essentially hates and therefore we must be smitten with the rod of God but in the midst of judgement God remembers mercy and makes the rod to be medicinal and like the rod of God in the hand of Aaron to shoot forth buds and leaves and Almonds hopes and mercies and eternal recompences in the day of restitution This is so great a good to us if it be well conducted in all the chanels of its intention and designe that if we had put off the objections of the flesh with abstractions contempts and separations so as we ought to do were as earnestly to be prayed for as any gay blessing that crowns our cups with joy and our heads with garlands and forgetfulnesse But this was it which I said that this may nay that it ought to be chosen at least by an after-election for so said S. Paul If we judge our selves we shall not be condemned of the Lord that is if we judge our selves worthy of the sicknesse if we acknowledge and confesse Gods justice in smiting us if we take the rod of God in our own hands and are willing to imprint it in the flesh we are workers together with God in the infliction and then the sickness beginning and being managed in the vertue of repentance and patience and resignation and charity will end in peace and pardon and justification and consignation to glory That I have spoken truth I have brought Gods Spirit speaking in Scripture for a witnesse But if this be true there are not many states of life that have advantages which can out-weigh this great instrument of security to our final condition Moses dyed at the mouth of the Lord said the story he died with the kisses of the Lords mouth so the Chaldee Paraphrase it was the greatest act of kindesse that God did to his servant Moses he kissed him and he died But I have some things to observe for the better finishing this consideration 1. All these advantages and lessenings of evil in the
him alone till he obtained the same favour for her and she also at the prayers of S. Hilary went into a more early grave and a bed of joyes 7. It is a sottish and an unlearned thing to reckon the time of our life as it is short or long to be good or evil fortune life in it self being neither good nor bad but just as we make it and therefore so is death 8. But when we consider death is not onely better then a miserable life not onely an easie and innocent thing in it self but also that it is a state of advantage we shall have reason not to double the sharpnesses of our sicknesse by our fear of death Certain it is death hath some good upon its proper stock praise and a fair memory a reverence and religion toward them so great that it is counted dishonest to speak evil of the dead then they rest in peace and are quiet from their labours and are designed to immortality Cleobis and Biton Throphonius and Agamedes had an early death sent them as a reward to the former for their piety to their Mother to the latter for building of a Temple To this all those arguments will minister which relate the advantages of the state of separation and resurrection SECT VIII Remedies against fear of death by way of exercise 1. HE that would willingly be fearlesse of death must learn to despise the world he must neither love any thing passionately nor be proud of any circumstance of his life O death how bitter is the remembrance of thee to a man that liveth at rest in his possessions to a man that hath nothing to vex him and that hath prosperity in all things yea unto him that is yet able to receive meat said the son of Sirach But the parts of this exercise help each other If a man be not incorporated in all his passions to the things of this world he will lesse fear to be divorced from them by a supervening death and yet because he must part with them all in death it is but reasonable he should not be passionate for so fugitive and transient interest But if any man thinks well of himself for being a handsome person or if he be stronger and wiser then his neighbours he must remember that what he boasts of will decline into weaknesse and dishonour but that very boasting and complacency will make death keener and more unwelcome because it comes to take him from his confidences and pleasures making his beauty equal to those Ladies that have slept some years in Charnel houses and their strength not so stubborn as the breath of an infant and their wisdom such which can be looked for in the land where all things are forgotten 2. He that would not fear death must strengthen his spirit with the proper instruments of Christian fortitude All men are resolved upon this that to bear grief honestly and temperately and to dye willingly and nobly is the duty of a good and of a valiant man and they that are not so are vitious and fools and cowards All men praise the valiant and honest and that which the very Heathen admired in their noblest examples is especially patience and contempt of death Zeno Eleates endured torments rather then discover his friends or betray them to the danger of the Tyrant and Calanus the barbarous and unlearned Indian willingly suffered himself to be burnt alive and all the women did so to do honour to their Husbands Funeral and to represent and prove their affections great to their Lords The religion of a Christian does more command fortitude then ever did any institution for we are commanded to be willing to die for Christ to dye for the brethren to dye rather then give offence or scandal the effect of which is this that he that is instructed to do the necessary parts of his duty is by the same instrument fortified against death As he that does his duty need not fear death so neither shall he the parts of his duty are parts of his security It is certainly a great basenesse and pusillanimitie of spirit that makes death terrible and extremely to be avoided 3. Christian prudence is a great security against the fear of death For if we be afraid of death it is but reasonable to use all spiritual arts to take off the apprehension of the evil but therefore we ought to remove our fear because fear gives to death wings and spurres and darts Death hastens to a fearful man if therefore you would make death harmlesse and slow to throw off fear is the way to do it and prayer is the way to do that If therefore you be afraid of death consider you will have lesse need to fear it by how much the less you do fear it and so cure your direct fear by a reflex act of prudence and consideration Fannius had not dyed so soon if he had not feared death and when Cneius Carbo begged the respite of a little time for a base imployment of the souldiers of Pompey he got nothing but that the basenesse of his fear dishonoured the dignity of his third Consulship and he chose to dye in a place where none but his meanest servants should have seen him I remember a story of the wrastler Polydamas that running into a cave to avoid the storm the water at last swelled so high that it began to presse that hollownesse to a ruine which when his fellowes espied they chose to enter into the common fate of all men and went abroad but Polydamas thought by his strength to support the earth till its intolerable weight crushed him into flatnesse and a grave Many men run for shelter to a place and they onely finde a remedie for their fears by feeling the worst of evils fear it self findes no sanctuary but the worst of sufferance and they that flye from a battel are exposed to the mercy and fury of the pursuers who if they faced about were as well disposed to give laws of life and death as to take them and at worst can but die nobly but now even at the very best they live shamefully or die timorously Courage is the greatest security for it does most commonly safeguard the man but alwayes rescues the condition from an intolerable evil 4. If thou wilt be fearlesse of death endeavour to be in love with the felicities of Saints and Angels and be once perswaded to believe that there is a condition of living better then this that there are creatures more noble then we that above there is a countrey better then ours that the inhabitants know more and know better and are in places of rest and desire and first learn to value it and then learn to purchase it and death cannot be a formidable thing which lets us into so much joy so much felicity And indeed who would not think his condition mended if he passed from conversing with dull
our passions turned into fear and the whole state into suffering God in complyance and mans infirmity hath also turned our religion into such a duty which a sick man can do most passionately and a sad man and a timorous can perform effectually and a dying man can do to many purposes of pardon and mercy and that is prayer For although a sick man is bound to do many acts of vertue of several kindes yet the most of them are to be done in the way of prayer Prayer is not onely the religion that is proper to a sick mans condition but it is the manner of doing other graces which is then left and in his power For thus the sick man is to do his repentance and his mortifications his temperance and his chastity by a fiction of imagination bringing the offers of the vertue to the spirit making an action of election and so our prayers are a direct act of chastity when they are made in the matter of that grace just as repentance for our cruelty is an act of the grace of mercie and repentance for uncleannesse is an act of chastity is a means of its purchase an act in order to the habit and though such acts of vertue which are onely in the way of prayer are ineffective to the intire purchase and of themselves cannot change the vice into vertue yet they are good renewings of the grace and proper exercise of a habit already gotten The purpose of this discourse is to represent the excellency of prayer and its proper advantages which it hath in the time of sicknesse For besides that it moves God to pity piercing the clouds making the Heavens like a pricked eye to weep over us and refresh us with showers of pity it also doth the work of the soul and expresses the vertue of his whole life in effigie in pictures and lively representments so preparing it for a never ceasing crown by renewing the actions in the continuation of a never ceasing a never hindred affection Prayer speaks to God when the tongue is stiffned with the approachings of death prayer can dwell in the heart and be signified by the hand or eye by a thought or a groan prayer of all the actions of religion is the last alive and it serves God without circumstances and exercises material graces by abstraction from matter and separation and makes them to be spiritual and therefore best dresses our bodies for funeral or recovery for the mercies of restitution or the mercies of the grave 5. In every sicknesse whether it will or will not be so in nature and in the event yet in thy spirit and preparations resolve upon it and treat thy self accordingly as if it were a sicknesse unto death For many men support their unequall courages by flattery and false hopes and because sicker men have recovered beleeve that they shall do so but therefore they neglect to adorn their souls or set their house in order besides the temporall inconveniences that often happen by such perswasions and putting off the evil day such as are dying Intestate leaving estates intangled and some Relatives unprovided for they suffer infinitely in the interest and affairs of their soul they die carelesly and surprized their burdens on and their scruples unremoved and their cases of conscience not determined and like a sheep without any care taken concerning their precious souls Some men will never beleeve that a villain will betray them though they receive often advices from suspicious persons and likely accidents till they are entered into the snare and then they beleeve it when they feel it and when they cannot return but so the treason entred and the man was betrayed by his own folly placing the snare in the regions and advantages of opportunity This evil looks like boldnesse and a confident spirit but it is the greatest timerousnesse and cowardize in the world They are so fearfull to die that they dare not look upon it as possible and think that the making of a Will is a mortall signe and sending for a spirituall man an irrecoverable disease and they are so afraid lest they should think and beleeve now they must die that they will not take care that it may not be evil in case they should So did the Eastern slaves drink wine and wrapt their heads in a vail that they might die without sense or sorrow and wink hard that they might sleep the easier In pursuance of this rule let a man consider that whatsoever must be done in sicknesse ought to be done in health onely let him observe that his sicknesse as a good monitor chastises his neglect of duty and forces him to live as he alwayes should and then all these solemnities and dressings for death are nothing else but the part of a religious life which he ought to have exercised all his dayes and if those circumstances can affright him let him please his fancy by this truth that then he does but begin to live But it will be a huge folly if he shall think that confession of his sins will kill him or receiving the holy Sacrament will hasten his agony or the Priest shall undo all the hopefull language and promises of his Physitian Assure thy self thou canst not die the sooner But by such addresses thou mayest die much the better 6. Let the sick person be infinitely carefull that he do not fall into a state of death upon a new account that is at no hand commit a deliberate sin or retain any affection to the old for in both cases he falls into the evils of a surprize and the horrors of a sudden death For a sudden death is but a sudden joy if it takes a man in the state and exercises of vertue and it is onely then an evil when it finds a man unready They were sad departures when Tegillinus Cornelius Gallus the Praetor Lewis the son of Gonzaga Duke of Mantua Ladislaus king of Naples Speusippus Giachettus of Geneva and one of the Popes died in the forbidden embraces of abused women or if Iob had cursed God and so died or when a man sits down in despair and in the accusation and calumny of the Divine mercy they make their night sad and stormy and eternall When Herod began to sink with the shamefull torment of his bowels and felt the grave open under him he imprisoned the Nobles of his Kingdom and commanded his Sister that they should be a sacrifice to his departing ghost This was an egresse fit onely for such persons who meant to dwell with Devils to eternall ages and that man is hugely in love with sin who cannot forbear in the week of the Assizes and when himself stood at the barre of scrutiny and prepared for his finall never to be reversed sentence He dies suddenly to the worst sense and event of sudden death who so manages his sicknesse that even that state shall not be innocent but that he is surprized in the
thoughts and sanctifie the accidents of my sicknesse and that the punishment of my sin may be the school of vertue In which since thou hast now entred me Lord make me a holy proficient that I may behave my self as a son under discipline humbly and obediently evenly and penitently that I may come by this means neerer unto thee that if I shall go forth of this sicknesse by the gate of life and health I may return to the world with great strengths of spirit to run a new race of a stricter holinesse and a more severe religion Or if I passe from hence with the out-let of death I may enter into the bosome of my Lord and may feel the present joyes of a certain hope of that Sea of pleasures in which all thy Saints and servants shall be comprehended to eternall ages Grant this for Jesus Christ his sake our Dearest Lord and Saviour Amen An act of resignation to be said by a sick person in all the evil accidents of his sicknesse O Eternall God thou hast made me and sustained me thou hast blessed me in all the dayes of my life and hast taken care of me in all variety of accidents and nothing happens to me in vain nothing without thy providence and I know thou smitest thy servants in mercy and with designes of the greatest pity in the world Lord I humbly lie down under thy rod do with me as thou pleasest do thou choose for me not onely the whole state and condition of being but every little and great accident of it Keep me safe by thy grace and then use what instrument thou pleasest of bringing me to thee Lord I am not sollicitous of the passage so I may get thee Onely O Lord remember my infirmities and let thy servant rejoyce in thee alwayes and feel and confesse and glory in thy goodnesse O be thou as delightfull to me in this my medicinal sicknesse as ever thou wert in any of the dangers of my prosperity let me not peevishly refuse thy pardon at the rate of a severe discipline I am thy servant and thy creature thy purchased possession and thy son I am all thine and because thou hast mercy in store for all that trust in thee I cover my eyes and in silence wait for the time of my redemption Amen A Prayer for the grace of Patience MOst Mercifull and Gracious Father who in the redemption of lost Mankind by the passion of thy most holy Son hast established a Covenant of sufferings I blesse and magnifie thy Name that thou hast adopted me into the inheritance of sons and hast given me a portion of my elder Brother Lord the crosse falls heavy and sits uneasie upon my shoulders my spirit is willing but my flesh is weak I humbly beg of thee that I may now rejoyce in this thy dispensation and effect of providence I know and am perswaded that thou art then as gracious when thou smitest us for amendment or triall as when thou releevest our wearied bodies in compliance with our infirmity I rejoyce O Lord in thy rare and mysterious mercy who by sufferings hast turned our misery into advantages unspeakable for so thou makest us like to thy Son and givest us a gift that the Angels never did receive for they cannot die in conformity to and imitation of their Lord and ours but blessed be thy Name we can and dearest Lord Let it be so Amen II. THou who art the God of patience and consolation strengthen me in the inner man that I may bear the yoak and burden of the Lord without any uneasie and uselesse murmurs and ineffective unwillingnesse Lord I am unable to stand under the crosse unable of my self but thou O Holy Jesus who didst feel the burden of it who didst sink under it and wert pleased to admit a man to bear part of the load when thou underwentest all for him be thou pleased to ease this load by fortifying my spirit that I may be strongest when I am weakest and may be able to do and suffer every thing thou pleasest through Christ which strengthens me Lord if thou wilt support me I will for ever praise thee If thou wilt suffer the load to presse me yet more heavily I will cry unto thee and complain unto my God and at last I will lie down and die and by the mercies and intercession of the Holy Jesus and the conduct of thy blessed Spirit and the ministery of Angels passe into those mansions where Holy souls rest and weep no more Lord pity me Lord sanctifie this my sicknesse Lord strengthen me Holy Jesus save me and deliver me thou knowest how shamefully I have fallen with pleasure in thy mercy and very pity let me not fall with pain too O let me never charge God foolishly nor offend thee by my impatience and uneasie spirit nor weaken the hands and hearts of those that charitably minister to my needs but let me passe through the valley of tears and the valley of the shadow of death with safety and peace with a meek spirit and a sense of the divine mercies and though thou breakest me in pieces my hope is thou wilt gather me up in the gatherings of eternity Grant this eternall God Gracious Father for the merits and intercession of our mercifull high Priest who once suffered for me and for ever intercedes for me our most gracious and ever Blessed Saviour Jesus A Prayer to be said when the sick man takes Physick O Most blessed and eternall Jesus thou who art the great Physician of our souls and the Sun of righteousnesse arising with healing in thy wings to thee is given by thy heavenly Father the Government of all the world and thou disposest every great and little accident to thy Fathers honour and to the good and comfort of them that love and serve thee Be pleased to blesse the ministery of thy servant in order to my ease and health direct his judgement prosper the medicines and dispose the chances of my sicknesse fortunately that I may feel the blessing and loving kindnesse of the Lord in the ease of my pain and the restitution of my health that I being restored to the society of the living and to thy solemn Assemblies may praise thee and thy goodnesse secretly among the faithfull and in the Congregation of thy redeemed ones here in the outer-courts of the Lord and hereafter in thy eternall temple for ever and ever Amen SECT III. Of the practise of the grace of Faith in the time of sicknesse NOw is the time in which faith appears most necessary and most difficult It is the foundation of a good life and the foundation of all our hopes it is that without which we cannot live well and without which we cannot die well it is a grace that then we shall need to support our spirits to sustain our hopes to alleviate our sickesse to resist temptations to prevent despair upon the belief of the articles of our
religion we can do the works of a holy life but upon belief of the promises we can bear our sicknesse patiently and die cheerfully The sick man may practise it in the following instances 1. Let the sick man be careful that he do not admit of any doubt concerning that which he beleeved and received from common consent in his best health and dayes of election and religion For if the Devil can but prevail so far as to unfix and unrivet the resolution and confidence or fulnesse of assent it is easie for him so to unwinde the spirit that from why to whether or no from whether or no to scarcely not from scarcely not to absolutely not at all are steps of a descending and falling spirit and whatsoever a man is made to doubt of by the weaknesse of his understanding in a sicknesse it will be hard to get an instrument strong or subtle enough to reenforce and ensure For when the strengths are gone by which faith held and it does not stand firme by the weight of its own bulk and great constitution nor yet by the cordage of a tenacious root then it is prepared for a ruine which it cannot escape in the tempests of a sicknesse and the assaults of a Devil * Discourse and argument * the line of tradition and a never * failing experience * the Spirit of God and the * truth of miracles * the word of prophecie * and the blood of Martyrs * the excellencie of the doctrine and * the necessity of men * the riches of the promises * and the wisdom of the revelations * the reasonablenesse and * sublimity the * concordance and the * usefulnesse of the articles and * their complyance with all the needs of man * and the goverment of common wealths are like the strings and branches of the roots by which faith stands firm and unmoveable in the spirit and understanding of a man But in sicknesse the understanding is shaken and the ground is removed in which the root did grapple and support its trunk and therefore there is no way now but that it be left to stand upon the old confidences and by the firmament of its own weight it must be left to stand because it alwayes stood there before and as it stood all his life time in the ground of understanding so it must now be supported with will and a fixed resolution But disputation tempts it and shakes it with trying and overthrowes it with shaking Above all things in the world let the sick man fear a proposition which his sickness hath put into him contrary to the discourses of health and a sober untroubled reason 2. Let the sick man mingle the recital of his Creed together with his devotions and in that let him account his faith not in curiosity and factions in the confessions of parties and interests for some over froward zeals are so earnest to professe their little and uncertain articles and glory so to die in a particular and divided communion that in the profession of their faith they lose or discompose their charity let it be enough that we secure our interest of heaven though we do not go about to appropriate the mansions to our sect for every good man hopes to be saved as he is a Christian and not as he is a Lutheran or of another division However those articles upon which he can build the exercise of any vertue in his sicknesse or upon the stock of which he can improve his present condition are such as consist in the greatnesse and goodnesse the veracity and mercy of God thorough Jesus Christ nothing of which can be concerned in the fond disputations which faction and interest hath too long maintained in Christendom 3. Let the sick mans faith especially be active about the promises of grace and the excellent things of the gospel those which can comfort his sorrowes and enable his patience those upon the hopes of which he did the duties of his life and for which he is not unwilling to dye such as the intercession and advocation of Christ remission of sins the resurrection the mysterious arts and mercies of mans redemption Christs triumph over death and all the powers of hell the covenant of grace or the blessed issues of repentance and above all the article of eternal life upon the strength of which 11000 virgins went cheerfully together to their martyrdome and 20000 Christians were burned by Dioclesian on a Christmas day and whole armies of Asian Christians offered themselves to the Tribunals of Arius Anthonius and whole colledges of severe persons were instituted who lived upon religion whose dinner was the Eucharist whose supper was praise and their nights were watches and their dayes were labour for the hope of which then men counted it gain to lose their estates and gloried in their sufferings and rejoyced in their persecutions and were glad at their disgraces this is the article that hath made all the Martyrs of Christ confident and glorious and if it does not more then sufficiently strengthen our spirits to the present suffering it is because we understand it not but have the appetites of beasts and fools But if the sick man fixes his thoughts and lets his habitation to dwell here he swells his hope and masters his fears and eases his sorrows and overcomes his temptations 4. Let the sick man endeavour to turn his faith of the Articles into love of them and that will be an excellent instrument not onely to refresh his sorrows but to confirm his faith in defiance of all temptations For a sick man and a disturbed understanding are not competent and fit instruments to judge concerning the reasonablenesse of a proposition But therefore let him consider and love it because it is usefull and necessary profitable and gracious and when he is once in love with it and then also renews his love to it when he feels the need of it he is an interested person and for his own sake will never let it go and passe into the shadows of doubting or the utter-darknesse of infidelity An act of love will make him have a mind to it and we easily beleeve what we love but very uneasily part with our belief which we for so great an interest have chosen and entertained with a great affection 5. Let the sick person be infinitely carefull that his faith be not tempted by any man or any thing and when it is in any degree weakned let him lay fast hold upon the conclusion upon the Article it self and by earnest prayer beg of God to guide him in certainty and safety For let him consider that the Article is better then all its contrary or contradictory and he is concerned that it be true and concerned also that he do beleeve it but he can receive no good at all if Christ did not die if there be no resurrection if his Creed hath deceived him therefore all that
God had made appetites of pleasure in man that in them the scene of his obedience should lye For when God made instances of mans obedience he 1. either commanded such things to be done which man did naturally desire or 2. such things which did contradict his natural desires or 3. such which were indifferent Not the first and the last For it could be no effect of love or duty towards God for a man to eat when he was impatiently hungry and could not stay from eating neither was it any contention of obedience or labour of love for a man to look Eastward once a day or turn his back when the North winde blew fierce and loud Therefore for the trial and instance of obedience God made his laws so that they should lay restraint upon mans appetites so that man might part with something of his own that he may give to God his will and deny it to himself for the interest of his service and chastity is the denyall of a violent desire and justice is parting with money that might help to inrich me and meekness is a huge contradiction to pride and revenge and the wandring of our eyes and the greatnesse of our fancy and our imaginative opinions are to be lessened that we may serve God there is no other way of serving God we have nothing else to present unto him we do not else give him any thing or part of our selves but when we for his sake part with what we naturally desire and difficulty is essential to vertue and without choice there can be no reward in the satisfaction of our natural desires there is no election we run to them as beasts to the river or the crib If therefore any man shall teach or practise such a religion that satisfies all our natural desires in the dayes of desire and passion of lust and appetites and only turns to God when his appetites are gone his desires cease this man hath overthrown the very being of vertues and the essential constitution of religion Religion is no religion and vertue is no act of choice and reward comes by chance and without condition if we onely are religious when we cannot choose if we part with our money when we cannot keep it with our lust when we cannot act it with our desires when they have left us death is a certain mortifier but that mortification is deadly not useful to the purposes of a spiritual life When we are compeld to depart from our evil customs and leave to live that we may begin to live then we dye to dye that life is the prologue to death and thenceforth we die eternally S. Cyril speaks of certain people that chose to worship the sun because he was a day God for believing that he was quenched every â—â—ght in the sea or that he had no influence upon them that light up candles and lived by the light of fire they were confident they might be Atheists all night and live as they list Men who divide their little portion of time between religion and pleasures between God and Gods enemy think that God is to rule but in his certain period of time and that our life is the stage for passion and folly and the day of death for the work of our life but as to God both the day and night are alike so are the first and the last of our dayes all are his due and he will account severely with us for the follies of the first and the evil of the last The evils and the pains are great which are reserved for those who defer their restitution to Gods favour till their death And therefore Antisthenes said well It is not the happy death but the happy life that makes man happy It is in piety as in fame and reputation he secures a good name but loosely that trusts his fame and celebritie onely to his ashes and it is more a civilitie 〈◊〉 then the base of a firm reputation that men speak honour of their departed relatives but if their life be vertuous it forces honour from contempt and snatches it from the hand of envy and it shines thorough the crevises of detraction and as it anointed the head of the living so it embalms the body of the dead From these premises if followes that when we discourse of a sick mans repentance it is intended to be not a beginning but the prosecution and consummation of the covenant of repentance which Christ stipulated with us in Baptisme and which we needed all our life and which we began long before this last arrest and in which we are now to make further progresse that we may arrive to that integrity and fulnesse of of dutie that our sins may be blotted out when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord. SECT VI. Rules for the practise of Repentance in sicknesse 1. LEt the sick man consider at what gate this sicknesse entred and if he can discover the particular let him instantly passionately and with great contrition dash the crime in pieces lest he descend into his grave in the midst of a sin and thence remove into an ocean of eternal sorrowes but if he onely suffers the common fate of man and knowes not the particular inlet he is to be governed by the following measures 2. Inquire into the repentance of thy former life particularly whether it were of a great and perfect grief and productive of fixed resolutions of holy living and reductive of these to act How many dayes and nights have we spent in sorrow or care in habitual and actual pursuances of vertue what instrument we have chosen and used for the eradication of sin how we have judged our selves and how punished and in summe whether we have by the grace of repentance changed our life from criminal to vertuous from one habit to another and whether we have paid for the pleasure of our sin by smart or sorrow by the effusion of alms or pernoctations or abodes in prayers so as the spirit hath been served in our repentance as earnestly and as greatly as our appetites have been provided for in the dayes of our shame and folly 3. Supply the imperfections of thy repentance by a general or universal sorrow for the sins not onely since the last communion or absolution but of thy whole life for all sins known and unknown repented and unrepented of ignorance or infirmity which thou knowest or which others have accused thee of thy clamorous and thy whispering sins the sinnes of scandall and the sinnes of a secret conscience of the flesh and of the spirit for it would be but a sad arrest to thy soul wandring in strange and unusuall regions to see a scroll of uncancelled sins represented and charged upon thee for want of care and notices and that thy repentance shall become invalid because of its imperfections 4. To this purpose it is usually advised by spirituall persons
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.
that it is not reasonable to think that every man and every life and an easie religion shall possesse such infinite glories * That although heaven is a gift yet there is a great severity and strict exacting of the conditions on our part to receive that gift * That some persons who have lived strictly for 40. years together yet have miscarried by some one crime at last or some secret hypocrisie or a latent pride or a creeping ambition or a phantastic spirit and therefore much lesse can they hope to receive so great portions of felicities when their life hath been a continuall declination from those severities which might have created confidence of pardon and acceptation through the mercies of God and the merits of Jesus * That every good man ought to be suspicious of himself and in his judgement concerning his own condition to fear the worst that he may provide for the better * That we are commanded to work out our salvation with fear trembling * That this precept was given with very great reason considering the thousand thousand wayes of miscarrying * That S. Paul himself and S. Arsenius and S. Elzearius and divers other remarkable Saints had at some times great apprehensions of the dangers of failing of the mighty price of their high calling * That the stake that is to be secured is of so great an interest that all our industry and all the violences we can suffer in the prosecution of it are not considerable * That this affair is to be done but once and then never any more unto eternal ages * That they who professe themselves servants of the institution and servants of the law and discipline of Jesus will find that they must judge themselves by the proportions of that law by which they were to rule themselves * That the laws of society and civility and the voices of my company are as ill judges as they are guides but we are to stand or fall by his sentence who will not consider or value the talk of idle men or the persuasion of wilfully abused consciences but of him who hath felt our infirmity in all things but sin and knowes where our failings are unavoidable and where and in what degree they are excusable but never will endure a sin should seize upon any part of our love and deliberate choice or carelesse cohabitation * That if our conscience accuse us not yet are we not hereby justified for God is greater then our consciences * That they who are most innocent have their consciences most tender and sensible * That scrupulous persons are alwayes most religious and that to feel nothing is not a signe of life but of death * That nothing can be hid from the eyes of the Lord to whom the day and the night publike and private words and thoughts actions and designes are equally discernable * That a lukewarme person is onely secured in his own thoughts but very unsafe in the event and despised by God * That we live in an Age in which that which is called and esteemed a holy life in the dayes of the Apostles and holy primitives would have been esteemed indifferent sometimes scandalous and alwayes cold That what was a truth of God then is so now and to what severities they were tyed for the same also we are to be accountable and heaven is not now an easier purchase then it was then * That if he will cast up his accounts even with a superficial eye Let him consider how few good works he hath done how inconsiderable is the relief which he gave to the poor how little are the extraordinaries of his religion and how unactive and lame how polluted and disordered how unchosen and unpleasant were the ordinary parts and periods of it and how many and great sins have stained his course of life and until he enters into a particular scrutinie let him only revolve in his minde what his general course hth been and in the way of prudence let him say whether it was laudable and holy or onely indifferent and excusable and if he can think it onely excusable and so as to hope for pardon by such suppletories of faith and arts of persuasion which he and others use to take in for auxiliaries to their unreasonable confidence then he cannot but think it very fit that he search into his own state and take a Guide and erect a tribunal or appear before that which Christ hath erected for him on earth that he may make his accesse fairer when he shall be called before the dreadfull Tribunal of Christ in the clouds For if he can be confident upon the stock of an unpraised or a looser life and should dare to venture upon wilde accounts without order without abatements without consideration without conduct without fear without scrutinies and confessions and instruments of amends or pardon he either knows not his danger or cares not for it and little understands how great a horrour that is that a man should rest his head for ever upon a cradle of flames and lye in a bed of sorrows and never sleep and never end his groans or the gnashing of his teeth This is that which some spiritual persons call a wakening the sinner by the terrours of the law which is a good analogie or Tropical expression to represent the threatnings of the Gospel and the dangers of an incurious and a sinning person but we have nothing else to do with the terrours of the law for Blessed be God they concern us not the terrours of the law were the intermination of curses upon all those that ever broke any of the least Commandements once or in any instance And to it the righteousnesse of faith is opposed The terrors of the law admitted no repentance no pardon no abatement and were so severe that God never inflicted them at all according to the letter because he admitted all to repentance that desired it with a timely prayer unlesse in very few cases as of Achan or Corah the gatherer of sticks upon the Sabbath-day or the like but the state of threatnings in the Gospel is very fearful because the conditions of avoiding them are easie and ready and they happen to evil persons after many warnings second thoughts frequent invitations to pardon and repentance and after one entire pardon consigned in Baptism and in this sense it is necessary that such persons as we now deal withall should be instructed concerning their danger 4. When the sick man is either of himself or by these considerations set forward with purposes of repentance and confession of his sins in order to all its holy purposes and effects then the Minister is to assist him in the understanding the number of his sins that is the several kinds of them and the various manners of prevaricating the divine commandments for as for the number of the particulars in every kinde he will need lesse help and if he did he
learning in publike charge and by all others in their proportions 10. The ministers of religion must take care that the sick mans confession be as minute and particular as it can and that as few sins as may be be entrusted to the generall prayer of pardon for all sins for by being particular and enumerative of the variety of evils which have disordered his life his repentance is disposed to be more pungent and afflictive and therefore more salutary and medicinall it hath in it more sincerity and makes a better judgement of the finall condition of the man and from thence it is certain the hopes of the sick man can be more confident and reasonable 11. The spirituall man that assists at the repentance of the sick must not be inquisitive into all the circumstances of the particular sins but be content with those that are direct parts of the crime and aggravation of the sorrow Such as frequency long abode and earnest choice in acting them violent desires great expense scandall of others dishonour to the religion dayes of devotion and religious solemnities holy places and the degrees of boldnesse and impudence perfect resolution and the habit If the sick person be reminded or inquired into concerning these it may prove a good instrument to increase his contrition and perfect his penitentiall sorrows and facilitate his ablution and the means of his amendment But the other circumstances as of the relative person in the participation of the crime the measures or circumstances of the impure action the name of the injured man or woman the quality or accidentall condition these and all the like are but questions springing from curiosity and producing scruple and apt to turn into many inconveniencies 11. The Minister in this duty of repentance must be diligent to observe concerning the person that repents that he be not imposed upon by some one excellent thing that was remarkable in the sick mans former life For there are some people of one good thing Some are charitable to the poor out of kind-heartednesse and the same good-nature makes them easie and compliant with drinking persons and they die with drink but cannot live with charity and their alms it may be shall deck their monument or give them the reward of loving persons and the poor mans thanks for alms and procure many temporall blessings but it is very sad that the reward should be all spent in this world some are rarely just persons and punctuall observers of their word with men but break their promises with God and make no scruple of that In these and all the like cases the spirituall man must be carefull to remark that good proceeds from an intire and integrall cause and evil from every part That one sicknesse can make a man die but he cannot live and be called a sound man without an intire health and therefore if any confidence arises upon that stock so as that it hinder the strictness of the repentance it must be allayed with the representment of this sad truth That he who reserves one evil in his choice hath chosen an evil portion and colliquintida and death is in the pot and he that worships the God of Israel with a frequent sacrifice and yet upon the anniversary will bow in the house of Venus and loves to see the follies and the nakednesse of Rimmon may eat part of the flesh of the sacrifice and fill his belly but shall not be refreshed by the holy cloud arising from the altar or the dew of heaven descending upon the mysteries 12. And yet the Minister is to estimate that one or more good things is to be an ingredient into his judgement concerning the state of his soul and the capacities of his restitution and admission to the peace of the Church and according as the excellency and usefulnesse of the grace hath been and according to the degrees and the reasons of its prosecution so abatements are to be made in the injunctions and impositions upon the penitent For every vertue is one degree of approach to God and though in respect of the acceptation it is equally none at all that is it is as certain a death if a man dies with one mortall wound as if he had twenty yet in such persons who have some one or more excellencies though not an intire piety there is naturally a neerer approach to the estate of grace then in persons who have done evils and are eminent for nothing that is good But in making judgement of such persons it is to be inquired into and noted accordingly why the sick person was so eminent in that one good thing whether by choice and apprehension of his duty or whether it was a vertue from which his state of life ministred nothing to dehort or discourage him or whether it was onely a consequent of his naturall temper and constitution If the first then it supposes him in the neighbourhood of the state of grace and that in other things he was strongly tempted The second is a felicity of his education and an effect of providence The third is a felicity of his nature and a gift of God in order to spirituall purposes But yet of every one of these advantage is to be made If he conscience of his duty was the principle then he is ready formed to entertain all other graces upon the same reason and his repentance must be made more sharp and penall because he is convinced to have done against his conscience in all the other parts of his life but the judgement concerning his finall state ought to be more gentle because it was a huge temptation that hindred the man and abused his infirmity but if either his calling or his nature were the parents of the grace he is in the state of a morall man in the just and proper meaning of the word and to be handled accordingly that vertue disposed him rarely well to many other good things but was no part of the grace of sanctification and therefore the mans repentance is to begin anew for all that and is to be finished in the returns of health if God grants it but if he denies it it is much very much the worse for all that sweet natur'd vertue 13. When the confession is made the spirituall man is to execute the office of a Restorer and a Iudge in the following particulars and manner SECT IIII. Of the ministring to the restitution and pardon or reconciliation of the sick person by administring the Holy Sacrament IF any man be overtaken in a fault ye which are spiritual restore such a one in the spirit of meeknesse That 's the Commission and Let the Elders of the Church pray over the sick man and if he have committed sins they shall be forgiven him that 's the effect of his power and his ministery But concerning this some few things are to be considered 1. It is the office of the Presbyters and Ministers
in temporall instances for he ever gave me sufficient for my life and although he promised such supplies and grounded the confidences of them upon our first seeking the kingdom of heaven and its righteousnesse yet he hath verified it to me who have not sought it as I ought But therefore I hope he accepted my endeavour or will give his great gifts and our great expectation even to the weakest endeavour to the least so it be a hearty piety * And sometimes I have had some chearful visitations of Gods Spirit and my cup hath been crowned with comfort and the wine that made my heart glad danced in the chalice and I was glad that God would have me so and therefore I hope this cloud may passe for that which was then a real cause of comfort is so still if I could disâ—ern it and I shall discern it when the veil is taken from my eyes * and blessed be God I can still remember that there are temptations to despair and they could not be temptations if they were not apt to perswade and had seeming probability on their side and they that despair think they do it with greatest reason for if they were not confident of the reason but that it were such an argument as might be opposed or suspected then they could not despair despair assents as firmly and strongly as faith it self but because it is a temptation and despair is a horrid sin therefore it is certain those persons are unreasonably abused and they have no reason to despair for all their confidence and therefore although I have strong reasons to condemn my self yet I have more reason to condemn my despair which therefore is unreasonable because it is a sin and a dishonour to God and a ruine to my condition and verifies it self if I do not look to it for as the hypochondriac person that thought himself dead made his dream true when he starved himself because dead people eat not so do despairing sinners lose Gods mercies by refusing to use and to believe them * And I hope it is a disease of judgement not an intolerable condition that I am falling to because I have been told so concerning others who therefore have been afflicted because they see not their pardon sealed after the manner of this world and the affairs of the Spirit are transacted by immaterial notices by propositions and spiritual discourses by promises which are to be verified hereafter and here we must live in a cloud in darknesse under a veil in fear and uncertainties and our very living by faith and hope is a life of mystery and secresie the onely part of the manner of that life in which we shall live in the state of separation and when a distemper of body or an infirmity of minde happens in the instances of such secret and reserved affairs we may easily mistake the manner of our notices for the uncertainty of the thing and therefore it is but reason I should stay till the state and manner of my abode be changed before I despair there it can be no sin nor error here it may be both and if it be that it is also this and then a man may perish for being miserable and be undone for being a fool In conclusion my hope is in God and I will trust him with the event which I am sure will be just and I hope full of mercy * However now I will use all the spiritual arts of reason and religion to make me more and more to love God that if I miscarry Charity also shall fail and something that loves God shall perish and be damned which if it be impossible then I may do well These considerations may be useful to men of little hearts and of great piety or if they be persons who have lived without infamy or begun their repentance so late that it is very imperfect and yet so early that it was before the arrest of death But if the man be a vitious person and hath persevered in a vitious life till his death-bed these considerations are not proper Let him inquire in the words of the first Disciples after Pentecost Men and brethren what shall we do to be saved and if they can but entertain so much hope as to enable them to do so much of their dutie as they can for the present it is all that can be provided for them an inquirie in their case can have no other purposes of religion or prudence and the Minister must be infinitely careful that he do no not go about to comfort vitious persons with the comforts belonging to Gods elect lest he prostitute holy things and make them common and his sermons deceitful and vices be incouraged in others and the man himself finde that he was deceived when he descends into his house of sorrow But because very few men are tempted with too great fears of failing but very many are tempted by confidence and presumption the Ministers of religion had need be instructed with spiritual armour to resist this fiery dart of the Devil when it operates to evil purposes SECT VI. Considerations against Presumption I Have already enumerated many particulars to provoke a drowzy conscience to a scrutinie and to a suspicion of himself that by seeing cause to suspect his condition he might more freely accuse himself and attend to the necessities and duties of repentance but if either before or in his repentance he grow too big in in his spirit so as either he does some little violence to the modesties of humilitie or abate his care and zeal of his repentance the spiritual man must allay his frowardnesse by representing to him 1. That the growths in grace are long difficult uncertain hindred of many parts and great variety 2. That an infant grace is soon dash'd and discountenanced often running into an inconvenience and the evils of an imprudent conduct being zealous and forward and therefore confident but alwayes with the least reason and the greatest danger like children and young fellows whose confidence hath no other reason but that they understand not their danger and their follies 3. That he that puts on his armour ought not to boast as he that puts it off and the Apostle chides the Galatians for ending in the flesh after they had begun in the spirit 4. that a man cannot think too meanly of himself but very easily he may think too high 5 That a wise man will alwayes in a matter of great concernment think the worst and a good man will condemn himself with hearty sentence 6. That humility and modesty of judgement and of hope are very good instruments to procure a mercie and a fair reception at the day of our death but presumption or bold opinions serve no end of God or man and is alwayes imprudent ever fatal and of all things in the world is its own greatest enemy for the more any man presumes the greater reason he hath to fear 7. That a mans
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
communication from an Angel or the sâ—ock of acquired notices here below it may the rather endear us to our charities or duties to them respectively since our vertues use not to live upon abstractions and Metaphysical perfections or inducements but then thrive when they have materiall arguments such which are not too far from sense However it be it is certain they are not dead and though we no more see the souls of our dead friends then we did when they were alive yet we have reason to beleeve them to know more things and better And if our sleep be an image of death we may also observe concerning it that it is a state of life so separate from communications with the body that it is one of the wayes of Oracle and prophecy by which the soul best declares her immortality and the noblenesse of her actions and powers if she could get free from the body as in the state of separation or a clear dominion over it as in the resurrection To which also this consideration may be added that men long time lived the life of sence before they use their reason and till they have sumished their head with experiments and notices of many things they cannot at all discourse of any thing but when they come to use their reason all their knowledge is nothing but remembrance and we know by proportions by similitudes and dissimilitudes by relations and oppositions by causes and effects by comparing things with things all which are nothing but operations of understanding upon the stock of former notices of something we knew before nothing but remembrances all the heads of Topicks which are the stock of all arguments and sciences in the world are a certain demonstration of this And he is the wisest man that remembers most and joyns those remembrances together to the best purposes of discourse From whence it may not be improbably gathered that in the state of separation if there be any act of understanding that is if the understanding be alive it must be relative to the notices it had in this world and therefore the acts of it must he discourses upon all the parts and persons of their conversation and relation excepting onely such new revelations which may be communicated to it concerning which we know nothing But if by seeing Sacrates I think upon Plato and by seeing a picture I remember a Man and by beholding two friends I remember my own and my friends need and he is wisest that drawes most lines from the same Centre and most discourses from the same Notices it cannot but be very probable to beleeve since the separate souls understand better if they understand at all that from the Notices they carried from hence and what they find there equall or unequall to those Notices they can better discover the things of their friends then we can here by our conjectures and craftiest imaginations and yet many men here can guesse shrewdly at the thoughts and designes of such men with whom they discourse or of whom they have heard or whose characters they prudently have perceived I have no other end in this discourse but that we may be ingaged to do our duty to our Dead lest peradventure they should perceive our neglect and be witnesses of our transient affections and forgetfulnesse Dead persons have religion passed upon them and a solemn reverence and if we think a Ghost beholds us it may be we may have upon us the impressions likely to be made by love and fear and religion However we are sure that God sees us and the world sees us and if it be matter of duty towards our Dead God will exact it if it be matter of kindnesse the world will and as Religion is the band of that so fame and reputation is the endearment of this It remains that we who are alive should so live and by the actions of Religion attend the coming of the day of the Lord that we neither be surprized nor leave our duties imperfect nor our sins uncanceld nor our persons unreconciled nor God unappeased but that when we descend to our graves we may rest in the bosome of the Lord till the mansions be prepared where we shall sing and feast eternally Amen Te Deum laudamus THE END BEsides this Rule of Holy Dying the Author hath in Print 1. The Rule of Holy Living 2. The Liberty of Prophesying 3. Episcopacie asserted 4 o 4. The History of the Life and Death of the ever blessed Iesus Christ. 4 o 5. An Apologie for Authorized and â—et forms of Lyturgie 4 o 6. A Sermon Preached at Oxon. on the Anniversary of the fifth of November 4 o 7. Together with 28. Sermons Preached at Golden grove fol. Lately published viz. SErmon 1.2 Of the Spirit of Grace Rom. 8. ver 9.10 Sermon 3.4 The descending and entailed curse cut off Exodus 20. part of the 5. verse Sermon 5.6 The invalidity of a late or death-bed repentance Ier. 13.6 Sermon 7.8 The deceitfulnesse of the heart Ierem. 17.9 Sermon 9.10.11 The faith and patience of the Saints Or the righteous cause oppressed 1 Pet. 4.17 Sermon 12.13 The mercy of the Divine judgements or Gods method in curing sinners Rom. 2.4 Sermon 14.15 Of groweth in grace with its proper instruments and signes 2 Pet. 3.18 Sermon 16.17 Of groweth in sin or the severall states and degrees of sinners with the manner how they are to be treated Iude Epist. ver 22 23. Sermon 18.19 The foolish exchange Matth. 16. ver 26. Sermon 20.21.22 The Serpent and the Dove or a Discourse of Christian Prudence Matth. 10. latter part of ver 16. Sermon 23.24 Of Christian simplicitie Matt. 10. latter part of ver 16. Sermon 25.26.27 The Miracles of the Divine Mercy Psal. 86.5 A Funerall Sermon Preached at the Obsequies of the right Honourable the Countesse of Carbery 2 Sam. 14.14 A Discourse of the Divine Institution necessity sacrednesse and separation of the Office Ministeriall Printed for Richard Royston at the Angel in Ivie-Lane * Vel quia nil rectum nisi quod placuit â—ibi ducunt Vel quia turpe putant parere minoâ—ibus quae Imberbes didicere senes perdenda fateri * Tenellis adhuc infantiae suae persuasionibus in senectute puerascunt Mamertus Concil Trid. hist lib 4. * Tertul de Monog S. Cyprian l. 1. ep 9 Sa. Athan q. 33. S. Cyril myst cat 5. Epiphan Haeres 75. Aug. de haeres c. 33. Concil Carth. 3. c. 29 * Dii majorum umbris tenuem sine pondere terram Spirantesque crocos in urna perpetuum yer Pers. Sat. 7. Otia das nobis sed qualia forat ulioâ— Meccenas Placco Virgilio que m◠〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 4 James 14. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Nihil sibi quisquam de futuro debet promittere Id quoque quod teâ—etur per 〈◊〉 anus exit