his servants to minister to the necessities and eternally to blesse and prudently to guide and wisely to judge concerning souls and the Holy Ghost that anointing from above descends upon us in severall effluxes but ever by the ministeries of the Church Our heads are anointed with that sacred unction Baptisme not in ceremony but in reall and proper effect our foreheads in confirmation our hands in ordinations all our senses in the visitation of the sick and all by the ministery of especially deputed and instructed persons and we who all our life time derive blessings from the fountains of grace by the channels of Ecclesiastical ministeries must do it then especially when our needs are most pungent and actuall 1. We cannot give up our names to Christ but the Holy man that ministers in religion must enroll them and present the persons and consigne the grace when we beg for Gods Spirit the Minister can best present our prayers and by his advocation hallow our private desires and turn them into publike and potent offices 2. If we desire to be established and confirmed in the grace and religion of our Baptisme the Holy man whose hands were anointed by a speciall ordination to that and its symbolical purposes layes his hands upon the Catechumen and the anointing from above descends by that ministery 3. If we would eat the body and drink the blood of our Lord we must addresse our selves to the Lords Table and he that stands there to blesse and to minister can reach it forth and feed thy soul and without his ministery thou canst not be nourished with that heavenly feast nor thy body consigned to immortality nor thy soul refreshed with the Sacramentall bread from heaven except by spirituall suppletories in cases of necessity and an impossible communion 4. If we have committed sins the spirituall man is appointed to restore us and to pray for us and to receive our confessions and to enquire into our wounds and to infuse oil and remedy and to pronounce pardon 5. If we be cut off from the communion of the faithfull by our own demerits their holy hands must reconcile us and give us peace they are our appointed comforters our instructers our ordinary Judges and in the whole what the children of Israel beg'd of Moses that God would no more speak to them alone but by his servant Moses lest they should be consumed God in compliance with our infirmities hath of his own goodnesse established as a perpetuall law in all ages of Christianity that God will speak to us by his Ministers and our solemn prayers shall be made to him by their advocation and his blessings descend from heaven by their hands and our offices return thither by their presidencies and our repentance shall be managed by them and our pardon in many degrees ministred by them God comforts us by their Sermons and reproves us by their Discipline and cuts off some by their severity and reconciles others by their gentlenesse and relieves us by their prayers and instructs us by their discourses and heals our sicknesses by their intercession presented to God and united to Christs advocation and in all this they are no causes but servants of the will of God instruments of the Divine Grace and order stewards and dispensers of the mysteries and appointed to our souls to serve and lead and to help in all accidents dangers and necessities And they who received us in our baptisme are also to cary us to our grave and to take care that our end be as our life was or should have been and therefore it is established as an Apostolical rule Is any man sick among you let him send for the Elders of the Church and let them pray over him c. The sum of the duties and offices respectively implied in these words is in the following rules SECT II. Rules for the manner of visitations of sick persons 1. LEt the Minister of religion be sent to not onely against the agony of death but be advised with in the whole conduct of the sicknesse for in sicknesse indefinitely and therefore in every sicknesse and therefore in such which are not mortall which end in health which have no agony or finall temptations S. Iames gives the advise and the sick man being bound to require them is also tied to do it when he can know them and his own necessity It is a very great evil both in the matter of prudence and piety that they fear the Priest as they fear the Embalmer or the Sextons spade and love not to converse with him unlesse he can converse with no man else and think his office so much to relate to the other world that he is not to be treated with while we hope to live in this and indeed that our religion be taken care of onely when we die and the event is this of which I have seen some sad experience that the man is deadly sick and his reason is uselesse and he is laid to sleep and his life is in the confines of the grave so that he can do nothing towards the trimming of his lamp and the Curate shall say a few prayers by him and talk to a dead man and the man is not in a condition to be helped but in a condition to need it hugely He cannot be called upon to confesse his sins and he is not able to remember them and he cannot understand an advice nor hear a free discourse nor be altered from a passion nor cured of his fear nor comforted upon any grounds of reason or religion and no man can tell what is likely to be his fate or if he does he cannot prophecie good things concerning him but evil Let the spiritual man come when the sick man can be conversed withall and instructed when he can take medicine and amend when he understands or can be taught to understand the case of his soul and the rules of his conscience and then his advice may turn into advantage It cannot otherwise be useful 2. The entercourses of the Minister with the sick man have so much variety in them that they are not to be transacted at once and therefore they do not well that send once to see the good man with sorrow and hear him pray and thank him and dismisse him civilly and desire to see his face no more To dresse a soul for funeral is not a work to be dispatched at one meeting At once he needs a comfort and anon something to make him willing to die and by and by he is tempted to impatience and that needs a special cure and it is a great work to make his confessions well and with advantages and it may be the man is carelesse and indifferent and then he needs to understand the evil of his sin and the danger of his person and his cases of conscience may be so many and so intricate that he is not quickly to be reduced to peace and one time
change without a spiritual act of him that is to be changed nor work by way of nature or by charme but morally and after the manner of reasonable creatures and therefore I do not think that ministery at all fit to be reckoned among the advantages of sick persons The Fathers of the Councel of Trent first disputed and after their manner at last agreed that extream unction was instituted by Christ. But afterwards being admonished by one of their Theologues that the Apostles ministred unction to infirm people before they were Priests the Priestly order according to their doctrine being collated in the institution of the last Supper for fear that it should be thought that this unction might be administred by him that was no Priest they blotted out the word instituted and put in its stead insinuated this Sacrament and that it was published by Saint Iames. So it is in their Doctrine and yet in their anathematismes they curse all them that shall deny it to have been instituted by Christ. I shall lay no more prejudice against it or the weak arts of them that maintain it but adde this onely that there being but two places of Scripture pretended for this ceremonie some chief men of their own side have proclaimed those two invalid as to the institution of it for Suarez sayes that the unction used by the Apostles in S. Mark 6.13 is not the same with what is used in the Church of Rome and that it cannot be plainly gathered from the Epistle of Saint Iames Cajetan affirms and that it did belong to the miraculous gift of healing not to a Sacrament The sick mans exercise of grace formerly acquired his perfecting repentance begun in the dayes of health the prayers and counsels of the Holy man that ministers the giving the Holy Sacrament the Ministery and assistance of Angels and the mercies of God the peace of conscience and the peace of the Church are all the assistances and preparatives that can help to dresse his lamp But if a man shall go to buy oil when the Bridegroom comes if his lamp be not first furnish'd and then trimmed that in his life this upon his death-bed his station shall be without doors his portion with unbelievers and the unction of the dying man shall no more strengthen his soul then it cures his body and the prayers for him after his death shall be of the same force as if they should pray that he should return to life again the next day and live as long as Lazarus in his return But I consider that it is not well that men should pretend any thing will do a man good when he dies and yet the same ministeries and ten times more assistances are found for fourty or fifty years together to be ineffectual can extreme unction at last cure what the Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist all his life time could not do Can prayers for a dead man do him more good then when he was alive If all his dayes the man belonged to death and the dominion of sin and from thence could not be recovered by Sermons and counsels and perpetual precepts and frequent Sacraments by confessions and absolutions by prayers and advocations by external ministeries and internal acts it is but too certain that his lamp cannot then be furnished his extreme unction is onely then of use when it is made by the oil that burned in his lamp in all the dayes of his expectation and waiting for the coming of the Bridegroom Neither can any supply be made in this case by their practise of praying for the dead though they pretend for this the fairest precedents of the Church and of the whole world The Heathens they say did it and the Jews did it and the Christians did it some were baptized for the dead in the dayes of the Apostles and very many were communicated for the dead for many ages after T is true they were so and did so the Heathens prayed for an easie grave and a perpetual spring that Saffron would rise from their beds of grasse The Jews prayed that the souls of their dead might be in the garden of Eden that they might have their part in Paradise and in the world to come and that they might hear the peace of the fathers of their generations sleeping in Hebron and the Christians prayed for a joyful resurrection for mercy at the day of judgement for the hastning of the coming of Christ the kingdom of God and they named all sorts of persons in their prayers all I mean but wicked persons all but them that liv'd evil lives they named Apostles Saints and Martyrs and all this is so nothing to their purpose or so much against it that the prayers for the dead used in the Church of Rome are moct plainly condemned because they are against the doctrine and practises of all the world in other forms to other purposes relying upon distinct doctrines until new opinions began to arise about S. Augustines time and changed the face of the proposition Concerning prayer for the dead the Church hath received no commandment from the Lord and therefore concerning it we can have no rules nor proportions but from those imperfect revelations of the state of departed souls and the measures of charity which can relate onely to the imperfection of their present condition and the terrors of the day of judgement but to think that any suppletory to an evil life can be taken from such devotions after the sinners are dead may incourage a bold man to sin but cannot relieve him when he hath But of all things in the world me thinks men should be most careful not to abuse dying people not onely because their condition is pitiable but because they shall soon be discovered and in the secret regions of souls there shall be an evil report concerning those men who have deceived them and if we believe we shall go to that place where such reports are made we may fear the shame and the amazement of being accounted impostors in the presence of Angels and all the wise holy men of the world To be erring and innocent is hugely pitiable and incident to mortality that we cannot help but to deceive or to destroy so great an interest as is that of a soul or to lessen its advantages by giving it trifling and false confidences is injurious and intolerable And therefore it were very well if all the Churches of the world would be extremely curious concerning their offices and ministeries of the visitation of the sick that their Ministers they send be holy and prudent that their instructions be severe and safe that their sentences be merciful and reasonable that their offices be sufficient and devout that their attendances be frequent and long that their deputations be special and peculiar that the doctrines upon which they ground their offices be true material and holy that their ceremonies be few and their advices wary that their
to move the sick man to confession of sins ibid. Instruments by way of consideration to awaken a careless person and a stupid conscience 255. § IV. Of ministring to the restitution and pardon or reconciliation of the sick person by administring the holy Sacrament 268. § V. Of ministring to the sick person by the Spiritual man as he is the Physitian of souls 282. Considerations against unreasonable fears concerning forgivenesse of sins and its uncertainty and danger 283. An exercise against despair in the day of our death 293. § VI. Considerations against Presumption 301. § VII Offices to be said by the Minister in his visitation of the sick 306. The prayer of S. Eustratius the Martyr 310. A prayer taken out of the Greek Euchologion c. 311. The order of recommendation of the soul in its agony 313. Prayers to be said by the surviving friends in behalf of them selves 318. A prayer to be said in the case of a sudden death or pressing fatall danger 321. § VIII A peroration concerning the contingencies and treatings of our departed friends after death in order to their will and buriall 322. Vigilate et Orate quia nescitis horam CHAP. I. A general preparation towards a holy and blessed Death by way of consideration SECT I. Consideration of the vanity and shortnesse of Mans life A Man is a Bubble said the Greek Proverb which Lucian represents with advantages and its proper circumstances to this purpose saying that all the world is a storm and Men rise up in their several generations like bubbles descending à Iove pluvio from God and the dew of Heaven from a tear and drop of Man from Nature and Providence and some of these instantly sink into the deluge of their first parent and are hidden in a sheet of Water having had no other businesse in the world but to be born that they might be able to die others float up and down two or three turns and suddenly disappear and give their place to others and they that live longest upon the face of the waters are in perpetual motion restlesse and uneasy and being crushed with the great drop of a cloud sink into flatness and a froth the change not being great it being hardly possible it should be more a nothing then it was before So is every man He is born in vanity and sin he comes into the world like morning Mushromes soon thrusting up their heads into the air and conversing with their kinred of the same production and as soon they turn into dust and forgetfulnesse some of them without any other interest in the affairs of the world but that they made their parents a little glad and very sorrowful others ride longer in the storm it may be until seven yeers of Vanity be expired and then peradventure the Sun shines hot upon their heads and they fall into the shades below into the cover of death and darknesse of the grave to hide them But if the bubble stands the shock of a bigger drop and outlives the chances of a childe of a carelesse Nurse of drowning in a pail of water of being overlaid by a sleepy servant or such little accidents then the young man dances like a bubble empty and gay and shines like a Doves neck or the image of a rainbow which hath no substance and whose very imagery and colours are phantastical and so he dances out the gayety of his youth and is all the while in a storm and endures onely because he is not knocked on the head by a drop of bigger rain or crushed by the pressure of a load of indigested meat or quenched by the disorder of an ill placed humor and to preserve a man alive in the midst of so many chances and hostilities is as great a miracle as to create him to preserve him from rushing into nothing and at first to draw him up from nothing were equally the issues of an Almighty power And therefore the wise men of the world have contended who shall best fit mans condition with words signifying his vanity and short abode Homer cals a man a leaf the smallest the weakest piece of a short liv'd unsteady plant Pindar calls him the dream of a shadow Another the dream of the shadow of smoak But S. Iames spake by a more excellent Spirit saying Our life is but a vapor viz. drawn from the earth by a coelestial influence made of smoak or the lighter parts of water tossed with every winde moved by the motion of a superiour body without vertue in it self lifted up on high or left below according as it pleases the Sun its Foster-father But it is lighter yet It is but appearing A phantastic vapor an apparition nothing real it is not so much as a mist not the matter of a shower nor substantial enough to make a cloud but it is like Cassiopeia's chair or Pelops shoulder or the circles of Heaven 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for which you cannot have a word that can signify a veryer nothing And yet the expression is one degree more made diminutive A vapor and phantastical or a meer appearance and this but for a little while neither the very dream the phantasm disappears in a small time like the shadow that departeth or like a tale that is told or as a dream when one awaketh A man is so vain so unfixed so perishing a creature that he cannot long last in the scene of fancy a man goes off and is forgotten like the dream of a distracted person The summe of all is this That thou art a man then whom there is not in the world any greater instance of heights and declensions of lights and shadows of misery and folly of laughter and tears of groans and death And because this consideration is of great usefulnesse and great necessity to many purposes of wisdom and the Spirit all the succession of time all the changes in nature all the varieties of light and darknesse the thousand thousands of accidents in the world and every contingency to every man and to every creature does preach our funeral sermon and calls us to look and see how the old Sexton Time throws up the earth and digs a Grave where we must lay our sins or our sorrows and sowe our bodies till they rise again in a fair or in an intolerable eternity Every revolution which the sun makes about the world divides between life and death and death possesses both those portions by the next morrow and we are dead to all those moneths which we have already lived and we shall never live them over again and still God makes little periods of our age First we change our world when we come from the womb to feel the warmth of the sun Then we sleep and enter into the image of death in which state we are unconcerned in all the changes of the world and if our Mothers or our Nurses die or a wilde boar destroy our
onely to play withall but before a man comes to be wise he is half dead with gouts and consumptions with Catarrhes and aches with sore eyes and a worn out body so that if we must not reckon the life of a man but by the accounts of his reason he is long before his soul be dressed and he is not to be called a man without a wise and an adorned soul a soul at least furnished with what is necessary towards his well being but by that time his soul is thus furnished his body is decayed and then you can hardly reckon him to be alive when his body is possessed by so many degrees of death 3. But there is yet another arrest At first he wants strength of body and then he wants the use of reason and when that is come it is ten to one but he stops by the impediments of vice and wants the strengths of the spirit and we know that Body and Soul and Spirit are the constituent parts of every Christian man And now let us consider what that thing is which we call years of discretion The young man is passed his Tutors and arrived at the bondage of a caytive spirit he is run from discipline and is let loose to passion the man by this time hath wit enough to chuse his vice to act his lust to court his Mistresse to talk confidently and ignorantly and perpetually to despise his betters to deny nothing to his appetite to do things that when he is indeed a man he must for ever be ashamed of for this is all the discretion that most men show in the first stage of their Manhood they can discern good from evil and they prove their skill by leaving all that is good and wallowing in the evils of folly and an unbridled appetite And by this time the young man hath contracted vitious habits and is a beast in manners and therefore it will not be fitting to reckon the beginning of his life he is a fool in his understanding and that is a sad death and he is dead in trespasses and sins and that is a sadder so that he hath no life but a natural the life of a beast or a tree in all other capacities he is dead he neither hath the intellectual nor the spiritual life neither the life of a man nor of a Christian and this sad truth lasts too long For old age seizes upon most men while they still retain the minds of boyes and vitious youth doing actions from principles of great folly and a mighty ignorance admiring things uselesse and hurtfull and filling up all the dimensions of their abode with businesses of empty affairs being at leasure to attend no vertue they cannot pray because they are busie and because they are passionate they cannot communicate because they have quarrels and intrigues of perplexed causes complicated hostilities and things of the world and therefore they cannot attend to the things of God little considering that they must find a time to die in when death comes they must be at leisure for that Such men are like Sailers loosing from a port and tost immediatly with a perpetual tempest lasting till their cordage crack and either they sink or return back again to the same place they did not make a voyage though they were long at sea The businesse and impertinent affairs of most men steal all their time and they are restlesse in a foolish motion but this is not the progress of a man he is no further advanc'd in the course of a life though he reckon many years for still his soul is childish and trifling like an untaught boy If the parts of this sad complaint finde their remedy we have by the same instruments also cured the evils and the vanity of a short life Therefore 1. Be infinitely curious you doe not set back your life in the accounts of God by the intermingling of criminal actions or the contracting vitious habits There are some vices which carry a sword in their hand and cut a man off before his time There is a sword of the Lord and there is a sword of a Man and there is a sword of the Devil Every vice of our own managing in the matter of carnality of lust or rage ambition or revenge is a sword of Sathan put into the hands of a man These are the destroying Angels sin is the Apollyon the destroyer that is gone out not from the Lord but from the Tempter and we hug the poison and twist willingly with the vipers till they bring us into the Regions of an irrecoverable sorrow We use to reckon persons as good as dead if they have lost their limbs and their teeth and are confined to an Hospital and converse with none but Surgeons and Physicians Mourners and Divines those pollinctores the Dressers of bodies and souls to Funeral But it is worse when the soul the principle of life is imployed wholly in the offices of death and that man was worse then dead of whom Seneca tells that being a rich fool when he was lifted up from the baths and set into a soft couch asked his slaves An ego jam sedeo Do I now sit The beast was so drownd in sensuality and the death of his soul that whether he did sit or no he was to believe another Idlenesse and every vice is as much of death as a long disease is or the expence of ten years and she that lives in pleasures is dead while she liveth saith the Apostle and it is the stile of the Spirit concerning wicked persons They are dead in trespasses and sins For as every sensual pleasure and every day of idlenes and useless living lops off a little branch from our short life so every deadly sin and every habitual vice does quite destroy us but innocence leaves us in our natural portions and perfect period we lose nothing of our life if we lose nothing of our souls health and therefore he that would live a full age must avoid a sin as he would decline the Regions of death the dishonors of the grave 2. If we would have our life lengthened let us begin bâ—times to live in the accounts of reason and sober counsels of religion and the Spirit and then we shall have no reason to complain that our abode on earth is so short Many men finde it long enough and indeed it is so to all senses But when we spend in waste what God hath given us in plenty when we sacrifice our youth to folly our manhood to lust and rage our old age to covetousnesse and irreligion not beginning to live till we are to die designing that time to Vertue which indeed is infirm to every thing and profitâ—ble to nothing then we make our lives short and lust runs away with all the vigorous and healthful part of it and pride and animosity steal the manly portion and craftinesse and interest possesse old age velut ex pleno
our gardens and spiders and flies in the palaces of the greatest Kings How few men in the world are prosperous what an infinite number of slaves and beggers of persecuted and oppressed people fill all corners of the earth with groans and Heaven it self with weeping prayers and sad remembrances how many Provinces and Kingdoms are afflicted by a violent war or made desolate by popular diseases some whole countreyes are remarked with fatal evils or periodical sicknesses Gran Cairo in Egypt feels the plague every three years returning like a Quartan ague and destroying many thousands of persons All the inhabitants of Arabia the desert are in continuall fear of being buried in huge heaps of sand and therefore dwell in tents and ambuâ—atory houses or retire to unfruitful mountains to prolong an uneasy and wilder life and all the Countreyes round about the Adriatic sea feel such violent convulsions by Tempests and intolerable Earthquakes that sometimes whole cities finde a Tombe and every man â—inks with his own house made ready to become his Monument and his bed is crushed into the disorders of a grave Was not all the world drowned at one deluge and breach of the Divine anger and shall not all the world again be destroyed by fire Are there not many thousands that die every night and that groan and weep sadly every day But what shall we think of that great evil which for the sins of men God hath suffered to possess the greatest part of Mankinde Most of the men that are now alive or that have been living for many ages are Jews Heathens or Turcs and God was pleased to suffer a base Epileptic person a villain and a vitious to set up a religion which hath filled almost all Asia and Africa and some parts of Europe so that the greatest number of men and women born in so many kingdoms and provinces are infallibly made Mahumetans strangers and enemies to Christ by whom alone we can be saved This consideration is extremely sad when we remember how universal and how great an evil it is that so many millions of sons and daughters are born to enter into the possession of Devils to eternal ages These evils are the miseries of great parts of mankinde and we cannot easily consider more particularly the evils which happen to us being the inseparable affections or incidents to the whole nature of man 2. We finde that all the women in the world are either born for barrennesse or the pains of Child-birth and yet this is one of our greatest blessings but such indeed are the blessings of this world we cannot be well with nor without many things Perfumes make our heads ake roses prick our fingers and in our very blood where our life dwells is the Scene under which nature acts many sharp Feavers and heavy sicknesses It were too sad if I should tell how many persons are afflicted with evil spirits with spectres and illusions of the night and that huge multitudes of men and women live upon mans flesh Nay worse yet upon the sins of men upon the sins of their sons and of their daughters and they pay their souls down for the bread they eat buying this dayes meal with the price of the last nights sin 3. Or if you please in charity to visit an Hospital which is indeed a map of the whole world there you shall see the effects of Adams sin and the ruines of humane nature bodies laid up in heaps like the bones of a destroyed town homines precarii spiritus malè haerentis men whose souls seem to be borrowed and are kept there by art and the force of Medicine whose miseries are so great that few people have charity or humanity enough to visit them fewer have the heart to dresse them and we pity them in civility or with a transient prayer but we do not feel their sorrows by the mercies of a religious pity and therefore as we leave their sorrows in many degrees unrelieved and uneased so we contract by our unmercifulnesse a guilt by which our selves become liable to the same calamities Those many that need pity and those infinites of people that refuse to pity are miserable upon a several charge but yet they almost make up all mankinde 4. All wicked men are in love with that which intangles them in huge variety of troubles they are slaves to the worst of Masters to sin and to the Devil to a passion and to an imperious woman Good men are for ever persecuted and God chastises every son whom he receives and whatsoever is easy is trifling and worth nothing and whatsoever is excellent is not to be obtained without labour and sorrow and the conditions and states of men that are free from great cares are such as have in them nothing rich and orderly and those that have are stuck full of thorns and trouble Kings are full of care and learned men in all ages have been observed to be very poor honestas miserias accusant they complain of their honest miseries 5. But these evils are notorious and confessed even they also whose felicity men stare at and admire besides their splendour and the sharpnesse of their light will with their appendant sorrows wring a tear from the most resolved eye For not only the winter quarter is full of storms and cold and darknesse but the beauteous spring hath blasts and sharp frosts the fruitful teeming summer is melted with heat and burnt with the kisses of the sun her friend and choaked with dust and the rich Autumn is full of sicknesse and we are weary of that which we enjoy because sorrow is its biggest portion and when we remember that upon the fairest face is placed one of the worst sinks of the body the nose we may use it not only as a mortification to the pride of beauty but as an allay to the fairest outside of condition which any of the sons and daughters of Adam do possesse For look upon Kings and conquerours I will not tell that many of them fall into the condition of servants and their subjects rule over them and stand upon the ruines of their families and that to such persons the sorrow is bigger then usually happens in smaller fortunes but let us suppose them still conquerers and see what a goodly purchase they get by all their pains and amazing fears and continual dangers They carry their arms beyond Ister and passe the Euphrates and binde the Germans with the bounds of the river Rhyne I speak in the stile of the Roman greatnesse for now adayes the biggest fortune swells not beyond the limits of a petty province or two and a hill confines the progresse of their prosperity or a river checks it But whatsoever tempts the pride and vanity of ambitious persons is not so big as the smallest star which we see scattered in disorder and unregarded upon the pavement and floor of Heaven And if we would suppose the pismires had but
our actions and condemning the Criminal by being Assessors in Gods Tribunal at least we shall obtain the favour of the Court. As therefore every night we must make our bed the memoriall of our grave so let our Evening thoughts be an image of the day of judgement 5. This advice was so reasonable and proper instrument of vertue that it was taught even to the Scholers of Pythagoras by their Master Let not sleep seiz upon the Regions of your senses before you have three times recalled the conversation and accidents of the day Examine what you have committed against the Divine Law what you have omitted of your duty and in what you have made use of the Divine Grace to the purposes of vertue and religion joyning the Iudge reason to the legislative mind or conscience that God may reigne there as a Law-giver and a Judge Then Christs kingdom is set up in our hearts then we alwayes live in the Eye of our Judge and live by the measures of reason religion and sober counsels The benefits we shall receive by practising this advice in order to a blessed death will also adde to the account of reason and fair inducements The Benefits of this exercise 1. By a daily examination of our actions we shall the easier cure a great sin and prevent its arrival to become habitual For to examine we suppose to be a relative duty and instrumentall to something else We examine our selves that we may finde out our failings and cure them and therefore if we use our remedy when the wound is fresh and bleeding we shall finde the cure more certain and lesse painfull For so a Taper when its crown of flames is newly blown off retains a nature so symbolical to light that it will with greedinesse reenkindle and snatch a ray from the neighbour fire So is the soul of Man when it is newly fallen into sin although God be angry with it and the state of Gods favour and its own graciousnesse is interrupted yet the habit is not naturally changed and still God leaves some roots of vertue standing and the Man is modest or apt to be made ashamed and he is not grown a bold sinner but if he sleeps on it and returns again to the same sin and by degrees growes in love with it and gets the custome and the strangenesse of it is taken away then it is his Master and is sweld into a heap and is abetted by use and corroborated by newly entertained principles and is insinuated into his Nature and hath possessed his affections and tainted the will and the understanding and by this time a man is in the state of a decaying Merchant his accounts are so great and so intricate and so much in arrear that to examine it will be but to represent the particulars of his calamity therefore they think it better to pull the napkin before their eyes then to stare upon the circumstances of their death 2. A daily or frequent examination of the parts of our life will interrupt the proceeding and hinder the journey of little sins into a heap For many dayes do not passe the best persons in which they have not many idle words or vainer thoughts to sully the fair whitenesse of their souls Some indiscreet passions or trifling purposes some impertinent discontents or unhandsome usages of their own persons or their dearest Relatives And though God is not extreme to mark what is done amisse and therefore puts these upon the accounts of his Mercy and the title of the Crosse yet in two cases these little sins combine and cluster and we know that grapes were once in so great a bunch that one cluster was the load of two men that is 1. When either we are in love with small sins or 2. When they proceed from a carelesse and incurious spirit into frequency and continuance For so the smallest atomes that dance in all the little cels of the world are so trifling and immaterial that they cannot trouble an eye nor vex the tenderest part of a wound where a barbed arrow dwelt yet when by their infinite numbers as Melissa and Parmenides affirm they danced first into order then into little bodies at last they made the matter of the world So are the little indiscretions of our life they are alwayes inconsiderable if they be considered and contemptible if they be not despised and God does not regard them if we do We may easily keep them asunder by our daily or nightly thoughts and prayers and severe sentences But even the least sand can check the tumultuous pride and become a limit to the Sea when it is in a heap and in united multitudes but if the wind scatter and divide them the little drops and the vainer froth of the water begins to invade the Strand Our sighes can scatter such little offences but then be sure to breath such accents frequently least they knot and combine and grow big as the shoar and we perish in sand in trifling instances He that despiseth little things shall perish by little and little So said the son of Sirach 3. A frequent examination of our actions will intenerate and soften our consciences so that they shall be impatient of any rudenesse or heavier load And he that is used to shrink when he is pressed with a branch of twining Osier will not willingly stand in the ruines of a house when the beam dashes upon the pavement And provided that our nice and tender spirit be not vexed into scruple nor the scruple turn into unreasonable fears nor the fears into superstition he that by any arts can make his spirit tender and apt for religious impressions hath made the fairest seat for religion and the unaptest and uneasiest entertainment for sin and eternal death in the whole world 4. A frequent examination of the smallest parts of our lives is the best instrument to make our repentance particular and a fit remedy to all the members of the whole body of sin For our examination put off to our death-bed of necessity brings us into this condition that very many thousands of our sins must be or not be at al washed off with a general repentance which the more general and indefinite it is it is ever so much the worse And if he that repents the longest and the oftnest and upon the most instances is still during his whole life but an imperfect penitent and there are very many reserves left to be wiped off by Gods mercies and to be eased by collateral assistances or to be groaned for at the terrible day of judgement it will be but a sad story to consider that the sins of a whole life or of very great portions of it shall be put upon the remedy of one examination and the advices of one discourse and the activities of a decayed body and a weak and an amazed Spirit Let us do the best we can we shall finde that the meer sins of ignorance
live and die well The professors of other arts are vulgar and many but he that knows how to do this businesse is certainly instructed to eternity But then let me remember this that a wise person will also put most upon the greatest interest Common prudence will teach us this No man will hire a Generall to cut wood or shake hay with a Scepter or spend his soul and all his faculties upon the purchase of a cockleshell but he will fit instruments to the dignity and exigence of the designe and therefore since heaven is so glorious a state and so certainly designed for us if we please let us spend all that we have all our passions and affections all our study and industry all our desires and stratagems all our witty and ingenuous faculties toward the arriving thither whither if we do come every minute will infinitely pay for all the troubles of our whole life If we do not we shall have the reward of fools an unpitied and an upbraided misery To this purpose I shall represent the state of dying and dead men in the devout words of some of the Fathers of the Church whose sense I shall exactly keep but change their order that by placing some of their dispersed meditations into a chain or sequell of discourse I may with their precious stones make an Vnion and compose them into a jewel for though the meditation is plain and easie yet it is affectionate and materiall and true and necessary The circumstances of a dying mans sorrow and danger When the sentence of death is decreed and begins to be put in execution it is sorrow enough to see or feel respectively the sad accidents of the agony and last contentions of the soul and the reluctancies and unwillingnesses of the body The forehead wash'd with a new and stranger baptisme besmeared with a cold sweat tenacious and clammy apt to make it cleave to the roof of his coffin the nose cold and undiscerning not pleased with perfumes nor suffering violence with a cloud of unwholsome smoak the eyes dim as a sullied mirror or the face of heaven when God shews his anger in a prodigious storm the feet cold the hands stiffe the Physitians despairing our friends weeping the rooms dressed with darknesse and sorrow and the exteriour parts betraying what are the violences which the soul and spirit suffer the nobler part like the lord of the house being assaulted by exteriour rudenesses and driven from all the out-works at last faint and weary with short and frequent breathings interrupted with the longer accents of sighes without moisture but the excrescencies of a spilt humour when the pitcher is broken at the cisterne it retires to its last sort the heart whither it is pursued and stormed and beaten out as when the barbarous Thracian sacked the glory of the Grecian Empire Then calamity is great and sorrow rules in all the capacities of man then the mourners weep because it is civil or because they need thee or because they fear but who suffers for thee with a compassion sharp as is thy pain Then the noise is like the faint eccho of a distant valley few heare and they will not regard thee who seemest like a person void of understanding and of a departing interest Verè tremendum est mortis sacramentum But these accidents are common to all that die and when a speciall providence shall distinguish them they shall die with easie circumstances but as no piety can secure it so must no confidence expect it but wait for the time and accept the manner of the dissolution But that which distinguishes them is this He that hath lived a wicked life if his conscience be alarmed and that he does not die like a Wolf or a Tigre without sense or remorse of all his wildnesse and his injury his beastly nature and desert and untilled manners if he have but sense of what he is going to suffer or what he may expect to be his portion then we may imagine the terrour of their abused fancies how they see affrighting shapes and because they fear them they feel the gripes of Devils urging the unwilling souls from the kinder and fast embraces of the body calling to the grave and hasting to judgement exhibiting great bills of uncancelled crimes awaking and amazing the conscience breaking all their hope in pieces and making faith uselesse and terrible because the malice was great and the charity was none at all Then they look for some to have pity on them but there is no man No man dares be their pledge No man can redeem their soul which now feels what it never feared Then the tremblings and the sorrow the memory of the past sin and the fear of future pains and the sense of an angry God and the presence of some Devils consigne him to the eternall company of all the damned and accursed spirits then they want an Angel for their guide and the Holy Spirit for their comforter and a good conscience for their testimony and Christ for their Advocate and they die and are left in prisons of earth or air in secret and undiscerned regions to weep and tremble and infinitely to fear the coming of the day of Christ at which time they shall be brought forth to change their condition into a worse where they shall for ever feel more then we can beleeve or understand But when a good man dies one that hath lived innocently or made joy in Heaven at his timely and effective repentance and in whose behalf the Holy Jesus hath interceded prosperously and for whose interest the Spirit makes interpellations with groans and sighs unutterable and in whose defence the Angels drive away the Devils on his death-bed because his sins are pardoned and because he resisted the Devil in his life time and fought successefully and persevered unto the end then the joyes break forth through the clouds of sicknesse and the conscience stands upright and confesses the glories of God and owns so much integrity that it can hope for pardon and obtain it too Then the sorrowes of the sicknesse and the flames of the Feaver or the faintnesse of the consumption do but untye the soul from its chain and let it go forth first into liberty and then to glory for it is but for a little while that the face of the skie was black like the preparations of the night but quickly the cloud torn and rent the violence of thunder parted it into little portions that the Sun might look forth with a watry eye and then shine without a tear but it is an infinite refreshment to remember all the comforts of his prayers the frequent victory over his temptations the mortification of his lust the noblest sacrifice to God in which he most delights that we have given him our wills and killed our appetiâ—es for the interest of his services then all the trouble of that is gone and what remains
evil into an intolerable it hinders prayers and fills up the intervalls of sicknesse with a worse torture it makes all spiritual arts uselesse and the office of spiritual comforters and guides to be impertinent Against this hope is to be opposed and its proper acts as it relates to the vertue and exercise of patience are 1 Praying to God for help and remedy 2 sending for the guides of souls 3. using all holy exercises and acts of grace proper to that state which who so does hath not the impatience of despair every man that is patient hath hope in God in the day of his sorrows 2. Our complaints in sicknesse must be without murmure Murmur sins against Gods providence and government by it we grow rude and like the falling Angels displeased at Gods supremacy and nothing is more unreasonable it talks against God for whose glory all speech was made it is proud and phantastic hath better opinions of a sinner then of the Divine justice and would rather accuse God then himself Against this is opposed that part of patience which resignes the man into the hands of God saying with old Eli It is the Lord let him do what he will and Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven and so by admiring Gods justice and wisdom does also dispose the sick person for receiving Gods mercy and secures him the rather in the grace of God The proper acts of this part of patience are 1. To confesse our sins and our own demerits 2. It increases and exercises humility 3. It loves to sing praises to God even from the lowest abysse of humane misery 3. Our complaints in sicknesse must be without peevishnesse This sins against civility and that necessary decency which must be used toward the ministers and assistants By peevishnesse we increase our own sorrowes and are troublesome to them that stand there to ease ours It hath in it harshnesse of nature and ungentlenesse wilfulnesse and Phantastic opinions morosity and incivility Against it are opposed obedience tractability easinesse of persuasion aptnesse to take counsel The acts of this part of patience are 1. To obey our Physitians 2. To treat our persons with respect to our present necessities 3. Not to be ungentle and uneasy to the ministers and nurses that attend us But to take their diligent and kinde offices as sweetly as we can and to bear their indiscretions or unhandsome accidents contentedly and without disquietnesse within or evil language or angry words without 4. Not to use unlawful means for our recovery If we secure these particulars we are not lightly to be judged of by noises and postures by colours and images of things by palenesse or tossings from side to side For it were a hard thing that those persons who are loaâ—en with the greatnesse of humane calamities should be strictly tyed to ceremonies and forms of things He is patient that calls upon God that hopes for health or heaven that believes God is wise and just in sending him afflictions that confesses his sins and accuses himself and justifies God that expects God will turne this into good that is civil to his Physitians and his servants that converses with the guides of souls the ministers of religion and in all things submits to Gods will and would use no indirect means for his recovery but had rather be sick and die then enter at all into Gods displeasure SECT IV. Remedies against impatience by way of consideration AS it happens concerning death so it is in sicknesse which is deathâ— handmaid It hath the fate to suffer calumny and reproach and hath a name worse thâ—n its nature 1. For there is no sicknesse so great but children endure it and have natural strengths to bear them out quite through the calamity what period soever nature hath allotted it Indeed they make no reflexions upon their sufferings and complain of sicknesse with an uneasy sigh or a natural groan but consider not what the sorrows of sicknesse mean and so bear it by a direct sufferance and as a pillar bears the weight of a roof But then why cannot we bear it so to For this which we call a reflexion upon or a considering of our sicknesse is nothing but a perfect instrument of trouble and consequently a temptation to impatience It serves no end of nature it may be avoided and we may consider it onely as an expression of Gods Anger and an emissary or procurator of repentance But all other considering it except where it serves the purposes of medicine and art is nothing but under the colour of reason an unreasonable device to heighten the sicknesse and increase the torment But then children want this act of reflex perception or reasonable sense whereby their sicknesse becomes lesse pungent and dolorous so also do they want the helps of reason whereby they should be able to support it For certain it is reason was as well given us to harden our spirits and stiffen them in passions and sad accidents as to make us bending and apt for action and if in men God hath heightned the faculties of apprehension he hath increased the auxiliaries of reasonable strengths that Gods rod and Gods staffe might go together and the beam of Gods countenance may as well refresh us with its light as scorch us with its heat But poor children that endure so much have not inward supports and refreshments to bear them through it they never heard the sayings of old men nor have been taught the principles of severe philosophy nor are assisted with the results of a long experience nor know they how to turn a sicknesse into vertue and a Feaver into a reward nor have they any sense of favors the remembrance of which may alleviate their burden and yet nature hath in them teeth and nails enough to scratch and fight against the sickness and by such aids as God is pleased to give them they wade thorough the storm and murmur not and besides this yet although infants have not such brisk perceptions upon the stock of reason they have a more tender feeling upon the accounts of sense and their flesh is as uneasy by their natural softnesse and weak shoulders as ours by our too forward apprehensions Therefore bear up either you or I or some man wiser and many a woman weaker then us both or the very children have endured worse evil then this that is upon thee now That sorrow is hugely tolerable which gives its smart but by instants and smallest proportions of time No man at once feels the sicknesse of a week or of a whole day but the smart of an instant and still every portion of a minute feels but its proper share and the last groan ended all the sorrow of its peculiar burden and what minute can that be which can pretend to be intolerable and the next minute is but the same as the last and the pain flowes like the drops of a river or the
little impertinencies and them imperfectly and that with infinite uncertainty But God hath been pleased with a rare art to prevent the inconveniencies apt to arise by this passionate longing after knowledge even by giving to every man a sufficient opinion of his own understanding and who is there in the world that thinks himself to be a fool or indeed not fit to govern his brother There are but few men but they think they are wise enough and every man believes his own opinion the soundest and if it were otherwise men would burst themselves with envy or else become irrecoverable slaves to the talking and disputing man But when God intended this permission to be an antidote of envy and a satisfaction and allay to the troublesome appetites of knowing and made that this universal opinion by making men in some proportions equal should be a keeper out or a great restraint to slavery and tyranny respectively Man for so he uses to do hath turned this into bitternesse for when nature had made so just a distribution of understanding that every man might think he had enough he is not content with that but will think he hath more then his brother and whereas it might well be imployed in restraining slavery he hath used it to break off the bands of all obedience and it ends in pride and schismes in heresies and tyrannies and it being a spiritual evil it growes upon the soul with old age and flattery with health and the supports of a prosperous fortune Now besides the direct operations of the Spirit and a powerfull grace there is in nature left to us no remedy for this evil but a sharp sicknesse or an equall sorrow and allay of fortune and then we are humble enough to ask counsell of a despised Priest and to think that even a common sentence from the mouth of an appointed comforter streams forth more refreshment then all our own wiser and more reputed discourses Then our understandings and our bodies peeping thorow their own breaches see their shame and their dishonour their dangerous follies and their huge deceptions and they go into the clefts of the rock and every little hand may cover them 3. Next to these As the soul is still undressing she takes off the roughnesse of her great and little angers and animosities and receives the oil of mercies and smooth forgivenesse fair interpretations and gentle answers designes of reconcilement and Christian atonement in their places For so did the wrastlers in Olympus they stripped themselves of all their garments and then anointed their naked bodies with oil smooth and vigorous with contracted nerves and enlarged voice they contended vehemently till they obtained their victory or their ease and a crown of Olive or a huge pity was the reward of their fierce contentions Some wise men have said that anger sticks to a mans nature as inseparably as other vices do to the manners of fools and that anger is never quite cured but God that hath found out remedies for all diseases hath so ordered the circumstances of man that in worser sort of men anger and great indignation consume and shrivell into little peevishnesses and uneasie accents of sicknesse and spend themselves in trifling instances and in the better and more sanctified it goes off in prayers and alms and solemn reconcilement And however the temptations of this state such I mean which are proper to it are little and inconsiderable The man is apt to chide a servant too bitterly and to be discontented with his nurse or not satisfied with his Physitian and he rests uneasily and poor man nothing can please him and indeed these little undecencies must be cured and stopped lest they run into an inconvenience But sicknesse is in this particular a little image of the state of blessed Souls or of Adams early morning in Paradise free from the troubles of lust and violencies of anger and the intricacies of ambition or the restlesnesse of covetousnesse For though a man may carry all these along with him into his sicknesse yet there he will not finde them and in despite of all his own malice his soul shall finde some rest from labouring in the galleys and baser captivity of sin and if we value those moments of being in the love of God and in the kingdom of grace which certainly are the beginnings of felicity we may also remember that the not sinning actually is one step of innocence and therefore that state is not intolerable which by a sensible trouble makes it in most instances impossible to commit those great sins which make death and hell and horrid damnations And then let us but adde this to it that God sends sicknesses but he never causes sin that God is angry with a â—inning person but never with a man for being sick that sin causes God to hate us and sicknesse causes him to pity us that all wise men in the world choose trouble rather then dishonour affliction rather then basenesse and that sicknesse stops the torrent of sin and interrupts its violence and even to the worst men makes it to retreat many degrees we may reckon sicknesse amongst good things as we reckon Rhubarb and Aloës and child-birth and labour and obedience and discipline These are unpleasant and yet safe they are troubles in order to blessings or they are securities from danger or the hard choices of a lesse and a more tolerable evil 4. Sicknesse is in some sense eligible because it is the opportunity and the proper scence of exercising some vertues It is that agony in which men are tried for a crown and if we remember what glorious things are spoken of the grace of faith that it is the life of just men the restitution of the dead in trespasses and sins the justification of a sinner the support of the weak the confidence of the strong the magazine of promises and the title to very glorious rewards we may easily imagine that it must have in it a work and a difficulty in some proportion answerable to so great effects But when we are bidden to beleeve strange propositions we are put upon it when we cannot judge and those propositions have possessed our discerning faculties and have made a party there and are become domestick before they come to be disputed and then the articles of faith are so few and are made so credible and in their event and in their object are so usefull and gaining upon the affections that he were a prodigie of man and would be so esteemed thâ—t should in all our present circumstances disbeleeve any point of faith and all is well as long as the Sun shines and the fair breath of heaven gently waâ—ts us to our own purposes But if you will try the excellency and feel the work of faith place the man in a persecution let him ride in a storm let his bones be broken with sorrow and his eyelids loosened with sicknesse let his bread be
checked with the stiffnesse of a tower or the united strength of a wood it grew mighty and dwelt there and made the highest branches stoop and make a smooth path for it on the top of all its glories So is sicknesse and so is the grace of God When sicknesse hath made the difficulty then Gods grace hath made a triumph and by doubling its power hath created new proportions of a reward and then shews its biggest glory when it hath the greatest difficulty to Master the greatest weaknesses to support the most busie temptations to contest with For so God loves that his strength should be seen in our weaknesse and our danger Happy is that state of life in which our services to God are the dearest and the most expensive 5. Sicknesse hath some degrees of eligibility at least by an after-choice because to all persons which are within the possibilities and state of pardon it becomes a great instrument of pardon of sins For as God seldom rewards here and hereafter too So it is not very often that he punishes in both states In great and finall sins he doth so but we finde it expressed onely in the case of the sin against the Holy Ghost which shall never be forgiven in this world nor in the world to come that is it shall be punished in both worlds and the infelicities of this world shall but usher in the intollerable calamities of the next But this is in a case of extremity and in sins of an unpardonable malice In those lesser stages of death which are deviations from the rule and not a destruction and perfect antinomy to the whole institution God very often smites with his rod of sicknesse that he may not for ever be slaying the soul with eternall death I will visit their offences with the rod and their sin with scourges Neverthelesse my loving kindenesse will I not utterly take from him nor suffer my truth to fail And there is in the New Testament a delivering over to Satan and a consequent buffeting for the mortification of the flesh indeed but that the soul may be saved in the day of the Lord. And to some persons the utmost processe of Gods anger reaches but to a sharp sicknesse or at most but to a temporall death and then the little momentany anger is spent and expires in rest and a quiet grave Origen S. Austin and Cassian say concerning Ananias and Sapphira that they were slain with a sudden death that by such a judgement their sin might be punished and their guilt expiated and their persons reserved for mercy in the day of judgement And God cuts off many of his children from the land of the living and yet when they are numbred amongst our dead he findes them in the book of life written amongst those that shall live to him for ever and thus it happened to many new Christians in the Church of Corinth for their little undecencies and disorders in the circumstances of receiving the holy Sacrament S. Paul sayes that many amongst them were sick may were weak and some were fallen asleep He expresses the divine anger against those persons in no louder accents which according to the stile of the New Testament where all the great transactions of duty and reproof are generally made upon the stock of Heaven and Hell is plainly a reserve and a period set to the declaration of Gods wrath For God knowes that the torments of hell are so horrid so insupportable a calamity that he is not easy and apt to cast those souls which he hath taken so much care and hath been at so much expence to save into the eternal never dying flames of Hell lightly for smaller sins or after a fairly begun repentance and in the midst of holy desires to finish it But God takes such penalties and exacts such fines of us which we may pay salvo contenemento saving the main stake of all even our precious souls And therefore S. Augustine prayed to God in his penitential sorrowes Here O Lord burn and cut my flesh that thou mayest spare me for ever For so said our blessed Saviour Every sacrifice must be seasoned with salt and every sacrifice must be burnt with fire that is we must abide in the state of grace and if we have committed sins we must expect to be put into the state of affliction and yet the sacrifice will send up a right and unâ—roubled cloud and a sweet smell to joyn with the incense of the Altar where the eternal Priest offers a never ceasing sacrifice And now I have said a thing against which there can be no exceptions and of which no just reason can make abatement For when sicknesse which is the condition of our nature is called for with purposes of redemption when we are sent to death to secure eternal life when God strikes us that he may spare us it shewes that we have done things which he essentially hates and therefore we must be smitten with the rod of God but in the midst of judgement God remembers mercy and makes the rod to be medicinal and like the rod of God in the hand of Aaron to shoot forth buds and leaves and Almonds hopes and mercies and eternal recompences in the day of restitution This is so great a good to us if it be well conducted in all the chanels of its intention and designe that if we had put off the objections of the flesh with abstractions contempts and separations so as we ought to do were as earnestly to be prayed for as any gay blessing that crowns our cups with joy and our heads with garlands and forgetfulnesse But this was it which I said that this may nay that it ought to be chosen at least by an after-election for so said S. Paul If we judge our selves we shall not be condemned of the Lord that is if we judge our selves worthy of the sicknesse if we acknowledge and confesse Gods justice in smiting us if we take the rod of God in our own hands and are willing to imprint it in the flesh we are workers together with God in the infliction and then the sickness beginning and being managed in the vertue of repentance and patience and resignation and charity will end in peace and pardon and justification and consignation to glory That I have spoken truth I have brought Gods Spirit speaking in Scripture for a witnesse But if this be true there are not many states of life that have advantages which can out-weigh this great instrument of security to our final condition Moses dyed at the mouth of the Lord said the story he died with the kisses of the Lords mouth so the Chaldee Paraphrase it was the greatest act of kindesse that God did to his servant Moses he kissed him and he died But I have some things to observe for the better finishing this consideration 1. All these advantages and lessenings of evil in the
God had made appetites of pleasure in man that in them the scene of his obedience should lye For when God made instances of mans obedience he 1. either commanded such things to be done which man did naturally desire or 2. such things which did contradict his natural desires or 3. such which were indifferent Not the first and the last For it could be no effect of love or duty towards God for a man to eat when he was impatiently hungry and could not stay from eating neither was it any contention of obedience or labour of love for a man to look Eastward once a day or turn his back when the North winde blew fierce and loud Therefore for the trial and instance of obedience God made his laws so that they should lay restraint upon mans appetites so that man might part with something of his own that he may give to God his will and deny it to himself for the interest of his service and chastity is the denyall of a violent desire and justice is parting with money that might help to inrich me and meekness is a huge contradiction to pride and revenge and the wandring of our eyes and the greatnesse of our fancy and our imaginative opinions are to be lessened that we may serve God there is no other way of serving God we have nothing else to present unto him we do not else give him any thing or part of our selves but when we for his sake part with what we naturally desire and difficulty is essential to vertue and without choice there can be no reward in the satisfaction of our natural desires there is no election we run to them as beasts to the river or the crib If therefore any man shall teach or practise such a religion that satisfies all our natural desires in the dayes of desire and passion of lust and appetites and only turns to God when his appetites are gone his desires cease this man hath overthrown the very being of vertues and the essential constitution of religion Religion is no religion and vertue is no act of choice and reward comes by chance and without condition if we onely are religious when we cannot choose if we part with our money when we cannot keep it with our lust when we cannot act it with our desires when they have left us death is a certain mortifier but that mortification is deadly not useful to the purposes of a spiritual life When we are compeld to depart from our evil customs and leave to live that we may begin to live then we dye to dye that life is the prologue to death and thenceforth we die eternally S. Cyril speaks of certain people that chose to worship the sun because he was a day God for believing that he was quenched every â—â—ght in the sea or that he had no influence upon them that light up candles and lived by the light of fire they were confident they might be Atheists all night and live as they list Men who divide their little portion of time between religion and pleasures between God and Gods enemy think that God is to rule but in his certain period of time and that our life is the stage for passion and folly and the day of death for the work of our life but as to God both the day and night are alike so are the first and the last of our dayes all are his due and he will account severely with us for the follies of the first and the evil of the last The evils and the pains are great which are reserved for those who defer their restitution to Gods favour till their death And therefore Antisthenes said well It is not the happy death but the happy life that makes man happy It is in piety as in fame and reputation he secures a good name but loosely that trusts his fame and celebritie onely to his ashes and it is more a civilitie 〈◊〉 then the base of a firm reputation that men speak honour of their departed relatives but if their life be vertuous it forces honour from contempt and snatches it from the hand of envy and it shines thorough the crevises of detraction and as it anointed the head of the living so it embalms the body of the dead From these premises if followes that when we discourse of a sick mans repentance it is intended to be not a beginning but the prosecution and consummation of the covenant of repentance which Christ stipulated with us in Baptisme and which we needed all our life and which we began long before this last arrest and in which we are now to make further progresse that we may arrive to that integrity and fulnesse of of dutie that our sins may be blotted out when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord. SECT VI. Rules for the practise of Repentance in sicknesse 1. LEt the sick man consider at what gate this sicknesse entred and if he can discover the particular let him instantly passionately and with great contrition dash the crime in pieces lest he descend into his grave in the midst of a sin and thence remove into an ocean of eternal sorrowes but if he onely suffers the common fate of man and knowes not the particular inlet he is to be governed by the following measures 2. Inquire into the repentance of thy former life particularly whether it were of a great and perfect grief and productive of fixed resolutions of holy living and reductive of these to act How many dayes and nights have we spent in sorrow or care in habitual and actual pursuances of vertue what instrument we have chosen and used for the eradication of sin how we have judged our selves and how punished and in summe whether we have by the grace of repentance changed our life from criminal to vertuous from one habit to another and whether we have paid for the pleasure of our sin by smart or sorrow by the effusion of alms or pernoctations or abodes in prayers so as the spirit hath been served in our repentance as earnestly and as greatly as our appetites have been provided for in the dayes of our shame and folly 3. Supply the imperfections of thy repentance by a general or universal sorrow for the sins not onely since the last communion or absolution but of thy whole life for all sins known and unknown repented and unrepented of ignorance or infirmity which thou knowest or which others have accused thee of thy clamorous and thy whispering sins the sinnes of scandall and the sinnes of a secret conscience of the flesh and of the spirit for it would be but a sad arrest to thy soul wandring in strange and unusuall regions to see a scroll of uncancelled sins represented and charged upon thee for want of care and notices and that thy repentance shall become invalid because of its imperfections 4. To this purpose it is usually advised by spirituall persons
tongue shall sing aloud of thy righteousnesse The sacrifice of God is a broken heart a broken and a contrite heart O God thou wilt not despise Lord I have done amisse I have been deceived let so great a wrong as this be removed The prayer for the grace and perfection of Repentance I. O Almighty God thou art the great Judge of all the world the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ the Father of mercies the Father of men and Angels thou lovest not that a sinner should perish but delightest in our conversion and salvation and hast in our Lord Jesus Christ established the Covenant of repentance and promised pardon to all them that confesse their sins and forsake them O my God be thou pleased to work in me what thou hast commanded should be in me Lord I am a dry tree who neither have brought forth fruit unto thee and unto holinesse nor have wept out salutary tears the instrument of life and restitution but have behaved my self like an unconcerned person in the ruins and breaches of my soul But O God thou art my God earnestly will I seek thee my soul thirsteth for thee in a barren and thirsty land where no water is Lord give me the grace of tears and pungent sorrow let my heart be as a land of rivers of waters and my head a fountain of tears turn my sin into repentance and let my repentance proceed to pardon refreshment II. SUpport me with thy graces strengthen me with thy Spirit soften my heart with the fire of thy love and the dew of heaven with penitentiall showers make my care prudent and the remaining portion of my dayes like the perpetuall watches of the night full of caution and observance strong and resolute patient and severe I remember O Lord that I did sin with greedinesse and passion with great desires and an unabated choice O let me be as great in my repentance as ever I have been in my calamity and shame let my hatred of sin be great as my love to thee and both as neer to infinite as my proportion can receive III. O Lord I renounce all affection to sin and would not buy my health nor redeem my life with doing any thing against the Lawes of my God but would rather die then offend thee O dearest Saviour have pity upon thy servant let me by thy sentence be doomed to perpetuall penance during the abode of this life let every sigh be the expression of a repentance and every groan an acccent of spiritual life and every stroke of my disease a punishment of my sin and an instrument of pardon that at my return to the land of innocence I may eat of the votive sacrifice of the supper of the Lamb that was from the beginning of the world slâ—in for the sins of every sorrowful and returning sinner O grant me sorrow here and joy hereafter through Jesus Christ who is our hope the resurrection of the dead the justifier of a sinner and the glory of all faithful souls Amen A prayer for pardon of sins to be said frequently in time of sicknesse and in all the portions of old age I. O Eternal and most gracious Father I humbly throw my self down at the foot of thy mercy seat upon the confidence of thy essential mercy and thy commandment that we should come boldly to the throne of grace that we may finde mercy in time of need O my God hear the prayers and cries of a sinner who calls earnestly for mercy Lord my needs are greater then all the degrees of my desire can be unlesse thou hast pity upon me I perish infinitely and intolerably and then there will be one voice fewer in the quire of singers who shall recite thy praises to eternal ages But O Lord in mercy deliver my soul. O save me for thy mercy sake For in the second death there is no remembrance of thee in that grave who shall give thee thanks II. O Just and dear God my sins are innumerable they are upon my soul in multitudes they are a burden too heavy for me to bear they already bring sorrow and sicknesse shame and displeasure guilt and a decaying spirit a sense of thy present displeasure and fear of worse of infinitely worse But it is to thee so essential so delightful so usual so desired by thee to shew mercy that although my sin be very great and my fear proportionable yet thy mercy is infinitely greater then all the world and my hope and my comfort rise up in proportions towards it that I trust the Devils shall never be able to reprove it nor my own weaknesse discompose it Lord thou hast sent thy Son to die for the pardon of my sins thou hast given me thy holy Spirit as a seal of adoption to consigne the article of remission of sins thou hast for all my sins still continued to invite me to conditions of life by thy ministers the prophets and thou hast with variety of holy acts softned my spirit and possessed my fancie and instructed my understanding and bended and inclined my will and directed or overruled my passions in order to repentance and pardon and why should not thy servant beg passionately and humbly hope for the effect of all these thy strange and miraculous acts of loving kindnesse Lord I deserve it not but I hope thou wilt pardon all my sins and I beg it of thee for Jesus Christ his sake whom thou hast made the great endearment of thy promises and the foundation of our hopes and the mighty instrument whereby we can obtain of thee whatsoever we need and can receive III. O My God how shall thy servant be disposed to receive such a favour which is so great that the ever blessed Jesus did die to purchase for us so great that the falling angels never could hope and never shall obtain Lord I do from my soul forgive all that have sinned against me O forgive me my sins as I forgive them that have sinned against me Lord I confesse my sins unto thee daily by the accusations and secret acts of conscience and if we confesse our sins thou hast called it a part of justice to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousnesse Lord I put my trust in thee and thou art ever gracious to them that put their trust in thee I call upon my God for mercy and thou art alwayes more ready to hear then we to pray But all that I can do and all that I am and all that I know of my self is nothing but sin and infirmity and misery therefore I go forth of my self and throw my self wholly into the arms of thy mercy through Jesus Christ and beg of thee for his death and passions sake by his resurrection and ascension by all the parts of our redemption and thy infinite mercy in which thou pleasest thy self above all the works of the creation to be pitifull and compassionate to thy servant
of religion to declare publike criminals and scandalous persons to be such that when the leprosie is declared the flock may avoid the infection and then the man is excommunicate when the people are warned to avoid the danger of the man or the reproach of the crime to withdraw from his society and not to bid him God speed not to eat and celebrate synaxes and Church-meetings with such who are declared criminal and dangerous and therefore excommunication is in a very great part the act of the Congregation and communities of the faithfull and S. Paul said to the Church of the Corinthians that they had inflicted the evil upon the incestuous person that is by excommunicating him all the acts of which are as they are subjected in the people acts of caution and liberty but no more acts of direct proper power or jurisdiction then it was when the scholers of Simon Magus lefâ— his chair and went to hear S. Peter But as they are actions of the Rulers of the Church so they are declarative ministerial and effective too by morall causality that is by perswasion and discourse by argument and prayer by homily and materiall representment by reasonablenesse of order and the superinduced necessities of men though not by any reall change of state as to the person nor by diminution of his right or violence to his condition 2. He that baptises and he that ministers the Holy Sacrament and he that prayes does holy offices of great advantage but in these also just as in the former he exercises no jurisdiction or preheminence after the manner of saecular authority and the same is also true if he should deny them He that refuseth to baptize an indisposed person hath by the consent of all men no power or jurisdiction over the unbaptized man and he that for the like reason refuseth to give him the Communion preserves the sacrednesse of the mysteries and does charitie to the undisposed man to deny that to him which will do him mischief and this is an act of separation just as it is for a friend or Physitian to deny water to an Hydropic person or Italian wines to a hectic feaver or as if Cato should deny to salute Bibulus or the Censor of maners to do countenance to a wanton and vitious person and though this thing was expressed by words of power such as separation abstention excommunication deposition yet these words we understand by the thing it self which was notorious and evident to be matter of prudence security and a free unconstrained discipline and they passed into power by consent and voluntary submission having the same effect of constraint fear and authority which we see in secular jurisdiction not because ecclesiastical discipline hath a natural proper coercion as lay-Tribunals have but because men have submitted to it and are bound to do so upon the interest of two or three Christian graces 3. In pursuance of this caution and provision the Church superinduced times and manners of abstention and expressions of sorrow and canonical punishments which they tyed the delinquent people to suffer before they would admit them to the holy Table of the Lord. For the criminal having obliged himself by his sin and the Church having declared it when she could take notice of it he is bound to repent to make him capable of pardon with God and to prove that he is penitent he is to do such actions which the Church in the vertue and pursuance of repentance shall accept as a testimony of it sufficient to inform her for as she could not binde at all in this sence till the crime was publike though the man had bound himself in secret so neither can she set him free till the repentance be as publike as the sin or so as she can note it and approve it Though the man be free as to God by his internal act yet as the publication of the sin was accidental to it and the Church censure consequent to it so is the publication of repentance and consequent absolution extrinsecal to the pardon but accidentally and in the present circumstances necessary This was the same that the Jews did though in other instances and expressions and do to this day to their prevaricaâ—ing people and the Essenes in their assemblies and private Colleges of scholars and publike Universities For all these being assemblies of voluntary persons and such as seek for advantage are bound to make an artificial authority in their superiours and so to secure order and government by their own obedience and voluntary subordination which is not essential and of proper jurisdiction in the superiour and the band of it is not any coeâ—citive power but the denying to communicate such benefits which they seek in that communion and fellowship 4. These I say were introduced in the speciall manners and instances by positive authority and have not a divine authority commanding them but there is a divine power that verefies them and makes these separations effectual and formidable for because they are declarative and ministerial in the spirituall man and suppose a delinquencie and demerit in the other and a sin against God our blessed Saviour our hath declared that what they binde in earth shall be bound in heaven that is in plain signification The same sins and sinners which the Clergie condemns in the face of their assemblies the same is condemned in heaven before the face of God and for the same reason too Gods law hath sentenced it and these are the preachers and publishers of his law by which they stand condemned and these laws are they that condemn the sin or acquit the penitent there and here whatsoever they binde here shall be bound there that is the sentence of God at the day of judgement shall sentence the same men whom the Church does rightly sentence here it is spoken in the future it shall be bound in heaven not but that the sinner is first bound there or first absolved there but because all binding and loosing in the interval is imperfect and relative to the day of judgement the day of the great sentence therefore it is set down in the time to come and sayes this only The Clergie are tyed by the word and laws of God to condemn such sins and sinners and that you may not think it ineffective because after such sentence the man lives and growes rich or remains in health and power therefore be sure it shall be verified in the day of judgement This is hugely agreeable with the words of our Lord and certain in reason for that the minister does nothing to the final alteration of the state of the mans soul by way of sentence is demonstratively certain because he cannot binde a man but such as hath bound himself and who is bound in heaven by his sin before his sentence in the Church as also be-because the binding of the Church is meerly accidental and upon publication
pasport in the article of his death and calls thâ—s the ancient and canonicall law of the Church and to minister it onely supposes the man in the communion of the Church not alwayes in the state but ever in the possibilities of sanctification They who in the article and danger of death were admitted to the communion and tied to penance if they recovered which was ever the custome of the ancient Church unlesse in very few cases were but in the threshold of repentance in the commencement and first introductions to a devout life and indeed then it is a fit ministery that it be given in all the periods of time in which the pardon of sins is working since it is the Sacrament of that great mystery the exhibition of that blood which is shed for the remission of sins 9. The Minister of religion ought not to give the Communion to a sick person if he retains the affection to any sin and refuses to disavow it or professe repentance of all sins whatsoever if he be required to do it The reason is because it is a certain death to him and an increase of his misery if he shall so prophane the body and blood of Christ as to take it into so unholy a breast where Sathan reignes and sin is principall and the Spirit is extinguished and Christ loves not to enter because he is not suffered to inhabite But when he professes repentance and does such acts of it as his present condition permits he is to be presumed to intend heartily what he professes solemnly and the Minister is onely the Judge of outward act and by that onely he is to take information concerning the inward But whether he be so or no or if he be whether that be timely and effectuall and sufficient toward the pardon of sins before God is another consideration of which we may conjecture here but we shall know it at doomsday The spirituall man is to do his ministery by the rules of Christ and as the customs of the Church appoint him and after the manner of men the event is in the hands of God and is to be expected not directly and wholly according to his ministery but to the former life or the timely internall repentance and amendment of which I have already given accounts These ministeries are acts of order and great assistances but the sum of affairs does not relie upon them And if any man puts his whole repentance upon this time or all his hopes upon these ministeries he will find them and himself to fail 10. It is the Ministers office to invite sick and dying persons to the Holy Sacrament such whose lives were fair and laudable and yet their sicknesse sad and violent making them list-lesse and of slow desires and flower apprehensions that such persons who are in the state of grace may lose no accidentall advantages of spirituall improvement but may receive into their dying bodies the symboles and great consignations of the resurrection and into their soules the pledges of immortality and may appear before God their Father in the union and with the impresses and likenesse of their elder Brother But if the persons be of ill report and have lived wickedly they are not to be invited because their case is hugely suspicious though they then repent and call for mercy but if they demand it they are not to be denied onely let the Minister in generall represent the evil consequents of an unworthy participation and if the penitent will judge himself unworthy let him stand candidate for pardon at the hands of God and stand or fall by that unerring and mercifull sentence to which his severity of condemning himself before men will make the easier and more hopefull addresse And the strictest among the Christians who denied to reconcile lapsed persons after baptisme yet acknowledged that there were hopes reserved in the court of heaven for them though not here since we who are easily deceived by the pretences of a reall return are tied to dispense Gods graces as he hath given us commission with fear and trembling and without too forward confidences and God hath mercies which we know not of and therefore because we know them not such persons were referred to Gods Tribunal where he would finde them if they were to be had at all 11. When the holy Sacrament is to be administred let the exhortation be made proper to the mystery but fitted to the man that is that it be used for the advantages of faith or love or contrition let all the circumstances and parts of the Divine love be represented all the mysterious advantages of the blessed Sacrament be declared * That it is the bread which came from heaven * That it is the representation of Christs death to all the purposes and capacities of faith * and the real exhibition of Christs body and blood to all the puposes of the Spirit * That it is the earnest of the resurrection * and the seed of a glorious immortality * That as by our cognation to the body of the first Adam we took in death so by our union with the body of the second Adam we shall have the inheritance of life for as by Adam came death so by Christ cometh the resurrection of the dead * That if we being worthy Communicants of these sacred pledges be presented to God with Christ within us our being accepted of God is certain even for the sake of his well beloved that dwells within us * That this is the Sacrament of the body which was broken for our sinnes of that blood which purifies our souls by which we are presented to God pure and holy in the beloved * That now we may ascertain our hopes and make our faith confident for he that hath given us his Son how should not he with him give us all things else Upon these or the like considerations the sick man may be assisted in his addresse and his faith strengthened and his hope confirmed and his charity be enlarged 12. The manner of the sick mans reception of the holy Sacrament hath in it nothing differing from the ordinary solemnities of the Sacrament save onely that abatement is to be made of such accidentall circumstances as by the lawes or customes of the Church healthfull persons are obliged to such as fasting kneeling c. though I remember that it was noted for great devotion in the Legate that died at Trent that he caused himself to be sustained upon his knees when he received the viaticum or the holy Sacrament before his death and it was greater in Hunniades that he caused himself to be carried to the Church that there he might receive his Lord in his Lords house and it was recorded for honour that William the pious Arch-Bishop of Bourges a small time before his last agony sprang out of his bed at the presence of the holy Sacrament and upon
his knees and his face recommended his soul to his Saviour But in these things no man is to be prejudiced or censured 13. Let not the holy Sacrament be administred to dying persons when they have no use of reason to make that duty acceptable and the mysteries effective to the purposes of the soul. For the Sacraments and ceremonies of the gospel operate not without the concurrent actions and moral influences of the suscipient To infuse the chalice in to the cold lips of the Clinick may disturb his agony but cannot relieve the soul which onely receives improvement by acts of grace and choice to which the external rites are apt and appointed to minister in a capable person All other persons as fools children distracted persons lethargical apoplectical or any wayes senselesse and uncapable of humane and reasonable acts are to be assisted onely by prayers for they may prevail even for the absent and for enemies and for all those who joyn not in the office SECT V. Of Ministring to the sick person by the Spiritual man as he is the Physitian of souls 1. IN all cases of receiving confessions of sick men and the assisting to the advancement of repentance the Minister is to apportion to every kinde of sin such spiritual remedies which are apt to mortifie and cure the sin such as abstinence from their occasions and opportunities to avoid temptations to resist their beginnings to punish the crime by acts of indignation against the person fastings and prayer alms and all the instances of charity asking forgiveness restitution of wrongs satisfaction of injuries acts of vertue contrary to the crimes and although in great and dangerous sicknesses they are not directly to be imposed unlesse they are direct matters of duty yet where they are medicinall they are to be insinuated and in general signification remarked to him and undertaken accordingly concerning which when he returnes to health he is to receive particular advices and this advice was inserted into the penitential of England in the time of Theodore Arch-Bishop of Canterbury and afterward adopted into the Canon of all the Western Churches 2. The proper temptations of sick men for which a remedie is not yet provided are unreasonable fears and unreasonable confidences which the Minister is to cure by the following considerations Considerations against unreasonable fears of not having our sins pardoned Many good men especially such who have tender consciences impatient of the least sin to which they are arrived by a long grace and a continual observation of their actions and the parts of a lasting repentance many times overact their tendernesse and turn their caution into scruple and care of their duty into inquiries after the event and askings after the counsels of God and the sentences of dooms-day He that asks of the standers by or of the Minister whether they think he shall be saved or damned are to be answered with the words of pity and reproof Seek not after new light for the searching into the privatest records of God look as much as you list into the pages of revelation for they concern your duty but the event is registred in heaven and we can expect no other certain notices of it but that it shall be given to them for whom it is prepared by the Father of mercies we have light enough to tell our duty and if we do that we need not fear what the issue will be and if we do not let us never look for more light or inquire after Gods pleasure concerning our souls since we so little serve his ends in those things where he hath given us light But yet this I adde that as pardon of sins in the old Testament was nothing but removing the punishment which then was temporal and therefore many times they could tell if their sins were pardoned and concerning pardon of sins they then had no fears of conscience but while the punishment was on them for so long indeed it was unpardoned and how long it would so remain it was matter of fear and of present sorrow Besides this in the Gospel pardon of sins is another thing Pardon of sins is a sanctification Christ came to take away our sin by turning every one of us from our iniquities And there is not in the nature of the thing any expectation of pardon or signe or signification of it but so far as the thing it self discovers it self As we hate sin and grow in grace and arrive at the state of holinesse which is also a state of repentance and imperfection but yet of sincerity of heart and diligent endeavour in the same degree we are to judge concerning the forgiveness of sins for indeed that is the Evangelical forgivenesse and it signifies our pardon because it effects it or rather it is in the nature of the thing so that we are to enquire into no hidden records forgivenesse of sins is not a secret sentence a word or a record but it is a state of change and effected upon us and upon our selves we are to look for it to read it and understand it We are onely to be curious of our duty and confident of the Article of remission of sins and the conclusion of these premises will be that we shall be full of hopes of a prosperous resurrection and our fear and trembling are no instances of our calamity but parts of duty we shall sure enough be wafted to the shore although we be tossed with the winds of our sighs and the unevenness of our fears and the ebbings and flowings of our passions if we sail in a right chanel and steere by a perfect compasse and look up to God and call for his help and do our own endeavour There are very many reasons why men ought not to despair and there are not very many men that ever go beyond a hope till they passe into possession if our fears have any mixture of hope that is enough to enable and to excite our duty and if we have a strong hope when we cast about we shall finde reason enough to have many fears let not this fear weaken our hands and if it allay our gayeties and our confidences it is no harm In this uncertainty we must abide if we have committed sins after baptisme and those confidences which some men glorie in are not reall supports or good foundations The fearing man is the safest and if he fears on his death-bed it is but what happens to most considering men and what was to be looked for all his life time he talked of the terrours of death and death is the king of terrours and therefore it is no strange thing if then he be hugely afraid if he be not it is either a great felicity or a great presumption but if he wants some degree of comfort or a greater degree of hope let him be refreshed by considering 1. That Christ came into the world to save sinners
his brother nor give to God a ransome for him for the redemption of their soul is precious and it ceaseth for ever that he should still live for ever and not see corruption But wise men die likewise the fool and the brutish person perish and leave their wealth to others but God will redeem my soul from the power of the grave for he shall receive me As for me I will behold thy face in righteousnesse I shall be satisfied when I awake in thy likenesse Thou shalt shew me the path of life in thy presence is the fulnesse of joy at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore Glory be to the Father c. As it was in the beginning c. Let us Pray ALmighty God Father of mercies the God of peace and comfort of rest and pardon we thy servants though unworthy to pray to thee yet in duty to thee and charity to our brother humbly beg mercy of thee for him to descend upon his body and his soul One sinner O Lord for another the miserable for the afflicted the poor for him that is in need but thou givest thy graces and thy favours by the measures of thy own mercies and in proportion to our necessities we humbly come to thee in the Name of Jesus for the merit of our Saviour and the mercies of our God praying thee to pardon the sins of this thy servant and to put them all upon the accounts of the Crosse and to bury them in the grave of Jesus that they may never rise up in judgement against thy servant nor bring him to shame and confusion of face in the day of finall inquiry and sentence Amen II. GIve thy servant patience in his sorrows comfort in this his sicknesse and restore him to health if it seem good to thee in order to thy great ends and his greatest interest And however thou shalt determine concerning him in this affair yet make his repentance perfect and his passage and his faith strong and his hope modest and confident that when thou shalt call his soul from the prison of the body it may enter into the securities and rest of the sons of God in the bosome of blessednesse and the custodies of Jesus Amen III. THou O Lord knowest all the necessities and all the infirmities of thy servant fortifie his spirit with spirituall joyes and perfect resignation and take from him all degrees of inordinate or insecure affections to this world and enlarge his heart with desires of being with thee and of freedome from sins and fruition of God IV. LOrd let not any pain or passion discompose the order and decencie of his thoughts and duty and lay no more upon thy servant then thou wilt make him able to bear and together with the temptation do thou provide a way to escape even by the mercies of a longer and a more holy life or by the mercies of a blessed death even as it pleaseth thee O Lord so let it be V. LEt the tendernesse of his conscience and the Spirit of God call to mind his sins that they may be confessed and repented of because thou hast promised that if we confesse our sins we shall have mercy Let thy mighty grace draw out from his soul every root of bitternesse lest the remains of the old man be accursed with the reserves of thy wrath but in the union of the Holy Jesus and in the charities of God and of the world and the communion of all the saints let this soul be presented to thee blamelesse and intirely pardoned and thorowly washed through Jesus Christ our Lord. Here also may be inserted the prayers set down after the Holy Communion is administred The Prayer of S. Eustratius the Martyr to be used by the sick or dying man or by the Priests or assistants in his behalf which he said when he was going to martyrdom I Will praise thee O Lord that thou hast considered my low estate and hast not shut me up in the hands of my enemies nor made my foes to rejoyce over me and now let thy right hand protect me and let thy mercy come upon me for my soul is in trouble and anguish because of its departure from the body O let not the assemblies of its wicked and cruell enemies meet it in the passing forth nor hinder me by reason of the sins of my passed life O Lord be favourable unto me that my so I may not behold the hellish countenance of the spirits of darknesse but let thy bright and joyfull Angels entertain it Give glory to thy Holy Name and to thy Majesty place me by thy mercifull arm before thy seat of Judgement and let not the hand of the prince of this world snatch me from thy presence or bear me into hell Mercy sweet Jesu Amen A Prayer taken out of the Euchologion of the Greek Church to be said by or in behalf of people in their danger or neer their death 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. I. BEmired with sins and naked of good deeds I that am the meat of worms cry vehemently in spirit Cast not me wretch away from thy face place me not on the left hand who with thy hands didst fashion me but give rest unto my soul for thy great mercy sake O Lord. II. SUpplicate with tears unto Christ who is to judge my poor soul that he would deliver me from the fire that is unquenchable I pray you all my friends and acquaintance make mention of me in your prayers that in the day of Judgement I may find mercy at that dreadfull Tribunall III. Then may the by-standers pray WHen in unspeakable glory thou dost come dreadfully to judge the whole world vouchsafe O gracious Redeemer that this thy faithfull servant may in the clouds meet thee cheerfully They who have been dead from the beginning with terrible and fearfull trembling stand at thy Tribunall waiting thy just O Blessed Saviour Jesus None shall there avoid thy formidable and most righteous judgement All Kings and Princes with servants stand together and hear the dreadfull voyce of the Judge condemning the people which have sinned into hell from which sad sentence O Christ deliver thy servant Amen Then let the sick man be called upon to rehearse the Articles of his Faith or if he be so weak he cannot let him if he have not before done it be called to say Amen when they are recited or to give some testimony of his faith and confident assent to them After which it is proper if the person be in capacity that the Minister examine him and invite him to confession and all the parts of repentance according to the foregoing rules after which he may pray this prayer of absolution OUr Lord Jesus Christ who hath given Commission to his Church in his Name to pronounce pardon to all that are truly penitent he of his mercy pardon and forgive thee all thy sins deliver thee from all evils past present and future
preserve thee in the faith and fear of his holy Name to thy lives end and bring thee to his everlasting Kingdom to live with him for ever and ever Amen Then let the sick man renounce all heresies and whatsoever is against the truth of God or the peace of the Church and pray for pardon for all his ignorances and errors known and unknown After which let him if all other circumstances be fitted be disposed to receive the Blessed Sacrament in which the Curate is to minister according to the form prescribed by the Church When the rites are finished let the sick man in the dayes of his sicknesse be imployed with the former offices and exercises before described and when the time drawes neer of his dissolution the Minister may assist by the following order of recommendation of the soul. I. O Holy and most Gracious Saviour Jesus we humbly recommend the soul of thy servant into thy hands thy most mercifull hands let thy Blessed Angels stand in ministery about thy servant and defend him from the violence and malice of all his ghosâ—ly enemies and drive far from hence all the spirits of darknesse Amen II. LOrd receive the soul of this thy servant Enter not into judgement with thy servaant spare him whom thou hast redeemed with thy most precious blood deliver him from all evil and mischief from the crafts and assaults of the Devil from the fear of death and from everlasting death Good Lord deliver him Amen III. IMpute not unto him the follies of his youth nor any of the errors and miscarriages of his life but strengthen him in his agony let not his faith waver nor his hope fail nor his charity be disordered Let none of his enemies imprint upon him any afflictive or evil phantasme let him die in peace and rest in hope and rise in glory Amen IIII. LOrd we know and beleeve assuredly that whatsoever is under thy custody cannot be taken out of thy hands nor by all the violences of hell robbed of thy protection preserve the work of thy hands rescue him from all evil for whose sake thou didst suffer all evil Take into the participation of thy glories him to whom thou hast given the seal of Adoption the earnest of the inheritance of the Saints Amen V. LEt his portion be with Abraham Isaac and Iacob with Iob and David with the Prophets and Apostles with Martyrs and all thy holy Saints in the arms of Christ in the bosome of felicity in the Kingdom of God to eternall ages Amen These following prayers are fit also to be added to the foregoing offices in case there be no communion or entercourse but prayer Let us Pray O Almighty and eternall God there is no number of thy dayes or of thy mercies thou hast sent us into this world to serve thee and to live according to thy lawes but we by our sins have provoked thee to wrath and we have planted thorns and sorrows round about our dwellings and our life is but a span long and yet very tedious because of the calamities that inclose us in on every side the dayes of our pilgrimage are few and evil we have frail and sickly bodies violent and distempered passions long designes and but a short stay weak understandings and strong enemies abused fancies perverse wils O Dear God look upon us in mercy and pity let not our weaknesses make us to sin against thee nor our fear cause us to betray our duty nor our former follies provoke thy eternall anger nor the calamities of this world vex us into tediousnesse of spirit and impatience but let thy Holy Spirit lead us thorow this vally of misery with safety and peace with holiness and religion with spirituall comforts and joy in the Holy Ghost that when we have served thee in our generations we may be gathered unto our Fathers having the testimony of a holy conscience in the communion of the Catholike Church in the confidence of a certain faith and the comforts of a reasonable religious and holy hope and perfect charity with thee our God and all the world that neither death nor life nor Angels nor principalities nor powers nor things present nor things to come nor height nor depth nor any other creature may be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen II. O Holy and most gracious Saviour Jesus in whose hands the souls of all faithfull people are laid up till the day of recompence have mercy upon the body and soul of this thy servant and upon all thy elect people who love the Lord Jesus and long for his coming Lord refresh the imperfection of their condition with the aids of the Spirit of grace and comfort and with the visitation and guard of Angels and supply to them all their necessities known onely unto thee let them dwell in peace and feel thy mercies pitying their infirmities and the follies of their flesh and speedily satisfying the desires of their spirits and when thou shalt bring us all forth in the day of Judgement O then shew thy self to be our Saviour Jesus our Advocate and our Judge Lord then remember that thou hast for so many ages prayed for the pardon of those sins which thou art then to sentence Let not the accusations of our consciences nor the calumnies and aggravation of Devils nor the effects of thy wrath presse those souls whâ—ch thou lovest which thou didst redeem which thou doest pray for but enable us all by the supporting hand of thy mercy to stand upright in judgement O Lord have mercy upon us have mercy upon us O Lord let thy mercy lighten upon us as our trust is in thee O Lord in thee have we trusted let us never be confounded Let us meet with joy and for ever dwell with thee feeling thy pardon supported with thy graciousnesse absolved by thy sentence saved by thy mercy that we may sing to the glory of thy Name eternall Allelujahs Amen Amen Amen Then may be added in the behalf of all that are present these ejaculations O spare us a little that we may recover our strength before we go hence and be no more seen Amen Cast us not away in the time of age O forsake us not when strength faileth Amen Grant that we may never sleep in sin or death eternall but that we may have our part of the first resurrection and that the second death may not prevail over us Amen Grant that our souls may be bound up in the bundle of life and in the day when thou bindest up thy Jewels remember thy servants for good and not for evil that our souls may be numbred amongst the righteous Amen Grant unto all sick and dying Christians mercy and aids from heaven and receive the souls returning unto thee whom thou hast redeemed with thy most precious blood Amen Grant unto thy servants to have faith in the Lord Jesus a daily meditation of death a contempt of
the world a longing desire after heaven patience in our sorrows comfort in our sicknesses joy in God a holy life and a blessed death that our souls may rest in hope and my body may rise in glory and both may be beatified in the communion of Saints in the kingdom of God and the glories of the Lord Jesus Amen The blessing Now the God of peace that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus that great shepherd of the sheep thorough the blood of the everlasting covenant make you perfect in every good work to do his will working in you that which is pleasing in his sight to whom be glory for ever and ever Amen The doxology To the blessed and onely Potentate the King of kings and the Lord of Lords who only hath immortality dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto whom no man hath seen nor can see be honour and power everlasting Amen After the sick man is departed the Minister if he be present or the Major dome or any other fit person may use the following prayers in behalf of themselves I. ALmighty God with whom do live the spirits of them that depart hence in the Lord we adore thy Majesty and submit to thy providence and revere thy justice and magnifie thy mercies thy infinite mercies that it hath pleased thee to deliver this our brother out of the miseries of this sinful world Thy counsels are secret and thy wisdom is infinite with the same hand thou hast crowned him and smitten us thou hast taken him into regions of felicity and placed him among Saints and Angels and left us to mourn for our sins and thy displeasure which thou hast signified to us by removing him from us to a better a far better place Lord turn thy anger into mercie thy chastisements into vertues thy rod into comforts and do thou give to all his neerest relatives comforts from heaven and a restitution of blessings equall to those which thou hast taken from them And we humbly beseech thee of thy gracious goodnesse shortly to satisfie the longing desires of those Holy souls who pray and wait and long for thy second coming Accomplish thou the number of thine elect and fill up the Mansions in heaven which are prepared for all them that love the coming of the Lord Jesus that we with this our Brother and all other departed this life in the obedience and faith of the Lord Jesus may have our perfect consummation and blisse in thy eternall glory which never shall have ending Grant this for Jesus Christ his sake our Lord and onely Saviour Amen II. O Mercifull God Father of our Lord Jesus who is the first fruits of the resurrection and by entring into glory hath opened the kingdom of heaven to all the beleevers we humbly beseech thee to raise us from the death of sin to the life of righteousnesse that being partakers of the death of Christ and followers of his Holy life we may be partakers of his Spirit and of his promises that when we shall depart this life we may rest in his arms and lie in his bosom as our hope is this our brother doth O suffer us not for any temptation of the world or any snares of the Devil or any pains of death to fall from thee Lord let thy H. Spirit enable us with his grace to fight a good fight with perseverance to finish our course with holiness and to keep the faith with constancie unto the end that at the day of judgement we may stand at the right hand of the throne of God and hear the blessed sentence of Come ye blessed children of my Father receive the kingdom prepared for you from the beginning of the world O blessed Jesus thou art our Judge and thou art our Advocate even because thou art good and gracious never suffer us to fall into the intolerable pains of hell never to lye down in sin and never to have our portion in the everlasting burning Mercy sweet Jesu Mercy Amen A prayer to be said in the case of a sudden surprise by death as by a mortal wound or evil accidents in childebirth when the forms and solemnities of preparation cannot be used O Most gracious Father Lord of heaven and earth Judge of the living and the dead behold thy servants running to thee for pity and mercy in behalf of our selves and this thy servant whom thou hast smitten with thy hasty rod and a swift Angel if it be thy will preserve his life that there may be place for his repentance and restitution O spare him a little that he may recover his strength before he go hence and be no more seen but if thou hast otherwise decreed let the miracles of thy compassion and thy wonderfull mercy supply to him the want of the usual measures of time and the periods of repentance and the trimming of his lamp and let the greatnesse of the calamity be accepted by thee as an instrument to procure pardon for those defects and degrees of unreadiness which may have caused this accident upon thy servant Lord stirre up in him a great and effectual contrition that the greatnesse of the sorrow and hatred against sin and the zeal of his love to thee may in a short time do the work of many dayes and thou who regardest the heart and the measures of the minde more then the delay and the measures of time let it be thy pleasure to rescue the soul of thy servant from all the evils he hath deserved and all the evils that he fears that in the glorifications of eternity and the songs which to eternal ages thy Saints and holy Angels shall sing to the honour of thy mighty Name and invaluable mercies it may be reckoned among thy glories that thou hast redeemed this soul from the dangers of an eternall death and made him partaker of the gift of God eternall life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen If there be time the prayers in the foregoing offices may be added according as they can be fitted to the present circumstances SECT VIII A peroration concerning the contingencies and treatings of our departed friends after death in order to their buriall c. WHen we have received the last breath of our friend and closed his eyes and composed his body for the grave then seasonable is the counsell of the son of Syrach Weep bitterly and make great moan and use lamentation as he is worthy and that a day or two lest thou be evil spoken of and then comfort thy self for thy heavinesse But take no grief to heart for there is no turning again thou shalâ— not do him good but hurt tâ—y self Solemn and appointed mournings are good expressions of our dearnesse to the departed soul and of his worth and our value of him and it hath its praise in nature and in manners and publike customs but the praise of it is not in the Gospel that is it hath
can have it no where but in his own conscience and from the witnesses of his conversation Let this be done by prudent insinuation by arts of remembrance and secret notices and propounding occasions and instruments of recalling such things to his minde which either by publike fame he is accused of or by the temptations of his condition it is likely he might have contracted 5. If the person be truly penitent and forward to confesse all that are set before him or offered to his sight at a half face then he may be complyed withall in all his innocent circumstances and his conscience made placid and willing and he be drawn forward by good nature and civilitie that his repentance in all the parts of it and in every step of its progresse and emanation may be as voluntary and chosen as it can For by that means if the sick person can be invited to do the work of religion it enters by the door of his will and choice and will passe on toward consummation by the instrument of delight 6. If the sick man be backward and without apprehension of the good natur'd and civil way let the Minister take care that by some way or other the work of God be secured and if he will not understand when he is secretly prompted he must be hollowed to and asked in plain interrogatives concerning the crime of his life He must be told of the evil things that are spoken of him in markets and exchanges the proper temptations and accustomed evils of his calling and condition of the actions of scandal and in all those actions which were publike or of which any notice is come abroad let care be taken that the right side of the case of conscience be turned toward him and the errour truly represented to him by which he was abused as the injustice of his contracts his oppressive bargains his rapine violence and if he hath perswaded himself to think well of a scandalous action let him be instructed and advertised of his folly and his danger 7. And this advice concerns the Minister of religion to follow without partialitie or fear or interest in much simplicity and prudence and hearty sincerity having no other consideration but that the interest of the mans soul be preserved and no caution used but that the matter be represented with just circumstances and civilities fitted to the person with prefaces of honour and regard but so that nothing of the duty be diminished by it that the introduction do not spoil the sermon and both together ruine two souls of the speaker and the hearer For it may soon be considered if the sick man be a poor or an indifferent person in secular account yet his soul is equally dear to God and was redeemed with the same highest price and therfore to be highly regarded and there is no temptation but that the spirituall man may speak freely without the allayes of interest or fear or mistaken civilities but if the sick man be a Prince or a person of eminence or wealth let it be remembred it is an ill expression of reverence to his authority or of regard to his person to let him perish for the want of an honest and just and a free homily Let the sick man in the scrutiny of his conscience and confession of his sins be carefully reminded to consider those sins which are onely condemned in the court of conscience and no where else For there are certain secrecies and retirments places of darknesse and artificiall veils with which the Devil uses to hide our sins from us and to incorporate them into our affections by a constant uninterrupted practise before they be prejudiced or discovered 1. There are many sins which have reputation and are accounted honour as fighting a duel answering a blow with a blow carrying armies into a neighbour countrey robbing with a navy violently seizing upon a kingdom 2. Others are permitted by law as Vsury in all countreys and because every excesse of it is a certain sin the permission of so suspected a matter makes it ready for us and instructs the temptation 3. Some things are not forbidden by lawes as lying in ordinary discourse jeering scoffing intemperate eating ingratitude selling too dear circumventing another in contracts importunate intreaties and temptation of persons to many instances of sin pride and ambition 4. Some others do not reckon the sin against God if the lawes have seized upon the person and many that are imprisoned for debt think themselves disobliged from payment and when they pay the penalty think they owe nothing for the scandal and disobedience 5. Some sins are thought not considerable but go under the title of sins of infirmity or inseparable accidents of mortality such as idle thoughts foolish talking looser revellings impatience anger and all the events of evil company 6. Lastly many things are thought to be no sins such as mispending of their time whole dayes or moneths of uselesse and impertinent imployment long gaming winning mens money in greater portions censuring mens actions curiosity aecquivocating in the prices and secrets of buying and selling rudenesse speaking truths enviously doing good to evil purposes and the like Under the dark shadow of these unhappy and fruitlesse Yew-trees the enemy of mankind makes very many to lie hid from themselves sewing before their nakednesse the fig-leaves of popular and idol reputation and impunity publike permission a temporall penalty infirmity prejudice and direct errour in judgement and ignorance Now in all these cases the Ministers are to be inquisitive and observant lest the fallacy prevail upon the penitent to evil purposes of death or diminution of his good and that those things which in his life passed without observation may now be brought forth and passe under sawes and barrows that is the severity and censure of sorrow and condemnation 9. To which I adde for the likenesse of the thing that the matter of omission be considered for in them lies the bigger half of our failings and yet in many instances they are undiscerned because they very often sit down by the conscience but never upon it and they are usually looked upon as poor men do upon their not having coach and horses or as that knowledge is missed by boyes and hindes which they never had it will be hard to make them understand their ignorance it requires knowledge to perceive it and therefore he that can perceive it hath it not But by this pressing the conscience with omissions I do not mean recessions or distances from states of eminency or perfection for although they may be used by the Ministers as an instrument of humility and a chastiser of too big a confidence yet that which is to be confessed and repented of is omission of duty in direct instances and matters of commandement or collaterall and personall obligations and is especially to be considered by Kings and Prelates by Governours and rich persons by Guides of souls and Presidents of
learning in publike charge and by all others in their proportions 10. The ministers of religion must take care that the sick mans confession be as minute and particular as it can and that as few sins as may be be entrusted to the generall prayer of pardon for all sins for by being particular and enumerative of the variety of evils which have disordered his life his repentance is disposed to be more pungent and afflictive and therefore more salutary and medicinall it hath in it more sincerity and makes a better judgement of the finall condition of the man and from thence it is certain the hopes of the sick man can be more confident and reasonable 11. The spirituall man that assists at the repentance of the sick must not be inquisitive into all the circumstances of the particular sins but be content with those that are direct parts of the crime and aggravation of the sorrow Such as frequency long abode and earnest choice in acting them violent desires great expense scandall of others dishonour to the religion dayes of devotion and religious solemnities holy places and the degrees of boldnesse and impudence perfect resolution and the habit If the sick person be reminded or inquired into concerning these it may prove a good instrument to increase his contrition and perfect his penitentiall sorrows and facilitate his ablution and the means of his amendment But the other circumstances as of the relative person in the participation of the crime the measures or circumstances of the impure action the name of the injured man or woman the quality or accidentall condition these and all the like are but questions springing from curiosity and producing scruple and apt to turn into many inconveniencies 11. The Minister in this duty of repentance must be diligent to observe concerning the person that repents that he be not imposed upon by some one excellent thing that was remarkable in the sick mans former life For there are some people of one good thing Some are charitable to the poor out of kind-heartednesse and the same good-nature makes them easie and compliant with drinking persons and they die with drink but cannot live with charity and their alms it may be shall deck their monument or give them the reward of loving persons and the poor mans thanks for alms and procure many temporall blessings but it is very sad that the reward should be all spent in this world some are rarely just persons and punctuall observers of their word with men but break their promises with God and make no scruple of that In these and all the like cases the spirituall man must be carefull to remark that good proceeds from an intire and integrall cause and evil from every part That one sicknesse can make a man die but he cannot live and be called a sound man without an intire health and therefore if any confidence arises upon that stock so as that it hinder the strictness of the repentance it must be allayed with the representment of this sad truth That he who reserves one evil in his choice hath chosen an evil portion and colliquintida and death is in the pot and he that worships the God of Israel with a frequent sacrifice and yet upon the anniversary will bow in the house of Venus and loves to see the follies and the nakednesse of Rimmon may eat part of the flesh of the sacrifice and fill his belly but shall not be refreshed by the holy cloud arising from the altar or the dew of heaven descending upon the mysteries 12. And yet the Minister is to estimate that one or more good things is to be an ingredient into his judgement concerning the state of his soul and the capacities of his restitution and admission to the peace of the Church and according as the excellency and usefulnesse of the grace hath been and according to the degrees and the reasons of its prosecution so abatements are to be made in the injunctions and impositions upon the penitent For every vertue is one degree of approach to God and though in respect of the acceptation it is equally none at all that is it is as certain a death if a man dies with one mortall wound as if he had twenty yet in such persons who have some one or more excellencies though not an intire piety there is naturally a neerer approach to the estate of grace then in persons who have done evils and are eminent for nothing that is good But in making judgement of such persons it is to be inquired into and noted accordingly why the sick person was so eminent in that one good thing whether by choice and apprehension of his duty or whether it was a vertue from which his state of life ministred nothing to dehort or discourage him or whether it was onely a consequent of his naturall temper and constitution If the first then it supposes him in the neighbourhood of the state of grace and that in other things he was strongly tempted The second is a felicity of his education and an effect of providence The third is a felicity of his nature and a gift of God in order to spirituall purposes But yet of every one of these advantage is to be made If he conscience of his duty was the principle then he is ready formed to entertain all other graces upon the same reason and his repentance must be made more sharp and penall because he is convinced to have done against his conscience in all the other parts of his life but the judgement concerning his finall state ought to be more gentle because it was a huge temptation that hindred the man and abused his infirmity but if either his calling or his nature were the parents of the grace he is in the state of a morall man in the just and proper meaning of the word and to be handled accordingly that vertue disposed him rarely well to many other good things but was no part of the grace of sanctification and therefore the mans repentance is to begin anew for all that and is to be finished in the returns of health if God grants it but if he denies it it is much very much the worse for all that sweet natur'd vertue 13. When the confession is made the spirituall man is to execute the office of a Restorer and a Iudge in the following particulars and manner SECT IIII. Of the ministring to the restitution and pardon or reconciliation of the sick person by administring the Holy Sacrament IF any man be overtaken in a fault ye which are spiritual restore such a one in the spirit of meeknesse That 's the Commission and Let the Elders of the Church pray over the sick man and if he have committed sins they shall be forgiven him that 's the effect of his power and his ministery But concerning this some few things are to be considered 1. It is the office of the Presbyters and Ministers