when he is ignorant of himself There was a Fable among the Heathens which wise men understood to contain in it great Philosophy In the midst of this sad discourse it will please you perhaps if I relate it and it will please you a great deal more for to learn and live by it After Jupiter had made the world he thought that men would not be restrained from sin without rewards and punishments and so he made two great barrels the one full of good things the other full of bad to be sent down among men as there was occasion Pandora being very desirous to know what was in these barrels did one day broach them and all the good things flew out towards heaven and all the bad towards hell Hope only and Fear remained in the bottom of these Casks the former in that of Evil things and the latter in that of Good When this was done Jupiter threw down these empty Tubs to the earth and all mortals ran at the rareness of the sight to see what they could find in them Some looked into the one and some into the other and though both of them were empty yet they thought verily that the one was full of good and the other full of evil And ever since it came to pass that here below we have nothing but a fancy or conceit of Good mixed with fear and jealousie and a meer conceit of Evil with some hope in the compound of it The Morral of it is this That the things of this world are but empty Goods and inconsiderable Evils They are our own opinions that trouble us with the shadow of evil and that flatter us on the other side with a fair shew of Good All substantiall Good is in heaven and all dreadfull misery is in hell If we go to heaven we are well enough whatsoever we lose if we fall into sin and so into hell we cannot be well though we should enjoy all the world and while we stay here below there is no good thing we enjoy but is accompanied with fear and no evil we suffer but is attended with Hope And there is no hope like that which is laid up in Heaven of enjoying a bliss sincere and pure without any allay at all Let us turn our minds then toward these heavenly things which they did but dream of in the dark ages of the world Let us heartily believe the Gospel which hath brought to light eternal life And then we shall think our selves happy enough if we lose not those things and perhaps the death of our friends and such like crosses befall us that we may not lose them The Almighty Goodness draws our thoughts and affections by these means from transitory comforts and calls them up thither where we hope our Friends are arrived See saith he here is your Home here is your resting place here is the immortal Inheritance that never fades away If you love your selves mind the way hither and suffer nothing to turn you out of it Whatsoever cross befalls you take it up and carry it along with you Let it only spur you to make the more hast to Eternal joyes Where when we are once seated aloft amidst those glorious objects which then shall incompass us with what contempt as an ingenious Person * M. Malh to the Princess of Conty speaks shall we look down upon this Morsel of earth which men have divided into so many Kingdoms or upon this drop of water whereof so many Seas are composed How shall we smile to see men so busie about the necessities of a Body to which we no sooner give one thing but it asks another and so disquieted through a weakness of spirit which daily troubles them as to unwish that to day which the day before they wished for Enter if it be possible into these generous thoughts before hand Begin to speak of the World as you will do when you have forsaken it Acknowledge it to be a place where you must daily lose something till you have lost all And by these and the like Meditations let your soul assuredly conceive that having had its Original from Heaven it is one of the number of those which must one day return thither In the mean time when the daies of Mourning come and sorrow will not be denyed its place let me recommend this advice to every man As soon as it is possible II. Our tears should be kept for that which is the cause of death and all our tears Turn thy sorrow for thy friend into sorrow for thy sins Remember that thy tears may be due to some other thing and the cure of that will cure all thy other griefs If thou art not a Christian then it is thy duty to mourn neither for one thing nor other but only to bewail thy self Let the dead bury the dead as our Saviour said do thou presently follow after thy Lord with tears Take no care of funerals think of no earthly thing but only how thou mayest be a Christian And if thou art so then thou oughtest to rejoyce that thy sins are pardoned and that thou hast not the greatest cause of grief and this joy sure will swallow up all thy sorrows There is scarce any thing so considerable in our bodies that is seen as our tears for they are the most notable expressions of what is in our hearts The hands as Ant. Guevara observes do work the feet do walk the tongue speaks but it is the heart only that weeps The eyes are but the spunges of the heart through which its affections are drained and dried up An afflicted heart hath neither hands to labour nor feet to walk nor can it find a tongue to speak but tears are all that it hath to tell you what it wants And therefore we ought to reserve these for some greater thing than our dead friends which our heart ought much to be affected withall As our Saviour said to the women of Jerusalem when he was going to the most cruel sufferings so might our friends say to us when they are a dying Weep not for us but weep for your selves if you be dead while you are alive Mourn more than you do if you have not yet mourned for your sins and amended them But if you have then rejoyce in the favour of God and bless him for his Son Jesus who is better to thee than ten Sons or all thy friends which thou lamentest Are our sins dead as well as our friends have we buried them in the grave of our Lord are we risen again to an heavenly life Let us go then to God and pray to him and praise him and this will give us ease But if we be troubled for sin then sure we shall not add another sin by immoderate sorrow and forgetfulness of Gods goodness If it be sin we hate then bitter complaints and discontents must all be hated Would you indispose your self to pray to praise God and meditate in his
sacred Word Would you render your self unfit to receive the Sacrament of his most blessed body and blood If not then mourn but so much as will not hinder any of these and you have leave to mourn as much as you please Stop but here and there is no man will lay any restraints upon you But then how short your mourning must be you will soon guess and the Sun must not go down upon your grief no more than it must upon your wrath But if you take no great care whether you disturb your souls or no then you have most reason to mourn for that carelesness and neglect Go then and bewail your unkindness to God your unthankfulness for his mercies and unbelief of his Gospel for you can never take your hearts in a better time than when they are so sad and inclined to be sorrowfull Tell them that now they are very well disposed for a necessary business and bid them look if there be not something else to bewail that is more considerable Ask thy self hast thou not deserved this and ten times more Wilt thou add another sin when thou shouldst cease all sins Hast thou not been careless of seeking God Hast thou not foolishly wasted thy precious time And art thou not troubled at all for that Yea art thou now impatient as if God dealt hardly with thee And wilt thou spend more time badly when thou art taught by the death of thy dear friend how short it is It is most incongruous thus to bewail the death of a child or acquaintance when thou art like to die thy self both body and soul And when thou hast mourned for thy sins thou wilt be taught thereby how little thou oughtest to mourn for thy losses For even our tears for sin must not be immoderate and therefore much less must we dare to let them flow in abundance for our losses So you know the great Apostle commands the Corinthians to comfort him that had been guilty of a great sin and receive him again into the Church now that he repented left perhaps such an one should be swallowed up with overmuch sorrow 2 Cor. 2.7 I wish all those who are ready to destroy themselves with grief would seriously consider this that we may not over-load our hearts with grief for our sins themselves which are the causes of all other sorrows We cannot please the Devil better than by discontent He would fain oppress every good man with some passion or other let us take heed how we joyn with him against our selves If we have left his service that is enough to provoke him If we have bid defiance to his pleasures this doth incense him and we must expect that he will endeavour to overcome us with griefs The Devil is mad against all good men and therefore let all those who have irritated him against them beware how they now prove cowards and execute his vengeance for him with their own hands Let us take heed as Photius excellently expresseth it lest we be good at stirring up and provoking the envy and rage of our adversary but naught at resisting and overcoming him by patience and perseverance to the end 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 But if we must needs weep for the loss of something here let it be for the afflictions of the people of God Let us mourn to see the Church sit like a widdow in her black garments Let it pitty us to see the blood of Gods servants shed like water upon the ground If our own sins do not trouble us let us weep to see the wickedness of the world and let our eyes run down with tears to think that men do not keep Gods Law Some such channel we should cut for our tears and not let them spend themselves on this fashion about our own personal troubles This is a method both to stop our tears and likewise to make them useful to us while they run It is a way to ease us of our present grief and of all others also We shall exchange that sorrow that would have troubled us for a great deal of joy and comfort Whereas our worldly grief would have left the heart sad this will leave it light and merry III. The life of our Lord Jesus gives us the greatest comfort against death Believe throughly that the Lord Jesus lives and so thou maist both expect a resurrection from the dead and likewise hope for comfort from him when thou art left sad and desolate The body it self doth not die any more than corn doth which dies that it may live and spring up again with large gain and advantage Are we loth to throw the corn into the ground and do we not patiently expect till the harvest comes Why should we then bury our friends with so many tears seeing they are but laid in the Womb of their mother again that by the power of God they may have a better birth The Heathen could say much to comfort themselves but they knew not this comfort for indeed they were rather contented than comforted Those that did think themselves most wise and judged that they had the best supports did only dream that the soul make take another body and shift its place at several times But we know that there will be a time when even our scattered ashes will fly into one anothers embraces again and a new life will breath into our dust and make it stand upon its feet And then in the mean time if our condition be never so sad and we be left at alone why do we not solace our selves in the great compassion of our High Priest who hath a feeling of all our miseries which we endure Can we expect that ever he should love us more than when we are like unto him in sufferings We should be so far from being sad at what befalls us that we should think if our condition was a little worse we should be more dear unto him than now we are when nothing extraordinary is hapned to us No man can be alone as long as he lives who hath said I will not leave you comfortless like fatherless children I will come to you Did not he bid his Disciples to be well content when he himself dyed Did he not leave his peace with them and bid them that their hearts should not be troubled And what is the death of one of our friends to the departure of the best friend to the world that ever was from his little flock of friends Did not Christ know what he said when he was going to die Did he advise them not to be troubled when it was impossible that they should be otherwise And if they were not to be troubled then I am sure we have less reason to be troubled now both because we have a less loss to bewail and we have a stronger and more excellent comfort against our loss Our friends are as much below him as his state in the grave was beneath that to which
not to mourn at all than to mourn moderately These are but the dreams of heavy souls that think that none can stand still but they that are resolved never to stir It is said indeed that we may more easily abstain from a thing of which we never tasted than refrain from it after a little acquaintance But this must be understood of pleasure and not of grief When we have mourned a little we shall soon see that there is neither pleasure nor profit in our mourning Or if any one shall think it to be some pleasure yet it will notwithstanding be easily moderated because it is only the pleasure of being eased of our loads that oppressed us not of being satisfied with the pressure of any delightful object It is but the letting out of sadness not the bringing in of any pleasure and therefore when the heart is once eased of its burden it will soon be perswaded to mourn no more for that will be the bringing upon us a new burden But then on the other side as we may grant something unto nature so we must be sure not to let it work alone That we may weep moderately it will be necessary to make resistance to our sorrows and muster up all the consolatory arguments that are reposited in our minds Nature will do its part without our help We need not study how to weep enough nor use any arguments to perswade our selves into tears It is a superfluous imployment to strive to magnifie our loss for Fancy is apt to make it bigger than it is It is a foolish trouble to be careful how to mourn for tears will flow from us without any bidding All our work must be to stop their passage as fast as we can and to make them flow leisurely not gush forth with too great a violence Our Reason and Religion must be called up in all haste to make as strong a dam as we are able to our sorrow or else if it have its course it may overflow us He is a base Pilot that leaves his tackling in a storm and suffers his ship to run along with the tempest and no less ignoble and abject is his spirit that permits himself to the gusts and Haericans of his own passions and lets them drive him whither they and not whither he himself pleases But it is a degree of madness to use reason it self to make the blasts more terrible and when the storm is too furious by art and skill to conjure up more boisterous passions Who would pitty him that sets his reason against himself and studies how to be as miserable as his mind can make him We need not be so in love with grief as to create it to our selves Nature as I said knows how to mourn without our teaching We had need think rather how to bear our natural troubles than how to lay more upon our shoulders But if we will make any opposition we must begin before our passions are too strong They are too powerful of themselves and we must not let them gather more strength by our negligence If we do not at the very first set our selves in a posture of defence against them they will seize upon our whole soul and get every thing into their possesion As soon therefore as our grief stirs we must strive to comfort our selves and not either help forward or suffer our grief If we go and bewail our friends as much as we can and think to chear our souls afterward we shall soon find that our souls are drowned with a flood and that it will be a long time before it be soaked up When we give the least leave to these passions they will ask no leave of us afterward but the soul will mourn like Rachel and refuse to be comforted As soon therefore as thou hearest of the death of thy friends do not spend the time in bemoaning thy self saying Alas what a friend have I lost did ever any man part with such a person where shall I find one comparable to him in wisdom in love in faithfulness in all manner of sufficiencies to make a friend Do not I say after this sort stand to aggravate thy grief but instantly say Why should a living man complain a man for the punishment of his sins why should I trouble and torment my self with my own thoughts why should wind and tyde run together how many reasons have I to be contented and spread them all before thine eyes that they may dry up thy tears and cease thy sorrow Labour at least that these thoughts may tread upon the heels of the other and as soon as may be overake them and get the mastery of them And so doing thou wilt weep as much as is fit but no more than thou oughtest Nature will be satisfied and thou thy self not ashamed None will think that thou art not grieved and thou wilt feel that thy heart is comforted SECT III. Which shews rather what might be said than what is said in this present Treatise for moderating our sorrow But yet those examples which we have from others may move us to follow their rules and so a brief touch is made upon them The best and wisest persons have not mourned much BUt what comforts are these may some say which you bring us with what reasons will you assist us I suppose it will be of no great effect to answer that the wisest persons have made their mourning short and moderate because I have already named two both good and wise that were excessive And therefore I must endeavour to make men throughly wise and furnish them with such reasons as will not suffer them to be oppressed with their sorrows Yet me thinks it is observable that the Aegyptians mourned ten times as long as the children of Israel Seven daies ordinarily contented the people of God for their grief as you may see Eccles 22.12 Job 2.13 whereas they that were strangers to the God of Israel extended their mourning seventy daies as you may read Gen. 50.3 yea the greatest mourning that the Israelites used for their two famous leaders Numb 20.29 Deut. 34.8 Moses and Aaron was prolonged but to thirty daies which is not half the time that those Heathens allowed I think not fit neither to pass by the shortness of Abrahams grief for his dearest wife Sarah who dyed as some of the Jews conjecture for very grief when he was at Mount Moriah thinking that her son was offered This they gather from that expression Gen. 23.2 Abraham came to mourn for Sarah and to weep for her From whence it was that he came I have nothing to affirm yet this note of theirs is considerable that in the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to weep for her there is a small Caph in the middle of great letters 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which may very well shew they think that his weeping was little and moderate and not of the greatest size That expression is
wisedome For his loss was so incomparable that there was no hope he should ever cease to lament it In this I believe he found himself happily mistaken For time which ends all things will end our grief though we strive never so obstinately to hinder it His proceeding is slow as one speaks but the effect is infallible But we may learn by such examples as this the necessity of concocting our own thoughts and setling our selves upon our own rules and prescriptions Otherwise we shall be in danger as he pathetically expresses his misery to celebrate the obsequies of our friends in a sadder manner than the Heathen did For they sacrificed to their Ghosts only with the blood of Beasts but we shall offer up to their memory all our counsels and be at the charge of losing our very Reason A recapitulation of the chief things that have been said Meditate therefore seriously of what hath been said Think that you are not losers by your friends gains and that there is no reason to be sorrowful when they are filled with joy We love our selves indeed better than we do them and are troubled at our own loss not at theirs but then if the loss be our own we can tell better how to repair it This is our comfort that it is in our own hands to ease our selves if we be the cause of our own trouble Consider often that it is as natural to die as it is to be born That God gives us every thing upon this condition that we should be content to give it up again when he pleases to call for it That God is a loving Father and doth every thing for the best That he would have us love him more when he leaves us nothing else to love That nothing can be dismally sad which by his grace and our care may be turned into joy That we ought to turn our sorrow into care lest there be something worse to sorrow for even the sin of our immoderate sorrow That we ought to live so that we may comfort our selves with hope we shall see our friends again that die in the Lord. That seeing we must die too and others must weep for us by our life we must leave them something to comfort them in hope that we are better than if we were with them We must often consider how much of our grief depends on meer fancy and not on things We were perhaps at a great distance from our friends while they lived and did but seldom see them The case is not much altered now that they are dead If we have sustained a loss we do but double it by losing our own quiet and comfort also And yet there is more cause of thankfullness than of repining both that we had them so long and also that God hath taken away only them Our grief at last must cease and that which will end it then may end it now Or if it must end it self by its own weariness it is a shame that Religious reason cannot do more than meer length of time can do It is but as we our selves would have it who would have been loth to have died first Or else it is as they would have it who would have been loth to have out-lived us and been so sad as we make it necessary to be They are not quite gone away but only gone before And by sorrow we may tread too fast upon their heels Let us henceforth place our chiefest comfort in God for if one be taken away then so may another There will be every day new matter of trouble and unless we be better provided against it we shall be every day miserable This world is the place of sorrow and therefore seeing there are things enough to trouble us let it not be our work to create trouble to our selves Trouble is a thing that will come without our call but true joy will not spring up without our selves If any sorrow should oppress us it must be for our sins And when we mourn for them let us be sorrowful we were no more thankful for such enjoyments as we have now lost Let these tears also teach us to take off our affections from worldly things all the pleasure of whose possession is scarce big enough to compensate the trouble of parting with them And above all remember that Jesus dyed and entred into the Grave as well as we and that by his Resurrection he hath opened the gate to immortal life and is in glory at Gods right hand and expects your coming thither where he is out of this calamitous place and that in the mean time you should not disparage your hope in him by impatience under the loss of any other thing And then your wisedom to distinguish the value of this world from the next and your Religious fear to offend our merciful Father and lose his blessing by repining at what he doth will undoubtedly preserve you from all inordinate and undutiful sorrow be the cause of it never so great FINIS