daily crucified for thee Canst thou fancy or desire greater benefits then those that accrew to thee and are offered thee by Christ who hath taken away the sting of death 1 Cor. 15. which is sin that when thou diest in the Lord thou art sure to be eternally blessed with the Lord Vitam non amittimus sed mutamus Hieron for true Christians doe not lose but exchange life by death Like a turning chatr which serves for a door so death natural is but a moving us out of one room which is an ontward antecamera chamber or common gallery or base court into another which is most ample and nobly furnished with all company and other accomplishments befitting the Majesty Palace and presence of the King of Heaven Death is but a transition or passage from grace to glory the taking of the candle of our soules out of a dark and close lanthorn of our bodies to set it on a fair candlestick in a stately chamber till the body be restored fitter for it crystalline celestial incorruptible When Christians defer their repentance and comming to Christ they forget the priviledges and benefits which are enjoyable only by them both in life and death at resurrection and judgment to come There being no other name under heaven by which we may be saved in any of these exigents Acts 4.12 which will in after-years overtake us all O bethink thy self and say in thy heart with David What shall I render to the Lord for all his mercies Psal 116.12 What shall I return to my blessed Saviour who hath redeemed me by his precious blood from so many and so great deaths I will devote both soul and body to him as a living and acceptable sacrifice Rom. 12.2 which is but my reasonable service Though I have done foolishy ungratefully unchristianly and desperately hitherto yet I will adde no more drunkenness to thirst or iniquity to sinne since he hath by his meritorious passion both redeemed my life from the death in sin and my death from the penal horrors for sin Yea in this he hath made my death better then my life that while I live I shall sin by daily defects and infirmities but when I die sin shall wholly die in me This one cordial is in every good Christians death that his sin shall not be immortal but as he shall be ever with the Lord so he shall never sin more against him 9. Lay to heart upon this and the like sad occasions to what good end or purpose thou hast hitherto lived for many yeares as a man or a Christian in the sphear of reason in the bosome of the Church and in the light of true Religion Bethink thy self how many hours dayes weeks moneths yeares God hath given thee since thou cam'st to be master of reason and instructed in Religion knowing good and evil as a space of repentance and opportunity to shew thy fear love duty and obedience to God that thou mightst be capable of his eternal rewards There are in every year eight thousand seven hundred seventy five hours if we should allow the greater half of these for sleep and necessary attending our bodies take but four thousand houres for our work and business of consequence how poor account can most men women of ripe age but not yet come to yeares of discretion give of all these in a whole year Not one hour in seven which is as a Sabbatical hour in every day not one hour in ten which is but the Tithe of our time is generally devoted to God or any good duty Nay many are weary of doing nothing Mark 11.20 and how solicitous to ravel out their time in the most impertinent and excessive pastimes they can imagine They are like to doe very well who know not what to doe with themselves and their time Phil. 3.19 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 When they have most leisure to intend their spiritual and eternal improvement then are they most lavish of their precious houres Debuisti boc tempus non perdere So Pliny the elder checked his Nephew for losse of time when he saw him walking in the streets and indisposed thereby to read or note any thing Canst thou not tell how to spend this or that long day Wouldst thou adde spurs to the wings of time I will tell thee the very waste and seeming superfluity of thy time would serve thy turn for an eternal happiness to work out thy salvation Those lost shreds of hours which thou flingest away lazing and laughing and chatting and visiting stretching yawning and playing and fooling so long till from doing nothing art tempted to doe evil things idleness being the Devils anvil Incus Diaboli desidia Cavene te Diabolus inveniat oriosum Hieren Pro. 17.16 These parings and rags I say of thy precious time which is infinitely more precious then the finest gold is a price put into thy hand if thou be not an egregious fool of which infinite gain and advantage may be made for ever In this and that good hour which thou prodigally losest not knowing how to spend it thou mightest be seeking thy lost-self thy lost soul thy lost conscience thy lost God thy lost Saviour who came into the world to seek and to save that which is lost O what might not be done in that chain and circle which St. Jerom commends to Laeta Orationem lectio lectionem meditatio meditationē oratio sequebatur Hieron of dispensing time nay if we wrought but now and then a link of grace O what prayers what tears what meditation what contrition what compunction what godly sorrow what ingenuous shame what self-abhorrence what self-despairs might be wrought upon thy heart as to the reflection of thy sins past Yea what fear of God what reverence of the Divine majesty power wisedome justice goodness evident in his works providences word What breathings sighings and seekings after God! What purposes vowes holy resolutions thou mightst take up and begin What hatred and loathing of sin as the greatest abasing of a reasonable creature what search into and admiration of the mystery of Christ crucified what longing after him what faith in him what sense of thy want of him what zeal for him what humility meekness charity holy industry sense of Gods savour sweet influence of his Spirit power against corruptions comforts against death hopes of heaven delight in well-doing joy in God! What serious considerations of the deformity and danger by sin of the beauty and benefits by Christ of the vanity of the world the certain uncertainty of dying These meditations and many such like effects of our thoughts and reflexions of things might be the happy fruits of thy true of thy holy considerations and sober endeavours if thou wert worthy of one moment of that life which thou art so weary of and wastest so impertinently a little portion of which will be one day when thy distresses and terrors come upon
that we fear to die but not to sin when as all the sad aspects and events of death rise from sin which is the Marah and Meribah the Stygian spring or lake whence our waters of bitterness and strife doe flow not to be healed but by that sacred wood of Christs cross cast into them not in the natural relique but in that mystical merit of him that hung upon it and bare our sins 1 Pet. 2.24 Pro. 19.4 That sin which thou as a fool makest a mock of how canst thou O poor bubble thus play with poyson dally with a dragon sport with a devil and caper over hell Wilt thou die in thy sinful smiles and pleasures Is it not horrid to be smothered in down-beds or drowned in malmsy as the Duke of Clarence was Will it not be bitterness in the latter end Remember this stream of Jordan in which thou swimmest runs to the dead sea The end of all these things as St. Rom. 6.23 Phil. 3.19 Rom. 1.33 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Paul tells us is destruction and death in all senses For these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience and sons of death Peccati deformitatem foetorem reputa as a Commentator observes on this Text. As a dead carkass is to thee loathsome and to be cast out of thy presence so is a soul a sinner that is dead in sin and impenitence while he lives Wouldest thou disarm the terrour power Morticinia non erant sacrificia and sting of death slay thy sin let it not die monte incruentâ a natural death by age and infirmity but a violent one by mortifying and crucifying Sinne must not die with us but before us Deut. 14.21 Nothing that died of it self was to be offered to God as a sacrifice No companion worse when we goe to our long home then sin if it be yet living in us and with us in the love power pleasure and purpose of sinning This worm will never die after death Now is the time to dy to sin while thou livest Now or never ohn 8.21 Lay this to heart lest thou die for ever in thy sins as Christ tells the Jewes for want of timely dying to them For in the sins a man hath committed and not repented of Ezek. 18.24 he shall surely die saith the Lord again again by the Prophet Ezekiel Nor is sin truly repented of unless it be mortified at least in the full and unfeigned resolutions of a believing humble contrite and penitent though dying sinner The will here shall be accepted for the deed and the purpose bears the value of the practise Wheresoever the black characters of sin are washed from the soul by penitent tears 2 Cor. 8.12 and the blood of Christ the lively image of God will appear as the face of the dry land did when the flood was fully asswaged The tyranny of death shall no more prevail when once the dominion of sin is taken away which hath no right but is a meer usurpation upon the reasonable creature 4. Quà m fugax fallax quam certa incerta quam procax procellosa Bern. Lay to heart the frailty and vanity the misery and momentariness of this short sinful and sorrowful life how fallacious and fading how short and vncertain how troublesome and importune this gleam and storm of life is as St Bernard speaks How specious a bubble how delightful a dream how goodly a nothing it is for a reasonable soule to intend to delight in to dote upon to rest and root its happinesse in Wilt thou set thine heart saith the Prophet on that which is not Job 7.17 wilt thou lay out and lavish thy thoughts in such things as have no worth and bear no price in that Country whither thou goest so that when thy vain and vexatious life fails all thy thoughts must perish Psal 146.4 when this little cock-boat of thy carkass comes a ground and splits Magno viatico breve iter non ornatur sed opprimitur Sen. all thy voyage is lost all thy good things with which thou wert not more adorned then incumbred and rather childishly pleased then really profited these sink with thee and are swallowed up in the Abyssus of forgetfulnes never to be buoyed up again nor enjoyed any more by thee as is expressed by Christ in the parabolical history of Dives Luke 16.19 Luke 12.19 which is too oft verified by sad experience of rich men In order to shew you the vanity of all things in this world that you call great or good high or honorable sacred or civil I shall not need beyond your own fresh experience to tell you Right Honorable and Beloved of those strange revolutions and excentrick motions which have befaln the highest Orbs of this British world which have shaken Heaven and Earth Church and State turning the Sun into darkness and the Moon into blood to the terror and astonishment of all the world at home and abroad They are as beasts without understanding who learn not wisedom and humility by those Paradoxes of providence which have posed the wise exhausted the rich debased the honorable diminished the great onely the gracious heart reads these riddles and the spiritual man understands God's meaning in all these intricacies which are like Ezekiels wheels full of dreadful and yet orderly confusions very perplexed in their motions yet evidently guided by that spirit within them Ezek. 1.20 which is wise and wonderful in all its ways These are publick lectures of the vanity and vexation of life which God hath taught us all in this Nation with the sound of the drum trumpet lessons that are written with the point of the sword as their pens and the blood of these Nations as their inck They that run may read and they that live the life of sober men and good Christians will learn Gods meaning to be this That the rich man should not glory in his riches nor the strong man in his strength Jer. 6.23 24. nor the wise man in his wisedom nor the great man in his greatness nor Princes in their Thrones 1 Cor. 1.32 but he that glories should glory in the Lord that he knows his blessed will in order to a better life Look a little lower to this Noble Gentleman whose Corps are here before us and his most Noble Mother who Ires in her dust not far from us There have seldom been afforded in any age in any one family greater instances by which to confute the confidences of poor mortals as to any thing desireable or enjoyable in this life Nothing of education honour estate comliness greatness of relations ampleness of worldly enjoyments could be modestly wished beyond what they seemed to enjoy both of them in the flower of their age in the conspicuity of grand fortunes and honours in the probability of long enjoying all those happinesses which are attainable under the
buy and sell to sport and play to fight and kill others yea to gratifie thy senses in all sorts of pleasures and to attend nature in the most sordid necessities and yet canst find no time to repent no nor to admit one serious thought of repentance to lodge in thy soul one day one hour no not one minute Yea canst thou find time to sin all manner of sins over and over that thou thinkest safe from the vengeance of man and yet no time to repent of thy sins against God No time in youth to repent of the sins of childhood or puerice which St. Austin now an aged yet tender-hearted penitent did reflect upon and repent of with tears St. Austin's confession Tantillus puer tantus peccator No time in riper years to repent of the inordinate hears of youth to quench the flames of extravagant lusts which God and nature reason and Religion command to be confined as fire to their proper hearths and chimneys the order of modesty and chastity but they are not allowed to set fire on the house-top to the fighting against and endangering both soul and body Canst thou find no time in the high noon and Solstice of thy life no nor yet in the decline and evening when gray hairs are here and there when thy eyes grow dim and the shadowes long to repent of thy former misdemeanors thy neglects and slightings of God thy despising his mercies thy uncharitableness sacriledge Psal 50.21 cruelty oppressions hypocrisie lying swearing murthers blasphemies insolencies hardness and impenitency carried on against thy God and thy Saviour thy Mediator and thy own soul with so high an hand so long a time Sure thou either believest there is no God or that he is such an one as thy self neither wise nor good not holy nor just that he hath revealed no Word or Will Law nor Gospel to mankind that he is indifferent what we do or impotent to reward or revenge that he hath neither heaven nor hel crowns nor flames for either good or bad that they who feare God and they that feare him not shall be all blended by death in an eternal Chaos medly or confusion without any distinction of reward or punishment according to their works upon these perswasions only thou canst be hitherto impenitent But if any one of those sharp arrows of divine truth which are shot from heaven which thou hast heard of Atheus est qui non tam credit quam cupit non esse Deum seen and received into thy brest which thou canst with no colour of reason deny or repel and which with much adoe thou bafflest and shufflest off to a kind of cavilling unbelief I say if but one of them had well fixed it selfe upon thy heart and conscience it would move thee to the speedy thoughts and essays of repentance at least to pare off the superfluity of thy sins and that excess of riot 1 Pet. 4.4 which argue more a monster then a man and a Divel then a Christian who loves darkness more then light and in the midst of that glorious Gospel which hath shined from Patriarchs Prophets Apostles Martyrs Confessors John 3.19 all good Christians in all ages and places yea from Christ himself confirmed to be the light life the Redeemer and Saviour of the world by many infallible signs and wonders In this blight Temple thou affectest the dungeon and vault of thy rotten and nasty lusts chusing death and refusing life digging deeper into hell then when thou mightest make an ascent to heaven by those gracious means as the ladders of heaven which are offer'd thee in precepts promises terrors comforts holy patterns and great examples set before thee in all grace and virtue which whoso seeth not must needs be blind whoso sees and doth not praise yea admire must needs be unthankful whoso is not proportionably affected to their truth and worth Divinae veritatis majestatem benignitatis gloriam gratiarum nitorem virtutum pulcherimam suavitatem qui non videt caecus est qui videt non laudat ingratus est qui videns laudansque parili affectu non movetur aut mortuus est aut insanus Eccles 12.6 must needs be either mad or dead as St. Austin speaks Surely if thou couldst once meet thy self that is thy conscience in the cool of the day apart from the heats of thy passions and the rapid torrent of thy foolish and hurtful lusts thou wouldst bethink thy selfe at length before thou diest of the necessary work of Repentance and not only before thou diest but before thou declinest and droopest It is indeed a sad uncertain and uncomfortable work to begin when a man is drawing to his end then to tune thy soul for God when thy body is most out of tune and thy mind too then to begin to wind up the strings of an Instrument when the very ribs of it are flying in pieces Who of a thousand can hope to draw waters out of the deep wells of salvation when the golden bowl and silver cord of life as Solomon speaks are almost broken and loosed It must needs be an hudling and most confused work then to set thy house in order I mean that interiorem animae domum inward withdrawing room of thy soul thy heart which ought to be as a Temple always fitted for God purged from sin adorned with all gracious habits then when the Tabernacle or out-house of thy body in which thy soul dwels is wholly out of order either burning with feavorish flames or tottering with consumptionary weakness or burdened and falling with unnatural loads and painful obstructions Thou couldst never have chosen a worse or unfitter time to repent then when the pains of sickness the inquietudes of body the impertinent visits of friends the cryes of relations the want of sleep all extremities the terrors of death and the stupors of soul are before thee or pressing upon thee Repentance is a work to be begun seriously in the most sedate temper of soul and calmest state of life when we enjoy the greatest serenity of body and mind when we have most leisure fewest interruptions and least diversions strongest temptations potentest oppositions and the greatest abilities of soul to resist them Once well begun it must at the same rate be carried on every day For this like oft pumping in a ship that hath but little leaks will keep her afloat but it is desperate plying the pump when a vessel hath now so many foot water in hold that it begins to sink The early repentings in our health are the best Antidotes and Cordials in our sickness like Summer provisions seasonably laid in against an hard Winter nor is there any bitter potion which a sick man is less able or disposed to take then that of Repentance when he is weak languishing sunk dispirited almost despairing in his sickness which is like a mans setting himself to cleave logs and therewith to make himself
FUNERALS MADE CORDIALS IN A SERMON Prepared and in part Preached at the solemn Interment of the Corps of the Right Honorable ROBERT RICH Heire apparent to the Earldom of WARWICK Who aged 23. died Febr. 16. at Whitehall and was honorably buried March 5. 1657. at Felsted in Essex By JOHN GAUDEN D. D. of Bocking in Essex Therefore I hated life for all is vanity and vexation of spirit Eccles 2.17 But the things that are not seen are eternal 2 Cor. 4.18 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Plato LONDON Printed by T. C. for Andrew Crook and are to be sold at the Green Dragon in St. Pauls Church-yard 1658. TO The Right Honorable the Lady FRANCES RICH. Madam THough I am justly tender of exasperating so vehement and unfeigned a grief as your Ladiship hath constantly expressed to the noble Mr. Rich both living and languishing dying and dead by my applying any such Balsame as may seem to renew your wound and pain yet knowing that your Ladiships greatest comforts next those of divine infusion arise from those proportions which your just sorrows bear to your generous affections which are now become the occasion and measure of your affliction I thought it would neither be offensive to your honour nor unbeseeming my respects if I justified your exceeding grief by representing to the world how diservedly you have loved and how worthily you have mourned for that Gentleman of whose honour and happiness even from his infancy I was most seriously ambitious Hence it is that I have adventured to dedicate to your Name this Funeral Cordial which was first devoted to adorn the Christian Interment and revive the honored Name of your dear Husband that since You lived not long together in your marriage yet You might at least be inseparable in this monument which aims not to add any further secular pomp to his dust much less to gratifie the impertinent curiosity of this or after ages touching his life sickness disease or death but rather to advance the glory of God in his unsearchable ways also to summon such as yet survive him to consider their latter ends that they may betimes even in youth remember their Creator and apply their hearts to true saving and eternal wisdom To these great and good ends I presume your Ladiships passionate piety will permit me to improve so sad a dispensation of providence whose aspect not only looks to your Ladiship but to all that stand within the view reach and terror of so sharp a stroak which deserves to be so far laid to heart by all spectators until they find their hearts mollified and mended through that gracious virtue which may by fear of death and grief for sin make way for faith in Christ and love of God Certainly a penitent and pious use is the best that can be made of such dreadful monitions that no seeming splendor of prosperity no vain confidences of youth and life no cumulations of worldly contents no momentary honours and imaginary pleasures should either blind or divert any of us from dayly taking a serious prospect of our sins and our souls of our death and judgement of our God and Saviour Nothing in all my lifes observation except one unparallel'd instance hath ever faln out of more pregnant and potent influence to abate the presumption of human vanity worldly confidence and earthly glory than the sudden Eclipse and fall of this great Star which was but lately risen to its lustre and conspicuity The contemplation of his so early death is no small warning to us that are yet living especially to those who most dally with death while they affect a dilatory indifferency as to any practise of repentance and true piety being afraid of nothing so much as of being good too soon as if they could be too soon in a capacity of happiness I know the folly and madness of many who have had not only ingenuous but religious breeding is usually such that though they please themselves in being civil and accomplist toward men yet they make no scruple of being neglective rude affrontive yea insolent toward God and therein cruel to their own souls forgetting at once both their moment and God's eternity which desperate frolick usually holds with many not only during the adventerous extravagancies of their youth and spring which is the chief hour of temptation and power of darkness but it extends by the hardning habits and deceitfulness of our sinful hearts to our Autumn and decline God knows our vicious accesses to the vanities and inordinacies of life are early and speedy but our gracious recesses in order to an holy life and happy death are very flow and late if ever unless special grace prevent the best of nature and God's good Spirit perfect the best of our educations Madame I write not at this rate out of a Censorian vanity to reproach others but out of an humble sense of my own infirmities and out of a Christian sympathy to others impendent miseries Alas 't is too evident that many persons otherways of excellent useful parts do live amidst the offers of eternal life and the terrors of eternal death as if they had never laid to heart either their own or any others death no nor the death of their blessed Saviour by the price of whose blood they have been both meritoriously Sacramentally redeemed from their vain conversation It is both a sad and shameful thing to consider that the least and last thoughts of many titularly Christians are devoted to their God their Saviour and their Souls These grand concernments are late unwelcome and but hardly admitted after the surfeits of sensual pleasures the crowds and pester of worldly affairs the importunities of ambitious designs and other busie vanities which so ingross the whole man and time that there is little place allowed in most mens and womens hearts or space in their lives which are always upon the confines and brink of death for that great point of wisedom and work of salvation which consists in beginning betimes to resist and retrench those evils to which our depraved hearts do naturally prompt us that so we might with greater speed and less impediment advance to that Supream and immutable good to which as we are invited and beseeched by the tender mercies and love of God in Christ so by the principles of true reason and religion and no less by the real interests of our own safety honour and eternal felicity The promoting of all which being my main design in publishing this grave piece I hope both your Ladiships great sadness and passion and my own deep resentments for the dead may be sufficient Apology for my freedom both of tongue and pen toward the living not only my natural genius prompting me but my conscience commanding me specially in publique and sacred remonstrances to speak and write out that is to use such honest Parrhesie as will least smother wholesome truths or flatter secure sins Nothing is more deformed
highest place and state of celestial honour next the Divine Essence far above all Angels is neer of kin even to the dead bodies and dust of his servants whom he will raise up again at the last day and take them to he ever with the Lord. But it will be a work more worthy of you and me to carry on this Corps and Funeral till we bring them to our own hearts where possibly we may find too much of the house and state of the dead You see the wisedome of Solomon or rather of God by his penitential pen teacheth us how to turn Funerals into Cordials Indeed nothing is more thrifty then true piety Religion is a good husband of all opportunities tempers providences John 6.12 Jam. 5.13 events and dispensations towards our selves or others it followes the frugal care and counsel of Christ Let nothing be lost Is any man merry saith St. James let him sing Psalms is any man afflicted let him pray Not only our own passions but others may be improved by holy Sympathies mourning with those that mourn Rom. 12.15 and weeping with those that weep as well as rejoycing with those that joy It is a Stoical and Cynical sowreness yea a putid and barbarous stupidity in any Christian to forget he is a man Mollissima corda Humano generi dare se ratura fatetur Quum lachrymas dedit Juv. having an heart fitted in the softness of nature beyond all other creatures with bowels of compassion with aptitude to be affected with others afflictions and to testifie this by our Tears which indicate an harmony of hearts moved by a secret symphony to an unison of affections Ezek. 11.19 Grace is so far from stupifying or petrifying mens hearts that it takes away the heart of sin and gives a heart of flesh it softens us not only to God and our selves but to others also nothing is further from a true and genuine Christian then either putid affectation or stupid in affectedness I mean that surly apathy and senseless indolency of soul which argues a spirit and conscience rather scorched and seared in the furnace of private lusts and particular factions than steeped in the blood of Jesus Christ or suppled with the gentle oyl of Catholick and Christian charity which is the greatest ornament and improvement of every true Christian We have this receipt how to make a right use of the Dead from Solomons great experience and exact observation of things whose accurate palate was not glutted or confounded nor the edge of his taste blunted or dulled by the luxurious gusto the delicacy plenty and variety of all things to which he applied his heart whose wisedom remained with him That wisedome which God gave him upon his wise choise of wisedom rather then of riches honour 2 Chron. 1.10 revenge long life or pleasure The desire of wisedome is the surest way to obtain it for the soule by unfeigned desires like a chrystal glass is polished and prepared for it that it easily receives the beams of wisedome into its self which like the Sun shine equally upon all men and are alike receptible by all where the gross and opacous temper the carnal and earthly lusts the dull and dirty disposition of mens soules being wiped off or purged and refined there is no inward impediment or cloud to hinder This is one great Instance that Solomons wives millions of concubines with his other proportionable equipage and provisions of sensual pleasures had not exhausted his wisedome in that he now as a Prince and Preacher makes this wise choise That it is better to goe to the house of mourning then to the house of feasting 1. Better in many and great respects chiefly for this that it sadly and solemnly sets forth to us the end of all men 2. A consideration worthy of the living who are infinitely concerned in the same fate and state attending them 3. And which they may then turn to a good account when they seriously lay the matter and manner the occasion and solemnity of Funerals to their hearts 4. Which they will doe if they are truly living in a rational prudent and religious way of life 5. For then they must needs be very sensible what need their hearts have of such applications even of death and the house of mourning to them And what advantages a wise man one that hath an humble holy and gracious heart may gain by such warnings and alarms which in many regards are proper to be laid to heart by all those that are truly living to God and his grace yea even such as are yet only living as beasts to their senses and as men to civil conversation being dead to the wisedom life of God these may hence learn to know God and themselves yea they may be excited and enabled to live to his glory and to work out their own salvation with fear and trembling 1. This choise and receipt of Solomon is considerable in general as to its chief ingredient the house of mourning or the condition of the dead which 2. will be best set forth if we consider the persons to whom he applies it the living whose duty and wisdome it is not to despise those spectacles and instances of mortality 3. Consider that part of the living to which he would have this medicine applied their heart whose pestilent distempers stand in need of such applications 4. The vertues ends and uses for which this receipt is sacred and soveraign to be laid to the hearts of the living which are all wrapped up in this one expression For it is the end of all men When I have given you this account of the Text in order to the religious benefit of the living I shall answer your wonted curiosity and expectation in giving you some account also of the Dead upon whose occasion we are now met that I may at once doe Him and you so much right as truth and justice first next my love and honour to him together with my charity to you command me to doe apart from all sinister fears or flatteries without any partiality or oblique passion toward the living or the dead which depraved distempers can at no time become me or any Minister of Christ and least of all now when I have set before me and am to set forth to you such a sad and serious prospect of the dead as ought to mortifie all our impotent passions and inordinate affections My first endeavour must be to set forth to you in general this part of Solomons wisedome which we may call a kind of sacred Necromancie or Necromathy by which he had learned himself and instructs others to make an holy use of the Dead rather to goe to the house of mourning in the blackest attire and representations of it which are at Funerals then to goe to the house of feasting or to frequent those Festivals either civil or sacred which invited poor mortals to more mirth and jollity of
ad infernum deprimit both as to the living and the dead Many are raised up to Heaven by the magnificence of the Burnings or Buryings whose souls are sunk down to Hell by the ponderous weight of their unrepented and unreformed sins When sorrow affects too much state and wraps up the sharpness of death in soft paradoes mixing too much sensual sweet with the wormwood and bitterness of that cup which is offered to all mens lips the good effects of Funerals are much defeated as to the living the house of mourning is so far from being better in such an equipage that it is worse then the sober house of feasting for it flatters the dead and living too making men deaf to Gods warning-pieces which are shot off at their ears and levelled at their hearts They are like wool-sacks or mounds of earth 1 John 2.16 which disarm the great cannon-shot which should batter down the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the strong holds of sin the lust of the eyes the lust of the flesh the pride of life Empty and adulatory pomp set up as it were by the higher ground of mens stately Funerals and Tombs what God intends to pull down namely those high and exalted imaginations with which poor sinful mortals are pestered and poysoned who are then best when they see themselves and others at the worst and then nearest to grace and glory too when they see themselves as in their graves reduced to their dust and ashes and in their very best estate Psal 39.5 as the Psalmist speaks to be but altogether vanity 2. Which is the great lesson that the great God intends to teach men by such pregnant instances of their mortality which the living will learn i. e. such as live not only to sense but to true reason and not only to reason but to true religion not only to a moment but eternity The aym of these severe Lectures is to bring sinful man down to the dust within sight of the grave and prospect of judgment and hell it self that so he may be a meet object for Gods grace and mercy It is a shrewd sign of a heart dead in sins and trespasses stupid in sensual security buried in worldly lusts and vain pleasures dead as the Apostle sayes of some widows even while they live 1 Tim. 5.6 not to lay to heart the departures of those who are snatcht out of the land of the living to a state and place whence they shall not return to a terra incognita a land which is far off a black Abyssus covered with profound darkness of which no discovery hath ever been made by any that went thither so as to give Survivers any Geographical map or account of it Which terrible summons like the decimating of souldiers to die one after another cannot but infinitely affect the sober and serious living to whose benefit only the death and Funerals the solemnities and obsequies civil and religious prayers and Sermons too may and ought to be duely improved For to the Dead they reach not nor can they turn to any account further then such civil honour and respect as is due to their place name and merit yet surviving or to their corps which rest in hope of a refurrection and so deserve an handsome and Christian interment But as to any advantage to be made for the benefit of their soules for redeeming them from Purgatory for abating their purgative paines for shortning or supplying their Pennance or obtaining remission for any sin or punishment in which they are engaged being once dead this must be let alone for ever There is no ground of hope to relieve them in any kind no Scripture no Catholick doctrine no precept no promise that gives any footing for Prayers or Sacrifices Masses or Dirges Oblations or Emptions Remissions or Redemptions by which to benefit the dead they are vain solaces to the living and none at all to the dead arising first from the suggestions of the impotent grief and passion in survivors next from an unwarranted charity and benevolence to the dead At last policy and covetousness grew so cunning in the darkness and superstition of times as to make no small advantages by the vulgar easiness and prodigality sliding by insensible degrees from those memorials of benediction for their piety and constancy in religion from the gratulations for their happy and hopeful delivery out of a dangerous and naufragous Sea and for their hoped arrival at a safe and happy heaven together with a Catholick comprecation for the consummation and plenary bliss at the resurrection of them and all Saints departed in the true faith of Christ See the excellent Primate of Arm. of praying to and for the dead in his Jesuites Challenge From these commendable customes I say of pious Antiquity of which Epiphanius and others give us an account degenerous posterity warped not onely to praying both for and to the dead but indeed to make a notable mystery and trade of preying upon the devotion and simplicity of the living uses and ends which we find neither Solomon nor any Prophet Apostle or Evangelist nor Christ himself any where teaching nor in the least kind intimating to the living either in order to give such honour or help to the dead neither of which either our blessed Saviours love of his compleater Saints or his charity to the more defective dead who had not fully done their pennance here and so stood in need of some grains of allowance from the charity of such as survived them or his Apostles care would have failed to have taught the Primitive Church by word or Epistle or example if such prayers had been available to the living or for the dead No they may be profitable fancies to the Romanists and plausible enough to their bigot and bountiful disciples but they are not justifiable in true religion by Old or New Testament nor by any practise in the first and best Centuries No known advantages can redound to the dead from the living nor other advantages to the living from the dead but only the laying their death seriously and devoutly to heart the use that wise Solomon and the wiser God here commends to us all 3. And this upon very great and pregnant reasons if we consider 1. The state of the living in respect of their hearts 2. The proper vertues which are derivable from the dead and fit to be applied to the hearts of the living 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Et vivens dabit ad cor suum The wise and considerate living will upon such occasions not only gape at the ceremony glory in the pomp talk of the person discourse of the disease and manner of death after a vulgar and easie fashion much less will they rejoyce in anothers death though an enemy or triumph in the advantages which accrew to them thereby after a malicious and covetous rate Such as lie under the power of these depraved distempers of soul and are of no
higher form of life are scarce among Solomons living who lay things to heart that is Altâ mente reponunt they deeply and devoutly seriously and solemnly rationally and religiously consider resolve and ponder in intimis animi recessibus the inward recesses of their soules or consciences the whole purport of such occasions what they mean in all their aspects They make as it were a speculative Anatomy and intellectual dissection of the dead yea and of death it self in all its forms and fashions in its causes and effects its antecedents concomitants and consequences They look upon the face of it which is neer at hand and the long train or extent of it which reacheth to Eternity This is the Lecture that the living read upon the dead and many lessons they learn from them because they are men that have an heart which is wise and understanding duely weighing in the scale of true reason and divine wisdom every occurrence and event of providence which hath any remark or signal character upon it as the death of any man or woman young or old infant or decrepit hath to such as have an heart able to apply it notwithstanding this frequency of such spectacles which with many men and women takes away the sense and regard of them though such persons need every day a memento mori some spectacle or remembrancer as King Philip had daily to put them in mind that they are but men Philippe memento te esse mortalem How necessary is it for them to remember their latter end to consider in what a vain shadow they live or rather die in their life because they are without an heart as silly birds not aware of the snares of sin the pits of death and hell over which they carelesly and confidently passe every moment Frequencie of Funerals doth not lessen the right use and influence of them to such living as know how to lay them to heart They doe not as women and children or country clowns only start amain when some sudden and unexpected death befals any as if it were the discharging of a great cannon near them which they never dreamed of but as valiant Commanders who finding that an hot battery and frequent shot slayes men round about them wisely consider that they may be the next mark whom death will hit which thought is so far from discouraging or appalling a man of a good heart that is pious and generous that it onely summons him to muster up all the fortitude and strength of his soul that whether he live or die he may do neither like a fool or a coward or a beast but like a valiant man and a good Christian who being engaged in a good Canse having a good God and a good conscience doubts not to make a good end when God shall call him out of this life to a better The Living that is the wise and considerable sort of mankind are the only persons who have hearts to consider all things as they ought to reflect upon their own hearts to commune with them to try and examine their state and tempers their defects and disorders their extravagancies and necessities The Living are they that duely consider the true interests and eternal concernments of their hearts and spirits their soules and consciences far beyond those of their bodies senses or fortunes The Living doe upon such occasions of mortality in se descendere make sober retreats home looking to themselves and searching into the penetralia animae their hearts above all Which they know to be as the rudder or steerage of the soule and of the whole man of all thoughts words and actions the card or compass by which our momentary and eternal course is shaped They know the infinite importance of a well or ill constituted and managed heart They find that verified which our Saviour tells us That out of the heart of man proceed evil thoughts murders Matth. 15.18 adulteries fornications thefts false witness blasphemies c. That God chiefly requires and regards this as the Gemme of the man most precious in it self most proper and proportionate for God That all beauty strength wit estate honour offered to God without the Heart is but the sacrifice nay the sacriledge and affront of fools and hypocrites Therefore it is frequently inculcated from Heaven and in the Scripture Prov. 23.26 to all sorts of men under all dispensations of Religion to Jew and Gentile Give me thy heart an honest and good heart Psal 51. a pure and peaceable heart an humble and contrite heart God will not despise yea in this he delights all things else are loss and dung in comparison Nothing else in man is worthy of God and yet nothing less worthy of him that is Gen. 6.5 naturally less fit and prepared for him What God complained long ago is verified in every mans experience That every imagination of the thoughts of mans heart was evil and that continually The 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 distempers diseases yea and deaths of the heart of man are as many as dangerous and as desperate as those of the body yea infinitely more For the bodies diseases doe but kill us as to mans society and to a moments life on earth but the diseases of the heart kill us as to the life of God and an eternal happiness of conservation in Heaven The living God who delights not in the death of a sinner nor yet in a dead heart which is the first death of a sinner as a gracious Father and compassionate Physitian hath discovered to us the many plagues which are in our hearts the sicknesses to which they are subject by the surfets they take of the world and their senses Sometimes the Heart swels with the tumor of intolerable pride sometimes it burns withcholerick inflammations sometimes it is scorched with passionate calentures of inordinate lusts sometimes it is almost drowned like hydropick and overgrown bodies with its sensual luxuries and fulness even to abominable fedities sometimes it hath such a gout as it is in great pain at any the least motion for God or any good motion from him sometime it pines away in a Consumption amidst all its sensible pleasures plenty and honours not finding any satisfactory solid and durable good in them all Sometimes the heart is shaken with paralytick tremblings and terrors like Earthquakes which seem to arise from the dark and pestilent vapors in it self sometimes it hath not only fits of the stone refractory tempers but a petrified habitude of a hard and stony heart which nothing doth soften neither mercy nor judgment love nor wrath bounty nor patience of God Sometimes the heart falls into Lethargick and Apoplectick stupors like Nabals and Achitophels it growes remorseless benummed stupid senselesse dull and dead within men past fear or feeling of any thing either sharp and pungent in the Law or spiritful and reviving in the Gospel Solomon who was a great King of hearts and had a
very large soveraign knowledge of them Eccl. 8.11 beyond any meer man tells us that the hearts of the sons of men are not onely full of folly 1 Kings 8.38 Eccl. 9.3 and set upon evill and sick of several sorts of plagues but frenzy fury and madness are in their hearts while they live which is a distemper not easily if ever perfectly cured But if any thing as to humane applications be likely to work any good upon the worst mens hearts Job 41.7 if any dart or weapon can reach and pierce these Leviathans whose natural proneness and customary habits in sin are so closely fixed and hardened to all manner of sin without any remorse it is such as Death brings with it not as it is pictured to scare children but as it is really it self and perceived among all sorts of men good or bad sparing none surprising any one even in the pride hardness deadness and damnableness of his heart Nothing in life is a more consummated fear then that which death carries with it It is called the King of terrors Job 18.14 Isa 14.9 11 12. Ezek. 32.27 Rex longimanus whose Scepter or sword reacheth all even Kings themselves such as were most impatient not to have all men living stoop down to their Scepter and Empire even these mighty Cedars and Colosses of Monarchs hath death subdued in a short time with a little labour and brought them down to the pit and bound them in chaines of darkness in the prison and dungeon of the grave triumphing over these Triumphers with an ironick Epinicion as the Prophet expresseth How art thou faln Art thou also become weak as we who wert a terror in the land of the living with thy sword lying in vain under thy head while thine iniquities are upon thy bones This representation of death to the living should be laid to Heart by all men and will be so by all such as truly live and not only breath There is a great difference between vixit and fuit being and living he lives that liveth wisely and worthily As bene valere is vivere health is the life of life so much more bene vivere est vita vitalis to live well is the welfare of life For as every disease of the body is a partial death to such a degree of health and life as is wanting so every sinful distemper of the rational heart of man is so far a deadness as it is a disorder upon it Which God seeks to cure and conquer by setting before us frequent spectacles of mortality which not to lay to heart and to entertain meerly with a specious formality with a childish historick or histrionick indifferency is the way firmare morbum corroborare mortem to increase the diseases and confirm that death which is upon mens hearts who are yet living in a vain shadow or shew of life only which is to these filly inconsiderate and sinful fooles not only mortalis and moriens but mortua yea mortifera vita a mortal and dayly dying but a dead yea a deadly and killing life while they live onely to beasts to men to their bodies and to a moment but are dead to soules to their own hearts to Gods Spirit and to Eternity as to their present impenitent state and posture of heart God by the Prophet complaines That the righteous perish and no man laid it to heart Yea when he sent many messengers and promiscuous executioners of death among the Jewes Isa 57.1 Aezek 14.21 his four sore judgments yet they laid not those terrors to heart nor considered their latter end that they might fear before God and live no more presumptuously Our blessed Lord at once reproacheth and threatneth those that had not so laid to heart the death of those on whom the tower of Siloa fell and whose blood Pilate mingled with their sacrifices Luke 13.4 that except they repent they should likewise perish Deaths must be so laid to heart that by the sadness of the countenance the heart may be made better Eccl. 7.3 as Solomon speaks The house of laughter may afford the heart of a fool more seeming pleasure for a season but the house of mourning affords a wise mans heart more solid and durable profit Luke 17.37 who like the Eagle will chuse to be there where the body not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 yea the dead corps is as our Saviour speaks in an higher sense where the Eagle-eye of a believer quick and clear seeing afar off eagerly hastens firmly seizeth pertinaciously holdeth and greedily feedeth upon Christs blessed body and blood which is given to die for us as the only food of our soules in its infinite merits As we must not take the name of God in vain by profane swearing blaspheming or jesting nor may we receive his grace in vain as to the meanes the monitions and motions of his Spirit within us or without us So neither may we passe by the dead as the Priest and Levite did by the wounded and half-dead traveller without much regard as if we were unconcerned Gods dispenpensations in this kind must not be in vain to us though we cannot doe the dead any good yet we may get good from them and by them yea account must be given as of other things so of this Thou must not only reddere rationem vitae tuae but alienae give an account of thy own life but of anothers too who may sin at the charge of thy soule while as Eli thou neglectest to hinder or reprove or give them good example or it may be soothest and encouragest them in sin or whose pious life is set before thee as an excellent pattern but ill followed by thee yea further we must reddere rationem mortis alienae give account to God of anothers death not only whom we unjustly slay Gen. 9.5 or neglect to save deliver asmuch as is justly in our power God will require the blood of these both for man and beast but further we must give account of anothers death which we see or hear of and doe not consider which we celebrate onely but lay it not to heart in piety when we are not warned or moved at all when custome as of sinning so of seeing the dead takes away all due sense when being touched with so sharp a spur as that of anothers death should be to thee thou art like a dull jade or tired hackney not at all affected or moved to mend thy pace not one sinners sigh or Christians tear no sad reflection or penitent remorse no quickened endeavours or confirmed resolutions in order to prepare more intentively for death for judgment and eternity only thou joggest on after the wonted rate and carriers pace of a formal and cold-hearted Christian Which evil defects arguments of a dead and unaffected heart either totally or gradually are the lesse excusable in men because the uses or advantages to be
unreasonable irreligious and divelish A carrionly carkass of a man is aromatick a very perfume in comparison of a dead and rotting soul The body becomes dead and so dissolves by the souls parting from it but the soul by Gods being separated from it first out of its own choise next by Gods penal deserting of it The soul is the salt the light and life of the body so is God of the soul Anima animae the very soul of our souls I mean his grace love and spiritual communion separation from this is the souls death here and hereafter For from the power wrath and vengeance of God the damned are not separated who are dead not to their being but to their well being or happiness to the union at and fruition of God in love The soul apart from God in grace or glory is not only an orphan or a widow condemned to eternal sorrow and desolation for nothing can maintain or entertain wooe wed or indow the soul to the least degree of happines or to any allay of misery when once God hath quite forsaken it But it is emortua conclamata in heaven earth and hell proclaimed as starke dead in Law and Gospel Matth. 13.42 to justice and mercy so represented in Scripture as the horridest expression or the blackest colour to set forth its misery and horror its regret and torpor its weeping and wailing its gnashing and despair Doth then such a thick cloud of horror hang over the face and state of a dead body which is senseless of its own death and deformity of its noysome grave and dark dungeon Sapiens ignis subtilis vermis carpit nutrit urit reficit Chrysol O what a world of horror must lie upon a dead soul when deservedly cast out of God's blessed presence when it feels its death and lives only to die when it feels it is plunged in a dead Sea which is boundless and bottomlesse where the worm dies not and the fire goeth not out because it is as Crysologus calls it a subtil fire and ingenious worm which burns but consumes not devours but destroyes not Who can dwell with everlasting burnings saith the Prophet in an extasie of holy horrour Isa 33.14 Who can live in everlasting dyings Who can abide his own everlasting rottings Is it a gradual and lingring death to want food raiment light liberty fit company Is it a total death to the body to want the little spark of the soul which is the breath and spirit of life to the body What is it then to the soul to want that God who is the breather of that breath of life and Inspirer of that spirit We want a word beyond death to expresse that state Lay it then to heart Phil. 3.11 and consider what cause we have to be humble to tremble and fear exceedingly to escape most solicitously and diligently that second and eternal death if by any means we may attain the resurrection of the dead to life eternal 3. Lay to heart upon the sight of a dead body and the meditation of a dead soul whence it is that these fears and faintings sicknesses and sorrows deaths and darknesses sordidnesse and desolation corruption and condemnation have thus mightily prevailed over the highest mountains as the flood over the most noble beautiful and excellent of all Gods works under heaven even over mankind good and bad great and small Eccles 2.16 wise and foolish upon which nature the great and only God had set such characters of special glory enduing it with a diviner spirit so making man as Moses saith a living spirit or a spirit of life And this after counsel and deliberation Faciamus hominem Sanctius his animal mentisâ— capaâ—ius aliâ—e Gen. 2.7 As in re magni momenti a matter of greater concern and weight then heaven and earth and all the host of them They were made ex tempore as it were Nudo verbo Let there be and there was But man was made ex consilio after Gods own Image full of beauty health honour riches wisedome the Spirit of the living God given him in an extraordinary beam Whence is this lapse to earth to dust to a sad and wretched a decaying and dying condition both temporal and eternal Sure not from the impotencie or envy of the blessed Creator whose omnipotent goodnesse is inconsistent with such infirmities nor yet from the frailty and inconsistency of the subject matter which he raised to so goodly a fabrick little lower then the Angels Psal 49.12 as man was made who should have been as long immortal as Angels had he continued a man that is Rom. 6.23 rational and religious enjoying the Image of God on him which forbids and excludes as all shadow of sin and defection so of all death or mutation to worse No. The Psalmist tells us after the history of Genesis Man being in honour did not so abide but is become like to the beasts that perish by the frailty of his will which fell from adherence to God as the durable and supreme Good Sin hath levelled us to beasts to death to devils to hell This death in all sizes and degrees from the least ache and dolour to the compleatnesse of damnation is the wages of fin So the Apostle oft tells us Rom. 5.17 by one mans offence death entred and reigned over all The soul that sins that shall die Ezek. 18. Sin is the source of all our sorrows the lethalis arundo poysoned arrow whose infection drinks up the spirits and eats up the health flesh bodies and soules of mankind No wonder we die since we sin at such a rate the wonder is that we live any one of us one moment How much more is the miracle of Gods love and mercy that hath by Christs death and merits brought forth to light eternal life and offered it to all penitent and believing sinners as purchased and prepared for them Because sin once lived in us we must once die and till sin be dead or mortified in us we cannot hope for life eternal Through death then thou wilt best see the face of thy sin What Poet what Painter what Orator whose colours are most lively can expresse the amazement horrour and astonishment that seized on the looks and hearts of Adam and Eve Rom. 27. 2 Tim. 1.10 when they had the dreadful prospect of their first great sin and curse written with the blood and pourtrayed on the face of their dead son Abel who in that primitive paucity of mankind was barbarously slain by his brother Cain Who can expresse or conceive the woful lamentation they made over their dead son in whom they first beheld the beauties of life swallowed up by the deformities of death Is death then so dreadful so dismal so deformed so putid O think what that sin is which thou so embracest and huggest The fountain of bitternesse is more bitter then the stream Our madness and misery is
Sun yet have I lived to see both their lives ended all their humane hopes and joys and honours buried in the dust the one before she was 27. years old the other before he had compleated four and twenty So great and neer experiments are these two for the confirmation of those two verses used to display the excellent emptiness and glorious nothingness of this world and present life of which subject as many pens and wits have largely descanted so none have expressed more in few words then he that made this distich Punctum bulla vitrum glacies flos fabula fumus Vmbra cinis somnus vox sonus aura nihil Thus in prose No point is more concise no bubble more pompously swelling and suddenly vanishing no glass more brittle no ice more self-dissolving no flower more fair and fading no tale more short and fabulous no shadow less substantial Introitus exitus lugubris Cum nascimur mundi hospitio excipimur initium a lacrymis auspicamur cum lacrymis extinguimur Cyp. Ordimur vitam lacrymis claudimus omnes Quisque suis natus sic sepelitur aquis no ashes more easily scattered and never to be recollected no sleep or dream more delighting and deceiving no voice more vanishing no sound more transient no breath more soft and unseen in sum nothing is a truer emblem of absolute and perfect nothing then this poor life which is begun as St. Cyprian and many observe continued and ended with tears An Egyptian reed on which if the heart of man leanes it soon fails and the defeats of it pierce the very soul O what a small thread is this on which we poor wretches hang the weight of our eternal state the great interests of our immortal souls while we delay our repentance multiply our sins dayly and hourly adding burthen to a crazy vessel which is leakey with its own infirmities and already over-laden with its pondus mortalitatis body of death O ye sons and daughters of men who are lifted up filled and stretched to the highest pitch and uttermost extents of pride self-conceit vain-glory who have already deified your selves in your owne imaginations of your heaven upon earth your humane happinesses who expect that all that see you should admire and adore you as creatures so compleatly blest that the Angels or Gods themselves have cause to envy you when you are so fair so fine so young so lovely so witty so nobly descended so mightily befriended so invested with honour so fortified with power so furnished with estate so attended with servants so lodged in sumptuous palaces so surrounded with all manner of pleasures so over-flowing with all sensible contents of life See see in this and the like sad spectacles of vanity mortality and misery What a perfection of folly 1 Tim. 6.17 what an apparent madnevs it is for you to be high-minded to be proud of any thing you enjoy here to trust in your uncertain riches and not in the living God You may as justly swell and look big and magnifie your selves for taking up some rich Jewels in a shop or for seeing and handling some fine and pretious wares a little while in your hand which you must shortly lay down and leave behind you and then when thou art driven from the living and thy soul taken from thee Luke 12.19 Thou egregious fool whose shall all these things be Experience hath taught us that a dead hand is an excellent means by rubbing it on wens and tumours of the body to allay disperse and as it were mortifie that irregular and deformed excrescency The same receipt of a dead hand might serve if duly applied to our souls for it would be a very soveraign remedy as against all that is in the world 1 John 2.16 which is of a puffing and exalting nature as the lust of the eyes the lust of the flesh and the pride of life so against all those flatuous and high imaginations of our hearts For the world passeth away and the lust thereof but he that doth the will of God abideth for ever 1 John 2.17 Yea in every Funeral there is as it were a special hand of providence Dan. 5.5 like that which Balshazzar saw upon the wall which not only wrote his fate but weighed him as it were in a ballance 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Stobae and shewed him by his own terrors and tremblings how much he was too light in God's esteem and in his own mistaken fancies of earthly felicity It is among the mementos of the ancient Greeks Being momentany and mortal it well becomes all mankind to be very lowly minded Mich. 6.8 to walk humbly before their God Not to lay much weight upon so small pillars as our legs and sinews are not to build upon so loose a foundation which like quick-sands or quagmires in a short time swallow and bury up the building which is set upon them How ridiculous would he be that should bestow much time to hew and square and polish cakes of ice in order to build himself a splendid and perspicuous palace which he should fancy to be like the Chrystal Firmament and comparable to the etherial mansions of heaven Magno conatu nugas agimus Truly such are the industrious self-cheats of those who fancy to themselves rare felicities or real fulness in this life Isa 44.20 Hos 12.1 Edunt tanquam hodie morituri Aedificant tanquam semper victuri so greedily feeding on the East-wind and ashes the pleasures of sense which blast our fouls and abase them as if they had but one day to live and yet so solicitous for the morrow as if they were to live here for ever No man takes the true dimensions of life who doth not as Pythagoras did the Pyramids measure it by the shadows of death Nor do we begin truly to live as rational and religious creatures till we lay to heart the true state and proportion of this life of which we are but Tenants at will having no lease much less see simple or inheritance but are at the will of the Lord to be turned out of house and home at a moments warning Blessed God! If we laid this to heart as we should what manner of men and women should we be in all humble holy 2 Pet. 3.11 1 Cor. 7.21 Frui utendis summa est dementia Aug. and heavenly conversation as St. Peter writes using this world as if we used it not at least enjoyed it not For as St. Austin observes it is extream fatuity to enjoy that as ours which is but lent us for a very little yea for no time but from one moment to another The very ancient Heathens will rise up against Christians in this point which they notably studied variously and wittily expressed yea and in many things modestly practised 5. Add to the thoughts of lifes frailty and vanity the certain uncertainty and inevitable necessity of death A subject adorned by
not be forced no man taking his life from him yet he yielded to doe the lowest homage to death as a man not without great horror of that cup yea humbling himself even to the death of the crosse and to the prison of the grave for a short time that by dying he might overcome death in its own fort 1 Cor. 15. By grapling with this Dragon he pulled out his sting and made him cast forth his poyson so far as to be innoxious now and not very terrible to those that fly to this Jesus for protection and life John 11.25 who is the resurrection and the life to believers and holy livers who maketh light to grow up to the righteous out of their darkness and life out of his death To others indeed that are either Infidel Heathens or unchristian Christians which have but forms and no power of godliness on whose hearts the death of Christ hath not yet wrought as a corrasive against sin and a cordial against death to these Death still appears as a direful Comet or blazing star in his full magnitude truculent threatning formidable inevitable infinitely to be dreaded because he threatens them with a total and entire death not onely to their estates and honours pleasures power friends and bodies but as to their soules as to that after and eternal life If death prevailed so far upon the Son of God how far will its vastations reach upon those that are the children of the flesh only that is of the Devil and properly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 sons of death If the living Lion thus died what must become of those that are but as dead dogs A gracious Christian as Jonathan did Sauls javelin avoids the stroak of death as to the main it may graze on his body but it toucheth not his soul Col. 3.3 when his life is hidden with Christ in God A natural man though while he lived he blessed himself yet dies wholly Death like the flood prevaileth over his highest tops and mountains it gnaweth upon them as sheep Nothing is left him for ever of which it may be said In this he lives as in the houses of the Egyptians there was none in which there was not one dead yea the first born For his children they shal follow the generation of their fathers and never see light if they follow their evil steps His lands which he called after his name in a few years they are alienated his lamp quite extinct and his memorial perisheth For his fair and costly Monument Et habent sua fata Sepulchra These in revolutions of time Psal 49.19 either by the rough hand of war overturning all things or by the gentle and leisurely thawings of peace melt and moulder away till they bury themselves in their own dust which were designed as repositories and conservatories of their Masters As for their souls they never lived the life of God nor can they hope to live in light with him so that eternal death feedeth for ever upon the whole man devouring every-limb of body and faculty of soul as the Lions did the accusers of Daniel before ever they come to the ground O how sad how mad is that security among Christians which sleeps on the top of a mast in so dangerous a sea that dares to live in known and presumptuous sins amidst these infinite and hourly adventures of death playing over the head of that mine where he knows is daily sapping under him and within him nor doth a man know in what moment it may be sprung to his utter dissipation We know not at what hour of the day Mat. 24.42 43. or watch of the night this notable Thief will come to break up our house of clay and spoil us of all our goods together with our lives and he is but the Vancourrier of our Judge whose counsel is holy and wholsome advising all his disciples to watch and pray lest we be surprised at unawares by the arrests of Death and Judgment Nothing concerns a wise man or evidenceth a good man more then to be never so imployed as he shall not dare to die that like an honest and able debtor he may confidently walk at all hours of the day in every street of the City where he dwells and where he owes a debt which he is able and willing to pay whereas the lewdnesse and riot of impenitent sinners makes them like bankrupt debtors shift and shark hide and skulk up and down in by-wayes and at twilight for fear of those Creditors whom they are neither able nor willing to satisfie and yet they cannot long escape the Bayliffs and Jaylors hand nor by any artifices avoid that prison out of which is no redemption till a man hath paid the uttermost farthing that is never unlesse while we are in the way we agree with our merciful Creditor Mat. 5.29 who is ready upon our humble request to forgive us all that we owe him like that gracious and generous Master in the Gospel Mat. 18.27 6. Lay to heart what little cause any mothers child of us hath to presume to sin and to procrastinate our repentance since we have no cause to presume of life till to morrow to neglect agreeing with our adversary while we are yet in the way that is under the meanes offer and capacity of reconciliation and happy accord to adventure so precious and momentary an opportunity upon which depends our everlasting fate in weal or woe Ex hoc momento pendet aeternitas never stirring up any Sympathies in our souls toward our Saviours death nor any compassions to our selves as to our own mortality never to return any holy Ecchoes or humble Amens either to the precepts or promises terrors or comforts of Gods word but as if stark deaf and quite dead so we are utterly dumb and unmoved as to all that is thundred and lightned from heaven 2 Cor. 5.20 2 Cor. 6.1 to all that Gods Embassadors those Boanerges and Barnabasses sonnes of thunder or of consolation daily cry unto us with infinite counsels and reproofs Sermons and prayers inviting and beseeching men to pity themselves to flee from the wrath that is to come to disarm Death and defeat the Devil of his expected prey There is no rock that Ministers should more avoid thenthis of giving people any encouragement to delay their repentance which no man may upon good grounds do e that hath not any assurance of his life nor any insurance against death Nor doth any thing usually more contribute to this vulgar presumption and dilatories then the courting and complementing with the dead and living too in Funeral Sermons making them rather Panegyricks and Harangues of commendation to the dead then serious summons and alarms to the living when neither the life nor the death of the interred gave any pregnant evidences of such grace and comfort as deserves either the commendation or imitation of the living No Funeral Sermons as I
a fire when he is so benummed and feeble with cold that he can hardly lift his hands to his head 2. Besides no man hath much cause to presume his repentance will be accepted of God when it comes perforce at the dregs and fag end of his life Lastly a man can then least relish and reflect upon such late and necessitated repentance as to the comfort and joy of his own soul for the best trial and taste of true repentance is to be had in health amidst the exercises and assaults of temptations then if it hold sound and firm it argues it to be of proof and safe Indeed there is nothing in our life so necessary to be done and so worthy of our living as our timely repenting for if life were for nothing else but an enflaming the reckonings of our sins here and our miseries hereafter it were a thousand times better never to be born or to see the Sun The great end of our life is first to remove the sordes and rubbidg of our sins next to build up our souls for God by grace to glory which two make up the compleat work of repentance which like currant coin hath two sides stampt or impressions on it the one is as cross the other is as pile the first is as turning from sin or dying to sin the other is turning to God and living to grace These are wrought by a double stamp upon the soul 1. Of fear and terrour scaring us from sin by the just apprehensions of the anger and wrath of God revealed from heaven and in the heart 2. Of love and mercy winning us to God by the beauty of holiness and the brightness of his goodness which appears in the face of Jesus Christ set forth in the Evangelical promifes The first breaks the second melts the heart The one is commonly much hidden where the other most appears to the soule either in fear or love which have their wholsome vicissitudes till the work be perfected by mortification to amendment by hatred of sin from the love of God This seasonably leisurely and seriously done doth strangely advance the souls faith comfort and hope of Gods love in Christ But it is neither an easie nor a ready thing to discerne the bright jewel of assurance as Gods love mercy and pardon there where the soul is all in dust and hurry and confusion moving and removing its lumber and rubbish A troubled water Isa 57.20 though it be pure will not shew a clear reflexion of our own or anothers face no more will a troubled spirit especially if it be foul with mire and dirt as a wicked heart is though a late repentant may find favour in Gods sight who can see our sincerity amidst all our confusions yet it is hard for us to have so clear a sight of God as may amount to that plerophory strong comfort and assurance which a dying man affected with his condition would desire even beyond life it self or a thousand worlds having now before his eyes the dismal aspect of death the black Abyssus of eternal night without bounds or bottome made up of desolation and oblivion at best and which is insinitely more horrid of damnation and eternal torments a Tophet that burns with much wood kindled by the breath of Gods displeasure which none can quench I know it is not fit to obstruct or shrink the mercies of God where there is yet any hope possibility or capacity allowed us by Gods indulgence They found Manasses in a prison and the thief on the Crosse and the prodigal son at the swine-trough by which sharp pennances God brought them first to themselves then to himself by repentance and so accepted of them I know God can and I believe sometimes he doth sanctifie sickness to the like good effects But we have no one example of death-bed repentance so much as once recorded in Scripture to give any instance of hope in that kind or to occasion the least presumption impenitently to sin away our health by putting off our turning to God till the time that we can scarce turn our selves in our bed Repentance like Poetry for it is a new making of the soul for God a composing of it to the holy meeters or measures of his Word requires solitude and recesses of mind Psal 4.4 that the heart of man may commune with it self and be still seriously reflecting upon a mans self what he is where he lives whence he is sprung whither he tends to what end he lives what he would have to make him happy whether this world can doe it where he may best know and how he may doe the will of his Maker and Preserver God what he will doe in age sickness death what relation proportion and capacity above all things under heaven he hath as a reasonable creature toward the Creator from what wisedom power and goodness all his visible and present comforts flow what duty and gratitude what justice and holiness befits him to God and man what to himself and his own future interests both as to soul and body which may without doubt be as capable of an after-happiness or misery which we call heaven and hell in their aspects to the supreme and increated good as they are here of health or sickness poverty or riches honour or disgrace joy or grief vexation or pleasure a momentary heaven or hell in reference to those creature-comforts they enjoy or want These if a man will but recollect himself and not shut the eyes of his soul he may in seeing see Gods will and apply himself to do his duty But this must be done apart and by himself when there are least diversions no distractions of body or mind that removed from the noise and tintamars both of secular incumbrances or sick annoyances he may better hear the gentle and orderly voice of God who is oftner in these silent and soft motions of reason then in those louder earthquakes and terrours of afflictions Nor can any pious and prudent Divine as the Confessor and Comforter of such a troubled spirit whose inward troubles for sin never began or were kindly entertained till the unwelcome trouble of his sickness made him a prisoner to his bed as the presage of his after-jayls the grave and hell In such cases I say no wise and worthy Minister of Christ but will be very wary how by the keyes of the Gospel he shut all disquiet for sin out of such a soule or let in the peace of God suddenly as to any particular confidences or personal assurance which in such cases must needs be very dark 'T is true in the general he may and must so temper Evangelical dispensations declaring the riches of Gods mercy and sufficiencies of Christs merits even to the chiefest of sinners as may never countenance despair as on Gods part in the least kind which is the dreadfullest fury of hell hardly allayed when once conjured up by the black art of
Satan For this damps all indeavors and at once doth both God and a poor sinner the greatest injury that can be by belying the one and lying most foully to the other It must alwayes be asserted on Gods behalf that when ever the sinner turns from his sins with all his heart God will abundantly pardon And whoever comes to Christ shall in no sort be cast out These are most true as to Gods readiness to receive provided alwayes on mans part that he seek the Lord while he may be found and call upon him while he is near Isa 57.7 Ezek. 18. John 6.37 Isa 55.6 in the means of grace in the motions of his spirit in the corrections of mens own consciences in the enjoyments of many mercies in the lengthnings of sinners tranquillity else such a penal hardness searedness and benummedness Rom. 1.24 28. such a giving over to a reprobate sense may befall a man that he shall have no contrition though he have time nor comfort though some terrors either he shall be dumb before God not daring to speak Hos 7.14 or if he doth cry and howl as a natural man or a beast for pain and fear yet God will not hear Prov. 21.13 Pro. 1.26 27 28. or answer them yea their very prayers shall be abominable because they so long refused to hear and answer Gods cry to them setting at nought his counsel c. Therefore may the Lord justly laugh at their calamity and mock when their fear cometh as desolation and their destruction as a whirlwind These are terrible checks and coolings as to the hope of an after-crop or death-bed repentance In which at the best advance and proficiency of it especially in people of riper years and full age who have filled up the measure of their iniquity Rom. 2.5 and heaped up nothing but wrath against the day of wrath if there should be melting of this rock and softening of this milstone by the furnace of sicknesse even so far as what God will accept for true repentance who is the only searcher and judge of mens hearts yet neither he that thus confesseth and deploreth his sins nor he that as a Minister takes his confession only as it is now in humane appearance and by real experience extorted by sickness and terrours neither of them can think that it is either so ingenuous or can be so comfortable to be driven to God by the scourge of fears rather then to be drawn to him by the cords of his love so long despised Nothing of force and compulsion is so acceptable to others or so reflecting with honour and comfort to a mans self as that which flowes from the freedome of love and such adherences as arise from choise and value A forced Repentance begun on our sick beds possibly may as muskmelons and other tender plants which are bred in hot beds come to good but they must be very carefully and warily tended for a little cold chills and kills them What fruit they may bear to another world I must leave to God but as to this world I am sure there are but rare that is few examples in all experience of any whose repentance began in sickness that did ever hold long in their after health and recovery Commonly all prayers and purposes are put into the grave of forgetfulness when our selves are reprieved from it Whether it may take a better effect in heaven then usually it doth on earth I leave to all serious Christians to judge Object But I know it will be here retorted with quickness upon me by some more morose or petulant sinners who are only witty to cavil with God and delude their own soules Must we not tarry the Lords leisure when he will call us at the sixth or ninth or eleventh hour Is not repentance a grace Matth. 20.6 and so a gift of God How vain is it to step unseasonably into the water if the Angel move it not there may be a royling of the pool by us but no healing for us Did not Christ and his Apostles heal many without scruple on their sick beds as well as those that had firmer health Nor is Christ to be thought a less ready Physician to sick mens soules then their bodies Do not therefore torment us before our time suffer us to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season it will not be long before we shall be unwilling because weary or unable to sinne then we shall be much more at leisure and dispose to repent mean time God gives us not at least we have no mind to it nor indeed any power as you Preachers tell us to attain or act it of our selves for till God turn us we cannot be turned So that it seems rather a passionate and imperious way of preaching in you agreeable to your more cholerick or melancholy tempers which makes you impatient not to be presently obeyed by all men then any true Divinity you ought not to stretch mans authority by shrinking Gods mercy Answ Thus are many men ingeniosè nequam perditè periti as St. Austin speaks very acute Sophisters to deceive and damn their own others souls rather listning as Ahab to the 400 false Prophets of their own foolish hearts deceitful lusts then to one true Micaiah which is Gods Prophet 'T is most true that the life and soul of repentance which crowns it with love and endears it to God in Christ as the highest good is a special grace of God Nor is any soul so far off from him but he can easily and speedily reach them and win them to himself by the attractions of his infinite goodness and mercy discovered and offered to them in the blood of Christ Divines that understand themselves doe not prejudice or diminish the sweet and soveraign power or freedome of Gods grace which compleats mans weak endeavours and crownes all meanes with good success But yet they justly urge and inculcate upon sinners their daily duty incumbent upon them and required of them as rational creatures capable to discern and chuse good and evil sensible of feares and hopes yea and as Christians compassed with a marvellous light which convinceth them of sin and righteousness and judgment to come with offers of mercy in Christ to the highest latitude Jam. 1.21 and menaces of wrath to eternity upon their impenitency This is that which is required of them as in their power to turn from sin at least as to that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 superfluity of wickedness and excess of riot in which they knowingly wallow to greater impudicities and fedities then the sober Heathens would indulge Since then even these men can deny many acts and degrees of sin even for fear of man why cannot why doe not they deny more for fear of God Rom. 2.1 They must needs be inexcusable and without Apology yea self-condemned because it is evident there is no sin so pleasing or so prevalent upon
any man or woman but either fear or shame or sense of honour or love or ingenuity or gratitude or hope of reward will restrain and resist even in the greatest paroxy sins of lust and temptations of the Devil If a man ascend not at first to the highest pitch of repentance namely the love of God and goodness or perfect hatred of sin to which special grace must conduct him yet he may come to the first steps and porch of it to deny the ontward acts of ungodliness and the fulfilling of worldly lusts Let a man by this negative part of repentance ceasing to doe evil first make trial in his health to leave any sin to which he hath been addicted and long captivated Let him prepare his heart thus to seek the Lord though with fear and difficulty yet the Lord will meet with such a soul and bring him beyond his feares terrours and conflicts as he did St. Austin to the confines of love through the wilderness of fiery serpents and thirst and weariness to the Land of Canaan to the state of rest in which the soul shall not only enjoy the comfort of Gods love in its delight to doe well and being enamoured with the beauty of holiness but he shall rejoyce to see the blessings of Gods grace following his first weak endeavors and dubious industry in contesting with and conquering temptations and resisting such sins as lay within the power and reach of his soule as he is a reasonable creature and an instructed baptized and inlightned Christian who furnished with such potent and moral means to do his part must not only attend the meanes but apply to doe his duty Nor shall any man have cause to complain of Gods defect as to the completion of his grace who takes care not to turn that grace into wantonness which hath appeared to him and is manifested on purpose to lead us to repentance to teach us to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts and to live soberly in this present world Labour to pull up the evil weeds of thy inordinate lusts at least keep them from being rank and luxuriant Tit. 2.11 12. attend also those meanes which are appointed of God in his Church to sow plant and water the good seeds of grace and vertue thou wilt in a short time find those wholsome and lively plants grow in thee to thy great comfort and pleasure Jucundissima est vita in dies sentire se fieri meliorem which consists not only in finding a mans self daily less vain and vicious but more serious and vertuous As it is to covetous men an infinite content to see themselves daily grow richer and to the ambitious man to be daily advancing so to a mind impatient of being poor and base in his sin it is an unspeakable joy to see himself every day mending in his judgment prayers desires designs and hearty endeavours The misery is health and life and liberty and strength and estate and pleasure and pride embase our souls toward God even to far lower degrees of ingratitude and unworthiness then we can in honour or will for shame shew toward men that have any power to punish or oblige us we abhor to seem uncivil uningenuous unthankful insolent presumptuous affrontive to such as are our betters and especially if they have merited many ways well of us only to God we offer such rude and unkind unholy and unthankful measure as we would not to a Prince to a Parent to any Superiour no nor to an equal and inferiour nor a noble enemy being so far from any thing of Christian and true Divinity which is the approportioning of our duty love respect and service to God that we forget all humanity which becoms our selves sinning not only most shamefully impudently against God but also against our own consciences and principles against our soules and bodies too even that honour and decency which we owe to our selves The first step to be a good Christian is to be a good man Right reason is the fair suburbs of Religion once cease to live as a beast without fear or understanding and thou wilt begin to delight in the dignity which becomes a man and a Christian God waits for thy essayes of repentance Isa 30.18 that he may be gracious to thee not only in pardoning thy sins but in speaking peace to thee which is far better to be perceived by thee when thou seest it was not meer slavish fear and the bastinado that compelled thee to look from sin toward God and goodness but something of a rational and religious principle becoming a man and a Christian God never failes there to apply by his special hand the sweet cordials of his love and comforts of his mercies in Christ where we apply the corrasives proper to repress our sins and those bitter pills which work to the purgative part of repentance They that cease to doe evil will so learn to doe good Maxima pars impotentiae fluit ex voluntate Aquinas Isa 1.16 It is not impotencie but unwillingnesse that holds us so long tame captives to grosse sins The least Sympathies of a sinner with his Redeemer as suffering death and agonies inexpressible upon the Cross out of love to his soul and upon the account of his sin to purchase pardon and work his redemption from hell to heaven These reflections will work more kindly upon a mans heart to repentance then all the sicknesses crosses and consternations in the world For there is no compare between a mans sin and his Saviour to those that are not wholly blind dead and buried in sin And can any rational man that takes with patience all those bitter potions those nauseous and painful applications of Physick which are prescribed by Physicians in order to remove dangerous obstructions to purge out noxious humours and correct malignant spirits thereby to prepare the way for recovering of the health of the body Can these severe disciplines for the short and uncertain good of the outward man be endured nay desired yea with great charge be purchased and shall we be impatient of those restraining and healing methods of repentance which possibly are less for a time agreable to our corrupted palats and viciated appetites yet are the meanes prescribed and dispensed by God himself as proper to heal us of our deadly sins for so all are unrepented of and to prepare us for that health which our soules may enjoy by Christ When once they are rid of those scurvy habits or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which customary and prevailing sins bring upon us daily Quò diutius peccamus eò longinquius a Deo abscedimus Greg. disposing us to all evil and indisposing to all that is good However the operation or event may be this I am sure the duty and work of Ministers is not to dispute nor dispense the the secret workings of Gods grace or to search the hidden purpose of Gods will but to declare and
preach his revealed will which is our sanctification by our repenting and amending according to the tenour of the Gospel Such as deaffen their ears harden their hearts and turn their backs on God and the meanes of grace all the time of their strength and health will find it very hard to see or seek his face in the disorder darkness and clouds of sickness which is the twilight and evening of Death As in civil conversation no man may so presume of Gods providence as to neglect honest industry so in religious respects no man may hope for grace that doth not rationally duely and conscienciously apply to the use of those meanes which God hath appointed in his Church All blessings temporal and eternal which are acquirable by and offered to reasonable creatures are ordinarily the effects of Gods mercy and mans industry not of miracles or omnipotence The meanes of grace given by God in his Church are never barren or ineffectual but to those who neglect to attend them and use them as they may and ought to doe if they look upon them as from God and in order to their soules good which is to be attained by this or no way 7. In order therefore to promote and speed by Gods assistance our repentance while we are yet in life and health we should lay to heart specially at the summons of another death What infinite patience and long-suffering it is that hitherto God hath shewed toward thee for many years of vanity sin and desperate folly Rom. 2.4 in which he hath spared thee notwithstanding thou hast daily provoked him to his face yet thou art not to this day cut off from the land of the living nor is the door of mercy and repentance shut upon thee How many have been cut off by the sword by sudden death and by lingring sickness here one there another while thou art reprieved Should not this forbearance of God lead thee to repentance Is it not enough in all conscience and too much in all reason and gratitude thus far to have offended a God that is loth to destroy thee giving thee space to repent Wilt thou after the hardness of thy heart and vain confidence of life still treasure up wrath against the day of wrath The time past may suffice to give thee sufficient experience how unwilling God is thou shouldest die 1 Pet. 4.3 and how willing thou shouldst repent and live Ezek. 33.11 For it is of the Lords mercy that thou art not consumed Thou mightest have been the corps now to be put into the grave Lam. 3.22 where is no device or wisedome of counsel or repentance or preaching Eccl. 9.10 or praying O turn no longer the grace of God into wantonness which is offered in Christ by his Ministers Breve sit quod turpiter audes Of a short precious and uncertain moment the least part is too much to be lavished in those wayes Jude 4. which are not only unprofitable but pernicious Our whole lives after the vanity of childhood and youth are too little to be spent in well-doing Isa 20.15 and in undoing what hath been either vain or wicked To live as if we had made a covenant with death and hell is not onely a fool-hardiness but a madness which hath by infinite sad and horrid instances been fearfully punished but not yet sufficiently cured in mankind Eccl. 8.12 Though a sinner live an hundred years twice told yet it shall not be well with him Eccl. 11.9 Though young and strong men please themselves in the delights of their eyes and desires of their own hearts yet they must know that for all these things God will bring them to judgment A mans debts and dangers are not the lesse because he is not presently arrested nor sees the books and specialties which are against him or the Serjeants which will arrest him 'T is high time to cease to offend that God who is willing to remit all our former arrears and debts upon our return to him begging his pardon and resolving to live worthy of such grace Doe not then feed any longer on ashes it is a deceived heart that turneth thee aside Isa 44.20 Jonah 2.8 Phil. 2.12 Heb. 2.9 so that thou canst not deliver thy soul nor say Is there not a lye in my right hand Take heed of following lying vanities lest thou forsake thy own mercies which are offer'd us but from moment to moment so as every minute of time that passeth every clock that striketh calls upon thee in the wise man's counsell Eccles 9.10 Whatever thine hand findeth to do do it with all thy might And what hast thou to do but to work out thy salvation with feare and trembling as the Apostle calls upon the Philippians All without this is time and labour lost 8. Lay to heart upon the sight and reflexions of death the infinite want thou hast of such a Saviour who may be able and willing to redeem thee a captive to sin and held all thy life in the fear of death from both these miserable bondages Lay to heart the infinite grace transcendent love and mercy of Christ Heb. 2.9 who is offer'd thee as a sufficient Saviour to all purposes Who hath tasted death for every man and hath overcome death as well as satisfied for the death of the whole world excluding none nor excepting any but putting all into a capacity of life and salvation upon their faith and repentance John 5.40 John 6.37 40. Ver. 54. John 8.52 John 11.25 Mark 16.15 so that whoever will come to him and believe in him shall not die but have eternal life yea though he die as to the body yet he shall continue to live in the happiness of his soul and his body shall be raised to live in glory and immortality by Christ who hath wrought this for us by his death and brought it to light by his Gospel which is commanded to be preached to every rational creature under heaven Lay then to heart that is seriously and alone ponder with thy self what Christ hath done and suffered for thee what he hath deserved of thee what he expects from thee as a man Christian for whose sake he hath died Wouldst thou have greater instances of his love to thee John 10.11 John 15.13 then thus to die for thee Shall not thy unthankful and sinful importunity be satisfied with that which hath satisfied divine justice stopped the Devils mouth conquered death and purchased life eternal to every true believer It wrought up blessed Ignatius's heart to an ambitious zeal of Martyrdome that he might shew his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 reciprocal love to Christ when he deeply considered and oft repeated Christ my love hath been crucified 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Doth it become thee to neglect despise sinne against such love any longer Canst thou trample that blood under feet which hath been shed for thee Wouldst thou have him
alienated from his fear by the prosperity of any evil doers Psal 73.16 or adversity of well doers in this life But go into his Sanctuary with David search the Scriptures and there thou shalt see the eternal counterpoisings of these strange momentary dispensations how the wicked go away to eternal darkness Psal 97.10 11 c. Luke 12.4 and shall never see any light of comfort when his candle is once put out but to the righteous the Lord preserveth the souls of them from those that can but kill the body Rom. 2.7 yea light is sown in their darkness life in their death a crown of eternal glory will grow out of their crown of thorns rivers of everlasting refreshings shall flow out of the rock of their patience and sufferings in well doing in the midst of which fiery trials the spirit of glory rested upon them 1 Pet. 3.18 1 Pet. 4.13 14. Phil. 1.28 they are made conformable to Christ in sufferings that they may reign with him hence they enjoy a most evident sign of their adversaries condition but of their own salvation and that of God who is a righteous Judge a God of truth and faithfulness who will not forget the labour of love or suffer those to go unrewarded who suffer for righteousness sake Mat. 5.10.12 great is their reward in heaven Do not foolishly fret and envy Dives his delicates when thou seest Lazarus die on a dunghil Luke 16.19 Matth. 14.8 nor grudge Herod his throne when thou seest John Baptists head in a charger There is not a greater argument Certissimum futuri judicii praejudicium Tert. Jer. 51.56 The Lord God of recompenses shall surely require Mal. 3.17 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or more likely demonstration to confute Atheism to confirm faith and hope in a better and another life which the Lord God of recompenses hath certainly prepared for those that are his when he makes up his jewels Can any man be loser for Gods cause Shall not the just God do right to himself and to every man according to his own word and every mans works No man can think God is unable or unwilling to make such amends in another life as shall infinitely expiate and exceed all the seeming detriments here on the part of the godly and the increments or advantages on the part of the wicked Could he make such a world for the good and bad the just and unjust for men and beasts enemies and servants Matth. 5.45 and cannot he prepare for and bestow a better state upon his friends and children Is this mortal and momentary state worthy the name of life with which we are so taken and we are loth to leave whose welfare consists only in the using and enjoying of creatures either without life or only with life and sense or at best adorned with reason added to their life and sense Col. 2.22 but yet perishing in the use and dying as our selves Is this a life to be so desired and doted upon and must not that excel which consists in communion with and participation of the Creator who must necessarily be better then all his creatures and infinitely exceed them as much as light darkness the sea a drop or the Sun a mote or spark Is it a small matter that the spirit or soul of a good man like Lazarus's and Stephens Luke 16. is presently attended and received by many blessed Angels which light on it as a swarm of bees to conduct it joyfully to its blessed God and Saviour so that as soon as it parts out of the body it enjoys spiritual Angelical and celestial joys But the souls of the wicked loth to leave their carkasses and lingring as it were about their corps are presently beset with so many evil spirits or spiteful divels who like wasps and hornets fall upon it as it were to bite and sting and vex it with such resentments and terrors as they either feel or fear to which the soul is first self-condemned and presently selfe-tormented being its own Hell or Tormentor now as it was its own betrayer or tempter heretofore 10. These and the like serious reflexions may justly be laid to heart by all such as are yet but in the outward court of reason on the bare forms of religion and even by others who are come or seem so at least into the holy place to clearer perceptions of piety carrying sincere purposes in their souls and professing to live in communion with God and Christ I am to speak to the hearts of these also How come they to live still incumbred with so many strange opinions passions lusts and affections which seem very weak partial preposterous disorderly earthly and uncharitable Is this to live as in the prospect of death in the confines of heaven in the aim at eternal life yet so eager solicitous impatient disquieted and concerned for these momentary and transeunt enjoyments of life as if these were the main interests they were to carry on in life or to provide for against death Art thou a Kings son and embracest dunghils Lam. 4.5 talkest so much of heaven and graspest only earth Art thou among Gods Nazarites Lam. 4.7 who profess to be separate from sinners crucified to the world whose heart and conversation should be whiter then milk purer then snow beautiful as the rubies and more polished then Saphirs as Jeremiah laments and yet is thy visage blacker then a coal thy sin cleaveth to thy bones such an hidebound Christian and politick professor so carking and caring so getting and griping so sharking and shifting to and fro in thy judgement and way of religion that thou seemest more to regard the wind and weathercock of civil interests favours and advantages then the constant rule and compass of Gods word shifting thy sails to every point as may most fit thy worldly occasions rather then thy conscience and eternal concernments Whence is it that thou a profest pilgrim and stranger in this world art so great an agitator and so passionately engaged in secular sidings whence is this strange Metamorphosis or change of Christianity from the primitive beauty and Scriptural garb or fashion used by the Confessors Martyrs Apostles by Christ himself and his best followers in all ages when hands and eyes heads and hearts lives and conversations of Christians were all lifted up toward heaven and set upon heavenly things how are they now become dross so groveling to the earth joyning Christ with Belial and God with Mammon 2 Cor. 6.15 1 Thes 2.5 Col. 3.5 Rom. 2.22 Prov. 3.9 Mal. 3.8 professions of light with operations of darkness making Christian liberty a cloke for all licentiousness and malice for all filthy lucre and even sacrilegious covetousness which is worse then Idolatry for the Idolater honours a false god with his substance but a Sacrilegious Christian robs the true God to increase his private substance This temper is far from the mortifying
thou 'T is hard for us to give a just reason and Christian account for most of our weepings and least of those that are most excessive we weep more for any loss of a momentary toy then for the absence of our Lord the loss of Gods love the loss of a good conscience the Churches wastes Jerusalems ruines and the sins of our own souls or of others which call us to mourning As our blessed Lord said to the women weeping when they saw him led to be crucified so may every dead friend or other object of our weeping say to us Weep not for me but weep for your selves Luke 23.28 who many times have most cause to sorrow then when you sorrow least some tears are to be wept for again Tears cannot profit the dead but they may the living yea I recant they may profit even dead souls who are dead as St. 1 Tim. 5.6 Prov. 8.36 John 11.35 Paul speaks even while they live who love death tears and prayers may be a means by Gods grace to revive these as Jesus his tears were to bring to life Lazarus Tears are the distillations of love resolved into drops by the coolings of some ambient sorrow We cannot love any thing in our selves or others so justifiably as our and their souls In reference to these all our passions and affections should be rightly disciplined and ranged duly and exercised and improved as most needing and deserving our cares and counsels our prayers and tears Nor can I here omit to lay to your hearts what this Noble Gentleman suggested to me when being sent for I came to him the morning before he died He told me he was very sorry that it was so late with him yea he feared very late he had been long fed with some hopes of life but now he believed his time was short which he could wish he had more improved to his souls comfort while his strength of body had been somewhat better I know men and women too have a feminine and foolish fear to dispirit or deject any patient or decumbent with the serious thoughts or speech of their dying for fear their sad physick and nauseous prescriptions should not operate well on the ill humors of their bodies But the care of removing any burthens or obstructions upon their souls and consciences this must be deferred and neglected till there is such a decline of life and spirits as hangs out the black flag of death and despair then ubi desinit Medicus incipit Theologus when Physitians have in vain done their best the Divine must God knows too oft in vain do his best also for alas he hath little time in the agonies of death and the precipitations of life to search and apply the necessary remedies or comforts of a languishing soul which is as if a man should begin to read a long letter of great and present concernment when his candle was at the last twinkling A method certainly not more preposterous then dangerous to sick bodies and diseased souls If our Physitians were meer disciples of Galen and Hippocrates I should not wonder at their dilatory indifferencies as to mens souls and intensiveness only to their bodies but being many of them very learned men and some of them very good Christians I humbly conceive it would no way misbecome them nor any way impede the success of their arts and applications if they did upon the first perception of a dubious and dangerous state of any sick body with Christian wisedom and charity advise them yea and intreat them not to neglect the care of preparing their souls for God that as they will do their best with Gods help to cure their bodily distempers so it will no way hinder their skill or cure to carry on the concurrent welfare of their souls so as becomes good Christians because the event of all sickness is uncertain diseases oft flatter where they destroy therefore Physitians and Friends should be with all speed faithful to their Patients souls as well as bodies It bears no proportion for a sick patient to be visited twice or thrice in a day by Physitians in order to the bodies health and by a Divine once in a week it may be and this not till the last exigent and gasp of life as if this would abundantly serve the turn When men begin more to value their pretious and immortal souls they will more prize the help of true Divines whose prayers connsels and spiritual assistance being Gods indulgence and ordinance in his Church is usually followed with most gracious and comfortable successes toward sick persons that desire their help and send timely for them as St. James 5.14 James adviseth yea commandeth to do when Christians are cast down in bodily or spiritual dejections and when they are desirous to have the comfort of forgiveness of sins further sealed to them yea who is there so able so knowing so self-confident so comfortable in health that may not and usually doth not finde great damps dulness and difficulties of soul in sickness these are prone to be dispirited as well as the bodies of the best Christians and may well bear with nay most earnestly desire to have their weak hands supported and feeble knees strengthned by the counsel prayers and comforts of true Ministers Yea in the most desperate cases when dissolute livers are catched in Gods net or toile and now begin to make their addresses to God and preparations for eternity even in these cases the diligent and frequent assistance of discreet Ministers helping poor creatures to search and try their hearts to see their sins to look to God in Christ to turn to him and lay hold upon him doth many times work miraculous effects both to sanctifie sickness and to save souls so much doth God blesse the means he hath appointed when duly used which supinely neglected the end must needs fail I know many men and women too are now turned Preachers as not a few are turn'd Physitians which truly in my judgement amount no higher for the most part then Empiricks and Mountebancks in both making more work for able Divines and Physitians too This I am sure few men in their wits and willing to live but court the best Physitians nor do I see less reason why they should not desire and employ the best and truest Divines such as are most able and skilful most willing and faithful most authorized and commissionated by Christ and his Church to assist and comfort to instruct and absolve if need be dying sinners beyond what any man ordinarily can do in his health much less in the distempers dejections and darknesses of his sickness both corporal and spiritual who yet now affect in it most what in the frolick of their lives to be their own Teachers and Preachers their own Ordainers and Confessors their own Bishops and Presbyters too contrary to the judgment of all pious Antiquity who thought the Evangelical Ministry not an
make up compleat authority the want of which as we have no cause much to rejoyce in or little to lament so posterity both in Church and State will unfeignedly deplore 3. Yea when any men or women that are eminently good and gracious wise and worthy are taken away either immaturely in their strength or very many of them in a little times these are Gods warnings which are to be laid to heart for the death of the righteous poor or rich is pretious in the fight of the Lord and should be so in the sense of all good men they many times portend some great evil to come when God pulls off his chief Jewels it is a sign he means shortly to strip and undress a Church or Nation of their ornaments and defences When men take off the principal and noblest parts of a fair ship the main-masts rudders prow and upper decks it argues that they intend to break it quite in pieces or to take it much lower and abase it So is it when God pulls up those repagula sluces and banks which either keep off inundations of judgements or dayly discharge the superfluities of epidemick sins by their prayers and tears for the sins of the people When Lot is out of Sodom and Noah shipped in Gods Ark then fire and flood is to be expected 4. When our Parents Fathers or Mothers are taken away though in a good old age as Jacob yet they may frigidam suffundere cast cold water by their deaths upon the varieties heats luxuries and confidences of their young heirs and successors who are prone to live as if they could never die out of this world when yet they see their roots die sure the branches cannot be everlasting It was a notable Instance of filial sympathy which a son of the Duke of Montpensier shewed who coming to his fathers monument in Italy at Puzzolo where he had in the French wars died being killed by ill air and inconveniencies the young Gentleman could not bear the memory of his dead father but amidst infinite passions and tears dies upon his fathers Tomb Guicciardin Hist lib. 5. p. 261. as Guicciardin reports of certainty Yea although estates honours and inheritances do descend upon men by the death of any yet they may lay this to heart that the more talents thou hast the greater account thou must give to God Luke 12.48 It is not considerable as to true internal and eternal comfort what lands moneys honours and titles a man hath but how wisely and nobly how piously and charitably he useth all things The accession of estate is but more fewel cast upon a fire that will at last consume riotous and inordinate livers A man needs not much to be holy and happy for a man may maintain all the vertues at a cheaper rate then any one vice nothing of competency is too little for a virtuous mind and nothing of plenty is sufficient to a vain and vicious spender As dumbness had been a mercy to swearers to profane and filthy speakers so had poverty been riches to many a riotous liver whose making was his marring Luke 15.13 as the Prodigals having his portion in his own hand utterly undid him The more honour and estate any one is master of the more he had need be master of himself of his lusts and passions for riotous expenses will end with Dives his gluttony in eternal poverty and such extream necessities as shall everlastingly want a drop of comfort there being no hope that God will bestow upon those men or women the blessings of eternity which have been such debauched abusers of these blessings which are momentary such as have not been faithful stewards to Gods glory and the worlds good in the little comparatively of this worlds unrighteous mammon as our Saviour tells us how can they expect Buke 16.11 when they come to die that they should be trusted with eternal riches or honours which are the rewards of well doing and recompenses of comely suffering 5. If an excellent wife or husband are parted by death who long lived or were likely to live as turtles in a peaceful sweetness and unspotted society being of one mind and one heart in the Lord joying each others joyes and grieving one anothers griefs who had nothing to envy or desire beyond that love and content which they mutually enjoyed save only the love of God and the fruition of their blessed Saviour in the Kingdom of heaven A blessed pair who so lived that they were dayly ready and preparing to die having nothing to give them any regret at death but only the leaving each other in such a solitude for a season as none but God could supply I need not tell these how they ought to lay to heart eithers death in point of humanity the care must be not to lay it too much to heart 1 Thes 4.13 not to sorrow as meer men and women without hope lest they be swallowed up with too much grief A moderate mourning in such occasions is neither uncomly nor unholy nor unwholesome but as the overflowings of land-floods is beneficial to low grounds when they seasonably abate and leave them dry for if waters stay too long on the richest bottomes they make them cold squallid course and barren Non amissi sed ' praemissi the like effects follow moderate and excessive sorrows upon any worldly occasion whatsoever They must consider each other not as lost but as gone a little before in the same way to happiness 6. So in the loss of children dear by nature deserving by duty especially if our only child more if in the prime and pregnancy of their age most if the hopes and honour of their families the props and pillars of their houses these wounds in the delights of our eyes are prone to go too deep to our hearts to fester and gangrene to something of irreligous discontent and sowrness toward God as if like Jonah Jonah 4.9 we did well to be angry with God and frown upon heaven for the loss of a gourd which had its being from God as St. Austin says of his pregnant son who died at 14. but its sin and mortality from thy self nor can any parents tell how sharp a thorn that child might prove in their eyes and hearts afterward which now seems so fair sweet and lovely a flower to their eyes In such cases not only the highest cordials of divine comforts and Christian hopes but the strictest charms of Gods commands must be applied lest we turn Gods physick into our poyson and by a sullen stubbornness turn a fathers cqastisement to the sharp punishment of an enemy remember God is so much beforehand with us by his bounty that his withdrawings can never be an injury to us He as the spring and occan hath more right in any streams then the channel through which they pass as all runs to him so they come from him So that after Job's example
a childish and stupid indifferency or with a vulgar formality or in some cases with a proud unchristian and unmanly insolency rejoycing and triumphing in the death of those who possibly were thought their betters or equals or rivals or enemies As Ahaz in his distresses sinned yet more against the Lord 2 Chro. 28.22 so do some men and women too amidst those Funerals which concerned them most to lay to heart How doth covetousness ambition envy and lasciviousness make many men and women unfeignedly rejoyce in the death of Parents Children Husbands Wives Rivals and Princes that they can hardly suppress their odious joys and unseasonable contentments from breaking forth into such abhorred expressions as Vitellius a most ungenerous Prince and profligate person used when after the battel ended which in civil wars as that was makes even victory it self sad and ashamed was heard to say when he rode amidst the now putid and unburied carkasses of the slain Citizens The smell of dead strangers corps is pleasing Bonus odor hostis occisi at melior civis but most of dead Roman Citizens being my enemies A speech which Suetonius brands with a stigma of just-infamy so infinitely distant from the clemency of Julius Caesar Quique dolet quoties cogitur esse ferox who ever in the chase commanded to spare the Roman Citizens and was unfeignedly grieved to use necessary severities which are next door to cruelty Poor mortals forget in their revengeful impatiencies military jollities and victorious triumphs how soon the wheel may come about and the same measure may be meeted to them Judg. 1.6 which they meet to others Adoni-Bezek may live to see his own thumbs and great toes one off Should not we tremble before the great and terrible God when we see his judgments so executed that our selves are sometimes made the sad executioners of them upon others who it may be in Gods sight are not greater sinners then our selves 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Stobaeus Matth. 5.28 They that joy in anothers calanity or insult in their death though just doe adopt a murther and commit man-slaughter in their hearts as Christ speaks of Adultery As a Judge who pleaseth his private spite and malice in that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 most depraved passion which sucks honey out of anothers gall while he justly condemnes a malefactor to die he may be a just Judge according to the Law of man but is unrighteous according to the Gospel of Christ which commends charity and compassion tenderness and bowels to Christians beyond all burnt sacrifices Gods High Court of Justice will judge even judges themselves and Death will in a few years not only conquer but triumph over those that are lifted up above the fate and pitch of poor mortals in their gloryings over an others ruines Let him that stands upon a mountain never so high and fast remember the day of death is coming he shall also fall and perish like one of the Princes Yet mens sins are not to be measured by the evil or seeming calamity of their death but by the open wickedness and impieties of their lives The same fate may befall good and bad they may die in peace as it is said of Josiah who are slain in warre and of Zedekiah 2 Kin. 22.20 Jer. 34.5 who died blind and in captivity The death of men is the more to be laid to heart by how much less they deserved it from men and more from God It serves to exhort and excite every one of us to search and try our own hearts Vse 2 to examine how far this or another Funeral is gone beyond our eyes and eares so as it is or shall be laid to our hearts What fear what trembling what holy purposes and what humble resolutions are raised in thee What sins mortified what vanities left what neglects repaired what graces increased what improving of life what preparings for death by a constant and conscientious use of all duties opportunities and means proper for so great ends as aym at eternity Your mourning with never so great pomp and state yea with unfeigned grief out of humane and momentary reflexions onely is not that just improvement which God expects As Fullers earth cleanseth spots of cloaths and Wood-ashes rince foul vessels so should the contemplation of anothers death their dust and ashes help to cleanse our souls In vain do you wear black mourning on your bodies if you still keep pullatas atratas animas black and sullied soules soyled and scorched with the inordinate flames of lust pride malice covetousness c. which are the soot of hell These sine black garments are but in stead of courser sackeloth the fittest coverings indeed for your bodies of sin and death but they must put you in mind to get your soules cloathed in white garments the robes of Christs righteousness for justification and sanctification without which thou wilt follow this corps to thy grave also with cause enough and too much for such everlasting mournings as admit no comforters or comforts Let thy mourning be not only civil formal and humane but Christian humble penitent Acts 20.25 As Jacob to the Angel so let not a Funeral goe without a blessing as Felix at St. Pauls Preaching so let thy heart tremble at these visible as well as audible instructions of death and judgment to come Retine to thy closet after these Solemnities and earnestly pray to God to give thee Funeral graces that by an holy Christian Chymistry thou mayst extract spirits out of dead bones Doe not play with Death lest it bite or sting thee next as that serpent did a merry Greek of old who jestingly putting his hand into the jawes of a Lion that was figured of stone for an ornamental statue in one of the Temples of the Gods was so stung with a scorpion which lay in the mouth of that Lion that he presently died having first laughed with his companions at that monition he had the night before in his dream as he told them that he should next day be destroyed by a Lion which beast never haunted that place and so he thought himself most secure Death many times lies then nearest us and in wait for us when we least mind the monitions or credit the warnings which may by providence be given us I cannot but make use of this Text as a just vindication of this and the like religious solemnities at Christian Burials Vse 3 against those severe Aristarchus'es and super-reforming Reformers who cast most supercilious browes and use very severe invectives against all Funeral Sermons and much more against all Scriptures read exhortations and prayers used by and to the living at the graves and interments of the dead by which tetrick austerities they seem to me not only to reproach the piety prudence and charity of this deserved famous and well reformed Church in its sacred offices and appointments on such occasions which were seriously approved happily