that the sick man make an universal confession or a renovation and repetition of all the particular confessions and accusations of his whole life that now at the foot of his account he may represent the summe totall to God and his conscience and make provisions for their remedie and pardon according to his present possibilities 5. Now is the time to make reflex acts of repentance that as by a general repentance we supply the want of the just extension of parts so by this we may supply the proper measures of the intension of degrees In our health we can consider concerning our own acts whether they be real or hypocritical essential or imaginary sincere or upon interest integrall or imperfect commensurate or defective and although it is a good caution of securities after all our care and diligence still to suspect our selves and our own deceptions and for ever to beg of God pardon and acceptance in the union of Christs passion and intercession yet in proper speaking reflex acts of repentance being a suppletory after the imperfection of the direct are then most fit to be used when we cannot proceed in and prosecute the direct actions To repent because we cannot repent and to grieve because we cannot grieve was a device invented to serve the turn of the mother of Peter Gratian but it was used by her and so advised to be in her sicknesse and last actions of repentance for in our perfect health and understanding if we doe not understand our first act we cannot discern our second and if we be not sorry for our sins we cannot be sorry for want of sorrows it is a contradiction to say we can because want of sorrow to which we are obliged is certainly a great sin and if we can grieve for that then also for the rest if not for all then not for this but in the dayes of weaknesse the case is otherwise for then our actions are imperfect our discourse weak our internall actions not discernable our fears great our work to be abbreviated and our defects to be supplied by spirituall arts and therefore it is proper and proportionate to our state and to our necessity to beg of God pardon for the imperfections of our repentance acceptance of our weaker sorrows supplies out of the treasures of grace and mercy and thus repenting of the evil and unhandsome adherencies of our repentance in the whole integrity of the duty it will become a repentance not to be repented of 6. Now is the time beyond which the sick man must at no hand defer to make restitution of all his unjust possessions or other mens rights and satisfactions for all injuries and violencies according to his obligation and possibilities for although many circumstances might impede the acting it in our lives-time and it was permitted to be deferred in many cases because by it justice was not hindred and oftentimes piety and equity were provided for yet because this is the last scene of our life he that does not act it so far as he can or put it into certain conditions and order of effecting can never do it again and therefore then to defer it is to omit it and leaves the repentance defective in an integrall and constituent part 7. Let the sick man be diligent and watchfull that the principle of his repentance be contrition or sorrow for sins commenced upon the love of God For although sorrow for sins upon any motive may lead us to God by many intermediall passages and is the threshold of returning sinners yet it is not good nor effective upon our death-bed because repentance is not then to begin but must then be finished and completed and it is to be a supply and reparation of all the imperfections of that duty and therefore it must by that time be arrived to contrition that is it must have grown from fear to love from the passions of a servant to the affections of a son The reason of which besides the precedent is this because when our repentance is in this state it supposes the man also in a state of grace a well grown Christian for to hate sin out of the love of God is not the felicity of a new convert or an infant grace or if it be that love also is in its infancy but it supposes a good progresse and the man habitually vertuous and tending to perfection and therefore contrition or repentance so qualified is usefull to great degrees of pardon because the man is a gracious person and that vertue is of good degree and consequently fit imployment for him that shall work no more but is to appear before his Judge to receive the hire of his day And if his repentance be contrition even before this state of sicknesse let it be increased by spirituall arts and the proper exercises of charity Means of exciting contrition or repentance of sins proceeding from the love of God TO which purpose the sick man may consider and is to be reminded if he does not that there are in God all the motives and causes of amability in the world that God is so infinitely good that there are some of the greatest and most excellent spirits of heaven whose work and whose felicity and whose perfections and whose nature it is to flame and burn in the brightest and most excellent love * that to love God is the greatest glory of Heaven that in him there are such excellencies that the smallest rayes of them communicated to our weaker understandings are yet sufficient to cause ravishments and transportations and satisfactions and joyes unspeakeable and full of glory * that all the wise Christians of the world know and feel such causes to love God that they all professe themselves ready to die for the love of God * and the Apostles and millions of the Martyrs did die for him * And although it be harder to live in his love then to die for it yet all the good people that ever gave their names to Christ did for his love endure the crucifying their lusts the mortification of their appetites the contradictions and death of their most passionate naturall desires * that Kings and Queens have quitted their Diadems and many married Saints have turned their mutuall vowes into the love of Jesus and married him onely keeping a virgin chastity in a married life that they may more tenderly expresse their love to God * that all the good we have derives from Gods love to us and all the good we can hope for is the effect of his love and can descend onely upon them that love him * that by his love it is that we receive the holy Jesus * and by his love we receive the Holy Spirit * and by his love we feel peace and joy within our spirits * and by his love we receive the mysterious Sacrament * And what can be greater then that from the goodnesse and love of God we receive Jesus Christ and
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
ignorance and prodigious errours made ridiculous with a thousand weaknesses worne away with labours loaden with diseases daily vexed with dangers and temptations and in love with misery we are weakned with delights afflicted with want with the evils of my self and of all my family and with the sadnesses of all my friends and of all good men even of the whole Church and therefore me thinks we need not be troubled that God is pleased to put an end to all these troubles and to let them sit down in a natural period which if we please may be to us the beginning of a better life When the Prince of Persia wept because his army should all die in the revolution of an age Artabanus told him that they should all meet with evils so many and so great that every man of them should wish himself dead long before that Indeed it were a sad thing to be cut of the stone and we that are in health tremble to think of it but the man that is wearied with the disease looks upon that sharpnesse as upon his cure and remedie and as none need to have a tooth drawn so none could well endure it but he that hath felt the pain of it in his head so is our life so full of evils that therefore death is no evil to them that have felt the smart of this or hope for the joyes of a better 2. But as it helps to ease a certain sorrow as a fire drawes out fire and a nail drives forth a nail so it instructs us in a present duty that is that we should not be so fond of a perpetual storm nor doat upon the transient gaudes and gilded thorns of this world They are not worth a passion not worth a sigh or a groan not of the price of one nights watching and therefore they are mistaken and miserable persons who since Adam planted thorns round about Paradise are more in love with that hedge then all the fruits of the garden sottish admirers of things that hurt them of sweet poisons gilded daggers and silken halters Tell them they have lost a bounteous friend a rich purchase a fair farm a wealthy donative and you dissolve their patience it is an evil bigger then their spirit can bear it brings sicknesse and death they can neither eate nor sleep with such a sorrow But if you represent to them the evils of a vitious habit and the dangers of a state of sin if you tell them they have displeased God and interrupted their hopes of heaven it may be they will be so civil as to hear it patiently and to treat you kindly and first commend and then to forget your story because they prefer this world with all its sorrowes before the pure unmingled felicities of heaven But it is strange that any man should be so passionately in love with the thorns that grow on his own ground that he should wear them for armelets and knit them in his shirt and prefer them before a kingdom and immortality No man loves this world the better for his being poor but men that love it because they have great possessions love it because it is troublesome and chargeable full of noise and temptation because it is unsafe and ungoverned flattered and abused and he that considers the troubles of an overlong garment and of a crammed stomach a trailing gown and a loaden Table may justly understand that all that for which men are so passionate is their hurt and their objection that which a temperate man would avoid and a wise man cannot love He that is no fool but can consider wisely if he be in love with this world we need not despair but that a witty man might reconcile him with tortures and make him think charitably of the Rack and be brought to dwell with Vipers and Dragons and entertain his Guests with the shrikes of Mandrakes Cats and Scrich Owls with the filing of iron and the harshnesse of rending silk or to admire the harmony that is made by a herd of Evening wolves when they misse their draught of blood in their midnight Revels The groans of a man in a fit of the stone are worse then all these and the distractions of a troubled conscience are worse then those groans and yet a carelesse merry sinner is worse then all that But if we could from one of the battlements of Heaven espie how many men and women at this time lye fainting and dying for want of bread how many young men are hewen down by the sword of war how many poor Orphans are now weeping over the graves of their Father by whose life they were enabled to eat If we could but hear how many Mariners and Passengers are at this present in a storm and shrike out because their keel dashes against a Rock or bulges under them how many people there are that weep with want and are mad with oppression or are desperate by too quick a sense of a constant infelicity in all reason we should be glad to be out of the noise and participation of so many evils This is a place of sorrows and tears of great evils and a constant calamity let us remove from hence at least in affections and preparation of minde CHAP. II. A general preparation towards a holy and blessed Death by way of exercise SECT I. Three precepts preparatory to a holy death to be practised in our whole life 1. HE that would die well must alwayes loook for death every day knocking at the gates of the grave and then the gates of the grave shall never prevail upon him to do him mischief This was the advice of all the wise and good men of the world who especially in the dayes and periods of their joy and festival egressions chose to throw some ashes into their chalices some sober remembrances of their fatal period Such was the black shirt of Saladine the tomb-stone presented to the Emperour of Constantinople on his Coronation day the Bishop of Romes two reeds with flax and wax taper the Egyptian skeleton served up at feasts and Trimalcions banquet in Petronius in which was brought in the image of a dead mans bones of silver with spondiles exactly turning to every of the Guests and saying to every one that you and you must die and look not one upon another for every one is equally concerned in this sad representment These in phantastic semblances declare a severe counsel and useful meditation and it is not easy for a man to be gay in his imagination or to be drunk with joy or wine pride or revenge who considers sadly that he must ere long dwell in a house of darknesse and dishonour and his bodie must be the inheritance of worms and his soul must be what he pleases even as a man makes it here by his living good or bad I have read of a young Hermit who being passionately in love with a young Lady could not by all the
our actions and condemning the Criminal by being Assessors in Gods Tribunal at least we shall obtain the favour of the Court. As therefore every night we must make our bed the memoriall of our grave so let our Evening thoughts be an image of the day of judgement 5. This advice was so reasonable and proper instrument of vertue that it was taught even to the Scholers of Pythagoras by their Master Let not sleep seiz upon the Regions of your senses before you have three times recalled the conversation and accidents of the day Examine what you have committed against the Divine Law what you have omitted of your duty and in what you have made use of the Divine Grace to the purposes of vertue and religion joyning the Iudge reason to the legislative mind or conscience that God may reigne there as a Law-giver and a Judge Then Christs kingdom is set up in our hearts then we alwayes live in the Eye of our Judge and live by the measures of reason religion and sober counsels The benefits we shall receive by practising this advice in order to a blessed death will also adde to the account of reason and fair inducements The Benefits of this exercise 1. By a daily examination of our actions we shall the easier cure a great sin and prevent its arrival to become habitual For to examine we suppose to be a relative duty and instrumentall to something else We examine our selves that we may finde out our failings and cure them and therefore if we use our remedy when the wound is fresh and bleeding we shall finde the cure more certain and lesse painfull For so a Taper when its crown of flames is newly blown off retains a nature so symbolical to light that it will with greedinesse reenkindle and snatch a ray from the neighbour fire So is the soul of Man when it is newly fallen into sin although God be angry with it and the state of Gods favour and its own graciousnesse is interrupted yet the habit is not naturally changed and still God leaves some roots of vertue standing and the Man is modest or apt to be made ashamed and he is not grown a bold sinner but if he sleeps on it and returns again to the same sin and by degrees growes in love with it and gets the custome and the strangenesse of it is taken away then it is his Master and is sweld into a heap and is abetted by use and corroborated by newly entertained principles and is insinuated into his Nature and hath possessed his affections and tainted the will and the understanding and by this time a man is in the state of a decaying Merchant his accounts are so great and so intricate and so much in arrear that to examine it will be but to represent the particulars of his calamity therefore they think it better to pull the napkin before their eyes then to stare upon the circumstances of their death 2. A daily or frequent examination of the parts of our life will interrupt the proceeding and hinder the journey of little sins into a heap For many dayes do not passe the best persons in which they have not many idle words or vainer thoughts to sully the fair whitenesse of their souls Some indiscreet passions or trifling purposes some impertinent discontents or unhandsome usages of their own persons or their dearest Relatives And though God is not extreme to mark what is done amisse and therefore puts these upon the accounts of his Mercy and the title of the Crosse yet in two cases these little sins combine and cluster and we know that grapes were once in so great a bunch that one cluster was the load of two men that is 1. When either we are in love with small sins or 2. When they proceed from a carelesse and incurious spirit into frequency and continuance For so the smallest atomes that dance in all the little cels of the world are so trifling and immaterial that they cannot trouble an eye nor vex the tenderest part of a wound where a barbed arrow dwelt yet when by their infinite numbers as Melissa and Parmenides affirm they danced first into order then into little bodies at last they made the matter of the world So are the little indiscretions of our life they are alwayes inconsiderable if they be considered and contemptible if they be not despised and God does not regard them if we do We may easily keep them asunder by our daily or nightly thoughts and prayers and severe sentences But even the least sand can check the tumultuous pride and become a limit to the Sea when it is in a heap and in united multitudes but if the wind scatter and divide them the little drops and the vainer froth of the water begins to invade the Strand Our sighes can scatter such little offences but then be sure to breath such accents frequently least they knot and combine and grow big as the shoar and we perish in sand in trifling instances He that despiseth little things shall perish by little and little So said the son of Sirach 3. A frequent examination of our actions will intenerate and soften our consciences so that they shall be impatient of any rudenesse or heavier load And he that is used to shrink when he is pressed with a branch of twining Osier will not willingly stand in the ruines of a house when the beam dashes upon the pavement And provided that our nice and tender spirit be not vexed into scruple nor the scruple turn into unreasonable fears nor the fears into superstition he that by any arts can make his spirit tender and apt for religious impressions hath made the fairest seat for religion and the unaptest and uneasiest entertainment for sin and eternal death in the whole world 4. A frequent examination of the smallest parts of our lives is the best instrument to make our repentance particular and a fit remedy to all the members of the whole body of sin For our examination put off to our death-bed of necessity brings us into this condition that very many thousands of our sins must be or not be at al washed off with a general repentance which the more general and indefinite it is it is ever so much the worse And if he that repents the longest and the oftnest and upon the most instances is still during his whole life but an imperfect penitent and there are very many reserves left to be wiped off by Gods mercies and to be eased by collateral assistances or to be groaned for at the terrible day of judgement it will be but a sad story to consider that the sins of a whole life or of very great portions of it shall be put upon the remedy of one examination and the advices of one discourse and the activities of a decayed body and a weak and an amazed Spirit Let us do the best we can we shall finde that the meer sins of ignorance
body and wrapt it self about his head till the Philosophers of Egypt said it was natural that from the marrow of some bodies such productions should arise and indeed it represents the condition of some men who being dead are esteemed saints and beatified persons when their head is encircled with dragons and is entered into the possession of Devils that old serpent and deceiver For indeed their life was secretly so corrupted that such serpents fed upon the ruines of the spirit and the decayes of grace and reason To be cosened in making judgements concerning our finall condition is extremely easie but if we be cosened we are infinitely miserable SECT III. Of exercising Charity during our whole life HE that would die well and happily must in his life time according to all his capacities exercise charity and because Religion is the life of the soul and charity is the life of religion the same which gives life to the better part of man which never dies may obtain of God a mercy to the inferiour part of man in the day of its dissolution 1. Charity is the great chanel through which God passes all his mercy upon mankinde For we receive absolution of our sins in proportion to our forgiving our brother this is the rule of our hopes and the measure of our desire in this world and in the day of death and judgement the great sentence upon mankinde shall be transacted according to our almes which is the other part of Charity Certain it is that God cannot will not never did reject a charitable man in his greatest needs and in his most passionate prayers for God himself is love and every degree of charity that dwells in us is the participation of the divine nature and therefore when upon our death-bed a cloud covers our heads and we are enwrapped with sorrow when we feel the weight of a sicknesse and do not feel the refreshing visitations of Gods loving kindnesse when we have many things to trouble us and looking round about us we see no comforter then call to minde what injuries you have forgiven how apt you were to pardon all affronts and real persecutions how you embraced peace when it was offered you how you followed after peace when it run from you and when you are weary of one side turn upon the other and remember the alms that by the grace of God and his assistances you have done and look up to God and with the eye of faith behold him coming in the cloud and pronouncing the sentence of dooms day according to his mercies and thy charity 2. Charity with its Twin-daughters almes and forgivenesse is especially effectual for the procuring Gods mercies in the day and the manner of our death almes deliver from death said old Tobias and almes make an atonement for sins said the son of Sirach and so said Daniel and so say all the wise men of the world And in this sence also is that of S. Peter Love covers a multitude of sins and S. Clement in his Constitutions gives this counsell If you have any thing in your hands give it that it may work to the remission of thy sins for by faith and alms sins are purged The same also is the counsel of Salviâ—n who wonders that men who are guilty of great and many sins will not work out their pardon by alms and mercy But this also must be added out of the words of Lactantius who makes this rule compleat and useful But think not that because sins are taken away by alms that by thy money thou mayest purchase a license to sin For sins are abolished if because thou hast sinned thou givest to God that is to Gods poor servants and his indigent necessitous creature But if thou sinnest upon confidence of giving thy sins are not abolished For God desires infinitely that men should be purged from their sins and therefore commands us to repent But to repent is nothing else but to professe and affirm that is to purpose and to make good that purpose that they will sin no more Now almes are therefore effective to the abolition and pardon of our sins because they are preparatory to and impetratory of the grace of repentance and are fruits of repentance and therefore S. Chrysostom affirmes that repentance without almes is dead and without wings and can never soar upwards to the element of love But because they are a part of repentance and hugely pleasing to Almighty God therefore they deliver us from the evils of an unhappy and accursed death for so Christ delivered his Disciples from the sea when he appeased the storm though they still sailed in the chanel and this S. Hierome verifies with all his reading and experience saying I do not remember to have read that ever any charitable person died an evil death and although a long experience hath observed Gods mercies to descend upon charitable people like the dew upon Gideons fleece when all the world was dry yet for this also we have a promise which is not onely an argument of a certain number of years as experience is but a security for eternall ages Make ye friends of the mammon of unrighteousnesse that when ye fail they may receive you into everlasting habitations When faith fails and chastity is uselesse and temperance shall be no more then charity shall bear you upon wings of cherubins to the eternall mountain of the Lord. I have been a lover of mankinde and a friend and mercifull and now I expect to communicate in that great kindnesse which he shews that is the great God and Father of men and mercies said Cyrus the Persian on his death-bed I do not mean this should onely be a death-bed charity any more then a death-bed repentance but it ought to be the charity of our life healthfull years a parting with portions of our goods then when we can keep them we must not first kindle our lights when we are to descend into our houses of darknesse or bring a glaring torch suddenly to a dark room that will amaze the eye and not delight it or instruct the body but if our Tapers have in their constant course descended into their grave crowned all the way with light then let the death-bed charity be doubled and the light burn brightest when it is to deck our hearse But concerning this I shall afterwards give account SECT IV. General considerations to enforce the former practises THese are the generall instruments of preparation in order to a holy death It will concern us all to use them diligently and speedily for we must be long in doing that which must be done but once and therefore we must begin betimes and lose no time especially since it is so great a venture and upon it depends so great a state Seneca said well There is no Science or Art in the world so hard as to
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
took so goodly a revenge upon the river Cyndus for his hard passage over it or did not deride or pity the Thracians for shooting arrowes against heaven when it thunders To be angry with God to quarrell with the Divine providence by repining against an unalterable a naturall an easie sentence is an argument of a huge folly and the parent of a great trouble as man is base and foolish to no purpose he throwes away a vice to his own misery and to no advantages of ease and pleasure Fear keeps men in bondage all their life saith Saint Paul and patience makes him his own man and lord of his own interest and person Therefore possesse your selves in patience with reason and religion and you shall die with ease If all the parts of this discourse be true if they be better then dreams and unlesse vertue be nothing but words as a grove is a heap of trees if they be not the Phantasmes of hypochondriacall persons and designes upon the interest of men and their perswasions to evil purposes then there is no reason but that we should really desire death and account it among the good things of God and the sowre and laborious felicities of man S. Paul understood it well when he desired to be dissolved he well enough knew his own advantages and pursued them accordingly But it is certain that he that is afraid of death I mean with a violent and transporting fear with a fear apt to discompose his duty or his patience that man either loves this world too much or dares not trust God for the next SECT IX General rules and exercises whereby our sicknesse may become safe and sanctified 1. TAke care that the cause of thy sicknesse be such as may not sowre it in the principle and original causes of it It a sad calamity to passe into the house of mourning through the gates of intemperance by a drunken meeting or the surfets of a loathed and luxurious Table for then a man suffers the pain of his own â—olly and he is like a fool smarting under the whip which his own vitiousnesse twisted for his back then a man payes the price of his sin and hath a pure and an unmingled sorrow in his suffering and it cannot be alleviated by any circumstances for the whole affair is a meere processe of death and sorrow Sin is in the head sicknesse is in the body and death and an eternity of pains in the tail and nothing can make this condition intolerable unlesse the miracles of the Divine mercy will be pleased to exchange the eternal anger for the temporal True it is that in all sufferings the cause of it makes it noble or ignoble honour or shame tolerable or intolerable For when patience is assaulted by a ruder violence and by a blow from heaven or earth from a gracious God or an unjust man patience looks forth to the doors which way she may escape and if innocence or a cause of religion keep the first entrance then whether she escapes at the gates of life or death there is a good to be received greater then the evils of a sicknesse but if sin thrust in that sicknesse and that hell stands at the door then patience turns into fury and seeing it impossible to go forth with safety rouls up and down with a circular and infinite revolution making its motion not from but upon its own centre it doubles the pain and increases the sorrow till by its weight it breaks the spirit and bursts into the agonies of infinite and eternal ages If we had seen S. Policarp burning to death or S. Laurence rosted upon his gridiron or S. Ignatius exposed to lions or S. Sebastion pierced with arrowes or S. Attalus carried about the theatre with scorn unto his death for the cause of Jesus for religion for God and a holy conscience we should have been in love with flames and have thought the gridiron fairer then the spondae the ribs of a maritall bed and we should have chosen to converse with those beasts rather then those men that brought those beasts forth and estimated the arrows to be the rayes of light brighter then the moon and that disgrace and mistaken pageantry were a solemnity richer and more magficent then Mordecai's procession upon the Kings horse and in the robes of majesty for so did these holy men account them they kissed their stakes and hugged their deaths and ran violently to torments and counted whippings and secular disgraces to be the enamel of their persons and the ointment of their heads and the embalming their names and securing them for immortality But to see Sejanus torne in pieces by the people or Nero crying or creeping timorously to his death when he was condemned to dye more majorum to see Iudas pale and trembling full of anguish sorrow and despair to observe the groanings and intolerable agonies of Herod and Antiochus will tell and demonstrate the causes of patience and impatience to proceed from the causes of the suffering and it is sin onely that makes the cup bitter and deadly when men by vomiting measure up the drink they took in and sick and sad do again taste their meat turned into choler by intemperance the sin and its punishment are mingled so that shame covers the face and sorrow puts a veil of darknesse upon the heart and we scarce pity a vile person that is haled to execution for murder or for treason but we say he deserves it and that every man is concerned in it that he should dye If lust brought the sicknesse or the shame if we truly suffer the reward of our evil deeds we must thank our selves that is we are fallen into an evil condition and are the sacrifice of the Divine justice But if we live holy lives and if we enter well in we are sure to passe on safe and to goe forth with advantage if we list our selves 2. To this relates that we should not counterfeit sicknesse For he that is to be carefull of his passage into a sicknesse will think himself concerned that he fall not into it through a trap door for so it hath sometimes happened that such counterfeiting to light and evil purposes hath ended in a real sufferance Appian tells of a Roman Gentleman who to escape the proscription of the Triumvirate fled and to secure his privacy counterfeited himself blinde on one eye and wore a plaister upon it till beginning to be free from the malice of the three prevailing princes he opened his hood but could not open his eye but for ever lost the use of it and with his eye paid for his libertie and hypocrisie And Celius counterfeited the gout and all its circumstances and pains its dressings and arts of remedy and complaint till at last the gout really entred and spoiled the pageantry His arts of dissimulation were so witty that they put life and motion into the very
the renewings of devotion and in the way of prayer and that is to be continued as long as life and voice and reason dwell with us SECT X. Acts of charity by way of prayer and ejaculation which may also be used for thanksgiving in case of recovery O My soul thou hast said unto the Lord thou art my Lord my goodnesse extendeth not to thee But to the saints that are in the earth and to the excellent in whom is all my delight The Lord is the portion of my inheritance and of my cup thou maintainest my lot As for God his way is perfect the word of the Lord is tried he is a buckler to all those that trust in him For who is God save the Lord or who is a rock save our God It is God that girdeth me with strength and maketh my way perfect Be not thou far from me O Lord O my strength haste thee to help me Deliver my soul from the sword my darling from the power of the dog save me from the lions mouth and thou hast heard me also from among the horns of the Unicorns I will declare thy Name unto my brethren in the midst of the Congregation will I praise thee Ye that fear the Lord praise the Lord ye sons of God J Glorifie him and fear before him all ye sons of men For he hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted neither hath he hid his face from him but when he cryed unto him he heard As the hart panteth after the water brooks so longeth my soul after thee O God My soul thirsteth for God for the living God when shall I come and appear before the Lord. O my God my soul is cast down within me all thy waves and billows are gone over me as with a sword in my bones I am reproached yet the Lord will command his loving kindnesse in the day time and in the night his song shall be with me and my prayer unto the God of my life Blesse ye the Lord in the congregations even the Lord from the fountains of Israel My mouth shall shew forth thy righteousnesse and thy salvation all the day for I know not the numbers thereof I will go in the strength of the Lord God I will make mention of thy righteousnesse even of thine onely O God thou hast taught me from my youth And hitherto have I declared thy wondrous works But I will hope continually and will yet praise thee more and more Thy righteousnesse O God is very high who hast done great things O God who is like unto thee thou which hast shewed me great and sore troubles shalt quicken me again and shalt bring me up again from the depth of the earth Thou shalt encrease thy goodnesse towards me and comfort me on every side My lips shall greatly rejoyce when I sing unto thee And my soul which thou hast redeemed Blessed be the Lord God the God of Israel who only doth wondrous things And blessed be his glorious name for ever and let the whole earth be filled with his glory Amen Amen I love the Lord because he hath heard my voice and my supplication The sorrows of death compassed me I found trouble and sorrow Then called I upon the name of the Lord O Lord I beseech thee deliver my soul. Gracious is the Lord and righteous yea our God is merciful The Lord preserveth the simple I was brought low and he helped me Return to thy rest O my soul the Lord hath dealt bountifully with thee For thou hast delivered my soul from death mine eyes from tears and my feet from falling Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints O Lord truly I am thy servant I am thy servant and the son of thine handmaid thou shalt loose my bonds He that loveth not the Lord Jesus let him be accursed O that I might love thee as well as ever any creature loved thee He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God There is no fear in love The prayer O Most Gracious and eternal God and loving Father who hast powred out thy bowels upon us and sent the son of thy love unto us to die for love and to make us dwell in love and the eternal comprehensions of thy divine mercies O be pleased to inflame my heart with a holy charity towards thee and all the world Lord I forgive all that ever have offended me and beg that both they and I may enter into the possession of thy mercies and feel a gracious pardon from the same fountain of grace and do thou forgive me all the acts of scandall whereby I have provoked or tempted or lessened or disturbed any person Lord let me never have my portion amongst those that divide the union and disturb the peace and break the charities of the Church and Christian communion And though I am fallen into evil times in which Christendom is divided by the names of an evil division yet I am in charity with all Christians with all that love the Lord Jesus and long for his coming and I would give my life to save the soul of any of my brethren and I humbly beg of thee that the publike calamity of the severall societies of the Church may not be imputed to my soul to any evil purposes II. LOrd preserve me in the unity of the holy Church in the love of God and of my neighbours let thy grace inlarge my heart to remember deeply to resent faithfully to use wisely to improve and humbly to give thanks to thee for all thy favours with which thou hast enriched my soul and supported my estate and preserved my person and rescued me from danger and invited me to goodnesse in all the dayes and periods of my life Thou hast led me thorow it with an excellent conduct and I have gone astray after the manner of men but my heart is towards thee O do unto thy servant as thou usest to do unto those that love thy Name let thy truth comfort me thy mercy deliver me thy staffe support me thy grace sanctifie my sorrow and thy goodnesse pardon all my sins thy Angels guide me with safety in this shadow of death and thy most holy Spirit lead me into the land of righteousnesse for thy Names sake which is so comfortable and for Jesus Christ his sake our Dearest Lord and most Gracious Saviour Amen CHAP. V. Of visitation of the sick or the assistance that is to be done to dying persons by the ministery of their Clergy Guides SECT I. GOd who hath made no new Covenant with dying persons distinct from the Covenant of the living hath also appointed no distinct Sacraments for them no other manner of usages but such as are common to all the spirituall necessities of living and healthfull persons In all the dayes of our religion from our baptisme to the resignation and delivery of our soul God hath appointed
sudden refreshment and so also iâ— was in the Cave at Ephesus for by this time the souldier began to think it was fit he should return to his watch and observe the dead bodies he had in charge but when he ascended from his mourning bridal chamber he found that one of the bodies was stolne by the friends of the dead and that he was fallen into an evil condition because by the laws of Ephesus his body was to be fixed in the place of it The poor man returns to his woman cryes out bitterly and in her presence resolves to dye to prevent his death and in secret to prevent his shame but now the womans love was raging like her former sadnesse and grew witty and she comforted her souldier and perswaded him to live lest by losing him who had brought her from death and a more grievous sorrow she should return to her old solemnities of dying and lose her honour for a dream or the reputation of her constancy without the change and satisfaction of an enjoyed love The man would fain have lived if it had been possible and she found out this way for him that he should take the body of her first husband whose funeral she had so strangely mourned and put it upon the gallows in the place of the stolne thief he did so and escaped the present danger to possesse a love which might change as violently as her grief had done But so have I seen a croud of disordered people rush violently and in heaps till their utmost border was restrained by a wall or had spent the fury of the first fluctuation and watry progress and by by it returned to the contrary with the same earnestness only because it was violent ungoverned a raging passion is this croud which when it is not under discipline and the conduct of reason and the proportions of temperate humanity runs passionatly the way it happens and by and by as greedily to another side being swayed by its own weight and driven any whither by chance in all its pursuits having no rule but to do all it can and spend it self in haste and expire with some shame and much undecency When thou hast wept a while compose the body to burial which that it be done gravely decently and charitably we have the example of all nations to engage us and of all ages of the world to warrant so that it is against common honesty and publike fame and reputation not to do this office It is good that the body be kept vailed and secret and not exposed to curious eyes or the dishonours wrought by the changes of death discerned and stared upon by impertinent persons When Cyrus was dying he called his sons and friends to take their leave to touch his hand to see him the last time and gave in charge that when he had put his veil over his face no man should uncover it and Epiphanius his body was rescued from inquisitive eyes by a miracle Let it be interred after the manner of the countrey and the laws of the place and the dignity of the person For so Iacob was buried with great solemnitie and Iosephs bones were carried into Canaan after they had been embalmed and kept four hundred years and devout men carried S. Stephen to his burial making great lamentation over him And Aelian tells that those who were the most excellent persons were buried in purple and men of an ordinary courage and fortune had their Graves onely trimmed with branches of Olive and mourning flowers But when Marc. Anthony gave the body of Brutus to his freed man to be buried honestly he gave also his own mantle to be thrown into his funeral pile and the magnificence of the old funeral we may see largely described by Virgil in the obsequies of Misenus and by Homer in the funeral of Patroclus It was noted for piety in the men of Iabesh-Gilead that they shewed kindness to their Lord Saul and buried him and they did it honourably And our blessed Saviour who was temperate in his expence and grave in all the parts of his life and death as age and sobriety itself yet was pleased to admit the cost of Maries ointment upon his head and feet because she did it against his burial and though she little thought it had bin so nigh yet because he accepted it for that end he knew he had made her apologie sufficient by which he remarked it to be a great act of piety and honorable to inter our friends and relatives according to the proportions of their condition and so to give a testimony of our hopes of their resurrection So far is piety beyond it may be the ostentation and braging of a grief or a designe to serve worse ends such was that of Herod when he made too studied and elaborate a funeral for Aristobulus whom he had murdered and of Regulus for his boy at whose pile he killed dogs nightingales parrots and little horses and such also was the expence of some of the Romans who hating their left wealth gave order by their Testament to have huge portions of it thrown into their fires bathing their locks which were presently to passe thorough the fire with Arabian and Egyptian liquors and balsam of Judea In this as in every thing else as our piety must not passe into superstition or vain expence so neither must the excesse be turned into parcimony and chastised by negligence and impiety to the memory of their dead But nothing of this concerns the dead in real and effective purposes nor is it with care to be provided for by themselves But it is the duty of the living For to them it is all one whether they be carried forth upon a chariot or a woodden bier whether they rot in the air or in the earth whether they be devoured by fishes or by worms by birds or by sepulchral dogs by water or by fire or by delay when Chriton ask'd Socrates how he would be buried he told him I think I shall escape from you and that you cannot catch me But so much of me as you can apprehend use it as you see cause for and bury it but however do it according to the laws There is nothing in this but opinion and the decency of fame to be served Where it is esteemed an honour and the manner of blessed people to descend into the graves of their Fathers there also it is reckoned as a curse to be buried in a strange land or that the birds of the air devour them Some Nations used to eat the bodies of their friends and esteemed that the most honoured sepulture but they were barbarous the Magi never buried any but such as were torn of beasts the Persians besmeared their dead with wax and the Aegyptians with gummes and with great art did condite the bodies and laid them in charnell houses But Cyrus the elder would none of all this
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