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
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
God will give thee to exercise any vertue to do him any service or thy self any advantage be careful that thou losest not this for to eternal ages this never shall return again 9. Or if thou peradventure shalt be restored to health be carefull that in the day of thy thanksgiving thou mayest not be ashamed of thy self for having behaved thy self poorly and weakly upon thy bed it will be a sensible and excellent comfort to thee and double upon thy spirit if when thou shalt worship God for restoring thee thou shalt also remember that thou didst do him service in thy suffering and tell that God was hugely gracious to thee in giving thee the opportunity of a vertue at so easie a rate as a sicknesse from which thou didst recover 10. Few men are so sick but they believe that they may recover and we shal seldom see a man lie down with a perfect persuasion that it is his last hour for many men have been sicker and yet have recovered but whether thou doest or no thou hast a vertue to exerâ—ise which may be a handmaid to thy patience Epaphroditus was sick sick unto death and yet God had mercy upon him and he hath done so to thousands to whom he found it useful in the great order of things and the events of universal providence If therefore thou desirest to recover here is cause enough of hope and hope is designed in the arts of God and of the Spirit to support patience But if thou recoverest not yet there is something that is matter of joy naturally and very much Spiritually if thou belongest to God and joy is as certain a support to patience as hope and it is no small cause of being pleased when we remember that if we recover not our sicknesse shall the sooner sit down in rest and joy For recovery by death as it is easier and better then the recovery by a sickly health so it is not so long in doing it suffers not the tediousnesse of a creeping restitution nor the inconvenience of Surgeons and Physitians watchfulnesse and care keepings in and suffering trouble fears of relapse and the little reliques of a storm 11. While we hear or use or think of these remedies part of the sicknesse is gone away and all of it is passing And if by such instruments we stand armed and ready dressed before hand we shall avoid the mischiefs of amazements and surprize while the accidents of sicknesse are such as were expected and against which we stood in readinesse with our spirits contracted instructed and put upon the defensive 12 But our patience will be the better secured if we consider that it is not violently tempted by the usual arrests of sicknesse for patience is with reason demanded while the sicknesse is tolerable that is so long as the evil is not too great but if it be also eligible and have in it some degrees of good our patience will have in it the lesse difficulty and the greater necessity This therefore will be a new stock of consideration Sicknesse is in many degrees eligible to many men and to many purposes SECT VI. Advantages of Sicknesse 1. I Consider one of the great felicities of heaven consists in an immunity from sin then we shall love God without mixtures of malice then we shall enjoy without envy then we shall see fuller vessels running over with glory and crowned with bigger circles and this we shall behold without spilling from our eyes those vessels of joy and grief any signe of anger trouble or a repining spirit our passions shall be pure our charity without fear our desire without lust our possessions all our own and all in the inheritance of Jesus in the richest soil of Gods eternall kingdom Now half of this reason which makes heaven so happy by being innocent is also in the state of sicknesse making the furrows of old age smooth and the groans of a sick heart apt to be joyned to the musick of Angels and though they sound harsh to our untuned ears and discomposed Organs yet those accents must needs be in themselves excellent which God loves to hear and esteems them as prayers and arguments of pity instruments of mercie and grace and preparatives to glory In sicknesse the soul begins to dresse her self for immortality and first she unties the strings of vanity that made her upper garment cleave to the world and sit uneasily First she puts off the light and phantastic summer robe of lust and wanton appetite and as soon as that Cestus that lascivious girdle is thrown away then the reins chasten us and give us warning in the night then that which called us formerly to serve the manlinesse of the body and the childishnesse of the soul keeps us waking to divide the hours with the intervals of prayer and to number the minutes with our penitential groans Then the flesh sits uneasily and dwells in sorrow and then the spirit feels it self at ease freed from the petulant sollicitations of those passions which in health were as buisie and as restlesse as atomes in the sun alwayes dancing and alwayes busie and never sitting down till a sad night of grief and uneasinesse draws the vail and lets them dye alone in seâ—ret dishonour 2. Next to this the soul by the help of sicknesse knocks off the fetters of pride and vainer complacencies Then she drawes the curtains and stops the lights from coming in and takes the pictures down those phantastic images of self-love and gay remembrances of vain opinion and popular noises Then the Spirit stoops into the sobrieties of humble thoughts and feels corruption chiding the forwardnesse of fancy and allaying the vapours of conceit and factious opinions For humility is the souls grave into which he enters not to die but to meditate and iâ— terre some of its troublesome appendages There she sees the dust and feels the dishonours of the body and reads the Register of all its sad adherencies and then she layes by all her vain reflexions beating upon her Chrystall and pure mirrour from the fancies of strength and beauty little decayed prettinesses of the body And when in sicknesse we forget all our knotty discourses of Philosophy and a Syllogisme makes our head ake and we feel our many and loud talkings served no lasting end of the soul no purpose that now we must abide by and that the body is like to descend to the land where all things are forgotten then she layes aside all her remembrances of applauses all her ignorant confidences and cares onely to know Christ Iesus and him crucified to know him plainly and with much heartinesse and simplicity And I cannot think this to be a contemptible advantage for ever since man tempted himself by his impatient desires of knowing and being as God Man thinks it the finest thing in the world to know much and therefore is hugely apt to esteem himself better then his brethren if he knowes some
thoughts and sanctifie the accidents of my sicknesse and that the punishment of my sin may be the school of vertue In which since thou hast now entred me Lord make me a holy proficient that I may behave my self as a son under discipline humbly and obediently evenly and penitently that I may come by this means neerer unto thee that if I shall go forth of this sicknesse by the gate of life and health I may return to the world with great strengths of spirit to run a new race of a stricter holinesse and a more severe religion Or if I passe from hence with the out-let of death I may enter into the bosome of my Lord and may feel the present joyes of a certain hope of that Sea of pleasures in which all thy Saints and servants shall be comprehended to eternall ages Grant this for Jesus Christ his sake our Dearest Lord and Saviour Amen An act of resignation to be said by a sick person in all the evil accidents of his sicknesse O Eternall God thou hast made me and sustained me thou hast blessed me in all the dayes of my life and hast taken care of me in all variety of accidents and nothing happens to me in vain nothing without thy providence and I know thou smitest thy servants in mercy and with designes of the greatest pity in the world Lord I humbly lie down under thy rod do with me as thou pleasest do thou choose for me not onely the whole state and condition of being but every little and great accident of it Keep me safe by thy grace and then use what instrument thou pleasest of bringing me to thee Lord I am not sollicitous of the passage so I may get thee Onely O Lord remember my infirmities and let thy servant rejoyce in thee alwayes and feel and confesse and glory in thy goodnesse O be thou as delightfull to me in this my medicinal sicknesse as ever thou wert in any of the dangers of my prosperity let me not peevishly refuse thy pardon at the rate of a severe discipline I am thy servant and thy creature thy purchased possession and thy son I am all thine and because thou hast mercy in store for all that trust in thee I cover my eyes and in silence wait for the time of my redemption Amen A Prayer for the grace of Patience MOst Mercifull and Gracious Father who in the redemption of lost Mankind by the passion of thy most holy Son hast established a Covenant of sufferings I blesse and magnifie thy Name that thou hast adopted me into the inheritance of sons and hast given me a portion of my elder Brother Lord the crosse falls heavy and sits uneasie upon my shoulders my spirit is willing but my flesh is weak I humbly beg of thee that I may now rejoyce in this thy dispensation and effect of providence I know and am perswaded that thou art then as gracious when thou smitest us for amendment or triall as when thou releevest our wearied bodies in compliance with our infirmity I rejoyce O Lord in thy rare and mysterious mercy who by sufferings hast turned our misery into advantages unspeakable for so thou makest us like to thy Son and givest us a gift that the Angels never did receive for they cannot die in conformity to and imitation of their Lord and ours but blessed be thy Name we can and dearest Lord Let it be so Amen II. THou who art the God of patience and consolation strengthen me in the inner man that I may bear the yoak and burden of the Lord without any uneasie and uselesse murmurs and ineffective unwillingnesse Lord I am unable to stand under the crosse unable of my self but thou O Holy Jesus who didst feel the burden of it who didst sink under it and wert pleased to admit a man to bear part of the load when thou underwentest all for him be thou pleased to ease this load by fortifying my spirit that I may be strongest when I am weakest and may be able to do and suffer every thing thou pleasest through Christ which strengthens me Lord if thou wilt support me I will for ever praise thee If thou wilt suffer the load to presse me yet more heavily I will cry unto thee and complain unto my God and at last I will lie down and die and by the mercies and intercession of the Holy Jesus and the conduct of thy blessed Spirit and the ministery of Angels passe into those mansions where Holy souls rest and weep no more Lord pity me Lord sanctifie this my sicknesse Lord strengthen me Holy Jesus save me and deliver me thou knowest how shamefully I have fallen with pleasure in thy mercy and very pity let me not fall with pain too O let me never charge God foolishly nor offend thee by my impatience and uneasie spirit nor weaken the hands and hearts of those that charitably minister to my needs but let me passe through the valley of tears and the valley of the shadow of death with safety and peace with a meek spirit and a sense of the divine mercies and though thou breakest me in pieces my hope is thou wilt gather me up in the gatherings of eternity Grant this eternall God Gracious Father for the merits and intercession of our mercifull high Priest who once suffered for me and for ever intercedes for me our most gracious and ever Blessed Saviour Jesus A Prayer to be said when the sick man takes Physick O Most blessed and eternall Jesus thou who art the great Physician of our souls and the Sun of righteousnesse arising with healing in thy wings to thee is given by thy heavenly Father the Government of all the world and thou disposest every great and little accident to thy Fathers honour and to the good and comfort of them that love and serve thee Be pleased to blesse the ministery of thy servant in order to my ease and health direct his judgement prosper the medicines and dispose the chances of my sicknesse fortunately that I may feel the blessing and loving kindnesse of the Lord in the ease of my pain and the restitution of my health that I being restored to the society of the living and to thy solemn Assemblies may praise thee and thy goodnesse secretly among the faithfull and in the Congregation of thy redeemed ones here in the outer-courts of the Lord and hereafter in thy eternall temple for ever and ever Amen SECT III. Of the practise of the grace of Faith in the time of sicknesse NOw is the time in which faith appears most necessary and most difficult It is the foundation of a good life and the foundation of all our hopes it is that without which we cannot live well and without which we cannot die well it is a grace that then we shall need to support our spirits to sustain our hopes to alleviate our sickesse to resist temptations to prevent despair upon the belief of the articles of our
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
much holinesse mortified sin with so great a labour purchased vertue at such a rate and so rare an industry It must needs be that such a man must dye when he ought to die and be like ripe and pleasant fruit falling from a fair tree and gathered into baskeâ—s for the planters use He that hath done â—ll his businesse and is begotten to a glorious hope by the seed of an immortal Spirit can never die too soon nor live too long Xerxes wept sadly when he saw his army of 2300000 men because he considered that within a hundred years all the youth of that army should be dust and ashes and yet as Seneca well observes of him he was the man that should bring them to their graves and he consumed all that army in two years for whom he feared and wept the death after an hundred Just so we do all We complain that within thirty or fourty years a little more or a great deal lesse we shall descend again into the bowels of our Mother and that our life is too short for any great imployment and yet we throw away five and â—hirty yeers of our fourty and the remaining five we divide between art and nature civility and customs necessity and convenience prudent counsels and religion but the portion of the last is little and contemptible and yet that little is all that we can prudently account of our lives We bring that fate and that death neer us of whose approach we are so sadly apprehensive 4. In taking the accounts of your life do not reckon by great distances and by the periods of pleasure or the satisfaction of your hopes or the stating your desires but let every intermedial day and hour passe with observation He that reckons he hath lived but so many harvests thinks they come not often enough and that they go away too soon Some lose the day with longing for the night and the night in waiting for the day Hope and phantastic expectations spend much of our lives and while with passion we look for a coronation or the death of an enemy or a day of joy passing from fancy to possession without any intermedial notices we throw away a precious year and use it but as the burden of our time fit to be pared off and thrown away that we may come at those little pleasures which first steal our hearts and then steal our life 5. A strict course of piety is the way to prolong our lives in the natural sense and to adde good portions to the number of our years and sin is sometimes by natural causality very often by the anger of God and the Divine judgement a cause of sudden and untimely death Concerning which I shall adde nothing to what I have some where else said of this article but onely the observation of Epiphanius that for 3332 years even to the twentieth age there was not one example of a son that died before his Father but the course of Nature was kept that he who was first born in the descending line did first die I speak of natural death and therefore Abel cannot be opposed to this observation till that Terah the Father of Abraham taught the people a new religion to make images of clay and worship them and concerning him it was first remarked that Haran died before his Father Terah in the land of his Nativity God by an unheard of judgement and a rare accident punishing his newly invented crime by the untimely death of his son 6. But if I shall describe a living man a man that hath that life that distinguishes him from a fool or a bird that which gives him a capacity next to Angels we shall finde that even a good man lives not long because it is long before he is born to this life and longer yet before he hath a mans growth He that can look upon death and see its face with the same countenance with which he hears its story that can endure all the labours of his life with his soul supporting his body that can equally despise riches when he hath them and when he hath them not that is not sadder if they lye in his Neighbours trunks nor more brag if they shine round about his own walls he that is neither moved with good fortune coming to him nor going from him that can look upon another mans lands evenly and pleasedly as if they were his own and yet look upon his own and use them too just as if they were another mans that neither spends his goods prodigally and like a fool nor yet keeps them avaritiously and like a wretch that weighs not benefits by weight and number but by the mind circumstances of him that gives them that never thinks his charity expensive if a worthy person be the receiver he that does nothing for opinion sake but every thing for conscience being as curious of his thoughts as of his actings in markets and Theaters and is as much in awe of himself as of a whole assembly he that knowes God looks on and contrives his secret affairs as in the presence of God and his holy Angels that eats and drinks because he needs it not that he may serve a lust or load his belly he that is bountifull and cheerfull to his friends and charitable and apt to forgive his enemies that loves his countrey and obeyes his Prince and desires and endeavours nothing more then that he may do honour to God this person may reckon his life to be the life of a man and compute his moneths not by the course of the sun but the Zodiac and circle of his vertues because these are such things which fools and children and birds and beasts cannot have These are therefore the actions of life because they are the feeds of immortality That day in which we have done some excellent thing we may as truly reckon to be added to our life as were the fifteen years to the dayes of Hezekiah SECT IV. Consideration of the miseries of Mans life AS our life is very short so it is very miserable and therefore it is well it is short God in pity to mankinde lest his burden should be insupportable and his nature an intolerable load hath reduced our state of misery to an abbreviature and the greateâ— our misery is the lesse while it is like to last the sorrows of a mans spirit being like ponderous weights which by the greatnesse of their burden make a swifter motion and descend into the grave to rest and ease our wearied limbs for then onely we shall sleep quietly when those fetters are knocked off which not onely bound our souls in prison but also eat the flesh till the very bones open'd the secret garments of their cartilages discovering their nakednesse and sorrow 1. Here is no place to sit down in but you must rise as soon as you are set for we have gnats in our chambers and worms in
our gardens and spiders and flies in the palaces of the greatest Kings How few men in the world are prosperous what an infinite number of slaves and beggers of persecuted and oppressed people fill all corners of the earth with groans and Heaven it self with weeping prayers and sad remembrances how many Provinces and Kingdoms are afflicted by a violent war or made desolate by popular diseases some whole countreyes are remarked with fatal evils or periodical sicknesses Gran Cairo in Egypt feels the plague every three years returning like a Quartan ague and destroying many thousands of persons All the inhabitants of Arabia the desert are in continuall fear of being buried in huge heaps of sand and therefore dwell in tents and ambuâ—atory houses or retire to unfruitful mountains to prolong an uneasy and wilder life and all the Countreyes round about the Adriatic sea feel such violent convulsions by Tempests and intolerable Earthquakes that sometimes whole cities finde a Tombe and every man â—inks with his own house made ready to become his Monument and his bed is crushed into the disorders of a grave Was not all the world drowned at one deluge and breach of the Divine anger and shall not all the world again be destroyed by fire Are there not many thousands that die every night and that groan and weep sadly every day But what shall we think of that great evil which for the sins of men God hath suffered to possess the greatest part of Mankinde Most of the men that are now alive or that have been living for many ages are Jews Heathens or Turcs and God was pleased to suffer a base Epileptic person a villain and a vitious to set up a religion which hath filled almost all Asia and Africa and some parts of Europe so that the greatest number of men and women born in so many kingdoms and provinces are infallibly made Mahumetans strangers and enemies to Christ by whom alone we can be saved This consideration is extremely sad when we remember how universal and how great an evil it is that so many millions of sons and daughters are born to enter into the possession of Devils to eternal ages These evils are the miseries of great parts of mankinde and we cannot easily consider more particularly the evils which happen to us being the inseparable affections or incidents to the whole nature of man 2. We finde that all the women in the world are either born for barrennesse or the pains of Child-birth and yet this is one of our greatest blessings but such indeed are the blessings of this world we cannot be well with nor without many things Perfumes make our heads ake roses prick our fingers and in our very blood where our life dwells is the Scene under which nature acts many sharp Feavers and heavy sicknesses It were too sad if I should tell how many persons are afflicted with evil spirits with spectres and illusions of the night and that huge multitudes of men and women live upon mans flesh Nay worse yet upon the sins of men upon the sins of their sons and of their daughters and they pay their souls down for the bread they eat buying this dayes meal with the price of the last nights sin 3. Or if you please in charity to visit an Hospital which is indeed a map of the whole world there you shall see the effects of Adams sin and the ruines of humane nature bodies laid up in heaps like the bones of a destroyed town homines precarii spiritus malè haerentis men whose souls seem to be borrowed and are kept there by art and the force of Medicine whose miseries are so great that few people have charity or humanity enough to visit them fewer have the heart to dresse them and we pity them in civility or with a transient prayer but we do not feel their sorrows by the mercies of a religious pity and therefore as we leave their sorrows in many degrees unrelieved and uneased so we contract by our unmercifulnesse a guilt by which our selves become liable to the same calamities Those many that need pity and those infinites of people that refuse to pity are miserable upon a several charge but yet they almost make up all mankinde 4. All wicked men are in love with that which intangles them in huge variety of troubles they are slaves to the worst of Masters to sin and to the Devil to a passion and to an imperious woman Good men are for ever persecuted and God chastises every son whom he receives and whatsoever is easy is trifling and worth nothing and whatsoever is excellent is not to be obtained without labour and sorrow and the conditions and states of men that are free from great cares are such as have in them nothing rich and orderly and those that have are stuck full of thorns and trouble Kings are full of care and learned men in all ages have been observed to be very poor honestas miserias accusant they complain of their honest miseries 5. But these evils are notorious and confessed even they also whose felicity men stare at and admire besides their splendour and the sharpnesse of their light will with their appendant sorrows wring a tear from the most resolved eye For not only the winter quarter is full of storms and cold and darknesse but the beauteous spring hath blasts and sharp frosts the fruitful teeming summer is melted with heat and burnt with the kisses of the sun her friend and choaked with dust and the rich Autumn is full of sicknesse and we are weary of that which we enjoy because sorrow is its biggest portion and when we remember that upon the fairest face is placed one of the worst sinks of the body the nose we may use it not only as a mortification to the pride of beauty but as an allay to the fairest outside of condition which any of the sons and daughters of Adam do possesse For look upon Kings and conquerours I will not tell that many of them fall into the condition of servants and their subjects rule over them and stand upon the ruines of their families and that to such persons the sorrow is bigger then usually happens in smaller fortunes but let us suppose them still conquerers and see what a goodly purchase they get by all their pains and amazing fears and continual dangers They carry their arms beyond Ister and passe the Euphrates and binde the Germans with the bounds of the river Rhyne I speak in the stile of the Roman greatnesse for now adayes the biggest fortune swells not beyond the limits of a petty province or two and a hill confines the progresse of their prosperity or a river checks it But whatsoever tempts the pride and vanity of ambitious persons is not so big as the smallest star which we see scattered in disorder and unregarded upon the pavement and floor of Heaven And if we would suppose the pismires had but
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
is a portion in the inheritance of Jesus of which he now talks no more as a thing at distance but is entring into the possession When the veil is rent and the prison doors are open at the presence of Gods Angel the soul goes forth full of hope sometimes with evidence but alwayes with certainty in the thing and instantly it passes into the throngs of Spirits where Angles meet it singing and the Devils flock with malitious and vile purposes desiring to lead it away with them into their houses of sorrow there they see things which they never saw and hear voices which they never heard There the Devils charge them with many sins And the Angels remember that themselves rejoyced when they were repented of Then the Devils aggravate and describe all the circumstances of the sin and adde calumnies and the Angels bear the soul forward still because their Lord doth answer for them Then the Devils rage and gnash their teeth they see the soul chast and pure and they are ashamed they see it penitent and they despair they perceive that the tongue was restrained and sanctified and then hold their peace Then the soul passes forth and rejoyces passing by the Devils in scorn and triumph being securely carried into the bosome of the Lord where they shall rest till their crowns are finished and their mansions are prepared and then they shall feast and sing rejoyce and worship for ever and ever Fearful and formidable to unholy persons is the first meeting with spirits in their separation But the victory which holy souls receive by the mercies of Jesus Christ and the conduct of Angels is a joy that we must not understand till we feel it and yet such which by an early and a persevering piety we may secure but let us enquire after it no further because it is secret CHAP. III. Of the state of sicknesse and the temptations incident to it with their proper remedies SECT I. Of the state of sicknesse ADams sin brought death into the world and man did die the same day in which he sinned according as God had threatned He did not die as death is taken for a separation of soul and body that is not death properly but the ending of the last act of death just as a man is said to be born when he ceases any longer to be born in his mothers womb But whereas to man was intended a life long and happy without sicknesse sorrow or infelicity and this life should be lived here or in a better place and the passage from one to the other should have been easy safe and pleasant now that man sinned he fell from that state to a contrary If Adam had stood he should not alwayes have lived in this world for this world was not a place capable of giving a dwelling to all those myriads of men and women which should have been born in all the generations of infinite and eternal ages for so it must have been if man had not dyed at all nor yet have removed hence at all Neither is it likely that mans innocence should have lost to him all possibility of going thither where the duration is better measured by a better time subject to fewer changes and which is now the reward of a returning vertue which in all natural senses is lesse then innocence save that it is heightned by Christ to an equality of acceptation with the state of innocence But so it must have been that his innocence should have been punished with an eternal confinement to this state which in all reason is the lesse perfect the state of a traveller not of one possessed of his inheritance It is therefore certain Man should have changed his abode for so did Enoch and so did Elias and so shall all the world that shall be alive at the day of judgement They shall not die but they shall change their place and their abode their duration and their state and all this without death That death therefore which God threatned to Adam and which passed upon his posterity is not the going out of this world but the manner of going If he had staid in innocence he should have gone from hence placidly and fairly without vexatious and afflictive circumstances he should not have dyed by sickness misfortune defect or unwillingnesse but when he fell then he began to die the same day so said God and that must needs be true and therefore it must mean that upon that very day he fell into an evil and dangerous condition a state of change and affliction then death began that is the man began to die by a natural diminution and aptnesse to disease and misery His first state was and should have been so long as it lasted a happy duration His second was a daily and miserable change and this was the dying properly This appears in the great instance of damnation which in the stile of Scripture is called eternal death not because it kills or ends the duration it hath not so much good in it but because it is a perpetual infelicity Change or separation of soul and body is but accidental to death Death may be with or without either but the formality the curse and the sting of death that is misery sorrow fear diminution defect anguish dishonour and whatsoever is miserable and afflictive in nature that is death death is not an action but a whole state and condition and this was first brought in upon us by the offence of one man But this went no further then thus to subject us to temporal infelicity If it had proceeded so as was supposed Man had been much more miserable for man had more then one original sin in this sence and though this death entred first upon us by Adams fault yet it came neerer unto us and increased upon us by the sins of more of our forefathers For Adams sin left us in strength enough to contend with humane calamities for almost a thousand years together But the sins of his children our forefathers took off from us half the strength about the time of the flood and then from 500. to 250. and from thence to 120. and from thence to threescore and ten so halfing it till it is almost come to nothing But by the sins of men in the several generations of the world death that is misery and disease is hastned so upon us that we are of a contemptible age and because we are to die by suffering evils and by the daily lessening of our strength and health this death is so long a doing that it makes so great a part of our short life uselesse and unserviceable that we have not time enough to get the perfection of a single manufacture but ten or twelve generations of the world must go to the making up of one wise man or one excellent Art and in the succession of those ages there happens so many changes and interruptions so many
so and that is that God doth minister proper aids and supports to every of his servants whom he visits with his rod. He knows our needs he pities our sorrows he relieves our miseries he supports our weaknesse he bids us ask for help and he promises to give us all that and he usually gives us more and indeed it is observable that no story tells of any godly man who living in the fear of God fell into a violent and unpardoned impatience in his naturall sicknesse if he used those means which God and his holy Church have appointed We see almost all men bear their last sicknesse with sorrowes indeed but without violent passions and unlesse they fear death violently they suffer the sicknesse with some indifferency and it is a rare thing to see a man who enjoyes his reason in his sicknesse to expresse the proper signes of a direct and solemne impatience For when God layes a sicknesse upon us he seizes commonly on a mans spirits which are the instruments of action and businesse and when they are secured from being tumultuous the sufferance is much the easier and therefore sicknesse secures all that which can do the man mischief It makes him tame and passive apt for suffering and confines him to an unactive condition To which if we adde that God then commonly produces fear and all those passions which naturally tend to humility and poverty of spirit we shall soon perceive by what instruments God verifies his promise to us which is the great security for our patience and the easinesse of our condition that God will lay no more upon us then he will make us able to â—ear but together with the affliction he will finde a way to escape Nay if any thing can be more then this we have two or three promises in which we may safely lodge our selves and roul from off our thorns and finde ease and rest God hath promised to be with us in our trouble and to be with us in our prayers and to be with us in our hope and conâ—idence 2. Prevent the violence and trouble of thy spirit by an act of thanksgiving for which in the worst of sicknesses thou canst not want cause especially if thou remembrest that this pain is not an eternall pain Blesse God for that But take heed also lest you so order your affairs that you passe from hence to an eternall soâ—râ—w If that be hard this will be intolerable But as for the present evil a few dayes will end it 3. Remember that thou art a man and a Christian as the Covenant of nature hath made it necessary so the covenant of grace hath made it to be chosen by thee to be a suffering person either you must renounce your religion or submit to the impositions of God and thy portion of sufferings So that here we see our advantages and let us use them accordingly The barbarous and warlike nations of old could fight well and willingly but could not bear sicknesse manfully The Greeks were cowardly in their fights as most wise men are but because they were learned and well taught they bore their sicknesse with patience and severity The Cimbrians and Celtiberians rejoyce in battail like Gyants but in their diseases they weep like Women These according to their institution and designes had unequal courages and accidental fortitude but since our Religion hath made a covenant of sufferings and the great businesse of our lives is sufferings and most of the vertues of a Christian are passive graces and all the promises of the Gospel are passed upon us through Christs crosse we have a necessity upon us to have an equal courage in all the variety of our sufferings for without an universal fortitude we can do nothing of our dutie 4. Resolve to do as much as you can for certain it is we can suffer very much if we list and many men have afflicted themselves unreasonably by not being skilful to consider how much their strength and state could permit and our flesh is nice and imperious crafty to perswade reason that she hath more necessities thâ—n indeed belong to her and that she demands nothing superfluous suffer as much in obedience to God as you can suffer for necessity or passion fear or desire And if you can for one thing you can for another and there is nothing wanting but the minde Never say I can do no more I cannot endure this For God would not have sent it if he had not known thee strong enough to abide it onely he that knows thee well already would also take this occasion to make thee know thy self But it will be fit that you pray to God to give you a discerning spirit that you may rightly distinguish just necessity from the flattery and fondnesses of flesh and blood 5. Propound to your eyes and heart the example of the holy Jesus upon the crosse he endured more for thee then thou canst either for thy self or him and remember that if we be put to suffer and do suffer in a good cause or in a good manner so that in any sense your sufferings be conformable to his sufferings or can be capable of being united to his we shall reign together with him The high way of the Crosse which the King of sufferings hath troden before us is the way to ease to a kingdom and to felicity 6. The very suffering is a title to an excellent inheritance for God chastens every son whom he receives and if we be not chastised we are bastards and not sons and be confident that although God often sends pardon without correction yet he never sends correction without pardon unless it be thy fault and therefore take every or any affliction as an earnest peny of thy pardon and upon condition there may be peace with God let any thing be welcome that he can send as its instrument or condition Suffer therefore God to choose his own circumstances of adopting thee and be content to be under discipline when the reward of that is to become the son of God and by such inflictions he hewes and breaks thy body first dressing it to funeral and then preparing it for immortality and if this be the effect or the designe of Gods love to thee let it be occasion of thy love to him and remember that the truth of love is hardly known but by somewhat that puts us to pain 7. Use this as a punishment for thy sins and so God intends it most commonly that is certain if therefore thou submittest to it thou approvest of the divine judgement and no man can have cause to complain of any thing but of himself if either he believes God to be just or himself to be a sinner if he either thinks he hath deserved Hell or that this little may be a means to prevent the greater and bring him to Heaven 8. It may be that this may be the last instance and the last opportunity that ever
so have I known passionate women to shrike aloud when their neerest relatives were dying and that horrid shrike hath stayed the spirit of the man a while to wonder at the folly and represent the inconvenience and the dying person hath lived one day longer full of pain amazed with an undeterminate spirit distorted with convulsions and onely come again to act one scene more of a new calamity and to die with less decency so also do very many men with passion and a troubled interest they strive to continue their life longer and it may be they escape this sickness and live to fall into a disgrace they escape the storm and fall into the hands of pyrats and instead of dying with liberty they live like slaves miserable and despised servants to a litle time and sottish admirers of the breath of their own lungs Paulus Aemilius did handsomly reprove the cowardice of the King of Macedon who begged of him for pities sake and humanity that having conquered him and taken his kingdom from him he would be content with that and not lead him in triumph a prisoner to Rome Aemilius told him he need not be beholding to him for that himself might prevent that in despite of him But the timorous King durst not die But certainly every wise man will easily believe that it had been better the Macedonian Kings should have dyed in battel then protract their life so long till some of them came to be Scriveners and Joyners at Rome or that the Tyrant of Sicily better had perished in the Adriatic then to be wafted to Corinth safely and there turn Schoolmaster It is a sad calamity that the fear of death shall so imbecill mans courage and understanding that he dares not suffer the remedie of all his calamities but that he lives to say as Liberius did I have lived this one day longer then I should either therefore let us be willing to die when God calls or let us never more complain of the calamities of our life which we feel so sharp and numerous And when God sends his Angel to us with a scroll of death let us look on it as an act of mercy to prevent many sins and many calamities of a longer life and lay our heads down softly and go to sleep without wrangling like babies and froward children For a man at least gets this by death that his calamities are not immortal But I do not onely consider death by the advantages of comparison but if we look on it in it self it is no such formidable thing if we view it on both sides and handle it and consider all its appendages 2. It is necessary and therefore not intolerable and nothing is to be esteemed evil which God and nature have fixed with eternal sancâ—ions It is a law of God it is a punishment of our sins and it is the constitution of our nature Two differing substances were joyned together with the breath of God and when that breath is taken away they part asunder and return to their several principles the soul to God our Father the body to the earth our Mother and what in all this is evil Surely nothing but that we are men nothing but that we were not born immortall but by declining this change with great passion or receiving it with a huge naturall fear we accuse the Divine Providence of Tyranny and exclaim against our naturall constitution and are discontent that we are men 3. It is a thing that is no great matter in it self if we consider that we die daily that it meets us in every accident that every creature carries a dart along with it and can kill us And therefore when Lysimachus threatned Theodorus to kill him he told him that was no great matter to do and he could do no more then the Cantharides could a little flie could do as much 4. It is a thing that every one suffers even persons of the lowest resolution of the meanest vertue of no breeding of no discourse Take away but the pomps of death the disguises and solemn bug-bears the tinsell and the actings by candle-light and proper and phantastic ceremonies the minstrels and the noise-makers the women and the weepers the swoonings and the shrikings the Nurses and the Physicians the dark room and the Ministers the Kinred and the Watchers and then to die is easie ready and quitted from its troublesome circumstances It is the same harmelesse thing that a poor shepherd suffered yesterday or a maid-servant to day and at the same time in which you die in that very night a thousand creatures die with you some wise men and many fools and the wisdom of the first will not quit him and the folly of the latter does not make him unable to die 5. Of all the evils of the world which are reproached with an evil character death is the most innocent of its accusation For when it is present it hurts no body and when it is absent 't is indeed troublesome but the trouble is owing to our fears not to the affrighting and mistaken object and besides this if it were an evil it is so transient that it passes like the instant or undiscerned portion of the present time and either it is past or it is not yet for just when it is no man hath reason to complain of so insensible so sudden so undiscerned a change 6. It is so harmelesse a thing that no good man was ever thought the more miserable for dying but much the happier When men saw the graves of Calatinus of the Servicij the Scipio's the Metelli did ever any man among the wisest Romans think them unhappy And when S. Paul fell under the sword of Nero and S. Peter died upon the crosse and S. Stephen from an heap of stones was carried into an easier grave they that made great lamentation over them wept for their own interest and after the manner of men but the Martyrs were accounted happy and their dayes kept solemnly and their memories preserved in never dying honours When S. Hilary Bishop of Poictiers in France went into the East to reproove the Arian heresie he heard that a young noble Gentleman treated with his daughter Abra for marriage The Bishop wrote to his daughter that she should not ingage her promise nor do countenance to that request because he had provided for her a husband fair rich wise and noble farre beyond her present offer The event of which was this She obeyed and when her father returned from his Eastern triumph to his Western charge he prayed to God that his daughter might die quickly and God heard his prayers and Christ took her into his bosome entertaining her with antepasts and caresses of holy love till the day of the marriage Supper of the Lamb shall come But when the Bishops wife observed this event and understood of the good man her husband what was done and why she never left
our passions turned into fear and the whole state into suffering God in complyance and mans infirmity hath also turned our religion into such a duty which a sick man can do most passionately and a sad man and a timorous can perform effectually and a dying man can do to many purposes of pardon and mercy and that is prayer For although a sick man is bound to do many acts of vertue of several kindes yet the most of them are to be done in the way of prayer Prayer is not onely the religion that is proper to a sick mans condition but it is the manner of doing other graces which is then left and in his power For thus the sick man is to do his repentance and his mortifications his temperance and his chastity by a fiction of imagination bringing the offers of the vertue to the spirit making an action of election and so our prayers are a direct act of chastity when they are made in the matter of that grace just as repentance for our cruelty is an act of the grace of mercie and repentance for uncleannesse is an act of chastity is a means of its purchase an act in order to the habit and though such acts of vertue which are onely in the way of prayer are ineffective to the intire purchase and of themselves cannot change the vice into vertue yet they are good renewings of the grace and proper exercise of a habit already gotten The purpose of this discourse is to represent the excellency of prayer and its proper advantages which it hath in the time of sicknesse For besides that it moves God to pity piercing the clouds making the Heavens like a pricked eye to weep over us and refresh us with showers of pity it also doth the work of the soul and expresses the vertue of his whole life in effigie in pictures and lively representments so preparing it for a never ceasing crown by renewing the actions in the continuation of a never ceasing a never hindred affection Prayer speaks to God when the tongue is stiffned with the approachings of death prayer can dwell in the heart and be signified by the hand or eye by a thought or a groan prayer of all the actions of religion is the last alive and it serves God without circumstances and exercises material graces by abstraction from matter and separation and makes them to be spiritual and therefore best dresses our bodies for funeral or recovery for the mercies of restitution or the mercies of the grave 5. In every sicknesse whether it will or will not be so in nature and in the event yet in thy spirit and preparations resolve upon it and treat thy self accordingly as if it were a sicknesse unto death For many men support their unequall courages by flattery and false hopes and because sicker men have recovered beleeve that they shall do so but therefore they neglect to adorn their souls or set their house in order besides the temporall inconveniences that often happen by such perswasions and putting off the evil day such as are dying Intestate leaving estates intangled and some Relatives unprovided for they suffer infinitely in the interest and affairs of their soul they die carelesly and surprized their burdens on and their scruples unremoved and their cases of conscience not determined and like a sheep without any care taken concerning their precious souls Some men will never beleeve that a villain will betray them though they receive often advices from suspicious persons and likely accidents till they are entered into the snare and then they beleeve it when they feel it and when they cannot return but so the treason entred and the man was betrayed by his own folly placing the snare in the regions and advantages of opportunity This evil looks like boldnesse and a confident spirit but it is the greatest timerousnesse and cowardize in the world They are so fearfull to die that they dare not look upon it as possible and think that the making of a Will is a mortall signe and sending for a spirituall man an irrecoverable disease and they are so afraid lest they should think and beleeve now they must die that they will not take care that it may not be evil in case they should So did the Eastern slaves drink wine and wrapt their heads in a vail that they might die without sense or sorrow and wink hard that they might sleep the easier In pursuance of this rule let a man consider that whatsoever must be done in sicknesse ought to be done in health onely let him observe that his sicknesse as a good monitor chastises his neglect of duty and forces him to live as he alwayes should and then all these solemnities and dressings for death are nothing else but the part of a religious life which he ought to have exercised all his dayes and if those circumstances can affright him let him please his fancy by this truth that then he does but begin to live But it will be a huge folly if he shall think that confession of his sins will kill him or receiving the holy Sacrament will hasten his agony or the Priest shall undo all the hopefull language and promises of his Physitian Assure thy self thou canst not die the sooner But by such addresses thou mayest die much the better 6. Let the sick person be infinitely carefull that he do not fall into a state of death upon a new account that is at no hand commit a deliberate sin or retain any affection to the old for in both cases he falls into the evils of a surprize and the horrors of a sudden death For a sudden death is but a sudden joy if it takes a man in the state and exercises of vertue and it is onely then an evil when it finds a man unready They were sad departures when Tegillinus Cornelius Gallus the Praetor Lewis the son of Gonzaga Duke of Mantua Ladislaus king of Naples Speusippus Giachettus of Geneva and one of the Popes died in the forbidden embraces of abused women or if Iob had cursed God and so died or when a man sits down in despair and in the accusation and calumny of the Divine mercy they make their night sad and stormy and eternall When Herod began to sink with the shamefull torment of his bowels and felt the grave open under him he imprisoned the Nobles of his Kingdom and commanded his Sister that they should be a sacrifice to his departing ghost This was an egresse fit onely for such persons who meant to dwell with Devils to eternall ages and that man is hugely in love with sin who cannot forbear in the week of the Assizes and when himself stood at the barre of scrutiny and prepared for his finall never to be reversed sentence He dies suddenly to the worst sense and event of sudden death who so manages his sicknesse that even that state shall not be innocent but that he is surprized in the
guilt of a new account It is a signe of a reprobate spirit and an habituall prevailing ruling sin which exacts obedience when the judgement looks him in the face At least go to God with the innocence and fair deportment of thy person in the last scene of thy life that when thy soul breaks into the state of separation it may carry the relishes of religion and sobriety to the places of its abode and sentence 7. When these things are taken care for let the sick man so order his affairs that he have but very little conversation with the world but wholly as he can attend to religion and antedate his conversation in heaven alwayes having entercourse with God and still conversing with the Holy Jesus kissing his wounds admiring his goodnesse beging his mercy feeding on him with faith and drinking his blood to which purpose it were very fit if all circumstances be answerable that the narrative of the passion of Christ be read or discoursed to him at length or in brief according to the stile of the four Gospels But in all things let his care and society be as little secular as is possible CHAP. IV. Of the practise of the graces proper to the state of sicknesse which a sick man may practise alone SECT I. Of the practise of Patience NOw we suppose the man entring upon his Scene of sorrows and passive graces It may be he went yesterday to a wedding merry and brisk and there he felt his sentence that he must return home and die For men very commonly enter into the snare singing and consider not whither their fate leads them nor feared that then the Angel was to strike his stroak till his knees kissed the earth and his head trembles with the weight of the rod which God put into the hand of an exterminating Angel But whatsoever the ingresse was when the man feels his blood boil or his bones weary or his flesh diseased with a load of a dispersed and disordered humour or his head to ake or his faculties discomposed then he must consider that all those discourses he hath heard concerning patience and resignation and conformity to Christs sufferings and the melancholy lectures of the Crosse must all of them now be reduced to practise and passe from an ineffective contemplation to such an exercise as will really try whether we were true disciples of the Crosse or onely beleeved the doctrines of religion when we were at ease and that they never passed thorow the ear to the heart and dwelt not in our spirits But every man should consider God does nothing in vain that he would not to no purpose send us Preachers and give us rules and furnish us with discourse and lend us books and provide Sermons and make examples and promise his Spirit and describe the blessednesse of holy sufferings and prepare us with daily alarums if he did not really purpose to order our affairs so that we should need all this and use it all there were no such thing as the grace of patience if we were not to feel a sicknesse or enter into a state of sufferings whether when we are entred we are to practise by the following rules The practise and acts of patience by way of rule 1. At the first addresse and presence of sicknesse stand still and arrest thy spirit that it may without amazement or affright consider that this was that thou lookedst for and were alwayes certain should happen and that now thou art to enter into the actions of a new religion the agony of a strange constitution but at no hand suffer thy spirits to be dispersed with fear or wildnesse of thought but stay their loosenesse and dispersion by a serious consideration of the present and future imployment For so doth the Lybian Lion spying the fierce huntsman first beats himself with the stroaks of his tail and curles up his spirits making them strong with union and recollection till being strook with a Mauritanian spear he rushes forth into his defence and noblest contention and either scapes into the secrets of his own dwelling or else dies the bravest of the forrest Every man when shot with an arrow from Gods quiver must then draw in all the auxiliaries of reason and know that then is the time to try his strength and to reduce the words of his religion into action and consider that if he behaves himself weakly and timerously he suffers never the lesse of sicknesse but if he turns to health he carries along with him the mark of a coward and a fool and if he descends into his grave he enters into the state of the faithlesse and unbeleevers Let him set his heart firm upon this resolution I must bear it inevitably and I will by Gods grace do it nobly 2. Bear in thy sicknesse all along the same thoughts propositions and discourses concerning thy person thy life and death thy soul and religion which thou hadst in the best dayes of thy health and when thou didst discourse wisely concerning things spirituall For it is to be supposed and if it be not yet done let this rule remind thee of it and direct thee that thou hast cast about in thy health and considered concerning thy change and the evil day that thou must be sick and die that you must need a comforter and that it was certain thou shouldst fall into a state in which all the cords of thy anchor should be stretched and the very rock and foundation of faith should be attempted and whatsoever fancies may disturb you or whatever weaknesses may invade you yet consider when you were better able to judge and governe the accidents of your life you concluded it necessary to trust in God and possesse your souls with patience Think of things as they think that stand by you and as you did when you stood by others that it is a blessed thing to be patient that a quietnesse of spirit hath a certain reward that still there is infinite truth and reality in the promises of the Gospel that still thou art in the care of God in the condition of a son and working out thy salvation with labour and pain with fear and trembling that now the Sun is under a cloud but it still sends forth the same influence and be sure to make no new principles upon the stock of a quick and an impatient sense or too busie an apprehension keep your old principles and upon their stock discourse and practise on towards your conclusion 3. Resolve to bear your sicknesse like a child that is without considering the evils and the pains the sorrows and the danger but go straight forward and let thy thoughts cast about for nothing but how to make advantages of it by the instrument of religion He that from a high tower looks down upon the precipice and measures the space through which he must descend and considers what a huge fall he shall have shall feel more by the
heart is infinitely deceitful unknown to it self not certain in his own acts praying one way and desiring another wandring and imperfect loose and various worshipping God and entertaining sin following what it hates and running from what it flatters loving to be tempted and betrayed petulant like a wanton girle running from that it might invite the fondnesse and enrage the appetite of the foolish young man or the evil temptation that followes it cold and indifferent one while and presently zealous and passionate furious and indiscreet not understood of it self or any one else and deceitful beyond all the arts and numbers of observation 8. That it is certain we have highly sinned against God but we are not so certain that our repentance is reall and effective integral and sufficient 9. That it is not revealed to us whether or no the time of our repentance be not past or if it be not yet how far God will give us pardon and upon what condition or after what sufferings or duties is still under a cloud 10. That vertue and vice are oftentimes so neer neighbours that we passe into each others borders without observation and think we do justice when we are cruel or call our selves liberal when we are loose and foolish in expences and are amorous when we commend our own civilities and good nature 11. That we allow to our selves so many little irregularities that insensibly they swell to so great a heap that from thence we have reason to fear an evil for an army of frogs and flies may destroy all the hopes of our harvest 12. That when we do that which is lawful and do all that we can in those bounds we commonly and easily run out of our proportions 13. That it is not easie to distinguish the vertues of our nature from the vertues of our choice and we may expect the reward of temperance when it is against our nature to be drunk or we hope to have the coronet of virgins for our morose disposition or our abstinence from marriage upon secular ends 14. That it may be we call every little sigh or the keeping a fish-day the dutie of repentance or have entertained false principles in the estimate and measures of vertues and contrarie to the Steward in that Gospel we write down fourscore when we should set downe but fifty 15. That it is better to trust the goodnesse and justice of God with our accounts then to offer him large bits 16. That we are commanded by Christ to sit down in the lowest place till the Master of the house bids us sit up higher 17. That when we have done all that we can we are unprofitable servants and yet no man does all that he can do and therefore is more to be despised and undervalued 18. That the self-accusing Publican was justified rather then the thanksgiving and confident Pharisee 19. That if Adam in Paradise and David in his house and Solomon in the Temple and Peter in Christs family and Iudas in the College of Apostles and Nicholas among the Deacons and the Angels in heaven it self did fall so foully and dishonestly then it is prudent advice that we be not high minded but fear and when we stand most confidently take heed lest we fall and yet there is nothing so likely to make us fall as pride and great opinions which ruined the Angels which God resists which all men despise and which betrayes us into carelesnesse and a wretchlesse undiscerning and an unwary spirit 4. Now the main parts of the Ecclesiastical ministery are done and that which remains is that the Minister pray over him and reminde him to do good actions as he is capable * to call upon God for pardon * to put his whole trust in him * to resigne himself to Gods disposing * to be patient and even * to renounce every ill word or thought or undecent action which the violence of his sicknesse may cause in him * to beg of God to give him his holy Spirit to guide him in his agony and * his holy Angels to guard him in his passage 5. Whatsoever is besides this concerns the standers by that they do all their ministeries diligently and temperately * that they joyn with much charity and devotion in the prayer of the Minister * that they make no outcries or exclamations in the departure of the soul * and that they make no judgement concerning the dying person by his dying quietly or violently with comfort or without with great fears or a cheerful confidence with sense or without like a lamb or like a lyon with convulsions or semblances of great pain or like an expiring and a spent candle for these happen to all men without rule without any known reason but according as God pleases to dispense the grace or the punishment for reasons onely known to himself Let us lay our hands upon our mouth and adore the mysteries of the divine wisdome and providence and pray to God to give the dying man rest and pardon and to our selves grace to live well and the blessing of a holy and a happy death SECT VII Offices to be said by the Minister in his visitation of the sick IN the Name of the Father of the Son and of the Holy Ghost Our Father which art in Heaven c. Let the Priest say this prayer secretly O Eternal Jesus thou great lover of souls who hast constituted a ministery in the Church to glorifie thy Name and to serve in the assistance of those that come to thee professing thy discipline and service give grace to me the unworthiest of thy servants that I in this my ministery may purely and zealously intend thy glory and effectually may minister comfort and advantages to this sick person whom God assoil from all his offences and grant that nothing of thy grace may perish to him by the unworthinesse of the Minister but let thy Spirit speak by me and give me prudence and charity wisdom and diligence good observation and apt discourses a certain judgement and merciful dispensation that the soul of thy servant may passe from this state of imperfection to the perfections of the state of glory thorough thy mercies O Eternal Jesus Amen The Psalm OUt of the depths have I cryed unto thee O Lord Lord hear my voice let thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications If thou Lord should mark iniquities O Lord who shall stand but there is forgivenesse with thee that thou mayest be feared I wait for the Lord my soul doth wait and in his word do I hope my soul waiteth for the Lord more then they that watch for the morning Let Israel hope in the Lord for with the Lord there is mercy and with him is plenteous redemption and he shall redeem his servants from all their iniquities Wherefore should I fear in the dayes of evil when the wickednesse of my heels shall compasse me about No man can by any means redeem