onely to play withall but before a man comes to be wise he is half dead with gouts and consumptions with Catarrhes and aches with sore eyes and a worn out body so that if we must not reckon the life of a man but by the accounts of his reason he is long before his soul be dressed and he is not to be called a man without a wise and an adorned soul a soul at least furnished with what is necessary towards his well being but by that time his soul is thus furnished his body is decayed and then you can hardly reckon him to be alive when his body is possessed by so many degrees of death 3. But there is yet another arrest At first he wants strength of body and then he wants the use of reason and when that is come it is ten to one but he stops by the impediments of vice and wants the strengths of the spirit and we know that Body and Soul and Spirit are the constituent parts of every Christian man And now let us consider what that thing is which we call years of discretion The young man is passed his Tutors and arrived at the bondage of a caytive spirit he is run from discipline and is let loose to passion the man by this time hath wit enough to chuse his vice to act his lust to court his Mistresse to talk confidently and ignorantly and perpetually to despise his betters to deny nothing to his appetite to do things that when he is indeed a man he must for ever be ashamed of for this is all the discretion that most men show in the first stage of their Manhood they can discern good from evil and they prove their skill by leaving all that is good and wallowing in the evils of folly and an unbridled appetite And by this time the young man hath contracted vitious habits and is a beast in manners and therefore it will not be fitting to reckon the beginning of his life he is a fool in his understanding and that is a sad death and he is dead in trespasses and sins and that is a sadder so that he hath no life but a natural the life of a beast or a tree in all other capacities he is dead he neither hath the intellectual nor the spiritual life neither the life of a man nor of a Christian and this sad truth lasts too long For old age seizes upon most men while they still retain the minds of boyes and vitious youth doing actions from principles of great folly and a mighty ignorance admiring things uselesse and hurtfull and filling up all the dimensions of their abode with businesses of empty affairs being at leasure to attend no vertue they cannot pray because they are busie and because they are passionate they cannot communicate because they have quarrels and intrigues of perplexed causes complicated hostilities and things of the world and therefore they cannot attend to the things of God little considering that they must find a time to die in when death comes they must be at leisure for that Such men are like Sailers loosing from a port and tost immediatly with a perpetual tempest lasting till their cordage crack and either they sink or return back again to the same place they did not make a voyage though they were long at sea The businesse and impertinent affairs of most men steal all their time and they are restlesse in a foolish motion but this is not the progress of a man he is no further advanc'd in the course of a life though he reckon many years for still his soul is childish and trifling like an untaught boy If the parts of this sad complaint finde their remedy we have by the same instruments also cured the evils and the vanity of a short life Therefore 1. Be infinitely curious you doe not set back your life in the accounts of God by the intermingling of criminal actions or the contracting vitious habits There are some vices which carry a sword in their hand and cut a man off before his time There is a sword of the Lord and there is a sword of a Man and there is a sword of the Devil Every vice of our own managing in the matter of carnality of lust or rage ambition or revenge is a sword of Sathan put into the hands of a man These are the destroying Angels sin is the Apollyon the destroyer that is gone out not from the Lord but from the Tempter and we hug the poison and twist willingly with the vipers till they bring us into the Regions of an irrecoverable sorrow We use to reckon persons as good as dead if they have lost their limbs and their teeth and are confined to an Hospital and converse with none but Surgeons and Physicians Mourners and Divines those pollinctores the Dressers of bodies and souls to Funeral But it is worse when the soul the principle of life is imployed wholly in the offices of death and that man was worse then dead of whom Seneca tells that being a rich fool when he was lifted up from the baths and set into a soft couch asked his slaves An ego jam sedeo Do I now sit The beast was so drownd in sensuality and the death of his soul that whether he did sit or no he was to believe another Idlenesse and every vice is as much of death as a long disease is or the expence of ten years and she that lives in pleasures is dead while she liveth saith the Apostle and it is the stile of the Spirit concerning wicked persons They are dead in trespasses and sins For as every sensual pleasure and every day of idlenes and useless living lops off a little branch from our short life so every deadly sin and every habitual vice does quite destroy us but innocence leaves us in our natural portions and perfect period we lose nothing of our life if we lose nothing of our souls health and therefore he that would live a full age must avoid a sin as he would decline the Regions of death the dishonors of the grave 2. If we would have our life lengthened let us begin bâ—times to live in the accounts of reason and sober counsels of religion and the Spirit and then we shall have no reason to complain that our abode on earth is so short Many men finde it long enough and indeed it is so to all senses But when we spend in waste what God hath given us in plenty when we sacrifice our youth to folly our manhood to lust and rage our old age to covetousnesse and irreligion not beginning to live till we are to die designing that time to Vertue which indeed is infirm to every thing and profitâ—ble to nothing then we make our lives short and lust runs away with all the vigorous and healthful part of it and pride and animosity steal the manly portion and craftinesse and interest possesse old age velut ex pleno
our gardens and spiders and flies in the palaces of the greatest Kings How few men in the world are prosperous what an infinite number of slaves and beggers of persecuted and oppressed people fill all corners of the earth with groans and Heaven it self with weeping prayers and sad remembrances how many Provinces and Kingdoms are afflicted by a violent war or made desolate by popular diseases some whole countreyes are remarked with fatal evils or periodical sicknesses Gran Cairo in Egypt feels the plague every three years returning like a Quartan ague and destroying many thousands of persons All the inhabitants of Arabia the desert are in continuall fear of being buried in huge heaps of sand and therefore dwell in tents and ambuâ—atory houses or retire to unfruitful mountains to prolong an uneasy and wilder life and all the Countreyes round about the Adriatic sea feel such violent convulsions by Tempests and intolerable Earthquakes that sometimes whole cities finde a Tombe and every man â—inks with his own house made ready to become his Monument and his bed is crushed into the disorders of a grave Was not all the world drowned at one deluge and breach of the Divine anger and shall not all the world again be destroyed by fire Are there not many thousands that die every night and that groan and weep sadly every day But what shall we think of that great evil which for the sins of men God hath suffered to possess the greatest part of Mankinde Most of the men that are now alive or that have been living for many ages are Jews Heathens or Turcs and God was pleased to suffer a base Epileptic person a villain and a vitious to set up a religion which hath filled almost all Asia and Africa and some parts of Europe so that the greatest number of men and women born in so many kingdoms and provinces are infallibly made Mahumetans strangers and enemies to Christ by whom alone we can be saved This consideration is extremely sad when we remember how universal and how great an evil it is that so many millions of sons and daughters are born to enter into the possession of Devils to eternal ages These evils are the miseries of great parts of mankinde and we cannot easily consider more particularly the evils which happen to us being the inseparable affections or incidents to the whole nature of man 2. We finde that all the women in the world are either born for barrennesse or the pains of Child-birth and yet this is one of our greatest blessings but such indeed are the blessings of this world we cannot be well with nor without many things Perfumes make our heads ake roses prick our fingers and in our very blood where our life dwells is the Scene under which nature acts many sharp Feavers and heavy sicknesses It were too sad if I should tell how many persons are afflicted with evil spirits with spectres and illusions of the night and that huge multitudes of men and women live upon mans flesh Nay worse yet upon the sins of men upon the sins of their sons and of their daughters and they pay their souls down for the bread they eat buying this dayes meal with the price of the last nights sin 3. Or if you please in charity to visit an Hospital which is indeed a map of the whole world there you shall see the effects of Adams sin and the ruines of humane nature bodies laid up in heaps like the bones of a destroyed town homines precarii spiritus malè haerentis men whose souls seem to be borrowed and are kept there by art and the force of Medicine whose miseries are so great that few people have charity or humanity enough to visit them fewer have the heart to dresse them and we pity them in civility or with a transient prayer but we do not feel their sorrows by the mercies of a religious pity and therefore as we leave their sorrows in many degrees unrelieved and uneased so we contract by our unmercifulnesse a guilt by which our selves become liable to the same calamities Those many that need pity and those infinites of people that refuse to pity are miserable upon a several charge but yet they almost make up all mankinde 4. All wicked men are in love with that which intangles them in huge variety of troubles they are slaves to the worst of Masters to sin and to the Devil to a passion and to an imperious woman Good men are for ever persecuted and God chastises every son whom he receives and whatsoever is easy is trifling and worth nothing and whatsoever is excellent is not to be obtained without labour and sorrow and the conditions and states of men that are free from great cares are such as have in them nothing rich and orderly and those that have are stuck full of thorns and trouble Kings are full of care and learned men in all ages have been observed to be very poor honestas miserias accusant they complain of their honest miseries 5. But these evils are notorious and confessed even they also whose felicity men stare at and admire besides their splendour and the sharpnesse of their light will with their appendant sorrows wring a tear from the most resolved eye For not only the winter quarter is full of storms and cold and darknesse but the beauteous spring hath blasts and sharp frosts the fruitful teeming summer is melted with heat and burnt with the kisses of the sun her friend and choaked with dust and the rich Autumn is full of sicknesse and we are weary of that which we enjoy because sorrow is its biggest portion and when we remember that upon the fairest face is placed one of the worst sinks of the body the nose we may use it not only as a mortification to the pride of beauty but as an allay to the fairest outside of condition which any of the sons and daughters of Adam do possesse For look upon Kings and conquerours I will not tell that many of them fall into the condition of servants and their subjects rule over them and stand upon the ruines of their families and that to such persons the sorrow is bigger then usually happens in smaller fortunes but let us suppose them still conquerers and see what a goodly purchase they get by all their pains and amazing fears and continual dangers They carry their arms beyond Ister and passe the Euphrates and binde the Germans with the bounds of the river Rhyne I speak in the stile of the Roman greatnesse for now adayes the biggest fortune swells not beyond the limits of a petty province or two and a hill confines the progresse of their prosperity or a river checks it But whatsoever tempts the pride and vanity of ambitious persons is not so big as the smallest star which we see scattered in disorder and unregarded upon the pavement and floor of Heaven And if we would suppose the pismires had but
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
fear with a temporall suffering preventing Gods judgement by passing one of his own let him groan for the labours of his pilgrimage and the dangers of his warfare and by that time he hath summed up all these labours and duties and contingencies all the proper causes instruments and acts of sorrow he will finde that for a secular joy and wantonnesse of spirit there are not left many void spaces of his life It was Saint Iames's advice Be afflicted and mourn and weep let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy into weeping And Bonaventure in the life of Christ reports that the H. Virgin Mother said to S. Elizabeth That Grace does not descend into the soul of a man but by prayer and by affliction Certain it is that a mourning spirit and an afflicted body are great instruments of reconciling God to a sinner and they alwayes dwell at the gates of atonement and restitution But besides this a delicate and prosperous life is hugely contrary to the hopes of a blessed eternity Wo be to them that are at ease in Sion so it was said of old and our B. Lord said Wo be to you that laugh for you shall weep but Blessed are they that mourn for they shall be comforted Here or hereafter we must have our portion of sorrows He that now goeth on his way weeping and beareth forth good seed with him shall doubtlesse come again with joy and bring his sheaves with him And certainly he that sadly considers the portion of Dives and remembers that the account which Abraham gave him for the unavoidablenesse of his torment was because he had his good things in this life must in all reason with trembling run from a course of banquets and faring deliciously every day as being a dangerous estate and a consignation to an evil greater then all danger the pains and torment of unhappy souls If either by patience or repentance by compassion or persecution by choise or by conformity by severity or discipline we allay the festival follies of a soft life and professe under the Crosse of Christ we shall more willingly and more safely enter into our grave But the death-bed of a voluptuous man upbraids his little and cosening prosperities and exacts pains made sharper by the passing from soft beds and a softer mind He that would die holily and happily must in this world love tears humility solitude and repentance SECT II. Of daily examination of our actions in the whole course of our health preparatory to our death-bed HE that will die well and happily must dresse his soul by a diligent and frequent scrutiny He must perfectly understand and watch the state of his soul he must set his house in order before he be fit to die And for this there is great reason and great necessity Reasons for a daily examination 1. For if we consider the disorders of every day the multitude of impertinent words the great portions of time spent in vanity the daily omissions of duty the coldnesse of our prayers the indifference of our spirit in holy things the uncertainty of our secret purposes our infinite deceptions and hypocrisie sometimes not known very often not observed by our selves our want of charity our not knowing in how many degrees of action and purpose every vertue is to be exercised the secret adherencies of pride and too forward complacencie in our best actions our failings in all our relations the niceties of difference between some vertues and some vices the secret undiscernable passages from lawfull to unlawfull in the first instances of change the perpetuall mistakings of permissions for duty and licentious practises for permissions our daily abusing the liberty that God gives us our unsuspected sins in the managing a course of life certainly lawfull our little greedinesses in eating our surprises in the proportions of our drinkings our too great freedoms and fondnesses in lawfull loves our aptnesse for things sensual and our deadnesse and tediousnesse of spirit in spiritual employments besides infinite variety of cases of conscience that do occur in the life of every man and in all entercourses of every life and that the productions of sin are numerous and increasing like the families of the Northern people or the genealogies of the first Patriarks of the world from all this we shall find that the computations of a mans life are buisie as the Tables of Signes and Tangents and intricate as the accounts of Eastern Merchants and therefore it were but reason we should summe up our accounts at the foot of every page I mean that we call our selves to scrutiny every night when we compose our selves to the little images of Death 2. For if we make but one Generall account and never reckon till we die either we shall onely reckon by great summes and remember nothing but clamorous and crying sins and never consider concerning particulars or forget very many or if we could consider all that we ought we must needs be confounded with the multitude and variety But if we observe all the little passages of our life and reduce them into the order of accounts and accusations we shall finde them multiply so fast that it will not onely appear to be an ease to the accounts of our death-bed but by the instrument of shame will restrain the inundation of evils it being a thing intolerable to humane modesty to see sins increase so fast and vertues grow up so slow to see every day stained with the spots of leprosie or sprinkled with the marks of a lesser evil 3. It is not intended we should take accounts of our lives onely to be thought religious but that we may see our evil and amend it that we dash our sins against the stones that we may go to God and to a spirituall Guide and search for remedies and apply them And indeed no man can well observe his own groweth in Grace but by accounting seldomer returns of sin and a more frequent victory over temptations concerning which every man makes his observations according as he makes his inquiries and search after himself In order to this it was that Saint Paul wrote Before receiving the Holy Sacrament Let a man examine himself and so let him eat This precept was given in those dayes when they communicated every day and therefore a daily examination also was intended 4. And it will appear highly fitting if we remember that at the day of judgement no onely the greatest lines of life but every branch and circumstance of every action every word and thought shall be called to scrutiny and severe judgement insomuch that it was a great truth which one said Wo be to the most Innocent life if God should search into it without mixtures of mercy And therefore we are here to follow S. Pauls advice Iudge your selves and you shall not be judged of the Lord. The way to prevent Gods anger is to be angry with our selves and by examining
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
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
God had made appetites of pleasure in man that in them the scene of his obedience should lye For when God made instances of mans obedience he 1. either commanded such things to be done which man did naturally desire or 2. such things which did contradict his natural desires or 3. such which were indifferent Not the first and the last For it could be no effect of love or duty towards God for a man to eat when he was impatiently hungry and could not stay from eating neither was it any contention of obedience or labour of love for a man to look Eastward once a day or turn his back when the North winde blew fierce and loud Therefore for the trial and instance of obedience God made his laws so that they should lay restraint upon mans appetites so that man might part with something of his own that he may give to God his will and deny it to himself for the interest of his service and chastity is the denyall of a violent desire and justice is parting with money that might help to inrich me and meekness is a huge contradiction to pride and revenge and the wandring of our eyes and the greatnesse of our fancy and our imaginative opinions are to be lessened that we may serve God there is no other way of serving God we have nothing else to present unto him we do not else give him any thing or part of our selves but when we for his sake part with what we naturally desire and difficulty is essential to vertue and without choice there can be no reward in the satisfaction of our natural desires there is no election we run to them as beasts to the river or the crib If therefore any man shall teach or practise such a religion that satisfies all our natural desires in the dayes of desire and passion of lust and appetites and only turns to God when his appetites are gone his desires cease this man hath overthrown the very being of vertues and the essential constitution of religion Religion is no religion and vertue is no act of choice and reward comes by chance and without condition if we onely are religious when we cannot choose if we part with our money when we cannot keep it with our lust when we cannot act it with our desires when they have left us death is a certain mortifier but that mortification is deadly not useful to the purposes of a spiritual life When we are compeld to depart from our evil customs and leave to live that we may begin to live then we dye to dye that life is the prologue to death and thenceforth we die eternally S. Cyril speaks of certain people that chose to worship the sun because he was a day God for believing that he was quenched every â—â—ght in the sea or that he had no influence upon them that light up candles and lived by the light of fire they were confident they might be Atheists all night and live as they list Men who divide their little portion of time between religion and pleasures between God and Gods enemy think that God is to rule but in his certain period of time and that our life is the stage for passion and folly and the day of death for the work of our life but as to God both the day and night are alike so are the first and the last of our dayes all are his due and he will account severely with us for the follies of the first and the evil of the last The evils and the pains are great which are reserved for those who defer their restitution to Gods favour till their death And therefore Antisthenes said well It is not the happy death but the happy life that makes man happy It is in piety as in fame and reputation he secures a good name but loosely that trusts his fame and celebritie onely to his ashes and it is more a civilitie 〈◊〉 then the base of a firm reputation that men speak honour of their departed relatives but if their life be vertuous it forces honour from contempt and snatches it from the hand of envy and it shines thorough the crevises of detraction and as it anointed the head of the living so it embalms the body of the dead From these premises if followes that when we discourse of a sick mans repentance it is intended to be not a beginning but the prosecution and consummation of the covenant of repentance which Christ stipulated with us in Baptisme and which we needed all our life and which we began long before this last arrest and in which we are now to make further progresse that we may arrive to that integrity and fulnesse of of dutie that our sins may be blotted out when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord. SECT VI. Rules for the practise of Repentance in sicknesse 1. LEt the sick man consider at what gate this sicknesse entred and if he can discover the particular let him instantly passionately and with great contrition dash the crime in pieces lest he descend into his grave in the midst of a sin and thence remove into an ocean of eternal sorrowes but if he onely suffers the common fate of man and knowes not the particular inlet he is to be governed by the following measures 2. Inquire into the repentance of thy former life particularly whether it were of a great and perfect grief and productive of fixed resolutions of holy living and reductive of these to act How many dayes and nights have we spent in sorrow or care in habitual and actual pursuances of vertue what instrument we have chosen and used for the eradication of sin how we have judged our selves and how punished and in summe whether we have by the grace of repentance changed our life from criminal to vertuous from one habit to another and whether we have paid for the pleasure of our sin by smart or sorrow by the effusion of alms or pernoctations or abodes in prayers so as the spirit hath been served in our repentance as earnestly and as greatly as our appetites have been provided for in the dayes of our shame and folly 3. Supply the imperfections of thy repentance by a general or universal sorrow for the sins not onely since the last communion or absolution but of thy whole life for all sins known and unknown repented and unrepented of ignorance or infirmity which thou knowest or which others have accused thee of thy clamorous and thy whispering sins the sinnes of scandall and the sinnes of a secret conscience of the flesh and of the spirit for it would be but a sad arrest to thy soul wandring in strange and unusuall regions to see a scroll of uncancelled sins represented and charged upon thee for want of care and notices and that thy repentance shall become invalid because of its imperfections 4. To this purpose it is usually advised by spirituall persons
tongue shall sing aloud of thy righteousnesse The sacrifice of God is a broken heart a broken and a contrite heart O God thou wilt not despise Lord I have done amisse I have been deceived let so great a wrong as this be removed The prayer for the grace and perfection of Repentance I. O Almighty God thou art the great Judge of all the world the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ the Father of mercies the Father of men and Angels thou lovest not that a sinner should perish but delightest in our conversion and salvation and hast in our Lord Jesus Christ established the Covenant of repentance and promised pardon to all them that confesse their sins and forsake them O my God be thou pleased to work in me what thou hast commanded should be in me Lord I am a dry tree who neither have brought forth fruit unto thee and unto holinesse nor have wept out salutary tears the instrument of life and restitution but have behaved my self like an unconcerned person in the ruins and breaches of my soul But O God thou art my God earnestly will I seek thee my soul thirsteth for thee in a barren and thirsty land where no water is Lord give me the grace of tears and pungent sorrow let my heart be as a land of rivers of waters and my head a fountain of tears turn my sin into repentance and let my repentance proceed to pardon refreshment II. SUpport me with thy graces strengthen me with thy Spirit soften my heart with the fire of thy love and the dew of heaven with penitentiall showers make my care prudent and the remaining portion of my dayes like the perpetuall watches of the night full of caution and observance strong and resolute patient and severe I remember O Lord that I did sin with greedinesse and passion with great desires and an unabated choice O let me be as great in my repentance as ever I have been in my calamity and shame let my hatred of sin be great as my love to thee and both as neer to infinite as my proportion can receive III. O Lord I renounce all affection to sin and would not buy my health nor redeem my life with doing any thing against the Lawes of my God but would rather die then offend thee O dearest Saviour have pity upon thy servant let me by thy sentence be doomed to perpetuall penance during the abode of this life let every sigh be the expression of a repentance and every groan an acccent of spiritual life and every stroke of my disease a punishment of my sin and an instrument of pardon that at my return to the land of innocence I may eat of the votive sacrifice of the supper of the Lamb that was from the beginning of the world slâ—in for the sins of every sorrowful and returning sinner O grant me sorrow here and joy hereafter through Jesus Christ who is our hope the resurrection of the dead the justifier of a sinner and the glory of all faithful souls Amen A prayer for pardon of sins to be said frequently in time of sicknesse and in all the portions of old age I. O Eternal and most gracious Father I humbly throw my self down at the foot of thy mercy seat upon the confidence of thy essential mercy and thy commandment that we should come boldly to the throne of grace that we may finde mercy in time of need O my God hear the prayers and cries of a sinner who calls earnestly for mercy Lord my needs are greater then all the degrees of my desire can be unlesse thou hast pity upon me I perish infinitely and intolerably and then there will be one voice fewer in the quire of singers who shall recite thy praises to eternal ages But O Lord in mercy deliver my soul. O save me for thy mercy sake For in the second death there is no remembrance of thee in that grave who shall give thee thanks II. O Just and dear God my sins are innumerable they are upon my soul in multitudes they are a burden too heavy for me to bear they already bring sorrow and sicknesse shame and displeasure guilt and a decaying spirit a sense of thy present displeasure and fear of worse of infinitely worse But it is to thee so essential so delightful so usual so desired by thee to shew mercy that although my sin be very great and my fear proportionable yet thy mercy is infinitely greater then all the world and my hope and my comfort rise up in proportions towards it that I trust the Devils shall never be able to reprove it nor my own weaknesse discompose it Lord thou hast sent thy Son to die for the pardon of my sins thou hast given me thy holy Spirit as a seal of adoption to consigne the article of remission of sins thou hast for all my sins still continued to invite me to conditions of life by thy ministers the prophets and thou hast with variety of holy acts softned my spirit and possessed my fancie and instructed my understanding and bended and inclined my will and directed or overruled my passions in order to repentance and pardon and why should not thy servant beg passionately and humbly hope for the effect of all these thy strange and miraculous acts of loving kindnesse Lord I deserve it not but I hope thou wilt pardon all my sins and I beg it of thee for Jesus Christ his sake whom thou hast made the great endearment of thy promises and the foundation of our hopes and the mighty instrument whereby we can obtain of thee whatsoever we need and can receive III. O My God how shall thy servant be disposed to receive such a favour which is so great that the ever blessed Jesus did die to purchase for us so great that the falling angels never could hope and never shall obtain Lord I do from my soul forgive all that have sinned against me O forgive me my sins as I forgive them that have sinned against me Lord I confesse my sins unto thee daily by the accusations and secret acts of conscience and if we confesse our sins thou hast called it a part of justice to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousnesse Lord I put my trust in thee and thou art ever gracious to them that put their trust in thee I call upon my God for mercy and thou art alwayes more ready to hear then we to pray But all that I can do and all that I am and all that I know of my self is nothing but sin and infirmity and misery therefore I go forth of my self and throw my self wholly into the arms of thy mercy through Jesus Christ and beg of thee for his death and passions sake by his resurrection and ascension by all the parts of our redemption and thy infinite mercy in which thou pleasest thy self above all the works of the creation to be pitifull and compassionate to thy servant
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
speak and because in it all our certainty does consist We must take our waters as out of a torrent and sudden shower which will quickly cease dropping from above and quickly cease running in our chanels here below This instant will never return again and yet it may be this instant will declare or secure the fortune of a whole eternity The old Greeks and Romans taught us the prudence of this rule but Christianity teaches us the Religion of it They so seized upon the present that they would lose nothing of the dayes pleasure Let us eat and drink for to morrow we shall die that was their philosophy and at their solemn feasts they would talk of death to heighten the present drinking and that they might warm their veins with a fuller chalice as knowing the drink that was poured upon their graves would be cold and without relish Break the beds drink your wine crown your heads with roses and besinear your curled locks with Nard for God bids you to remember death so the Epigrammatist speaks the sence of their drunken principles Something towards this signification is that of Solomon There is nothing better for a man then that he should eat and drink and that he should make his soul enjoy good in his labour for that is his portion for who shall bring him to see that which shall be after him But although he concludes all this to be vanity yet because it was the best thing that was then commonly known that they should seize upon the present with a temperate use of permited pleasures had reason to say that Christianity taught us to turn this into religion For he that by a present and a constant holiness secures the present and makes it useful to his noblest purposes he turns his condition into his best advantage by making his unavoidable fate become his necessary religion To the purpose of this rule is that collect of Tuscan hieroglyphics which we have from Gabriel Simeon Our life is very short beauty is a cosenage money is false and fugitive Empire is odious and hated by them that have it not and uneasy to them that have victory is alwayes uncertain and peace most commonly is but a fraudulent bargain old age is miserable death is the period and is a happy one if it be not sowred by the sins of our life but nothing continues but the effects of that wisdom which imployes the present time in the acts of a holy religion and a peaceable conscience for they make us to live even beyond our funerals embalmed in the spices and odours of a good name and entombed in the grave of the Holy Jesus where we shall be dressed for a blessed resurrection to the state of Angels and beatified Spirits 5. Since we stay not here being people but of a dayes abode and our age is like that of a flie and contemporary with a gourd we must look some where else for an abiding city a place in another countrey to fix our house in whose walls and foundation is God where we must finde rest or else be restlesse for ever For whatsoever ease we can have or fancy here is shortly to be changed into sadnesse or tediousnesse it goes away too soon like the periods of our life or stayes too long like the sorrows of a sinner it s own wearinesse or a contrary disturbance is its load or it is eased by its revolution into vanity forgetfulness and where either there is sorrow or an end of joy there can be no true felicity which because it must be had by some instrument and in some period of our duration we must carry up our affections to the mansions prepared for us above where eternity is the measure felicity is their state Angels are the Company the Lamb is the light and God is the portion and inheritance SECT III. Rules and Spiritual arts of lengthening our dayes and to take off the objection of a short life IN the accounts of a mans life we do not reckon that portion of dayes in which we are shut up in the prison of the womb we tell our years from the day of our birth and the same reason that makes our reckning to stay so long sayes also that then it begins too soon For then we are beholding to others to make the account for us for we know not of a long time whether we be alive or no having but some little approaches and symptoms of a life To feed and sleep and move a little and imperfectly is the state of an unborn childe and when it is born he does no more for a good while and what is it that shall make him to be esteemed to live the life of a man and when shall that account begin For we should be loath to have the accounts of our age taken by the measures of a beast and fools and distracted persons are reckoned as civilly dead they are no parts of the Common-wealth not subject to laws but secured by them in Charity and kept from violence as a man keeps his Ox and a third part of our life is spent before we enter into a higher order into the state of a man 2. Neither must we think that the life of a Man begins when he can feed himself or walk alone when he can fight or beget his like for so he is contemporary with a camel or a cow but he is first a man when he comes to a certain steddy use of reason according to his proportion and when that is all the world of men cannot tell precisely Some are called at age at fourteen some at one and twenty some never but all men late enough for the life of a man comes upon him slowly and insensibly But as when the Sun approaches towards the gates of the morning he first opens a little eye of Heaven and sends away the spirits of darknesse and gives light to a cock and calls up the lark to Mattins and by and by gilds the fringes of a cloud and peeps over the Eastern hills thrusting out his golden horns like those which decked the browes of Moses when he was forced to wear a vail because himself had seen the face of God and still while a man tells the story the sun gets up higher till he showes a fair face and a full light and then he shines one whole day under a cloud often and sometimes weeping great and little showers and sets quickly so is a mans reason and his life He first begins to perceive himself to see or taste making little reflections upon his actions of sense and can discourse of flies and dogs shells and play horses and liberty but when he is strong enough to enter into arts and little institutions he is at first entertained with trifles and impertinent things not because he needs them but because his understanding is no bigger and little images of things are laid before him like a cock-boat to a whale
ignorance and prodigious errours made ridiculous with a thousand weaknesses worne away with labours loaden with diseases daily vexed with dangers and temptations and in love with misery we are weakned with delights afflicted with want with the evils of my self and of all my family and with the sadnesses of all my friends and of all good men even of the whole Church and therefore me thinks we need not be troubled that God is pleased to put an end to all these troubles and to let them sit down in a natural period which if we please may be to us the beginning of a better life When the Prince of Persia wept because his army should all die in the revolution of an age Artabanus told him that they should all meet with evils so many and so great that every man of them should wish himself dead long before that Indeed it were a sad thing to be cut of the stone and we that are in health tremble to think of it but the man that is wearied with the disease looks upon that sharpnesse as upon his cure and remedie and as none need to have a tooth drawn so none could well endure it but he that hath felt the pain of it in his head so is our life so full of evils that therefore death is no evil to them that have felt the smart of this or hope for the joyes of a better 2. But as it helps to ease a certain sorrow as a fire drawes out fire and a nail drives forth a nail so it instructs us in a present duty that is that we should not be so fond of a perpetual storm nor doat upon the transient gaudes and gilded thorns of this world They are not worth a passion not worth a sigh or a groan not of the price of one nights watching and therefore they are mistaken and miserable persons who since Adam planted thorns round about Paradise are more in love with that hedge then all the fruits of the garden sottish admirers of things that hurt them of sweet poisons gilded daggers and silken halters Tell them they have lost a bounteous friend a rich purchase a fair farm a wealthy donative and you dissolve their patience it is an evil bigger then their spirit can bear it brings sicknesse and death they can neither eate nor sleep with such a sorrow But if you represent to them the evils of a vitious habit and the dangers of a state of sin if you tell them they have displeased God and interrupted their hopes of heaven it may be they will be so civil as to hear it patiently and to treat you kindly and first commend and then to forget your story because they prefer this world with all its sorrowes before the pure unmingled felicities of heaven But it is strange that any man should be so passionately in love with the thorns that grow on his own ground that he should wear them for armelets and knit them in his shirt and prefer them before a kingdom and immortality No man loves this world the better for his being poor but men that love it because they have great possessions love it because it is troublesome and chargeable full of noise and temptation because it is unsafe and ungoverned flattered and abused and he that considers the troubles of an overlong garment and of a crammed stomach a trailing gown and a loaden Table may justly understand that all that for which men are so passionate is their hurt and their objection that which a temperate man would avoid and a wise man cannot love He that is no fool but can consider wisely if he be in love with this world we need not despair but that a witty man might reconcile him with tortures and make him think charitably of the Rack and be brought to dwell with Vipers and Dragons and entertain his Guests with the shrikes of Mandrakes Cats and Scrich Owls with the filing of iron and the harshnesse of rending silk or to admire the harmony that is made by a herd of Evening wolves when they misse their draught of blood in their midnight Revels The groans of a man in a fit of the stone are worse then all these and the distractions of a troubled conscience are worse then those groans and yet a carelesse merry sinner is worse then all that But if we could from one of the battlements of Heaven espie how many men and women at this time lye fainting and dying for want of bread how many young men are hewen down by the sword of war how many poor Orphans are now weeping over the graves of their Father by whose life they were enabled to eat If we could but hear how many Mariners and Passengers are at this present in a storm and shrike out because their keel dashes against a Rock or bulges under them how many people there are that weep with want and are mad with oppression or are desperate by too quick a sense of a constant infelicity in all reason we should be glad to be out of the noise and participation of so many evils This is a place of sorrows and tears of great evils and a constant calamity let us remove from hence at least in affections and preparation of minde CHAP. II. A general preparation towards a holy and blessed Death by way of exercise SECT I. Three precepts preparatory to a holy death to be practised in our whole life 1. HE that would die well must alwayes loook for death every day knocking at the gates of the grave and then the gates of the grave shall never prevail upon him to do him mischief This was the advice of all the wise and good men of the world who especially in the dayes and periods of their joy and festival egressions chose to throw some ashes into their chalices some sober remembrances of their fatal period Such was the black shirt of Saladine the tomb-stone presented to the Emperour of Constantinople on his Coronation day the Bishop of Romes two reeds with flax and wax taper the Egyptian skeleton served up at feasts and Trimalcions banquet in Petronius in which was brought in the image of a dead mans bones of silver with spondiles exactly turning to every of the Guests and saying to every one that you and you must die and look not one upon another for every one is equally concerned in this sad representment These in phantastic semblances declare a severe counsel and useful meditation and it is not easy for a man to be gay in his imagination or to be drunk with joy or wine pride or revenge who considers sadly that he must ere long dwell in a house of darknesse and dishonour and his bodie must be the inheritance of worms and his soul must be what he pleases even as a man makes it here by his living good or bad I have read of a young Hermit who being passionately in love with a young Lady could not by all the
arts of religion and mortification suppresse the trouble of that fancy till at last being told that she was dead and had been buried about fourteen dayes he went secretly to her Vault and with the skirt of his mantle wiped the moisture from the Carkasse and still at the return of his temptation laid it before him saying Behold this is the beauty of the woman thou didst so much desire and so the man found his cure And if we make death as present to us our own death dwelling and dressed in all its pomp of fancy and proper circumstances if any thing will quench the heats of lust or the desires of money or the greedy passionate affections of this world this must do it But withall the frequent use of this meditation by curing our present inordinations will make death safe and friendly and by its very custom will make that the King of terrours shall come to us without his affrighting dresses and that we shall sit down in the grave as we compose our selves to sleep and do the duties of nature and choice The old people that lived neer the Riphaean mountains were taught to converse with death and to handle it on all sides and to discourse of it as of a thing that will certainly come and ought so to do Thence their minds and resolutions became capable of death and they thought it a dishonourable thing with greedinesse to keep a life that must go from us to lay aside its thorns and to return again circled with a glory and a Diadem 2. He that would die well must all the dayes of his life lay up against the day of death not only by the general provisions of holinesse and a pious life indefinitely but provisions proper to the necessities of that great day of expence in which a man is to throw his last cast for an eternity of joyes or sorrows ever remembring that this alone well performed is not enough to passe us into Paradise but that alone done foolishly is enough to send us to hell and the want of either a holy life or death makes a man to fall short of the mighty price of our high calling In order to this rule we are to consider what special graces we shall then need to exercise and by the proper arts of the Spirit by a heap of proportioned arguments by prayers and a great treasure of devotion laid up in Heaven provide before hand a reserve of strength and mercy Men in the course of their lives walk lazily and incuriously as if they had both their feet in one shoe and when they are passively revolved to the time of their dissolution they have no mercies in store no patience no faith no charity to God or despite of the world being without gust or appetite for the land of their inheritance which Christ with so much pain and blood had purchased for them When we come to die indeed we shall be very much put to it to stand firm upon the two feet of a Christian faith and patience When we our selves are to use the articles to turn our former discourses into present practise and to feel what we never felt before we shall finde it to be quite another thing to be willing presently to quit this life and all our present possessions for the hopes of a thing which we were never suffered to see and such a thing of which we may sail so many wayes and of which if we fail any way we are miserable for ever Then we shall finde how much we have need to have secured the Spirit of God and the grace of saith by an habitual perfect unmovable resolution * The same also is the case of patience which will be assaulted with sharp pains disturbed fancies great fears want of a present minde natural weaknesses frauds of the Devil and a thousand accidents and imperfections It concerns us therfore highly in the whole course of our lives not onely to accustome our selves to a patient suffering of injuries and affronts of persecutions and losses of crosse accidents and unnecessary circumstances but also by representing death as present to us to consider with what arguments then to fortifie our patience and by assiduous and fervent prayer to God all our life long call upon God to give us patience and great assistances a strong faith and a confirmed hope the Spirit of God and his Holy Angels assistants at that time to resist and to subdue the devils temptations and assaults and so to fortifie our hearts that it break not into intolerable sorrows and impatience and end in wretchlessenesse and infidelity * But this is to be the work of our life and not to be done at once but as God gives us time by succession by parts and little periods For it is very remarkable that God who giveth plenteously to all creatures he hath scattered the firmament with stars as a man sowes corn in his fields in a multitude bigger then the capacities of humane order he hath made so much varietie of creatures and gives us great choice of meats and drinks although any one of both kindes would have served our needs and so in all instances of nature yet in the distribution of our time God seems to be strait-handed and gives it to us not as Nature gives us Rivers enough to drown us but drop by drop minute after minute so that we never can have two minutes together but he takes away one when he gives us another This should teach us to value our time since God so values it and by his so small distribution of it tells us it is the most precious thing we have Since therefore in the day of our death we can have but still the same little portion of this precious time let us in every minute of our life I mean in every discernable portion lay up such a stock of reason and good works that they may convey a value to the imperfect and shorter actions of our death-bed while God rewards the piety of our lives by his gracious acceptation and benediction upon the actions preparatory to our death-bed 3. He that desires to die well and happily above all things must be carefull that he do not live a soft a delicate and voluptuous life but a life severe holy and under the discipline of the crosse under the conduct of prudence and observation a life of warfare and sober counsels labour and watchfulnesse No man wants cause of tears and a daily sorrow Let every man consider what he feels and acknowledge his misery let him confesse his sin and chastise it let him bear his crosse patiently and his persecutions nobly and his repentances willingly and constantly let him pity the evils of all the world and bear his share of the calamities of his Brother let him long and sigh for the joyes of Heaven let him tremble and fear because he hath deserved the pains of hell let him commute his eternall
body and wrapt it self about his head till the Philosophers of Egypt said it was natural that from the marrow of some bodies such productions should arise and indeed it represents the condition of some men who being dead are esteemed saints and beatified persons when their head is encircled with dragons and is entered into the possession of Devils that old serpent and deceiver For indeed their life was secretly so corrupted that such serpents fed upon the ruines of the spirit and the decayes of grace and reason To be cosened in making judgements concerning our finall condition is extremely easie but if we be cosened we are infinitely miserable SECT III. Of exercising Charity during our whole life HE that would die well and happily must in his life time according to all his capacities exercise charity and because Religion is the life of the soul and charity is the life of religion the same which gives life to the better part of man which never dies may obtain of God a mercy to the inferiour part of man in the day of its dissolution 1. Charity is the great chanel through which God passes all his mercy upon mankinde For we receive absolution of our sins in proportion to our forgiving our brother this is the rule of our hopes and the measure of our desire in this world and in the day of death and judgement the great sentence upon mankinde shall be transacted according to our almes which is the other part of Charity Certain it is that God cannot will not never did reject a charitable man in his greatest needs and in his most passionate prayers for God himself is love and every degree of charity that dwells in us is the participation of the divine nature and therefore when upon our death-bed a cloud covers our heads and we are enwrapped with sorrow when we feel the weight of a sicknesse and do not feel the refreshing visitations of Gods loving kindnesse when we have many things to trouble us and looking round about us we see no comforter then call to minde what injuries you have forgiven how apt you were to pardon all affronts and real persecutions how you embraced peace when it was offered you how you followed after peace when it run from you and when you are weary of one side turn upon the other and remember the alms that by the grace of God and his assistances you have done and look up to God and with the eye of faith behold him coming in the cloud and pronouncing the sentence of dooms day according to his mercies and thy charity 2. Charity with its Twin-daughters almes and forgivenesse is especially effectual for the procuring Gods mercies in the day and the manner of our death almes deliver from death said old Tobias and almes make an atonement for sins said the son of Sirach and so said Daniel and so say all the wise men of the world And in this sence also is that of S. Peter Love covers a multitude of sins and S. Clement in his Constitutions gives this counsell If you have any thing in your hands give it that it may work to the remission of thy sins for by faith and alms sins are purged The same also is the counsel of Salviâ—n who wonders that men who are guilty of great and many sins will not work out their pardon by alms and mercy But this also must be added out of the words of Lactantius who makes this rule compleat and useful But think not that because sins are taken away by alms that by thy money thou mayest purchase a license to sin For sins are abolished if because thou hast sinned thou givest to God that is to Gods poor servants and his indigent necessitous creature But if thou sinnest upon confidence of giving thy sins are not abolished For God desires infinitely that men should be purged from their sins and therefore commands us to repent But to repent is nothing else but to professe and affirm that is to purpose and to make good that purpose that they will sin no more Now almes are therefore effective to the abolition and pardon of our sins because they are preparatory to and impetratory of the grace of repentance and are fruits of repentance and therefore S. Chrysostom affirmes that repentance without almes is dead and without wings and can never soar upwards to the element of love But because they are a part of repentance and hugely pleasing to Almighty God therefore they deliver us from the evils of an unhappy and accursed death for so Christ delivered his Disciples from the sea when he appeased the storm though they still sailed in the chanel and this S. Hierome verifies with all his reading and experience saying I do not remember to have read that ever any charitable person died an evil death and although a long experience hath observed Gods mercies to descend upon charitable people like the dew upon Gideons fleece when all the world was dry yet for this also we have a promise which is not onely an argument of a certain number of years as experience is but a security for eternall ages Make ye friends of the mammon of unrighteousnesse that when ye fail they may receive you into everlasting habitations When faith fails and chastity is uselesse and temperance shall be no more then charity shall bear you upon wings of cherubins to the eternall mountain of the Lord. I have been a lover of mankinde and a friend and mercifull and now I expect to communicate in that great kindnesse which he shews that is the great God and Father of men and mercies said Cyrus the Persian on his death-bed I do not mean this should onely be a death-bed charity any more then a death-bed repentance but it ought to be the charity of our life healthfull years a parting with portions of our goods then when we can keep them we must not first kindle our lights when we are to descend into our houses of darknesse or bring a glaring torch suddenly to a dark room that will amaze the eye and not delight it or instruct the body but if our Tapers have in their constant course descended into their grave crowned all the way with light then let the death-bed charity be doubled and the light burn brightest when it is to deck our hearse But concerning this I shall afterwards give account SECT IV. General considerations to enforce the former practises THese are the generall instruments of preparation in order to a holy death It will concern us all to use them diligently and speedily for we must be long in doing that which must be done but once and therefore we must begin betimes and lose no time especially since it is so great a venture and upon it depends so great a state Seneca said well There is no Science or Art in the world so hard as to
live and die well The professors of other arts are vulgar and many but he that knows how to do this businesse is certainly instructed to eternity But then let me remember this that a wise person will also put most upon the greatest interest Common prudence will teach us this No man will hire a Generall to cut wood or shake hay with a Scepter or spend his soul and all his faculties upon the purchase of a cockleshell but he will fit instruments to the dignity and exigence of the designe and therefore since heaven is so glorious a state and so certainly designed for us if we please let us spend all that we have all our passions and affections all our study and industry all our desires and stratagems all our witty and ingenuous faculties toward the arriving thither whither if we do come every minute will infinitely pay for all the troubles of our whole life If we do not we shall have the reward of fools an unpitied and an upbraided misery To this purpose I shall represent the state of dying and dead men in the devout words of some of the Fathers of the Church whose sense I shall exactly keep but change their order that by placing some of their dispersed meditations into a chain or sequell of discourse I may with their precious stones make an Vnion and compose them into a jewel for though the meditation is plain and easie yet it is affectionate and materiall and true and necessary The circumstances of a dying mans sorrow and danger When the sentence of death is decreed and begins to be put in execution it is sorrow enough to see or feel respectively the sad accidents of the agony and last contentions of the soul and the reluctancies and unwillingnesses of the body The forehead wash'd with a new and stranger baptisme besmeared with a cold sweat tenacious and clammy apt to make it cleave to the roof of his coffin the nose cold and undiscerning not pleased with perfumes nor suffering violence with a cloud of unwholsome smoak the eyes dim as a sullied mirror or the face of heaven when God shews his anger in a prodigious storm the feet cold the hands stiffe the Physitians despairing our friends weeping the rooms dressed with darknesse and sorrow and the exteriour parts betraying what are the violences which the soul and spirit suffer the nobler part like the lord of the house being assaulted by exteriour rudenesses and driven from all the out-works at last faint and weary with short and frequent breathings interrupted with the longer accents of sighes without moisture but the excrescencies of a spilt humour when the pitcher is broken at the cisterne it retires to its last sort the heart whither it is pursued and stormed and beaten out as when the barbarous Thracian sacked the glory of the Grecian Empire Then calamity is great and sorrow rules in all the capacities of man then the mourners weep because it is civil or because they need thee or because they fear but who suffers for thee with a compassion sharp as is thy pain Then the noise is like the faint eccho of a distant valley few heare and they will not regard thee who seemest like a person void of understanding and of a departing interest Verè tremendum est mortis sacramentum But these accidents are common to all that die and when a speciall providence shall distinguish them they shall die with easie circumstances but as no piety can secure it so must no confidence expect it but wait for the time and accept the manner of the dissolution But that which distinguishes them is this He that hath lived a wicked life if his conscience be alarmed and that he does not die like a Wolf or a Tigre without sense or remorse of all his wildnesse and his injury his beastly nature and desert and untilled manners if he have but sense of what he is going to suffer or what he may expect to be his portion then we may imagine the terrour of their abused fancies how they see affrighting shapes and because they fear them they feel the gripes of Devils urging the unwilling souls from the kinder and fast embraces of the body calling to the grave and hasting to judgement exhibiting great bills of uncancelled crimes awaking and amazing the conscience breaking all their hope in pieces and making faith uselesse and terrible because the malice was great and the charity was none at all Then they look for some to have pity on them but there is no man No man dares be their pledge No man can redeem their soul which now feels what it never feared Then the tremblings and the sorrow the memory of the past sin and the fear of future pains and the sense of an angry God and the presence of some Devils consigne him to the eternall company of all the damned and accursed spirits then they want an Angel for their guide and the Holy Spirit for their comforter and a good conscience for their testimony and Christ for their Advocate and they die and are left in prisons of earth or air in secret and undiscerned regions to weep and tremble and infinitely to fear the coming of the day of Christ at which time they shall be brought forth to change their condition into a worse where they shall for ever feel more then we can beleeve or understand But when a good man dies one that hath lived innocently or made joy in Heaven at his timely and effective repentance and in whose behalf the Holy Jesus hath interceded prosperously and for whose interest the Spirit makes interpellations with groans and sighs unutterable and in whose defence the Angels drive away the Devils on his death-bed because his sins are pardoned and because he resisted the Devil in his life time and fought successefully and persevered unto the end then the joyes break forth through the clouds of sicknesse and the conscience stands upright and confesses the glories of God and owns so much integrity that it can hope for pardon and obtain it too Then the sorrowes of the sicknesse and the flames of the Feaver or the faintnesse of the consumption do but untye the soul from its chain and let it go forth first into liberty and then to glory for it is but for a little while that the face of the skie was black like the preparations of the night but quickly the cloud torn and rent the violence of thunder parted it into little portions that the Sun might look forth with a watry eye and then shine without a tear but it is an infinite refreshment to remember all the comforts of his prayers the frequent victory over his temptations the mortification of his lust the noblest sacrifice to God in which he most delights that we have given him our wills and killed our appetiâ—es for the interest of his services then all the trouble of that is gone and what remains
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
state of sicknesse are onely upon the stock of vertue and religion There is nothing can make sicknesse in any sense eligible or in many senses tolerable but onely the grace of God that onely turns sicknesse into easinesse and felicity which also turnes it into vertue For whosoever goes about to comfort a vitious person when he lies sick upon his bed can onely discourse of the necessities of nature of the unavoidableness of the suffering of the accidental vexations and increase of torments by impatience of the fellowship of all the sons of Adam and such other little considerations which indeed if sadly reflected upon and found to stand alone teach him nothing but the degree of his calamity and the evil of his condition and teach him such a patience and minister to him such a comfort which can only make him to observ decent gestures in his sicknesse and to converse with his friends and standers by so as may do them comfort and ease their funeral and civil complaints but do him no true advantage For all that may be spoken to a beast when he is crowned with hairlaces and bound with fillets to the Altar to bleed to death to appease the anger of the Deity and to ease the burden of his Relatives And indeed what comfort can he receive whose sicknesse as it looks back is an effect of Gods indignation and fierce vengeance and if it goes forward and enters into the gates of the grave is a beginning of a sorrow that shall shall never have an ending But when the sicknesse is a messenger sent from a chastising Father when it first turns into degrees of innocence and then into vertues and thence into pardon this is no misery but such a method of the Divine oeconomy and dispensation as resolves to bring us to heaven without any new impositions but meerly upon the stock and charges of nature 2. Let it be observed that these advantages which spring from sicknesse are not in all instances of vertue nor to all persons Sicknesse is the proper scene for patience and resignation for all the passive graces of a Christian for faith and hope and for some single acts of the love of God But sicknesse is not a fit station for a penitent and it can serve the ends of the grace of repentance but accidentally Sicknesse may begin a repentance if God continues life and if we cooperate with the Divine grace or sicknesse may help to alleviate the wrath of God and to facilitate the pardon if all the other parts of this duty be performed in our healthfull state so that it may serve at the entrance in or at the going out But sicknesse at no hand is a good stage to represent all the substantiall parts of this duty 1. It invites to it 2. It makes it appear necessary 3. It takes off the fancies of vanity 4. It attempers the spirit 5. It cures hypocrisie 6. It tames the fumes of pride 7. It is the school of patience 8. And by taking us from off the brisker relishes of the world it makes us with more gust to taste the things of the Spirit and all this onely when God fits the circumstances of the sicknesse so as to consist with acts of reason consideration choice and a present and reflecting minde which then God sends when he means that the sickness of the body should be the cure of the soul. But let no man so rely upon it as by designe to trust the beginning the progresse and the consummation of our piety to such an estate which for ever leaves it unperfect and though to some persons it addes degrees and ministers opportunities and exercises single acts with great advantage in passive graces yet it is never an intire or sufficient instrument for the change of our condition from the state of death to the liberty and life of the sons of God 3. It were good if we would transact the affairs of our souls with noblenesse and ingenuity and that we would by an early and forward religion prevent the necessary arts of the Divine providence It is true that God cures some by incision by fire and torments but these are ever the more obstinate and more unrelenting natures Gods providence is not so afflictive and full of trouble as that it hath placed sicknesse and infirmity amongst things simply necessary and in most persons it is but a sickly and an effeminate vertue which is imprinted upon our spirits with fears and the sorrowes of a feaver or a peevâ—sh consumption It is but a miserable remedy to be beholding to a sicknesse for our health and though it be better to suffer the losse of a finger then that the arm and the whole body should putrifie yet even then also it is a trouble and an evil to lose a finger He that mends with sicknesse pares the nails of the beast when they have already torn off part of the flesh But he that would have a sicknesse become a clear and an entire blessing a thing indeed to be reckoned among the good things of God and the evil things of the world must lead an holy life and judge himself with an early sentence and so order the affairs of his soul that in the usuall method of Gods saving us there may be nothing left to be done but that such vertues should be exercised which God intends to crown and then as when the Athenians upon a day of battell with longing and uncertain souls sate in their Common-hall expecting what would be the sentence of the day at last received a messenger who onely had breath enough left him to say We are conquerours and so died So shall the sick person who hath fought a good fight and kept the faith and onely waitâ— for his dissolution and his sentence breaths forth his spirit with the accents of a conquerour and his sicknesse and his death shall onely make the mercy and the vertue more illustrious But for the sicknesse it self if all the calumnies were true concerning it with which it is aspersed yet it is far to be preferred before the most pleasant sin and before a great secular businesse and a temporall care and some men wake as much in the foldings of the softest beds as others on the crosse and sometimes the very weight of sorrow and the wearinesse of a sicknesse presses the spirit into slumbers and the images of rest when the intemperate or the lustfull person rolls upon his uneasie thorns and sleep is departed from his eyes Certainly it is some sicknesse is a blessing Indeed blindnesse were a most accursed thing if no man were ever blind but he whose eyes are pulled out with tortures or burning basins and if sickness were always a testimony of Gods anger and a violence to a mans whole condition then it were a huge calamity but because God sends it to his servants to his children to little infants to Apostles and Saints with designes
mortals with ignorant and foolish persons with Tyrants and enemies of learning to converse with Homer and Plato with Socrates and Cicero with Plutarch and Fabricius So the Heathens speculated but we consider higher The dead that die in the Lord shall converse with S. Paul and all the Colledge of the Apostles and all the Saints and Martyrs with all the good men whose memory we preserve in honour with excellent Kings and holy Bishops and with the great Shepherd and Bishop of our souls Iesus Christ and with God himself For Christ dyed for us that whether we wake or sleep we might live together with him Then we shall be free from lust and envy from fear and rage from covetousnesse and sorrow from tears and cowardice and these indeed properly are the onely evils that are contrary to felicity and wisdom Then we shall see strange things and know new propositions and all things in another manner and to higher purposes Cleombrotus was so taken with this speculation that having learned from Plato's Phaedon the souls abode he had not patience to stay natures dull leisure but leapt from a wall to his portion of immortality And when Pomponius Atticus resolved to die by famine to ease the great pains of his gout in the abstinence of two dayes found his foot at ease But when he began to feel the pleasures of an approaching death and the delicacies of that ease he was to inherit below he would not withdraw his foot but went on and finished his death and so did Cleanthes and every wise man will despise the little evils of that state which indeed is the daughter of fear but the mother of rest and peace and felicity 5. If God should say to us Cast thy self into the Sea as Christ did to S. Peter or as God concerning Ionas I have provided for thee a Dolphin or a Whale or a Port a safety or a deliverance security or a reward were we not incredulous and pusillanimous persons if we should tremble to put such a felicity into act and our selves into possession The very duty of resignation and the love of our own interest are good antidores against fear In fourty or fifty years we finde evils enough and arguments enough to make us weary of this life And to a good man there are very many more reasons to be afraid of life then death this having in it lesse of evil and more of advantage And it was a rare wish of that Roman that death might come onely to wise and excellent persons and not to fools and cowards that it might not be a sanctuary for the timerous but the reward of the vertuous and indeed they onely can make advantage of it 6. Make no excuses to make thy desires of life seem reasonable neither cover thy fear and pretences but suppresse it rather with arts of severity and ingenuity Some are not willing to submit to Gods sentence and arrest of death till they have finished such a designe or made an end of the last paragraph of their book or raised such portions for their children or preached so many sermons or built their house or planted their orchard or ordered their estate with such advantages It is well for the modesty of these men that the excuse is ready but if it were not it is certain they would search one out for an idle man is never ready to die and is glad of any excuse and a busied man hath alwayes something unfinished and he is ready for every thing but death and I remember that Petronius brings in Eumolpus composing verses in a desperate storm and being called upon to shift for himself when the ship dashed upon the rock cried out to let him alone till he had finished and trimmed his verse which was lame in the hinder leg the man either had too strong a desire to end his verse or too great a desire not to end his life But we must know Gods times are not to be measured by our circumstances and what I value God regards not or if it be valuable in the accounts of men yet God will supply it with other contingencies of his providence and if Epaphroditus had died when he had his great sicknesse S. Paul speaks of God would have secured the work of the Gospel without him and he could have spared Epaphroditus as well as S. Stephen and S. Peter as well as S. Iames Say no more but when God calls lay aside thy papers and first dresse thy soul and then dresse thy hearse Blindnesse is odious and widow-hood is sad and destitution is without comfort and persecution is full of trouble and famine is intolerable and tears are the sad ease of a sadder heart but these are evils of our life not of our death For the dead that die in the Lord are so farre from wanting the commodities of this life that they do not want life it self After all this I do not say it is a sin to be afraid of death we find the boldest spirit that discourses of it with confidence and dares undertake a danger as big as death yet doth shrink at the horror of it when it comes dressed in its proper circumstances And Brutus who was as bold a Roman to undertake a noble action as any was since they first reckoned by Consuls yet when Furius came to cut his throat after his defeat by Anthony he ran from it like a girl and being admonished to die constantly he swore by his life that he would shortly endure death But what do I speak of such imperfect persons Our B. Lord was pleased to legitimate fear to us by his agony and prayers in the garden It is not a sin to be afraid but it is a great felicity to be without fear which felicity our dearest Saviour refused to have because it was agreeable to his purposes to suffer any thing that was contrary to felicity every thing but sin But when men will by all means avoid death they are like those who at any hand resolve to be rich The case may happen in which they wil blaspheme and dishonor providence or do a base action or curse God and die But in all cases they die miserable and insnared and in no case do they die the lesse for it Nature hath left us the key of the Churchyard and custome hath brought Caemeteries and charnell houses into Cities and Churches places most frequented that we might not carry our selves strangely in so certain so expected so ordinary so unavoydable an accident All reluctancy or unwillingnesse to obey the Divine decree is but a snare to our selves and a load to our spirits and is either an intire cause or a great aggravation of the calamity Who did not scorn to look upon Xerxes when he caused 300. stripes to be given to the Sea and sent a chartell of defiance against the Mountain Atho Who did not scorn the proud vanity of Cyrus when he
horror of it then by the last dash on the pavement and he that tells his groans and numbers his sighs and reckons one for every gripe of his belly or throb of his distempered pulse will make an artificiall sicknesse greater then the naturall and if thou beest ashamed that a childe should bear an evil better then thou then take his instrument and allay thy spirit with it reflect not upon thy evil but contrive as much as you can for duty and in all the rest inconsideration will ease your pain 4. If thou fearest thou shalt need observe and draw together all such things as are apt to charm thy spirit and ease thy fancy in the sufferance It is the counsell of Socrates It is said he a great danger and you must by discourse and arts of reasoning inchant it into slumber and some rest It may be thou wert moved much to see a person of honour to die untimely or thou didst love the religion of that death bed and it was dressed up in circumstances fitted to thy needs and hit thee on that part where thou wert most sensible or some little saying in a Sermon or passage of a book was chosen and singled out by a peculiar apprehension and made consent lodge a while in thy spirit even then when thou didst place death in thy meditation and didst view it in all its dresse of fancy whatsoever that was which at any time did please thee in thy most passionate and fantastic part let not that go but bring it home at that time especially because then thou art in thy weaknesse such little things will easier move thee then a more severe discourse and a better reason For a sick man is like a scrupulous his case is gone beyond the cure of arguments and it is a trouble that can onely be helped by chance or a lucky saying and Ludovico Corbinelli was moved at the death of Henry the second more then if he had read the saddest Elegy of all the unfortunate Princes in Christendom or all the sad sayings of Scripture or the threnes of the funerall prophets I deny not but this course is most proper to weak persons but it is a state of weaknesse for which we are now providing remedies and instruction a strong man will not need it But when our sicknesse hath rendred us weak in all senses it is not good to refuse a remedy because it supposes us to be sick But then if to the Catalogue of weak persons we adde all those who are ruled by fancy we shall find that many persons in their health and more in their sicknesse are under the dominion of fancy and apt to be helped by those little things which themselves have found fitted to their apprehension and which no other man can minister to their needs unlesse by chance or in a heap of other things But therefore every man should remember by what instruments he was at any time much moved and try them upon his spirit in the day of his calamity 5. Do not choose the kind of thy sicknesse or the manner of thy death but let it be what God please so it be no greater then thy spirit or thy patience and for that you are to rely upon the promise of God and to secure thy self by prayer and industry but in all things else let God be thy chooser and let it be thy work to submit indifferently and attend thy duty It is lawfull to beg of God that thy sicknesse may not be sharp or noysome infectious or unusuall because these are circumstances of evil which are also proper instruments of temptation and though it may well concern the prudence of thy religion to fear thy self and keep thee from violent temptations who hast so often fallen in little ones yet even in these things be sure to keep some degrees of indifferency that is if God will not be intreated to ease thee or to change thy triall then be importunate that thy spirit and its interest be secured and let him do what seemeth good in his eyes but as in the degrees of sicknesse thou art to submit to God so in the kind of it supposing equall degrees thou art to be altogether incurious whether God call thee by a consumption or an asthma by a dropsey or a palsey by a feaver in thy humours or a feaver in thy spirits because all such nicety of choice is nothing but a colour to legitimate impatience and to make an excuse to murmure privately and for circumstances when in the summe of affairs we durst not owne impatience I have known some persons vehemently wish that they might die of a consumption and some of these had a plot upon heaven and hoped by that means to secure it after a carelesse life as thinking a lingring sicknesse would certainly infer a lingring and a protracted repentance and by that means they thought they should be safest others of them dreamed it would be an easier death and have found themselves deceived and their patience hath been tired with a weary spirit and a uselesse body by often conversing with healthfull persons and vigorous neighbours by uneasinesse of the flesh and the sharpnesse of his bones by want of spirits and a dying life and in conclusion have been directly debauched by peevishnesse and a fretfull sicknesse and these men had better have left it to the wisdom and goodnesse of God for they both are infinite 6. Be patient in the desires of religion and take care that the forwardnesse of exteriour actions do not discompose thy spirit while thou fearest that by lesse serving God in thy disability thou runnest backward in the accounts of pardon and the favour of God Be content that the time which was formerly spent in prayer be now spent in vomiting and carefulnesse and attendances since God hath pleased it should be so it does not become us to think hard thoughts concerning it Do not think that God is onely to be found in a great prayer or a solemn office he is moved by a sigh by a groan by an act of love and therefore when your pain is great and pungent lay all your strength upon it to bear it patiently when the evil is something more tolerable let your mind think some pious though short meditation let it not be very busie and full of attention for that will be but a new temptation to your patience and render your religion tedious and hatefull But record your desires and present your self to God by generall acts of will and understanding and by habituall remembrances of your former vigorousnesse and by verification of the same grace rather then proper exercises if you can do more do it but if you cannot let it not become a scruple to thee we must not think man is tyed to the forms of health or that he who swoons and faints is obliged to his usual forms and hours of prayer if we cannot labour yet let us love Nothing can hinder
he is to do is to secure his hold which he can do no way but by prayer and by his interest And by this Argument or instrument it was that Socrates refreshed the evil of his condition when he was to drink his aconite If the soul be immortall and perpetuall rewards be laid up for wise souls then I lose nothing by my death but if there be not then I lose nothing by my opinion for it supports my spirit in my passage and the evil of being deceived cannot overtake me when I have no being So it is with all that are tempted in their faith If those Articles be not true then the men are nothing if they be true then they are happy and if the Article fails there can be no punishment for beleeving but if they be true my not beleeving destroyes all my portion in them and possibility to receive the excellent things which they contain By faith we quench the fiery darts of the Devil but if our faith be quenched wherewithall shall we be able to endure the assault therefore seiz upon the Article and secure the great object and the great instrument that is the hopes of pardon and eternall life through Iesus Christ and do this by all means and by any instrument artificiall or inartificiall by argument or by stratagem by perfect resolution or by discourse by the hand and ears of premisses or the foot of the conclusion by right or by wrong because we understand it or because we love it super totam materiam because I will and because I ought because it is safe to do so and because it is not safe to do otherwise because if I do I may receive a good and because if I do not I am miserable either for that I shall have a portion of sorrows or that I can have no portion of good things SECT IV. Acts of faith by way of prayer and ejaculation to be said by sick men in the dayes of their temptation LOrd whither shall I go thou hast the words of eternall life I beleeve in God the Father Almighty and in Jesus Christ his onely Son our Lord c. And I beleeve in the Holy Ghost c. Lord I beleeve help thou mine unbelief I know and am perswaded by the Lord Jesus that none of us liveth to himself and no man dieth to himself For whether we live we live unto the Lord and whether we die we die unto the Lord whether we live therefore or die we are the Lords If God be for us who can be against us He that spared not his own Son but delivered him up for us all how shall he not with him give us all things Who shall lay any thing to the charge of Gods elect It is God that justifieth who is he that condemneth It is Christ that died yea rather that is risen again who is even at the right hand of God who also maketh intercession for us If any man sin we have an Advocate with the Father Jesus Christ the righteous and he is the propitiation for our sins This is a faithfull saying and worthy of all acceptation that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners O grant that I may obtain mercy that in me Jesus Christ may shew forth all long-suffering that I may beleeve in him to life everlasting I am bound to give thanks unto God alway because God hath from the beginning chosen me to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth whereunto he called me by the Gospel to the obtaining of the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God even our Father which hath loved us and hath given us everlasting consolation and good hope through grace Comfort my heart and stablish me in every good word and work The Lord direct my heart into the love of God and into the patient waiting for Christ. O that our God would count me worthy of this calling and fulfill all the good pleasure of his goodnesse and the work of faith with power That the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ may be glorified in me and I in him according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ. Let us who are of the day be sober putting on the brest-plate of faith and love and for an helmet the hope of salvation For God hath not appointed us to wrath but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ who died for us that whether we wake or sleep we should live together with him Wherefore comfort your selves together and edifie one another There is no name under heaven whereby we can be saved but onely the Name of the Lord Jesus And every soul which will not hear that Prophet shall be destroyed from among the people God forbid that I should glory save in the Crosse of Jesus Christ. I desire to know nothing but Jesus Christ and him crucified For to me to live is Christ and to die is gain Cease ye from man whose breath is in his nostrils for wherein is he to be accounted of But the just shall live by faith Lord I beleeve that thou art the Christ the Son of God the Saviour of the world the resurrection and the life and he that beleeveth in thee though he were dead yet shall he live Jesus said unto her Said I not to thee that if thou wouldest beleeve thou shouldst see the glory of God O death where is thy sting O grave where is thy victory the sting of death is sin and the strength of sin is the Law But thanks be to God which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Lord make me stedfast and unmoveable alwayes abounding in the work of the Lord For I know that my labour is not in vain in the Lord. The Prayer for the grace and strengths of faith O Holy and eternall Jesus who didst die for me and for all mankind abolishing our sin reconciling us to God adopting us into the portion of thine heritage and establishing with us a covenant of faith and obedience making our souls to rely upon spirituall strengths by the supports of a holy belief and the expectation of rare promises and the infallible truths of God O let me for ever dwell upon the rock leaning upon thy arm beleeving thy word trusting in thy promises waiting for thy mercies and doing thy commandements that the Devil may not prevail upon me and my own weaknesses may not abuse or unsettle my perswasions nor my sins discompose my just confidence in thee and thy eternall mercies Let me alwayes be thy servant and thy disciple and die in the communion of thy Church of all faithfull people Lord I renounce whatsoever is against thy truth and if secretly I have or do beleeve any false proposition I do it in the simplicity of my heart and great weaknesse and if I could
the Holy Ghost and Adoption and the inheritance of sons and to be coheirs with Jesus and to have pardon of our sins and a divine nature and restraining grace and the grace of sanctification and a rest and peace within us and a certain expectation of glory * who can choose but love him who when we had provoked him exceedingly sent his Son to die for us that we might live with him who does so desire to pardon us and save us that he hath appointed his Holy Son continually to intercede for us * That his love is so great that he offers us great kindnesse and intreats us to be happy and makes many decrees in heaven concerning the interest of our soul and the very provision and support of our persons * That he sends an Angel to attend upon every of his servants and to be their guard and their guide in all their dangers and hostilities * That for our sakes he restrains the Devil and puts his mightinesse in fetters and restraints and chastises his malice with decrees of grace and safety * That he it is who makes all the creatures serve us and takes care of our sleeps and preserves all plants and elements all mineralls and vegetables all beasts and birds all fishes and insects for food to us and for ornament for physick and instruction for variety and wonder for delight and for religion * That as God is all good in himself and all good to us so sin is directly contrary to God to reason to religion to safety and pleasure and felicity * That it is a great dishonour to a mans spirit to have been made a fool by a weak temptation and an empty lust and to have rejected God who is so rich so wise so good and so excellent so delicious and so profitable to us * That all the repentance in the world of excellent men does end in contrition or a sorrow for sins proceeding from the love of God because they that are in the state of grace do not fear hell violently and so long as they remain in Gods favour although they suffer the infirmities of men yet they are Gods portion and therefore all the repentance of just and holy men which is certainly the best is a repentance not for lower ends but because they are the friends of God and they are full of indignation that they have done an act against the honour of their Patron and their dearest Lord and Father * That it is a huge imperfection and a state of weaknesse to need to be moved with fear or temporall respects and they that are so as yet are either immerged in the affections of the world or of themselves and those men that bear such a character are not yet esteemed laudable persons or men of good natures or the sons of vertue * That no repentance can be lasting that relies upon any thing but the love of God for temporal motives may cease and contrary contingencies may arise and fear of hell may be expelled by natural or acquired hardnesses and is alwayes the least when we have most need of it and most cause for it for the more habitual our sins are the more cauterized our conscience is the lesse is the fear of hell and yet our danger is much the greater * that although fear of hell or other temporal motives may be the first inlet to a repentance yet repentance in that constitution and under those circumstances cannot obtain pardon because there is in that no union with God no adhesion to Christ no endeerment of passion or of spirit no similitude or conformity to the great instrument of our peace our glorious Mediatour for as yet a man is turned from his sin but not converted to God the first and last of our returns to God being love and nothing but love for obedience is the first part of love and fruition is the last and because he that does not love God cannot obey him therefore he that does not love him cannot enjoy him Now that this may he reduced to practise the sick man may be advertised that in the actions of repentance * he separate low temporal sensual and self ends from his thoughts and so do his repentance * that he may still reflect honour upon God * that he confesse his justice in punishing that he acknowledge himself to have deserved the worst of evils * that he heartily believe and professe that if he perish finally yet that God ought to be glorified by that sad event and that he hath truly merited so intolerable a calamity * that he also be put to make acts of election and preference professing that he would willingly endure all temporal evils rather then be in the disfavour of God or in the state of sin for by this last instance he will be quitted from the suspicion of leaving sin for temporal respects because he by an act of imagination or fained presence of the object to him entertains the temporal evil that he may leave the sin and therefore unlesse he be a hypocrite does not leave the sin to be quit of the temporal evil And as for the other motive of leaving sin our of the fear of hell because that is an evangelical motive conveyed to us by the spirit of God and is immediate to the love of God if the Schoolmen had pleased they might have reckoned it as the hand-maid and of the retinue of contrition but the more the considerations are sublimed above this of the greater effect and the more immediate to pardon will be the repentance 8. Let the sick persons do frequent actions of repentance by way of prayer for all those sins which are spiritual and in which no restitution or satisfaction material can be made and whose contrary acts cannot in kinde be exercised For penitential prayers in some cases are the only instances of repentance that can be An envious man if he gives God hearty thanks for the advancement of his brother hath done an act of mortification of his envy as directly as corporal austerities are an act of chastity and an enemy to uncleanness and if I have seduced a person that is dead or absent if I cannot restore him to sober counsels by my discourse and undeceiving him I can onely repent of that by way of prayer and intemperance is no way to be rescinded or punished by a dying man but by hearty prayers Prayers are a great help in all cases in some they are proper acts of vertue and direct enemies to sin but although alone and in long continuance they alone can cure some one or some few little habits yet they can never alone change the state of the man and therefore are intended to be a suppletory to the imperfections of other acts and by that reason are the proper and most pertinent imployment of a Clinick or death-bed penitent 9. In those sins whose proper cure is mortification corporal the sick man is to supply that part of
learning in publike charge and by all others in their proportions 10. The ministers of religion must take care that the sick mans confession be as minute and particular as it can and that as few sins as may be be entrusted to the generall prayer of pardon for all sins for by being particular and enumerative of the variety of evils which have disordered his life his repentance is disposed to be more pungent and afflictive and therefore more salutary and medicinall it hath in it more sincerity and makes a better judgement of the finall condition of the man and from thence it is certain the hopes of the sick man can be more confident and reasonable 11. The spirituall man that assists at the repentance of the sick must not be inquisitive into all the circumstances of the particular sins but be content with those that are direct parts of the crime and aggravation of the sorrow Such as frequency long abode and earnest choice in acting them violent desires great expense scandall of others dishonour to the religion dayes of devotion and religious solemnities holy places and the degrees of boldnesse and impudence perfect resolution and the habit If the sick person be reminded or inquired into concerning these it may prove a good instrument to increase his contrition and perfect his penitentiall sorrows and facilitate his ablution and the means of his amendment But the other circumstances as of the relative person in the participation of the crime the measures or circumstances of the impure action the name of the injured man or woman the quality or accidentall condition these and all the like are but questions springing from curiosity and producing scruple and apt to turn into many inconveniencies 11. The Minister in this duty of repentance must be diligent to observe concerning the person that repents that he be not imposed upon by some one excellent thing that was remarkable in the sick mans former life For there are some people of one good thing Some are charitable to the poor out of kind-heartednesse and the same good-nature makes them easie and compliant with drinking persons and they die with drink but cannot live with charity and their alms it may be shall deck their monument or give them the reward of loving persons and the poor mans thanks for alms and procure many temporall blessings but it is very sad that the reward should be all spent in this world some are rarely just persons and punctuall observers of their word with men but break their promises with God and make no scruple of that In these and all the like cases the spirituall man must be carefull to remark that good proceeds from an intire and integrall cause and evil from every part That one sicknesse can make a man die but he cannot live and be called a sound man without an intire health and therefore if any confidence arises upon that stock so as that it hinder the strictness of the repentance it must be allayed with the representment of this sad truth That he who reserves one evil in his choice hath chosen an evil portion and colliquintida and death is in the pot and he that worships the God of Israel with a frequent sacrifice and yet upon the anniversary will bow in the house of Venus and loves to see the follies and the nakednesse of Rimmon may eat part of the flesh of the sacrifice and fill his belly but shall not be refreshed by the holy cloud arising from the altar or the dew of heaven descending upon the mysteries 12. And yet the Minister is to estimate that one or more good things is to be an ingredient into his judgement concerning the state of his soul and the capacities of his restitution and admission to the peace of the Church and according as the excellency and usefulnesse of the grace hath been and according to the degrees and the reasons of its prosecution so abatements are to be made in the injunctions and impositions upon the penitent For every vertue is one degree of approach to God and though in respect of the acceptation it is equally none at all that is it is as certain a death if a man dies with one mortall wound as if he had twenty yet in such persons who have some one or more excellencies though not an intire piety there is naturally a neerer approach to the estate of grace then in persons who have done evils and are eminent for nothing that is good But in making judgement of such persons it is to be inquired into and noted accordingly why the sick person was so eminent in that one good thing whether by choice and apprehension of his duty or whether it was a vertue from which his state of life ministred nothing to dehort or discourage him or whether it was onely a consequent of his naturall temper and constitution If the first then it supposes him in the neighbourhood of the state of grace and that in other things he was strongly tempted The second is a felicity of his education and an effect of providence The third is a felicity of his nature and a gift of God in order to spirituall purposes But yet of every one of these advantage is to be made If he conscience of his duty was the principle then he is ready formed to entertain all other graces upon the same reason and his repentance must be made more sharp and penall because he is convinced to have done against his conscience in all the other parts of his life but the judgement concerning his finall state ought to be more gentle because it was a huge temptation that hindred the man and abused his infirmity but if either his calling or his nature were the parents of the grace he is in the state of a morall man in the just and proper meaning of the word and to be handled accordingly that vertue disposed him rarely well to many other good things but was no part of the grace of sanctification and therefore the mans repentance is to begin anew for all that and is to be finished in the returns of health if God grants it but if he denies it it is much very much the worse for all that sweet natur'd vertue 13. When the confession is made the spirituall man is to execute the office of a Restorer and a Iudge in the following particulars and manner SECT IIII. Of the ministring to the restitution and pardon or reconciliation of the sick person by administring the Holy Sacrament IF any man be overtaken in a fault ye which are spiritual restore such a one in the spirit of meeknesse That 's the Commission and Let the Elders of the Church pray over the sick man and if he have committed sins they shall be forgiven him that 's the effect of his power and his ministery But concerning this some few things are to be considered 1. It is the office of the Presbyters and Ministers
2 That God delights not in the confusion and death of sinners 3. That in heaven there is great joy at the conversion of a sinner 4. That Christ is a perpetual advocate daily interceding with his Father for our pardon 5. That God uses infinite arts instruments and devices to reconcile us to himself 6. That he prayes us to be in charity with him and to be forgiven 7. That he sends Angels to keep us from violence and evil company from temptations and surprizes and his holy Spirit to guide us in holy wayes and his servants to warn us and reminde us perpetually and therefore since certainly he is so desirous to save us as appears by his word by his oaths by his very nature and his daily artifices of mercy it is not likely that he will condemn us without great provocations of his Majesty and perseverance in them 8. That the covenant of the Gospel is a covenant of grace and of repentance and being established with so many great solemnities and miracles from heaven must signifie a huge favour and a mighty change of things and therefore that repentance which is the great condition of it is a grace that does not expire in little accents and minutes but hath a great latitude of signification and a large extension of parts under the protection of all which persons are safe even when they fear exceedingly 9. That there are great degrees and differences of glory in heaven and therefore if we estimate our piety by proportions to the more eminent persons and devouter people we are not to conclude we shall not enter into the same state of glory but that we shall not go into the same degrees 9 That although forgivenesse of sins is consigned to us in Baptism and that this Baptism is but once and cannot be repeated yet forgivenesse of sins is the grace of the gospel which is perpetually remanent upon us and secured unto us so long as we have not renounced our Baptisme For then we enter into the condition of repentance and repentance is not an indivisible grace or a thing performed at once but is working all our lives and therefore so is our pardon which ebbes and flowes according as we discompose or renew the decency of our Baptismall promises and therefore it ought to be certain that no man despair of pardon but he that hath voluntarily renounced his Baptism or willingly estranged himself from that covenant He that sticks to it and still professes the religion and approves the faith and endeavours to obey and to do his duty this man hath all the veracity of God to assure him and give him confidence that he is not in an impossible state of salvation unlesse God cuts him off before he can work or that he begins to work when he can no longer choose 10. And then let him consider the more he fears the more he hates his sin that is the cause of it and the lesse he can be tempted to it and the more desirous he is of heaven and therefore such fears are good instruments of grace and good signes of a future pardon 11. That God in the old law although he made a Covenant of perfect obedience and did not promise pardon at all after great sins yet he did give pardon and declared it so to them for their own and for our sakes too So he did to David to Manasses to the whole Nation of the Israelies ten times in the wildernesse even after their Apostacies and Idolatries and in the Prophets the mercies of God and his remissions of sins were largely preached though in the Law God put on the robes of an angry Judge and a severe Lord but therefore in the Gospel where he hath established the whole summe of affairs upon faith and repentance if God should not pardon great sinners that repent after baptisme with a free dispensation the Gospel were far harder then the intolerable Covenant of the Law 12. That if a Proselyte went into the Jewish communion and were circumcised and baptized he entred into all the hopes of good things which God had promised or would give to his people and yet that was but the Covenant of works If then the Gentile Proselytes by their circumcision and legall baptisme were admitted to a state of pardon to last so long as they were in the Covenant even after their admission for sins committed against Moses law which they then undertook to observe exactly In the Gospel which is the Covenant of Faith it must needs be certain that there is a great grace given and an easier conditon entred into then was that of the Jewish law and that is nothing else but that abatement is made for our infirmities and our single evils and our timely repented and forsaken habits of sin and our violent passions when they are contested withall and fought with and under discipline and in the beginnings and progresses of mortification 13. That God hath erected in his Church a whole order of men the main part and dignity of whose work it is to remit and retain sins by a perpetuall and daily ministery and this they do not onely in baptisme but in all their offices to be administered afterwards in the Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist which exhibits the Symbols of that blood which was shed for pardon of our sins and therefore by its continued ministery and repetition declares that all that while we are within the ordinary powers and usuall dispensations of pardon even so long as we are in any probable dispositions to receive that Holy Sacrament And the same effect is also signified and exhibited in the whole power of the Keyes which if it extends to private sins sins done in secret it is certain it does also to publike but this is a greater testimony of the certainty of the remissibility of our greatest sins for publike sins as they alwayes have a sting and a superadded formality of scandall and ill example so they are most commonly the greatest such as murder sacriledge and others of unconcealed nature and unprivate action and if God for these worst of evils hath appointed an office of ease and pardon which is and may daily be administred that will be an uneasie pusillanimity and fond suspicion of Gods goodnesse to fear that our repentance shall be rejected even although we have not committed the greatest or the most of evils 14. And it was concerning baptized Christians that Saint Iohn said If any man sin we have an Advocate with the Father and he is the propitiation for our sins and concerning lapsed Christians S. Paul gave instruction that if any man be overtaken in a fault ye which are spiritual restore such a man in the spirit of meeknesse considering lest ye also be temted the Corinthian Christian committed incest and was pardoned and ‑ Simon Magus after he was baptized offered to commit his own sin of Simony and yet Saint Peter bid him pray
preserve thee in the faith and fear of his holy Name to thy lives end and bring thee to his everlasting Kingdom to live with him for ever and ever Amen Then let the sick man renounce all heresies and whatsoever is against the truth of God or the peace of the Church and pray for pardon for all his ignorances and errors known and unknown After which let him if all other circumstances be fitted be disposed to receive the Blessed Sacrament in which the Curate is to minister according to the form prescribed by the Church When the rites are finished let the sick man in the dayes of his sicknesse be imployed with the former offices and exercises before described and when the time drawes neer of his dissolution the Minister may assist by the following order of recommendation of the soul. I. O Holy and most Gracious Saviour Jesus we humbly recommend the soul of thy servant into thy hands thy most mercifull hands let thy Blessed Angels stand in ministery about thy servant and defend him from the violence and malice of all his ghosâ—ly enemies and drive far from hence all the spirits of darknesse Amen II. LOrd receive the soul of this thy servant Enter not into judgement with thy servaant spare him whom thou hast redeemed with thy most precious blood deliver him from all evil and mischief from the crafts and assaults of the Devil from the fear of death and from everlasting death Good Lord deliver him Amen III. IMpute not unto him the follies of his youth nor any of the errors and miscarriages of his life but strengthen him in his agony let not his faith waver nor his hope fail nor his charity be disordered Let none of his enemies imprint upon him any afflictive or evil phantasme let him die in peace and rest in hope and rise in glory Amen IIII. LOrd we know and beleeve assuredly that whatsoever is under thy custody cannot be taken out of thy hands nor by all the violences of hell robbed of thy protection preserve the work of thy hands rescue him from all evil for whose sake thou didst suffer all evil Take into the participation of thy glories him to whom thou hast given the seal of Adoption the earnest of the inheritance of the Saints Amen V. LEt his portion be with Abraham Isaac and Iacob with Iob and David with the Prophets and Apostles with Martyrs and all thy holy Saints in the arms of Christ in the bosome of felicity in the Kingdom of God to eternall ages Amen These following prayers are fit also to be added to the foregoing offices in case there be no communion or entercourse but prayer Let us Pray O Almighty and eternall God there is no number of thy dayes or of thy mercies thou hast sent us into this world to serve thee and to live according to thy lawes but we by our sins have provoked thee to wrath and we have planted thorns and sorrows round about our dwellings and our life is but a span long and yet very tedious because of the calamities that inclose us in on every side the dayes of our pilgrimage are few and evil we have frail and sickly bodies violent and distempered passions long designes and but a short stay weak understandings and strong enemies abused fancies perverse wils O Dear God look upon us in mercy and pity let not our weaknesses make us to sin against thee nor our fear cause us to betray our duty nor our former follies provoke thy eternall anger nor the calamities of this world vex us into tediousnesse of spirit and impatience but let thy Holy Spirit lead us thorow this vally of misery with safety and peace with holiness and religion with spirituall comforts and joy in the Holy Ghost that when we have served thee in our generations we may be gathered unto our Fathers having the testimony of a holy conscience in the communion of the Catholike Church in the confidence of a certain faith and the comforts of a reasonable religious and holy hope and perfect charity with thee our God and all the world that neither death nor life nor Angels nor principalities nor powers nor things present nor things to come nor height nor depth nor any other creature may be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen II. O Holy and most gracious Saviour Jesus in whose hands the souls of all faithfull people are laid up till the day of recompence have mercy upon the body and soul of this thy servant and upon all thy elect people who love the Lord Jesus and long for his coming Lord refresh the imperfection of their condition with the aids of the Spirit of grace and comfort and with the visitation and guard of Angels and supply to them all their necessities known onely unto thee let them dwell in peace and feel thy mercies pitying their infirmities and the follies of their flesh and speedily satisfying the desires of their spirits and when thou shalt bring us all forth in the day of Judgement O then shew thy self to be our Saviour Jesus our Advocate and our Judge Lord then remember that thou hast for so many ages prayed for the pardon of those sins which thou art then to sentence Let not the accusations of our consciences nor the calumnies and aggravation of Devils nor the effects of thy wrath presse those souls whâ—ch thou lovest which thou didst redeem which thou doest pray for but enable us all by the supporting hand of thy mercy to stand upright in judgement O Lord have mercy upon us have mercy upon us O Lord let thy mercy lighten upon us as our trust is in thee O Lord in thee have we trusted let us never be confounded Let us meet with joy and for ever dwell with thee feeling thy pardon supported with thy graciousnesse absolved by thy sentence saved by thy mercy that we may sing to the glory of thy Name eternall Allelujahs Amen Amen Amen Then may be added in the behalf of all that are present these ejaculations O spare us a little that we may recover our strength before we go hence and be no more seen Amen Cast us not away in the time of age O forsake us not when strength faileth Amen Grant that we may never sleep in sin or death eternall but that we may have our part of the first resurrection and that the second death may not prevail over us Amen Grant that our souls may be bound up in the bundle of life and in the day when thou bindest up thy Jewels remember thy servants for good and not for evil that our souls may be numbred amongst the righteous Amen Grant unto all sick and dying Christians mercy and aids from heaven and receive the souls returning unto thee whom thou hast redeemed with thy most precious blood Amen Grant unto thy servants to have faith in the Lord Jesus a daily meditation of death a contempt of
the world a longing desire after heaven patience in our sorrows comfort in our sicknesses joy in God a holy life and a blessed death that our souls may rest in hope and my body may rise in glory and both may be beatified in the communion of Saints in the kingdom of God and the glories of the Lord Jesus Amen The blessing Now the God of peace that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus that great shepherd of the sheep thorough the blood of the everlasting covenant make you perfect in every good work to do his will working in you that which is pleasing in his sight to whom be glory for ever and ever Amen The doxology To the blessed and onely Potentate the King of kings and the Lord of Lords who only hath immortality dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto whom no man hath seen nor can see be honour and power everlasting Amen After the sick man is departed the Minister if he be present or the Major dome or any other fit person may use the following prayers in behalf of themselves I. ALmighty God with whom do live the spirits of them that depart hence in the Lord we adore thy Majesty and submit to thy providence and revere thy justice and magnifie thy mercies thy infinite mercies that it hath pleased thee to deliver this our brother out of the miseries of this sinful world Thy counsels are secret and thy wisdom is infinite with the same hand thou hast crowned him and smitten us thou hast taken him into regions of felicity and placed him among Saints and Angels and left us to mourn for our sins and thy displeasure which thou hast signified to us by removing him from us to a better a far better place Lord turn thy anger into mercie thy chastisements into vertues thy rod into comforts and do thou give to all his neerest relatives comforts from heaven and a restitution of blessings equall to those which thou hast taken from them And we humbly beseech thee of thy gracious goodnesse shortly to satisfie the longing desires of those Holy souls who pray and wait and long for thy second coming Accomplish thou the number of thine elect and fill up the Mansions in heaven which are prepared for all them that love the coming of the Lord Jesus that we with this our Brother and all other departed this life in the obedience and faith of the Lord Jesus may have our perfect consummation and blisse in thy eternall glory which never shall have ending Grant this for Jesus Christ his sake our Lord and onely Saviour Amen II. O Mercifull God Father of our Lord Jesus who is the first fruits of the resurrection and by entring into glory hath opened the kingdom of heaven to all the beleevers we humbly beseech thee to raise us from the death of sin to the life of righteousnesse that being partakers of the death of Christ and followers of his Holy life we may be partakers of his Spirit and of his promises that when we shall depart this life we may rest in his arms and lie in his bosom as our hope is this our brother doth O suffer us not for any temptation of the world or any snares of the Devil or any pains of death to fall from thee Lord let thy H. Spirit enable us with his grace to fight a good fight with perseverance to finish our course with holiness and to keep the faith with constancie unto the end that at the day of judgement we may stand at the right hand of the throne of God and hear the blessed sentence of Come ye blessed children of my Father receive the kingdom prepared for you from the beginning of the world O blessed Jesus thou art our Judge and thou art our Advocate even because thou art good and gracious never suffer us to fall into the intolerable pains of hell never to lye down in sin and never to have our portion in the everlasting burning Mercy sweet Jesu Mercy Amen A prayer to be said in the case of a sudden surprise by death as by a mortal wound or evil accidents in childebirth when the forms and solemnities of preparation cannot be used O Most gracious Father Lord of heaven and earth Judge of the living and the dead behold thy servants running to thee for pity and mercy in behalf of our selves and this thy servant whom thou hast smitten with thy hasty rod and a swift Angel if it be thy will preserve his life that there may be place for his repentance and restitution O spare him a little that he may recover his strength before he go hence and be no more seen but if thou hast otherwise decreed let the miracles of thy compassion and thy wonderfull mercy supply to him the want of the usual measures of time and the periods of repentance and the trimming of his lamp and let the greatnesse of the calamity be accepted by thee as an instrument to procure pardon for those defects and degrees of unreadiness which may have caused this accident upon thy servant Lord stirre up in him a great and effectual contrition that the greatnesse of the sorrow and hatred against sin and the zeal of his love to thee may in a short time do the work of many dayes and thou who regardest the heart and the measures of the minde more then the delay and the measures of time let it be thy pleasure to rescue the soul of thy servant from all the evils he hath deserved and all the evils that he fears that in the glorifications of eternity and the songs which to eternal ages thy Saints and holy Angels shall sing to the honour of thy mighty Name and invaluable mercies it may be reckoned among thy glories that thou hast redeemed this soul from the dangers of an eternall death and made him partaker of the gift of God eternall life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen If there be time the prayers in the foregoing offices may be added according as they can be fitted to the present circumstances SECT VIII A peroration concerning the contingencies and treatings of our departed friends after death in order to their buriall c. WHen we have received the last breath of our friend and closed his eyes and composed his body for the grave then seasonable is the counsell of the son of Syrach Weep bitterly and make great moan and use lamentation as he is worthy and that a day or two lest thou be evil spoken of and then comfort thy self for thy heavinesse But take no grief to heart for there is no turning again thou shalâ— not do him good but hurt tâ—y self Solemn and appointed mournings are good expressions of our dearnesse to the departed soul and of his worth and our value of him and it hath its praise in nature and in manners and publike customs but the praise of it is not in the Gospel that is it hath
hand of the most High No temptation hath taken me but such as is common to man but God is faithful who will not suffer me to be tempted above what I am able but will with the temptation also make a way to escape that I may be able to bear it Whatsoever things were written afore time were written for our learning that we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope Now the God of peace and consolation grant me to be so minded It is the Lord let him do what seemeth good in his eyes Surely the word that the Lord hath spoken is very good But thy servant is weak O remember mine infirmities and lift thy servant up that leaneth upon thy right hand There is given unto me a thorn in the flesh to buffet me For this thing I besought the Lord thrice that it might depart from me and he said unto me My grace is sufficient for thee For my strength is made perfect in weaknesse Most gladly therefore will I glory in my infirmities that the power of Christ may rest upon me For when I am weak then am I strong O Lord thou hast pleaded the causes of my soul thou hast redeemed my life And I said My strength and my hope is in the Lord remembring my affliction and my misery the wormwood and the gall My soul hath them still in remembrance and is humbled within me This I recall to my minde therefore I have hope It is the Lords mercies that we are not consumed because his compassions fail not They are new every morning great is thy faithfulnesse The Lord is my portion said my soul therefore will I hope in him The Lord is good unto them that wait for him to the soul that seeketh him It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord. For the Lord will not cast off for ever But though he cause grief yet will he have compassion according to the multitude of his mercies For he doth not afflict willingly nor grieve the children of men Wherefore doth a living man complain a man for the punishment of his sins O that thou wouldest hide me in the grave of Jesus that thou wouldest keep me secret until thy wrath be past that thou wouldest appoint me a set time and remember me Shall we receive good at the hand of God and shall we not receive evil The sick man may recite or hear recited the following Psalms in the intervals of his agony I. O Lord rebuke me not in thine anger neither chasten me in thy hot displeasure Have mercy upon me O Lord for I am weak O Lord heal me for my bones are vexed My soul is also sore vexed but thou O Lord how long Return O Lord deliver my soul O save me for thy mercies sake For in death no man remembreth thee in the grave who shall give thee thanks I am weary with my groaning all the night make I my bed to swim I water my couch with my tears Mine eye is consumed because of grief it waxeth old because of all my sorrowes Depart from me all ye workers of iniquity for the Lord hath heard the voice of my weeping The Lord hath heard my supplication the Lord will receive my prayer Blessed be the Lord who hath heard my prayer and hath not turned his mercy from me II. IN the Lord put I my trust how say ye to my soul flee as a bird to your mountain The Lord is in his holy temple the Lords throne is in heaven his eyes behold his eye-lids try the children of men Preserve me O God for in thee do I put my trust O my soul thou hast said unto the Lord thou art my Lord my goodnesse extendeth not to thee The Lord is the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup thou maintainest my lot I will blesse the Lord who hath given me counsel my reins also instruct me in the night seasons I have set the Lord alwayes before me because he is at my right hand I shall not be moved Therefore my heart is glad and my glory rejoyceth my flesh also shall rest in hope Thou wilt shew me the path of life in thy presence is the fulnesse of joy at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore As for me I will behold thy face in righteousnesse I shall be satisfied when I awake with thy likenesse III. HAve mercy upon me O Lord for I am in trouble mine eye is consumed with grief yea my soul and my belly For my life is spent with grief and my years with sighing my strength faileth because of mine iniquity and my bones are consumed * I am like a broken vessel But I trusted in thee O Lord I said thou art my God My times are in thy hand make thy face to shine upon thy servant save me for thy mercies sake When thou saidst seek ye my face my heart said unto thee thy face Lord will I seek Hide not thy face from me put not thy servant away in thy anger thou hadst been my help leave me not neither forsake me O God of my salvation I had fainted unlesse I had beleeved the goodnesse of the Lord in the land of the living O how great is thy goodnesse which thou hast laid up for them that fear thee which thou hast wrought for them that trust in thee before the sons of men Thou shalt hide them in the secret of thy presence from the pride of man thou shalt keep them secretly in a pavilion from the strife of tongues from the calumnies and aggravation of sins by Devils I said in my haste I am cut off from before thine eyes neverthelesse thou heardest the voice of my supplication when I cried unto thee O love the Lord all ye his Saints for the Lord preserveth the faithfull and plenteously rewardeth the proud doer Be of good courage and he shall strengthen your heart all ye that hope in the Lord. The Prayer to be said in the beginning of a sicknesse O Almighty God mercifull and gracious who in thy justice didst send sorrow and tears sicknesse and death into the world as a punishment for mans sins and hast comprehended all under sin and this sad covenant of sufferings not to destroy us but that thou mightest have mercy upon all making thy justice to minister to mercy short afflictions to an eternall weight of glory as thou hast turned my sins into sicknesse so turn my sicknesse to the advantages of holinesse and religion of mercy and pardon of faith and hope of grace and glory thou hast now called me to the fellowship of sufferings Lord by the instrument of religion let my present condition be so sanctified that my sufferings may be united to the sufferings of my Lord that so thou mayest pity me and assist me relieve my sorrow and support my spirit direct my