THE RULES AND EXERCISES OF HOLY DYING

CHAP. 1:

A GENERAL PREPARATION TOWARDS A HOLY AND
BLESSED DEATH, BY WAY OF CONSIDERATION.

SECT. 1:

Consideration of the Vanity and Shortness of Man's Life.

            A MAN is a bubble, (said the Greek proverb,) which Lucian represents with advantages, to this purpose, saying, All the world is a storm, and men rise up in their several generations like bubbles descending from GOD and the dew of heaven, from a tear and drop of man, from nature and providence. And some of these instantly sink into the deluge of their first parent, and are hidden in a sheet of water, having had no other 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 than 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 darkness of the grave. But if the bubble stands the shock of a bigger drop, and outlives the chances of a child, then the young man dances like a bubble, empty and gay, and shines like the image of a rainbow, which has no substance, and whose very imagery and colors are fantastical; and so he dances out of the gaiety of his Youth, and is all the while in a storm, and endures, only because he is not knocked on head by a drop of bigger rain, or crushed by the pressure of a load of indigested meat, or quenched by the disorder of an ill-placed humor. And to preserve a man alive in the midst of so many chances and hostilities, is as great a miracle as to create him; to preserve him from rushing into nothing, 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. Homer 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 spoke by a more excellent spirit, saying, « Our life is but a vapour," 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 pleases the sun its foster-father. But it is lighter yet. It is but appearing; a fantastic

vapor, an apparition, nothing real.' It is not so much as a mist, not the matter of a shower, nor substantial enough to make a cloud; Thou cannot have a word that can signify a verier nothing. And yet the expression is made one degree more diminutive: a vapor, and phan­tastical, or a mere appearance, and this but for a little while; the very dream, the phantasm disappears in a small time, like the shadow that departeth, or like a tale that is told, or as a dream when one awaketh. A man is so vain, so unfixed, so perishing a creature, that he cannot long last in the scene of fancy. A man goes off, and is forgotten like the dream of a distracted person. The sum of all is this, Thou art a man, than whom there is not in the world any greater instance of lights and sha­dows, of misery and folly, of laughter and tears, of groans and death.

            And because this consideration is of great usefulness to many purposes of wisdom; 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, to every creature, does preach our funeral sermon, and calls us to look and see how the old sexton Time throws up the earth., and digs a grave, where we must lay our sins or our sorrows, and sow our bodies, till they rise again in a fair or in an intolerable eternity. Every revolution which the sun makes about the world, divides between life and death; and death possesses both those portions by the next morrow; and we are dead to all those months which we have already lived, and we shall never live them over again. And still GOD makes little periods of our age. First we change our world, when we come from the womb to feel the warmth of the sun. Then we sleep and enter into the image of death, in which state we are unconcerned in all the changes of the world; and if our mothers or our nurses die, or a wild boar destroy our vineyards, or our king be sick, we regard it not, but during that state, are 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 necessity become useless, and entangled like the

wheels of a broken clock. Baldness is but a dressing to our funerals, the proper ornament of mourning, and of a person entered very far into the regions of death. And we have many more of the same signification; grey 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 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 on death by those things which are the instruments of acting it. And GOD, by all the variety of his providence, makes us see death every where, in all variety of circumstances, and dressed up for all the fancies and the expectation of every single person. Nature has given us one harvest every year, but death has two: and the spring and autumn sends throngs of men and women to charnel-houses; and all the summer long men are recovering from their evils of the spring, till the dog-days come, and then 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 fruits 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 hind upon our graves. Calentures and surfeit, cold and agues, are the four quarters of the year, and all minister to death; and Thou can go no whither but Thou tread upon a dead man's bones.

            The wild fellow in Petronious, that escaped upon a broken table from the furies of a shipwreck, as he was sunning himself upon the rocky shore, espied a man rolling 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; That, peradventure, this man's wife, in some part of the continent, safe and warm, was looking for the good man's return next month; or, it might be, his son knew nothing of the tempest; or his father was thinking of that affectionate kiss which still was warm upon the good old man's cheek ever since he took a kind farewell, and he was weeping with joy to think how blessed he should be when his beloved boy returned 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, an 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.

            But seas alone do not break our vessels in pieces every where 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 an hearse; dying the night before he was appointed to perish in the drunkenness of his festival joys. It was a sad arrest of the feasts of the French court, when their king (Henry 2:) was killed really by the sportive image of a fight. And many brides have died under the hands of maidens dressing them for un­easy joys. Some have been paying their vows, and giving thanks for a prosperous return to their own houses, and the roof has 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 has quickly bound their heads and feet, and carried them forth to burial? Or else the birth-day of an heir has seen the coffin of the father brought into the house, and the divided mother has been forced to travail twice, with a painful birth, and a sadder death.

            There is no state, no accident, no circumstance of our life, but it has been soured by some sad instance of a dying friend. A friendly meeting often ends in some sad 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 every where, 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 damp of a mist; by the.emissions of a cloud, and the meeting of a vapor; 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, or water thawed into the floods of a river; by a hair or a raisin; by violent motion or sitting still; by GOD’s mercy or GOD’s anger; by every thing in providence, and every thing in manners; by every thing in nature and every thing in chance. 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 against them; but within the revolution of a few months, the same men met with a more uneasy and unpleasant 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, and end our quarrels and contentions by passing to a final sentence.

SECT. 2:
The Consideration reduced to Practice.

            It will be very material to our 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 sprightliness 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 unripe retirements, it began to put on darkness, and 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. The same is the portion of every man and every woman; the heritage of worms and ser­pents, rottenness and cold dishonor, and our beauty

so changed, that our acquaintance quickly know us not; and that change is mingled with so much horror, 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 honor. 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 back-bone full of serpents; and so he stands pic­tured among his armed ancestors. So does the fairest beauty change, and it will be as bad with Thou 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 unwholsome 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 practice the following rules and considerations:

            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 their cares, that by this time all that shall be left will be this, that the neighbors shall say, he died a rich. man. And yet his wealth will not profit him in the grave, but hugely swell the sad account. And he that kills the Lord's people with unjust or ambitious wars, shall have this character, 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 labors and affronts, many indigni­ties and crimes, labor 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 he unregarded as their ashes, and without concernment or relation, as the turf upon the face of their graves. A man may read a sermon, the best that ever man preached, if he shall but enter into the sepul­chres of kings. Where our kings have been crowned, their ancestors he 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 colors 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 Athena us concerning Ninus, the great Assyrian monarch, whose life and death is 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 was most valiant to eat and drink, and having mingled his wines, he threw the rest upon the stones. This man is dead: behold his sepulchre, and now hear where Ninus is. Sometime 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. 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 any thing that cam better represent the evil condition of a wicked man. 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 far distant events. This day is mine and Thours, but " we know not what we 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 phantoms that make a child to smile. So that we cannot discern what comes hereafter, 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. Whatsoever is disposed to happen, by the order of natural causes, or civil counsels, may be rescinded by a peculiar decree of-Providence, or be prevented by the death of the interested persons; who, while their hopes are full, and the work brought forward, and the sickle put into the harvest, 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.

            3. As our hopes must be confined, so must our de­signs. Let us not project long designs; the work of our soul is cut short, sweet, and plain, and fitted to the small portions of our shorter life. And as we must not trouble our inquiry, so neither must we intricate our labor 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 we do charity to our relatives. But such projects are reproved as discompose our present duty by long and future designs; such as, by casting our labors to events at a distance, make us less 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 is within our eye, and in our duty, and within the usual periods of man's life; for whatsoever is necessary is also 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 miserably we died. Consider how imprudent a person he is who disposes of ten years to come, when he is not lord of to-morrow.

            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, because it passes from us while we speak, and because in it all our certainty consists. 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 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. "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, as knowing the drink that was poured upon their graves would be cold and without relish. Christianity turns this into religion. For he that by a present and a constant holiness secures the present, and makes it useful to his' noblest purposes, turns his condition to his best advantage, by making his unavoidable fate be­come his necessary religion.

            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: 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 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.

SECT. 3:
Rules and Spiritual parts of lengthening our Days.

            In the accounts of a man's life we do not reckon thati portion of days in which we were shut up in the prison of the womb; we tell our years from the day of our birth. Arid 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 not, having but some little approaches and symp­toms-of 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 be esteemed to live the life of a -man? And when shall that account begin? For we should be, does 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, nor 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 an higher order, into the state of a man.

            2. Neither must we think that the life of a man begins when he can feed himself, or walk alone; when he can fight, or beget his like; for so he is contemporary with a camel or a cow. But he is first a man when he comes to a steady use of reason, according to his proportion; and when that is, all the world of men cannot tell precisely. Some are called at age at fourteen, some at one-and­ twenty, some never; but all men late enough, for the life of a man comes upon him slowly and. insensibly. But as when the sun approaches towards the gates of the morning, he first opens a little eye of heaven, and sends away the spirits of darkness, and gives light to a cock, and calls up the lark to mattens, 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 brow 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 flies and dogs, shells and play, horses and liberty: but when he is strong enough to enter into arts, and little institutions, he is at first entertained with trifles and impertinent things., not because he needs them, but because his understanding is no larger, 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 worn-out body. So that if we must not reckon the life of a man but by the accounts of his reason, it 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 to his well-being. But by that time his soul is thus furnished, his body is decayed; and then Thou can hardly reckon him to be alive, when his body is pos­sessed by so many degrees of death.

            3. But there is yet another arrest. At first he wants strength of body, and then he wants the use of reason, and when that is come, it is ten to one but he stops by the impediments of vice, and wants the strengths of the Spirit. Arid now let us consider what that thing is which we call years of discretion. The young man has passed his tutors, and arrived at the bondage of a caitiff spirit;. he has run from discipline, and is let loose to passion; the man by this time has wit enough to choose his vice, 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 has contracted vicious habits, and is a beast in manners, and therefore it will not be fitting to reckon this 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 has no life but a natural, the life of a beast or a tree; in all other capacities he is dead; he neither has 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, 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 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; and therefore they cannot attend to the things of God; little considering that they must find a time to die in; that 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 farther advanced in the course of life, Though he reckon many years; for still his soul is childish, and trifling like an untaught boy.

            If the parts of this sad complaint find their remedy, we have by the same means cured the evils and the vanity of a short life. Therefore,

            1. Be infinitely curious Thou do not set back Your life in the accounts of GOD by the intermingling criminal actions, or contracting 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.  Lust or rage, ambition or revenge, is a sword of safari put into the hands of a man. These are the destroying angels; sin is the Apollyon. the destroyer that is gone out, not from the Lord but from the tempter; and we hug the poison, and twist willingly with the vipers, till they bring us into the regions of an irrecoverable sorrow.

            We use to reckon persons as good as dead, if they have lost their limbs and their teeth, and are confined to an hospital, and converse with none but surgeons and phy­sicians, mourners and divines, those 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 hass, and set into a soft couch, asked his slaves, Do I now sit? The beast was so drowned in sensuality, and the death of his soul, that whether he did sit or not, he was to believe another. Idleness and every vice is as much of death as a long disease is, or the expense of ten years: and “she that lives in pleasures is dead while she lives," says 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 lives; so every deadly sin and every habitual vice quite destroys 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 dis­honors of the grave.

            2. If we would have our life lengthened, let us begin betimes to live in the accounts of reason and religion, 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 has given us in plenty, when we sacri­fice our Youth to folly, our manhood to lust and rage, our old age to covetousness and irreligion, riot beginning to live till we are to die, designing that time to virtue, which indeed is infirm to every thing and profitable to nothing; then we make our lives short, and lust runs away with all the vigorous part of it, and pride and animosity steal the manly portion, and craftiness and interest possess old age; we spend as if we had too much time, and knew not what to do with it. We fear every thing, 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 the 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. Our life is too short to serve the ambition of a haughty prince, or an usurping rebel; our time too little to purchase great wealth, to satisfy the pride of a vain­glorious fool, to trample upon all the enemies of our just or unjust interest: but for the obtaining virtue, for the actions of religion, GOD gives us time sufficient, if we make the out-goings 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 terriperate, modest and industrious, proceeding through a prudent and sober manhood to a religious old age; then we have lived our whole duration, and shall never die, but be changed in a just time to a better and an immortal life.

            2. If, besides the ordinary returns of our prayers, and periodical and festival solemnities, and our seldom com­munions, we would allow to religion and the studies of wisdom those great shares that are trifled away upon vain sorrow, foolish mirth, troublesome ambition, busy cove­tousness, watchful lust, and impertinent amours, and balls, and revellings, 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. 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 go out of his way. 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 sutler none of it to pass undiscerned; and then measure Your life, and tell me how Thou find the measure of its continuance. 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 seared 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, " Truce but till the morning;" and if a year, or some few months were given, those men think they could do miracles in it. And let us a while 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's chair, or at­tending as near the altar as he could get, or relieving poor Lazarus, or praying to GOD, and crucifying all his sins? I have read of a melancholic person who saw hell but in a dream or vision, and the amazement was such, that he would have chosen ten times to die rather than feel again so much horror; and it cannot be supposed but that such a person would spend a year in such holiness, that the religion of a few months would equal the devotion of many years. 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 we had performed such a religion, served GOD with so much holiness, mor­tified sin with so great labor, 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 has done all his business, and is begotten to a glorious hope by the seed of a Divine Spirit, can never die too soon, nor live too long.

Xerxes wept sadly when he saw his army of 2,3OO,OOO men, because he considered that within an hundred years all that army •would be dust and ashes. And yet, as Seneca well observes, he was the man that would bring them to their graves; and he consumed all that army in two sears, for whom he feared after an 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 custom, 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 satisfactions of Your hopes, or the stating Your desires; but let' every day and hour pass with observation. He that reckons he has lived but so many harvests, thinks they come not often enough, and that they go away too soon. Some lose the day with longing for the night, and the night in waiting for the day. Hope and phantastic expectations spend much of our lives; and, while with passion we look for a coronation, or the death of an enemy, or a day of joy, passing from fancy to possession without any intermedial notices, we throw away a precious year, and use it but as the burden of our time, fit to be pared off and thrown away, that: we may come at those little pleasures which first steal our hearts, and then steal our lives.

            5. A strict course of piety is the way to prolong our lives in the natural sense, and to add to the number of our years; and sin is sometimes by natural causality, very often by the anger of GOD, and the Divine judgment, a cause of sudden and untimely death. Concerning which I shall add nothing but only the observation of Epiphanius, that for 3332 years, 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 did first die, (I speak of natural death, and therefore Abel cannot be opposed to this observation) till 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, punishing his new-invented crime, by the untimely death of his son.

            6. But if I shall describe a living man, a man that has 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 has.   learn from Joshua 24: 2, that the progenitors of Abraham, and particularly Terah, served other gods in Ur of the Chaldees, but there appears to be no proof that he was the introducer of idolatry and image-worship in that country a man's growth. a He that can look upon death, and see its face with the same countenance with which he hears its story; that can endure all the labors of his life with his soul supporting his body; that can equally despise riches when he has them, and when he hash them not; that does nothing for opinion sake, but every thing for conscience, being as curious of his Thoughts as of his acting in markets and theatres, and is as much in awe of himself as of a whole assembly; he that knows GOD looks on, and who contrives his secret affairs as in the presence GOD and his holy angels; that loves his country, and obeys his prince, and desires and endeavors nothing more than that he may do honor to God:" this person may reckon his life to be the life of a man; 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 lives, as were the fifteen years to the days of Hezekiah.

THE RULES AND EXERCISES

CHAP. 2:

A GENERAL PREPARATION TOWARD A HOLY AND
BLESSED DEATH, BY WAY OF EXERCISE.

SECT. 1:

Three Precepts preparatory to an holy Death, to be
practiced in our whole Life.

            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. This was the advice of all the wise and good men of the world, who especially in the days and periods of their joy, chose to throw some ashes into their chalices, some sober remembrances of their fatal period.

            2. He that would die well, must all the days of his life lay up against the day of death; not only by the general provisions of holiness, 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 this 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 prize of his high calling. In order to this rule, we are to consider, what special graces we shall then need, and provide before hand a reserve of strength and mercy. Men in the course of their lives walk lazily and incau­tiously; and when they are revolved to the time of their dissolution, they have no mercies in store, no patience, no faith, no love of GOD, being without 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 put to it to stand firm upon the two feet of a Christian, faith and patience. When we ourselves are to turn our former discourses into pre­sent practice, and to feel what we never felt before; 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, immovable resolution. The same also is the case of patience. It concerns us therefore highly in the whole course of our lives, not only to accustom ourselves, to a patient suffering of injuries, affronts, persecutions, losses; but also, by assiduous and fervent prayer to GOD all our life long to call upon him to give us patience and great assistance, a strong faith and a confirmed hope, the Spirit of GOD and his holy angels assistants at that time, to resist and subdue the devil's temptations and assaults; and so to fortify our hearts, that they break not into in­tolerable sorrows and impatience, and end in wretched­ness and infidelity. But this is to be the work of our lives, as GOD gives us time, by succession, by parts and little periods. For it is very remarkable, that GOD has scattered the firmament with stars, as a man sows corn in his fields. He has made 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 strait-handed, and gives it to us, not as nature gives us rivers, enough to drown us, but drop by drop, minute after minute, so that we never can have two minutes together, but he takes away one when he gives us another. This should teach us to value our time, since GOD so values it, and by his distribution of it, tells us it is the most precious thing we have. Since therefore in the day of our death we can still have but the same little portion of this precious time, let us in every minute of our life, prepare for our death.

            3. He that desires to die happily, above all things must be careful that he do not live a soft, a delicate, and a voluptuous life; but a life severe, holy, and under the. discipline of the cross, a life of warfare, labor, and watchfulness. No man wants cause of tears and a daily sorrow. Let every man 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 has deserved the pains of hell. And by that time he has summed up all these labors and duties, all proper causes and acts of sorrow, he will find, that for secular joy and wantonness of spirit, there are not left many void spaces of his life. But besides this a delicate life is hugely contrary to the hopes of a blessed eternity. " Woe be to them that are at ease in Sion;" so it was said of old: and our blessed Lord said, " Woe be to Thou that laugh, for ye shall weep;" but, " Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted." Here or here­after we must have our portion of sorrows. " He that now goes on his way weeping, and bears forth good seed with him, shall doubtless come again with joy, and bring his sheaves with him." And certainly he that sadly considers the portion of Dives, and remembers that the account which Abraham gave him for the 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.

SECT. 2:

Of daily Examination of our Actions in the whole Course
of our Health, preparatory to our Death-bed.

He that will die well and happily, must dress his soul by a diligent and frequent scrutiny. He must 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.

            1. For if we consider the disorders of every day, the multitude of impertinent words, the time spent in vanity, the daily omissions of duty, the coldness of our prayers, the indifference of our spirits 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, our unsuspected sins in the managing a course of life certainly lawful, our little greedinesses in eating, 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 an infinite variety of cases that occur in the life of every man, and in all intercourses of life; from all this we shall find, that the computations of a man's life are 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.

            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 may 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 observations according as he makes his in­quiries and search after himself.

            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; 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 Thourselves, and Thou shall not be judged of the Lord." The way to prevent GOD’s anger, is to be angry with ourselves. 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.

SECT. 3:
General Considerations to enforce the former Practices.

            These are the general instruments of preparation, in order to an holy death; it will concern us all to use them diligently and speedily; for we must be long in doing that which must he 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. 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 cockle-shell; but he will fit in­struments to the dignity. Since heaven is so glorious a state, and so certainly designed for us, let us spend all that we have, all our passions and affections, all our study and industry, 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 upbraiding misery.

            To this purpose, I shall represent the state of (lying and dead men in the devout words of some of the fathers of the church.  When the sentence of death is decreed, and begins to be put in execution, it is sorrow enough to see or feel the sad accents of the agony and last contentions of the soul, and the reluctancies 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 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 stiffer; the nobler part, like the lord of the house, being assaulted by exterior rudenesses, and driven from all the out-works, at last faint and weary with short and frequent breathings, interrupted with the longer accents of sighs, without moisture, except the excrescencies of a spilt humor, 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. Mere 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 that which distinguishes them is this He that has lived a wicked life, if his conscience be alarmed, and he does not die like a wolf or a tiger, without sense or remorse of all his wildness and his injury, his beastly nature led, if he had but sense of what he is going to suffer, or what he may expect to be his portion; then we may imagine the terror of the abused fancies of such, how they see affrighting shapes, and because they fear them, they feel the gripes of devils, urging the un­willing souls from the embraces of their bodies, calling to the grave, and hasting to judgment, exhibiting great bills of uncancelled crimes, awakening and amazing their consciences, breaking all their hopes in pieces. Then " they look for some to have pity on them, but there is no man." No man dares be their pledge; " No man can redeem their souls," which now feel what they never feared. Then the tremblings and the sorrow, the memory of past sins, and the fear of future pains, and the sense of an angry GOD, and the presence of devils, consign them to the eternal company of all the damned and ac­cursed spirits. Then they want an angel for their guide, and the Holy Spirit for their Comforter, and a good con­science for their testimony, and CHRIST for their Advocate, and they die and are left in prisons of earth or air, in secret and -undiscerned regions, to weep and tremble, and infinitely to fear the coming of the day of CHRIST; at which time they shall be brought forth to change their condition into a worse, where they shall for ever feel more than we can believe or understand.

            But when a good man dies, one that has lived innocently, or made joy in heaven at his timely repent­ance, and in whose behalf the holy JESUS has interceded prosperously, and for whose interest " the Spirit makes interpellations with groans and sighs unutterable," and in whose defense 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; 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 was 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 lusts, 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 a 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, and instantly 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. 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.

CHAP. 3:

OF THE STATE OF SICKNESS, AND THE TEMPTATIONS
INCIDENT TO IT, WITH THEIR PROPER REMEDIES.

Of the State of Sickness.

            IF Adam had stood, he would not always have lived in this world: for this world was not a place capable of affording a dwelling to all those myriads of men and women which should have been born in all the gene­rations of eternal ages for so it must have been if man had not died at all. It is therefore certain man would 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.

SECT. 1:

Of the first Temptation proper to the State of Sickness, Impatience.

            Men that are in health are severe exactors of patience at the hands of them that are sick. 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 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. 2. Therefore silence and not com­plaining, are no parts of a sick man's duty, they are not necessary parts of patience. Abel's blood had a voice, and cried to God; and humility has a voice, and cries so loud to GOD that it pierces the clouds; and so has every sorrow and every sickness. And when a man cries out, and complains but according to his pain, it cannot be any part of a culpable impatience. 3. Some men's senses are so subtle, and their perceptions so quick, that the same load is double upon them to what it is to another person. And therefore, comparing the expressions of the one with the silence of the other, a different judgment cannot be made concerning their patience. 4. Nature, in some cases, has made cryings out 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 spirits 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 they 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 Savior suffered his, last and sharpest pang of sorrow, he cried out with a loud voice, and resolved to die, and did so.

SECT. II

Parts of Patience.

            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 sorrows, and turn our sickness into the state of devils and perishing souls. No affliction is greater than despair; for that is it which makes hell­fire, and turns a natural evil into an intolerable one; it hinders prayer, 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 exercise of patience, are, 1. Praying to GOD for help: 2. Sending for the guides of souls: 3. Using all holy exercises proper to that state which whoso does has not the impatience of despair.

            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 fallen angels, dis­pleased at GOD’s supremacy. Against this is opposed that part of patience, by which a man resigns himself into the hands of GOD, saying, with old Eli, "It is the Lord, let him do what he will;" and, "Thy will he done in earth, as it is in heaven:" and so the admiring GOD’s justice and wisdom does also fit the sick person for receiving GOD’s mercy, and secures him the more in the grace of God.

            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. Against it are opposed easiness of persuasion, aptness to take counsel. The acts of this part of patience are, 1. To obey our physicians: 2. Not to be ungentle and uneasy to the ministers and nurses that attend us; but to take their kind offices as sweetly as we can, and to bear their indiscretions contentedly and without dis­quietness within, or angry words without.

SECT. 3:
Remedies against Impatience, by Way of Exercise.

            1. The fittest means to enable us to esteem sickness tolerable is, to remember that which indeed makes it so; and that is, that GOD does minister proper aids and supports to every one of his servants whom he visits with his rod. He knows our needs; he pities our sorrows; he relieves our miseries; he supports our weaknesses; he bids us ask for help, and he promises to give us all that; and he usually gives us more.

            2. Prevent the violence and trouble of thy spirit by an act of thanksgiving; for which, in the worst of sicknesses, Thou can not want cause, especially if Thou rememberest that this pain is not an eternal pain. Bless GOD for that; but take heed also lest Thou so order thy affairs that Thou pass from hence to an eternal sorrow. If that be hard, this will be intolerable. But as for the present evil, a few days will end it.

            3. Remember that Thou art a man and a Christian. As the covenant of nature has made it necessary, so the covenant of grace has made it to be chosen by thee to be a suffering person. Either Thou must renounce thy religion, or submit to GOD, and thy portion of sufferings. And since our religion has made a covenant of sufferings, and the great business of our lives in 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. 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 he fit that Thou pray to GOD to give thee a discerning spirit, that Thou may rightly distinguish just necessity from the flattery and fondness of flesh and blood.

            5. Propound to thine eyes and heart the example of the holy JESUS upon the cross. He endured more for thee than Thou can, 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, our suffer­ings be conformable to his sufferings, we shall reign to­gether with him. The highway of the cross, which the King of sufferings has trodden before us, is the way to ease, to a kingdom.

            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 of thy pardon; and upon condition there may be peace with GOD, let any thing be welcome that he can send as its instrument or condition. Suffer therefore GOD to choose his own circumstances of adopting thee, and be content to be under discipline, when the reward of that is to become the Son of God. And if this be the effect or the design of GOD’s love to thee, let it be the 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 that GOD so intends it commonly is certain. If therefore Thou sub­mittest to it, Thou approvest of the Divine judgment. And no man can have cause to complain of any thing but of himself, if either he believes GOD to be just, or himself to be a sinner; if he either thinks he has deserved hell, or that this little may be a means to prevent the greater, and bring him to heaven.

SECT. 4:

Advantages of Sickness.

            1. I consider one of the great felicities of heaven con­sists in, an immunity from sin. Then we shall love GOD without mixture of malice, then we shall enjoy without envy; then we shall see fuller vessels running over with glory, and crowned with larger 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 love without fear, 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 fit to be joined to the musick of angels. And Though they sound harsh to our untuned ears and discomposed organs; yet those accents must needs be in themselves excellent which GOD loves to hear, and esteems them as prayers, and arguments of pity, instruments of 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. The flesh sits uneasy, 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 as rest­less as atoms in the sun.

            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, arid stops the light from coming in, arid takes the pictures down, those phantastic images of self-love, and gay remembrances of vain opi­nion. Then the spirit stoops into the sobrieties of humble Thoughts, and feels corruption chiding the forwardness of fancy, arid allaying the vapours of conceit. She lays aside all her remembrances of applauses, all her ignorant confidences, and cares only to know CHRIST JESUS, and him crucified; to know him plainly, and with much heartiness and simplicity.

            3. Next to these, as the soul is still undressing, she takes off the roughness of her anger and animosities, and receives the oil of mercies and forgiveness; fair interpre­tations and gentle answers, designs of reconcilement and Christian atonement. Wise men have said, that anger sticks to a man's nature inseparably. But GOD, that has found out remedies for all diseases, has so ordered the circumstances of man, that, in the worst sort of men, anger and great indignation consume and shrivel into little peevishness and uneasy accents of sickness; and in the better and more sanctified, it goes off in prayers, and alms, and solemn reconcilement.

            4. Sickness is in some sense eligible, because it is the opportunity and the proper scene of exercising some virtues. It is that agony in which men are tried for a crown. And if we remember what glorious things are spoken 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 if Thou will try the excellency, and feel the work of faith, place Thourself in a persecution, ride in a storm, let Your bones be broken with sorrow, and Your eye-lids loosened with sickness; let Your bread be dipped in tears, and all the daughters of musick be brought, low; then GOD tries Your faith. Can Thou then trust his goodness, and believe him to be a Father, when Thou groan under his rod? Can Thou rely upon all the strange propositions of Scripture, and be content to perish if they be not true? Can Thou receive comfort in the discourses of death and heaven, of immor­tality and the resurrection, of the death of CHRIST, and conforming to his sufferings? The truth is, there are but two great periods in which faith demonstrates itself to be a powerful and mighty grace: and they are the time of persecution and the approaches of death, for the passive part; and temptation for the active. In the days of pleasure, and the night of pain, faith is to fight, to contend for mastery. And faith overcomes all alluring temptations to sin, and all our weaknesses and faintings in our troubles. In our health and clearer days it is easy to talk of putting our trust in God; we readily trust in him for life when we have fair revenues, and for deli­verance when we are newly escaped. But let us come to sit upon the margin of our grave, and let a tyrant lean hard upon our fortunes, let the storm arise, and the keels toss till the cordage crack:-then can Thou believe, when Thou neither hear, nor see, nor feel any thing but objections? This is the proper work of sickness. Faith is then brought into the theatre, and so exercised, that if it abide but to the end of the contention, we may see that work of faith, which GOD will hugely crown. The same I say of hope, and 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. GOD has crowned the memory of Job with a wreath of glory, because he sat upon his dunghill wisely and tempe­rately; and his potsherd and groans, mingled with praises and justifications of GOD, pleased like an anthem sung by angels in the morning of the resurrection. GOD could

not choose but be pleased with the 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 resignation to the Divine pleasure, can delight in GOD’s severe dispensations, will have the transports of cherubims, when they enter into the joys of God.

SECT. 5:

The second Temptation proper to the State of Sickness,
Fear of Death, with its Remedies.

            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.

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, has 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 has designed every one, that there he may rest from the troubles of the world. 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 froward children.

            2. 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 Metelli, did ever any man amongst the wiset 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 an heap of stones was carried into an easier grave, they that made great lamentation over them wept for their own interest, and after the manner of men; but the martyrs were accounted happy, and their days kept solemnly, and their memories preserved in never-dying honors.

            3. But when we consider death is not only better than a miserable life, but also that it is a state of advantage, we shall have reason not to double the sharpnesses of our sickness by o-ur fear of death. To this all those argu­ments will minister which relate the advantages of the state of separation and resurrection.

SECT. VI

Remedies against the Fear of Death, by way of Exercise.

            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 lives at rest in his possessions, to a man that has nothing to vex him, and that has prospe­rity in all things?"

            2. He that would not fear death must strengthen his mind with Christian fortitude. 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 give offence or scandal. The effect of which is this, that he who is thus instructed to do the necessary parts of his duty, is by the same instrument fortified against death. As he that does his duty needs not fear death,

so neither shall he; the parts of his duty are parts of his security.

            3. If GOD should say to us, Cast thyself into the sea, (as CHRIST did to Peter, or as GOD concerning Jonas,) I have provided for thee a dolphin, or a whale, or a port, a safety, or a deliverance, were we not incredulous and pusillanimous persons, if we should tremble to put our­selves into possession? The very duty of resignation and the love of our own interest, are good antidotes against fear. There is no reason, if we be pious, but that we should really desire death, and account it among the good things of God. 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 who is afraid of death, either loves this world too much, or dares not trr.t GOD for the

next.

CHAP. 4:

OF THE PRACTICE OF THE GRACES PROPER TO THE
STATE OF SICKNESS.

SECT. 1:

Of the Practice of Patience.

            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; 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. But whatsoever the ingress was, when the man feels his blood boil, or his bones weary, or his flesh diseased, then he trust consider that all those discourses he has heard concerning patience, and resignation, and conformity to CHRIST's sufferings, must now be reduced to practice, and pass from contemplation to such an ex­ercise as will really try whether he was a true disciple of the cross. There would be no such thing as the grace of patience, if we were not to feel sickness; or enter into a state of sufferings: whither, when we are entered, we are to practice the following rules

            1. At the first address of sickness, stand still and arrest thy spirit, that it may, without amazement or affright, consider; this was that which Thou lookedst for, and vast always certain would happen, and that now Thou art to enter into the actions of a new religion. 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.

            2. Do not choose the kind of sickness, or the manner of thy death; but let it be what GOD shall please, so it be no greater than thy spirit or thy patience. And for that Thou art to rely upon the promise of GOD, and to secure thyself by prayer. But in all things else let GOD be thy chooser, and let it be thy work to submit indifferently, and attend thy duty.

            3. Be patient in the desires of religion, while Thou fearest that by less serving GOD, Thou runnest backwards in the favor of God. Be content that the time which was formerly spent in prayer be now spent in vomiting, and carefulness, and attendances: since GOD has 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 thy pain is great, lay all thy strength upon it to bear it patiently. When the evil is something more tolerable, let thy 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. If Thou can do more, do it; but if Thou can not, let it not become a scruple to thee. °Q If we cannot labor, yet let us love." Nothing can hinder us from that.

            4. Let not the smart of thy sickness make thee call vio­lently for death. Thou art not patient, unless Thou be content to live. GOD has wisely ordered it that we may be the better reconciled to death, because it is the period of many calamities. But wherever the general has placed thee, stir not from thy station until Thou art called off, but abide so, that death may come to thee by the design of him who intends it to be thy advantage. GOD has made sufferance 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.

SECT. 2:
Of the Practice of Faith in the Time of Sickness.

            Now is the time in which faith appears most necessary, and most difficult. It is the foundation of a good life, and the foundation of all our hopes; it is that without which we cannot live well, and without which we cannot die well. It is a grace that then we shall need to support our spirits, to sustain our hopes, to alleviate our sickness, to resist temptations, to prevent despair. The sick man may practice it in the following instances.

            1. Let the sick man he careful that he do not admit of any doubt concerning that which he believed in his best health. Above all things in the world, let the sick man fear a proposition which his sickness has put into him, contrary to the discourses of health and a sober untroubled mind.

            2. Let the sick man's faith especially he active about the promises of grace, and the excellent things of the gos­pel: things which can comfort him in his sorrows, and support 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 the advocateship of CHRIST, remission of sins, the resurrection, the mysterious acts 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. This is the article that has 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 if the sick man fix his Thoughts here, be swells his hope, and masters his fears, and eases his sorrows, and overcomes his temptations.

            3. 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, and by earnest prayer beg of GOD to guide him in certainty and safety. Consider that the article is better than all that is contrary or contradictory to it, 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 has deceived 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: " 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 eternal life through JESUS CHRIST.

THE RULES AND EXERCISES

SECT. 3:

Rules for the Practice of Repentance in Sickness.

            Let the sick man consider at what gate his sickness en­tered. And if he can discover the particular, let him instantly, passionately, and with great contrition, dash the crime in pieces, lest he descend into his grave in the midst of a sin, and thence remove into an ocean of eternal sorrow. But if he only suffers the common fate of man, and knows not the particular inlet, he is to be govered by the following measures

            1. Supply the imperfections of thy repentance by a general sorrow for the sins of thy whole life; for all sins, known and unknown, repented and unrepented of, sins of ignorance or infirmity, which Thou knows; 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.

            2. To this purpose it is usually advised by spiritual

persons, that the sick man should make an universal con­fession, or a 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.

            3. Now is the time beyond which the sick man must on no account defer to make restitution of all his unjust possessions, or other men's rights, and satisfactions for all injuries and violences, according to his obligation and possibilities.

            4. Let the sick person pour out many prayers of humili­ation and contrition for all those sins which are spiritual, and in which no restitution or satisfaction can be made.  For penitential prayers in some cases are the only instances of repentance that can be. 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 rescined or punished by a dying man but by hearty prayers.

SECT. 4:

Of the sick Man's Practice of Charity and Justice, in,
way of Rule.

            1. Let the sick man set his house in order before he die; state his cases of conscience, reconcile the fractures of his family, re-unite 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.

            2. Let the sick man discover every secret which he is acquainted with, of art, or profit, physic, or advantage to mankind, if he may do it without the prejudice of a third person. 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.

            3. Let him make his will with great justice and piety, that is, that the right heirs be not defrauded; 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. It is proper for the state of sickness, 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 entrusted to our executors as may be, except the lasting and successive portions; but with our own present care let us exercise the charity, and secure the stewardship.

            5. 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, arid care of him, he must needs find infinite matter of thanksgiving; and it is a proper act of love to GOD, and justice too, that he do honor to GOD on his death-bed for all the blessings of his life, not only in general communications, but those by which he has been distinguished from others, or sup­ported and blessed in his own person. So even Cyrus did upon the tops of the mountains, when by a phantasm he was warned of his approaching death. a 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 has 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 thy care of me, and have never exalted myself above my condition for any prosperous accident. And I pray that Thou wilt grant felicity to my wife, my children, and friends, and to me a death such as my life has been." 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.

CHAP. 5:

OF

VISITATION OF THE SICK.

SECT. 1:

            GOD, who has made no new covenant with dying persons, distinct from the covenant of the living, has also appointed no distinct sacraments for them, no other 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 of our soul, GOD has appointed his servants to minister to the necessities of souls, to bless, and prudently to guide, and wisely to judge concerning them; and the Holy Ghost, that anointing from above, descends upon us in several effluxes, but ever by the ministries of the church. What the children of Israel begged of Moses, that GOD "would no more speak to them alone, but by his servant Moses," lest they should be-consumed; GOD, in compliance with our infirmities, has of his own goodness established as a perpetual law in all ages of Christianity, that GOD will speak to us by his servants, 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 intercessions presented io 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, stewards and dispensers of the mysteries, and appointed to our souls to serve and lead, and to help in all 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 Thou? Let him send for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him."

SECT. 2:
Rules for the Visitations of Sick Persons.

            1. Let the minister be sent to, not only against the agony of 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, 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.

            2. The intercourses of the minister with the sick man has 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 person for his funeral is not it work to be despatched at one meeting. At one time he needs a comfort, and anon something to make him willing to die; and by. and by he is tempted to im­ patience, 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 be made acquainted with 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.

            3. When the ministers of religion are come, first let them do their ordinary offices; that is, pray for grace for the sick man, for patience, for resignation, for health, (if it seem 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 when the case is desperate, but before the sickness is come to its period. Let him discourse concerning the causes of sickness, and 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 has done, and to sup­ply all the defects of duty, as much as his past condition requires, and his present can admit. When he has made this general entrance to the work of many days, he may descend to particulars by the fol­lowing discourses.

SECT. 3:

Of ministering in the sick Man's Confession of Sins and Repentance.

            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 humors that need a lancet or a cautery. To this purpose the sick man may be reminded

            1. That GOD has 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." 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. 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, which they then renounced, abjured, and confessed to the apostles. 5. That without confession it cannot easily be judged concerning the sick person, whether his conscience ought to be troubled or not, and therefore it, cannot be certain that it is not necessary. 6. 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. 7. 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. 8. That in the matter of prudence, it is not safe to trust a man's self in the final condition of his soul, a man being no good judge in his own case and when a duty is so useful in all cases, so necessary in some, and encouraged by promises evangelical, b