Holy Dying
Typed by Kathy Sewell, [email protected], March 17, 1997.
This etext is in the Public Domain.
THE
RULE AND EXERCISES
OF
HOLY DYING:
IN WHICH ARE DESCRIBED THE
MEANS AND INSTRUMENTS
OF
PREPARING OURSELVES AND OTHERS RESPECTIVELY FOR A BLESSED DEATH: AND THE
REMEDIES AGAINST THE EVILS AND TEMPTATIONS PROPER TO THE STATE OF SICKNESS:
TOGETHER WITH
PRAYERS AND ACTS OF VIRTUE
TO BE USED BY SICK AND DYING PERSONS, OR BY OTHERS STANDING IN THEIR
ATTENDANCE.
TO WHICH ARE ADDED
RULES FOR THE VISITATION OF THE SICK
AND
OFFICES PROPER FOR THAT MINISTRY.
BY JEREMY TAYLOR, D.D.
CHAPLAIN IN ORDINARY TO KING CHARLES THE FIRST, AND SOME LORD BISHOP OF DOWN
AND CONNOR
TO THE
RIGHT HON. AND NOBLEST
LORD RICHARD, EARL OF CARBERY,
ETC., ETC.
My Lord,
I am treating your Lordship as a Roman
gentleman did St. Augustine and his mother: I shall entertain you in a
charnel-house, and carry your meditations awhile into the chambers of death,
where you shall find the rooms dressed up with melancholic arts, and fit to
converse with your most retired thoughts, which begin with a sigh, and proceed
in deep consideration, and end in a holy resolution. The sight that St.
Augustine most noted in that house of sorrow, was the body of Caesar, clothed
with all the dishonours of corruption that you can suppose in a six months'
burial. But I know, that, without pointing, your first thoughts will remember
the change of a greater beauty, which is now dressing for the brightest
immortality, and from herbed of darkness calls to you to dress your soul for
that change which shall mingle your bones with that beloved dust, and carry
your soul to the same quire, where you may both sit and sing for ever. My Lord,
it is your dear Lady's anniversary, and she deserved the biggest honour, and
the longest memory, and the fairest monument, and the most solemn mourning: and
in order to it, give me leave, my Lord, to cover her hearse with these
following sheets. This book was intended first to minister to her piety; and
she desired all good people should partake of the advantages which are here
recorded; she knew how to live rarely well, and she desired to know how to die;
and God taught her by an experiment. But since her work is done, and God
supplied her with provisions of his own, before I could minister to her, and
perfect what she desired, it is necessary to present to your Lordship those
bundles of cypress which were intended to dress her closet, but come now to
dress her hearse. My Lord, both your Lordship, and myself have lately seen and
felt such sorrows of death, and such sad departure of dearest friends, that it
is more than high time we should thing ourselves nearly concerned in the
accidents. Death hath come so near to you, as to fetch a portion from your very
heart; and now you cannot choose but dig your own grave, and place your coffin
in your eye, when the angel hath dressed your scene of sorrow and mediation
with so particular and so near an object: and, therefore, as it is my duty, I
am come to minister to your pious thoughts, and to direct your sorrows, that
they may turn into virtues and advantages.
And since I know your Lordship to be so constant
and regular in your devotions, and so tender in the matter of justice, so ready
in the expressions of charity, and so apprehensive of religion; that you are a
person whose work of grace is apt and must every day grow toward those degrees
where, when you arrive, you shall triumph over imperfection, and choose nothing
but what may please God; I could not by any compendium conduct and assist your
pious purposes so well as by that which is the great argument and the great
instrument of Holy Living, the consideration and exercises of death.
My Lord, it is a great art to die well, and to be
learnt by men in health, by them that can discourse and consider, by those
whose understanding and act of reason are not abated with fear or pains; and as
the greatest part of death is passed by the preceeding years of our life, so
also in those years are the greatest preparations to it; and he that prepares
not for death before his last sickness, is like him that begins to study
philosophy when he is going to dispute publicly in the faculty. All that a sick
and dying man can do, is but to exercise those virtues which he before
acquired, and to perfect that repentance, which was begun more early. And of
this, my Lord, my book, I think, is a good testimony; not only because it
represents the vanity of a late and sick-bed repentance, but because it
contains in it so many precepts and meditations, so many propositions and
various duties, such forms of exercise, and the degrees and difficulties of so
many graces, which are necessary preparatives to a holy death, that the very
learning the duties requires study and skill, time and understanding, in the
ways of godliness; and it were very vain to say so much is necessary, and not
to suppose more time to learn them, more skill to practise them, more
opportunities to desire them, more abilities both of body and mind, that can be
supposed in a sick, amazed, timorous, and weak person; whose senses are weak,
whose discerning facilities are lessened, whose principles are mane intricate
and entangles, upon whose eye sits a cloud, and the heart is broken with
sickness, and the liver pierced through with sorrows and the strokes of death.
And, therefore, my Lord, it is intended by the necessity of affairs that the
pre-health, and the days of discourse and understanding which, in this case
hath another degree of necessity superadded; because in other notices, an
imperfect study may be supplied by a frequent exercise and renewed experience;
her, if we practise imperfectly once, we shall never recover the error, for we
die but once; and therefore it will be necessary that our skill be more exact,
since it is not to be mended by trial, but the actions must be for ever left
imperfect, unless the habit be contracted with study and contemplation
beforehand.
And indeed I were vain if I should intend this
book to be read and studied by dying persons; and they were vainer that should
need to be instructed in those graces, which they are then to exercise and to
finish. For a sick bed is only a school of severe exercise, in which the spirit
of a man is tried and his graces are rehearsed; and the assistances which I
have, in the following pages, given to those virtues, which are proper to the
state of sickness, are such as suppose a man in the state of grace; or they
confirm a good man, or they support the weak, or add degrees, or minister
comfort, or prevent an evil, or cure the little mischiefs which are incident to
tempted persons in their weakness. That is the sum of the present design, as it
relates to dying persons. And therefore I have not inserted any advices proper
to old age, but such as are common to it and the state of sickness, for I
suppose very old age to be a longer sickness; it is a labour and sorrow when it
goes beyond the common period of nature; but if it be on this side that period,
and be healthful, in the same degree it is so I reckon it in the accounts of
life, and therefore it can have no distinct consideration. But I do not think
it is a station of advantage to begin the change of an evil life in; it is a
middle state between life and death-bed; and, therefore, although it hath more
of hopes than this, and less than that, yet as it partakes of either state, so
it is to be regulated by the advices of that state, and judged by its
sentences.
Only this; I desire that all old persons would
sadly consider that their advantages in that state are very few; their bodies
are without strength, their prejudices long and mighty, their vices (if they
have lived wicked) are habitual, the occasions of the virtues not many, the
possibilities of some (in the matter of which they stand very guilty) are past,
and shall never return again (such are chastity and many parts of self-denial;)
that they have some temptations proper to their age, as peevishness and pride,
covetousness and talking, wilfulness and unwillingness to learn: and they think
they are protected by age from learning anew, or repenting the old, and do not
leave but change their vices; and after all this, either the day of their
repentance is past, as we see it true in very many, or it is expiring and
towards the sunset, as it is in all; and, therefore, although in in these to
recover is very possible, yet we may also remember that, in the matter of
virtue and repentance, possibility is a great way off from performance; and how
few do repent of whom it is only possible that they may! and that many things
more are required to reduce their possibility to act; a great grace, an
assiduous ministry, an effective calling, mighty assistances, excellent
counsel, great industry, a watchful diligence, a well-disposed mind, passionate
desires, deep apprehensions of danger, quick perceptions of duty, and time, and
God's good blessing, and effectual impression, and seconding all this, that to
will and do may, by him, be wrought to great purposes and with great speed.
And, therefore, it will not be amiss, but it is
hugely necessary, that these persons who have lost their time and their blessed
opportunities should have the diligence of youth, and the zeal of new converts,
and take account of every hour that is left them, and pray perpetually, and be
advised prudently, and study the interest of their souls carefully, with
diligence, and with fear; and their old age, which, in effect, is nothing but a
continual death-bed, dressed with some more order and advantages, may be a
state of hope, and labour, and acceptance; through the infinite mercies of God,
in Jesus Christ.
But concerning sinners really under the arrest of
death, God hath made no death-bed covenant, the Scriptures hath recorded no
promises, given no instructions; and therefore I had none to give, but only the
same which are to be given to all men that are alive, because they are so, and
because it is uncertain when they shall be otherwise. But then this advice I
also am to insert, that they are the smallest number of Christian men who can
be divided by the characters of a certain holiness or an open villainy; and
between these there are many degrees of latitude, and most are of a middle
sort, concerning which we are tied to make the judgments of charity, and
possibly God may do too. But, however, all they are such to whom the rules of
Holy Dying are useful and applicable, and therefore no separation is to be made
in this world. But where the case is not evident, men are to be permitted to
the unerring judgment of God; where it is evident we can rejoice or mourn for
them that die.
In the church of Rome they reckon otherwise
concerning sick and dying Christians than I have done. For they make
profession, that from death to life, from sin to grace, a man may very
certainly be changed, though the operation begin not before his last hour; and
half this they do upon his death-bed, and the other half when he is in his
grave; and they take away the eternal punishment in an instant, by a
school-distinction, or the hand of the priest; and the temporal punishment
shall stick longer, even then, when the man is no more measured with time,
having nothing to do with any thing of or under the sun; but that they pretend
to take away too, when the man is dead; and, God knows, the poor man for all
this pays them both in hell. The distinction of temporal and eternal is a just
measure of pain when it refers to this life and another; but to dream of a
punishment temporal, when all his time is done, and to think of repentance when
the time of grace is past, are great errors, the one in philosophy and both in
divinity, and are a huge folly in their pretence, and infinite danger if they
are believed being a certain destruction of the necessity of holy living, when
men dare trust them, and live at the rate of such doctrines. The secret of
these is soon discovered; for by such means, though holy life be not necessary,
yet a priest is; as if God did not appoint the priest to minister to holy
living, but to excuse it; so making the holy calling not only to live upon the
sins of the people, but upon their ruin, and the advantages of their function
to spring from their eternal dangers. It is an evil craft to serve a temporal
end upon the death of souls; that is an interest not to be handled but with
nobleness and ingenuity, fear and caution, diligence and prudence, with great
skill and great honesty, with reverence, and trembling, and severity; a soul is
worth all that, and the need we have requires all that; and therefore those
doctrines that go less than all this are not friendly, because they are not
safe.
I know no other difference in the visitation and
treating of sick persons than what depends upon the article of late repentance;
for all churches agree in the same essential propositions, and assist the sick
by the same internal ministries. As for external, I mean unction, used in the
church of Rome, since it is used when the man is above half dead, when he can
exercise no act of understanding, it must needs be nothing; for no rational man
can think that any ceremony can make a spiritual change, without a spiritual
act of him that is to be changed; nor work by way of nature, or by charm, but
morally, and after the manner of reasonable creatures; and therefore I do not
think that ministry at all fit to be reckoned among the advantages of sick
persons. The fathers of the Council of Trent first disputed, and after this
manner at last agreed, that extreme unction was instituted by Christ. But
afterwards, being admonished by one of their theologues, that the apostles
ministered unction to inform people before they were priests, (the priestly
order, according to their doctrine being collated in the institution of the
Last Supper,) for fear that it should be taught that this unction might be
administered by him that was no priest, they blotted out the word instituted,
and put in its stead insinuated, this sacrament, and that it was published by
St. James. So it is in their doctrine; and yet in their anathomatisms, they
curse all them that shall deny it to have been instituted by Christ. I shall
lay no more prejudice against it, or the weak arts of them that maintain it,
but add this only, that there being but two places of Scripture pretended for
this ceremony, some chief men of their own side have proclaimed these two
invalid as to the institution of it; for Suarez says, that the unction used by
the apostles, in St. mark, vi.13, is not the same with what is used in the
church of Rome; and that it cannot be plainly gathered from the Epistle of St.
James, Cajetan affirms, and that it did belong to the miraculous gift of
healing, not to a sacrament. The sick man's exercise of grace formerly
acquired, his perfecting repentance began in the days of health, the prayers
and counsels of the holy man that ministers, the giving the holy sacrament, the
ministry and assistance of angels, and the more mercies of God, the peace of
conscience, and the peace of the church, are all the assistances and
preparatives that can help to dress his lamp. But if a man shall go to buy oil
when the bridegroom comes, if his lamp be not first furnished and then trimmed,
that in this life, this upon his death-bed, his station will be without doors,
his portion with unbelievers; and the unction of the dying man shall no more
strengthen his soul than it cures his body; and the prayers for him after his
death shall be of the same force, as if they should pray that he should return
to life again the next day, and live as long as Lazarus in his return. But I
consider that it is not well that men should pretend any thing will do a man
good when he dies; and yet the same ministries, and ten times more assistances,
are found for forty or fifty years together to be ineffectual. Can extreme
unction at last cure what the holy sacrament of the eucharist, all his
life-time, could not do? Can prayers for a dead man do him more good than when
he was alive? If all his days the man belonged to death and the dominion of
sin, and from thence could not be recovered by sermons, and counsels, and
perpetual precepts, and frequent sacraments, by confessions and absolutions, by
prayers and advocations, by external ministries and internal acts, it is but
too certain that his lamp cannot then be furnished: his extreme unction is only
then of use when it is made by the oil that burned in his lamp in all the days
of his expectation and waiting for the coming of the bridegroom.
Neither can any supply be made in this case by
their practice of praying for the dead; though they pretend for this the
fairest precedents of the church and of the whole world. The heathens, they
say, did it, and the Jews did it, and the Christians did it; some were baptized
for the dead in the days of the apostles, and very many were communicated for
the dead for so many ages after. It is true they were so, and did so; the
heathens prayed for any easy grave, and a perpetual spring, that saffron would
rise from their beds of grass. The Jews prayed that the souls of their dead
might be in the garden of Eden, that they might have their part in Paradise,
and in the world to come; and that they might hear the peace of the fathers of
their generation, sleeping in Hebron. And the Christians prayed for a joyful
resurrection, for mercy at the day of judgment, for hastening of the coming of
Christ, and the kingdom of God; and they named all sorts of persons in their
prayers, all, I mean, but wicked persons, all but them that lived evil lives;
they named apostles, saints and martyrs. And all this is so nothing to their
purpose, or so much against it, that the prayers for the dead used in the
church of Rome are most plainly condemned, because they are against the
doctrine and practices of all the world, in other forms, to other purposes,
relying upon distinct doctrines, until new opinions began to arise, about St.
Augustine's time, and changed the face of the proposition. Concernment from the
Lord; and therefore concerning it we can have no rules nor proportions, but
from those imperfect revelations of the state of departed souls, and the
measures of charity, which can relate only to the imperfection of their present
condition, and the terrors of the day of judgment; but to think that any
suppletory to an evil life can be taken from such devotions, after the sinners
are dead, may encourage a bad man to sin, but cannot relieve him when he
hath.
But, of all things in the world, methinks, men
should be most careful not to abuse dying people; not only because their
condition is pitiable, but because they shall soon be discovered, and, in the
secret regions of souls, there shall be an evil report concerning those men who
have deceive them: and if we believe we shall go to that place where such
reports are made, we may fear the shame and the amazement of being accounted
impostors in the presence of angels, and all the wise holy men of the world. To
be erring and innocent, is hugely pitiable, and incident to mortality; that we
cannot help; but to deceive or to destroy so great an interest as is that of a
soul, or to lessen its advantages, by giving it trifling and false confidences,
is injurious and intolerable. And therefore it were very well if all the
churches of the world would be extremely curious concerning their offices and
ministries of the visitation of the sick: that their ministers they send be
holy and prudent; that their instructions be severe and safe; that their
sentences be merciful and reasonable, that their offices be sufficient and
devout; that their attendances be frequent and long; that their deputations be
special and peculiar; that the doctrines upon which they ground their offices
be true, material and holy; that their ceremonies be few, and their advices
wary; that their separation be full of caution, their judgments not remiss,
their remissions not loose and dissolute; and that all the whole ministration
be made by persons of experience and charity. For it is a sad thing to see our
dead go out of our hands: they live incuriously, and die without regard; and
the last scene of their life, which should be dressed with all spiritual
advantages, is abused by flattery and easy propositions, and let go with
carelessness and folly.
My Lord, I have endeavoured to cure some part of
the evil as well as I could, being willing to relieve the needs of indigent
people in such ways as I can; and, therefore, have described the duties which
every sick man may do alone, with such in which he can be assisted by the
minister; and am the more confident that these my endeavours will be the better
entertained because they are the first entire body of directions for sick and
dying people that I remember to have been published in the church of England.
In the church of Rome there have been many; but they are dressed with such
doctrines, which are sometimes useless, sometimes hurtful, and their whole
design of assistance, which they commonly yield, is at the best imperfect, and
the representment is too careless and loose for so severe an employment. So
that, in this affair, I was almost forced to walk alone; only that I drew the
rules and advices from the fountains of Scripture, and the purest channcla of
the primitive church, and was helped by some experience in the cure of souls. I
shall measure the success of my labours, not by popular noises or the sentences
of curious persons, but by the advantage which good people may receive. My work
here is not to please the speculative part of men, but to minister, to
practice, to preach to the weary, to comfort the sick, to assist the penitent,
to reprove the confident, to strengthen weak hands and feeble knees, having
scarce any other possibilities left me of doing alms, or exercising that
charity by which we shall be judged at doomsday. It is enough for me to be an
under-builder in the house of God, and I glory in the employment; I labour in
the foundations; and therefore the work needs no apology for being plain, so it
be strong and well laid. But, my Lord, as mean as it is, I must give God thanks
for the desires and the strength; and, next to him, to you, for that
opportunity and little portion of leisure which I had to do it in: for I must
acknowledge it publicly (and, besides my prayers, it is all the recompense I
can make you,) my being quiet I owe to your interest, much of my support to
your bounty, and many other collateral comforts I derive from your favour and
nobleness. My Lord, because I much honour you, and because I would do honour to
myself, I have written your name in the entrance of my book: I am sure you will
entertain it because the design related to your dear Lady, and because it may
minister to your spirit in the day of visitation; when God shall call for you
to receive your reward for your charity and your noble piety, by which you have
not only endeared very many persons, but in great degrees have obliged me to
be.
My noblest Lord,
Your Lordship's
most thankful
and
most humble servant,
Jer.
Taylor.
A GENERAL PREPARATION TOWARDS A HOLY AND BLESSED DEATH, BY WAY OF
CONSIDERATION.
A man is a bubble, (said the Greek
proverb,)[1] which Lucian represents
with advantages and its proper circumstances, to this purpose; saying, that all
the world is a storm, and men rise up in their several generations, like
bubbles descending a Jove pluvio, from God and the dew of heaven, from a
tear and drop of rain, from nature and Providence; and some of these instantly
sink into the deluge of their first parent, and are hidden in a sheet of water,
having had no other business in the world, but to be born, that they might be
able to die: others float up and down two or three turns, and suddenly
disappear, and give their place to others: and they that live longest upon the
face of the waters are in perpetual motion, restless and uneasy; and, being
crushed with a great drop of a cloud, sink into flatness and a froth; the
change not being great, it being hardly possible it should be more a nothing
that it was before. So is every man: he is born in vanity and sin; he comes
into the world like morning mushrooms, soon thrusting up their heads into the
air, and conversing with their kindred of the same production, and as soon they
turn into dust and forgetfulness - some of them without any other interest in
the affairs of the world, but that they made their parents a little glad and
very sorrowful: others ride longer in the storm; it may be until seven years of
vanity be expired, and then peradventure the sun shines hot upon their heads,
and they fall into the shades below, into the cover of death and darkness of
the grave to hide them. But if the bubble stands the shock of a bigger drop,
and outlives the chances of a child, of a careless nurse, of drowning in a pail
of water, of being overlaid by a sleepy servant, or such little accidents, then
the young man dances like a bubble, empty and gay, and shines like a dove's
neck, or the image of a rainbow, which hath no substance, and whose very
imagery and colours are fantastical; and so he dances out the gaiety of his
youth, and is all the while in a storm, and endures only because he is not
knocked on the head by a drop of bigger rain, or crushed by the pressure of a
load of indigested meat, or quenched by the disorder of an ill-placed humour:
and to preserve a man alive in the midst of so many chances and hostilities is
as great a miracle as to create him; to preserve him from rushing into nothing,
and at first to draw him up from nothing were equally the issues of an almighty
power. And therefore the wise men of the world have contended who shall best
fit man's condition with words signifying his vanity and short abode. Honour
calls a man "a leaf," the smallest, the weakest piece of a short-lived,
unsteady plant. Pindar calls him "the dream of a shadow:" another "the dream of
the shadow of smoke." But St. James spake by a more excellent spirit, saying,
`Our life is but a vapour,'[2] viz,
drawn from the earth by a celestial influence; made of smoke, or the lighter
parts of water tossed with every wind, moved by the motion of a superior body,
without virtue in itself, lifted up on high, or left below, according as it
pleased the sun, its foster-father. But it is lighter yet. It is but
appearing;[3] a fantastic vapour, an
apparition, nothing real; it is not so much as a mist, not the matter of a
shower, nor substantial enough to make a cloud; but it is like Cassiopeia's
chair, or Pelop's shoulder, or the circles of heaven, fainorena, for which you cannot have a word that can
signify a vernier nothing. And yet the expression is one degree more made
diminutive; a vapour, and fantastical, or a mere appearance, and
this but for a little while neither,[4] the very dream, the phantasm, disappears in a
small time, "like the shadow that departed; or like a tale that is told, or as
a dream when one waketh." A man is so vain, so unfixed, so perishing a
creature, that he cannot long last in the scene of fancy: a man goes off, and
is forgotten, like the dream of a distracted person. The sum of all is this:
that thou art a man, than whom there is not in the world any greater instance
of heights and declinations, of lights and shadows, of misery and folly, of
laughter and tears, of groans and death.
And because this consideration is of great
usefulness and great necessity to many purposes of wisdom and the spirit, all
the succession of time, all the changes in nature, all the varieties of light
and darkness, the thousand thousands of accidents in the world, and every
contingency to every man and to every creature, doth preach our funeral sermon,
and calls us to look and see how the old sexton, Time, throws up the earth,
and digs a grave, where we must lay our sins or our sorrows, and sow our
bodies, till they rise again in a fair or an intolerable eternity. Every
revolution which the sun makes about the world divides between life and death;
and death possesses both those portions by the next morrow; and we are dead to
all those months of which we have already lived, and we shall never live them
over again: and still God makes little periods of our age.[5] First we change our world, when we come from
the womb to feel the warmth of the sun. Then we sleep and enter into the image
of death, in which state we are unconcerned in all the changes of the world:
and if our mothers or our nurses die, or a wild boar destroy our vine-yards, or
our king be sick, we regard it not, but, during that state, are as
disinterested as if our eyes were closed with the clay that weeps in the bowels
of the earth. At the end of seven years our teeth fall and die before us,
representing a formal prologue to the tragedy; and still, every seven years it
is odds but we shall finish the last scene: and when nature, or chance, or
vice, takes our body in pieces, weakening some parts and loosing others, we
taste the grave and the solemnities of our own funerals, first, in those parts
that ministered to vice; and next, in them that served for ornament; and, in a
short time, even they that served for necessity become useless and entangled
like the wheels of a broken clock. Baldness is but a dressing to our
funerals,[6] the proper ornament of
mourning, and of a person entered very far into the regions and possession of
death; and we have many more of the same signification - gray hairs, rotten
teeth, dim eyes, trembling joints, short breath, stiff limbs, wrinkled skin,
short memory, decayed appetite. Every day's necessity calls for a reparation of
that portion which death fed on all night, when we lay in his lap, and slept in
his outer chambers. The very spirits of a man prey upon the daily portion
portion of bread and flesh, and every meal is a rescue from one death, and lays
up for another; and while we think a thought, we die; and the clock strikes,
and reckons on our portion of eternity: we form our words with the breath of
our nostrils - we have the less to live upon for every word we speak.
Thus nature calls us to meditate of
death by those things which are the instruments of acting it; and God, by all
the variety of his providence, makes us see death everywhere, in all variety of
circumstances, and dressed up for all the fancies, and the expectation of every
single person. Nature hath given us one harvest every year, but death hath two;
and the spring and the autumn send throngs of men and women to charnel-houses;
and the summer long men are recovering from their evils of the spring, till the
dog-days come, and the Sirian star makes the summer deadly; and the fruits of
autumn are laid up for all the year's provision, and the man that gathers them
eats and surfeits, and dies and needs them not, and himself is laid up for
eternity; and he that escapes till winter only stays for another opportunity,
which the distempers of that quarter minister to him with great variety. Thus
death reigns in all the portions of our time. The autumn with its fruit
provides disorders for us, and the winter's cold turns them into sharp
diseases, and the spring brings flowers to strew our hearse, and the summer
gives green turf and brambles to bind upon our graves. Calentures and surfeit,
cold and agues, are the four quarters of the year, and all minister to death;
and you can no whither, but you tread upon a dead man's bones.
The wild fellow, in Petronius, that escaped upon
a broken table from the furies of a shipwreck, as he was sunning himself upon
the rocky shore, espied a man, rolled upon his floating bed of waves, ballasted
with sand in the folds of his garment, and carried by his civil enemy, the sea,
towards the shore to find a grave: and it cast him into some sad thoughts;[7] that peradventure this man's wife, in some
part of the continent, safe and warm, looks next month for the good man's
return; or it many be, his son knows nothing of the tempest; or his father
things of that affectionate kiss, which still is warm upon the good man's
cheek, ever since he took a kind of farewell; and he weeps with joy to think
how blessed he shall be when his beloved boy returns into the circle of his
father's arms. These are the thoughts of mortals, this is the end and sum of
all their designs: a dark night and an ill guide, a boisterous sea and a broken
cable, a hard rock and a rough wind, dashed in pieces the fortune of a whole
family; and they that shall weep loudest for the accident are not yet entered
into the storm, and yet have suffered shipwreck. Then looking upon the carcass,
he knew it, and found it to be the master of the ship, who, the day before,
cast up the accounts of his patrimony and his trade, and named the day when he
thought to be at home: see how the man swims who was so angry two days since;
his passions are becalmed with the storm, his accounts cast up, his cares at an
end, his voyage done, and his gains are the strange events of death, which,
whether they be good or evil, the men that are alive seldom trouble themselves
concerning the interest of the dead.
But seas alone do not break our vessel in pieces:
everywhere we may be shipwrecked. A valiant general, when he is to reap the
harvest of his crowns and triumphs, fights unprosperously, or falls into a
fever with joy and wine, and changes his laurel into cypress, his triumphal
chariot to a hearse; dying the night before he was appointed to perish in the
drunkenness of his festival joys. It was a sad arrest of the loosenesses and
wilder feasts of the French court, when their king (Henry II.) was killed
really by the sportive image of a fight. And many brides have died under the
hands of paranymphs and maidens, dressing them for uneasy joy, the new and
undiscerned chains of marriage, according to the saying of Bensirah, the wise
Jew, "The bride went into her chamber, and knew not what should befall her
there." Some have been paying their vows, and giving thanks for a prosperous
return to their own house, and the roof hath descended upon their heads, and
turned their loud religion into the deeper silence of a grave. And how many
teeming mothers have rejoiced over their swelling wombs, and pleased themselves
in becoming the channels of blessing to a family; and the midwife hath quickly
bound their heads and feet, and carried them forth to burial! Or else the
birth-day of an heir hath seen the coffin of the father brought into the house,
and the divided mother hath been forced to travail twice, with a painful birth
and a sudden death.[8]
There is no state, no accident, no circumstance
of our life, but it hath soured by some sad instance of a dying friend; a
friendly meeting often ends in some mischance, and makes an eternal parting;
and when the poet Eschylus was sitting under the walls of his house, an eagle
hovering over his bald head mistook it for a stone, and let fall his oyster,
hoping there to break the shell, but pierced the poor man's skull.
Death meets us everywhere, and is procured by
every instrument, and in all chances and enters in at many doors; by violence
and secret influence; by the aspect of a star and the stink of a mist; by the
emissions of a cloud and the meeting of a vapour; by the fall of a chariot and
the stumbling at a stone; by a full meal or an empty stomach; by watching at
the wine or by watching at prayers; by the sun or the moon; by a heat or a
cold; by sleepless nights or sleeping days; by water frozen into the hardness
and sharpness of a dagger,[9] or water thawed
into the floods of a river; by a hair or a raisin; by violent motion or sitting
still; by severity or dissolution; by God's mercy or God's anger; by everything
in providence and everything in manners; by everything in nature and everything
in chance.[10] Eripitur persona, manetres;
we take pains to heap up things useful to our life, and get our death in
the purchase; and the person is snatched away, and the goods remain. And all
this is the law and constitution of nature; it is a punishment to our sins, the
unalterable event of Providence, and the decree of Heaven. The chains that
confine us to this condition are strong as destiny, and immutable as the
eternal laws of God.
I have conversed with some men who rejoiced in
the death or calamity of others, and accounted it as a judgment upon them for
being on the other side, and against them in the contention; but within the
revolution of a few months the same man met with a more uneasy and unhandsome
death; which when I saw, I wept, and was afraid; for I knew that it must be so
with all men; for we also shall die,[11] and
end our quarrels and contentions by passing to a final sentence.
It will be very material to our best and
noblest purposes, if we represent this scene of change and sorrow a little more
dressed up in circumstances; for so we shall be more apt to practice those
rules, the doctrine of which is consequent to this consideration. It is a
mighty change that is made by the death of every person, and it is visible to
us who are alive. Reckon but from the sprightfulness of youth, and the fair
cheeks and full eyes of childhood, from the vigorousness and strong flexure of
the joints of five-and-twenty, to the hollowness and dead paleness, to the
loathsomeness and horror, of a three days' burial, and we shall perceive the
distance to be very great and very strange. But so have I seen a rose newly
springing from the clefts of its hood, and, at first, it was fair as the
morning, and full with the dew of heaven, as a lamb's fleece; but when a ruder
breath had forced open its virgin modesty, and dismantled its too youthful and
unripe retirements, it began to put on darkness, and to decline to softness and
the symptoms of a sickly age; it bowed the head, and broke its stalk; and at
night, having lost some of its leaves and all its beauty, it fell into the
portion of weeds and outworn faces. The same is the portion of every man and
every woman; the heritage of worms and serpents, rottenness and cold dishonour,
and our beauty so changed that our acquaintance quickly knew us not; and that
change mingled with so much horror, or else meets so with our fears and weak
discoursings, that they who, six hours ago, tended upon us, either with
charitable or ambitious services, cannot, without some regret, stay in the room
alone where the body lies stripped of its life and honour. I have read of a
fair young German gentleman, who, living, often refused to be pictured, but put
off the importunity of his friends' desire by giving way, that, after a few
days' burial, they might send a painter to his vault, and, if they saw cause
for it, draw the image of his death unto the life. They did so, and found his
face half eaten, and his midriff and backbone full of serpents; and so he
stands pictured among his armed ancestors. So does the fairest beauty
change,[12] and it will be as bad
with you and me; and then what servants shall we have to wait upon us in the
grave? what friends to visit us? what officious people to cleanse away the
moist and unwholesome cloud reflected upon our faces from the sides of the
weeping vaults, which are the longest weepers for our funeral?
This discourse will be useful, if we
consider and practise the following rules and considerations respectively:
1. All the rich and all the covetous men in the
world will perceive, and all the world will perceive for them, that it is but
an ill recompense for all their cares, that, by this time all that shall be
left will be this,[13] that the neighbours
shall say, "He died a rich man;" and yet his wealth will not profit him in the
grave, but hugely swell the sad accounts of doomsday. And he that kills the
Lord's people with unjust or ambitious wars, for an unrewarding interest, shall
have this character;[14] that he threw away
all the days of his life, that one year might be reckoned with his name, and
computed by his reign or consulship: and many men, by great labours and
affronts, many indignities and crimes, labour only for a pompous epitaph, and a
loud title upon their marble; whilst those into whose possessions their heirs
or kindred are entered are forgotten, and lie unregarded as their ashes, and
without concernment or relation, as the turf upon the face of their grave.[15] A man may read a sermon, the best and most
passionate that ever man preached, if he shall but enter into the sepulchres of
kings. In the same Escurial where the Spanish princes live in greatness and
power, and decree war or peace, they have wisely placed a cemetery, where their
ashes and their glory shall sleep till time shall be no more; and where our
kings have been crowned their ancestors lie interred, and they must walk over
their grandsire's head to take his crown. There is an acre sown with royal
seed, the copy of the greatest change, from rich to naked, from ceiled roofs to
arched coffins, from living like gods to die like men. There is enough to cool
the flames of lust, to abate the heights of pride, to appease the itch of
covetous desires, to sully and dash out the dissembling colours of a lustful,
artificial, and imaginary beauty. There the warlike and the peaceful, the
fortunate and the miserable, the beloved and the despised princes mingle their
dust, and pay down their symbol of mortality, and tell all the world that when
we die our ashes shall be equal to kings', and our accounts easier, and our
pains for our crowns shall be less. To my apprehension, it is a sad record
which is left by Atheneus concerning Ninus, the great Assyrian monarch, whose
life and death are summed up in these words: "Ninus, the Assyrian, had an ocean
of gold, and other riches, more than the sand in the Caspian Sea; he never say
the stars, and perhaps he never desired it; he never stirred up the holy fire
among the Magi, nor touched his god with the sacred rod according to the laws;
he never offered sacrifice, nor worshipped the deity, nor administered justice,
nor spake to his people, nor numbered them; but he was most valiant to eat and
drink, and having mingled his wines, he threw the rest upon the stores. This
man is dead; behold his sepulchre; and now hear where Ninus is. Some time I was
Ninus, and drew the breath of a living man; but now am nothing but clay. I have
nothing but what I did eat, and what I served to myself in lust; that was and
is all my portion. The wealth with which I was esteemed blessed, my enemies
meeting together shall bear away, as the mad Thyades carry a new goat. I am
gone to hell; and when I went thither I neither carried gold, nor horse, nor
silver chariot. I that wore a mitre am now a little heap of dust." I know not
anything that can better represent the evil condition of a wicked man, or a
changing greatness.[16] From the greatest
secular dignity to dust and ashes his nature bears him; and from thence to hell
his sins carry him, and there he shall be for ever under the dominion of chains
and devils, wrath and an intolerable calamity. This is the reward of an
unsanctified condition, and a greatness ill-gotten or ill-administered.
2. Let no man extend his thoughts, or let his
hopes wander towards future and far-distant events and accidental
contingencies. This day is mine and yours, but ye know not what shall be on the
morrow and every morning creeps out of a dark cloud, leaving behind it an
ignorance and silence deep as midnight, and undiscerned as are the phantasms
that make a chrisom-child to smile; so that we cannot discern what comes
hereafter,[17] unless we had a light from
heaven brighter than the vision of an angel, even the spirit of prophecy.
Without revelation we cannot tell whether we shall eat to-morrow, or whether a
squinancy shall choke us: and it is written in the unrevealed folds of Divine
predestination, that many who are this day alive shall to-morrow be laid upon
the cold earth, and the women shall weep over their shroud, and dress them for
their funeral. St. James, in his Epistle, notes the folly of some men, his
contemporaries, who were so impatient of the event of to-morrow, or the
accidents of next year, or the good or evils of old age, that they would
consult astrologers and witches, oracles and devils, what should befall them
the next calends-what should be the event of such a voyage-what God had written
in his book concerning the success of battles, the election of emperors, the
heirs of families, the price of merchandise, the return of the Tyrian fleet,
the rate of Sidonian carpets: and as they were taught by the crafty and lying
demons, so they would expect the issue; and oftentimes, by disposing their
affairs in order towards such events, really did produce some little accidents
according to their expectation; and that made them trust the oracles in greater
things, and in all. Against this he opposes his counsel, that we should not
search after forbidden records,[18] much less
by uncertain significations: for whatsoever is disposed to happen by the order
of natural causes or civil counsels, may be rescinded by a perculiar decree of
Providence, or be prevented by the death of the interested persons; who, while
their hopes are full, and their causes conjoined, and the work brought forward,
and the sickle put into the harvest, and the first-fruits offered and ready to
be eaten, even then, if they put forth their hand to an event that stands but
at the door, at that door their body may be carried forth to burial before the
expectation shall enter into fruition. When Richilda, the widow of Albert earl
of Ebersberg, had feasted the emperor Henry III. and petitioned, in behalf of
her nephew Welpho, for some lands formerly possessed by the earl her husband,
just as the emperor held out his hand to signify his consent, the chamber-floor
suddenly fell under them, and Richilda, falling upon the edge of a
bathing-vessel, was bruised to death, and staid not to see her nephew sleep in
those lands which the emperor was reaching forth to her, and placed at the door
of restitution.
3. As our hopes must be confined, so must our
designs;[19] let us not project long designs,
crafty plots, and diggings so deep that the intrigues of a design shall never
be unfolded till our grandchildren have forgotten our virtues or our vices. The
work of our soul is cut short, facile, sweet, and plain, and fitted to the
small portions of our shorter life; and as we must not trouble our iniquity, so
neither must we intricate our labour and purposes with what we shall never
enjoy. This rule does not forbid us to plant orchards, which shall feed our
nephews with their fruit; for by such provisions they do something towards an
imaginary immortality, and do charity to their relatives: but such projects are
reproved which discompose our present duty by long and future designs;[20] such which, by casting our labours to
events at distance, make us less to remember our death standing at the door. It
is fit for a man to work for his day's wages, or to contrive for the hire of a
week, or to lay a train to make provisions for such a time as it is within our
eye, and in our duty, and within the usual periods of man's life; for
whatsoever is made necessary is also made prudent; but while we plot and busy
ourselves in the toils of an ambitious war, or the levies of a great estate,
night enters in upon us, and tells all the world how like fools we lived, and
how deceived and miserably we died. Seneca tells of Senecio Cornelius, a man
crafty in getting, and tenacious in holding, a great estate, and one who was as
diligent in the care of his body as of his money, curious of his health as of
his possessions, that he all day long attended upon his sick and dying friend;
but when he went away, was quickly comforted, supped merrily, went to bed
cheerfully, and on a sudden being surprised by a squinancy, scarce drew his
breath until the morning, but by that time died, being snatched from the
torrent of his fortune, and the swelling tide of wealth, and a likely hope
bigger than the necessities of ten men. This accident was much noted then in
Rome, because it happened in so great a fortune, and in the midst of wealthy
designs; and presently it made wise men to consider how imprudent a person he
is who disposes of ten years to come, when he is not lord of tomorrow.
4. Though we must not look so far off, and pry
abroad, yet we must be busy near at hand; we must, with all arts of the spirit,
seize upon the present,[21] because it passes
from us while we 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 channels 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 day's pleasure.[22] "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 besmear your curled
locks with nard; for God bids you to remember death:" so the epigrammatist
speaks the sense of their drunken principles.[23] Something towards this signification is that of Solomon,
"There is nothing better for a man than 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?[24] 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 permitted pleasures, I had
reason to say[25] that Christianity taught us
to turn this into religion. For he that by a present and 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 hieroglyphies which we have from Gabriel Simeon: "Our life is very
short; beauty is a cozenage; money is false and fugitive; empire is adious, and
hated by them that have it not, and uneasy to them that have; victory is always
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 sorrowed by
the sins of our life: but nothing continues but the effects of that wisdom
which employs 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
day's abode, and our age is like that of a fly and contemporary with a gourd,
we must look somewhere else for an abiding city, a place in another country to
fix our house in, whose walls and foundation is God, where we must find rest,
or else be restless for ever. For whatsoever ease we can have or fancy here, is
shortly to be changed into sadness or tediousness;[26] it goes away too soon, like the periods of our life, or
stays too long, like the sorrows of a sinner; its own weariness, or a contrary
disturbance, is its load; or it is eased by its revolution into vanity and
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 the state,
angels are the company, the Lamb is the light, and God is the portion and
inheritance.
In the accounts of a man's life, we do
not reckon that portion of days 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 reckoning to stay so long, says also, that then it begins too soon.
For then we are beholden 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 child: and when he 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 commonwealth,
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 man.
2. Neither must we thing 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, steady use of reason, according to his
proportion; and when that is, all the world of men cannot tell precisely. Some
men 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 darkness, and gives
light to a cock, and calls up the lark to matins, 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 brows of Moses when he was forced to wear a
veil because himself had seen the face of God; and still, while a man tells the
story, the sun gets up higher, till he shows 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 man's 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 hies 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, only
to play withal; but before a man comes to be wise, he is half dead with gouts
and consumptions, with catarrhs and aches, with sore eyes and a wornout 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 toward 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
strength 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 past his tutors,
and arrived at the bondage of a caitiff spirit; he is run from discipline, and
is let loose to passion; the man by this time hath wit enough to choose his
vice, to act his lust, to court his mistress, 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 vicious
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
boys and vicious youth, doing actions from principles of great folly, and a
mighty ignorance, admiring things useless and hurtful, and filling up all the
dimensions of their abode with businesses of empty affairs, being at leisure to
attend no virtue; they cannot pray because they are busy, 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 sailors loosing from a port, and tossed immediately 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 business and impertinent affairs of most men steal all
their time, and they are restless in a foolish motion: but this is not the
progress of a man; he is no further advanced in the course of a life, though he
reckon many years;[27] for still his soul is
childish and trifling like an untaught boy.
If the parts of this sad complaint find 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 do not set back your
life in the accounts of God by the intermingling of criminal actions, or the
contracting of vicious 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 Satan 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 a hospital, and converse with none but
surgeons and physicians, mourners and divines, those paltinctores, the
dressers of bodies and souls to funeral; but it is worse when the soul, the
principle of life, is employed wholly in the offices of death, and that man was
worse than 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, As ego
jam sedeo? Do I now sit? The beast was so drowned in sensuality and the
death of his soul, that, whether he did sit or no, he was to believe another.
Idleness and every vice are as much of death as a long disease is, or the
expense of ten years; and `she that lives in pleasures if dead while she
liveth' (saith the apostle;) and it is the style of the Spirit concerning
wicked persons, `they are dead in trespasses and sins.' For as every sensual
pleasure and every day of idleness 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 soul's health; and
therefore, he that would live a full age must avoid a sin as he would decline
the regions of death and the dishonours of the grave.
2. If we would have our life lengthened,[28] let us begin betimes 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
find 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 covetousness and irreligion, not
beginning to live till we are to die, designing that time to virtue which
indeed is infirm to everything and profitable 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 craftiness and interest
possess old age; velut ex pleno et abundanti perdimus, we spend as if
we had too much time, and knew not what to do with it: we fear everything, like
weak and silly mortals, and desire strangely and greedily, as if we were
immortal; we complain our life is short, and yet we throw away much of it, and
are weary of many of its parts: we complain that day is long, and the night is
long, and we want company, and seek out arts to drive the time away, and then
weep because it is gone too soon. But so the treasure of the capitol is but a
small estate when Caesar comes to finger it, and to pay with it all his
legions; and the revenue of all Egypt and the eastern provinces was but a
little sum when they were to support the luxury of Mark Antony, and feed the
riot of Cleopatra; but a thousand crowns is a vast proportion to be spent in
the cottage of a frugal person, or to feed a hermit. Just so is our life: it is
too short to serve the ambition of a haughty prince, or an usurping rebel; too
little time to purchase great wealth, to satisfy the pride of a vain-glorious
fool, to trample upon all the enemies of our just or unjust interest; but for
the obtaining virtue, for the purchase of sobriety and modesty, for the actions
of religion, God gave us time sufficient, if we make the `outgoings of the
morning and evening,' that is, our infancy and old age, to be taken into the
computations of a man. Which we may see in the following particulars:
1. If our childhood, being first consecrated, by
a forward baptism, be seconded by a holy education and a complying obedience;
if our youth be chaste and temperate, modest and industrious, proceeding
through a prudent and sober manhood to a religious old age, then we have lived
our whole duration,[29] and shall never die,
but be changed, in a just time, to the preparations of a better and an immortal
life.
2. If, besides the ordinary returns of our prayer
and periodical and festival solemnities, and on seldom communions, we would
allow to religion and the studies of wisdom those great shares that are trifled
away upon vain sorrow, foolish mirth, lust, and impertinent amours, and balls
and reveling and banquets, all that which was spent viciously, and all that
time that lay fallow and without employment, our life would quickly amount to a
great sum. Tostatus Abulensis was a very painful person, and a great clerk, and
in the days of his manhood he wrote so many books, and they not ill ones, that
the world computed a sheet for every day of his life; I suppose they meant
after he came to the use of reason and the state of a man: and John Scotus died
about the two-and-thirtieth year of his age; and yet, besides his public
disputations, his daily lectures of divinity in public and private, the books
that he wrote, being lately collected and printed at Lyons, do equal the number
of volumes of any two the most voluminous fathers of the Latin church. Every
man is not enabled to such employments, but every man is called and enabled to
the works of a sober and a religious life; and there are many saints of God
that can reckon as many volumes of religion and mountains of piety as those
others did of good books. St. Ambrose (and I think, from his example, St.
Augustine) divided every day into three tertias of employment: eight hours he
spent in charity and doing assistance to others, dispatching their business,
reconciling their enmities, reproving their vices, correcting their errors,
instructing their ignorances, transacting the affairs of his diocese; and the
other eight hours he spent in study and prayer. If we were thus minute and
curious in the spending of our time, it is impossible but our life would seem
very long. For so have I seen an amorous person tell the minutes of his absence
from his fancied joy, and while he told the sands of his hour-glass, or the
throbs and little beatings of his watch, by dividing an hour into so many
members, he spun out its length by number, and so translated a day into the
tediousness of a month. And if we tell our days by canonical hours of prayer,
our weeks by a constant revolution of fasting-days or days of special devotion,
and over all these draw a black cypress, a veil of penitential sorrow and
severe mortification, we shall soon answer the calumny and objection of a short
life. He that governs the day and divides the hours hastens from the eyes and
observation of a merry sinner; but loves to stand still, and behold, and tell
the sighs, and number the groans and sadly-delicious accents of a grieved
penitent. It is a vast work that any man may do if he never be idle: and it is
a huge way that a man may go in virtue if he never goes out of his way by a
vicious habit or a great crime: and he that perpetually reads good books, if
his parts be answerable, will have a huge stock of knowledge. It is so in all
things else. Strive not to forget your time, and suffer none of it to pass
undiscerned; and then measure your life, and tell me how you find the measure
of its abode. However, the time we live is worth the money we pay for it; and
therefore it is not to be thrown away.
3. When vicious men are dying, and scared with
the affrighting truths of an evil conscience, they would give all the world for
a year, for a month: nay, we read of some that called out with amazement,
inducias usque ad mane - truce but till the morning: and if that year or
some few months were given, those men think they could do miracles in it. And
let us awhile suppose what Dives would have done if he had been loosed from the
pains of hell, and permitted to live on earth one year. Would all the pleasures
of the world have kept him one hour from the temple? would he not perpetually
have been under the hands of priests, or at the feet of the doctors, or by
Moses' chair, or attending as near the altar as he could get, or reviving poor
Lazarus, or praying to God, and crucifying all sin? I have read of a melancholy
person, who saw hell but in a dream or a vision, and the amazement was such,
that he would have chosen ten times to die rather than feel again so much of
that horror: and such a person cannot be fancied but that he would spend a year
in such holiness that the religion of a few months would equal the devotion of
many years, even of a good man. Let us but compute the proportions. If we
should spend all our years of reason so as such a person would spend that one,
can it be thought that life would be short and trifling in which he had
performed such a religion, served God with so much holiness, mortified sin with
so great a labour, purchased virtue at such a rate and so rare an industry? It
must needs be that such a man must die when he ought to die, and be like ripe
and pleasant fruit falling from a fair tree, and gathered into baskets for the
planter's use. He that hath done all his business, and is begotten to a
glorious hope by the seed of an immortal spirit, can never die too soon, nor
live too long!
Xerxes wept sadly when he say his army of
1,300,000 men, because he considered that within a hundred years all the youth
of that army should be dust and ashes; and yet, as Seneca well observes of him,
he was the man that should bring them to their graves; and he consumed all that
army in two years for whom he feared and wept the death after a hundred. Just
so we do all. We complain that within thirty or forty years, a little more, or
a great deal less, we shall descend again into the bowels of our mother, and
that our life is too short for any great employment; and yet we throw away
five-and thirty years of our forty, and the remaining five we divide between
art and nature, civility and customs, necessity and convenience, prudent
counsels and religion; but the portion of the last is little and contemptible,
and yet that little is all that we can prudently account of our lives. We bring
that fate and that death near us of whose approach we are so sadly
apprehensive.
4. In taking the accounts of your life, do not
reckon by great distances, and by the periods of pleasure, or the satisfaction
of your hopes, or the sating your desires; but let every intermedial day and
hour pass with observation. He that reckons he hath lived but so many harvests,
thinks they come not often enough, and that they go away too soon;[30] some lose the day with longing for the
night, and the night in waiting for the day. Hope and fantastic expectations
spend much of our lives; and while with passion we look for a coronation, or
the death of an enemy, or a day of joy, passing from fancy to possession
without any intermedial notices, we throw away a precious year, and use it but
as the burden of our time, fit to be pared off and thrown away, that we may
come at those little pleasures which first steal our hearts, and then steal our
life.
5. A strict course of piety is the way to prolong
our lives in the natural sense, and to add good portions to the number of our
years; and sin is sometimes by natural casualty, very often by the anger of God
and the Divine judgment, a cause of sudden and untimely death. Concerning which
I shall add nothing (to what I have somewhere else said of this article,[31] ) but only the observation of Epiphanius;
that for three thousand three hundred and thirty-two years, even to the
twentieth age, there was not one example of a son that died before his father;
but the course of nature was kept, that he who was first born in the descending
line did first die, (I speak of natural death, and therefore Abel cannot be
opposed to this observation,) till that Terah, the father of Abraham, taught
the people a new religion, to make images of clay and worship them; and
concerning him it was first remarked, that `Haran died before his father Terah
in the land of his nativity:' God, by an unheard of judgment and a rare
accident punishing his newly-invented crime by the untimely death of his
son.
6. But if I shall describe a living man, a man
that hath that life that distinguishes him from a fool or a bird, that which
gives him a capacity next to angels, we shall find that even a good man lives
not long, because it is long before he is born to this life, and longer yet
before he hath a man's growth. "He that can look upon death, and see its face
with the same countenance with which he hears its story;[32] that can endure all the labours of his life with his soul
supporting his body; that can equally despise riches when he hath them and when
he hath them not; that is not sadder if they lie in his neighbour's trunks, nor
more brag if they shine round about his own walls: he that is neither moved
with good fortune coming to him nor going from him; that can look upon another
man's lands evenly and pleasedly, as if they were his own, and yet look upon
his own, and use them too, just as if they were another man's; that neither
spends his goods prodigally and life a fool, nor yet keeps them avariciously
and like a wretch; that weighs not benefits by weight and number, but by the
mind and circumstances of him that gives them; that never thinks his charity
expensive if a worthy person be the receiver; he that does nothing for opinion
sake, but everything for conscience, being as curious of his thoughts as of his
actings in markets and theatres, and is as much in awe of himself as a whole
assembly: he that knows God looks on, and contrives his secret affairs as in
the presence of God and his holy angels; that eats and drinks because he needs
it, not that he may serve a lust or load his belly; he that is bountiful and
cheerful to his friends, and charitable and apt to forgive his enemies; that
loves his country, and obeys his prince, and desires and endeavours nothing
more than that he may do honour to God:" this person may reckon his life to be
the life of a man, and compute his months, not by the course of the sun, but
the zodiac and circle of his virtues; because these are such things which fools
and children, and birds and beasts, cannot have; these are therefore the
actions of life, because they are the seeds of immortality. That day in which
we have done some excellent thing we may as truly reckon to be added to our
life as were the fifteen years to the days of Hezekiah.
As our life is very short, so it is very
miserable; and therefore it is well it is short. God, in pity to mankind, lest
his burden should be insupportable, and his nature an intolerable load, hath
reduced our state of misery to an abbreviator; and the greater our misery is,
the less while it is like to last: the sorrows of a man's spirit being like
ponderous weights, which by the greatness of their burden make a swifter
motion, and descend into the grave to rest and ease our wearied limbs; for then
only we shall sleep quietly, when those fetters are knocked off, which not only
bound our souls in prison, but also ate the flesh, till the very bones opened
the secret garments of their cartilages, discovering their nakedness and
sorrow.
1. Here is no place to sit down in, but
you must rise as soon as you are set, for we have gnats in our chambers, and
worms in our gardens,[33] 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 beggars, of persecuted and
oppressed people, fill all corners of the earth and groans, and heaven itself
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 countries are remarked with fatal evils or periodical sicknesses. Grand
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 a continual fear of being buried in huge heaps of sand, and
therefore dwell in tents and ambulatory houses, or retire to unfruitful
mountains, to prolong an uneasy and wilder life. And all the countries round
about the Adriatic Sea feel such violent convulsions by tempests and
intolerable earthquakes, that sometimes whole cities find a tomb, and every man
sinks 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 agner? 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 the great evil which
for the sins of men God hath suffered to posses the greatest part of mankind?
Most of the men that are now alive, or that have been living for many ages, are
Jews, heathens, or Turks; and God was pleased to suffer a base epileptic
person, a villain and a vicious, to set up a religion which hath filled all the
nearer parts of Asia, and much of Africa, and some part of Europe; so that the
greatest number of men and women born in so many kingdoms and provinces are
infallibly made Mahometan, 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 mankind, 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 find that all the women in the world are
either born for barrenness or the pains of childbirth, 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 ache,
roses prick our fingers, and in our very blood, where our life dwells, is the
scene under which nature acts many sharp fevers 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 man's 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 day's meal with the price of the last night's sin.
3. Or if you please in charity to visit a
hospital, which is indeed a map of the whole world, there you shall see the
effects of Adam's sin, and the ruins of human nature; bodies laid up in heaps,
like the bones of a destroyed town, homines precartt spiritus et male
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 dress 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
unmercifulness a guilt by which ourselves become liable to the same calamities.
Those many that need pity, and those infinities of people that refuse to pity,
are miserable upon a several charge, but yet they almost make up all
mankind.
4. All wicked men are in love with that which
entangles them in huge varieties 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,[34] 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 sharpness of their light, will, with their appendant sorrows, wring a
tear from the most resolved eye; for not only the winter is full of storms and
cold and darkness, 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 choked with dust; and the rich autumn is full of sickness;
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 posses. For look upon kings and
conquerors: I will not tell that many of them fall into the condition of
servants,[35] and their subjects rule over
them, and stand upon the ruins of their families, and that to such persons the
sorrow is bigger than usually happens in smaller fortunes; but let us suppose
them still conquerors, and see what a goodly purchase they get by all their
bounds of the river Rhine: I speak in the style of the Roman greatness; for
now-adays the biggest fortune swells not beyond the limits of a petty province
or two, and a hill confines the progress of their prosperity, or a river checks
it: but whatsoever tempts the pride and vanity of ambitious persons is not so
big as the smallest star which we see scattered in disorder and unregarded upon
the pavement and floor of heaven. And if we would suppose the pismires had but
our understandings, they also would have the method of a man's greatness, and
divide their little mole-hills into provinces and exharchates; and if they also
grew as vicious and as miserable, one of their princes would lead an army out,
and kill his neighbour ants, that he might reign over the next handful of a
turf. But then, if we consider at what price and with what felicity all this is
purchased, the sting of the painted snake will quickly appear, and the fairest
of their fortunes will properly enter into this account of human
infelicities.
We may guess at it by the constitution of
Augustus's fortune, who struggled for his power, first, with the Roman
citizens, then with Brutus and Cassius, and all the fortune of the republic;
then with his colleague, Mary Antony; then with his kindred and nearest
relatives; and, after he was wearied with slaughter of the Romans, before he
could sit down and rest in his imperial chair, he was forced to carry armies
into Macedonia, Galatia, beyond Euphrates, Rhine, and Danubius; and when he
dwelt at home in greatness, and within the circles of a mighty power, he hardly
escaped the sword of the Egnatii, of Lepidus, Caepio, and Muraena: and after he
had entirely reduced the felicity and grandeur into his own family, his
daughter, his only child, conspired with many of the young nobility, and, being
joined with adulterous complications, as with an impious sacrament,[36] they affrighted and destroyed the fortune
of the old man, and wrought him more sorrow than all the troubles that were
hatched in the baths and beds of Egypt between Antony and Cleopatra.[37] This was the greatest fortune that the
world had then or ever since, and therefore we cannot expect it to be better in
a less prosperity.
6. The prosperity of this world is so infinitely
soured with the overflowing of evils, that he is counted the most happy that
hath the fewest; all conditions being evil and miserable, they are only
distinguished by the number of calamities. The collector of the Roman and
foreign examples, when he had reckoned two-and-twenty instances of great
fortunes, every one of which had been allayed with great variety of evils; in
all his reading or experience, he could tell but of two who had been famed for
an entire prosperity. Quintus Metellus, and Gyges the king Lydia: and yet
concerning the one of them he tells, that his felicity was so considerable (and
yet it was the bigger of the two) that the oracle said that Aglaus the
Sophidius, the poor Arcadian shepherd, was more happy than he-that is, he had
fewer troubles; for so indeed we are to reckon the pleasures of this life; the
limit of our joy is the absence of some degree of sorrow, and he that hath the
least of this is the most prosperous person. But then we must look for
prosperity, not in palaces or courts of princes, not in the tents of
conquerors, or in the gaieties of fortunate and prevailing sinners; but rather
in the cottages of honest, innocent, and contented persons, whose mind is no
bigger than their fortune, nor their virtue less than their security. As for
others, whose fortune looks bigger, and allures fools to follow it, like the
wandering fires of the night, till they run into rivers, or are broken upon
rocks with staring and running after them, they are all in the condition of
Marius, than whose condition nothing was more constant, and nothing more
mutable: if we reckon them amongst the miserable, they are the most
miserable.[38] For just as is a man's
condition, great or little, so is the state of his misery: all have their
share; but kings and princes, great generals and consuls, rich men and mighty,
as they have the biggest business and the biggest charge, and are answerable to
God for the greatest accounts, so they have the biggest trouble, that the
uneasiness of their appendage may divide the good and evil of the world, making
the poor man's fortune as eligible as the greatest; and also restraining the
vanity of man's spirit, which a great fortune is apt to swell from a vapour to
a bubble; but God in mercy hath mingles wormwood with their wine, and so
restrained the drunkenness and follies of prosperity.
7. Man never hath one day to himself of entire
peace from the things of the world, but either something troubles him, or
nothing satisfies him, or his very fulness swells him and makes him breathe
short upon his bed. Men's joys are troublesome; and besides that the fear of
losing them takes away the present pleasure, (and a man hath need of another
felicity to preserve this,) they are also wavering and full of trepidation, not
only from their inconstant nature, but from their weak foundation: they arise
from vanity, and they dwell upon ice, and they converse with the wind, and they
have the wings of a bird, and are serious but as the resolutions of a child,
commenced by chance, and managed by folly, and proceeded by inadvertency, and
end in vanity and forgetfulness. So that, as Livius Drusus said of himself, he
never had any play-days or days of quiet when he was a boy;[39] for he was troublesome and busy, a restless and unquiet
man - the same may every man observe to be true of himself; he is always
restless and uneasy, he dwells upon the waters, and leans upon thorns, and lays
his head upon a sharp stone.
1. The effect of this consideration is
this, that the sadnesses of this life help to sweeten the bitter cup of death.
For let our life be never so long, if our strength were great as that of oxen
and camels, if our sinews were strong as the cordage at the foot of an oak, if
we were as fighting and prosperous people as Siccius Dentatus, who was on the
prevailing side in a hundred and twenty battles, who had three hundred and
twelve public rewards assigned him by his generals and princes for his valour
and conduct in sieges and sharp in nine triumphs; yet still the period shall be
that all this shall end in death, and the people shall talk of us awhile, good
or bad, according as we deserve, or as they please; and once it shall come to
pass that concerning every one of us it shall be told in the neighbourhood that
we are dead. This we are apt to think a sad story, but therefore let us help it
with a sadder; for we therefore need not be much troubled that we shall die,
because we are not here in ease, nor do we dwell in a fair condition; but our
days are full of sorrow and anguish, dishonoured and made unhappy with many
sins, with a frail and a foolish spirit, entangled with difficult cases of
conscience, ensnared with passions, amazed with fears, full of cares, divided
with curiosities and contradictory interests, made airy and impertinent with
vanities, abused with ignorance and prodigious errors, made ridiculour with a
thousand weaknesses, worn away with labours, loaden with diseases, daily vexed
with dangers and temptations, and in love with misery: we are weakened with
delights, afflicted with want, with the evils of myself 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 methinks 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 sharpness as upon his cure and remedy; and as none need to have
a tooth drawn, so none could well endure it but he that 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 joys of a better.
2. But as it helps to ease a certain
sorrow, as a fire draws 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 dote upon the transient guads and gilded thorns of this
world. They are not worth a passion, nor worth a sigh or a groan, not of the
price of one night's watching; and therefore they are mistaken and miserable
persons who, since Adam planted thorns round about paradise, are more in love
with the hedge than with 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 than their
spirit can bear; it brings sickness and death; they can neither eat nor sleep
with such a sorrow. But if you represent to them the evils of a vicious 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 to commend, and then
forget your story, because they prefer this world with all its sorrows before
the pure unmingled felicities of heaven. But it is strange that any man should
be so passionately in love with the thorns which grow on his own ground that he
should wear them for armlets, 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 over-long 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
shrieks of mandrakes, cats, and screech-owls, with the fling of iron, and the
harshness of rending of silk, or to admire the harmony that is made by a herd
of evening wolves, when they miss their draught of blood in their midnight
revels. The groans of a man in a fit of the stone are worse than these, and the
distractions of a troubled conscience are worse than those groans; and yet a
careless merry sinner is worse than all that. But if we could from one of the
battlements of heaven espy how many men and women at this time lie fainting and
dying for want of bread, how many young men are hewn 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 shriek 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 mind.
A GENERAL PREPARATION TOWARDS A HOLY AND BLESSED DEATH, BY WAY OF
EXERCISE.
1. He that would die well must always
look 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.[40] This was the advice of all the wise and
good men of the world, who, especially in the days and periods of their joy and
festival egressions, chose to throw some ashes into their chalices, some sober
remembrances of their fatal period.[41] Such was the black shirt of Saladine; the tombstone
presented to the Emperor of Constantinople on his coronation-day; the Bishop of
Rome's two reeds with flax and a fax-taper; the Egyptian skeleton served up at
feasts; and Trimalcion's banquet in Petronius, in which was brought in the
image of a dead man's bones of silver, with spondyles exactly returning to
every of the guests,[42] 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 fantastic
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
darkness and dishonour, and his body 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, suppress
the trouble of that fancy, till at last, being told that she was dead, and had
been buried about fourteen days, he went secretly to her vault, and, with the
skirt of his mantle, wiped the moisture from the carcass, 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 anything will quench the heats of
lust, or the desires of money, or the greedy passionate affections of this
world, this must do it. But withal, 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 terrors shall come to us without his
affrighting dresses; and that we shall sit down in the grave as we compose
ourselves to sleep and do the duties of nature and choice. The old people that
lived near the Riphaean mountains[43]
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 greediness 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 days of
his life, lay up against the day of death,"[44] not only by the general provisions of holiness and a
pious life indefinitely, but provisions proper to the necessities of that great
day of expense, in which a man is to throw his last cast for an eternity of
joys or sorrows, ever remembering, that this alone well performed is not enough
to pass 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 beforehand a reserve of
strength and mercy.[45] 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 passably 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 ourselves are to
use the articles, to turn our former discourses into present practice, and to
feel what we never felt before, we shall find 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 fail so many ways, and of which, if we fail any, we are miserable for
ever. Then we shall find how much we have need to have secured the Spirit of
God and the grace of faith, 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 mind, natural weaknesses,
frauds of the devil, and a thousand accidents and imperfections. It concerns us
therefore highly, in the whole course of our lives, not only to accustom
ourselves to a patient suffering of injuries and affronts, of persecutions and
loses, of cross accidents and unnecessary circumstances; but also by
representing death as present to us, to consider with what arguments then to
fortify our patience, and by assiduous and fervent prayer to God all our life
long to call upon him 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 devil's temptations and assaults; and
so to fortify our heart, that it break not into intolerable sorrows and
impatience, and end in wretchedness 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 sows corn in his fields, in a multitude bigger than the
capacities of human order; he hath made so much variety of creatures, and gives
us great choice of meats and drinks, although any one of both kinds would have
served our needs, and so in all instances of nature; yet in the distribution of
our time God seems to be straighthanded, 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 still but
the same little portion of this precious time, let us in every minute of our
life, I mean in every discernible 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 careful that he do not live a soft, a delicate, and
voluptuous life; but a life severe, holy, and under the discipline of the
cross, under the conduct of prudence and observation, a life of warfare and
sober counsels, labour and watchfulness. No man wants cause of tears and a
daily sorrow. Let every man consider what he feels, and acknowledge his misery;
let him confess his sin, and chastise it; let him bear his cross 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 joys of heaven; let him tremble and
fear, because he hath deserved the pains of hell; let him commute his eternal
fear with a temporal suffering, preventing God's judgment 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
find that for a secular joy and wantonness of spirit there are not left many
void spaces of his life. It was St. James's advice,[46] "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 holy virgin-mother said to St. Elizabeth, that
grace does not descend into the soul of a man but by prayer and
affliction.[47] Certain it is, that
a mourning spirit and an afflicted body are great instruments of reconciling
God to a sinner, and they always 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. `Woe be to them that are at ease
in Sion,'[48] so it was said of old;
and our blessed Lord said, `Woe be to you that laugh, for ye shall
weep;'[49] 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 doubtless come again with joy, and bring his
sheaves with him.'[50] And certainly
he that sadly considers the portion of Dives, and remembers that the account
which Abraham gave him for the unavoidableness 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 than all danger, the pains and
torments of unhappy souls. If, either by patience or repentance, by compassion
or persecution, by choice or by conformity, by severity or discipline, we allay
the festival follies of a soft life, and profess under the cross 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 cozening prosperities, and exacts
pains made sharper by the passing from soft beds and a sober mind. He that
would die holily and happily, must in this world love tears, humility,
solitude, and repentance.
He that will die well and happily must
dress 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 coldness of our prayers, the
indifference of our spirit in holy things, the uncertainty of our secret
purposes, our infinite deceptions and hypocrisies, sometimes not known, very
often not observed by ourselves, our want of charity, our not knowing in how
many degrees of action and purpose every virtue is to be exercised, the secret
adherences of pride, and too forward complacency in our best actions, our
failings in all our relations, the niceties of difference between some virtues
and some vices, the secret, indiscernible passages from lawful to unlawful in
the first instances of change, the perpetual mistakings of permissions for
duty, and licentious practices for permissions, our daily abusing the liberty
that God gives us, our unsuspected sins in the managing a course of life
certainly lawful, our little greedinesses in eating, our surprises in the
proportions of our drinking, our too great freedoms and fondnesses in lawful
loves, our aptness for things sensual, and our deadness and tediousness of
spirit in spiritual employments; besides infinite variety of cases of
conscience that do occur in the life of every man, and in all intercourses 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 patriarchs
of the world; from all this we shall find that the computations of a man's life
are busy as the tables of sines and tangents, and intricate as the accounts of
eastern merchants; and therefore it were but reason we should sum up our
accounts at the foot of every page, I mean that we call ourselves to scrutiny
every night, when we compose ourselves to the little images of death.
2. For if we make but one general account, and
never reckon till we die, either we shall only reckon by great sums, 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 into the order of accounts and
accusations, we shall find them multiply so fast, that it will not only 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 human
modesty to see sins increase so fast, and virtues grow up so slow; to see every
day stained with the spots of leprosy, or sprinkled with the marks of a lesser
evil.
3. It is not intended we should take accounts of
our lives only 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
spiritual guide, and search for remedies, and apply them. And indeed no man can
well observe his own growth in grace, but by accounting seldomer returns of
sin, and a more frequent victory over temptations; concerning which every man
makes his inquires and search after himself. In order to this it was that St.
Paul wrote, before receiving the holy sacrament, `Let a man examine himself and
so let him eat.' This precept was given in those days 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 judgment, not only the greatest lines of life, but
every branch and circumstance of every action, every word and thought, shall be
called to scrutiny and severe judgment; insomuch that it was a great truth
which one said, Woe be to the most innocent life, if God should search into it
without mixtures of mercy. And therefore we are here to follow St. Paul's
advice, `Judge yourselves, and you shall not be judged of the Lord.' The way to
prevent God's anger is to be angry with ourselves; and by examining our
actions, and condemning the criminal, by being assessors in God's tribunal, at
least we shall obtain the favour of the court. As therefore every night we must
make our bed the memorial of our grave, so let our evening thoughts be an image
of the day of judgment.
5. This advice was so reasonable and proper an
instrument of virtue, that it was taught even to the scholars of Pythagoras by
their master;[51] Let not sleep seize 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 ommitted of your duty, and in what you have made
use of the divine grace to the purposes of virtue and religion; joining the
judge, reason, to the legislative mind or conscience, that God may reign there
as a lawgiver and a judge. Then Christ's kingdom is set up in our hearts: then
we always 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 add 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 instrumental to
something else. We examine ourselves, that we may find out our failings and
cure them; and therefore if we use our remedy when the wound is fresh and
bleeding, we shall find the cure more certain and less painful. For so a taper,
when its crown of flame is newly blown off, retains a nature so symbolical to
light, that it will with greediness rekindle bolical to light, that it will
with greediness rekindle 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 God's favour and its own graciousness is interrupted, yet the
habit is not naturally changed; and still God leaves some roots of virtue
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 grows in love with it, and gets the custom, and the strangeness of
it is taken away, then it is his master, and is swelled 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
than to state 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 days do not pass the best person in which they have not
many idle words or vainer thoughts to sully the fair whiteness of their souls;
some indiscreet passions of trifling purposes, some impertinent discontents or
unhandsome useages of their dearest relatives. And though God is not extreme to
mark what is done amiss, and therefore puts these upon the accounts of his
mercy, and the title of the cross; 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 careless and incurious spirit into
frequency and continuance. For so the smallest atoms that dance in all the
little cells 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
always inconsiderable 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 begin to invade the strand. Our sighs can scatter
such little offences; but then be sure to breathe such accents frequently, lest
they knot and combine, and grow big as the shore, 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.[52]
3. A frequent examination of our actions will
intenerate and soften our consciences, so that they shall be impatient of any
rudeness or heavier load; and he that is used to shrink, when he is pressed
with a branch of twining osier,[53] will not
willingly stand in the ruins 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 all) 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 oftenest, 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 God's mercies, and to be
eased by collateral assistances, or to be groaned for at the terrible day of
judgment; 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 find
that the mere sins of ignorance and unavoidable forgetfulness will be enough to
be entrusted to such a bank; and if that a general repentance will serve
towards their expiation, it will be an infinite mercy; but we have nothing to
warrant our confidence, if we shall think it to be enough on our death-bed to
confess the notorious actions of our lives, and to say, "The Lord be merciful
unto me for the infinite transgressions of my life, which I have wilfully or
carelessly forgot;" for very many of which the repentance, the distinct,
particular, circumstantiate repentance of a whole life have been too little if
we could have done more.
5. After the enumeration of these advantages, I
shall not need to add, that if we decline or refuse to call ourselves
frequently to account, and to use daily advices concerning the state of our
souls, it is a very ill sign that our souls are not right with God, or that
they do not dwell in religion. But this I shall say, that they who do use this
exercise frequently will make their conscience much at ease, by casting out a
daily load of humour and surfeit, the matter of diseases and the instruments of
death. "He that does not frequently search his conscience, is a house without a
window," and like a wild untutored son of a fond and undiscerning widow.
But if this exercise seem too great a trouble,
and that by such advices religion will seem a burden, I have two things to
oppose against it:
1. One is, that we had better bear the burden of
the Lord than the burden of a base and polluted conscience. Religion cannot be
so great a trouble as a guilty soul; and whatsoever trouble can be fancied in
this or any other action of religion, it is only to inexperienced persons. It
may be a trouble at first, just as is every change and every new accident; but
if you do it frequently, and accustom your spirit to it, as the custom will
make it easy,[54] so the advantages will make
it delectable; that will make it facile as nature, these will make it as
pleasant and eligible as reward.
2. The other thing I have to say is this, that to
examine our lives will be no trouble, if we do not intricate it with the
businesses of the world and the labyrinths of care and impertinent affairs.[55] A man needs a quiet and disentangled life
who comes to search into all his actions, and to make judgment concerning his
errors and his needs, his remedies and his hopes. They that have great
intrigues of the world have a yoke upon their necks and cannot look back; and
he that covets many things greedily, and snatches at high things ambitiously,
that despises his neighbour proudly, and bears this crosses peevishly, or his
prosperity impotently and passionately; he that is prodigal of his precious
time, and is tenacious and retentive of evil purposes, is not a man disposed to
this exercise; he hath reason to be afraid of his own memory, and to dash his
glass in pieces, because it must needs represent to his own eyes an intolerable
deformity. He therefore that resolves to live well, whatsoever it costs him; he
that will go to heaven at any rate, shall best tend this duty by neglecting the
affairs of the world in all things where prudently he may. But of our death-bed
and the examination made by a disturbed understanding will be very empty of
comfort and full of inconveniences.
6. For hence it comes that men die so timorously
and uncomfortably, as if they were forced out of their lives by the violence of
an executioner. Then, without much examination, they remember how wickedly they
have lived, without religion, against the laws of the covenant of grace,
without God in the world; then they see sin goes off like an amazed, wounded,
affrighted person from a lost battle, without honour, without a veil, with
nothing but shame and sad remembrances; then they can consider, that if they
had lived virtuously all the trouble and objection of that would now be past,
and all that had remained should be peace and joy, and all that good which
dwells within the house of God and eternal life. But now they find they have
done amiss and dealt wickedly, they have no bank of good works, but a huge
treasure of wrath, and they are going to a strange place, and what shall be
their lot is uncertain: (so they say, when they would comfort and flatter
themselves:) but in truth of religion their portion is sad and intolerable,
without hope and without refreshment, and they must use little silly arts to
make them go off from their stage of sins with some handsome circumstances of
opinion: they will in civility be abused, that they may die quietly, and go
decently to their execution, and leave their friends indifferently contented,
and apt to be comforted; and by that time they are gone awhile they see that
they deceived themselves all their days, and were by others deceived at
last.
Let us make it our own case: we shall come to
that state and period of condition in which we shall be infinitely comforted if
we have lived well; or else be amazed and go off trembling, because we are
guilty of heaps of unrepented and unforsaken sins. It may happen, we shall not
then understand it so, because most men of late ages have been abused with
false principles, and they are taught (or they are willing to believe) that a
little thing is enough to save them, and that heaven is so cheap a purchase
that it will fall upon them whether they will or no. The misery of it is, they
will not suffer themselves to be confuted till it be too late to recant their
error. In the interim, they are impatient to be examined, as a leper is of a
comb, and are greedy of the world, as children of raw fruit; and they hate a
severe reproof as they do thorns in their bed; and they love to lay aside
religion as a drunken person does to forget his sorrow; and all the way they
dream of fine things and their dreams prove contrary, and become the
hieroglyphics of an eternal sorrow. The daughter of Polycrates dreamed that her
father was lifted up, and that Jupiter washed him, and the sun annointed him;
but it proved to him but a sad prosperity; for after a long life of constant
prosperous success he was surprised by his enemies, and hanged up till the dew
of heaven wet his cheeks, and the sun melted his grease. Such is the condition
of those persons who, living either in the despite or in the neglect of
religion, lie wallowing in the drunkenness of prosperity or worldly cares; they
think themselves to be exalted, till the evil day overtakes them; and then they
can expound their dream of life to end in a sad and hopeless death. I remember
that Cleomenes was called a god by the Egyptians, because when he was hanged a
serpent grew out of his body, and wrapped itself 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 ruins of the spirit, and the decays of grace and
reason. To be cozened in making judgments concerning our final condition is
extremely easy; but if we be cozened we are infinitely miserable.
He that would die well and happily must
in his lifetime, according to all his capacities, exercise charity;[56] 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 inferior
part of man in the day of its dissolution.
1. Charity is the great channel through which God
passes all his mercy upon mankind. 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 judgment the
great sentence upon mankind shall to transacted according to our alms, 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;[57] 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 head,
and we are enwrapped with sorrow; when we feel the weight of a sickness, and do
not feel the refreshing visitations of God's loving-kindness; when we have many
things to trouble us, and looking round about us we see no comforter; then call
to mind 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 ran 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 doom's
day according to his mercies and they charity.
2. Charity with his twin-daughters, alms and
forgiveness, is especially effectual for the procuring God's mercies in the day
and manner of our death. `Alms deliver from death,' said old Tobias;[58] and `alms make an atonement for
sins,[59] and the son of
Sirach:[60] and so said Daniel,
and so say all the wise men of the world. And in this sense, also, is
that of St. Peter, `Love covers a multitude of sins; and St. Clement in his
Constitutions gives this counsel, "If you have anything 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 Salvian, 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 Lactanius, who makes
this rule complete and useful; "But think not, 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 God's
poor servants, and his indigent necessitous creatures; 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 profess and affirm (that is, to purpose,
and to make good that purpose) that they will sin no more.[61]
Now alms 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 St. Chrysostom affirms, that repentance without alms 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 channel: and this St. Jerome 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 God's mercies to descend upon charitable people, like the dew upon
Gideon's fleece, when all the world was dry; yet for this also we have a
promise, which is not only an argument of a certain number of years (as
experience is,) but a security for eternal ages. `Make ye friends of the mammon
of unrighteousness, that when ye fail they may receive you into everlasting
habitations. When faith fails, and chastity is useless, and temperance shall be
no more, then charity shall bear you upon wings of cherubim to the eternal
mountain of the Lord. "I have been a lover of mankind, and a friend, and
merciful' and now I expect to communicate in that great kindness which he shows
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 only be a death-bed
charity, any more than a death-bed repentance; but it ought to be the charity
of our life and healthful 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 darkness, 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.
These are the general 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 stake. 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 business 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 general to cut
wood, or shake hay with a sceptre, 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 design: 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 ingenious faculties, towards 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 sequel of
discourse, I may with their precious stones make a union, and compose them into
a jewel; for though the meditation is plain and easy, yet it is affectionate
and material, and true and necessary.
The Circumstances of a Dying Man's 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 accents of the agony and last contentions of the soul, and the
reluctances and unwillingnesses of the body: the forehead washed with a new and
stranger baptism, 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 unwholesome
smoke; the eyes dim as a sullied mirror, or the face of heaven when God shows
his anger in a prodigious storm; the feet cold, the hands stiff, the physicians
despairing, our friends weeping, the rooms dressed with darkness and sorrow,
and the exterior parts betraying what are the violences which the soul and
spirit suffer; the nobler part, like the lord of the house, being assaulted by
exterior rudenesses, and driven from all the outworks, at last, faint and weary
with short and frequent breathings, interrupted with the longer accents of
sighs, without moisture but the excrescences of a split humour- when the
pitcher is broken at the cistern, it retires to its last fort, 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
echo of a distant valley, and few hear, and they will not regard thee, who
seemest like a person void of understanding and of a departing interest.
Vere tremendum est mortis sacramentum. But these accidents are common to
all that die; and when a special Providence shall distinguish them, they shall
die with easy 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 lives a wicked life, if his
conscience be alarmed, and that he does not die like a wolf or a tiger, without
sense or remorse of all his wildness 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 expect to be his
portion - then we may imagine the terror 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 hastening to judgment, exhibiting great bills of
uncancelled crimes, awaking and amazing the conscience, breaking all their hope
in pieces, and making faith useless 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.[62] 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, consign him to the eternal company of all the damned and accursed
spirits.[63] 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 froth to change their condition into a worse, where they
shall for ever feel more than we can believe and 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 successfully, and persevered unto the end; then the joys break forth
through the clouds of sickness, 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 sorrows of the sickness, and the flames of
the fever, or the faintness of the consumption, do but untie 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 sky was black, like the
preparations of the night, but quickly the cloud was torn and rent, the
violence of thunder parted it into little portions, that the sun might look
forth with a watery 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
appetites for the interests 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 entering into the possession.
When the veil is rent, and the prison-doors are open at the presence of God's
angel, the soul goes forth full of hope, sometimes with evidence, but always
with certainty in the thing, and instantly it passes into the throngs of
spirits, where angels meet it singing, and the devils flock with malicious 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 rejoiced when they were repented of. Then the devils aggravate
and describe all the circumstances of the sin, and add calumnies; and the
angels bear the sword forward still, because their Lord doth answer for them.
Then the devils rage and gnash their teeth; they see the soul chaste and pure,
and they are ashamed; they see it penitent, and they despair; they perceive
that the tongue was refrained and sanctified, and then hold their peace. Then
the soul passes forth and rejoices, passing by the devils in scorn and triumph,
being securely carried into the bosom of the Lord, where they shall rest till
their crowns are finished, and their mansions are prepared; and then they shall
feast and sing, rejoice 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
inquire after it no further, because it is secret.
OF THE STATE OF SICKNESS AND THE TEMPTATIONS INCIDENT TO IT, WITH
THEIR PROPER REMEDIES.
Adam's sin brought death into the world,
and man did die the same day in which he sinned, according as God had
threatened. 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 borne in his mother's womb; but whereas to man was intended a
life long and happy, without sickness, 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 always
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 died at all, nor yet have removed hence at all. Neither is it
likely that man's 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 virtue which in all
natural senses is less than innocence, save that it is heightened 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 less perfect, the state of a
traveler, 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 judgment; 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 threatened to
Adam, and which passed upon his posterity, is not the going out of this world,
but the manner of going. If he had stayed in innocence, he should not have died
by sickness, misfortune, defect, or unwillingness; 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 aptness 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 style of Scripture, is called eternal death; not because it kills
or ends 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 than thus to subject us
to temporal infelicity. If it had proceeded so far as was supposed, man had
been much more miserable, for man had more than one original sin in this sense;
and though this death entered first upon us by Adam's fault, yet it came nearer
unto us, and increased upon us by the sins of more of our forefathers; for
Adam's sin left us in strength enough to contend with human 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 five hundred to two hundred and fifty, and from thence to one
hundred and twenty, and from thence to threescore and ten; so often halving 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 hastened 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
useless 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 happen so many changes and interruptions, so many wars and
violences, that seven years' fighting sets a whole kingdom back in learning and
virtue to which they were creeping, it may be a whole age.
And thus also we do evil to our posterity as Adam
did to his, and Cham did to his, and Eli to his, and all they to theirs who by
sins caused God to shorten the life and multiply the evils of mankind; and for
this reason it is the world grows worse and worse, because so many original
sins are multiplied, and so many evils from parents descend upon the succeeding
generations of men, that they derive nothing from us but original misery.
But he who restored the law of nature did also
restore us to the condition of nature, which, being violated by the
introduction of death, Christ then repaired when he suffered and overcame death
for us; that is, he hath taken away the unhappiness of sickness and the sting
of death, and the dishonurs of the grave, of dissolution and weakness, of decay
and change, and hath turned them into acts of favour, into instances of
comfort, into opportunities of virtue; Christ hath now knit them into rosaries
and coronets; he hath put them into promises and rewards; he hath made them
part of the portion of his elect: they are instruments and earnests, and
securities and passage to the greatest perfection of human nature and the
divine promises. So that it is possible for us now to be reconciled to
sickness; it came in by sin, and therefore is cured when it is turned into
virtue; and although it may have in it the uneasiness of labour, yet it will
not be uneasy as sin, or the restlessness of a discomposed conscience. If
therefore, we can well manage our state of sickness, that we may not fall by
pain, as we usually do by pleasure, we need not fear; for no evil shall happen
to us.
Men that are in health are severe
exactors of patience at the hands of them that are sick; and they usually judge
it not by terms of relation between God and the suffering man, but between him
and the friends that stand by the bed-side. It will be, therefore, necessary
that we truly understand to what duties and actions the patience of a sick man
ought to extend.
1. Sighs and groans, sorrow and prayers,
humble complaints and dolorous[64]
expressions, are the sad accents of a sick man's language; for it is not to be
expected that a sick man should act a part of patience with a countenance like
an orator, or grave like a dramatic person; it were well if all men could bear
an exterior decency in their sickness, and regulate their voice, their face,
their discourse, and all their circumstances, by the measures and proportions
of comeliness and satisfaction to all the standers by. But this would better
please them than assist him; the sick man would do more good to others than he
would receive to himself.
2.Therefore silence and still composures, and not
complaining, are no parts of a sick man's duty; they are not necessary parts of
patience.[65] We find that David roared the
the very disquietness of his sickness; and he lay chattering like a swallow,
and his throat was dry with calling for help upon his God. That is the proper
voice of sickness; and certain it is that the proper voices of sickness are
expressly vocal and petitory in the ears of God, and call for pity in the same
accent as the cries and oppressions of widows and orphans do for vengeance upon
their persecutors, though they say no collect against them. For there is the
voice of man, and there is the voice of the disease, and God hears both; and
the louder the disease speaks, there is the greater need of mercy and pity, and
therefore God will the sooner hear it. Abel's blood had a voice, and cried to
God; and humility hath a voice, and cries so loud to God that it pierces the
clouds; and so hath every sorrow and every sickness; and when a man cries out
and complains but according to the sorrows of his pain, it cannot be any part
of a culpable impatience, but an argument for pity.
3. Some men's senses are so subtile, and their
perceptions so quick and full of relish, and their spirits so active, that the
same load is double upon them to what it is to another person; and therefore
comparing the expressions of the one to the silence of the other, a different
judgment cannot be made concerning their patience. Some natures are querulous
and melancholy and soft and nice and tender and weeping and expressive; others
are sullen, dull, without apprehension, apt to tolerate and carry burdens; and
the crucifixion of our blessed Saviour falling upon a delicate and virgin body,
of curious temper, and strict, equal composition, was naturally more full of
torment than that of the ruder thieves, whose proportions were courser and
uneven.
4. In this case it was no imprudent advice which
Cicero gave;[66] nothing in the world is more
amiable than an even temper in our whole life, and in every action; but this
evenness cannot be kept unless every man follows his own nature, without
striving to imitate the circumstances of another. And what is so in the thing
itself ought to be so in our judgments concerning the things. We must not call
any one impatient if he be not silent in a fever, as if he were asleep, or as
if he were dull as Herod's son of Athens.
5. Nature in some cases hath made cryings out and
exclamations to be an entertainment of the spirit, and an abatement or
diversion of the pain. For so did the old champions when they threw their fatal
nets that they might load their enemy with the snares and weights of death;
they groaned aloud, and sent forth the anguish of their spirit into the eyes
and heart of the man that stood against them; so it is in the endurance of some
sharp pains, the complaints and shriekings, the sharp groans and the tender
accents, send forth the afflicted spirits, and force a way that may ease their
oppression and their load; that, when they have spent some of their sorrows by
a sally forth, they may return better able to fortify the heart. Nothing of
this is a certain sign, much less an action or part of impatience; and when our
blessed Saviour suffered his last and sharpest pang of sorrow, he cried out
with a loud voice, and resolved to die, and did so.
1. That we may secure our patience we
must take care that our complaints be without despair. Despair sins against the
reputation of God's goodness, and the efficacy of all our old experience. By
despair we destroy the greatest comfort of our sorrow's, and turn our sickness
into the state of devils and perishing souls. No affliction is greater than
despair; for that is it which makes hell-fire, and turn's a natural evil into
an intolerable; it hinders prayers, and fills up the intervals of sickness with
a worse torture; it makes all spiritual arts useless, and the office of
spiritual comforters and guides to be impertinent.
Against this; hope is to be opposed; and
its proper acts, as it relates to the virtue and exercises of patient are, 1.
Praying to God for help and remedy; 2. Sending for the guides of souls; 3.
Using all holy exercises and acts of grace proper to that state, which whoso
does hath not the impatience of despair; every man that is patient hath hope in
God in the day of his sorrows.
2. Our complaints in sickness must be without
murmur. Murmur sins against God's providence and government; by it we grow
rude, and, like the falling angels, displeased at God's supremacy; and nothing
is more unreasonable - to talks against God, for whose glory all speech was
made; it is proud and fantastic, hath better opinions of a sinner than of the
Divine justice, and would rather accuse God than himself.
Against this is opposed that part of patience
which resigns the man into the hands of God, saying with old Eli, `It is the
Lord, let him do what he will;' and, `Thy will be done in earth as it is in
heaven;' and so by admiring God's justice and wisdom does also dispose the sick
person for receiving God's mercy, and secures him the rather in the grace of
God. The proper acts of this part of patience are, 1. To confess our sins and
our own demerits; 2. It increases and exercises humility; 3. It loves to sing
praises to God, even from the lowest abyss of human misery.
3. Our complaints in sickness must be without
peevishness. This sins against civility and that necessary decency which must
be used towards the ministers and assistants. By peevishness we increase our
own sorrows, and are troublesome to them that stand there to ease ours. It hath
in it harshness of nature and ungentleness, wilfulness and fantastic opinions,
morosity and incivility.
Against it are opposed obedience, tractability,
easiness of persuasion, aptness to take counsel. The acts of this part of
patience are, 1. To obey our physicians; 2. To treat our persons with respect
to our present necessities; 3. Not to be ungentle and uneasy to the ministers
and nurses that attend us, but to take their diligent and kind offices as
sweetly as we can, and to bear their indiscretions or unhandsome accidents
contentedly and without disquietness within, or evil language or angry words
without; 4. Not to use unlawful means for our recovery.
If we secure these particulars, we are not
lightly to be judged of by noises and postures, by colours and images of
things, by paleness, or tossing from side to side. For it were a hard thing
that those persons who are loaden with the greatest of human calamities should
be strictly tied to ceremonies and forms of things. He is patient that calls
upon God; that hopes for health or heaven; that believes God is wise and just
in sending him afflictions; that confesses his sins, and accuses himself and
justifies God; that expects God will turn this into good; that is civil to his
physicians and his servants; that converses with the guides of souls, the
ministers of religion; and in all things submits to God's will, and would use
no indirect means for his recovery; but had rather be sick and die than enter
at all into God's displeasure.
As it happens concerning death, so it is
in sickness, which is death's handmaid. It hath the fate to suffer calumny and
reproach, and hath a name worse than its nature.
1. For there is no sickness so great but
children endure it, and have natural strengths to bear them out quite through
the calamity, what period soever nature hath allotted it. Indeed they make no
reflections upon their sufferings, and complain of sickness with an uneasy sigh
or a natural groan, but consider not what the sorrows of sickness mean; and so
bear it by a direct sufferance, and as a piller bears the weight of a roof.
But, then, why cannot we bear it so too? For this which we all a reflection
upon, or a considering of our sickness, is nothing but a perfect instrument of
trouble, and consequently a temptation to impatience. It serves no end of
nature; it may be avoided, and we may consider it only as an expression of
God's anger, and an emissary or procurator of repentance. But all other
considering it,[67] except where it serves
the purposes of medicine and art, is nothing but, under the colour of reason,
and unreasonable device to heighten the sickness and increase the torment. But,
then, as children want this act of reflex perception or reasonable sense
whereby they should be able to support it. For certain it is, reason was as
well given us to harden our spirits, and stiffen them in passions and sad
accidents, as to make us bending and apt for action; and if in men God hath
heightened the faculties of apprehension, he hath increased the auxiliaries of
reasonable strengths; that God's rod and God's staff might go together, and the
beam of God's countenance may as well refresh us with its light as scorch us
with its heat. For poor children that endure so much have not inward supports
and refreshments to bear them through it; they never heard the sayings of old
men, nor have been taught the principles of severe philosophy, nor are assisted
with the results of a long experience, nor know they how to turn a sickness
into virtue, and a fever into a reward; nor have they any sense of favours, the
remembrance of which may alleviate their burden; and yet nature hath in them
teeth and nails enough to scratch and fight against the sickness, and by such
aids as God is pleased to give them they wade through the storm and murmur not.
And besides this, yet, although infants have not such brisk perceptions upon
the stock of reason, they have a more tender feelings upon the accounts of
sense, and their flesh is as uneasy by their natural softness and weak
shoulders as ours by too forward apprehensions. Therefore bear up; either you,
or I, or some man wiser, and many a woman weaker than us both, or the very
children, have endured worse evil than this that is upon thee now.
That sorrow is hugely tolerable which gives its
smart but by instants and smallest proportions of time. No man at once feels
the sickness of a week or of a whole day, but the smart of an instant; and
still every portion of a minute feels but its proper share; and the last groan
ended all the sorrow of its peculiar burden. And what minute can that be which
can pretend to be intolerable? and the next minute is but the same as the last,
and the pain flows like the drops of a river, or the little shreds of time; and
if we do but take care of the present minute, it cannot seem a great charge or
a great burden; but that care will secure our duty, if we still but secure the
present minute.
3. If we consider how much men can suffer if they
list, and how much they do suffer for greater and little causes, and that no
causes are greater than the proper causes of patience in sickness, (that is
necessity and religion,) we cannot, without huge shame to our nature, to our
persons, and to our manners, complain of this tax and impost of nature. This
experience added something to the old philosophy. When the gladiators were
exposed naked to each other's short swords, and were to cut each other's souls
away in portions of flesh, as it their forms had been as divisible as the life
of worms, they did not sigh or groan - it was a shame to decline the blow but
according to the just measures of art. The women that saw the wound shriek out;
and he that receives it holds his peace. he did not only stand bravely, but
would also fall so; and, when he was down, scorned to shirk his head when the
insolent conqueror came to lift it from his shoulders; and yet this man, in his
first design, only aimed at liberty, and the reputation of a good fencer; and
when he sunk down he saw he could only receive the honour of a bold man, the
noise of which he shall never hear when his ashes are crammed in his narrow
urn. And what can we complain of the weakness of our strengths or the pressures
of diseases, when we see a poor soldier stand in a breach almost starved with
cold and hunger, and his cold apt to be relieved only by the heats of anger, a
fever, or a fired musket, and his hunger slackened by a greater pain and a huge
fear? This man shall stand in his arms and wounds, patiens luminis alque
solis, pale and faint, weary and watchful; and at night shall have a bullet
pulled out of his flesh, and shivers from his bones, and endure his mouth to be
sewed up from a violent rent to its own demension; and all this for a man whom
he never saw, or, if he did, was not noted by him; but one that shall condemn
him to the gallows if he runs from all this misery. It is seldom that God sends
such calamities upon men as men bring upon themselves and suffer willingly. But
that which is most considerable is, that any passion and violence upon the
spirit of man makes him able to suffer huge calamities with a certain constancy
and an unwearied patience. Scipio Africanus was wont to commend that saying in
Xenophon, That the same labours of warfare were easier far to a general than to
a common soldier; because he was supported by the huge appetites of honour,
which made his hard marches nothing but stepping forward and reaching at a
triumph. Did not the lady of Sabinus, for others' interest, bear twins
privately and without groaning? Are not the labours and cares, the spare diet
and the waking nights, of covetous and adulterous, of ambitious and revengeful
persons, greater sorrows and of more smart than a fever, or the short pains of
child-birth? What will not tender women suffer to hide their shame? And if vice
and passion, lust and inferior appetites, can supply to the tenderest persons
strengths more than enough for the sufferance of the greatest natural
violences, can we suppose that honesty and religion and the grace of God are
more nice, tender, and effeminate?
4. Sickness is the more tolerable, because it
cures very many evils, and takes away the sense of all the cross fortunes which
amaze the spirits of some men, and transports them certainly beyond all the
limits of patience. Here all losses and disgraces, domestic cares and public
evils, the apprehensions of pity and a sociable calamity, the fears of want and
the troubles of ambition, lie down and rest upon the sick man's pillow. One fit
of the stone takes away from the fancies of men all relations to the world and
secular interests: at least they are made dull and flat, without sharpness and
edge.
And he that shall observe the infinite variety of
troubles which afflict some busy persons and almost all men in very busy times,
will think it not much amiss, that those huge numbers were reduced to
certainty, to method and an order; and there is no better compendium for this
than that they be reduced to one. And a sick man seem so unconcerned in the
things of the world, that although this separation be done with violence, yet
it is no otherwise than all noble contentions are, and all honours are
purchased, and all virtues are acquired, and all vices mortified, and all
appetites chastised, and all rewards obtained; there is infallibly to all these
a difficulty and a sharpness annexed, without which there could be no
proportion between a work and a reward. To this add that sickness does not take
off the sense of secular troubles and worldly cares from us, by employing all
the perceptions and apprehensions of men; by filling all faculties with sorrow,
and leaving no room for the lesser instances of troubles, as little rivers are
swallowed up in the sea; but sickness is a messenger of God, sent with
purposes of abstraction and separation, with a secret power and a proper
efficacy to draw us off from unprofitable and useless sorrows: and this is
effected partly by reason that it represents the uselessness of the things of
this world, and that there is a portion of this life in which honours and
things of the world cannot serve us to many purposes; partly by preparing us to
death, and telling us that a man shall descend thither, whence this world
cannot redeem us, and where the goods of this world cannot serve us.
5. And yet, after all this, sickness leaves in us
appetites so strong, and apprehensions so sensible, and delights so many, and
good things in so great a degree that a healthless body and a sad disease do
seldom make men weary of this world, but still they would fain find an excuse
to live.[68] The gout, the stone, and the
tooth-ache, the sciatica, sore eyes, and an aching head, are evils indeed; but
such which, rather than die, most men are willing to suffer; and Mecaenas added
also a wish rather to be crucified than to die, and though his wish was low,
timorous, and base, yet we find the same desires in most men, dressed up with
better circumstances. It was a cruel mercy in Tamerland, who commanded all the
leprous persons to be put to death, as we knock some beasts quickly on their
head to put them out of pain, and lest they should live miserably; the poor men
would rather have endured another leprosy, and have more willingly taken two
diseases than one death. Therefore Caesar wondered that the old crazed soldier
begged leave he might kill himself, and asked him, "Dost thou thing then to be
more alive than now thou art?" We do not die suddenly, but we descend to death
by steps and slow passages; and therefore men (so long as they are sick) are
unwilling to proceed and go forward in the finishing of that sad employment.
Between a disease and death there are many degrees, and all those are like the
reserves of evil things, the declining of every one of which is justly reckoned
amongst those good things which alleviate the sickness and make it tolerable.
Never account that sickness intolerable in which thou hadst rather remain than
die: and yet if thou hadst rather die than suffer it, the worst of it that can
be said is this, that this sickness is worse than death; that is, it is worse
than that which is the best of all evils, and the end of all troubles; and then
you have said no great harm against it.
6. Remember that thou art under a supervening
necessity. Nothing is intolerable that is necessary; and therefore when men are
to suffer a sharp incission, or what they are pleased to call intolerable, tie
the man down to it, and he endures it.[69]
Now God hath bound this sickness upon thee by the condition of nature; for
every flower must wither and droop; it is also bound upon thee by special
providence, and with a design to try thee, and with purposes to reward and to
crown thee. These cords thou canst not break; and therefore lie thou down
gently, and suffer the hand of God to do what he please, that at least thou
mayst swallow an advantage which the care and severe mercies of God force down
thy throat.
7. Remember that all men have passed this way;
the bravest, the wisest, and the best men have been subject to sickness and sad
diseases; and it is esteemed a prodigy that a man should live to a long age and
not be sick; and it is recorded for a wonder concerning Xenophilus the
musician, that he lived to one hundred and six years of age in a perfect and
continual health. No story tells the like of a prince, or a great or a wise
person;[70] unless we have a mind to believe
the tales concerning Nestor and the Euhoean Sybil, or reckon Cyrus of Persia,
or Masinissa the Mauritanian, to be rivals of old age, or that Argantonius the
Tartesian king did really outstrip that age, according as his story tells,
reporting him to have reigned eighty years,[71] and to have lived one hundred and twenty. Old age and
healthful bodies are seldom made the appendages to great fortunes; and under so
great and so universal precedents,[72] so
common fate of men, he that will not suffer his portion deserves to be
something else than a man, but nothing that is better.
8. We find in story that many Gentiles, who
walked by no light but that of reason, opinion, and human examples, did bear
their sickness nobly, and with great contempt of pain, and with huge interests
of virtue. When Pompey came from Syria, and called at Rhodes, to see Posidonins
the philosopher, he found him hugely afflicted with the gout, and expressed his
sorrow that he could not hear his lectures, from which by this pain he must
needs be hindered. Posidonius told him, "But you may hear me for all this;" and
he discoursed excellently in the midst of his tortures, even then when the
torches were put to his feet,[73] "That
nothing was good but what was honest," and therefore "nothing could be an evil
if it were not criminal;" and summed up his lectures with this saying, "O pain,
in vain dost thou attempt me,for I will never confess thee to be an evil, as
long as I can honestly bear thee." And when Pompey himself was desperately sick
at Naples, the Neapolitans wore crowns and triumphed, and the men of Puteoli
came to congratulate his sickness, not because they loved him not, but because
it was the custom of their country to have better opinions of sickness than we
have. The boys of Sparta would, at their alters, endure whipping till their
very entrails saw the light through their torn flesh; and some of them to
death, without crying or complaint. Caesar would drink his portions of rhubarb
rudely mixed, and unfitly allayed, with little sippings, and taking the horrow
of the medicine, spreading the loathsomeness of his physic so, that all the
parts of his tongue and palate might have an entire share; and when C. Marius
suffered the veins of his leg to be cut out for the curing his gout, and yet
shrunk not, he declared not only the rudeness of their physic, but the strength
of a man's spirit, if it be contracted and united by the aids of reason or
religion, by resolution or any accidental harshness, against a violent
disease.
9. All impatience, howsoever expressed, is
perfectly useless to all purposes of ease, but hugely effective to the
multiplying the trouble; and the impatience and vexation is another, but the
sharper disease of the two: it does mischief by itself, and mischief by the
disease. For men grieve themselves as much as they please;[74] and when, by impatience, they put themselves into the
retune of sorrows, they become solemn mourners. For so I have seen the rays of
the sun or moon dash upon a brazen vessel, whose lips kissed the face of those
waters that lodged within its bosom; but being turned back, and sent off with
its smooth pretences or rougher waftings, it wandered about the room, and beat
upon the roof, and still doubled its heat and motion. So is a sickness and a
sorrow, entertained by an unquiet and a discontented man, turned back either
with anger or with excuses; but then the pain passes from the stomach to the
liver, and from the liver to the heart, and from the heart to the head, and
from feeling to consideration, from thence to sorrow, and at last ends in
impatience and useless murmur; and all the way the man was impotent and weak,
but the sickness was doubled, and grew imperious and tyrannical over the soul
and body. Masuriun Sabinus tells that the image of the goddess Angerona was,
with a muffler upon her mouth, placed upon the altar of Volupia, to represent
that those persons who bear their sicknesses and sorrows without murmurs shall
certainly pass from sorrow to pleasure, and the ease and honours of felicity;
but they that with spite and indignation bite the burning coal, or shake the
yoke upon their necks, gall their spirits, and fret the skin, and hurt nothing
but themselves.
10. Remember that this sickness is but for a
short time: if it be sharp, it will not last long; if it be long, it will be
easy and very tolerable. And although St. Eadsine, archbishop of Canterbury,
had twelve years of sickness, yet all that while he ruled his church prudently,
gave example of many virtues, and, after his death, was enrolled in the
calendar of saints who had finished their course prosperously. Nothing is more
unreasonable than to entangle our spirits in wildness and amazement, like a
partridge fluttering in a net which she breaks not, though she breaks her
wings.
1. The fittest instrument of esteeming
sickness easily tolerable is, to remember that which indeed makes it so; and
that is, that God doth minister proper aids and supports to every of his
servants whom he visits with his rod. He knows our needs, he pities our
sorrows, he relieves our miseries, he supports our weakness, he bids us ask for
help, and he promises to give us all that, and he usually give us more; and
indeed it is observable, that no story tells of any godly man who, living in
the fear of God fell into a violent and unpardoned impatience in his natural
sickness, if he used those means which God and his holy church have appointed.
We see almost all men bear their last sickness with sorrows indeed, but without
violent passions; and unless they fear death violently, they suffer the
sickness with some indifferency: and it is a rare thing to see a man who enjoys
his reason in his sickness to express the proper signs of a direct and solemn
impatience. For when God lays a sickness upon us, he seizes commonly on a man's
spirits, which are the instruments of action and business; and when they are
secured from being tumultuous, the sufferance is much the easier: and therefore
sickness secures all that which can do the man mischief; it makes him tame and
passive, apt for suffering, and confines him to an inactive condition. To
which, if we add, that God then commonly produces fear, and all those passions
which naturally tend to humility and poverty of spirit, we shall soon perceive
by what instruments God verifies his promise to us, (which is the great
security for our patience, and the easiness of our condition,) that God will
lay no more upon us than he will make us able to bear it, but together with the
affliction, he will find a way to escape.[75] Nay, if anything can be more than this, we have two or
three promises in which we may safely lodge ourselves, and roll from off our
thorns, and find ease and rest; God hath promised to be with us in our trouble,
and to be with us in our prayers, and to be with us in our hope and
confidence.[76]
2. Prevent the violence and trouble of
thy spirit by an act of thanksgiving; for which in the worst of sickness thou
canst not want cause, especially if thou rememberest that this pain is not an
eternal pain. Bless God for that: but take heed, also, lest you so order your
affairs that you pass from hence to an eternal sorrow. If that be hard, this
will be intolerable: but as for the present evil, a few day will end it.
3. Remember that thou art a man and a Christian:
as the covenant of nature hath made it necessary, so the covenant of grace hath
made it to be chosen by thee, to be a suffering person: either you must
renounce your religion or submit to the impositions of God and thy portion of
sufferings. So there here we see our advantages, and let us use them
accordingly. The barbarous and warlike nations of old could fight well and
willingly, but could not bear sickness manfully. The Greeks were cowardly in
their fights, as most wise men are; but because they were learned and well
taught, they bore their sickness with patience and severity. The Cim rians and
Celtiberians rejoice in battle, like giants; but in their diseases they weep
like women. These according to their institution and designs had unequal
courages and accidental fortitude. But since our religion hath made a covenant
of sufferings, and the great business of our lives is sufferings, and most of
the virtues of a Christian are passive graces, and all the promises of the
gospel are passed upon us through Christ's cross, we have a necessity upon us
to have an equal courage in all the variety of our sufferings; for without an
universal fortitude we can do nothing of our duty.
4. Resolve to do as much as you can; for certain
it is, we can suffer much if we list; and many men have afflicted themselves
unreasonably by not being skilful to consider how much their strength and state
could permit; and our flesh is nice and imperious, crafty to persuade reason
that she hath more necessities than indeed belong to her, and that she demands
nothing superfluous. Suffer as much in obedience to God as you can suffer for
necessity or passion, fear or desire. And if you can for one thing, you can for
another; and there is nothing wanting but the mind. Never say, I can do no
more; I cannot endure this; for God would not have sent it if he had not known
thee strong enough to abide it; only he that knows thee well already would also
take this occasion to make thee know thyself; but it will be fit that you pray
to God to give you a discerning spirit, that you may rightly distinguish just
necessity from the flattery and fondness of flesh and blood.
5. Propound to your eyes and heart the example of
the holy Jesus upon the cross; he endured more for thee than thou canst either
for thyself or him: and remember, that if we be put to suffer, and do suffer in
a good cause, or in a good manner, so that in any sense your sufferings be
conformable to his sufferings, or can be capable of being united to his, we
shall reign together with him. The highway of the cross, which the King of
sufferings hath trodden before us, is the way to ease, to a kingdom, and to
felicity.
6. The very suffering is a title to an excellent
inheritance; for God chastens every son whom he receives; and if we be not
chastised, we are bastards, and not sons. And be confident, that although God
often sends pardon without correction, yet he never sends correction without
pardon, unless it be thy fault: and therefore take every or any affliction as
an earnest-penny of thy pardon; and upon condition there may be peace with God,
let anything be welcome that he can send as its instrument or condition.
Suffer, therefore, God to choose his own circumstances of adopting thee, and be
content to be under discipline, when the reward of that is to become the son of
God: and by such inflictions he hews and breaks thy body, first dressing it to
funeral, and then preparing it for immortality. And if this be effect of the
design of God's love to thee, let it be occasion of thy love to him; and
remember, that the truth of love is hardly known but by somewhat that puts us
to pain.
7. Use this as a punishment for thy sins; and so
God intends it most commonly; that is certain: if therefore thou submittest to
it, thou approvest of the Divine judgment; and no man can have cause to
complain of anything but himself, if either he believes God to be just or
himself to be a sinner. If he either thinks he hath deserved hell, or that this
little may be a means to prevent the greater and bring him to heaven.
8. It may be, that this may be the last instance
and the last opportunity that ever God will give thee to exercise any virtue,
to do him any service, or thyself any advantage: be careful that thou losest
not this; for to eternal ages this never shall return again.
9. Or if thou, peradventure, shalt be restored to
health, be careful that in the day of thy thanksgiving thou mayst not be
ashamed of thyself for having behaved thyself poorly and weakly upon thy bed.
It will be a sensible and excellent comfort to thee, and double upon thy
spirit, if, when thou shalt worship God for restoring thee, thou shalt also
remember that thou didst do him service in thy suffering, and tell that God was
hugely gracious to thee in giving thee the opportunity of a virtue at so easy a
rate as a sickness from which thou didst recover.
10. Few men are so sick but they believe that
they may recover; and we shall seldom see a man lie down with a perfect
persuasion that it is his last hour; for many men have been sicker, and yet
have recovered; but whether thou dost or no, thou hast a virtue to exercise
which may be a handmaid to thy patience. Epaphroditus was sick, sick, unto
death; and yet God had mercy upon him: and he hath done so to thousands to whom
he found it useful in the great order of things and the events of universal
providence. If, therefore, thou desirest to recover, here is cause enough of
hope; and hope is designed in the arts of God and of the Spirit to support
patience. But if thou recoverest not, yet there is something that is matter of
joy naturally, and very much spiritually, of thou belongest to God; and joy is
as certain a support to patience as hope: and it is no small cause of being
pleased, when we remember that, if we recover not, our sickness shall the
sooner sit down in rest and joy. For recovery by death, as it is easier and
better than the recovery by a sickly health, so it is not so long in doing: it
suffers not the tediousness of a creeping restitution, nor the inconvenience of
surgeons and physicians, watchfulness and care, keepings in and suffering
trouble, fears of relapse, and the little relics of a storm.
11. While we hear, or use, or think of these
remedies, part of the sickness is gone away, and all of it is passing. And if
by such instruments we stand armed and ready dressed beforehand, we shall avoid
the mischiefs of amazements and surprise;[77]
while the accidents of sickness are such as were expected, and against which,
we stood in readiness, with our spirits contracted, instructed, and put upon
the defensive.
12. But our patience will be the better secured
if we consider that it is not violently tempted by the usual arrests of
sickness; for patience is with reason demanded while the sickness is tolerable,
that is, so long as the evil is not too great; but if it be also eligible, and
have in it some degrees of good, our patience will have in it the less
difficulty and the greater necessity. This therefore will be a new stock of
consideration: sickness is in many degrees eligible to many men and to many
purposes.
1. I consider one of the greatest
felicities of heaven consists in an immunity from sin: then we shall love God
without mixtures of malice; then we shall enjoy without envy; then we shall see
fuller vessels running over with glory, and crowned with bigger circles; and
this we shall behold without spilling from our eyes (those vessels of joy and
grief) any sign of anger, trouble, or a repining spirit: our passions shall be
pure, our charity without fear, our desire without lust, our possessions all
our own; and all in the inheritance of Jesus, in the richest soil of God's
eternal kingdom. Now half of this reason, which makes heaven so happy by being
innocent, is also in the state of sickness, making the sorrows of old age
smooth, and the groans of a sick heart apt to be joined to the music of angels:
and, though they sound harsh to our untuned ears and discomposed organs, yet
those accents must needs be in themselves excellent which God loves to hear,
and esteems them as prayers, and arguments of pity, instruments of mercy and
grace, and preparatives to glory.
In sickness the soul begins to dress
herself for immortality. And, first, she unties the strings of vanity that made
her upper garment cleave to the world and sit uneasy; first, she puts off the
light and fantastic summer robe of lust and wanton appetite; and as soon as
that cestus, that lascivious girdle is thrown away, then the reins chasten us,
and give us warning in the night; then that which called us formerly to serve
the manliness of the body, and the childishness of the soul, keeps us waking,
to divide the hours with the intervals of prayer, and to number the minutes
with our penitential groans; then the flesh sets uneasily and dwells in sorrow;
and then the spirit feels itself at ease, freed from the petulant solicitations
of those passions which in health were as busy and restless as atoms in the
sun, always dancing, and always busy, and never sitting down, till a sad night
of grief and uneasiness draws the veil, and lets them die alone in secret
dishonour.
2. Next to this, the soul, by the help of
sickness, knocks off the fetters of pride and vainer complacencies. Then she
draws the curtains, and stops the light from coming in, and takes the pictures
down, those fantastic images of self-love[78]
and gay remembrances of vain opinion and popular noises. Then the spirit stoops
into the sobrieties of humble thoughts, and feels corruption chiding the
forwardness of fancy, and allaying the vapours of conceit and factious
opinions. For humility is the soul's grave, into which she enters, not to die,
but to meditate and inter some of its troublesome appendages. There she sees
the dust, and feels the dishonours of the body, and reads the register of all
its sad adherences; and then she lays by all her vain reflections, beating upon
her crystal and pure mirror from the fancies of strength and beauty, and little
decayed prettinesses of the body. And when, in sickness, we forget all our
knotty discourses of philosophy, and a syllogism makes our head ache, and we
feel our many and loud talkings served no lasting end of the soul, no purpose
that now we must abide by, and that the body is like to descend to the land
where all things are forgotten; then she lays aside all her remembrances of
applauses, all her ignorant confidences, and ares only to know "Christ Jesus
and him crucified," to know him plainly, and with much heartiness and
simplicity. And I cannot think this to be a contemptible advantage. For ever
since man tempted himself by his impatient desires of knowing and being as God,
man thinks it the finest thing in the world to know much, and therefore is
hugely apt to esteem himself better than his brethren if he knows some little
impertinences, and them imperfectly, and that with infinite uncertainty; but
God hath been pleased, with a rare art, to prevent the inconveniences apt to
arise by this passionate longing after knowledge, even by giving to every man a
sufficient opinion of his own understanding: and who is there in the world that
thinks himself to be a fool, or indeed not fit to govern his brother? There are
but few men but they think they are wise enough, and every man believes his own
opinion the soundest; and, if it were otherwise, men would burst themselves
with envy, or else become irrecoverable slaves to the talking and disputing
man. But when God intended this permission to be an antidote of envy, and a
satisfaction and allay to the troublesome appetites of knowing, and made that
this universal opinion, by making men in some proportions equal, should be a
keeper-out or a great restraint to slavery and tyranny respectively; man (for
so he uses to do) hath turned this into bitterness; for when nature had made so
just a distribution of understanding that every man might think he had enough,
he is not content with that, but will think he hath more than his brother; and
whereas it might well be employed in restraining slavery, he hath used it to
break off the bands of all obedience, and it ends in pride and schisms, in
heresies and tyrannies; and it being a spiritual evil, it grows upon the soul
with old age and flattery, with health and the supports of a prosperous
fortune. Now, besides the direct operations of the Spirit, and a powerful
grace, there is in nature left to us no remedy for this evil but a sharp
sickness, or an equal sorrow, and allay of fortune; and then we are humble
enough to ask counsel of a despised priest, and to think that even a common
sentence, from the mouth of an appointed comforter streams forth more
refreshment than all our own wiser and more reputed discourses; then our
understandings and our bodies, peeping through their own breaches, see their
shame and their dishonour, their dangerous follies and their huge deceptions;
and they go into the clefts of the rock, and every little hand may cover
them.
3. Next to these, as the soul is still
undressing, she takes off the roughness of her great and little angers and
animosities, and receives the oil of mercies and smooth forgiveness, fair
interpretations and gentle answers, designs of reconcilement and Christian
atonement in their places. For so did the wrestlers in Olympus; they stripped
themselves of all their garments, and then anointed their naked bodies with
oil, smooth and vigorous; with contracted nerves and enlarged voice they
contended vehemently, till they obtained their victory or their ease; and a
crown of olive, or a huge pity, was the reward of their fierce contentions.
Some wise men have said, than anger sticks to a man's nature as inseparable as
other vices do to the manner of fools, and that anger is never quite cured: but
God, that hath found out remedies for all diseases, hath so ordered the
circumstances of man, that in the worser sort of men anger and great
indignation consume and shrivel into little peevishnesses and uneasy accents of
sickness, and spend themselves in trifling instances; and in the better and
more sanctified it goes off in prayers and alms and solemn reconcilement. And,
however the temptations of this state, such, I mean, which are proper to it,
are little and considerable, the man is apt to chide a servant too bitterly,
and to be discontented with his nurse, or not satisfied with his physician, and
he rests uneasily, and (poor man!) nothing can please him: and indeed these
little indecencies must be cured and stopped, lest they run into an
inconvenience. But sickness is, in this particular, a little image of the state
of blessed souls, or of Adam's early morning in paradise, free from the
troubles of lust, and violences of anger, and the intricacies of ambition, or
the restlessness of covetousness. For though a man may carry all these along
with him into his sickness, yet there he will not find them; and in despite of
all his own malice, his soul shall find some rest from labouring in the galleys
and baser captivity of sin: and if e value those moments of being in the love
of God and in the kingdom of grace, which certainly are the beginnings of
felicity, we may also remember that the not sinning actually is one step of
innocence; and therefore that state is not intolerable which, by a sensible
trouble, makes it in most instances impossible to commit those great sins which
make death, hell, and horrid damnations. And then let us but add this to it,
that God sends sicknesses, but he never causes sin; that God is angry with a
sinning person, but never with a man for being sick; that sin causes God to
hate us, and sickness causes him to pity us; that all wise men in the world
choose trouble rather than dishonour, affliction rather than baseness; and that
sickness stops the torrent of sin, and interrupts its violence, and even to the
worst men makes it to retreat many degrees. We may reckon sickness amongst good
things, as we reckon rhubarb and aloes and childbirth and labour and obedience
and discipline; these are unpleasant, and yet safe; they are troubles in order
to blessings, or they are securities from danger, or the hard choices of a less
and a more tolerable evil.
4. Sickness, is in some sense elegible, because
it is the opportunity and the proper scene of exercising some virtues.[79] It is that agony in which men are tried for
a crown. And if we remember what glorious things are spoken of the grace of
faith, that it is the life of just men, the restitution of the dead in
trespasses and sins, the justification of a sinner, the support of the weak,
the confidence of the strong, the magazine of promises, and the title to very
glorious rewards: we may easily imagine that it must have in it a work and a
difficulty in some proportion answerable to so great effects. But when we are
bidden to believe strange propositions, we are put upon it when we cannot
judge, and those propositions have possessed our discerning faculties, and have
made a party there, and are become domestic before they come to be disputed;
and then the articles of faith are so few, and are made so credible, and in
their event and in their object are so useful and gaining upon the affections,
that he were a prodigy of man, and would be so esteemed, that should, in all
our present circumstances, disbelieve any point of faith: and all is well as
long as the sun shines, and the fair breath of heaven gently wafts us to our
own purposes. But if you will try the excellency, and feel the work of faith,
place the man in a persecution, let him ride in a storm, let his bones be
broken with sorrow,and his eyelids loosened with sickness, let his bread be
dipped in tears, and all the daughters of music be brought low; let God
commence a quarrel against him, and be bitter in the accents of his anger or
his discipline; then God tries your faith. Can you, then, trust his goodness,
and believe him to be a father, when you groan under his rod? Can you rely upon
all the strange propositions of Scripture, and be content to perish if they be
not true? Can you receive comfort in the discourses of death and heaven, of
immortality and the resurrection, of the death of Christ and conforming to his
sufferings? Truth is, there are but two great periods in which faith
demonstrates itself to be a powerful and mighty grace; and they are persecution
and the approaches of death, for the passive part, and a temptation for the
active. In the days of pleasure and the night of pain faith is to fight her
agonistiun, to contend for mastery: and faith overcomes all alluring and
fond temptations to sin, and faith overcomes all our weaknesses and faintings
in our troubles. By the faith of the promises we learn to despise the world,
choosing those objects which faith discovers; and by expectation of the same
promises, we are comforted in all our sorrows, and enabled to look through and
see beyond the cloud: but the vigour of it is pressed and called forth when all
our fine discourses come to be reduced to practice. For in our health and
clearer days it is easy to talk of putting trust in God;[80] we readily trust him for life when we are in health; for
provisions when we have fair revenues; and for deliverance when we are newly
escaped: but let us come to sit upon the margent of our grave, and let a tyrant
lean hard upon our fortunes and dwell upon our wrong, let the strom arise, and
the keels toss till the cordage crack, or that all our hopes bulge under us and
descend into the hollowness of sad misfortunes; then can you believe, when you
neither hear, nor see, nor feel anything but objections? This is the proper
work of sickness: faith is then brought into the theatre, and so exercised,
that if it abides but to the end of the contention we may see the work of faith
which God will hugely crown. The same I say of hope and of charity, of the love
of God and of patience, which is a grace produced from the mixtures of all
these: they are virtues which are greedy of danger; and no man was ever
honoured by any wise or discerning person for dining upon Persian carpets, nor
rewarded with a crown for being at ease.[81]
It was the fire that did honour to Mutius Scaevola; poverty made Fabricius
famous; Rutilius was made excellent by banishment; Regulus by torments;
Socrates by prison; Cato by his death; and God hath crowned the memory of Job
with a wreath of glory because he sat upon his dunghill wisely and temperately;
and his potsherd and his groans, mingled with praises and justifications of
God, pleased him like an anthem sung by angels in the morning of the
resurrection. God could not choose but be pleased with the delicious accents of
martyrs, when in their tortures they cried out nothing but `Holy Jesus' and
`Blessed be God;' and they also themselves who, with a hearty designation to
the divine pleasure, can delight in God's severe dispensation, will have the
transportations of cherubim when they enter into the joys of God. If God be
delicious to his servants when he smites them, he will be nothing but
ravishments and ecstasies to their spirits when he refreshes them with the
overflowings of joy in the day of recompenses. No man is more miserable than he
that hath no adversity; that man is not tried,[82] whether he be good or bad: and God never crowns those
virtues which are only faculties and dispositions; but every act of virtue is
an ingredient into reward. And we see many children fairly planted, whose parts
of nature were never dressed by art, nor called from the furrows of their first
possibilities by discipline and institution; and they dwell for ever in
ignorance, and converse with beasts; and yet, if they had been dressed and
exercised, might have stood at the chairs of princes, or spoken parables
amongst the rulers of cities. Our virtues are but in the seed when the grace of
God comes upon us first; but this grace must be thrown into broken furrows, and
must twice feel the cold, and twice feel the heat, and be softened with storms
and showers; and then it will arise into fruitfulness and harvests. And what is
there in the world to distinguish virtues from dishonours, or the valour of
Caesar from the softness of the Egyptian eunuchs, or that can make anything
rewardable, but the labour and the danger, the pain and the difficulty? Virtue
could not be anything but sensuality if it were the entertainment of our senses
and fond desires; and Apicius had been the noblest of all the Romans if feeding
a great appetite and despising the severities of temperance had been the work
and proper employment of a wise man. But otherwise do fathers and otherwise do
mothers handle their children. These soften them with kisses and imperfect
noises, with the pap and breast-milk of soft endearments; they rescue them from
tutors and snatch them from discipline; they desire to keep them fat and warm,
and their feet dry, and their bellies full; and then the children govern and
cry and prove fools and troublesome, so long as the feminine republic does
endure. But fathers, because they design to have their children wise and
valiant, apt for counsel or tie them to study, to hard labour, and affective
contingencies. They rejoice when the bold boy strikes a lion with his hunting
spear, and shrinks not when the beast comes to affright his early courage.
Softness is for slaves and beasts,[83] for
minstrels and useless persons, for such who cannot ascend higher that the state
of a fair ox, or a servant entertained for vainer offices: but the man that
designs his son for noble employments, to honours and to triumphs, to consular
dignities and presidencies of councils, loves to see him pale with study, or
panting with labour, burdened with sufferance, or eminent by dangers. And so
God dresses us for heaven. He loves us struggling with a disease, and resisting
the devil, and contesting against the weaknesses of nature, and against hope to
believe in hope, resigning ourselves to God's will, praying him to choose for
us, and dying in all things but faith and its blessed consequences; ut ad
officium cum pericule simus prompti: and the danger and the resistance
shall endear the office. For so have I known the boisterous north wind pass
through the yielding air,[84] which opened its
bosom and appeased its violence by entertaining it with easy compliance in all
the regions of its reception: but when the same breath of heaven hath been
checked with the stiffness of a tower, or the united strength of wood, it grew
mighty, and dwelt there, and made the highest branches stoop and make a smooth
path for it on the top of all its glories. So is sickness, and so is the grace
of God: when sickness hath made the difficulty, then God's grace hath made a
triumph, and by doubling its power hath created new proportions of a reward;
and then shows its biggest glory,[85] when it
hath the greatest difficulty to master, the greatest weaknesses to support, the
most busy temptations to contest with; for so God loves that his strength
should be seen in our weakness and our danger. Happy is that state of life in
which our services to God are the dearest and the most expensive.[86]
5. Sickness hath some degrees of eligibility, at
least by an after-choice; because to all persons which are within the
possibilities and state of pardon it becomes a great instrument of pardon of
sins. For as God seldom rewards here and hereafter too, so it is not very often
that he punishes in both states. In great and final sins he doth so; but we
find it expressed only in the case of the sin against the Holy Ghost. `which
shall never be forgiven in this world, nor in the world to come,' that is, it
shall be punished in both worlds, and the infelicities of this world shall but
usher in the intolerable calamities of the next. But this is in a case of
extremity, and in sins of an unpardonable malice: in those lesser stages of
death, which are deviations from the rule, and not a destruction and perfect
antinomy to the whole institution, God very often smites with his rod of
sickness that he may not for ever be slaying the soul with eternal death. `I
will visit their offences with the rod, and their sin with scourges;
nevertheless my loving-kindness will I not utterly take from him, nor suffer my
truth to fail.' And there is in the New Testament a delivering over to Satan,[87] and a consequent buffetting, for the
mortification of the flesh indeed, but that the soul may be saved in the day of
the Lord. And to some persons the utmost process of God's anger reaches but to
a sharp sickness, or at most but to a temporal death; and then the little
momentary anger is spent, and expires in rest and a quiet grave. Origen, St.
Augustine, and Cassian say, concerning Ananias and Sapphira that they were
slain with a sudden death, that by such a judgment their sin might be punished,
and their guilt expiated, and their persons reserved for mercy in the day of
judgment. And God cuts off many of his children from the land of the living;
and yet, when they are numbered amongst the dead, he finds them in the book of
life, written amongst those that shall live to him for ever. And thus it
happened to many new Christians, in the church of Corinth, for their little
indecencies and disorders in the circumstances of receiving the holy sacrament.
St. Paul says, that `many amongst them were sick, many were weak, and some were
fallen asleep.' He expresses the divine anger against those persons in no
louder accents; which is according to the style of the New Testament, where all
the great transactions of duty and reproof are generally made upon the stock of
heaven, and hell is plainly a reserve, and a period set to the declaration of
God's wrath. For God knows that the torments of hell are so horrid, so
insupportable a calamity, that he is not easy and apt to cast those souls which
he hath taken so much care, and hath been at so much expense to save, into the
eternal never-dying flames of hell lightly, for smaller sins, or after a
fairly-begun repentance, and in the midst of holy desires to finish it; but God
takes such penalties and exacts such fines of us which we may pay salvo
contenemento, saving the main stake of all, even our precious souls. And
therefore St. Augustine prayed to God in his penitential sorrows, "Here, O
Lord, burn and cut my flesh, that thou mayest spare me for ever." For so said
our blessed Saviour, `every sacrifice must be burnt with fire;' that is, we
must abide in the state of grace; and if we have committed sins we must expect
to be put into the state of affliction; and yet the sacrifice will send up a
right and untroubled cloud, and a sweet smell to join with the incense of the
altar, where the eternal Priest offers a never-ceasing sacrifice. And now I
have said a thing against which there can be no exceptions, and of which no
just reason can make abatement. For when sickness, which is the condition of
our nature, is called for with purposes of redemption; when we are sent to
death to secure eternal life; when God strikes us that he may spare us - it
shows that we have done things which he essentially hates; and therefore we
must be smitten with the rod of God: but in the midst of judgment God remembers
mercy, and makes the rod to be medicinal, and, like the rod of God in the hand
of Aaron, to shoot forth buds and leaves and almonds, hopes and mercies and
eternal recompenses, in the day of restitution. This is so great a good to us,
if it be well conducted in all the channels of its intention and design, that
if we had put off the objections of the flesh with abstractions, contempts,and
separations, so as we ought to do, it were as earnestly to be prayed for as any
gay blessing that crowns our cups with joy and our heads with garlands and
forgetfulness. But this was it which I said, that this may, nay, that it ought
to be chosen, at least by an after-election; for so said St. Paul, `If we judge
ourselves, we shall not be condemned of the Lord;' that is, if we judge
ourselves worthy of the sickness, if we acknowledge and confess God's justice
in smiting us, if we take the rod of God in the infliction; and then the
sickness, beginning and being managed in the virtue of repentance and patience
and resignation and charity, will end in peace and pardon and justification and
consignation to glory. That I have spoken truth, I have brought God's Spirit
speaking in Scripture for a witness. But, if this be true, there are not many
states of life that have advantages which can outweigh this great instrument of
security to our final condition. Moses died at the mouth of the Lord, said the
story; he died with the kisses of the Lord's mouth:[88] (so the Chaldee paraphrase:) it was the greatest he
kissed him and he died. But I have some things to observe for the better
finishing this consideration.
1. All these advantages and lessenings of evils
in the state of sickness are only upon the stock of virtue and religion. There
is nothing can make sickness in any sense eligible, or in many senses
tolerable, but only the grace of God;[89] that
only turns sickness into easiness and felicity which also turns it into virtue.
For whosoever goes about to comfort a vicious person, when he lies sick upon
his bed, can only 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 an only make him to observe decent gestures in his sickness, 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 hair-laces, 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 sickness as it looks back, is an effect of God's indignation and fierce
vengeance, and if it goes forward and enters into the gates of the grave is the
beginning of a sorrow that shall never have an ending? But when the sickness is
a messenger sent from a chastising father; when it first turns into degrees of
innocence, and then into virtues, and thence into pardon, this is no misery,
but such a method of the divine economy and dispensation as resolves to bring
us to heaven without any new impositions, but merely upon the stock and charges
of nature.
2. Let it be observed, that these advantages
which spring from sickness are not in all instances of virtue, nor to all
persons. Sickness 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 sickness is not a fit station for a penitent; and it can
serve the ends of the grace of repentance but accidentally. Sickness may begin
a repentance,[90] if God continues life, and
if we co-operate with the divine grace; or sickness 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 healthful state, so that it may serve at the entrance in or
at the going out. But sickness, at no hand, is a good stage to represent all
the substantial 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 attempters the spirit;
5. it cures hypocrisy; 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 only
when God fits the circumstances of the sickness so as to consist with acts of
reason, consideration, choice, and a present and reflecting mind 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 design to trust the beginning, the
progress, and the consummation of our piety to such an estate, which for ever
leaves it imperfect; and though to some persons it adds degrees, and ministers
opportunities, and exercises single acts with great advantage, in passive
graces; yet it is never an entire 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 nobleness 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 unrelentint natures. God's providence is not so
afflictive and full of trouble,[91] as that it
hath placed sickness and infirmity amongst things simply necessary; and, in
most persons, it is but a sickly and an effeminate virtue, which is imprinted
upon our spirits with fears, and the sorrows of a fever, or a peevish
consumption. It is but a miserable remedy to be beholden to a sickness for our
health; and though it be better to suffer the loss of a finger than that the
arm and the whole body should putrefy, yet even then also it is a trouble and
an evil to lose a finger. He that mends with sickness pares the nails of the
beast when they have already torn off part of the flesh: but he that would have
a sickness 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 a holy
life, and judge himself with an early sentence; and so order the affairs of his
soul, that, in the usual method of God's saving us, there may be nothing left
to be done, but that such virtues should be exercised which God intends to
crown; and then, as when the Athenians upon a day of battle, with longing and
uncertain souls sitting in their common-hall, expecting what would be the
sentence of the day, at last received a messenger who only had breath enough
left him to say, "We are conquerors," and so died, - so shall the sick person,
who hath `fought a good fight and kept the faith,' and only waits for his
dissolution and his sentence, breathe forth his spirit with the accents of a
conquer, and his sickness and his death shall only make the mercy and the
virtue more illustrious.
But for the sickness itself: 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 business and
a temporal care; and some men wake as much in the foldings of the softest beds,
as others on the cross; and sometimes the very weight of sorrow and the
weariness of a sickness press the spirit into slumbers and the images of rest,
when the intemperate or the lustful person rolls upon his uneasy thorns, and
sleep is departed from his eyes. Certain it is some sickness is a blessing.
Indeed blindness were a most accursed thing,[92] if no man were ever blind but he whose eyes were pulled
out with tortures or burning basins: and if sickness were always a testimony of
God's anger, and a violence to a man's whose 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 designs of mercy to preserve their
innocence, to overcome temptation, to try their virtue, to fit them for
rewards: it is certain that sickness never is an evil but by our own faults,
and if we will do our duty, we shall be sure to turn it into a blessing. If the
sickness be great, it may end in death, and the greater it is[93] the sooner; and if it be very little, it hath great
intervals of rest; if it be between both, we may be masters of it, and by
serving the ends of Providence serve also the perfective end of human nature,
and enter into the possession of everlasting mercies.
The sum is this: He that is afraid of pain is
afraid of his own nature; and if his fear be violent it is a sign his patience
is none at all, and an impatient person is not ready-dressed for heaven. None
but suffering, humble, and patient persons can go to heaven; and when God hath
given us the whole stage of our life to exercise all the active virtues of
religion, it is necessary in the state of virtues, that some portion and period
of our lives be assigned to passive graces; for patience, for Christian
fortitude, for resignation or conformity to the Divine will. But as the violent
fear of sickness makes us impatient, so it will make our death without comfort
and without religion; and we shall go off from our stage of actions and
sufferings with an unhandsome exit, because we were willing to receive the
kindness of God, when he expressed it as we listed; but we would not suffer him
to be king and gracious to us in his own method, nor were willing to exercise
and improve our virtues at the charge of a sharp fever, or a lingering
consumption. `Woe be to the man that hath lost patience; for what will he do
when the Lord shall visit him?'[94]
There is nothing which can make sickness
unsanctified, but the same also will give us cause to fear death. if,
therefore, we so order our affairs and spirits that we do not fear death, our
sickness may easily become our advantage; and we can then receive counsel, and
consider, and do those acts of virtue, which are, in that state, the proper
services of God, and such which men in bondage and fear are not capable of
doing, or of advices how they should, when they come to the appointed days of
mourning. And, indeed, if men would but place their design of being happy in
the nobleness, courage, and perfect resolutions of doing handsome things, and
passing through our unavoidable necessities, in the contempt and despite of the
things of this world, and in holy living and the perfective desires of our
natures, the longings and pursuances after heaven; it is certain they could not
be made miserable by chance and change, by sickness and death. But we are so
softened and made effeminate with delicate thoughts, and meditations of ease,
and brutish satisfactions that if our death come before we have seized upon a
great fortune, or enjoy the promises of the fortune-tellers, we esteem
ourselves to be robbed of our goods, to be mocked, and miserable. Hence it
comes that men are impatient of the thoughts of death; hence come those arts of
protraction and delaying the significations of old age: thinking to deceive the
world, men cozen themselves,[95] and
by representing themselves youthful, they certainly continue their vanity, till
Proserpina pull the peruke from their heads. We cannot deceive God and nature;
for a coffin is a coffin, though it be covered with a pompous veil; and the
minutes of our time strike on, and are counted by angels, till the period comes
which must cause the passing-bell to give warning to all the neighbours that
thou art dead, and they must be so; and nothing can excuse or retard this. And
if our death could be put off a little longer, what advantage can it be, in thy
accounts of nature or felicity? They that three hundred years agone died
unwillingly, and stopped death two days, or stayed it a week, what is their
gain? Where is that week? And poor-spirited men use arts of protraction, and
make their persons pitiable, but their condition contemptible, being like the
poor sinners at Noah's flood; the waters drove them out of their lower rooms;
then they crept up to the roof, having lasted half a day longer, and then they
knew not how to get down; some crept upon the top-branch of a tree, and some
climbed up to a mountain, and stayed, it may be, three days longer; but all
that while they entered a worse torment than death: they lived with amazement,
and were distracted with the ruins of mankind, and the horror of a universal
deluge.
Remedies against the Fear of Death, by way of Consideration.
1. God having in this world placed us in a
sea, and troubled the sea with a continual storm, hath appointed the church for
a ship, and religion to be the stern; but there is no haven or port but death.
Death is that harbour, whither God hath designed every one, that there he may
find rest from the troubles of the world. How many of the noblest Romans have
taken death for sanctuary, and have esteemed it less than shame or a mean
dishonour? and Caesar was cruel to Domitius, captain of Corfinium, when he had
taken the town from him, that he refused to sign his petition of death. Death
would have hid his head with honour, but that cruel mercy reserved him to the
shame of surviving his disgrace.[96] The holy
Scripture, giving an account of the reason of the Divine providence taking
godly men from this world, and shutting them up in a hasty grave, says, `that
they are taken away from the evils to come:' and concerning ourselves it is
certain, if we had ten years agone taken seizure of our portion of dust, death
had not taken us from good things, but from infinite evils, such which the sun
hath seldom seen. Did not Priamus weep oftener that Troilus?[97] and happy had he been, if he had died when his sons were
living, and his kingdom safe, and houses full, and his city unburnt. It was a
long life that made him miserable, and an early death only could have secured
his fortune. And it hath happened many times, that persons of a fair life and a
clear reputation, of a good fortune, and an honourable name, have been tempted
in their age to folly and vanity,[98] have
fallen under the disgrace of dotage, or into an unfortunate marriage, or have
besotted themselves with drinking, or outlived their fortunes, or become
tedious to their friends, or are afflicted with lingering and vexatious
diseases, or lived to see their excellent parts buried, and cannot understand
the wise discourses and productions of their younger years. In all these cases,
and infinite more, do not all the world say, that it had been better this man
had died sooner?[99] But so have I known
passionate women to shriek aloud when their nearest relatives were dying, and
that horrid shriek hath stayed the spirit of the man awhile to wonder at the
folly, and represent the inconvenience; and the dying person hath lived one day
longer full of pain, amazed with an indeterminate spirit, distorted with
convulsions, and only come again to act one scene more of a new calamity, and
to die with less decency. So also do very many men; with passion and a troubled
interest they strive to continue their life longer; and it may be, they escape
this sickness, and live to fall into a disgrace; they escape the storm, and
fall into the hands of pirates; and instead of dying with liberty, they live
like slaves, miserable and despised servants to a little time, and sottish
admirers of the breath of their own lungs. Paulus Emilius did handsomely
reprove the cowardice of the king of humanity, that having conquered him and
taken his kingdom from him, he would be content with that, and not lead him in
triumph a prisoner to Rome. Emilius told him he need not be beholden to him for
that; himself might prevent that in despite of him. But the timorous king durst
not die. But certainly every wise man will easily believe, that it had been
better the Macedonian kings should have died in battle than protract their life
so long, till some of them came to be scriveners and joiners at Rome: or that
the tyrant of Sicily better had perished in the Adriatic than to be wafted to
Corinth safely, and there turn schoolmaster. It is a sad calamity, that the
fear of death shall so imbecile man's courage and understanding, that he dares
not suffer the remedy of all his calamities; but that he lives to say as
Laberius did, "I have lived this one day longer than I should." Either,
therefore, let us be willing to die, when God calls, or let us never more
complain of the calamities of our life, which we feel so sharp and numerous.
And when God sends his angel to us with the scroll of death, let us look on it
as an act of mercy, to prevent many sins and many calamities of a longer life,
and lay our heads down softly, and go to sleep without wrangling like babies
and forward children. For a man (at least) get this by death, that his
calamities are not immortal.[100]
But I do not only consider death by the
advantages of comparison; but if we look on it in itself, it is no such
formidable thing, if we view it on both sides and handle it, and consider all
its appendages.
2. It is necessary, and therefore not
intolerable: and nothing is to be esteemed evil which God and nature have fixed
with eternal sanctions.[101] It is a law of
God, it is a punishment of our sins, and it is the constitution of our nature.
Two differing substances were joined together with the breath of God, and when
that breath is taken away, they part asunder, and return to their several
principles; the soul to God our Father, the body to the earth our mother: and
what in all this is evil? Surely nothing, but that we are men; nothing, but
that we are not born immortal: but by declining this change with great passion,
or receiving it with a huge natural fear, we accuse the Divine Providence of
tyranny, and exclaim against our natural constitution, and are discontent that
we are men.
3. It is a thing that is no great matter in
itself; if we consider, that we die daily, that it meets us in every accident,
that every creature carries a dart along with it and can kill us. And therefore
when Lysimachus threatened Theodorus to kill him, he told him, that was so
great matter to do, and he could do no more than the cantharides could: a
little fly could do as much.
4. It is a thing that every one suffers, even
persons of the lowest resolution, of the meanest virtue, of no breeding, of no
discourse. Take away but the pomps of death, the disguises and solemn bugbears,
the tinsel, and the actings by candlelight, and proper and fantastic
ceremonies, the minstrels and the noise makers, the women and the weepers, the
swoonings and the shriekings, the nurses and the physicians, the dark room and
the ministers, the kindred and the watchers; and then to die is easy, ready,
and quitted from its troublesome circumstances. It is the same harmless thing
that a poor shepherd suffered yesterday, or a maid-servant to-day; and at the
same time in which you die, in that very night a thousand creatures die with
you, some wise men, and many fools; and the wisdom of the first will not quit
him, and the folly of the latter does not make him unable to die.
5. Of all the evils of the world which are
reproached with an evil character, death is the most innocent of its
accusation. For when it is present, it hurts nobody, and when it is absent, it
is indeed troublesome, but the trouble is owning to our fears, not to the
affrighting and mistaken object: and besides this, if it were an evil, it is so
transient that it passes like the instant or undiscerned portion of the present
time; and either it is past, or it is not yet; for just when it is, no man hath
reason to complain of so insensible, so sudden, so undiscerned a change.
6. It is so harmless a thing that no good man was
ever thought the more miserable for dying but much the happier. When men saw
the graves of Calatinus, of the Servilii, the Scipios, the Metlli, did ever any
man among the wisest Romans think them unhappy? And when St. Paul fell under
the sword of Nero, and St. Peter died upon the cross, and St. Stephen from a
heap of stones was carried into an easier grave, they that made great
lamentation over them, wept for their own interest, and after the manner of
men; but the martyrs were accounted happy, and their days kept solemnly, and
their memories preserved in never-dying honours. When St. Hilary, bishop of
Poictiers, in France, went into the East to reprove the Arian heresy, he heard
that a young noble gentleman treated with his daughter Abra for marriage. The
bishop wrote to his daughter, that she should not engage her promise, nor do
countenance to that request, because he had provided for her a husband fair,
rich, wise, and noble, far beyond her present offer. The event of which was
this: she obeyed; and when her father returned from his eastern triumph to his
western charge, he prayed to God that his daughter might die quickly: and God
heard his prayers, and Christ took her into his bosom, entertaining with
antepasts and caresses of holy love, till the day of the marriage-supper of the
Lamb shall come. But when the bishop's wife observed this event, and understood
of the good man her husband what was done, and why, she never let him alone,
till he obtained the same favour for her; and she also, at the prayers of St.
Hilary, went into a more early grave and a bed of joys.
7. I is a sottish and an unlearned thing to
reckon the time of our life, as it is short or long, to be good or evil
fortune; life in itself being neither good nor bad, but just as we make it; and
therefore so is death.
8. But when we consider death is not only better
than a miserable life, not only an easy and innocent thing in itself, but also
that it is a state of advantage, we shall have reason not to double the
sharpnesses of our sickness by our fear of death. Certain it is, death hath
some good upon its proper stock; praise, and a fair memory, a reverence and
religion towards them so great, that it is counted dishonest to speak evil of
the dead; then they rest in peace and are quiet from their labours, and are
designed to immortality. Cleobis and Biton, Trophonius and Agamedes, had an
early death sent them as a reward; to the former, for their piety to their
mother; to the latter, for building of a temple. To this all those arguments
will minister, which relate the advantages of the state of separation and
resurrection.
1. He that would willingly be fearless of
death, must learn to despise the world: he must neither love any thing
passionately, nor be proud of any circumstance of his life. `O death, how
bitter is the remembrance of thee to a man that liveth at rest in his
possessions, to a man that hath nothing to vex him, and that hath prosperity in
all things; yea, unto him that is yet able to receive meat,' said the son of
Sirach. But the parts of this exercise help each other. If a man be not
incorporated in all his passions to the things of this world he will less fear
to be divorced from them by a supervening death; and yet because he must part
with them all in death; it is but reasonable he should not be passionate for so
fugitive and transient interest. But if any man things well of himself for
being a handsome person, or if he be stronger and wiser than his neighbours, he
must remember that what he boasts of will decline into weakness and dishonour;
but that very boasting and complacency will make death keener and more
unwelcome, because it comes to take him from his confidence and pleasures,
making his beauty equal to those ladies that have slept some years in
charnel-houses, and their strength not so stubborn as the breath of an infant,
and their wisdom such which can be looked for in the land where all things are
forgotten.
2. He that would not fear death must strengthen
his spirits with the proper instruments of Christian fortitude. All men are
resolved upon this, that to bear grief honestly and temperately, and to die
willingly and nobly, is the duty of a good and valiant man; and they that are
not so are vicious and fools and cowards. All men praise the valiant and
honest; and that which the very heathen admired in their noblest examples is
especially patience and contempt of death. Zeno Eleates endured torments rather
than discover his friends, or betray them to the danger of the tyrant; and
Calanus, the barbarous and unlearned Indian, willingly suffered himself to be
burnt alive; and all the women did so, to do honour to their husbands funeral,
and to represent and prove their affections great to their lords. The religion
of a Christian does more command fortitude than ever did any institution; for
we are commanded to be willing to die for Christ, to die for the brethren, to
die rather than to give offence or scandal: the effect of which is this, that
he that is instructed to do the necessary parts of his duty, is, by the same
instrument, fortified against death; as he that does his duty need not fear
death, so neither shall he; the parts of his duty are parts of his security. It
is certainly a great baseness and pusillanimity of spirit that makes death
terrible, and extremely to be avoided.
3. Christian prudence is a great
security against the fear of death. For if we be afraid of death, it is but
reasonable to use all spiritual arts to take off the apprehension of the evil;
but therefore we ought to remove our fear, because fear gives to death wings
and spurs and darts. Death hastens to a fearful man; if therefore you would
make death harmless and slow, to throw off fear is the way to do it; and prayer
is the way to do that. If therefore you be afraid of death, consider you will
have less need to fear it by how much the less you do fear it: and so cure your
direct fear by a reflex act of prudence and consideration. Fannius had not died
so soon[102] if he had not feared death; and
when Cneius Carbo begged the respite of a little time, for a base employment,
of the soldiers of Pompey, he got nothing, but that the baseness of his fear
dishonoured the dignity of his third consulship; and he chose to die in a place
where none but his meanest servants should have seen him. I remember a story of
the wrestler Polydamus, that, running into a cave to avoid the storm, the water
at last swelled so high that it began to press that hollowness to a ruin; which
when his fellows espied, they chose to enter into the common fate of all men,
and went abroad; but Polydamus thought by his strength to support the earth,
till its intolerable weight crushed him into flatness and a grave. Many men run
for shelter to a place, and they only find a remedy for their fears by feeling
the worst of evils; fear itself finds no sanctuary but the worst of sufferance;
and they that fly from a battle are exposed to the mercy and fury of the
pursuers, who, if they faced about, were as well disposed to give laws of life
and death as to take them, and at worst can but die nobly; but now, even at the
very best, they live shamefully, or die timorously. Courage is the greatest
security; for it does most commonly safeguard the man, but always rescues the
condition from an intolerable evil.
4. If thou wilt be fearless of death endeavour to
be in love with the felicities of saints and angels, and be once persuaded to
believe that there is a condition of living better than this; that there are
creatures more noble than we; that above there is a country better than ours;
that the inhabitants know more and know better, and are in places of rest and
desire; and first learn to value it, and then learn to purchase it, and death
cannot be a formidable thing, which lets us into so much joy and so much
felicity. And, indeed, who would not thing his condition mended if he passed
from conversing with dull 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 St. Paul, and all the college 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, Jesus Christ, and with God himself. For Christ died for us, that,
whether we wake or sleep, we might live together with him. Then we shall be
free from lust and envy,[103] from fear and
rage, from covetousness and sorrow, from tears and cowardice; and these,
indeed, properly, are the only 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 soul's abode, he had
not patience to stay nature's dull leisure, but leaped 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 alistnence of two days be 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 Cleapthes. 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 thyself into the
sea, (as Christ did to St. Peter, or as God concerning Jonas,) 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 incredulour and pusillanimous persons if we should
tremble to put such a felicity into act, and ourselves into possession? The
very duty of resignation and the love of our own interest are good antidotes
against fear. In forty or fifty years we find 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 than death, this having in it less of evil
and more of advantage. And it was a rare wish of that Roman,[104] that death might come only to wise and excellent
persons, and not to fools and cowards; that it might not be a sanctuary for the
timorous, but the reward of the virtuous: and indeed they only can make
advantage of it.
6. Make no excuses to make thy desires of life
seem reasonable; neither cover thy fear with pretences, but suppose it rather
with arts of severity and ingenuity. Some are not willing to submit to God's
sentence and arrest of death till they have finished such a design,[105] 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 always 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 trimmed and
finished his verse, which was lame in the hinder led: 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, God's 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 sickness St. Paul speaks of, God
would have secured the work of the gospel without him: and he could have spared
Epaphroditus as well as St. Stephen, and St. Peter as well as St. James. Say no
more; but when God calls, lay aside thy papers; and first dress thy soul, and
then dress thy hearse.
Blindness is odious, and widowhood 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
far from wanting the commodities of this life, that they do not want life
itself.
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 blessed 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 with fear; which felicity our dearest Saviour refused to
have, because it was agreeable to his purposes to suffer anything 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 will blaspheme and dishonour Providence, or do a base
action, or curse God and die; but, in all cases, they die miserable and
ensnared, and in no case do they die the less for it. Nature hath left us the
key of the churchyard, and custom hath brought cemeteries and charnel-houses
into cities and churches, places most frequented, that we might not carry
ourselves strangely in so certain, so expected, so ordinary, so unavoidable an
accident. All reluctancy or unwillingness to obey the divine decree is but a
snare to ourselves, and a load to our spirits, and is either an entire cause or
a great aggravation of the calamity. Who did not scorn to look upon Xerxes when
he caused three hundred stripes to be given to the sea, and sent a chartel of
defiance against the mountain of Athos? We did not scorn the proud vanity of
Cyrus, when he took so goodly a revenge upon the river Cyndus for his hard
passage over it? or did not deride or pity the Thracians for shooting arrows
against heaven when it thunders? To be angry with God, to quarrel with the
divine providence, by repining against an unalterable, a natural, an easy
sentence, is an argument of a huge folly, and the parent of a great trouble; a
man is base and foolish to no purpose; he throws away a vice to his own misery,
and to no advantages of ease and pleasure. Fear keeps men in bondage all their
life, saith St. Paul; and patience makes him his own man, and lord of his own
interest and person. Therefore posses yourselves in patience with reason and
religion, and you shall die with ease. [106]
If all the parts of this discourse be true, if
they be better than dreams, and unless virtue be nothing but words, as a grove
is a heap of trees; if they be not the phantasms of hypochondriacal persons,
and designs upon the interest of men, and their persuasions to evil purposes;
then there is no reason but that we should really desire death, and account it
among the good things of God, and the sour and laborious felicities of man. St.
Paul understood it well when he desired to be dissolved: he well enough knew
his own advantages and pursued them accordingly. But it is certain that he that
is afraid of death, I mean with a violent and transporting fear, with a fear
apt to discompose his duty or his patience, that man either loves this world
too much or dares not trust God for the next.
1. Take care that the cause of thy
sickness be such as may not sour it in the principal causes of it. It is a sad
calamity to pass into the house of mourning through the gates of intemperance,
by a drunken meeting, or the surfeits of a loathed and luxurious table; for
then a man suffers the pain of his own folly, and he is like a fool smarting
under the whip which his own viciousness twisted for his back: then a man pays
the price of his sin, and hath a pure and an unmingled sorrow in his suffering;
and it cannot be alleviated by any circumstances, for the whole affair is mere
process of death and sorrow. Sin is in the head, sickness is in the body, and
death and eternity of pains in the tail; and nothing can make this condition
tolerable unless the miracles of the divine mercy will be pleased to exchange
the eternal anger for the temporal. True it is, that in all sufferings the
cause of it makes it noble or ignoble, honour or shame, tolerable or
intolerable. For when patience is assaulted by a ruder violence, by a blow from
heaven or earth, from a gracious God or an unjust man, patience looks forth to
the doors, which way she may escape. And if innocence or a cause of religion
keep the first entrance, then, whether she escapes at the gates of life or
death, there is a good to be received greater than the evils of a sickness; but
if sin thrust in that sickness, and that hell stands at the door, then patience
turns into fury, and, seeing it impossible to go forth with safety, rolls up
and down with a circular and infinite revolution, makes its motion not from but
upon its own centre; it doubles the pain, and increases the sorrow, till by its
weight it breaks the spirit and bursts into the agonies of infinite and eternal
ages. If we had seen St. Polycarp burning to death, or St. Laurence roasted
upon his gridiron, or St. Ignatius exposed to lions, or St. Sebastian pierced
with arrows, or St. Attalus carried about the theatre with scorn unto his
death, for the cause of Jesus, for religion, for God, and a holy conscience -
we should have been in love with flames, and have thought the gridiron fairer
than the spondae, the ribs of a martial bed; and we should have chosen to
converse with those beasts, rather than those men that brought those beasts
forth; and estimated the arrows to be rays of light brighter than the moon; and
that disgrace and mistaken pageantry were a solemnity richer and more
magnificent than Mordecia's procession upon the king's horse, and in the robes
of majesty: for so did these holy men account them; they kissed their stakes,
and hugged their deaths, and ran violently to torments, and counted whippings
and secular disgraces to be the enamel of their persons, and the ointment of
their heads, and the embalming their names, and securing them for immortality.
But to see Sejanus torn in pieces by the people, or Nero crying or creeping
timorously to his death, when he was condemned to die more majorum; to see
Judas pale and trembling, full of anguish, sorrow, and despair; to observe the
groanings and intolerable agonies of Herod and Antiochus - will tell and
demonstrate the causes of patience and impatience to proceed from the causes of
the suffering; and it is sin only that makes the cup bitter and deadly. When
men, by vomiting, measure up the drink they took in, and sick and sad do again
taste their meat turned into choler by intemperance, the sin and its punishment
are mingled so that shame covers the face and sorrow puts a veil of darkness
upon the heart; and we scarce pity a vile person that is haled to execution for
murder or for treason, but we say he deserves it, and that every man is
concerned in it that he should die. If lust brought the sickness or the shame,
if we truly suffer the rewards of our evil deeds, we must thank ourselves; that
is, we are fallen into an evil condition, and are the sacrifice of the divine
justice. But if we live holy lives, and if we enter well in, we are sure to
pass on safe, and to go forth with advantage if we list ourselves.
2. To this relates that we should not
counterfeit sickness; for he that is to be careful of his passage into a
sickness will think himself concerned that he fall not into it through a
trap-door: for so it hath sometimes happened that such counterfeiting to light
and evil purposes hath ended in a real sufferance. Appian tells of a Roman
gentleman who, to escape the proscription of the trinmvirate, fled, and to
secure his privacy, counterfeited himself blind on one eye, and wore a plaister
upon it; till, beginning to be free from the malice of the three prevailing
princes, he opened his hood, but could not open his eye, but for ever lost the
use of it, and with his eye paid for his liberty and hypocrisy. And Caelius
counterfeited the gout, and all its circumstances and pains, its dressings and
arts of remedy and complaint, till at last the gout really entered and spoiled
the pageantry. His arts of dissimulation were so witty, that they put life and
motion into the very image of the disease: he made the very picture to sigh and
groan.
It is easy to tell upon the interest of what
virtue such counterfeiting is to be reproved. But it will be harder to snatch
the politics of the world from following that which they call a canonised and
authentic precedent; and David's counterfeiting himself mad before the king of
Gath, to save his life and liberty, will be sufficient to entice men to serve
an end upon the stock and charges of so small an irregularity, not in the
matter of manners, but in the rules and decencies of natural or civil
deportment: I cannot certainly tell what degrees of excuse David's action might
put on. This only; besides his present necessity, the laws whose coercive and
directive power David lived under had less of severity, and more of liberty,
and towards enemies had so little of restraint and so great a power, that what
amongst them was a direct sin, if used to their brethren the sons of Jacob, was
lawful and permitted to be acted against enemies. To which also I add this
general caution, that the actions of holy persons in Scripture are not always
good precedents to us Christians, who are to walk by a rule and a greater
strictness, with more simplicity and heartiness of pursuit. And amongst them
sanctity and holy living did, in very many of its instances, increase in new
particulars of duty; and the prophets reproved many things which the law forbad
not, and taught many duties which Moses prescribed not; and as the time of
Christ's approach came, so the sermons and revelations too were more
evangelical and like the patterns which were fully to be exhibited by the Son
of God. Amongst which it is certain that Christian simplicity and godly
sincerity are to be accounted; and counterfeiting of sickness is a huge enemy
to this: it is an upbraiding the Divine Providence, a jesting with fire, a
playing with a thunderbolt, a making the decrees of God to serve the vicious or
secular ends of men; it is a tempting of a judgment, a false accusation of God,
a forestalling and antedating his anger; it is a cozening of men by making God
a party in the fraud; and, therefore, if the cozenage returns upon the man's
own head, he enters like a fox into his sickness, and perceives himself catched
in a trap, or earthed in the intolerable dangers of the grave.
3. Although we must be infinitely careful to
prevent it, that sin does not thrust us into a sickness; yet, when we are in
the house of sorrow, we should do well to take physic against sin, and suppose
that it is the cause of the evil; if not by way of natural causality and proper
effect, yet by amoral influence, and by a just demerit. We can easily see when
a man hath got a surfeit; intemperance is as plain as the handwriting upon the
wall, and easier to be read; but covetousness may cause a fever as well as
drunkenness, and pride can produce a falling-sickness as well as long washings
and dilutions of the brain, and intemperate lust; and we find it recorded in
Scripture that the contemptuous and unprepared manner of receiving the holy
sacraments caused sickness and death; and sacrilege and vow-breach in Ananias
and Sapphira made them to descend quick into their graves. Therefore, when
sickness is upon us, let us cast about; and, if we can, let us find out the
cause of God's displeasure; that, it being removed, we may return into the
health and securities of God's loving-kindness. Thus, in the three years'
famine, David inquired of the Lord what was the matter: and God answered, `It
is for Saul and his bloody house;' and then David expiated the guilt, and the
people were full again of food and blessing. And when Israel was smitten by the
Amorites, Joshua cast about, and found out the accursed thing, and cast it out;
and the people after that fought prosperously. And what God in that case said
to Joshua he will also verify to us: `I will not be with you any more, unless
you destroy the accursed thing from among you.'[107] But in pursuant of this we are to observe, that
although in case of loud and clamorous sins the discovery is easy, and the
remedy not difficult; yet, because Christianity is a nice thing, and religion
is as pure as the sun, and the soul of man is apt to be troubled from more
principles than the intricate and curiously-composed body in its innumerable
parts, it will often happen that iffy go to inquire into the particular we
shall never find it out; and we may suspect drunkenness when it may be also a
morose delectation in unclean thoughts, or covetousness, or oppression, or a
crafty invasion of my neighbour's rights, or my want of charity, or my judging
unjustly in my own cause, or my censuring my neighbours, or a secret pride, or
a base hypocrisy, or the pursuance of little ends with violence and passion,
that may have procured the present messenger of death. Therefore, ask no more
after any one, but heartily endeavour to reform all: `Sin no more, lest a worst
thing happen;' for a single search or accusation may be the design of an
imperfect repentance; but no man does heartily return to God but he that
decrees against every irregularity; and then only we can be restored to health
or life, when we have taken away the causes of sickness and a cursed death.
4. He that means to have his sickness turn into
safety and life, into health and virtue, must make religion the employment of
his sickness, and prayer the employment of his religion. For there are certain
compendiums or abbreviatures and shortenings of religion fitted to several
states. They that first gave up their names to Christ, and that turned from
Paganism to Christianity, had an abbreviature fitted for them; they were to
renounce their false worshippings, and give up their belief, and vow their
obedience unto Christ; and in the very profession of this they were forgiven in
baptism. For God hastens to snatch them from the power of the devil, and
therefore shortens the passage and secures the estate. In the case of poverty,
God hath reduced this duty of man to an abbreviature of those few graces which
they can exercise; such as are patience, contentedness, truth, and diligence;
and the rest he accepts in good will, and the charities of the soul, in
prayers, and the actions of a cheap religion. And to most men charity is also
an abbreviature. And as the love of God shortens the way to the purchase of all
virtues; so the expression of this to the poor goes a huge way in the
requisites and towards the consummation of an excellent religion. And martyrdom
is another abbreviature; and so is every act of an excellent and heroical
virtue. But when we are fallen into the state of sickness, and that our
understanding is weak and troubled, our bodies sick and useless, our passions
turned into fear, and the whole state into suffering, God, in compliance with
man's infirmity, hath also turned our religion into such a duty which a sick
man can do most passionately, and a sad man and a timorous can perform
effectually, and a dying man can do to many purposes of pardon and mercy; and
that is prayer. For although a sick man is bound to do many acts of virtue of
several kinds, yet the most of them are to be done in the way of prayer. Prayer
is not only the religion that is proper to a sick man's condition, but it is
the manner of doing other graces, which is then left and in his power. For thus
the sick man is to do his repentance and his mortifications, his temperance and
his chastity, by a fiction of imagination, bringing the offers of the virtue to
the spirit, and making an action of election: and so our prayers are a direct
act of chastity, when they are made in the matter of that grace; just as
repentance for our cruelty is an act of the grace of mercy; and repentance for
uncleanness is an act of chastity, is a means of its purchase, an act in order
to the habit. And though such acts of virtue, which are only in the way of
prayer, are ineffective to the entire purchase, and of themselves cannot change
the vice into virtue, yet they are good renewings of the grace, and proper
exercise of a habit already gotten.
The purpose of this discourse is, to represent
the excellency of prayer, and its proper advantages which it hath in the time
of sickness. For besides that it moves God to pity, piercing the clouds, and
making the heavens, like a pricked eye, to weep over us and refresh us with
showers of pity; it also doth the work of the soul, and expresses the virtue of
his whole life in effigy, in pictures and lively representments, so preparing
it for a never-ceasing crown, by renewing the actions in the continuation of a
never-ceasing, a never-hindered affection. Prayer speaks to God when the tongue
is stiffened with the approachings of death: prayer can dwell in the heart, and
be signified by the hand or eye, by a thought or a groan; prayer of all the
actions of religion is the last alive, and it serves God without circumstances,
and exercises material graces by abstraction from matter, and separation, and
makes them to be spiritual; and therefore best dresses our bodies for funeral
or recovery, for the mercies of restitution or the mercies of the grave.
5. In every sickness, whether it will or will not
be so in nature and in the event, yet in thy spirit and preparations resolve
upon it, and treat thyself accordingly, as if it were a sickness unto death.
For many men support their unequal courages by flattery and false hopes; and
because sicker men have recovered, believe that they shall do so; but therefore
they neglect to adorn their souls, or set their house in order: besides the
temporal inconveniences that often happen by such persuasions and putting off
the evil day, such as are dying intestate, leaving estates entangled and some
relatives unprovided for, they suffer infinitely in the interest and affairs of
their soul, they die carelessly and surprised, their burdens on and their
scruples unremoved, and their cases of conscience not determined, and, like a
sheep without any care taken concerning their precious souls. Some men will
never believe that a villain will betray them, though they receive often
advices from suspicious persons and likely accidents, till they are entered
into the snare; and then they cannot return; but so the treason entered, and
the man was betrayed by his own folly, placing the snare in the regions and
advantages of opportunity. This evil looks like boldness and a confident
spirit, but it is the greatest timorousness and cowardice in the world. They
are so fearful to die, that they dare not look upon it as possible; and think
that the making of a will is a mortal sign, and sending for a spiritual man an
irrecoverable disease: and they are so afraid lest they should think and
believe now they must die, that they will not take care that it may not be evil
in case they should. So did the eastern slaves drink wine, and wrapped their
heads in a veil, that they might die without sense or sorrow, and wink hard
that they might sleep the easier. In pursuance of this rune, let a man consider
that whatsoever must be done in sickness ought to be done in health; only let
him observe, that his sickness, as a good monitor, chastises his neglect of
duty, and forces him to live as he always should; and then all these
solemnities and dressings for death are nothing else but the part of a
religious life, which he ought to have exercised all his days; and if those
circumstances can affright him, let him please his fancy by this truth, that
then he does but begin to live. But it will be a huge folly if he shall think
that confession of his sins will kill him; or receiving the holy sacrament will
hasten his agony, or the priest shall undo all the hopeful language and
promises of his physician. Assure thyself thou canst not die the sooner; but by
such addresses thou mayest die much the better.
6. Let the sick person be infinitely careful that
he do not fall into a state of death upon a new account: that is, at no hand
commit a deliberate sin, or retain any affection to the old; for in both cases
he falls into the evils of a surprise, and the horrors of a sudden death; for a
sudden death is but a sudden joy, if it takes a man in the state and exercises
of virtue; and it is only then an evil when it finds a man unready. They were
sad departures when Tigillinus, Cornellius Gallus the pretor, Lewis the son of
Gonzaga duke of Mantua, Ladislaus king of Naples, Speusippus, Giachetius of
Geneva, and one of the popes, died in the forbidden embraces of abused women;
or if Job had cursed God, and so died; or when a man sits down in despair, and
in the accusation and calumny of the Divine mercy: they make their night sad,
and stormy, and eternal. When Herod began to sink with the shameful torment of
his bowels, and felt the grave open under him, he imprisoned the nobles of his
kingdom, and commanded his sister that they should be a sacrifice to his
departing ghost. This was an egress fit only for such persons who meant to
dwell with devils to eternal ages; and that man is hugely in love with sin who
cannot forbear in the week of the assizes, and when himself stood at the bar of
scrutiny, and prepared for his final, never-to-be-reversed sentence. He dies
suddenly to the worse sense and event of sudden death who so manages his
sickness that even that state shall not be innocent, but that he is surprised
in the guilt of a new account. It is a sign of a reprobate spirit, and an
habitual prevailing ruling sin, which exacts obedience when the judgment 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.[108]
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, always having intercourse with God, and still
conversing with the holy Jesus, kissing his wounds, admiring his goodness,
begging 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 style of the four gospels. But in all things let his
care and society be as little secular as is possible.
OF THE PRACTICE OF THE GRACES PROPER TO THE STATE OF SICKNESS,
WHICH A SICK MAN MAY PRACTICE ALONE.
Now we suppose the man entering 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 stroke, till his knees kissed the earth and his head trembled with the
weight of the rod which God put into the hand of an exter minating angel. But
whatsoever the ingress was, when the man feels his blood boil, or his bones
weary, or his flesh diseased with a load of dispersed and disordered humour, or
his head to ache, or his faculties discomposed, then he must consider that all
those discoursed he hath heard concerning patience and resignation, and
conformity to Christ's sufferings, and the melancholy lectures of the cross,
must all of them now be reduced to practice, and pass from an ineffective
contemplation to such an exercise as will really try whether we were true
disciples of the cross, or only believed the doctrines of religion when we were
at ease, and that they never passed through 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 blessedness of holy sufferings, and
prepare us with daily alarms, 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 sickness or enter into a state
of sufferings; whither, when we are entered, we are to practise by the
following rules:
The Practice and Acts of Patience by way of Rule.
1. At the first address and presence of
sickness stand still and arrest thy spirit, that it may, without amazement or
affright, consider that this was that thou lookedst for and wert always 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 wildness of thought, but stay their
looseness and dispersion by a serious consideration of the present and future
employment. For so doth the Libyan lion, spying the fierce huntsman, first
beats himself with the strokes of his tail, and curls up his spirits, making
them strong with union and recollection, till being struck with a Mauitanian
spear, he rushed forth into his defence and noblest contention; and either
`scapes into the secrets of his own dwelling, or else dies the bravest of the
forest. Every man, when shot with an arrow from God's 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 timorously, he suffers nevertheless of
sickness; but if he returns 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 faithless and unbelievers. Let him set his heart firm upon this
resolution: "I must bear it inevitably, and I will, by God's grace, do it
nobly."
2. Bear in thy sickness 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 days of thy health,
and when thou didst discourse wisely concerning things spiritual. 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 thou 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 whatsoever weaknesses may invade you, yet consider when you were better
able to judge and govern the accidents of your life you concluded it necessary
to trust in God and posses 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 quietness 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 busy an apprehension: keep your old principles, and upon their stock
discourse and practise on towards your conclusion.
3. Resolve to bear your sickness 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 horrow of it than 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 artificial sickness greater
than the natural. And if thou beest ashamed that a child should bear an evil
better than 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 counsel of Socrates: "It is (said he) a great
danger, and you must, by discourse and arts of reasoning, enchant it into
slumber and some rest."[109] 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 awhile in thy spirit,
even then when thou didst place death in thy meditation, and didst view it in
all its dress 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, when thou art in thy weakness, such little
things will easier move thee than 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 only be helped by chance, or a lucky
saying: and Ludovico Corbinelli was moved at the death of Henry the Second more
than if he had read the saddest elegy of all the unfortunate princes in
Christendom, or all the sad sayings of Scripture, or the thrones of the funeral
prophets. I deny not but this course is most proper to weak persons; but it is
a state of weakness for which we are now providing remedies and instruction; a
strong man will not need it; but when our sickness hath rendered 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 add all those who are ruled by
fancy, we shall find that many persons in their health, and more in their
sickness, 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, unless 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 sickness, or the
manner of thy death, but let it be what God please, so it be no greater than
thy spirit or thy patience; and for that you are to rely upon the promise of
God, and to secure thyself 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 lawful to beg of God that thy sickness may not be sharp or
noisome, infectious or unusual, 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 thyself, 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 entreated to ease thee, or to change thy trial, 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 sickness thou art to submit to God, so in the
kind of it (supposing equal degrees) thou art to be altogether incurious
whether God call thee by a consumption or an asthma, by a dropsy or a palsy, by
a fever in thy humours, or a fever in thy spirits; because all such nicety of
choice is nothing but a colour to a legitimate impatience, and to make an
excuse to murmur privately, and for circumstances, when in the sum of affairs
we durst not own 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 careless life; as thinking a lingering
sickness would certainly infer a lingering 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 useless body, by often conversing with
healthful persons and vigorous neighbours, by uneasiness of the flesh and the
sharpness of their bones, by want of spirits and a dying life; and, in
conclusion, have been directly debauched by peevishness and a fretful sickness:
and these men had better have left it to the wisdom and goodness of God; for
they both are infinite.
6. Be patient in the desires of religion; and
take care that the forwardness of exterior actions do not discompose thy
spirit, while thou fearest, that by less 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
carefulness 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
only 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 busy, and full of attention; for that will be
but a new temptation to your patience, and render your religion tedious and
hateful. But record your desires, and present yourself to God by general acts
of will and understanding, and by habitual remembrances of your former
vigorousness, and by verification of the same grace, rather than 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 tied 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 us from that but our own
uncharitableness.
7. Be obedient to thy physician in those things
that concern him, if he be a person fit to minister unto thee. God is he only
that needs no help, and God hath created the physician for thine: therefore use
him temperately without violent confidences, and sweetly without uncivil
distrustings, or refusing his prescriptions upon humours or impotent fear. A
man may refuse to have his arm or leg cut off, or to suffer the pains of
Marius's incision; and if he believes that to die is the less evil, he may
compose himself to it without hazarding his patience, or introducing that which
he thinks a worse evil; but that which in this article is to be reproved and
avoided is, that some men will choose to die out of fear of death, and send for
physicians, and do what themselves list, and call for counsel and follow none.
When there is reason they should decline him, it is not to be accounted to the
stock of a sin; but where there is no just case there is a direct
impatience.
Hither is to be reduced, that we be not too
confident of the physician, or drain our hopes of recovery from the fountain
through so imperfect channels, laying the wells of God dry, and digging to
ourselves broken cisterns. Physicians are the ministers of God's mercies and
providence in the matter of health and ease, of restitution or death; and when
God shall enable their judgments, and direct their counsels, and prosper their
medicines, they shall do thee good, for which you must give God thanks, and to
the physician the honour of a blessed instrument. But this cannot always be
done: and Lucius Cornelius,[110] the
lieutenant in Portugal under Fabius the consul, boasted in the inscription of
his monument, that he had lived a healthful and vegete age till his last
sickness, but then complained he was forsaken by his physician and railed upon
Esculapius for not accepting his vow and passionate desire of preserving his
life longer; and all the effect of that impatience and folly was, that it is
recorded to folling ages that he died without reason and without religion. But
it was a sad sight to see the favour of all France confined to a physician and
a barber, and the king (Louis XI.) to be so much their servant, that he should
acknowledge and own his life from them, and all his ease to their gentle
dressing of his gout and friendly ministries; for the king thought himself
undone and robbed if he should die; his portion here was fair; and he was loath
to exchange his possession for the interest of a bigger hope.
8. Treat thy nurses and servants sweetly, and as
it becomes an obliged and a necessitous person. Remember that thou art very
troublesome to them; that they trouble not thee willingly; that they strive to
do thee ease and benefit, that they wish it, and sigh and pray for it, and are
glad if thou likest their attendance; that whatsoever is amiss is thy disease,
and the uneasiness of thy head or thy side, thy distemper or thy disaffections;
and it will be an unhandsome injustice to be troublesome to them because thou
art so to thyself; to make them feel a part of thy sorrows, that thou mayest
not bear them alone; evilly to requite their care by thy too curious and
impatient wrangling and fretful spirit. That tenderness is vicious and
unnatural that shieks out under the weight of a gentle cataplasm; and he will
ill comply with God's rod that cannot endure his friends; greatest kindness;
and he will be very angry (if he durst) with God's smiting him that is peevish
with his servants that go about to ease him.
9. Let not the smart of your sickness make you to
call violently for death; you are not patient unless you be content to live;[111] God hath wisely ordered that we may be
the better reconciled with death, because it is the period of many calamities;
but wherever the general hath placed thee, stir not from thy station until thou
beest called off, but abide so, that death may come to thee by the design of
him who intends it to be thy work, and do not impatiently long for evening,
lest at night thou findest the reward of him that was weary of his work; for he
that is weary before his time is an unprofitable servant, and is either idle or
diseased.
10. That which remains in the practice of this
grace is, that the sick man should do acts of patience by way of prayer and
ejaculations; in which he may serve himself of the following collection.
I will seek unto God, unto God will I
committ my cause, which doth great things and unsearchable, marvellous things
without number. Job. v. 8,9,11,16-19,26.
To set up on high those that be low, that those
which mourn may be exalted to safety.
So the poor have hope, and iniquity
stoppeth her mouth.
Behold, happy is the man whom God correcteth:
therefore despise not thou the chastening of the Almighty.
For he maketh sore, and bindeth up; he woundeth,
and his hands make a whole.
He shall deliver thee in six troubles; yea, in
seven there shall no evil touch thee.
Thou shalt come to thy grave in a just age, like
as a shock of corn cometh in his season.
I remember thee upon my bed, and meditate upon
thee in the night watches. Because thou hast been my help, therefore under the
shadow of thy wings will I rejoice. My soul followeth hard after thee; for thy
right hand hath upholden me. Psalm lxiii. 6-8.
God restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the path
of righteousness for his name's sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of
the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for thou art with me; thy rod and thy
staff they comfort me. Psalm xxiii.3,4.
In the time of trouble he shall hide me in his
pavillion; in the secret of his tabernacle shall he hide me; he shall set me up
upon a rock. Psalm xxvii.5.
The Lord hath looked down from the height of his
sanctuary; from the heaven did the Lord behold the earth; to hear the groaning
of his prisoners; to loose those that are appointed to death. Psalm
cii.19,20.
I cried unto God with my voice, even unto God
with my voice, and he gave ear unto me. In the day of my trouble I sought the
Lord; my sore ran in the night and ceased not; my soul refused to be comforted;
I remembered God, and was troubled: I complained, and my spirit was
overwhelmed. Thou holdest mine eyes waking; I am so troubled that I cannot
speak. Will the Lord cast me off for ever? and will he be favourable no more?
Is his promise clean gone for ever? Doth his promise fail for evermore? Hath
God forgotten to be gracious? hath he in anger shut up his tender mercies? And
I said, This is my infirmity; but I will remember the years of the right hand
of the Most High. Psalm lxxvii. 1-4,7-10.
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. 1 Cor. x.13.
Whatsoever things were written aforetime 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. Rom. xv.4,5.
It is the Lord; let him do what seemeth good in
his eyes. 1 Sam. iii. 18.
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 weakness. Most gladly, therefore, I will glory in my
infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For when I am weak,
then am I strong. 2 Cor. xii. 7-10.
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;
remembering 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
mind, therefore I have hope.
It is the Lord's mercies that we are not
consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning; great
is thy faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, said my soul; therefore will I
hope in him.
The Lord is good to 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. Lain. iii. 58, 18-26, 31-33, 39.
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! Job, xiv. 13.
Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and
shall we not receive evil? Job. ii.20.
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. Psalm vi.
Have mercy upon me, O Lord, for I am weak; O
Lord, heal me, for my bones are vexed.
My soul is also vexed; but thou, O Lord, how
long?
Return, O Lord, deliver my soul; O save me for
thy mercy sake.
For in death no man 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 (sorrows).
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 by 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? Psalm xi.
The Lord is in his holy temple, the Lord's throne
is in heaven; his eyes behold, his eyelids try, the children of men.
Preserve me, O God; for in thee do I put my
trust. Psalm xvi.
O my soul, thou hast said unto the Lord, Thou art
my Lord; my goodness extendeth not to thee.
The Lord is the portion of mine inheritance and
of my cup; thou maintainest my lot.
I will bless the Lord who hath given me counsel;
my reins also instruct me in the night seasons.
I have set the Lord always before me; because he
is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.
Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory
rejoiceth; my flesh also shall rest in hope.
Thou wilt show me the path of life; in thy
presence is the fulness of joy, at thy right hand there are pleasures for
evermore.
As for me, I will behold thy face in
righteousness: I shall be satisfied when I awake with thy likeness. Psalm
xvii.
III.
Have mercy upon me, O Lord, for I am in
trouble: mine eye is consumed with grief; yea, my soul and my belly. Psalm
xxxi.
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 mercy's sake.
When thou saidst, Seek ye my face, my heart said
unto thee, Thy face, Lord, will I seek. Psalm xxvii.
Thou shalt hide them in the secret of thy
presence from the pride of man; thou shalt keep them secretly in a pavillion
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; nevertheless 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 faithful, 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 at the beginning of Sickness.
O Almighty God, merciful and gracious, who
in thy justice didst send sorrow and tears, sickness and death, into the world,
as a punishment for man's 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 eternal weight of glory; as thou hast turned my sins into sickness, so turn
my sickness to the advantages of holiness 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 mayst pity me and assist me. Relieve my sorrow and support my
spirit; direct my thoughts, and sanctify the accidents of my sickness; and that
the punishment of my sin may be the school of virtue, in which, since thou hast
now entered me, Lord, make me a holy proficient, that I may behave myself as a
son under discipline, humbly and obediently, evenly and penitently; that I may
come by this means nearer unto thee; that, if I shall go forth of this sickness
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 holiness and a more severe religion;
or, if I pass from hence with the outlet of death, I may enter into the bosom
of my Lord, and may feel the present joys of a certain hope of that sea of
pleasures, in which all thy saints and servants shall be comprehended to
eternal ages. Grant this for Jesus Christ's 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 Sickness.
O eternal God, thou hast made me and
sustained me; thou hast blessed me in all the days 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 designs of the greatest pity in the world; Lord, I humbly lie down
under thy rod: do with me as thou pleaseth; do thou choose for me not only 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 pleaseth of
bringing me to thee. Lord, I am not solicitous of the passage, so I may get to
thee. Only, O Lord, remember my infirmities, and let thy servant rejoice in
thee always, and feel and confess and glory in thy goodness. O, be thou as
delightful to me in this my medicinal sickness as ever thou wert in any of the
danger of my prosperity; let me not peevishly refuse thy pardon at the rate of
a severe discipling. 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 mine eyes, and in silence wait for the time
of my redemption. Amen.
A Prayer for the Grace of Patience.
Most merciful 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 bless and magnify thy name that thou
hast adopted me into the inheritance of sons, and hast given me a portion of my
elder brother. Lord, the cross falls heavy and sits uneasy upon my shoulders;
my spirit is willing, but my flesh is weak: I humbly beg of thee that I may now
rejoice in this thy dispensation and effect of Providence. I know and am
persuaded that thou art then as gracious when thou smitest us for amendment or
trial, as when thou relievest our wearied bodies in compliance with our
infirmity. I rejoice, 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 by 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 yoke and
burden of the Lord without any uneasy and useless murmurs and ineffective
unwillingness. Lord, I am unable to stand under the cross, unable of myself;
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 under
wentest 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 pleased through Christ, who strengthens me. Lord, if thou wilt
support me, I will for ever praise thee; if thou wilt suffer the load to press
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 ministry of angels, pass
into those mansions where holy souls rest and weep no more. Lord, pity me;
Lord, sanctify this my sickness; 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 uneasy spirit, nor weaken the
hands and hearts of those that charitably minister to my needs: but let me pass
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, eternal God, gracious Father, for the merits and
intercession of our merciful 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 Physic.
O most blessed and eternal Jesus, thou who
art the great physician of our souls, and the Sun of Righteousness 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
Father's honour, and to the good and comfort of them that love and serve thee;
be pleased to bless the ministry of thy servant in order to ease and health,
direct his judgment, prosper the medicines, and dispose the chances of my
sickness fortunately, that I may feel the blessing and loving-kindness 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 goodness secretly among the faithful, and in the congregation of
thy redeemed ones here in the outer-courts of the Lord,and hereafter in thy
eternal temple for ever and ever. Amen.
Now is the time in which the 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 sickness,
to resist temptation, to prevent despair; upon the belief of the articles of
our religion we can do the works of a holy life; but upon belief of the
promises we can bear our sickness patiently, and die cheerfully. The sick man
may practise it in the following instances.
1. Let the sick man be careful that he
do not admit of any doubt concerning that which he believed and received from a
common consent in his best health and days of election and religion. For if the
devil can but prevail so far as to unfix and unrivet the resolution and
confidence or fulness of assent, it is easy for him so to unwind the spirit,
that from why to whether or no, from whether or no to scarcely not, from
scarcely to absolutely not at all, are steps of a descending and falling
spirit; and whatsoever a man is made to doubt of by the weakness of his
understanding in a sickness, it will be hard to get an instrument strong or
subtle enough to reinforce and insure: for when the strengths are gone by which
faith held, and it does not stand firm by the weight of its own bulk and great
constitution, nor yet by the cordage of a tenacious root, then it is prepared
for a ruin, which it cannot escape in the tempests of a sickness and the
assaults of a devil. Discourse and argument, the line of tradition and a
never-failing experience, the Spirit of God and the truth of miracles, the word
of prophecy and the blood of martyrs, the excellency of the doctrine and the
necessity of men, the riches of the promises and the wisdom of the revelations,
the reasonableness and sublimity, the concordance and the usefulness of the
articles, and their compliance with all the needs of man, and the government of
commonwealths, are like the strings and branches of the roots by which faith
stands firm and unmovable in the spirit and understanding of a man. But in
sickness the understanding is shaken, and the ground is removed in which the
root did grapple and support its trunk;[112]
and therefore there is no way now but that it be left to stand upon the old
confidences, and by the firmament of its own weight; it must be left to stand,
because it always stood there before; and as it stood all his life-time in the
ground of understanding, so it must now he supported with will and a fixed
resolution.[113] But the disputation tempts
it, and shakes it with trying, and overthrows it with shaking. Above all things
in the world let the sick man fear a proposition which his sickness hath put
into him contrary to the discourses of health and a sober untroubled reason.
2. Let the sick man mingle the recital of his
creed together with his devotions, and in that let him account his faith; not
in curiosity and factions, in the confessions of parties and interests:[114] for some over-forward zeals are so
earnest to profess their little and uncertain articles, and glory so to die in
a particular and divided communion, that in the profession of their faith they
lose or discompose their charity. Let it be enough that we secure our interest
of heaven, though we do not go about to appropriate the mansions to our sect;
for every good man hopes to be saved, as he is a Christian, and not as he is a
Lutheran, or of another division. However, those articles upon which he can
build the exercise of any virtue in his sickness, or upon the stock of which he
can improve his present condition, are such as consist in the greatness and
goodness, the veracity and mercy of God through Jesus Christ; nothing of which
can be concerned in the fond disputations which faction and interest hath too
long maintained in Christendom.
3. Let the sick man's faith especially be active
about the promises of grace, and the excellent things of the gospel; those
which can comfort his sorrows and enable his patience; those upon the hopes of
which he did the duties of his life, and for which he is not unwilling to die;
such as the intercession and advocation of Christ, remission of sins, the
resurrection, the mysterious arts and mercies of man's redemption, Christ's
triumph over death and all the powers of hell, the covenant of grace, or the
blessed issues of repentance; and, above all, the article of eternal life, upon
the strength of which eleven thousand virgins went cheerfully together to their
martyrdom, and twenty thousand Christians were burned by Diocesian on a
Christman-day, and whole armies of Asian Christians offered themselves to the
tribunals of Arius Antonius, and whole colleges of severe persons were
instituted, who lived upon religion, whose dinner was the eucharist, whose
supper was praise, and their nights were watches, and their days were labour;
for the hopes of which then men counted it gain to lose their estates, and
gloried in their sufferings, and rejoiced in their persecutions, and were glad
at their disgraces. This is the article that hath made all the martyrs of
Christ confident and glorious; and if it does not more than sufficiently
strengthen our spirits to the present suffering, it is because we understand it
not, but have the appetites of beasts and fools. But if the sick man fixes his
thoughts, and sets his habitation to dwell here, he swells his hope, and
masters his fears, and eases his sorrows, and overcomes his temptations.
4. Let the sick man endeavour to turn his faith
of the articles into the love of them; and that will be an excellent
instrument, not only to refresh his sorrows, but to confirm his faith in
defiance of all temptations. For a sick man and a disturbed understanding are
not competent and fit instruments to judge concerning the reasonableness of a
proposition. But therefore let him consider and love it, because it is useful
and necessary, profitable and gracious; and when he is once in love with it,
and then also renews his love to it, when he feels the need of it, he is an
interested person, and for his own sake will never let it go, and pass into the
shadows of doubting, or the utter darkness of infidelity. And act of love will
make him have a mind to it; and we easily believe what we love, but very
uneasily part with our belief, which we for so great an interest have chosen
and entertained with a great affection.
5. Let the sick person be infinitely careful that
his faith be not tempted by any man, or any thing; and when it is in any degree
weakened, let him lay fast hold upon the conclusion, upon the article itself,
and by earnest prayer beg of God to guide him in certainty and safety. For let
him consider that the article is better than all its contrary or contradictory,
and he is concerned that it be true, and concerned also that he do believe it:
but he can receive no good at all if Christ did not die, if there be no
resurrection, if his creed hath deceiven him; therefore all that 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.[115] "If the soul be immortal, and perpetual 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 articles
fail, there can be no punishment for believing; but if they be true, my not
believing destroys 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, wherewithal shall we be able to endure the
assault? Therefore seize upon the article, and secure the great object, and the
great instrument, that is, the hopes of pardon and eternal life through Jesus
Christ; and do this by all means, and by any instrument, artificial or in
artificial, by argument or by stratagem, by perfect resolution or by discourse,
by the hand and ears of premises or the foot of 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 good things without it.
Lord, whither shall I go? Thou hast the
words of eternal life. John, vi. 68.
I believe in God the Father Almighty,
and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, etc.
And I believe in the Holy Ghost, etc.
Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief. Mark,
ix. 24.
I know and am persuaded 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 lord's. Rom. xiv.14,7,8.
If God be for us, who can be against us?
Rom.viii.31-34.
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 God's
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. 1
John, ii.1,2.
This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all
acceptation, that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. 1 Tim.
i.15.
O grant that I may obtain mercy, that in me Jesus
Christ may show forth all long-suffering, that I may believe 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 thy glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. 2 Thess. ii.
13,14,16,17.
Now our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God even
our Father which hath loves 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. 2 Thess. iii. 5.
O that our God would count me worthy of this
calling, and fulfil all the good pleasure of his goodness, 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.
2 Thess. i. 11,12.
Let us who are of the day be sober, putting on
the breastplate 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 yourselves together, and edify one another. 1
Thess. v.8-10,12.
There is no name under heaven whereby we can be
saved, but only the name of the Lord Jesus. Acts, iv. 12. And every soul which
will not hear that prophet shall be destroyed from among the people. Acts,
iii.23.
God forbid that I should glory save in the cross
of Jesus Christ. Gal. vi. 14. I desire to know nothing but Jesus Christ and him
crucified. 1 Cor. ii.2. For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. Phil.
i. 21.
Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his
nostrils; for wherein is he to be accounted of? Isa. ii.22. But the just shall
live by faith. Hab. ii.4.
Lord, I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son
of God, John, xi. 27; the Saviour of the world, John iv. 42; the resurrection
and the life; and he that believeth in thee, though he were dead, yet shall he
live. John, xi. 25-40.
Jesus said unto her, Said I not to thee, that if
thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest 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, who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Lord, make me steadfast and unmovable, always abounding in the work of the
Lord: for I know that my labour is not in vain in the Lord. 1 Cor. xv.
55-58.
The Prayer for the Grace and Strengths of Faith.
O holy and eternal Jesus, who didst die
for me and 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 spiritual 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, believing thy word, trusting in thy promises, waiting for thy mercies,
and doing thy commandments; that the devil may not prevail upon me, and my own
weaknesses may not abuse or unsettle my persuasions, nor my sins discompose my
just confidence in thee and thy eternal mercies. let me always be thy servant
and thy disciple, and die in the communion of thy church, of all faithful
people. Lord, I renounce whatsoever is against thy truth; and if secretly I
have or do believe any false proposition, I do it in the simplicity of my heart
and great weakness; and, if I could discover it, would dash it in pieces by a
solemn disclaiming it; for thou art the way, the truth, and the life. And I
know that whatsoever thou hast declared, that is the truth of God; and I do
firmly adhere to the religion thou hast taught, and glory in nothing so much as
that I am a Christian, that thy name is called upon me. O my God, though I die,
yet will I put my trust in thee. In thee, O Lord, have I trusted; let me never
be confounded. Amen.
Men generally do very much dread sudden
death, and pray against it passionately; and certainly it hath in it great
inconveniences accidentally to men's estates, to the settlement of families, to
the culture and trimming of souls; and it robs a man of the blessing which may
be consequent to sickness, and to the passive graces and holy contentions of a
Christian, while he descends to his grave without an adversary or a
trial;[116] and a good man may be
taken at such a disadvantage, that a sudden death would be a great evil even to
the most excellent person if it strikes him in an unlucky circumstance. But
these considerations are not the only ingredients into those men's discourse
who pray violently against sudden deaths; for possibly if this were all, there
may be in the condition of sudden death something to make recompence for the
evils of the over-hasty accident. For certainly it is a less temporal evil to
fall by the rudeness of a sword than the violence of a fever, and the axe is
much a less affliction than a strangury; and though a sickness tries our
virtues, yet a sudden death is free from temptation; a sickness may be more
glorious, and a sudden death more safe. The deadest deaths are best, the
shortest and least premeditate,[117] so Caesar said; and Pliny called a short death the
greatest fortune of a man's life. For even good men have been forced to an
indecency of deportment by the violences of pain:[118] and Cicero observes concerning Hercules, that he was
broken in pieces with pain even then when he sought for immortality by his
death, being tortured with a plague knit up in the lappet of his
shirt.[119] And therefore as a
sudden death certainly loses the rewards of a holy sickness, so it makes that a
man shall not so much hazard and lose the rewards of a holy life.
But the secret of this affair is a worse matter;
men live t that rate either of an habitual wickedness, or else a frequent
repetition of single acts of killing and deadly sins, that a sudden death is
the ruin of all their hopes, and a perfect consignation to an eternal sorrow.
But in this case also so is a lingering sickness: for our sickness may change
us from life to health, from health to strength, from strength to the firmness
and confirmation of habitual graces; but it cannot change a man from death to
life, and begin and finish that process which sits not down but in the bosom of
blessedness. He that washes in the morning when his bath is seasonable and
healthful,[120] is not only made
clean, but sprightly, and the blood is brisk and coloured like the first
springing of the morning; but they that wash their dead cleanse the skin, and
leave paleness upon the cheek, and stiffness in all the joints. A repentance
upon our deathbed is like washing the corpse: it is cleanly and civil; but
makes no change deeper than the skin. But God knows it is a custom so to wash
them that are going to dwell with dust, and to be buried in the lap of their
kindred earth, but all their lives time wallow in pollutions without any
washing at all; or if they do, it is like that of the Dardani, who washed but
thrice all their lifetime, when they were born, and when they marry, and when
they die; when they are baptized, or against a solemnity, or for the day of
their funeral; but these are but ceremonious washings, and never purify the
soul if it be stained and hath sullied the whiteness of its baptismal robes.
God intended we should live a holy life; he
contracted with us in Jesus Christ for a holy life; he made no abatements of
the strictest sense of it, but such as did necessarily comply with human
infirmities or possibilities; that is, he understood it in the sense of
repentance, which still is so to renew our duty, that it may be a holy life in
the second sense; that is, some great portion of our life to be spent in living
as Christians should. A resolving to repent upon our death-bed is the greatest
mockery of God in the world, and the most perfect contradictory to all his
excellent designs of mercy and holiness: for therefore he threatened us with
hell if we did not, and he promised heaven if we did live a holy life; and a
late repentance promises heaven to us upon other conditions, even when we have
lived wickedly. It renders a man useless and intolerable to the world; taking
off the great curb of religion, of fear and hope, and permitting all impiety
with the greatest impunity and encouragement in the world. By this means we see
so many patuax polucronious, as Philo calls them, or
as the prophets, pueros centum annorum, children of almost a hundred
years old, upon whose grave we may write the inscription which was upon the
tomb of Similis in Xiphilin. "Here he lies who was so many years, but lived but
seven." And the course of nature runs counter to the perfect designs of piety;
and God, who gave us a life to live to him, is only served at our death when we
die to all the world; and we undervalue the great promises made by the holy
Jesus,[121] for which the piety,
the strictest unerring piety often thousand ages is not a proportionable
exchange: yet we think it a hard bargain to get to heaven if we be forced to
part with one lust, or live soberly twenty years; but, like Demetrius Afer,
(who having lived a slave all his life-time, yet desiring to descend to his
grave in freedom,[122] begged
manumission of his lord,) we lived in the bondage of our sin all our days, and
hope to die the Lord's freed-men. But above all, this course of a delayed
repentance must of necessity therefore be ineffective and certainly mortal,
because it is an entire destruction of the very formality and essential
constituent reason of religion: which I thus demonstrate.
When God made man and propounded to him
an immortal and a blessed state as the end of his hopes and the perfection of
his condition, he did not give it him for nothing, but upon certain conditions;
which, although they could add nothing to God, yet they were such things which
man could value, and they were his best: and God had made appetites of pleasure
in man, that in them the scene of his obedience should lie. For when God made
instances of man's obedience, he, 1. Either commanded such things to be done
which man did naturally desire; or, 2. Such things which 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 wind blew fierce and loud. Therefore for
the trial and in stance of obedience, God made his laws so that they should lay
restraint upon man's 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 denial of a violent desire; and justice is
parting with money that might help to enrich me; and meekness is a huge
contradiction to pride and revenge; and the wandering of our eyes, and the
greatness 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 anything or part of ourselves, but
when we for his sake part with what we naturally desire; and difficulty is
essential to virtue, and without choice there can be no reward, and in the
satisfaction of our natural desires there is no election; we run to them as
beasts to the river or the crib. If, religion that satisfied all our natural
desires in the days of desires and passion, of lust and appetites, and only
turns to God when his appetites are gone and his desires cease, this man hath
overthrown the very being of virtues, and the essential constitution of
religion: religion is no religion, and virtue is no act of choice, and reward
comes by chance and without condition, if we only 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 compelled to depart from our evil customs, and
leave to live, that we may begin to live, then we die to die; that life is the
prologue to death, and thenceforth we die eternally.
St. Cyril speaks of certain people that chose to
worship the sun because he was a day-god; for believing that he was quenched
every night 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 God's enemy, think that
God is to rule but in hiscertai 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 the night are alike, so are the first and last of our
days: 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 God's 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 celebrity only to
his ashes; and it is more a civility than the basis of a firm reputation that
men speak honour of their departed relatives; but if their life be virtuous,
it forces honour from contempt, and snatches it from the hand of envy, and it
shines through the crevices of detraction; and as it anointed the head of the
living, so it embalms the body of the dead.[123] From these premises it follows, that when we discourse
of a sick man's 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 baptism, 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
progress, that we may arrive to that integrity and fulness of duty, `that our
sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the
presence of the Lord.'[124]
1. Let the sick man consider at what gate
this sickness entered; and if he can discover the particular, let him
instantly, passionately, and with great contrition, dash the crime in pieces,
lest he descends into his grave in the midst of a sin, and thence remove into
an ocean of eternal sorrow. But if he only suffers the common fate of man, and
knows 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 days and nights we have spent in sorrow or care, in habitual and
actual pursuances of virtue; what instrument we have chosen and used for the
eradication of sin; how we have judged ourselves, and how punished; and, in
sum, whether we have by the grace of repentance changed our life from criminal
to virtuous, 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
pernctations or abodes in prayers, so as the spirit hath been served in our
repentance s earnestly and as greatly as our appetites have been provided for
in the days of our shame and folly.
3. Supply the imperfections of thy repentance by
a general or universal sorrow for thy sins, not only 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 sins of
scandal and the sins of a secret conscience, of the flesh and of the spirit:
for it would be but a sad arrest to thy soul wandering in strange and unusual
regions, to see a scroll of uncancelled sins represented and charged upon thee
for want of care and notices, and that thy repentane shall become invalid
because of its imperfections.
4. To this purpose it is usually advised by
spiritual persons, that the sick man make an universal confession, or a
renovation and repetition of all the particular confessions and accusations of
his whole life; that now, at the foot of his account, he may represent the sum
total to God and his conscience, and make provisions for their remedy and
pardon according to his present possibilities.
5. Now is the time to make reflex acts of
repentance: that as by a general repentance we supply the want of the just
extension of parts, so by this we may supply the proper measures of the
intention of degrees. In our health we can consider concerning our own acts,
whether they be real or hypocritical, essential or imaginary, sincere or upon
interest, integral or imperfect, commensurate or defective. And although it is
a good caution of securities after all our care and diligence still to suspect
ourselves and our own deceptions, and for ever to beg of God pardon and
acceptance in the union of Christ's passion and intercession: yet, in proper
speaking, reflex acts of repentance, being a suppletory after the imperfection
of the direct, and then most fit to be used when we cannot proceed in and
prosecute the direct actions. To repent because we cannot repent, and to grieve
because we cannot grieve, was a device invented to serve the turn of the mother
of Peter Gratian; but it was used by her, and so advised to be, in her sickness
and last actions of repentance: for in our perfect health and understanding, if
we do not understand our first act we cannot discern our second; and if we be
not sorry for our sins we cannot be sorry for want of sorrows: it is a
contradiction to say we can; because want of sorrow, to which we are obliged,
is certainly a great sin; and if we can grieve for that, then also for the
rest; if not for all, then not for this. But in the days of weakness the case
is otherwise; for then our actions are imperfect, our discourse weak, our
internal actions not discernible, our fears great, our work to be abbreviated,
and our defects to be supplied by spiritual arts: and therefore it is proper
and proportionate to our state, and to our necessity, to beg of God pardon for
the imperfections of our repentance, acceptance of our weaker sorrows, supplies
out of the treasures of grace and mercy. And thus repenting of the evil and
unhandsome adherences of our repentance, in the whole integrity of the duty it
will become a repentance not to be repented of.
6. Now is the time beyond which the sick man must
at no hand defer to make restitution of all his unjust possessions,[125] or other men's rights, and satisfactions
for all injuries and violences, according to his obligation and possibilities:
for although many circumstances might impede the acting it in our life-time,
and it was permitted to be deferred in many cases because by it justice was not
hindered, and oftentimes piety and equity were provided for; yet, because this
is the last scene of our life, he that does not act it so far as he can, or put
it into certain conditions and order of effecting, can never do it again, and
therefore then to defer it is to omit, and leaves the repentance defective in
an integral and constituent part.
7. Let the sick man be diligent and watchful that
the principle of his repentance be contrition, or sorrow for sins, commenced
upon the love of God. For although sorrow for sins upon any motive may lead us
to God by many intermedial passages, and is the threshold of returning sinners;
yet it is not good nor effective upon our death-bed; because repentance is not
then to begin, but must then be finished and completed; and it is to be a
supply and preparation of all the imperfections of that duty, and therefore it
must by that time be arrived to contrition; that is, is must have grown from
fear to love, from the passions of a servant to the affections of a son. The
reason of which (besides the precedent) is this, because when our repentance is
in this state it supposes the man also in a state of grace, a well-grown
Christian; for to hate sin out of the love of God is not the felicity of a new
convert, or an infant grace; (or if it be that love also is in its infancy;)
but it supposes a good progress, and the man habitually virtuous, and tending
to perfection: and therefore contrition or repentance so qualified is useful to
great degrees of pardon, because the man is a gracious person, and that virtue
is of good degree, and consequently a fit employment for his that shall work no
more, but is to appear before his Judge to receive the hire of his day. And if
his repentance be contrition even before this state of sickness, let it be
increased by spiritual arts and the proper exercises of charity.
Means of exciting Contrition, or Repentance of Sins, proceeding from the
Love of God.
To which purpose the sick man may
consider, and is to be reminded (if he does not) that there are in God all the
motives and causes of amiability in the world: that God is so infinitely good,
that there are some of the greatest and most excellent spirits of heaven, whose
work, and whose felicity and whose perfections, and whose nature it is, to
flame and burn in the brightest and most excellent love: that to love God is
the greatest glory of heaven: that in him there are such excellences, that the
smallest rays of them, communicated to our weaker understandings, are yet
sufficient to cause ravishments, and transportations, and satisfactions, and
joys unspeakable and full of glory: that all the wise Christians of the world
know and feel such causes to love God, that they all profess themselves ready
to die for the love of God, and the apostles and millions of the martyrs did
die for him: and although it be harder to live in his love than to die for it,
yet all the good people that ever gave their names to Christ did, for his love,
endure the crucifying their lusts, the mortification of their appetites, the
contradictions and death of their most passionate natural desires: that kings
and queens have quitted their diadems, and many married saints have turned
their mutual vows into the love of Jesus,and married him only, keeping a virgin
chastity in a married life, that they may more tenderly express their love to
God: that all the good we have derives from God's love to us, and all the good
we can hope for is the effect of his love, and can descend only upon them that
love him: that by his love we feel peace and joy within our spirits, and by his
love we receive the mysterious sacrament. And what can be greater than that
from the goodness and love of God we receive Jesus Christ, and 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 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 kindness, and entreats 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 put his mightiness 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 minerals and vegetables, all beasts and birds, all
fishes and insects, for food to us and for ornament, for physic 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 man's 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 preceeding 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 God's favour,
although they suffer the infirmities of men, yet they are God's 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 pardon, and their dearest Lord and Father: that it is a huge
imperfection and a state of weakness to need to be moved with fear or temporal
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
et esteemed laudable persons, or men of good natures, or the sons of virtue:
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 always
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 less 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
endearment of passion or of spirit, no similitude or conformity to the great
instrument of our peace, our glorious Mediator: 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 be reduced to practice, 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 confess his justice in
punishing, that he acknowledge himself to have deserved the worst of evils;
that he heartily believe and profess 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 than be in the disfacour 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 feigned presence of
the object to him, entertains the temporal evil that he may leave the sin; and
therefore, unless 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 out 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 handmaid, 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.
5. 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 kind 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 only 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 virtue,
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 a 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 employment of a clinic or death-bed penitent.
6. In those sins whose proper cure is
mortification corporal, the sick man is to supply that part of his repentance
by a patient submission to the rod of sickness: for sickness does the work of
penances, or sharp afflictions and dry diet, perfectly well: to which if we
also put our wills, and make it our act by an after-election, by confessing the
justice of God, by bearing it sweetly, by begging it may be medicinal, there is
nothing wanting to the perfection of this part, but that God confirm our
patience and hear our prayers. When the guilty man runs to punishment[126] the injured person is prevented, and
hath no whither to go but to forgiveness.
7.I have learned but of one suppletory more for
the perfection and proper exercise of a sick man's repentance; but it is such
an one as will go a great way in the abolition of our past sins and making our
peace with God, even after a less severe life; and that is, that the sick man
do some heroical actions in the matter of charity or religion, of justice or
severity. There is a story of an infamous thief who, having begged his pardon
of the emperior Mauricius, was yet put into the hospital of St. Sampson, where
he so plentifully bewailed his sins in the last agonies of his death, that the
physician who attended found him unexpectedly dead, and over his face a
handkerchief bathed in tears; and soon after, somebody or other pretended to a
revelation of this man's beatitude. It was a rare grief that was noted in this
man, which begot in that age a confidence of his being saved: and that
confidence (as things then went) was quickly called a revelation. But it was a
stranger severity which is related by Thomas Cantipratanus, concerning a young
gentleman condemned for robbery and violence, who had so deep a sense of his
sin, that he was not content with a single death, but begged to be tormented,
and cut in pieces joint by joint, with intermedial senses, that he might, by
such a smart, signify a great sorrow. Some have given great estates to the poor
and to religion; some have built colleges for holy persons; many have suffered
martyrdom: and though those that died under the conduct of the Maccabees, in
defence of their country and religion, had pendants on their breasts
consecrated to the idols of the Mamnenses; yet that they gave their lives in
such a cause with so great a duty, (the biggest things they could do or give,)
it was esteemed to prevail hugely towards the pardon and acceptation of their
persons. An heroic action of virtue in a huge compendium of religion: for if it
be attained to by the usual measures and progress of a Christian from
inclination to act, from act to habit, from habit to abode, from abode to
reigning, from reigning to perfect possession, from possession to extraordinary
emanations, that is, to heroic actions, then it must needs do the work of man,
by being so great towards the work of God: but if a man comes thither per
saltum, or on a sudden, (which is seldom seen,) then it supposes the man
always well inclined, but abused by accident or hope, by confidence or
ignorance; then it supposes the man for the present in a great fear of evil,
and a passionate desire of pardon; it supposes his apprehensions great and his
time little; and what the event of that will be no man can tell; but it is
certain that to some purposes God will account for our religion on our
death-bed, not by the measures of our time, but the eminency of affection; (as
said Celestine the First;[127]) that is,
supposing the man in the state of grace, or in the revealed possibility of
salvation, then an heroical act hath the reward of a longer series of good
actions in an even and ordinary course of virtue.
8. In what can remain for the perfecting of a
sick man's repentance, he is to be helped by the ministries of a spiritual
guide.
Let us search and try our ways, and turn
again to the Lord. Let us lift up our hearts with our hands unto God in the
heavens. We have transgressed and rebelled; and thou hast not pardoned. Thou
hast covered with anger and persecuted us; thou hast slain, thou hast not
pitied. O cover not thyself with a cloud, but let our prayer pass through. Lam.
iii. 40-44.
I have sinned: what shall I do unto thee, O thou
preserver of men? Why hast thou set me as a mark against thee, so that I am a
burden to myself? And why dost not thou pardon my transgression, and take away
mine iniquity? for now shall I sleep in the dust, and thou shalt seek me in the
morning, but I shall not be. Job. vii.20,21.
The Lord is righteous; for I have
rebelled against his commandments. Hear, I pray, all ye people, behold my
sorrow. Behold, O Lord, I am in distress; my bowels are troubled; my heart is
turned within me; for I have grievously rebelled. Lam. i. 18,40.
Thou, O Lord, remainest for ever; thy throne from
generation to generation. Wherefore dost thou forget us for ever, and forsake
us so long time? Turn thou us into thee, O Lord, and so shall we be turned;
renew our days as of old. O reject me not utterly, and be not exceeding wroth
against thy servant. Lam. v. 19-22.
O remember not the sins of my youth, nor my
transgressions; but according to thy mercies remember thou me, for thy goodness
sake, O Lord. Psalm. xxv.7. Do thou for me, O God the Lord, for thy name's
sake; because thy mercy is good, deliver thou me. For I am poor and needy, and
my heart, is wounded within me. I am gone like the shadow that declineth; I am
tossed up and down as the locust. Psalm cix.21-23.
Then Zeccheus stood forth, and said, Behold,
Lord, half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have wronged any man, I
restore him fourfold. Luke, xix. 8.
Hear my prayer, O Lord, and consider my desire.
Psalm exliii.1. Let my prayer be set forth in thy sight as the incense, and let
the lifting up of my hands be an evening sacrifice. Psalm cxli.3. And enter not
into judgment with thy servant; for in thy sight shall no man be justified.
Teach me to do the thing that pleaseth thee, for thou art my God: let thy
loving Spirit lead me forth into the land of righteousness. Psalm
cxliii.2,10.
I will speak of mercy and judgment; unto thee, O
Lord, will I make my prayer. I will behave myself wisely in a perfect way. O
when wilt thou come unto me? I will walk in my house with a perfect heart. I
will set no wicked thing before mine eyes: I hate the work of them that turn
aside; it shall not cleave to me. Psalm ci. 1-3.
Hide thy face from my sins, and blot out all mine
iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within
me. Deliver me from blood-guiltiness, O God, from malice, envy, the follies of
lust and violence, of passion, etc., thou God of my salvation; and my tongue
shall sing aloud of thy righteousness. Psalm li. 9,10,14.
The sacrifice of God is a broken heart: a broken
and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise. ver. 17.
Lord, I have done amiss; I have been deceived;
let so great a wrong as this be removed, and let it be so no more.
The Prayer for the Grace and Perfection of Repentance.
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
confess their sins and forsake them; O my God, be thou pleased to work in my
what thou hast commanded should be in me. Lord, I am a dry tree, who neither
have brought forth fruit unto thee and unto holiness, nor have wept out
salutary tears, the instrument of life and restitution, but have behaved myself
like an unconcerned person in the ruins and breaches of my soul: but, O God,
thou art my God, early will I seek thee; my soul thirsteth for thee in a barren
and thirsty land where no water is.[128]
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 and 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 penitential showers; make my care prudent, and the remaining
portion of my days like the perpetual watches of the night, full of caution and
observance, strong and resolute, patient and severe. I remember, O Lord, that I
did sin with greediness 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 as great as my love to thee, and both as near 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
laws of my God, but would rather die than offend thee. O dearest Saviour, have
pity upon thy servant; let me, by thy sentence, be doomed to perpetual penance
during the abode of this life; let every sigh be the expression of a repentance
and every groan an accent 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 and pleasure, I may eat of the votive sacrifice of the supper
of the Lamb, that was, from the beginning of the world, slain for the sins of
every sorrowful and returning sinner. O grant the 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 Sickness, and
in all the portions of Old Age.
O eternal and most gracious Father, I
humbly throw myself 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 find 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 than all the degrees of my desire can be; unless thou hast pity upon
me, I perish infinitely and intolerably; and then there will be one voice fewer
in the choir of singers who shall recite thy praises to eternal ages. But, O
Lord, in mercy deliver my soul. O save me for thy mercy's sake.[129] 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 sickness, shame and displeasure, guilt and
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 show mercy, that although my sin be very great, and my fear
proportionable, yet thy mercy is infinitely greater than 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 weakness 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 consign the article of remission of sins;
thou hast, for all my sins, still continued to invite my to conditions of life
by thy ministers the prophets; and thou hast, with variety of holy acts,
softened my spirit, and possessed my fancy, 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 effects of all these thy strange and
miraculous acts of loving-kindness? Lord, I deserve it not, but I hope thou
wilt pardon all my sins; and I beg it of thee for Jesus Christ's 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 it for us; so great that the falling angels never could give all
that have sinned against me; O forgive me my sins, as I forgive them that have
sinned against me. Lord, I confess my sins unto thee daily by the accusations
and secret acts of conscience; and if we confess us our sins, and to cleanse us
from all unrighteousness. 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 always more ready to hear than we to pray. But all that I can do,
and all that I am, and all that I know of myself, is nothing but sin, and
infirmity, and misery: therefore I go forth of myself, and throw myself wholly
into the arms of thy mercy through Jesus Christ, and beg of thee, for his death
and passion's sake, by his resurrection and ascension, by all the parts of our
redemption, and thy infinite mercy, in which thou pleaseth thyself above all
the works of the creation, to be pitiful and compassionate to thy servant in
the abolition of all my sins; so shall I praise thy glories with a tongue not
defiled with evil language, and a heart purged by thy grace, quitted by thy
mercy, and absolved by thy sentence, from generation to generation. Amen.
An Act of holy Resolution of Amendment of Life, in case of Recovery.
O most just and merciful Lord God, who
hast sent evil diseases, sorrow and fear, trouble and uneasiness, briers and
thorns, into the world, and planted them in our houses, and round about our
dwellings, to keep sin from our souls, or to drive it thence; I humbly beg of
thee that this my sickness may serve the ends of the spirit, and be a messenger
of spiritual life, an instrument of reducing me to more religious and sober
courses. I say, O Lord, that I am unready and unprepared in my accounts, having
thrown away great portions of my time in vanity, and set myself hugely back in
the accounts of eternity, and I had need live my life over gain, and live it
better; but thy counsels are in the great deep, and thy footsteps in the water;
and I know not what thou wilt determine of me. If I die I throw myself into the
arms of the holy Jesus, whom I love above all things, and if I perish I know I
have deserved it; but thou wilt not reject him that loves thee. But if I
recover, I will live, by thy grace and help, to do the work of God, and
passionately pursue my interest of heaven, and serve thee in the labour of love
with the charities of a holy zeal, and the diligence of a firm and humble
obedience. Lord, I will dwell in thy temple and in thy service; religion shall
be my employment, and alms shall be my recreation, and patience shall be my
rest, and to do thy will shall be my meat and drink, and to live shall be
Christ, and then to die shall be gain.
`O spare me a little, that I may recover my
strength, before I go hence, and be no more seen.' `Thy will be done on earth,
as it is in heaven.' Amen.
An Analysis or Resolution of the Decalogue, and the special Precepts of the
Gospel, describing the Duties enjoined, and the Sins forbidden respectively;
for the Assistance of sick Men in making their Confessions to God and his
Ministers, and the rendering their Repentance more particular and perfect.
1. Thou shalt have none other gods but
me.
Duties commanded are, 1. To love God above
all things. 2. To obey him and fear him. 3. To worship him with prayers, vows,
thanksgiving, presenting to him our souls and bodies, and all such actions and
expressions, which the consent of nations, or the laws and customs of the place
where we live, have appropriated to God. 4. To design all to God's glory. 5. To
inquire after his will. 6. To believe all his word. 7. To submit to his
providence. 8. To proceed towards all our lawful ends by such means as himself
hath appointed. 9. To speak and think honourably of God, and recite his
praises, and confess his attributes and perfections.
They sin against this commandment, 1. Who love
themselves or any of the creatures inordinately and intemperately. 2. They that
despise or neglect any of the Divine precepts. 3. They that pray to unknown or
false gods. 4. They that disbelieve or deny there is a God. 5. They that make
vows to creatures. 6. Or say prayers to the honour of men, or women, or angels;
as paternosters to the honour of the Virgin Mary, or St. Peter, which is a
taking a part of that honour which is due to God and giving it to the creature;
it is a religion paid to men and women our of God's proper portion, out of
prayers directed to God immediately; and it is an act contrary to that
religion, which makes God that last end of all things; for this, through our
addresses to God, passes something to the creatures as if they stood beyond
him; for by the intermedial worship paid to God, they ultimately do honour to
the man or angel. 7. They that make consumptive oblations to the creatures; as
the Collyridians who offered cakes, and those that burnt incense or candles to
the Virgin Mary. 8. They that give themselves to the devil, or make contracts
with him, and use fantastic conversation with him. 9. They that consult witches
and fortune-tellers. 10. They that rely upon dreams and superstitions
observeanes. 11. That use charms, spells, superstitious words and characters,
verses of psalms, the consecrated elements, to cure diseases, to be shot-free,
to recover stolen goods, or inquire into secrets. 12.That are wilfully ignorant
of the laws of God, or love to be deceived in their persuasions that they may
sin with confidence. 13. They that neglect to pray to God. 14. They that
arrogate to themselves the glory of any action or power, and do not give the
glory to God, as Herod. 15. They that doubt of or disbelieve any article of the
Creed, or any proposition of Scripture, or put false glosses to serve secular
or vicious ends, against their conscience, or with violence any way done to
their reason. 16. They that violently or passionately pursue any temporal end
with an eagerness greater than the thing is in prudent account. 17. They that
make religion to serve ill ends, or do good to evil purposes, or evil to good
purposes. 18. They that accuse God of injustice or unmercifulness, remissness
of cruelty; such as are the presumptuous and the desperate. 19. All hypocrites
and pretenders to religion, walking in forms and shadows, but denying the power
of godliness. 20. All impatient persons; all that repine or murmur against the
prosperities of the wicked, or the calamities of the godly, or their own
afflictions. 21. All that blaspheme God, or speak dishonourable things of so
sacred a Majesty. 22. They that tempt God, or rely upon his protection against
his rules, and without his promise and besides reason, entering into danger,
from which, without a miracle, they cannot be rescued. 23. They that are bold
in the midst of judgment, and fearless in the midst of the Divine vengeance,
and the accents of his anger.
II. Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven image, nor worship it.
The moral duties of this commandment are, 1.
To worship God with all bodily worship and external forms of address, according
to the custom of the church we live in. 2. To believe God to be a spiritual and
pure substance, without any visible form or shape. 3. To worship God in ways of
his own appointing, or by his proportions, or measures of nature, and right
reason, or public and holy customs.
They sin against this commandment, 1. That make
any image or pictures of the Godhead, or fancy any likeness to him. 2. They
that use images in their religion, designing or addressing any religious
worship to them; for if this thing could be naturally tolerable, yet it is too
near an intolerable for a jealous God to suffer. 3. They that deny to worship
God with lowly reverence of their bodies, according as the church expresses her
reverence to God externally. 4. They that invent or practice superstitious
worshippings, invented by man against God's word, or without reason, or besides
the public customs or forms of worshipping, either foolishly or ridiculously,
without the purpose of order, decency, proportion to a wise or a religious end,
in prosecution of some virtue or duty.
III. Thou shalt not take God's name in vain.
The duties of this commandment are. 1. To
honour and revere the most holy name of God. 2. To invocate his name directly,
or by consequence, in all solemn and permitted adjurations or public oaths. 3.
To use all things and persons, upon whom his name is called, or any ways
imprinted, with a regardful and separate manner of usage, different from
common, and far from contempt and scorn. 4. To swear in truth and judgment.
They sin against this commandment, 1. Who swear
vainly and customarily, without just cause, without competent authority. 2.
They that blaspheme or curse God. 3. They that speak of God without grave cause
or solemn occasion. 4. They that forswear themselves, that is, they that do not
perform their vows to God, or that swear, or call God to witness to a lie. 5.
They that swear rashly or maliciously to commit a sin or an act of revenge. 6.
They that swear by any creature falsely, or any way but as it relates to God,
and consequently invokes his testimony. 7. All curious inquirers into the
secrets, and intruders into the mysteries and hidden things of God. 8. They
that curse God, or curse a creature by God. 9. They that profane churches, holy
utensils, holy persons, holy customs, holy sacraments. 10. They that provoke
others to swear voluntarily and by design, or incuriously, or negligently, when
they might avoid it. 11. They that swear to things uncertain and unknown.
IV. Remember that thou keep holy the Sabbath day.
The duties of this commandment are, 1. To set
apart some portions of our time for the immediate offices of religion and
glorification of God. 2. This is to be done according as God or his holy church
hath appointed. 3. One day in seven is to be set apart. 4. The Christian day is
to be subrogated into the place of the Jews' day; the resurrection of Christ
and the redemption of man was a greater blessing than to create him. 5. God on
that day to be worshipped and acknowledged as our Creator and as our Saviour.
6. The day to be spent in holy offices, in hearing divine service, public
prayers, frequenting the congregations, hearing the word of God read or
expounded, reading good books, meditations, alms, reconciling enumities,
remission of burdens and of offences, of debts and of work; friendly offices,
neighbourhood, and provoking one another to good works; and to this end all
servile works must be omitted, excepting necessary and charitable offices to
men or beasts, to ourselves or others.
They sin against this commandment. 1. That do, or
compel, or entice others to do, servile works without the cases of necessity or
charity, to be estimated according to common and prudent accounts. 2. They that
refuse or neglect to come to the public assemblies of the church, to hear and
assist at the Divine offices entirely. 3. They that spend the day in idleness,
forbidden or vain recreations, or the actions of sin and folly. 4. They that
buy and sell without the cases of permission. 5. They that travel unnecessary
journeys. 6. They that act or assist in contentions or lawsuits, markets,
fairs, etc. 7. They that on that day omit their private devotions, unless the
whole day be spent in public. 8. They that by any cross or contradictory
actions against the customs of the church, do purposely desecrate or unhollow
and make the day common; as they that, in despite and contempt, fast upon the
Lord's day, lest they may celebrate the festival after the manner of the
Christians.
V. Honour thy father and thy mother.
The duties are, 1. To do honour and reverence
to, and to love our natural parents. 2. To obey all their domestic commands,
for in them the scene of their authority lies. 3. To give them maintenance and
support in their needs. 4. To obey kings and all that are in authority. 5. To
pay tribute and honours, custom and reverence. 6. To do reverence to the aged
and all our betters. 7. To obey our masters, spiritual governors and guides, in
those things which concern their several respective interest and authority.
They sin against this commandment, 1. That
despise their parents' age or infirmity. 2. That are ashamed of their poverty
and extraction. 3. That publish their vices, errors, and infirmities, to shame
them. 4. That refuse and reject all or any of their lawful commands. 5.
Children that marry without or against their consent, when it may be reasonable
obtained. 6. That curse them from whom they receive so many blessings. 7. That
grieve the souls of their parents by not complying in their desires, and
observing their circumstances. 8. That hate their persons, that mock them or
use uncomely jestings. 9. That discover their nakedness voluntarily. 10. That
murmur against their injunctions, and obey them involuntarily. 11. All rebels
against their kings, or the supreme power, where it is legally and justly
invested. 12. That refuse to pay tributes and impositions imposed legally. 13.
They that disobey their masters, murmur or repine against their commands, abuse
or deride their persons, talk rudely, etc. 14. They that curse the king in
their heart, or speak evil of the ruler of their of their people. 15. All that
are uncivil and rude towards aged persons, mockers and scorners of them.[130]
VI.Thou shalt do no murder.
The duties are, 1. To preserve our own lives,
the lives of our relatives, and all with whom we converse, (or who can need us,
and we assist,) by prudent, reasonable, and wary defences, advocations,
discoveries of snares, etc. 2. To preserve our health, and the integrity of our
bodies and minds, and of others. 3. To preserve and follow peace with all
men.
They sin against this commandment, 1. That
destroy the life of a man or woman, himself or any other. 2. That do violence
to, or dismember or hurt any part of the body with evil intent. 3. That fight
duels, or commerce unjust wars. 4. They that willingly hasten their own or
others death. 5. That by oppression or violence embitter the spirits of any, so
as to make their life sad and their death hasty. 6. They that conceal the
dangers of their neighbour, which they can safely discover. 7. They that sow
strife and contention among neighbours. 8. They that refuse to rescue or
preserve those whom they can and are obliged to preserve. 9. They that procure
abortion. 10. They that threaten, or keep men in fears, or hate them.
VII. Thou shalt not commit adultery.
The duties are 1. To preserve our bodies in
the chastity of a single life, or of marriage. 2. To keep all the parts of our
bodies in the care and severities of chastity, so that we be restrained in our
eyes as well as in our feet.
They sin against this commandment, 1. Who are
adulterous, incestuous, sodomitical, or commit fornication. 2. They that commit
folly alone, dishonouring their own bodies with softness and wantonness. 3.
They that immoderately let loose the reins of their bodley appetite, though
within the protection of marriage. 4. They that by wanton gestures, wandering
eyes, lascivious dressings, discovery of the nakedness of themselves or others,
filthy discourse, high diet, amorous songs, balls and revellings, tempt and
betray themselves or others to folly. 5. They that marry a woman divorced for
adultery. 6. They that divorce their wives, except for adultery, and marry
another.
VIII. Thou shalt not steal.
The duties are, 1. To give every man his due.
2. To permit every man to enjoy his own goods and estate quietly.
They sin against this commandment, 1. That injure
any man's estate by open violence or by secret robbery, by stealth or cozenage,
by arts of bargaining or vexatious lawsuits. 2. That refuse or neglect to pay
their debts when they are able. 3. That are forward to run into debt knowingly
beyond their power, without hopes or purposes of repayment. 4. Oppressors of
the poor. 5. That exact usury of necessitous persons, or of any beyond the
permissions of equity, as determined by the laws. 6. All sacrilegious persons,
people that rob God of his dues or of his possessions. 7. All that game, viz.
at cards and dice, etc., to the prejudice and detriment of other men's estates.
8. They that embase coin and metals, and obtrude them for perfect and natural.
9. That break their promises to the detriment of a third person. 10. They that
refuse to stand to their bargains. 11. They that by negligence imbecile other
men's estates, spoiling or letting any thing perish which is entrusted to them.
12. That refuse to restore the pledge.
IX. Thou shalt not bear false witness.
The duties are, 1. To give testimony to
truth, when we are called to it by competent authority. 2. To preserve the good
name of our neighbours. 3. To speak well of them that deserve it.
They sin against this commandment, 1. That speak
false things in judgment, accusing their neighbour unjustly, or denying his
crime publicly when they are asked, and can be commanded lawfully to tell it.
2. Flatterers; and 3. Slanderers; 4. Backbiters; and 5. Detractors. 6. They
that secretly raise jealousies and suspicion of their neighbours
causelessly.
X. Thou shalt not covet.
The duties are, 1. To be content with the
portion God hath given us. 2. Not to be covetous of other men's goods.
They sin against this commandment, 1. That envy
the prosperity of other men. 2. They that desire passionately to be possessed
of what is their neighbour's. 3. They that with greediness pursue riches,
honours, pleasures, and curiosities. 4. They that are too careful, troubled,
distracted, or amazed, affrighted and afflicted with being solicitous in the
conduct of temporal blessings.
These are the general lines of duty by which we
may discover our failings and be humbled, and confess accordingly: only the
penitent person is to remember, that although these are the kinds of sins
described after the sense of the Jewish church, which consisted principally in
the external action or the deed done, and had no restraints upon the thoughts
of men, save only in the tenth commandment which was mixed, and did relate as
much to action as to thought; (as appears in the instances;) yet upon us
Christians there are many circumstances and degrees of obligation, which endear
our duty with greater severity and observation: and the penitent is to account
of himself and enumerate his sins, not only by external actions or the deed
done, but by words and by thoughts; and so to reckon if we have done it
directly or indirectly, if he have caused others to do it, by tempting or
encouraging, by assisting or counselling, by not dissuading when he could and
ought, by fortifying their hands or hearts, or not weakening their evil
purposes; if we have designed or contrived its action, desired it or love it,
delighted in the thought, remembered the past sin with pleasure or without
sorrow: these are the by-ways of sin, and the crooked lanes, in which a man may
wander and be lost, as certainly as in the broad highways of iniquity.
But besides this our blessed Lord and his
apostles have added divers other precepts; some of which have been with some
violence reduced to the decalogue, and others have not been noted at all in the
catalogues of confession. I shall therefore describe them entirely, that the
sick man may discover his failings, that, by the mercies of God in Jesus
Christ, and by the instrument of repentance, he may be presented pure and
spotless before the throne of God.
The Special Precepts of the Gospel.
1. Prayer, frequent, fervent, holy, and
persevering.[131] 2. Faith.[132] 3. Repentance.[133]
4. Poverty of spirit, as opposed to ambition and high designs.[134] 5. And in it is humility, or sitting down in the lowest
place, and in giving honour to go before another.[135] 6. Meekness, as it is opposed to waywardness,
fretfulness, immoderate grieving, disdain and scorn.[136] 7. Contempt of the world. 8. Prudence, or the
advantageous conduct of religion.[137] 9.
Simplicity, or sincerity in words and actions, pretences and substances. 10.
Hope.[138] 11. Hearing the word.[139] 12. Reading.[140] 14. Obeying them that have the rule over us in
spiritual affairs.[141] 15. Refusing to
communicate with persons excommunicate: whither also may be reduced, to reject
heretics.[142] 16. Charity:[143] viz. Love to God above all things; brotherly kindness,
or profitable love to our neighbours as ourselves, to be expressed in alms.
forgiveness, and to die for our brethren. 17. To pluck out the right eye, or
violently to rescind all occasions of sins, though dear to us as an eye.[144] 18. To reprove our erring brother. 19. To
be patient in afflictions; and long animity is referred hither or
long-sufferance; which is the perfection and perseverance of patience, and is
opposed to hastiness and weariness of spirit. 20. To be thankful to our
benefactors; but above all, in all things to give thanks to God. 21. To rejoice
in the Lord always. 22. Not to quench, not to grieve, not to resist the Spirit.
23. To love our wives as Christ loved his church, and to reverence our
husbands. 24. To provide for our families. 25. Not to be bitter to our
children. 26. To bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. 27.
Not to despise prophesying. 28. To be gentle, and easy to be entreated. 29. To
give no scandal or offence. 30. To follow after peace with all men, and to make
peace. 31. Not to go to law before the unbelievers. 32. To do all things that
are of good report, or the actions of public honesty, abstaining from all
appearances of evil. 33. To convert souls, or turn sinners from the error of
their ways. 34. To confess Christ before all the world. 35. To resist unto
blood, if God call us to it. 36. To rejoice in tribulation for Christ's sake.
37. To remember and show forth the Lord's death till his second coming, by
celebrating the Lord's supper. 38. To believe all the New Testament. 39. To add
nothing to St. John's last book, that is, to pretend to no new revelations. 40.
To keep the customs of the church, her festivals and solemnities; lest we be
reproved, as the Corinthians were by St. Paul, `We have no such customs, nor
the churches of God.' 41. To contend earnestly for the faith. Not to be
contentious in matters not concerning the eternal interest of our souls; but in
matters indifferent to have faith to ourselves. 42. Not to make schisms or
divisions in the body of the church. 43. To call no man master upon earth; but
to acknowledge Christ our master and lawgiver. 44. Not to domineer over the
Lord's heritage. 45. To try all things and keep that which is best. 46. To be
temperate in all things. 47. To deny ourselves. 48. To mortify our lusts and
their instruments. 49. To lend, looking for nothing again, nothing by way of
increase, nothing by way of recompence. 50. To watch and stand in readiness
against the coming of the Lord. 51. Not to be angry without cause. 52. Not at
all to revile. 53. Not to swear. 54. Not to respect persons. 55. To lay hands
suddenly on no man. (This especially pertains to bishops; to whom also, and to
all the ecclesiastical order, it is enjoined that they preach the word, that
they be instant in season and out of season, that they rebuke, reprove, exhort
with all long-suffering and doctrine.) 56. To keep the Lord's day, (derived
into an obligation from a practice apostolical.) 57. To do all things to the
glory of God. 58. To hunger and thirst after righteousness and its rewards. 59.
To avoid foolish questions. 60. To pray for persecutors, and to do good to them
that persecute us, and despitefully use us. 61. To pray for all men. 63. To
work with our own hands, that we be not burdensome to others, avoiding
idleness. 64. To be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect. 65. To be
liberal and frugal; for he that will call us to an account for our time, will
also for the spending our money. 66. Not to use uncomely jestings. 67. Modesty;
as opposed to boldness, to curiosity, to indecency. 68. To be swift to hear,
slow to speak. 69. To worship the holy Jesus as the mention of his holy name;
as of old God was at the mention of Jehovah.
These are the straight lines of Scripture by
which we may also measure our obliquities, and discover crooked walking. If the
sick man hath not done these things, or if he have done contrary to any of them
in any particular, he hath cause enough for his sorrow and matter for his
confession; of which he needs no other forms, but that he heartily deplore and
plainly enumerate his follies, as a man tells the sad stories of his own
calamity.
1. Let the sick man set his house in
order before he die; state his cases of conscience, reconcile the fractures of
his family, reunite brethren, cause right understandings, and remove
jealousies; give good counsels for the future conduct of their persons and
estates, charm them into religion by the authority and advantages of a dying
person; because the last words of a dying man are like the tooth of a wounded
lion, making a deeper impression in the agony than in the most vigorous
strength.[145]
2. Let the sick man discover every secret of art
or profit, physic or advantage to mankind, if he may do it without the
prejudice of a third person.[146]
Some persons are so uncharitably envious, that they are willing that a secret
receipt should die with them, and be buried in their grave, like treasure in
the sepulchre of David. But this, which is a design of charity, must therefore
not be done to any man's prejudice; and the mason of Herodotus, the king of
Egypt, who kept secret his notice of the king's treasure, and when he was a
dying told his son, betrayed his trust then, when he should have kept it most
sacredly for his own interest. In all other cases let thy charity outlive thee,
that thou mayst rejoice in the mansion of rest, because, by thy means, many
living persons are eased or advantaged.
3. Let him make his will with great
justice and piety, that is, that the right heirs be no defrauded for collareral
respects, fancies, or indirect fondnesses; but the inheritances descend in
their legal and due channel; and in those things where we have a liberty, that
we take the opportunity of doing virtuously, that is, of considering how God
may be best served by our donatives, or how the interest of any virtue may be
promoted; in which we are principally to regard the necessities of our nearest
kindred and relatives, servants and friends.
4. Let the will or testament be made with
ingenuity, openness, and plain expression, that he may not entail a lawsuit
upon his posterity and relatives, and make them lose their charity, or entangle
their estates, or make them poorer by the gift. He hath done me no charity, but
dies in my debt that makes me sue for a legacy.
5. It is proper for the state of sickness, and an
excellent annealing us to burial, that we give alms in this state, so burying
treasure in our graves that will not perish, but rise again in the resurrection
of the just. Let the dispensation of our alms be as little intrusted to our
executors as may be, excepting the lasting and successive portions; but with
our own present care, let us exercise the charity and secure the stewardship.
It was a custom amongst the old Greeks to bury horses, clothes, arms, and
whatsoever was dear to the deceased person, supposing they might need them, and
that without clothes they should be found naked by their judges; and all the
friends did use to bring gifts, by such liberality thinking to promote the
interest of their dead. But we may offer our entsfta
ourselves best of all: our doles and funeral meals, if they be our own
early provisions, will then spend the better; and it is good so to carry our
passing penny in our hand, and, by reaching that hand to the poor make a friend
in the everlasting habitations. He that gives with his own hand shall be sure
to find it, and the poor shall find it; but he that trusts executors with his
charity, and the economy and issues of his virtue, by which he must enter into
his hopes of heaven and pardon, shall find but an ill account when his
executors complain he died poor. Think on this. To this purpose, wise and pious
was the counsel of Salvian:[147] "Let a
dying man, who hath nothing else of which he may make an effective oblation,
offer up to God of his substance; let him offer it with compunction and tears,
with grief and mourning, as knowing that all our oblations have their value not
by the price, but by the affection; and it is our faith that commendeth the
money, since God receives the money by the hands of the poor, but at the same
time gives and does not take the blessing, because he receives nothing but his
own; and man gives that which is none of his own, that of which he is only a
steward, and shall be accountable for every shilling. Let it, therefore, be
offered humbly, as a creditor pays his debts; not magnifically, as a prince
gives a donative; and let him remember that such doles do not pay for the sin,
but they ease the punishment; that are not proper instruments of redemption,
but instances of supplication and advantages of prayer; and when we have done
well, remember that we have not paid our debt, but shown our willingness to
give a little of the vast sum we owe; and he that gives plentifully according
to the measure of his estate, is still behindhand according to the measure of
his sins. Let him pray to God that this late oblation may be accepted; and so
it will, if it sails to him in a sea of penitential tears or sorrows that it is
so little, and that is is so late.
6. Let the sick man's charity be so ordered that
it may not come only to deck the funeral and make up the pomp; charity waiting
like one of the solemn mourners; but let it be continued, that, besides the
alms of health and sickness, there may be a rejoicing in God for his charity
long after his funeral, so as to become more beneficial and less public; that
the poor may pray in private, and give God thanks many days together. This is
matter of prudence, and yet in this we are to observe the same regards which we
had in the charity and alms of our lives; with this only difference, that, in
the funeral alms also of rich and able persons, the public customs of the
church are to be observed, and decency and solemnity, and the expectations of
the poor, and matter of public opinion, and the reputation of religion; in all
other cases let thy charity consult with humility and prudence, that it never
minister at all to vanity, but be as full of advantage and usefulness as it
may.
7. Every man will forgive a dying person; and
therefore let the sick man be ready and sure, if he can, to send to such
persons whom he hath injured, and beg their pardon, and do them right; for in
this case he cannot stay for an opportunity of convenient and advantageous
reconcilement; he cannot then spin out a treaty, nor beat down the price of
composition, nor lay a snare to be quit from the obligation and coercion of
laws; but he must ask forgiveness downright, and make him amends as he can,
being greedy of making use of this opportunity of doing a duty that must be
done, but cannot any more, if not now, until time returns again and tells the
minutes backwards, so that yesterday shall be reckoned in the portions of the
future.
8. In the intervals of sharper pains, when the
sick man amasses together all the arguments of comfort and testimonies of God's
love to him and care of him, he must needs find infinite matter of thanksgiving
and glorification of God; and it is a proper act of charity and love to God,
and justice too, that he do honour to God on his death-bed for all the
blessings of his life, not only in general communications, but those by which
he hath been separate and discerned from others, or supported and blessed in
his own person; such as are, "In all my life-time I never broke a home; I never
fell into the hands of robbers, never into public shame, nor into moisome
diseases; I have not begged my bread, nor been tempted by great and unequal
fortunes: God gave me a good understanding, good friends, or delivered me in
such a danger, and heard my prayers in such particular pressures of my spirit."
This or like enumeration and consequent acts of thanksgiving are apt to produce
love to God, and confidence in the day of trial; for he that gave me blessings
in proportion to the state and capacities of my life, I hope also will do so in
proportion to the needs of my sickness and my death-bed. This we find
practised, as a most reasonable piece of piety, by the wisest of the heathens.
So Antipater Tarsensis gave God thanks for his prosperous voyage into Greece;
and Cyrus made a handsome prayer upon the tops of the mountains when, by a
phantasm, he was warned of his approaching death. "Receive, O God my Father,
these holy rites, by which I put an end to many and great affairs; and I give
thee thanks for thy celestial signs and prophetic notices, whereby thou hast
signified to me what I ought to do, and what I ought not. I present also very
great thanks that I have perceived and acknowledged your care of me, and have
never exalted myself above my condition, for any prosperour accident. And I
pray that you will grant felicity to my wife, my children, and friends, and to
me a death such as my life hath been." But that of Philagrius, in Gregory
Nazianzen, is eucharistical, but it relates more especially to the blessings
and advantages which are accidentally consequent to sickness. "I thank thee, O
Father and maker of all my children, that thou art pleased to bless and to
sanctify us even against our wills, and by the outward man purgest the inward,
and leadest us through cross-ways to a blessed ending, for reasons best known
unto thee." However, when we go from our hospital and place of little
intermedial rest in our journey to heaven, it is fit that we give thanks to the
major-domo for our entertainment. When these parts of religion are finished
according to each man's necessity, there is nothing remaining of personal duty
to be done alone, but that the sick man act over these virtues by the renewings
of devotion and in the way of prayer; and that is to be continued as long as
life, and voice, and reason dwell with us.
O my soul, thou hast said unto the Lord,
Thou art my Lord; my goodness extendeth not to thee, but to the saints that are
in the earth, and to the excellent, in whom is all my delight. The Lord is the
portion of my inheritance and of my cup; thou maintainest my lot. Psalm xvi.
2,3,5.
As for God, his way is perfect; the word of the
Lord is tried; he is a buckler to all those that trust in him. For who is God,
except the Lord? or who is a rock, save our God? It is God that girdeth me with
strength, and maketh my way perfect. Psalm xviii.30-32.
Be not thou far from me, O Lord; O my
strength, haste thee to help me. Psalm xxii. 19.
Deliver my soul from the sword, my darling from
the power of the dog. Save me from the lion's mouth; and thou hast heard me
also from among the horns of the unicorns. Ver. 20,21.
I will declare thy name unto my brethren; in the
midst of the congregation will I praise thee. Ver. 22.
Ye that fear the Lord, praise the Lord; ye sons
of God, glorify him, and fear before him, all ye sons of men. For he hath not
despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, neither hath he hid his
face from him; but when he cried unto him, he heard. Ver. 23,24.
As the hart panteth after the water-brooks, so
longeth my soul after thee, O God. Psalm xlii.1.
My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God;
when shall I come and appear before the Lord? Ver. 2.
O my God, my soul is cast down within me. All thy
waves and billows are gone over me. As with a sword in my bones, I am
reproached. Yet the Lord will command his loving-kindness in the day-time; and
in the night his song shall be with me, and my prayer unto the God of my life.
Ver. 6-8, 10.
Bless ye the Lord in the congregations; even the
Lord from the fountains of Israel. Psalm lxviii. 26.
My mouth shall show forth thy righteousness and
thy salvation all the day; for I know not the numbers thereof. Psalm
lxxxi.15.
I will go in the strength of the Lord God; I will
make mention of thy righteousness, even of thine only. O God, thou hast taught
me from my youth; and hitherto have I declared thy wonderous works. But I will
hope continually, and will yet praise thee more and more. Ver. 16,17,14.
Thy righteousness, O God, is very high, who hast
done great things. O God, who is like unto thee? Thou which hast showed me
great and sore troubles shall quicken me again, and shalt bring me up again
from the depths of the earth. Ver. 19,20.
Thou shalt increase thy goodness towards me, and
comfort me on every side. Ver. 21.
My lips shall greatly rejoice when I sing unto
thee; and my soul which thou hast redeemed. Blessed be the Lord God, the God of
Israel, who only doth wondrous things. And blessed be his glorious name for
ever; and let the whole earth be filled with his glory. Amen, Amen. Ver. 23,
Psalm lxxii. 18,19.
I love the Lord because he hath heard my voice
and my supplication. The sorrows of death compassed me: I found trouble and
sorrow. Then called I upon the name of the Lord; O Lord, I beseech thee,
deliver my soul. Gracious is the Lord and righteous; yea our God is merciful.
Psalm cxvi. 1,3-5.
The Lord preserveth the simple: I was brought low
and he helped me. Return to thy rest, O my soul: the Lord hath dealt
bountifully with me. For thou hast delivered my soul from death, mine eyes from
tears, and my feet from falling. Ver. 6-8.
Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of
his saints. O Lord, truly I am thy servant; I am thy servant and the son of
thine handmaid: thou shalt loose my bonds. Ver. 15,16.
He that loveth not the Lord Jesus, let him be
accursed. 1 Cor. xvi. 22.
O that I might love thee as well as ever any
creature loved thee! He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God. There is no fear
in love. 1 John, iv. 16,18.
The Prayer.
O most gracious and eternal God and loving
Father, who hast poured out thy bowels upon us, and sent the Son of thy love
unto us to die for love, and to make us dwell in love, and the eternal
comprehensions of thy Divine mercies, O be pleased to inflame my heart with a
holy charity towards thee and all the world. Lord, I forgive all that ever have
offended me, and beg that both they and I may enter into the possession of thy
mercies, and feel a gracious pardon from the same fountain of grace: and do
thou forgive me all the acts of scandal whereby I have provoked, or tempted, or
lessened, or disturbed any person. Lord, let me never have my portion amongst
those that divide the union, and disturb the peace, and break the charities of
the church and Christian communion. And though I am fallen into evil times, in
which Christendom is divided by the names of an evil division, yet I am in
charity with all Christians, with all that love the Lord Jesus and long for his
coming; and I would give my life to save the soul of any of my brethren; and I
humbly beg of thee that the public calamity of the several societies of the
church may not be imputed to my soul to any evil purposes.
II.
Lord, preserve me in the unity of thy holy
church, in the love of God and of my neighbours. Let thy grace enlarge my heart
to remember, deeply to resent, faithfully to use, wisely to improve, and humbly
to give thanks to thee for all thy favours with which thou hast enriched my
soul, and supported my estate, and preserved my person, and rescued me from
danger, and invited me to goodness in all the days and periods of my life. Thou
hast led me through it with an excellent conduct; and I have gone astray after
the manner of men; but my heart is towards thee. O, do unto thy servant as thou
usest to do unto those that love thy name; let thy truth comfort me; thy mercy
deliver me; thy staff support me; thy grace sanctify my sorrow; and thy
goodness pardon all my sins: thy angels guide me with safety in this shadow of
death, and thy most Holy Spirit lead me into the land of righteousness, for thy
name's sake, which is so comfortable, and for Jesus Christ's sake, our dearest
Lord and most gracious Saviour. Amen.
OF VISITATION OF THE SICK: OR THE ASSISTANCE THAT IS TO BE DONE
TO DYING PERSONS BY THE MINISTRY OF THEIR CLERGY-GUIDES.
God, who hath made no new covenant with
dying persons distinct from the covenant of the living, hath also appointed no
distinct sacraments for them, no other manner of usages but such as are common
to all the spiritual necessities of living and healthful persons. In all the
days of our religion, from our baptism to the resignation and delivery of our
soul, God hath appointed his servants to minister to the necessities, and
eternally to bless, and prudently to guide, and wisely to judge, concerning
souls; and the Holy Ghost, that anointing from above, descends upon us in
several effluxes, but ever by the ministries of the church. Our heads are
anointed with that sacred unction, baptism, (not in ceremony, but in real and
proper effect,) our foreheads in confirmation, our hands in ordinations, all
our senses in the visitation of the sick; and all by the ministry of especially
deputed and instructed persons: and we, who all our life-time derive blessings
from the fountains of grace by the channels of ecclesiastical ministries, must
do it then especially, when our needs are most pungent and actual. 1. We cannot
give up our names to Christ, but the holy man that ministers in religion must
enrol them, and present the persons and consign the grace: when we beg for
God's Spirit the minister can best present our prayers, and by his advocation
hallow our private desires and turn them into public and potent offices. 2. If
we desire to be established and confirmed in the grace and religion of our
baptism, the holy man whose hands are anointed by a special ordination to that
and its symbolical purposes, lays his hands upon the catechumen, and the
anointing from above descends by that ministry. 3. If we would eat the body and
drink the blood of our Lord, we must address ourselves to the Lord's table, and
he that stands there to bless and to minister can reach it forth and feed thy
soul; and without his ministry thou canst not be nourished with that heavenly
feast, nor thy body consigned to immortality, nor thy soul refreshed with the
sacramental bread from heaven, except by spiritual suppletories in cases of
necessity and an impossible communion. 4. If we have committed sins, the
spiritual man is appointed to restore us, and to pray for us, and to receive
our confessions, and to inquire into our wounds, and to infuse oil and remedy,
and to pronounce pardon. 5. If we be cut off from the communion of the faithful
by our own demerits, their holy hands must reconcile us and give us peace; they
are our appointed comforters, our instructors, our ordinary judges; and, in the
whole, what the children of Israel begged of Moses,[148] - that God would no more speak to them alone, but by
his servant Moses, lest they should be consumed - God, in compliance with our
infirmities, hath of his own goodness established as a perpetual law in all
ages of Christianity, that God will speak to us by his ministers, and our
solemn prayers shall be made to him by their advocation, and his blessings
descend from heaven by their hands, and our offices return thither by their
presidencies, and our repentance shall be managed by them, and our pardon in
many degrees ministered by them: God comforts us by their sermons, and reproves
us by their discipline, and cuts off some by their severity, and reconciles
others by their gentleness, and relieves us by their prayers, and instructs us
by their discourses, and heals our sicknesses by their intercession presented
to God, and united to Christ's advocation: and in all this they are no causes
but servants of the will of God, instruments of the divine grace and order,
stewards and dispensers of the mysteries, and appointed to our souls to serve
and lead, and to help in all accidents, dangers, and necessities.
And they who received us in our baptism are also
to carry us to our grave, and to take care that our end be as our life was or
should have been; and therefore it is established as an apostolical rule, `Is
any man sick among you? let him send for the elders of the church, and let them
pray over him,[149] etc.
The sum of the duties and offices
respectively implied in these words is in the following rules.
1. Let the minister of religion be sent
to, not only against the agony or death, but be advised with in the whole
conduct of the sickness; for in sickness indefinitely, and therefore in every
sickness, and therefore in such which are not mortal, which end in health,
which have no agony or final temptations, St. James gives the advice; and the
sick man, being bound to require them, is also tied to do it, when he can know
them and his own necessity. It is a very great evil both in the matter of
prudence and piety that they fear the priest as they fear the embalmer or the
sexton's spade; and love not to converse with him unless they can converse with
no man else; and think his office so much to relate to the other world that he
is not to be treated with while we hope to live in this; and, indeed, that our
religion be taken care of only when we die: and the event is this, (of which I
have seen some sad experience,) that the man is deadly sick, and his reason is
useless, and he is laid to sleep, and his life is in the confines of the grave,
so that he can do nothing towards the trimming of his lamp; and the curate
shall say a few prayers by him, and talk to a dead man, and the man is not in a
condition to be helped but in a condition to need it hugely. He cannot be
called upon to confess his sins, and he is not able to remember them, and he
cannot understand an advice, nor hear a free discourse, nor be altered from a
passion, nor cured of his fear, nor comforted upon any grounds of reason or
religion, and no man can tell what is likely to be his fate; or, if he does, he
cannot prophesy good things concerning him, but evil. Let the spiritual man
come when the sick man can be conversed withal and instructed, when he can take
medicine and amend, when he understands or can be taught to understand the case
of his soul, and the rules of his conscience; and then his advice may turn into
advantage; it cannot otherwise be useful.
2.The intercourses of the minister with
the sick man have so much variety in them that they are not to be transacted at
once; and therefore they do not well that send once to see the good man with
sorrow, and hear him pray and thank him, and dismiss him civilly, and desire to
see his face no more. To dress a soul for funeral is not a work to be
dispatched at one meeting: at first he needs a comfort, and anon something to
make him willing to die; and by and by he is tempted to impatience, and that
needs a special cure; and it is a great work to make his confessions well and
with advantages; and it may be the man is careless and indifferent, and then he
needs to understand the evil of his sin, and the danger of his person; and his
cases of conscience may be so many and so intricate that he is not quickly to
be reduced to peace, and one time the holy man must pray, and another time he
must exhort, a third time administer the holy sacrament; and he that ought to
watch all the periods and little portions of his life, lest he should be
surprised and overcome, had need be watched when he is sick, and assisted and
called upon and reminded of the several parts of his duty in every instant of
his temptation. This article was well provided for among the easterlings; for
the priests in their visitations, of a sick person did abide in their
attendance and ministry for seven days together. The want of this makes the
visitations fruitless, and the calling of the clergy contemptible, while it is
not suffered to imprint its proper effects upon them that need it in a lasting
ministry.
3. St. James advises that when a man is sick he
should send for the elders;[150] one sick
man for many presbyters; and so did the eastern churches,[151] they sent for seven; and like a college of physicians
they ministered spiritual remedies, and sent up prayers like a choir of singing
clerks. In cities they might do so while the Christians were few and the
priests many. But when they that dwelt in the pagi, or villages, ceased to be
Pagans, and were baptized, it grew to be an impossible felicity, unless in few
cases, and to some more eminent persons: but because they need it most God hath
taken care that they may best have it; and they that can are not very prudent
if they neglect it.
4. Whether they be many or few that are sent to
the sick person, let the curate of his parish, or his own confessor, be amongst
them; that is, let him not be wholly advised by strangers who know not his
particular necessities; but he that is the ordinary judge cannot safely be
passed by in his extraordinary necessity, which in so great portions depends
upon his whole life past: and it is a matter of suspicion, when we decline his
judgment that knows us best, and with whom we formerly did converse either by
choice or by law, by private election or public constitution. It concerns us
then to make severe and profitable judgments, and not to conspire against
ourselves, or procure such assistances which may handle us softly, or comply
with our weaknesses more than relieve our necessities.
5. When the ministers of religion are come, first
let them do their ordinary offices, that is, pray for grace to the sick man for
patience, for resignation, for health, (if it seems good to God in order to his
great ends.) For that is one of the ends of the advice of the apostle. And
therefore the minister is to be sent for not while the case is desperate, but
before the sickness is come to its crisis or period. Let him discourse
concerning the causes of sickness, and by a general instrument move him to
consider concerning his condition. Let him call upon him to set his soul in
order; to trim his lamp; to dress his soul; to renew acts of grace by way of
prayer; to make amends in all the evils he hath done; and to supply all the
defects of duty as much as his past condition requires, and his present can
admit.
6. According as the condition of the sickness or
the weakness of the man is observed, so the exhortation is to be less, and the
prayers more, because the life of the man was his main preparatory; and,
therefore, if his condition be full of pain and infirmity, the shortness and
small number of his own acts is to be supplied by the acts of the ministers and
standers-by, who are in such case to speak more to God for him than to talk to
him. For the prayer of the righteous,[152]
when it is fervent, hath a promise to prevail much in behalf the sick person.
But exhortations must prevail with their own proper weight, not by the passion
of the speaker. But yet this assistance by way of prayers is not to be done by
long offices, but by frequent and fervent and holy; in which offices, if the
sick man joins, let them be short and apt to comply with his little strength
and great infirmities: if they be said in his behalf without his conjunction,
they that pray may prudently use their liberty, and take no measures but their
own devotions and opportunities, and the sick man's necessities.
When he hath made this general address and
preparatory entrance to the work of many days and periods, he may descend to
particulars by the following instruments and discourses.
The first necessity that is to be served
is that of repentance, in which the ministers can in no way serve him but by
first exhorting him to confession of his sins, and declaration of the state of
his soul. For unless they know the manner of his life, and the degrees of his
restitution, either they can do nothing at all, or nothing of advantage and
certainty. His discourses, like Jonathan's arrows, may shoot short or shoot
over, but not wound where they should, nor open those humours that need a
lancet or a cautery. To this purpose the sick man may be reminded:--
Arguments and Exhortations to move the Sick Man to Confession of Sins.
1. That God hath made a special promise to
confession of sins. `He that confesseth his sins, and forsaketh them, shall
have mercy;' and `If we confess our sins, God is righteous to forgive us our
sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.'[153] 2. That confession of sins is a proper act and
introduction to repentance. 3. That when the Jews, being warned by the sermons
of the Baptist, repented of their sins, they confessed their sins to John in
the susception of baptism.[154] 4. That the
converts in the days of the apostles, returning to Christianity, instantly
declared their faith and their repentance by confession and declaration of
their deeds,[155] which they then renounced,
abjured, and confessed to the apostles. 5. That confession is an act of many
virtues together. 6. It is the gate of repentance. 7. An instrument of shame
and condemnation of our sins. 8. A glorification of God, so called by Joshua,
particularly in the case of Achan. 9. An acknowledgment that God is just in
punishing; for by confessing of our sins we also confess his justice, and are
assessors with God in this condemnation of ourselves. 10. That by such an act
of judging ourselves, we escape the more angry judgment of God; St. Paul
expressly exhorting us to it upon that very inducement.[156] 11. That confession of sins is so necessary a duty,
that, in all Scriptures, it is the immediate preface to pardon, and the certain
consequence of godly sorrow, and an integral or constituent part of that grace
which, together with faith, makes up the whole duty of the gospel. 12. That in
all ages of the gospel it hath been taught and practised respectively, that all
the penitents made confessions proportionable to their repentance, that is,
public or private, general or particular. 13. That God, by testimonies from
heaven, that is by his word, and by a consequent rare peace of conscience, hath
given approbation to this holy duty. 14. That by this instrument those whose
office it is to apply remedies to every spiritual sickness can best perform
their offices. 15. That it is by all churches esteemed a duty necessary to be
done in cases of a troubled conscience. 16. That what is necessary to be done
in one case, and convenient in all cases, is fit to be done by all persons. 17.
That without confession it cannot easily be judged concerning the sick person
whether his conscience ought to be troubled or no, and therefore it cannot be
certain that it is not necessary. 18. That there can be no reason against it,
but such as consults with flesh and blood, with infirmity and sin, to all which
confession of sins is a direct enemy. 19. That now is that time when all the
imperfections of his repentance and all the breaches of his duty are to be made
up, and that if he omits this opportunity he can never be admitted to a
salutary and medicinal confession. 20. That St. James gives an express precept
that we Christians should confess our sins to each other,[157] that is, Christian to Christian, brother to brother,
the people to their minister; and then he makes a specification of that duty
which a sick man is to do when he hath sent for the elders of the church. 21.
That in all this there is no more lies upon him; but `if he hides his sins he
shall not be directed,' so said the wise man; but ere long he must appear
before the great Judge of men and angels; and his spirit will be more amazed
and confounded to be seen among the angels of light with the shadows of the
works of darkness upon him, than he can suffer by confessing to God in the
presence of him whom God hath sent to heal him. However, it is better to be
ashames here than to be confounded hereafter. "Polpudere praestat quam pigere,
totidem literis."[158] 22. That confession
being in order to pardon of sins, it is very proper and analogical to the
nature of the thing that it be made there where the pardon of sins is to be
administered; and that of pardon of sins God hath made the minister the
publisher and dispenser; and all this is besides the accidental advantages
which accrue to the conscience, which is made ashamed and timorous, and
restrained by the mortifications and blushings of discovering to a man the
faults committed in secret. 23. That the ministers of the gospel are the
ministers of reconciliation, are commanded to restore such persons as are
overtaken in a fault; and to that purpose they come to offer their ministry, if
they may have cognizance of the fault and person. 24. That in the matter of
prudence it is not safe to trust a man's self in the final condition and last
security of a man's soul, a man being no good judge of his own case. And when a
duty is so useful to all cases, so necessary in some, and encouraged by
promises evangelical, by Scripture precedents, by the example of both
Testaments, and prescribed by injunctions apostolical, and by the canon of all
churches, and the example of all ages, and taught us even by the proportions of
duty, and the analogy to the power of ministerial, and the very necessities of
every man; he that for stubbornness or sinful shamefacedness, or prejudice, or
any other criminal weakness, shall decline to do it in the days of his danger,
when the vanities of the world are worn off, and all affections to sin are
wearied, and the sin itself is pungent and grievous, and that we are certain we
shall not escape shame for them hereinafter, unless we be ashamed of them
here,[159] and use all the proper
instruments of their pardon; this man, I say, is very near death, but very far
off from the kingdom of heaven.
2. The spiritual man will find in the conduct of
this duty many cases and varieties of accidents which will alter his course and
forms of proceedings. Most men are of a rude indifferency, apt to excuse
themselves, ignorant of their condition abused by evil principles, content with
a general and indefinite confession; and, if you provoke them to it by the
forgoing considerations, lest their spirits should be a little uneasy, or not
secured in their own opinions, will be apt to say they are sinners, as every
man hath his infirmity, and he as well as any man: but, God be thanked, they
bear no ill-will to any man, or are no adulterers, or no rebels, or they have
fought on the right side; and God be merciful to them, for they are sinners.
But you shall hardly open their breasts further; and to inquire beyond this
would be to do the office of an accuser.
3. But which is yet worse, there are very many
persons who have been so used to an habitual course of a constant intemperance,
or dissolution in any other instance, that the crime is made natural and
necessary, and the conscience hath digested all the trouble, and the man thinks
himself to a good estate, and never reckons any sins but those which are the
egressions and passings beyond his ordinary and daily drunkenness. This happens
in the case of drunkenness and intemperate eating and idleness and
uncharitableness, and in lying and vain jestings, and particularly in such
evils which the laws do not punish, and public customs do not shame, but which
are countenanced by potent sinners, or evil customs, or good nature and
mistaken civilities.
Instruments by way of Consideration, to awaken a careless Person, and a
stupid Conscience.
In these and the like cases the spiritual
man must awaken the lethargy, and prick the conscience, by representing to him,
1. That Christianity is a holy and a strict religion. 2. That many are called,
but few are chosen. That the number of them that are to be saved is but a very
few in respect of those that are to descent into sorrow and everlasting
darkness. That we have covenanted with God in baptism to live a holy life. That
the measures of holiness in the Christian religion are not to be taken by the
evil proportions of the multitude and common fame of looser and less severe
persons; because the multitude is that which does not enter into heaven, but
the few, the elect, the holy servants of Jesus. That every habitual sin does
amount to a very great guilt in the whole, though it be but in a small
instance. That if the righteous scarcely be saved, then there will be no place
for the unrighteous and the sinner to appear in but places of horrow and
amazement. That confidence hath destroyed many souls, and many have had a sad
portion who have reckoned themselves in the calendar of saints. That the
promises of heaven are so great that it is not reasonable to think that every
man and every life and an easy religion shall possess such infinite glories.
That although heaven is a gift, yet there is a great severity and strict
exacting of the conditions on our part to receive that gift. That some persons
who have lived strictly for forty years together, yet have misearned by some
one crime at last, or some secret hypocrisy, or a latent pride, or a creeping
ambition, or a fantastic spirit; and therefore much less can they hope to
receive so great portions of felicities, when their life hath been a continual
declination from those severities which might have created confidence of pardon
and acceptation through the mercies of God and the merits of Jesus. That every
good man ought to be suspicious of himself, and in his judgment concerning his
own condition to fear the worst that he may provide for the better. That we are
commanded to work our out salvation with fear and trembling. That this precept
was given with great reason, considering the thousand thousand ways of
miscarrying. That St. Paul himself, and St. Arenius and St. Elzearius and
divers other remarkable saints, had at some times great apprehensions of the
dangers of failing of the mighty price of their high calling. That the stake
that is to be secured is of so great an interest that all our industry and all
the violatences we can suffer in the prosecution of it are not considerable.
That this affair is to be done but once, and then never any more unto eternal
ages. That they who profess themselves servants of the institution, and
servants of the law and discipline of Jesus, will find that they must judge
themselves by the proportions of that law by which they were to rule
themselves. That the laws of society and civility, and the voices of my company
are as ill judges as they are guides; but we are to stand or fall by his
sentence who will not consider or value the talk of idle men or the persuasion
of wilfully-abused consciences, but of him who hath felt our infirmity in all
things but sin, and knows where our failings are unavoidable, and where, and in
what degree they are excusable; but never will endure a sin should seize upon
any part of our love and deliberate choice or careless cohabitation. That if
our conscience accuse us not, yet are we not hereby justified; for God is
greater than our consciences. That they who are most innocent have their
consciences most tender and sensible. That scrupulous persons are always most
religious; and that to feel nothing is not a sign of life, but of death. That
nothing can be hid from the eyes of the Lord, to whom the day and the night,
public and private, words and thoughts, actions and desires, are equally
discernible. That a lukewarm person is only secured in his own thoughts, but
very unsafe in the event, and despised by God. That we live in an age in which
that which is called and esteemed a holy life, in the days of the apostles and
holy primitives would have been esteemed indifferent, sometimes scandalous, and
always cold. That what was a truth of God then is so now; and to what
severities they were tied, for the same also we are to be accountable; and
heaven is not now an easier purchase than it was then. That if he will cast up
his accounts, even with a superficial eye, let him consider how few good works
he hath done; how inconsiderable is the relief which he gave to the poor; how
little are the extraordinaries of his religion; and how inactive and lame, how
polluted and disordered, how unchosen and unpleasant were the ordinary parts
and periods of it; and how many and great sins have stained his course of life;
and till he enters into a particular scrutiny, let him only revolve in his mind
what his general course hath been; and, in the way of prudence, let him say
whether it was landable and holy or only indifferent and excusable; and if he
can think it only excusable, and so as to hope for pardon by such suppletories
of faith and arts of persuasion which he and others used to take in for
auxiliaries to their unreasonable confidence, then he cannot but think it very
fit that he search into his own state, and take a guide,and erect a tribunal,
or appear before that which Christ hath erected for him on earth, that he may
make his access fairer when he shall be called before the dreadful tribunal of
Christ in the clouds.[160] For if he can be
confident upon the stock of an unpraised or a looser life, and should dare to
venture upon wild accounts, without order, without abatements, without
consideration, without conduct, without fear, without scrutinies and
confessions and instruments of amends or pardon, he either knows not his danger
or cares not for it, and little understands how great a horror that is that a
man should rest his head for ever upon a cradle of flames, and lie in a bed of
sorrows, and never sleep, and never end his groans or the gnashing of his
teeth.
This is that which some spiritual persons call a
wakening of the sinner by the terrors of the law, which is a good analogy or
tropical expression to represent the threatenings of the Gospel, and the
dangers of an incurious and a sinning person; but we have nothing else to do
with the terrors of the law, for, blessed be God, they concern us not. The
terrors of the law were the intermination of curses upon all those that ever
broke any of the least commandments once or in any instance; and to it the
righteousness of faith is opposed. The terrors of the law admitted no
repentance, no pardon, no abatement, and were so severe that God never
inflicted them at all according to the letter, because he admitted all to
repentance that desired it with a timely prayer, unless in very few cases, as
of Achan, or Korah the gatherer of sticks upon the Sabbath day, or the like;
but the state of threatenings in the Gospel is very fearful, because the
conditions of avoiding them are easy and ready, and they happen to evil persons
after many warnings, second thoughts, frequent invitations to pardon and
repentance, and after one entire pardon consigned in baptism. And in this sense
it is necessary that such persons as we now deal withal should be instructed
concerning their danger.
4. When the sick man is, either of himself or by
these considerations, set forward with purposes of repentance and confession of
his sins, in order to all its holy purposes and effects then the minister is to
assist him in the understanding the number of his sins, that is, the several
kinds of them, and the various manners of prevaricating the divine
commandments: for, as for the number of the particulars in every kind, he will
need less help; and if he did he can have it nowhere but in his own conscience
and from the witnesses of his conversation. Let this be done by prudent
insinuation, by arts of remembrance, and secret notices, and propounding
occasions and instruments of recalling such things to his mind, which either by
public fame he is accused of, or by the temptations of his condition it is
likely he might have contracted.
5. If the person be truly penitent, and forward
to confess all that are set before him, or offered to his sight at a half face,
then he may be complied withal in all his innocent circumstances, and his
conscience made placid and willing, and he be drawn forward by good-nature and
civility, that his repentance in all the parts of it, and in every step of its
progress and emanation, may be as voluntary and chosen as it can. For by that
means, if the sick person can be invited to do the work of religion, it enters
by the door of his will and choice, and will pass on toward consummation by the
instrument of delight.
6. If the sick man be backward and without
apprehension of the good-natured and civil way, let the minister take care that
by some way or other the work of God be secured; and if he will not understand
when he is secretly prompted, he must be hallowed to, and asked in plain
interrogatives concerning the crime of his life. He must be told of the evil
things that are spoken of him in markets and exchanges, the proper temptations
and accustomed evils of his calling and condition, of the actions of scandal;
and in all those actions which are public, or of which any notice is come
abroad, let care be taken that the right side of the case of conscience be
turned toward him, and the error truly represented to him by which he was
abused, as the injustice of his contracts, his oppressive bargains, his rapine
and violence; and if he hath persuaded himself to think well of a scandalous
action, let him be instructed and advertised of his folly and his danger.
7. And this advice concerns the minister of
religion to follow without partiality, or fear, or interest, in much
simplicity, and prudence, and hearty sincerity; having no other consideration
but that the interest of the man's soul be preserved, and no caution used but
that the matter be represented with just circumstances and civilities, fitted
to the person with prefaces of honour and regard; but so that nothing of the
duty be diminished by it, that the introduction do not spoil the sermon, and
both together ruin two souls, of the speaker and the hearer. For it may soon be
considered, if the sick man be a poor or an indifferent person in secular
account, yet his soul is equally dear to God, and was redeemed with the same
highest price, and therefore to be highly regarded; and there is no temptation
but that the spiritual man may speak freely without the allays of interest, or
fear, or mistaken civilities. But if the sick man be a prince, or a person of
eminence or wealth, let it be remembered it is an ill expression of reverence
to his authority, or of regard to his person, to let him perish for the want of
an honest, and just, and free homily.
8. Let the sick man, in the scrutiny of his
conscience and confession of his sins, be carefully reminded to consider those
sins which are only condemned in the court of conscience, and nowhere else. For
there are certain secresies and retirements, places of darkness and artificial
veils, with which the devil uses to hide our sins from us, and to incorporate
them into our affections by a constant uninterrupted practice before they be
prejudiced or discovered. 1. There are many sins which have reputation and are
accounted honour; as fighting a duel, answering a blow with a blow, carrying
armies into a neighbour-country, robbing with a navy, violently seizing upon a
kingdom. 2. Others are permitted by law, as usury in all countries; and because
every excuse of it is a certain sin, the permission of so suspected a matter
makes it ready for us, and instructs the temptation. 3. Some things are not
forbidden by laws, as lying in ordinary discourse, jeering, scoffing,
intemperate eating, ingratitude, selling too high, circumventing another in
contracts, importunate entreaties, and temptation of persons to many instances
of sin, pride, and ambition. 4. Some others do not reckon they sin against God
if the laws have seized upon the person; and many that are imprisoned for debt
think themselves disobliged from payment, and when they pay the penalty think
they owe nothing for the scandal and disobedience. 5. Some sins are thought not
considerable, but go under the title of sins of infirmity, or inseparable
accidents of mortality; such as idle thoughts, foolish talking, looser
revellings, impatience, anger, and all the events of evil company. 6. Lastly,
many things are thought to be no sins; such as mispending of their time, whole
days or months of useless and impertinent employment, long gaming, winning
men's money in greater portions, censuring men's actions, curiosity,
equivocating in the prices and secrets of buying and selling, rudeness,
speaking truths enviously, doing good to evil purposes, and the like. Under the
dark shadow of these unhappy and fruitless yew-trees the enemy of mankind makes
very many to lie hid from themselves, sewing before their nakedness the
fig-leaves of popular and idol reputation and impunity, public permission, a
temporal penalty, infirmity, prejudice, and direct error in judgment and
ignorance. Now in all these cases the ministers are to be inquisitive and
observant, lest the fallacy prevail upon the penitent to evil purposes of death
or diminution of his good; and that those things, which in his life passed
without observation, may now be brought forth, and pass under saws and harrows,
that is, the severity and censure of sorrow and condemnation.
9. To which I add, for the likeness of the thing,
that the matters of omission be considered, for in them lies the bigger half of
our failings; and yet, in many instances, they are undiscerned, because they
very often sit down by the conscience but never upon it; and they are usually
looked upon as poor men's do upon their not having coach and horses, or as that
knowledge is missed by boys and hinds which they never had; it will be hard to
make them understand their ignorance - it requires knowledge to perceive it,
and therefore he that can perceive it hath it not. But by this pressing the
conscience with omissions, I do not mean recessions or distances from states of
eminency or perfection; for although they may be used by the ministers as an
instrument of humility, and a chastiser of too big a confidence, yet that which
is to be confessed and repented of is omission of duty in direct instances and
matters of commandment, or collateral and personal obligations, and is
especially to be considered by kings and prelates, by governors and rich
persons, by guides of souls and presidents of learning in public charge, and by
all other in their proportions.
10. The ministers of religion must take care that
the sick man's confession be as minute and particular as it can, and that as
few sins as may be, be entrusted to the general 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 medicinal; it hath in it more
sincerity, and makes a better judgment of the final condition of the man; and
from thence it is certain the hopes of the sick man can be more confident and
reasonable.
11. The spiritual 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 aggravations of the sorrow; such as frequency, long abode, and
earnest choice in acting them; violent desires, great expense, scandal of
others, dishonour to the religion, days of devotion, religious solemnities, and
holy places; and the degrees of boldness 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
penitential sorrows, and facilitate his absolution 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 accidental condition;
these and all the like are but questions springing from curiosity, and
producing scruple, and apt to turn into many inconveniences.
12. 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 man's
former life.[161] For there are some people
of one good thing. Some are charitable to the poor out of kind-heartedness; and
the same good nature makes them easy 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 man's thanks for alms, and procure many temporal blessings; but it is very
sad that the reward should be soon spent in this world. Some are rarely just
persons and punctual 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
spiritual man must be careful to remark, that good proceeds from an entire and
integral cause, and evil from every part; that one sickness can make a man die,
but he cannot live and be called a sound man without an entire health; and
therefore, if any confidence arises upon that stock, so as that it hinders 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 coloquintida 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 nakedness 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 alter, or the dew of
heaven descending upon the mysteries.
13. And yet the minister is to estimate, that one
or more good things is to be an ingredient into his judgment 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 usefulness 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 virtue 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 mortal wound as if he had twenty: yet
in such persons who have some one or more excellences, though not an entire
piety, there is naturally a nearer approach to the estate of grace than in
persons who have done evils and are eminent for nothing that is good. But in
making judgment 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 virtue from which
his state of life ministered nothing to dehort or discourse him, or whether it
was only a consequent of his natural 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 felicity of his nature,
and a gift of God in order to spiritual purposes. But yet of every one of these
advantages is to be made. If the 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 penal; because he is convinced to have
done against his conscience in all the other parts of his life; but the
judgment concerning his final state ought to be more gentle, because it was a
huge temptation that hindered 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 moral man, (in the just and proper meaning of the word,) and to be handled
accordingly; that virtue disposed him rarely well to many other good things,
but was no part of the grace of sanctification; and therefore the man's
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-natured virtue.
14. When the confession is made, the spiritual
man is to execute the office of a restorer and a judge in the following
particulars and manner.
`If any man be overtaken in a fault ye
which are spiritual restore such a one in the spirit of meekness,'[162] that is 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;'[163] that
is the effect of his power and his ministry. But concerning this some few
things are to be considered.
1. It is the office of the presbyters and
ministers of religion to declare public criminals and scandalous persons to be
such, that, when the leprosy is declared, the flock may avoid the infection;
and then the man is excommunicate, when the people are warned to avoid the
danger of the man or the reproach of the crime, to withdraw from his society,
and not to bid him God speed, not to eat and celebrate syntaxes and
church-meetings with such who are declared criminal and dangerous. And
therefore excommunication is, in a very great part, the act of the congregation
and communities of the faithful: and St. Paul said to the church of the
Corinthians,[164] that they had
inflicted the evil upon the incestuous person, that is, by excommunicating him:
all the acts of which are, as they are subjected in the people, acts of caution
and liberty; but no more acts of direct proper power or jurisdiction than it
was when the scholars of Simon Magus left his chair and went to hear St. Peter;
but as they are actions of the rulers of the church, so they are declarative,
ministerial, and effective too by moral causality; that is, by persuasion and
discourse, by argument and prayer, by homily and material representment, by
reasonableness of order and the superinduced necessities of men; though not by
any real change of state as to the person, nor by diminution of his right, or
violence to his condition.
2. He that baptizes, and he that ministers the
holy sacrament, and he that prays, does holy offices of great advantage; but in
these also, just as in the former, he exercises no jurisdiction or pre-eminence
after the manner of secular authority;[165] and the same is also true if he should deny them. He
that refuseth to baptize an indisposed person hath, by the consent of all men,
no power or jurisdiction over the unbaptized man; and he that, for the like
reason, refuseth to give him the communion, preserves the sacredness of the
mysteries, and does charity to the undisposed man, to deny that to him which
will do him mischief: and this is an act of separation, just as it is for a
friend or physician to deny water to an hydropic person, or Italian wines to a
hectic fever, or as if Cato should deny to salute Bibulus, or the censor of
manners to do countenance to a wanton and a vicious person. And though this
thing was expressed by words of power, such as separation, abstention,
excommunication, deposition; yet these words we understand by the thing itself,
which was notorious and evident to be matter of prudence, security, and a free,
unconstrained discipline; and they passed into power by consent and voluntary
submission, having the same effect of constraint, fear, and authority, which we
see in secular jurisdiction: not because ecclesiastical discipline hath a
natural proper coercion as lay tribunals have, but because men have submitted
to it, and are bound to do so upon the interest of two or three Christian
graces.
In pursuance of this caution and
provision, the church superinduced times and manners of abstention, and
expressions of sorrow, and canonical punishments, which they tied the
delinquent people to suffer before they would admit them to the holy table of
the Lord. For the criminal having obliged himself by his sin, and the church
having declared it, when she should take notice of it, be is bound to repent,
to make him capable of pardon with God; and to prove that he is penitent he is
to do such actions which the church, in the virtue and pursuance of repentance,
shall accept as a testimony of it sufficient to inform her; for as she could
not bind at all (in this sense) till the crime was public, though the man had
bound himself in secret; so neither can she set him free till the repentance be
as public as the sin, or so as she can note it and approve it. Though the man
be free, as to God, by his internal act, yet, as the publication of the sin was
accidental to it, and the church-censure consequent to it, so is the
publication of repentance and consequent absolution extrinsieal to the pardon,
but accidentally and in the present circumstances necessary. This was the same
that the Jews did, (though in other instances and expressions,) and do to this
day to their prevaricating people; and the Essences in their assemblies, and
private colleges of scholars, and public universities. For all these being
assemblies of voluntary persons, and such as seek for advantage, are bound to
make an artificial authority in their superiors, and so to secure order and
government by their own obedience and voluntary subordination in the superior;
and the band of it is not any coercitive power, but the deny to communicate
such benefits which they seek in that communion and fellowship.
4. These, I say, were introduced in the special
manners and instances by positive authority, and have not a divine authority
commanding them; but there is a divine power that verifies them and makes these
separations effectual and formidable; for because they are declarative and
ministerial in the spiritual man, and suppose a delinquency and demerit in the
other, and a sin against God, our blessed Saviour hath declared that `what they
bind on earth shall be bound in heaven;' that is in plain signification, the
same sins and sinners which the clergy condemn in the face of their assemblies,
the same are condemned in heaven before the face of God, and for the same
reason too. God's law hath sentenced it, and these are the preachers and
publishers of his law by which they stand condemned; and these laws are they
that condemn the sin or acquit the penitent there and here; whatsoever they
bind here shall be bound there, that is, the sentence of God at the day of
judgment shall sentence the same men[166]
whom the church does rightly sentence here. It is spoken in the future, it
shall be bound in heaven; not but that the sinner is first bound there or
first absolved there; but because all binding and loosing in the interval is
imperfect and relative to the day of judgment, the day of the great sentence,
therefore it is set down in the time to come; and says this only, the clergy
are tied by the word and laws of God to condemn such sins and sinners; and that
you may not think it ineffective, because after such sentence the man lives and
grows rich, or remains in health and power, therefore be sure it shall be
verified in the day of judgment. This is hugely agreeable with the words of our
Lord and certain in reason; for that the minister does nothing to the final
alteration of the state of the man's soul by way of sentence, is
demonstratively certain, because he cannot bind a man but such as hath bound
himself and who is bound in heaven by his sin before his sentence in the
church; as also because the binding of the church is merely accidental and upon
publication only; and when the man repents he is absolved before God, before
the sentence of the church, upon his contrition and dereliction only; and if he
were not the church could not absolve him. The consequent of which evident
truth is this, that, whatsoever impositions the church-officers impose upon the
criminal, they are to avoid scandal, to testify repentance and to exercise it,
to instruct the people, to make them fear, to represent the act of God and the
secret and the true state of the sinner: and although they are not essentially
necessary to our pardon, yet they are become necessary when the church hath
seized upon the sinner by public notice of the crime; necessary (I say) for the
removing the scandal and giving testimony of our contrition, and for the
receiving all that comfort which he needs and can derive from the promises of
pardon as they are published by him that is commanded to preach them to all
them that repent. And therefore, although it cannot be necessary as to the
obtaining pardon that the priest should in private absolve a sick man from his
private sins, and there is no loosing where there was no precedent binding, and
he that was only bound before God, can before him only be loosed - yet as to
confess sins to any Christian in private may have many good ends, and to
confess them to a clergyman may have many more, so to hear God's sentence at
the mouth of the minister, pardon pronounced by God's ambassador, is of huge
comfort to them that cannot otherwise be comforted, and whose infirmity needs
it; and therefore it were very fit it were not neglected in the days of our
fear and danger, of our infirmities and sorrow.
5. The execution of this ministry being an act of
prudence and charity, and therefore relative to changing circumstances, it hath
been, and in many cases may, and in some must, be rescinded and altered. The
time of separation may be lengthened and shortened, the condition made lighter
or heavier, and for the same offence the clergyman is deposed, but yet admitted
to the communion for which one of the people who hath no office to lose is
denied the benefit of communicating; and this sometimes when he might lawfully
receive it: and a private man is separate when a multitude or a prince is not,
cannot, ought not; and at last, when the case of sickness and danger of death
did occur, they admitted all men that desired it; sometimes without scruple or
difficulty, sometimes with some little restraint in great or insolent cases,
(as in the case of apostasy, in which the council of Arles denied absolution
unless they received and gave public satisfaction by acts of repentance; and
some other councils denied at any time to do it to such persons,) according as
seemed fitting to the present necessities of the church. All which particulars
declare it to be no part of a divine commandment that any man should be denied
to receive the communion if he desires it, and if he be in any probable
capacity of receiving it.
6. Since the separation was an act of liberty and
a direct negative, it follows that the restitution was a mere doing that which
they refused formerly, and to give the holy communion was the formality of
absolution, and all the instrument and the whole matter of reconcilement; the
taking off the punishment is the pardoning of the sin; for this without the
other is but a word; and if this be done, I care not whether any thing is said
or no Vinum Dominicum ministratoris gratia est is also true in this
sense; to give the chalice and cup is the grace and indulgence of the minister;
and when that is done, the man hath obtained the peace of the church; and to do
that is all the absolution the church can give. And they were vain disputes
which were commenced some few ages since, concerning the forms of absolution,
whether they were indicative or optative, by way of declaration or by way of
sentence, for at first they had no forms at all, but they said a prayer, and,
after the manner of the Jews, laid hands upon the penitent when they prayed
over him, and so admitted him to the holy communion; for since the church had
no power over her children but of excommunicating and denying them to attend
upon holy offices and ministries respectively, neither could they have any
absolution but to admit them thither from whence formerly they were forbidden;
whatsoever ceremony or forms did signify, this was superinduced and arbitrary,
alterable and accidental; it had variety but no necessity.
7. The practice consequent to this is, that if
the penitent be bound by the positive censures of the church, he is to be
reconciled upon those conditions which the laws of the church tie him to in
case he can perform them: if he cannot, he can no longer be prejudiced by the
censure of the church,[167] which had no
relation but the people, with whom the dying man is no longer to converse: for
whatsoever relates to God is to be transacted in spiritual ways by contrition
and internal graces; and the mercy of the church is such as to give him her
peace and her blessing upon his undertaking to obey her injunctions, if he
shall be able: which injunctions, if they be declared by public sentence, the
minister hath nothing to do in the affairs but to remind him of his obligation
and reconcile him, that is, give him the holy sacrament.
8. If the penitent be not bound by public
sentence, the minister is to make his repentance as great, and his heart as
contrite, as he can; to dispose him by the repetition of acts of grace in the
way of prayer, and in real and exterior instances where he can; and then to
give him the holy communion in all the same cases in which he ought not to have
denied it to him in his health; that is, even in the beginnings of such a
repentance which by human signs he believes to be real and holy; and after this
the event must be left to God. The reason of the rule depends upon this,
because there is no divine commandment directly forbidding the rulers of the
church to give the communion to any Christian that desires it and professes
repentance of his sins. And all church-discipline in every instance, and to
every single person, was imposed upon him by men who did it according to the
necessities of this state and constitution of our affairs below: but we, who
are but ministers and delegates of pardon and condemnation, must resign and
give up our judgment when the man is no more to be judged by the sentences of
man, and by the proportions of this world, but of the other: to which, if our
reconciliation does advantage, we ought in charity to send him forth with all
the advantages he can receive; for he will need them all. And therefore the
Niceen council commands[168] that no man be
deprived of this necessary passport in the article of his death, and calls this
the ancient and canonical law of the church; and to minister it only supposes
the man in the communion of the church, not always in the state, but ever in
the possibilities, of sanctification. They who in the article and danger of
death were admitted to the communion, and tied to penance if they recovered,
(which was ever the custom of the ancient church, unless in very few cases,)
were but in the threshold of repentance in the commencement and first
introductions to a devout life; and, indeed, then it is a fit ministry that it
be given in all the periods of time in which the pardons of sins is working,
since it is the sacrament of that great mystery, and the exhibition of that
blood which is shed for the remission of sins.
9. The minister of religion ought not to give the
communion to a sick person if he retains the affection to any sin, and refuses
to disavow it, or profess repentance of all sins whatsoever, if he be required
to do it. The reason is, because it is a certain death to him, and an increase
of his misery, if he shall so profane the body and blood of Christ as to take
it into so unholy a breast, where Satan reigns, and sin is principal, and the
Spirit is extinguished, and Christ loves not to enter, because he is not
suffered to inhabit. But when he professes repentance,[169] and does such acts of it as his present condition
permits, he is to be presumed to intend heartily what he professes solemnly;
and the minister is only the judge of outward act, and by that only he is to
take information concerning the inward. But whether he be so or no, or if he
be, whether that be timely, and effectual, and sufficient toward the pardon of
sins before God, is another consideration of which we may conjecture here, but
we shall know it at dooms-day. The spiritual man is to do his ministry by the
rules of Christ, and as the customs of the church appoint him, and after the
manner of men: the event is in the hands of God, and is to be expected, not
directly and wholly according to his ministry, but to the former life, or the
timely internal repentance and amendment, of which I have already given
accounts. These ministries are acts of order and great assistances, but the sum
of affairs does not rely upon them. And if any man puts his whole repentance
upon this time, or all his hopes upon these ministries, he will find them and
himself to fail.
10. It is the minister's office to invite sick
and dying persons to the holy sacrament; such whose lives were fair and
laudable, and yet their sickness sad and violent, making them listless and of
slow desires, and slower apprehensions; that such persons who are in the state
of grace may lose no accidental advantages of spiritual improvement, but may
receive into their dying bodies the symbols and great consignations of the
resurrection, and into their souls the pledges of immortality, and may appear
before God their father in the union and with the impresses and likeness of
their elder brother. But if the persons be of ill report, and have lived
wickedly, they are not to be invited; because their case is hugely suspicious,
though they then repent and call for mercy: but if they demand it, they are not
to be denied; only let the minister in general represent the evil consequence
of an unworthy participation; and if the penitent will judge himself unworthy,
let him stand candidate for pardon at the hands of God, and stand or fall by
that unerring and merciful sentence, to which his severity of condemning
himself before men will make the easier and more hopeful address. And the
strictest among the Christians who denied to reconcile lapsed persons after
baptism, yet acknowledged that there were hopes reserved in the court of heaven
for them, though not here; since we, who are easily deceived by the pretenses
of a real return, are tied to dispense God's graces, as he hath given us
commission, with fear and trembling, and without too forward confidences; and
God hath mercies which we know not of; and therefore, because we know them not,
such persons were referred to God's tribunal, where he would find them if they
were to be had at all.
11. When the holy sacrament is to be
administered, let the exhortation be made proper to the mystery, but fitted to
the man; that is, that it be used for the advantages of faith, or love, or
contrition: let all the circumstances and parts of the divine love be
represented, all the mysterious advantages of the blessed sacrament be
declared, that it is the bread which came from heaven; that it is the
representation of Christ's death to all the purposes and capacities of faith,
and the real exhibition of Christ's body and blood to all the purposes of the
Spirit; that it is the earnest of the resurrection, and the seed of a glorious
immortality; that as by our cognation to the body of the first Adam we took in
death, so, by our union with the body of the second Adam, we shall have the
inheritance of life; (for as by Adam came death, so by Christ cometh the
resurrection of the dead;[170]) that if we,
being worthy communicants of these sacred pledges, being presented to God with
Christ within us, our being accepted of God is certain, even for the sake of
his well-beloved that dwells within us; that this is the sacrament of that body
which was broken for our sins, of that blood which purifies our souls, by which
we are presented to God pure and holy in the beloved; that now we may ascertain
our hopes and make our faith confident; `for he that hath given us his Son, how
should not he with him give us all things else?'[171] Upon these or the like considerations the sick man may
be assisted in his address, and his faith strengthened, and his hope confirmed,
and his charity be enlarged.
12. The manner of the sick man's reception of the
holy sacrament hath in it nothing differing from the ordinary solemnities of
the sacrament,[172] save only that
abatement is to be made of such accidental circumstances as by the laws and
customs of the church healthful persons are obliged to, such as fasting,
kneeling, etc. Though I remember that it was noted for great devotion in the
legate that died at Trent, that he caused himself to be sustained upon his
knees when he received the viaticum, or the holy sacrament, before, his
death; and it was greater in Huniades that he caused himself to be carried to
the church, that there he might receive his Lord in his Lord's house; and it
was recorded for honour, that William, the pious archbishop of Bourges, a small
time before his last agony, sprang out of his bed at the presence of the holy
sacrament, and, upon his knees and his face, recommended his soul to his
Saviour. But in these things no man is to be prejudiced or censured.
13. Let not the holy sacrament be administered
to dying persons, when they have no use of reason to make that duty acceptable,
and the mysteries effective to the purposes of the soul. For the sacraments and
ceremonies of the gospel operate not without the concurrent actions and moral
influences of the suscipient. To infuse the chalice into the cold lips of the
clinic may disturb his agony, but cannot relieve the soul which only receives
improvement by acts of grace and choice, to which the external rites are apt
and appointed to minister in a capable person. All other persons, as fools,
children, distracted persons, lethargieal, apoplectical, or any ways senseless
and incapable of human and reasonable acts, are to be assisted only by prayers;
for they may prevail even for the absent, and for enemies, and for all those
who join not in the office.
1. In all cases of receiving confessions
of sick men, and the assisting to the advancement of repentance, the minister
is to apportion to every kind of sin such spiritual remedies which are apt to
mortify and cure the sin; such as abstinence from their occasions and
opportunities, to avoid temptations, to resist their beginnings, to punish the
crime by acts of indignation against the person, fastings and prayer, alms and
all the instances of charity, asking forgiveness, restitution of wrongs,
satisfaction of injuries, acts of virtue contrary to the crimes. And although,
in great and dangerous sicknesses, they are not directly to be imposed unless
they are not directly to be imposed unless they are direct matters of duty;
yet, where they are medicinal, they are to be insinuated, and in general
signification remarked to him, and undertaken accordingly; concerning which,
when he returns to health, he is to receive particular advices. And this advice
was inserted into the penitential of England, in the time of Theodore,
archbishop of Canterbury, and afterwards adopted into the canon of the western
churches.[173]
2. The proper temptations of sick men,
for which a remedy is not yet provided, are unreasonable fears and unreasonable
confidences, which the minister is to cure by the following considerations:
Considerations against Unreasonable Fears of not having our Sins
pardoned.
Many good men, especially such who have
tender consciences, impatient of the least sin, to which they are arrived by a
long grace, and a continual observation of their actions, and the parts of a
lasting repentance, many times overact their tenderness, and turn their caution
into scruple, and care of their duty into inquiries after the event, and
askings after the counsels of God and the sentences of doomsday.
He that asks of the standers-by, or of the
minister, whether they think he shall be saved or damned, is to be answered
with the words of pity and reproof. Seek not after new light for the searching
into the private records of God: look as much as you list into the pages of
revelation, for they concern your duty; but the event is registered in heaven,
and we can expect no other certain notices of it, but that it shall be given to
them for whom it is prepared by the Father of mercies. We have light enough to
tell our duty; and if we do that, we need not fear what the issue will be; and
if we do not, let us never look for more light, or inquire after God's pleasure
concerning our souls, since we so little serve his ends in those things where
he hath given us light. But yet this I add, that as pardon of sins in the Old
Testament[174] was nothing but removing the
punishment, which then was temporal, and therefore many times they could tell
if their sins were pardoned; and concerning pardon of sins, they then had no
fears of conscience but while the punishment was on them, for so long indeed it
was unpardoned, and how long it would so remain it was matter of fear and of
present sorrow; besides this, in the Gospel pardon of sins is another thing;
pardon for sins is a sanctification; Christ came to take away our sins, by
turning every one of us from our iniquities;[175] and there is not in the nature of the thing any
expectation of pardon, or sign or signification of it, but so far as the thing
itself discovers itself. As we hate sin, and grow in grace, and arrive at the
state of holiness, which is also a state of repentance and imperfection, but
yet of sincerity of heart and diligent endeavour; in the same degree we are to
judge concerning the forgiveness of sins: for indeed that is the evangelical
forgiveness, and it signifies our pardon, because it effects it, or rather it
is in the nature of the thing; so that we are to inquire into no hidden
records: forgiveness of sins is not a secret sentence, a word, or a record; but
it is a state of change, and effected upon us; and upon ourselves we look for
it, to read it, and understand it. We are only to be curious of our duty, and
confident of the article of the remission of sins;[176] and the conclusion of these premises will be, that we
shall be full of hopes of a prosperous resurrection; and our fear and trembling
are no instances of our calamity, but parts of duty; we shall sure enough be
wafted to the shore, although we be tossed with the winds of our sighs, and the
unevenness of our fears, and the ebbings and flowings of our passions, if we
sail in a right channel, and steer by a perfect compass, and look up to God,
and call for his help, and do our own endeavour. There are very many reasons
why men ought not to despair; and there are not very many men that ever go
beyond a hope till they pass into possession. If our fears have any mixture of
hope, that is enough to enable and to excite our duty; and if we have a strong
hope, when we cast about we shall find reason enough to have many fears. Let
not this fear weaken our hands; and if it allay our gaieties and our
confidences, it is no harm. In this uncertainty we must abide if we have
committed sins after baptism; and those confidences which some men glory in are
not real supports or good foundations. The fearing man is the safest; and if he
fears on his death-bed, it is but what happens to most considering men, and
what was to be looked for all his life time: he talked of the terrors of death,
and death is the king of terrors; and therefore it is no strange thing if then
he be hugely afraid; if he be not, it is either a great felicity or a great
presumption. But if he want some degree of comfort, or a greater degree of
hope, let him be refreshed by considering,
1. That Christ came into the world to save
sinners.[177] 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 prays 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 surprises, and his Holy
Spirit to guide us in holy ways, and his servants to warn us and remind us
perpetually: and therefore since certainly he is so desirous of 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 perserverance 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 signify 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 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 s hall not enter into the same
state of glory, but that we shall not go into the same degree. 10. That
although forgiveness of sins is consigned to us in baptism, and that this
baptism is but once, and cannot be repeated; yet forgiveness 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 baptism: for then we enter into the
condition of repentance; and repentance is not an indivisible grace, or a thing
performed at once, but it is working all our lives: and therefore so is our
pardon, which ebbs and flows according as we discompose or renew the decency of
our baptismal 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 unless God cuts
him off before he can work, or that he begins to work when he can no longer
choose. 11. And then let him consider, the more he fears the more he hates his
sin that is the cause of it, and the less 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 signs of a future pardon. 12. 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 Israelites, ten times in the wilderness, 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 sum of affairs upon faith and repentance, if God should not pardon great
sinners that repent after baptism with a free dispensation, the Gospel were far
harder than the intolerable covenant of the law. 13. That if a proselyte went
into the Jewish communion, and were circumcised and baptized, he entered 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 legal baptism, 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's 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 greater grace given, and an easier condition entered
into, than 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 withal, and fought with, and under discipline, and in the
beginnings and progresses of mortification. 14. 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 perpetual and daily ministry; and this they do, not
only in baptism, 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 mystery and
repetition declares that all that while we are within the ordinary powers and
usual 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 keys, which, if it extends to
private sins, sins done in secret, it is certain it does also to public. But
this is a greater testimony of the certainty of the remissibility of our
greatest sins; for public sins, as they always have a sting and a superadded
formality of scandal and ill example, so they are most commonly the greatest;
such as murder, sacrilege, 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 administered, that will be an uneasy
pusillanimity and fond suspicion of God's goodness to fear that our repentance
shall be rejected, even although we have committed the greatest or the most of
evils. 15. And it was concerning baptized Christians that St. John said, `If
any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, and he is the propitiation
for our sins;' and concerning lapsed Christians St. Paul gave instruction, that
`if any man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual restore such a man
in the spirit of meekness; considering lest ye also be tempted.' 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 St. Peter bid him
pray for pardon; and St. James tells, that `if the sick man sends for the
elders of the church, and they pray over him, and he confess his sins, they
shall be forgiven him.' 16. That only one sin is declared to be irremissible,
`the sin against the Holy Ghost, the sin unto death,' as St. John calls it, for
which we are not bound to pray - for all others we are; and certain it is no
man commits a sin against the Holy Ghost, if he be afraid he hath, and desires
that he had not; for such penitential passions are against the definition of
that sin. 17. That all the sermons in the Scripture written to Christians and
disciples of Jesus, exhorting men to repentance, to be afflicted, to mourn and
to weep, to confession of sins, are sure testimonies of God's purpose and
desire to forgive us, even when we fall after baptism; and if our fall after
baptism were irrecoverable, than all preaching were in vain, and our faith were
also vain, and we could not with comfort rehearse the creed, in which, as soon
as ever we profess Jesus to have died for our sins, we also are condemned by
our own conscience of a sin that shall not be forgiven; and then all
exhortations and comforts and fasts and disciplines were useless and too late,
if they were not given us before we can understand them; for, most commonly, as
soon as we can, we enter into the regions of sin, for we commit evil actions
before we understand, and together with our understanding they begin to be
imputed. 18. That if it could be otherwise, infants were very ill provided for
in the church who were baptized, when they have no stain upon their brows but
the misery they contracted from Adam; and they are left to be angels for ever
after, and live innocently in the midst of their ignorances and weaknesses and
temptations and the heat and follies of youth, or else to perish in an eternal
ruin. We cannot think of speak good things of God if we entertain such evil
suspicions of the mercies of the Father of our Lord Jesus. 19. That the
long-sufferance and patience of God is indeed wonderful; but therefore it
leaves us in certainties of pardon, so long as there is the possibility to
return, if we reduce the power to act. 20. That God calls upon us to forgive
our brother seventy times seven times, and yet all that is but like the
forgiving a hundred pence for his sake who forgives us ten thousand talents;
for so the Lord professed that he had done to him that was his servant and his
domestic. 21. That if we can forgive a hundred thousand times, it is certain
God will do so to us, our blessed Lord having commanded us to pray for pardon
as we pardon our offending and penitent brother. 22. That even in the case of
very great sins, and great judgments inflicted upon the sinners, wise and good
men and presidents of religion have declared their sense to be, that God spent
all his anger, and made it expire in that temporal misery; and so it was
supposed to have been done in the case of Ananias: but that the hopes of any
penitent man may not rely upon any uncertainty, we find in holy Scripture that
those Christians who had for their scandalous crimes deserved to be given over
to Satan to be buffeted, yet had hopes to be saved in the day of the Lord. 23.
That God glories in the titles of mercy and forgiveness, and will not have his
appellatives so finite and limited as to expire in one act, or in a seldom
pardon. 24. That man's condition were desperate, and like that of the fallen
angels, equally desperate, but unequally oppressed, considering our infinite
weaknesses and ignorances, (in respect of their excellent understanding and
perfect choice,) if he could be admitted to no repentance after his infant
baptism; and if he may be admitted to one, there is nothing in the covenant of
the Gospel but he may also to a second, and so for ever, as long as he can
repent and return and live to God in a timely religion. 25. That every man is a
sinner - `in many things we offend all;'[178] and `if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves;'[179] and therefore either all must perish, or
else there is mercy for all; and so there is, upon this very stock, because
`Christ died for sinners,'[180] and `God
hath comprehended all under sin, that he might have mercy upon all.'[181] 26. That if ever God sends temporal
punishments into the world with purposes of amendment, and if they be not all
of them certain consignations to hell, and unless every man that breaks his
leg, or in punishment loses a child or wife, be certainly damned, it is certain
that God in these cases is angry and loving, chastises the sin to amend the
person, and smites that he may cure, and judge that he may absolve. 27. That he
that will not quench the smoking flax, nor break the bruised reed - will not
tie us to perfection and the laws and measures of heaven upon earth; and if, in
every period of our repentance, he is pleased with our duty, and the voice of
our heart, and the hand of our desires, he hath told us plainly that he will
not only pardon all the sins of the days of our folly, but the returns and
surprises of sins in the days of repentance, if we give no way, and allow no
affection, and give no place to anything that is God's enemy; all the past
sins, and all the seldom-returning and ever-repented evils put upon the
accounts of the cross.
An Exercise against Despair in the Day of our Death.
To which may be added this short exercise,
to be used for the curing the temptation to direct despair, in case that the
hope and faith of good men be assaulted in the day of their calamity.
I consider that the ground of my trouble is my
sin; and if it were not for that, I should not need to be troubled; but the
help that all the world looks for is such as supposes a man to be a sinner.
Indeed, if from myself I were to derive my title to heaven, then my sins were a
just argument of despair; but now that they bring me to Christ, that they drive
me to an appeal to God's mercies, and to take sanctuary in the cross, they
ought not, they cannot, infer a just cause of despair. I am sure it is a
stranger thing that God should take upon him hands and feet, and those hands
and feet should be nailed upon a cross, than that a man should be partaker of
the felicities of pardon and life eternal; and it were stranger yet that God
should do so much for man, and that a man that desires it, that labours for it,
that is in life and possibilities of working his salvation, should inevitably
miss that end for which that God suffered so much. For what is the meaning, and
what is the extent, and what are the significations, of the divine mercy in
pardoning sinners? If it be thought a great matter that I am charged with
original sin, I confess I feel the weight of it in loads of temporal
infelicities and proclivities to sin; but I fear not the guilt of it, since I
am baptized, and it cannot do honour to the reputation of God's mercy that it
should be all spent in remissions of what I never chose, never acted, never
knew of, could not help, concerning which I received no commandment, no
prohibition. But, blessed be God, it is ordered in just measures that that
original evil which I contracted without my knowledge; and what I suffered
before I had a being was cleansed before I had an useful understanding. But I
am taught to believe God's mercies to be infinite, not only in himself but to
us; for mercy is a relative term, and we are its correspondent: of all the
creatures which God made, we only, in a proper sense, are the subjects of mercy
and remission. Angels have more of God's bounty than we have, but not so much
of his mercy; and beasts have little rays of his kindness, and effects of his
wisdom and graciousness in petty donatives, but nothing of mercy; for they have
no laws, and therefore no sins, and need no mercy, nor are capable of any.
Since, therefore, man alone is the correlative, or proper object and vessel of
reception of an infinite mercy, and that mercy is in giving and forgiving, I
have reason to hope that he will so forgive me that my sins shall not hinder me
of heaven; or because it is a gift, I may also, upon the stock of the same
infinite mercy, hope he will give heaven to me; and if I have it either upon
the title of giving or forgiving, it is alike to me, and will alike magnify the
glories of the divine mercy. And because eternal life is the gift of God,[182] I have less reason to despair; for if my
sins were fewer, and my disproportions towards such a glory were less, and my
evenness more, yet it is still a gift, and I could not receive it but as a free
and a gracious donative, and so I may still: God can still give it me; and it
is not an impossible expectation to wait and look for such a gift at the hands
of the God of mercy; the best men deserve it not, and I, who am the worst, may
have it given me. And I consider that God hath set no measures of his mercy,
but that we be within the covenant, that is, repenting persons, endeavouring to
serve him with an honest, single heart; and that within this covenant there is
a very great latitude and variety of persons and degrees and capacities; and
therefore that it cannot stand with the proportions of so infinite a mercy that
obedience be exacted to such a point, which he never expressed, unless it
should be the least, and that to which all capacities, though otherwise
unequal, are fitted and sufficiently enabled. But, however, I find that the
Spirit of God taught the writers of the New Testament to apply to us all in
general, and to every single person in particular, some gracious words which
God in the Old Testament spake to one man upon a special occasion in a single
and temporal instance. Such are the words which God spake to Joshua; `I will
never fail thee, nor forsake thee:' and upon the stock of that promise St. Paul
forbids covetousness and persuades contentedness,[183] because those words were spoken by God to
Joshua in another case. If the gracious words of God have so great an extension
of parts, and intention of kind purposes, then how many comforts have we upon
the stock of all the excellent words which are spoken in the prophets and in
the Psalms? and I will never more question whether they be spoken concerning
me, having such an authentic precedent so to expound the excellent words of
God; all the treasures of God which are in the Psalms are my own riches, and
the wealth of my hope; there will I look, and whatsoever I can need, that I
will depend upon. For certainly, if we could understand it, that which is
infinite (as God is) must needs be some such kind of thing: it must go whither
it was never sent, and signify what was not first intended, and it must warm
with its light, and shine with its heat, and refresh when it strikes, and heal
when it wounds, and ascertain where it makes afraid, and intend all when it
warns one, and mean a great deal in a small word. And as the sun, passing to
its southern tropic, looks with an open eye upon his sun-burnt Ethiopians, but
at the same time sends light from its posterns, and collateral influences from
the back side of his beams, and sees the corners of the east when his face
tends towards the west, because he is a round body of fire, and hath some
little images and resemblances of the Infinite; so is God's mercy when it
looked upon Moses: it relieved St. Paul, and it pardoned David, and gave hope
to Manasses, and might have restored Judas if he would have had hope, and used
himself accordingly. But as to my own case, I have sinned grievously and
frequently;[184] but I have repented it;
but I have begged pardon; I have confessed it and forsaken it. I cannot undo
what was done, and I perish if God hath appointed no remedy, if there be no
remission; but then my religion falls together with my hope, and God's word
fails as well as I. But I believe the article of forgiveness of sins; and if
there be any such thing I may do well, for I have and do and will do that which
all good men call repentance, that is, I will be humbled before God, and mourn
for my sin, and for ever ask forgiveness, and judge myself, and leave it with
haste, and mortify it with diligence, and watch against it carefully. And this
I can do but in the manner of man; I can but mourn for my sins, as I apprehend
grief in other instances, but I will rather choose to suffer all evils than to
do one deliberate act of sin. I know my sins are greater than my sorrow, and
too many for my memory, and too insinuating to be prevented by all my are; but
I know also that God knows and pities my infirmities, and how far that will
extend I know not, but that it will reach so far as to satisfy my needs is the
matter of my hope. But this I am sure of, that I have in my great necessity
prayed humbly and with great desire, and sometimes I have been heard in kind,
and sometimes have had a bigger mercy instead of it; and I have the hope of
prayers, and the hope of my confession, and the hope of my endeavour, and the
hope of many promises, and of God's essential goodness; and I am sure that God
hath heard my prayers, and verified his promises in temporal instances, for he
ever gave me sufficient for my life; and although he promised such supplies,
and grounded the confidences of them upon our last seeking the kingdom of
heaven and its righteousness, yet he hath verified it to me who have not sought
it as I ought; but therefore I hope he accepted my endeavour, or will give his
great gifts and our great expectation even to the weakest endeavour, to the
least, so it be a hearty piety. And sometimes I have had some cheerful
visitations of God's Spirit, and my cup hath been crowned with comfort, and the
wine that made my heart glad danced in the chalice, and I was glad that God
would have me so; and therefore I hope this cloud may pass; for that which was
then a real cause of comfort is so still if I could discern it, and I shall
discern it when the veil is taken from mine eyes. And, blessed be God, I can
still remember that there are temptations to despair; and they could not be
temptations if they were not apt to persuade, and had seeming probability on
their side; and they that despair think they do it with the greatest reason;
for if they were not confident of the reason, but that it were such an argument
as might be opposed or suspected, then they could not despair. Despair assents
as firmly and strongly as faith itself; but because it is a temptation, and
despair is a horrid sin, there it is certain those persons are unreasonably
abused, and they have no reason to despair, for all their confidence; and,
therefore, although I have strong reasons to condemn my despair, which
therefore is unreasonable, because it is a sin, and a dishonour to God, and a
ruin to my condition, and verifies itself if I do not look to it. For as the
hypochondriac person that thought himself dead made his dream true when he
starved himself because dead people eat not; so do despairing sinners lose
God's mercies by refusing to use and to believe them. And I hope it is a
disease of judgment, not an intolerable condition, that I am falling into;
because I have been afflicted, because they see not their pardon sealed after
the manner of this world; and the affairs of the Spirit are transacted by
immaterial notices, by propositions and spiritual discourses, by promises which
are to be verified hereafter: and here we must live in a cloud, in darkness
under a veil, in fear and uncertainties; and our very living by faith and hope
is a life of mystery and secrecy, the only part of the manner of that life in
which we shall live in the state of separation. And when a distemper of body or
an infirmity of mind happens in the instances of such secret and reserved
affairs, we may easily mistake the manner of our notices for the uncertainty of
the thing; and therefore it is but reason I should stay till the state and
manner of my abode be changed before I despair: there it can be no sin nor
error, here it may be both; and if it be that, it is also this, and then a man
may perish for being miserable, and be undone for being a fool. In conclusion,
my hope is in God, and I will trust him with the event, which I am sure will be
just, and I hope full of mercy. However now I will use all the spiritual arts
of reason and religion to make me more and more to love God, that if I
miscarry, charity also shall fail, and something that loves God shall perish
and be damned, which if it be possible than I may do well.
These considerations may be useful to men of
little hearts and of great piety; or if they be persons who have lived without
infamy, or begun their repentance so late that it is very imperfect, and yet so
early that it was before the arrest of death. But if the man be a vicious
person, and hath persevered in a vicious life till his death-bed, these
considerations are not proper. Let him inquire, in the words of the first
disciples after Pentecost, `Men and brethren, what shall we do to be saved?'
and if they can but entertain so much hope as to enable them to do so much of
their duty as they can for the present, it is all that can be provided for
them: an inquiry, in their case, can have no other purposes of religion or
prudence. And the minister must be infinitely careful that he do not go about
to comfort vicious persons with the comforts belonging to God's elect, lest he
prostitute holy things, and make them common, and his sermons deceitful, and
vices be encouraged in others, and the man himself find that he was deceived,
when he descends into his house of sorrow.
But because very few men are tempted with too
great fears of failing, but very many are tempted by confidence and
presumption, the ministers of religion had need be instructed with spiritual
armour to resist this firey dart of the devil, when it operates to evil
purposes.
I have already enumerated many
particulars to provoke drowsy conscience to a scrutiny and to a suspection of
himself, that by seeing cause to suspect his condition he might more freely
accuse himself, and attend to the necessities and duties of repentance; but if
either before or in his repentance he grow too big in his spirit, so as either
he does some little violences to the modesties of humility, or abates his care
and zeal to his repentance, the spiritual man must allay his forwardness by
representing to him, 1. That the growths in grace are long, difficult,
uncertain, hindered, of many parts and great variety. 2. That an infant grace
is soon dashed and discountenanced, often running into an inconvenience and the
evils of an imprudent conduct, being zealous and forward, and therefore
confident, but always with the least reason and the greatest danger; like
children and young fellows, whose confidence hath no other reason but that they
understand not their danger and their follies. 3. That he that puts on his
armour ought not to boast as he that puts it off; and the apostle chides the
Galatians for ending in the flesh after they had begun in the spirit. 4. That a
man cannot think too meanly of himself, but very easily he may thing too high.
5. That a wise man will always, in a matter of great concernment, think the
worst, and a good man will condemn himself with hearty sentence. 6. That
humility and modesty of judgment and of hope are very good instruments to
procure a mercy and a fair reception at the day of our death; but presumption
or bold opinions serve no end of God or man, and is always imprudent, ever
fatal, and of all things in the world is its own greatest enemy; for the more
any man presumes, the greater reason he hath to fear. 7. That a man's heart is
infinitely deceitful, unknown to itself, not certain in his own acts, praying
one way and desiring another, wandering and imperfect loose and various,
worshipping God and entertaining sin, following what it hates, and running from
what it flatters, loving to be tempted and betrayed; petulant, like a wanton
girl running from, that it might invite the fondness and enrage the appetite of
the foolish young man, or the evil temptation that follows it; cold and
indifferent one while, and presently zealous and passionate, furious and
indiscreet; not understood of itself, or any one else, and deceitful beyond all
the arts and numbers of observation. 8. That it is certain we have highly
sinned against God, but we are not so certain that our repentane is real and
effective, integral and sufficient. 9. That it is not revealed to us whether or
no the time of our repentance be not past; or, if it be not, yet how far God
will give us pardon, and upon what condition, or after what sufferings or
duties, is still under a cloud. 10. That virtue and vice are oftentimes so near
neighbours that we pass into each other's borders without observation, and
think we do justice when we are cruel; or call ourselves liberal when we are
loose and foolish in expenses; and are amorous when we commend our own
civilities and good nature. 11. That we allow to ourselves so many little
irregularities, that insensibly they swell to so great a heap that from thence
we have reason to fear an evil; for an army of frogs and flies may destroy all
the hopes of our harvest. 12. That when we do that which is lawful, and do all
that we can in those bounds, we commonly and easily run out of our proportions.
13. That it is not easy to distinguish the virtues of our nature from the
virtues of our choice: and we may expect the reward of temperance, when it is
against our nature to be drunk; or we hope to have the coronet of virgins for
our morose disposition, or our abstinence from marriage upon secular ends. 14.
That it may be we call every little sigh or the keeping a first-day the duty of
repentance, or have entertained false principles in the estimate and measures
of virtues; and, contrary to the steward in that gospel, we write down
fourscore when we should be set down but fifty. 15. That it is better to trust
the goodness and justice of God with our accounts than to offer him large
bills. 16. That we are commanded by Christ to sit down bids us sit up higher.
17. That `when we have done all that we can, we are unprofitable servants;' and
yet no man does all that he can do, and therefore is more to be despised and
undervalued. 18. That the self-accusing publican was justified rather than the
thanksgiving and confident Pharisee. 19. That if Adam in paradise, and David in
his house, and Solomon in the temple, and Peter in Christ's family, and Judas
in the college of apostles, and Nicholas among the deacons, and the angels in
heaven itself, did fall so foully and dishonestly, then it is prudent advice
that we be not high-minded, but fear; and when we stand most confidently take
heed lest we fall: and yet there is nothing so likely to make us fall as pride
and great opinions, which ruined the angels, which God resists, which all men
despise, and which betrays us into artlessness, and a reckless, undiscerning
and an unwary spirit.
4. Now the main parts of the
ecclesiastical ministry are done; and that which remains is, that the minister
pray over him and remind him to do good actions as he is capable; to call upon
God for pardon; to put his whole trust in him; to resign himself to God's
disposing; to be patient and even; to renounce every ill word or thought, or
indecent action, which the violence of his sickness may cause in him; to beg of
God to give him his Holy Spirit to guide him in his agony, and his holy angels
to guard him in his passage.
5. Whatsoever is besides this concerns the
standers by; that they do all their ministers diligently and temperately; that
they join with much charity and devotion in the prayer of the minister; that
they make no outcries or exclamations in the departure of the soul; and that
they make no judgment concerning the dying person, by his dying quietly or
violently, with comfort or without, with great fears or a cheerful confidence,
with sense or without, like a lamb or like a lion, with convulsions or
semblances of great pain, or like an expiring and a spent candle; for these
happen to all men without rule; without any known reason, but according as God
pleases to dispense the grace or the punishment, for reasons only known to
himself. Let us lay our hands upon our mouth, and adore the mysteries of the
divine wisdom and providence, and pray to God to give the dying man rest and
pardon, and to ourselves grace to live well, and the blessing of a holy and a
happy death.
In the name of the Father, of the
Son, and of the Holy Ghost. "Our Father, which art in heaven," etc.
Let the Priest say this Prayer secretly
O eternal Jesus, thou great lover of
souls, who hast constituted a ministry in the church to glorify thy name, and
to serve in the assistance of those that come to thee, prefessing thy
discipline and service, give grace to me the unwrothiest of thy servants that
I, in this my ministry, may purely and zealously intend thy glory, and
effectually may minister comfort and advantages to this sick person; (whom God
assoil from all his offences;) and grant that nothing of thy grace may perish
to him by the unworthiness of the minister; but let thy Spirit speak to me, and
give me prudence and charity, wisdom and diligence, good observation and apt
discourses a certain judgment and merciful dispensation, that the soul of thy
servant may pass from this state of imperfection to the perfections of the
state of glory, through thy mercies, O eternal Jesus. Amen.
The Psalm.
Out of the depths have I cried unto thee,
O Lord. Lord, hear my voice; let thine ears be attentive to the voice of my
supplications. Psalm cxxx.
If thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord,
who should stand.
But there is forgiveness with thee, that thou
mayst be feared.
I wait for the Lord; my soul doth wait; and in
his word do I hope.
My soul waiteth for the Lord, more than they that
watch for the morning.
Let Israel hope in the Lord; for with the Lord
there is mercy, and with him is plenteous redemption.
And he shall redeem his servants from all their
iniquities. Psalm cxxx.
Wherefore should I fear in the days of evil, when
the wickedness of my heels shall compass me about? Psalm xlix.5.
No man can be any means redeem his brother, nor
give to God a ransom for him. Ver. 7.
For the redemption of their soul is precious, and
it ceasern for ever. Ver. 8.
That he should still live for ever, and not see
corruption. Ver. 9.
But wise men die, likewise the fool and the
brutish person perish, and leave their wealth to others. Ver. 10.
But God will redeem my soul from the power of the
grave: for he shall receive me. Ver. 15.
As for me, I will behold thy face in
righteousness: I shall be satisfied when I awake in thy likeness. Psalm
xvii.15.
Thou shalt show me the path of life: in thy
presence is the fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for
evermore. Psalm xvi. 11.
Glory be to the Father, etc.
As it was in the beginning, etc.
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 for 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 cross, and to bury them in the grave of Jesus; that they
may never rise up in judgment against thy servant, nor bring him to shame and
confusion of face in the day of final inquiry and sentence. Amen.
II.
Give thy servant patience in his sorrows,
comfort in this his sickness, and restore him to health, if it seems 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 safe, 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 bosom of blessedness and
the custodies of Jesus. Amen.
III.
Thou, O Lord, knowest all the necessities and
all the infirmities of thy servant; fortify his spirit with spiritual joys 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 freedom from sins, and fruition of God.
IV.
Lord, let not any pain or passion discompose
the order and decency of his thoughts and duty; and lay no more upon thy
servant than 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 tenderness 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 confess our sins we shall have mercy.
Let thy mighty grace draw out from his soul every root of bitterness, 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 blameless and
entirely pardoned, and thoroughly washed, through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Here also may be inserted the Prayers set down after the holy Communion is
administered.
The prayer of St. Eustatius the Martyr, to be
used by the sick of 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 mine enemies,
nor made my foes to rejoice 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 cruel
enemies meet it in the passing forth, nor hinder me by reason of the sins of my
past life. O Lord, be favourable unto me, that my soul may not behold the
hellish countenance of the spirits of darkness, but let thy bright and joyful
angels entertain it. Give glory to thy holy name and thou thy majesty; place me
by thy merciful arm before thy seat of judgment, and let not the hand of the
prince of this world snatch me from thy presence, or beat me into hell. Mercy,
sweet Jesus. 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 at
their death.
beborborwnenos taiz
anartiaiz, etc.
I.
Bemired with sins and naked of good deeds, I
that am the meat of worms cry vehemently in spirit; cast not me a wretch away
from thy face; place me not on the left hand, who with thy hands didst fashion
me; but give me rest unto my soul, for thy great mercy's sake, O Lord.
II.
Supplicate with tears unto Christ, who is to
judge my poor soul, that he will deliver me from the fire that is unquenchable.
I pray you all, my friends and acquaintance, make mention of my in your
prayers, that in the day of judgment I may find mercy at that dreadful
tribunal.
III.
Then may the Standers-by pray.
When in unspeakable glory thou dost come
dreadfully to judge the whole world, vouchsafe, O gracious Redeemer, that this
thy faithful servant may in the clouds meet thee cheerfully. They who have been
dead from the beginning, with terrible and fearful trembling stand at thy
tribunal, waiting thy just sentence. O blessed Saviour Jesus! None shall there
avoid thy formidable and most righteous judgment. All kings and princes with
servants stand together, and hear the dreadful voice 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 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 the prayer of absolution.
O Lord Jesus Christ, who hath given commission to
his church, in his name to pronounce pardon to all that are truly penitent, he
of his mercy pardon and forgive thee all thy sins, deliver thee from all evils
past, present, and future, preserve thee in the faith and fear of his holy name
to thy life's 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 days of his sickness, be employed with the former offices and exercises
before described; and when the time draws near 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 merciful
hands; let thy blessed angels stand in ministry about thy servant, and defend
him from the violence and malice of all his ghostly enemies; and drive far from
hence all the spirits of darkness. Amen.
II.
Lord, receive the soul of this thy servant;
enter not into judgment with thy servant, spare him whom thou hast redeemed
with thy most precious blood; deliver him from all evil, for whose sake thou
didst suffer 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 his 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
phantasm; let him die in peace, and rest in hope, and rise in glory. Amen.
IV.
Lord, we know, and believe 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 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
Jacob; with Job and David, with the prophets and apostles, with martyrs and all
thy holy saints, in the arms of Christ, in the bosom of felicity, in the
kingdom of God, to eternal ages. Amen.
These following prayers are fit also to be added
to the foregoing offices in as there be no communion or intercourse but
prayer.
Let us Pray.
O almighty and eternal God, there is no
number of thy days, or of thy mercies; thou hast sent us into this world to
serve thee, and to live according to thy laws; 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 enclose us in on every side; the days of our pilgrimage are few
and evil; we have frail and sickly bodies, violent and distempered passions,
long designs and but a short stay, weak understandings and strong enemies,
abused fancies, perverse wills. 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 eternal anger, nor the calamities
of this world vex us into tediousness of spirit and impatience; but let thy
Holy Spirit lead us through this valley of misery with safety and peace, with
holiness and religion, with spiritual 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
catholic 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 faithful 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 or grace and
comfort, and with the visitation and guard of angels, and supply to them all
their necessities known only 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 judgment, O then show thyself 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, press those souls which thou lovest,
which thou didst redeem, which thou dost pray for; but enable us all, by the
supporting hand of thy mercy, to stand upright in judgment. 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 graciousness, absolved by thy sentence, saved by thy mercy,
that we may sing to the glory of thy name eternal hallelujahs. Amen. Amen.
Amen.
Then may be added in the behalf of all that are
present those 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
eternal, 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 numbered 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, through 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 only 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-domo, 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 magnify 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 mercy, thy chastisements into virtues, thy rod into comforts; and do
thou give to all his nearest relatives comforts from heaven, and a restitution
of blessings equal to those which thou hast taken from them. And we humbly
beseech thee of thy gracious goodness shortly to satisfy 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 others departed this life in the obedience and faith
of the Lord Jesus, may have our perfect consummation and bliss in thy eternal
glory, which never shall have ending. Grant this for Jesus Christ's sake, our
Lord and only Saviour. Amen.
II.
O merciful God, father of our Lord Jesus, who
art the first fruits of the resurrection, and by entering into glory hath
opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers, we humbly beseech thee to raise
us up from the death of sin to the life of righteousness; 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 Holy 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 constancy unto the end, that at the day of
judgment 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
lie down in sin, and never to have our portion in the everlasting burning.
Mercy, sweet Jesus, mercy. Amen.
A Prayer to be said in the Case of sudden Surprise by Death, as by a mortal
Wound, or evil Accidents in Childbirth, 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 ourselves 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 wonderful 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
greatness 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, stir up in him a great and effectual
contrition, that the greatness 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 days. And
thou, who regardest the heart and the measures of the mind more than 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 the eternal death, and made him partaker
of the gift of God, eternal 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.
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 counsel of the Son of Sirach: `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 thyself for thy heaviness. But take no grief
to heart; for there is no turning again: thou shalt not do him good, but hurt
thyself.[185] Solemn and appointed
mournings are good expressions of our dearness to the departed soul, and of his
worth, and our value of him; and it hath its praise in nature, and in manners,
and in public customs; but the praise of it is not in the Gospel, that is, it
hath no direct and proper uses in religion. For if the dead did die in the
Lord, then there is joy to him; and it is an ill expression of our affection
and our charity to weep uncomfortably at a change that hath carried my friend
to the state of a huge felicity. But if the man did perish in his folly and his
sins, there is indeed cause to mourn, but no hopes of being comforted; for he
shall never return to light, or to hopes of restitution; therefore, beware lest
thou also come into the same place of torment; and let thy grief sit down, and
rest upon thy own turf, and weep till a shower springs from thy eyes to heal
the wounds of thy spirit; turn thy sorrow into caution, thy grief for him that
is dead to thy care for thyself who art alive, lest thou die and fall like one
of the fools whose life is worse than death, and their death is the
consummation of all felicities. The church in her funerals of the dead used to
sing psalms, and to give thanks for the redemption and delivery of the soul
from the evils and dangers of mortality; and therefore we have no reason to be
angry when God hears our prayers, who call upon him to hasten his coming, and
to fill up his numbers, and to do that which we pretend to give him thanks for.
And St. Chrysostom asks, "To what purpose is it that thou singest, `Return unto
thy rest, O my soul,' etc., if thou dost not believe thy friend to be in rest?
and if thou dost, why dost thou weep impertinently and unreasonable?" Nothing
but our own loss can justly be deplored; and him that is passionate for the
loss of his money or his advantages we esteem foolish and imperfect; and
therefore have no reason to love the immoderate sorrows of those who too
earnestly mourn for their dead, when, in the last resolution of the inquiry, it
is their own evil and present or feared inconveniences they deplore; the best
that can be said of such a grief is, that those mourners love themselves too
well. Something is to be given to custom, something to fame, to nature, and to
civilities, and to the honour of the deceased friends; for that man is esteemed
to die miserable for whom no friend or relative sheds a tear[186] or pays a solemn sigh. I desire to die a
dry death, but am not very desirous to have a dry funeral: some
flowers sprinkled upon my grave would do well and comely; and a soft shower to
turn those flowers into a springing memory, or a fair rehearsal, that I may not
go forth of my doors as my servants carry the entrails of beasts.
But that which is to be faulted in this
particular is when the grief is immoderate and unreasonable; and Paula Romana
deserved to have felt the weight of St. Jerome's severe reproof, when at the
death of every of her children she almost wept herself into her grave. But it
is worse yet, when people by an ambitious and a pompous sorrow, and by
ceremonies invented for the ostentation of their grief, fill heaven and earth
with exclamations, and grow troublesome because their friend is happy, or
themselves want his company. It is certainly a sad thing in nature to see a
friend trembling with a palsy, or scorched with fevers, or dried up like a
potsherd with immoderate heats, and rolling upon his uneasy bed without sleep,
which he cannot be invited with music, or pleasant murmurs, or a decent
stillness; nothing but the servants of cold death, poppy and weariness, can
tempt the eyes to let their curtains down; and then they sleep only to taste of
death, and make an essay of the shades below: and yet we weep not here; the
period and opportunity for tears we choose when our friend is fallen asleep,
when he hath laid his neck upon the lap of his mother, and let his head down to
be raised up to heaven. This grief is ill-placed and indecent. But many times
it is worse; and it hath been observed, that those greater and stormy passions
do so spend the whole stock of grief that they presently admit a comfort and
contrary affection, while a sorrow that is even and temperate goes on to its
period with expectation and the distances of a just time. The Ephesian woman
that the soldier told of in Petronius was the talk of all the town, and the
rarest example of a dear affection to her husband. She descended with the
corpse into the vault, and there, being attended with her maiden, resolved to
weep to death, or die with famine, or a distempered sorrow: from which
resolution nor his, not her friends, nor the reverence of the principal
citizens, who used the entreaties of their charity and their power, could
persuade her. But a soldier that watched seven dead bodies hanging upon trees
just over against this monument crept in, and awhile stared upon the silent and
comely disorders of the sorrow; and having let the wonder awhile breathe out at
each other's eyes, at last he fetched his supper and a bottle of wine with
purpose to eat and drink, and still to feed himself with that sad prettiness.
His pity and first-draught of wine made him bold and curious to try if the maid
would drink; who, having many hours since felt her resolution faint as her
wearied body, took his kindness, and the light returned into her eyes, and
danced like boys in a festival: and fearing lest the pertinaciousness of her
mistress's sorrows should cause her evil to revert, or her shame of approach,
essayed whether she would endure to hear an argument to persuade her to drink
and live. The violent passion had laid all her spirits in wildness and
dissolution, and the maid found them willing to be gathered into order at the
arrest of any new object, being weary of the first, of which, like leeches,
they had sucked their fill, till they fell down and burst. The weeping woman
took her cordial, and was not angry with her maid, and heard the soldier talk;
and he was so pleased with the change, that he who first loved the silence of
the sorrow was more in love with the music of her returning voice, especially
which himself had strung and put in tune: and the man began to talk amorously,
and the woman's weak head and heart were soon possessed with a little wine, and
grew gay, and talked, and fell in love; and that very night, in the morning of
her passion, in the grave of her husband, in the pomps of mourning, and in her
funeral garments, married her new and stranger-guest. For so the wild foragers
of Lybia, being spent with heat, and dissolved by the too fond kissses of the
sun, do melt with their common fires, and die with faintness, and descend with
motions slow and unable to the little brooks that descent from heaven in the
wilderness; and when they drink they return into the vigour of a new life, and
contract strange marriages; and the lioness is courted by a panther, and she
listens to his love, and conceives a monster that all men call unnatural, and
the daughter of an equivocal passion and of a sudden refreshment. And so also
was it in the cave at Ephesus: for by this time the soldier began to think it
was fit he should return to his watch and observe the dead bodies he had in
charge: but when he ascended from his mourning bridal-chamber, he found that
one of the bodies was stolen by the friends of the dead, and that he was fallen
into an evil condition, because, by the laws of Ephesus, his body was to be
fixed in the place of it. The poor man returns to his woman, cries out
bitterly, and in her presence resolves to die to prevent his death, and in
secret to prevent his shame: but now the woman's love was raging like her
former sadness, and grew witty, and she comforted her soldier, and persuaded
him to live, lest by losing him who had brought her from death and a more
grievous sorrow, she should return to her old solemnities of dying, and lose
her honour for a dream, or the reputation of her constancy without the change
and satisfaction of an enjoyed love. The man would fain have lived if it had
been possible, and she found out this way for him; that he should take the body
of her first husband, whose funeral she had so strangely mourned, and put it
upon the gallows in the place of the stolen thief; he did so, and escaped the
present danger to possess a love which might change as violently as her grief
had done. But so have I seen a crowd of disordered people rush violently and in
heaps, till their utmost border was restrained by a wall, or had spent the fury
of the first fluctuation and watery progress, and by and by it returned to the
contrary with the same earnestness, only because it was violent and ungoverned.
A raging passion is this crowd, which, when it is not under discipline and the
conduct of reason, and the proportions of temperate humanity, runs passionately
the way it happens, and by and by as greedily to another side, being swayed by
its own weight, and driven any whither by chance in all its pursuits, having no
rule but to do all it can, and spend itself in haste, and expire with some
shame and much indecency.
When thou hast wept awhile, compose the body to
burial; which that it be done gravely, decently, and charitably, we have the
example of all nations to engage us and of all ages of the world to warrant: so
that it is against common honesty and public fame and reputation not to do this
office.
It is good that the body be kept veiled and
secret, and not exposed to curious eyes, or the dishonours wrought by the
changes of death discerned and stared upon by impertinent persons. When Cyrus
was dying, he called his sons and friends to take their leave, to touch his
hand, to see him the last time, and gave in charge, that when he had put his
veil over his face no man should uncover it: and Epiphanius's body was rescued
from inquisitive eyes by a miracle. Let it be interred after the manner of the
country, and the laws of the place, and the dignity of the person. For so Jacob
was buried with great solemnity, and Joseph's bones were carried into Canaan
after they had been embalmed and kept four hundred years; and devout men
carried St. Stephen to his burial, making great lamentation over him. And Elian
tells that those who were the most excellent persons were buried in purple; and
men of an ordinary courage and fortune had their graves only trimmed with
branches of olive and mourning flowers. But when Marc Anthony gave the body of
Brutus to his freed-man to be buried honestly, he gave also his own mantle to
be thrown into his funeral pile: and the magnificence of the old funeral we may
see largely described by Virgil in the obsequies of Misenus, and by Homer in
the funeral of Patroclus, It was noted for piety in the men of Jabesh-Gilead,
that they showed kindness to their lord, Saul, and buried him; and they did it
honourably. And our blessed Saviour, who was temperate in his expense, and
grave in all the parts of his life and death, as age and sobriety itself, yet
was pleased to admit the cost of Mary's ointment upon his head and feet,
because she did it against his burial; and though she little thought it had
been so nigh, yet because he accepted it for that end he knew he had made her
apology sufficient: by which he remarked it to be a great act of piety, and
honourable, to inter our friends and relatives according to the proportions of
their condition, and so to give a testimony of our hope of their
resurrection.[187] So far is piety; beyond
it may be the ostentation and bragging of a grief, or a design to serve worse
ends. Such was that of Herod, when he made too studied and elaborate a funeral
for Aristobulus whom he had murdered; and of Regulus for his boy,[188] at whose pile he killed dogs,
nightingales, parrots, and little horses; and such also was the expense of some
of the Romans, who, hating their left wealth, gave order by their testament to
have huge portions of it thrown into their fires, bathing their locks, which
were presently to pass through the fire, with Arabian and Egyptian liquors and
balsam of Judea. In this, as in every thing else, as our piety must not pass
into superstition or vain expense, so neither must the excess be turned into
parsimony, and chastised by negligence and impiety to the memory of their
dead.
But nothing of this concerns the dead in real and
effective purposes; nor is it with care to be provided for by themselves: but
it is the duty of the living.[189] For to
them it is all one[190] whether they be
carried forth upon a chariot or a wooden hier; whether they rot in the air or
in the earth; whether they be devoured by fishes or by worms, by birds or by
sepulchral dogs, by water or by fire, or by delay. When Criton asked Socrates
how he would be buried, he told him, I think I shall escape from you, and that
you cannot catch me; but so much of me as you can apprehend, use it as you see
cause for and bury it; but, however, do it according to the laws. There is
nothing in this but opinion and the decency of fame to be served. When it is
esteemed an honour and the manner of blessed people to descend into the graves
of their fathers, there also it is reckoned as a curse to be buried in a
strange land, or that the birds of the air devour them.[191] Some nations used to eat the bodies of their friends,
and esteemed that the most honoured sepulture; but they were barbarous. The
magi never buried any but such as were torn of beasts. The Persians besmeared
their dead with wax, and the Egyptians with gums and with great art did condite
the bodies and laid them in charnel-houses. But Cyrus the elder would none of
all this, but gave command that his body should be interred, not laid in a
coffin of gold or silver, but just into the earth from whence all living
creatures receive birth and nourishment, and whither they must return. Among
Christians the honour which is valued in the behalf of the dead is, that they
be buried in holy ground; that is, in appointed cemeteries in places of
religion, there were the field of God is sown with the seeds of the
resurrection.[192] that their bodies also
may be among the Christians, with whom their hope and their portion is and
shall be for ever. "Quicquid feceris, omnia haec eodem ventura sunt." That we
are sure of: our bodies shall all be restored to our souls hereafter, and in
the interval they shall all be turned into dust, by what way soever you or your
chance shall dress them. Licinus the freed-man slept in a marble tomb,[193] but Cato in a little one, Pompey in
none; and yet they had the best fate among the Romans, and a memory of the
biggest honour. And it may happen that to want a monument may best preserve
their memories, while the succeeding ages shall, by their instances, remember
the changes of the world, and the dishonours of death, and the equality of the
dead: and James the Fourth,[194] king of the
Scots, obtained an epitaph for wanting of a tomb; and King Stephen is
remembered with a sad story, because four hundred years after his death his
bones were thrown into a river that evil men might sell the leaden coffin. It
is all one in the final event of things.[195] Ninus the Assyrian had a monument erected, whose
height was nine furlongs, and the breadth ten, saith Diodorus: but John the
Baptist had more honour when he was humbly laid in the earth between the bodies
of Abdias and Elizeus. And St. Ignatius, who was buried in the bodies of lions,
and St. Polycarp, who was burned to ashes, shall have their bones and their
flesh again with greater comfort than those violent persons who slept among
kings, having usurped their thrones when they were alive, and their sepulchres
when they were dead.
Concerning doing honour to the dead, the
consideration is not long. Anciently the friends of the dead used to make their
funeral orations,[196] and what they spake
of greater commendation was pardoned upon the accounts of friendship; but when
Christianity seized upon the possession of the world, this charge was devolved
upon priests and bishops, and they first kept the custom of the world, and
adorned it with the piety of truth and of religion; but they also so ordered
it, that it should not be cheap; for they made funeral sermons only at the
death of princes or of such holy persons, who shall judge the angels. The
custom descended, and in the channels mingled with the veins of earth through
which it passed; and now-a-days men that die are commended at a price, and the
measures of their legacy is the degree of their virtue. But these things ought
not so to be: the reward of the greatest virtue ought not to be prostitute to
the doles of common persons, but preserved like laurels and coronets, to remark
and encourage the noblest things. Persons of an ordinary life should neither be
praised publicly nor reproached in private; for it is an office and charge of
humanity to speak no evil of the dead (which, I suppose, is meant concerning
things not public and evident;) but then neither should our charity to them
teach us to tell a lie, or to make a great flame from a heap of rushes and
mushrooms, and make orations crammed with the narrative of little observances,
and acts of civil, and necessary, and eternal religion.
But that which is most considerable is, that we
should do something for the dead, something that is real and of proper
advantage. That we perform their will, the laws oblige us, and will see to it;
but that we do all those parts of personal duty which our dead left
unperformed, and to which the laws do not oblige us, is an act of great charity
and perfect kindness: and it may redound to the advantage of our friends also,
that their debts be paid even beyond the inventory of their movables.
Besides this, let us right their causes and
assert their honour. When Marcus Regulus had injured the memory of Herennius
Senecio, Metius Carus asked him what he had to do with his dead? and became his
advocate after death, of whose cause he was parton when he was alive. And David
added this also, that he did kindnesses to Mephibosheth for Jonathan's sake;
and Solomon pleaded his father's cause by the sword against Joab and Shimel.
And certainly it is the noblest thing in the world to do, an act of kindness to
him whom we shall never see, but yet hath deserved it of us, and to whom we
would do it if he were present; and unless we do so our charity is mercenary,
and our friendships are direct merchandise, and our gifts are brocage: but what
we do to the dead or to the living for their sakes is gratitude, and virtue for
virtue's sake, and the noblest portion of humanity.
And yet I remember, that the most excellent
prince Cyrus, in his last exhortation to his sons upon his death-bed, charms
them into peace and union of hearts and designs, by telling them that his soul
would be still alive, and therefore fit to be revered and accounted as awful
and venerable as when he was alive: and what we do to our dead friends is not
done to persons undiscerning as a fallen tree, but to such who better attend to
their relatives, and to greater purposes, though in other manner, than they did
here below. And therefore those wise persons, who in their funeral orations
made their doubt with an ei tis aisfnsiz toiz teteleutnkosi
teri twn enfase gegnomenwn, "If the dead have any perception of what is
done below," which are the words of Isocrates, in the funeral encomium of
Evagoras, did it upon the uncertain opinion of the soul's immortality; but made
no question if they were living they did also understand what could concern
them. The same words Nazianzen uses at the exequies of his sister Gorgonia, and
in the former invective against Julian: but this was upon another reason; even
because it was uncertain what the state of separation was, and whether our dead
perceive anything of us, till we shall meet in the day of judgment. If it was
uncertain then, it is certain since that time we have had no new revelation
concerning it; but it is ten to one but when we die we shall find the state of
affairs wholly differing from all our opinions here, and that no man or sect
hath guessed anything at all of it as it is. here I intend not to dispute, but
to persuade; and therefore, in the general, if it be probable that they know or
feel the benefits done to them, though but by a reflex revelation from God, or
some under-communication from an angel, or the stock of acquired notices here
below, it may the rather endear us to our charities or duties to them
respectively; since our virtues use not to live upon abstractions, or
inducements, but then thrive when they have material arguments, such which are
not too far from sense. However, it be, it is certain they are not dead; and
though we no more see the souls of our dead friends than we did when they were
alive, yet we have reason to believe them to know more things and better; and
if our sleep be an image of death, we may also observe concerning it, that it
is a state of life so separate from communications with the body, that it is
one of the ways of oracle and prophecy[197]
by which the soul best declares her immortality, and the nobleness of her
actions and powers, if she could get free from the body, (as in the state of
separation, or a clear dominion over it,) as in the resurrection. To which also
this consideration may be added, that men a long time live the life of sense
before they use their reason; and till they have furnished their head with
experiments and notices of many things, they cannot at all discourse of
anything: but when they come to use their reason, all their knowledge is
nothing but remembrance; and we know by proportions, by similitudes and
dissimilitueds, by relations and oppositions, by causes and effects, by
comparing things with things; all which are nothing but operations of
understanding upon the stock of former notices, of something we knew before,
nothing but remembrances: all the heads of topics, which are the stock of all
arguments and sciences in the world, are a certain demonstration of this; and
he is the wisest man that remembers most, and joins those remembrances together
to the best purposes of discourses. From whence it may not be improbably
gathered, that in the state of separation, if there be any act of
understanding, that is, if the understanding be alive, it must be relative to
the notices it had in this world; and therefore the acts of it must be
discourses upon all the parts and persons of their conversation and relation,
excepting only such new revelation which may be communicated to it; concerning
which we know nothing. But if by seeing Socrates I think upon Plato, and by
seeing a picture I remember a man, and by beholding two friends I remember my
own and my friend's need; (and he is wisest that draws lines from the same
centre, and most discourses from the same notices;) it cannot be very probable
to believe, since the separate souls understand better if they understand at
all, that from the notices they carried from hence, and what they find there
equal or unequal to those notices, they can better discover the things of their
friends, than we can here by our conjectures and craftiest imaginations and yet
many men here can guess shrewdly at the thoughts and designs of such men with
whom they discourse, or of whom they have heard, or whose characters they
prudently have perceived. I have no other end in this discourse, but that we
may be witnesses of our transient affections and forgetfulness. Dead persons
have religion passed upon them, and a solemn reverence; and if we think a ghost
beholds us, it may be we have upon us the impressions likely to be made by
love, and fear, and religion. However, we are sure that God sees us, and the
world sees us; and if it be matter of duty towards our dead, God will exact it;
if it be matter of kindness, the world will: and as religion is the band of
that, so fame and reputation are the endearment of this.
It remains, that we who are alive should so live,
and by the actions of religion attend the coming of the day of the Lord, that
we neither be surprised nor leave our duties imperfect, nor our sins
uncancelled, nor our persons unreconciled, nor God unappeased; but that, when
we descend to our graves, we may rest in the bosom of the Lord, till the
mansions be prepared where we shall sing and feast eternally. Amen.
To Deum laudamus.
THE END.
[1] Pomfolne o
anzrwpos.
[2] James, iv. 14,
[3] fainminm.
[4] Hroz oigon.
[5] Nihil sibi quisquame de futuro debet
promittere. Id quo-que, quod tenetur, per manus exit, et ipsam quam premimus,
horam casus incidit. Volvitur tempus rata quidem lege, sed per
obscurum.-Seneca.
[6] Ut mortem eitius venire credas, Scito jam
capitis perisae partem.
[7] Navigationes longas, et, pererratis
litoribus alienis, seros in partriam reditus proponimus, militiam, et
castrensium laborum tarda manu pretia, procurationes, officiorumque per officia
processus, cum interim ad latus mors est; quae quoniam nunquam cogitatur nisi
aliena, subinde nobis ingerantur morialitatis exempla, non diutius quam miramur
hasura.-Senec.
[8] Quia lex cadem manet omnes, Gemitum dare
sorte sub una, Cognataque funera nobis Aliena in morte dolere. Prud. Hymn.
Exequiis Defunctor.
[9] Aut ubi mors non est, si jugulatis,
aque?-Martial.
[10] Currit mortalibus evum, Nec nasci bis posse
datur; fugit hera, rapitque Tartareus torrens, as sacum ferre sub umbras. Si
qua animo placuere, negat.-Sil Ital 1.xv.
[11] Tefnafi khoa o eyw
tote oexomai ottote ken oh Zeus efzg telesa.-It x.365.
[12] Anceps forma bonum mortalibus, Exigui
donum breve temproris; Ut fulgor, teneris qui radiat genis, Momento rapitur,
nullaque non dies Formosi spolium corporis abstulit.-Sence. Hipp. 770.
[13] Rape, congere, aufer, posside;
relinquendum est. Martial
[14] Annos omnes prodegit, ut ex eo annus unus
numeretur, et per mille indignitates laboravit in titulum sepulchri.--Sen.
[15] Jam eorum prabendas alii possident, et
nescio utrum de its cogitant.-Gerson.
Me veterum frequens - Memphis Pyramidum docet, Me pressae tumulo lacryma
glorie, Me projecta jacentium Passim per polulos busta Quiritium, Et vilis
Zephyro jocus Jactati cineres et procerum rogi, Fumantumque cadvarea Regnorum
tacito, Fufe silentio Mestum multa monent.-Cas.1.ii.Od. 27.
[16] Afanasias o ouk
estin, ouo an sunayayxs Ta Tantalou talant ekeina leyohena. All an apofanxs,
tauta kataleiyees tisin. Menand. Clcrc.p.214.
[17] Quid sit futurum cras, fuge querere, et
Quem fors dierum cunque debit, lucro Appone.-Horat. 1.ix.15.
[18] Tentaris numeros, ut melius, quicquid
erit, pati, Seu plures hyemes, seu tribuit Jupiter ultimam. Horat.1.ii.2.
[19] Certa amittimus, dum incerta petimus;
atque hoe evenit in labore atque in dolore, ut mors obrepat interim-Plaut.
Pseud. Act ii. Seen.3.
[20] Quid brevi fortes jaculamur evo Multa? 2.
16. Jam te premet nox, fabuleque Manes, Et domus exillis Plutonia.
I.4.-Horat.
[21] Ille enim ex futuro suspenditur, cui
irritum est praens. Seneca.
[22] Etate fruere; mobili cursu
fugit.-Seneca.
[23] Martial. 1.ii.Epig.59.
[24] Eccles. iii. 22; ii. 24.
[25] Amici, dum vivimus, vivamus. pine, legei to glumrra, kai esfie, kai perikeiso Anfea totontot
gignomef ezapinms. Hoc etiam faciunt, ubi discubuere, tenentque Pocula
sape homines, et inumbrant ora coronis, Ex animo ut dicant, brevis est hic
fructus homullis; Jam fuerit, neque post unquam revocare licebit. Lucret. lib.
iii. 925.
[26] Quis sapiens bono Confidat fragili? dum
licet, utere:
[27] Bis jam consul trigesimus instat, Et
numerat paucos vix tua vita dies.-Mart. i. 16.
[28] Edepol, proinde ut bene vivitur, diu
vivitur.-Plaut. Trinum. Non acccpimus brevem vitam, sed fecimus; nec inopes
ejus sed prodigi sumus.-Seneca.
[29] Sed potes, Publi, geminare magna Sccula
fama. Quem sui raptum gemuere cives, Hie diu vixit. Sibi quisque famam Scribat
haeredem: rapiunt avarae aetera Lunae.-Casim. ii.2.
[30] In spe viventibus proximum quodque tempus
clabitur, subitque aviditas temporis, et miserrimus, atque miserrima omnia
efficiens, metus mortis - Ex hac autem indigentia timor nascitur, et cupiditas
fururi exedens animum.-Seneca.
[31] Life of Christ, part iii. Disc.14.
[32] Seneca e Vita beata cap. 20.
[33] Nula requies in terris; surgite, postquam
sederitis; hie est locus pulicum et culicum.
[34] Villis adulator pieto jacet ebrius ostro,
Et qui solicitat numtas, ad praemia peccat. Sola pruinoisis horret facundia
pannis, Atque inopi lingua desertas invocat artes. Petron. c. 83. p. 249.ed.
Ant. Hine et jocus apud Aristophaneon in Avibus-934.
[35] Vilis servus habet regni bona, cellaque
capti Derides festam Romulcamque casam.-Petron. Frag. 21. Omnia, crede mihi,
etiam felicibus dubia sunt.-Seneca.
[36] Et adulterio velut sacramento
adacti.-Tacit.
[37] Plusque et iterum timenda cum Antonio
mulier.
[38] Quem si inter miseros posueris,
miserrimus; inter felices, felicissimus reperiebatur.
[39] Uni sibi nec puero unquam ferias
contigisse. Seditious et foro gravis.
[40] Propera vivere, et singulos die singulas
vitas puta. Nihil interest inter diem et seculum.
[41] Si sapis, utaris totis, Colme, diebus;
Extremumque tibi semper adese putes.-Martial.
[42] Heu, heu, nos miseros! quam totus
homuncio nil est! Sic erimus cunci. postquam nos auferet Orcus: Ergo vivamus,
dum licet esse, bene.
[43] Certe populi quos despicit Arctos Felices
errore suo, quos ille timorum Maximus haud urget, lethi metus Inde ruendi In
ferrum mens prona viris, animaque capaces Mortis, et ignavum rediture parcere
vitae.-Lucan. i. 458.
[44] Qui quotidie vit suae manum imposuit, non
indiget tempore.-Seneca.
[45] insere nunc, Melibae, pyros, pone ordine
vites.
[46] Chap. iv. 9.
[47] Neque enim Deus ulla re perinde atque
corporis arumna concilliatur.-Naz. Orat. 18.
[48] Amos, vi.1.
[49] Luke, vi.25.
[50] Matt. v.4.
[51] Hierocl.
[52] Ecclus. xix.1.
[53] Qui levi comminatione pellitur, non opus
est, ut fortitudin et armis invadatur.-Seneca.
[54] Elige vitam optimam, consuetudo faciet
jucundissimam.-Seneca.
[55] Securae et quietae mentis est in omnes
vitue partes discurrere; occupatorum animi velut sub jugo sunt, respicere non
possunt.-Seneca.
[56] Respice quid prodest praesentis temporis
aevum; Omne quod est, nihil est, praeter amare Deum.
[57] Quod expendi habui, Quod donavi habeo:
Quod negavi punior, Quod servavi perdidi.
[58] Tob. iv. 10; xii 9.
[59] Ecclus. iii. 30.
[60] Dan. iv. 27.
[61] Agere autem paeniterntiam nihil aliud est
quam profiteri et affirmare se non ulterius peccaturum.
[62] St. Chrysostomus.
[63] Ephraim Syrus.
[64] Ejulatu, questu, gemitu, fremitibus,
Resonando multum febiles voces refert.-Cic. Tues. ii. 13.
[65] concedendum est gementi.
[66] Omnino si quicquan est decorum, mibil est
profecto magis quam acquabilitas univerae vitae, turn singularum actionem; quam
autem conservare non possis, si aliorum naturam imitans omittas tuam.-1 Offic.
88.
[67] Praetulerim - delirus inersque videri,
Dum mea delectent mala me, vel denique fallant, Quani sapere et ringi.-Horat.
lib. ii. ep. 2.
[68] Debilem facito manu, debilem pede, coxa,
lubricos quate dentes; vita dum superest, bene est. Hanc milhi, vel acutam, si
das, sustineo crueem.-Sen. Ep. x.1.
[69] cerno equidem gemina constratos morte
Phillippos, Thessaliaeque rogos, et fun eta gentis Iberae.
[70] Rara est in nobilitate senectus.
[71] Cicero de Senect.
[72] Ferre quam sortem patiuntur omnes, nemo
recusat.
[73] Tusc. 1l ii. Cum faces doloris
admoverentur.
[74] Tantum doluerunt, quantum doloribus se
inserueruent.-St. August. Virg. 1. viii. v. 4. Ceu rore seges viret, Sic
crescunt riguis tristia fletibus; Urget lacryma lacrymam, Faecundusque sui se
numerat dolor
[75] 1 Cor. x. 13.
[76] Psalm ix.9; Matt. vii.7; James, v. 13;
Psalm xxxi. 19,24; xxxiv. 22.
[77] Nulla mihi nova nune facies inopinave
surgit: Omnia praecepi atque animo mecum ante peregi. Virgil. lib. vi.
[78] Nunc festinatos nimium sibi sentit
honores, Actaque lauriferae damnat Syllana juventae.-Lucan. lib. viii.
[79] Nola quad cupio statim senere, Nec
victoria mi placet parata.-Petrom.
[80] Mors ipsa beatior inde est, Quod per
cruciamina lethi Via panditur ardua justis, Es ad astreadoloribus itur. Prud.
Hymn. in Exeq. Defunct.
[81] Virtutes avidae periculi monstrant, quam
non paeniteat tanto pretio aestimasse virtutem.-Senec. Non enim hilaritate, nec
lascivia, nec risu, aut joco comite levitatis, sed saepe etiam tristes
firmitate et constantia sunt beati.-Cic. de Fin. 1. xxii.
[82] Nihil infelicius eo eui nihil unquam
contigit adversi. Non licuit illi se experii.-Seneca.
[83] Modestia filiorum delectantur; vernularum
licentia et ca num, non puerorum.
[84] Ventus ut amittit vires nisi robore
densae Occurrunt sylvae, spatio diffusus inani.-Lucan.
[85] Marcet sine adversario virtus.
[86] Psalm lxxxix. 32,33.
[87] 1 Cor. v.5; 1 Tim. i.20.
[88] Deut. xxxiv.5.
[89] Haec clementia non paratur arte: sed
norunt cui serviunt ieones. Si iatus aut renes morbo tententur acuto, Quaere
fugaim morbi. Vis recite vivere? quis non? Si virtus hoc una potest dare,
fortis omissis Hoc age delicis - Horat. 1.i.ep.6.
[90] Nec tamen putaverant ad rem pertinere,
ubi inciperent, quod placuerat ut fieret
[91] Neque tam aversa unquam videbitur ab
opere suo providentia, ut debilitas inter optima inventa sit.
[92] Detestabilis erit caecitae, si nemo
oculos perdiderit nisi cui eruendi sunt.
[93] Memineris ergo maximos dolores morte
finiri, parvos habere multa intervalla requietis, mediocrium nos esse dominos.
Cicero.
[94] Ecclus ii.15.
[95] mentiris juvenem tinietis Lentine,
capillis, Tam subito corvus, qui modo cygnus eras. Non omnes fallis, scit te
Proserpina canum; Personam capiti detrahet illa tuo.-Mart. 1.iii ep. 42.
[96] Heu, quanto melius vel caede peracta
Parccre Romano potuit fortina pudori!-Lucanus.
[97] Haec omnia vidit inflammari, Jovis aram
sanguine turpari
[98] Sic longius aevum Destruit ingentes
animos, et vita superstes Imperio; nisi summa dies cum fine bonorum Adfuit, et
celeri praevertit trista leto, Dedecori est fortuna prior.-Lucan. lib. viii
[99] Mors illi medius quam tu consuluit
quidem.-Quisquam ne secundis tradere se fatis audet nisi morte parata?-Luc.
lib. viii
[100] Hoc homo morte lucratur, ne malum esset
immortale.-Naz.
[101] Nihil in malis ducamus, quod si a Diis
immortalibus vel a Natura parente omnium, constitutum.
[102] Hostem cum fugeret, se Fannius ipse
peremit.-Mart.
[103] Beati erimus, cum, corporibus
relictis, et cupiditatum et amulationum erimus expertes, quodque nunc facimus,
cum laxati curis sumus, ut speciare aliquid velimus et visere.-Tuscal. Q.
[104] Mors utinam pavidos wita subducere
nolles, Sed virtus te sola daret.-Lucan.
[105] Pendent spera interrupta, minaeque
murorum ingentes.
[106] Non levat miseros dolor.
[107] Josh. vii. 12.
[108] Whoso him bethoft Inwardly oft how
hard it were to flit From heaven to pit, From pit unto pain That nere shall
cease again, It would not be one sin All the world to win. Inscript. marmori in
eccles. paroch. de Feversham in agro Cantiano.
[109] Kalos gar o
kinsu[omegahat]os cai xrm ta toianta wsper ixasuein eautw.
[110] L. Cornel. Legatus sub Fabio Consule
vividam naturam et virilem animum servavi, quoad animam effiavi; et tandem
desertus ope medicorum et Escalapii Dei ingrati, cui me voveram sodalem
perpetuo futurum, si fila aliquantulum optata prorulisset.-Vetus Inscripton in
Lusitania.
[111] Apokarterein
Gtpesi vocant, cum mors propter impatientiam
petitur.
[112] Non jam validis radicubus haerens,
pondere fixa suo.
[113] Sanctiusque ae reverentius visum de
actis Deorum credere quam scire.-Tacit.
[114] Fides tua te salvum faciet: non
exercitatio Scripturarum, Fides in regula posita est; (scil. in Symbolo quod
jam recitaverat) habet legem, et saluterm de observatione legis; Exercitatio
autem in curiositate consistit, habens gloriam solam de pertitia studio. Cedat
curiositas Fidel; cedat Gloria Saluti-Tert. de pagescript St. Augustinus vocat
Symbolum comprehensionem Fidei vestra atque perfectionem; Cordis signaculum, et
nostrae militiae sacramentum. Amb. lib iii. de Vcland. Virgin. Aug. Serm. 115
Non per diddiciles nos Deus ad beatam vitam quaesuscitatum a mortuis per Deum
credere, et ipsum esse Dominum confiteri.-St. Hilar. lib. 10 de Trinit. Haec
est fides Catholica, de Symbolo suo dixit Athanasius, vel quicunque author est
St. Athanas. de fide ni cena.
[115] In Phaedon.
[116] Descendisti ad Olympia, sed nemo
praeter te: coronam tabes, vistoriam non habes.
[117] Mitius ille perit subith qui mergitur
unda, Quam sua qui liquidis brachia lassat aquis.-Ovid.
[118] Etiam innocentes mentiri cogit
dolor.
[119] Ipse illigatus peste interimor
textili.
[120] Lavor honesta hora et salubri, quae
mihi et calorem et sanguinem servet: rigere et pallere post lavacrum mortuus
possum. Tertul. Apol. c.42.
[121] Vide the Life of Christ, Disc. of
Repentance; Rule of Holy Living, chap. iv. Sect. of Repentance; and volume of
Serm. Serm. v. vi.
[122] Ne tamen ad Stygias famulus
descenderet umbras, Ureret implicitum cum scelerata lues, Cavimus
[123] Tu milhi, quod rarum est, vivo sublime
dedisti Nomen, ab exsequiis quod dare fama solet.
[124] Acts, iii. 19.
[125] Ou pendre, ou rendre, ou les peines
d'enfers attendra.
[126] Quid debent laesi facere, ubi rei ad
paenam confugiunt?
[127] Vera ad Deum conversio in ultimis
positorum mente potius est aestimanda quam tempore. Cel. P. ep ii. c. 9. Vera
conversio scil. ab infidelitate ad finem Christi per bapts
[128] Psalm lxiii.1.
[129] Psalm vi. 4,5.
[130] Credebant hoc grande nefus et morte
piandum, Si juvenis vetulo non assurrexerat, et si Barbato cuicunque
puer.-Juven. Sat. 13.
[131] 1 Thess.v.17; Luke, xviii. 1.
[132] Mark, xvi. 16.
[133] Luke xiii. 3; Acts, iii.19.
[134] Matt. v.3.
[135] Luke, xiv.10; John, xiii.14.
[136] Matt. v.5; Col. iii.12.
[137] Matt. x.16; 1 Thess.v.8.
[138] Rom. viii.24.
[139] Luke, xvi.29; Mark, iv.24.
[140] 1 Tim. iv.13.
[141] Heb.xiii.17; Matt. xviii.17.
[142] Titus, iii.10.
[143] Coloss.iii 14; 1 Tim. i.v.; 2 Tim. ii
22.
[144] Matt. xviii.9.
[145] Magnifica verba mors prope admota
excutit.
[146] Nam verae voces tum demum pectore ab
imo Ejiciuntur - Lucret. iii. 57.
[147] Contra avaritiam.
[148] Exod. xx. 19.
[149] James, v. 14.
[150] James, v.14.
[151] Gabriel in 4. sent. dist. 23.
[152] James, v.16.
[153] John i.9.
[154] Matt. iii.6.
[155] Acts, xix. 18.
[156] 1 Cor. xi. 31.
[157] Si tacuerit qui percussus est, et non
egerit paenitentiam, nec vulnus suum fratri et magistro voluerit confiteri,
magister qui linguam habet ad curandum, facile ci prodesse non poterit. Si enim
erubeseat aegrotus vulnus medico coniteri, quod ignorat medicina non curat. St.
Hierom. ad caput 10. Ecces. Si enim hoc fecerimus, et revelaverimus peccata
nostra non sol im Deo, sed et his qui possunt mederi vulneribus nostris atque
peccatis, delebuntur peccata nostra. - Orig. Hom. 17 in Lucam.
[158] Plaut. Trinum.
[159] Qui homo culpam admisit in se, nullus
est tam parvi pretis quin pudent, quin purget sese.-Plaut. Aulul, act. iv. sc.
10. 60.
[160] Illi mers gravis incubat, qui notus
nimis omuibus, igortus moritur sihi.-Thyest. 401.
[161] Nune si depositum non inficiatur
amicus, So reddat veterem cum tota aerugine follem, Prodigicsa fides et Thuscis
digna libellis. Juven. Sat. xiii. 62.
[162] Gal. vi.1.
[163] James, v. 14,15.
[164] 1 Cor v.5,12,13; 2 Cor. ii.6.
[165] Homines in remissione peccatorum
ministerium suum exhibent, non just alicujus potestatis exercent: Neque enim in
suo, sed in nomine Patris, Filii, et Spiritus Sancti, peccata dimittuntur: Isti
rogant, Divinitas donat.-St. Amb. de Spir. 8. 1. iii. c. 10.
[166] Summum futuri judieli praejudicium
est, si quis ita deliquert ut a communicatione orationis et conventus et oranis
sancti commercii relegetur.-Tertul. Apol cap. 39. Atque hoc idem innuitur per
summam Apostoli censuram in reos maxini criminis: sit anafera nsranafa, id est, excommunicatus majori
Excommunicatione; Dominus veniet, scil. ad jusicandum eum: ad quod judicium
haec censura Ecclesiae est relativa et in ordine. Tum demum paenas dabit: ad
quas, nise resipiscat, hic consignatur.
[167] Caus. 26. Q. 6 et q.7.
[168] Can.13. Vide etiam Con. Ancyr. cap. 6.
Aurel. 2 cap. 12.
[169] Saevi quoque et implacabiles domini
crudelitatem suam impediunt, si, quando paenitentia fugitivos reduxit,
dedititiis hostibus parcinaus.
[170] 1 Cor. xv. 22.
[171] Rom. viii. 32.
[172] Vide Rule of Holy Loving, chap. iv.
sect. 10; and Hist. of the Life of Jesus, part iii. Disc. 18.
[173] Caus. 26. Q. 7. ab infirmis.
[174] Matt. ix. 6.
[175] Acts. iii. 26.
[176] Est modus gloriandi in conscientia, ut
noveris, fidem tuam cease sinceram, soem tuarm esse certam.-August. Psalm
cxlix.
[177] Ezek. xxxiii.11.
[178] James, iii.2.
[179] 1 John, i. 8.
[180] Rom. v. 8.
[181] 1 Rom. xi. 32.
[182] Rom. vi.23.
[183] Heb. xiii.5.
[184] Vixi, peccavi, paenitui, natuae
cessi.
[185] Ecclus. xxxviii. 17,20.
[186] Expectavimus lacrymas ad ostentationem
doloris paratas: et ergo ambitiosus detonuit, texit superhum pallio caput, et
nanibus inter se usque ad articulorum strepitum contritis, etc. Petron. 17.3.
[187] Nam quid sibi saxa cavata, Quid
pulchra volunt momumenta, Nisi quod res creditur illis Non mortua, sed data
somno? Prud. Hymn in Eceq. Defunct
[188] Cupit omnia ferre Produgus et totos
Melior succendere census, Desertas exosus opes.-Statius, lib. ii. Sylner.
[189] Totus hic locus contemneudus est in
nobis, non negligendus in nostris.-Cicero.
[190] Id cinerem aut manes credis curare
sepultos?
[191] Fugientibus Trojanis minatus est
Hector.
[192] Nam quod requiescere corpus Vacuum
sine mente videmus, Spatium breve restat, ut alti Repetat collgia senus Hinc
maxima cura sepulchris Impenditur.-Prud. Hymn, in exeq. Defunct.
[193] Marmoreo Licinus tumulo jacet, at Cato
parvo, Pompeius nullo: credimus esse Deos?-Varro Atacinus
[194] Fama orbem replet, mortem sors
occulit, at tu Desine scrutari quod tegit ossa solum. Si mihi dent animo non
impar fata speulcrum, Angusta est tumulo terra Britanna meo.
[195] Cernit ibi moestos et mortis honore
carentes Leucaspim, et Lyciae ductorem classis Orontem.-Eneid. vi.
[196] Lustravitque viros, dixitque novissima
verba.-Eceid.
[197] Hue tou anfrwpou
yuch tote shpou feiotath katafainetai, kai tote ti twn nellontwn prooora tote
gur ws eoike naliota eleuferutai.-Cyrus apud Xenoph. lib. viii. Instit.