THE
WHOLE WORKS
OF THE
RIGHT REV. JEREMY TAYLOR, D. D.
LORD BISHOP OF DOWN, CONNOR, AND DROMORE.
VOLUME IV.
CONTAINING
THE RULE AND EXERCISES OF HOLY LIVING
AND DYING.
THE
WHOLE WORKS
OF
THE RIGHT REV. JEREMY TAYLOR, D.D.
LORD BISHOP OF DOWN, CONNOR, AND DROMORE :
WITH
A LIFE OF THE AUTHOR,
AND
A CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF HIS WRITINGS,
BY
REGINALD HEBER, A.M.
CANON OF ST. ASAPH, RECTOR OF HODNET, AND LATE FELLOW
OF ALL souls' COLLEGE, OXFORD.
IN FIFTEEN VOLUMES.
VOL. IV.
LONDON:
OGLE, DUNCAN, AND CO. 37, PATERNOSTER ROW, AND 295, HOLBORN ;
AND RICHARD PRIESTLEY, 143, HIGH HOLBORN ;
J. PARKER, OXFORD ; AND DEIGHTON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE.
1822.
CONTENTS
OF
THE FOURTH VOLUME.
THE RULE AND EXERCLSES OF HOLY LIVING.
PAGE
Dedication • • • • • • • • • ♦ • • i
CHAP. I.
CONSIDERATION OF THE GENERAL INSTRUMENTS AND MEANS SERVING
TO A HOLY LIFE, BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION.
SECTION I.
The first General Instrument of Holy Living, Care of our Time 13
Rules for employing our Time ^»-^ • •- 16
The Benefits of this Exercise 22
SECTION II.
The second General Instrument of Holy Living, Purity of Intention • • • 22
Rules for our Intentions 24
Signs of Purity of Intention 27
SECTION III.
The third General Instrument of Holy Living'; or the Practice of the
Presence of God 30
Several Manners of the Divine i'resence 31
Rules of exercising this Consideration 34
The Benefits of this Exercise 37
Prayers and Devotions according to the Religion and Purposes of the
foregoing Considerations 39
For Grace to spend our Time well • ib.
a 2
vi CONTENTS.
VAGE
The first Pnivcrs in tlie Morning, as ^uon as we arc dressed 39
An Act of Adoration, being tlie Song that the Angels sing in Heaven- ■ 4U
An Act ot" Thanksgiving, being the Song of David for the Morning- • - - ili.
An Act of Olilation, or presenting ourselves to God for the Day 41
An Act of Repentance or Contrition ib.
Prayer or Petition 42
An Act of Intercession or Prayer for others, to be added to this or any
other Olfice, as our Devotion, or Duty, or their Needs, shall deter-
mine us ib.
For the Church ib.
For the King .- ib.
For the Clergy 43
For Wife or Husband ib.
For our Children ib.
For Friends and Benefactors ib.
For our Family ib.
For all in Misery 44
Another Form of Prayer, for the Morning ib.
An Ejaculation 46
An Exercise to be used at any Time of the Day ib.
Hymn, collected out of the Psalms, recounting the Excellencies and
Greatness of God ib.
Another Hymn 47
Ejaculations 48
Prayer ib.
A Form of Prayer for the Evening, to be said by such who have not
Time or Opportunity to say the public Prayers appointed for this
Ortice 50
Another Form of Evening Prayer, which may also be used at Bedtime 51
Ejaculations and short Meditations to be used in the Night, when we
wake 53
Ad Section II.] A Prayer for holy Intention in the Beginning and
Pursuit of any considerable Action, as Study, Preaching, &c. 55
Ad Section III.] A Prayer meditating and referring to the Divine Pre-
sence ib.
CHAP. II.
OF CHRISTIAN SOBRIETY.
SECTION I.
or Sobriety in the general Sense 56
]--vil Conscquencos of Voluptuousness or Sensualitv ib.
Degrees of Sol)rietv 57
Rules for suppressing Voluptuousness 5a
CONTENTS. vii
SECTION ir.
PAGE
OF Temperance in Eating and Drinking 60
Measures of Temperance in Eating G2
Signs and Effects of Temperance 63
Of Drunkenness 64
Evil Consequents of Drunkenness 65
Signs of Drunkenness 67
Rules for obtaining Temperance \- • • ib.
SECTION III.
Of Chastity 70
The evil Consequents of Uncleanness 72
Acts of Chastity in general 76
Acts of Virginal Chastity 77
Rules for Widows, or vidual Chastity • • - 78
Rules for married Persons, or matrimonial Chastity 79
Remedies against Uncleanness 82
SECTION IV.
Of Humility 85
Arguments against Pride, by way of Consideration 86
Acts or Offices of Humility 88
Means and Exercises for obtaining and increasing the Grace of Humility 93
Signs of Humility 98
SECTION V.
Of Modesty 99
Acts and Duties of Modesty, as it is opposed to Curiosity ib.
Acts of Modesty, as it is opposed to Boldness 102
Acts of Modesty, as it is opposed to Indecency 103
SECTiON VT.
Of Contentedness in all Estates and Accidents- • • 106
Instruments or Exercises to procure Contentedness 1 10
Means to obtain Content, by way of Considerations 120
i'overty, or a low Fortune 126
The Charge of many Children 131
Violent Necessities 132
Death of Chililriiu, or nearest Relatives and Friends 133
Untimely Death 134
Death unseasonable 136
Sudden Deatli, or violent 137
Being Childless ib.
Evil or Unfortunate Children 138
viii CONTENTS.
I'ACE
Our own Death 138
Prayers for the several Graces and Parts of Christian Sobriety 139
A Prayer against Sensuality ib-
For Temperance ib.
For Chastity: to be said tspeciaily l;y unmarried Persons 140
A Prayer for the Love of God, to be said by Virions and Widows, pro-
fessed or resolved so to live ; and may be used by luiv one ib.
A Prayer to be said by married Persons in behalf of themselves and
each otticr 141
A Prayer for the Grace of Humility ib.
Acts of Humility and Modesty, by way of Prayer and Meditation 142
A Prayer for a contented Spirit, and the Grace of Moderation and
Patience 143
CHAP. III.
OF CHRISTIAN JUSTICE.
SECTION I.
Of Obedience to our Superiors 145
Acts and Duties of Obedience to all our Superiors ib.
Remedies against Disobedience, and Means to endear our Obedience,
by way of Consideration 149
Degrees of Obedience 152
SECTION II.
Of Provision, or that Part of Justice which is due from Superiors to
Inferiors 153
Duties of Kings, and all the Supreme Power as Lawgivers ib.
The Duty of Superiors, as they are Judges 15G
The Duty of Parents to their Children 1 57
Rules for married Persons • 159
The Duty of Masters of Families 160
The Duty of Guardians or Tutors 161
SECTION III.
Of Negotiation, or Civil Contracts 161
Rules and Measures of Justicc'in Bargaining 162
SECTION IV.
Of Restitution 165
Rules of making llestitution 167
Prayers to be said, in relation to the several Obligations and Offices of
Justice — 172
CONTENTS. ix
PACE
A Prayer for the Grace of Obedience, to be said by all Persons under
Conmiand 172
Prayeis for Kings and all Magistrates, for our Parents, spiritual and
natural, are in the following Litanies, at the End of the Fourth
Chapter • 173
A Prayer to be said by Subjects, when their Land is invaded and over-
run by barbarous or wicked People, Enemies of the Religion or the
Government • ib.
A Prayer to be said by Kings or Magistrates, for themselves and their
People 175
A Prayer to be said by Parents for their Children 176
A Prayer to be said by Masters of Families, Curates, Tutors, or other
obliged Persons, for their Charges ib.
A Prayer to be said by Merchants, Tradesmen, and Handicraftsmen • • 177
A Prayer to be said by Debtors, and all Persons obliged, whether by
Crime or Contract ib.
A Prayer for Patron and Benefactors • 178
CHAP. IV.
OF CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
Of the Internal Actions of Religion 179
SECTION I.
Of Faith ' 180
The Acts and Offices of Faith ib.
Signs of True Faith * 181
The Means and Instruments to obtain Faith 184-
SECTION II.
Of the Hope of a Christian •- 185
The Acts of Hope 186
Rules to govern our Hope 187
Means of Hope, and Remedies against Despair 188
SECTION III.
Of Charity, or the Love of God 1^3
The Acts of Love to God l^"*
The Measures and Rules of Divine Love ' • • 19^
Helps to increase our Love to God, by way of Exercise 197
The two States of Love to God ^^^
Cautions and Rules concerning Zeal '^^^
Of the External Actions of Religion 202
X CONTENTS.
SECTION IV.
PAGE
Of Reading or Hearing the Word of God 203
Rules for Hearing or Reading the Word of God 205
Advice concerning Spiritual Books and Ordinary Sermons 20G
SECTION V.
Of Fasting 207
Rules for Christian Fasting ib.
The Benefits of Fasting 212
SECTION VI.
Of keeping Festivals, and Days holy to the Lord ; particularly the
Lord's Day • • - 212
Receiving the blessed Sacrament 217
SECTION VII.
Of Prayer • • - .» 2 17
Motives to Prayer 218
Rules for the Practice of Prayer 219
Cautions for making Vows 225
Remedies against Wandering Thoughts in Prayer 226
Signs of Tediousness of Spirit in our Prayers and all Actions of Religion 228
Remedies against Tediousness of Spirit 229
SECTION VIII.
Of Alms • • 232
Works of Mercy, or the several Kinds of Corporeal Alms 233
Works of Spiritual Alms and Mercy 234
Rules for giving Alms 235
Motives to Charity 241
Remedies against Unmercifulness and Uncharitableness 243
1. Against Envy, by way of Consideratiou ib.
2. Remedies against Anger, by way of Exercise 244
Remedies against Anger, by way of Consideratiou 247
3. Remedies against Covetousness, the third Enemy of Mercy 249
SECTION IX.
Of Repentance .-.- 255
Acts and Parts of Repentance 257
Motives to Repentance • • •- 263
CONTENTS. xi
SECTION X.
PAGE
Of Preparation to, and the Manner how to receive the Holy Sacrament
of the Lord's Supper 209
The Effects and Benefits of worthy Coinnmnicating 273
Prayers for all Sorts of Men and all Necessities ; relating to the several
Parts of the Virtue of Religion • • •, 274
A Prayer for the Graces of Faith, Hope, Charity ib.
Acts of Love, by way of Prayer and Ejaculation; to be used in Private 275
A Prayer to be said in any Affliction, as Death of Children, of Husband
or Wife, in great Poverty, in Imprisonment, in a Sad and Disconso-
late Spirit, and in Temptations to Despair 276
Ejaculations and short Meditations to be used in Time of Sickness and
Sorrow, or Danger of Death 277
An Act of Faith concerning the Resurrection and the Day of Judgment,
to be said by Sick Persons, or meditated 278
Short Prayers to be said by Sick Persons ib.
Acts of Hope, to be used by Sick Persons after a Pious Life 281
A Prayer to be said in behalf of a Sick or Dying Person ib.
A Prayer to be said in a Storm at Sea 282
An Act of Resignation • • 283
A Form of a Vow in the Time of Danger ib.
A Form of a Prayer to be used for a Blessing on an Enterprise ib.
A Prayer before a Journey 284
Ad Section IV.] A Prayer to be said before the Hearing or Reading
the Word of God ib.
Ad Section V. IX. X.] A Form of Confession of Sins and Repentance,
to be used upon Fasting Days, or Days of Humiliation ; especially in
Lent, and before the Holy Sacrament ib.
Prayer • 287
[1.] Ex Liturgia S. Basilii magna ex parte 288
A short Form of Thanksgiving to be said upon any Special Deliverance,
as from Childbirth, from Sickness, from Battle, or imminent Danger
at Sea or Land, &c. • • 293
A Prayer of Thanksgiving after the receiving of some great Blessing, as
the Birth of an Heir, the Success of an honest Design, a V^ictory, a
good Harvest, &c. 294
A Prayer to be said on the Feast of Christmas, or the Birth of our
Blessed Saviour Jesus : the same also may be said upon the Feast of
the Annunciation and Purification of the B. Virgin Mary 295
A Prayer to be said upon our Birth-Day, or Day of Baptism 296
A Prayer to be said upon the Days of the Memory of Apostles, Martyrs,
&c. 297
A Form of Prayer recording all the Parts and Mysteries of Christ's
Passion, being a short History of it : to be used especially in the
Week of the Passion, and before the receiving of the Blessed Sacra-
ment " 298
Prayer 301
xil CONTENTS.
PACi:
Ad Section VII. VIII. X.J A Form of Prayer or Intercession for all
Estates of People in the Christian Church. The Parts of which may
be added to any other Forms : and the whole Office, entirely as it lies,
is proper to be said in our Preparation to the Holy Sacrament, or on
the Day of Celebration S02
1. For Ourselves ib.
2. For the whole Catholic Church ib.
3. For all Christian Kings, Princes, and Governors 303
4. For all the Orders of them that minister about holy Things ib.
5. For our nearest Relatives, as Husband, Wife, Children, Family, &c. 3t)4
6. For our Parents, our Kindred in the Flesh, our Friends and Bene-
factors ib.
7. For all that lie under the Rod of War, Famine, Pestilence: to be said
in the Time of Plague, or War, &c. 305
8. For all Women with Child, and for Unborn Children ib,
9. For all Estates of Men and Women in the Christian Church 306
Ad Section X.] The Manner of using these Devotions, by way of Pre-
paration to the receiving the blessed Sacrament of the Lord's Supper* • 307
A Prayer of Preparation or Address to the holy Sacrament 308
An Act of Love ib.
An Act of Desire ib.
An Act of Contrition 309
An Act of Faith ib.
Petition 3 10
Ejaculations to be said before, or at, the receiving the holy Sacrament ib.
Ejaculations to be used any time that Day, after the Solemnity is ended 313
CONTENTS
OF THE
RULE AND EXERCISES OF HOLY DYING.
CHAP. I.
A GENERAL PREPARATION TOWARDS A HOLY AND BLESSED DEATH,
BY WAY OF CONSIDERATION.
SECTION I.
PAGE
Consideration of the Vanity and Shortness of Man's Life 333
SECTION II.
The Consideration reduced to Practice 342
SECTION III,
Rules and Spiritual Arts of lengthening our Days, and to take off the
Objection of a Short Life 349
SECTION IV.
Consideration of the Miseries of Man's Life 359
SECTION V.
The Consideration reduced to Practice 365
CHAP. II.
A GENERAL PREPARATION TOWARDS A HOLY AND BLESSED DEATH,
BY WAY OF EXERCISE.
SECTION I.
Three Precepts preparatory to a holy Death, to be practised in our
whole Life • 308
xiv CONTENTS.
SECTION II.
PAGE
Of Daily Examination of our Actions in the whole Course of our Health,
preparatory to our Death- bed 373
Reasons for a Daily Examination ib.
The Benefits of this Exercise 37 6
SECTION III.
Of exercising Charity during our whole Life 38 1
SECTION IV.
General Considerations to enforce the former Practices 384
The Circumstances of a Dying Man's Sorrow and Danger 385
CHAP. III.
OF THE STATE OF SICKNESS, AND THE TEMPTATIONS INCIDENT TO IT,
WITH THEIR PROPER REMEDIES.
SECTION I.
Of the State of Sickness 389
SECTION II.
Of the fust Temptation proper to the State of Sickness, Impatience • • • 392
SECTION III.
Constituent or integral Parts of Patience • • . • 394
SECTION IV.
Remedies against Impatience, by way of Consideration 39G
SECTION V.
Remedies against Impatience, by way of Exercise 404
SECTION VI.
Advantages of Sickness 408 /
SECTION VII.
The second Temptation proper to the State of Sickness, Fear of Death,
with its Remedies 423
Remedies against the Fear of Death, by way of Consideration 423
CONTENTS. XV
SECTION VIII.
Page
llemedies against Fear of Death, 1)y way of Exercise- •-• • • • • 430
SECTION IX.
General Rules and Exercises whereby our Sickness may become safe
and sanctified - . ►^ 43G
CHAP. IV.
OF THE PRACTICE OF THE GRACES PROPER TO THE STATE OF SICKNESS
WHICH A SICK MAN MAY PRACTISE ALONE.
SECTION I.
Of the Practice of Patience • • • • 415
The Practice and Acts of Patience, by way of Rule • 446
SECTION II.
Acts of Patience, by way of Prayer and Ejaculation 452
The Prayer to be said in the Beginning of a Sickness 456
An Act of Resignation, to be said by a Sick Person in all the evil Acci-
dents of his Sickness • • • 457
A Prayer for the Grace of Patience- • • • • 458
A Prayer to be said when the Sick Man takes Physic • • . - 459
SECTION III.
Of the Practice of the Grace of Faith, in the Time of Sickness 460
SECTION IV.
Acts of Faith, by way of Prayer and Ejaculation, to be said by Sick
Men in the Days of their Temptation 464
The Prayer for the Grace and Strengths of Faith 466
SECTION V.
Of the Practice of the Grace of Repentance in the Time of Sickness • • 467
SECTION \T.
Rules for the Practice of Repentance in Sickness 472
Means of exciting Contrition, or Repentance of Sins, proceeding from
the Love of God •• 475
XV i CONTENTS.
SECTION VII.
Page
Acts of Repentance, by way of Prayer and Ejaculation, to he used
especially by Old Men in their Age, and by all Men in their Sickness 480
A Prayer for the Grace and Perfection of Repentance 482
A Prayer for Pardon of Sins, to be said frequently in Time of Sickness,
and in all the Portions of Old Age 48^
An Act of holy Resolution of Amendment of Life, in case of
Recovery 485
SECTION VIIL
An Analysis, or Resolution of the Decalogue, and the special Precepts
of the Gospel, describing the Duties enjoined, and the Sins forbidden
respectively; for the Assistance of Sick Men in making their Confes-
sions to Gud and his Ministers, and the rendering their Repentance
more particular and perfect • • 486
I. Comm. Thou shalt have none other Gods but me ib.
II. Comm. Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven Image, nor wor-
ship it 488
III. Comm. Thou shalt not take God's Name m vain ib.
IV. Comm. Remember that thou keep holy the Sabbath Day 489
V. Comm. Honour thy Father and thy Mother 490
VI. Comm. Thou shalt do no Murder 491
VII. Comm. Thou shalt not commit Adultery ib.
VIII. Comm. Thou shalt not Steal 492
IX. Comm. Thou sliait nut bear False Witness ib.
X. Comm. Thou shalt not Covet • ib.
The special Precepts of the Gospel 493
SECTION IX.
Of the Sick Man's Practice of Charity and Justice, by way of Rule- • • • 496
SECTION X.
Acts of Charity, by way of Prayer and Ejaculation ; which may also be
used fur Thanksgiving, in case of Recovery 501
Prayer 503
CHAP. V.
OF VISITATION OF THE SICK : OR TIIK ASSISTANCE THAT IS TO HE DONE TO
DYING PERSONS BY THE MINISTRY' OF THEIR CI.EUGY GUIDES.
SECTION I.
General Observations 504
CONTENTS. xvii
SECTION II.
PAGE
Rules for the Manner of Visitation of Sick Persons 50G
SECTION III.
Of ministering in the Sick Man's Confession of Sins and Repentance • • 310
Arguments uiiil Exhortations to move the Sick Man to Confession of Sins ib.
Instruments by way of Consideration, to awaken a careless Person, and
a stupid Conscience • • 513
SECTION IV.
Of the ministering to the Restitution and Pardon, or Reconciliation of
the Sick Person, by administering the Holy Sacrament • • • • • • 523
SECTION V.
Of ministering to the Sick Person by the Spiritual Man, as he is the
Physician of Souls- • 533
Considerations against unreasonable Fears of not having our Sins
pardoned • ib.
An Exercise against Despair in the Day of our Death 540
SECTION VI.
Considerations against Presumption 54G
SECTION VII.
Offices to be said by the Minister, in his Visitation of the Sick 549
A Prayer to be said by the Priest secretly • ib.
A Psalui ib.
Another Prayer 550
A Prayer to be said by the Standers-by 553
Another Prayer 555
Ejaculations 556
The Blessing 557
The Doxology ib.
A Prayer to be said in the Case of a sudden Surprise by Death, as by a
mortal Wound, or evil Accidents in Childbirth, when the Forms and
Solemnities of Preparation cannot be used 559
SECTION VIII.
A Peroration concerning the Contingencies and Treatings of our de-
parted Friends after Death, in order to their Burial, &c. 560
TO
The right honourable
AND TRULY NOBLE
RICHARD LORD VAUGHAN,
EARL OF CARBERY, KNIGHT OF THE HONOURABLE
ORDER OF THE BATH.
MY LORD,
1 HAVE lived to see religion painted upOn banners,
and thrust out of churches, and the temple turned
into a tabernacle, and that tabernacle made ambula-
tory, and covered with skins of beasts and torn cur-
tains, and God to be worshipped, not as he is " the
father of our Lord Jesus" (an afflicted prince, the king
of sufferings), nor as the ** God of peace," (which two
appellatives God newly took upon him in the New
Testament, and glories in for ever :) but he is owned
now rather as " the Lord of Hosts," which title he was
pleased to lay aside, when the kingdom of the gospel
was preached by the Prince of peace. But when
religion puts on armour, and God is not acknow-
ledged by his New Testament titles, religion may
have in it the power of the sword, but not the power
VOL. IV. B
11 DEDICATIOX.
of godliness ; and we may complain of this to God,
and amongst them that are afflicted, but we have no
remedy, but what we must expect from the fellow-
ship of Christ's sufferings, and the returns of the
God of peace. In the mean time, and now that re-
ligion pretends to stranger actions upon new prin-
ciples, and men are apt to prefer a prosperous error
before an afflicted truth, and some will think they
are religious enough, if their worshippings have in
them the prevailing ingredient; and the ministers of
religion are so scattered, that they cannot unite to
stop the inundation, and from chairs or pulpits, from
their synods or tribunals, chastise the iniquity of the
error, and the ambition of evil guides, and the infi-
delity of the willingly-seduced multitude, and that
those few good people, who have no other plot in
their religion but to serve God and save their souls,
do want such assistances of ghostly counsel, as may
serve their emergent needs, and assist their endea-
vours in the acquist of virtues, and relieve their
dangers, when they are tempted to sin and death ;
I thought I had reasons enough inviting me to draw
into one body those advices, which the several ne-
cessities of many men must use at some time or
other, and many of them daily: that by a collection
of holy precepts they might less feel the want of
personal and attending guides, and that the rules for
conduct of souls might be committed to a book,
which they might always have ; since they could not
DEDICATION. Ill
always have a prophet at their needs, nor be suffered
to go up to the house of the Lord to inquire of the
appointed oracles.
I know, my Lord, that there are some interested
persons, who add scorn to the afflictions of the
church of England, and because she is afflicted by
men, call her " forsaken of the Lord;" and because
her solemn assemblies are scattered, think that the
religion is lost, and the church divorced from God,
supposing Christ (who was a man of sorrows) to be
angry with his spouse when she is, like him, [for that
is the true state of the error] and that he, who pro-
mised his Spirit to assist his servants in their trou-
bles, will, because they are in trouble, take away
the Comforter from them ; who cannot be a comforter,
but while he cures our sadnesses, and relieves our
sorrows, and turns our persecutions into joys, and
crowns, and sceptres. But concerning the present
state of the church of England, I consider, that be-
cause Ave now want the blessings of external com-
munion in many degrees, and the circumstances of a
prosperous and unafflicted people, we are to take
estimate of ourselves with single judgments, and
every man is to give sentence concerning the state
of his own soul by the precepts and rules of our
law-giver, not by the after-decrees and usages of the
church ; that is, by the essential parts of religion, ra-
ther than by the uncertain significations of any ex-
terior adherencies : for though it be uncertain, when
b2
IV DEDICATIOX,
a man is the member of a church, whether he be a
member to Christ or no, because in the church's
net there are fishes good and bad ; yet we may be
sure, that, if we be members of Christ, we are of a
church to all purposes of spiritual religion and sal-
vation ; and, in order to this, give me leave to speak
this great truth.
That man does certainly belong to God, who 1.
believes and is baptized into all the articles of the
Christian faith, and studies to improve his know-
ledge in the matters of God, so as may best make
him to live a holy life. 2. He that, in obedience
to Christ, worships God diligently, frequently, and
constantly, with natural religion, that is of prayer,
praises, and thanksgiving. 3. He that takes all op-
portunities to remember Christ's death by a frequent
sacrament (as it can be had ; ) or else by inward acts
of understanding, will, and memory (which is the spi-
ritual communion), supplies the want of the external
rite. 4. He that lives chastely; 5. And is merciful;
6. And despises the world, using it as a man, but
never suffering it to rifle a duty; 7. And is just in
his dealing, and diligent in his calling. 8. He that
is humble in his spirit, 9. And obedient to govern-
ment, 10. And content in his fortune and employ-
ment. 1 1 . He that does his duty because he loves
God; 12. And especially, if, after all this, he be af-
flicted, and patient, or prepared to suffer affliction
for the cause of God: the man that hath these
DEDICATION. V
twelve signs of grace and predestination, does as cer-
tainly belong to God, and is his son, as surely as he
is his creature.
And if my brethren in persecujipn, and in the
bonds of the Lord Jesus, can truly shew these marks,
they shall not need be troubled, that others can shew
a prosperous outside, great revenues, public assem-
blies, uninterrupted successions of bishops, prevail-
ing armies, or any arm of flesh, or less certain cir-
cumstance. These are the marks of the Lord Jesus,
and the characters of a Christian : this is a good re-
ligion ; and these things God's grace hath put into
our powers, and God's laws have made to be our
duty, and the nature of men, and the needs of com-
monwealths, have made to be necessary. The other
accidents and pomps of a church are things without
our power, and are not in our choice : they are good
to be used, when they may be had, and they help to
illustrate or advantage it : but if any of them con-
stitute a church in the being of a society and a go-
vernment, yet they are not of its constitution, as it
is Christian, and hopes to be saved.
And now the case is so with us, that we are re-
duced to that religion, which no man can forbid ;
which we can keep in the midst of a persecution ;
by which the martyrs, in the days of our fathers,
went to heaven; that, by which we can be servants
of God, and receive the spirit of Christ, and make
use of his comforts, and live in his love, and in
VI DEDICATION'.
charity with all men : and they that do so, cannot
perish.
My Lord, I have now described some general lines
and features of that religion, which I have more par-
ticularly set down in the following pages : in which
I have neither served nor disserved the interest of
any party of Christians, as they are divided by un-
charitable names from the rest of their brethren; and
no man will have reason to be angry with me for re-
fusing to mingle in his unnecessary or vicious quar-
rels ; especially while I study to do him good by
conducting him in the narrow way to heaven, with-
out intricating him in the labyrinths and wild turn-
ings of questions and uncertain talkings. I have told
what men ought to do, and by what means they may
be assisted; and in most cases, I have also told them
why : and yet with as much quickness, as I could
think necessary to establish a rule, and not to engage
in homily or discourse. In the use of which rules,
although they are plain, useful, and fitted for the best
and worst understandings, and for the needs of all
men, yet I shall desire the reader to proceed with
the following advices.
1 . They that will with profit make use of the pro-
per instruments of virtue, must so live, as if they
were always under the physician's hand. For the
counsels of religion are not to be applied to the dis-
tempers of the soul, as men used to take hellebore ;
but they must dwell together with the spirit of a man,
DEDICATION. Vll
and be twisted about his understanding for ever:
they must be used like nourishment, that is, by a
daily care and meditation ; not like a single medicine,
and upon the actual pressure of a present necessity.
For counsels and wise discourses, applied to an ac-
tual distemper, at the best are but like strong smells
to an epileptic person ; sometimes they may raise
him, but they never cure him. The following rules,
if they be made familiar to our natures and the
thoughts of every day, may make virtue and religion
become easy and habitual ; but when the temptation
is present, and hath already seized upon some por-
tions of our consent, we are not so apt to be coun-
selled, and we find no gust or relish in the precept ;
the lessons are the same, but the instrument is un-
strung or out of tune.
2. In using the instruments of virtue, we must be
curious to distinguish instruments from duties, and
prudent advices from necessary injunctions; and if
by any other means the duty can be secured, let
there be no scruples stirred concerning any other
helps : only, if they can, in that case, strengthen and
secure the duty, or help towards perseverance, let
them serve in that station, in which they can be
placed. For there are some persons, in whom the
Spirit of God hath breathed so bright a flame of love,
that they do all their acts of virtue by perfect choice
and without objection, and their zeal is warmer, than
that it will be allayed by temptation : and to such
Vlll DEDICATIOX.
persons mortification by philosophical instruments,
as fasting, sackcloth, and other rudenesses to the
body, is wholly useless ; it is always a more uncer-
tain means to acquire any virtue, or secure any duty ;
and if love hath filled all the corners of our soul, it
alone is able to do all the work of God.
3. Be not nice in stating the obligations of religion ;
but where the duty is necessary, and the means very
reasonable in itself, dispute not too busily, whether,
in all circumstances, it can fit thy particular ; but
** super totam materiam," upon the whole, make use
of it. For it is a good sign of a great religion, and
no imprudence, when we have sufficiently considered
the substance of affairs, then to be easy, humble,
obedient, apt, and credulous in the circumstances,
which are appointed to us, in particular, by our spi-
ritual guides ; or, in general, by all wise men in cases
not unlike. He that gives alms, does best not always
to consider the minutes and strict measures of his
ability, but to give freely, incuriously, and abun-
dantly. A man must not weigh grains in the ac-
counts of his repentance ; but for a great sin have a
great sorrow, and a great severity, and in this take
the ordinary advices ; though, it may be, a less rigour
might not be insufficient : a/cf>«|3oSi/catov, or arithmeti-
cal measures, especially of our own proportioning,
are but arguments of want of love and of forwardness
in religion ; or else are instruments of scruple, and
then become dangerous. Use the rule heartily and
DEUICATIOX. IX
enough, and there will be no harm in thy error, if any
should happen.
4. If thou intendest heartily to serve God, and
avoid sin in any one instance, refuse not the hardest
and most severe advice, that is prescribed in order
to it, though possibly it be a stranger to thee ; for
whatsoever it be, custom will make it easy.
5. When many instruments for the obtaining any
virtue, or restraining any vice, are propounded, ob-
serve which of them fits thy person, or the circum-
stances of thy need, and use it rather than the other;
that by this means thou mayest be engaged to watch,
and use spiritual arts and observation about thy soul.
Concerning the managing of which, as the interest is
greater, so the necessities are more, and the cases
more intricate, and the accidents and dangers greater
and more importunate ; and there is greater skill re-
quired, than in the securing an estate, or restoring
health to an infirm body. I wish all men in the
world did heartily believe so much of this, as is true ;
it would very much help to do the work of God.
Thus, my Lord, 1 have made bold by your hand
to reach out this little scroll of cautions to all those,
who, by seeing your honoured names set before my
book, shall, by the fairness of such a frontispiece, be
invited to look into it. I must confess, it cannot but
look like a design in me, to borrow your name and
beg your patronage to my book, that, if there be no
other worth in it, yet at least it may have the splen-
X DEDICATION.
dour and warmth of a burning-glass, which, borrow-
ing a flame from the eye of Heaven, shines and burns
by the rays of the sun its patron. I will not quit my-
self from the suspicion : for I cannot pretend it to be
a present either of itself fit to be oifered to such a
personage, or any part of a just return; but I humbly
desire, you would own it for an acknowledgment of
those great endearments and noblest usages, you
have past upon me : but so, men in their religion
give a piece of gum, or the fat of a cheap lamb, in
sacrifice to Him, that gives them all that they have or
need : and unless He, who was pleased to employ
your Lordship, as a great minister of his providence,
in making a promise of his good to me, the meanest
of his servants, " that he would never leave me nor
forsake me," shall enable me, by greater services of
religion, to pay my great debt to your honour, I must
still increase my score ; since I shall now spend as
much in my needs of pardon for this boldness, as in
the reception of those favours, by which I stand ac-
countable to your Lordship in all the bands of service
and gratitude ; though I am, in the deepest sense of
duty and affection.
My most honoured Lord,
Your Honour's most obliged.
And most humble Servant,
JER. TAYLOR.
THE
RULE AND EXERCISES
OF
HOLY LIVING, &c.
CHAP. I.
CONSIDERATION OF THE GENERAL INSTRUMENTS AND
MEANS SERVING TO A HOLY LIFE, BY WAY OF INTRO-
DUCTION.
It is necessary, that every man should consider, that, since
God hath given him an excellent nature, wisdom, and choice,
an understanding soul, and an immortal spirit, having made
him lord over the beasts, and but a little lower than the an-
gels ; he hath also appointed for him a work and a service
great enough to employ those abilities, and hath also designed
him to a state of life after this, to which he can only arrive
by that service and obedience. And therefore, as every man
is wholly God's own portion by the title of creation, so all
our labours and care, all our powers and faculties, must be
wholly employed in the service of God, and even all the days
of our life ; that, this life being ended, we may live with him
for ever.
Neither is it sufficient, that we think of the service of God
as a work of the least necessity, or of small employment, but
that it be done by us as God intended it; that it be done
with great earnestness and passion, with much zeal and de-
sire; that we refuse no labour, that we bestow upon it much
time ; that we use the best guides, and arrive at the end of
glory by all the ways of grace, of prudence, and religion.
And indeed, if we consider how much of our lives is taken
up by the needs of nature ; how many years are wholly spent.
12 THE INTRODUCTION TO HOLY LIFE.
before we come to any use of reason ; how many years more,
before that reason is useful to us to any great purposes ; how
imperfect our discourse is made by our evil education, false
principles, ill company, bad examples, and want of expe-
rience ; how many parts of our wisest and best years are spent
in eating and sleeping, in necessary businesses and unneces-
sary vanities, in worldly civilities and less useful circum-
stances, in the learning arts and sciences, languages or
trades; that little portion of hours, that is left for the prac-
tices of piety and religious walking with God, is so short and
trifling, that, were not the goodness of God infinitely great,
it might seem unreasonable or impossible for us to expect of
him eternal joys in heaven, even after the well spending those
few minutes, which are left for God and God*s service,, after
we have served ourselves and our own occasions.
And yet it is considerable, that the fruit, which comes
from the many days of recreation and vanity, is very little ;
and, although we scatter much, yet we gather but little
profit: but from the few hours we spend in prayer and the
exercises of a pious life, the return is great and profitable ;
and what we sow in the minutes and spare portions of a few
years, grows up to crowns and sceptres in a happy and a
glorious eternity.
1. Therefore, although it cannot be enjoined, that the
greatest part of our time be spent in the direct actions of
devotion and religion, yet it will become, not only a duty,
but also a great providence, to lay aside for the services of
God and the businesses of the Spirit, as much as we can;
because God rewards oiir minutes with long and eternal
happiness ; and the greater portion of our time we give to
God, the more we treasure up for ourselves; and "No man
is a better merchant than he, that lays out his time upon God,
and his money upon the poor."
2. Only it becomes us to remiember, and to adore God's
goodness for it, that God hath not only permitted us to serve
the necessities of our nat ure, but hath made them to become
parts of our duty ; that if we, by directing these actions to
the glory of God, intend them as instruments id continue
our persons in his service, he, by adopting them into reli-
gion, may turn our nature into grace, and accept our natural
actions as actions of religion. God is pleased to esteem it
CARE OF OUR TIME. 13
for a part of his service% if we eat or drink; so it be done
temperately, and as may best preserve our heabli, that our
health may enable our services towards him : and there is
no one minute of our lives (after we are come to the use of
reason), but we are or may be doing the work of God, even
then, when we most of all serve ourselves.
3. To which if we add, that in these and all other actions
of our lives we always stand before God, acting, and speak-
ing, and thinking in his presence, and that it matters not
that our conscience is sealed with secrecy, since it lies open
to God ; it will concern us to behave ourselves carefully, as
in the presence of our judge.
These three considerations rightly managed, and applied
to the several parts and instances of our lives, will be, like
EHsha, stretched upon the child, apt to put life and quick-
ness into every part of it, and to make us live the life of
grace, and do the work of God-
I shall therefore, by way of introduction, reduce these
three to practice, and shew how every Christian may im-
prove all and each of these to the advantage of piety, in the
whole course of his life : that if he please to bear but one
of them upon his spirit, he may feel the benefit, like an
universal instrument, helpful in all spiritual and temporal
actions.
SECT. I.
/-
Thejirst general instrument ufholj/ Living,
Care of our Time.
He that is choice of his time, will also be choice of his com-
pany, and choice of his actions: lest the first engage him in
vanity and loss ; and the latter, by being criminal, be a throw-
ing his time and himself away, and a going back in the ac-
counts of eternity.
God hath given to man a short time here upon earth, and
yet upon this short time eternity depends: but so, that for
every hour of our life (after we are persons capable of laws,
and know good from evil) we must give account to the great
* nuS-o.MEVoy Tjvo;, wai? Io-tjv £S-&;'e(V apso-rij S-Eo~c ; E; Jixa.i*f \<nh, 'i-^n, xa; (vy)ix[J,i-
Airuni. I'^jfist. I. i. c. 1;>.
14 CARE OF OUR TIME.
Judge of men and angels. And this is it which our blessed Sa-
viour told us, that we must account for every idle word : not
meaning, that every word, which is not designed to edifica-
tion, or is less prudent, shall be reckoned for a sin; but that
the time, which we spend in our idle talking and unprofitable
discoursings, that time, which might and ought to have been
employed to spiritual and useful purposes ; that is to be ac-
counted for.
For we must remember, that we have a great work to do,
many enemies to conquer, many evils to prevent, much dan-
ger to run through, many dithculties to be mastered, many
necessities to serve, and much good to do, many children to
provide for, or many friends to support, or many poor to re-
lieve, or many diseases to cure, besides the needs of nature
and of relation, our private and our public cares, and duties
of the world, which necessity and the providence of God have
adopted into the family of religion.
And that we need not fear this instrument to be a snare to
us, or that the duty must end in scruple, vexation, and eter-
nal fears, we must remember, that the life of every man may
be so ordered, (and indeed must) that it may be a perpetual
serving of God: the greatest trouble and most busy trade
and worldly incumbrances, when they are necessary, or cha-
ritable, or profitable in order to any of those ends, which we
are bound to serve, whether public or private, being a doing
God's work. For God provides the good things of the world
to serve the needs of nature, by the labours of the ploughman,
the skill and pains of the artisan, and the dangers and traffic
of the merchant : these men are, in their calling, the minis-
ters of the Divine Providence, and the stewards of the crea-
tion, and servants of a great fiimily of God, the world, in the
employment of procuring necessaries for food and clothing,
ornament and physic. In their proportions, also, a king and
a priest and a prophet, a judge and an advocate, doing the
works of their employment according to their proper rules,
are doing the work of God, because they serve those necessi-
ties, which God hath made, and yet made no provisions for
them, but by their ministry. So that no man can complain,
that his callino; takes him off from religion : his calling itself
and his very worldly employment in honest trades and offices
is a serving of God; and, if it be moderately pursued and ac-
CARE OF OUR TIME. 15
cording to the rules of Christian prudence, will leave void
spaces enough for prayers and retirements of a more spiritual
religion.
God hath given every man work enough to do, that there
shall be no room for idleness ; and yet hath so ordered the
world, that there shall be space for devotion. He, that hath
the fewest businesses of the world, is called upon to spend
more time in the dressing of his soul ; and he, that hath the
most affairs, may so order them, that they shall be a service
of God; whilst, at certain periods, they are blessed with
prayers and actions of religion, and all day long are hallowed
by a holy intention.
However, so long as idleness is quite shut out from our
lives, all the sins of wantonness, softness, and effeminacy, are
prevented, and there is but little room left for temptation ;
and therefore, to a busy man, temptation is fain to climb up
together with his businesses, and sins creep upon him only by
accidents and occasions; whereas, to an idle person, they come
in a full body, and with open violence, and the impudence of
a restless importunity.
Idleness is called " the sin of Sodom and her daughters'',"
and indeed is " the burial of a living man'';" an idle person
being so useless to any purposes of God and man, that he is
like one that is dead, unconcerned in the changes and necessi-
ties of the world ; and he only lives to spend his time, and eat
the fruits of the earth : like a vermin or a wolf, when their
time comes, they die and perish, and in the mean time, do no
good ; they neither plough nor carry burthens; all that they
do, either is unprofitable or mischievous.
Idleness is the greatest prodigality in the world: it throws
away that, which is invaluable in respect of its present use,
and irreparable when it is past, being to be recovered by no
power of art or nature. But the way to secure and improve
our time we may practice in the following rules.
*> Ezek. xvi. 49. <= Senec,
16 CAUF. OF OIR TTMi:.
Rules for employuig our Time.
1. In the morning, when you awake, accustom yourself to
think first upon God, or something in order to his service;
and at night also, let him close thine eyes : and let your sleep
be necessary and healthful, not idle and expensive of time,
beyond the needs and conveniences of nature ; and sometimes
be curious to see the preparation, which the sun makes, when
he is coming forth from his chambers of the east.
2. Let every man that hath a calling, be diligent in pursu-
ance of its employment, so as not lightly or without reason-
able occasion to neglect it in any of those times, which are
usually, and by the custom of prudent persons and good hus"
bands, employed in it.
3. Let all the intervals or void spaces of time be employed
in prayers, reading, meditating, works of nature, recreation,
charity, friendliness and neighbourhood, and means of spiri-
tual and corporal health : ever remembering so to work in our
calling, as not to neglect the work of our high calling ; but
to begin and end the day with God, with such forms of devo-
tion, as shall be proper to ovu* necessities.
4. The resting days of Christians, and festivals of the church,
must, in no sense, be days of idleness ; for it isbetter to plough
upon holy days, than to do nothing or to do viciously : but
let them be spent in the works of the day, that is, of religion
and charity, according to the rules appointed'^.
5. Avoid the company of drunkards and busy bodies, and
all such as are apt to talk much to little purpose : for no man
can be provident of his time, that is not prudent in the choice
of his company ; and if one of the speakers be vain, tedious,
and trifling, he that hears, and he that answers, in the dis-
course, are equal losers of their time.
6. Never walk with any man, or undertake any trifling em-
ployment, merely to pass the time away : " for every day well
spent may become a " day of salvation," and time rightly era-
ployed is an " acceptable time." And remember, that the time
thou triflest away, was given thee to repent in, to pray for
pardon of sins, to work out thy salvation, to do the work of
<> See (hap. iv. sect. 6. « S. 13cni. dc Triplici Custodia.
CARE OF OUR TIME. 17
grace, to lay up against the day of j udgement a treasure of
good works, that thy time may be crowned with eternity.
7. In the midst of the works of thy caUing, often retire to
God ^ in short prayers and ejaculations; and those may make
up the want of those larger portions of time, which, it may
be, thou desirest for devotion, and in which thou thinkest
other persons have advantage of thee; for so thou reconcilest
the outward work and thy inward calling, the church and the
commonwealth, the employment of the body and the interest
of thy soul : for be sure, that God is present at thy breathings
and hearty sighings of prayer, as soon as at the longer offices
of less busied persons; and thy time is as truly sanctified by
a trade, and devout though shorter prayers, as by the longer
offices of those, whose time is not filled up with labour and
useful business.
8. Let your employment be such, as may become a rea-
sonable person ; and not be a business fit for children or dis-
tracted people, but fit for your age and understanding. For
a man may be very idly busy, and take great pains to so
little purpose, that, in his labours and expense of time, he
shall serve no end but of folly and vanity. There are some
trades, that wholly serve the ends of idle persons and fools,
and such as are fit to be seized upon by the severity of laws
and banished from under the sun : and there are some people,
who are busy ; but it is, as Domitian was, in catching flies.
9. Let your employment be fitted to your person and call-
ing. Some there are, that employ their time in affairs infi-
nitely below the dignity of their person; and being called by
God or by the republic, to help to bear great burdens, and to
judge a people, do enfeeble their understandings, and disable
their persons by sordid and brutish business. Thus Nero went
up and down Greece, and challenged the fiddlers at their
trade. iEropus, a Macedonian king, made lanterns. Har-
catius, the king of Parthia, was a mole-catcher : and Biantes,
the Lydian, filed needles. He, that is appointed to minister
in holy things, must not suffer secular affairs and sordid arts \
to eat up great portions of his employment : a clergyman
must not keep a tavern, nor a judge be an innkeeper ; and it i
' Laudatur Cajsar apud Lucanutn,
media inter praslia semper
Stellarum coelique plagis, superisqiie vacavi. — x. 186.
VOL. IV. C
18 CARE OF OUR TIME.
was a great idleness in Theophylact, the patriarch of C. P.
to spend his time in his stable of horses, when he should
have been in his study, or the pulpit, or saying his holy of-
fices. Such employments are the diseases of labour, and the
rust of time, which it contracts, not by lying still, but by
dirty employment.
10. Let our employment be such as becomes a Christian ;
that is, in no sense, mingled with sin : for he that takes pains
to serve the ends of covetousness, or ministers to another's
lust, or keeps a shop of impurities or intemperance, is idle in
the worst sense ; for every hour, so spent, runs him backward,
and must be spent again in the remaining and shorter part of
his life, and spent better,
11. Persons of great quality, and of no trade, are to be
most prudent and curious in their employment and traffic of
time. They are miserable, if their education hath been so
loose and undisciplined, as to leave them unfurnished of skill
to spend their time : but most miserable are they, if such
misgovernment and unskilfulness make them fall into vicious
and baser company, and drive on their time by the sad mi-
nutes and periods of sin and death. They that are learned,
know the worth of time, and the manner how well to improve
a day; and they are to prepare themselves for such purposes,
jn which they may be most useful in order to arts or arms,
to counsel in public, or government in their country : but for
others of them, that are unlearned, let them choose good
company, such as may not tempt them to a vice, or join with
them in any ; but that may supply their defects by counsel
and discourse, by way of conduct and conversation. Let
them learn easy and useful things, read history and the laws
of the land, learn the customs of their country, the condi-
tion of their own estate, profitable and charitable contriv-
ances of it: let them study prudently to govern their fami-
lies, learn the burdens of their tenants, the necessities of
their neighbours, and in their proportion supply them, and
reconcile their enmities, and prevent their law-suits, or
quickly end them; and in this glut of leisure and disem-
ployment, let them set apart greater portions of their time
for religion and the necessities of their souls.
12. Let the women of noble birth and sreat fortunes do
the same things in their proportions and capacities, nurse
CARE OF OUR TIME. 19
their children, look to the affairs of the house, visit poor
cottages, and relieve their necessities, be courteous to the
neighbourhood, learn in silence of their husbands or their
spiritual guides, read good books, pray often and speak
little, and " learn to do good works for necessary uses;"
for, by that phrase, St. Paul expresses the obligation of
Christian women to good housewifery, and charitable pro-
visions for their family and neighbourhood.
13. Let all persons of all conditions avoid all delicacy and
niceness in their clothing or diet, because such softness en-
gages them upon great mispendings of their time, while
they dress and comb out all their opportunities of their
morning devotion, and half the day's severity, and sleep out
the care and provision for their souls.
14. Let every one of every condition avoid curiosity, and
all inquiry into things, that concern them not. For all bu-
siness in things, that concern us not, is an employing our
time to no good of ours, and therefore not in order to a
happy eternity. In this account our neighbours' necessities
are not to be reckoned ; for they concern us, as one member
is concerned in the grief of another: but going from house
to house, tatlers and busybodies, which are the canker and
rust of idleness, as idleness is the rust of time, are reproved
by the apostle in severe language, and forbidden in order to
this exercise.
15. As much as may be, cut off all impertinent and useless
employments of your life, unnecessary and fantastic visits,
long waitings upon great personages, where neither duty, nor
necessity, nor charity obliges us; all vain meetings, all labo-
rious trifles, and whatsoever spends much time to no real,
civil, religious, or charitable purpose.
16. Let not your recreations be lavish spenders of your
time ; but choose such which are healthful, short, transient,
recreative, and apt to refresh you ; but at no hand dwell
upon them, or make them your great employment : for he
that spends his time in sports, and calls it recreation, is like
him, whose garment is all made of fringes, and his meat no-
thing but sauces; they are healthless, chargeable, and use-
less. And therefore avoid such games, which require much
time or long attendance ; or which are apt to steal thy affec-
tions from more severe employments. For to whatsoever
c2
20 CARE OF OUR TIME.
thou hast given thy affections, thou wilt not grudge to give
thy time. Natural necessity and the example of St. John,
who recreated himself with sporting with a tame partridge*,
teach us, that it is lawful to relax and unbend our bow, but
not to suffer it to be unready or unstrung,
17. Set apart some portions of every day for more solemn
devotion and religious employment, which be severe in ob-
serving : and if variety of employment, or prudent affairs,
or civil society press upon you, yet so order thy rule, that
the necessary parts of it be not omitted; and though just
occasions may make our prayers shorter, yet let nothing, but a
violent, sudden,'and impatient necessity, make thee, upon any
one day, wholly to omit thy morning and evening devotions ;
which if you be forced to make very short, you may supply
and lengthen with ejaculations and short retirements in the
day-time, in the midst of your employment or of your company.
18. Do not the'' " work of God negligently" and idly: let
not thy heart be upon the world, when thy hand is lift up in
prayer: and be sure to prefer an action of religion, in its
place and proper season, before all worldly pleasure, letting
secular things, that may be dispensed with in themselves, in
these circumstances wait upon the other; not like the pa-
triarch, who ran from the altar in St. Sopliia to his stable,
in all his pontificals, and in the midst of his office, to see a
colt newly fallen from his beloved and much-valued mare
Phorbante. More prudent and severe was that of Sir Tho-
mas More, who, being sent for by the king, when he was at
his prayers in public, returned answer, he would attend him,
when he had first performed his service to the King of kings.
And it did honour to Rusticus', that, when letters from
C'cBsar were given to him, he refused to open them, till the
philosopher had done his lecture. In honouring God and
doing his work, put forth all thy strength; for of that time
only thou mayest be most confident that it is gained, which
is prudently and zealously spent in God's service.
19. When the clock strikes, or however else you shall
measure the day, it is good to say a short ejaculation every
hour, that the parts and returns of devotion may be the mea-
sure of your time : and do so also in all the breaches of thy
n Casiiau, CoUat. 24. c. xxi. ^ Jet. xlviii. 10. ' Plutarch, de Curiosit. c. xv.
CARE OF OL'K TIME. 21
sleep ; that those spaces, which have in them no direct bu-
siness of the world, may be filled with religion.
20. If, by thus doing, you have not secured your time by
an early and fore-handed care, yet be sure by a timely dili-
gence to redeem the time, that is, to be pious and religious
in such instances'", in which formerly you have sinned, and
to bestow your time especially upon such graces, the con-
trary whereof you have formerly practised, doing actions of
chastity and temperance with as great a zeal and earnestness,
as you did once act your uncleanness ; and then, by all arts,
to watch against your present and future dangers, from day
to day securing your standing : this is properly to redeem
your time, that is, to buy your security of it at the rate of
any labour and honest arts.
2i. Let him, that is most busied, set apart some^ " solemn
time eV'Cry year," in which, for the time quitting all worldly
business, he may attend wholly to fasting and prayer, and
the dressing of his soul by confessions, meditations, and at-
tendances upon God; that he may make up his accounts,
renew his vows, make amends for his carelessness, and retire
back again, from whence levity and the vanities of the world,
or the opportunity of temptations, or the distraction of se-
cular affairs, have carried him.
22. In this we shall be much assisted, and we shall find
the work more easy, if, before we sleep, every night™ we
examine the actions of the past day with a particular scru-
tiny, if there have been any accident extraordinary ; as long
■discourse, a feast, much business, variety of company. If
nothing but common hath happened, the less examination
will suffice : only let us take care, that we sleep not without
such a recollection of the actions of the day, as may repre-
sent any thing, that is remarkable and great, either to be
the matter of sorrow or thanksgiving : for other things a ge-
neral care is proportionable.
23. Let all these things be done prudently and moderately,
mot with scruple and vexation. For these are good advan-
Procop. 2. Vandal.
' 1 Cor. vii. 5.
" M>iS' L'ttvov jxaXctKoHa-iv Itt' OjU/aaj-i 7rpoo-jE^a<r9ai, IIpiv t5v r^spivitv e^yxv rpU inae-nv
iwixfierv rrii wajtfrjv ; ri 8' ifi^a; Tt/*o( Stov ovy. treXeirSn ; — Pythagor. Aiir. Carm.
22 PURITY OF IXTENTIOy.
tages, but the particulars are not Divine commandments; and
therefore are to be used, as shall be found expedient to every
one's condition. For, provided that our duty be secured, for
the degrees and for the instrument^ every man is permitted
to himself and the conduct of such, who shall be appointed
to him. He is happy, that can secure every hour to a sober
or a pious employment: but the duty consists not scrupu-
lously in minutes and half hours, but in greater portions of
time ; provided that no minute be employed in sin, and the
great portions of our time be spent in sober employment,
and all the appointed days, and some portions of every day,
be allowed for religion. In all the lesser parts of time, we are
left to our own elections and prudent management, and to
the consideration of the great degrees and differences of
glory, that are laid up in heaven for us, according to the de-
grees of our care, and piety, and diligence.
The benefits of this exercise.
This exercise, besides that it hath influence upon our
whole lives, it hath a special efficacy for the preventing of
1. beggarly sins, that is, those sins, which idleness and beg-
gary usually betray men to; such as are lying, flattery, steal-
ing, and dissimulation. 2. It is a proper antidote against car-
nal sins, and such as proceed from fulness of bread and empti-
ness of employment. 3. It is a great instrument of prevent-
ing the smallest sins and irregularities of our life, which
usually creep upon idle, disemployed, and curious persons.
4. It not only teaches us to avoid evil, but engages us upon
doing good, as the proper business of all our days. 5. It pre-
pares us so against sudden changes, that we shall not easily
be surprised at the sudden coming of the day of tlie Lord :
for he, that is curious of his time, willnot ea sily be unready
and unfurnished.
SECT. II.
The second general instrument of holy Living,
Purity of Intention.
That we should intend and design God's glory in every
action, we do, whether it be natural or chosen, is expressed by
PURITY OF INTENTION. 23
St. Paul", " Whether ye eat or drink, do all to the glory of
God." Which rule when we observe, every action of nature
becomes religious, and every meal is an act of worship, and
shall have its reward in its proportion, as well as an act of
prayer. Blessed be that goodness and grace of God, which,
out of infinite desire to glorify and save mankind, would make
the very works of nature capable of becoming acts of virtue,
that all our life-time we may do him service.
This grace is so excellent, that it sanctifies the most com-
mon action of our life; and yet so necessary, that, without it,
the very best actions of our devotion are imperfect and vi-
cious. For he that prays out of custom, or gives alms for
praise, or fasts to be accounted religious, is but a pharisee in
his devotion, and a beggar in his alms, and a hypocrite in
his fast. But a holy end sanctifies all these and all other ac-
tions, which can be made holy, and gives distinction to them,
and procures acceptance.
For, as to know the end distinguishes a man from a beast,
so to choose a good end distinguishes him from an evil man.
Hezekiah repeated his good deeds upon his sick-bed, and ob-
tained favour of God ; but the pharisee was accounted inso-
lent for doing ° the same thing: because this man did it to
upbraid his brother, the other to obtain a mercy of God. Za-
charias questioned with the angel about his message, and
was made speechless for his incredulity ; but the blessed
Virgin Mary questioned too, and was blameless ; for she did
it to enquire after the manner of the thing, but he did not
believe the thing itself: he doubted of God's power, or the
truth of the messenger; but she, only of her own incapacity.
This was it, which distinguished the mourning of David from
the exclamation of Saul; the confession of Pharaoh from
that of Manasses; the tears of Peter from the repentance of
Judas : " for the praise is not in the deed done, but in the
manner of its doing?. If a man visits his sick friend, and
watches at his pillow for charity's sake, and because of his old
affection, we approve it : but if he does it in hope of legacy,
he is a vulture, and only watches for the carcass. The same
n 1 Cor. X. 31.
" Atticus eximic si cceiiat, lautus habehir;
Si Rutilus, deiuciis Jaieii. Sat. 11.
P Seneca.
24 PUKITY OF INTENTION.
things are honest and dishonest : the manner of doing them,
and the end of the design, makes the separation."
Holy intention is to the actions of a man that, which the
soul is to the body, or form to its matter, or the root to the
tree, or the sun to the world, or the fountain to a river, or
the base to a pillar : for, without these, the body is a dead
trunk, the matter is sluggish, the tree is a block, the world is
darkness, the river is quickly dry, the pillar rushes into flat-
ness and a ruin ; and the action is sinful, or unprofitable and
vain. The poor farmer, that gave a dish of cold water to Ar-
taxerxes, was rewarded with a golden goblet; and he that
gives the same to a disciple in the name of a disciple, shall
have a crown : but if he gives water in despite, when the dis-
ciple needs wine or a cordial, his reward shall be, to want
that water to cool his tongue.
But this duty must be reduced to rules : —
Rules for our Intentions.
1. In every action reflect upon the end ; and in your un-
dertaking it, consider why you do it, and what you propound
to yourself for a reward, and to your action as its end.
2. Begin every action in the name oftheFather,of theSon,
and of the Holy Ghost: the meaning of which is, 1. That we
be careful, that we do not the action without the permission
or w arrant of God. 2. That we design it to the glory of God,
if not in the direct action, yet at least in its consequence; if
not in the particular, yet at least in the whole order of things
and accidents. 3. That it may be so blessed, that what you
intend for innocent and holy purposes, may not, by any
chance, or abuse, or misunderstanding of men, be turned into
evil, or made the occasion of sin.
3. Let every action of concernment be begun with prayer,
that God would not only bless the action, but sanctify your
purpose; and make an oblation of the action to God: holy
and well intended actions being the best oblations and pre-
sents we can make to God; and, when God is entitled to
them, he will the rather keep the fire upon the altar bright
and shining.
4. In the prosecution of the action, renew and re-enkindle
your purpose by short ejaculations to these purposes : " Not
PURITY 01' INTENTION. 25
unto US, O Lord, not unto us, but unto thy name, let all praise
be given:" and consider " Now I am working the work of
God; I am his servant, I am in a happy employment, I am
doing my master's business, I am not at my own dispose, I
am using his talents, and all the gain must be his :" for then
be sure, as the glory is his, so the reward shall be thine. If
thou bringest his goods home with increase, he will make
thee ruler over cities.
5. Have a care, that, while the altar thus sends up a holy
fume, thou dost not sutler the birds to come and carry away
the sacrifice : that is, let not that, which began well, and was
intended for God's glory, decline and end in thy own praise,
or temporal satisfaction, or a sin. A story, told to represent
the vileness of unchastity, is well begun : but if thy female
auditor be pleased with thy language, and begins rather to
like thy person for thy story, than to dislike the crime, be
watchful, lest this goodly head of gold descend in silver and
brass, and end in iron and clay, like Nebuchadnezzar's image ;
for from the i end it shall have its name and reward.
6. If any accidental event, which was not first intended by
thee, can come to pass, let it not be taken into thy purposes,
not at all be made use of: as if, by telling a true story, you
can do an ill turn to your enemy, by no means do it ; but,
when the temptation is found out, turn all thy enmity upon
that.
7. In every more solemn action of religion, join together
many good ends, that the consideration of them may enter-
tain all your affections ; and that, when any one ceases, the
purity of your intention may be supported by another supply.
He that fasts only to tame a rebellious body, when he is pro-
vided of a remedy either in grace or nature, may be tempted
to leave off his fasting. But he, that in his fast intends the
mortification of every unruly appetite, and accustoming him-
self to bear the yoke of the Lord, a contempt of the pleasures
of meat and drink, humiliation of all wilder thoughts, obe-
dience and humility, austerity and charity, and the conveni-
ence and assistance to devotion, and to do an act of repent-
ance; whatever happens, will have reason enough to make
him to continue his purpose, j^nd to sanctify it. And certain
1 Qui furatur ut racEchetur, moechus est magis qnam fur. — Arisl. Elh.
26 PURITY OF INTENTION.
it is, the more p^ood ends are designed in an action, the more
degrees of excellency the man obtains.
8. If any temptation to spoil your purpose happens in a
religious duty, do not presently omit the action, but rather
strive to rectify your intention, and to mortify the temptation.
St. Bernard taught us this rule: for when the devil, observ-
ing him to preach excellently and to do much benefit to his
hearers, tempted him to vain-glory, hoping that the good
man, to avoid that, would cease preaching, he gave this an-
swer only ; " I neither began for thee, neither for thee will I
make an end."
9. In all actions, which are of long continuance, delibera-
tion, and abode, let your holy and pious intention be actual ;
that is, that it be, by a special prayer or action, by a pecu-
liar act of resignation or oblation, given to God : but in smaller
actions, and little things and indifferent, fail not to secure
a pious habitual intention ; that is, that it be included within
your general care, that no action have an ill end ; and that
it be comprehended in your general prayers, whereby you
offer yourself and all you do, to God's glory.
10. Call not every temporal end, a defiling of thy inten-
tion, but only, l.when it contradicts any of the ends of
God; or 2. when it is principally intended in an action of
religion. t"or sometimes a temporal end is part of our duty;
and such are all the actions of our calling, whether our em-
ployment be religious or civil. We are commanded to pro-
vide for our family : but if the minister of divine offices shall
take upon him that holy calling for covetous or ambitious
ends, or shall not design the glory of God principally and
especially, he hath polluted his hands and his heart; and the
fire of the altar is quenched, or it sends forth nothing but
the smoke of mushrooms or unpleasant gums. And it is a
great unworthiness to prefer the interest of a creature before
the ends of God, the Almighty Creator.
But because many cases may happen, in which a man's
heart may deceive him, and he may not well know, what is
in his own spirit ; therefore, by these following signs, we
shall best make a judgement, whether our intentions be pure,
and our purposes holy.
rUlUTY OF INTENTIOX. 27
Signs of Purity of Intention.
1. It is probable our hearts "^ are right with God, and our
intentions innocent and pious, if we set upon actions of re-
ligion or civil life with an affection proportionate to the qua-
lity of the work ; that we act our temporal affairs with a de-
sire no greater than our necessity ; and that, in actions of
religion, we be zealous, active, and operative, so far as pru-
dence will permit; but in all cases, that we value a religious
design before a temporal, when otherwise they are in equal
order to their several ends : that is, that whatsoever is neces-
sary in order to our soul's health be higher esteemed, than
what is for bodily; and the necessities, the indispensable
necessities of the spirit, be served before the needs of nature,
when they are required in their several circumstances; or
plainer yet, when we choose any temporal inconvenience,
rather than commit a sin, and when we choose to do a duty,
rather than to get gain. But he that does his recreation or
his merchandise cheerfully, promptly, readily, and busily,
and the works of religion slowly, flatly, and without appe-
tite ; and the spirit moves like Pharaoh's chariots, when the
wheels were off"; it is a sign, that his heart is not right with
God, but it cleaves too much to the world.
2. It is likely our hearts are pure, and our intentions spot-
less, when we are not solicitous of the opinion and censures
of men ; but only that we do our duty, and be accepted of
God. For our eyes will certainly be fixed there, fiom whence
we expect our reward: and if we desire, that God should
approve us, it is a sign we do his work, and expect him our
paymaster.
3. He that does as well, in private, between God and his
own soul, as in public, in pulpits, in theatres, and market-
places, hath given himself a good testimony, that his pur-
poses are full of honesty, nobleness, and integrity. For
what Helkanah said to the mother of Samuel, " Am not I
better to thee than ten sons r" is most certainly verified con-
cerning God; that he, who is to be our judge, is better than
ten thousand witnesses. But he, that would have his virtue
>■ Sec sect. I. of this cliaptcr, rule 18.
28 Pl'KITV or INTENTIOX.
published, studies not virtue, but glory. *•' He is not just',
that will not be just without praise: but he is a riohteous
man, that docs justice, when to do so is made infamous ;
and he is a wise man, who is delighted with an ill name,
that is well gotten." And indeed that man hath a strange'
covetousness, or folly, that is not contented with this re-
ward, that he hath pleased God. And see what he gets
by it. lie that does good works" for praise or secular
ends, sells an inestimable jewel for a trifle; and that, which
would purchase heaven for him, he parts with for the breath
of the people ; which, at best, is but air, and that not often
wholesome.
4. It is well also, when we are not solicitous or troubled
concerning the effect and event of all our actions ; but that
being first by prayer recommended to him, is left at his dis-
pose: for then, in case the event be not answerable to our
desires or to the efficacy of the instrument, we have nothing
left to rest in, but the honesty of our purposes ; which it is
the more likely we have secured, by how much more we are
indifferent concernino; the success. St. James converted but
eight persons, when he preached in Spain : and our blessed
Saviour converted fewer, than his own disciples did : and if
thy labours prove unprosperous, if thou beest much troubled
at that, it is certain thou didst not think thyself secure of a
reward for your intention; which you might have done, if it
had been pure and just.
5. He loves virtue for God's sake and its own, that loves
and honours it, wherever it is to be seen ; but he that is en-
vious or angry at a virtue, that is not his own, at the perfec-
tion or excellency of his neighbour, is not covetous of the
virtue, but of its reward and reputation ; and then his inten-
tions are polluted. It was a great ingenuity in Moses, that
wished all the people might be prophets ; but if he had de-
signed his own honour, he would have prophesied alone.
But he that desires only, that the work of God and religion
shall go on, is pleased with it, whoever is the instrument.
6. He that despises the w orld, and all its appendant vani-
ties, is the best judge, and the most secured of his inten-
' Stiicca, Kji. 1K?» • St. rhiys- 1, ii. de Conijuin. cordis.
" St. Greg. Moral. 8. caji. xw.
PURITY OF INTENTION. 29
tions ; because he is the farthest removed from a temptation.
Every degree of mortification is a testimony of the purity of
our purposes ; and in what degree we despise sensual plea-
sure, or secular honours, or worldly reputation, in the same
degree we shall conclude our heart right to religion and spi-
litual designs.
7. When we are not solicitous concerning the instruments
and means of our actions ; but use those means, which God
hath laid before us, with resignation, indifferency, and thank-
fulness ; it is a good sign, that we are rather intent upon the
end of God's glory, than our own conveniency, or temporal
satisfaction. He that is indifferent, whether he serve God
in riches or in poverty, is rather a seeker of God than of
himself; and he that will throw away a good book, because
it is not curiously gilded, is more curious to please his eye,
than to inform his understanding.
8. When a temporal end consisting with a spiritual, and
pretended to be subordinate to it, happens to fail and be
defeated, if we can rejoice in that, so God's glory may be
secured, and the interests of religion ; it is a great sign our
hearts are right, and our ends prudently designed and or-
dered.
When our intentions are thus balanced, regulated, and
discerned, we may consider, 1. that this exercise is of so
universal efficacy in the whole course of a holy life, that it
is like the soul to every holy action, and must be provided
for in every undertaking; and is, of itself alone, sufficient to
make all natural and indifferent actions to be adopted into
the family of religion.
2. That there are some actions, which are usually reckoned
as parts of our religion, which yet, of themselves, are so re-
lative and imperfect, that, without the purity of intention,
they degenerate: and unless they be directed and proceed
4Dn to those purposes, which God designed them to, they re-
turn into the family of common, secular, or sinful, actions.
Thus alms are for charity, fasting for temperance, prayer is
for religion, humiliation is for humility, austerity or suf-
ferance is in order to the virtue of patience : and when these
actions fail of their several ends, or are not directed to their
own purposes, alms are mispent, fasting is an impertinent
trouble, prayer is but lip-labour, humiliation is but hypo-
30 PRACTICE or THK PRESENCE OF GOD.
crisy, sufferance is but vexation ; for such were the ahns of
the pharisee, the fast of Jezabel, the prayer of Judah re-
proved by the prophet Isaiah, the humiliation of Ahab, the
martyrdom of heretics ; in which nothing is given to God,
but the body, or the forms of religion ; but the soul and the
power of godliness is wholly wanting.
3. We are to consider, that no intention can sanctify an
imhoiy or unlawful action. Saul, the king, disobeyed God's
commandment, and spared the cattle of Amalek to reserve
the best for sacrifice : and Saul, the pharisee, persecuted the
church of God, with a design to do God service : and they
that killed the apostles, had also good purposes, but they
had unhallowed actions. " When there is both truth in
election, and charity in the intention^; when we go to God
in ways of his own choosing or approving, then our eye is
single, and our hands are clean, and our hearts are pure.
But when a man does evil, that good may come of it, or good
to an evil purpose, that man does like him, that rolls him-
self in thorns, that he may sleep easily ; he roasts himself in
the fire, that he may quench his thirst with his own sweat ;
he turns his face to the east, that he may go to bed with the
sun. I end this with the saying of a wise heathen"': " He is
to be called evil, that is good only for his own sake. Regard
not, how full hands you bring to God, but how pure. Many
cease from sin out of fear alone, not out of innocence or love
of virtue ;" and they, as yet, are not to be called innocent but
timorous.
SECT. III.
The third general instrument of holy Living : or the
Practice of' the Presence of God.
That God is present in all places, that he sees every
action, hears all discourses, and understands every thought,
is no strange thing to a Christian ear, who hath been taught
this doctrine, not only by right reason, and the consent of
all the wise men in the world, but also by God himself in
holy Scripture. " Am I a God at hand, saith the Lord, and
* St. Bern. lib. de Praccept. * Publius Miiuus.
PRACTICE OF THE PRESENCE OF GOD. 31
not a God afar off? Can any hide himself in secret places,
that I shall not see him? saith the Lord. Do not I fill
heaven and earth '^?" " Neither is there any creature, that
is not manifest in his sight : but all things are naked and
open to the eyes of him, with whom we have to do^." " For
in him we live, and move, and have our being^." God is
wholly in every place ; included in no place ; not bound
with cords, except those of love ; not divided into parts, not
changeable into several shapes ; filling heaven and earth with
his present power, and with his never absent nature. So
St. Augustine^ expresses this article. So that we may ima-
gine God to be as the air and the sea ; and we all enclosed
in his circle, wrapped up in the lap of his infinite na-
ture ; or as infants in the wombs of their pregnant mothers :
and we can no more be removed from the presence of God,
than from our own being.
Several mariners of the Divine Presence.
The presence of God is understood by us, in several man-
ners, and to several purposes.
1. God is present by his essence; which, because it is in-
finite, cannot be contained within the limits of any place;
and because he is of an essential purity and spiritual nature,
he cannot be undervalued by being supposed present in the
places of unnatural uncleanness : because as the sun, reflect-
ing upon the mud of strands and shores, is unpolluted in its
beams, so is God not dishonoured, when we suppose him in
every of his creatures, and in every part of every one of them;
and is still as unmixt with any unhandsome adherence, as is
the soul in the bowels of the body.
2. God is everywhere present by his power''. He rolls
the orbs of heaven with his hand ; he fixes the earth with
his foot; he guides all the creatures with his eye, and re-
freshes them with his influence : he makes the powers of hell
to shake with his terrors, and binds the devils with his word,
and throws them out with his command ; and sends the angels
"^ Jer. xxiii. 23, 24. J Heb. iv. 13. ^ Acts vii. 28.
* Lib. vii. de Civit. c. xxx.
'' ©to; TifjiEp^st Tf,Qov\nj-ei to wav, jmei^iwv tou Travrof Sicwt^rp ova-la, ovnii; xal a^i'a.
Resp. ad Orthod,
24 PRACTICE OF THE PRESENCE OF GOD.
on embassies with his decrees : he hardens the joints of in-
fants, and confirms the bones, when they are fashioned be-
neath secretly in the earth. He it is, that assists at the nu-
merous productions of fishes; and there is not one hollow-
ness in tlie bottom of the sea, but he shews himself to be
Lord of it, by sustaining there the creatures, that come to
dwell in it: and in the wilderness, the bittern and the stork,
the dragon and the satyr, the unicorn and the elk, live upon
his provisions, and revere his power, and feel the force of his,
almightiness.
3. God is more specially present, in some places, by the
several and more special manifestations of himself to extraor-
dinary purposes. First, by glory. Thus his seat is in hea-
ven ; because, there he sits encircled with all the outward
demonstrations of his glory, which he is pleased to shew to
all the inhabitants of those his inward and secret courts.
And thus they, that " die in the Lord," may be properly said
to be " gone to God ;" with whom although they were before,
yet now they enter into his courts, into the secret of his ta-
bernacle, into the retinue and splendour of his glory. That
is called walking with God ; but this is dwelling, or being,
with him. " I desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ;"
so said St. Paul. But this manner of Divine presence is re-
served for the elect people of God, and for their portion in
their country.
4. God is, by grace and benediction, specially present in
holy places % and in the solemn assemblies of his servants. If
holy people meet in grots and dens of the earth, when perse-
cution or a public necessity disturbs the public order, cir-
cumstance and convenience, God fails not to come thither to
them : but God is also, by the same or a greater reason, pre-
sent there, where they meet ordinarily, by order, and public
authority : there God is present ordinarily, that is, at every
such meeting. God will go out of his way to meet his saints,
when themselves are forced out of their way of order by a
sad necessity: but else, God's usual way is to be present in
those places, where his servants are appointed ordinarily*^ to
meet. But his presence there signifies nothing, but a readi-
ness to hear their prayers, to bless their persons, to accept
« Mat. xviii. 20. Ilcb. x. 25. '' 1 Kings v. 9. Psalm cxxxviii. 1, f.
PRACTICE OF THE PRESENCE OF GOD. 33
their offices, and to like even the circumstance of orderly and
public meeting. For thither the prayers of consecration, the
public authority separating it, and God's love of order, and
the reasonable customs of religion, have, in ordinary, and in
a certain degree, fixed this manner of his presence ; and he
loves to have it so.
5. God is especially present, in the' hearts of his people,
by his Holy Spirit : and indeed the hearts of holy men are
temples in the truth of things, and, in type and shadow, they
are heaven itself. For God reigns in the hearts of his ser-
vants: there is his kingdom. The power of grace hath sub-
dued all his enemies : there is his power. They serve him
night and day, and give him thanks and praise : that is his
glory. This is the religion and worship of God in the tem-
ple. The temple itself is the heart of man ; Christ is the
high-priest, who from thence sends up the incense of pray-
ers, and joins them to his own intercession, and presents all
together to his Father ; and the Holy Ghost, by his dwelling
there, hath also consecrated it into a temple;'' and God
dwells in our hearts by faith, and Christ by his Spirit, and
the Spirit by his purities : so that we are also cabinets of
the mysterious Trinity ; and what is this short of heaven it-
self, but as infancy is short of manhood, and letters of words?
The same state of life it is, but not the same age. It is
heaven in a looking-glass, dark, but yet true, representing
the beauties of the soul, and the graces of God, and the
images of his eternal glory, by the reality of a special pre-
sence.
6. God is specially present in the consciences of all per-
sons, good and bad, by way of testimony and judgment :
that is, he is there a remembrancer to call our actions to
mind, a witness to bring them to judgment, and a judge to
acquit or to condemn. And although this manner of pre-
sence is, in this life, after the manner of this life, that is, im-
perfect, and we forget many actions of our lives; yet the
greatest changes of our state of grace or sin, our most con-
siderable actions, are always present, like capital letters to an
aged and dim eye : and, at the day of judgment, God shall
draw aside the cloud, and manifest this manner of his pre-
" 1 Cor. iii. 16. 2 Cor. vi. 16.
VOL. IV. D
34 PRACTICE OF THE PRESENCE OF GOD.
sence more notoriously, and make it appear, that he was an
observer of our very thoughts, and that he only laid those
things by, which, because we covered with dust and negli-
gence, were not then discerned. But when we are risen from
our dust and imperfection, they all appear plain and legible.
Now the consideration of this great truth is of a very uni-
versal use, in the whole course of the life of a Christian. All
the consequents and effects of it are universal. He that remem-
bers, that God stands a witness and a judge, beholding every
secrecy, besides his impiety, must have put on impudence, if
he be not much restrained in his temptation to sin. " For
the greatest part of sin is taken away, ^ if a man have a wit-
ness of his conversation : and he is a great despiser of God,
who sends a boy away, when he is going to commit fornica-
tion, and yet will dare to do it, though he knows, God is pre-
sent, and cannot be sent off: as if the eye of a little boy were
more awful, than the all-seeing eye of God. He is to be feared
in public, he is to be feared in private : if you go forth, he
spies you; if you go in, he sees you: when you light the
candle, he observes you ; when you put it out, then also God
marks you. Be sure, that while you are in his sight, you be-
have yourself, as becomes so holy a presence." But if you
will sin, retire yourself wisely, and go where God cannot
see : for no where else can you be safe. And certainly, if
men would always actually consider, and really esteem this
truth, that God is the great eye of the world, always watch-
ing over our actions, and an ever-open ear to hear all our
words, and an unwearied arm ever lifted up to crush a sinner
into ruin, it would be the readiest way in the world, to make
sin to cease from amongst the children of men, and for men
to approach to the blessed estate of the saints in heaven,
who cannot sin, for they always walk in the presence, and
behold the face of God. This instrument is to be reduced
to practice, according to the following rules.
Rules of exercising this consideration.
1. Let this actual thought often return, that God is omni-
present, filling every place ; and say with David,s " Whither
' St. Aug. de verbis Domiuicis, c. 3. s Psal. xiii. 7, 8.
PRACTICE OF THE PRESENCE OF GOD, 35
shall I go from thy Spirit, or whither shall I flee from thy
presence ? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there : if I
make my bed in hell, thou art there," &c. This thought, by
being frequent, will make an habitual dread and reverence
towards God, and fear in all thy actions. For it is a great
necessity and engagement to do unblamably, when we act
before the Judge,'' who is infallible in his sentence, all-know-
ing in his information, severe in his anger, powerful in his
providence, and intolerable in his wrath and indignation.
2. In the beginning of actions of religion, make an act
of adoration, that is, solemnly worship God, and place thy-
self in God's presence, and behold him with the eye of faith ;
and let thy desires actually fix on him, as the object of thy
worship, and the reason of thy hope, and the fountain of thy
blessing. For when thou hast placed thyself before him, and
kneelest in his presence, it is most likely, all the following
parts of thy devotion will be answerable to the wisdom of
such an apprehension, and the glory of such a presence.
3. Let every thing you see, represent to your spirit the
presence, the excellency, and the power of God; and let your
conversation wdth the creatures lead you unto the Creator ;
for so shall your actions be done, more frequently, with an
actual eye to God's presence, by your often seeing him in the
glass of the creation. In the face of the sun, you may see
God's beauty ; in the fire, you may feel his heat warming ; in
the water, his gentleness to refresh you : he it is, that com-
forts your spirit, when you have taken cordials : it is the dew
of heaven, that makes your field give you bread ; and the
breasts of God are the bottles, that minister drink to your
necessities. This philosophy, which is obvious to every
man's experience, is a good advantage to our piety ; and, by
this act of understanding, our wills are checked from violence
and misdemeanour.
4. In your retirement, make frequent colloquies, or short
discoursings, between God and thy own soul. " Seven times
a day do I praise thee : and, in the night season also, I thought
upon thee, while I was waking," So did David; and every
act of complaint or thanksgiving, every act of rejoicing or of
mourning, every petition and eveiy return of the heart in
'■ Boeth. 1. 5. de Consol.
d2
36 PRACTICE OF THE PRESENCE OF COD.
these intercourses, is a goincr to God, an appearing in his
presence, and a representing him present to thy spirit and to
thy necessity. And this was, long since, by a spiritual person
called, " a building to God a chapel in our heart." It recon-
ciles Martha's employment with Mary's devotion, charity and
religion, the necessities of our calling and the employments
of devotion. For thus, in the midst of the v.orks of your
trade, you may retire into your chapel, your heart; and con-
verse with God by frequent addresses and returns.
5. Represent and offer to God " acts of love and fear ;"
which are the proper effects of this apprehension, and tlie
proper exercise of this consideration. For, as God is every
where present by his power, he calls for reverence and godly
fear : as he is present to thee in all thy needs, and relieves
them, he deserves thy love : and since, in every accident of
our lives, we find one or other of these apparent, and, in most
things, we see both, it is a proper and proportionate return,
that to every such demonstration of God, we express ourselves
sensible of it, by admiring the Divine goodness, or trembling
at his presence ; ever obeying him, because we love him, and
ever obeying him, because we fear to offend him. This is
that, which Enoch did, who thus " walked with God."
6. Let us remember, that God is in us, and that we are
in him: we are his workmanship, let us not deface it; we are
in his presence, let us not pollute it by unholy and impure
actions. God hath " also wrought all our works in us ' :" and
because he rejoices in his own works, if we defile them, and
make them unpleasant to him, we walk perversely with God,
and he will walk crookedly towards us.
7. " God is in the bowels of thy brother;" refresh them,
when he needs it, and then you give your alms in the pre-
sence of God, and to God; and he feels the relief, which thou
providest for thy brother.
8. God is in every place : suppose it therefore to be a
church : and that decency of deportment and piety of carri-
age, which you are taught, by religion, or by custom, or by
civility and public manners, to use in churches, the same use
in all places : with this difference only, that, in churches, let
your deportment be religious in external forms and circum-
'Isa. xxvi. 12.
PRACTICE OF THE PRESENCE OF GOD. 37
stances also; but there and every where, let it be religious in
abstaining from spiritual indecencies, and in readiness to do
good actions : that it may not be said of us, as God once com-
plained of his people, " Why hath my beloved done wicked-
ness in my house ?" ^
9. God is in every creature : be cruel towards none, nei-
ther abuse any by intemperance. Remember, that the crea-
tures, and every member of thy own body, is one of the lesser
cabinets and receptacles of God. They are such, which God
hath blessed with his presence, hallowed by his touch, and
separated from unholy use, by making them to belong to his
dwelling.
10. He walks as in the presence of God, that converses
with him in frequent prayer and frequent communion ; that
runs to him in all his necessities, that asks counsel of him in
all his doubtings ; that opens all his wants to him ; that weeps
before him for his sins; that asks remedy and support for his
weakness; that fears him as a judge; reverences him as a
lord ; obeys him as a father ; and loves him as a patron.
The benefits of this exercise.
The benefits of this consideration and exercise being uni-
versal upon all the parts of piety, I shall less need to specify
any particulars ; but yet, most properly, this exercise of con-
sidering the Divine presence is, 1. an excellent help to prayer,
producing in us reverence and awfulness to the Divine Ma-
jesty of God, and actual devotion in our offices. 2. It pro-
duces a confidence in God, and fearlessness of our enemies,
patience in trouble, and hope of remedy ; since God is so
nigh in all our sad accidents, he is a disposer of the hearts
of men and the events of things, he proportions out our trials,
and supplies us with remedy, and, where his rod strikes us,
his staft supports us. To which we may add this; that God,
who is always with us, is especially, by promise, with us in
tribulation, to turn the misery into a mercy, and that our
greatest trouble may become our advantage, by entitling us
to a new manner of the Divine presence. 3. It is apt to pro-
duce joy and rejoicing in God, we being more apt to delight
•' JtT. xi. 15. secun. vulg. edit.
38 PRACTICE OF THE PRESENCE OF GOD.
in the partners and witnesses of our conversation; every de-
gree of mutual abiding and conversing being a relation and
an endearment : we are of the same household with God ; he
is with us in our natural actions, to preserve us; in our re-
creations, to restrain us; in our public actions, to applaud or
reprove us; in our private, to observe us; in our sleeps, to watch
by us ; in our watchings, to refresh us : and if we walk with
God in all his ways, as he walks with us in all ours, we shall
find perpetual reasons to enable us to keep that rule of God,
** Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say rejoice." And
this puts me in mind of a saying of an old religious person',
" There is one way of overcoming our ghostly enemies; spi-
ritual mirth, and a perpetual bearing of God in our minds."
This effectively resists the devil, and suffers us to receive no
hurt from him. 4. This exercise is apt also to enkindle holy
desires of the enjoyment of God, because it produces joy,
when we do enjoy him; the same desires that a weak man
hath for a defender ; the sick man, for a physician ; the poor,
for a patron; the child, for his father; the espoused lover, for
her betrothed, 5. From the same fountain are apt to issue
humility of spirit, apprehensions of our great distance and
our great needs, our daily wants and hourly supplies, admi-
ration of God's unspeakable mercies: it is the cause of great
modesty and decency in our actions ; it helps to recollection
of mind, and restrains the scatterings and looseness of wan-
dering thoughts; it establishes the heart in good purposes,
andleadeth on to perseverance; it gains purity and perfection
(according to the saying of God to Abraham, " walk before
me, and be perfect"), holy fear, and holy love, and indeed every
thing, that pertains to holy living: when we see ourselves
placed in the eye of God, who sets us on work and will re-
ward us plenteously, to serve him with an eye-service is very
pleasing; for he also sees the heart : and the want of this con-
sideration was declared to be the cause, why Israel sinned so
grievously, " for they say. The Lord hath forsaken the earth,
and the Lord seetli not'":" " therefore the land is full of
blood, and the city full of perverseness"." What a child
would do, in the eye of his father; and a pupil, before his tutor;
and a wife, in the presence of her husband; and a servant, in
'In vita S. Antho. '" Psal. x. 11. " Ezck. ix. 9.
PUACTICE OF THE PRESENCE 01< GOD. 39
the sight of his master; let us always do the same: for \ve
are made a spectacle to God, to angels, and to men ; we are
always in the sight and presence of the all-seeing and al-
. mighty God, who also is to us a father and a guardian, a hus-
band and a lord.
Prai/ers and devotions, according to the religion and purposes of
the foregoing considerations.
I.
For grace to spend our time well.
O eternal God, who, from all eternity, dost behold and
love thy own glories and perfections infinite, and hast created
jne to do the work of God after the manner of men, and to
serve thee in this generation, and according to my capacities;
give me thy grace, that I may be a curious and prudent
spender of my time, so as I may best prevent, or resist, all temp-
tation, and be profitable to the Christian commonwealth, and,
by discharging all my duty, may glorify thy name. Take from
me all slothfulness, and give me a diligent and an active spi-
rit, and wisdom to choose my employment; that I may do
works proportionable to my person, and to the dignity of a
Christian, and may fill up all the spaces of my time with ac-
tions of religion and charity; that, when the devil assaults
me, he may not find me idle ; and my dearest Lord, at his
.sudden coming, may find me busy in lawful, necessary, and
pious actions ; improving my talent entrusted to me by thee,
my Lord ; that I may enter into the joy of my Lord, to par-
take of his eternal felicities, even for thy mercy's sake, and for
my dearest Saviour's sake. Amen.
Here follows the devotion of ordinary days ; for the right em-
ployment of those portions of time, which every day must
allow for religion.
The first Prayers in the morning, as soon as we are dressed.
Humbly and reverently compose yourself, with heart lift-up
to God, and your head bowed, and meekly kneeUng upon
your knees, say the Lord's Prayer : after which, use the fol-
lowing collects, or as many of them, as you shall choose.
" Our Father, which art in heaven," &c.
40 DEVOTIONS FOR ORDINARY DAYS.
I.
An Act of Adoration, being the song, that the angels sing in heaven.
Holy, holy, holy. Lord God Almighty, who was, and is,
and is to come °: heaven and earth, angels and men, the air
and the sea, give glory, and honour, and thanks to him, that
sitteth on the throne, who liveth for ever and ever p. All the
blessed spirits and souls of the righteous cast their crowns be-
fore the throne, and worship him, that liveth for ever and
ever ''. Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory, and ho-
nour, and power ; for thou hast created all things, and for thy
pleasure they are, and were created. Great and marvellous
are thy works, O Lord God Almighty : just and true are thy
ways, thou King of saints'". Thy wisdom is infinite, thy mer-
cies are glorious; and I am not worthy, O Lord, to appear in
thy presence, before whom the angels hide their faces. O
holy and eternal Jesus, lamb of God, who wert slain from the
beginning of the world, thou hast redeemed us to God by
thy blood out of every nation, and hast made us unto our
God kings and priests, and we shall reign with thee for ever.
Blessing, honour, glory, and power be unto him, that sitteth
on the throne, and to the Lamb, for ever and ever. Amen.
II.
An Act of Thanksgiving, being the song of David, for the morning.
Sing praises unto the Lord, O ye saints of his, and give
thanks to him for a remembrance of his holiness . For his
wrath endureth but the twinkling of an eye : and in his plea-
sure is life : heaviness may endure for a night; but joy cometh
in the morning. Thou, Lord, hast preserved me this night
from the violence of the spirits of darkness, from all sad ca-
sualties and evil accidents, from the wrath, which I have
every day deserved : thou hast brought my soul out of hell ;
thou hast kept my life from them that go down into the pit:
thou hast shewed me marvellous great kindness, and hast
blessed me for ever; the greatness of thy glory reacheth untp
the heavens, and thy truth uuto the clouds. Therefore shall
every good man sing of thy praise without ceasing. O my
God, I will give thanks unto thee for ever. Hallelujah.
" Rev. xi. 17. r And v. 10. 13. 'i And iv. 10. ' And xv. 3.
DEVOTIONS FOR ORDINARY DAYS. 41
m.
An Act of Oblation, or presenling ourselves to God for the day.
Most holy and eternal God, lord and sovereign of all the
creatures, I humbly present to thy Divine Majesty, myself, my
soul and body, my thoughts and my words, my actions and in-
tentions, my passions and my sufferings, to be disposed by thee
to thy glory; to be blessed by thy providence; to be guided
by thy counsel ; to be sanctified by thy Spirit ; and, afterwards,
that my body and soul may be received into glory : for no-
thing can perish, which is under thy custody; and the enemy
of souls cannot devour, what is thy portion, nor take it out
of thy hands. This day, O Lord, and all the days of my life,
I dedicate to thy honour, and the actions of my calling,
to the uses of grace, and the religion of all my days to be
united to the merits and intercession of my holy Saviour,
Jesus ; that, in him and for him, I may be pardoned and ac-
cepted. Amen.
IV.
An Act of Repentance or Contrition.
For, as for me, I am not worthy to be called thy servant ;
much less am I worthy to be thy son ; for I am the vilest of
sinners and the worst of men ; a lover of the things of the
world, and a despiser of the things of God ; proud and en-
vious, lustful and intemperate, greedy of sin, and impatient
of reproof; desirous to seem holy, and negligent of being so;
transported with interest ; fooled with presumption and false
principles ; disturbed with anger, with a peevish and unmor-
tified spirit, and disordered by a whole body of sin and death.
Lord, pardon all my sins for my sweetest Saviour's sake:
thou, who didst die for me, holy Jesus, save me and deliver
me: reserve not my sins to be punished in the day of wrath
and eternal vengeance; but wash away my sins, and blot
them out of thy remembrance, and purify my soul with the
waters of repentance, and the blood of the cross ; that, for
what is past, thy wrath may not come out against me; and,
for the time to come, I may never provoke thee to anger or
to jealousy. O just and dear God, be pitiful and gracious
to thy servant. Amen.
42 DEVOTIONS FOR ORDINARY DAYS.
V.
The Prayer, or Petition.
Bless me, gracious God, in my calling to such purposes,
as thou shalt choose for me, or employ me in: relieve me in all
my sadnesses ; make my bed in my sickness ; give me patience
in my sorrows, confidence in thee, and grace to call upon
thee in all temptations. O be thou my guide in all my ac-
tions, my protector in all dangers : give me a healthful body,
and a clear understanding; a sanctified and just, a charitable
and humble, a religious and a contented spirit : let not my
life be miserable and wretched ; nor my name stained with sin
and shame; nor my condition lifted up to a tempting and
dangerous fortune; but let my condition be blessed, my
conversation useful to my neighbours, and pleasing to thee;
that, when my body shall lie down in its bed of darkness, my
soul may pass into the regions of light, and live with thee
for ever, through Jesus Christ. Amen.
VI.
An act of Intercession or Prai/er for others, to be added to this or
any other office, as our devotion, or duly, or their needs, shall
determine us.
O God of infinite mercy, who hast compassion on all men,
and relievest the necessities of all, that call to thee for help,
hear the prayers of thy servant, who is unworthy to ask any
petition for himself, yet, in humility and duty, is bound to
pray for others.
For the Church.
O let thy mercy descend upon the whole church ; preserve
her in truth and peace, in unity and safety, in all storms, and
against all temptations and enemies ; that she, offering to thy
glory the never-ceasing sacrifice of prayer and thanksgiving,
may advance the honour of her Lord, and be filled with his
Spirit, and partake of his glory. Amen.
For the King.
In mercy, remember the king; preserve his person in health
and honour; his crown, in wealth and dignity ; his kingdoms,
in peace and plenty ; the churches under his protection, in
DEVOTIONS FOR ORDINARY DAYS. 43
piety and knowledge, and a strict and holy religion: keep
him perpetually in thy fear and favour, and crown him with
glory and immortality. Amen.
For the Clergy.
Remember them, that minister about holy things; let
them be clothed with righteousness, and sing with joyful-
ness. Amen.
For Wife or Husband.
Bless thy servant [my wife, or husband] with health of
body and of spirit. O let the hand of thy blessing be upon
his [or her'] head, night and day, and support him in all ne-
cessities, strengthen him in all temptations, comfort him in
all his sorrows, and let him be thy servant in all changes ;
and make us both to dwell with thee for ever in thy favour,
in the light of thy countenance, and in thy glory. Amen.
For our Children.
Bless my children with healthful bodies, with good un-
derstandings, with the graces and gifts of thy Spirit, with
sweet dispositions and holy habits; and sanctify them
throughout in their bodies, and souls, and spirits, and keep
them unblamable to the coming of the Lord Jesus. Amen.
3
For Friends and Benefactors.
Be pleased, O Lord, to remember my friends, all that
have prayed for me, and all that have done me good. [Here
name such, whom you would specially recommend.] Do thou
good to them, and return all their kindness double into their
own bosom, rewarding them with blessings, and sanctifying
them with thy graces, and bringing them to glory.
For ovr Famili/.
Let all my family and kindred, my neighbours and ac-
quaintance \here name what other relations you please], re-
ceive the benefits of my prayers, and the blessings of God ;
the comforts and supports of thy providence, and the sanc-
tification of thy Spirit.
44 DEVOTIONS FOR ORDINARY DAYS.
For all in misery.
Relieve and comfort all the persecuted and afflicted ;
speak peace to troubled consciences: strengthen the weak:
confirm the strong: instruct the ignorant: deliver the op-
pressed from him that spoileth him, and relieve the needy
that hath no helper: and bring us all, by the waters of com-
fort, and in the ways of righteousness, to the kingdom of
rest and glory, through Jesus Ciirist, our Lord. Amen.
To God, the father of our Lord Jesus Christ; to the eter-
nal Son, that was incarnate and born of a virgin; to the Spirit
of the Father and the Son, be all honour and glory, worship
and thanksgiving, now and for ever. Amen.
Another Form of Prayer, for the morning.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
Ghost. Our Father, S)'c.
I.
Most glorious and eternal God, father of mercy, and God
of all comfort, I worship and adore thee with the lowest hu-
mility of my soul and body, and give thee all thanks and
praise for thy infinite and essential glories and perfections,
and for the continual demonstration of thy mercies upon me,
upon all mine, and upon thy holy catholic church.
IL
I acknowledge, dear God, that I have deserved the great-
est of thy wrath and indignation ; and that, if thou liadst dealt
with me according to my deserving, I had now, at this instant,
been desperately bewailing my miseries, in the sorrows and
horrors of a sad eternity. But, thy mercy triumphing over
thy justice and my sins, thou hast still continued to me life
and time of repentance; thou hast opened to me the gates of
grace and mercy, and perpetually callest upon me to enter in,
and to walk in the paths of a holy life, that I might glorify
thee, and be glorified of thee eternally.
in.
Behold, O God, for this thy great and unspeakable good-
ness, for the preservation of me this night, and for all other
thy graces and blessings, I offer up my soul aud body, all
DEVOTIONS FOR ORDINARY DAYS. 45
that I am, and all tliat I have, as a sacrifice to thee and thy
service ; humbly begging of thee to pardon all my sins, to de-
fend me from all evil, to lead me into all good ; and let my
portion be amongst thy redeemed ones, in the gathering to-
gether of the saints, in the kingdom of grace and glory.
IV.
Guide me, O Lord, in all the changes and varieties of the
world ; that in all things that shall happen, I may have an
evenness and tranquillity of spirit ; that my soul may be
wholly resigned to thy divinest will and pleasure, never mur-
muring at thy gentle chastisements and fatherly correction ;
never waxing proud and insolent, though I feel a torrent of
comforts and prosperous successes.
V.
Fix my thoughts, my hopes, and my desires, upon heaven
and heavenly things; teach me to despise the world, to repent
me deeply for my sins ; give me holy purposes of amendment,
and ghostly strength and assistances to perform faithfully,
whatsoever I shall intend piously. Enrich my understanding
with an eternal treasure of Divine truths, that I may know thy
will; and thou, who workest in us to will and to do of thy
good pleasure, teach me to obey all thy commandments, to
believe all thy revelations, and make me partaker of all thy
gracious promises.
VI.
Teach me to watch over all my w ays, that I may never be
surprised by sudden temptations or a careless spirit, nor ever
return to folly and vanity. Set a watch, O Lord, before my
mouth, and keep the door of my lips, that I offend not in my
tongue, neither against piety nor charity. Teach me to think
of nothing but thee, and what is in order to thy glory and
service : to speak nothing but of thee, and thy glories ; and to
do nothing, but what becomes thy servant, whom thy infinite
mercy, by the graces of thy Holy Spirit, hath sealed up to the
day of redemption.
VII.
Let all my passions and affections be so mortified and
brought under the dominion of grace, that I may never, by-
deliberation and purpose, nor yet by levity, rashness, or in-
46 DEVOTIONS FOR ORDINARY DAYS.
consideration, offend thy Divine majesty. Make me such as
thou wouldest have me to be : strencjthen mv faith, confirm
my hope, and give me a daily increase of charity, that, this
day and ever, I may serve thee according to all my opportu-
nities and capacities, growing from grace to grace; till at last,
by thy mercies, I shall receive the consummation and perfec-
tion of grace, even the glories of thy kingdom, in the full frui-
tion of the face and excellences of God the Father, the Son,
and the Holy Ghost; to whom be glory and praise, honour
and adoration, given by all angels, and all men, and all crea-
tures, now, and to all eternity. Amen.
% To this may be added the prayer of intercession for others,
whom we are bound to remember, which is at the end of
the foregoing prayer ; or else you may take such special
prayers, which follow at the end of the fourth chapter
[for parents, for children, &c.] .
After which, conclude toith this ejaculation.
Now, in all tribulation and anguish of spirit, in all dangers
of soul and body, in prosperity and adversity, in the hour of
death and in the day of judgment, holy and most blessed
Saviour Jesus, have mercy upon me, save me, and deliver me
and all faithful people. Amen.
% Between this and noon, usually, are said the public prayers
appointed by authority ; to which all the clergy are obliged,
and other devout persons, that have leisure to accompany
them.
% Afternoon, or at any time of the day, when a devout person
retires into his closet for private prayer, or spiritual ex-
ercises, he may say the following devotions.
An exercise to he used at any time of the dni/.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, &c. Our
Father, &c.
The Hymn, collected out of the Psalms, recounting the excellences
and greatness of God.
O be joyful in God, all ye lands; sing praises unto the
honour of his name, make his name to be glorious. O come
hither, and behold the works of God, how wonderful he is in
DEVOTIONS FOR ORDINARY DAYS. 47
his doings towards the children of men. He ruleth with his
power for ever\
He is the Father of the fatherless, and defendeth the
cause of the widow, even God in his holy habitation. He is
the God, that maketh men to be of one mind in a house, and
brino-eth the prisoners out of captivity ; but letteth the run-
agates continue in scarceness*.
It is the Lord, that commandeth the waters; it is the
o-lorious God, that maketh the thunder. It is the Lord, that
ruleth the sea : the voice of the Lord is mighty in operation;
the voice of the Lord is a glorious voice".
Let all the earth fear the Lord : stand in awe of him, all
ye, that dwell in the world''. Thou shalt shew us wonderful
thino-s in thy righteousness, O God of our salvation; thou,
that art the hope of all the ends of the earth, and of them,
that remain in the broad sea'\
Glory be to the Father, &,c.
Or this.
O Lord, thou art my God, I will exalt thee : I will praise
thy name, for thou hast done wonderful things : thy counsels
of old are faithfulness and truth".
Thou, in thy strength, settest fast the mountains, and art
girded about with power. Thou stillest the raging of the
sea, and the noise of his waves, and the madness of his
people y.
They also, that remain in the uttermost parts of the
earth, shall be afraid at thy tokens; thou, that makest the
outgoings of the morning and evening to praise thee.
O Lord God of Hosts, who is like unto thee ? thy truth,
most mighty Lord, is on every side^ Among the gods there
is none like unto thee ; O Lord, there is none, that can do, as
thou doest. For thou art great, and doest wondrous things ;
thou art God alone".
God is very greatly to be feared in the council of the
saints, and to be had in reverence of all them, that are round
about him ^.
Righteousness and equity is in the habitation of thy seat;
' Psal. Ixvi. 1. 4. 6. ' Psal. Ixviii. 5, 6. " Psal. xxix. 3. 4. ^ Psal. xxxiii. 8.
" Psal.lxv. 5. " Isa. xxv. 1. y Psal. Ixv. 6—8. ^ Psal. Ixxxix. 9.
a Psal. Ixxxvi. 8, 9. *> Psal. Ixxxix. 8. 15.
48 DEVOTIONS FOR ORDIXARY DAYS.
mercy and truth shall go before thy face. Glory and wor-
ship are before him ; power and honour are in his sanctuary*".
Thou, Lord, art the thing, that I long for; thou art my
hope, even from my youth. Through thee have I been
holden up, ever since I was born ; thou art he, that took
me out of my mother's womb ; my praise shall be always of
thee''.
Glory be to the Father, &.c.
^ After this may be read some portion of Holy Scripture,
out of the New Testament, or out of the Sapiential books
of the Old, viz. Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, &c. because these
are of great use to piety, and to civil conversation. Upon
which w^hen you have awhile meditated, humbly com-
posing yourself upon your knees, say as foUoweth.
Ejaculations.
My help standeth in the name of the Lord, who hath
made heaven and earth''.
Shew the light of thy countenance upon thy servant; and
I shall be safe '.
Do well, O Lord, to them, that be true of heart, and
evermore mightily defend them^.
Direct me in thy truth, and teach me ; for thou art my
Saviour, and my great master''.
Keep me from sin and death eternal, and from my ene-
mies visible and invisible.
Give me grace to live a holy life, and thy favour, that I
may die a godly and happy death.
Lord, hear the prayer of thy servant, and give me thy
Holy Spirit.
The Prayer.
O eternal God, merciful and gracious, vouchsafe thy fa-
vour and thy blessing to thy servant : let the love of thy
mercies, and the dread and fear of thy majesty, make me
careful and inquisitive to search thy will, and diligent to
perform it, and to persevere in the practices of a holy life,
even till the last of my days.
* Psal. xcvi. 6. ^ Psal. Ixxi. 5, 6. * Psal. cxxiv. 8.
f Psal. Ixxx. 3. e Psal. cxxv. 4. ^ Psal. xxv. 5.
DEVOTIONS FOR ORDINARY DAYS. 49
II.
Keep me, O Lord, for I am thine by creation ; guide me,
for I am thine by purchase ; thou hast redeemed me by the
blood of thy Son ; and loved me with the love of a father, for
I am thy child by adoption and grace: let thy mercy pardon
my sins, thy providence secure me from the punishments and
evils I have deserved, and thy care watch over me, that I
may never any more offend thee : make me, in malice, to be
a child; but in understanding, piety, and the fear of God, let
me be a perfect man in Christ, innocent and prudent, readily
furnished and instructed to every good work.
III.
Keep me, O Lord, from the destroying angel, and from
the wrath of God : let thy anger never rise against me, but
thy rod gently correct my follies, and guide me in thy ways,
and thy staff support me in all sufferings and changes. Pre-
serve me from fracture of bones, from noisome, infectious,
and sharp sicknesses ; from great violences of fortune and
sudden surprises : keep all my senses entire till the day of
ray death, and let my death be neither sudden, untimely, nor
unprovided : let it be after the common manner of men,
having in it nothing extraordinary, but an extraordinary
piety, and the manifestation of thy great and miraculous
mercy.
IV. .,.,^
Let no riches make me ever forget myself, no poverty
ever make me to forget thee : let no hope or fear, no pleasure
or pain, no accident without, no weakness within, hinder or
discompose my duty, or turn me from the ways of thy com-
mandments. O let thy Spirit dwell with me for ever, and
make my soul just and charitable, full of honesty, full of re-
lioion, resolute and constant in holy purposes, but inflexible
to evil. Make me humble and obedient, peaceable and pious :
let me never envy any man's good, nor deserve to be despised
myself : and if I be, teach me to bear it with meekness and
charity.
V.
Give me a tender conscience ; a conversation discreet
and affable, modest and patient, liberal and obliging; a body
VOL. IV. E
50 DEVOTIONS FOR ORDIXARY DAYS.
chaste and healthful, competency of living according to my
condition, contentedness in all estates, a resigned will and
mortified affections; that I may be, as thou wouldest have
me, and my portion may be in the lot of the righteous, in
the brightness of thy countenance, and the glories of eter-
nity. Amen.
Holy is our God. Holy is the Almighty. Holy is the
Immortal. Holy, holy, holy Lord God of Sabaoth, have
mercy upon me.
A form of Prayer for the Evening, to he said hy such, who have
not time or opportunity to say the public prayers appointed
for this office.
I.
Evening Prayer.
O eternal God, great Father of men and angels, who hast
established the heavens and the earth in a wonderful order,
making day and night to succeed each other ; I make my
humble address to thy Divine Majesty, begging of thee mercy
and protection this night and ever. O Lord, pardon all my
sins, my light and rash words, the vanity and impiety of my
thoughts, my unjust and uncharitable actions, and whatso-
ever I have transgressed against thee this day, or at any
time before. Behold, O God, my soul is troubled in the
remembrance of my sins, in the frailty and sinfulness of my
flesh exposed to every temptation, and of itself not able to
resist any. Lord God of mercy, I earnestly beg of thee to
give me a great portion of thy grace, such as may be suffi-
cient and effectual for the mortification of all my sins and
vanities and disorders : that as I have formerly served my
lust and unworthy desires, so now I may give myself up
wholly to thy service and the studies of a holy life.
IL
Blessed Lord, teach me frequently and sadly to remem-
ber my sins ; and be thou pleased to remember them no
more : let me never forget thy mercies, and do thou still re-
member to do me good. Teach me to walk always as in
thy presence : ennoble my soul with great degrees of love to
thee, and consign my spirit with great fear, religion and ve-
DEVOTIONS FOR ORDINARY DAYS. 51
neration of thy holy name and laws ; that it may become
the great employment of my whole life to serve thee, to ad-
vance thy glory, to root out all the accursed habits of sin ;
that in holiness of life, in humility, in charity, in chastity
and all the ornaments of grace, I may, by patience, wait for
the coming of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
III.
Teach me, O Lord, to number my days, that I may apply
ray heart unto wisdom ; ever to remember my last end, that
I may not dare to sin against thee. Let thy holy angels be
ever present with me to keep me in all my ways from the
malice and violence of the spirits of darkness, from evil com-
pany, and the occasions and opportunities of evil, from pe-
rishing in popular judgments, from all the ways of sinful
shame, from the hands of all mine enemies, from a sinful
life, and from despair in the day of my death. Then, O
brightest Jesu, shine gloriously upon me ; let thy mercies
and the light of thy countenance sustain me in all my
agonies, weaknesses, and temptations. Give me opportunity
of a prudent and spiritual guide ; and of receiving the holy
sacrament, and let thy loving Spirit so guide me in the ways
of peace and safety, that with the testimony of a good con-
science and the sense of thy mercies and refreshment, I may
depart this life in the unity of the church, in the love of
God, and a certain hope of salvation through Jesus Christ
our Lord and most blessed Saviour. Amen.
Our Father, &c.
Aiiofher Form of Evening Prayer which may also he used at
bed-time.
Our Father, 8cc.
I will lift up my eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh
my help'.
My help cometh of the Lord, which made heaven and
earth.
He will not suffer thy foot to be moved : he that keepeth
thee, will not slumber.
Behold, he that keepeth Israel, shall neither slumber nor
sleep.
Psal. cxx!. 1, &e.
e2
52 DEVOTIONS FOR ORDINARY DAYS.
The Lord is thy keeper, the Lord is thy sliade, uj)on thy
ri";ht hand.
The sun shall not smite thee by day, neither the moon by
night.
The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil ; he shall pre-
serve thy soul.
The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in,
from this time forth for evermore.
Glory be to the Father, &c.
L
Visit, I beseech thee, O Lord, this habitation with thy
mercy, and me with thy grace and salvation. Let thy holy
angels pitch their tents round about and dwell here, that no
illusion of the night may abuse me, the spirits of darkness
may not come near to hurt me, no evil or sad accident op-
press me ; and let the eternal Spirit of the Father dwell in
my soul and body, filling every corner of my heart with light
and grace. Let no deed of darkness overtake me ; and let
thy blessing, most blessed God, be upon me for ever, through
Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
IL
Into thy hands, most blessed Jesu, I commend my soul
and body, for thou hast redeemed both with thy precious
blood. So bless and sanctify my sleep unto me, that it may
be temperate, holy, and safe, a refreshment to my wearied
body, to enable it so to sei"ve my soul, that both may serve
thee with a never-failing duty. O let me never sleep in sin
or death eternal, but give me a watchful and a prudent spirit,
that I may omit no opportunity of serving thee ; that whe-
ther I sleep or wake, live or die, I may be thy servant and
thy child : that when the work of my life is done, I may rest
in the bosom of my Lord, till by the voice of the archangel,
the trump of God, I shall be awakened, and called to sit down
and feast in the eternal supper of the Lamb. Grant this, O
Lamb of God, for the honour of thy mercies, and the glory
of thy name, O most merciful Saviour and Redeemer Jesus.
Amen.
IIL
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus, who
DEVOTIONS FOR ORDINARY DAYS. 53
hath sent his angels, and kept me this day from the destruc-
tion that walketh at noon, and the arrow that flieth by day ;
and hath given me his Spirit to restrain me from those evils,
to which my own weaknesses, and my evil habits, and my
miquiet enemies, would easily betray me. Blessed and for
ever hallowed be thy name for that never-ceasing shower of
blessing, by which I live, and am content and blessed, and
provided for in all necessities, and set forward in my duty
and way to heaven. Blessing, honour, glory, and power, be
unto him that sitteth on the throne, and to the Lamb, for
ever and ever. Amen.
Holy is our God. Holy is the Almighty. Holy is the
Immortal. Holy, holy, holy Lord God of Sabaoth, have
mercy upon me.
Ejaculations and short Meditations to be used in the nighty
7vhen we wake.
Stand in awe and sin not : commune with your own heart
upon your bed, and be still. I will lay me down in peace
and sleep ; for thou. Lord, only makest me to dwell in safety''.
O Father of spirits, and the God of all flesh, have mercy
and pity upon all sick and dying Christians, and receive the
souls which thou hast redeemed returning unto thee.
Blessed are they that dwell in the heavenly Jerusalem,
where there is no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to
shine in it : for the glory of God does lighten it, and the
Lamb is the light thereof. And there shall be no night there,
and they need no candle; for the Lord God giveth them
light, and they shall reign for ever and ever™.
Meditate on Jacob's wrestling with the angel all night :
be thou also importunate with God for a blessing, and give
not over, till he hath blessed thee.
Meditate on the angel passing over the children of Israel,
and destroying the Egyptians for disobedience and oppres-
sion. Pray for the grace of obedience and charity, and for
the Divine protection.
Meditate on the angel, who destroyed in a night the
whole army of the Assyrians for fornication. Call to mind
^ Psal. iv. t. 9. ' Rev. xxi. 23. ™ Rev. xxii. 5.
54 DEVOTIONS FOR ORDINARY DAYS.
the sins of thy youth, the sins of thy bed ; and say with
David, " My reins chasten me in the night season, and my
soul refuseth comfort." Pray for pardon and the grace of
chastity.
Meditate on the agonies of Christ in the garden, his sad-
ness and affliction all that night; and thank and adore him
for his love, that made him suffer so much for thee ; and
hate thy sins, which made it necessary for the Son of God
to suffer so much.
Meditate on the four last things. 1. The certainty of
death. 2. The terrors of the day of judgment. 3. The joys
of heaven. 4. The pains of hell ; and the eternity of both.
Think upon all thy friends, who are gone before thee ;
and pray that God would grant to thee to meet them in a
joyful resurrection.
" The day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night";
in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise,
and the elements shall melt w ith fervent heat ; the earth also,
and the works that are therein, shall be burnt up. Seeing
then, that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of
persons ought we to be, in all holy conversation and godli-
ness, looking for and hastening unto the coming of the day
of God r"
Lord, in mercy remember thy servant in the day of judg-
ment.
Thou shalt answer for me, O Lord my God. In thee, O
Lord, have I trusted : let n:^ never be confounded. Amen.
I desire the Christian reader to observe, that all these
offices or fomis of prayer (if they should be used every day)
would not spend above an hour and a half: but because
some of them are double (and so but one of them to be used
in one day) it is much less : and by affording to God one
hour in twenty-four, thou mayest have the comforts and re-
wards of devotion. But he that thinks this is too much,
either is very busy in the world, or very careless of heaven.
I have parted the prayers into smaller portions, that he may
use which and how many he please in any one of the forms.
» 2 Pet. iii. 10.
DEVOTIONS FOR ORDINARY DAYS. 55
Ad Sect. 2.
A Prayer for holy intention in the beginning and pursuit of any
considerable action, as Study, Preaching, 8ic.
O eternal God, who hast made all things for man, and man
for thy glory, sanctify my body and soul, my thoughts and
my intentions, my words and actions, that whatsoever I shall
think, or speak, or do, may be by me designed to the glori-
fication of thy name; and by thy blessing it may be effective
and successful in the work of God, according as it can be
capable. Lord, turn my necessities into virtue ; the works
of nature into the works of grace, by making them orderly,
regular, temperate, subordinate, and profitable to ends be-
yond their own proper efficacy: and let no pride or self-
seeking, no covetousness or revenge, no impure mixture or
unhandsome purposes, no little ends and low imaginations,
pollute my spirit, and unhallow any of my words and actions:
but let my body be a servant of my spirit, and both body
and spirit servants of Jesus; that, doing all things for thy
glory here, I may be partaker of thy glory hereafter, through
Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Ad Sect. 3.
A Prayer meditating and referring to the Divine presence.
% This Prayer is specially to be used in temptation to private sin.
O Almighty God, infinite and eternal, thou fillest all
things with thy presence; thou art every where by thy
essence and by thy power, in heaven by glory, in holy places
by thy grace and favour, in the hearts of thy servants by thy
Spirit, in the consciences of all men by thy testimony and
observation of us. Teach me to walk always as in thy pre-
sence, to fear thy majesty, to reverence thy wisdom and
omniscience ; that I may never dare to commit any inde-
cency in the eye of my Lord and my Judge ; but that I may,
with so much care and reverence, demean myself, that my
judge may not be my accuser, but my advocate ; that I, ex-
pressing the belief of thy presence here by careful walking,
may feel the effects of it in the participation of eternal glory,
through Jesus Christ. Amen.
56 CHRISTIAN SOBRIETY.
CHAP. II.
OF CHRISTIAN SOBRIETY.
SECT. I.
Of Sobriety in the general sense.
Christian religion, in all its moral parts, is nothing else
but the law of nature, and great reason, complying with the
great necessities of all the world, and promoting the great
profit of all relations, and carrying us through all accidents
of variety of chances to that end, which God hath from eter-
nal ages purposed for all, that live according to it, and which
he hath revealed in Jesus Christ: and, according to the
apostle's arithmetic, hath but these three parts of it; 1. So-
briety, 2. Justice, 3. Religion. " For the grace of God
bringing salvation hath appeared to all men, teaching us that,
denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live, 1.
Soberly, 2. Righteously, and, 3. Godly, in this present world,
looking for that blessed hope and glorious appearing of the
great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ." The first contains
all our deportment in our personal and private capacities,
the fair treating of our bodies and our spirits. The second
enlarges our duty in all relations to our neighbour. The
third contains the offices of direct religion, and intercourse
with God.
Christian sobriety is all that duty, that concerns ourselves
in the matter of meat and drink and pleasures and thoughts ;
and it hath within it the duties of 1. Temperance, 2. Chastity,
3. Humility, 4. Modesty, 5. Content.
It is a using severity, denial and frustration of our ap-
petite, when it grows unreasonable in any of these instances :
the necessity of which we shall to best purpose understand,
by considering the evil consequences of sensuality, effemi-
nacy, or fondness after carnal pleasures.
Evil consequences of Voluptuousness or Sensualitj/.
1. A longing after sensual pleasures is a dissolution of
the spirit of a man, and makes it loose, soft, and wandering ;
unapt for noble, wise, or spiritual employments ; because
the principles, upon which pleasure is chosen and pursued.
CHRISTIAN SOBRIETY. ^1
are sottish, weak, and unlearned, such as prefer the body be-
fore the soul°, the appetite before reason, sense before the
spirit, the pleasures of a short abode before the pleasures of
eternity.
2. The nature of sensual pleasure is vain, empty, and un-
satisfying, biggest always in expectation, and a mere vanity
in the enjoying, and leaves a sting and thorn behind it, when
it goes off. Our laughing, if it be loud and high, commonly
ends in a deep sigh ; and all the instances of pleasure have
a sting in the tail, though they carry beauty on the face and
sweetness on the lip.
3. Sensual pleasure is a great abuse to the spirit of a
man, being a kind of fascination or witchcraft, blinding the
understanding and enslaving the will. And he that knows
he is free-born or redeemed with the blood of the Son of God,
will not easily suffer the freedom of his soul to be entangled
and rifled P.
4. It is most contrary to the state of a Christian, whose
life is a perpetual exercise, a wrestling and warfare, to which
sensual pleasure disables him, by yielding to that enemy,
with whom he must strive, if ever he will be crowned''. And
this argument the apostle intimated : " He that striveth for
masteries is temperate in all things : now they do it to ob-
tain a corruptible crown ; but we, an incorruptible ^"
5. It is by a certain consequence the greatest impediment
in the world to martyrdom : that being a fondness, this be-
ing a cruelty to the flesh ; to which a Christian man, arriv-
ing by degrees, must first have crucified the lesser affections :
for he, that is overcome by little arguments of pain, will
hardly consent to lose his life with torments.
Degrees of Sobrieti/.
Against this voluptuousness, sobriety is opposed in three
degrees.
1. A despite or disaffection to pleasures, or a resolving
" Tu si aiiimiim vicisti potius quain animus le, est quod gaudeas. Qui aiiirauiii
vincunt, quam quos animus, semper probiores cluerit. Trinum. 2. 2. 29.
P MoW a-XEvf-at irdcrav 'STai\i~i; Tnv (7eavroiJ TTjoaijES'iv, avfljaJTTE* £i f^nSlv oiXXs, fjiii uXtyou
alrhv wcoXriirr)^. Arrian. c. 2. 1. i.
T 0£X£ic oXu/wTTiet Vixnirat; AiX it EiiraJCTErv, avayxoTgo<})E"v, atti-j^lG-^ai Tnix/AaTiDV, yvfji.-
Ki^Ec-Sai TT^o; avctyKriv, &c. Fpict. c. 29. 2. ed. Sclav.
f 1 Cor. ix. 'ia.
58 CHRISTIAN SOBRIETY.
against all entertainment of the instances and temptations
of sensuality: and it consists in the internal faculties of will
and understanding, decreeing and declaring against them,
disapproving and disliking them, upon good reason and
strong resolution.
2. A fight and actual war against all the temptations and
offers of sensual pleasure in all evil instances and degrees :
and it consists in prayer, in fasting, in cheap diet, and hard
lodging, and laborious exercises, and avoiding occasions,
and using all arts and industry of fortifying the spirit, and
making it severe, manly, and Christian.
3. Spiritual pleasure is the highest degree of sobriety :
and in the same degree, in which we relish and are in love
with spiritual delights, the hidden manna % with the sweet-
ness of devotion, with the joys of thanksgiving, with rejoic-
ing in the Lord, with the comforts of hope, with the deli-
ciousness of charity and alms-deeds, with the sweetness of a
good conscience, with the peace of meekness, and the feli-
cities of a contented spirit; in the same degree we disrelish
and loath the husks of swinish lusts, and the parings of the
apples of Sodom; and the taste of sinful pleasures is un-
savoury as the drunkard's vomit.
Rules for suppressing Voluptuousness.
The precepts and advices, which are of best and of ge-
neral use in the curing of sensuality, are these:
1. Accustom thyself to cut off all superfluity in the pro-
visions of thy life, for our desires will enlarge beyond the
present possession, so long as all the things of this world are
imsatisfying : if therefore you suffer them to extend beyond
the measures of necessity or moderated conveniency, they
will still swell : but you reduce them to a little compass,
when you make nature to be your limit. We must more take
care, that our desires should cease*, than that they should be
satisfied : and therefore reducing them to narrow scantlings
and small proportions is the best instrument to redeem their
trouble, and prevent the dropsy, because that is next to an
universal denying them : it is certainly a paring off from
*■ Apoc. ii. 17.
' Desideria tua parvu rcdiine^ hoc euim tantuin curare debcs, ut desiuant. Senec.
CHRISTIAN SOBRIETY. 59
them all unreasonableness and irregularity. " For whatso-
ever covets unseemly things, and is apt to swell to an incon-
venient bulk, is to be chastened and tempered : and such are
sensuality, and a boy "," said the philosopher.
2. Suppress your sensual desires in their first approach "■';
for then they are least, and thy faculties and election are
stronger: but if they, in their weakness, prevail upon thy
strengths, there will be no resisting them, when they are in-
creased, and thy abilities lessened. " You shall scarce ob-
tain of them to end, if you suffer them to begin."
3. Divert them with some laudable employment, and take
off their edge by inadvertency, or a not-attending to them.
For since the faculties of a man cannot, at the same time,
with any sharpness, attend to two objects, if you employ
your spirit upon a book or a bodily labour, or any innocent
and indifferent employment, you have no room left for the
present trouble of a sensual temptation. For to this sense
it was, that Alexander told the Queen of Caria, that his tutor
Leonidas had provided two cooks for him^"; " Hard marches
all night, and a small dinner the next day :" these tamed his
youthful aptnesses to dissolution, so long as he ate of their
provisions.
4. Look upon pleasures, not upon that side that is next
the sun, or where they look beauteously : that is, as they
come towards you to be enjoyed, for then they paint, and
smile, and dress themselves up in tinsel and glass, gems and
counterfeit imagery : but when thou hast rifled and discom-
posed them with enjoying their false beauties, and that they
begin to go off, then behold them in their nakedness and
weariness". See what a sigh and sorrow, what naked un-
handsome proportions, and a filthy carcass, they discover;
and the next time they counterfeit, remember what you have
already discovered, and be no more abused. And I have
known some wise persons have advised to cure the passions
and longings of their children by letting them taste of every
thing they passionately fancied ; for they should be sure to
" Lib. iii. Eth. c. 12. p. 129. ed. Wilk.
^ Facilius est initia aflectuum prohibere, quam iinpetum regere. Senec, ep. 86.
" NuJtTiwopittv Kal oXiyapifl-Ti'av.
* Voluptates abcunles fessas et poenitentia plenas, animis nustris iialura siibjecit,
quo minus cupide repelantur. Seiteca. Laila venire \ enus, tristis abire solct.
CO OF TEMPERANCI-: IN EATING.
find less in it than they looked for, and the impatience of
their being denied would be loosened and made slack : and
when our wishings are no bigger than the thing deserves,
and our usages of them according to our needs (which may
be obtained by trying what they are, and what good they
can do us), we shall find in all pleasures so little entertain-
ment, that the vanity of the possession will soon reprove the
violence of the appetite. And if this permission be in in-
nocent instances, it may be of good use : but Solomon tried
it in all things, taking his fill of all pleasures, and soon grew
weary of them all. The same thing we may do by reason,
which we do by experience, if either we will look upon plea-
sures, as we are sure they look, when they go off, after their
enjoyment ; or if we will credit the experience of those men,
who have tasted them and loathed them.
5. Often consider and contemplate the joys of heaven,
that, when they have filled thy desires which are the sails
of the soul, thou mayest steer only thither, and never more
look back to Sodom. And when thy soul dwells above, and
looks down upon the pleasures of the world, they seem like
things at distance, little and contemptible, and men run-
ning after the satisfaction of their sottish appetites seem
foolish as fishes, thousands of them running after a rotten
worm, that covers a deadly hook ; or at the best, but like
children, with great noise pursuing a bubble rising from a
walnut-shell, which ends sooner than the noise.
6. To this, the example of Christ and his apostles, of
Moses, and all the wise men of all ages of the world, will
much help ; who, understanding how to distinguish good
from evil, did choose a sad and melancholy way to felicity,
rather than the broad, pleasant, and easy path, to folly and
misery.
But this is but the general. Its first particular is tem-
perance.
SECT. II.
Of Temperance in Eating and Drinking.
Sobriety is the bridle of the passions of desire ^ and
temperance is the bit and curb of that bridle, a restraint put
^„
y EyxjaTEia, aiTo tow £V Kfarii e;)^eiv rr,v imUv/xMv.
OF TEMPERA XCE IN EATIXG. C)\
into a man's mouth, a moderate use of meat and drink, so
as may best consist with our health, and may not hinder
but help the works of the soul by its necessary supporting
us, and ministering cheerfulness and refreshment.
Temperance consists in the actions of the soul princi-
pally : for it is a grace that chooses natural means in order to
proper, and natural, and holy ends : it is exercised about eat-
ing and drinking, because they are necessary; but therefore
it permits the use of them, only as they minister to lawful
ends ; it does not eat and drink for pleasure, but for need,
and for refreshment, which is a part or a degree of need. I
deny not that eating and drinking may be, and, in healthful
bodies, always is, with pleasure ; because there is in nature
no greater pleasure, than that all the appetites, which God
hath made, should be satisfied : and a man may choose a
morsel, that is pleasant, the less pleasant being rejected as
being less useful, less apt to nourish, or more agreeing with
an infirm stomach, or when the day is festival by order, or
by private joy. In all these cases it is permitted to receive
a more free delight, and to design it too, as the less principal :
that is, that the chief reason why we choose the more deli-
cious, be the serving that end, for which such refreshments
and choices are permitted. But when delight is the only
end, and rests itself, and dwells there long, then eatino- and
drinking is not a serving of God, but an inordinate action ;
because it is not in the way to that end, whither God di-
rected it. But the choosing of a delicate before a more or-
dinary dish is to be done, as other human actions are, in
which there are no degrees and precise natural limits de-
scribed, but a latitude is indulged ; it must be done mode-
rately, prudently, and according to the accounts of wise,
religious, and sober men : and then God, who gave us such
variety of creatures, and our choice to use which we will,
may receive glory from our temperate use, and thanksgiving;
and we may use them indifferently without scruple, and a
making them to become snares to us, either by too licentious
and studied use of them, or too restrained and scrupulous
fear of using them at all, but in such certain circumstances,
in which no man can be sure, he is not mistaken.
But temperance in meat and drink is to be estimated by
the following measures.
62 OF TEMPERANCE IN EATING.
Measures of Temperance in Eating.
1. Eat not before the time, unless necessity, or charity,
or any intervenino- accident, which may make it reasonable
and prudent, should happen. Remember it had almost cost
Jonathan his life, because he tasted a little honey before the
sun went down, contrary to the king's commandment ; and
although a great need, which he had, excused him from the
sin of gluttony, yet it is inexcusable, when thou eatest be-
fore the usual time, and thrustest thy hand into the dish un-
seasonably, out of greediness of the pleasure, and impatience
of the delay.
2. Eat not hastily and impatiently, but with such decent
and timely action, that your eating be a human act, subject
to deliberation and choice, and that you may consider in the
eating : whereas he that eats hastily, cannot consider par-
ticularly of the circumstances, degrees, and little accidents
and chances, that happen in his meal ; but may contract
many little indecencies, and be suddenly surprised.
3. Eat not delicately, or nicely; that is, be not trouble-
some to thyself or others in the choice of thy meats, or the
delicacy of thy sauces. It was imputed as a sin to the sons
of Israel, that they loathed manna and longed for flesh : " the
quails stunk in their nostrils, and the w rath of God fell upon
them." And for the manner of dressing, the sons of Eli
were noted of indiscreet curiosity : they would not have the
flesh boiled, but raw, that they might roast it with fire. Not
that it was a sin to eat it, or desire meat roasted ; but that
when it was appointed to be boiled, they refused it : which
declared an intemperate and a nice palate. It is lawful in
all senses to comply with a weak and a nice stomach : but
not with a nice and curious palate. When our health requires
it, that ought to be provided for ; but not so our sensuality
and intemperate longings. Whatsoever is set before you,
eat; if it be provided for you, you may eat it, be it never so
delicate ; and be it plain and common, so it be wholesome,
and fit for you, it must not be refused upon curiosity : for
every degree of that is a degree of intemperance. Happy
and innocent were the ages of our forefathers, who ate herbs
and parched corn, and drank the pure stream, and broke
OF TEMPERANCE IX EATING. G3
their fast with nuts and roots ^; and when they were per-
mitted flesh, ate it only dressed with hunger and fire ; and
the first sauce they had was bitter herbs, and sometimes
bread dipped in vinegar. But, in this circumstance, modera-
tion is to be reckoned in proportion to the present customs,
to the company, to education, and the judgment of honest
and wise persons, and the necessities of nature.
4. Eat not too much : load neither thy stomach nor thy
understanding. " If thou sit at a bountiful table, be not
greedy upon it, and say not there is much meat on it. Re-
member that a wicked eye is an evil thing : and what is
created more wicked tlian an eye ? Therefore it weepeth
upon every occasion. Stretch not thy hand whithersoever
it looketh, and thrust it not with him into the dish. A very
little is sufficient for a man well nurtured, and he fetcheth
not his wind short upon his bed."
Signs and Effects of Temperance.
We shall best know, that we have the grace of temper-
ance by the following signs, which are as so many arguments
to engage us also upon its study and practice.
1. A temperate man is modest: greediness is unman-
nerly and rude. And this is intimated in the advice of the
son of Sirach, "When thou sittest amongst many, reach not
thy hand out first of all. Leave off first for manners' sake,
and be not insatiable, lest thou offend." 2. Temperance is
accompanied with gravity of deportment : greediness is
garish, and rejoices loosely at the sight of dainties^. 3. Sound,
but moderate, sleep, is its sign and its effect. Sound sleep
cometh of moderate eating ; he riseth early, and his wits are
with him. 4. A spiritual joy and a devout prayer. 5. A
suppressed and seldom anger. 6. A command of our thoughts
and passions. 7. A seldom-returning, and a never-prevail-
ing temptation. 8. To which add, that a temperate person
is not curious of fancies and deliciousness. He thinks not
* FelLx initium, prior aslas contenta dnlcibiis arvis ;
Facileque sera solebat jejuuia solvere glande. Boeth. 1. 1. de consol.
Arbuteos foetus, luontanaque fraga legebant. Ov. M. 1. 104.
* Cicero vooat Temperantiam ornatum vitee, in quo decorum illud et honestam si-
tum est.
64 OF TEMPERANCE IN EATING.
mucl), and speaks not often, of meat and drink; hath a
healtliful body and long life, unless it be hindered by some
other accident : whereas to gluttony, the pain of watching
and choler, the pangs of the belly are continual company.
And therefore Stratonicus said handsomely concerning the
luxuiy of tlie Rliodians, " They built houses, as if they were
immortal ; but they feasted, as if they meant to live but a
little while." And Antipater, by his reproach of the old
glutton Demades well expressed the baseness of this sin,
saying, that Demades, now old'', and always a glutton, was
like a spent sacrifice, nothing left of him but his belly and
his tongue, all the man besides is gone.
Of Drunkenness.
But I desire that it be observed, that because intemper-
ance in eating is not so soon perceived by others as immo-
derate drinking, and the outward visible effects of it are not
either so notorious or so ridiculous, therefore gluttony is not
of so great disreputation amongst men as drunkenness ; yet,
according to its degree, it puts on the greatness of the sin be-
fore God, and is most strictly to be attended to, lest we be
surprised by our security and want of diligence, and the in-
temperance is alike criminal in both, according as the af-
fections are either to the meat or drink. Gluttony is more
uncharitable to the body, and drunkenness to the soul, or
the understanding part of man ; and therefore in Scripture is
more frequently forbidden and declaimed against than the
other : and sobriety hath by use obtained to signify temper-
ance in drinking.
Drunkenness is an immoderate affection and use of dnnk.
Tliat I call immoderate, that is besides or beyond that order
of good things, for which God hath given us the use of drink.
The ends are digestion of our meat, (cheerfulness and refresh-
ment of our spirits, or any end of health ; besides which if we
go, or at any time beyond it, it is inordinate and criminal, it
is the vice of drunkenness. It is forbidden by our blessed
Saviour in these words". " Take heed to yourselves, lest at
any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting and
drunkenness :" surfeiting, that is, the evil effects, the sot-
•> Plularcli. dc cnpid. divit. "^ Luke xxi. 34.
OF TEMPERANCE IN DRINKING. G5
tishness and remaining" stupidity of habitual, or of the last
night's drunkenness. For Christ forbids both the actual and
the habitual intemperance ; not only the effect of it, but
also the affection to it ; for in both there is sin. He that
drinks but little, if that little makes him drunk, and if he
know beforehand his own infirmity, is guilty of surfeiting,
not of drunkenness''. But he that drinks much, and is strong
to bear it, and is not deprived of his reason violently, is guilty
of the sin of drunkenness. It is a sin, not to prevent such
uncharitable effects upon the body and understanding : and
therefore a man that loves not the drink, is guilty of surfeit-
ing, if he does not watch to prevent the evil effect : and it is
a sin, and the greater of the two, inordinately to love or to
use the drink, though the surfeiting or violence do not fol-
low. Good therefore is the counsel of the son of Sirach,
" Shew not thy valiantness in wine ; for wine hath destroyed
many*."
Evil consequents to Drunkenness.
The evils and sad consequents of drunkenness (the con-
sideration of which are as so many arguments to avoid the
sin) are to this sense reckoned by the writers of holy Scrip-
ture, and other wise personages of the world. 1. It causeth
woes and mischief^, wounds and sorrow, sin and shame s; it
maketh bitterness of spirit, brawling and quarrelling ; it in-
creaseth rage and lesseneth strength; it maketh red eyes, and
a loose and babbling tongue. 2. It particularly ministers to
lust, and yet disables the body ; so that in effect it makes
man wanton as a satyr, and impotent as age. And Solomon,
in enumerating the evils of this vice, adds this to the account*",
" thine eyes shall behold strange women, and thine heart shall
utter perverse things :" as if the drunkard were only desire,
and then impatience, muttering and enjoying like an eunuch
embracing a woman. 3. It besots and hinders the actions
of the understanding, making a man brutish in his passions,
and a fool in his reason ; and differs nothing from madness,
^ K^ameiXt! ano -rrpon^aiai ant am X^'C*^? olvo'oroa-ia;. Schol. in Aristoph. Idem fere
apud Plutarch. Vinolentia animi qaaiidam remissionem et levitalem, ebrietas futili-
latem significat. Plutarch, de Garrul.
^ Ecclus. xxxi. 25. "" Prov. xxiii. 29. Ecclus. xxxi. 26.
S Multa faciunt ebrii, quibus sobrii erubescunt. Senec. ep. 83, 17.
^ Prov. xxiii. 33.
VOL. IV. F
ijG or ti::mperaxcf. in drinking.
but that it is voluntary, and no is an equal evil in nature, and
a worse in manners'. 4. It takes off all the guards, and lets
loose the reins of all those evils, to which a man is by his na-
ture or by his evil customs inclined, and from which he is
restrained by reason and severe principles. Drunkenness
calls off the watchmen from their towers ; and then all the
evils, that can proceed from a loose heart, and an untied
tongue, and a dissolute spirit, and an unguarded, unlimited
will, all that we may put upon the accounts of drunkenness.
5. It extinguisheth and quenches the Spirit of God, for no
man can be filled with the Spirit of God and with wine at
the same time. And therefore St. Paul makes them exclusive
of each other''. " Be not drunk with wine, wherein is ex-
cess; but be filled with the Spirit'." And since Joseph's cup
was put into Benjamin's sack, no man had a divining goblet.
6. It opens all the sanctuaries of nature, and discovers the
nakedness of the soul, all its weaknesses and follies ; it mul-
tiplies sins and discovers them ; it makes a man incapable of
being a private friend, or a public counsellor. 7. It taketh
a man's soul into slavery and imprisonment more than any
vice whatsoever'", because it disarms a man of all his reason
and his wisdom, whereby he might be cured, and therefore
commonly it grows upon him with age; a drunkard being
still more a fool and less a man. I need not add any sad ex-
amples, since all story and all ages have too many of them.
Amnion was slain by his brother Absalom, when he was warm
and high with wine. Simon the high priest and two of his
sons were slain by their brother at a drunken feast. Holo-
fernes was drunk, when Judith slew him : and all the great
things that Daniel spake of Alexander", were drowned with
a surfeit of one night's intemperance: and the drunkenness
' Insaniac comes est ira, contubernalis ebiietas. Plutarch,
■ Corpus onustiim
Hesternis vitiis animum quoque pr?sgravat. Iloral.
Ebrietas est vuluntaria insania. Senec.
^ Epbcs. V. 18.
' OTvof a-t rpdlt /i*8Xi>)J»c, o'c Tg xai aXXou?
BXaTTTij, Of av jwiv j^avJov 'ixri jt*»i5' a's-ifxa, -rem. Homer. Od. <{>'. 293.
"• Prov. \xxi. k
Ovh~i Ji fxi^uaiv, av o-xowSf,"Of olx) JoCXo'j eitti toZ Trevmitivat,
Philem. p. oW. ed. Clerc.
■» Alexandruin iiiteiniieraiitia bibemU, et ille Heiciilaims ac latalis soyplius perdi-
dit. V»i. ep. IxNxiii. t'l.
OF TEMPERANCE. C)7
of Noah and Lot are upon record to eternal ages, that in
those early instances, and righteous persons, and less crimi-
nal drunkenness, than is that of Christians in this period of
the world, God might shew, that very great evils are prepared
to punish this vice ; no less than shame, and slavery, and in-
cest; the first upon Noah, the second upon one of his sons,
and the third in the person of Lot.
Signs of Drunkenness.
But if it be inquired concerning the periods and distinct
significations of this crime ; and when a man is said to be
drunk ; to this I answer, that drunkenness is in the same
manner to be judged as sickness. As every illness or vio-
lence done to health, in every part of its continuance, is a
part or degree of sickness : so is every going off from our
natural and common temper and our usual severity of be-
haviour, a degree of drunkenness. He is not only drunk,
that can drink no more ; for few are so : but he hath sin-
ned in a degree of drunkenness, who hath done any thing to-
wards it beyond his proper measure. But its parts and pe-
riods are usually thus reckoned. 1. Apish gestures. 2. Much
talking. 3, Immoderate laughing. 4. Dulness of sense. 5.
Scurrility, that is, wanton, or jeering, or abusive language.
6. An useless understanding. 7. Stupid sleep. 8. Epilepsies,
or fallings and reelings, and beastly vomitings. The least of
these, even when the tongue begins to be untied, is a degree
of drunkenness.
But that we may avoid the sin of intemperance in meats
and drinks, besides the former rules of measures, these coun-
sels also may be useful.
Rules for obtaining Temperance.
1. Be not often present at feasts, nor at all in dissolute
company, when it may be avoided : for variety of pleasing
objects steals away the heart of man ; and company is either
violent or enticing ; and we are weak or complying, or per-
haps desirous enough to be abused. But if you be unavoid-
ably or indiscreetly engaged, let not mistaken civility or
good nature engage thee either to the temptation of staying.
F 2
G8 OF TEMPERANCE.
(if thou understandest thy weakness) or the sin of drinking
inordinately.
2. Be severe in your judgment concerning your propor-
tions, and let no occasion make you enlarge far beyond your
ordinary. For a man is surprised by parts ; and while he thinks
one glass more will not make him drunk, that one glass hath
disabled him from well discerning his present condition and
neighbour danger. " While men think themselves wise, they
become fools:" they think they shall taste the aconite and
not die, or crown their heads with juice of poppy and not
be drowsy; and if they drink off the whole vintage, still
they think, they can swallow another goblet°. But remem-
ber this, whenever you begin ^o consider, whether you may
safely take one draught more, it is then high time to give
over. Let that be accounted a sign late enouoh to break
off: for every reason to doubt, is a sufficient reason to part
the company.
3. Come not to table, but when thy need mvites thee :
and if thou beest in health, leave something of thy appetite
unfilled, something of thy natural heat unemployed, that it
may secure thy digestion, and serve other needs of nature or
tiie spirit.
4. Propound to thyself (if thou beest in a capacity) a
constant rule of living, of eating and drinking : which though
it may not be fit to observe scrupulously, lest it become a
snare to thy conscience, or endanger thy health upon every
accidental violence ; yet let not thy rule be broken often nor
much, but upon great necessity and in small degrees.
5. Never urge any man to eat or drink beyond his own
limits and his own desires. He that does otherwise, is drunk
with his brother's surfeit'', and reels and falls with his in-
temperance ; that is, the sin of drunkenness is upon both
their scores; they both lie wallowing in the guilt.
6. Use St. Paul's instruments of sobriety : " Let us who are
of the day, be sober, putting on the breast-plate of faith and
love, and for an helmet the hope of salvation." Faith, hope,
and charity, are the best weapone in the world to fight
against intemperance. The faith of the Mahometans forbids
" Clii lia hcviilo tut(o il niarp, puo bcre ariche uii trano. — Senec, cp. 83.
P Nil interest, faveas sceleri, an illud facias. Sencc.
OF TEiMPKIJAKCE. CD
them to drink wine, and they abstain religiously, as the sons
of Rechab : and the faith of Clirist forbids drunkenness to
us ; and therefore is infinitely more powerful to suppress
this vice, when we remember, that we are Christians, and to
abstain from drunkenness and gluttony is part of the faith
and discipline of Jesus, and that with these vices neither our
love to God, nor our hopes of heaven can possibly consist;
and therefore, when these enter the heart, the others go out
at the mouth : for this is the devil, that is cast out by fasting
and prayer, which are the proper actions of these graces.
7. As a pursuance of this rule, it is a good advice, that as
we begin and end all our times of eating with prayer and
thanksgiving; so, at the meal, we remove and carry up our
mind and spirit to the celestial table, often thinking of it,
and often desiring it ; that by enkindling thy desire to hea-
venly banquets, thou mayest be indifferent and less pas-
sionate for the earthly.
8. Mingle discourses, pious, or in some sense profitable,
and in all senses charitable and innocent, with thy meal, as
occasion is ministered.
9. Let your drink so serve your meat, as your meat doth
your health ; that it be apt to convey and digest it, and re-
fresh the spirits : but let it never go beyond such a refresh-
ment, as may a little lighten the present load of a sad or
troubled spirit ; never to inconvenience, lightness, sottish-
ness, vanity, or intemperance ; and know that the loosing
the bands of the tongue, and the very first dissolution of its
duty, is one degree of the intemperance.
10. In all cases be careful, that you be not brought under
the power of such things, which otherwise are lawful enough
in the use. " All things are lawful for me ; but I will not
be brought under the power of any ; " said St. Paul. And
to be perpetually longing, and impatiently desirous of any
thing, so that a man cannot abstain from it, is to lose a man's
liberty, and to become a servant of meat and drink, or
smoke. And I wish this last instance were more considered
by persons, who little suspect themselves guilty of intemper-
ance, though their desires are strong and impatient, and the
use of it perpetual and unreasonable to all purposes, but
that they have made it habitual and necessary, as intemper-
ance itself is made to some men.
70 OF CHASTITY.
11. Use those advices, which are prescribed as instru
ments to suppress voluptuousness, in the foregoing section.
SECTION III.
Of C ha St it I/.
Reader, stay, and read not the advices of the following-
section, vmless thou hast a chaste spirit ; or desirest to be
chaste ; or at least art apt to consider, whether you ought or
no. For there are some spirits so atheistical, and some so
wholly possessed with a spirit of uncleanness, that they turn
the most prudent and chaste discourses into dirty and filthy
apprehensions ; like choleric stomachs, changing their very
cordials and medicines into bitterness ; and in a literal sense,
turning the grace of God into wantonness. They study
cases of conscience in the matter of carnal sins, not to avoid,
but to learn ways how to offend God and pollute their own
spirits ; and search their houses with a sun-beam, that they
may be instructed in all the corners of nastiness. I have used
-all the care I could, in the following periods, that I might
neither be wanting to assist those, that need it, nor yet minis-
ter any occasion of fancy or vainer thoughts to those, that
need them not. If any man will snatch the pure taper from
my hand, and hold it to the devil, he will only burn his own
fingers, but shall not rob me of the reward of my care and
good intention, since I have taken heed how to express the
following duties, and given him caution how to read them.
Chastity is that duty, which was mystically intended by
God in the law of circumcision. It is the circumcision of
the heart, the cutting off all superfluity of naughtiness, and
a suppression of all irregular desires in the matter of sensual
or carnal pleasure. I call all desires irregular and sinful,
that are not sanctified: 1. By the holy institution, or by
being within the ])rotection of marriage; 2. By being within
the order of nature; 3. By being within the moderation of
Christian modesty. Against the first are fornication, adul-
tery, and all voluntary pollutions of either sex. Against
the second are all unnatural lusts and incestuous mixtures.
Against the third is all immoderate use of permitted beds ;
concerning which judgment is to be made, as concerning
OF CHASTITV. 71
meats aiul (biiiks: there being no certain degree of fre-
ic]uency or intention prescribed to all persons, but it is to be
ruled as the other actions of a man, by proportion to the
end, by the dignity of the person in the honour and severity
of being a Christian, and by other circumstances, of which
I am to give account.
Chastity is that grace, which forbids and restrains all
these, keeping the body and soul pure in that state, in which
it is placed by God, whether of the single or of the married
life. Concerning which our duty is thus described by St.
Paul, " For this is the will of God, even your sanctification,
that ye should abstain from fornication : that every one of
you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification
and honour; not in the lust of concupiscence, even as the ,
gentiles which know not God''."
Chastity is either abstinence or continence. Abstinence
is that of virgins or widows : continence of married persons.
Chaste marriages are honourable and pleasing to God : wi-
dowhood is pitiable in its solitariness and loss, but amia-
ble and comely, when it is adorned with gravity and purity,
and not sullied with remembrances of the passed license, nor
with present desires of returning to a second bed. But vir-
ginity is a life of angels, the enamel of the soul, the huge
advantage of religion, the great opportunity for the retire-
ments of devotion"^: and, being empty of cares, it is full of
prayers ; being unmingled with the vvorld, it is apt to con-
verse with God ; and by not feeling the warmth of a too-
forward and indulgent nature, flames out with holy fires, till
it be burning like the cherubim and the most extasied order
of holy and unpolluted spirits.
Natural virginity, of itself, is not a state more acceptable
to God: but that which is chosen and voluntary, in order to
the conveniences of religion and separation from worldly
encumbrances, is therefore better than the married life, not
that it is more holy, but that it is a freedom from cares, an
opportunity to spend more time in spiritual employments ;
it is not allayed with businesses and attendances upon lower
affairs : and if it be a chosen condition to these ends, it con-
T 1 Tbcss. iv. 3—0.
' Virginitas est in carne corruplibili iucoiruplionis perjietua meditatio. St. Au^. L
it Virg. c. 13.
72 OF CHASTITY.
taineth in it a victory over lusts, and greater desires of reli-
gion, and self-denial ; and therefore is more excellent than
the married life, in that degree in which it hath greater reli-
gion, and a greater mortification, a less satisfaction of natural
desires, and a greater fulness of the spiritual : and just so is
to expect that little coronet or special reward, which God
hath prepared (extraordinary and besides the great crown of
all faithful souls) for those, " who have not defiled themselves
with women, but follow the virgin Lamb for ever^"
But some married persons, even in their marriage, do
better please God, than some virgins in their state of virgi-
nity : they by giving great example of conjugal affection, by
preserving their faith unbroken, by educating children in the
fear of God, by patience and contentednessand holy thoughts,
and the exercise of virtues proper to that state, do not only
please God, but do in a higher degree than those virgins,
whose piety is not answerable to their great opportunities
and advantages.
However, married persons, and widows, and virgins, are
all servants of God and coheirs in the inheritance of Jesus,
if they live within the restraints and laws of their particular
estate, chastely, temperately, justly and religiously.
'The evil cortsequents of Uncleanness.
The blessings and proper effects of chastity we shall best
understand, by reckoning the evils of uncleanness and car-
nality.
1. Uncleanness of all vices is the most shameful. " The
eye of the adulterer waiteth for the twilight, saying. No eye
shall see me ; and disguiseth his face. In the dark they dig-
through houses, which they had marked for tliemselves in the
day-time ; they know not the light : for the morning is to
them as the shadow of death. He is swift as the waters; their
portion is cursed in the earth ; he beholdeth not the way of
the vineyards*." Shame is the eldest daughter of uncleanness".
2. The appetites of uncleanness are full of cares and
trouble, and its fruition is sorrow and repentance. The way
of the adulterer is hedged with thorns"; full of fears and
' Apoc. xiv. 4. ' Job xxiv. 15, &c. " art/ita jra&n. '^ Hos. ii.6.
OF CHASTITY. 73
jealousies, burning desires and impatient waitings, tedious-
ness of delay, and sufferance of affronts, and amazements of
discovery '^
3. Most of its kinds are of that condition, that they in-
volve the ruin of two souls ; and he that is a fornicator or
adulterous, steals the soul, as well as dishonours the body,
of his neighbour; and so it becomes like the sin of falling
Lucifer, who brought a part of the stars with his tail from
heaven.
4. Of all carnal sins it is that alone, which the devil takes
delight to imitate and counterfeit; communicating with
witches and impure persons in the corporal act, but in this
only.
5. Uncleanness with all its kinds is a vice, which hath a
prafessed enmity against the body. " Every sin which a man
doth, is without the body; but he that committeth fornica-
tion, sinneth against his own body"."
6. Uncleanness is hugely contrary to the spirit of govern-
ment^ by embasing the spirit of a man, making it effeminate,
sneaking, soft and foolish, without courage, without confi-
dence. David felt this after his folly with Bathsheba, he
fell to unkingly arts and stratagems to hide the crime ; and
he did nothing but increase it, and remained timorous and
poor-spirited, till he prayed to God once more to establish
him with a free and princely spirits And no superior dare
strictly observe discipline upon his charge, if he hath let
himself loose to the shame of incontinence.
7. The Gospel hath added two arguments against un-
cleanness, which were never before used, nor indeed could
be : since God hath given the Holy Spirit to them that are
baptized, and rightly confirmed, and entered into covenant
with him, our 1)odies are made temples of the Holy Ghost, in
which he dwells ; and therefore uncleanness is sacrilege and
defiles a temple. It is St. Paul's argument, " Know ye not
that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost^?" and " He
that defiles a temple, him will God destroy ^ Therefore
glorify God in your bodies," that is, flee fornication. To
which, for the likeness of the argument, add, " that our bo-
"' Appetitus fornicationis anxietas est, satiutas vera poeiiitentia. St. Ilieron.
1 Lor. VI. 18. y <})3-apTixai Tiv a^^xv.
' Spiiitu princjpali me confirma. Psal. li. ' 1 Cor. vi. IP. b i Cor. iii. 17.
^
/4 OF CII A> [ \\\ .
dies are members of Christ; and therefore God forbid, that
we should take tlie members of Christ, and make them mem-
bers of a harlot." So that uncleanness dishonours Christ,
and dishonours the Holy Spirit : it is a sin against God, and
in this sense a sin against the Holy Ghost.
8. The next special argument, which the Gospel ministers
especially against adultery, and for the preservation of the
purity of marriage, is that marriage is by Christ hallowed
in a mystery, to signify the sacramental and mystical union
of Christ and his church*^. He therefore that breaks this
knot, which the church and their mutual faith have tied, and
Christ hath knit up into a mystery, dishonours a great rite of
Christianity, of high, spiritiial, and excellent signification.
9. St. Gregory reckons uncleanness to be the parent of
these monsters'^, blindness of mind, inconsideration, precipi-
tancy or giddiness in actions, self-love, hatred of God, love
of the present pleasures, a despite or despair of the joys of
religion here, and of heaven hereafter. Whereas a pure mind
in a chaste body is the mother of wisdom and deliberation,
sober counsels and ingenious actions, open deportment and
sweet carriage, sincere princijjles and unprejudicate under-
standing, love of God and self-denial, peace and confidence,
holy prayers and spiritual comfort, and a pleasure of spirit
infinitely greater than the sottish and beastly pleasures of
unchastity. " For to overcome pleasure is the greatest plea-
sure ; and no victory is greater than that, which is gotten
over our lusts and filthy inclinations*^."
10. Add to all these, the public dishonesty and disrepu-
tation, that all the nations of the world have cast upon adul-
terous and luihallowed embraces. Abimelcch, to the men of
Gerar, mad(! it death to meddle with the wife of Isaac: and
Judah condemned Thamar to be burnt for her adulterous
conception : and God, besides the law made to put the adul-
terous person to death, did constitute a settled and constant
miracle to discover the adultery of a suspected woman*^, that
her bowels should burst with drinking the waters of jealousy.
The Egyptian law was to cut off the nose of the adulteress,
and the offending part of the adulterer. The Locrians put
out the adulterer's both eyes. The Germans (as Tacitus
♦ Ei)lies. T. oC '' Moral. * SI. Cjprian. de bono pudicitia. ' Numb, v 11.
OF CHASTITY. 75
reports), placed the udulteress amidst her kindred naked, and
shaved her head, and caused her husband to beat her witii
clubs through the city. The Gortynseans crowned the man
with wool, to shame him for his effeminacy; and the Cumani
caused the woman to ride upon an ass, naked and hooted at,
and for ever after called her by an appellative of scorn, " a ri-
der upon the ass^." All nations, barbarous and civil, agreeing
in their general design, of rooting so dishonest and shameful
a vice from under heaven.
The middle ages of the Church were not pleased, that
the adulteress should be put to death'': but in the primitive
ages, the civil laws, by which Christians were then govern-
ed, gave leave to the wronged husband to kill his adulterous
wife, if he took her in the fact' : but because it was a privilege
indulged to men, rather than a direct detestation of the
crime, a consideration of the injury rather than of the un-
cleanness, therefore it was soon altered, but yet hath caused
an inquiry. Whether is worse, the adultery of the man or the
woman ?
The resolution of which case, in order to our present af-
fair, is thus : in respect of the person, the fault is greater in a
man than in a woman, who is of a more pliant and easy spirit,
and weaker understanding, and hath nothing to supply the
unequal strengths of men, but the defensative of a passive
nature and armour of modesty, which is the natural orna-
ment of that sex. "And it is unjust that the man should
demand chastity and severity from his wife, which himself
will not observe towards her""," said the good emperor Anto-
ninus : it is as if the man should persuade his wife to fight
against those enemies, to which he had yielded himself a
prisoner. 2. In respect of the effects and evil consequents,
the adultery of the woman is worse, as bringing bastardy
into a family, and disinherisons or great injuries to the law-
ful children, and infinite violations of peace, and murders,
and divorces, and all the ellects of rage and madness. 3. But
in respect of the crime, and as relating to God, they are equal,
'' Concil. Tribar. c. 49. Concil. Aurel. 1. sub. Clodovaco.
Cod. de adulteriis, ad legem Juliani, 1. 1. et Cod. Theod. de adulteriis, c.
placuit.
■* Apad Aug. de adulter, conjug. Plal. coi>jii<^. pyicccpt.
76 OF CHASTITY.
intolerable, and damnable: and since it is no more permitted
to men to have many wives, than to women to have many
husbands, and that in this respect their privilege is equal,
their sin is so too. And this is the case of the question in
Christianity. And the Church anciently refused to admit
such persons to the holy communion, until they had done
seven years' penances in fasting, in sackcloth, in severe in-
flictions and instruments of charity and sorrow, according to
the discipline of those ages.
Acts of Chastity in general.
The actions and proper offices of the grace of chastity in
general, are these.
1. To resist all unchaste thoughts : at no hand, entertain-
ing pleasure in the unfruitful fancies and remembrances of
uncleanness, although no definite desire or resolution be en-
tertained.
2. At no hand, to entertain any desire', or any fantastic,
imaginative loves, though by shame, or disability, or other
circumstance, they be restrained from act.
3. To have a chaste eye and hand'" : for it is all one with
what part of the body we commit adultery : and if a man lets
his eye loose, and enjoys the lust of that, he is an adulterer.
" Look not upon a woman to lust after her." And supposing
all the other members restrained, yet if the eye be permitted
to lust, the man can no otherwise be called chaste, than he
can be called severe and mortified, that sits all day long see-
ing plays and revellings, and out of greediness to fill his eye,
neglects his belly. There are some vessels, which if you offer
to lift by the belly or bottom, you cannot stir them, but are
soon removed, if you take them by the ears. It matters not,
with which of your members you are taken and carried off
from your duty and severity.
4. To have a heart and mind chaste and pure ; that is,
detesting all uncleanness ; disliking all its motions, past ac-
tions, circumstances, likenesses, discourses : and this ought
-Casso sallcin clrleclainine ain-ire quod poliri nnn licet. Poeta.
I'atollas hniuia- oculos, dixit Ihidorus. ' A'Kyrjlovai aib^anrM , alius qiiidain.
"" Time vidcie unde jiossi!, cadcre, et uoli fieri peiversck biinpiicilate sccurus.
St. Aug.
OF CHASTITY. 77
to be the chastity of virgins and widows, of ohl persons and
eunuchs especially, and generally of all men, according to
their several necessities.
5. To discourse chastely and purely"; with great care de-
clining all indecencies of language, chastening the tongue,
and restraining it with grace, as vapours of wine are re-
strained with a bunch of myrrh.
6. To disapprove by an after-act all involuntary and na-
tural pollutions : for if a man delights in having sufiered
any natural pollution, and with pleasure remembers it, he
chooses that, which was in itself involuntary; and that
which, being natural, was innocent, becoming voluntary, is
made useful.
7. They that have performed these duties and parts of
chastity, will certainly abstain from all exterior actions of
uncleanness, those noonday and midnight devils, those law-
less and ungodly worshippings of shame and uncleanness,
whose birth is in trouble, whose growth is in folly, and whose
end is in shame.
But besides these general acts of chastity, which are
common to all states of men and women, there are some few
things proper to the severals.
Acts of Virginal Chastity .
1. Virgins must remember, that the virginity of the body
is only excellent in order to the purity of the soul ; who
therefore must consider, that since they are in some mea-
sure in a condition like that of angels, it is their duty to
spend much of their time in angelical employment : for in
the same degree that virgins live more spiritually than other
persons, in the same degree is their virginity a more excel-
lent state. But else it is no better than that of involuntary
or constrained eunuchs ; a misery and a trouble, or else a
mere privation, as much without excellency as without mix-
ture.
2. Virgins must contend for a singular modesty ; whose
first part must be an ignorance in the distinction of sexes,
or their proper instruments ; or if they accidentally be in-
" Sp. Minucius Pontifex Posthnmium monuit, ne verbis vitas castimoniam non
aeqaanlibus uteretur. Plut. de cap. exinim, utilit.
7B OF CHASTITY.
structed in tliat, it must be supplied with an inadvertency or
neglect of all thoughts and remembrances of such differ-
ence; and the following parts of it must be pious and chaste
thoughts, holy language, and modest carriage.
3. Virgins must be retired and unpublic : for all freedom
and looseness of society is a violence done to virginity, not
in its natural, but in its moral capacity ; that is, it loses part
of its severity, strictness, and opportunity of advantages, by
publishing that person, whose work is religion, whose com-
pany is angels, whose thoughts must dwell in heaven, and
separate from all mixtures of the world.
4. Virgins have a peculiar obligation to charity : for this
is the virginity of the soul ; as purity, integrity, and separa-
tion is of the body : which doctrine we are taught by St.
Peter : " Seing ye have purified your souls in obeying the
truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren,
see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently"."
For a virgin, that consecrates her body to God, and pollutes
her spirit with rage, or impatience, or inordinate anger, gives
him what he most hates, a most foul and defiled soul.
5. These rules are necessary for virgins, that offer that
state to God, and mean not to enter into the state of mar-
riage : for they that only wait the opportunity of a conve-
nient change, are to steer themselves by the general rules of
chastity.
Rules for Widows, or vidual Chastiti/.
For widows, the fontinel of whose desires hath been
opened by the former permissions of the marriage-bed, they
must remember,
1. That God hath now restrained the former license,
bound up their eyes and shut up their heart into a narrower
compass, and hath given them sorrow to be a bridle to their
desires. A widow must be a mourner ; and she that is not,
cannot so well secure the chastity of her proper state.
2. It is against public honesty to marry another man, so
long as she is with child by her former husband : and of the
same fame, it is in a lesser proportion to marry, within the
year of mourning ; but anciently it was infamous for her to
° 1 I'et. i. I'l?.
OF CHASTITY. 70
marry, till by coimnoii account the body was dissolved into
its first principle of earth.
3. A widow must restrain her memory and her fancy, not
recalling or recounting her former permissions and freer li-
censes with any present delight: for then she opens that
sluice, which her husband's death and her own sorrow have
shut up.
4. A widow, that desires her widowhood should be a
state pleasing to God, must spend her time as devoted virgins
should, in fastings, and prayers, and charity.
5. A widow must forbid herself to use those temporal
solaces, which in her former estate were innocent, but now
are dangerous.
Rules for married persons, or matrimomal Chastiti/.
Concerning married persons, besides the keeping of their
mutual faith and contract with each other, these particulars
are useful to be observed*'.
1. Although their mutual endearments are safe within the
protection of marriage, yet they that have wives or husbands,
must be, as though they had them not; that is, they must
have an affection greater to each other, than they have to
any person in the world, but not greater than they have to
God : but that they be ready to part with all interest in each
other's person rather than sin against God.
2. In their permissions and license, they must be sure to
observe the order of nature, and the ends of God. " He is
an ill husband, that uses his wife as a man treats a harlof,"
having no other end but pleasure. Concerning which our
best rule is, that although in this, as in eating and drinking,
there is an appetite to be satisfied, which cannot be done
without pleasing that desire ; yet since that desire and satis-
faction was intended by nature for other ends, they should
never be separate from those ends, but always be joined with
all or one of these ends, " with a desire of children, or to
avoid fornication, or to lighten and ease the cares and sad-
P Nisi fundaincnta stirpis jacta siut probe, Mis?ros neresse est is-e iKii^ceps pos-
teros. Eiirip.
1 Non debenius eoilem amico uli et adiilalore ; nee ei»dein uti nxore et si-orlo.
Pint, conjiig. praapt.
80 OF CHASTITY.
nesses of household affairs, or to endear each other;" but
never vvitli a purpose, either in act or desire, to separate the
sensuality from these ends which hallow it. Onan did sepa-
rate his act from its proper end, and so ordered his embraces
that his wife should not conceive, and God punished him.
3. Married persons must keep such modesty and decency
of treating each other ^ that they never force themselves into
high and violent lusts, with arts and misbecoming devices :
always remembering, that those mixtures are most innocent,
which are most simple and most natural, most orderly and
most safe.
4. It is a duty of matrimonial chastity, to be restrained
and temperate in the use of their lawful pleasures : concern-
ing which although no universal rule can antecedently be
given to all persons, any more than to all bodies one propor-
tion of meat and drink; yet married persons are to estimate
the degree of their license according to the following pro-
portions. 1. That it be moderate, so as to consist with health.
2. That it be so ordered as not to be too expensive of time,
that precious opportunity of working out our salvation.
3. That when duty is demanded, it be always paid (so far as
is in our powers and election) according to the foregoing
measures. 4. That it be with a temperate affection, without
violent transporting desires, or too sensual applications.
Concerning which a man is to make judgment by proportion
to other actions, and the severities of his religion, and the
sentences of sober and wise persons ; always remembering,
that marriage is a provision for supply of the natural neces-
sities of the body, not for the artificial and procured appe-
tites of the mind. And it is a sad truth, that many married
persons, thinking that the flood-gates of liberty are set wide
open without measures or restraints (so they sail in that
channel), have felt the final rewards of intemperance and
lust, by their unlawful using of lawful permissions. Only
let each of them be temperate, and both of them be modest.
Socrates was wont to say, that those women, to whom nature
had not been indulgent in good features and colours, should
make it up themselves with excellent manners ; and those
■■ Non recte est ab Herodoto dictum, simul cum tnuicu mulierem verecundiam ex-
uere. Qua; nam casta est, posit;t veste, verecundiam ejus loco induit, maximcqne
Terecundiil conjuges tesserd uiaximi inviceiu amoris utuntur. Pint, conjiig. pra:cept.
OF CHASTITY. 8?'
who were beautiful and comely, should be careful, that so
fair a body be not polluted with unhandsome usages. To
which Plutarch* adds, that a wife, if she be unhandsome,
shoidd consider how extremely ugly she would be, if she
wanted modesty : but if she be handsome, let her think how
gracious that beauty would be, if she superadds chastity.
5. Married persons by consent are to abstain from their
mutual entertainments at solemn times of devotion; not as a
duty of itself necessary, but as being the most proper act of
purity, which in their condition they can present to God,
and being a good advantage for attending their preparation
to tlie solemn duty and their demeanour in it. It is St. Paul's
counsel, that " by consent for a time they should abstain,
that they may give themselves to fasting and prayer*." And
though when Christians did receive the holy communion
every day", it is certain they did not abstain, but had chil-
dren: yet when the communion was more seldom, they did
with religion abstain from the marriaoe-bed during the time
of their solemn preparatory devotions, as anciently they did
from eating and drinking, till the solemnity of the day was
past.
6. It were well if married persons would, in their peniten-
tial prayers, and in their general confessions, suspect them-
selves, and accordingly ask a general pardon for all their
indecencies, and more passionate applications of themselves
in the offices of marriage : that what is lawful and honourable
in its kind, may not be sullied with imperfect cirGumstauces ;
or if it be, it may be made clean again by the interruption
and recallings of such a repentance, of which such uncertain
parts of action are capable.
But, because of all the dangers of a Christian, none more
pressing and troublesome than the temptations to lust, no
enemy more dangerous than that of the flesh, no accounts
greater, than what we have to reckon for at the audit of con-
* De conjug. pia?cept. ' 1 Cor. vii. 5.
" Hoc etiam ex more Christianoram, Tertul. suadens fcemiriis CliKistian'is ne Pa-
ganis iiul)aiit ait, Quis denique solennibus Pascliac abnoctautum seciirus sustinebit ?
I'ertul. ad uxur.2.\. Et ex more etiani Gunlilium. Fiut. sympos. 3. q. 6. Nobis au-
teni, si leges civitatis recte colimus, cavendum esl, ne ad terapla et sacrificia acce-
damiis, panlo ante re venerea usi. Itaque expedit, nocleet somno interjecto, juslo-
que intervallo adliibito, mundos rursum quasi de integro, et ad novum diem nova co-
gitanles (ut ait Dcmocrilus) surgi^e.
VOL. IV. G
82 OF CHASTITY.
cupiscence, therefore it concerns all, that would be safe from
this death, to arm themselves by the following rules, to pre-
vent, or to cure all the wounds of our flesh made by the
poisoned arrows of lust.
Remedies against iJndeauness.
1. When a temptation of lust assaults thee, do not resist
it by heaping up arguments against it, and disputing with it,
considering its offers and its danger, but fly from it", that is,
think not at all of it ; lay aside all consideration concerning
it, and turn away from it by any severe and laudable thought
of business. Saint Jerome very wittily reproves the gentile
superstition, who pictured the virgin-deities armed with a
shield and lance, as if chastity could not be defended with-
out war and direct contention. No; this enemy is to be
treated otherwise. If you hear it speak, though but to dis-
pute with it, it ruins you ; and the very arguments you go
about to answer, leave a relish upon the tongue. A man
may be burned, if he goes near the fire, though but to quench
his house; and by handling pitch, though but to draw it
from your clothes, you defile your fingers.
2. Avoid idleness, and fill up all the spaces of thy time
with severe and useful employment : for lust usually creeps
in at those emptinesses, where the soul is unemployed, and
the body is at ease. For no easy, healthful, and idle, per-
son was ever chaste, if he could be tempted. But of all em-
ployments bodily labour is most useful, and of greatest be-
nefit for the driving away the devil.
3. Give no entertainment to the beginnings, the first mo-
tions and secret whispers of the spirit of impurity. For if
you totally suppress it, it dies'': if you permit the furnace
to breathe its smoke and flame out at any vent, it will rage
to the consumption of the whole. This cockatrice is soonest
crushed in the shell ; but if it grows, it turns to a serpent,
and a dragon, and a devil.
4. Corporal mortification, and hard usages of our body,
» Contra libidinis impetura ajiprehende fugani, si vis obtinere victoriain. St. Aug.
Nclla guerra d' amor chi fiige vince.
"■ Quisquis in priiiio obstitit
Repulitque aniorem, tutus ac victor fuit :
Qui blandiendo dulce nutrivit malum,
Sero recusal ferre, qnod subiit, jajuin. Senec. Hippol. i3l.
OF CHASTITY. 83
hath, by all ages of the church, been accounted a good in-
strument, and of some profit against the spirit of fornication.
A spare diet, and a thin coarse table, seldom refreshment,
frequent fasts, not violent, and interrupted with returns to
ordinary feeding, but constantly little, unpleasant, of whole-
some but sparing nourishment : for by such cutting off the
provisions of victual, we shall weaken the strengths of our
enemy. To which if we add lyings upon the ground, pain-
ful postures in prayer, reciting our devotions with our arms
extended at full length, like Moses praying against Amalek,
or our blessed Saviour hanging upon his painful bed of sor-
rows, the cross, and (if the lust be upon us, and sharply
tempting) by inflicting any smart to overthrow the strongest
passion by the most violent pain, w'e shall find great ease for
the present, and the resolution and apt sufferance against
the future danger. And this was St. Paul's remedy, " I
bring my body under ;" he used some rudenesses towards it.
But it was a great nobleness of chastity, which St. Jerome
reports of a son of the King of Nicomedia'', who being
tempted upon flowers and a perfumed bed, with a soft vio-
lence, but yet tied down to the temptation, and solicited
with circumstances of Asian luxury by an impure courtesan,
lest the easiness of his posture should abuse him, spit out
his tongue into her face: to represent, that no virtue hath
cost the saints so much as this of chastity y.
5. Fly from all occasions, temptations, loosenesses of
company, balls and revellings, indecent mixtures of wanton
dancings, idle talk, private society with strange women,
starings upon a beauteous face, the company of women that
are singers, amorous gestures, garish and wanton dresses,
feasts and liberty, banquets and perfumes % wine and strong
drinks, which are made to persecute chastity ; some of these
* In vita S. Panli.
y BenedictQS in spinis se volutavit ; S. Martinianns faciem et manus. S. Johan-
nes, cognoniento Bonns, calamos aculos inter nuRues et carnem digilorum intrusit.
S. Theoctistus in silvis more feraram vixit, ne inter Arabes pollueretur.
^ 2t£<})0? •zjrXsJtaJv •EiroS' ll^cv
'Ev roTi; po'Soic "Egura,
Kal tSiv TTTEpSv x.aTctJ-p^a;v,
'E^aTTTio- eI; tcv o"v3V,
Kai vt/V ii-a) fXi'Kaii/ /xou
riTEpoTa-t yapj/aXiJ^EJ. Julian.
G 2
84 OF CHASTITY.
being the very prologues to lust, and the most innocent of
them being but like condited or pickled mushrooms, which if
carefully corrected, and seldom tasted, may be harmless, but
can never do good : ever remembering, that it is easier to die
for chastity than to live with it; and the hangman could not
extort a consent from some persons, from whom a lover
would have entreated it. For the glory of chastity will easily
overcome the rudeness of fear and violence ; but easiness
and softness and smooth temptations creep in, and, like the
sun, make a maiden lay by her veil and robe, which persecu-
tion, like the northern wind, makes her hold fast and clap
close about her.
6. He that will secure his chastity, must first cure his
pride and his rage. For oftentimes lust is the punishment
of a proud man", to tame the vanity of his pride by the
shame and affronts of unchastity : and the same intemperate
heat that makes anger, does enkindle lust.
7. If thou beest assaulted with an unclean spirit, trust
not thyself alone; but run forth into company, whose reve-
rence and modesty may suppress, or whose society may
divert thy thoughts : and a perpetual witness of thy conver-
sation is of especial use against this vice, which evaporates
in the open air, like camphire, being impatient of light and
witnesses.
8. Use frequent and earnest prayers to the King of puri-
ties, the first of virgins, the eternal God, who is of an essen-
tial purity, that he would be pleased to reprove and cast out
the unclean spirit. For beside the blessings of prayer by
way of reward, it hath a natural virtue to restrain this vice :
because a prayer against it is an unwillingness to act it; and
so long as we heartily pray against it, our desires are secured,
and then this devil hath no power. This was St. Paul's
other remedy: " For this cause I besought the Lord thrice."
And there is much reason and much advantage in the use of
this instrument; because the main thing, that in this aflair is
Venus rosam ainat propter fabellam, qnani recitat. Labauius.
Venler mero sesluans cilo despumatur in libidines. St. Hieron.
II fuoco che non mi .scahla, non voglio die mi scotti.
* nuni(|ui(1 ego ji te
Magno prognatam deposco consule
Velataque sloI4 mea cwm conferbuit ira ? Horat. serin. I. i. Sal. 2.
OF I1U1MIL1TY^ 85
to be secured, is a man's mind''. He that goes about to cure
lust by bodily exercises alone (as St. Paul's phrase is) or
mortilications, shall find them sometimes instrumental to it,
and inritations of sudden desires, but always insufficient and
of little profit : but he that hath a chaste mind, shall find his
body apt enough to take laws; and let it do its worst, it can-
not make a sin, and in its greatest violence, can but produce
a little natural uneasiness, not so much trouble as a severe
fasting-day, or a hard night's lodging upon boards. If a
man be hungry, he must eat ; and if he be thirsty, he must
drink in some convenient time, or else he dies : but if the
body be rebellious, so the mind be chaste, let it do its worst,
if you resolve perfectly not to satisfy it, you can receive no
great evil by it. Therefore the proper cure is by applica-
tion to the spirit, and securities of the mind, which can no
w^ay so well be secured as by frequent and fervent prayers,
and sober resolutions, and severe discourses. Therefore,
9. Hither brino- in succour from consideration of the
Divine presence, and of his holy angels, meditation of death,
and the passions of Christ upon the cross, imitation of his
purities, and of the Virgin Mary his unspotted and holy
mother, and of such eminent saints, who, in their generations,
were burning and shining lights, unmingled with such un-
cleannesses, which defile the soul, and who now follow the
Lamb, whithersoever he goes.
10. These remedies are of universal efficacy in all cases
extraordinary and violent ; but in ordinary and common, the
remedy, which God hath provided, that is, honourable mar-
riage'^, hath a natural efficacy, besides a virtue by divine
blessing, to cure the inconveniences, which otherwise might
afilict persons temperate and sober.
SECTION IV.
Of Humility.
Humility is the great ornament and jewel of Christian
religion ; that, whereby it is distinguished from all the wisdom
^ -Mcrib impudicaiu faccre, non corpus solet.
<: Danila est opera ut uialriuiouio deviucianlur, quod est tutissiinum jiiveniutis
viauuluiu. Plut. dc educ. lib.
86 OF HUMILITY,
of the world ; it not having been taught by the wise men of
the gentiles, but first put into a discipline, and made part of
a religion, by our Lord Jesus Christ, who propounded himself
imitable by his disciples so signally in nothing, as in the
twin-sisters of meekness and humility. Learn of me, for I
am meek and humble ; and ye shall find rest unto your souls.
For all the world, all that we are, and all that we have,
our bodies and our souls, our actions and our sufferings, our
conditions at home, our accidents abroad, our many sins and
our seldom virtues, are as so many arguments to make our
souls dwell low in the deep vallies of humility.
Arguments against Pride by way of consideration.
1. Our body is weak and impure, sending out more un-
cleannesses from its several sinks than could be endured, if
they were not necessary and natural : and we are forced to
pass that through our mouths, which as soon as we see upon
the ground, we loathe like rottenness and vomiting.
2. Our strength is inferior to that of many beasts, and our
infirmities so many, that we are forced to dress and tend
horses and asses, that they may help our needs, and relieve
our wants.
3. Our beauty is in colour inferior to many flowers, and
in proportion of parts it is no better than nothing ; for even
a dog hath parts as well proportioned and fitted to his pur-
poses, and the designs of liis nature, as we have : and when
it is most florid and gay, three fits of an ague can change it
into yellowness and leanness, and the hollowness and wrin-
kles of deformity.
4. Our learning is then best, when it teaches most humi-
lity : but to be proud of learning is the greatest ignorance
in the world. For our learning is so long in getting, and so
very imperfect, that the greatest clerk knows not the thou-
sandth part of what life is ignorant; and knows so uncertainly
what he seems to know, and knows no otherwise than a fool
or a child, even what is told him or what he guesses at, that
except those things which concern his duty, and which God
hath revealed to him, which also every woman knows so far
as is necessary, the most learned man halh nothing to be
proud of, unless this be a suflicient argument to exalt him,
OF jiL'Mii.rrv. 87
that he uncertainly guesses at some more unnecessary thing
tlian many others, who yet know all that concerns them, and
mind other things more necessary for the needs of life and
commonwealths.
5. He that is proud of riches, is a fool. For if he be ex-
alted above his neighbours, because he hath more gold, how
much inferior is he to a gold mine ? How much is he to give
])lace to a chain of pearl, or a knot of diamonds? For cer-
tainly that hath the greatest excellence, from whence he
derives all his gallantry and pre-eminence over his neigh-
bours.
6. If a man be exalted by reason of any excellence in his
soul, he may please to remember, that all souls are equal ;
and their differing operations are because their instrument is
in better tune, their body is more healthful, or better tem-
pered : which is no more praise to him, than it is that he was
born in Italy.
7. He that is proud of his birth, is proud of the blessings
of others, not of himself: for if his parents were more emi-
nent in any circumstance than their neighbours, he is to
thank God, and to rejoice in them; but still he may be a
fool, or unfortunate, or deformed ; and when himself was
born, it was indifferent to him, whether his father were a king
or a peasant, for he knew not any thing, nor chose any
thing : and most commonly it is true, that he that boasts of
his ancestors, who were the founders and raisers of a noble
family, doth confess that he hath in himself a less virtue and
a less honour, and therefore that he is degenerated.
8. Whatsoever other difference there is between thee and
thy neighbour, if it be bad, it is thine own, but thou hast no
reason to boast of thy misery and shame: if it be good, thou
hast received it from God : and then thou art more obliged
to pay duty and tribute, use and principal to him: and it
were a strange folly for a man to be proud of being more in
debt than another.
9. Remember what thou wert, before thou wert begotten.
Nothing. What wert thou in the first regions of thy dwell-
ing, before thy birth r Unclsanness. What wert thou for
many years after ? Weakness. What in all thy life ? A great
sinner. What in all thy excellences ? A mere debtor to God,
to thy parents, to the earth, to all the creatures. But we
88 OF iiuMiLiry.
may, if we please, use the method of the Platonists'', who
reduce all the causes and arguments for humility, wliich we
can take from ourselves, to these seven heads. 1 . The spirit
of a man is light and troublesome. 2. His body is brutish
and sickly. 3. He is constant in his folly and error, and in-
consistent in his manners and good purposes. 4. His la-
bours are vain, intricate, and endless. 5. His fortune is
changeable, but seldom pleasing, never perfect. 6". His wis-
dom comes not, till he be ready to die, that is, till he be past
using it. 7. His death is certain, always ready at the door,
but never far off. Upon these or the like meditations if we
dwell, or frequently retire to them, we shall see nothing more
reasonable than to be humble, and nothing more l'ooli^h than
to be proud.
Acts or offices of' Humilitj/.
The grace of humility is exercised by these following
rules.
1. Think not thyself better for any thing, that happens
to thee from without. For although thou mayest, by gifts
bestowed upon thee, be better than another, as one horse is
better than another, that is of more use to others ; yet as
thou art a man, thou hast nothing to commend thee to thy-
self but that only, by w hich thou art a man, that is, by what
thou choosest and refusest.
2. Humility consists not in railing against thyself, or
wearing mean clothes, or going softly and submissively: but
in hearty and real evil or mean opinion of thyself. Believe
thyself an unworthy person heartily, as thou believest thyself
to be hungry, or poor, or sick, when thou art so.
3. Whatsoever evil thou sayest of thyself, be content that
others should think to be true : and if thou callest thyself
fool, be not angry, if another say so of thee. For if thou
thinkest so truly, all men in the world desire other men to
be of their opinion ; and he is an hypocrite, that accuses
himself before others, with an intent not to be believed. But
he tliat calls hiuiself intemperate, foolish, lustful, and is
angry when his neighbours call him so, is both a false and
a proud person.
4. Love to be concealed, and little esteemed' : be content
'' Aiiultius df Dciiiou, Socialis. "^ Ania ncsciri ct j>i o niliilo rcpulari. Gcrsou.
OF HUMILITY. 89
to want praise, never beiiTX troubled, when thou art slighted
or undervakied ; for thou canst not undervalue thyself, and
if thou thinkest so meanly, as there is reason, no contempt
will seem unreasonable, and therefore it will be very tolerable.
5. Never be ashamed of thy birth*', or thy parents, or thy
trades or thy present employment, for the meanness or
poverty of any of them : and when there is an occasion to
speak of them, such an occasion as would invite you to speak
of any thing that pleases you, omit it not, but speak as
readily and indifferently of tiiy meanness as of thy greatness.
Primislaus, the first king of Bohemia, kept his country-shoes
always by him, to remember from whence he was raised : and
Agathocles, by the furniture of his table, confessed, that,
from a potter, he was raised to be the king of Sicily.
C, Never speak any thing directly tending to thy praise
or glory ; that is, with a purpose to be commended, and tor
no other end. If other ends be mingled with thy honour, as
if the glory of God, or charity, or necessity, or any thing of
prudence be thy end, you are not tied to omit your discourse
or your design, that you may avoid praise, but pursue your
end, though praise come along in the company. Only let
not praise be the design.
7. When thou hast said or done any thing, for which thou
receivest praise or estimation, take it indifferently, and re-
turn it to God; reflecting upon him as the giver of the gift,
or the blesser of the action, or the aid of the design : and
give God thanks for making thee an instrument of his glory,
for the benefit of others.
8. Secure a good name to thyself by living virtuously
and humbly : but let this good name be nursed abroad, and
never be brought home to look upon it : let others use it for
their own advantage; let them speak of it if they please;
but do not thou at all use it, but as an instrument to do God
glory, and thy neighbour more advantage. Let thy face, like
Moses's, shine to others, but make no looking-glasses for
thyself.
9. Take no content in praise, when it is offered thee : but
let thy rejoicing in God's gift be allayed with fear, lest this
good bring thee to evil. Use the praise, as you use your
f II villan iiohilitado noii cognosce pareiitaclo.
S Clii del ailc sua se vei-gogiia, sciupie vive cou vergogiia.
90 OF IIL'MILITY.
])leasure in eating and drinking: if it conies, make it do
drudgery, let it serve other ends, and minister to necessities,
and to caution, lest, by pride, you lose your just praise,
which you have deserved ; or else, by being praised unjustly,
you receive shame into yourself with God and wise men,
10. Use no stratagems and devices to get praise. Some
use to inquire into the faults of their own actions or dis-
courses, on purpose to hear, that it was well done or spoken,
and without fault*' : others bring the matter into talk, or
thrust themselves into company, and intimate and give occa-
sion to be thought or spoke of. These men make a bait to
persuade themselves to swallow the hook, till by drinking
the waters of vanity they swell and burst.
11. Make no suppletories to thyself, when thou art dis-
graced or slighted, by pleasing thyself with supposing thou
didst deserve praise, though they understood thee not, or
enviously detracted from thee : neither do thou get to thy-
self a private theatre and flatterers', in whose vain noises and
fantastic praises thou mayest keep up thine own good opi-
nion of thyself.
12. Entertain no fancies of vanity and private whispers
of this devil of pride : such as was that of Nebuchadnezzar ;
" Is not this great Babylon, which I have built for the honour
of my name, and the might of my majesty, and the power of
my kingdom r" some fantastic spirits will walk alone, and
dream waking of greatnesses, of palaces, of excellent ora-
tions, full theatres, loud applauses, sudden advancement,
great fortunes, and so will spend an hour with imaginative
pleasure ; all their employment being nothing but fumes of
pride, and secret indefinite desires and significations of what
their heart wishes. In this, although there is nothing of its
own nature directly vicious, yet it is either an ill mother or
an ill daughter, an ill sign or an ill effect ; and therefore at no
hand consisting with the safety and interests of humility.
13. Suffer others to be praised in thy presence, and enter-
tain their good and glory with delight; but at no hand dis^
parage them, or lessen the report, or make an objection ; and
'■ tI oZv JimTv o/3eXiVx5V xaTaariiv -TT'^nra-rlTg ; nQiXev I'va /jlI xtu o\ aitavrHiTit; Say-
fjLa^cus-i, nal EiraxciXoi;0oD)TE; imM^auyi^o^iriy, cu fxiycthov ifiXoro'^f-oi/. Arrian. Kjtist.
<•. '2^■ 1. 1.
< Allii allcii siUis ampluiu llieutium i^iimus ; siilis iiiius, satis nullus. .Sen,
OF HUMILITY. 91
think not the advancement of thy brother is a lessening of
thy worth. But this act is also to extend further.
14. Be content that he should be employed, and thou laid
by as unprofitable ; his sentence approved, thine rejected ; he
be preferred, and thou fixed in a low employment.
15. Never compare thyself with others, unless it be to
advance them and to depress thyself. To which purpose, we
must be sure in some sense or other to think ourselves the
worst in every company, where we come : one is more learned
than I am, another is more prudent, a third more honourable,
a fourth more chaste, or he is more charitable, or less proud.
For the humble man observes their good, and reflects only
upon his own vileness ; or considers the many evils of himself
certainly known to himself, and the ill of others but by un-
certain report : or he considers, that the evils, done by an-
other, are out of much infirmity or ignorance, but his own
sins are against a clearer light; and if the other had so
great helps, he would have done more good and less evil : or
he remembers, that his old sins before his conversion were
greater in the nature of the thing, or in certain circumstances,
than the sins of other men. So St. Paul reckoned himself
the chiefest of sinners, because formerly he had acted the
chiefest sin of persecuting the church of God. But this
rule is to be used with this caution ; that, though it be good
always to think meanest of ourselves, yet it is not ever safe
to speak it ; because those circumstances and considerations,
which determine thy thoughts, are not known to others as
to thyself; and it may concern others, that they hear thee
give God thanks for the graces he hath given thee. But if
thou preservest thy thoughts and opinions of thyself truly
humble, you may v> ith more safety give God thanks in public
for that good which cannot, or ought not to, be concealed.
16. Be not always ready to excuse every oversight, or in-
discretion, or ill action : but if thou beest guilty of it, confess
it plainly ; for virtue scorns a lie for its cover : but to hide
a sin with it, is like a crust of leprosy drawn upon an ulcer.
If thou beest not guilty (unless it be scandalous), be not over-
earnest to remove it : but rather use it as an argument to
chastise all greatness of fancy and opinion in thyself; and
accustom thyself to bear reproof patiently and contentedly,
and the harsh words of thy enemies, as knowing that the
92 OF jnMiMiv.
anger of an enemy is a better monitor, and represents our
faults, or adnionislies us of our duty with more heartiness,
than the kindness does, or precioua balms of a friend.
17. Give (jod thanks for every weakness, deformity and
imperfection, and accept it as a favour and ejraee of God,
and an instrument to resist pride, and nurse humility; ever
remembering, that when God, by giving thee a crooked back,
hath also made thy spirit stoop or less vain, thou art more
ready to enter the narrow gate of heaven, than by being
straight, and standing upright, and thinking highly. Thus
the apostles rejoiced in their infirmities, not moral, but natu-
ral and accidental, in their being beaten and whipt like slaves,
in their nakedness and poverty.
18. Upbraid no man's weakness to him to discomfort
him, neither report it to disparage him, neither delight to re-
member it to lessen him, or to set thyself above him. Be
sure never to praise thyself, or to dispraise any man else,
unless God's glory or some holy end do hallow it. And it
was noted to the praise of Cyrus, that, amongst his equals
in age'', he would never play at any sport, or use any exer-
cise, in which he knew himself more excellent than thev :
but in such, in which he was unskilful, he would make his
challenges, lest he should shame them by his victory, and
that himself mi<iht learn something of their skill, and do
them civilities.
19. Besides the foregoing parts and actions, humility
teaches us to submit ourselves and all our faculties to God,
" to believe all things, to do all things, to suffer all things,"
which his will enjoins us : to be content in every state or
chanjie, knowino; we have deserved worse than the worst we
feel ; and (as Anytus said to Alcibiades) he hath taken but
half, when he might have taken all ; to adore his goodness,
to fear his greatness, to worship his eternal and infinite ex-
cellences, and to submit ourselves to all our superiors, in all
things, according to godliness, and to be meek and gentle in
our conversation towards others'.
•^ Aina ramico tuo con il difetto suo. Incnlloquiis, pueri irivi^i uliis iioii fieiil, si
lion omiiiui) in di.sputationib'is victoriam semper obtiiieri! laborciit. T^ion taiitum
egregiuui est scire viiicerc, scd cliaiii posse viiu i pulchrum csl, ubi victoria est dam-
uosa. Pl\it. lie ediic. Uher,
' Nihil ila di^iiuu! est udio, ut i.o;uiii nicies, (jui conipcllanlibus se dillicilus praj-
Lciii. riut.
or HUMILITY. 93
Now although, according to the nature of every grace,
this betrins as a frift, and is increased like a ]ia1)it, that is,
best by its own acts ; yet besides the former acts and offices
of humihty, there are certain other exercises and consider-
ations, which are good helps and instruments for tlie pro-
curing and increasing this grace, and the curing of pride.
Means and exercises for ohtaimvg and increasing
the grace of Humility.
1. Make confession of thy sins often to God ; and con-
sider what all that evil amounts to, which you then charge
upon yourself. Look not upon them as scattered in the
course of a long life ; now, an intemperate anger, then, too
full a meal ; now, idle talking, and another time, impatience:
but unite them into one continued representation, and re-
member, that he whose life seems fair, by reason that his
faults are scattered at large distances in the several parts of
his life, yet, if all his errors and follies were articled against
him, the man would seem vicious and miserable : and possi-
bly this exercise, really applied upon thy spirit, may be
useful.
2. Remember, that we usually disparage others upon
slight grounds and little instances; and towards them one
fly is enough to spoil a whole box of ointment : and if a man
be highly commended, we think him sufficiently lessened, if
we clap one sin or folly or infirmity into his account. Let
us, therefore, be just to ourselves, since we are so severe to
others, and consider, that whatsoever good any one can
think or say of us, we can tell him of hundreds of base and
unworthy, and foolish actions, any one of which were enough
(we hope) to destroy another's reputation : therefore, let so
many be sufficient to destroy our over-high thoughts of our-
selves.
3-. When thy neighbour is cried up by public fame and
popular noises, that we may disparage and lessen him, we
cry out that the people is a herd of unlearned and ignorant
persons, ill judges, loud trumpets, but which never give cer-
tain sound : let us use the same art to humble ourselves, and
never take delight and pleasure in public reports, and ac-
clamations of assemblies, and please ourselves with their
94 OF HUMILITY.
judgment"^ of whom, in other the like cases, \vc affirm that
they are mad.
4. We change our opinion of others, by their kindness or
unkindness towards us. If he be my patron, and bounteous,
he is wise, he is noble, his faults are but warts, his virtues
are mountainous ; but if he proves unkind, or rejects our
importunate suit, then he is illnatured, covetous, and his
free meal is called gluttony : that which before we called ci-
vility, is now very drunkenness ; and all he speaks is flat
and dull, and ignorant as a swine. This, indeed, is unjust
towards others ; but a good instrument, if we turn the edge
of it upon ourselves. We use ourselves ill, abusing ourselves
with false principles, cheating ourselves with lies and pre-
tences, stealing the choice and election from our wills,
placing voluntary ignorance in our understandings, denying
the desires of the spirit, setting up a faction against every
noble and just desire ; the least of which, because we should
resent up to reviling the injurious person, it is but reason we
should at least not flatter ourselves with fond and too kind
opinions.
5. Every day call to mind some one of thy foulest sins,
or the most shameful of thy disgraces, or the indiscreetest
of thy actions, or any thing that did then most trouble thee,
and apply it to the present swelling of thy spirit and opi-
nion, and it may help to allay it.
6. Pray often for his grace, with all humility of gesture
and passion of desire ; and in thy devotion interpose many
acts of humility, by way of confession and address to God,
and reflection upon thyself.
7. Avoid great offices and employments, and the noises
of worldly honour". For in those states, many times so many
ceremonies and circumstances will seem necessary, as will
destroy the sobriety of thy thoughts. If the number of thy
servants be fewer, and their observances less, and their re-
verences less solemn, possibly they will seem less than thy
dignity ; and if they be so much and so many, it is likely
they will be too big for thy spirit. And here be thou very
•" O'JY oItoJ E13-I, iTipl Sy EioiSo; XfyEiv o't( fXaiioYTai ; ti ouv IttI rZv fAai\ioy.(va>v fliXetc
^av/jii^ic-Qat ; Arriaii.
" Fabis abstiiie, dixit Pvlliagoras. Olim nam Magistratiis per sntTragla fabis lata
creabantur. Plul.
OF UDMIIITV. 95
careful, lest thou be abused by a pretence, thnt thou wouldcst
use thy great dignity, as an opportunity of doing great good.
For supposing it might be good for others, yet it is not good
for thee: they may have encouragement in noble things from
thee ; and, by the same instrument, thou mayest thyself be
tempted to pride and vanity. And certain it is, God is as
much glorified by thy example of humility in a low or tem-
perate condition, as by thy bounty in a great and dangerous.
8. Make no reflex acts upon thy own humility, nor upon
any other grace, with which God hath enriched tliy soul.
For since God oftentimes hides from his saints and servants
the sight of those excellent things, by which they shine to
others (though the dark side of the lantern be toward them-
selves), that he may secure the grace of humility ; it is good
that thou do so thyself: and if thou beholdest a grace of
God in thee, remember to sfive him thanks for it, that thou
mayest not boast in that, which is none of thy own : and
consider how thou hast sullied it, by handling it with dirty
fingers, with thy ovv'n imperfections, and with mixture of
unhandsome circumstances. Spiritual pride is very danger-
ous, not only by reason it spoils so many graces, by which we
drew nigh unto the kingdom of God, but also because it so
frequently creeps upon the spirit of holy persons. For it is
no wonder for a beggar to call himself poor, or a drunkard to
confess, that he is no sober person ; but for a holy person to
be humble, for one whom all men esteem a saint, to fear lest
himself become a devil, and to observe his ow n danger, and
to discern his own infirmities, and make discovery of his
bad adherencies, is as hard as for a prince to submit himself
to be guided by tutors, and make himself subject to disci-
pline, like the meanest of his servants.
9. Often meditate upon the effects of pride, on one side,
and humility, on the other. First, That pride is like a
canker, and destroys the beauty of the fairest flowers, the
most excellent gifts and graces ; but humility crowns them
all. Secondly, That pride is a great hindrance to the per-
ceiving the things of God"; and humility is an excellent pre-
parative and instrument of spiritual wisdom. Thirdly, That
pride hinders the acceptation of our prayers ; but " humility
" Mat. xi. 25.
96 OF HUMrr.iTy.
pierceth the clouds, and will not depart till the Most High
shall regard." Fourthly, That humility is but a speaking
truth, and all pride is a lie. Fifthly, That humility is the
most certain way to real honour, and pride is ever affronted
or despised. Sixthly, That pride turned Lucifer into a devil,
and humility exalted the Son of God above every name, and
placed him eternally at the right hand of his Father. Se-
venthly, that *' God resisteth the proud''," professing open de-
fiance and hostility against such persons; but "giveth grace
to the humble:" grace and pardon, remedy and relief against
misery and oppression, content in all conditions, tranquillity
of spirit, patience in afflictions, love abroad, peace at home,
and utter freedom from contention, and the sin of censuring
others, and the trouble of being censured themselves. For
the humble man will not "judge his brother for the mote in
his eye," being more troubled at "the beam in his own eye ;"
and is patient and glad to be reproved, because himself hath
cast the first stone at himself, and therefore wonders not,
that others are of his mind.
10. Remember that the blessed Saviour of the world hath
done more to prescribe, and transmit, and secure this grace,
than any others ; his whole life being a great continued ex-
ample of humility, a vast descent from the glorious bosom of
his Father to the womb of a poor maiden, to the form of a
servant, to the miseries of a sinner, to a life of labour, to a
state of poverty, to a death of malefactors, to the grave of
death, and the intolerable calamities, which we deserved :
and it were a good design, and yet but reasonable, that we
should be as humble in the midst of our greatest imperfec-
tions and basest sins, as Christ was in the midst of his ful-
ness of the Spirit, great wisdom, perfect life, and most ad-
mirable virtues.
11. Drive away all flatterers from thy company, and at
no hand endure them; for he that endures himself so to be
abused by another, is not only a fool for entertaining the
mockery, but loves to have his own opinion of himself to be
heightened and cherished.
12. Never change thy employment for the sudden coming
of another to thee : but if modesty permits, or discretion ap-
P James iv. 6- "i Julm xiii. 15,
OF HUMILITV. 97
pear to him that visits thee, the same that thou wert to God
and thyself in thy privacy. But if thou wert walking or
sleeping-, or in any other innocent employment or retirement,
snatch not up a book to seem studious, nor fall on thy knees
to seem devout, nor alter any thing to make him believe thee
better employed than thou wert.
13, To the same purpose it is of great use, that he who
would preserve his humility, should choose some spiritual
person, to whom he shall oblige himself to discover his very
thoughts and fancies, every act of his and all his intercourse
with others, in which there may be danger; that by such an
openness of spirit he may expose every blast of vain-glory,
every idle thought, to be chastened and lessened by the rod
of spiritual discipline : and he that shall find himself tied to
confess every proud thought, every vanity of his spirit, will
also perceive they must not dwell with him, nor find any
kindness from him : and besides this, the nature of pride is
so shameful and unhandsome, that the very discovery of it
is a huge mortification and means of suppressing it. A man
would be ashamed to be told, that he inquires after the faults
of his last oration or action on purpose to be commended :
and therefore, when the man shall tell his spiritual guide the
same shameful story of himself, it is very likely he will be
humbled, and heartily ashamed of it.
14. Let every man suppose, what opinion he should have
of one, that should spend his time in playing with drum-
sticks and cockle-shells, and that should wrangle all day
long with a little boy for pins, or should study hard, and la-
bour to cozen a child of his gauds ; and, who would run into
a river, deep and dangerous, with a great burden upon his
back, even then when he were told of the danger, and ear-
nestly importuned not to do it ? and let him but change the
instances and the person, and he shall find that he hath the
same reason to think as bad of himself, who pursues trifles
with earnestness, spending his time in vanity, and his " la-
bour for that which profits not ;" who knowing the laws of
God, the rewards of virtue, the cursed consequents of sin,
that it is an evil spirit that tempts him to it; a devil, one that
hates him, that longs extremely to ruin him ; that it is his
own destruction that he is then working ; that the pleasures
of his sin are base and brutish, unsatisfying in the enjoyment,
VOL. fv. H
98 OF HUMILITY.
soon over, shameful in their story, bitter in the memory,
painful in the effect here, and intolerable hereafter, and for
ever; yet in despite of all this, he runs foolishly into his sin
and his ruin, merely because he is a fool, and winks hard,
and rushes violently like a horse into the battle, or like a
madman to his death. He that can think great and good
things of such a person, the next step may court the rack
for an instrument of pleasure, and admire a swine for wisdom,
and go for counsel to the prodigal and trifling grasshopper.
After the use of these and such-like instruments and con-
siderations, if you would try, how your soul is grown, you
shall know that humility, like the root of a goodly tree, is
thrust very far into the ground, by these goodly fruits, which
appear above ground.
Signs of HumiUty.
1. The humble man trusts not to his own discretion, but
in matter of concernment relies rather upon the judgment of
his friends, counsellors, or spiritual guides. 2. He does not
pertinaciously pursue the choice of his own will, but in all
things lets God choose for him, and his superiors in those
things, which concern them. 3. He does not murmur against
commands ^ 4. He is not inquisitive into the reasonableness
of indifferent and innocent commands, but believes their
command to be reason enough in such cases to exact his
obedience. 5. He lives according to a rule, and with com-
pliance to public customs, without any affectation or sin-
gularity. 6. He is meek and indifferent in all accidents and
chances. 7. He patiently bears injuries^ 8. He is always
unsatisfied in his own conduct, resolutions, and counsels.
9. He is a great lover of good men, and a praiser of wise
men, and a censurer of no man. 10. He is modest in his
speech, and reserved in his laughter. 11. He fears, when he
hears himself commended, lest God make another judgment
concerning his actions, than men do. 12. He gives no pert
or saucy answers, when he is reproved, whether justly or un-
justly. 13. He loves to sit down in private, and, if he may,
he refuses the temptation of offices and new honours. 14.
He is ingenuous, free, and open, in his actions and discourses.
' Assai commanda, chi ubbidisce al sagglo.
* Veram humilem patientia ostendit. 5t. Ilier,
OF MODESTY. 99
15. He mends liis fault, and gives thanks, when he is ad-
monished. 16. He is ready to do good offices to the mur-
derers of his fame, to his slanderers, backbiters, and detrac-
tors, as Christ washed the feet of Judas. 17. And is content-
ed to be suspected of indiscretion, so before God he may be
really innocent, and not offensive to his neighbour, nor want-
ing to his just and prudent interest.
SECT. V.
Of Modesty.
Modesty is the appendage of sobriety, and is to chas-
tity, to temperance, and to humility, as the fringes are to a
garment. It is a grace of God, that moderates the over-ac-
tiveness and curiosity of the mind, and orders the passions
of the body, and external actions, and is directly opposed to
curiosity, to boldness, to indecency. The practice of mo-
desty consists in these following rules.
Acts and duties of Modesty, as it is opposed to Curiosity^.
1. Inquire not into the secrets of God", but be content to
learn thy duty according to the quality of thy person or em-
ployment : that is plainly, if thou beest not concerned in
the conduct of others ; but if thou beest a teacher, learn it
so, as may best enable thee to discharge thy office. God's
commandments were proclaimed to all the world ; but God's
counsels are to himself and to his secret ones, when they are
admitted within the veil.
2. Inquire not into the things, which are too hard for
thee, but learn modestly to know thy infirmities and abili-
ties^'; and raise not thy mind up to inquire into mysteries of
state, or the secrets of government, or difficulties theological,
if thy employment really be, or thy understanding be judged
to be, of a lower rank.
3. Let us not inquire into the affairs of others, that con-
cern us not, but be busied within ourselves and our own
' V.lc-)(niACsim. " Ecclas. iii. 21 — 23.
" Qui scrutator est Majestatis, opprimetura gloria. Prov. xxv. aL'tji a^'^n toD <f>(-
'Korv^uv, a'a-^r.Tig rov IBiov hyiy.ovt)COv, 1x01% 6;^£i" /met* j-ip to yvZva.i oTi airBlvZ;, OhKiTi
0EXii(rEi jfjtis-S'ai ain-f wpgj ra (Aeynrra. Arrian. lib. i. cap. 26. Et pins sapere inter-
dum vulgus, quod, quantum opus est, sapiat. Lactant.
H 2
100 OP MODESTY.
spheres ; ever remembering that to pry into the actions or in-
terests of other men, not under our charge, may minister to
pride, to tyranny, to uncharitableness, to trouble, but can
never consist with modesty; unless where duty, or the mere
intentions of charity and relation, do warrant it.
4. Never listen at the doors or windows "' : for besides
that it contains in it danger and a snare, it is also an invad-
ing my neighbour's privacy, and a laying that open, which
he therefore enclosed, that it might not be open. Never ask,
what he carries covered so curiously ; for it is enough, that
it is covered curiously. Hither also is reducible, that we
never open letters without public authority, or reasonable
presumed leave, or great necessity, or charity.
Every man hath in his own life sins enough, in his own
mind trouble enough, in his own fortune evils enough, and
in performance of his offices failings more than enough, to
entertain his own inquiry : so that curiosity after the affairs
of others cannot be without envy and an evil mind. What
is it to me, if my neighbour's grandfather were a Syrian, or
his grandmother illegitimate ; or that another is indebted five
thousand pounds, or whether his wife be expensive? But com-
monly curious persons, or (as the apostle's phrase is) *' busy-
bodies," are not solicitous or inquisitive into the beauty
and order of a well-governed family, or after the virtues of
an excellent person ; but if there be any thing, for which
men keep locks and bars and porters, things that blush to
see the light, and either are shameful in manners, or private
in nature, these thing-s are their care and their business. But
if great things will satisfy our inquiry, the course of the sun
and moon, the spots in their faces, the firmament of heaven,
and the supposed orbs, the ebbing and flowing of the sea,
are work enough for us : or if this be not, let him tell me, whe-
ther the number of the stars be even or odd, and when they
began to be so ; since some ages have discovered new stars,
which the former knew not, but might have seen, if they had
been where now they are fixed. If these be too troublesome,
search lower, and tell me, why this turf this year brings
forth a daisy, and the next year a plantain ; why the apple
bears his seed in his heart, and wheat bears it in his head :
* 8cclus< vii. 21. — Ne occhi in lettera, ne mano in tasca, ne orecclii io secret!
altrui.
OF MODESTV. 101
let him tell, why a graft, taking nourishment from a crab-
stock, shall have a fruit more noble than its nurse and parent:
let him say, why the best of oil is at the top, the best of wine
in the middle, and the best of honey at the bottom, other-
wise than it is in some liquors, that are thinner, and in some,
that are thicker. But these things are not such as please
busy-bodies ; they must feed upon tragedies, and stories of
misfortunes, and crimes : and yet tell them ancient stories
of the ravishment of chaste maidens, or the debauchment of
nations, or the extreme poverty of learned persons, or the
persecutions of the old saints, or the changes of government,
and sad accidents happening in royal families amongst the
Arsacidas, the Ctesars, the Ptolemies, these were enough to
scratch the itch of knowing sad stories ; but unless you tell
them something sad and new, something that is done within
the bounds of their own knowledge or relatiop, it seems te-
dious and unsatisfying ; which shews plainly, it is an evil
spirit : envy and idleness married together, and begot curio-
sity. Therefore Plutarch rarely well compares curious and
inquisitive ears to the execrable gates of cities, out of which
only malefactors and hangmen and tragedies pass, nothing
that is chaste or holy. If a physician should go from house
to house unsent for, aijd inquire what woman hath a cancer
in her bowels, or what man hath a fistula in his cholic-gut,
though he could pretend to cure it, he would be almost as
unwelcome as the disease itself: and therefore it is inhuman
to inquire after crimes and disasters without pretence of
amending them, but only to discover them. We are not
angry with searchers and publicans, when they look only
on public merchandise ; but when they break open trunks,
and pierce vessels, and unrip packs, and open sealed letters.
Curiosity is the direct incontinency of the spirit ; and
adultery itself, in its principle, is many times nothing but a
curious inquisition after, and envying of, another man's en-
closed pleasures ; and there have been many, who refused
fairer objects, that they might ravish an enclosed woman
from her retirement and single possessor. But these inqui-
sitions are seldom without danger, never without baseness :
they are neither just, nor honest, nor delightful, and very
often useless to the curious inquirer. For men stand upon
their guards against them, as they secure their meat against
102 OF MODESTY.
harpies and cats, laying all their counsels and secrets out of
their way ; or as men clap their garments close about them,
when the searching and saucy winds would discover their
nakedness ; as knowing, that what men willingly hear, they
do willingly speak of. Knock therefore at the door, before
you enter upon your neighbour's privacy ; and remember,
that there is no difference between entering into his house,
and looking into it.
Acts of Modesty as it is opposed to Boldness"^.
1. Let us always bear about us such impressions of re-
verence and fear of God as to tremble at his voice, to ex-
press our apprehensions of his greatness in all great acci-
dents, in popular judgments, loud thunders, tempests, earth-
quakes ; not only for fear of being smitten ourselves, or
that we are concerned in the accident, but also that we may
humble ourselves before his Almightiness, and express that
infinite distance between his infiniteness and our weak-
nesses, at such times especially, when he gives such visible
arguments of it. He that is merry and airy at shore, when
he sees a sad and a loud tempest on the sea; or dances brisk-
ly, when God thunders from heaven, regards not, when God
speaks to all the world, but is possessed with a firm immo-
desty.
2. Be reverent, modest, and reserved, in the presence of
thy betters, giving to all according to their quality their titles
of honour, keeping distance, speaking little, answering per-
tinently, not interposing without leave or reason, not an-
swering to a question propounded to another ; and ever pre-
sent to thy superiors the fairest side of thy discourse, of tliy
temper, of thy ceremony, as being ashamed to serve excel-
lent persons with unhandsome intercourse.
3. Never lie before a king, or a great person, nor stand
in a lie, when thou art accused ; nor offer to justify, what is
indeed a fault ; but modestly be ashamed of it, ask pardon,
and make amends^.
1 Quern Deus tegit verecundia; pallio, liujiis maculas homlnibus noii ostendit.
Maimon. Can. Eth,
ngSrov ayaSaJv avafxaprnrov, Seute^ov J' alo'^Cvai, Meliss.
Obstare primuni est velle, nee labi via;
Pudor est secapdus, tiosse pcccandi moduin. Senec. Hip. 140.
OF MODESTY. 103
4. Never boast of thy sin, but at least lay a veil upon thy
nakedness and shame*, and put thy hand before thine eyes,
that thou mayest have this beginning of repentance, to be-
lieve thy sin to be thy shame. For he that blushes not at
his crime, but adds shamelessness to his shame, hath no in-
strument left to restore him to the hopes of virtue.
5. Be not confident and affirmative in an uncertain mat-
ter, but report things modestly and temperately, according to
the degree of that persuasion, which is, or ought to be, be-
gotten in thee by the efficacy of the authority, or the reason
inducing thee.
6. Pretend not to more knowledge than thou hast, but be
content to seem ignorant where thou art so, lest thou beest
either brouoht to shame, or retirest into shamelessness ^
Acts of Modest 1/ as it is opposed to Indecency'.
1. In your prayers, in churches, and places of religion,
use reverent postures, great attention, grave ceremony, the
lowest gestures of humility, remembering that we speak to
God, in our reverence to whom we cannot possibly exceed ;
but that the expression of this reverence be according to law
or custom, and the example of the most prudent and pious
persons : that is, let it be the best in its kind, to the best of
essences.
2. In all public meetings, private addresses, in discourses,
in journeys, use those forms of salutation, reverence, and de-
cency, which the custom prescribes ; and is visual amongst
the most sober persons ; giving honour to whom honour be-
longeth, taking place of none of thy betters, and in all cases
of question concerning civil precedency giving it to any one,
that will take it, if it be only thy own right, that is in question.
3. Observe the proportion of affections in all meetings
and to all persons : be not merry at a funeral, nor sad upon
a festival ; but rejoice with them that rejoice, and weep with
them that weep.
4. Abstain from wanton and dissolute laughter, petulant
and uncomely jests, loud talking, jeering, and all such ac-
* A Chione saltein, vel ab Helide disce pudorem ;
Abscondunt spurcas baec monumenta lapas. Mart. I. i. Ep. 35.
^ Eccliis. iii. 25. » Kos-/xwth{, ilnit^la. or ivTrfinim.
104 OF MODESTV.
tlons, which in civil account are called indecencies and inci-
vilities.
5. Towards your parents use all modesty of duty and
humble carriage ; towards them and all your kindred, be
severe in the modesties of chastity ; ever fearing, lest the
freedoms of natural kindness should enlarge into any neigh-
bourhood of unhandsomeness. For all incestuous mixtures,
and all circumstances and degrees towards it, are the highest
violations of modesty in the world : for therefore incest is
grown to be so high a crime, especially in the last periods of
the w'orld, because it breaks that reverence, which the con-
sent of all nations and the severity of human laws hath en-
joined towards our parents and nearest kindred, in imitation
of that law, which God gave to the Jews in prosecution of
modesty in this instance.
6. Be a curious observer of all those things, which are of
good report, and are parts of public honesty''. For public
fame, and the sentence of prudent and public persons, is the
measure of good and evil in things indifferent : and charity
requires us to comply with those fancies and affections,
which are agreeable to nature, or the analogy of virtue, or
public laws, or old customs. It is against modesty for a wo-
man to marry a second husband, as long as she bears a bur-
den by the first ; or to admit a second love, while her funeral
tears are not wiped from her cheeks. It is against public ho-
nesty to do some lawful actions of privacy in public theatres,
and therefore in such cases retirement is a duty of modesty''.
7. Be grave, decent, and modest, in thy clothing and
ornament: never let it be above thy condition, not always
equal to it, never light or amorous, never discovering a naked-
ness through a thin veil, which thou pretendest to hide, never
to lay a snare for a soul ; but remember what becomes a
Christian, professing holiness, chastity, and the discipline of
the holy Jesus : and the first effect of this let your servants
feel by your gentleness and aptness to be pleased with their
usual diligence, and ordinary conduct*^. For the man or
«> Philip, iv. 8.
* At meretrix abigit testem vel^que serique ; Raraque Suminccni fornicc riina
j>atet. Mart. p. 1.53.
«■ Tula sit onialrix : odi quae sancial ora
Unguibiis, el rapU bracbia figit acu.
Devnvt't, et tangit Doiuins caput ilia, simulque
Plorat ad invisas sauguiuoknta comas. Oiid. A. A. 3. 238.
OF MODESTY
105
woman, that is dressed with anger and impatience, wears
pride under their robes, and immodesty above.
8. Hither also is to be reduced singular and affected walk-
ing, proud, nice, and ridiculous gestures of body, painting
and lascivious dressings ; all which together God reproves
by the prophet, "The Lord saith, Because the daughters of
Sion are haughty, and walk with stretched-forth necks and
wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go, and make a
tinkling with their feet ; therefore the Lord will smite her
with a scab of the crown of the head, and will take away
the bravery of their tinkling ornaments ^" And this duty
of modesty, in this instance, is expressly enjoined to all
Christian women by St. Paul, "That women adorn them-
selves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety,
not with broidered hair, or gold, or pearl, or costly array, but
(which becometh women professing godliness) with good
works ^"
9. As those meats are to be avoided, which tempt our
stomachs beyond our hunger ; so also should prudent per-
sons decline all such spectacles, relations, theatres, loud
noises and outcries, which concern us not, and are besides
our natural or moral interest. Our senses should not, like
petulant and wanton girls, wander into markets and theatres
without just employment; but when they are sent abroad
by reason, return quickly with their errand, and remain mo-
destly at home under their guide, till they be sent agains.
10. Let all persons be curious in observing modesty to-
wards themselves, in the handsome treating their own body,
and such as are in their power, whether living or dead.
Against this rule, they offend, w^ho expose to others their
own, or pry into others' nakedness beyond the limits of ne-
cessity, or where a leave is not made holy by a permission
from God. It is also said, that God was pleased to work a
miracle about the body of Epiphanius, to reprove the immo-
dest curiosity of an imconcerned person, who pried too near,
when charitable people were composing it to the grave. In
all these cases and particulars, although they seem little, yet
our duty and concernment is not little. Concerning which
* Isa. iii. 16—18.
f 1 Tim. ii. 9.
t (Eilipum curiosilas in exlreiuas tODJecit calainitales. P/uf.
lOG
OF COXTENTEDXESS.
I use the words of the son of Siiach, " He that despiseth
little things, shall perish by little and little."
SECT. VI.
OfConfcntediiess in all estates and accidents.
Virtues and discourses are, like friends, necessary in all
fortunes ; but those are the best, which are friends in our sad-
nesses, and support us in our sorrows and sad accidents :
and in this sense, no man that is virtuous, can be friendless ;
nor hath any man reason to complain of the Divine Provi-
dence, or accuse the public disorder of things, or his own
felicity, since God hath appointed one remedy for all the
evils in the world, and that is a contented spirit : for this
alone makes a man pass through fire, and not be scorched ;
through seas, and not be drowned; through hunger and
nakedness, and want nothing. For since all the evil in the
world consists in the disagreeing between the object and the
appetite, as when a man hath what he desires not, or desires
what he hath not, or desires amiss ; he that composes his
spirit to the present accident, hath variety of instances for
his virtue, but none to trouble him ; because his desires
enlarge not beyond his present fortune : and a wise man is
placed in the variety of chances, like the nave or centre of a
wheel, in the midst of all the circumvolutions and changes
of posture, without violence or change, save that it turns
gently in compliance with its changed parts, and is indiffer-
ent, which part is up, and which is down ; for there is some
virtue or other to be exercised, whatever happens, either pa-
tience or thanksgiving, love or fear, moderation or humility,
charity or contentedness, and they are every one of them
equally in order to his great end and immortal felicity : and
beauty is not made by white or red, by black eyes and a
I'ound face, by a straight body and a smooth skin : but by a
proportion to the fancy. No rules can make amiability; our
minds and apprehensions make that; and so is our felicity:
and we may be reconciled to poverty and a low fortune, if
w'e suffer contentedness and the grace of God to make the
proportions. For no man is poor, that does not think him-
self so : but if, in a full fortune, with impatience he desires
OF COXTENTEDXESS. 107
more, he proclaims his wants and his beggarly condition''.
But because this grace of contentedness was the smn of all
tlie old moral philosophy, and a great duty in Christianity,
and of most universal use in the whole course of our lives,
and the only instrument to ease the burdens of the world
and the enmities of sad chances, it will not be amiss to press
it by the proper arguments, by which God hath bound it
upon our spirits, it being fastened by reason and religion, by
duty and interest, by necessity and conveniency, by exam-
ple, and by the proposition of excellent rewards, no less than
peace and felicity.
1. Contentedness in all estates is a duty of religion ; it is
the great reasonableness of complying with the Divine Pro-
vidence, which governs all the world, and hath so ordered
us in the administration of his great family. He were a
strange fool, that should be angry, because dogs and sheep
need no shoes, and yet himself is full of care to get some.
God hath supplied those needs to them by natural provisions,
and to thee by an artificial : for he hath given thee reason to
learn a trade, or some means to make or buy them, so that
it only differs in the manner of our provision ; and which had
you rather want, shoes or reason ? And my patron, that hath
given me a farm, is freer to me, than if he gives a loaf ready
baked. But, however, all these gifts come from him, and
therefore it is fit he should dispense them as he pleases; and
if we murmur here, we may, at the next melancholy, be
troubled, that God did not make us to be angels or stars.
For if that, which we are or have, do not content us, we
may be troubled for every thing in the world, which is be-
sides our being or our possessions.
God is the master of the scenes ; we must not choose
which part we shall act ; it concerns us only to be careful
that we do it well, always saying, " If this please God, let it
be as it is':" and we who pray, that God's wdlmay be done
in earth, as it is in heaven, must remember, that the angels
do whatsoever is commanded them, and go wherever they
are sent, and refuse no circumstances : and if their employ-
ment be crossed by a higher decree, they sit down in peace
and rejoice in the event ; and when the angel of Judea could
' Non facta libi est, si dissimulcs, injuria. lEi tovto ~y ©£« ^I'Xtv, 7cZre yvicBu-.
108
or CONTENTEDXtSS.
not prevail in behalf of the people committed to his charoie ^
because the angel of Persia opposed it, he only told the
story at the command of God, and was as content, and wor-
shipped with as great an extasy in his proportion, as the pre-
vailing spirit. Do thou so likewise : keep the station, where
God hath placed you, and you shall never long for things
without, but sit at home feasting upon the Divine providence
and thy own reason, by which we are taught, that it is ne-
cessary and reasonable to submit to God.
For is not all the w orld God's family ? Are not we his
creatures? Are we not as clay in the hand of the potter r Do
we not live upon his meat, and move by his strength, and
do our work by his light ? Are we any thing, but what we
are from him ? And shall there be a mutiny among the flocks
and herds, because their lord or their shepherd chooses their
pastures, and suffers them not to wander into deserts and
unknown ways ? If we choose, we do it so foolishly, that we
cannot like it long, and most commonly not at all : but God,
who can do what he pleases, is wise to choose safely for us,
affectionate to comply with our needs, and powerful to exe-
cute all his wise decrees. Here therefore is the wisdom of
the contented man, to let God choose for him : for when we
have given up our wills to him, and stand in that station of
the battle, where our great general hath placed us, our
spirits must needs rest, while our conditions have, for their
security, the power, the wisdom, and the charity of God.
2. Contentedness, in all accidents, brings great peace of
spirit, and is the great and only instrument of temporal feli-
city. It removes the sting from the accident, and makes a
man not to depend upon chance, and the uncertain disposi-
tions of men for his well-being, but only on God and his
own spirit. We ourselves make our fortunes good or bad',
and when God lets loose a tyrant upon us, or a sickness, or
scorn, or a lessened fortune, if we fear to die, or know not to
be patient, or are proud, or covetous, then the calamity sits
lieavy on us. But if we know how to manage a noble prin-
ciple, and fear not death so much as a dishonest action, and
think impatience a worse evil than a fever, and pride to be
the biggest disgrace, and poverty to be infinitely desirable
'' Dan. X. 13.
' 'O bi>; riQetai, am ■pi^tv, ei' ti ayaQiv bi\u;, wapa s-iaurou ha$i. Arrian. Ep.
OF COXTENTEDXESS. 109
before the torments of covetousness; then we, who now tliiiik
vice to be so easy, and make it so familiar, and think tlie
cure so impossible, shall quickly be of another mind, and
reckon these accidents amongst things eligible.
But no man can be happy, that hath great hopes and
great fears of things without, and events depending upon
other men, or upon the chances of fortune. The rewards of
virtue are certain, and our provisions for our natural suppoit
are certain; or if we want meat till we die, then we die of
that disease, and there are many worse than to die with an
atrophy or consumption, or unapt and coarser nourishment.
But he that sutFers a transporting passion concerning things
within the power of others, is free from sorrow and amaze-
ment no longer, than his enemy shall give him leave ; and
it is ten to one but he shall be smitten then and there, where
it shall most trouble him: for so the adder teaches us, where
to strike, by her curious and fearful defending of her head.
The old stoics, when you told them of a sad story, would
still answer Ti irpog jui; " What is that to me? — Yes, for the ty-
rant hath sentenced you also to prison. — Well, what is that?
He will put a chain upon my leg; but he cannot bind my
soul. — No : but he will kill you. — Then I will die. If pre-
sently, let me go, that I may presently be freer than himself:
but if not till anon or to-morrow, I will dine first, or sleep,
or do what reason or nature calls for, as at other times." This,
in gentile philosophy, is the same with the discourse of St.
Paul,'" " 1 have learned in whatsoever state I am, therewith
to be content. I know both how to be abased, and I know
how to abound : every where and in all things 1 am in-
structed, both to be full and to be hungry ; both to abound
and suffer need"."
We are in the world, like men playing at tables ; the
chance is not in our power, but to play it is ; and when it is
fallen, we must manage it as we can ; and let nothing trouble
us, but when we do a base action, or speak like a fool, or
think wickedly : these things God hath put into our powers ;
but concerning those things, which are wholly in the choice
of another, they cannot fall under our deliberation, and
therefore neither are they fit for our passions. My fear may
■" Phil. iv. 11, 12. 1 Tira. vi. 6. Hebr. xiii. 5.
" Clii bene mal uon puo soflTrir, A' s;ruud bonor iion puo venir.
110 OF CONTEXTEDNESS.
make me miserable, but it cannot prevent, what another hath
in his power and purpo.se: and prosperities can only be en-
joyed by them, who fear not at all to lose them; since the
amazement and passion concerning the future takes off all
the pleasure of the present possession. Therefore if thou
hast lost thy land, do not also lose thy constancy: and if
thou must die a little sooner, yet do not die impatiently.
For no chance is evil to him that is content, and to a man
nothing is miserable, unless it be unreasonable ". No man
can muke another man to be his slave, unless he hath first
enslaved himself to life and death, to pleasure or pain, to
hope or fear: command these passions, and you are freer
than the Parthian kings.
Instruments or exercises to procure Contentedness.
Upon the strength of these premises we may reduce this
virtue to practice by its proper instruments first, and then by
some more special considerations or arguments of content.
1. When any thing happens to our displeasure, let us
endeavour to take off its trouble by turning it into spiritual
or artificial advantage, and handle it on that side, in which
it may be useful to the designs of reason. For there is no-
thins; but hath a double handle, or at least we have two
hands to apprehend it. When an enemy reproaches us, let
us look on him as an impartial relator of our faults, for he
will tell thee truer than thy fondest friend will ; and thou
mayest cull them precious balms, though they break thy
head, and forgive his anger, while thou makest use of the
plainness of his declamation. " The ox, when he is weary,
treads surest :" and if there be nothino- else in the diso-race,
but that it makes us to walk warily, and tread sure for fear
of our enemies, that is better than to be flattered into pride
and carelessness. This is the charity of Christian philoso-
phy, which expounds the sense of the Divine providence
fairly, and reconciles us to it by a charitable construction:
and we may as well refuse all physic, if we consider it only
as unpleasant in the taste ; and we may find fault with the
rich vallies of Thasus, because they are circled by sharp
mountains : but so also we may be in charity with every un-
OF CONTENTEDXESS. Ill
pleasant accident, because, though it taste bitter, it is in-
tended for health and medicine.
If therefore thou fallest from thy employment in public,
take sanctuary in an honest retirement, being indifferent to
thy gain abroad, or thy safety at home. If thou art out of
favour with thy prince, secure the favour of the King of
kings, and then there is no harm come to thee. And when
Zeno Citiensis lost all his goods in a storm, he retired to the
studies of philosophy, to his short cloak, and a severe life,
and gave thanks to fortune for his prosperous mischance.
When the north-wind blows hard, and it rains sadly, none
but fools sit down in it and cry ; wise people defend them-
selves against it with a warm garment, or a good fire and a
dry roof. When a storm of a sad mischance beats upon our
spirits, turn it into some advantage by observing, where it
can serve another end, either of religion or prudence, of more
safety or less envy : it will turn into something, that is good,
if we list to make it so ; at least it may make us weary of the
world's vanity, and take off our confidence from uncertain
riches, and make our spirits to dwell in those regions, where
content dwells essentially. If it does any good to our souls,
it hath made more than suflicient recompence for all the
temporal affliction. He that threw a stone at a dog, and hit
his cruel step-mother, said, that although he intended it
otherwise, yet the stone was not quite lost: and if we fail in
the first design, if we bring it home to another equally to
content us, or more to profit us, then we have put our con-
ditions past the power of chance ; and this was called, in the
old Greek comedy, " a being revenged on fortune by be-
coming philosophers," and turning the chance into reason
or religion : for so a wise man shall overrule his stars, and
have a greater influence upon his own content, than all the
constellations and planets of the firmament.
2. Never compare thy condition with those above thee :
but, to secure thy content, look upon those thousands, with
whom thou wo'ddest not, for any interest, change thy fortune
and condition. A soldier must not think himself unpros-
perous, if he be not successful as the son of Philip, or can-
not grasp a fortune as big as the Roman empire. Be content,
that thou art not lessened as was Pyrrhus ; or if thou beest,
that thou art not routed like Crassus : and when that comes
112 OF COXTEXTEDNES.S.
to tlioe, it Is a great prosperity, that thou art not cae;ed and
made a spectacle, like Bajazet, or thy eyes were not pulled
out, like Zedekiah's, or that thou wert not Hayed alive, like
Valentinian. If thou admirest the greatness of Xerxes, look
also on those, that digged the mountain Atho, or whose ears
and noses were cut oft', because the Hellespont carried away
the bridge. It is a fine thing (thou thinkest) to be carried
on men's shoulders : but give God thanks, that thou art not
forced to carry a rich fool upon thy shoulders, as those poor
men do, whom thou beholdest. There are but a few kings
in mankind ; but many thousands who are very miserable, if
compared to thee. However, it is a huge folly rather to grieve
for the good of others, than to rejoice for that good, which
God hath given us of our own.
And yet there is no wise or good man, that would cliange
persons or conditions entirely with any man in the world. It
may be, he would have one man's wealth added to himself,
or the power of a second, or the learning of a third; but still
he would receive these into his own person, because he loves
that best, and therefore esteems it best, and therefore over-
values all that, which he is, before all that, which any other
man in the world can be. Would any man be Dives to have
his wealth, or Judas for his office, or Saul for his kingdom,
or Absalom for his bounty, or Achitophel for his policy." It
is likely he would wish all these, and yet he would be the
same person still. For every man hath desires of his own,
and objects just fitted to them, without which he cannot be,
unless he were not himself. And let every man, that loves
himself so well as to love himself before all the world, con-
sider, if he have not something, for which in the whole he
values himself far more, than he can value any man else.
There is therefore no reason to take the finest feathers from
all the winged nation to deck that bird, that thinks already
she is more valuable than any of the inhabitants of the air.
Either change all or none. Cease to love yourself best, or be
content with that portion of being and blessing, for which
you love yourself so well.
3. It conduces much to our content, if we pass by those
things, which happen to our trouble, and consider that which
is pleasing and prosperous, that, by the representation of the
better, the worse may be blotted out : and, at the worst, you
OF CONTENTEDXESS. 113
have enough to keep you ahve, and to keep up and to im-
prove your hopes of heaven. If" 1 be overthrown in my suit
at law, yet my house is left me still and my land ; or I have
a virtuous wife, or hopeful children, or kind friends, or good
hopes. If I have lost one child, it may be I have two or
three still left me. Or else reckon the blessings, which
already you have received, and therefore be pleased, in the
change and variety of affairs, to receive evil from the hand of
God as well as good. Antipater of Tarsus used this art to
support his sorrows on his death-bed, and reckoned the good
things of his past life, not forgetting to recount it as a bless-
ing, an argument that God took care of him, that he had a
prosperous journey from Cilicia to Athens. Or else please
thyself with hopes of the future'': for we were born with
this sadness upon us ; and it was a change, that brought us
into it, and a change may bring us out again. Harvest will
come, and then every farmer is rich, at least for a month or
two''. It may be thou art entered into the cloud, which will
bring a gentle shower to refresh thy sorrows.
Now suppose thyself in as great a sadness as ever did load
thy spirit, wouldest thou not bear it cheerfully and nobly, if
thou wert sure that, within a certain space, some strange
excellent fortune would relieve thee, and enrich thee, and
recompense thee so as to overflow all thy hopes and thy de-
sires and capacities ? Now then, when a sadness lies heavy
upon thee, remember that thou art a Christian designed to
the inheritance of Jesus : and what dost thou think con-
cerning thy great fortune, thy lot and portion of eternity ?
Dost thou think, thou shalt be saved or damned ? Indeed if
thou thinkest thou shalt perish, I cannot blame thee to be
sad, till thy heart-strings crack : but then why art thou
troubled at the loss of thy money ? What should a damned
man do with money, which in so great a sadness it is im-
possible for him to enjoy .'' Did ever any man upon the rack
afflict himself, because he had received a cross answer from
his mistress .'' or call for the particulars of a purchase upon
the gallows? If thou dost really believe thou shalt be damned,
I do not say, it will cure the sadness of thy poverty, but it
P L:i speranza e il pan de poveri.
Non si mnle nunc, et olini Sic erit. Hor. ii. 10.
VOL. IV. 1
114 OF COXTENTTEDNESS.
will swallow it up. But if tlioix believest thou shalt be saved,
consider, how great is that joy, how infinite is that change,
how unspeakable is the glory, how excellent is the recom-
pence, for all the sufferings in the world, if they Mere all laden
upon the spirit ? So that let thy condition be what it will, if
thou considerest thy own present condition, and comparest
it to thy future possibility, thou canst not feel the present
smart of a cross fortune to any great degree, either because
thou hast a far bigger sorrow, or a far bigger joy. Here
thou art but a stranger travelling to thy country, where the
glories of a kingdom are prepared for thee ; it is therefore a
huge folly to be much afflicted, because thou hast a less con-
-Venient inn to lodge in by the way.
But these arts of looking forwards and backwards, are
more than enough to support the spirit of aChristian : there
is no man, but hath blessings enough in present possession
to outweigh the evils of a great affliction. Tell the joints of
thy body, and do not accuse the universal Providence for
a lame leg, or the want of a finger, when all the rest is per-
fect, and you have a noble soul, a particle of divinity, the
image of God himself: and, by the want of a finger, you
may the better know how to estimate the remaining parts,
and to account for every degree of the surviving blessings.
Aristippus, in a great suit at law, lost a farm, and to a gen-
tleman, who in civility pitied and dejilored his loss, he an-
swered, " I have two farms left still, and that is more than 1
have lost, and more than you have by one." If you miss an
office, for which you stood candidate, then, besides that you
are quit of the cares and the envy of it, you still have all
those excellences, which rendered you capable to receive
it, and they are better thaii the best office in the common-
wealth. If your estate be lessened, you need the less to care
who governs the province, whether he be rude or gentle. I
am crossed in my journey, and yet I 'scaped robbers; and I
consider, that if I had been set upon by villains, I would
have redeemed that evil by this, which I now sutler, and
have counted it a deliverance : or if I did fall into the hands
of thieves, yet they did not steal my land. Or I am fallen
into the hands of publicans and sequestrators, and they have
taken all from me : what now r let me look about me. They
have left me the sun and moon, fire ^and water, a loving
OF COXTF.XTEDNESS. 115
wife, and many friends to pity me, and some to relieve me,
and I can still discourse; and, unless I list, they have not
taken away my merry countenance, and my cheerful spirit,
and a good conscience : they still have left me the provi-
dence of God, and all the promises of the gospel, and my
religion, and my hopes of heaven, and my charity to them
too ; and still I sleep and digest, I eat and drink, I read and
meditate, I can walk in my neighbour's pleasant fields, and
see the varieties of natural beauties, and delight in all that,
in which God delights, that is, in virtue and wisdom, in the
whole creation, and in God himself. And he that hath so
many causes of joy, and so great, is very much in love with
sorrow and peevishness, who loses all these pleasures, and
chooses to sit down upon his little handful of thorns. Such
a person is fit to bear Nero company in his funeral sorrow
for the loss of one of Poppea's hairs, or help to mourn for
Lesbia's sparrow : and because he loves it, he deserves to
starve in the midst of plenty, and to want comfort, while he
is encircled with blessings.
4. Enjoy the present, whatsoever it be, and be not soli-
citous for the future : for if you take your foot from the pre-
sent standing, and thrust it forward towards to-morrow's
event, you are in a restless condition : it is like refusing to
quench your present thirst, by fearing you shall want drink
the next day'. If it be well to-day, it is madness to make
the present miserable, by fearing it may be ill to-morrow ;
when your belly is full of to-day's dinner, to fear you shall
want the next day's supper: for it may be you shall not, and
then to what purpose was this day's affliction ? But if to-
morrow you shall want, your sorrow will come time enough,
though you do not hasten it : let your trouble tarry, till its
own day comes. But if it chance to be ill to-day, do not
' Quid sit futurum eras fuge qaaerere, et
Quem fors dieraiu cunque dabit, lucro Appone.
Hor. 1. i. Od. 9.
Prudens fatari temporis exitum
Caliginosa node preinit Deus,
Ridetqae, si inortalis ultra
Fas trepidet : quod adest, memento
Componere aequus. Hor. I. iii. Od. 29.
To cr.fxl^oy fAlXei (jLOi,
To S' a2g(cv Ti; oTSev ; Anacr. Od. 15.
i2
IIG
OF COyTEXTEDNESS.
increase it by the care of to-morrow. Enjoy the blessings
of this day, if God sends then), and the evils of it bear pa-
tiently and sweetly: for this day is only ours: we are dead
to yesterday, and we are not yet born to the morrow. He,
therefore, that enjoys the present, if it be good, enjoys as
much as is possible; and if only that day's trouble leans upon
him, it is singular and finite. " Sufficient to the day (said
Christ) is the evil thereof:" sufficient, but not intolerable.
But if we look abroad, and bring into one day's thoughts
tlie evil of many, certain and uncertain, what will be, and
wliat will never be, our load will be as intolerable as it is un-
reasonable. To rejjrove this instrument of discontent, the
ancients feigned, that in hell stood a man twisting a rope of
hay ; and still he twisted on, suffering an ass to eat up all
that was finished : so miserable is he, who thrusts his pas-
sions forwards towards future events, and suffers all, that
he may enjoy, to be lost and devoured by folly and incon-
sideration, thinking nothing fit to be enjoyed, but that
which is not, or cannot be had. Just so, many young per-
sons are loath to die, and therefore desire to live to old age,
and when they are come thither, are troubled, that they are
come to tliat state of life, to which, before they were come,
they were hugely afraid, they should never come.
5. Let us prepare our minds against changes, always ex-
pecting them, that we be not surprised, when they come :
for nothing is so great an enemy to tranquillity and a con-
tented spirit, as the amazement and confusions of unreadi-
ness and inconsideration : and when our fortunes are vio-
lently changed, our spirits are unchanged, if they always
stood in the suburbs and expectation of sorrows. " O deaths •
how bitter art thou to a man, that is at rest in his posses^
sions !" And to the rich man, who had promised to himself
ease and fulness for many years, it was a sad arrest, that his
soul was surprised the first night : but the apostles, who
every day knocked at the gate of death, and looked upon it
continually, went to their martyrdom in peace and evenness.
6. Let us often frame to ourselves and represent to our
considerations, the images of those blessings we have, just
as we usually understand them, when we want them. Con-
sider how desirable health is to a sick man, or liberty to a
pri&oner ; and if but a fit of the tooth-ache seizes us with
Ol' CONTENTEDXESS. 117
violence, all those troubles, which in our health afflicted us,
disband instantly, and seem inconsiderable, lie that in his
health is troubled that he is in debt, and spends sleepless
nights, and refuses meat because of his infelicity, let him fall
into a fit of the stone or a high fever, he despises the arrest of
all his first troubles, and is as a man unconccined. Remem-
ber then, that God hath given thee a blessing, the want of
which is infinitely more trouble than thy present debt or po-
verty or loss; and therefoi'e is now more to be valued ia the
possession, and ought to outweigh thy trouble. The very
privative blessings, the blessings of immunity, safeguard,
liberty, and integrity, w liich we commonly enjoy, deserve the
thanksgiving of a whole life. If God should send a cancer
upon thy face, or a wolf into thy side, if he should spread a
crust of leprosy upon thy skin, what wouldest thou give to
be but as now thou art? Wouldest thou not, on that condi-
tion, be as poor as 1 am, ox as the meanest of thy brethren r
Would you not choose your present loss and affliction as a
thing extremely eligible, and a redemption to thee, if thou
mightest exchange the other for this ? Thou art quit from a
thousand calamities, every one of which, if it were upon
thee, would make thee insensible of thy present sorrow : ajid
therefore let thy joy (which should be as great for thy free-
dom from them, as is thy sadness when thou feelest any of
them) do the same cure upon thy discontent. For if we be
not extremely foolish or vain, thankless or senseless, a great
joy is more apt to cure sorrow and discontent, than a great
trouble is. I have known an affectionate wife, whsn she hath
been in fear of parting with her beloved husband, heartily
desire of God his life or society upon any conditions that
were not sinful ; and choose to beg with him, rather than to
feast without him : and the same person hath, upon that con-
sideration, borne poverty nobly, when God hath heard her
prayer in the other matter. What wise man in the world
is there, who does not prefer a small fortune with peace be-
fore a great one with contention, and war, and violence .'' And
then he is no longer wise, if he alters his opinion, when he
hath his wish.
7. If you will secure a contented spirit, you must mea-
sure your desires by your fortune and condition, not your
fortunes by your desires : that is, be governed by your needs.
118 OF COXTENTEDNESS.
not by your fancy; by nature, not by evil customs and am-
bitious principles^ He that would shoot an arrow out of a
plough, or hunt a hare with an elephant, is not unfortunate
for missing the mark or prey ; but he is foolish for choosing
such unapt instruments : and so is he, that runs after his
content with appetites not springing from natural needs, but
from artificial, fantastical, and violent necessities. These
are not to be satisfied ; or if they were, a man hath chosen
an evil instrument towards his content : nature did not in-
tend rest to a man by filling of such desires. Is that beast
l_ better, that hath two or three mountains to graze on, than a
little bee that feeds on dew or manna, and lives upon what
falls every morning from the storehouses of heaven, clouds
and Providence ? Can a man quench his thirst better out
of a river than a full urn, or drink better from the fountain,
which is finely^ paved with marble, than when it swells over
the green turf? ; Pride and artificial gluttonies do but adul-
terate nature, Triiaking our diet healthless, our appetites im-
patient and unsatisfiable, and the taste mixed, fantastical,
and meretricious. But that which we miscall poverty, is
indeed nature : and its proportions are the just measures of a
man, and the best instruments of content. But when we
create needs, that God or nature never made, we have erected
to ourselves an infinite stock of trouble, that can have no
period. Sempronius complained of want of clothes, and was
much troubled for a new suit, being ashamed to appear in
the theatre with his gown a little threadbare: but when he
got it, and gave his old clothes to Codrus, the poor man was
ravished with joy, and went and gave God thanks for his
new purchase ; and Codrus was made richly fine and cheer-
fully warm by that which Sempronius was ashamed to wear;
' Assai basta per clii iion e ingoido.
' Quaiilo priKstantius esset
Naroeu aquR3, viridi si inurgine clauderet undas
Herba, nee ingenuam violarent niarmora tophnin. Juv. ii!. 20.
me pascunt oliva-,
Me cicborea, levcsque inalva?.
Frai paratis ct valido mibi,
Laloe, dones. Horat. I. i. Od. 31.
Amabolevem ciipressum,
f)inissi,s Ciela' pjiscuis :
Terra; niilii datum fsf paruin ;
Caicn interim doloribus. riiutar. fiapiin. 43.
OF CONTENTEDNESSi 119
and yet their natural needs were both alike : the difference
only was, that Sempronius had some artificial and fantasti-
cal necessities superinduced, which Codrvis had not ; and
was harder to be relieved, and could not have joy at so cheap
a rate ; because he only lived according to nature, the other
by pride and ill customs, and measures taken by other men's
eyes and tongues, and artificial needs. He that propounds
to his fancy things greater than himself or his needs, and is
discontent and troubled, when he fails of such purchases,
ought not to accuse Providence, or blame his fortune, but
his folly. God and nature made no more needs than they
mean to satisfy ; and he that will make more, must look for
satisfaction when he can.
8. In all troubles and sadder accidents, let us take sanc-
tuary in religion, and by innocence cast out anchors for our
KGuls to keep them from shipwreck, though they be not kept
from storm". For what philosophy shall comfort a villain,
that is haled to the rack for murdering his prince, or that is
broken upon the wheel for sacrilege? His cup is full of pure
and unmingled sorrow : his body is rent with torment, his
name with ignominy, his soul with shame and sorrow, which
are to last eternally. But when a man suffers in a good
cause, or is afilicted, and yet walks not perversely with his
God, then " Anytus and Melitus may kill me, but they can-
not hmt me :" then St. Paul's character is eno;raved in the
forehead of our fortune""'; " We are troubled on every side,
but not distressed ; perplexed, but not in despair ; persecuted,
but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed. And who
is he that will harm you, if ye be followers of that which is
good ''r" For indeed every thing in the world is indifferent,
but sin: and all the scorchings of the sun are very tolerable
in respect of the burnings of a fever or a calenture. The
greatest evils are from within us : and from ourselves also we
must look for our greatest good ; for God is the fountain of
it, but reaches it to us by our own hands : and when all
things look sadly round about us, then only we shall find,
how excellent a fortune it is to have God to our friend ; and,
of all friendships, that only is created to support us in our
needs. For it is sin that turns an an-ue into a fever, and a
" \ acaie culpa in calamitatibus maximnm solatium.
^ V Cor. iv. 8, 'J. «• 1 Pet. iii. 13. jv. 15. ig.
120 OF CONTEXTEDNESS.
fever to the plague, fear into despair, anger into rage, and
loss into madness, and sorrow to amazement and confusion :
but if either we were innocent, or else, by the sadness, are
made penitent, we are put to school, or into the theatre,
either to learn how, or else actually to combat for a crown ;
the accident may serve an end of mercy, but is not a mes-
senger of wrath.
Let us therefore be governed by external, and present, and
seeming things; nor let us make the same judgment of things
that common and weak understandings do ; nor make other
men, and they not the wisest, to be judges of our felicity, so
that we be happy or miserable, as they please to think us :
but let reason, and experience, and religion, and hope rely-
ing upon the divine promises, be the measure of our judg-
ment. No wise man did ever describe felicity without vir-
tue"; and no good man did ever think, virtue could depend
upon the variety of a good or bad fortune. It is no evil to
be poor, but to be vicious and impatient.
Means to obtain Content by way of considerations.
To these exercises and spiritual instruments, if we add
the following considerations concerning the nature and cir-
cumstances of human chance, we may better secure our
peace. For as to children, who are afraid of vain images,
we use to persuade confidence by making them to handle
and look nearer such things, that when, in such a familiarity,
they perceive them innocent, they may overcome their fears :
so must timorous, fantastical, sad, and discontented persons,
be treated ; they must be made to consider and on all sides
to look upon the accident, and to take all its dimensions, and
consider its consequences, and to behold the purpose of
God, and the common mistakes of men, and their evil sen-
tences, they usually pass upon them. For then we shall per-
ceive, that, like colts of unmanaged horses, we start at dead
bones and lifeless blocks, things that are inactive as they
are innocent. But if we secure our hopes and our fears, and
make them moderate and within government, we may the
sooner overcome the evil of the accident ; for nothing that
we feel is so bad as what we fear.
" Bcalitudo pciidet a rcctis cousiliib iu alTcclioncm aiiimi conslaDtcm desmcnlilvus.
OF COXTEXTEDNESS. 121
1. Consider that the universal providence of God hath
BO ordered it, that the good things of nature and fortune
are divided, that we may know how to bear our own, and
relieve each other's wants and imperfections. It is not for a
man, but for a God, to have all excellences and all felici-
ties-^ He supports my poverty with his wealth ; I counsel
and instruct him with my learning and experience. He hath
many friends, I many children : he hath no heir, I have no
inheritance : and any one great blessing, together with the
common portions of nature and necessity, is a fair fortune,
if it be but health or strength, or the swiftness of Ahimaaz.
For it is an unreasonable discontent to be troubled, that I
have not so good cocks or dogs or horses as my neighbour,
being more troubled that I want one thing that I need
not, than thankful for having received all that I need. Nero
had this disease, that he was not content with the fortune of
the whole empire, but put the fiddlers to death for being more
skilful in the trade, than he was : and Dionysius the elder
was so angry at Philoxenus for singing, and with Plato for
disputing, better than he did, that he sold Plato a slave into
iEgina, and condemned the other to the quarries.
This consideration is to be enlarged by adding to it, that
there are some instances of fortune and a fair condition, that
cannot stand with some others, but if you desire this, you
must lose that, and unless you be content with one, you lose
the comfort of both. If you covet learning, you must have
leisure and a retired life : if to be a politician, you must go
abroad and get experience, and do all businesses, and keep all
ijompany, and have no leisure at all. If you will be rich, you
must be frugal : if you will be popular, you must be bounti-
ful: if a philosopher, you must despise riches. The Greek,
that designed to make the most exquisite picture, that could
be imagined, fancied the eye of Chione, and the hair of Pseg-
nium, and Tarsia's lip, Philenium's chin, and the forehead of
Delphia, and set all these upon Milphidippa's neck, and
thought that he should outdo both art and nature. But when
he came to view the proportions, he found, that what was ex-
cellent in Tarsia, did not agree with the other excellency of
Philenium ; and although, singly, they were rare pieces, yet
y Nnn le ad omnia laeta genuit, O Agamemnon, Atreus. Opus est Ic gaadere et
mocrere : Mortalis cnim nalUb cs, el ut baud velis ; Superi sic roiibtitucrunt.
122 OF CONTENTEDNESS.
in the whole, they made a most ugly face. The dispersed
excellences -and blessings of many men, if given to one,
Avould not make a handsome, but a monstrous fortune. Use
therefore that faculty, which nature hath given thee, and thy
education hath made actual, and thy calling hath made a
duty. But if thou desirest to be a saint, refuse not his per-
secution : if thou wouldest be famous as Epaminondas or Fa-
bricius, accept also of their poverty ; for that added lustre
to their persons, and envy to their fortune, and their virtue
without it could not have been so excellent. Let Euphoriou
sleep quietly with his old rich wife; and let Medius drink
on with Alexander : and remember thou canst not have the
riches of the first, unless you have the old wife too ; nor the
favour, which the second had with his prince, unless you buy
it at his price'', that is, lay thy sobriety down at first, and thy
health a little after; and then their condition, though it look
splendidly, yet when you handle it on all sides, it will prick
your fingers.
2. Consider, how many excellent personages in all ages
have suffered as great or greater calamities than this, which
now tempts thee to impatience. Agis was the most noble of
the Greeks, and yet his wife bore a child by Alcibiades: and
Philip was prince of Itursea, and yet his wife ran away with
his brother Herod into Galilee ; and certainly, in a great for-
tune, that was a great calamity. But these are but single
instances. Almost all the ages of the world have noted, that
their most eminent scholars were most eminently poor, some
by choice, but most by chance, and an inevitable decree of
Providence: and, in the whole sex of women, God hath de-
creed the sharpest pains of child-birth, to shew, that there is
no state exempt from sorrow, and yet that the weakest persons
have strength more than enough to bear the greatest evil : and
the greatest queens, and the mothers of saints and apostles,
have no charter of exemption from this sad sentence. But
the Lord of men and angels was also the King of sufferings:
and if thy coarse robe trouble thee, remember the swaddling-
clothes of Jesus; if thy bed be uneasy, yet it is not worse
than his manger ; and it is no sadness to have a thin table,
if thou callest to mind, that the King of heaven and earth
' Prandct Aristoteles, quaado Pliilippo lubct ; Dio^ufeaes, (juando Diogeni.
J
OF CONTENTEDNESS. 123
was fed with a little breast-milk : and yet, besides this, he
suffered all the sorrows which we deserved. We therefore
have great reason to sit down upon our own hearths, and
warm ourselves at our own fires, and feed upon content at
home: for it were a strange pride to expect to be more gently
treated by the Divine Providence, than the best and wisest
men, than apostles and saints, nay, the Son of the eternal
God, the heir of both the worlds. |
This consideration may be enlarged by surveying all the
states and families of the world: and he" that at once saw
jEgina and Megara, Pyraus and Corinth, lie gasping in their
ruins, and almost buried in their own heaps, had reason to
blame Cicero for mourning impatiently the death of one wo-
man. In the most beauteous and splendid fortune, there are
many cares and proper interruptions and allays : in the for-
tune of a prince there is not the coarse robe of beggary ; but
there are infinite cares; and the judge sits upon the tribunal
with great ceremony and ostentation of fortune ^ and yet, at
his house or in his breast, there is something, that causes him
to sigh deeply. Pittacus was a wise and valiant man, but
his wife overthrew the table when he had invited his friends :
upon which the good man, to excuse her incivility and his
own misfortune, said, " That every man had one evil, and he
was most happy, that had but that alone." And if nothing
else happens, yet sicknesses so often do embitter the fortune
and content of a family, that a physician, in a few years, and
with the practice upon a very few families, gets experience
enough to administer to almost all diseases. And when thy
little misfortune troubles thee, remember that thou hast
known the best of kings and the best of men put to death
publickly by his own subjects.
3. There are many accidents, which are esteemed great
calamities, and yet we have reason enough to bear them well
and unconcernedly; for they neither touch our bodies nor
our souls : our health and our virtue remain entire, our life
* Servins Sulpicius.
*> Hie inforo beatus esse credilur,
Ciiiii foribns apertis sit suis niiserriraus ;
Iiiiperat mulier, jubet omnia, semper liti^'at.
Mulla adfcrunt illi dolorera, nihil milii. —
Ferre, (juam sortnin paliunlur onines,
Nemo recusal.
124 OF CONTENTEDNESS.
and our reputation. It may be I am slighted, or I have re-
ceived ill language ; but my head aches not for it, neither
hath it broke my thigh, nor taken away my virtue, vmless 1
lose my charity or my patience. Inquire, therefore, what
you are the worse, either in your soul or in your body, for
what hath happened : for upon this very stock many evils will
disappear, since the body and the soul make up the whole
man''. And when the daughter of Stilpo proved a wanton,
he said it was none of his sin, and therefore there was no
reason it should be his misery. And if an enemy hath taken
all that from a prince, whereby he was a king ; he may re-
fresh himself by considering all that is left him, whereby he
is a man.
4. Consider, that sad accidents and a state of affliction
is a school of virtue : it reduces our spirits to soberness,
and our counsels to moderation : it corrects levity, and in-
terrupts the confidence of sinning. " It is good for me
(said David) that I have been afflicted, for thereby I have
learned thy law'"." And " I know (O Lord) tluit thou of very
faithfulness hast caused me to be troubled." For God, who,
in mercy and wisdom, governs the world, would never have
suffered so many sadnesses, and have sent them especially
to the most virtuous and the wisest men, but that he intends
they should be the seminary of comfort, the nursery of vir-
tue, the exercise of wisdom, the trial of patience, the ven-
turing for a crown, and the gate of glory.
5. Consider, that afflictions are oftentimes the occasions
of great temporal advantages ; and we must not look upon
them, as they sit down heavily upon us, but as they serve
some of God's ends, and the purposes of universal Provi-
dence. And when a prince fights justly, and yet unprosper-
ously, if he could see all those reasons for which God hath
so ordered it, he would think it the most reasonable thing
in the world, and that it would be very ill to have it other-
wise. If a man could have opened one of the pages of the
* Si natus es, Tropbiiiie, sniiis omnjiim hiic lege,
Ut semper earit tibi res arbitrio tuo,
Felicitateni Iianc si quis proiriisit Deus,
Irascercris jure, si inala is Cde
El iniprobi.' egisset. Mcnan. Ckrc. p. '2b9.
<• Fsal. cxis. part 10. vcr. 3. ^ J/ ■■ .
OF CONTENTEDNESS, 125
Divine counsel, and could have seen the event of Joseph's
being sold to the merchants of Anialek, he might, with much
reason, have dried up the young man's tears : and when
God's purposes are opened in the events of things, as it was
in the case of Joseph, when he sustained his father's family
and became lord of Egypt, then we see, what ill j udgment
we made of things, and that we were passionate as children,
and transported with sense and mistaken interest. The case
of Themistocles was almost like that of Joseph ; for being
banished into Egypt, he also grew in favour with the king,
and told his wife, " he had been undone, unless he had been
undone." For God esteems it one of his glories, that he
brino's crood out of evil ; and therefore it were but reason, we
should trust God to govern his own world as he pleases ;
and that we should patiently wait till the change cometh, or
the reason be discovered.
And this consideration is also of great use to them,
who envy at the prosperity of the wicked, and the success
of persecutors, and the baits of fishes, and the bread of
dogs. God fails not to sow blessings in the long furrows,
which the ploughers plough upon the back of the church :
and this success, which troubles us, will be a great glory
to God, and a great benefit to his saints and servants, and
a great ruin to the persecutors, who shall have but the
fortune of Theramenes, one of the thirty tyrants of Athens,
who escaped, when his house fell upon him, and was shortly
after put to death with torments by his colleagues in the
tyranny.
To which also may be added, that the great evils, which
happen to the best and wisest men, are one of the great
arguments, upon the strength of which we can expect felicity
to our souls and the joys of another world. And certainly
they are then very tolerable and eligible, when, with so great
advantages, they minister to the faith and hope of a Christian.
But if we consider what unspeakable tortures are provided
for the wicked to all eternity, we should not be troubled to
see them prosperous here, but ratlier wonder, that their por-
tion in this life is not bigger, and that ever they should be
sick, or crossed, or afi'ronted, or troubled with the contra-
diction and disease of their own vices, since, if they were
fortunate beyond their own ambition, it could not make them
12G OF CONTENTEDXESS.
recompence for one hour's torment in hell, which yet they
shall have for their eternal portion.
After all these considerations deriving from sense and
experience, grace and reason, there are two remedies still
remaining, and they are necessity and time.
6. For it is but reasonable to bear that accident patiently
which God sends, since impatience does but entangle us,
like the fluttering of a bird in a net, but cannot at all ease
our trouble, or prevent the accident^ : it must be run through,
and therefore it were better we compose ourselves to a
patient, than to a troubled and miserable suffering.
7. But however, if you will not otherwise be cured, time
at last will do it alone ; and then consider, do you mean to
mourn always, or but for a time? If always, you are misera-
ble and foolish. If for a time, then why will you not apply
those reasons to your grief at first, with which you will cure
it at last ? or if you will not cure it with reason, see how
little of a man there is in you, that you suffer time to do
more with you than reason or religion ! You suffer your-
self to be cured, just as a beast or a tree is ; let it alone,
and the thing will heal itself: but this is neither honourable
to thy person, nor of reputation to thy religion. However,
be content to bear thy calamity, because thou art sure, in a
little time, it will sit down gentle and easy : for to a mortal
man no evil is immortal. And here let the worst thing happen
that can, it will end in death, and we commonly think that
to be near enough.
8. Lastly, of those things which are reckoned amongst
evils, some are better than their contraries j and to a good
man, the very worst is tolerable.
Poverty or a low fortune.
1 . Poverty is better than riches, and a mean fortune to
be chosen before a great and splendid one. It is indeed de-
spised, and makes men contemptible : it exposes a man to the
insolence of evil persons, and leaves a man defenceless : it
is always suspected : its stories are accounted lies, and all
its counsels follies : it puts a man from all employment : it
makes a man's discourses tedious, and his society trouble-
* Nemo recusal ferre, quod iiecesse est pati.
or CONTENTEDNESS. 127
some. This is the worst of it : and yet all this, and far worse
than this, the apostles suffered for beino- Christians : and
Christianity itself may be esteemed an affliction as well as
poverty, if this be all that can be said against it; for the
apostles and the most eminent Christians were really poor,
and were used contemptuously : and yet, that poverty is
despised may be an argument to commend it, if it be de-
spised by none but persons vicious and ignorant'. However,
certain it is, that a great fortune is a great vanity, and riches
is nothing but danger, trouble, and temptation ; like a gar-
ment that is too long, and bears a train ; not so useful to
one, but it is troublesome to two, to him that bears the one
part upon his shoulders, and to him that bears the other part
in his hand. But poverty is the sister of a good mind, the
parent of sober counsels, and the nurse of all virtue.
For what is it that you admire in the fortune of a great
king ? Is it, that he always goes in a great company ? You
may thrust yourself into the same crowd, or go often to
church, and then you have as great a company as he hath ;
and that may, upon as good grounds, please you as him, that
is, justly neither: for so impertinent and useless pomp, and
the other circumstances of his distance, are not made for him,
but for his subjects, that they may learn to separate him from
common usages, and be taught to be governed". But if you
look upon them as fine things in themselves, you may quick-
ly alter your opinion, when you shall consider, that they can-
not cure the tooth-ache, nor make one wise, or fill the belly,
or give one night's sleep (though they help to break many),
not satisfying any appetite of nature, or reason, or religion :
but they are states of greatness, which only make it possi-
ble for a man to be made extremely miserable. And it was
long ago observed by the Greek tragedians, and from them
by Arrianus'', saying, " That all our tragedies are of kinos
and princes, and rich or ambitious personages ; but you never
* Aha fortana alto Iravaglio apporta. 6 Da autorita la ceiMiioiiIa al atto.
Bis sex dieruin lueiisura cuiisero e^o a^ios,
Bereeynlhia arva.
Aiiiiii usque meus sensim usque evectus ad poluiii
Decidit humi, el me sic videtur al!i>(|ni ;
Disce baud nimis inagnilaccre morlalia. Taiital. in Tragcrd.
128 OF COXTENTEDXESS.
see a poor man have a part, unless it be as a chorus, or to
fill up the scenes, to dance or to be derided ; but the kings
and the great generals. First (says he), they begin with joy,
arixpan Sw/uora, crown the houses : but about the third or
fourth act they cry out, " O Citheron! why didst thou spare
my life to reserve me for this more sad calamity ?" And this
is really true in the great accidents of the world : for a great
estate hath great crosses, and a mean fortune hath but small
ones. It may be, the poor man loses a cow ; for if his child
dies, he is quit of his biggest care ; but such an accident in
a rich and splendid family doubles upon the spirits of the
parents. Or, it may be, the poor man is troubled to pay his
rent, and that is his biggest trouble : but it is a bigger care
to secure a great fortune in a troubled estate, or with equal
greatness, or with the circumstances of honour, and the nice-
ness of reputation to defend a law-suit; and that, which
will secure a common man's whole estate, is not enough to
defend a great man's honour.
And therefore it was not without mystery observed among
the ancients, that they, who made gods of gold and silver,
of hope and fear, peace and fortune, garlic and onions, beasts
and serpents, and a quartan ague, yet never deified money' :
meaning, that however wealth was admired by common or
abused understandings ; yet from riches, that is, from that
proportion of good things which is beyond the necessities
of nature, no moment could be added to a man's real con-
tent or happiness. Corn from Sardinia, herds of Calabrian
cattle, meadows through which pleasant Liris glides, silks
from Tyrus, and golden chalices to drown my health in, are
nothing but instruments of vanity or sin, and suppose a dis-
ease in the soul of him, that longs for them, or admires them.
And this I have otherwhere represented more largely ; to
which I here add, that riches have very great dangers to
their souls, not only who covet them, but to all that have
them''. For if a great personage undertakes an action pas-
sionately and upon great interest, let him manage it indis-
creetly, let the whole design be unjust, let it be acted with
futiesta Pecuniii, templo
Nondum haliitas, iiullas iiiinimoruin ereximus aras,
Ut colitiii Pax atque Fides Juv. i. 113.
* Cbaj), iv. Sect. B. Title of Covctousiiess.
OF CONTENTEDNESS. 129
all the malice and impotency in the world, he shall have
enough to flatter him, hut not enough to reprove him. He
had need be a bold man, that shall tell his patron, he is go-
ing to hell ; and that prince had need be a good man, that
shall suffer such a monitor ; and though it be a strange kind
of civility, and an evil dutifulness in friends and relatives to
suffer him to perish without reproof or medicine, rather than
to seem unmannerly to a great sinner ; yet it is none of their
least infelicities, that their wealth and greatness shall put
them into sin, and yet put them past reproof. I need not
instance in the habitual intemperance of rich tables, nor the
evil accidents and effects of fulness, pride and lust, wanton-
ness and softness of disposition, huge talking and an imperious
spirit, despite of religion and contempt of poor persons ; at
the best, " it is a great temptation for a man to have in his
power, whatsoever he can have in his sensual desires':" and
therefore riches is a blessing, like to a present made of a
whole vintage to a man in a hectic fever ; he will be much
tempted to drink of it ; and if he does, he is inflamed, and
may chance to die with the kindness.
Now besides what hath been already noted in the state
' of poverty, there is nothing to be accounted for but the fear
of wanting necessaries ; of which if a man could be secured,
that he might live free from care, all the other parts of it
might be reckoned amongst the advantages of wise and sober
persons, rather than objections against that state of fortune.
But concerning this I consider, that there must needs be
great security to all Christians, since Christ not only made
express promises, that we should have sufficient for this life :
but also took great pains and used many arguments to create
confidence in us : and such they were, which by their own
strength were sufficient, though you abate the authority of
the speaker. The Son of God told us, his Father takes care
of us : he that knew all his Father's counsels and his whole
kindness towards mankind, told us so. How great is that
truth, how certain, how necessary, which Christ himself
proved by arguments! The excellent words and most com-
fortable sentences, which are our bills of exchange, upon the
credit of which we lay our cares down, and receive provisions
' Jam. ii. 5 — 7.
VOL. IV. K
130 OF CONTENTEDNESS.
for our need, are these; " Take no thought for your life, what
ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink, nor yet for your body,
what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and
the body than raiment ? Behold the fowls of the air; for they
sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns, yet
your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better
than they ? Which of you, by taking thought, can add one
cubit to his stature ? And why take ye thought for raiment ?
Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they toil not,
neither do they spin ; and yet I say unto you, that even
Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
Therefore if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to-
day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not
much more clothe you, O ye of little faith ? Therefore take
no thought, saying. What shall we eat ? or what shall we
drink ? or wherewithal shall we be clothed ? (for after all
these things do the gentiles seek) for your heavenly Father
knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye
first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these
things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought
for the morrow ; for the morrow shall take thought for the
things of itself: sufficient to the day is the evil thereof'"."
The same discourse is repeated by St. Luke " : and accord-
ingly our duty is urged, and our confidence abetted, by the
disciples of our Lord, in divers places of Holy Scripture. So
St. Paul : " Be careful for nothing, but in every thing by
prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests
be made known unto God"." And again, " Charge them that
are rich in this world, that they be not high-minded, nor trust
in uncertain riches, but in the living God, who giveth us
richly all things to enjoy p." And yet again, "Let your con-
versation be without covetousness, and be content with such
things as ye have; for he hath said, I will never leave thee,
nor forsake thee : so that we may boldly say. The Lord is my
helper''." And all this is by St. Peter summed up in our duty,
thus : " Cast all your care upon him, for he careth for you."
Which words he seems to have borrowed out of the fifty-
fifth Psalm, V. 23. where David saith the same thino" almost
in the same words. To which I only add the observation
•» Malt, vi 25, &c. " Luke xii. 22. to verse 31. " Phil. iv. 6.
P 1 Tim. vi. 17. 1 Ileb. xiii. 5, 6.
OF CONTENTEDNESS. 131
made by him, and the argument of experience; '' I have beer>
young and now am old, and yet saw I never the righteous
forsaken, nor his seed begging their bread." And now after
all this, a fearless confidence in God, and concerning a pro-
vision of necessaries, is so reasonable, that it is become a
duty; and he is scarce a Christian, whose faith is so little as
to be jealous of God, and suspicious concerning meat and
clothes : that man hath nothing in him of the nobleness or
confidence of charity.
Does not God provide for all the birds, and beasts, and
fishes ? Do not the sparrows fly from their bush, and every
morning find meat, where they laid it not .? Do not the young
ravens call to God, and he feeds them f And were it rea-
sonable, that the sons of the family should fear, the Father
vv^ould give meat to the chickens and the servants, his sheep
and his dogs, but give none to them ^ He were a very ill
father, that should do so ; or he were a very foolish son, that
should think so of a good father. But, besides the reason-
ableness of this faith and this hope, we have infinite experi-
ence of it. How innocent, how careless, how secure, is in-
fancy ! and yet how certainly provided for ! We have lived
at God's charges all the days of our life, and have (as the
Italian proverb says) set down to meat at the sound of a
bell ; and hitherto he hath not failed us : we have no reason
to suspect him for the future : we do not use to serve men
so ; and less time of trial creates great confidences in us to-
wards them, who for twenty years together never broke their
word with us : and God hath so ordered it, that a man shall
have had the experience of many years' provision, before he
shall understand how to doubt ; that he may be provided for
an answer, against the temptation shall come, and the mer-
cies felt in his childhood may make him fearless, when he
is a man. Add to this, that God hath given us his Holy Spi-
rit : he hath promised heaven to us : he hath given us his
Son; and we are taught from Scripture to make this infer-
ence from hence, " How should not he with him give us all
things else r"
The Charge of many Children.
We have a title to be provided for, as we are God's crea-
tures, another title as we are his children, another because
K 2
132 OF CONTENTEDNESS.
God hath promised ; and every of our children hath the
same title : and therefore it is a huge folly and infidelity to
be troubled and full of care, because we have many children.
Every child we have to feed, is a new revenue, a new title to
God's care and providence ; so that many children are a
great wealth : and if it be said, they are chargeable, it is
no more than all ^wealth and great revenues are. For what
difference is it? Titius keeps ten ploughs, Cornelia hath ten
children : he hath land enough to employ and to feed all his
hinds : she, blessings and promises, and the provisions and
the truth of God, to maintain all her children. His hinds
and horses eat up all his corn, and her children are suffici-
ently maintained with her little. They bring in and eat up ;
and she indeed eats up, but they also bring in from the store-
houses of heaven, and the granaries of God : and my chil-
dren are not so much mine as they are God's : he feeds them
in the womb by ways secret and insensible ; and would not
work a perpetual miracle to bring them forth, and then to
starve them.
Violent Necessities.
But some men are highly tempted, and are brought to a
strait ; that, without a miracle, they cannot be relieved :
what shall they do? It may be, their pride or vanity hath
brought the necessity upon them, and it is not a need of
God's making; and if it be not, they must cure it themselves,
by lessening their desires, and moderating their appetites :
and yet, if it be innocent, though unnecessary, God does
usually relieve such necessities ; and he does not only upon
our prayers grant us more than he promised of temporal
things, but also he gives many times more than we ask.
This is no object for our faith, but ground enough for a tem-
poral and prudent hope ; and, if we fail in the particular,
God will turn it to a bigger mercy, if we submit to his dis-
pensation, and adore him in the denial. But if it be a mat-
ter of necessity, let not any man, by way of impatience, cry
out, that God will not work a miracle ; for God, by miracle,
did give meat and drink to his people in the wilderness, of
which he made no particular promise in any covenant : and
if all natural means fail, it is certain, that God will rather
work a miracle than break his word : he can do that ; he
OF CONTENTEDNESS. 133
cannot do this. Only we must remember, that our portion
of temporal tilings is but food and raiment. God hath not
promised us coaches and horses, rich houses and jewels,
Tyrian silks and Persian carpets ; neither hath he promised
to minister to our needs in such circumstances, as we shall
appoint, but such as himself shall choose. God will enable
either thee to pay thy debt (if thou beggest it of him), or else
he will pay it for thee; that is, take thy desire as a discharge
of thy duty, and pay it to thy creditor in blessings, or in
some secret of his providence. It may be he hath laid up
the corn, that shall feed thee, in the granary of thy brother ;
or will clothe thee with his wool. He enabled St. Peter to
pay his gabel by the ministry of a fish ; and Elias to be waited
on by a crow, who was both his minister and his steward for
provisions : and his holy Son rode in triumph upon an ass,
that grazed in another man's pastures. And if God gives to
him the dominion, and reserves the use to thee, thou hast
the better half of the two : but the charitable man serves
God and serves thy need ; and both join to provide for thee,
and God blesses both. But if he takes away the flesh-pots
from thee, he can also alter the appetite, and he hath given
thee power and commandment to restrain it : and if he less-
ens the revenue, he will also shrink the necessity ; or if he
gives but a very little, he will make it go a great way ; or if
he sends thee but a coarse diet, he will bless it and make it
healthful, and can cure all the anguish of thy poverty by
giving thee patience, and the grace of contentedness. For
the grace of God secures you of provisions, and yet the
grace of God feeds and supports the spirit in the want of pro-
visions : and if a thin table be apt to enfeeble the spirits of
one used to feed better, yet the cheerfulness of a spirit, that
is blessed, will make a thin table become a delicacy, if the
man was as well taught as he was fed, and learned his duty,
when he received the blessing. Poverty^ therefore, is in some
senses eligible, and to be preferred before riches ; but, in all
senses, it is very tolerable.
Death of Children, or nearest Relatives and Friends.
There are some persons, who have been noted for excel-
lent in their lives and passions, rarely innocent, and yet
134 OF CONTENTEbNESS.
hugely penitent for indiscretions and harmless infirmitie s;
such as was Paulina, one of the ghostly children of St. Je-
rome; and yet when any of her children died, she was ar-
rested with a sorrow so great, as brought her to the margent
of her grave. And the more tiender our spirits are made by
teligion, the more easy we are to let in grief, if the cause be
innocent, and be but in any sense twisted with piety and due
affections. To cure which, we may consider, that all the
world must die, and therefore to be impatient at the death of
a person, concerning whom it was certain and known that
he must die, is to mourn, because thy friend or child was
not born an angel ; and, when thou hast awhile made thyself
miserable by an importunate and useless grief, it may be
thou shalt die thyself, and leave others to their choice, whe-
ther they will mourn for thee or no : but, by that time, it
will appear, how impertinent that grief was, which served no
end of life, and ended in thy own funeral. But what great
matter is it, if sparks fly upward, or a stone falls into a pit;
if that, which was combustible, be burned, or that, which
was liquid, be melted, or that which is mortal, do die ? It is
ho more than a man does every day : for every night death
hath gotten possession of that day, and we shall never live that
iday over again ; and when the last day is come, there are no
more days left for us to die. And what is sleeping and
Waking, but living and dying ? what is spring and autxmin,
youth and old age, morning and evening, but real images of
life and death, and really the same to many considerable ef-
fects and changes ?
Untimely Death.
But it is not mere dying, that is pretended by some as
the cause of their impatient mourning ; but that the child
died young, before he knew good and evil, his right hand
from his left, and so lost all his portion of this world, and
they know not, of what excellency his portion in the next
shall be. If he died young, he lost but little; for he under-
stood but little, and had not capacities of great pleasures or
great cares : but yet he died innocent, and before the sweet-
ness of his soul was deflowered and ravished from him by
the flames and follies of a froward age : he went out from
the dining-room, before he had fallen into error by the in-
OF CONTENTEDNESS. 135
temperance of his meat, or the deluge of drink : and he hath
obtained this favour of God, that his soul hath suffered a
less imprisonment, and her load was sooner taken off, that
he might, with lesser delays, go and converse with immortal
spirits : and the babe is taken into paradise, before he knows
good and evil. (For that knowledge threw our great father
out, and this ignorance returns the child thither.) But (as
concerning thy own particular) remove thy thoughts back to
those days, in which thy child was not born, and you are
now, but as then you was, and there is no difference, but
thftt you had a son born : and if you reckon that for evil,
you are unthankful for the blessing ; if it be good, it is better,
that you had the blessing for awhile, than not at all ; and
yet, if he had never been born, this sorrow had not been at
all^ But be no more displeased at God for giving you a
blessing for awhile, than you would have been, if he had not
given it at all ; and reckon that intervening blessing for a gain,
but account it not an evil ; and if it be a good, turn it not
into sorrow and sadness. But, if we have great reason to
complain of the calamities and evils of our life, then we have
the less reason to grieve, that those, whom we loved, have
so small a portion of evil assigned to them. And it is no
small advantage, that our children dying young receive : for
their condition of a blessed immortality is rendered to them
secure by being snatched from the dangers of an evil choice,
aad carried to their little cells of felicity, where they can
weep no more. And this the wisest of the gentiles under-
stood well, when they forbade any ofFerings or libations to be
made for dead infants, as was usual for their other dead ; as
believing they were entered into a secure possession, to which
they went with no other condition, but that they passed into
it through the way of mortality, and, for a few months, wore
an uneasy garment. And let weeping parents say, if they
do not think, that the evils, their little babes have suffered,
are sufficient. If they be, why are they troubled, that they
Avere taken from those many and greater, which, in succeed-
ing years, are great enough to try all the reason and religion,
which art, and nature, and the grace of God, have produced in
>■ Itidem si puer parvuliis ocoidat, a'quo aniino fereiulum putanl ; si vero in ciinis,
ne queretidiim quidem ; atqui hoc acerbius exegit iiatura quod dederat. At id qui-
dem in ca^teris rebus melius putatur, aliquam partem quam nullara attingexc. Senec.
136 OF CONTENTJCDNESS.
US, to enable us for such sad contentions? And, possibly, we
may doubt concerning men and women, but we cannot sus-
pect, that to infants death can be such an evil, but that it
brings to them much more good, than it takes from them in
this life.
Death unseasonable.
But others can well bear the death of infants : but when
they have spent some years of childhood or youth, and are
entered into arts and society, when they are hopeful and
provided for, when the parents are to reap the comfort of all
their fears and cares, then it breaks the spirit to lose them.
This is true in many ; but this is not love to the dead, but to
themselves ; for they miss, what they had flattered themselves
into by hope and opinion : and if it were kindness to the
dead, they may consider, that, since we hope he is gone to
God and to rest, it is an ill expression of our love to them,
that we weep for their good fortune. For that life is not
best, which is longest : and when they are descended into
the grave, it shall not be inquired how long they have lived,
but how well : and yet this shortening of their days is an evil
wholly depending upon opinion ^ For if men did naturally
live but twenty years, then we should be satisfied, if they
died about sixteen or eighteen; and yet eighteen years now
are as long, as eighteen years would be then: and if a man
were but of a day's life, it is well if he lasts till evensong, and
then says his compline an hour before the time : and we are
pleased, and call not that death immature, if he lives till
seventy ; and yet this age is as short of the old periods be-
fore and since the flood, as this youth's age (for whom you
mourn) is of the present fulness. Suppose therefore a decree
passed upon this person (as there have been many upon all
mankind), and God hath set him a shorter period ; and then
we may as well bear the immature death of the young man,
as the death of the oldest men : for they also are immature
and unseasonable in respect of the old periods of many ge-
nerations. And why are we troubled, that he had arts and
sciences before he died ? or are we troubled, that he does not
live to make use of them? The first is cause of joy, for they
• Juvenis reliiujuit vilam, quem Dii diligunt. Menand. Clerc. p. 46.
OF CONTENTEDNESS. 137
are excellent in order to certain ends : and the second cannot
be cause of sorrow, because he hath no need to use them, as
the case now stands, being provided for with the provisions
of an angel, and the manner of eternity. However, the sons
and the parents, friends and relatives, are in the world, like
hours and minutes to a day. The hour comes, and must
pass ; and some stay by minutes, and they also pass, and
shall never return again. But let it be considered, that from
the time in which a man is conceived, from that time forward
to eternity he shall never cease to be : and let him die young
or old, still he hath an immortal soul, and hath laid down
his body only for a time, as that which was the instrument
of his trouble and sorrow, and the scene of sicknesses and
disease. But he is in a more noble manner of being after
death, than he can be here: and the child may, with more
reason, be allowed to cry for leaving his mother's womb for
this world, than a man can, for changing this world for an-
other.
Sudden Death or violent.
Others are yet troubled at the manner of their child's or
friend's death. He was drowned, or lost his head, or died
of the plague ; and this is a new spring of sorrow. But no
man can give a sensible account, how it shall be worse for a
child to die with drowning in half an hour, than to endure a
fever of one-and-twenty days. And if my friend lost his
head, so he did not lose his constancy and his religion, he
died with huge advantage.
Being Childless.
But, by this means, I am left without an heir. Well,
suppose that : thou hast no heir, and I have no inheritance ;
and there are many kings and emperors that have died child-
less, many royal lines are extinguished : and Augustus Csesar
was forced to adopt his wife's son to inherit all the Roman
greatness. And there are many wise persons that never
married : and we read no where, that any of the children of
the apostles did survive their fathers : and all that inherit
any thing of Christ's kingdom, come to it by adoption, not
by natural inheritance : and to die without a natural heir is
138 OF CONTENIEDNESS.
no intolerable evil, since it was sanctified in the person of
Jesus, who died a virgin.
Evil or unfortunate Children.
And by this means, we are freed from the greater sor-
rows of having a fool, a swine, or a goat, to rule after us in
our families : and yet even this condition admits of comfort*.
For all the wild Americans are supposed to be the sons of
Dodonaim ; and the sons of Jacob are now the most scat-
tered and despised people in the whole v/orld. The son of
Solomon was but a silly weak man ; and the sonof Hezekiah
was wicked : and all the fools and barbarous people, all the
thieves and pirates, all the slaves and miserable men and wo-
men of the world, are the sons and daughters of Noah : and
we must not look to be exempted from that portion of sor-
row, which God gave to Noah, and Adam, to Abraham, to
Isaac, and to Jacob : I pray God send us into the lot of
Abraham. But if any thing happens worse to us, it is enough
for us, that we bear it evenly".
Our oivn death.
And how, if you were to die yourself? You know you
must. Only be ready for it, by the preparations of a good
life" : and then it is the greatest good, that ever happened to
thee : else there is nothing, that can comfort you. But if
you have served God in a holy life, send away the women
and the weepers ; tell them it is as much intemperance to
weep too much as to laugh too much : and when thou art
alone, or with fitting company, die as thou shouldest, but do
not die impatiently, and like a fox catched in a trap. For if
you fear death, you shall never the more avoid it, but you
make it miserable. Fannius, that killed himself for fear of
death, died as certainly as Porcia, that ate burning coals, or
Cato, that cut his own throat. To die is necessary and na-
tural, and it may be honourable : but to die poorly, and
basely, and sinfully, that alone is it, that can make a man un-
fortunate'". No man can be a slave, but he that fears pain,
* K^iTs-iTOV vlov xttJtov i7va.i, n at xanoSai/xova. Epict. c. 16.
" 2(3t J' a^xeiTO) TO euTTa^iiv. *' Ad fines tiiiu pervencris, uc levertito. Pytluig.
^ Ov KcnSaVM SltKV, aKX' als'^^xi; QaviXv.
PRAYERS FOR SEVERAL CiRACES, 139
or fears to die. To such a man, nothing but chance and
peaceable times can secure his duty, and he depends upon
things without for his felicity ; and so is well but during the
pleasure of his enemy, or a thief, or a tyrant, or it may be of
a dog or a wild bull.
Prayers for the several Graces and parts of Christian Sobriety .
A Prayer against Sensuality.
O eternal Father, thou that sittest in heaven invested with
essential glories and divine perfections, fill my soul with so
deep a sense of the excellences of spiritual and heavenly
things, that my affections, being weaned from the pleasures
of the world, and the false allurements of sin, I may, with
great severity, and the prudence of a holy discipline and strict
desires, with clear resolutions and a free spirit, have my con-
versation in heaven and heavenly employments ; that being,
in affections as in my condition, a pilgrim and a stranger
here, I may covet after and labour for an abiding city, and at
last may enter into, and for ever dwell in, the celestial Jeru-
salem, which is the mother of us all, through Jesus Christ
our Lord. Amen.
For Temperance.
O Almighty God and gracious Father of men and angels,
who openest thy hand and fillest all things with plenty, and
hast provided for thy servant sufficient to satisfy all my needs;
teach me to use thy creatures soberly and temperately, that
I may not, with loads of meat or drink, make the tempta-
tions of my enemy to prevail upon me, or my spirit unapt
for the performance of my duty, or my body healthless, or
my affections sensual and unholy. O my God, never suffer
that the blessings, which thou givest me, may either minis-
ter to sin or sickness, but to health and holiness and thanks-
giving; that in the strength of thy provisions I may, cheer-
fully and actively and diligently, serve thee: that I may
worthily feast at thy table here, and be accounted worthy,
through thy grace, to be admitted to thy table hereafter, at
the eternal supper of the Lamb, to sing an hallelujah to God
the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, for ever and ever.
Amen.
140 PRAYERS FOR SEVERAL GRACES.
For Chastitj/ : to be said espedalhj by unmarried Persons.
Almighty God, our most holy and eternal Father, who
art of pure eyes, and canst behold no uncleanness ; let thy
gracious and Holy Spirit descend upon thy servant, and
reprove the spirit of fornication and uncleanness, and cast
him out, that my body may be a holy temple, and my soul a
sanctuary to entertain the Prince of purities, the holy and
eternal Spirit of God. O let no impure thoughts pollute
that soul, which God hath sanctified ; no unclean words pol-
lute that tongue, which God hath commanded to be an organ
of his praises ; no unholy and unchaste action rend the veil
of that temple, where the holy Jesus hath been pleased to
enter, and hath chosen for his habitation : but seal up all my
senses from all vain objects, and let them be entirely possessed
with religion, and fortified with prudence, watchfulness, and
mortification ; that I, possessing my vessel in holiness, may
lay it down with a holy hope, and receive it again in a joy-
ful resurrection, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Am^n.
A Prayer for the love of God, to be said bi/ Virgins and Widows,
professed or resolved so to live : and may be used by any one.
O holy and purest Jesus, who wert pleased to espouse
every holy soul, and join it to thee with a holy union and
mysterious instruments of religious society and communica-
tions ; O fill my soul with religion, and desires, holy as the
thoughts of cherubim, passionate beyond the love of women ;
that I may love thee, as much as ever any creature loved
thee, even with all my soul, and all my faculties, and all the
degrees of every faculty : let me know no loves but those of
duty and charity, obedience and devotion; that I may for
ever run after thee, who art the king of virgins, and with
whom whole kingdoms are in love, and for whose sake queens
have died, and at whose feet kings, with joy, have laid their
crowns and sceptres. My soul is thine, O dearest Jesu ; thou
art my Lord, and hast bound up my eyes and heart from all
stranger affections ; give me for my dowry, purity and humi-
lity, modesty and devotion, charity and patience, and at last
bring me into the bride-chamber to partake of the felicities,
and to lie in the bosom, of the bridegroom to eternal ages, O
holy and sweetest Saviour Jesus. Amen.
PRAYERS FOR SEVERAL GRACES. 141
A Prayer to be said by married Persons in behalf of themselves
and each other.
O eternal and o;racious Father, who hast consecrated the
holy estate of marriage to become mysterious, and to repre-
sent the miion of Christ and his church, let thy Holy Spirit
so guide me in the doing the duties of this state, that it may
not become a sin unto me ; nor that liberty, which thou hast
hallowed by the holy Jesus, become an occasion of licenti-
ousness by my own weakness and sensuality : and do thou
forgive all those irregularities and too sensual applications,
which may have, in any degree, discomposed my spirit and
the severity of a Christian. Let me, in all accidents and
circumstances, be severe in my duty towards thee, affec-
tionate and dear to my wife (or husband), a guide and good
example to my family, and in all quietness, sobriety, pru-
dence, and peace, a follower of those holy pairs, who have
served thee with godliness and a good testimony. And the
blessings of the eternal God, blessings of the right hand and
of the left, be upon the body and soul of thy servant my
wife (or husband), and abide upon her (or him) till the end of
a holy and happy life ; and grant that both of us may live to-
gether for ever in the embraces of the holy and eternal Jesus,
our Lord and Saviour. Amen.
A Prayer for the grace of Humility.
O holy and most gracious Master and Saviour Jesus, who,
by thy example and by thy precept, by the practice of a whole
life and frequent discourses, didst command us to be meek
and humble in imitation of thy incomparable sweetness and
great humility; be pleased to give me the grace, as thou
hast given me the commandment : enable me to do what-
soever thou commandest, and command whatsoever thou
pleasest. O mortify in me all proud thoughts and vain
opinions of myself: let me return to thee the acknowledo-
ment and the fruits of all those good things thou hast given
me, that, by confessing I am wholly in debt to thee for them,
I may not boast myself for what I have received, and for what
I am highly accountable : and for what is my own, teach me
to be ashamed and humbled, it being nothing but sin and
142 PRAYERS FOR SEVERAL GRACES,
misery, weakness and uncleanness. Let me go before my
brethren in notliino; but in striving to do them honour and
thee glory, never to seek my own praise, never to delight in
it, when it is offered; that despising myself I may be ac-
cepted by thee in the honours, with which thou shalt crown
thy humble and despised servants, for Jesus's sake, in the
kingdom of eternal glory. Amen.
Acts of IlumUity and Modesti/ by way of Prayer
and Meditation.
I.
Lord, I know that my spirit is light and thorny, my body
is brutish and exposed to sickness ; I am constant to folly,
and inconstant in holy purposes. My labours are vain and
fruitless ; my fortune full of change and trouble, seldom
pleasing, never perfect : my wisdom is folly ; being ignorant
even of the parts and passions of my own body : and what
am I, O Lord, before thee, but a miserable person, hugely in
debt, not able to pay .''
n.
Lord, I am nothing, and I have nothing of myself : I am
less than the least of all thy mercies.
in.
What was I before my birth ? First, nothing, and then un-
cleanness. What during my childhood? Weakness and folly.
What in my youth ? Folly still and passion, lust, and wild-
ness. What in my whole life ? A great sinner, a deceived,
and an abused person. Lord, pity me; for it is thy good-
ness, that I am kept from confusion and amazement, when I
consider the misery and shame of my person, and the defile-
ments of my nature.
IV.
Lord, what am I ? And, Lord, what art thou ? " What is
man, that thou art mindful of him ? and the son of man, that
thou so reo;ardest him ?"
"ts
" How can man be justified with God ? Or how can he be
OF CHRISTIAN JUSTICE. 143
clean, that is born of a woman? Behold, even to the moon,
and it shineth not; yea, the stars are not pure in his sioht:
How much less man, that is a worm, and the son of man,
which is a worm!" Job xxv. 4, &c.
A Prayer for a contented spirit, and the grace of Moderation
and Patience.
O Almighty God, Father and Lord of all the creatures,
who hast disposed all things and all chances so, as may best
glorify thy wisdom, and serve the ends of thy justice, and
magnify thy mercy, by secret and indiscernible ways bring-
ing good out of evil; I most humbly beseech thee to give
me wisdom from above, that I may adore thee, and admire
thy ways and footsteps, which are in the great deep and not
to be searched out : teach me to submit to thy providence in
all things, to be content in all changes of person and condi-
tion, to be temperate in prosperity, and to read my duty in
the lines of thy mercy; and, in adversity, to be meek, patient,
and resigned; and to look through the cloud, that I may wait
for the consolation of the Lord, and the day of redemption ;
in the mean time doing my duty with an unwearied diligence,
and an undisturbed resolution, having no fondness for the
vanities or possessions of this world; but laying up my hopes
in heaven and the rewards of holy living, and being strength-
ened with the spirit of the inner man, through Jesus Christ
our Lord. Amen.
CHAP. in.
or CHRISTIAN JUSTICE.
Justice is, by the Christian religion, enjoined in all its
parts by these two propositions in Scripture : " Whatsoever
ye would that men should do to you, even so do to them,"
This is the measure of commutative justice, or of that justice,
which supposes exchange of things profitable for things pro-
fitable : that, as I supply your need, you may supply mine ;
as I do a benefit to you, I may receive one by you : and be-
.cause every man may be injured by another, therefore his se-
144 OF CHRISTIAN JUSTICE.
curity shall depend upon mine : if he will not let me be safe,
he shall not be safe himself (only the manner of his being
punished is, upon great reason, both by God and all the
world, taken from particulars, and committed to a public
disinterested person, who will do justice, without passion,
both to him and to me) ; if he refuses to do me advantage,
he shall receive none, when his needs require it. And thus
God gave necessities to man, that all men might need : and
several abilities to several persons, that each man might help
to supply the public needs, and by joining to fill up all
wants, they may be knit together by justice, as the parts of
the world are by nature : and he hath made all obnoxious
to injuries, and made every little thing strong enough to do
us hurt by some instrument or other ; and hath given us all
a sufficient stock of self-love, and desire of self-preservation,
to be as the chain to tie together all the parts of society, and
to restrain us from doing violence, lest we be violently dealt
withal ourselves.
The other part of justice is commonly called distributive,
and is commanded in this rule, " Render to all their dues ;
tribute, to whom tribute is due ; custom, to whom custom ;
fear, to whom fear : honour, to whom honour. Owe no
man any thing, but to love one another"." This justice is
distinguished from the first : because the obligation depends
not upon contract or express bargain, but passes upon us by
virtue of some command of God, or of our superior, by na-
ture or by grace, by piety or religion, by trust or by office,
according to that commandment, " As every man hath re-
ceived the gift, so let him minister the same, one to another,
as good stewards of the manifold grace of God^." And as
the first considers an equality of persons in respect of the
contract or particular necessity, this supposes a difference
of persons, and no particular bargains, but such necessary
intercourses, as by the laws of God or man, are introduced.
But I shall reduce all the particulars of both kinds to these
four heads: 1. Obedience; 2. Provision; 3. Negotiation;
4. Restitution.
" Rom. xiii. 7. y 1 Pet. iv. 10.
OF OBEDIENCE. 145
SECTION I.
Of Obedience to our Superiors.
Our superiors are set over us in affairs of the world, or
the affairs of the soul, and things pertaining to religion, and
are called accordingly, ecclesiastical, or civil. Towards
whom our duty is thus generally described in the New Testa-
ment. For temporal or civil governors the commands are
these : " Render to Csesar the things that are Caesar's ;'*
and " Let every soul be subject to the higher powers : for
there is no power but of God : the powers that be, are or-
dained of God: whosoever therefore resisteth the power,
resisteth the ordinance of God ; and they that resist, shall
receive to themselves damnation^:" and " Put them in mind
to be subject to principalities and powers, and to obey ma-
gistrates" :" and " Submit yourselves to every ordinance of
man, for the Lord's sake ; whether it be to the king, as
supreme ; or unto governors, as unto them that are sent by
him for the punishment of evil-doers, and the praise of them
that do welP."
For spiritual or ecclesiastical governors, thus we are com-
manded : " Obey them that have the rule over you, and
submit yourselves ; for they watch for your souls, as they
that must give an account'' :" and " Hold such in reputa-
tion*^ :" and " To this end did I write, that I might know the
proof of you, whether ye be obedient in all things*:" said
St. Paul to the church of Corinth. Our duty is reducible to
practice by the following rules.
Acts and duties of Obedience to all our Superiors.
1. We must obey all human laws appointed and constituted
by lawful authority, that is, of the supreme power, according
to the constitution of the place, in which we live ; all laws,
I mean, which are not against the law of God.
2. In obedience to human laws, we must observe the
letter of the law, where we can, without doing violence to the
reason of the law, and the intention of the lawgiver : but,
where they cross each other, the charity of the law is to be
» Rom. xiii. 1. » Titus iii. 1. ''I Pet.ii. 13. « Heb. xiii. 17.
d Phil. ii. 29. « 2 Cor. ii. 9.
VOL. IV. L
140 OF OBEDIENCE.
preferred before its discipline ; and the reason of it, before
the letter.
3. If the general reason of the law ceases in our parti-
cular, and a contrary reason rises upon us, we are to procure
dispensation, or leave to omit the observation of it in such
circumstances, if there be any persons or office appointed
for granting it : but if there be none, or if it is not easily to
be had, or not without an inconvenience greater than the
good of the observation of the law in our particular, we are
dispensed withal in the nature of the thing, Avithout further
process or trouble.
4. As long as the law is obligatory, so long our obedience
is due ; and he that begins a contrary cu&tom without reason,
sins : butlie, that breaks the law, when the custom is entered
and fixed, is excused ; because it is supposed the legislative
power consents, when, by not punishing, it suffers disobe-
dience to grow up to a custom ^
5. Obedience to human laws must be for conscience' sake :
that is, because, in such obedience, public order, and charity,
and benefit, are concerned, and because the law of God com-
mands us ; therefore we must make a conscience in keeping
the just laws of superiors : and, although the matter before
the making of the law was indifferent, yet now the obedience
is not indifferent"; but, next to the laws of God, we are to
obey the laws of all our superiors, who the more public they
are, the first they are to be, in the order of obedience.
6. Submit to the punishment and censure of the laws,
and seek not to reverse their judgment by opposing, but by
submitting, or flying, or silence, to pass through it or by it,
as we can: and although from inferior judges we may appeal,
where the law permits us, yet we must sit down and rest in
the judgment of the supreme ; and if we be wronged, let us
complain to God of the injury, not of the persons ; and he
will deliver thy soul from unrighteous judges.
7. Do not believe thou hast kept the law, when thou
hast suffered the punishment. For although patiently to
submit to the power of the sword be a part of obedience, yet
this is such a part, as supposes another left undone : and the
law punishes, not because she is as well pleased in taking
f Mores leges perduxeruut in potestalein suam. Leges mori sen-iunt. Plant. Trinum.
S 'e^ O'^X'^'; f*iv> oviiv StaifE^EC oTttV Se QJivTtti, J(tt<{>Epei. Arist, etb. 5. cap. 7.
OF OBEDIENCE. 147
vengeance as in being obeyed ; but, because she is pleased,
she uses punishment as a means to secure obedience for the
future, or in others. Therefore, although in such cases the
law is satisfied, and the injury and the injustice are paid for,
yet the sins of irreligion, and scandal, and disobedience to
God, must still be so accounted for, as to crave pardon, and
be washed off by repentance.
8. Human laws are not to be broken with scandal, nor at
all without reason ; for he that does it causelessly, is a de-
spiser of the law, and undervalues the authority. For human
laws differ from Divine laws principally in this : 1. That the
positive commands of a man may be broken upon smaller
and more reasons, than the positive commands of God ; we
may, upon a smaller reason, omit to keep any of the fasting-
days of the church, than omit to give alms to the poor : only
this, the reason must bear weight according to the gravity
and concernment of the law ; a law, in a small matter, may
be omitted for a small reason ; in a great matter, not without
a greater reason. And, 2. The negative precepts of men
may cease by many instruments, by contrary customs, by
public disrelish, by long omission : but the negative precepts
of God never can cease, but when they are expressly abro-
gated by the same authority. But what those reasons are,
that can dispense with the command of a man, a man may
be his own judge, and sometimes take his proportions from
his own reason and necessity, sometimes from public fame,
and the practice of pious and severe persons, and from po-
pular customs ; in which a man shall walk most safely, when
he does not walk alone, but a spiritual man takes him by the
hand.
9. We must not be too forward in procuring dispensa-
tions, nor use them any longer, than the reason continues,
for which we first procured them : for to be dispensed withal
is an argument of natural infirmity, if it be necessary; but,
if it be not, it signifies an undisciplined and unmortified
spirit.
10. We must not be too busy in examining the prudence
and unreasonableness of human laws : for although we are
not bound to believe them all to be the wisest ; yet if, by
inquiring into the lawfulness of them, or by any other in-
strument, we find them to fail of that wisdom, with which
L 2
148 OF OBEDIENCE.
some others are ordained, yet we must never make use of it
to disparage the person of the lawgiver, or to countenance
any man's disobedience, much less our own.
11. Pay that reverence to the person of thy prince, of
his ministers, of thy parents and spiritual guides, which, by
the customs of the place thou livest in, are usually paid to
such persons in their several degrees : that is, that the high-
est reverence be paid to the highest person, and so still in
proportion; and that this reverence be expressed in all the
circumstances and manners of the city and nation.
12. Lift not up thy hand against thy prince or parent,
upon what pretence soever: but bear all personal affronts
and inconveniences at their hands, and seek no remedy but
by patience and piety, yielding and praying, or absenting
thyself.
13. Speak not evil of the ruler of thy people, neither
curse thy father or mother, nor revile thy spiritual guides,
nor discover and lay naked their infirmities : but treat them
with reverence and religion, and preserve their authority
sacred, by esteeming their persons venerable.
14. Pay tribute and customs to princes according to the
laws, and maintenance to thy parents according to their ne-
cessity, and honourable support to the clergy according to
the dignity of the work, and the customs of the place.
15. Remember always, that duty to our superiors is not an
act of commutative justice, but of distributive; that is, although
kings and parents and spiritual guides are to pay a great duty
to their inferiors, the duty of their several charges and go-
vernment; yet the good government of a king and of parents
are actions of religion, as they relate to God, and of piety,
as they relate to their people and families. And although we
usually call them just princes, who administer their laws ex-
actly to the people, because the actions are in the manner of
justice; yet, in propriety of speech, they are rather to be
called pious and religious. For as he is not called a just
father, that educates his children well, but pious ; so that
prince, who defends and well rules his people, is religious,
and does that duty, for which alone he is answerable to God.
The consequence of which is this, so far as concerns our
duty : If the prince or parent fail of their duty, we must not
fail of ours ; for we are answerable to them and to God too.
OF OBEDIENCE. 149
as being accountable to all our superiors, and so are they to
theirs : they are above us, and God is above them.
Remedies against Disobedience, and means to endear our Obedi-
ence; by loay of consideration.
1. Consider, that all authority descends from God, and
our superiors bear the image of the Divine power, which
God imprints on them as on an image of clay, or a coin
upon a less perfect metal, which whoso defaces, shall not
be answerable for the loss or spoil of the materials, but the
defacing the king's image ; and, in the same measure, will
God require it at our hands, if we despise his authority, upon
whomsoever he hath imprinted it. " He that despiseth you,
despiseth me." And Dathan and Abiram were said to be
"gathered together against the Lord." And this was St.
Paul's argument for our obedience : " The powers that be,
are ordained of God."
2. There is very great peace and immunity from sin, in
resigning our wills up to the command of others : for pro-
vided that our duty to God be secured, their commands are
warrants to us in all things else ; and the case of conscience
is determined, if the command be evident and pressing : and
it is certain, the action, that is but indifferent, and without
reward, if done only upon our own choice, is an act of duty
and of religion, and rewardable by the grace and favour of
God, if done in obedience to the command of our superiors.
For since naturally we desire what is forbidden us (and some-
times there is no other evil in the thing, but that it is for-
bidden us), God hath in grace enjoined and proportionably
accepts obedience, as being directly opposed to the former
irregularity; and it is acceptable, although there be no other
good in the thing, that is commanded us, but that it is com-
manded.
3. By obedience, we are made a society and a republic,
and distinguished from herds of beasts, and heaps of flies,
who do what they list, and are incapable of laws, and obey
none ; and therefore are killed and destroyed, though never
punished, and they never can have a reward.
4. By obedience, we are rendered capable of all the bless-
ings of government, signified by St. Paul in these words : " He
150 OF OBEDIENCE.
is the minister of God to thee for good*";" and by St. Peter in
these : " Governors are sent by him for the punishment of
evil-doers, and for the praise of them that do well'." And
he that ever felt, or saw, or can understand, the miseries of
confusion in public affairs, or amazement in aheap of sad, tu-
multuous, and indefinite thoughts, may, from thence, judge
of the admirable effects of order, and the beauty of govern-
ment. What health is to the body, and peace is to the spi-
rit, that is government to the societies of men; the greatest
blessing, which they can receive in that temporal capacity.
5. No man shall ever be fit to govern others, that knows
not first how to obey. For if the spirit of a subject be re-
bellious, in a prince it will be tyrannical and intolerable :
and of so ill example, that as it will encourage the disobe-
dience of others, so it will render it unreasonable for him to
exact of others, what in the like case he refused to pay.
6. There is no sin in the world, which God hath punished
with so great severity and high detestation, as this of diso-
bedience. For the crime of idolatry God sent the sword
amongst his people ; but it was never heard, that the earth
opened and swallowed up any but rebels against their prince.
7. Obedience is better than the particular actions of re-
ligion ; and he serves God better, that follows his prince in
lawful services, than he, that refuses his command, upon pre-
tence he must go say his prayers. But rebellion is compared
to that sin, which of all sin seems the most unnatural and
damned impiety : — " Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft."
8. Obedience is a complicated act of virtue, and many
graces are exercised in one act of obedience. It is an act of
humility, of mortification and self-denial, of charity to God,
of care of the public, of order and charity to ourselves and
all our society, and a great instance of a victory over the
most refractory and unruly passions.
9. To be a subject is a greater temporal felicity, than to
be a king : for all eminent governments according to their
height have a great burden, huge care, infinite business ^
little rest, innumerable fears; and all that he enjoys above
another, is, that he does enjoy the things of the world with
h Rom. xiii.4. ' 1 Pet. ii. 14.
^ Q, Xaoi t' ETTiTETgaif arai, xai roTca fjt.ifji.n\i. Homer. 11. /3'. 24.
OF OBEDIENXE. 151
Other circumstances, and a bigger noise ; and if others go at
his single command, it is also certain, he must suffer incon-
venience at the needs and disturbances of all his people : and
the evils of one man and of one family are not enough for
him to bear, unless also he be almost crushed with the evils
of mankind. He therefore is an ungrateful person, that will
press the scales down with a voluntary load, and, by disobe-
dience, put more thorns into the crown or mitre of his su-
perior. Much better is the advice of St. Paul; " Obey them
that have the rule over you, as they that must give an ac-
count for your souls ; that they may do it with joy and not
with grief: for (besides that it is unpleasant to them) it is
unprofitable for you."
10. The angels are ministering spirits, and perpetually
execute the will and commandment of God : and all the wise
men and all the good men of the world are obedient to their
governors; and the eternal Son of God esteemed it his "meat
and drink to do the will of his Father," and for his obedience
alone obtained the greatest glory : and no man ever came to
perfection, but by obedience : and thousands of saints have
chosen such institutions and manners of living, in which they
might not choose their own work, nor follow their own will,
nor please themselves, but be accountable to others, and
subject to discipline, and obedient to command ; as knowing
this to be the highway of the cross, the way that the King
of sufferings and humility did choose, and so became the
king of glory.
11. No man ever perished, who followed first the will of
God, and then the will of his superiors : but thousands have
been damned merely for following their own will, and re-
lying upon their own judgments, and choosing their own
work, and doing their own fancies. For if we begin with
ourselves, whatsoever seems good in our eyes, is most com-
monly displeasing in the eyes of God.
12. The sin of rebellion, though it be a spiritual sin, and
imitable by devils, yet it is of that disorder, unreasonableness,
and impossibihty, amongst intelligent spirits, that they never
murmured or mutinied in their lower stations against their
superiors. Nay, the good angels of an inferior order durst
not revile a devil of a higher order. This consideration,
which I reckon to be most pressing in the discourses of rea-
152 OF OBEDIENCE.
son, and obliging next to the necessity of a Divine precept,
we learn from St. Jude, viii. 9. " Likewise also these filthy
dreamers despise dominion, and speak evil of dignities. And
yet Michael the archangel, when, contending with the devil,
he disputed about the body of Moses, durst not bring against
him a railing accusation."
But because our superiors rule by their example, by their
w^ord or law, and by the rod, therefore in proportion there
are several degrees and parts of obedience, of several excel-
lencies and degrees towards perfection.
Degrees of Obedience.
1 . The first is the obedience of our outward work : and
this is all, that human laws of themselves regard ; for because
man cannot judge the heart, therefore it prescribes nothing
to it : the public end is served, not by good wishes, but by
real and actual performances ; and, if a man obeys against
his will, he is not punishable by the laws.
2. The obedience of the will : and this is also necessary
in our obedience to human laws, not because man requires it
for himself, but because God commands it towards man ;
and of it, although man cannot, yet God will demand an ac-
count. For we are to do it as to the Lord, and not to men ;
and therefore we must do it willingly. But by this means
our obedience in private is secured against secret arts and
subterfuges : and when we can avoid the punishment, yet
we shall not decline our duty, but serve man for God's sake,
that is, cheerfully, promptly, vigorously ; for these are the
proper parts of willingness and choice.
3. The understanding must yield obedience in general,
though not in the particular instance ; that is, we must be
firmly persuaded of the excellency of the obedience, though
we be not bound, in all cases, to think the particular law to
be most prudent. But, in this, our rule is plain enough.
Our understanding ought to be inquisitive, whether the civil
constitution agree with our duty to God ; but we are bound
to inquire no further : and therefore beyond this, although
he, who, having no obligation to it (as counsellors have), hi-
quires not at all into the wisdom or reasonableness of the law,
be not always the wisest man ; yet he is ever the best sub-
ject. For when he hath given up his understanding to his
THE DUTY OF SUPERIORS. 153
prince and prelate, provided that his duty to God be secured
by a precedent search, he hath also with the best and with
all the instruments in the world, secured his obedience to man.
SECTION II.
Of provisiot}, or that part of justice, icliich is due from superiors
to inferiors.
As God hath imprinted his authority in several parts upon
several estatespf men, as princes, parents, spiritual guides :
so he hath also delegated and committed parts of his care
and providence unto them, that they may be instrumental in
the conveying such blessings, which God knows we need,
and which he intends should be the effects of government.
For since God governs all the world as a king, provides for
us as a father, and is the great guide and conductor of our
spirits as the head of the church, and the great shepherd and
bishop of our souls, they, who have portions of these dig-
nities, have also their share of the administration : the sum
of all which is usually signified in these two words, govern-
ing andfeeding, and is particularly recited in these following
rules.
Duties of Kings, and all the supreme poiver as Lawgivers.
1. Princes of the people, and all that have legislative
power, must provide useful and good laws for the defence of
property, for the encouragement of labour, for the safeguard
of their persons, for determining controversies, for reward of
noble actions and excellent arts and rare inventions, for pro-
moting trade, and enriching their people.
2. In the making laws, princes must have regard to the
public dispositions, to the affections and disaffections of the
people, and must not introduce a law with public scandal
and displeasure ; but consider the public benefit, and the
present capacity of affairs, and general inclinations of men's
minds'. For he, that enforces a law upon a people against
^ Omittenda potius pra;vali(Ia et adulta vitia, quain hoc adsequi, ul palam Gat, ijui-
bus flagitiis imparcs sinius. Tacit,
154 THE DUTY OF SUPERIORS.
their first and public apprehensions, tempts them to disobe-
dience, and makes laws to become snares and hooks to catch
the people, and to enrich the treasury with the spoil and
tears and curses of the commonalty, and to multiply their
mutiny and their sin,
3. Princes must provide, that the laws be duly executed :
for a good law, without execution, is like an unperformed
promise : and therefore they must be severe exactors of ac-
counts from their delegates and ministers of justice.
4. The severity of laws must be tempered with dispensa-
tions, pardons, and remissions, according as the case shall
alter, and new necessities be introduced, or some sino-ular ac-
cident shall happen, in which the law would be unreasonable
or intolerable, as to that particular'". And thus the people,
with their importunity, prevailed against Saul in the case of
Jonathan, and obtained his pardon for breaking the law,
which his father made, because his necessity forced him to
taste honey ; and his breaking the law, in that case, did pro-
mote that service, whose promotion was intended by the law.
5. Princes must be fathers of the people, and provide
such instances of gentleness, ease, wealth, and advantages,
as may make mutual confidence between them ; and must
fix their security under God in the love of the people ; which
therefore they must, with all arts of sweetness, remission,
popularity, nobleness, and sincerity, endeavour to secure to
themselves.
6. Princes must not multiply public oaths without great,
eminent, and violent necessity ; lest the security of the king
become a snare to the people, and they become false, when
they see themselves suspected ; or impatient, when they are
violently held fast : but the greater and more useful caution
is upon things than upon persons ; and if security of kings
can be obtained otherwise, it is better that oaths should be
the last refuge, and when nothing else can be suflUcient.
7. Let not the people be tempted with arguments to dis-
obey, by the imposition of great and unnecessary taxes: for.
that lost to the son of Solomon the dominion of the ten tribes
of Israel".
8. Princes must, in a special manner, be guardians of
"' 'ETrilUlia la-riv i'jra.m^^ai/j.a voy.ou, ij IXXEiVei Jw to jta&oXoy, Eth. 5. c. 10.
" L' avarilia de Re, peste de regui.
THE DUTY OF SUP£11I011S. 155
pupils and widows, not suffering their persons to be op-
pressed, or their estates imbeciled, or in any sense be ex-
posed to the rapine of covetous persons; but be provided
for by just laws, and provident judges, and good guardians,
ever having an ear ready open to their just complaints, and
a heart full of pity, and one hand to support them, and the
other to avenge them.
9. Princes must provide, that the laws may be so admin-
istered, that they be truly and really an ease to the people,
not an instrument of vexation : and therefore must be care-
ful, that the shortest and most equal ways of trials be ap-
pointed, fees moderated, and intricacies and windings as
much cut off as may be, lest injured persons be forced to pe-
rish under the oppression, or under the law, in the injury, or
in the suit. Laws are like princes, those best and most be-
loved, who are most easy of access,
10. Places of judicature ought, at no hand, to be sold by
pious princes, who remember themselves to be fathers of the
people. For they that buy the office, will sell the act° ; and
they, that, at any rate, will be judges, will not, at any easy
rate, do justice ; and their bribery is less punishable, when
bribery opened the door, by which they entered.
11. Ancient privileges, favours, customs, and acts of
grace indulged by former kings to their people, must not,
without high reason and great necessities, be revoked by
their successors, nor forfeitures be exacted violently, nor
penal laws urged rigorously, nor in light cases ; nor laws be
multiplied without great need; nor vicious persons, which
are publickly and deservedly hated, be kept in defiance of
popular desires ; nor any thing, that may unnecessarily make
the yoke heavy and the affection light, that may increase
murmurs and lessen charity ; always remembering, that the
interest of the prince and the people is so enfolded in a mu-
tual embrace, that they cannot be untwisted without pulling
a limb off, or dissolving the bands and conjunction of the
whole body.
12. All princes must esteem themselves as much bound
by their word, by their grants, and by their promises, as the
meanest of their subjects are by the restraint and penalty of
" Clii comprail magistiato, foiza t;, clie \ emlia la giuglitia.
156 THE DUTY OF SUPERIORS.
lawsP; and although they are superior to the people, yet
they are not superior to their own voluntary concessions and
engagements, their promises and oaths, when once they are
passed from them.
The duty of Superiors as they are Judges.
1. Princes in judgment and their delegate judges must
judge the causes of all persons uprightly and impartially,
without any personal consideration of the power of the
mighty, or the bribe of the rich, or the needs of the poor.
For although the poor must fare no worse for his poverty,
yet, injustice, he must fare no better for it: and although
the rich must be no more regarded, yet he must not be less.
And to this purpose the tutor of Cyrus instructed him, when
in a controversy, where a great boy would have taken a large
coat from a little boy, because his own was too little for him,
and the other's was too big, he adjudged the great coat to
the great boy : his tutor answered, " Sir, if you were made
a judge of decency or fitness, you had judged well in giving
the biggest to the biggest; but when you are appointed
judge, not whom the coat did fit, but whose it was, you
should have considered the title and the possession, who did
the violence, and who made it, or who bought it." And so
it must be in judgments between the rich and the poor : it
is not to be considered, what the poor man needs, but what
is his own.
2. A prince may not, much less may inferior judges, deny
justice, when it is legally and competently demanded : and
if the prince will use his prerogative in pardoning an offen-
der, against whom justice is required, he must be careful to
give satisfaction to the injured person, or his relatives, by
some other instrument ; and be watchful to take away the
scandal, that is, lest such indulgence might make persons
more bold to do injury : and if he spares the life, let him
change the punishment into that, which may make the of-
fender, if not suffer justice, yet do justice, and more real ad-
vantage to the injured person.
These rules concern princes and their delegates in the
making or administering laws, in the appointing rules of
P Nulla lex (civilis") sibi soli coiiscieiiliam jiistitia; suse debet, sed eis a quibus oh-
sequium expectat. Tertul. Apolooet.
THE DUTY OF SUPERIORS. 157
justice, and doing acts of judgment. The duty of parents
to their children and nephews is briefly described by St.
Paul.
TJie duty of Parents to tJteir Children.
1. " Fathers, provoke not your children to wrath "^ :" that
is, be tender-bowelled, pitiful, and gentle, complying with all
the infirmities of the children, and, in their several ages, pro-
portioning to them several usages, according to their needs
and their capacities.
2. " Bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the
Lord:" that is, secure their religion; season their younger
years with prudent and pious principles ; make them in love
with virtue ; and make them habitually so, before they come
to choose or to discern good from evil, that their choice may
be with less difficulty and danger. For while they are under
discipline, they suck in all that they are first taught, and be-
lieve it infinitely. Provide for them wise, learned, and vir-
tuous tutors, and good company and discipline, seasonable
baptism, catechism, and confirmation"". For it is great folly
to heap up much wealth for our children, and not to take
care concerning the children, for whom we get it. It is, as
if a man should take more care about his shoe than about
his foot.
3. Parents must shew piety at home^; that is, they must
give good example and reverend deportment in the face of
their children ; and all those instances of charity, which usu-
ally endear each other, sweetness of conversation, affability,
frequent admonitions, all significations of love and tender-
ness, care and watchfulness, must be expressed towards
children, that they may look upon their parents as their
friends and patrons, their defence and sanctuary, their trea-
sure and their ouide. Hither is to be reduced the nursino- of
children, which is the first, and most natural, and necessary
instance of piety, which mothers can shew to their babes; a
duty, from which nothing will excuse, but a disability, sick-
ness, danger, or public necessity.
1 Ephes. vl. 4.
^ Potior niilii ratio vivendi honeste, quaiu et optinie dicendi videtur. Quintil,
Jib. 1. cap. 2.
' Heb. xii. 9. Crates apud Plutarch, de liber, educand. 1 Tim. v. 4.
158 THE DUTY OF SUPERIORS.
4. Parents must provide for their own, according to their
condition, education, and employment: called by St. Paul,
" a laying up for the children','' that is, an enabling them,
by competent portions, or good trades, arts, or learning, to
defend themselves against the chances of the world, that they
may not be exposed to temptation, to beggary, or unworthy
arts. And although this must be done without covetous-
ness, without impatient and greedy desires of making them
rich ; yet it must be done with much care and great affec-
tion, with all reasonable provision, and according to our
power : and if we can, without sin, improve our estates for
them, that also is part of the duty, we owe to God for them.
And this rule is to extend to all, that descend from us, al-
though we have been overtaken in a fault, and have unlawful
issue ; they also become part of our care, yet so as not to in-
jure the production of the lawful bed.
5. This duty is to extend to a provision of conditions
and an estate of life". Parents must, according to their
power and reason, provide husbands or wives for their child-
ren''. In which they must secure piety and religion'^ and
t 1 Tim. V. 1.
" HvfX'^iVfji.a'TCDv jxh rxv IjaSv Trarfif IjUo;
MEpijCtvav £^£1, xoCk IfAov xjiiEtv TaJt. Eurip. Androm. 988.
Me libi T^'ntlareus vitii gravis auclor et aunis
Tradidit : arbitriuDi neptis habebat avns.
• Oviil. in Epist. Hermiones.
^ I/iberi sine consensu parentum contraliere non debeiit. Audroinaclia apud En-
ripidem.cuiii petita fuit ad nuptias, respondit, patris sui esse sponsaliuiii suoruni cu-
rain habere : et Achilles apud Hoineram Regis filiain sine patris sui consensu no-
luitducere. II. 9.393. "Hv ^ap ^h jxt a-iois-i Seoi, xai oixaSTzaj^ai, Xln'hil:;Bhv fxoi i-mna, yvv
aina yayATG-irai avtog. Et Justinianus Imp. nit, natural! simul et civili ration! con-
gruere, ne filii ducant uxores citra Parentum authoritatem. Simo Terenlianas parat
abdicationeni, quia Pamphilus clam ipso duxisset uxorem. Istiusmodi sponsaliti
fiunt irrita, nisi velint parentes : at si subsequuta est copula, ne teraere rescindantur
eounubia, inultse suadent cautiones et pericula. Liberi, autem, quamdiu secuiuluui
leges patrias sui juris non sunt, clandeslinas nuptias si ineant, peccant contra quin-
tum praeceptum, et jus naturale Secundarium. Proprie enim loquendo Parentes non
Labent l^ovs-iav, sivepotestatem, sed authoritatem ; habent jus jubendi aul prohibendi,
sed non irrilum faciendi. Atque etiam ista autlioritas exercenda est secundum acquum
et boDum ; soil, ut ue morosus et difficilis sit Pater. Mater enim vix liabet aliquod
Juris praeter suasionis et amoris et gratitudinis. Si autem Pater fiiiam non collo-
casset ante 2.5. annos, filia nubcre poterat cui voluerat, ex Jure Romanorum. Pa-
trum enim authoritas major aut minor est ex legiljus patiiis, et solet extendi ad cer-
♦am ajtatem, et turn exspirat quoad Matrimonium ; et est major in filias quam filios.
Num. 30.
** Eosdem quos maritus nosse deos et colore solos uxor debet; supervacaneis au-
THE DUTY OK SUPERIORS. 159
the affection and love of the interested persons ; and, after
these, let them make what provisions they can, for other
conveniences or advantages : ever remembering, that they
can do no injnry more afflictive to the children, than to join
them with cords of a disagreeing affection : it is like tying a
wolf and a lamb, or planting the vine in a garden of cole-
worts. Let them be persuaded with reasonable inducements
to make them willing, and to choose according to the parent's
wish; but, at no hand, let them be forced. Better to sit up
all night, then to go to bed with a dragon.
Rules for married Persons.
1. Husbands must give to their wives love'', maintenance,
duty, and the sweetnesses of conversation ; and wives ^ must
pay to them all they have, or can, with the interest of obedi-
ence and reverence : and they must be complicated in affec-
tions and interest, that there be no distinction between them
of mine and thine. And if the title be the man's, or the
woman's, yet the use must be common ; only the wisdom of
the man is to resfulate all extravagances and indiscretions.
In other things, no question is to be made ; and their goods
should be as their children, not to be divided, but of one
possession and provision : whatsoever is otherwise, is not
marriage, but merchandize. And, upon this ground, I sup-
pose, it was, that St. Basil commended that woman, who took
tern religionibus et alienis superstiticuibus fores occludere. NuHi eriim Deuin j;^ra-
ta sunt sacra, quae raulier claiiculuiu et furtim facit. Plutarch. Cuiijiig. prttcept.
Gen. 24. Vocemus paellam, et quasrarnus os ejus.
The duty of Husbands, &c.
See Cbap. ii. Sect. 3.
* 2oi Sa ^iol ToVa SorcV —
"AvSpa t6 Koi oiKVii, xai o;oto<f'joa-i;v»v oTTaiTEittv
'Ea-Q'Kny cv f*tv yap rov ye x.piic-o'ov xai a^Eiov,
*H o'y 0;(*0<f>pOV60VTS VO»!|W«0-IV oiicov S^riTOV
'Avhf iSs yuvri' ttoXX' a'hyea St;5-|a£VEEcr<ri,
Xapfjiara, J' £uyM£V6Ti]<ri' ^aXia-ra Si T iKhuov avrol. Odyss. e. 180.
y "Eve3-t aXri^lg <^i\r^ov ely^'Jifjioiv Tpowoj'
TouTce xaraKfaTiiv avSgo; t'ionBev yuvn. Merian.
'H fxovyoi iptXiovs'' aXo')(ovi; fAS^o'jtuiv avdpcuTrcov
ArpsTSai ; nri), ccrri^ amp ayaOi^ xcti l^S'f^uv,
Tiiv aiiTOu (jjiXsEt not xnSsTai' ax; xal lyii rhv
'£x fly^ov ^iXeov SoujixTnTW wEp iouirav. Homer. II. 9. 3 tO.
IGO THE DUTY OF SUPERIORS.
part of her husband's goods, to do good works withal ==: foi'
supposing him to be unwilling, and that the work was his duty
or hers alone, or both theirs in conjunction, or of great ad-
vantage to either of their souls, and no violence to the sup-
port of their families, she had right to all that : and Abigail,
of her own right, made a costly present to David, when her
husband Nabal had refused it. The husband must" rule
over his wife, as the soul does over the body, obnoxious to
the same sufferings, and boimd by the same affections, and
doing or suffering by the permissions and interest of each
other : that (as the old philosopher said) as the humours of
the body are mingled with each other in the whole sub-
stances, so marriage may be a mixture of interests, of bo-
dies, of minds, of friends, a conjunction'' of the whole life,
and the noblest of friendships. But if, after all the fair de-
portments and innocent chaste compliances, the husband be
morose and ungentle, let the '^wife discourse thus : "If while
I do my duty, my husband neglects me ; what will he do, if I
neglect him r" And if she thinks to be separated by reason
of her husband's unchaste life, let her consider, that then
the man will be incurably ruined, and her rivals could wish
nothing more, than that they might possess him alone.
The Duty of Masters of Families.
1. The same care is to extend to all of our family, in their
proportions, as to our children : for as, by St. Paul's eco-
nomy, the heir differs nothing from a servant, while he is in
minority, so a servant should difTer nothing from a child, in
the substantial part of the care ; and the difference is only in
degrees. Servants and masters are of the same kindred, of
* Lsetum esse debet et ofticiosum mariti imperiuin. Plut.
Namque es ei Paler et Frater, venerandaque Mater : Nee minus facit ad dignita-
tem viri, si mulier eum suum Praeceptoiera, Pliilosophum, Masjistrumque appellet.
'Plalaich.
^ Convictio est quasi quasdam inlensio benevolentiae.
" Ou ygujroc, ill rvpa.nl;, ov ttXojjtou p^XlS^
'i2; avJgo? 10-6X011 Kod ymaiid; iviTB0ov(:
rvcijWn huala, xai <f>^owutra r avS^ixa.
Inferior matrona suo sit, Sexle, marito ;
Non aliter fiunt focmina virque pares.
OF CIVIL CONTRACTS. IGl
the same nature, and heirs of the same promises, and there-
fore, l.must be provided of necessaries, for their support
and maintenance. 2. They must be used with mercy. 3. Their
work must be tolerable and merciful. 4. Their restraints
must be reasonable. 5. Their recreations fitting and health-
ful. 6. Their religion and the interest of souls taken care of.
7. And masters must correct their servants with gentleness,
prudence, and mercy ; not for every slight fault, not always,
not with upbraiding and disgraceful language, but with such
only, as may express and reprove the fault, and amend the
person. But, in all these things, measures are to be taken
by the contract made, by the lavv's and customs of the place,
by the sentence of prudent and merciful men, and by the
cautions and remembrances given us by God ; such as is that
written by St. Paul, " as knowing that we also have a Master
in heaven." The master must not be a lion in his house,
lest his power be obeyed, and his person hated ; his eye be
waited on, and his business be neolected in secret. No ser-
vant will do his duty, unless he make a conscience, or love
his master : if he does it not for God's sake or his master's,
he will not need to do it always for his own.
The duty of Guardians or Tutors.
Tutors and guardians are in the place of parents ; and
what they are in fiction of law, they must remember as an
argument to engage them to do, in reality of duty. They
must do all the duty of parents, excepting those obligations,
which are merely natural.
^ The duty of ministers and spiritual guides to the people
is of so great burden, so various rules, so intricate and
busy caution, that it requires a distinct tractate by itself.
SECTION III.
Of Negotiation, or Civil Contracts.
This part of justice is such, as depends upon the laws of
man directly, and upon the laws of God only by consequence
and indirect reason ; and from civil laws or private agree-
ments it is to take its estimate and measures : and although
VOL. IV. M
162 OF CIVIL CONTRACTS.
oui" duty is plain and easy, requiring of us honesty in con-
tracts, sincerity in affirming, simplicity in bargaining, and
faithfulness in performing; yet it may be helped by the addi-
tion of these following rules and considerations.
Rules and measures of justice in bai'gaiyiing.
1 . In making contracts, use not many words ; for all the
business of a bargain is summed up in few sentences : and
he that speaks least, means fairest, as having fewer oppor-
tunities to deceive.
2. Lie not at all, neither in a little thing nor in a great,
neither in the substance nor in the circumstance, neither in
word nor deed : that is, pretend not, what is false ; cover not
what is true ; and let the measure of your affirmation or
denial be the understanding of your contractor ; for he, that
deceives the buyer or the seller by speaking, what is true in
a sense, not intended or understood by the other, is a liar
and a thief. For, in bargains, you are to avoid not only,
what is false, but that also, which deceives.
3. In prices of bargaining concerning uncertain merchan-
dises, you may buy as cheap ordinarily, as you can ; and
sell as dear as you can, so it be, 1. without violence; and,
2. when you contract on equal terms with persons in all
senses (as to the matter and skill of bargaining) equal to
yourself, that is, merchants with merchants, wise men with
wise men, rich with rich ; and, 3. when there is no deceit,
and no necessity, and no monopoly : for in these cases, viz.
when the contractors are equal, and no advantage on either
side, both parties are voluntary, and therefore there can be
no injustice or wrong to either. But then add also this con-
sideration, that the public be not oppressed by unreasonable
and unjust rates : for which, the following rules are the best
measure.
4. Let your prices be according to that measure of good
and evil, which is established in the fame and common ac-
counts of the wisest and most merciful men, skilled in that
manufacture or commodity ; and the gain such, which, with-
out scandal, is allowed to persons, in all the same circum-
stances.
5. Let no prices be heightened by the necessity or un-
OF CIVIL CONTRACTS. 163
skilfulness of the contractor : for the first is direct unchari-
tableness to the person, and injustice in the thing ; because
the man's necessity could not naturally enter into the consi-
deration of the value of the commodity ; and the other is
deceit and oppression : much less must any man make neces-
sities ; as by engrossing a commodity, by monopoly, by de-
taining corn, or the like indirect arts ; for such persons are
unjust to all single persons, with whom, in such cases, they
contract, and oppressors of the public.
6. In intercourse with others, do not do all, which you
may lawfully do ; but keep something within thy power : and,
because there is a latitude of gain in buying and selling,
take not thou the utmost penny, that is lawful, or which thou
thinkest so; for although it be lawful, yet it is not safe; and
he that gains all, that he can gain lawfully, this year, possibly,
next year, will be tempted to gain something unlawfully.
7. He that sells dearer, by reason he sells not for ready
money, must increase his price no higher, than to make him-
self recompence for the loss, which, according to the rules
of trade, he sustained by his forbearance, according to com-
mon computation, reckoning in also the hazard, which he is
prudently, warily, and charitably, to estimate. But although
this be the measure of his justice, yet because it happens
either to their friends, or to necessitous and poor persons,
they are^ in these cases, to consider the rules of friendship
and neighbourhood, and the obligations of charity, lest jus-
tice turn into unmercifulness.
8. No man is to be raised in his price or rents in regard
of any accident, advantage, or disadvantage, of his person ''.
A prince must be used conscionably, as well as a common
person ; and a beggar be treated justly, as well as a prince :
with this only difference, that, to poor persons, the utmost
measure and extent of justice is unmerciful, which, to a rich
person, is innocent, because it is just; and he needs not thy
mercy and remission.
9. Let no man, for his own poverty, become more oppress-
ing and cruel in his bargain, but quietly, modestly, diligently,
and patiently, recommend his estate to God, and follow its
interest, and leave the success to him : for such courses will
^ Mercantia Don vuol ne amici ne parenti.
M 2
164 OF CIVIL CONTRACTS.
more probably advance his trade ; they will certainly pro-
cure him a blessing and a recompence ; and, if they cure not
his poverty, they will take away the evil of it: and there is
nothing else in it, that can trouble him.
10. Detain not the wages of the hireling ; for every de-
gree of detention of it beyond the time is injustice and un-
charitableness, and grinds his face, till tears and blood come
out : but pay him exactly according to covenant, or accord-
ing to his needs.
11. Religiously keep all promises and covenants, though
made to your disadvantage, though afterwards you perceive,
you might have been better : and let not any precedent act
of yours be altered by any after-accident. Let nothing make
you break your promise, unless it be unlawful, or impossible :
that is, either out of your natural, or out of your civil power,
yourself being under the power of another ; or that it be in-
tolerably inconvenient to yourself, and of no advantage to
another ; or that you have leave expressed, or reasonably
presumed^.
12. Let no man take wages or fees for a work, that he
cannot do, or cannot with probability undertake, or in some
sense profitably, and with ease, or with advantage manage.
Physicians must not meddle with desperate diseases, and
known to be incurable, without declarino; their sense before-
hand ; that, if the patient please, he may entertain him at
adventure, or to do him some little ease. Advocates must
deal plainly with their clients, and tell them the true state
and danger of their case ; and must not pretend confidence
in an evil cause : but when he hath so cleared his own in-
nocence, if the client will have collateral and legal advan-
tages obtained by his industry, he may engage his endeavour,
provided he do no injury to the right cause, or any man's
person.
13. Let no man appropriate to his own use, what God,
by a special mercy, or the republic, hath made common^; for
^ Surgatn ad spoiisalia, quia promisi, quamvis non concoxeriin : sed non, si febri-
citavero : subesl enini tacita exceplio, si potero, si debebo. EfTice ut idem status
sit, cum exigilur, quifuit, cum proiiiitterem. Destitiiere levitas non eril, si aliquid
intervenit oovi. Eadem inihi omnia piKsla: et idem sum.lib. iv. cap. 39.de benefic.
'R.nhk. vol. iv. p. 197. Seneca.
^ Brassavol. in exam, sinipl.
OF RESTITUTION. 165
that is both against justice and charity too: and, by mira-
culous accidents, God hath declared his displeasure against
such enclosure. When the kings of Naples enclosed the
gardens of CEnotria, where the best manna of Calabria de-
scends, that no man might gather it without paying tribute,
the manna ceased, till the tribute was taken off; and then
it came again : and so, when after the third trial, the princes
found, they could not have that in proper, which God made
to be common, they left it as free as God gave it. The like
happened in Epire ; when Lysimachus laid an impost upon
the Tragassean salt, it vanished, till Lysimachus left it pub-
lic^. And when the procurators of King Antigonus imposed
a rate upon the sick people, that came to Edepsum to drink
the waters, which were lately sprung, and were very health-
ful, instantly the waters dried up, and the hope of gain pe-
rished.
The sum of all is in these words of St. Paul, " Let no
man go beyond and defraud his brother, in any matter ; be-
cause the Lord is the avenger of all such ^." And our blessed
Saviour, in the enumerating the duties of justice, besides
the commandment of " Do not steal," adds, " Defraud
not'," forbidding (as a distinct explication of the old law)
the tacit and secret theft of abusinsf our brother in civil con-
tracts. And it needs no other arguments to enforce this
caution, but only, that the Lord hath undertaken to avenge
all such persons. And as he always does it in the great day
of recompences ; so very often he does it here, by making
the unclean portion of injustice to be as a canker-worm eat-
ing up all the other increase : it procures beggary, and a de-
clining estate, or a caitiff cursed spirit, an ill name, the curse
of the injured and oppressed person, and a fool or a prodigal
to be his heir.
SECTION IV.
Of Restitutio)).
Restitution is that part of justice, to which a man is
s Ca-Iius Rhod I. ix. c. li. Athenac. Deipuos, 1. iii. •» 1 Thets. ir. 6.
• Lev. xix. 13. 1 Cor. vi. 8. Matt. x. 19.
166 OF RESTITUTION.
obliged by a precedent contract, or a foregoing fault, by his
own act or another man's, either with, or without, his will.
He, that borrows, is bound to pay, and much more he, that
steals or cheats ''. For if he that borrows, and pays not
when he is able, be an unjust person and a robber, because
he possesses another man's goods, to the right owner's pre-
judice ; then he, that took them at first without leave, is
the same thing in every instant of his possession, which the
debtor is after the time, in which he should, and could, have
made payment. For, in all sins, we are to distinguish the
transient or passing act from the remaining effect or evil.
The act of stealing was soon over, and cannot be undone;
and for it the sinner is only answerable to God, or his vice-
gerent ; and he is, in a particular manner, appointed to ex-
piate it by suffering punishment, and repenting, and asking
pardon, and judging and condemning himself, doing acts of
justice and charity, in opposition and contradiction to that
evil action. But because, in the case of stealing, there is
an injury done to our neighbour; and the evil still remains
after the action is past : therefore for this we are accountable
to our neighbour, and we are to take the evil off from him,
which we brought upon him ; or else he is an injured person,
a sufferer all the while : and that any man should be the
worse for me, and ray direct act, and by my intention, is
against the rule of equity, of justice, and of charity'; I do
not that to others, which I would have done to myself; for
I^grow richer upon the ruins of his fortune. Upon this
ground, it is a determined rule in divinity, " Our sin can
never be pardoned, till we have restored what we unjustly
took, or wrongfully detain :" restored it (I mean) actually,
or in purpose and desire, which we must really perform,
when we can. And this doctrine, besides its evident and ap-
parent reasonableness, is derived from the express words of
Scripture reckoning restitution to be a part of repentance,
necessary in order to the remission of our sins. " If the
wicked restore the pledge, give again that he had robbed,
Slc. lie shall surely live, he shall not die""." The practice of
this part of justice is to be directed by the following rules.
•* Cbi noil vuol rendeie,fa iiial a prendere.
' Si tu^ culpa datum est damuunij jure super his sallsfaceie te oportet.
"' Ezek. xxxiil. Ij.
OF RESTITUTION. 1G7
Rii/es of making Restitution.
1. Whosoever is an effective real cause of doing his neigh-
bour wrong, by what instrument soever he does it (whether
by commanding, or encouraging it, by counselling, or com-
mending it", by acting it, or not hindering it, when he might,
and ought", by concealing it or receiving it) is bound to make
restitution to his neighbour ; if, without him, the injury had
not been done, but, by him or his assistance, it was. For,
by the same reason, that every one of these is guilty of the
sin, and is cause of the injury, by the same they are bound
to make reparation ; because by him his neighbour is made
worse, and therefore is to be put into that state, from whence
he was forced. And suppose that thou hast persuaded an
injury to be done to thy neighbour, which others would have
persuaded, if thou hadst not, yet thou art still obliged, be-
cause thou really didst cause the injury; just as they had
been obliged, if they had done it : and thou art not at all
the less bound, by having persons as ill-inclined, as thou
wert.
2. He, that commanded the injury to be done, is first
bound ; then he, that did it ; and after these, they also are
obliged, who did so assist, as without them the thing would
not have been done. If satisfaction be made by any of the
former, the latter is tied to repentance, but no restitution :
but if the injured person be not righted, every one of them
is wholly guilty of the injustice ; and therefore bound to
restitution, singly and entirely.
3. Whosoever intends a little injury to his neighbour,
and acts it, and by it a greater evil accidentally comes, he is
obliged to make an entire reparation of all the injury, of that,
which he intended ; and of that, which he intended not, but
yet acted by his own instrument going further than he at
first purposed it p. He, that set fire on a plane-tree to spite
" O j/ij £7raivEa"a; tov SsS^axoTa, ovSsv t« tico'ov rZv TiiiiT^ayfjihtiiiv ahrov^yo; yiVErai.
Tot'das apud Procop. Goth. 3. Qui laudat servum fugitivum, tenelur. Noii enim
oportet laudaudo augeri malum. Utpian. in lib. i. cap. de servo corruplo.
" O E^Trgtia-jUEvof tou ava^avro; aXXa xal rou xaTus-Qria-ai SwaywEvou, Spatrai Se toiouto
oXaii; fA.h ^oi/XjiQevtoj. Nicet. Clioniut. in Michael. Comneit. Sic Sjri ab Amphjctioni-
bus judicio damiiati, quia piralicam non proliibiierunt, cum poterant.
1' Eliamsi partem damiii dare noluisti, in totum quasi prudens dederis, lenendui
es. Ex toto enim noluisse debet qui iniprudentia defenditur. Sen. Contr. Iiivolun-
tarium oitum ex roluiitariu ccnsetur pro voliintario. Strabo.
168 OF RESTITUTIOiyr.
his neighbour, and the plane-tree set fire on his neighbour's
house, is bound to pay for all the loss, because it did all rise
from his own ill intention. It is like murder, committed by
a drunken person, involuntary in some of the effect, but
voluntary in the other parts of it, and in all the cause ; and
therefore the guilty person is answerable for all of it. And
when Ariarathes, the Cappadocian king, had, but in wanton-
ness, stopped the mouth of the river Melanus, although he
intended no evil, yet Euphrates being swelled by that means,
and bearing away some of the strand of Cappadocia, did
great spoil to the Phrygians and Galatians; he therefore by
the Roman senate was condemned in three hundred talents,
towards reparation of the damage. Much rather therefore,
when the lesser part of the evil was directly intended.
4. He, that hinders a charitable person from giving alms
to a poor man, is tied to restitution, if he hindered him by
fraud or violence ; because it was a right, which the poor
man had, when the good man had designed and resolved it,
and the fraud or violence hinders the effect, but not the pur-
pose : and therefore he, who used the deceit or the force, is
injurious, and did damage to the poor man. But if the alms
were hindered only by entreaty, the hinderer is not tied to
restitution, because entreaty took not liberty away from the
giver, but left him still master of his own act, and he had
power to alter his purpose, and so long there was no injustice
done*'. The same is the case of a testator giving a legacy,
either by kindness, or by promise, and common right. He,
that hinders the charitable legacy by fraud or violence, or
the due legacy by entreaty, is equally obliged to restitution.
The reason of the latter part of this case is, because he, that
entreats or persuades to a sin, is as guilty as he that acts it:
and if, without his persuasion, the sin and the injury would
not be acted, he is in his kind the entire cause, and therefore
obliged to repair the injury as much as the person, that does
the wrong immediately.
5. He that refuses to do any part of his duty (to which
he is otherwise obliged) without a bribe, is bound to restore
that money, because he took it in his neighbour's wrong,
and not as a salary for his labour, or a reward for his wisdom
1 ^^£»VEXT£l' suJev 0 ov 0ori^i]3-ar -^^i) [j.a.J I 51 aveXEu&Eji'av. Ei'i. I. v. c. 4.
OF RESTITUTION. 169
(for his stipend hath paid all that), or he hath obliged him-
self to do it by his voluntary undertaking.
6. He that takes any thing fr m his neighbour, which
was justly forfeited, but yet takes it not as a minister of jus-
tice, but to satisfy his own revenge or avarice, is tied to re-
pentance, but not to restitution. For my neighbour is not
the worse for my act, for thither the law and his own de-
merits bore him; but because I took the forfeiture indirectly,
I am answerable to God for my unhandsome, unjust, or un-
charitable circumstances. Thus Philip of Macedon was re-
proved by Aristides for destroying the Phocenses ; because
although they deserved it, yet he did it not in prosecution of
the law of nations, but to enlarge his own dominions.
7. The heir of an obliged person is not bound to make
restitution, if the obligation passed only by a personal act;
but, if it passed from his person to his estate, then the estate
passes with all its burden. If the father, by persuading his
neighbour to do injustice, be bound to restore, the action is
extinguished by the death of the father, because it was only
the father's sin that bound him, which cannot directly bind
the son : therefore the son is free. And this is so in all per-
sonal actions, unless where the civil law interposes and alters
the case.
5F These rules concern the persons, that are obliged to make
restitution : the other circumstances of it are thus de-
scribed.
8. He, that by fact, or word, or sign, either fraudulently,
or violently, does hurt to his neighbour's body, life, goods,
good name, friends, or soul, is bound to make restitution in
the several instances, according as they are capable to be
made. In all these instances, we must separate entreaty and
enticements from deceit or violence. If I persuade my neigh-
bour to commit adultery, I still leave him or her in their own
power : and, though I am answerable to God for my sin, yet
not to my neighbour. For I made her to be willing ; yet she
was willing"", that is, the same at last, as I was at first. But
if I have used fraud, and made her to believe a lie% upon
•■ Ai aWir^iov t^yov -nrraisi ouSeiJ. Epict.
* nS.Ta ■^V)(ji cluoufa s-Ji^iirai ti7j oKhBliaq. Plato.
Non liccl sufl'urari raeiitciu vel Saraaritani. R. Muimo;<.. Can. Eth.
170 OF RESTITUTION.
which confidence she did the act, and, without, she would
not (as if I tell a woman, her husband is dead, or intended to
kill her, or is himself an adulterous man), or if I use violence,
that is, either force her, or threaten her with death, or a
grievous wound, or any thing, that takes her from the liberty
of her choice, I am bound to restitution ; that is, to restore
her to a right understanding of things and to a full liberty,
by taking from her the deceit or the violence.
9. An adulterous person is tied to restitution of the in-
jury, so far as it is reparable, and can be made to the wronged
person ; that is, to make provision for the children begotten
in unlawful embraces, that they may do no injury to the le-
gitimate, by receiving a common portion : and, if the injured
person do account of it, he must satisfy him with money, for
the wrong done to his bed. He is not tied to offer this, be-
cause it is no proper exchange ; but he is bound to pay it, if
it be reasonably demanded : for every man hath justice done
him, when himself is satisfied, though by a word, or an ac-
tion, or a penny.
10. He that hath killed a man, is bound to restitution, by
allowing such a maintenance to the children and near rela-
tives of the deceased, as they have lost by his death, consi-
dering and allowing for all circumstances of the man's age,
and health, and probability of living. And thus Hercules is
said to have made expiation for the death of Iphitus, whom
he slew, by paying a mulct to his children".
11. He that hath really lessened the fame of his neigh-
bour by fraud or violence, is bound to restore it by its pro-
per instruments ; such as are confession of his fault, giving
testimony of his innocence or worth, doing him honour, or
(if that will do it, and both parties agree) by money, which
answers all things".
12. He that hath wounded his neighbour, is tied to the
expenses of the surgeon and other incidences, and to repair
whatever loss he sustains by his disability to work or trade ;
and the same is in the case of false imprisonment ; in which
cases only the real effect and remaining detriment are to be
mended and repaired : for the action itself is to be punished
" 0 yap h yvMn, ii o\ 'rraXlii;, h oi ffuyyiviii; tov ^oveuQevto? 'iXaotv, rpoTTov T»vi Ixei'vai JeSj-
tai. Mich. Epites. ad 5. Eth,
* Sic Viviamis rcsipitil de injusla acciisulione : apud Cussiodo. 4. 41.
OF RESTITUTION. 171
or repented of, and enters not into the question of restitu-
tion. But, in these and all other cases, the injured person
is to be restored to that perfect and good condition, from
which he was removed by my fraud or violence, so far as is
possible. Thus a ravisher must repair the temporal detri-
ment or injury done to the maid, and give her a dowry, or
marry her, if she desire it. For this restores her into that
capacity of being a good wife, which by the injury was lost,
as far as it can be done.
13. He, that robbeth his neighbour of his goods, or de-
tains any thing violently or fraudulently, is bound not only
to restore the principal, but all its fruits and emoluments,
which would have accrued, to the right owner, during the
time of their being detained. By proportion to these rules
we may judge of the obligation, that lies upon all sorts of
injurious persons : the sacrilegious, the detainers of tithes,
cheaters of men's inheritances, unjust judges, false witnesses
and accusers ; those, that do fraudulently or violently bring
men to sin, that force men to drink, that laugh at and dis-
grace virtue, that persuade servants to run away, or commend
such purposes ; violent persecutors of religion in any in-
stance ; and all of the same nature.
14. He, that hath wronged so many, or in that manner
(as in the way of daily trade), that he knows not, in what
measure he hath done it, or who they are, must redeem his
fault by alms and largesses to the poor, according to the va-
lue of his wrongful dealing, as near as he can proportion it.
Better it is to go begging to heaven, than to go to hell, laden
with the spoils of rapine and injustice.
15. The order of paying the debts of contract or restitu-
tion, is, in some instances, set down by the civil laws of a
kingdom, in which cases, their rule is to be observed. In
destitution or want of such rules, we are, 1 . to observe the
necessity of the creditor ; 2. then the time of the delay ; and
3. the special obligations of friendship or kindness ; and ac-
cording to these, in their several degrees, make our restitu-
tion, if we be not able to do all, that we should ; but, if we
be, the best rule is, to do it so soon as we can ; taking our
accounts in this, as in our human actions, according to
prudence, and civil or natural conveniences or possibili-
ties; only securing these two things: l.That the duty be
172 PRAYERS RELATING TO
not wholly omitted ; and, 2. That it be not deferred at all
out of covetousness, or any other principle that is vicious.
Remember, that the same day, in which Zaccheus made re-
stitution to all whom he had injured, the same day Christ
himself pronounced, that salvation was come to his house"'.
16. But, besides the obligation arising from contract or
default, there is one of another sort, which comes from kind-
ness, and the acts of charity and friendship ''. He, that does
me a favour, hath bound me to make him a return of thank-
fulness. The obligation comes not by covenant, not by his
own express intention, but by the nature of the thing ; and is
a duty, springing up within the spirit of the obliged person,
to whom it is more natural to love his friend, and to do good
for good, than to return evil for evil : because a man may for-
give an injury, but he must never forget a good turn. For
every thing, that is excellent, and every thing, that is profit-
able, whatsoever is good in itself, or good to me, cannot but
be beloved ; and what we love, we naturally cherish, and do
good to. lie, therefore, that refuses to do good to them,
whom he is bound to love, or to love that which did him
good, is unnatural and monstrous in his affections, and
thinks all the world born to minister to him, with a greedi-
ness worse than that of the sea ; which although it receives
all rivers into itself, yet it furnishes the clouds and springs
with a return of all they need.
Our duty to benefactors is to esteem and love their per-
sons ; to inake them proportionable returns of service or
duty, or profit, according as we can, or as they need, or as
opportunity presents itself, and according to the greatnesses
of their kindness, and to pray to God to make them recom-
pence for all the good, they have done to us ; which last
office is also requisite to be done for our creditors, who, in
charity, have relieved our wants.
Prayers to he said, in relation to the several obligations and
ojjices of Justice.
A Prayer for the Grace of Obedience, to he said by all persons
under command.
O eternal God, great ruler of men and angels, who hast
" Luke xix. 9. ^ Gratitude.
THE DUTIES OF JUSTICE. 173
constituted all things in a wonderful order, making all the
creatures subject to man, and one man to another, and all to
thee, the last link of this admirable chain being fastened to
the foot of thy throne ; teach me to obey all those, whom
thou hast set over me, reverencing their persons, submitting
indifferently to all their lawful commands, cheerfully under-
going those burdens, which the public wisdom and necessity
shall impose upon me ; at no hand murmuring against go-
vernment, lest the spirit of pride and mutiny, of murmur and
disorder, enter into me, and consign me to the portion of the
disobedient and rebellious, of the despisers of dominion,
and revilers of dignity. Grant this, O holy God, for his
sake, who, for his obedience to the Father, hath obtained the
glorification of eternal ages, our Lord and Saviour Jesus
Christ. Amen.
Pnii/ersfor Kings and all Magistrates, for our Parents spiritual
and natural, are in the following Litanies, at the end of the
fourth Chapter.
A Prayer to be said by Sid)jects, when their Land is invaded and
overrun by barbarous or wicked people, enemies of the Reli-
gion, or the Government.
I.
O eternal God, thou alone rulest in the kingdoms of men ;
thou art the great God of battles and recompences ; and by
thy glorious wisdom, by thy almighty power, and by thy
secret providence, dost determine the events of war, and the
issues of human counsels, and the returns of peace and vic-
tory : now at last be pleased to let the light of thy counte-
nance, and the etlects of a glorious mercy and a gracious
pardon, return to this land. Thou seest, how great evils we
suffer under the power and tyranny of war ; and, although
we submit to and adore thy justice in our sufferings, yet be
pleased to pity our misery, to hear our complaints, and to
provide us of remedy against our present calamities : let not
the defenders of a righteous cause go away ashamed, nor our
counsels be for ever confounded, nor our parties defeated,
nor religion suppressed, nor learning discountenanced, and
we be spoiled of all the exterior ornaments, instruments, and
advantages, of piety, which thou hast been pleased formerly
174 PRAYERS RELATING TO
to minister to our infirmities, for the interests of learning
and religion. Amen.
II.
We confess, dear God, that we have deserved to be to-
tally extinct and separate from the communion of saints, and
the comforts of religion, to be made servants to ignorant,
unjust, and inferior persons, or to suffer any other calamity,
which thou shalt allot us as the instrument of thy anger, whom
we have so often provoked to wrath and jealousy. Lord, we
humbly lie down under the burden of thy rod, begging of
thee to remember our infirmities, and no more to remember
our sins, to support us with thy staff, to lift us up with thy
hand, to refresh us with thy gracious eye : and, if a sad
cloud of temporal infelicities must still encircle us, open unto
us the window of heaven, that, with an eye of faith and hope,
we may see beyond the cloud, looking upon those mercies,
which in thy secret providence and admirable wisdom, thou
designest to all thy servants, from such unlikely and sad be-
ginnings. Teach us diligently to do all our duty, and cheer-
fully to submit to all thy will ; and, at last, be gracious to
thy people, that call upon thee, that put their trust in thee,
that have laid up all their hopes in the bosom of God, that,
besides thee, have no helper. Amen.
III.
Place a guard of angels about the person of the king,
and immure him with the defence of thy right hand, that no
unhallowed arm may do violence to him. Support him with
aids from heaven in all his battles, trials, and dangers ; that
he may, in every instant of his temptation, become dearer to
thee ; and do thou return to him with mercy and deliverance.
Give unto him the hearts of all his people; and put into his
hand a prevailing rod of iron, a sceptre of power, and a
sword of justice ; and enable him to defend and comfort the
churches under his protection.
IV.
Bless all his friends, relatives, confederates, and lieges ;
direct their counsels, unite their hearts, strengthen their
hands, bless their actions. Give unto them holiness of in-
THE DUTIES OF JUSTICE. 175
tention, that they may, with much candour and ingenuity,
pursue the cause of God and the king. Sanctify all the
means and instruments of their purposes, that they may not,
with cruelty, injustice, or oppression, proceed towards the
end of their just desires : and do thou crown all their en-
deavours with a prosperous event, that all may co-operate
to, and actually produce, those great mercies, which we beg
of thee ; honour and safety to our sovereign, defence of his
just rights, peace to his people, establishment ttnd promo-
tion to religion, advantages and encouragement to learning
and holy living, deliverance to all the oppressed, comfort to
all thy faithful people, and from all these, glory to thy holy
name. Grant this, O King of kings, for his sake, by whom
thou hast consigned us to all thy mercies and promises, and
to whom thou hast given all power in heaven and earth, our
Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. Amen.
A Prayer to be said by Kings or Magistrates, for
themselves and their People.
O my God and King, thou rulest in the kingdoms of
men ; by thee kings reign, and princes decree justice : thou
hast appointed me under thyself [and under my prince ^^ to
govern this portion of thy church, according to the laws of
religion and the commonwealth, O Lord, I am but an in-
firm man, and know not how to decree certain sentences
without erring in judgment : but do thou give to thy servant
an understanding heart to judge this people, that I may dis-
cern between good and evil. Cause me to walk, before thee
and all the people, in truth and righteousness, and in sin-
cerity of heart, that I may not regard the person of the
mighty, nor be afraid of his terroi", nor despise the person of
the poor, and reject his petition; but that, doing justice to
all men, I, and my people, may receive mercy of thee, peace
and plenty in our days, and mutual love, duty, and corres-
pondence ; that there be no leading into captivity, no com-
plaining in our streets ; but we may see the church in pros-
perity all our days, and religion established and increasing.
Do thou establish the house of thy servant, and bring me to
a participation of the glories of thy kingdom, for his sake,
y These words to be added by a delegate or inferior.
176 PRAYERS RELATING TO
who is my Lord and King-, the holy and ever blessed Saviour
of the world, our Redeemer, Jesus. Amen.
A Prai/er to he said by Parents for their Children.
O almighty and most merciful Father, who hast promised
children as a reward to the righteous, and hast given them
to me as a testimony of thy mercy, and an engagement of
my duty ; be pleased to be a Father unto them, and give
them healthful bodies, understanding souls, and sanctified
spirits, that they may l)e thy servants and thy children, all
their days. Let a great mercy and providence lead them
through tlie dangers and temptations and ignorances of their
youth, that they may never run into folly, and the evils of
an unbridled appetite. So order the accidents of their lives,
that, by good education, careful tutors, holy example, inno-
cent company, prudent counsel, and thy restraining grace,
their duty to thee may be secured in the midst of a crooked
and untoward generation : and if it seem good in thy eyes,
let me be enabled to provide conveniently for the support of
their persons, that they may not be destitute and miserable
in my death ; or if thou shalt call me off from this world by
a more timely summons, let their portion be, thy care, mercy,
and providence, over their bodies and souls : and may they
never live vicious lives, nor die violent or untimely deaths ;
but let them glorify thee here with a free obedience, and the
duties of a whole life ; that, when they have served thee in
their generations, and have profited the Christian common-
wealth, they may be coheirs with Jesus, in the glories of thy
eternal kingdom, throiigh the same our Lord, Jesus Christ.
Amen.
A Prayer to he said hi/ Masters of Families, Curates, Tutors,
or other ohliged persons, for their charges.
O Almighty God, merciful and gracious, have mercy
upon my family [or pupils, or parishioners, &c.] and all com-
mitted to my charge : sanctify them with thy grace, preserve
them with thy providence, guard them from all evil by the
custody of angels, direct them in the ways of peace and holy
religion by my ministry and the conduct of thy most Holy
Spirit, and consign them all, with the participation of thy
THE DUTIES OF JUSTICE. 177
blessings and graces in this world, with healthful bodies,
with good understandings, and sanctified spirits, to a full
fruition of thy glories hereafter, through Jesus Christ, our
Lord,
A Prayer to he said hy Merchants, Tradesmen, and
Handicraftsmen.
O eternal God, thou fountain of justice, mercy, and be-
nediction, who, by my education and other effects of thy
providence hast called me to this profession, that, by my in-
dustry, I may, in my small proportion, work together for the
good of myself and others ; I humbly beg thy grace to guide
me in my intention, and in the transaction of my affairs, that
I may be diligent, just, and faithful : and give me thy favour,
that this my labour may be accepted by thee as a part of my
necessary duty : and give me thy blessing to assist and pros-
per me in my calling, to such measures, as thou shalt, in
mercy, choose for me : and be pleased to let the Holy Spirit
be for ever present with me, that I may never be given to
cdvetousness and sordid appetites, to lying and falsehood, or
any other base, indirect, and beggarly arts; but give me pru-
dence, honesty, and Christian sincerity, that my trade may
be sanctified by my religion; my labour, by my intention and
thy blessing ; that, when I have done my portion of work
thou hast allotted me, and improved the talent, thou hast in-
trusted to me, and served the commonwealth in my capa-
city ; I may receive the mighty price of my high calling,
which I expect and beg, in the portion and inheritance of the
ever blessed Saviour and Redeemer, Jesus. Amen.
A Prayer to he said hy Debtors, and all persons ohliged whether
by crime or conliact.
O Almighty God, who art rich unto all, the treasury and
fountain of all good, of all justice, and all mercy, and all
bounty, to whom we owe all, that we are, and all, that we
have, being thy debtors by reason of our sins, and by thy
own gracious contract, made with us in Jesus Christ ; teach
me, in the first place, to perform all my obligations to thee,
both of duty and thankfulness ; and, next, enable me to pay
my duty to all my friends, and my debts to all my creditors,
that none be made miserable or lessened in his estate bv his
VOL. IV, N
178 THE DUTIES OF JUSTICE.
kindness to me, or traffic with me. Forgive me all those
sins and irregular actions, by which I entered into debt fur-
ther, than my necessity required, or by which such necessity
was brought upon me : but let not them suffer by occasion
of my sin. Lord, reward all their kindness into their bosoms,
and make them recompence, where I cannot; and make me
very willing in all that I can, and able for all, that I am
obliged to : or, if it seem good in thine eyes to afflict me by
the continuance of this condition, yet make it up by some
means to them, that the prayer of thy servant may obtain of
thee, at least, to pay my debt in blessings. Amen.
Lord, sanctify and forgive all, that I have tempted to evil
by my discourse or my example : instruct them in the right
way, whom I have led to error, and let me never run further
on the score of sin : but do thou blot out all the evils, I have
done, by the spunge of thy passion, and the blood of thy
cross ; and give me a deep and an excellent repentance, and
a free and a gracious pardon, that thou mayest answer for
me, O Lord, and enable me to stand upright in judgment ;
for in thee, O Lord, have I trusted ; let me never be con-
founded. Pity me and instruct me, guide me and support
me, pardon me and save me, for my sweet Saviour, Jesus
Christ's sake. Amen.
A Prayer for Patron and Benefactors.
O Almighty God, thou fountain of all good, of all excel-
lency both to men and angels, extend thine abundant favour
and loving kindness to my patron, to all my friends and bene-
factors : reward them and make them plentiful recompence
for all the good, which, from thy merciful providence, they
have conveyed unto me. Let the light of thy countenance
shine upon them, and let them never come into any affliction
or sadness, but such as may be an instrument of thy glory
and their eternal comfort. Forgive them all their sins ; let
thy Divinest Spirit preserve them from all deeds of darkness.
Let thy ministering angels guard their persons from the vio-
lence of the spirits of darkness. And thou, who knowest
every degree of their necessity by thy infinite wisdom, give
supply to all their needs by thy glorious mercy, preserving
OF RELIGION. 179
their persons, sanctifying their hearts, and leading them in
the ways of righteousness, by the waters of comfort, to the
land of eternal rest and glory, through Jesus Christ, our
Lord. Amen.
CHAP. IV.
OF CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
IvELiGioN, in a large sense, doth signify the whole duty of
man, comprehending in it justice, charity, and sobriety : be-
cause all these being commanded by God, they become a
part of that honour and worship, which we are bound to pay
to him. And thus the word is used in St. James, *' Pure
religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to
visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep
himself unspotted from the world "=." But, in a more re-
strained sense, it is taken for that part of duty, which parti-
cularly relates to God in our worshippings and adoration of
him, in confessing his excellences, loving his person, ad-
miring his goodness, believing his word, and doing all that,
which may, in a proper and direct manner, do him honour.
It contains the duties of the first table only ; and so it is
called godliness% and is by St. Paul distinguished from jus-
tice and sobriety. In this sense I am now to explicate the
parts of it.
Of the internal actions of Religion.
Those I call the internal actions of religion, in which the
soul only is employed, and ministers to God in the special
actions of faith, hope, and charity. Faith believes the re-
velations of God : hope expects his promises : and charity
loves his excellences and mercies. Faith gives us under-
standing to God : hope gives up all the passions and affec-
tions to heaven and heavenly things : and charity gives the
will to the service of God. Faith is opposed to infidelity,
hope to despair, charity to enmity and hostility : and these
three sanctify the whole man, and make our duty to God and
^ James i. 27. a Tit, ii. 12.
N 2
180 OF FAITH.
obedience to his commandments to be chosen, reasonable,
and delightful, and therefore to be entire, persevering, and
universal.
SECTION I.
OF FAITH-
The acts and offices of Faith are,
1 . To believe every thing, which God hath revealed to
us^ : and, when once we are convinced, that God hath spoken
it, to make no further inquiry, but humbly to submit ; ever
remembering, that there are some things, which our under-
standing cannot fathom, nor search out their depth.
2. To believe nothing concerning God, but what is ho-
nourable and excellent, as knowing that belief to be no ho-
nouring of God, which entertains of him any dishonourable
thoughts. Faith is the parent of charity ; and whatsoever
faith entertains, must be apt to produce love to God : but he,
that believes God to be cruel or unmerciful, or a rejoicer in
the unavoidable damnation of the greatest part of mankind,
or that he speaks one thing and privately means another,
thinks evil thoughts concerning God, and such, as for which
we should hate a man, and therefore are great enemies of
faith, being apt to destroy charity. Our faith concerning
God must be, as himself hath revealed and described his own
excellences : and, in our discourses, we must remove from
him all imperfection, and attribute to him all excellency.
3. To give ourselves wholly up to Christ, in heart and
desire, to become disciples of his doctrine with choice (be-
sides conviction), being in the presence of God but as idiots,
that is, without any principles of our own to hinder the truth
of God ; but sucking in greedily all that God hath taught us,
believing it infinitely, and loving to believe it. For this is
an act of love, reflected upon faith ; or an act of faith, leaning
upon love.
4. To believe all God's promises, and that whatsoever is
promised in Scripture, shall, on God's part, be as surely ^er-
^ Demus, Deum aliquid posse, quod uos fateamur investigare non posse. St. Aug.
1. xxi. C.7, de Civitat.
OF FAITH. 181
formed, as if we had it in possession. This act makes us to.
rely upon God with the same confidence, as we did on our
parents, when we were children, when we made no doubt, but
whatsoever we needed, we should have it, if it were in their
power.
5. To believe also the conditions of the promise, or that
part of the revelation, which concerns our duty. Many are
apt to believe the article of remission of sins, but they be-
lieve it, without the condition of repentance, or the fruits of
holy life : and that is to believe the article otherwise, than
God intended it. For the covenant of the gospel is the great
object of faith, and that supposes our duty to answer his
gracvi ; that God will be our God, so long as we are his peo-
ple. The other is not faith, but flattery.
6. To profess publickly the doctrine of Jesus Christ, openly
owning whatsoever he hath revealed and commanded, not
being ashamed of the word of God, or of any practices en-
joined by it; and this, without complying with any man's
interest, not regarding favour, nor being moved with good
words, not fearing disgrace, or loss, or inconvenience, or
death itself.
7. To pray without doubting, without weariness, without
faintness, entertaining no jealousies or suspicions of God,
but being confident of God's hearing us, and of his returns
to us, whatsoever the manner or the instance be, that, if we
do our duty, it will be gracious and merciful.
These acts of faith are, in several degrees, in the servants
of Jesus; some have it but as a grain of mustard-seed ; some
grow up to a plant ; some have the fulness of faith : but the
least faith, that is, must be a persuasion so strong, as to
make us undertake the doing of all that duty, which Christ
built upon the foundation of believing. But we shall best
discern the truth of our faith by these following signs. St.
Jerome reckons three ".
Signs of true Fa'Uk.
1. An earnest and vehement prayer: for it is impossible,
we should heartily believe the things of God and the glories
of the gospel, and not most importunately desire them. For
■^ Dial, adver. liucif.
182 OF FAITH.
every thing is desired according to our belief of its excel-
lency and possibility.
2. To do nothing for vain-glory, but wholly for the in-
terests of religion, and these articles we believe ; valuing not
at all the rumours of men, but the praise of God, to whom,
by faith, we have given up all our intellectual faculties.-
'" 3. To be content with God for our judge, for our patron,
for our Lord, for our friend ; desiring God to be all in all to
us, as we are, in our understanding and affections, wholly his.
Add to these;
4. To be a stranger upon earth in our affections, and to
have all our thoughts and principal desires fixed upon the
matters of faith, the things of heaven. For, if a man were
adopted heir to Caesar, he would (if he believed it real and
effective) despise the present, and wholly be at court in his
father's eye ; and his desires would outrun his swiftest speed,
and all his thoughts would spend themselves in creating
ideas and little fantastic images of his future condition.
Now God hath made us heirs of his kingdom, and coheirs
with Jesus : if we believed this, we would think, and affect,
and study accordingly. But he, that rejoices in gain, and
his heart dwells in the world, and is espoused to a fair estate,
and transported with a light momentary joy, and is afflicted
with losses, and amazed with temporal persecutions, and
esteems disgrace or poverty in a good cause to be intolera-
ble ; this man either hath no inheritance in heaven, or be-
lieves none; and believes not, that he is adopted to be the
son of God, the heir of eternal glory.
5. St. James's sign is the best : " Shew me thy faith by
thy works." Faith makes the merchant diligent and ven-
turous, and that makes him rich. Ferdinando, of Arragon,
believed the story told him by Columbus, and therefore he
furnished him with ships, and got the West Indies by his
faith in the undertaker. But Henry the Seventh, of Eng-
land, believed him not ; and therefore trusted him not with
shipping, and lost all the purchase of that faith. It is told
us by Christ, " He that forgives, shall be forgiven :" if we
believe this, it is certain we shall forgive our enemies ; for
none of us all but need and desire to be forgiven. No man
can possibly despise, or refuse to desire, such excellent glo-
OF FAITH. 183
ries, as are revealed to them, that are servants of Christ, and
yet we do nothing, that is commanded us as a condition to
obtain them. No man could work a day's labour without
faith : but because he believes, he shall have his wages at
the day's or week's end, he does his duty. But he only be-
lieves, who does that thing, which other men, in the like
cases, do, when they do believe. He, that believes money,
gotten with danger, is better than poverty with safety, will
venture for it in unknown lands or seas : and so will he, that
believes it better to get heaven with labour, than to go to
hell with pleasure.
6. He that believes, does not make haste, but waits pa-
tiently, till the times of refreshment come, and dares trust
God for the morrow, and is no more solicitous for the next
year, than he is for that which is past : and it is certairf,
that man wants faith, who dares be more confident of being
supplied, when he hath money in his purse, than when he
hath it only in bills of exchange from God ; or that relies
more upon his own industry than upon God's providence,
when his own industry fails him. If you dare trust to God,
when the case, to human reason, seems impossible, and
trust to God then also out of choice, not because you have
nothing else to trust to, but because he is the only support
of a just confidence, then you give a good testimony of your
faith.
7. True faith is confident, and will venture all the world
upon the strength of its persuasion. Will you lay your life
on it, your estate, your reputation, that the doctrine of
Jesus Christ is true in every article ? Then you have true
faith. But he that fears men more than God, believes men,
more than he believes in God.
8. Faith, if it be true, living, and justifying, cannot be
separated from a good life : it works miracles, makes a
drunkard become sober, a lascivious person become chaste,
a covetous man become liberal, " it overcomes the world — it
works righteousness*^," and makes us diligently to do, and
cheerfully to suffer, whatsoever God hath placed in our way
to heaven.
'' 2 Cor. xiii. ."5. R<iiii, viii. 10.
184 OF FAITH.
The means and instruments to obtain Faith are,
1. A humble, willing, and docile mind, or desire to be
instructed in the way of God : for persuasion enters like a
sun-beam, gently, and without violence : and open but the
window, and draw the curtain, and the Sun of righteousness
will enlighten your darkness.
2. Remove all prejudice and love to every thing, which
may be contradicted by faith. " How can ye believe (said
Christ), that receive praise, one of another ?" An unchaste
man cannot easily be brought to believe, that, without pu-
rity, he shall never see God. He, that loves riches, can hardly
believe the doctrine of poverty and renunciation of the world:
and alms and martyrdom and the doctrine of the cross is
folly to him, that loves his ease and pleasures. He, that
hath within him any principle contrary to the doctrines of
faith, cannot easily become a disciple.
3. Prayer, which is instrumental to every thing, hath a
particular promise in this thing. " He that lacks wisdom, let
him ask it of God :" and, " If you give good things to your
children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give
his Spirit to them, that ask him ?"
4. The consideration of the Divine omnipotence and in-
finite wisdom, and our own ignorance, are great instruments
of curing all doubting, and silencing the murmurs of infide-
lity^
5. Avoid all curiosity of inquiry into particulars and
circumstances and mysteries : for true faith is full of inge-
nuity and hearty simplicity, free from suspicion, wise and
confident, trusting upon generals, without watching and pry-
ing into unnecessary or indiscernible particulars. No man
carries his bed into his field, to watch how his corn grows,
but believes upon the general order of Providence and na-
ture ; and, at harvest, finds himself not deceived.
6. In time of temptation, be not busy to dispute, but
rely upon the conclusion, and throw yourself upon God ; and
contend not with him but in prayer, and in the presence, and
with the help, of a prudent untempted guide : and be sure to
esteem all changes of belief, which otfer themselves in the
time of your greatest weakness (contrary to the persuasions
^ III relxismiiis siiinraa crcdciuli rallo est omnipnteiilia Cieatoiis. St. Aug.
OF HOPE. 185
of your best understanding) to be temptations, and reject
them accordingly.
7. It is a prudent course, that, in our health and best
advantages, we lay up particular arguments and instruments
of persuasion and confidence, to be brought forth and used
in the great day of expense ; and that especially, in such
things, in which we use to be most tempted, and in which
yve are least confident, and which are most necessary, and
which commonly the devil uses to assault us withal, in the
days of our visitation.
8. The wisdom of the church of God is very remarkable
in appointing festivals or holy days, whose solemnity and of-
fices have no other special business but to record the article
of the day ; such as Trinity Sunday, Ascension, Easter,
Christmas day ; and to those persons, who can only believe,
not prove or dispute, there is no better instrument to cause
the remembrance and plain notion, and to endear the affec-
tion and hearty assent to the article, than the proclaiming
and recommending it by the festivity and joy of a holy day.
SECTION II.
Of the Hope of a Christian.
Faith differs from hope, in the extension of its object, and
in the intention of deg-ree. St. Austin thus accounts their
differences ^ Faith is of all things revealed, good and bad,
rewards and punishments, of things past, present, and to come,
of things that concern us, of things that concern us not ;
but hope hath, for its object, things only, that are good, and
fit to be hoped for, future, and concerning ourselves : and
because these things are offered to us upon conditions of
which we may so fail, as we may change our will, therefore
our certainty is less than the adherences of faith ; which (be-
cause faith relies only upon one proposition, that is, the
truth of the word of God) cannot be made uncertain in them-
selves, though the object of our hope may become uncertain
to us, and to our possession. For it is infallibly certain, that
f Enchirid. c. 8.
186 OF HOPE.
there is heaven for all the godly, and for me amongst them
all, if I do my duty. But that I shall enter into heaven, is
the object of my hope, not of my faith ; and is so sure, as it
is certain I shall persevere in the ways of God,
The acts of Hope are,
1. To rely upon God with a confident expectation of his
promises ; ever esteeming, that every promise of God is a
magazine of all that grace and relief, which we can need in
that instance, for which the promise is made. Every degree
of hope is a degree of confidence.
2. To esteem all the danger of an action, and the possibi-
lities of miscarriage, and every cross accident, that can in-
tervene, to be no defect on God's part, but either a mercy on
his part, or a fault on ours : for then we shall be sure to trust
in God, when we see him to be our confidence, and ourselves
the cause of all mischances. The hope of a Christian is pru-
dent and religious.
3. To rejoice in the midstof a misfortune or seeming sad-
ness, knowing, that this may work for good, and will, if we
be not wanting to our souls. This is a direct act of hope,
to look through the cloud, and look for a beam of the light
from God : and this is called in Scripture, " rejoicing in
tribulation, when the God of hope fills us with all joy in be-
lieving." Every degree of hope brings a degree of joy.
4. To desire, to pray, and to long for, the great object of
our hope, the mighty price of our high calling ; and to de-
sire the other things of this life, as they are promised ; that is,
so far as they are made necessary and useful to us, in order to
God's glory and the great end of souls. Hope and fasting
are said to be the two wings of prayer. Fasting is but as
the wing of a bird ; but hope is like the wing of an angel,
soaring up to heaven, and bears our prayers to the throne of
grace. Without hope, it is impossible to pray ; but hope
makes our prayers reasonable, passionate, and religious ; for
it relies upon God's promise, or experience, or providence,
and story. Prayer is always in proportion to our hope, zeal-
pus and affectionate.
5. Perseverance is the perfection of the duty of hope, and
its last act : and so long as our hope continues, so long we
OF HOPE. 187
go on in duty and diligence : but he, that is to raise a castle
in an hour, sits down and does nothing towards it : and He-
rod, the sophister, left off to teach his son, when he saw that
twenty-four Pages, appointed to wait on him, and called by
the several letters of the alphabet, could never make him to
understand his letters perfectly.
Rules to govern our Hope.
1. Let your hope be moderate; proportioned to your
state, person, and condition, whether it be for gifts or graces,
or temporal favours. It is an ambitious hope for persons,
whose diligence is like them, that are least in the kingdom
of heaven, to believe themselves endeared to God as the
greatest saints : or that they shall have a throne equal to
St. Paul, or the blessed Virgin Mary. A stammerer cannot,
with moderation, hope for the gift of tongues ; or a peasant
to become learned as Origen; or if a beggar desires, or hopes^
to become a king, or asks for a thousand pound a year, we
call him impudent, not passionate, much less reasonable.
Hope, that God will crown your endeavours with equal mea-
sures of that reward, which he indeed freely gives, but yet
gives, according to our proportions. Hope for good success
according to, or not much beyond, the efficacy of the causes
and the instrument; and let the husbandman hope for a good
harvest, not for a rich kingdom, or a victorious army.
2. Let your hope be well founded, relying upon just con-
fidences ; that is, upon God, according to his revelations and
promises. For it is possible for a man, to have a vain hope
upon God : and, in matters of religion, it is presumption to
hope, that God's mercies will be poured forth upon lazy per-
sons, that do nothing towards holy and strict walking, nothing
(I say) but trust, and long for an event besides, and against,
all disposition of the means. Every false principle, in re-
ligion, is a reed of Egypt, false and dangerous. Rely not
in temporal things upon uncertain prophecies and astrology,
not upon our own wit or industry, not upon gold or friends,
not upon armies and princes ; expect not health from phy-
sicians, that cannot cure their own breath, much less their
mortality : use all lawful instruments, but expect nothing
from them above their natural or ordinary efficacy, and, in
the use of them> from God expect a blessing. A hope, that
]88 OF HOPE.
is easy and credulous, is an arm of flesh, an ill supporter
without a bone^.
3. Let your hope be without vanity, or garishness of spi-
rit ; but sober, grave, and silent, fixed in the heart, not borne
upon the lip, apt to support our spirits within, but not to
provoke envy abroad.
4. Let your hope be of things possible, safe, and use-
ful''. He that hopes for an opportunity of acting his revenge,
or lust, or rapine, watches to do himself a mischief. All evils
of ourselves, or brethren, are objects of our fear, not hope :
and, when it is truly understood, things useless and unsafe
can no more be wished for, than things impossible can be
obtained.
5. Let your hope be patient, without tediousness of spi-
rit, or hastiness of prefixing time. Make no limits or pre-
scriptions to God ; but let your prayers and endeavours go
on still with a constant attendance on the periods of God's
providence. The men of Bethulia resolved to wait upon God,
but five days longer: but deliverance stayed seven days, and
yet came at last. And take not every accident for an argu-
mer^t of despair : but go on still in hoping; and begin again
to work, if any ill accident have interrupted you.
Means of Hope, and remedies against Despair.
The means to cure despair, and to continue or increase
hope, are, partly by consideration, partly by exercise.
1. Apply your mind to the cure of all the proper causes
of despair : and they are, weakness of spirit, or violence of
passion. He, that greedily covets, is impatient of delay,
and desperate in contrary accidents ; and he, that is little of
heart, is also of little hope, and apt to sorrow and suspicion'.
2. Despise the things of the world, and be indifferent to
all changes and events of Providence : and, for the things of
God, the promises are certain to be performed in kind ; and,
where there is less variety of chance, there is less possibility
of being mocked'' : but he that creates to himself thousands
g Jer. xvii. 5. '' DL cosi fuori di credcnza, Noii vuolci fur speranza.
OF HOPE. . 189
bf little hopes, uncertain in the promise, fliUible in the event,
and depending upon ten thousand circumstances (as are all
the things of this world), shall often fail in his expectations,
and be used to argumenti^ of distrust in such hopes.
3. So long as your hopes are regular and reasonable,
though in temporal affairs, such as are deliverance from ene-
mies, escaping a storm or shipwreck, recovery from a sick-
ness, ability to pay your debts, &c. remember, that there are
some things ordinary, and some things extraordinary, to
prevent despair. In ordinary, remember, that the very hoping
in God is an endearment of him, and a means to obtain the
blessing ; " I will deliver him, because he hath put his trust
in me." 2. There are in God, all those glorious attributes
and excellences, which, in the nature of things, can possibly
create or confirm hope. God is, 1. strong; 2. wise; 3. true;
4. loving. There cannot be added another capacity to create
a confidence ; for, upon these premises, we cannot fail of
receiving, what is fit for us. 3. God hath obliged himself,
by promise, that we shall have the good of every thing, we
desire : for even losses and denials shall work for the good
of them, that fear God. And, if we will trust the truth of
God for performance of the general, we may well trust his
wisdom to choose for us the particular. But the extraordi-
naries of God are apt to supply the defect of all natural and
human possibilities. 1. God hath, in many instances, given
extraordinary virtue to the active causes and instruments :
to a jaw-bone, to kill a multitude; to three hundred men,
to destroy a great army ; to Jonathan and his armoar-bearer,
to rout a whole garrison. 2. He hath given excellent suffer-
ance and vigorousness to the sufferers, arming them with
strange courage, heroical fortitude, invincible resolution, and
glorious patience : and thus he lays no more Upon us, than
we are able to bear ; for when he increases our sufferings,
he lessens them, by increasing our patience. 3. His provi-
dence is extraregular, and produces strange things beyond
common rules: and he, that led Israel through a sea, and
Oi/VEXIV EV fjLi^O'Biiffffi TloKviS'Kanii; jxeCKa. ta-rv
"Os'cra yap arpiK^cmi; ovK scimai, vy,fxi<; h h/jiTv
Tlai^oirt, a-rpa'^mre, o<rovi i/Atu va-ripov ovra?
ivpoir ov voHvraf oVff SejUi? larl vo^j-at. Homer.
190 OF HOPE.
made a rock pour forth waters, and the heavens to give them
bread and flesh, and whole armies to be destroyed with fan-
tastic noises, and the fortune of all France to be recovered
and entirely revolved, by the arms and conduct of a girl,
against the torrent of the English fortune and chivalry ; can
do, what he please ; and still retain the same affections to
his people, and the same providence over mankind as ever.
And it is impossible for that man to despair, who remembers,
that his helper is omnipotent, and can do what he please'.
Let us rest there awhile ; he can, if he please : and he is in-
finitely loving, willing enough : and he is infinitely wise ;
choosing better for us, then we can do for ourselves. This,
in all ages and chances, hath supported the afflicted people
of God, and carried them on dry ground through a Red-sea.
God invites and cherishes the hopes of men, by all the variety
of his providence.
4. If your case be brought to the last extremity, and that
you are at the pit's brink, even the very margin of the grave,
yet then despair not ; at least put it off a little longer : and
remember, that whatsoever final accident ta.kes away all
hope from you, if you stay a little longer, and, in the mean
while, bear it sweetly, it will also take away all despair too.
For, when you enter into the regions of death, you rest from
all your labours and your fears.
5. Let them, who are tempted to despair of their salva-
tion, consider, how much Christ suffered to redeem us from
sin and its eternal punishment : and he, that considers this,
must needs believe, that the desires, which God had to save
us, were not less than infinite ; and therefore not easily to
be satisfied without it.
6. Let no man despair of God's mercies to forgive him,
unless he be sure, that his sins are greater than God's mer-
cies. If they be not, we have much reason to hope, that the
stronger ingredient will prevail, so long as we are in the time
and state of repentance, and within the possibilities and lati-
tude of the covenant, and as long as any promise can but
reflect upon him with an oblique beam of comfort. Possibly
the man may err in his judgment of circumstances ; and
therefore let him fear : but, because it is not certain he is
mistaken, let him not despair.
Heb. ii. 18.
OF HOPE. 191
7. Consider that God, who knows all the events of men,
and what their final condition shall be, who shall be saved,
and who will perish ; yet he treateth them as his own, calls
them to be his own, offers fair conditions as to his own, gives
them blessings, argmiients of mercy, and instances of fear,
to call them off from death, and to call them home to life ;
and, in all this, shews no despair of happiness to them ; and
therefore much less should any man despair for himself,
since he never was able to read the scrolls of the eternal
predestination.
8. Remember, that despair belongs only to passionate
fools or villains, such as were Achitophel and Judas, or else
to devils and damned persons : and as the hope of salvation
is a good disposition towards it ; so is despair a certain
consignation to eternal ruin. A man may be damned for
despairing to be saved. Despair is the proper passion of
damnation. "God hath placed truth and felicity in heaven;
curiosity and repentance, upon earth: but misery and despair
are the portions of hell"\"
9. Gather together into your spirit and its treasure-
house, the memory, not only all the promises of God, but
also the remembrances of experience, and the former senses
of the Divine favours, that, from thence, you may argue
from times past to the present, and enlarge to the future, and
to greater blessings. For although the conjectures and ex-
pectations of hope are not like the conclusions of faith, yet
they are a helmet against the scorching of despair, in tem-
poral things, and an anchor of the soul sure and steadfast
against the fluctuations of the spirit, in matters of the soul.
St. Bernard reckons divers principles of hope, by enume-
rating the instances of the Divine mercy ; and we may, by
them, reduce this rule to practice, in the following manner :
1. God hath preserved me from many sins: his mercies are
infinite : I hope he will still preserve me from more, and for
ever. 2. 1 have sinned, and God smote me not: his mercies
are still over the penitent : I hope, he will deliver me from
all the evils, I have deserved. He hath forgiven me many
sins of malice ; and therefore surely he will pity my infirmi-
ties. • 3. God visited my heart, and changed it: he loves the
work of his own hands ; and so my heart is now become : I
«" V. Bede.
192 or HOPE.
hope, he will love this too. 4. When I repented, he received
me graciously ; and therefore I hope, if I do my endeavour,
he veil! totally forgive me. 5. He helped my slow and be-
ginning endeavours ; and therefore I hope, he will lead me to
perfection. 6. When he had given me something first, then
he gave me more : I hope, therefore, he will keep me from
falling, and give me the grace of perseverance. 7. He hath
chosen me to be a disciple of Christ's institution : he hath
elected me to his kingdom of grace ; and therefore, I hope,
also to the kingdom of his glory. 8. He died for me, when
I was his enemy ; and therefore, I hope, he will save me,
when he hath reconciled me to him, and is become my
friend. 9. " God hath given us his Son : how should not
he, with him, give us all things else ?" All these St. Bernard
reduces to these three heads, as the instruments of all our
hopes : 1. The charity of God adopting us ; 2. The truth of
his promises ; 3. The power of his performance : which if any
truly weighs, no infirmity or accident can break his hopes
into indiscernible fragments, but some good planks will
remain, after the greatest storm and shipwreck. This was
St. Paul's instrument : " Experience begets hope, and hope'
maketh not ashamed."
10. Do thou take care only of thy duty, of the means
and proper instruments of thy purpose, and leave the end to
God : lay that up with him, and he will take care of all, that
is entrusted to him : and this, being an act of confidence in
God, is also a means of security to thee.
11. By special arts of spiritual prudence and arguments,
secure the confident belief of the resurrection, and thou canst
not but hope for every thing else, which you may reasonably
expect, or lawfully desire, upon the stock of the Divine mer-
cies and promises.
12. If a despair seizes you in a particular temporal in-
stance, let it not defile thy spirit with impvu'e mixture, or
mingle in spiritual considerations : but rather let it make
thee fortify thy soul in matters of religion, that, by being
thrown out of your earthly dwelling and confidence, you
may retire into the strengths of grace, and hope the more
strongly in that, by how much you are the more defeated in
this, that despair of a fortune or a success may become the
necessity of all virtue.
THE LOVE OF GOD. . 193
SECTION III.
Of ChaiHty, or the Love of God.
Love is the greatest thing that God can give us; for him-
self is love ; and it is the greatest thing, we can give to God;
for it will also give ourselves, and carry with it all, that is
ours. The apostle calls it the band of perfection ; it is the
old, and it is the new, and it is the great commandment, and
it is all the commandments; for it is the fulfilling of the law.
It does the work of all other graces, without any instrument
but its own immediate virtue. For as the love to sin makes
a man sin against all his own reason, and all the dis-
courses of wisdom, and all the advices of his friends, and
without temptation, and without opportunity : so does the
love of God ; it makes a man chaste without the laborious
arts of fasting and exterior disciplines, temperate in the midst
of feasts, and is active enough to choose it without any in-
termedial appetites, and reaches at glory through the very
heart of grace, without any other arms but those of love. It
is a grace, that loves God for himself; and our neighbours,
for God. The consideration of God's goodness and bounty,
the experience of those profitable and excellent emanations
from him, may be, and, most commonly, are, the first
motive of our love : but, when we are once entered, and have
tasted the goodness of God, we love the spring for its own
excellency, passing from passion to reason, from thanking to
adoring, from sense to spirit, from considering ourselves to
an union with God : and this is the image and little repre-
sentation of heaven ; it is beatitude in picture, or rather the
infancy and beginnings of glory.
We need no incentives by way of special enumeration to
move us to the love of God ; for we cannot love any thing
for any reason real or imaginary, but that excellence is in-
finitely more eminent in God. There can but two things
create love, perfection and usefulness : to which answer on
our part, 1. Admiration; and, 2. Desire; and both these are
centred in love. For the entertainment of the first, there is
in God an infinite nature, immensity or vastness without
extension or limit, immutability, eternity, omnipotence, om-
niscience, holiness, dominion, providence, bounty, mercy,
VOL. IV. o
194 OF CHARITY, OR
justice, perfection in himself, and the end, to which all things
and all actions must be directed, and will, at last, arrive.
The consideration of which may be heightened, if we con-
sider our distance from all these glories ; our small ness and
limited nature, our nothing, our inconstancy, our age like a
span, our weakness and ignorance, our poverty, our inad-
vertency and inconsideration, our disabilities and disaffec-
tions to do good, our harsh natures and unmerciful inclina-
tions, our universal iniquity, and our necessities and depend-
encies, not only on God originally and essentially, but even
our need of the meanest of God's creatures, and our being
obnoxious to the weakest and most contemptible. But, for
the entertainment of the second, we may consider, that in
him is a torrent of pleasure for the voluptuous ; he is the
fountain of honour for the ambitious ; an inexhaustible trea-
sure for the covetous. Our vices are in love with fantastic
pleasures and images of perfection, which are truly and
really to be found no where but in God. And therefore our
virtues have such proper objects, that it is but reasonable
they should all turn into love : for certain it is, that this
love will turn all into virtue. For in the scrutinies for
righteousness and judgment, when it is inquired, whether
such a person be a good man or no, the meaning is not. What
does he believe ? or what does he hope ? but what he loves ".
The Acts of Love to God are,
1. Love does all things, which may please the beloved
person ; it performs all his commandments : and this is one
of the greatest instances and arguments of our love, that God
requires of us, this is love, " That we keep his command-
ments." Love is obedient.
2. It does all the intimations and secret significations of
his pleasure, whom we love ; and this is an argument of a
great degree of it. The first instance is, it makes the love
accepted: but this gives a greatness and singularity to it.
The first is the least, and less than it cannot do our duty :
but, without this second, we cannot come to perfection.
Great love is also pliant and inquisitive in the instances of
its expression.
" St. Aug. I. ii, Confes. c. 6.
THE LOVE OF GOD. 195
3. Love gives away all things, that so he may advance the
interest of the beloved person: it relieves all, that he would
have relieved, and spends itself in such real significations, as
it is enabled withal. He never loved God, that will quit any
thing of his religion, to save his money. Love is always li-
beral and communicative.
4. It suffers all things, that are imposed by its beloved,
or that can happen for his sake ; or that intervene in his ser-
vice, cheerfully, sweetly, willingly ; expecting, that God
should turn them into good, and instruments of felicity.
" Charity hopeth all things, endureth all things"." Love is
patient and content with any thing, so it be together with
its beloved.
5. Love is also impatient of any thing, that may displease
the beloved person ; hating all sin as the enemy of its friend ;
for love contracts all the same relations, and marries the
same friendships and the same hatreds ; and all affection to
a sin is perfectly inconsistent with the love of God. Love is
not divided between God and God's enemy : we must love
God with all our heart; that is, give him a whole and undi-
vided affection, havino; love for nothino- else, but such thing-s
which he allows, and which he commands, or loves himself.
6. Love endeavours for ever to be present, to converse
with, to enjoy, to be united with its object; loves to be talk-
ing of him, reciting his praises, telling his stories, repeating
his words, imitating his gestures, transcribing his copy in
every thing ; and every degree of union and every degree of
likeness is a degree of love; and it can endure any thing but
the displeasure and the absence of its beloved. For we are
not to use God and religion, as men use perfumes, with which
they are delighted, when they have them, but can very well
be without them. True charity is restless, till it enjoys God
in such instances, in which it wants him : it is like hunger
and thirst, it must be fed or it cannot be answeredP: and
nothing can supply the presence, or make recompence for
the absence of God, or of the effects of his favour, and the
light of his countenance.
7. True love in all accidents looks upon the beloved per-
son, and observes his countenance, and how he approves or
disapproves, and accordingly, looks sad or cheerful. He,
" 1 Cor. xiii. P Amoris ut morsam qui vere senserit,
o 2
196 OF CHARITY, OR
that loves God, is not displeased at those accidents, which
God chooses ; nor murmurs at those changes, which he
makes in his family ; nor envies at those gifts he bestows ;
but chooses, as he likes, and is ruled by his judgment, and
is perfectly of his persuasion ; loving to learn, where God is
the teacher, and being content to be ignorant or silent, where
he is not pleased to open himself.
8. Love is curious of little things, of circumstances and
measures, and little accidents ; not allowing to itself any
infirmity, which it strives not to master, aiming at what it
cannot yet reach, desiring to be of an angelical purity, and
of a perfect innocence, and a seraphical fervour, and fears
every image of offence ; is as much afflicted at an idle word,
as some at an act of adultery, and will not allow to itself so
much anger, as will disturb a child, nor endure the impurity
of a dream 1. And this is the curiosity and niceness of Di-
vine love : this is the fear of God, and is the daughter and
production of love.
The Measures and Rules of Divine Love.
But because this passion is pure as the brightest and
smoothest mirror, and, therefore, is apt to be sullied with
every impurer breath, we must be careful, that our love to
God be governed by these measures.
1. That our love to God be sweet, even, and full of tran-
quillity ; having in it no violences or transportations, but
going on in a course of holy actions and duties, which are
proportionable to our condition and present state ; not to
satisfy all the desire, but all the probabilities and measures
of our strength. A new beginner in religion hath passionate
and violent desires ; but they must not be the measure of his
actions : but he must consider his strength, his late sick-
ness and state of death, the proper temptations of his con-
dition, and stand at first upon his defence ; not go to storm
a strong fort, or attack a potent enemy, or do heroical ac-
tions and fitter for giants in religion. Indiscreet violences
and untimely forwardness are the rocks of religion, against
which tender spirits often suffer shipwreck.
*i Plutarcbus citans carmen de suo Apolline, adjich ex Herodoto quasi de sao,
De eo OS meum continens esto.
THE LOVE OF GOD. 197
2. Let our love be prudent and without illusion : that is,
that it express itself in such instances, which God hath cho-
sen, or which we choose ourselves by proportion to his rules
and measures. Love turns into doating, when religion turns
into superstition. No degree of love can be imprudent, but
the expressions may: we cannot love God too much, but we
may proclaim it in indecent manners.
3. Let our love be firm, constant, and inseparable ; not
coming and returning like the tide, but descending like a
never-failing river, ever running into the ocean of Divine
excellency, passing on in the channels of duty and a constant
obedience, and never ceasing to be, what it is, till it comes
to be, what it desires to be ; still being a river, till it be turn-
ed into sea and vastness, even the immensity of a blessed
eternity.
Although the consideration of the Divine excellences and
mercies be infinitely sufficient to produce in us love to God
(who is invisible, and yet not distant from us, but we feel
him in his blessings, he dwells in our hearts by faith, we feed
on him in the sacrament, and are made all one with him in
the incarnation and glorifications of Jesus) ; yet, that we
may the better enkindle and increase our love to God, the
following advices are not useless.
Helps to increase our Love to God, hy way of Exercise.
1 . Cut off all earthly and sensual loves ; for they pollute
and unhallow the pure and spiritual love. Every degree of
inordinate affection to the things of this world, and every act
of love to a sin, is a perfect enemy to the love of God : and
it is a great shame to take any part of our affection from the
eternal God, to bestow it upon his creature in defiance of
the Creator ; or to give it to the devil, our open enemy, in
disparagement of him, who is the fountain of all excellences
and celestial amities.
2. Lay fetters and restraints upon the imaginative and
fantastic part; because our fancy, being an imperfect and
higher faculty, is usually pleased with the entertainment of
shadows and gauds : and, because the things of the world
fill it with such beauties and fantastic imagery, the fancy
presents such objects, as are amiable to the affections and
198 OF CHARITY, OR
elective powers. Persons of fancy, such as are women and
children, have always the most violent loves : but, there-
fore, if we be careful, with what representments we fill our
fancy, we may the sooner rectify our love. To this purpose
it is good, that we transplant the instruments of fancy into
religion : and for this reason music was brought into churches,
and ornaments, and perfumes, and comely garments, and so-
lemnities, and decent ceremonies, that the busy and less dis-
cerning fancy, being bribed with its proper objects, may be
instrumental to a more celestial and spiritual love.
3. Remove solicitude or worldly cares, and multitudes
of secular businesses: for, if these take up the intention and
actual application of our thoughts and our employments,
they will also possess our passions ; which, if they be filled
with one object, though ignoble, cannot attend another,
though more excellent. We always contract a friendship
and relation with those, with whom we converse : our very
country is dear to us, for our being in it; and the neighbours
of the same village, and those that buy and sell with us, have
seized upon some portions of our love : and, therefore, if we
dwell in the affairs of the world, we shall also grow in love
with them ; and all our love or all our hatred, all our hopes
or all our fears, which the eternal God would willingly se-
cure to himself, and esteem amongst his treasures and pre-
cious things, shall be spent upon trifles and vanities.
4. Do not only choose the things of God, but secure
your inclinations and aptnesses for God and for religion.
For it will be a hard thing for a man, to do such a personal
violence to his first desires, as to choose whatsoever he hath
no mind to. A man will many times satisfy the importunity
and daily solicitations of his first longings : and, therefore,
there is nothing can secure our loves to God, but stopping
the natural fountains, and making religion to grow near the
first desires of the soul.
5. Converse with God, by frequent prayer. In particu-
lar, desire that your desires may be right, and love to have
your affections regular and holy. To which purpose make
very frequent addresses to God by ejaculations and commu-
nions, and an assiduous daily devotion : discover to him all
your wants ; complain to him of all your affronts ; do, as
jHezekiah did, lay your misfortunes and your ill news before
THE LOVK OF GOD. 199
him, spread them before the Lord ; call to him for health, run
to him for counsel, beg of him for pardon; and it is as na-
tural to love him, to whom we make such addresses, and of
whom we have such dependences, as it is for children to love
their parents.
6. Consider the immensity and vastness of the Divine
love to us, expressed in all the emanations of his providence;
1. In his creation; 2. In his conservation of us. For it is
not my prince, or my patron, or my friend, that supports me,
or relieves my needs ; but God, who made the corn, that my
friend sends me ; who created the grapes, and supported him,
who hath as many dependences, and as many natural neces-
sities, and as perfect disabilities, as myself. God, indeed,
made him the instrument of his providence to fae, as he hath
made his own land or his own cattle to him : with this only
difference, that God, by his ministration to me, intends to
do him a favour and a reward, which to natural instruments
he does not. 3. In giving his Son; 4. In forgiving our sins;
5. In adopting us to glory; and ten thousand times ten
thousand little accidents and instances, happening in the
doing every of these : and it is not possible, but, for so great
love, we should give love again; for God, we should give
man; for felicity, we should part with our misery. Nay, so
great is the love of the holy Jesus, God incarnate, that he
would leave all his triumphant glories, and die once more
for man, if it were necessary for procuring felicity to him ".
In the use of these instruments, love will grow in several
knots and steps, like the sugar-canes of India, according to
a thousand varieties in the persons loving ; and it will be
great or less, in several persons ; and in the same, according
to his growth in Christianity. But, in general discoursing,
there are but two states of love ; and those are labour of love,
and the zeal of love : the first is duty ; the second is perfec-
tion.
The two states of Love to God.
The least love that is, must be obedient, pure, simple, and
communicative : that is, it must exclude all affection to sin,
and all inordinate affection to the world, and must be ex-
^ Sie Jesus dixit S. Carpo apud Dionysium epist. ad Demophilum.
200 OF ZEAL.
pressive, according to our power, in the instances of duty,
and must be love for love's sake : and for this love, martyr-
dom is the highest instance ; that is, a readiness of mind ra-
ther to suffer any evil, than to do any. Of this our blessed
Saviour affirmed, that no man had greater love than this:
that is, this is the highest point of duty, the greatest love,
that God requires of man. And yet he, that is the most im-
perfect, must have this love also in preparation of mind, and
must differ from another in nothing, except in the degrees
of promptness and alacrity. And, in this sense, he, that
loves God truly (though but with a beginning and tender
love), yet he loves God with all his heart, that is, with that
degree of love, which is the highest point of our duty, and
of God's charge upon us ; and he, that loves God with all his
heart, may yet increase with the increase of God: just as
there are degrees of love to God among the saints, and yet
each of them love him with all their powers and capacities.
2. But the greater state of love is the zeal of love, which
runs out into excrescences and suckers, like a fruitful and
pleasant tree, or bursting into gums, and producing fruits,
not of a monstrous, but of an extraordinary and heroical
greatness. Concerning which, these cautions are to be ob-
served.
Cautions and Rules concerning Zeal.
1. If zeal be in the beginnings of our spiritual birth, or
be short, sudden, and transient ; or be a consequent of a man's
natural temper ; or come upon any cause but after a long
growth of a temperate and well-regulated love ; it is to be
suspected for passion and frowardness, rather than the ver-
tical point of love^.
2. That zeal only is good, which, in a fervent love, hath
temperate expressions. For let the affection boil, as high as
it can, yet if it boil over into irregular and strange actions,
it will have but few, but will need many, excuses. Elijah
was zealous for the Lord of Hosts ; and yet he was so trans-
ported with it, that he could not receive answer from God,
till, by music, he was recomposed and tamed : and Moses
broke both the tables of the law, by being passionately zeal-
ous against them, that brake the first.
' KaAsv 81 TO {)iXoi/o-&a4 h tm KaXai U7aVTjT£. — Gal. iv. 18.
OF ZEAL. 201
3. Zeal must spend its greatest heat, principally, in those
things, that concern ourselves ; but with great care and re-
straint in those, that concern others.
4. Remember, that zeal, being an excrescence of Divine
love, must, in no sense, contradict any action of love. Love
to God includes love' to our neighbour ; and therefore, no
pretence of zeal for God's glory must make us uncharitable
to our brother; for that is just so pleasing to God, as hatred
is an act of love.
5. That zeal, that concerns others, can spend itself in
nothing but arts, and actions, and charitable instruments, for
their good : and, when it concerns the good of many, that
one should suffer, it must be done by persons of a competent
authority, and in great necessity, in seldom instances, ac-
cording to the law of God or man; but never by private
right, or for trifling accidents, or in mistaken propositions.
The Zelots, in the old law, had authority to transfix and stab
some certain persons : but God gave them warrant ; it was
in the case of idolatry, or such notorious huge crimes, the
danger of which was insupportable, and the cognizance of
which was infallible : and yet that warrant expired with the
synagogue.
6. Zeal, in the instances of our own duty and personal
deportment, is more safe than in matters of counsel, and ac-
tions besides our just duty, and tending towards perfection.
Though, in these instances, there is not a direct sin, even
where the zeal is less wary, yet there is much trouble and
some danger; as, if it be spent in the too-forward vows of
chastity, and restraints of natural and innocent liberties.
7. Zeal may be let loose in the instances of internal, per-
sonal, and spiritual actions, that are matters of direct duty :
as in prayers, and acts of adoration, and thanksgiving, and
frequent addresses : provided that no indirect act pass upon
them to defile them ; such as complacency, and opinions of
sanctity, censuring others, scruples and opinions of neces-
sity, unnecessary fears, superstitious numberings of times and
hours: but let the zeal be as forward as it will, as devout as
it will, as seraphical as it will, in the direct address and in-
tercourse with God, there is no danger, no transgression.
Do all the parts of your duty as earnestly, as if the salvation
' Pbil. iii. 6.
202 OF THE EXTERNAL ACTIONS OF RELIGION.
of all the world, and the whole glory of God, and the con-
fusion of all devils, and all that you hope or desire, did de-
pend upon every one action".
8. Let zeal be seated, in the will and choice, and regu-
lated with prudence and a sober understanding, not in the
fancies and affections^ ; for these will make it full of noise
and empty of profit ; but that will make it deep and smooth,
material and devout.
The sum is this : that zeal is not a direct duty, no where
commanded for itself, and is nothing but a forwardness and
circumstance of another duty, and therefore is then only ac-
ceptable, when it advances the love of God and our neigh-
bours, whose circumstance it is'''. That zeal is only safe, only
acceptable, which increases charity directly : and because
love to our neighbour and obedience to God are the two great
portions of charity, we must never account our zeal to be
good, but as it advances both these, if it be in a matter, that
relates to both; or severally, if it relates severally. St. Paul's
zeal was expressed in preaching without any offerings or sti-
pend, in travelling, in spending and being spent for his flock,
in suffering, in being willing to be accursed, for love of the
people of God and his countrymen. Let our zeal be as great
as his was, so it be in affections to others, but not at all in an-
gers against them : in the first, there is no danger ; in the se-
cond, there is no safety. In brief, let your zeal (if it must be
expressed in anger) be always more severe against thyself
than against others".
^ The other part of love to God is love to our neighbour, for
which I have reserved the paragraph of alms.
Of the external actions of religion.
Religion teaches us to present to God our bodies as well
as our souls ; for God is the Lord of both ; and if the body
serves the soul in actions, natural, and civil, and intellectual,
it must not be eased in the only offices of religion, unless
the body shall expect no portion of the rewards of religion,
such as are resuri'ection, re-union, and glorification. " Our
" Larora, come se tu avessi a conipar ognl hora : Adora, come se tu avessi a mo-
rir allora.
» Rom. X. 2. ^^ Tit. ii. 14. Rev. iii. 16. " 2 Cor. vii. 11.
OF READING OR HEARING, &C. 203
bodies are to God a living sacrifice : and to present them to
God, is holy and acceptable^.
The actions of the body, as it serves to religion, and as it
is distinguished from sobriety and justice, either relate to the
word of God, or to prayer, or to repentance, and make these
kinds of external actions of religion. 1. Reading and hear-
ing the word of God ; 2. Fasting and corporal austerities,
called by St. Paul, bodily exercise ; 3. Feasting, or keeping
days of public joy and thanksgiving.
SECTION IV.
Of reading or hearing the Word of God.
Reading and hearing the word of God are but the several
circumstances of the same duty ; instrumental especially to
faith ; but, consequently, to all other graces of the Spirit. It
is all one to us, whether, by the eye or by the ear, the Spirit
conveys his precepts to us. If we hear St. Paul saying to
us, that " whoremongers and adulterers God will judge," or
read it in one of his epistles ; in either of them, we are
equally and sufficiently instructed. The Scriptures read are
the same thing to us, which the same doctrine was, when it
was preached by the disciples of our blessed Lord ; and we
are to learn of either, with the same dispositions. There are
many, that cannot read the word, and they must take it in
by the ear ; and they, that can read, find the sanic word of
God by the eye. It is necessary, that all men learn it in some
way or other, and it is sufficient, in order to their practice,
that they learn it any way. The word of God is all those
commandments and revelations, those promises and threaten-
ings, the stories and sermons recorded in the Bible : nothing
else is the word of God, that we know of by any certain in-
strument. The good books and spiritual discourses, the ser-
mons or homilies written or spoken by men, are but the word
of men, or rather explications of, and exhortations according
to, the word of God : but, of themselves, they are not the
word of God. In a sermon, the text only is in a proper
y Rom. xii. 1.
204 OF READING OR HEARING
sense to be called God's word : and yet good sermons are of
great use and convenience for the advantages of religion.
He, that preaches an hour together against drunkenness with
the tongue of men or angels, hath spoke no other word of
God but this, " Be not drunk with wine, wherein is ex-
cess :" and he, that writes that sermon in a book, and pub-
lishes that book, hath preached to all, that read it, a loud-
er sermon, than could be spoken in a church. This I say
to this purpose, that we may separate truth from error, po-
pular opinions from substantial truths. For God preaches
to us in the Scripture, and by his secret assistances and spi-
ritual thoughts and holy motions : good men preach to us,
when they, by popular arguments, and human arts and com-
pliances, expound and press any of those doctrines, which
God hath preached unto us in his holy word. But,
1. The Holy Ghost is certainly the best preacher in the
world, and the words of Scripture the best sermons.
2. All the doctrine of salvation is plainly set down there,
that the most unlearned person, by hearing it read, may un-
derstand all his duty. What can be plainer spoken than this,
*' Thou shalt not kill. Be not drunk with wine. Husbands,
love your wives. Whatsoever ye would that men should do
to you, do ye so to them." The wit of man cannot more
plainly tell us our duty, or more fully, than the Holy Ghost
hath done already.
3. Good sermons and good books are of excellent use :
but yet they can serve no other end, but that we practise the
plain doctrines of Scripture.
4. What Abraham, in the parable said, concerning the
brethren of the rich man, is here very proper ; " They have
Moses and the prophets, let them hear them : but if they re-
fuse to hear these, neither will they believe ; though one should
arise from the dead to preach vinto them^."
5. Reading the Holy Scriptures is a duty expressly com-
manded us^ and is called in Scripture " preaching :" all other
preaching is the effect of human skill and industry, and al-
though of great benefit, yet it is but an ecclesiastical ordi-
nance ; the law of God concerning preaching being expressed
^ Luke xvi. 29. 31.
a Deut. xxxi. 13. Luke xxiv. 45. Matt. xxii. 29. Acts xv. 21. Rer. i. 3.
2 Tim. iii. 16.
THE WORD OF GOD. 205
in the matter of reading the Scriptures, and hearing that word
of God which is, and as it is, there described.
But this duty is reduced to practice in the following
rules.
Rules for hearing or reading the Word of God.
1. Set apart some portion of thy time, according to the
opportunities of thy calling and necessary employment, for
the reading of Holy Scriptures ; and, if it be possible, every
day, read or hear some of it read : you are sure, that book
teaches all truth, commands all holiness, and promises all
happiness.
2. When it is in your power to choose, accustom your-
self to such portions, which are most plain and certain duty,
and which contain the story of the life and death of our
blessed Saviour. Read the gospels, the Psalms of David ;
and especially those portions of Scripture, which, by the
wisdom of the church, are appointed to be publickly read upon
Sundays and holydays, viz. the epistles and gospels. In the
choice of any other portions, you may advise with a spiritual
guide, that you may spend your time with most profit.
3. Fail not diligently to attend to the reading of Holy
Scriptures, upon those days, wherein it is most publickly and
solemnly read in churches : for, at such times, besides the
learning our duty, we obtain a blessing along with it ; it be-
coming to us, upon those days, a part of the solemn Divine
worship.
4. When the word of God is read or preached to you,
be sure, you be of a ready heart and mind, free from worldly
cares and thoughts, diligent to hear, careful to mark, studi-
ous to remember, and desirous to practise all, that is com-
manded, and to live according to it : do not hear for any
other end, but to become better in your life, and to be in-
structed in every good work, and to increase in the love and
service of God.
5. Beg of God, by prayer, that he would give you the
spirit of obedience and profit, and that he would, by his
Spirit, write the word in your heart, and that you describe it
in your life. To which purpose serve yourself of some af-
fectionate ejaculations to that purpose, before and after this
duty.
20G OF READING OR HEARING, &C.
Concerning spiritual Books mid ordinary Sermons, take
in these advices also.
6. Let not a prejudice to any man's person hinder thee
from receiving good by his doctrine, if it be according to
godliness : but (if occasion offer it, or especially if duty pre-
sent it to thee, that is, if it be preached in that assembly,
where thou art bound to be present) accept the word preached
as a message from God, and the minister, as his angel in that
ministration.
7. Consider and remark the doctrine, that is represented
to thee in any discourse; and if the preacher adds accidental
advantages, any thing to comply with thy weakness, or to
put thy spirit into action, or holy resolution, remember it,
and make use of it. But if the preacher be a weak person,
yet the text is the doctrine, thou art to remember ; that con-
tains all thy duty, it is worth thy attendance to hear that
spoken often, and renewed upon thy thoughts : and though
thou beest a learned man, yet the same thing, which thou
knowest already, if spoken by another, may be made active
by that application. I can better be comforted by my own
considerations, if another hand applies them, than if I do it
myself; because the word of God does not work as a natu-
ral agent, but as a Divine instrument : it does not prevail by
the force of deduction and artificial discoursings only, but
chiefly by way of blessing in the ordinance, and in the mi-
nistry of an appointed person. At least, obey the public
order, and reverence the constitution, and give good example
of humility, charity, and obedience.
8. When Scriptures are read, you are only to inquire,
with diligence and modesty, into the meaning of the Spirit:
but if homilies or sermons be made upon the words of scrip-
ture, you are to consider, whether all that be spoken, be con-
formable to the Scriptures. For, although you may practise
for human reasons, and human arguments, ministered from
the preacher's art ; yet you must practise nothing but the
command of God, nothing but the doctrine of Scripture, that
is, the text.
9. Use the advice of some spiritual or other prudent man,
for the choice of such spiritual books, which may be of use
and benefit for the edification of thy spirit in the ways of
OF FASTING.
207
holy living; and esteem that time well accounted ; for that
is prudently and affectionately employed in hearing or read-
ing good books and pious discourses; ever remembering,
that God, by hearing us speak to him in prayer, obliges us
to hear him speak to us in his word, by what instrument so-
ever it be conveyed.
SECTION V.
Of Fasting.
Fasting, if it be considered in itself without relation to
spiritual ends, is a duty, no where enjoined or counselled.
But Christianity hath to do with it, as it may be made an in-
strument of the Spirit, by subduing the lusts of the flesh, or
removing any hinderances of religion. And it hath been
practised by all ages of the church, and advised in order to
three ministries; 1. To prayer; 2. To mortification of bodily
lusts ; 3. To repentance : and it is to be practised, according
to the followino- measures.
&
Rules for Christian Fasting.
1. Fasting, in order to prayer, is to be measured by the
proportions of the times of prayer; that is, it ought to be a
total fast from all things, during the solemnity ; unless a
probable necessity intervene. Thus the Jews ate nothing
• upon the sabbath-days, till their great offices were performed;
that is, about the sixth hour : and St. Peter used it as an
argument, that the apostles in Pentecost were not drunk,
because it was but the third hour of the day ; of such a day,
in which it was not lawful to eat or drink, till the sixth
hour : and the Jews were oifended at the disciples, for pluck-
ing the ears of corn, on the sabbath, early in the morning,
because it was before the time, in which, by their customs,
they esteemed it lawful to break their fast. In imitation of
this custom, and in prosecution of the reason of it, the
Christian church hath religiously observed fasting, before
the holy communion ; and the more devout persons (though
without any obligation at all), refused to eat or drink,
till they had finished their morning devotions : and fuither
208 OF FASTING.
yet upon days of public humiliation, which are designed to
be spent wholly in devotion, and for the averting God's judg-
ments (if they were imminent), fasting is commanded toge-
,ther with prayer : commanded (I say) by the church to this
end ; that the spirit might be clearer and more angelical,
when it is quitted in some proportions from the loads of
flesh.
2. Fasting, when it is in order to prayer, must be a total
abstinence from all meat, or else an abatement of the quan-
tity : for the help, which fasting does to prayer, cannot be
served by changing flesh into fish, or milk-meats into dry
diet; but by turning much into little, or little into none at
all, during the time of solemn and extraordinary prayer.
3. Fasting, as it is instrumental to prayer, must be at-
tended with other aids of the like virtue and efficacy; such
as are removing for the time all worldly cares and secular
businesses : and therefore our blessed Saviour enfolds these
parts within the same caution ; " take heed, lest your hearts
be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and the
cares of this world, and that day overtake you unawares."
To which add alms ; for, upon the wings of fasting and alms,
holy prayer infallibly mounts up to heaven''.
4. When fasting is intended to serve the duty of repent-
ance, it is then best chosen, when it is short, sharp, and afflic-
tive; that is, either a total abstinence from all nourishment,
according as we shall appoint, or be appointed ; during such
a time, as is separate for the solemnity and attendance upon
the employment : or, if we shall extend our severity beyond
the solemn days, and keep our anger against our sin, as we
are to keep our sorrow, that is, always in a readiness, and
often to be called upon; then, to refuse a pleasant morsel, to
abstain from the bread of our desires, and only to take whole-
some and less-pleasing nourishment, vexing our appetite by
the refusing a lawful satisfaction, since, in its petulancy and
luxury, it preyed upon an unlawful.
5. Fasting, designed for repentance, must be ever joined
with an extreme care, that we fast from sin : for there is no
greater folly or indecency in the world, than to commit that,
for which I am now judging and condemning myself. This
is the best fast, and the other may serve to promote the in-
*> Jejunium sine eleemosjna, lanipas sine oleo. — St. Aug.
OF FASTING. 209
terest of this, by increasing the disaffection to it, and multi-
plying arguments against it,
6. He that fasts for repentance, must, during that so-
lemnity, abstain from all bodily delights, and the sensuality
of all his senses and his appetites : for a man must not, when
he mourns in his fast, be merry in his sport: weep at dinner,
and laugh all day after ; have a silence in his kitchen, and
music in his chamber ; judge the stomach, and feast the
other senses. I deny not, but a man may, in a single in-
stance, punish a particular sin with a proper instrument. If
a man have offended in his palate, he may choose to fast
only ; if he have sinned in softness and in his touch, he may
choose to lie hard, or work hard, and use sharp inflictions :
but although this discipline be proper and particular, yet be-
cause the sorrow is of the whole man, no sense must rejoice,
or be with any study or purpose, feasted and entertained
softly. This rule is intended to relate to the solemn days,
appointed for repentance publickly or privately :' besides
which, in the whole course of our life^ even in the midst of
our most festival and freer joys, we may sprinkle some single
instanced and acts of self-condemning, or punishing ; as to
refuse a pleasant morsel or a delicious draught with a tacit
remembrance of the sin, that now returns to displease my
spirit. And, though these actions be single, there is no in-
decency in them ; because a man may abate of his ordinary
liberty and bold freedom, with great prudence, so he does it
without singularity in himself, or trouble to others ; but he
may not abate of his solemn sorrow : that may be caution ;
but this would be softness, effeminacy, and indecency.
7. When fasting is an act of mortification, that is, is in-
tended to subdue a bodily lust, as the spirit of fornication, or
the fondness of strong and impatient appetites, it must not
be a sudden, sharp, and violent fast, but a state of fasting, a
diet of fasting, a daily lessening our portion of meat and
drink, and a choosing such a coarse dief", which may make
the least preparation for the lusts of the body. He that fasts
three days without food, will weaken other parts, more than
the ministers of fornication : and when the meals return as
usually, they also will be served, as soon as any. In the
mean time, they will be supplied and made active by the ac-
^ Digluna assai chi mal inangia,
VOL. IV. P
210 OF FASTING.
cidental heat, that comes with such violent fastings : for this
is a kind of aerial devil ; the prince, that rules in the air, is
the devil of fornication ; and he will be as tempting with the
windiness of a violent fast, as with the flesh of an ordinary
meal''. But a daily subtraction of the nourishment will in-
troduce a less busy habit of body ; and that will prove the
more effectual remedy.
8. Fasting alone will not cure this devil, though it helps
much towards it : but it must not, therefore, be neglected,
but assisted by all the proper instruments of remedy against
this unclean spirit: and what it is unable to do alone, in com-
pany with other instruments, and God's blessing upon them,
it may effect.
9. All fasting, for whatsoever end it be undertaken, must
be done without any opinion of the necessity of the thing
itself, without censuring others, with all humility, in order
to the proper end ; and just as a man takes physic ; of which
no man hath reason to be proud, and no man thinks it ne-
cessary, but because he is in sickness, or in danger and dis-
position to it.
10. All fasts, ordained by lawful authority, are to be ob-
served in order to the same purposes, to which they are en-
joined ; and to be accompanied with actions of the same na-
ture, just as it is in private fasts: for there is no other dif-
ference, but that, in public, our superiors choose for us, what,
in private, we do for ourselves.
1 1 . Fasts, ordained by lawful authority, are not to be
neglected ; because alone they cannot do the thing, in order
to which they were enjoined. It may be, one day of humi-
liation will not obtain the blessing, or alone kill the lust ;
yet it must not be despised, if it can do any thing towards
it. An act of fasting is an act of self-denial ; and, though
it do not produce the habit, yet it is a good act.
12. When the principal end, why a fast is publickly pre-
scribed, is obtained by some other instrument, in a particular
person ; as if the spirit of fornication be cured by the rite of
marriage, or by a gift of chastity ; yet that person, so eased,
is not freed from the fasts of the church by that alone, if
those fasts can prudently serve any other end of religion, as
*• Clii digiuna, et allro beo uon fa,
Spaiagn;! il i)aiie, el al inftriio va, See chap, ii, sect, ii, 2.
OF FASTING. 211
that of prayer, or repentance, or mortification of some other
appetite : for, when it is instrumental to any end of the Spirit,
it is freed from superstition; and then we must have some
other reason to quit us from the obligation, or that alone will
not do it.
13. When the fast, publickly commanded by reason of
some indisposition, in the particular person, cannot operate
to the end of the commandment; yet the avoiding offence,
and the complying with public order, is reason enough to
make the obedience to be necessary. For he, that is other-
wise disobliged, as when the reason of the law ceases as to
his particular, yet remains still obliged, if he cannot do
otherwise, without scandal : but this is an obligation of cha-
rity, not of justice.
14. All fasting is to be used with prudence and charity :
for there is no end, to which fasting serves, but may be ob-
tained by other instruments : and, therefore, it must, at no
hand, be made an instrument of scruple ; or become an enemy
to our health ; or be imposed upon persons, that are sick or
aged, or to whom it is, in any sense, uncharitable, such as
are wearied travellers ; or to whom, in the whole kind of it,
it is useless, such as are women with child, poor people, and
little children. But, in these cases, the church hath made
provision, and inserted caution into her laws; and they are
to be reduced to practice, according to custom, and the sen-
tence of prudent persons, with great latitude, and without
nicenessand curiosity : having this in our first care, that we
secure our virtue ; and, next, that we secure our health, that
we may the better exercise the labours of virtue ; lest, out of
too much austerity, we bring ourselves to that condition, that
it be necessary to be indulgent to softness, ease, and extreme
tenderness''.
15. Let not intemperance be the prologue or the epilogue
to your fast ; lest the fast be so far from taking off any thing
of the sin, that it be an occasion to increase it : and, there-
fore, when the fast is done, be careful, that no supervening
act of gluttony or excessive drinking unhallow the religion
of the past day; but eat temperately, according to the
c S. Basil. Monast. Constit. enp. 5. Cassian. col. 21. cap. 22. Nepercausara ne-
cessitatis eij iiiipiiiganius, ut voluptalibus serviainus,
p2
212 : OF KEEPIXG I'ESTiVAL DAYS TO GOD.
propoi'tion of other meals, lest gluttony keep cither of the
gates to abstinence'.
The Benefits of Fasting.
He that undertakes to enumerate the benefits of fasting,
may, in the next page, also reckon all the benefits of physic:
for fasting is not to be commended as a duty, but as an in-
strument ; and, in that sense, no man can reprove it, or un-
dervalue it, but he that knows neither spiritual arts, nor spi-
ritual necessities. But, by the doctors of the church, it is
called the nourishment of prayer, the restraint of lust, the
wings of the soul, the diet of angels, the instrument of hu-
mility and self-denial, the purification of the spirit : and the
paleness and meagreness of visage, which is consequent to
the daily fast of great mortifiers, is, by St. Basil, said to be
the mark in the forehead, which the angel observed, when
he signed the saints in the forehead to escape the wrath of
God. " The soul that is greatly vexed, which goeth stoop-
ing and feeble, and the eyes that fail, and the hungry soul,
shall give thee praise and righteousness, O Lord"^.
SECTION VI.
Of keeping Festivals, and Dai/s holt/ to the Lord: particular/i/,
.' the Lord's Dai/.
True natural religion, that, which was common to all
nations and ages, did principally rely upon four great propo-
sitions : 1. That there -is one God ; 2. That God is nothing
of those things, which we see ; 3. That God takes care of
all things below, and governs all the world ; 4. That he is
the great Creator of all things, without himself: and, accord-
ing to these, were framed the four first precepts of the deca-
logue. In the first, the unity of the Godhead is expressly
affirmed : in the second, his invisibility and immateriality :
iti the third, is affirmed Gcid's government and providence,
by avenging them, that swear falsely by his name ; by which
also his omniscience is declared : In the fourth command-
ment, he proclaims himself the Maker of heaven and earth :
f 'AfAvvi/xivoi Tnv yifA,i^av, — Naz, S Baruch, ii. v. 18.
OF KEEPING !• ESTIVA L DAYS TO GOD. 213
for, ill memory of God's rest from the work of six days, the
seventh was hallowed into a sabbath ; and the keeping it
was a confessino- God to be the irreat maker of heaven and
earth ; and consequently to this, it also was a confession of his
goodness, his omnipotence, and his wisdom; all which were
written with a sun-beam in the great book of the creature.
So long as the law of the sabbath was bound upon God's
people, so long God would have that to be the solemn man-
ner of confessing these attributes ; but when, the priesthood
being changed, there was a change also of the law, the great
duty remained unalterable in changed circumstances: We
are eternally bound to confess God Almighty to be the maker
of heaven and earth ; but the manner of confessincr it is
changed from a rest, or a doing nothing, to a speaking some-
thing ; from a day to a symbol ; from a ceremony to a sub-
stance ; from a Jewish rite to a Christian duty ; we profess
it in our creed, we confess it in our lives ; we describe it by
every line of our life, by every action of duty, by faith, and
trust, and obedience : and we do also, upon great reason,
comply with the Jewish manner of confessing the creation,
so far as it is instrumental to a real duty. We keep one day
in seven, and so confess the manner and circumstance of the
creation ; and we rest also, that we may tend holy duties :
so imitating God's rest better than the Jew in Synesius.who
lay upon his face from evening to evening, and could not,
by stripes or wounds, be raised up to steer the ship in a great
storm. God's rest was not a natural cessation ; he, who
could not labour, could not be said to rest : but God's rest
is to be understood to be a beholding and a rejoicing in his
work finished : and therefore we truly represent God's rest,
- when we confess and rejoice in God's works and God's glory.
This the Christian churcli does upon every day ; but
especially upon the Lord's day, which she hath set apart for
this and all other offices of religion, being determined to this
day by the resurrection of her dearest Lord, it being the first
day of joy the church ever had. And now, upon the Lord's
day, we are not tied to the rest of the sabbath, but to all the
work of the sabbath ; and we are to abstain from bodily
labour, not because it is a direct duty to us, as it was to the
Jews ; but because it is necessary in order to our duty, that
we attend to the offices of religion.
214 OF KEEPING THE LORDS DAY, &C.
The observation of the Lord's day differs nothing from
the observation of the sabbath, in the matter of religion, but
in the manner. They differ in the ceremony and external
rite: rest, with them, was the principal ; with us, it is the
accessory. They differ in the office or forms of worship :
for they were then to worship God as a creator and a gentle
father; we are to add to that, our Redeemer, and all his
other excellences and mercies. And, though we have more
natural and proper reason to keep the Lord's day tlian the
sabbath, yet the Jews had a Divine commandment for their
day, which we have not for ours : but we have many com-
mandments to do all that honour to God, v.hich was in-
tended in the fourth commandment; and the apostles ap-
pointed the first day of the week for doing it in solemn as-
semblies. And the manner of worshipping God, and doing
him solemn honour and service upon this day, we may best
observe in the followino; measures.
Rules for keeping the Lord's Dai/ and other Christian Festivals.
1. When you go about to distinguish festival days from
common, do it not, by lessening the devotions of ordinary
days, that the common devotion may seem bigger upon fes-
tivals ; but, on every day, keep your ordinary devotions en-
tire, and enlarge upon the holy-day.
2. Upon the Lord's day, we must abstain from all servile
and laborious works, except such, which are matters of ne-
cessity, of common life, or of great charity : for these are
permitted by that authority, which hath separated the day
for holy uses. The sabbath of the Jews, though consisting
principally in rest, and established by God, did yield to
these. The labour of love and the labours of religion, were
not against the reason and the spirit of the commandment,
for which the letter was decreed, and to which it ought to
minister. And, therefore, much more is it so on the Lord's
day, where the letter is wholly turned into spirit, and there
is no commandment of God, but of spiritual and holy actions.
The priests might kill their beasts, and dress them for sacri-
fice ; and Christ, though born imder the law, might heal a
sick man ; and the sick man might carry his bed to witness
his recovery, and confess the mercy, and Jeap and dance to
OF KEEPING THE LORD^S DAY, SiC. 215
God for joy ; and an ox might be led to water, and an ass be
haled out of a ditch ; and a man may take physic, and he
may cat meat, and therefore there were of necessity some to
prepare and minister it : and the performing these labours
did not consist in minutes and just determining stages ; but
they had, even then, a reasonable latitude ; so only as to ex-
clude unnecessary labour, or such, as did not minister to
charity or religion. And, therefore, this is to be enlarged in
the gospel, whose sabbath or rest is but a circumstance, and
accessory to the principal and spiritual duties. Upon the
Christian sabbath necessity is to be served first ; then, cha-
rity ; and then, religion ; for this is to give place to charity,
in great instances, and the second to the first, in all ; and, in
all cases, God is to be worshipped in spirit and in truth.
3. The Lord's day, being the remembrance of a great
blessing, must be a day of joy, festivity, spiritual rejoicing,
and thanksgiving: and therefore it is a proper work of the
day, to let your devotions spend themselves in singing or
reading psalms; in recounting the great works of God ; in
remembering his mercies; in worshipping his excellencies; in
celebrating his attributes ; in admiring his person ; in send-
ing portions of pleasant meat to them, for whom nothing is
provided ; and in all the arts and instruments of advancing
God's glory, and the reputation of religion : in which it were
a great decency that a memorial of the resurrection should
be inserted, that the particular religion of the day be not
swallowed up in the general. And of this we may the more
easily serve ourselves, by rising seasonably in the morning
to private devotion, and by retiring at the leisures and
spaces of the day, not employed in public oftices.
4. Fail not to be present at the public hours and places
of prayer, entering early and cheerfully, attending reverently
and devoutly, abiding patiently during the whole office,
piously assisting at the prayers, and gladly also hearing the
sermon ; and, at no hand, omitting to receive the holy com-
munion, when it is offered (unless some great reason excuse
it), this being the great solemnity of thanksgiving, and a pro-
per work of the day.
5. After the solemnities are past, and in the intervals be-
tween the morning and evening devotion (as you shall find
opportunity), visit sick persons, reconcile differences, do
216 OF KEEPING THE LORd's DAY, &C.
offices of neighbourhood, inquire into the needs of the poor,
especially housekeepers, relieve them, as they shall need,
and as you are able : for then we truly rejoice in God, when
we make our neighbours, the poor members of Christ, rejoice
together with us.
6. Whatsoever you are to do yourself, as necessary, you
are to take care, that others also, who are under your charge,
do in their station and manner. Let your servants be called
to church, and all your family, that can be spared from ne-
cessary and great household ministries : those that cannot,
let them go by turns, and be supplied otherwise, as well as
they may : and provide, on these days especially, that they
be instructed in the articles of faith and necessary parts of
their duty.
7. Those, who labour hard in the week, must be eased
upon the Lord's day ; such ease being a great charity and
alms : but, at no hand, must they be permitted to use any
unlawful games, any thing forbidden by the laws, any thing
that is scandalous, or any thing that is dangerous and apt to
mingle sin with it ; no games prompting to wantonness, to
drunkenness, to quarrelling, to ridiculous and superstitious
customs ; but let" their refreshments be innocent, and chari-
table, and of good report, and not exclusive of the duties of
religion.
8. Beyond these bounds, because neither God nor man
hath passed any obligation upon us, we must preserve our
Christian liberty, and not suffer ourselves to be entangled
with a yoke of bondage : for even a good action may become
a snare to us, if we make it an occasion of scruple by a pre-
tence of necessity, binding loads upon the conscience not
with the bands of God, but of men, and of fancy, or of opi-
nion, or of tyranny. Whatsoever is laid upon us by the
hands of man, must be acted and accounted of by the mea-
sures of a man : but our best measure is this ; he keeps the
Lord's day best, that keeps it with most religion and with
most charity.
9. What the church hath done in the article of the resur-
rection, she hath in some measure done, in the other articles
of the nativity, of the ascension, and of the descent of the
Holy Ghost at Pentecost : and so great blessings deserve
an anniversary solemnity ; since he is a very unthankful per-
OF PRAYER, 217
son, that does not often record them in the whole year, and
esteem them the ground of his hopes, the object of his faith,
the comfort of his troubles, and the great effluxes of the
Divine mercy, greater than all the victories over our temporal
enemies, for which all glad persons usually give thanks. And
if, with great reason, the memory of the resurrection does
return solemnly every week, it is but reason, the other should
return once a year. To which \ add, that the commemora-
tion of the articles of our Creed in solemn days and offices is
a very excellent instrument to convey and imprint the sense
and memory of it, upon the spirits of the most ignorant per-
son. For, as a picture may. with more fancy, convey a story
to a man than a plain narrative either in word or writing : so
a real representment, and an office of remembrance, and a
day to declare it, is far more impressive than a picture, or any
other art of making and fixing imagery.
10. The memories of the saints are precious to God, and
therefore they ought also to be so to us : and such persons,
who serve God by holy living, industrious preaching, and
•religious dying, ought to have their names preserved in
honour, and God be glorified in them, and their holy doc-
trines and lives published and imitated : and we, by so doing,
give testimony to the article of the communion of saints.
But, in these cases, as every church is to be sparing in the
number of days, so also should she be temperate in her in-
junctions, not imposing them but upon voluntary and un-
busied persons, without snare or burden. But the holy day
is best kept, by giving God thanks for the excellent persons,
apostles, or martyrs, we then remember, and by imitating
their lives ; this all may do : and they, that can also keep the
solemnity, must do that too, when it is publickly enjoined.
The mixed act iom of Religion are, 1. Prai/er, 2. A/tns, 3. Re-
pentance, 4. Receiving the blessed Sacrament.
SECTION VII.
Of Prayer.
There is no greater argument in the world of our spi-
litual danger and unwillingness to religion, than the back-
218
OF PRAYER.
wardness, which most men have always, and all men hare
sometimes, to say their prayers : so weary of their length, so
glad when they are done, so witty to excuse and frustrate
an opportunity: and yet all is nothing but a desiring of God
to give us the greatest and the best things we can need, and
which can make us happy : it is a work so easy, so honour-
able, and to so great purpose, that in all the instances of re-
ligion and providence (except only the incarnation of his
Son), God hath not given us a greater argument of his will-
ingness to have us saved, and of our unwillingness to accept
it, his goodness and our gracelessness, his infinite condescen-
sion and our carelessness and folly, than by rewarding so
easy a duty with so great blessings.
Motives to Prai/er.
I cannot say any thing beyond this very consideration
and its appendages to invite Christian people to pray often.
But we may consider that, 1. It is a duty commanded by God
and his holy Son. 2. It is an act of grace and highest ho-
nour, that we, dust and ashes, are admitted to speak to the
eternal God, to run to him as to a father, to lay open our
wants, to complain of our burdens, to explicate our scruples,
to beg remedy and ease, support and counsel, health and
safety, deliverance and salvation. And, 3. God hath invited
us to it by many gracious promises of hearing us. 4. He
hath appointed his most glorious Son to be the precedent of
prayer, and to make continual intercession for us to the throne
of grace. 5. He hath appointed an angel to present the prayers
of his servants. And, 6. Christ unites them to his own, and
sanctifies them, and makes th^m effective and prevalent; and,
7. hath put it into the hands of men to rescind, or alter, all
the decrees of God, which are of one kind (that is, condi-
tional, and concerning ourselves and our final estate, and
many instances of our intermedial or temporal), by the power
of prayers. 8. And the prayers of men have saved cities and
kingdoms from ruin : prayer hath raised dead men to life,
hath stopped the violence of fire, shut the mouths of wild
beasts, hath altered the course of nature, caused rain in
Egypt, and drought in the sea; it made the sun to go from
west to east, and the moon to stand still, and rocks and
OF PRAYER. 219
mountains to walk ; and it cures diseases without physic, and
makes physic to do the work of nature, and nature to do the
work of grace, and grace to do the work of God, and it does
miracles of accident and event: and yet prayer, that does all
this, is, of itself, nothing but an ascent of the mind to God,
a desiring things fit to be desired, and an expression of this
desire to God, as we can, and as becomes us. And our un-
willingness to pray, is nothing else but a not desiring, what
we ought passionately to long for ; or, if we do desire it, it
is a choosing rather to miss our satisfaction and felicity, than
to ask for it.
There is no more to be said in this affair, but that we re-
duce it to practice, according to the following rules.
Ruksfor the practice of Prater,
1 . We must be careful, that we never ask any thing of
God, that is sinful, or that directly ministers to sin : for that
is to ask God to dishonour himself, and to undo us. We had
need consider, what we pray ; for before it returns in bless-
ing, it must be joined with Christ's intercession, and presented
to God, Let us principally ask of God power and assist-
ances to do our duty, to glorify God, to do good works, to
live a good life, to die in the fear and favour of God, and
eternal life : these things God delights to give, and com-
mands, that we shall ask, and we may, with confidence, ex-
pect to be answered graciously ; for these things are promised
without any reservation of a secret condition : if we ask
them, and do our duty towards the obtaining them, we are
sure never to miss them.
2. We may lawfully pray to God for the gifts of the
Spirit, that minister to holy ends ; such as are the gift of
preaching, the spirit of prayer, good expression, a ready and
unloosed tongue, good understanding, learning, opportuni-
ties to publish them, &.c. with these only restraints. 1. That
we cannot be so confident of the event of those prayers as
of the former. 2. That we must be curious to secure our
intention in these desires, that we may not ask them to serve
our own ends, but only for God's glory ; and then we shall
have them, or a blessing for desiring them. In order to such
purposes our intentions in the first desires cannot be amiss ;
220
OF PRAYEll.
because they are able to sanctify other things, and therefore
cannot be unhallowed themselves. 3. We must submit to
God's will, desiring him to choose our employment, and to
furnish our persons, as he shall see expedient.
3. Whatsoever we may lawfully desire of temporal things,
we may lawfully ask of God in prayer, and we may expect
them, as they are promised. 1. Whatsoever is necessary to
our life and being, is promised to us : and therefore we may,
with certainty, expect food and raiment; food to keep us
alive, clothing to keep us from nakedness and shame : so
long as our life is permitted to us, so long all things ne-
cessary to our life shall be ministered. We may be secure of
maintenance, but not secure of our life ; for that is promised,
not this : only concerning food and raiment we are not to
make accounts' by the measure of our desires, but by the
measure of our needs. 2. Whatsoever is convenient for us,
pleasant, and modestly delectable, we may pray for : so we
do it, 1. With submission to God's will. 2. Without impa-
tient desires. 3. That it be not a trifle and inconsiderable,
but a matter so grave and concerning, as to be a fit matter
to be treated on, between God and our souls. 4. That we ask
"it not to spend upon our lusts, but for ends of justice, or
charity, or religion, and that they be employeft with so-
briety.
4. He that would pray with effect, must live with care
and piety''. For although God gives to sinners and evil per-
sons the common blessings of life and chance ; yet either
they want the comfort and blessing of those blessings, or
they become occasions of sadder accidents to them, or serve
to upbraid them in their ingratitude or irreligion: and, in all
cases, they are not the effects of prayer, or the fruits of pro-
mise, or instances of a father's love ; for they cannot be ex-
pected with confidence, or received without danger, or used
without a curse and mischief in their company. But as all
sin is an impediment to prayer, so some have a special indis-
position towards acceptation ; such are uncharitableness and
wrath, hypocrisy in the present action, pride and lust : he-
cause these, by defiling the body or the spirit, or by contra-
dicting some necessary ingredient in prayer (such as are
•> 1 John, iii. 22. John, ix. 31. Isa. i. 15. Iviii. .5. Mai. iii. 10. '2 Tim. ii. 8.
Psal. iv= 6. Ixvi, 8.
OF PRAYER. 221
mercy, humility, purity, and sincerity), do defile the prayer,
•and make it a direct sin, in the circumstances or formality
of the action.
5. All prayer must be made with faith and hope ; that is,
we must certainly believe' we shall receive the grace, which
God hath commanded us to ask; and we must hope for such
things, which he hath permitted us to ask ; and our hope
shall not be vain, though we miss what is not absolutely
promised ; because we shall at least have an equal blessing
in the denial, as in the grant. And, therefore, the former
conditions must first be secured ; that is, that we ask things
necessary, or at least good and innocent and profitable, and
that our persons be gracious in the eyes of God: or else,
what God hath promised to our natural needs, he may, in
many degrees, deny to our personal incapacity : but the
thing being secured, and the person disposed, there can be
no fault at all ; for whatsoever else remains, is on God's part,
and that cannot possibly fail. But, because the things, which
are not commanded, cannot possibly be secured (for we
are not sure, they are good in all circumstances), we can but
hope for such things, even after we have secured our good
intentions. We are sure of a blessing, but, in what instance,
we are not yet assured.
6. Our prayers must be fervent, intense, earnest, and im-
portunate, when we we pray for things of high concernment
and necessity. " Continuing instant in prayer ; striving in
prayer; labouring fervently in prayer; night and day, pray-
ing exceedingly ; praying always with all prayer :" so St.
Paul calls it*". "Watching unto prayer:" so St. Peter ':
"Praying earnestly:" so St. James'". And this is not at
all to be abated in matters spiritual and of duty : for, ac-
cording as our desires are, so are our prayers; and as our
prayers are, so shall be the grace ; and, as that is, so shall
be the measure of glory. But this admits of degrees accord-
ing to the perfection or imperfection of our state of life : but
it hath no other measures, but ought to be as great, as it
can; the bigger, the better: we must make no positive re-
straints upon ourselves. In other things, they are to use a
* Mark, xi. 24. Jain.i. 6, 7.
^ Rora. xii. 12. xv. 30. Col. iv. 12. 1 Thes. iii. 10. Ephes. vi. 18.
' 1 Pet. iv. 7. 1' Jam. v. 16.
222 OF PRAYER.
bridle : and, as we must limit our desires with submission to
God's will ; so also we must limit the importunity of our
prayers, by the moderation and term of our desires. Pray
for it as earnestly, as you may desire it.
7. Our desires must be lasting, and our prayers frequent,
assiduous, and continual ; not asking for a blessing once,
and then leaving it ; but daily renewing our suits, and exer-
cising our hope, and faith, and patience, and long-suffering,
and religion, and resignation, and self-denial, in all the de-
grees we shall be put to. This circumstance of duty our
blessed Saviour taught, saying, that " men ought always to
pray, and not to faint"." Always to pray signifies the frequent
doing of the duty in general : but, because we cannot always
ask several things, and we also have frequent need of the same
things, and those ai'e such, as concern our great interest, the
precept comes home to this very circumstance ; and St. Paul
calls it, "praying without ceasing"," and himself in his own
case gave a precedent, " For this cause I besought the Lord
thrice." And so did our blessed Lord : he went thrice to
God on the same errand, with the same words, in a short
space, about half a night ; for his time to solicit his suit was
but short. And the Philippians were remembered by the
apostle, their spiritual Father, " always in every prayer of
hisi"." And thus we must always pray for the pardon of our
sins, for the assistance of God's grace, for charity, for life
eternal, never giving over, till we die: and thus also we pray
for supply of great temporal needs in their several propor-
tions ; in all cases being curious, we do not give over, out of
weariness or impatience. For God oftentimes defers to
grant our suit ; because he loves to hear us beg it, and hath
a design to give us more than we ask, even a satisfaction of
our desires, and a blessing for the very importunity.
8. Let the words of our prayers be pertinent, grave, ma-
terial, not studiously many, but according to our need, suf-
ficient to express our wants, and to signify our importunity.
God hears us not the sooner for our many words, but much
the sooner for an earnest desire ; to which let apt and suf-
ficient words minister, be they few or many, according as it
happens. A long prayer and a short, differ not in their ca-
pacities of being accepted ; for both of them take their value
" Luke xviii. 1 \xi. 36. <» 1 Tliess, v, 17. P IMiil. i. 4.
OF PRAYER. 223
according to the fervency of spirit, and the charity of the
prayer. That prayer, which is short, by reason of an impa-
tient spirit, or duhiess, or despite of holy things, or indif-
ferency of desires, is very often criminal, always imperfect;
and that prayer, which is long out of ostentation, or super-
stition, or a trifling spirit, is as criminal and imperfect as
the other, in their several instances. This rule relates to
private prayer. In public, our devotion is to be measured
by the appointed office, and we are to support our spirit with
spiritual arts, that our private spirit may be a part of the
public spirit, and be adopted into the society and blessings
of the communion of saints.
9. In all forms of prayer, mingle petition with thanks-
giving, that you may endear the present prayer and the
future blessing, by returning praise and thanks, for what we
have already received. This is St. Paul's advice, " Be care-
ful for nothing ; but, in every thing, by prayer and supplica-
tion with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known
unto God''.
10. Whatever we beg of God, let us also work for it ; if
the thing be matter of duty, or a consequent to industry.
For God loves to bless labour and to reward it, but not to
support idleness'. And, therefore, our blessed Saviour, in
his sermons, joins watchfulness with prayer: for God's
graces are but assistances, not new creations of the whole
habit, in every instant or period of our life. Read Scriptures;
and then pray to God for understanding. Pray against
temptation : but you must also resist the devil, and then he
will flee from you. Ask of God competency of living: but
you must also work with your hands the things, that are
honest, that ye may have to supply in time of need. We can
but do our endeavour, and pray for blessing, and then leave
the success with God : and beyond this, we cannot deliberate,
we cannot take care ; but so far, we must.
11. To this purpose let every man study his prayers, and
read his duty in his petitions. For the body of our prayer
is the sum of our duty : and, as we must ask of God, what-
1 Phil. iv. 6.
■■ Ena, 'Kiyofxiv, KujtE o -^£5?, itZq fxn aynviZ ; (/.xps, p^Eigaj oux 'i^ct^ ; oux. Ittouxte (roi
Arrian^ 1. ii. c. IG,
224 OF PRAYER.
soever we need ; so we must labour for all, that we ask.
Because it is our duty, therefore we must pray for God's
grace : but because God's grace is necessary, and without it
we can do nothing, we are sufficiently taught, that in the
proper matter of our religious prayers is the just matter of
our duty : and if we shall turn our prayers into precepts, we
shall the easier turn our hearty desires into effective practices.
12. In all our prayers, we must be careful to attend our
present work % having a present mind, not wandering upon
impertinent things, not distant from our words, much less
contrary to them : and if our thoughts do at any time wander,
and divert upon other objects, bring them back again with
prudent and severe arts ; by all means striving to obtain a
diligent, a sober, an untroubled, and a composed spirit.
13. Let your posture and gesture of body in prayers, be
reverent, grave, and humble : according to public order, or
the best examples, if it be in public: if it be in private,
either stand, or kneel, or lie flat upon the ground on your
face, in your ordinary and more solemn prayers ; but in ex-
traordinary, casual and ejaculatory prayers, the reverence
and devotion of the soul, and the lifting up the eyes and
hands to God with any other posture not indecent, is usual
and commendable ; for we may pray in bed, on horseback,
" every where*," and at all times, and in all circumstances :
and it is well if we do so : and some servants have not oppor-
tunity to pray so often as they would, unless they supply
the appetites of religion by such accidental devotions.
14. " Let prayers and supplications and giving of thanks
be made for all men : for kings, and all that are in authority.
For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Sa-
viour"." We, who must love our neighbours as ourselves,
must also pray for them, as for ourselves : with this only dif-
ference; that we may enlarge in our temporal desires for kings,
and pray for secular prosperity to them with more importu-
nity than for ourselves ; because they need more to enable
their duty and government, and for the interests of religion
and justice. This part of prayer is by the apostle called inter-
cession ; in which, with special care, we are to remember our
relatives, our family, our charge, our benefactors, our credi-
* Inter sacra ct vota verbis etiam profanis abstinere. — Tacit.
' 1 Tim. ii. 8. "1 Tim. ii. ">.
OF MAKING VOM'S. 225
tors ; not forj^etting to beg pardon and charity for our ene-
mies, and protection against them.
15. Rely not on u single prayer in matters of great con-
cernment; but make it as public, as you can, by obtaining
of others to pray for you : this being the great blessing of
the communion of saints, that a prayer united is strong, like
a well-ordered army ; and God loves to be tied fast with such
cords of love, and constrained by a holy violence.
16. Every time, that is not seized upon by some other
duty, is seasonable enough for prayer : but let it be performed
as a solemn duty morning and evening, that God may begin
and end all our business, that " the outgoing of the morn-
ing and evening may praise him ;" for so we bless God, and
God blesses us. And yet fail not to find, or make, opportuni-
ties to worship God at some other times of the day ; at least
by ejaculations and short addresses, more or less, longer or
shorter, solemnly or without solemnity, privately or^publick-
ly, as you can, or are permitted : always remembei ing, that as
every sin is a degree of danger and unsafety ; so every pious
prayer and well-employed opportunity is a degree of return
to hope and pardon."
Cautions for making V&ivs.
' 17. A vow to God is an act of prayer, and a great de-
gree and instance of opportunity, and an increase of duty
by some new uncommanded instance, or some more eminent
degree of duty, or frequency of action, or earnestness of
spirit in the same. And because it hath pleased God, in all
ages of the world, to admit of intercourse with his servants
in the matters of vows, it is not ill advice, that we make
vows to God in such cases, in which we have great need, or
great danger. But let it be done according to these rules
and by these cautions.
1. That the matter of the vow be lawful. 2. That it be
useful, in order to religion or charity. 3. That it be grave,
not trifling or impertinent ; but great in our proportion of
duty towards the blessing. 4. That it be an uncommanded
instance ; that is, that it be of something, or in some manner,
or in some degree, to which formerly we were not obliged, or
which we might have omitted, without sin. 5. That it be
done with prudence ; that is, that it be safe in all the cir-
voL. ly. Q
226 OF PRAYER.
cumstances of person, lest we beg a blessing, and fall into
a snare. 6. That every vow of a new action be also accom-
panied with a new degree and enforcement of our essential
and unalterable duty : such as was Jacob's vow, that (besides
the payment of a tithe) God should be his God : that so he
might strengthen his duty to him, first in essentials and pre-
cepts ; and then, in additionals and accidentals. For it is
but an ill tree, that spends more in leaves and suckers and
gums, than in fruit : and that thankfulness and religion is
best, that first secures duty, and then enlarges in counsels.
Therefore let every great prayer, and great need, and great
danger, draw us nearer to God by the approach of a pious
purpose to live more strictly ; and let every mercy of God,
answering that prayer, produce a real performance of it. 7.
Let not young beginners in religion enlarge their hearts and
straiten their liberty by vows of long continuance : nor in-
deed any one else, without a great experience of himself,
and of all accidental dangers^. Vows, of single actions,
are safest, and proportionable to those single blessings, ever
begged in such cases of sudden and transient importunities.
8. Let no action, which is matter of question and dispute in
religion, ever become the matter of a vow. He vows fool-
ishly, that promises to God to live and die in such an opinion,
in an article not necessary, nor certain ; or that, upon confi-
dence of his present guide, bindshimself for ever to the pro-
fession of what he may, afterwards, more reasonably, con-
tradict, or may find not to be useful, or not profitable, but
of some danger, or of no necessity.
If we observe the former rules, we shall pray piously and
effectually : but, because even this duty hath in it some spe-
cial temptations, it is necessary, that we be armed by special
remedies against them. The dangers are, 1. Wandering
thoughts ; 2. Tediousness of spirit. Against the first these
advices are profitable.
Remedies against Wandering Thoughts in Prayer.
If we feel our spirits apt to wander in our prayers, and
■* Angustam annuliim non gesta, dixit Pytliag. id est, vitae genus liberuin seclare,
ncc vinculo temetipsuin obstringe. — Plutarch. Sic Novatus nuvilios sbos compu-
lit ad jurandnm, tie iinquam ad Catholicos Eplscopos redirent. — Euneb. 1. ii. Ecel, Hist,
OF PRAYER. 227
to retire into the world, or to things unprofitable, or vain
and impertinent ;
1. Use prayer to be assisted in prayer : pray for the spirit
of supplication, for a sober, fixed, and recollected spirit : and
when to this you add a moral industry to be steady in your
thoughts, whatsoever wanderings after this do return irre-
mediably, are a misery of nature and an imperfection, but no
sin, while it is not cherished and indulged to*
2. In private, it is not amiss to attempt the cure by re-
ducing your prayers into collects and short forms of prayer,
making voluntary interruptions, and beginning again, that
the want of spirit and breath may be supplied by the short
stages and periods.
3. When you have observed any considerable wanderings
of your thoughts, bind yourself to repeat that prayer again
with actual attention, or else revolve the full sense of it in
your spirit, and repeat it in all the efi^ect and desires of it: and,
possibly, the tempter may be driven away with his own art,
and may cease to interpose his trifles, when he perceives,
they do but vex the person into carefulness and piety; and
yet he loses nothing of his devotion, but doubles the earnest-
ness of his care.
4. If this be not seasonable or opportune, or apt to any
man's circumstances, yet be sure, with actual attention, to
say a hearty Amen to the whole prayer with one united de-'
sire, earnestly begging the graces mentioned in the prayer :
for that desire does the great work of the prayer, and secures
the blessing, if the wandering thoughts were against our will,
and disclaimed by contending against them.
5. Avoid multiplicity of businesses of the world ; and in
those, that are unavoidable, labour for an evenness' and tran-
quillity of spirit, that you may be untroubled and smooth, in
all tempests of fortune : for so we shall better tend religion,
when we are not torn in pieces with the cares of the world,
and seized upon with low affections, passions, and interest.
6. It helps much to attention and actual advertisement in
our prayers, if we say our prayers, silently, without the voice,
only by the spirit. For, in mental prayer, if our thoughts
wander, we only stand still ; when our mind returns, we go
an again : there is none of the prayer lost, as it is, if our
mouths speak, and our hearts wander.
q2
^28 OF PRAYER.
7. To incite you to the use of these or any other coun-
sels, you shall meet with, remember, that it is a great in-
decency to desire of God to hear those prayers, a great part
whereof we do not hear ourselves. If they be not worthy ot
our attention, they are far more unworthy of God's.
Signs of tedioumesa of spirit in our Prayers ami
all actions of Religion.
The second temptation in our prayer, is a tediousness of
spirit, or a weariness of the employment; like that of the
Jews, who complained, that they were weary of the new
moons, and their souls loathed the frequent return of their
sabbaths: so do very many Christians, who, first, pray with-
out fervour and earnestness of spirit: and, secondly, medi-
tate but seldom, and that without fruit, or sense, or affection;
or, thirdly, who seldom examine their consciences, and when
they do it, they do it but sleepily, slightly, without com-
punction, or hearty purpose, or fruits of amendment. 4.
They enlarge themselves in the thoughts and fruition of tem-
poral things, running for comfort to them only in any sad-
ness and misfortune. 5. They love not to frequent the sacra-
ments, nor any the instruments of religion, as sermons, con-
fessions, prayers in public, fastings; but love ease, and a
loose undisciplined life. 6. They obey not their superiors,
but follow their own judgment, when their judgment follows
their affections, and their affections follow sense and worldly
pleasures, 7. They neglect, or dissemble, or defer, or do not
attend to, the motions and inclinations to virtue, which the
Spirit of God puts into their soul. 8. They repent them of
their vows and holy purposes, not because they discover any
indiscretion in them, or intolerable inconvenience, but be-
cause they have within them labour (as the case now stands),
to them displeasure. 9. They content themselves with the
first degrees and necessary parts of virtue ; and, when they
are arrived thither, they sit down, as if they were come to the
mountain of the Lord, and care not to proceed on toward
perfection. 10. Tliey inquire into all cases, in which it may
be lawful to omit a duty ; and, though they will not do less,
than they are bound to, yet they will do no more, than needs
must ; for they do out of fear and self-love, not out of the
OF PKAVEK. 229
love of God, or (he spirit of holiness and zeal. The event of
which will be this : he, that will do no more than needs must,
will soon be brought to omit something of his duty, and will
be apt to believe less to be necessary, than is.
Remedies against Tediousness of spirit.
The remedies against this temptation are these.
1. Order your private devotions so, that they become not
arguments and causes of tediousness by their indiscreet
length ; but reduce your words into a narrow compass, still
keeping all the matter, and what is cut off in the length of
your prayers, supply in the earnestness of your spirit: for so
nothing is lost, while the words are changed into matter, and
length of time into fervency of devotion. The forms are
made not the less perfect, and the spirit is more, and the scru-
ple is removed.
2. It is not miprudent, if we provide variety of forms of
prayer to the same purposes, that the change, by consulting
with the appetites of fancy, may better entertain the spirit :
and, possibly, we may be pleased to recite a hymn, when a
collect seems flat to us and unpleasant; and we are willing
to sing rather than to say, or to sing this rather than that :
we are certain that variety is delightful; and whether that be
natural to us, or an imperfection, yet if it be complied with,
it may remove some part of the temptation.
3. Break your office and devotion into fragments, and
make frequent returnings by ejaculations and abrupt inter-
courses with God; for so, no length can oppress your ten-
derness and sickliness of spirit; and, by often praying in
such manner and in all circumstances, we shall habituate our
souls to prayer, by making it the business of many lesser por-
tions of our time : and, by thrusting in between all our other
employments, it will make every thing relish of religion, and
by degrees turn all into its nature.
4. Learn to abstract your thoughts and desires from plea-
sures and thinos of the world. For nothins; is a direct cure
to this evil, but cutting off all other loves and adherences.
Order your affairs so, that religion may be propounded to
you as a reward, and prayer as your defence, and holy actions
as your security, and charity and good works as your trea
230 OF PRAYER.
sure. Consider that all things else are satisfactions but to
the brutish part of a man ; and that these are the refresh-
ments and relishes of that noble part of us, by which we are
better than beasts, and whatsoever other instrument, exercise,
or consideration, is of use to take our loves from the v/orld,
the same is apt to place them upon God.
5. Do not seek for deliciousness and sensible consola-
tions in the actions of religion ; but only regard the duty
and the conscience of it. For, although in the beginning of
religion, most frequently, and, at some other times, irregu-
larly, God complies with our infirmity, and encourages our
duty with little overflowings of spiritual joy, and sensible
pleasure, and delicacies in prayer, so as we seem to feel some
little beam of heaven, and great refreshments from the Spirit
of consolation ; yet this is not always safe for us to have,
neither safe for us to expect and look for : and when we do,
it is apt to make us cool in our inquiries and waitings upon
Christ, when we want them : it is a running after him, not
for the miracles, but for the loaves ; not for the wonderful
things of God, and the desires of pleasing him, but for the
pleasures of pleasing ourselves. And, as we must not judge
our devotion to be barren or unfruitful, when we want the
overflowings of joy running over : so neither must we cease,
for want of them. If our spirits can serve God, choosingly
and greedily, out of pure conscience of our duty, it is better
in itself, and more safe to us.
6. Let him use to soften his spirit with frequent medita-
tion upon sad and dolorous objects, as of death, the terrors
of the day of judgment, fearful judgments upon sinners,
strange horrid accidents, fear of God's wrath, the pains of
hell, the unspeakable amazements of the damned, the into-
lerable load of a sad eternity. For whatsoever creates fear,
pr makes the spirit to dwell in a religious sadness, is apt to
entender the spirit, and make it devout and pliant to any
part of duty. For a great fear, when it is ill managed, is the
parent of superstition ; but a discreet and well-guided fear
produces religion.
7. Pray often and you shall pray oftener ; and, when you
are accustomed to a frequent devotion, it will so insensibly
vmite to your nature and affections, that it will become
trouble to omit your usual or appointed prayers : and what
OF PllAYEU. 231
you obtain, at first, by doing violence to your inclinations,
at last, will not be left without as great unwillingness, as
that, by which at first it entered. This rule relies not only
upon reason derived from the nature of habits, which turn
into a second nature, and make their actions easy, frequent,
and delightful : but it relies upon a reason, depending upon
the nature and constitution of grace ; whose productions are
of the same nature with the parent, and increases itself, natu-
rally growing from grains to huge trees, from minutes to
vast proportions, and from moments to eternity. But be
sure not to omit your usual prayers without great reason,
though, without sin, it may be done ; because after you have
omitted something, in a little while you will be past the
scruple of that, and begin to be tempted to leave out more.
Keep yourself up to your usual forms : you may enlarge,
when you will ; but do not contract or lessen them, without
a very probable reason.
8. Let a man, frequently and seriously, by imagination,
place himself upon his death-bed, and consider what great
joys he shall have for the remembrance of every day well
spent, and what then he would give, that he had so spent all
his days. He may guess at it, by proportions : for it is cer-
tain, he shall have a joyful and prosperous night, who hath
spent his day holily ; and he resigns his soul with peace
into the hands of God, who hath lived in the peace of God
and the works of religion, in his life-time. This considera-
tion is of a real event ; it is of a thing, that will certainly
come to pass. " It is appointed for all men once to die ;"
and, after death, comes judgment ; the apprehension of
which is dreadful, and the presence of it is intolerable ; un-
less, by religion and sanctity, we are disposed for so venera-
ble an appearance.
9. To this may be useful, that we consider the easiness
of Christ's yoke ^'', the excellences and sweetnesses, that are
in religion, the peace of conscience, the joy of the Holy
Ghost, the rejoicing in God, the simplicity and pleasure of
virtue, the intricacy, trouble, and business of sin ; the bless-
ings and health, and reward of that; the curses, the sick-
nesses, and sad consequences of this; and that, if we are
weary of the labours of religion, we must eternally sit still,
« See iLe great exemplar. Part. iii. Disc xiv. of the Easiness of Cliristiau Reli-iou
232 OF ALMS.
and do nothing : for whatsoevei' we do contrary to it, is in-
finitely more full of labour, care, difficulty, and vexation.
10. Consider this also, that tediousness of spirit is the
beginning of the most dangerous condition and estate in the
whole world. For it is a great disposition to the sin against
the Holy Ghost : it is apt to bring a man to backsliding and
the state of unregeneration ; to make him return to his vomit
and his sink ; and either to make the man impatient, or his
condition scrupulous, unsatisfied, irksome, and desperate :
and it is better, that he had never known the way of godli-
ness, than, after the knowledge of it, that he should fall
away. There is not in the world a greater sign, that the
spirit of reprobation is beginning upon a man, than when he
is habitually and constantly, or very frequently, weary, and
slights, or loathes, holy offices.
11. The last remedy, that preserves the hope of such a
man, and can reduce him to the state of zeal and the love of
God, is a pungent, sad, and a heavy affliction ; not desperate,
but recreated with some intervals of kindness, or little com-
forts, or entertained with hopes of deliverance ; which con-
dition if a man shall fall into, by the grace of God he is^
likely to recover; but, if this help him not, it is infinite odds,
but he will quench the Spirit.
SECTION VIII.
Of Alms.
Love is as communicative as fire, as busy and as active,
and it hath four twin-daughters, extreme like each other;
and but that the doctors of the school have done, as Tha-
mar's midwife did, who bound a scarlet thread, something
to distinguish them, it would be very hard to call them
asunder. Their names are, 1. Mercy; 2. Beneficence, or
well-doing ; 3. Liberality ; and, 4. Alms ; which, by a special
privilege, hath obtained to be called after the mother's name,
and is commonly called charity. The first or eldest is seated
in the affection ; and it is that, which all the other must at-
tend. For mercy, without alms, is acceptable, when the
person is disabled to express outwardly, what he lieartily de-
OF ALMS. 233
sires. But alms, wilhout mercy, are like prayers without
devotion, or religion without humility. 2. Beneficence, ov
well-doing, is a promptness and nobleness of mind, making
us to do offices of courtesy and humanity to all sorts of per-
sons in their need, or out of their need. 3. Liberality is a
disposition of mind, opposite to covetousness ; and consists
in the despite and neglect of money upon just occasions, and
relates to our friends, children, kindred, servants, and other
relatives, 4. But alms is a relieving the poor and needy.
The first and the last only are duties of Christianity. The
second and third, are circumstances and adjuncts of these
duties : for liberality increases the degree of alms, making
our gift greater ; and beneficence extends it to more persons
and orders of men, spreading it wider. The former makes
us sometimes to give more, than we are able; and the latter
gives to more, than need by the necessity of beggars, and
serves the needs and conveniences of persons, and supplies
circumstances : whereas, properly, alms are doles and lar-
gesses to the necessitous and calamitous people, sup])lying
the necessities of nature, and giving remedies to their mi-
series.
Mercy and alms are the body and soul of that charity,
■which we must pay to our neighbour's need : and it is a pre-
cept, which God therefore enjoined to the world, that the
great inequality, which he was pleased to suffer in the pos-
sessions and accidents of men, might be reduced to some
temper and evenness ; and the most miserable person might
be reconciled to some sense and participation of felicity.
Works of Merc I/, or the several kinds oj' corporal Alms.
The works of mercy are so many, as the affections of
mercy have objects, or as the world hath kinds of misery.
Men want meat, or drink, or clothes, or a house, or liberty,
or attendance, or a grave. In proportion to these, seven
works are usually assigned to mercy, and there are seven
kinds of corporal alms reckoned. 1. To feed the hungry".
2. To give drink to the thirsty. 3. Or clothes to the naked.
4. To redeem captives. 5. To visit the sick. 6. To enter-
tain strangers. 7. To bury the dead^. But many more may
^ MaU. \xv. 35. y Malt. xxvi. 12. 2 Sam. ii. b.
234 OF ALMS.
be added. Such as are, 8. To give physic to sick persons.
9. To bring cold and starved people to warmth and to the
fire; for sometimes clothing will not do it; or this may be
done, when we cannot do the other. 10. To lead the blind
in right ways. 11. To lend money. 12. To forgive debts.
13. To remit forfeitures. 1 4. To mend highways and bridges.
15. To reduce or guide wanderino; travellers. 16. To ease
their labours, by accommodating their work with apt in-
struments ; or their journey, with beasts of carriage. 17. To
deliver the poor from their oppressors. 18. To die for my
brother^. 19. To pay maidens' dowries, and to procure for
them honest and chaste marriages.
Works of spiritual Alms and Mercy are,
1. To teach the ignorant. 2. To counsel doubting per-
sons. 3. To admonish sinners diligently, prudently, season-
ably, and charitably : to which also may be reduced, pro-
voking and encouraging to good works". 4. To comfort the
afflicted. 5. To pardon offenders. 6. To suffer and support
the weak*". 7. To pray for all estates of men, and for relief
to all their necessities. To which may be added, 8. To
punish or correct refractoriness. 9. To be gentle and cha-
ritable, in censuring the actions of others. 10. To establish
the scrupulous, wavering, and inconstant spirits. 11. To
confirm the strong. 12. Not to give scandal. 13. To quit
a man of his fear. 14. To redeem maidens from prostitution
and publication of their bodies*^.
To both these kinds, a third also may be added of a mixed
nature, partly corporal, and partly spiritual : such are, 1. Re-
conciling enemies'^. 2. Erecting public schools of learning.
3. Maintaining lectures of divinity. 4. Erecting colleges of
religion, and retirement from the noises and more frequent
temptations of the world. 5. Finding employment for un-
busied persons, and putting children to honest trades. For
the particulars of mercy or alms cannot be narrower, than
'■ Nobilis lia--c esset pletatis rixa diiobus ;
Quod pro i'ratre moii vellet uterque prio;-, — Mart.
a Heb. X. 24. b 1 Tliess. v. 14.
<= Puella prosternit se ad pedes : Miserere virgiuitatis iiica-, ne piostiiuus lioa
sco'pus sub taiu luipi titulo. — Hist. Apol. Tya.
'^ Laudi cllictum apud vet. ai^-a te xai (xiya nTno', i'liia-vatj^ifxq x.ati'na.vs-l.
OF ALMS. 235
men's needs are : and the old method of ahns is too narrow
to comprise them all ; and yet the kinds are too many to be
discoursed of particularly : only our blessed Saviour, in the
precept of alms, uses the instances of relieving the poor, and
forgiveness of injuries; and -by proportion to these, the rest,
whose duty is plain, simple, easy, and necessary, may be de-
termined. But alms, in general, are to be disposed of, ac-
cording to the following rules.
Rules for giving Alms.
1. Let no man do alms of that, which is none of his own^;
for of that he is to make restitution ; that is due to the
owners, not to the poor: for every man hath need of his
X)wn, and that is first to be provided for : and then you must
think of the needs of the poor. He, that gives the poor,
what is not his own, makes himself a thief, and the poor to
be the receivers. This is not to be understood, as if it were
unlawful for a man, that is not able to pay his debts, to give
smaller alms to the poor. He may not give such portions,
as can in any sense more disable him to do justice' ; but
such, which if they were saved, could not advance the other
duty, may retire to this, and do here, what they may, since,
in the other duty, they cannot do, what they should. But,
generally, cheaters and robbers cannot give alms of what
they have cheated and robbed ; unless they cannot tell the
persons, whom they have injured, or the proportions; and,
in such cases, they are to give those unknown portions to the
poor by way of restitution, for it is no alms : only God is
the supreme Lord, to whom those escheats devolve, and the
poor are his receivers.
2. Of money unjustly taken, and yet voluntarily parted
with, we may, and are bound to, give alms : such as is money
given and taken for false witness, bribes, simoniacal con-
tracts ; because the receiver hath no right to keep it, nor the
giver any right to recall it ; it is unjust money, and yet pay-
able to none but the supreme Lord (who is the person in-
jured) and to his delegates, that is, the poor. To which I
insert these cautions. 1. If the person, injured by the unjust
« S. Greg. vji. 1. 110. Epist.
f Pitebeant misericoidia, ul coaisi vetur jiistiliu. — St. Aug. I'lov. iii. y.
236 OF ALMS.
sentence of a bribed judge, or by false witness, be poor,
he is the proper object and bosom, to whom the lestitution
is to be made. 2. In case of simony % the church, to whom
the simony was injmious, is the lap, into which the restitu-
tion is to be poured ; and if it be poor and out of repair, the
alms, or restitution (siiall I call it?) are to be paid to it.
3. There is some sort of gain, that hath in it no injus-
tice, properly so called ; but it is unlawful and filthy lucre :
such as is money, taken for work done unlawfully upon the
Lord's day ; hire taken for disfiguring one's-self, and for be-
ing professed jesters : the wages of such as make unjust
bargains; and of harlots: of this money there is some pre-
paration to be made, before it be given in alms. The money
is infected with the plague, and must pass through the fire
or the water, before it be fit for alms : the person must repent
and leave the crime, and then minister to the poor.
4. He, that gives alms, must do it in mercy ; that is, out
of a true sense of the calamity of his brother, first feeling it
in himself, in some proportion, and then endeavouring to ease
himself and the other of their common calamity''. Against
this rule they offend, who give alms out of custom ; or to
upbraid the poverty of the other; or to make him mercenary
and obliged ; or with any unhandsome circumstances.
5. He, that gives alms, must do it with a single eye and
heart ; that is, without designs to get the praise of men : and,
if he secures that, he may either give them publickly or pri-
vately : for Christ intended only to provide against pride and
hypocrisy, when he bade alms to be given in secret ; it being
otherwise one of his commandments, " that our light should
fehine before men :" this is more excellent; that is more safe.
6. To this also appertains, that he, who hath done a good
turn, should so forget it, as not to speak of it : but he, that
boasts it, or upbraids it, hath paid himself, and lost the noble-
ness of the charity'.
7. Give alms with a cheerful heart and countenance ;
" not grudgingly or of necessity, for God loveth a cheerful
giver "^ ;" and therefore give quickly, when the power is in thy
S Decret. ep. tit. de. Simonia.
'' Donum nudom es(, nisi consensu vestiatur. 1. iii. C. de pactis.
' Qui dedit beneficium, laceat ; nairet, qui accejiit. — Ssnec,
^ U Cor. ix. 7.
OF ALMS. 237
band, and the need is in thy neighbour, and thy neighbour
at tlie door. He gives twice, that reUeves speedily.
8. According to thy ability give to all men, that need':
and, in equal needs, give first to good men, rather than to bad
men ; and if the needs be unequal, do so too ; provided that
the need of the poorest be not violent or extreme : but, if an
evi! man be in extreme necessity, he is to be relieved, rather
than a good man, who can tarry longer, and may subsist
without it. And, if he be a good man, he will desire, it
should be so : because himself is bound to save the life of his
brother, with doins; some inconvenience to himself: and no
difference of virtue or vice can make the ease of one bea'o'ar
equal with the life of another.
9. Give no alms to vicious persons, if such alms will sup-
port their sin : as if they will continue in idleness ; " if they
will not work, neither let them eat'" ;" or if they will spend it
in drunkenness", or wantonness : such persons, when they
are reduced to very great want, must be relieved in such pro-
portions, as may not relieve their dying lust, but may refresh
their faint or dying bodies,
10. The best objects of charity are poor housekeepers,
that labour hard, and are burdened with many children ; or
gentlemen fallen into sad poverty, especially, if, by innocent
misfortune (and if their crimes brought them into it, yet they
are to be relieved according to the former rule) ; persecuted
persons, widows and fatherless children, putting them to ho-
nest trades or schools of learnino;. And search into the needs
of numerous and meaner families ° : for there are many per-
sons, that have nothing left them but misery and modesty :
and towards such we must add two circumstances of cha-
rity, 1. To inquire them out; 2. To convey our relief unto
them so, as we do not make them ashamed.
.11. Give, looking for nothing again; that is, without
consideration of future advantages : give to children, to old
men, to the unthankful, and the dying, and to those, you
» Luke, vi. 30. Gal. vi. 10.
™ 2 Thess. iii. 10. A cavallo, clii non poila sella, liiada noo si crivella.
" De ineiidico male inerelar, qui ei dat qucd edat aut quod bibat:
Nam et illud quod dat perdit, et illi produeit vitara ad miseriam. — Trin.
" Beatus qui intelligit .super egeniiiu et paupeiem. Psal. A doiiaie e leiiere in-
gegiio bisogna avere.
238 OF ALMS.
shall never see again ; for else your alms or courtesy is not
charity, but traffic and merchandise ; and be sure, that you
omit not to relieve the needs of your enemy and the inju-
rious; for so, possibly, you may win him to yourself; but
do you intend the winning him to God.
12. Trust not your alms to intermedial, uncertain, and
under-dispensers : by which rule is not only intended the
securing your alms in the right channel : but the humility of
your person, and that, which the apostle calls " the labour
of love." And if you converse in hospitals and alms-houses,
and minister with your own hand, what your heart hath first
decreed, you will find your heart endeared and made familiar
with the needs and with the persons of the poor, those ex-
cellent images of Christ.
13. Whatsoever is superfluous in thy estate, is to be dis-
pensed in alms''. "He, that hath two coats, must give to
him, that hath none ;" that is, he, that hath beyond his need,
must give that, which is beyond it. Only among needs, we
are to reckon not only, what will support our life, but also
what will maintain the decency of our estate and person;
not only in present needs, but in all future necessities, and
very probable contingencies, but no further : we are not
obliged beyond this, unless we see very great, public, and
calamitous necessities. But yet, if we do extend beyond our
measures, and give more, than we are able, we have the Phi-
lippians and many holy persons for our precedent; we have
St. Paul for our encouragement; we have Christ for our
counsellor; we have God for our rewarder, and a great trea-
sure in heaven for our recompence and restitution. But I
propound it to the consideration of all Christian people, that
they be not nice and curious, fond and indulgent to them-
selves in taking accounts of their personal conveniences: and
that they make their proportions moderate and easy, accord-
ing to the order and manner of Christianity ; and the conse-
quent will be this, that the poor will more plentifully be re-
lieved, themselves will be more able to do it, and the duty
will be less chargeable, and the owners of estates charged
with fewer accounts in the spending them. It cannot be de-
nied, but, in the expenses of all liberal and great personages,
P PraDinoiistro tibi
Ul ita te aliorum miserescat, ne lui alios inisereat. — Trinumrmis.
OF ALMS. 239
many things might be spared ; some superfluous servants,
some idle meetings, some unnecessary and imprudent feasts,
some garments too costly, some unnecessary lawsuits, some
vain journeys: and, when we are tempted to such needless ex-
penses, if we shall descend to moderation, and lay aside the
surplusage, we shall find it with more profit to be laid out
upon the poor members of Christ, than upon our own with
vanity. But this is only intended to be an advice in the
manner of doing alms : for I am not ignorant, that great va-
riety of clothes always have been permitted to princes and
nobility and others, in their proportion ; and they usually
give those clothes as rewards to servants, and other persons
needful enough, and then they may serve their own fancy
and their duty too : but it is but reason and religion to be
careful, that they be given to such only, where duty, or pru-
dent liberality, or alms, determine them ; but, in no sense, let
them do it so, as to minister to vanity, to luxury, to prodi-
gality. The like also is to be observed in other instances ;
and if we once give our minds to the study and arts of alms,
we shall find ways enough to make this duty easy, profitable,
and useful.
1. He, that plays at any game, must resolve beforehand,
to be indifferent to win or lose : but if he gives to the poor
all, that he wins, it is better than to keep it to himself : but
it were better yet, that he lay by so much, as he is willing to
lose, and let the game alone, and, by giving so much alms,
trafhc for eternity. That is one way.
2. Another is keeping the fasting-days of the church ;
which if our condition be such as to be able to cast our ac-
counts, and make abatements for our wanting so many meals
in the whole year (which by the old appointment did amount
to one hundred and fifty-three, and since most of them are
fallen into desuetude, we may make up as many of them as
we please, by voluntary fasts), we may, from hence, find a
considerable relief for the poor. But if we be not willing
sometimes to fast, that our brother may eat, we should ill die
for him. St. Martin had given all, that he had in the world, to
the poor, save one coat; and that also he divided between two
beggars. A father, in the mount of Nitria, was reduced at last
to the inventory of one testament ; and that book also was
tempted from him by the needs of one, whom he thought
240
OF ALMS.
poorer than himself. Greater yet: St. Pauliaus sold himself
to slavery to redeem a young man, for whose captivity his
mother wept sadly : and it is said, that St, Katharine sucked
the envenomed wounds of a villain, who had injured her most
impudently. And I shall tell you of a greater charity, than all
these put together : Christ gave himself to shame and death
to redeem his enemies from bondage, and death, and hell.
3. Learn of the frugal man, and only avoid sordid actions,
and turn good husband, and change your arts of getting into
providence for the poor, and we shall soon become rich in
good works : and why should we not do as much for charity,
as for covetousness ; for heaven, as for the fading world ;
for God and the holy Jesus, as for the needless superfluities
of back and belly ?
14. In giving alms to beggars and persons of that low
rank, it is better to give little to each ; that we may give
to the more ; so extending our alms to m.any persons : but
in charities of religion, as building hospitals, colleges, and
houses for devotion, and supplying the accidental wants of
decayed persons, fallen from great plenty to great necessity,
it is better to unite our alms, than to disperse them ; to make
a noble relief or maintenance to one, and to restore him to
•comfort, than to support only his natural needs, and keep
him alive only, unrescued from sad discomforts,
15. The precept of alms or charity binds not indefinitely
to all the instances and kinds of charity : for he, that delights
to feed the poor, and spends all his portion that way, is not
bound to enter into prisons and redeem captives : but we are
obliged, by the presence of circumstances, and the special
disposition of Providence, and the pitiableness of an object,
to this or that particular act of charity. The eye is the sense
of mercy ; and the bowels are its organ ; and that enkindles
pity, and pity produces alms : when the eye sees, what it
never saw, the heart will think, what it never thought : but,
when we have an object present to our eye, then we must
pity ; for there the providence of God hath fitted cur charity
with circumstances. He, that is in thy sight or in thy neigh-
bourhood, is fallen into the lot of thy charity.
16. If thou hast no moneys, yet thou must have mercy;
and art bound to pity the poor, and pray for them, and throw
q Luke, \ii. 2. Acts iii. 6. Chi ti da un ossa, non ti verrebbe moilo.
OJ- ALMS. 241
ihy holy desires and devotions Into the treasure of the crhurch :
and if thou dost, what thou art able, be it little or great,
corporal or spiritual, the charity of alms or the charity of
prayers, a cap of wine or a cup of water, if it be but love to
the brethren"", or a desire to help all or any of Christ's poor,
it shall be accepted according to that a man hath, not ac-
cording to that he hath not\ For love is all this, and all
the other commandments : and it will express itself, where it
can; and where it cannot, yet it is love still; and it is also
sorrow , that it cannot.
Motives fn Charity.
The motives to this duty are such, as Holy Scripture hath
propounded to ns by way of consideration and proposition
of its excellences and consequent reward. 1. There is no
one duty, which our blessed Saviour did recommend to his
disciples with so repeated an injunction, as this of charity
and alms*. To which add the words spoken by our Lord,
" It is better to give than to receive." And when we con-
sider, how great a blessing it is, that we beg not from door
to door, it is a ready instance of our thankfulness to God,
for his sake to relieve them, that do. 2. This duty is that
alone, whereby the future day of judgment shall be trans-
acted. For nothing but charity and alms is that, whereby
Christ shall declare the justice and mercy of the eternal
sentence. Martyrdom itself is not there expressed, and no
otherwise involved, but as it is the greatest charity. 3. Christ
made himself the greatest and daily example of alms or
charity. He went up and down doing good, preaching the
gospel, and healing ail diseases : and God the Father is imita-
ble by use in nothing, but in purity and mercy. 4. Alms,
given to the poor, redound to the emolument of the giver,
both temporal and eternal". 5. They are instrumental to the
remission of sins. Oiu' forgiveness and mercy to others
being made the very rule and proportion of our confidence,
and hope, and our prayer, to be forgiven ourselves'. 6. It is
a treasure in heaven ; it procures friends, when we die. It
>• 1 Pet. i. '21'. • 2 Cor. viii. 12.
♦ Matt. vi. 4. MhU. xiii. VI. So. x\v. 15. Luke xi. 41. ' " Phil. iv. IT.
" Acts.x. 4. Heb xiii. 16. Dao. iv. 27.
VOL. IV. R
"242 -OF ALMS.
'is reckoned, as dohe to Christ, whatsoever we do to our poor
brother: and, therefore, when a poor man begs for Christ's
sake, if he have reason to ask for Christ's sake, give it him.
If thou canst. Now every man hath title to ask for Christ's
'sake, whose need is great, and himself unable to cure it, and
If the man be a Christian. Whatsoever charity Christ will
reward, all that is given for Christ's sake, and therefore it
niay be asked in his name : but every man, that uses that
sacred name for an endearment, hath not a title to it, neither
he, nor his need. 7. It is one of the wings of prayer, by which
it flies to the throne of g:race. 8. It crowns all the works of
piety ^^. 9. It causes thanksgiving to God on our behalf :
;I0. And the bowels of the poor bless us, and they pray for
MS. 11. And that portion of our estate, out of which a tenth,
or a fifth, or a twentieth, or some offering to God for religion
and the poor goes forth, certainly returns with a great bless-
ing upon all the rest. It is like the effusion of oil by the
Sidonian woman ; as long as she pours into empty vessels,
it could never cease running : or like the widow's barrel of
meal ; it consumed not, as long as she fed the prophet.
,12. The sum of all is contained in the words of our blessed
Saviour,- " Give alms of such things as you have, and be-
hold all things are clean unto you." 13. To which may be
added, that charity, or mercy, is the peculiar character of
God's elect, and a sign of predestination ; which advantage
we are taught by St. Paul : " Put on therefore, as tlie elect
of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercy, kindness, &c.
Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any
man have a quarrel against any''." The result of all which
we may read in the words of St. Chrysostom : " To know
the art of alms, is greater than to be crowned with the dia-
dem of kings. And yet to convert one soul is greater than
to'pour out ten thousand talents into the baskets of the poor.'*
But, because giving alms is an act of the virtue of mer-
cifulness, our endeavouV must be, by proper arts, to mortify
the parents of unmercifulness, which are, 1. Envy; 2. An-
ger; 3. Covetousness: in which we may be helped, by the
following rules or instruments.
" Nunquain memini me legisse malaraorte mortuuiD,qui libenter opera charitalis
exercuit. — S. Hieron. ep. ad Nepot,
" Coloss, iii. 12,
OF ENVY. ^4^
Jlemcdies against Unmercifnhiess and Unc/iaritaUeness.
1. Against Envi/, hi/ waif of consider alion.
Against envy I shall use the same argument, I would use
to persuade a man from the fever or the dropsy. 1. Because
it is a disease; it is so far from having pleasure in it, or a
temptation to it, that it is full of pain, a great instrument of
vexation : it eats the flesh, and dries up the marrow, and
makes hollow eyes, and lean cheeks, and a pale face. 2. It
is nothing but a direct resolution never to enter into heaven
by the way of noble pleasure, taken in the good of others.
3. It is most contrary to God. 4. And a just contrary state
to the felicities and actions of heaven, where every star in-
creases the light of the other, and the multitude of guests
at the supper of the Lamb makes the eternal meal more
festival. 5. It is, perfectly, the state of hell, and the passion
of devils: for they do nothing but despair in themselves'',
and envy others' quiet or safety, and yet cannot rejoice ei-
ther in their good or in their evil, although they endeavour
to hinder that, and procure this, with all the devices and arts
of malice and of a great understanding. 6. Envy can serve
no end in the world : it cannot please any thing, nor do any
thing, nor hinder any thing, but the content and felicity of
him that hath. 7. Envy can never pretend to justice, as
hatred and uncharitableness sometimes may : for there may
be causes of hatred ; and I may have wrong done me ; and
then hatred hath some pretence, though no just argument. But
no man is unjust or injurious, for being prosperous or wise.
8; And therefore many men profess to hate another, but no
man owns envy, as being an enmity and displeasure for no
cause, but goodness or felicity : envious men, being like
cantharides and caterpillars, that delight m.ost to devour
ripe and most excellent fruits^. It is of all crimes, the bas-
est : for malice and anger are appeased with benefits, but
envy is exasperated, as envying to fortunate persons both
their power and their will to do good ; and never leaves mur-
muring, till the envied person be levelled, and then only the
y Nemo alienae virtuti invidet, qui satis confWit suae.— Cic. contra M. Anton.
* Homerus, Thersitis malos mores describens, malitire sammam apposuit,
Pelidcs imprimiit erat atque inimicu* Ulyssi.
r2
244 OF AXGER.
vulture leaves to eat the liver. For if his neiglibour be made
miserable, the envious man is apt to be troubled : like him,
that is so lono; unbuildino; the turrets, till all the roof is low
or flat, or that the stones fall upon the lower buildings, and
do a mischief, that the man repents of.
2. Remedies against Anger bij icay of Exercise.
The next enemy to mercifulness and the grace of alms is
anger ; against which there are proper instruments both in
prudence and religion.
1. Prayer is tlie great remedy against anger : for it must
suppose it, in some degree removed, before we pray ; and
then it is the more likely, it will be finished, when the prayer
is done. We must lay aside the act of anger, as a prepara-
tory to prayer ; and the curing the habit will be. the effect
and blessing of prayer : so that, if a man, to cure his anger,
resolves to address himself to God by prayer, it is first ne-
cessary, that, by his own observation and diligence, he lay
the anger aside, before his prayer can be fit to be presented:
and when we so pray, and so endeavour, we have all the
blessings of prayer, which God hath promised to it, to be
our security for success.
2. If anger arises in thy breast, instantly seal up thy lips,
and let it not go forth'*: for, like fire, when it wants vent, it
will suppress itself. It is good, in a fever, to have a tender
and a smooth tongue ; but it is better, that it be so in anger:
for, if it be rough and distempered, there it is an ill sign, but
here it is an ill cause. Angry passion is a fire, and angry
words are like breath to fan them together : they are like
steel and flint, sending out fire by mutual collision. Some
men will discourse themselves into passion ; and, if their
neighbour be enkindled too, together they flame with rage
and violence.
3. Humility is the most excellent natural cure for anger,
in the world : for he, that, by daily considering his own in-
firmities and failings, makes the error of his neighbour or
' Ira cum pectus i-apida occopavit,-
FutHes liiii^uET jubeo cavere
Vana latrutus jaculaiitis.-^~-Sap/)/io.
Turbatus sam, etnoii sum Iucutu».-~P:)al. Uxix.
OF ANGKR. 245
servant to be his own case, and remembers, that he daily
needs God's pardon and his brother's charity, will not be apt
to rage at the levities, or misfortunes, or indiscretions, of
another ; greater than which he considers, tliat he is very
frequently and more inexcusably guilty of.
4. Consider the example of the ever-blessed Jesus, who
suffered all the contradictions of sinners, and received all
affronts and reproaches of malicious, rash, and foolish per-
sons, and yet, in all them, was as dispassionate and gentle,
as the morning sun in autumn : and in this also he pro-
pounded himself imitable by us. For, if innocence itself
did suffer so great injuries and disgraces, it is no great mat-
ter for us quietly to receive all the calamities of fortune, and
indiscretion of servants, and mistakes of friends, and un-
kindnesses of kindred, and rudenesses of enemies; since we
have deserved these and worse, even hell itself.
5. If we be tempted to anger in the actions of govern-
ment and discipline to our inferiors (in which case, anger is
permitted so far, as it is prudently instrumental to govern-
ment, and only is a sin, when it is excessive and unreason-
able, and apt to disturb our own discourse, or to express it-
self in imprudent words or violent actions), let us propound
to ourselves the example of God the Father ; who, at the
same time and with the same tranquillity, decreed heaven
and hell, the joys of blessed angels and souls, and the tor:-
ments of devils and accursed spirits; and, at the day of judgv
ment, when all the world shall burn under his feet, God shall
not be at all inflamed, or shaken in his essential seat and
centre of tranquillity and joy. And if, at first, the cause
seems reasonable, yet defer to execute thy anger, till thou
mayest better judge. For, as Phocion told the Athenians,
who, upon the first news of the death of Alexander, were
ready to revolt, " Stay a while ; for if the King be not
dead, your haste will ruin you ; but, if he be dead, your stay
cannot prejudice your affairs ; for he will be dead to-morrow,
as well as to-day :" so if thy servant or inferior deserves pu-
nishment, stavino; till to-morrow will not make him innocent;
but it may possibly preserve thee so, by preventing thy strik-
ing a guiltless person, or being furious for a trifle.
6. Remove from thyself all provocations and incentives
to anger; especially, 1. Games of chance and great \vager.
240: OF ANGEH.>
Patroclus killed his friend^, the son of Amphidamas, in his;
rage and sudden fury, rising upon a cross game at tables.
Such also are petty curiosities, and worldly business, and care-
fulness about it : but manage thyself with indifferency, or
contempt of those external things, and do not spend a pas-
sion upon them; for it is more, than they are worth. But
they, that desire but few things, can be crossed but in afew^.
In not heaping up, with an ambitious or curious prodigality,
any very curious or choice utensils, seals, jewels, glasses,
precious stones ; because those very many accidents, which
happen in the spoiling or loss of these rarities, are, in event,
an irresistible cause of violent anger. 3. Do not entertain
nor suffer talebearers ; for they abuse our ears first, and then
our credulity, and then steal our patience, and, it may be, for
a lie ; and, if it be true, the matter is not considerable ; or
if it be, yet it is pardonable. And we may always escape
with patience at one of these outlets ; either, 1. By not hear-
ing slanders; or, 2. By not believing them; or, 3. By not
regarding the thing; or, 4. By forgiving the person. 4. To
this purpose also it may serve well, if we choose (as much as
we can) to live with peaceable persons, for that prevents the
occasions of confusion ; and if we live with prudent persons,
they will not easily occasion our disturbance. But, because
these things are not in many men's power, therefore I pro-r
pound this rather as a felicity than a remedy or a duty, and
an act of prevention than of cure.
7. Be not inquisitive into the affairs of other men, nor
the faults of thy servants, nor the mistakes of thy friends;
but what is offered to you, use according to the former rules ;
but do not thou go out to gather sticks to kindle a fire to
burn thine own house. And add this; " If my friend said,
or did, well in that, for which I am angry, I am in the fault,
not he ; but if he did amiss, he is in the misery, not I : for
either he was deceived, or he was malicious ; and either of
them both is all one with a miserable person ; and that is an
object of pity, not of anger."
8. Use all reasonable discourses to excuse the faults of
others ; considering that there are many circumstances of
^ "H/uttTi r^, on TtcuSa. nareKravov 'Afji.^i^i/xavro;,
Nwio?, oix l^iXaiv, au<)>' aiTTpayaXoiiri ^o\a;Qii(, — Iliad, -^ , 87.
* Quipauca requiruiit, non inultis exckluiil. — Pint.
OJ- ANGERy 247
time, of person, of accident, of inadvertency, of infiequency^
of aptness to amend, of sorrow for doing it ; and it is well^
that we take any good in exchange; for the eyij ii^ dpij^ qj
sufl'ered.
9. Upon the arising of anger, instantly enter into a deep
consideration of the joys of heaven, or the pains of hell : for
" fear and joy are naturally apt to appease this violence''."
10. In contentions be always passive, never active ; upon
the defensive, not the assaulting part ; and then also give 9,
gentle answer, receiving the furies and indiscretions of the
other, like a stone into a bed of moss and soft compliance ;
and you shall find it sit down quietly : whereas anger and
violence make the contention loud and long, and injurious
to both the parties.
11. In the actions of religion, be careful to temper all
thy instances with meekness, and the proper instruments of
it: and, if thou beest apt to be angry, neither fast violently,
nor entertain the too-forward heats of zeal, but secure thy
duty with constant and regular actions, and a good temper of
body, with convenient refreshments and recreations.
12. If anger rises suddenly and violently, first restrain
it with consideration ; and then let it end in a hearty prayer
for him, that did the real or seeming injury. The former of
the two stops its growth, and the latter quite kills it, and
^ijiakjes ^iiieiiitls for its monstrous and involuntary birth.
Itemedies against A)iger, hy way of consideration.
1. Consider, that anger is a professed enemy to counsel ;
it is a direct storm, in which no man can be heard to speak
or call from v/ithout : for if you counsel gently, you are de-
spised ; if you urge it, and be vehement, you provoke it more.
Be careful therefore to lay up beforehand a great stock of
reason and prudent consideration", that, like a besieged town,
you may be provided for, and be defensible from within,
since you are not likely to be relieved from without. Anger
is not to be suppressed but by something, that is as inward
as itself, and more habitual. To which purpose add, that, 2.
d Ik
248 OF axgj:k.
Of all passions, it endeavours most to make reason useless*
3. That it is a universal poison, of an infinite object: for
no man was ever so amorous, as to love a toad ; none so en-
vious, as to repine at the condition of the miserable ; no
man so timorous, as to fear a dead bee ; but anger is trou-
bled at every thing, and every man, and every accident; and
therefore, unless it be suppressed, it will make a man's con-
dition restless. 4. If it proceeds from a great cause, it turns
to fury ; if from a small cause, it is peevishness : and so is,
always, either terrible or ridiculous '^^. 5. It makes a man's
body monstrous, deformed, and contemptible; the voice hor-
rid ; the eyes cruel ; the face pale or fiery ; the gait fierce ;
the speech clamorous and loud. 6. It is neither manly nor
ingenuous. 7. It proceeds from softness of spirit and pusil-
lanimity ; which makes, that women are more angry than
men, sick persons more than the healthful, old men more
than young, unprosperous and calamitous people than the
blessed and fortunate. 8. It is a passion fitter for flies and
insects, than for persons, professing nobleness and bounty.
9. It is troublesome not only to those, that sufl'er it, but to
them, that behold it ; there being no greater incivility of en-
tertainment, than for the cook's faults or the negligence of
the servants, to be cruel, or outrageous, or unpleasant in the
presence of the guests. 10. It makes marriage to be a ne-
cessary and unavoidable trouble ; friendships, and societies,
and familiarities, to be intolerable. 11. It nndtiplies the evils
of drunkenness, arid makes the levities of wine to run into
madness. 12. It makes innocent jesting to be the beginning
of tragedies. 13. It turns friendship into hatred ; it makes
a man lose himself, and his reason, and his argument, in dis-
putation. It turns the desires of knowledge into an itch of
wrangling. It adds insolency to power. It turns justice into
cruelty, and judgment into oppression. It changes discipline
into tediousness and hatred of liberal institution. It makes
a prosperous man to be envied, and the unfortunate to be un-
pitied. It is a confluence of all the irregular passions : there
is in it envy and sorrow, fear and scorn, pride and ])rejudice,
rashness and inconsideration, rejoicing in evil and a desire
' 'O Qvfjto; 4>ova!V aWiov, tru/ji.<po^ai trvf*.fji,a.^o)/, flXa^nc s-Jvi^yav nal artfxia;, ;^f>i//,aTJcv
f Picere quid c(«ii& possis ingratin!' isti?
OF COVEJOUSNESS. 249
to inflict it, self-love, impatience, and curiosity. And lastly,
though it be very troublesome to others, yet it is most trou-
blesome to him, that hath it.
In the use ot" these arpuments and the former exercises,
be diligent to observe, lest, in your desires to suppress anger,
you be passionate and angry at yourself for being angry ;
like physicians'", who give a bitter potion, when they intend
to eject the bitterness of choler ; for this will provoke the
person, and increase the passion. But placidly and quietly
set upon the mortification of it ; and attempt it first for a
day, resolving that day not at all to be angry, and to be watch-
ful and observant; for a day is no great trouble : but then,
after one day's watchfulness, it will be as easy to watch two
days, as at first it was to watch one day ; and so you may
increase, till it becomes easy and habitual.
Only observe, that such an anger alone is criminal, which
is against charity to myself or my neighbour ; but anger
against sin is a holy zeal, and an effect of love to God and
my brother, for whose interest 1 am passionate, like a con-
cerned person : and, if I take care, that my anger makes no
reflection of scorn or cruelty upon the offender, or of pride
and violence, or transportation to myself, anger becomes
charity and duty. And when one commended Charilaus, the
king of Sparta, for a gentle, a good, and a meek prince, his
colleague said well, " How can he be good, who is not an
enemy even to vicious persons 'f"
3. Remedies against Covetousness, the third enemi/ of Mere}/.
Covetousness is also an enemy to alms, though not to all
the effects of mercifulness : but this is to be cured by the
proper motives to charity beforementioned. and by the pro-
per rules of justice ; which being secured, the arts of getting
money are not easily made criminal. To which also we may
add,
1. Covetousness makes a man miserable "^ ; because riches
are not means to make a man happy : and unless felicity
^ Aiiiaium aniaro bilem pliariaaco qui eluunt. ' Plutar. Je odio etinviilia.
•^ Qoid refertigilur (juatilis jamenta fuliget
Porticibus, quanta nemorum vecletur in nmbra,
Jugera qnot vicina foro, quas eroerit redes ?
Nemo mains felix. — Juv. Sat. 4.
Z^Q OF CO VETO us NESS,
were to be bought with money, he is a vain person, who ad-r
mires heaps of gold and rich possessions. For what Hjppo-
machus said to some persons, who commended a tall man as
fit to be a champion in the Olympic games, " It is true (said
he) if the crown hang so high, that the longest arm could
reach it ;" the same we may say concerning riches ; they
were excellent things, if the richest man were certainly the
wisest and the best : but as they are, they are nothing to be
wondered at, because they contribute nothing towards felir
city : which appears, because some men choose to be miserar
ble, that they may be rich, rather than be happy with the
expense of money and doing noble things.
2. Riches are useless and unprofitable ; for, beyond our
needs and conveniences, nature knows no use of riches : an4
they say, that the princes of Italy, when they sup alone, eat
out of a single dish, and drink in a plain glass, and the wife
eats without purple ; for nothing is more frugal than th^
back and belly, if they be used as they should ; but when
they would entertain the eyes of strangers, when they are
vain, and would make a noise, then riches come forth to se^
forth the spectacle, and furnish out the comedy of wealth, o_f
vanity'. No man can, with all the wealth in the Vv'orld, buy
so much skill, as to be a good lutenist ; he must go the same
way that poor people do, he must learn and take paius;:
much less can he buy constancy or chastity or courage ;
nay, not so much as the contempt of riches : and, by possess,-
ing more than we need, we cannot obtain so much power
over our souls, as not to require more. And certainly riches
must deliver me from no evil, if the possession of them can^
not take away the longing for them. If any man be thirsty,
drink cools him ; if he be hungry, eating meat satisfies him :
and when a man is cold, and calls for a warm cloak, he is
pleased, if you give it him; but you trouble him, if you load
him with six or eight cloaks. Nature rests, and sits still,
when she hath her portion; but that, which exceeds it, is a
trouble and a burden : and, therefore, in true philosophy,
no man is rich, but he that is poor, according to the conmioh
account: for when God hath satisfied those needs, which he
made, that is, all that is natural, whatsoever is beyond it, is
thirst and a disease ; and, unless it be sent back again in
' PIU(, : ,
OF COVETOUSNESSi 251
charity or religion, can serve no end but vice or vanity : it
can increase the appetite to represent the man poorer, and
full of a new and artificial, unnatural need ; but it never satis-
fies the need it makes, or makes the man richer. No wealth
can satisfy the covetous desire of wealth.
3. Riches are troublesome ; but the satisfaction of those
appetites, which God and nature hath made, are cheap and
easy ; for who ever paid use-money for bread, and onions,
and water, to keep him alive"" ? but when we covet after
houses of the frame and design of Italy, or long for jewels,
or for my next neighbour's field, or horses from Barbary, or
the richest perfumes of Arabia, or Galatian mules, or fat
eunuchs for our slaves from Tunis, or rich coaches from Na-
ples, then we can never be satisfied, till we have the best
thing, that is fancied, and all that can be had, and all that
can be desired, and that we can lust no more : but, before
we come to the one half of our first wild desires, we are the
bondmen of usurers, and of our worse tyrant appetites, and
the tortures of envy and impatience. But I consider, that
those, who drink on still, when their thirst is quenched, or
eat, after they have well dined, are forced to vomit not only
their superfluity, but even that, which at first was necessary :
so those, that covet more, than they can temperately use, are
oftentimes forced to part even with that patrimony, which
would have supported their persons in freedom and honour,
and have satisfied all their reasonable desire.
4. Contentedness is therefore health, because covetous-
ness is a direct sickness : and it was well said of Aristippus
(as Plutarch reports him), if any man, after much eating and
drinking, be still unsatisfied, he hath no need of more meat
or more drink, but of a physician ; he more needs to be pm'ged
than to be filled : and therefore, since covetousness cannot be
satisfied, it must be cured by emptiness and evacuation. The
man is without remedy, unless he be reduced to the scantling
of nature, and the measures of his personal necessity. Give
to a poor man a house, and a few cows, pay his little debt,
and set him on work, and he is provided for, and quiet : but
when a man enlarges beyond a fair possession, and desires
another lordship, you spite him, if you let him have it ; for,
m Ergo solioitse tu causa, [irciinia, vita- cs :
Per te iraraatuiuin mortis adimus iter. — Prcpert. o'. 7^,3.,
252 OF COVETOUSNESS.
by that, he is one degree the further off from the rest in his
desires and satisfaction ; and now he sees himself in a big-
ger capacity to a larger fortune ; and he shall never find his
period, till you begin to take away something of what he
hath ; for then he will begin to be glad to keep that, which
is left : but reduce him to nature's measures, and there he
shall be sure to find rest: for there no man can desire beyond
his belly-full ; and, when he wants that, any one friend or
charitable man can cure his poverty ; but all the world can^
not satisfy his covetousness.
5. Covetousness is the most fantastical and contradictory
disease in the whole world : it must therefore be incurable ;
because it strives against its own cure. No man, therefore,
abstains from meat, because he is hungry ; nor from wine,
because he loves it, and needs it: but the covetous man does
so, for he desires it passionately, because he says, he needs
it, and, when he hath it, he will need it still, because he dares
not use it. He gets clothes, because he cannot be without
them ; but when he hath them, then he can : as if he needed
corn for his granary, and clothes for his wardrobe, more than
for his back and belly. For covetousness pretends to heap
much together for fear of want ; and yet, after all his pains
and purchase, he suffers that really, which, at first, he feared
vainly; and, by not using what he gets, he makes that suf-
fering to be actual, present, and necessary, which, in his
lowest condition, was but future, contingent, and possible.
It stirs up the desire, and takes away the pleasure of being
satisfied. It increases the appetite, and will not content it:
it swells the principal to no purpose, and lessens the use to
all purposes; disturbing the order of nature, and the desis^ns
of God ; making monev not to be the instrument of exchansre
or charity, nor corn to feed himself or the poor, nor wool to
clothe himself or his brother, nor wine to refresh the sadnesij
of the afflicted, nor his oil to make his own countenance
cheerful ; but all these to look upon, and to tell over, and to
take accounts by, and make himself considerable, and won-
dered at by fools ; that while he lives, he may be called riclj,
and when he dies, may be accounted miserable; and, like the
dish-makers of China, may leave a greater heap of dirt for
his nepbevv s, while he himself hath a new lot fallen to him
in the portion of Dives. But thus the ass carried wood and
OF COVETOUSXES8. 253-
sweet herbs to the l>aths, hut was never washed or perfumed
himself: [le heaped up sweets for others, while himself was
tHthy with smoke aud ashes. And yet it is considerable ; if
the man can be content to feed hardly, and laliour extremely,
and watch carefully, and suffer affronts and disgrace, that he
may get money more, than he uses in his temperate and just
needs, with how much ease might this man be happy ? and
with how great uneasiness and trouble does he make himself
miserable ? For he takes pains to get content, and, when he
might have it, he lets it go. He might better be content with
a virtuous and quiet poverty, than with an artificial, trouble-
some, and vicious. The same diet and a less labour would,
at first, make him happy, and, for ever after, rewardable.
6. The sum of all is that, which the apostle says, " Covet-
ousness is idolatry;" that is, it is an admiring money for itself,
not for its use; it relies ixpon money, and loves it more, than
it loves God and religion : and it is " the root of all evil ;" it
teaches men to be cruel and crafty, industrious in evil, full
of care and malice ; it devours vouno; heirs, and g-rinds the
face of the poor, and undoes those, who specially belong to
God's protection, helpless, craftless, and innocent people ; it
inquires into our parents' age, and longs for the death of our
friends ; it makes friendship an art of rapine, and changes a
partner into a vulture, and a companion into a thief; and,
after all this, it is for no good to itself; for it dares not spend
those heaps of treasure, which it snatched : and men hate
serpents and basilisks worse than lions and bears ; for these
kill, because they need the prey, but they sting to death and
eat not". And if they pretend all this care and heap for their
heirs (like the mice of Africa, hiding the golden ore in their
bowels, and refusing to give back the indigested gold, till
their guts be out) they may remember, that what was unne-
cessary for themselves, is as unnecessary for their sons ; and
why cannot they be without it, as well as their fathers, who
did not use it ? And it often happens, that to the sons, it be-
comes an instrument to serve some lust or other ; that, as
XpvTe xaxj'v ci^^riyi, CioiJjfio'^E, TraVTa ■^aXi'jTTikii,
Elbi a fM 9v>iTors-» ysvia-Qat my-a troQetviv
Zo5 ya^ EXlTi fxayai n, XftjXairi'ai tt, <fiivoi t§,
'fpjSpa Se T£x»a yovs~3-j», ahX'^fioi ts <rvjaijxoi;. — Phocylid, 38.
254 OF COVETOUSNESS:
the gold was useless to their fathers, so may the sons be to
the public, fools or prodigals, loads to their country, and the
curse and punishment of their father's avarice : and yet all
that wealth is short of one blessing; but it is a load, coming
with a curse, and descending from the family of a long-de-
rived sin. However the father transmits it to the son, and
it may be the son to one more ; till a tyrant, or an oppressor,
or a war, or change of government, or the usurer, or folly, or
an expensive vice, makes holes in the bottom of the bag, and
the wealth runs out like water, and flies away, like a bird from
the hand of a child.
7. Add to these the consideration of the advantages of
poverty °; that it is a state freer from temptation, secure in
dangers, but of one trouble, safe under the Divine Provi-
dence, cared for in heaven by a daily ministration, and for
whose support God makes every day a new decree ; a state,
of which Christ was pleased to make open profession, and
many wise men daily make vows : that a rich man is but like
a pool, to whom the poor run, and first trouble it, and then
draw it dry : that he enjoys no more of it, than according to
the few and limited needs of a man ; he cannot eat like a
ivolf or an elephant : that variety of dainty fare ministers,
•but to sin and sicknesses : that the poor man feasts oftener
than the richi', because every little enlargement is a feast to
the poor, but he, that feasts every day, feasts no day, there
being nothing left, to which he may, beyond his ordinary,
"extend his appetite : that the rich man sleeps not so soundly
as the poor labourer ; that his fears are more, and his needs
are greater (for who is poorer, he that needs 5/. or he that
needs 6000?) ; the poor man hath enough to fill his belly, and
the rich hath not enough to fill his eye ; that the poor man's
Vants are easy to be relieved by a common charity, but the
" Provooel iit segnes animos, rerumque remotas
Iiigeniosa vias paulalim explorel egeslas. — Claudian.36. 31.
■>,. V Sed oliiu
Prodigio par est in iiobilitate Scnectus.
Hortulus liic, puteusque brevis, nee reste movendus,
In tenue.s plantas facili difl'iinditur baustii.
Vive bidentis ain.iDs, et cuiti villicus horti :
Unde cpuluia possis centum dare Pytliagoreis.
Est aliqnid, qnocunque loco, quocunqne recessu,
I'nius doniinmn sese fecisse lacertae. — Juven. Sat, iii. 226.
OF REPENTAKCE'. Q.^^
rieeds of rich men cannot be supplied but by princes ; and
they are left to the temptation of great vices to make repara-
tion of their needs; and the am1)itious labours of men to get
great estates, is but like the selling of a foimtain to buy a
fever, a parting with content to buy necessity, a purchase of
an unhandsome condition at the price of infelicity : that
princes, and they that enjoy most of the world, have most
Df it but in title, and supreme rights, and reserved privileges,
peppercorns, homages, trifling services and acknowledg-
ments, the real use descending to others, to more substantial
purposes. These considerations may be useful to the curing
of covetousness; that, the grace of mercifulness enlarging
the heart of a man, his hand may not be contracted ; but
reached out to the poor in alms.
SECTION IX.
Of Repentance.
Repentance, of all things in the world, makes the
"greatest change : it changes things in heaven and earth ; for
it changes the whole man from sin to grace, from vicious
habits to holy customs, from unchaste bodies to angelical
souls, from swine to philosophers, from drunkenness to so-
ber counsels: and God himself, "with whom is no variable-
ness or shadow of change," is pleased, by descending to our
weak understandings, to say, that he changes also upon
man's repentance, that he alters his decrees, revokes his sen-
'i:ence, cancels the bills of accusation, throws the records of
shame and sorrow from the court of heaven, and lifts up the
sinner from the grave to life, from his prison to a throne, from
hell and the guilt of eternal torture, to heaven and to a title
'to never-ceasino; felicities. If we be bound on earth, we shall
be bound in heaven : if we be absolved here, we shall be
loosed there : if we repent, God will repent, and not send
the evil upon us, which we had deserved.
But repentance is a conjugation and society of many du-
'ties; and it contains in it all the parts of a holy life, from the
"time of our return to the day of our death inclusively ; and
it hath in it some things specially relating to the sins of our
256 OF REPKNIANCE.
former days, which are now to be abolished by special arts,
and have obliged us to special labours, and brought in many
new necessities, and put us into a very great deal of danger.
And, because it is a duty consisting of so many parts and so
much employment, it also requires much time, and leaves a
man in the same degree of hope of pardon, as is his restitu-
tion to the state of righteousness and holy living, for which
we covenanted in baptism. For we must know, that there
is but one repentance in a man's whole life, if repentance be
taken in the proper and strict evangelical covenant sense,
and not after the ordinary understandino; of the w orld ; that
is, we are but once to change our whole state of life, from
the power of the devil and his entire possession, from the
state of sin and death, from the body of corruption, to the
life of grace, to the possession of Jesus, to the kingdom of
the Gospel ; and this is done in the baptism of water, or in
the baptism of the Spirit, when the first rite comes to be veri-
fied by God's grace coming upon us, and by our obedience
to the heavenly calling, we working together with God.
After this change, if ever we fall into the contrary state, and
be wholly estranged from God and religion, and profess our-
selves servants of unrighteousness, God hath made no more
covenant of restitution to us ; there is no place left for any
more repentance, or entire change of condition, or new
birth : a man can be regenerated but once ; and such are
voluntary malicious apostates, witches, obstinate impenitent
persons, and the like. But if we be overtaken by infirmity,
or enter into the marches or borders of this estate, and commit
a grievous sin, or ten, or twenty, so we be not in the entire
possession of the devil, we are, for the present, in a damnable
condition, if we die; but if we live, we are in a recoverable
condition; for so we may repent often. We repent or rise
from death but once, but from sickness many times ; and,
by the grace of God, we shall be pardoned, if so we repent.
But our hopes of pardon are, just as is the repentance;
which, if it be timely, hearty, industrious, and effective, God
accepts ; not by weighing grains or scruples, but by esti-
mating the great proportions of our life. A hearty endea-
vour, and an effectual general change shall get the pardon;
the unavoidable infirmities, and past evils, and present im-
perfections, and short interruptions, against which we watch.
OF REPENTANCE. 257
find pray, and strive, being put upon the accounts of the
cross, and paid for by the holy ,Tesus. This is the state
and condition of repentance : its parts and actions must be
valued, according to the following rules.
Acts and parts of Repentance.
1. He, that repents truly, is greatly sorrowful for his past
sins : not with a superficial sigh or tear, but a pungent af-
flictive sorrow ; such a sorrow as hates the sin so much, that
the man would choose to die rather than act it any more.
This sorrow is called in Scripture " a weeping sorely; a
weeping with bitterness of heart ; a weeping day and night ;
a sorrow of heart ; a breaking of the spirit ; mourning like a
dove, and chattering like a swallow ^:" and we may read the
degree and manner of it by the lamentations and sad accents
of the prophet Jeremy, when he wept for the sins of the na-
tion ; by the heart-breaking of David, when he mourned for
his murder and adultery : and the bitter weeping of St. Peter,
after the shameful denying of his master. The expression
of this sorrow differs according to the temper of the body,
the sex, the age, and circumstance of action, and the motive
of sorrow, and by many accidental tendernesses, or masculine
hardnesses ; and the repentance is not to be estimated by
the tears, but by the grief; and the grief is to be valued not
by the sensitive trouble, but by the cordial hatred of the
sin, and ready actual dereliction of it, and a resolution and
real resisting its consequent temptations. Some people can
shed tears for nothing, some for any thing ; but the proper
and true effects of a godly sorrow are, fear of the Divine
judgments, apprehension of God's displeasure, watchings
and strivings against sin, patiently enduring the cross of
sorrow (which God sends as their punishment), in accusation
of ourselves, in perpetually begging pardon, in mean and
base opinions of ourselves, and in all the natural productions
from these, according to our temper and constitution. For
if we be apt to weep in other accidents, it is ill, if we weep
not also in the sorrows of repentance : not, that weeping is
of itself a duty, but that the sorrow, if it be as great, will be
still expressed in as great a manner.
"> Jer. siii, 17. Joel, ii. 13. E?.ek. xxvii. 31. James, iv. 9.
VOL. IV, S
25B OF REPF-XTAXCE.
2. Our sorrow for sins must retain the proportion of our
sins, thouoh not the equality : we have no particular mea-
sures of sins ; we know not, which is greater of sacrilege or
superstition, idolatry or covetousness, rebellion or witch-
craft: and therefore God ties us not to nice measures of
sorrow, but only, that we keep the general rules of propor-
tion ; that is, that a great sin have a great grief, a smaller
crime being- to be washed off with a lesser shower.
3. Our sorrow for sins is then best accounted of for its
degree, when it, together with all the penal and afflictive du-
ties of repentance, shall have equalled or exceeded the plea-
sure we had in commission of the sin'.
4. True repentance is a punishing duty, and acts its sor-
row; and judges and condemns the sin by voluntary sub-
mitting to such sadnesses, as God sends on us, or (to pre-
vent the judgment of God) by judging ourselves, and punishT
ing our bodies and our spirits by such instruments of piety,
as are troublesome to the body : sugh as are fasting, watch-
ing, long prayers, troublesome postures in our prayers, ex-
pensive alms, and all outward acts of humiliation. For he,
that must judge himself, must condemn himself, if he be
guilty; and, if he be condemned, he must be punished; and,
if he be so judged, it will help to prevent the judgment of
the Lord, St. Paul instructing us in this particular^ But I
before intimated, that the punishing actions of repentance
are only actions of sorrow, and therefore are to make up the
proportions of it. For our grief may be so full of trouble*
as to outweigh all the burdens of fasts and bodily afflictions,
and then the other are the less necessary ; and, when they
are used, the benefit of them is to obtain of God a remission
or a lessening of such temporal judgments, which God hath
decreed against the sins, as it was in the case of Ahab : but
the sinner is not, by any thing of this, reconciled to the
eternal favour of God ; for as yet, this is but the introduc-
tion to repentance.
5. Every true penitent is obliged to confess his sins, and
to humble himself before God for ever. Confession of sins
hath a special promise. " If we confess our sins, he is faith-
ful and just to forgive tis our sins':" meaning that God hath
bound himself to forgive us, if we duly confess our sins, and
' Hugode St. Victor. « 1 Cor. xi. 31. > 1 John, i. 9.
d
OF REPENTANCE. 259
do all that, for which confession was appointed; that is, be
ashamed of them, and own them no more. For confession
of onr sins to God can signify nothing of itself, in its direct
nature : he sees us, when we act them, and keeps a record of
them ; and we forget them, unless he reminds us of them by
his grace. So " that to confess them to God does not punish
us, or make us ashamed ; but confession to him, if it pro-
ceeds from shame and sorrow, and is an act of himiility and
self-condemnation," and is a laying open our wounds for
cure, then it is a duty God delights in. In all which circum-
stances, because we may very much be helped, if we take in
the assistance of a spiritual guide ; therefore the church of
God, in all ages, hath commended, and, in most ages, en-
joined, that we confess our sins", and discover the state and
condition of our souls, to such a person, whom we or our su-
periors judge fit to help us in such needs. For so "if we
confess our sins one to another," as St. James advises, we
shall obtain the prayers of the holy man, whom God and the
church have appointed solemnly to pray for us : and when
he knows our needs, he can best minister comfort or reproof,
oil or caustics ; he can more opportunely recommend your
particular state to God ; he can determine your cases of con-
science, and judge better for you, than you do for yourself;
and the shame of opening such ulcers may restrain your for-
wardness to contract them : and all these circumstances of
advantage will do veiy much towards the forgiveness. And
this course was taken by the new converts in the days of the
apostles : " For many that believed, came and confessed and
shewed their deeds ^'." And it were well, if this duty were
practised prudently and innocently in order to publick dis-
cipline, or private comfort and instruction : but that it be
done to God is a duty, not directly for itself, but for its ad-
juncts and the duties, that go with it, or before it, or after it :
which duties because they are all to be helped and guided
by our pastors and curates of souls, he is careful of his eternal
interest, that will not lose the advantage of using a private
guide and judge. "He that hideth his sins, shall not prosper;"
" 'AvttyxaTov roii TteTmrrevfAivoii Ttjv oixov fiiav rZv fAuirrn^imv rou Sesu e^ofxaXiyeia-^ai
TO. afxa^rnfxaTa.—St. Basil, reg. brer. 228. Concil. Laod. c. 2. Concil. Quin. sext.'
c. 102. Tertol. de poenit.
» Acts, xi\. 18.
s2
2G0 OF REPENTANCE.
Non (Vtrigetur, saith the vulgar Latin, "he shall want a guide,"
" but who confesseth and forsaketh them, shall have mercy ^\"
And to this purpose Climacus reports, that divers holy persons
in that age did use to carry table-books with them, and in
them described an account of all their determinate thoughts,
purposes, words, and actions, in which they had suffered in-
firmity; that, by communicating the estate of their souls, they
might be instructed and guided, or corrected or encouraged.
6. True repentance must reduce to act all its holy pur-
poses, and enter into and run through the state of holy
living'', which is contrary to that state of darkness, in which
in times past we walked^. For to resolve to do it, and yet
not to do it, is to break our resolution and our faith, to mock
God, to falsify and evacuate all the preceding acts of re-
pentance, and to make our pardon hopeless, and our hope
fruitless. He that resolves to live well, when a danger is
upon him, or a violent fear, or when the appetites of lust are
newly satisfied, or newly served, and yet when the tempta-
tion comes again, sins again, and then is sorrowful, and re-
solves once more against it, and yet falls when the tempta-
tion returns, is a vain man, but no true penitent, nor in the
state of grace ; and if he chance to die in one of these good
moods, is very far from salvation: for if it be necessary, that
we resolve to live well, it is necessary we should do so. For
resolution is an imperfect act, a term of relation, and signi-
fies notliing but in order to the actions : it is as a faculty is
to the act, as spring is to the harvest, as eggs are to birds, as
a relative to its correspondent, nothing without it. No man
therefore can be in the state of grace and actual favour by
resolutions and holy purposes ; these are but the gate and
portal towards pardon : a holy life is the only perfection of
repentance, and the firm ground, upon which we can cast the
anchor of hope in the mercies of God, through Jesus Christ.
7. No man is to reckon his pardon immediately upon his
returns from sin to the beginnings of good life, but is to
begin his hopes and degrees of confidence according as sin
" Prov. xxviii. 13.
s Rom. vi. 3, 4, 7. viii. 10. xiii. 13, 14. xi. 22. 27. Gal. v. 6. 24. vi. 15. 1 Cor.
vii. 19. 2 Cor. xiii. o. Colos. i. 21—23. Heb.xii. 1. 14. 16. x. 16. 22. 1 Pet. i. 13.
2 Pet. i. 4. 9. 10. iii 11. 1 Jolin, i. 6. iii. 8, 9. v. 16.
y Nequam illuil verimm, Bene vult, nisi qui bene facil. — Trinummus, Act. ii.
Seen. iii. 38.
OF REPF,NTAXtE. 201
dies in him, iincl grace lives; as the habits of sin lessen, aud
righteousness grows ; according as sin returns btit seldom in
smaller instances and without choice, and by surprise with-
out deliberation, and is highly disrelished, and presently
dashed against the rock Christ Jesus by a holy sorrow and
renewed care and more strict watchfulness. For a holy life
being the condition of the covenant on our part, as we return
to God, so God returns to us, and our state returns to t^e
probabilities of pardon.
8. Every man is to work out his salvation with, fear and
trembling; and after the commission of sins his fears must
multiply ; because every new sin and every great declining
from the way« of God is still a degree of new danger, and
hath increased God's anger, and hath made him more uneasy
to grant pardon : and when he does grant it, it is upon harder
terms both for doing and suffering; that is, we must do more
for pardon, and, it may be, suffer much more. For we must
know, that God pardons our sins by parts ; as our duty in-
creases, and our care is more prudent and active, so God's
anger decreases : and yet, it may be, the last sin you com-
mitted, made God unalterably resolve to send upon you
some sad judgment. Of the particulars in all cases we are
uncertain; and therefore we have reason always to mourn
for our sins, that have so provoked God, and made our con-
dition so full of danger, that, it may be, no prayers or tears
or duty can alter his sentence concerning some sad judg-
ment upon us. Thus God irrevocably decreed to punish the
Israehtes for idolatry, although Moses prayed for them, and
God forgave them in some degree ; that is, so that he would
not cut them off from being a people: yet he would not for-
give them so, but he would visit that their sin upon them :
and he did so.
9. A true penitent must, all the days of his life^ pray for
pardon, and never think the work completed, till he dies ;
not by any act of his own, by no act of the church, by no
forgiveness by the party injured, by no restitution. These
are all instruments of great use and efficacy, and the means,
by which it is to be done at length ; but still the sin lies at
the door, ready to return upon us in judgment and danina-
twn, if we return to it in choice or action. And whether
' Danduiii inierstitium ixjenilenliae. — Tacit.
262 01- REPENTANCE.
God hath forgiven us or no, ue know not% and how far we
know not; and all that we have done, is not of sufficient
worth to obtain pardon : therefore still pray, and still be sor-
rowful for ever having done it, and for ever watch against it ;
and then those beginnings of pardon, which are working all
the way, will at last be perfected in the day of the Lord.
10. Defer not at all to repent ; much less mayest thou
put it off to thy death-bed. It is not an easy thing to root
out the habits of sin'', which a man's whole life hath gathered
and confirmed. We find work enough to mortify one beloved
lust, in our very best advantage of strength and time, and
before it is so deeply rooted, as it must needs be supposed
to be at the end of a wicked life : and therefore it will prove
impossible, when the work is so great and the strengths so
little, when sin is so strong and grace so weak : for they al-
ways keep the same proportion of increase and decrease, and
as sin grows, grace decays ; so that the more need we have
of grace, the less at that time we shall have ; because the
greatness of our sins, which makes the need, hath lessened
the grace of God, which should help us, into nothing. To
which add this consideration ; that on a man's death-bed the
day of repentance is past : for repentance being the renew-
ing of a holy life, a living the life of grace, it is a contra-
diction to say that a man can live a holy life upon his death-
bed : especially if we consider, that for a sinner to live a holy
life must first suppose him to have overcome all his evil ha-
bits, and then to have made a purchase of the contrary
graces, by the labours of great prudence, watchfulness, self-
denial and severity*^. " Nothing that is excellent, can be
wrought suddenly''."
11. After the beginnings of thy recovery, be infinitely
fearful of a relapse ; and therefore, upon the stock of thy sad
experience, observe where thy failings were, and by especial
arts fortify that faculty, and arm against that temptation.
For if all those arguments, which God uses to us to preserve
our innocence, and thy late danger, and thy fears, and the
goodness of God making thee once to escape, and the shame
* 1 |jeccati el i clebiti son sempie piu di quel ciie si crede.
•' Tt oiv TTpof 'ido; ia-cly thfls-KiiM ^oiifiii^xa ; to EvaVTtov eOo?. — Arria.
•' \[ortera venienlem nemo hilaris excipit, nisi <jiii ad earn se din eiiMijiosuerat.
"* Ov^hi T«v ixiyaXiiiv a'fvw ■ylma.i.—Arrian.
OF Rf:rEXTANC^. 263
of thy Ikll, and I lie sense of thy own weaknesses, will not
make thee watchful against a fall, especially knowing how
much it costs a man to be restored, it will be infinitely more
dangerous, if ever thou fallest again ; not only for fear God
should no more accept thee to pardon, but even thy own
hopes will be made more desperate, and thy impatience
greater, and thy shame turn to impudence, and thy own will
be more estranged, violent, and refractory, and thy latter
end will be worse than thy beginning. To which add this
consideration : that thy sin, which was formerly in a good
way of being pardoned, will not only return upon thee with
all its own loads, but Avith the baseness of unthankfulness,
and thou wilt be set as far back from heaven as ever ; and
all thy former labours and fears and watchings and agonies
will be reckoned for nothing, but as arguments to upbraid
thy folly, who, when thou hadst set one foot in heaven, didst
pull that back, and carry both to hell.
Motives to Repentance.
I shall use no other arguments to move a sinner to re
pentance, but to tell him, miless he does, he shall certainly
perish ; and if he does repent timely and entirely, that is,
jive a holy life, he shall be forgiven and be saved. But yet
1 desire, that this consideration be enlarged with some great
circumstances ; and let us remember,
1. That to admit mankind to repentance and pardon,
was a favour greater than ever God gave to the angels and
devils; for they were never admitted to the condition of se-
cond thoughts : Christ never groaned one groan for them :
he never suffered one stripe nor one affront, nor shed one
drop of blood, to restore them to hopes of blessedness after
their first failings. But this he did for us : he paid the
score of our sins, only that we might be admitted to repent,.
and that this repentance might be effectual to the great pur-
poses of felicity and salvation,
2. Consider, that as it cost Christ many millions of prayers
and groans and sighs, so he is now at this instant, and hath
been for these sixteen hundred years, night and day inces-
santly, praying for grace to us, that we may repent; and for
pardon, when we do ; and for degrees of pardon beyond the
capacities of our infirmities,and the merit of our sorrows and
264 OF REPENTANCE.
amendment; and this prayer he will continue till his second
coming : " for he ever liveth to make intercession for us*."
And that we may know what it is, in behalf of which he in-
tercedes, St. Paul tells us his design; "We are ambassadors
for Christ, as though he did beseech you by us, we pray you
in Christ's stead to be reconciled to GodV And what
Christ prays us to do, he prays to God, that we may do ;
that which he desires of us as his servants, he desires of God,
who is the fountain of the grace and powers unto us, and
without whose assistance we can do nothing.
3. That ever we should repent, was so costly a purchase,
and so great a concernment, and so high a favour, and the
event is esteemed by God himself so great an excellency,
that our blessed Saviour tells us, " there shall be joy in hea-
ven over one sinner that repenteth^:" meaning, that when
Christ shall be glorified, and at the right hand of his Father
make intercession for us, praying for our repentance, the
conversion and repentance of every sinner is part of Christ's
glorification, it is the answering of his prayers, it is a portion
of his reward, in which he does essentially glory by the joys
of his glorified humanity. This is the joy of our Lord him-
self directly, not of the angels, save only by reflection : tlie
joy (said our blessed Saviour) shall be in the presence of the
angels ; they shall see the glory of the Lord, the answering
of his prayers, the satisfaction of his desires, and the reward
of his sufferings, in the repentance and consequent pardon of
a sinner. For therefore he once suffered, and for that reason
he rejoices for ever. And therefore, when a penitent sinner
comes to receive the effect and full consummation of his par-
don, it is called " an entering into the joy of our Lord ;" that
is, a partaking of that joy, which Christ received at our con-
version and enjoyed ever since.
4. Add to this, that the rewards of heaven are so great
and glorious, and Christ's burden is so light, his yoke is so
easy, that it is a shameless impudence to expect so great glo-
ries at a less rate than so little a service, ata lower rate than
a holy life. It cost the heart-blood of the Son of God to
obtain heaven for us upon that condition ; and who shall die
again to get heaven for us upon easier terms? What would
you do, if God should command you to kill your eldest son,
f iieb, vii. 15. f 2 Cor. V. 20. s Lake, xv. r. '
PliEPAUATIOX TO THE HOLY SACRAMENT. 265
or to work in the mines for a thousand years together, or to
fast all thy life-time with bread and water? were not heaven
a very great bargain even after all this t And when God re-
quires nothing of us but to live soberly, justly, and godly,
(which things themselves are to a man a very great felicity,
and necessary to our present well-being), shall we think this
to be an intolerable burden, and that heaven is too little a
purchase at that price ; and that God, in mere justice, will
take a death-bed sigh or groan, and a few unprofitable tears
and promises in exchange for all our duty ?
If these motives joined together with our own interest,
even as much as felicity, and the sight of God, and the avoid-
ing the intolerable pains of hell, and many intermedial judg-
ments comes to, will not move us to leave, 1 . the filthiness,
and, 2. the trouble, and, 3. the uneasiness, and, 4. the unrea-
sonableness of sin, and turn to God, there is no more to be
said ; we must perish in our folly.
SECTION X.
Of Preparation to, and the manner koic to receive the holi/ Sacra-
ment oftlie Lo7'd's Supper.
The celebration of the holy sacrament is the great myste-
riousness of the Christian religion, and succeeds to the most
solemn rite of natural and Judaical religion, the law of sacri-
ficing. For God spared mankind, and took the sacrifice of
beasts together with our solemn prayers for an instrument of
expiation. But these could not purify the soul from sin,
but were typical of the sacrifice of something that could.
But nothing could do this, but either the oftering of all that
sinned, that every man should be the anathema or devoted
thing; or else by some one of the same capacity, who by
some superadded excellency might in his own personal suf-
ferings have a value great enough to satisfy for all the whole
kind of sinning persons. This the Son of God, Jesus Christ,
God and man, undertook, and finished by a sacrifice of him-
self upon the altar of the cross.
2. This sacrifice, because it was perfect, could be but
one, and that once : but because the needs of the world
266 I'REPARATIOX TO TUK HOLY SACKAMEXT.
sliould last as long as the world itself, it was necessary, that
there should be a perpetual ministry established, whereby
this one sufficient sacrifice should be made eternally effec-
tual to the several new avisins: needs of" all the world, who
should desire it, or in any sense be capable of" it.
3. To this end Christ was made a priest for ever : he was
initiated or consecrated on the cross, and there began his
priesthood, which was to last till his coming to judgment.
It began on earth, but was to last and be officiated in heaven,
where he sits perpetually representing and exhibiting to the
Father that great effective sacrifice, which he offered on the
cross, to eternal and never-failing purposes.
4. As Christ is pleased to represent to his Father that
great sacrifice as a means of atonement and expiation for all
mankind, and with special purposes and intendment for aJJ
the elect, all that serve him in holiness : so he hath appointed,
that the same ministry shall be done upon earth too, in our
manner, and according to our proportion ; and therefore hath
constituted and separated an order of men, who, by " shew-
ing forth the Lord's death" by sacramental representation,
may pray unto God after the same manner, that our Lord
and high-priest does ; that is, offer to God and represent in
tliis solemn prayer and sacrament, Christ as already offered;
so sending up a gracious instrument, whereby our prayers
may, for his sake and in the same manner of intercession, be
offered up to God in our behalf, and for all them, for whom
we pray, to all those purposes, for which Christ died.
5. As the ministers of the sacrament do, in a sacramen-
tal manner, present to God the sacrifice of the cross, by be-
ing imitators of Christ's intercession ; so the people are sa-
crificers too in their manner : for besides that, by saying
Amen, they join in the act of him that ministers, and make
it also to be their own ; so, when they eat and drink the con-
secrated and blessed elements worthily, they receive Christ
within them, and therefore may also offer him to God,
while, in their sacrifice of obedience and thanksgiving, they
present themselves to God with Christ, whom they have
spiritually received, that is, themselves with that, which
will make them gracious and acceptable. The offering their
bodies anil souls and services to God in him, and by him, and
with him, who is his Father's well-beloved, and in whom he
PREPARATION TO JUE HOLY SACRAMENT. 267
is well pleased, cannot but be accepted to all the purposes
of blessing, grace, and glory''.
6. This is the sum of" the greatest mystery of our reli-
gion; it is the copy of the passion, and the ministration of
the great mystery of our redemption : and therefore, what-
soever entitles us to the general privileges of Christ's pas-
sion, all that is necessary by way of disposition to the cele-
bration of the sacrament of his passion; because this cele-
bration is our manner of applying or using it. The parti-
culars of which preparation are represented in the following
rules.
1. No man must dare to approach to the holy sacrament
of the Lord's supper, if he be in a state of any one sin', that
is, unless he have entered into the state of repentance, that
is, of sorrow and amendment ; lest it be said concerning him,
as it was concerning Judas, the hand of him that betrayeth
me, is with me on the table : and he that receiveth Christ
into an impure soul or body, first turns his most excellent
nourishment into poison, and then feeds upon it.
2. Every communicant must first have examined himself^
that is, tried the condition and state of his soul, searched
out the secret ulcers, inquired out its weaknesses and indis-
cretions, and all those aptnesses, where it is exposed to temp-
tation ; that, by finding out its diseases, he may find a cure,
and by discovering its aptnesses he may secure his present
purposes of future amendment, and may be armed against
dangers and temptations.
3. This examination must be a man's own act, and inqui-
sition into his life : but then also it should lead a man on to
run to those, whom the great Physician of our souls, Christ
Jesus, hath appointed to minister physic to our diseases ;
that, in all dangers and great accidents, we may be assisted
for comfort and remedy, for medicine and caution.
4. In this affair let no man deceive himself, and against
such a time which public authority hath appointed for us to
receive the sacrament, weep for his sins by way of solemnity
and ceremony, and still retain the affection : but he that
^ Nosti tempora tu Jovis sereni,
Cum fulget placiflus, suoque vultu,
Quo nil supplicibus sold negare. — Martial, ep. I, v. 6.
" V'asa para ad rem Divinam. — Flaut. in Cap. Act. iv. sc. 1,
268 rHKrAUATiox to the holy .sacramext.
comes to Ibis feast, must have on the wedding-garment, that
is, he must have put on Jesus Christ, and he must have put
off the old man with his affections and lusts ; and he must
be wholly conformed to Christ in the image of his mind.
For then we have put on Christ, when our souls are clothed
with his righteousness, when every faculty of our soul is
proportioned and vested according to the pattern of Christ's
life. And therefore a man must not leap from his last night's
surfeit and bath, and then communicate : but when he hath
begun tlie work of God effectually, and made some progress
in repentance, and hath walked some stages and periods in
the ways of godliness, then let him come to him, that is to
minister it, and having made known the state of his soul, he
is to be admitted : but to receive it into an unhallowed soul
and body, is to receive the dust of the tabernacle in the
waters of jealousy; it will make the belly to swell, and the
thigh to rot; it will not convey Christ to us, but the devil
will enter and dwell there, till with it he returns to his dwell-
ing of torment. Remember always, that after a great sin or
after a habit of sins, a man is not soon made clean ; and no
unclean thing must come to this feast. It is not the prepa-
ration of two or three days, that can render a person capable
of this banquet : for, in this feast, all Christ, and Christ's
passion, and all his graces, the blessings and effects of his
sufferings are conveyed. Nothing can fit us for this, but
what can unite us to Christ, and obtain of him to present
our needs to his heavenly Father : this sacrament can no
otherwise be celebrated but upon the same terms, on which
we may hope for pardon and heaven itself.
5. When we have this general and indispensably-necessary
preparation, we are to make our souls more adorned and
trimmed up with circumstances of pious actions and special
devotions, setting apart some portion of our time imme-
diately before the day of solemnity, according as our great
occasions will permit : and this time is specially to be spent
in actions of repentance, confession of our sins, renewing
our purposes of holy living, praying for pardon of our fail-
ings, and for those graces, which may prevent the like sad-
nesses for the time to come, meditation upon the passion,
/upon the infinite love of God expressed in so great mysteri-
ous manners of redemption; and indefinitely in all acts of
PREPAHATION TO THE HOLY SACRAMENT. 2G9
virtue, whicli may build our souls up into a temple fit for the
ie('e))tion of Christ Iiimself and the inhabitation of the Holy
Spirit.
6. The celebration of the holy sacrament being the most
solemn prayer, joined with the most effectual instrument of
its acceptance, must suppose us in the love of God and in
charity with all the world : and therefore we must, before
every communion especially, remember what difFcrences or
jealousies are between us and any one else, and recompose
all disunions, and cause right understandings between each
other; offering to satisfy, whom we have injured, and to for-
give them, who have injured us, without thoughts of re-
suming the quarrel, when the solemnity is over ; for that is
but to rake the embers in lio;ht and fantastic ashes: it must
be quenched, and a holy flame enkindled : no fires must be
at all, but the fires of love and zeal : and the altar of incense
will send up a sweet perfume, and make atonement for us.
7. When the day of the feast is come, lay aside all cares
and impertinences of the world, and remember that this is
thy soul's day, a day of traffic and intercourse with heaven.
Arise early in the morning. 1. Give God thanks for the ap-
proach of so great a blessing. 2. Confess thine own unwor-
thiness to admit so Divine a o-uest. 3. Then remember and
deplore thy sins, which have made thee so unworthy. 4. Then
confess God's goodness and take sanctuary there, and upon
him place thy hopes ; 5. And invite him to thee with re-
newed acts of love, of holy desire, of hatred of his enemy,
sin. 6. Make oblation of thyself wholly to be disposed by
him, to the obedience of him, to his providence and posses-
sion, and pray him to enter and dwell there for ever. And
after this, with joy and holy fear, and the forwardness of
love, address thyself to the receiving of him, to whom, and
by whom, and for whom, all faith and all hope, and all love,
in the whole catholic church, both in heaven and earth, is
designed ; him, whom kings and queens, and whole king-
doms, are in love with, and count it the greatest honour in
the world, that their crowns and sceptres are laid at his holy
feet.
8. When the holy man stands at the table of blessing and
ministers the rite of consecration, then do as the angels do,
who behold, and love, and wonder that the Son of God should
270 PRF.PARATIOX TO THE HOLY SACRAMEXT.
become food to the souls of his servants ; that he, who can-
not suffer any change or lessening, should be broken into
pieces, and enter into the body to support and nourish the
spirit, and yet at the same time remain in heaven, while he
descends to thee upon earth ; that he who hath essential fe-
licity, should become miserable and die for thee, and then
give himself to thee for ever to redeem thee from sin and mi-
sery ; that by his wounds he should procure health to thee,
by his atfronts he should entitle thee to glory, by his death
he should bring thee to life, and by becoming a man he should
make thee partaker of the Divine nature. These are such
glories, that although they are made so obvious, that each
eye may behold them, yet they are also so deep, that no
thought can fathom them : but so it hath pleased him to
make these mysteries to be sensible, because the excellency .
and depth of the mercy is not intelligible ; that while we are
ravished and comprehended within the infiniteness of so vast
and mysterious a mercy, yet we may be as sure of it as of
that thing, we see and feel and smell and taste ; but yet it is
so great, that we cannot understand it.
9. These holy mysteries are offered to our senses, but
not to be placed under our feet ; they are sensible, but not
common : and therefore as the weakness of the elements adds
wonder to the excellency of the sacrament : so let our re-
verence and venerable usages of them add honour to the
elements, and acknowledge the glory of the mystery, and
the divinity of the mercy. Let us receive the consecrated
elements with all devotion and humility of body and spirit ;
and do this honour to it, that it be the first food we eat, and
the first beverage we drink that day, unless it be in case of
sickness, or other great necessity ; and that your body and
soul both be prepared to its reception with abstinence from
secular pleasures, that you may better have attended fastings
and preparatory prayers. For if ever it be seasonable to ob-
serve the counsel of St. Paul, that married persons by con-
sent should abstain for a time, that they may attend to so- J
lemn religion, it is now*". It was not by St. Paul nor the I
after-ages of the church called a duty so to do, but it is most
reasonable, that the more solemn actions of religion should
be attended to without the mixture of any thing, that may
'' — Discedite ab aris, Qtieis tulit hesterna gaudia nocte Venas. — Tibut. ii. 1. 12.
PREPARATION' TO THE HOLY SACRAMENT. 271
discompose the mind, and make it more secular or less re-
ligious.
10. In the act of receiving, exercise acts of faith with
much confidence and resignation, believing it not to be com-
mon bread and wine, but holy in tlieir use, holy in their sig-
nification, holy in their change, and holy in their effect : and
believe, if thou art a worthy communicant, thou dost as
verily receive Christ's body and blood to all effects and pur-
poses of the Spirit, as thou dost receive the blessed element*
into thy mouth, that thou puttest thy finger to his hand, and
thy hand into his side, and thy lips to his fontinel of blood,
sucking life from his heart' ; and yet if thou dost communi-
cate unworthily, thou eatest and drinkest Christ to thy dan-
ger, and death, and destruction. Dispute not concerning the
secret of the mystery, and the nicety of the manner of Christ's
presence ; it is sufficient to thee, that Christ shall be present
to thy soul, as an instrument of grace, as a pledge of the re-
surrection, as the earnest of glory and immortality, and a
means of many intermedial blessings, even all such, as are
necessary for thee, and are in order to thy salvation. And to
make all this good to thee, there is nothing necessary on thy
part but a holy life, and a true belief of all the sayings of
Christ; amongst which, indefinitely assent to the words of in-
stitution, and believe that Christ, in the holy sacrament, gives
thee his body and his blood. He that believes not this, is
not a Christian. He that believes so much, needs not to in-
quire further, nor to entangle his faith by disbelieving his
sense.
11. Fail not this solemnity, according to the custom of
pious and devout people, to make an offering to God for the
uses of religion and the poor, according to thy ability. For
when Christ feasts his body, let us also feast our fellow-
members, who have right to the same promises, and are par-
takers of the same sacrament, and partners of the same
hope, and cared for under the same Providence, and de-
scended from the same common parents, and whose Father
God is, and Christ is their elder brother. If thou chancest
to communicate, where this holy custom is not observed
publickly, supply that want by thy private charity; but offer
' Crnci hacremns, sanguinem s 'is, et inter ipsa Redemptoris noslri ?uhier8
ilgiiuus lingnam. — Cyprian, de cizmi uom.
272 RECEIVIXG THE HOLY SACRAMEXT.
it to God at his holy table, at least by thy private designing
it there.
12. When you have received, pray and give thanks. Pray
for all estates of men ; for they also have an interest in the
body of Christ, whereof they are members: and you, in con-
junction withChrist(whom then you have received), are more
fit to pray for them in that advantage, and in the celebra-
tion of that holy sacrifice, which then is sacramentally repre-
sented to God. Give thanks for the passion of our dearest
Lord : remember all its parts, and all the instruments of your
redemption ; and beg of God, that, by a holy perseverance
in well-doing, you may from shadows pass on to sub-
stances, from eating his body to seeing his face, from the
typical, sacramei>tal, and transient, to the real and eternal
supper of the Lamb.
13. After the solemnity is done, let Christ dwell in your
hearts by faith, and love, and obedience, and conformity to
his life and death : as you have taken Christ into you, so
put Christ on you, and conform every faculty of your soul
and body to his holy image and perfection. Remember, that
now Christ is all one with you ; and therefore, when you are
to do an action, consider how Christ did, or would do, the
like, and do you imitate his example, and transcribe his copy,
and understand all his commandments, and choose all that
he propounded, and desire his promises, and fear his threat-
enings, and marry his loves and hatreds, and contract his
friendships ; for then you do every day communicate ; espe-
cially when Christ thus dwells in you, and you in Christ,
growing up towards a perfect man in Christ Jesus.
14. Do not instantly, upon your return from church, re-
turn also to the world, and secular thoughts and employ-
ment ; but let the remaining parts of that day be like a post-
communion, or an after-office, entertaining your blessed
Lord with all the caresses and sweetness of love and collo-
quies, and intercourses of duty and affection, acquainting
liim with all your needs, and revealing to him all your se-
crets, and opening all your infirmities ; and as the affairs of
your person or employment call you off, so retire again with
often ejaculations and acts of entertainment to your beloved
guest.
RECEIVING THE HOLY S ACRAMEIVT. 273
The effects and benefits of worthy communkuting.
When I said, that the sacrifice of the cross, which Christ
offered for all the sins and all the needs of the world, is re-
presented to God by the minister in the sacrament, and of-
fered up in prayer and sacramental memory, after the man-
ner that Christ himself intercedes for us in heaven (so far
as his glorious priesthood is imitable by his ministers on
earth), I must of necessity also mean, that all the benefits of
that sacrifice are then conveyed to all, that communicate
worthily. But if we descend to particulars, then and there
the church is nourished in her faith, stren<rthened in her
hope, enlarged in her bowels with an increasing charity;
there all the members of Christ are joined with each other,
and all to Christ their head; and we again renew the cove-
nant with God in Jesus Christ, and God seals his part, and
we promise for ours, and Christ unites both, and the Holy
Ghost signs both in the collation of those graces, which we
then pray for, and exercise and receive all at once. There
our bodies are nourished with the signs, and our souls with
the mystery : our bodies receive into them the seed of an
immortal nature, and our souls are joined with him, who is
the first-fruits of the resurrection and never can die. And
if we desire any thing else and need it, here it is to be prayed
for, here to be hoped for, here to be received. Long life
and health, and recovery from sickness, and competent sup-
port and maintenance, and peace and deliverance from our
enemies, and content, and patience, and joy, and sancti^ed
riches, or a cheerful poverty, and liberty, and whatsoever
else is a blessing, was purchased for us by Christ in his death
and resurrection, and in his intercession in heaven. And
this sacrament being that to our particulars, which the great
mysteries are in themselves and by design to all the world,
if we receive worthily, we shall receive any of these bless-
ings, according as God shall choose for us ; and he will not
only choose with more wisdom, but also with more affection,
than we can for ourselves.
After all this, it is advised by the guides of souls, wise
men and pious, that all persons should communicate very
often, even as often as they can without excuses or delays.
Every thing, that puts us from so holy an employment, when
VOL. IV. T
274 PRAYEUS FOR SEVERAL OCCASIONS.
we are moved to it, being either a sin or an imperfection, an
infirmity or indevotion, and an inactiveness of spirit. All
Christian people must come. They indeed, that are in the
state of sin, must not come so, but yet they must come. First
they must quit their state of death, and then partake of the
bread of life. They that are at enmity with their neighbours,
must come, that is no excuse for their not coming; only they
must not bring their enmity along with them, but leave it,
and then come. They that have variety of secular employ-
ment, must come"'; only they must leave their secular
thoughts and affections behind them, and then come and
converse with God. If any man be well grown in grace, he
must needs come, because he is excellently disposed to so
holy a feast : but he that is but in the infancy of piety, had
need to come, that so he may grow in grace. The strong
must come, lest they become weak ; and the weak, that they
may become strong. The sick must come to be cured, the
healthful to be preserved. They that have leisure must come,
because they have no excuse ; they that have no leisure, must
come hither, that by so excellent religion they may sanctify
their business. The penitent sinners must come, that they
may be justified; and they that are justified, that they may
be justified still. They that have fears and great reverence
to these mysteries, and think no preparation to be sufficient,
must receive, that they may learn how to receive the more
worthily : and they that have a less degree of reverence,
must come often to have it heiahtened : that as those crea-
tures that live amongst the snows of the mountains, turn
white with their food and conversation with such perpetual
whitenesses ; so our souls may be transformed into the simi-
litude and union with Christ by our perpetual feeding on
him, and conversation, not only in his courts, but in his very
heart, and most secret affections, and incomparable purities.
Prnijcrsfor all sorts of Men and all Necessities ; relating to the
several jKirts of the virtue of Religion.
A Prai/er for the graces of Faith, Hope, Charity.
O Lord God of infinite mercy, of infinite excellency, who
hast sent thy holy Son into the world to redeem us from an
■" L'Eves<jue de Geneve iiitrod. a la vie <lcvote.
PRAYERS FOR SEVERAL OCCASIOXS. 275
intolerable misery, and to teach us a holy religion, and to
forgive us an infinite debt ; give me thy Holy Spirit, that my
understanding and all my faculties may be so resigned to the
discipline and doctrine of my Lord, that I may be prepared
in mind and will to die for the testimony of Jesus, and to
suffer any affliction or calamity, that shall offer to hinder my
duty, or tempt me to shame or sin or apostacy : and let my
faith be the parent of a good life, a strong shield to repel the
fiery darts of the devil, and the author of a holy hope, of
modest desires, of confidence in God, and of a never-failing
charity to thee my God, and to all the world ; that I may
never have my portion with the unbelievers, or uncharitable
and desperate persons; but may be supported by the strengths
of faith in all temptations, and may be refreshed with the
comforts of a holy hope in all my sorrows, and may bear the
burden of the Lord, and the infirmities of niy neighbour by
the support of charity ; that the yoke of Jesus may become
easy to me, and my love may do all the miracles of grace,
till from grace it svv'ell to glory, from earth to heaven, from
duty to reward, from the imperfections of a beginning and
still growing love, it may arrive to the consummation of an
eternal and never-ceasing charity, through Jesus Christ the
Son of thy love, the anchor of our hope, and the author and
finisher of our faith : to whom with thee, O Lord God, Father
of heaven and earth, and with thy Holy Spirit, be all glory,
and love, and obedience, and dominion, now and for ever.
Amen.
Ads of Love hy way of Prayer and FJacuhition ; to be used in
private.
O God, thou art my God, early will I seek thee : my soul
thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and
thirsty land, where no water is ; to see thy power and thy
glory so, as I have seen thee in the sanctuary. Because thy
loving kindness is better than life, my lips shall praise thee.
Psal. Ixiii. 1, &-c.
T am ready not only to be bound, but to die for the name
of the Lord Jesus. Acts, xxi. 13.
How amiable are thy tabernacles, thou Lord of Hosts !
My soul longeth, yea even fainteth for the courts of the
Lord : my heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God.
T 2
276 PRAYERS FOR SEVKRAL OCCASIONS.
Bkssed are they that dwell in thy house ; they will still be
praising thee. Psal. Ixxxiv. 1, 2, 4.
O blessed Jesu, thou art worthy of all adoration, and all
honour, and all love : thou art the wonderful, the counsellor,
the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of peace;
of thy government and peace there shall be no end : thou
art the brightness of thy Father's glory, the express image of
his person, the appointed heir of all things. Thou upholdest
all things by the word of thy power; thou didst by thyself
purge our sins : thou art set on the right hand of the Majesty
on high ; thou art made better than the angels ; thou hast
by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they.
Thou, O dearest Jesus, art the head of the church, the begin-
ning and the first-born from the dead: in all things thou
hast the pre-eminence, and it pleased the Father, that in thee
should all fulness dwell. Kingdoms are in love with thee :
Kings lay their crowns and sceptres at thy feet, and queens
are thy Imndmaids, and wash the feet of thy servants.
A Prayer to be said in any ajfiiction, as death of cliildrcn, of
husband or wife, in great poverti/, in imprisonment, in a sad
and disconsolate spirit, and in temptations to despair.
O eternal God, Father of mercies, and God of all com-
fort, with much mercy look upon the sadnesses and sorrows
of thy servant. My sins lie heavy upon me, and press me
sore, and there is no health in my bones by reason of thy
displeasure and my sin. The waters are gone over me, and
I stick fast in the deep mire, and my miseries are without
comfort, because they are punishments of my sin : and I am
so evil and unworthy a person, that though I have great de-
sires, yet I have no dispositions or worthiness toward receiv-
ing comfort. My sins have caused my sorrow, and my sorrovy
does not cure my sins: and unless for thy own sake, and
merely because thou art good, thou shalt pity me and re-
lieve me, I am as much without remedy, as now I am without
comfort. Lord, j)ity me ; Lord, let thy grace refresh my
sj)irit. Let thy comforts support nle, thy mercy pardon me,
and never let my portion be amongst hopeless and accursed
spirits: for thou art good and gracious; and I throw myself
upon thy mercy. Let me never let my hold go, and do thou
PRAYERS FOR SKVERAL OCCASIONS. 277
with me, what seems good in thy own eyes. I cannot suffer
more than I have deserved : and yet I can need no relief so
great as thy mercy is : for thou art infinitely more merciful
than I can be miserable; and thy mercy, which is above all
thy own works, must needs be far above all my sin and all
my misery. Dearest Jesus, let me trust in thee for ever,
and let me never be confounded. Amen.
Ejaculations and short Meditations to he used in time of Sickness
and SoiTOw: or danger of Death.
Hear my prayer, O Lord, and let my cry come unto
thee". Hide not thy face from me in the time of my trouble,
incline thine ear unto me, when I call : O hear me and that
right soon. For my days are consumed like smoke, and my
bones are burnt up, as it were with a firebrand. My heart is
smitten down and w ithered like grass, so that I forget to eat
my bread : and that because of thine indignation and wrath :
for thou hast taken me up and cast me down : thine arrows
stick first in me, and thine hand presseth me sore °. There
is no health in my flesh because of thy displeasure ; neither
is there any rest in my bones by reason of my sin. My
wickednesses are gone over my head, and are a sore burden
too heavy for me to bear. But I will confess my wickedness,
and be sorry for my sin. O Lord, rebuke me not in thine
indignation, neither chasten me in thy displeasure p. Lord,
be merciful unto me, heal my soul, for I have sinned against
theei.
Have mercy upon me, O God, after thy great goodness,
according to the multitude of thy mercies do away mine of-
fences ^ O remember not the sins and offences of my youth:
but according to thy mercy think thou upon me, O Lord, for
thy goodness-. Wash me thoroughly from my wickedness:
and cleanse me from my sin. Make me a clean heart, O
God, and renew a right spirit within me'. Cast me not away
from thy presence, from thy all-hallowing and life-giving pre-
sence: and take not thy Holy Spirit, thy sanctifying, thy
guiding, thy comforting, thy supporting, and confirming
Spirit from me.
■ Psal. cii. 2—4. 10. " Psal. xxxviii. 2—4. 18. r Psal. ri. 1.
t Psal. xli. 4. ' Psal. li. 1. ' Psal. xxv. 6. ' Psal. li. 2. 10. 11.
27& PRAYIiRS FOR SEVERAL OCCASIONS.
0 God ; thou art my God for ever and ever : thou shalt
be my guide unto death ". Lord, comfort me, now that 1 lie
sick upon my bed : make thou my bed in all my sickness"^.
O deliver my soul from the place of hell : and do thou receive
me'". My heart is disquieted within me, and the fear of
death is fallen upon me''. Behold thou hast made my days
as it were a span long, and my age is even as nothing in
respect of thee ; and verily every man living is altogether
vanity y. When thou with rebukes dost chasten man for sin,
thou makest his beauty to consume away, like a moth fret-
ting a garment : every man therefore is but vanity. And
now, Lord, what is my hope? truly my hope is even in thee.
Hear my prayer, O Lord, and with thine ears consider my
calling : hold not thy peace at my tears. Take this plague
away from me : I am consumed by the means of thy heavy
hand. I am a stranger with thee and a sojourner, as all my
fathers were. O spare me a little, that I may recover my
strength, before I go hence and be no more seen. My soul
cleaveth unto the dust: O quicken me according to thy
word^. And when the snares of death compass me round
about, let not the pains of hell take hold upon me^.
An Act of Faith concerning the Resurrection and the Day of
Judgment, to be said by Sick Persons, or meditated.
1 know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand
at the latter day upon the earth: and though after my skin
worms destroy this body, yet, in my flesh, shall I see God:
whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold,
though my reins be consumed within me. Job xix. 25, &c.
God shall come and shall not keep silence : there shall
go before him a consuming fire, and a mighty tempest shall
be stirred up round about him : he shall call the heaven from
above, and the earth, that he may judge his people''." O
blessed Jesu, thou art my judge and thou art my advocate :
have mercy upon me in the hour of my death, and in the day
of judgment. See John v. 28. and 1 Thess. iv. 15.
Short Prayers to be said by sick persons.
O holy Jesus, thou art a merciful high-priest, and touched
" Psal. xlviii. 13. " Psal. xli. 3. " Psal. xlix. 15. ^ Psal. Iv. 4,
y Psal. xxxix. 6. <■ Psal. cxis. 2!). ^ Psal. cxvi. o. '' Psal. 1. 3. 4.
PRAYERS FOR SEVERAL OCCASIONS. 279
with the sense of our infirmities ; thou knowest the sharjD-
ness of my sickness and the weakness of my person. The
clouds are Gathered about me, and thou hast covered me
with thy storm : my understanding hath not such apprehen-
sion of things as formerly. Lord, let thy mercy support me,
thy Spirit guide me, and lead me through the valley of this
death safely; that I may pass it patiently, holily, with per-
fect resignation ; and let me rejoice in the Lord, in the
hopes of pardon, in the expectation of glory, in the sense of
thy mercies, in the refreshments of thy Spirit, in a victory
over all temptations.
Thou hast promised to be with us in tribulation. Lord,
my soul is troubled, and my body is weak, and my hope is
in thee, and my enemies are busy and mighty; now make
good thy holy promise. Now, O holy Jesus, now let thy
hand of grace be upon me : restrain my ghostly enemies,
and give me all sorts of spiritual assistances. Lord, remem-
ber thy servant in the day, when thou bindest up thy jewels.
O take from me all tediousness of spirit, all impatiency
and unquietness : let me possess my soul in patience, and re-
sign my soul and body into thy hands, as into the hands of
a faithful Creator, and a blessed Redeemer.
O holy Jesu, thou didst die for us ; by thy sad, pungent
and intolerable pains, which thou enduredst for me, have pity
on me, and ease my pain, or increase my patience. Lay on
me no more, than thou shalt enable me to bear. I have de-
served it all and more, and infinitely more. Lord, I am weak
and ignorant, timorous and inconstant, and I fear, lest some-
thing should happen that may discompose the state of my
soul, that may displease thee : do what thou wilt with me,
so thou dost but preserve me in thy fear and favour. Thou
knowest, that it is my great fear ; but let thy Spirit secure,
that nothing may be able to separate me from the love of
God in Jesus Christ : then smite me here, that thou mavest
spare me for ever: and yet, O Lord, smite me friendly ; for
thou knowest my infirmities. Into thy hands I commend my
spirit, for thou hast redeemed me, O Lord, thou God of
truth. Come, Holy Spirit, help me in this conflict. Come,
Lord Jesus, come quickly.
Let the sick man often meditate upon these following
promises and gracious words of God.
280 rilAYEKS lOIl SEVERAL OCCASIONS.
My help cometh of the Lord, who preserveth them, that
are true of heart. Psal, vii. 11.
And all they that know thy name, will put their trust in
thee : for thou. Lord, hast never failed them that seek thee.
Psal. ix. 10.
O how plentiful is thy goodness, which thou hast laid up
for them that fear thee, and that thou hast prepared for them
that put their trust in thee, even before the sons of men !
Psal. xxxi. 21.
Behold, the eye of the Lord is upon them, that fear him,
and upon them, that put their trust in his mercy, to deliver
their souls from death. Psal. xxxiii. 17.
The Lord is nigh unto them, that are of a contrite heart ;
and will save such, as are of an humble spirit. Psal. xxxiv.
18.
Thou, Lord, shalt save both man and beast : how excel-
lent is thy mercy, O God ! and the children of men shall put
their trust under the shadow of thy wings. Psal.xxxvi. 7.
They shall be satisfied with the plenteousness of thy
house : and thou shalt give them to drink of thy pleasures,
as out of the rivers, ver. 8.
For with thee is the well of life ; and in thy light we shall
see light, ver. 9.
Commit thy way unto the Lord, and put thy trust in him,
and he shall bring it to pass. Psal. xxxvii. 5.
But the salvation of the riohteous cometh of the Lord :
who is also their strength in the time of trouble, ver. 40.
So that a man shall say, Verily there is a reward for the
righteous: doubtless there is a God, that judgeth the earth.
Psal. Iviii. 10.
Blessed is the man, whom thou choosest and receivest
unto thee : he shall dwell in thy court, and shall be satisfied
with the pleasures of thy house, even of thy holy temple.
Psal. Ixv. 4.
They that sow in tears, shall reap in joy. Psal. cxxvi. 6.
It is written, I will never leave thee nor forsake thee.
Heb. xiii. 5.
The prayer of faith shall save the sick ; and the Lord shall
raise him up : and if he have committed sins, they shall be
forgiven him. Jam. v. 15,
Come and let us return unto the Lord : for he hath torn.
PHAYERS FOR SEVJiUAL OCCASIONS. 281
and he will heal us : he hath smitten, and he will bind us up.
Hos. vi. 1.
If we sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus
Christ the righteous ; and he is the propitiation for our sins.
IJohn, ii. 1, 2.
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to for-
give us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
1 John, i. 9.
He that forgives, shall be forgiven, Luke, vi. 37.
And this is the confidence, that we have in him, that if
we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us. 1 John,
v. 14.
And ye know, that he was manifested to take away our
sins. 1 John, iii. 5.
If ye, being evil, know how to give good things to your
children ; how much more shall your Father which is in hea-
ven, give good things to them that ask him ? Matt. vii. 11.
This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation,
that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. 1 Tim.
i. 15.
He that hath given us his Son, how should he not, with
him, give us all things else ? Rom. viii. 32.
Acts of Hope, to he used hy sick persons after a pious life.
I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels,
nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor thino-s
to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall
be able to separate me from the love of God, which is in
Christ Jesus our Lord. Rom. viii. 38, 39.
I have fought a good fight : I have finished my course : I
have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me a
crown of righteousness, which the Lord the righteous judge
shall give me at that day ; and not to me only, but unto all
them also, that love his appearing. 2 Tim. iv. 7, 8.
Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
the Father of mercies and the God of all comforts, who com-
forts us in all our tribulation. 2 Cor. i. 3, 4.
A Prayer to be said in behalf of a sick or dying person.
.0 Lord God, there is no number of thy days nor of thy
282 PRAYERS FOR SE\ERAL OCCASIOXS.
mercies, and the sins and sorrows of thy servant also are
multiplied. Lord, look upon him with much mercy and pity,
forgive liim all his sins, comfort his sorrows, ease his pain,
satisfy liis doubts, relieve his fears, instruct his ignorances,
streniithen his understanding, take from him all disorders of
spirit, weakness and abuse of fancy. E.estrain the malice and
power of the spirits of darkness; and suffer him to be injured
neither by his ghostly enemies, nor his own infirmities ; and
let a holy and a just peace, the peace of God, be within his
conscience.
Lord, preserve his senses till the last of his time, strengthen
his faith, confirm his hope, and give him a never-ceasing cha-
rity to thee our God, and to all the world : stir up in him a
great and proportionable contrition for all the evils he hath
done, and give him a just measure of patience for all he suf-
fers : give him prudence, memory, and consideration, rightly
to state the accounts of his soul ; and do thou remind him
of all his duty ; that when it shall please thee, that his soul
goes out from the prison of his body, it may be received by
angels, and preserved from the surprise of evil spirits, and
from the horrors and amazements of new and strange regions,
and be laid up in the bosom of our Lord, till, at the day of
thy second coming, it shall be reunited to the body, which
is now to be laid down in weakness and dishonour, but we
humbly beg, may then be raised up with glory and power for
ever to live, and to behold the face of God in the glories of
the Lord Jesus, who is our hope, our resurrection, and our
life, the light of our eyes and the j oy of our souls, our blessed
and ever-glorious redeemer. Amen.
Hither the sick persons may draw in, and use the acts of se-
veral virtues respersed in the several parts of this book,
the several litanies, viz. of repentance, of the passion,
and the single prayers, according to his present needs.
A Prayer to be said in a Storm at Sea.
O my God, thou didst create the earth and the sea for
thy glory and the use of man, and dost daily shew wonders in
the deep: look upon the danger and fear of thy servant. My
sins have taken hold upon me, and without the supporting
arm of thy mercy, I cannot look up ; but my trust is in thee.
PRAYERS FOR SEVERAL OCCASIONS. 283
Do thou, O Lord, rebuke the sea, and make it cahii ; for to
thee the winds and the sea obey : let not the waters swallow
me up, but let thy Spirit, the spirit of gentleness and mercy,
move upon the waters. Be thou reconciled unto thy ser-
vants, and then the face of the waters will be smooth. I fear
that my sins make me, like Jonas, the cause of the tempest.
Cast out all my sins, and throw not thy servants av/ay from
thy presence and from the land of the living, into tlie depths,
where all things are forgotten. But if it be thy will, that we
shall go down into the waters. Lord, receive my soul into thy
holy hands, and preserve it in mercy and safety (ill the day
of restitution of all things: and be pleased to unite my death
to the death of thy Son, and to accept of it so united as a
punishment for all my sins, that thou mayest forget all thine
anger, and blot my sins out of thy book, and write my soul
there, for Jesus Christ's sake, our dearest Lord and most
mighty Redeemer. Amen.
Then make an act of Resignation tints;
To God pertain the issues of life and death. It is the
Lord, let him do, what seemeth good in his own eyes. "Thy
will be done in earth, as it is in heaven."
Recite Psalm cvii. and cxxx.
A form of a Vow to be made in this or the like danger.
If the Lord will be gracious and hear the prayer of his
servant, and bring me safe to shore, then I wiil praise him
secretly and publickly, and pay unto the uses of charity [or
religion] [then name the sum yon design for holy uses.'] O
my God, my goods are nothing unto thee : I will also be
thy servant all the days of my life, and remember this mercy
and my present purposes, and live more to God's glory, and
with a stricter duty. And do thou please to accept this vow
as an instance of my importunity, and the greatness of my
needs: and be thou graciously moved to pity and deliver me.
Amen.
This form also may be used in praying for a blessing on an enter-
prise, and may be instanced in actions of decotion as well as (f
charity.
284 PRAYERS FOR SEVERAL OCCASIOKS.
A Prater before a Joimiei/.
O Almighty God, who fillest all things with thy presence,
and art a God afar off as well as near at hand ; thou didst
send thy angel to bless Jacob in his journey, and didst lead
the children of Israel through the Red-sea, making it a wall
on the right hand and on the left : be pleased to let thy
angel go out before me and guide me in my journey, pre-
serving me from dangers of robbers, from violence of ene-
mies, and sudden and sad accidents, from falls and errors.
And prosper my journey to thy glory, and to all my innocent
purposes : and preserve me from all sin, that I may return in
peace and holiness, with thy favour and thy blessing, and
may serve thee in thankfulness and obedience all the days
of my pilgrimage ; and at last bring me to thy country, to
the celestial Jerusalem, there to dwell in thy house, and to
sing praises to thee for ever. Amen.
Ad Sect. 4.} A Prayer to be said before the hearing or reading
the Word of God.
O holy and eternal Jesus, who hast begotten us by thy
word, renewed us by thy Spirit, fed us by thy sacraments, and
by the daily ministry of thy word, still go on to build us up
to life eternal. Let thy most Holy Spirit be present with me
and rest upon me in the reading, or hearing, thy sacred word;
that I may do it humbly, reverently, without prejudice, with
a mind ready and desirous to learn and to obey ; that I may
be readily furnished and instructed to every good work, and
may practise all thy holy laws and commandments, to the
glory of thy holy name, O holy and eternal Jesus. Amen.
Ad Sect. 5, 9, 10.] A form of confession of sins and repentance,
to be used upon Fasting days, or days of Humiliation; espe-
cially in Lent, and before the Holy Sacrament.
" Have mercy upon me, O God, after thy great goodness ;
according to the multitude of thy mercies do away mine of-
fences. For I will confess my wickedness and be sorry for
my sin." O my dearest Lord, I am not worthy to be ac-
counted amongst the meanest of thy servants; not worthy to
be sustained by the leasit iiagments of thy mercy, but to be
PRAYERS FOR SEVERAL OCCASIONS. 285
shut out of thy presence for ever with dogs and unbelievers.
*' But for thy name's sake, O Lord, be merciful unto my sin,
for it is great."
I am the vilest of sinners, and the worst of men : proud
and vainglorious, impatient of scorn or of just reproof;
not enduring to be slighted, and yet extremely deserving it :
I have been cozened by the colours of humility, and when
I have truly called myself vicious, I could not endure any
man else should say so or think so. I have been disobedient
to my superiors, churlish and ungentle in my behaviour, un-
christian and unmanly. " But for thy name's sake," Sec.
O just and dear God, how can I expect pity or pardon,
who am so angry and peevish, with and without cause, envi-
ous at good, rejoicing in the evil of my neighbours, negli-
gent of my charge, idle and useless, timorous and base, jea-
lous and impudent, ambitious and hard-hearted, soft, unmor-
tified and effeminate in my life, undevout in my prayers, with-
out fancy or affection, without attendance to them or perse-
verance in them : but passionate and curious in pleasing my
appetite of meat and drink and pleasures, making matter
both for sin and sickness ; and I have reaped the cursed
fruits of such improvidence, entertaining indecent and im-
pure thoughts ; and I have brought them forth in indecent and
impure actions, and the spirit of uncleanness hath entered in,
and unhallowed the temple, which thou didst consecrate for
the habitation of thy Spirit of love and holiness. But for
thy name's sake, O Lord, be merciful unto my sin, for it is great.
Thou hast given me a whole life to serve thee in, and to
advance my hopes of heaven: and this precious time I have
thrown away upon my sins and vanities, being improvident
of my time and of my talent, and of thy grace and my own
advantages, resisting thy Spirit and quenching him. I have
been a great lover of myself, and yet used many ways to de-
stroy myself. I have pursued my temporal ends with greedi-
ness and indirect means. I am revengeful and unthankful,
forgetting benefits, but not so soon forgetting injuries, curious
and murmuring, a great breaker of promises. I have not
loved my neighbour's good, nor advanced it in all things,
where I could. I have been unlike thee in all things. I am
unmerciful and unjust; a sottish admirer of things below,
and careless of heaven and the wavs that lead thither.
2SG PRAYERS FOR SEVERAL OCCASION'S.
But for thy name's sake, O Lord, be merciful imto my
sin, for it is great.
All my senses have been windows to let sin in, and death
by sin. Mine eyes have been adulterous and covetous ; mine
ears open to slander and detraction ; my tongue and palate
loose and wanton, intemperate, and of foul language, talkative
and lying, rash and malicious, false and flattering, irreligious
and irreverent, detracting and censorious ; my hands have
been injurious and unclean, my passions violent and rebel-
lious, my desires impatient and unreasonable : all my mem-
bers and all my faculties have been servants of sin ; and my
very best actions have more matter of pity than of confidence,
being imperfect in my best, and intolerable in most. But
for thy name's sake, O Lord, &c.
Unto this and a far bigger heap of sin I have added also
the faults of others to my own score, by neglecting to hinder
them to sin in all, that I could, and ought : but I also have
encouraged them in sin, have taken oft" their fears, and hard-
ened their consciences, and tempted them directly, and
prevailed in it to my own ruin and theirs, unless thy glorious
and imspeakable mercy hath prevented so intolerable a cala-
mity.
Lord, I have abused thy mercy, despised thy judgments,
turned thy grace into wantonness. I have been unthankful
for thy infinite loving-kindness. I have sinned and repented,
and then sinned again, and resolved against it, and presently
broke it; and then I tied myself up witlivows, and then was
tempted, and then I yielded by little and little, till I was
willingly lost again, and my vows fell oft" like cords of vanity.
Miserable man that I am ! who shall deliver me from this
body of sin ?
And yet, O Lord, I have another heap of sins to be un-'
loaded. My secret sins, O Lord, are innumerable, sins I
noted not ; sins that I willingly neglected ; sins that I acted
upon wilful ignorance and voluntary mispersuasion ; sins
that I have forgot; and sins which a diligent and a watchful
spirit might have prevented, but I would not. Lord, I am
confounded with the multitude of them, and the horror of
their remembrance, though I consider them nakedly in their
direct appearance, without the deformity of their unhand-
some and aggravating circumstances : but so dressed they
PRAYERS FOR SEVERAL OCCASIONS. 287
are a sight too ugly, an instance of amazement, infinite in
degrees, and insutl'erable in their load.
And yet thou hast spared me all this while, and hast not
tlirown me into hell, where I have deserved to have been long
since, and even now to have been shut up to an eternity of
torments with insupportable amazement, fearing the revela-
tion of thy day.
Miserable man that I am ! who shall deliver me from this
l)ody of sin ?
Thou shalt answer for me, O Lord my God. Thou that
prayest for me, shalt be my judge.
The Prayer,
Thou hast prepared for me a more healtliful sorrow : O
deny not thy servant, when he begs sorrow of thee. Give
me a deep contrition for my sins, a hearty detestation and
loathing of them, hating them worse than death with tor-
ments. Give me grace entirely, presently, and for ever, to
forsake them ; to walk with care and prudence, with fear and
watchfulness all my days; to do all my duty with diligence
and charity, with zeal and a never-ftiinting spirit; to redeem
the time, to trust upon thy mercies, to make use of all the
instruments of grace, to work out my salvation with fear and
trembling: that thou mayest have the glory of pardoning all
my sins, and I may reap the fruit of all thy mercies and
all thy graces, of thy patience and long-suffering, even to
live a holy life here, and to reign with thee for ever, through
Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.
Ad Sect. 6.] Special devotions to be used upon the Lord's-
day, and the great festivals of Christians.
In the morning, recite the following form of thanksgiving;
upon the special festivals adding the commemoration of
the special blessings according to the following prayers:
adding such prayers, as you shall choose out of the fore-
going devotions.
2. Besides the ordinary and public duties of the day, if you
retire into your closet to read and meditate, after you
have performed that duty, say the Song of Saint Ambrose
(commonly called the Te Deiim), or. We praise thee, &c.
then add the prayers for particular graces, which are at
288 PRAYERS FOR SEVERAL OCCASIONS.
the end of the former chapter, such and as many of them
as shall fit your present needs and affections; ending with
the Lord's Prayer. This form of devotion may, for va-
riety, be indifferently used at other times.
A form of thanksgiving, with a recital of public and private
blessings ; to be used upon Easter-day, Whitsunday,
Ascension-day, and all Sundays of the year: but the
middle part of it may be reserved for the more solemn
festivals, and the other used upon the ordinary ; as every
man's affections or leisure shall determine.
[1.] Ex Liturgia S. Basilii magna ex parte.
O eternal essence. Lord God, Father Almighty, maker of
all things in heaven and earth; it is a good thing to give
thanks to thee, O Lord, and to pay to thee all reverence,
worship, and devotion, from a clean and prepared heart;
and with an humble spirit to present a living and reasonable
sacrifice to thy holiness and majesty : for thou hast given
unto us the knowledge of thy truth ; and who is able to de-
clare thy greatness, and to recount all thy marvellous works,
which thou hast done in all the generations of the world ?
O great Lord and Governor of all things, lord and creator
of all things visible and invisible, who sittest upon the throne
of thy glory, and beholdest the secrets of the lowest abyss
and darkness, thou art without beginning, uncircumscribed,
incomprehensible, unalterable, and seated for ever unmove-
able in thy own essential happiness and tranquillity : thou art
the father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is.
Our dearest and most gracious Saviour, our hope, the
wisdom of the Father, the image of thy goodness, the word
eternal, and the brightness of thy person, the power of God
from eternal ages, the true light, that lighteneth every man
that cometh into the world, the redemption of man, and the
sanctification of our spirits.
By whom the Holy Ghost descended upon the church;
the Holy Spirit of truth, the seal of adoption ; the earnest of
the inheritance of the saints ; the first-fruits of everlasting
felicity; the life-giving power; the fountain of sanctification;
the comfort of the church, the ease of the afflicted, the sup-
port of the weak, the wealth of the poor, the teacher of the
PRAYERS FOR SEVERAL OCCASIONS. 289
tloubtful, scrupulous, and ignorant; the anchor of the fearful,
the infinite reward of all faithful souls; by whom all reason-
able and understanding creatures serve thee, and send up a
never-ceasing and a never-rejected sacrifice of prayer and
praises and adoration.
All angels and archangels, all thrones and dominions, all
principalities and powers, the cherubim with many eyes,
and the seraphim covered with wings from the terror and
amazement of thy brightest glory : these, and all the powers
of heaven, do perpetually sing praises and never-ceasing
hymns and eternal anthems to the glory of the eternal God,
the almighty Father of men and angels.
Holy is our God : holy is the Almighty : holy is the Im-
mortal : holy, holy, holy. Lord God of sabaoth, heaven and
earth are full of the majesty of thy glory. Amen. With
these holy and blessed spirits I also, thy servant, O thou
great lover of souls, though I be unworthy to offer praise to
such a majesty; yet, out of my bounden duty, humbly offer
up my heart and voice to join in this blessed choir, and con-
fess the glories of the Lord. For thou art holy, and of thy
greatness there is no end ; and in thy justice and goodness,
thou hast measured out to us all thy works.
Thou madest man out of the earth, and didst form him
after thine own image : thou didst place him in a garden of
pleasure, and gavest him laws of righteousness to be to him
a seed of immortality.
" O that men would therefore praise the Lord for his
goodness, and declare the wonders, that he hath done for the
children of men."
For when man sinned and listened to the whispers of a
tempting spirit, and refused to hear the voice of God, thou
didst throw him out from paradise, and sentest him to till
the earth ; but yet leftest not his condition without remedy,
but didst provide for him the salvation of a new birth, and,
by the blood of thy Son, didst redeem and pay the price to
thine own justice for thine own creature, lest the work of
thine own hands should perish.
" O that men would therefore praise the Lord," &c.
For thou, O Lord, in every age didst send testimonies
from heaven, blessings, and prophets, and fruitful seasons,
and preachers of righteousness, and miracles of power and
VOL. IV, u
290 PRAYERS FOR SEVERAL OCCASIONS,
mercy : thou spakest by thy prophets, and saidst, " I will
help by one that is mighty;" and, in the fulness of time,
spakest to us by thy Son, by whom thou didst make both
the worlds, who, by the word of his power, sustains all things
in heaven and earth ; who thought it no robbery to be equal
to the Father ; who, being before all time, was pleased to be
born in time, to converse with men, to be incarnate of a
holy Virgin: he emptied himself of all his glories, took on
him the form of a servant, in all things being made like
unto us, in a soul of passions and discourse, in a body of
humility and sorrow, but in all things innocent, and in all
things afflicted ; and suffered death for us, that we by him
might live, and be partakers of his nature and his glories, of
his body and of his Spirit, of the blessings of earth, and of
immortal felicities in heaven.
" O that men would therefore praise the Lord," 8cc.
For thou, O holy and immortal God, O sweetest Saviour
Jesus, wert made under the law to condemn sin in the flesh:
thou, who knewest no sin, wert made sin for us : thou gavest
to us righteous commandments, and madest known to us
all thy Father's will : thou didst redeem us from our vain
conversation, and from the vanity of idols, false principles,
and foolish confidences, and broughtest us to the knowledge
of the true and only God and our Father, and hast made us
to thyself a peculiar people, of thy own purchase, a royal
priesthood, a holy nation : thou hast washed our souls in the
laver of regeneration, the sacrament of baptism : thou hast
reconciled us by thy death, justified us by thy resurrection,
sanctified us by thy Spirit, sending him upon thy church in
visible forms, and giving him in powers and miracles and
mighty signs, and continuing this incomparable favour in
gifts and sanctifying graces, and promising that he shall
abide with us for ever : thou hast fed us with thine own
broken body, and given drink to our souls out of thine own
heart, and hast ascended up on high, and hast overcome all
the powers of death and hell, and redeemed us from the
miseries of a sad eternity; and sittest at the right hand
of God, making intercession for us with a never-ceasing-
charity.
" O that men would therefore praise the Lord," &c.
The grave could not hold thee long, O holy and eternal
PRAYERS FOR SEVERAL OCCASIONS. 291
Jesus : thy body could not. see corruption, neither could thy
soul be left in hell : thou wert free among the dead, and thou
brakest the iron gates of death, and the bars and chains of
the lower prisons. Thou broughtest comfort to the souls of
the patriarchs, who waited for thy coming, who longed for
the redemption of man, and the revelation of thy day. Abra-
ham, Isaac, and Jacob, saw thy day, and rejoiced: and when
thou didst arise from thy bed of darkness, and leftest the
grave-clothes behind thee, and didst put on a robe of glory
(over which for forty days thou didst wear a veil), and then^
enteredst into a cloud, and then into glory, then the powers
of hell were confounded, then death lost its power and was
swallowed up into victory : and though death is not quite de-
stroyed, yet it is made harmless and without a sting, and the
condition of human nature is made an entrance to eternal
glory; and art become the prince of life, the first-fruits of the
resurrection, the first-born from the dead, having made the
w^ay plain before our faces, that we may also arise again in
the resurrection of the last day, when thou shalt come again
unto us, to render to every man according to his works.
" O that men would therefore praise the Lord," &c.
O give thanks unto the Lord ; for he is gracious, and his
mercy endm'eth for ever.
O all ye angels of the Lord, praise ye the Lord ; praise
him and magnify him for ever.
O ye spirits and souls of the righteous, praise ye the
Lord; praise him and magnify him for ever."
And now, O Lord God, what shall I render to thy Divine
Majesty for all the benefits, thou hast done unto thy servant
in my personal capacity ?
Thou art my creator and my father, my protector and
my guardian : thou hast brought me from my mother's womb :
thou hast told all my joints, and in thy book were all my
members written: thou hast given me a comely body. Christ-
ian and careful parents, holy education : thou hast been my
guide and my teacher all my days : thou hast given me ready
faculties, an unloosed tongue, a cheerful spirit, straight limbs,
a good reputation, and liberty of person, a quiet life, and a
tender conscience [a loving wife or husband, and hopeful chil-
dren]. Thou wert my hope from my youth, through thee have
I been holden up, ever since I was born. Thou hast clothed
u 2
292 PRAYERS FOE SEVERAL OCCASIONS,
me and fed me, given me friends and blessed them : grven-
me many days of comfort, and health, free from those sad in-
firmities, with which many of thy saints and dearest servants
are afflicted. Thou hast sent thy angel to snatch me from
the violence of fire and water, to prevent precipices, fracture
of bones, to rescue me from thunder and lightning, plague
and pestilential diseases, murder and robbery, violence of
chance and enemies, and all the spirits of darkness : and in
the days of sorrow thou hast refreshed me ; in the destitution
of provisions thou hast taken care of me, and thou hast said
unto me, " I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee."
" I will give thanks unto the Lord with my whole heart,
secretly among the faithful, and in the congregation."
Thou, O my dearest Lord and Father, hast taken care of
my soul, hast pitied my miseries, sustained my infirmities,
relieved and instructed my ignorances : and though I have
broken thy righteous laws and commandments, run pas-
sionately after vanities, and was in love with death, and was
dead in sin, and was exposed to thousands of temptations,
and fell foully, and continued in it, and loved to have it so,
and hated to be reformed ; yet thou didst call me with the
checks of conscience, with daily sermons and precepts of
holiness, with fear and shame, with benefits and the admoni-
tions of thy most Holy Spirit, by the counsel of my friends,
by the example of good persons, with holy books and tliou-
sands of excellent arts, and would not suffer me to perish in
my folly, but didst force me to attend to thy gracious calling,
and hast put me into a state of repentance, and possibilities
of pardon, being infinitely desirous 1 should live, and re-
cover, and make use of thy grace, and pai'take of thy glories.
" I will give thanks unto the Lord with my whole heart,
secretly among the faithful, and in the congregation. For
salvation belongeth unto the Lord, and thy blessing is upon
thy servant. But as for me, I will come into thy house in
the multitude of thy mercies, and in thy fear will I worship
toward thy holy temple. For of thee, and in thee, and through
and for thee, are all things. Blessed be the name of God,
from generation to generation." Amen.
PRAYERS FOR SEVERAL OCCASIONS. 293
A sJmt form of Thanksgiviug to he said upon any special deli-
verance, as from Childbirth, from Sickness, from Battle, or im-
minent danger at sea or land, S)C.
O most merciful and gracious God, thou fountain of all
mercy and blessing, thou hast opened the hand of thy mercy
to fill me with blessings, and tiie sweet effects of thy loving-
kindness : thou feedest us like a shepherd, thou governest
us as a king, thou bea^est us in thy arms like a nurse, thou
dost cover us under the shadow of thy wings and shelter us
like a hen ; thou (O dearest Lord) wakest for us as a watch-
man, thou providest for us like a husband, thou lovest us as
a friend, and thinkest on us perpetually, as a careful mother
on her helpless babe, and art exceeding merciful to all that
fear thee. And now, O Lord, thou hast added this great
blessing of deliverance from my late danger [here name the
blessing] ; it was thy hand and the help of thy mercy that re
lieved me ; the waters of affliction had drowned me, and the
stream had gone over my soul, if the Spirit of the Lord had
not moved upon these waters. Thou, O Lord, didst revoke
thy angry sentence, which I had deserved, and which was
gone out against me. Unto thee, O Lord, I ascribe the praise
and honour of my redemption, I will be glad and rejoice in
thy mercy, for thou hast considered my trouble, and hast
known my soul in adversity. As thou hast spread thy hand
upon me for a covering, so also enlarge my heart with thank-
fulness, and fill my mouth with praises, tliat my duty and
returns to thee may be great as my needs of mercy are ; ar^d
let thy gracious favours and loving-kindness endure for ev^r
and ever upon thy servant^ and grant that what thou hast
sown in mercy, may spring up in duty : and let thy grace so
strengthen my purposes, that I may sin no more, lest thy
threatening return upon me in anger, and thy anger break
me into pieces: but let me walk in the light of thy favour,
and in the paths of thy commandments : that I, living here
to the glory of thy name, may at last enter into the glory of
my Lord, to spend a whole eternity in giving praise to thy
exalted and ever-glorious name. Amen.
" We praise thee, O God, we acknowledge thee to be the
Lord. All the earth doth worship thee, the Father everlast-
ing. To thee all angels cry aloud, the heavens and all the
294 PRAYERS FOR SEVERAL OCCASIONS.
powers therein. To thee cherubim and seraphim continually
do cry, Holy, holy, holy. Lord God of sabaoth ; heaven
and earth are full of the majesty of thy glory. The glorious
company of the apostles praise thee. The goodly fellowship
of the prophets praise thee. The noble army of martyrs
praise thee. The holy church throughout all the world doth
acknowledge thee, the Father of an infinite majesty ; thine
honourable, true and only Son ; also the Holy Ghost, the
comforter. Thou art the king of glory, O Christ : thou art
the everlasting Son of the Father. When thou tookest upon
thee to deliver man, thou didst not abhor the Virgin's womb.
V/hen thou hadst overcome the sharpness of death, thou
didst open the kingdom of heaven to all believers. Thou
sittest at the right hand of God in the glory of the Father.
We believe, that thou shalt come to be our judge. We
therefore pray thee, help thy servants, whom thou hast re-
deemed with thy precious blood. Make them to be num-
bered with thy saints in glory everlasting. O Lord, save thy
people, and bless thine heritage. Govern them, and lift them
up for ever. Day by day we magnify thee, and we worship
thy name ever world without end. Vouchsafe, O Lord, to
keep us this day without sin. O Lord^ have mercy upon us,
have mercy upon us. O Lord, let thy mercy lighten upon
us, as our trust is in thee. O Lord, in thee have I trusted :
let me never be confounded." Amen.
A Prayer of Thanksgiving after the receiving of some great bless-
ing, as the birth of an heir, the success of an honest design, a
victory, a good liarvest, &c.
O Lord God, father of mercies, the fountain of comfort
and blessing, of life and peace, of plenty and pardon, who
fillest heaven with thy glory, and earth with thy goodness ;
I give thee the most earnest, most humble, and most enlarged
returns of my glad and thankful heart, for thou hast refreshed
me with thy comforts, and enlarged me with thy blessing :
thou hast made my flesh and my bones to rejoice: for be-
sides the blessings of all mankind, the blessings of nature
and the blessings of grace, the support of every minute, and
the comforts of every day, thou hast opened thy bosom, and
at this time hast poured out an excellent expression of thy
PRAYEllS FOR SEVERAL OCCASIONS. 295
loving-kiudness [here name the b/essing']. What am I, O Lord,
and what is my father's house, what is the life and what are
the capacities of thy servant, that thou shouldest do this unto
me; that the great God of men and angels should make a
special decree in heaven for me, and send out an angel of
blessing, and instead of condemning and ruining me, as I
miserably have deserved, to distinguish me from many my
equals and my betters, by this and many other special acts
of grace and favour ?
Praised be the Lord daily, even the Lord, that helpeth
us, and poureth his benefits upon us. He is our God, even
the God of whom cometh salvation: God is the Lord, by
whom we escape death. Thou hast brought me to great ho-
nour, and comforted me on every side.
Thou, Lord, hast made me glad through thy works; I will
rejoice in giving praise for the operation of thy hands.
O give thanks unto the Lord, and call upon his name :
tell the people, what things he hath done.
As for me, I will give great thanks unto the Lord, and
praise him among the multitude.
Blessed be the Lord God, even the Lord God of Israel,
which only doth wondrous and gracious things.
And blessed be the name of his Majesty for ever: and all
the earth shall be filled with his majesty. Amen. Amen.
Glory be to the Father, &c.
As it was in the beginning, &;c.
A Praj/er to be said on the Feast of Christmas, or the Birth of
our blessed Savitmr Jesus: the same also may be said upon the
Feast of the Annunciation and Purif cation of the B. Virgin
Mary.
O holy and almighty God, Father of mercies. Father of our
Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of thy love and eternal mercies,
I adore and praise and glorify thy infinite and unspeakable
love and wisdom, who hast sent thy Son from the bosom of
felicities to take upon him our nature and our misery and
our guilt, and hast made the Son of God to become the Son
of man, that we might become the sons of God, and par-
takers of the Divine nature : since thou hast so exalted hu-
man nature, be [)leased also to sanctify my person, that, by
296 PRAYERS FOR SEVERAL OCCASIONS.
a conformity to the humility and laws and sufferings of my
dearest Saviour, I may be united to his Spirit, and be made
all one with the most holy Jesus. Amen.
O holy and eternal Jesus, who didst pity mankind lying
in his blood and sin and misery, and didst choose our sad-
nesses and sorrows, that thou mightest make us to partake of
thy felicities ; let thine eyes pity me, thy hands support me,
thy holy feet tread down all the difficulties in my way to
heaven : let me dwell in thy heart, be instructed with thy
wisdom, moved by thy affections, choose with thy will, and
be clothed with thy righteousness ; that, in the day of judg-
ment, I may be found having on thy garments, sealed with
thy impression ; and that, bearing upon every faculty and
member the character of my elder brother, I may not be cast
out with strangers and unbelievers. Amen.
O holy and ever-blessed Spirit, who didst overshadow
the holy virgin-mother of our Lord, and caused her to con-
ceive by a miraculous and mysterious manner ; be pleased to
overshadow my soul, and enlighten my spirit, that I may
conceive the holy Jesus in my heart, and may bear him in
my mind, and may grow up to the fulness of the stature of
Christ, to be a perfect man in Christ Jesus. Amen.
To God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, to the eter-
nal Son that was incarnate and born of a Virgin, to the Spirit
of the Father and the Son, be all honour and glory, worship
and adoration, now and for ever. Amen.
The same Form of Prayer may be used upon our own birth-
day, or day of our baptism : adding the following prayer.
A Pi^ayer to be said upon our Birth-day, or day of Baptism.
O blessed and eternal God, I give thee praise and glory
for thy great mercy to me, in causing me to be born of Christ-
ian parents, and didst not allot to me a portion with mis-
believers and heathen that have not known thee. Thou didst
not suffer me to be strangled at the gate of the womb, but
thy hand sustained and brought me to the light of the world,
and the illumination of baptism, with thy grace preventing
my election, and by an artificial necessity and holy preven-
tion engaging me to the profession and practices of Christi-
anity. Lord, since that, 1 have broken the promises made in
PRAYEKS lOR -SEVERAL OCCASIONS. 297
my behalf, and which I confirmed by my after-act ; I went
back from them by an evil life : and yet thou hast still con-
tinued to me life and time of repentance ; and didst not cut
me off in the beginning of my days, and the progress of my
snis. O dearest God, pardon the errors and ignorances,, the
vices and vanities, of my youth, and the faults of my more
forward years, and let me never more stain the whiteness of
my baptismal robe : and now that by thy grace I still persist
in the purposes of obedience, and do give up my name to
Christ, and glory to be a disciple of thy institution, and a
servant of Jesus, let me never fail of thy grace ; let no root
of bitterness spring up, and disorder my purposes, and defile
my spirit. O let my years be so many degrees of nearer ap-
proach to thee : and forsake me not, O God, in my old age,
when I am grey-headed ; and when my strength faileth me,
be thou my strength and my guide unto death ; that I may
reckon my years, and apply my heart unto wisdom ; and at
last, after the spending a holy and a blessed life, I may be
brought unto a glorious eternity, through Jesus Christ our
Lord. Amen.
Then add the form of thanksgiving formerly described.
A Prayer to he said upon the days of the memory of Apostles,
Martyrs, &c.
O eternal God, to whom do live the spirits of them, that
depart hence in the Lord, and in whom the souls of them
that be elected, after they be delivered from the burden of
the flesh, be in peace and rest from their labours, and their
works follow them, and their memory is blessed ; I bless and
magnify thy holy and ever-glorious name, for the great grace
and blessing manifested to thy apostles and martyrs, and other
holy persons, who have glorified thy name in the days of their
flesh, and have served the interest of religion and of thy
service : and this day we have thy servant \jiame the apostle
or martyr, 8ic.] in remembrance, whom thou hast led through
the troubles and temptations of this world, and now hast
lodged in the bosom of a certain hope and great beatitude,
until the day of restitution of all things. Blessed be the
mercy and eternal goodness of God ; and the memory of all
thy saints is blessed. Teach me to practise their doctrine.
29S PRAYERS lOR SEVERAL OCCASIONS.
to imitate their lives, following their example, and being
iniited as a part of the same mystical body by the band of
the same faith, and a holy hope, and a never-ceasing charity.
And may it please thee, of thy gracious goodness, shortly to
accomplish the number of thine elect, and to hasten thy
kingdom, that we with thy servant and all others depart-
ed in the true faith and fear of thy holy name, may have
our perfect consummation and bliss, in body and soul, in thy
eternal and everlasting kingdom. Amen.
A Form of Prayer recording all the parts and rnysteries of
Christ'' s Passion, being a short history of it: to be used espe-
cially in the loeek of the Passion, and before the receiving the
blessed Sacrament.
All praise, honour, and glory, be to the holy and eternal
Jesus. I adore thee, O blessed Redeemer, eternal God, the
light of the gentiles, and the glory of Israel ; for thou hast
done and suffered for me more, than I could wish ; more,
than I could think of; even all that a lost and a miserable
perishing sinner could possibly need.
Thou wert afflicted with thirst and hunger, with heat and
cold, with labours and sorrows, with hard journeys and rest-
less nights ; and when thou wert contriving all the mysterious
and admirable ways of paying our scores, thou didst suffer
thyself to be designed to slaughter by those, for whom in
love thou wert ready to die.
" What is man, that thou art mindful of him; and the Son
of man, that thou visitest him ?"
Blessed be thy name, O holy Jesus ; for thou wentest
about doing good, working miracles of mercy, healing the
sick, comforting the distressed, instructing the ignorant,
raising the dead, enlightening the blind, strengthening the
lame, straightening the crooked, relieving the poor, preach-
ing the gospel, and reconciling sinners by the mightiness
of thy power, by the wisdom of thy Spirit, by the word of
God, and the merits of thy passion, thy healthful and bitter
passion.
" Lord, what is man that thou art mindful of him," &c.
Blessed be thy name, O holy Jesus, who wert content to
he conspired against by the Jews, to be sold by thy servant
PRAYERS FOR SEVERAL OCCASIONS. 299
tbr a vile price, and to wash the feet of him, that took money
for thy life, and to give to him and to all thy apostles thy
most holy body and blood, to become a sacrifice for their
sins, even for their betraying and denying thee ; and for all
my sins, even for my crucifying thee afresh, and for such
sins, which I am ashamed to think, but that the greatness of
my sins magnify the infiniteness of thy mercies, who didst
so great things for so vile a person.
" Lord, what is man," &c.
Blessed be thy name, O holy Jesus, who, being to depart
the world, didst comfort thy apostles, pouring out into their
ears and hearts treasures of admirable discourses ; who didst
recommend them to thy Father with a mighty charity, and
then didst enter into the garden set with nothing but briers and
sorrows, where thou didst suffer a most unspeakable agony,
imtil the sweat strained through thy pure skin like drops of
blood, and there didst sigh and groan, and fall flat upon the
earth, and pray, and submit to the intolerable burden of thy
Father's wrath, which I had deserved, and thou sufferedst.
" Lord, what is man," &c.
Blessed be thy name, O holy Jesus, who hast sanctified
to us all our natural infirmities and passions, by vouchsafing
to be in fear and trembling and sore amazement, by being
bound and imprisoned, by being harassed and drugged with
cords of violence and rude hands, by being drenched in the
brook in the way, by being sought after like a thief, and used
like a sinner, who wert the most holy and the most innocent,
cleaner than an angel, and brighter than the morning star.
" Lord, what is man," &c.
Blessed be thy name, O holy Jesus, and blessed be thy
loving-kindness and pity, by which thou didst neglect thy
own sorrows, and go to comfort the sadness of thy disciples,
quickening their dulness, encouraging their duty, arming
their weakness with excellent precepts against the day of
trial. Blessed be that humility and sorrow of thine, who,
being Lord of the angels, yet wouldest need and receive com-
fort from thy servant the angel ; who didst offer thyself to
thy persecutors, and madest them able to seize thee ; and
didst receive the traitor's kiss, and sufferedst a veil to be
thrown over thy holy face, that thy enemies might not pre-
sently be confounded by so bright a lustre j and wouldst do
300 PRAYERS FOR SEVERAL OCCASIONS.
a miracle to cure a wound of one of thy spiteful enemies ; and
didst reprove a zealous servant in behalf of a malicious adver-
sary ; and then didst go like a lamb to the slaughter, with-
out noise or violence or resistance, when thou couldst have
commanded millions of angels for thy guard and rescue.
" Lord, what is man," &c.
Blessed be thy name, O holy Jesus, and blessed be that
holy sorrow thou didst suffer, when thy disciples fled, and
thou wert left alone in the hands of cruel men, who, like
evening wolves, thirsted for a draught of thy best blood :
and thou wert led to the house of Annas, and there asked
ensnaring questions, and smitten on the face by him, whose
ear thou hadst but lately healed ; and from thence wert
dragged to the house of Caiaphas ; and there all night didst
endure spittings, aftronts, scorn, contumelies, blows, and in-
tolerable insolences ; and all this for man, who was thy enemy,
and the cause of all thy sorrows.
" Lord, what is man," &c.
Blessed be thy name, O holy Jesus, and blessed be thy
mercy, who, when thy servant Peter denied thee and forsook
thee and forswore thee, didst look back upon him, and, by
that gracious and chiding look, didst call him back to him-
self and thee; who wert accused before the high-priest, and
railed upon, and examined to evil purposes, and with designs
of blood ; who wert declared guilty of death for speaking a
most necessary and most probable truth ; who wert sent to
Pilate and found innocent, and sent to Herod and still found
innocent, and wert arrayed in white, both to declare thy in-
nocence, and yet to deride thy person, and wert sent back to
Pilate and examined again, and yet nothing but innocence
found in thee, and malice round about thee to devour thy life,
which yet thou wert more desirous to lay down for them,
than they were to take it from thee.
" Lord, what is man," &c.
Blessed be thy name, O holy Jesus, and blessed be that
patience and charity, by which for our sakes thou wert con-
tent to be smitten with canes, and have that holy face, which
angels with joy and wonder do behold, be spit upon, and be
despised, when compared with Barabbas, and scourged most
rudely with unhallowed hands, till the pavement was purpled
with that holy blood, and condemned to a sad and shameful.
PRAYERS rOR SEVERAL OCCASIOXS. 301
a public and painful death, and arrayed in scarlet, and crowned
with thorns, and stripped naked, and then clothed, and
loaden with the cross, and tormented with a tablet stuck
with nails at the fringes of thy garment, and bound hard
with cords, and dragged most vilely and most piteously, till
the load was too great, and did sink thy tender and virginal
body to the earth ; and yet didst comfort the weeping wo-
men, and didst more pity thy persecutors than thyself, and
wert grieved for the miseries of Jerusalem to come forty
years after, more than for thy present passion.
" Lord, what is man," &c.
Blessed be thy name, O holy Jesus, and blessed be that
incomparable sweetness and holy sorrow, which thou suf-
feredst, when thy holy hands and feet were nailed upon the
cross, and the cross, being set in a hollowness of the earth,
did in the fall rend the wounds wider, and there naked and
bleeding, sick and faint, wounded and despised, didst hang
upon the weight of thy wounds three long hours, praying for
thy persecutors, satisfying thy Father's wrath, reconciling
the penitent thief, providing for thy holy and afflicted mother,
tasting vinegar and gall ; and when the fulness of thy suf-
fering was accomplished, didst give thy soul into the hand*
of God, and didst descend to the regions of longing souls,
who waited for the revelation of this thy day in their prisons
of hope : and then thy body was transfixed with a spear, and
issued forth two sacraments, water and blood, and thy body
was composed to burial, and dwelt in darkness three days
and three nights.
" Lord, what is man, that thou art mindful of him ; and
the son of man, that thou thus visitest him? "
The Prayer.
Thus, O blessed Jesu, thou didst finish thy holy passion
with pain and anguish so great, that nothing could be greater
than it, except thyself and thy own infinite mercy : and all
this for man, even for me, than whom nothing could be more
miserable, thyself only excepted, who becamest so by under-
taking our guilt and our punishment. And now, Lord, who
hast done so much for me, be pleased only to make it effec-
tual to me, that it may not be useless and lost as to my par-
ticular, lest I become eternally miserable, and lost to all hopes
302 PRAYERS FOR SEVERAL OCCASIOXS.
and possibilities of comfort. All this deserves more love than-
I have to give : but. Lord, do thou turn me all into love, and-
all my love into obedience, and let my obedience be without
interruption, and then I hope, thou wilt accept such a return
as I can make. Make me to be something, that thou de-
lightest in, and thou shalt have all that I am or have from
thee, even whatsoever thou makest fit for thyself. Teach me:
to live wholly for my Saviour Jesus, and to be ready to die
for Jesus, and to be conformable to his life and sufferings,
and to be united to him by inseparable unions, and to own
no passions, but what may be servants to Jesus and disci-
ples of his institution. O sweetest Saviour, clothe my soul
with thy holy robe ; hide my sins in thy wounds, and bury
them in thy grave ; and let me rise in the life of grace, and
abide and grow in it, till I arrive at the kingdom of glory..
Amen.
" Our Father," Sec.
[Ad Sect. 7, 8. 10.] A form of Pi-ayer or Intercession for all
estates oj people in the Clmstian church. The parts of wJiich
ma}/ be added to any other forms; and the whole office, en-
tirely as it lies, is proper to he said in our preparation to the
holy Sacrament, or on the day of celebration.
1. For ourselves.
0 thou gracious Father of mercy. Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ, have mercy upon thy servants, who bov/ our heads,
and our knees, and our hearts to thee : pardon and forgive us
all our sins : give us the grace of holy repentance, and a sti'ict
obedience to thy holy word : strengthen us in the inner man
with the power of thy Holy Ghost for all the parts and duties
of our calling and holy living : preserve us for ever in the
unity of the holy catholic church, and in the integrity of
the Christian faith, and in the love of God and of our neiffh-
hours, and in hope of life eternal. Amen.
2. For the ivhole catholic church.
O holy Jesus, king of the saints, and prince of the catholic
church, preserve thy spouse, whom thou hast purchased with
thy right hand, and redeemed and cleansed with thy blood ;
the whole catholic church from one end of the earth to the
PRAYERS FOR SEVERAL OCCASIONS, 303
other; she is founded upon a rock, but phinted in the sea.
O preserve her safe from schism, heresy, and sacrilege. Unite
all her members with the bands of faith, hope, and charity,
and an external communion, when it shall seem good in thine
eyes. Let the daily sacrifice of prayer and sacramental
thanksgiving never cease, but be for ever presented to thee,
and for ever united to the intercession of her dearest Lord,
and for ever prevail for the obtaining for every of its mem-
bers grace and blessing, pardon and salvation. Amen.
3. For all Christian Khigs, Princes, and Governors.
O King of kings, and Prince of all the rulers of the earth,
give thy grace and Spirit to all Christian princes, the spirit
of wisdom and counsel, the spirit of government and godly
fear. Grant unto them to live in peace and honour, that their
people may love and fear them, and they may love and fear
God. Speak good unto their hearts concerning the church,
that they may be nursing fathers to it, fathers to tiie father-
less, judges and avengers of the cause of widows ; that they
may be compassionate to the wants of the poor, and the groans
of the oppressed; that they may not vex or kill the Lord's
people with unjust or ambitious wars, but may feed the flock
of God, and may inquire after and do all things, which may
promote peace, public honesty, and holy religion ; so admi-
nistering things present, that they may not fail of the ever-
lasting glories of the world to come, where all thy faithful
people shall reign kings for ever. Amen.
4. For all the orders of them, that minister about holy things.
O thou great shepherd and bishop of our souls, holy and
eternal Jesus, give unto thy servants the ministers of the mys-
teries of Christian religion, the spirit of prudence and sanc-
tity, faith and charity, confidence and zeal, diligence and
watchfulness, that they may declare thy will unto the people
faithfully, and dispense thy sacraments rightly, and intercede
with thee graciously and acceptably for thy servants. Grant,
O Lord, that by a holy life and a true belief, by well doing
and patient suffering (when thou shalt call them to it), they
may glorify thee the great lover of souls, and after a plentiful
conversion of sinners from the error of their ways, they may
shine like the stars in glory. Amen.
304 PRAYERS FOR SEVERAL OCCASIONS.
Give unto thy servants, the bishops, a discerning spirit,
that they may lay hands suddenly on no man, but may depute
such persons to the ministries of religion, who may adorn
the gospel of God, and whose lips may preserve knowledge,
and such, who by their good preaching and holy living may
advance the service of the Lord Jesus. Amen.
5. For our nearest relatives, as Husband, Wife, Children,
Family, <S)T.
O God of infinite mercy, let thy loving mercy and com-
passion descend upon the head of thy servants [mi/ wife, or
husband, children andfamily'[ : be pleased to give them health
of body and of spirit, a competent portion of temporals, so
as may with comfort support them in their journey to heaven :
preserve them from all evil and sad accidents, defend them
in all assaults of their enemies, direct their persons and their
actions, sanctify their hearts and words and purposes ; that
we all may, by the bands of obedience and charity, be united
to our Lord Jesus, and always feeling thee our merciful and
gracious father, may become a holy family, discharging our
whole duty in all our relations ; that we in this life being
thy children by adoption and grace, may be admitted into
thy holy family hereafter, for ever to sing praises to thee in
the church of the first-born, in the family of thy redeemed
ones. Amen.
6. For our Parents, our Kindred in the flesh, our Friends
and Benefactors.
O God, merciful and gracious, who hast made [rny pa-
rents,'] my friends and my benefactors ministers of thy mercy
and instruments of Providence, to thy servant, I humbly
beg a blessing to descend upon the heads of \jiame the per-
sons, or the relations.] Depute thy holy angels to guard
their persons, thy Holy Spirit to guide their souls, thy provi-
dence to minister to their necessities ; and let thy grace and
mercy preserve them from the bitter pains of eternal death,
and bring them to everlasting life, throiigh Jesus Christ.
Amen.
PRAYERS FOR SEVERAL OCCASIONS. 305
7.. For all that lie under the rod of War, Famine, Pestilence ;
to he said in the time of Plague, or war, &c.
O Lord God Almighty, thou art our father, we are thy
t^hildren: thou art our Redeemer, we thy people purchased
with the price of thy most precious blood : be pleased to
moderate thy anger towards thy servants ; let not thy whole
displeasure arise, lest we be consumed and brought to no-
thing. Let health and peace be within our dwellings ; let
righteousness and holiness dwell for ever in our hearts, and
be expressed in all our actions, and the light of thy counte-
nance be upon us in all our sufferings, that we may delight
in the service and in the mercies of God for ever. Amen.
O gracious Father and merciful God, if it be thy will,
say unto the destroying angel, " It is enough :" and though
we are not better than our brethren, who are smitten with
the rod of God, but much worse, yet may it please thee,
even because thou art good, and because we are timorous
and sinful, not yet fitted for our appearance, to set thy mark
upon our foreheads, that thy angel, the minister of thy jus-
tice, may pass over us and hurt us not : let thy hand cover
thy servants and hide us in the clefts of the rock, in the
wounds of the holy Jesus, from the present anger, that is
gone out against us ; that though we walk through the valley
of the shadow of death, we may fear no evil, and suffer
none : and those, whom thou hast smitten with thy rod, sup-
port with thy staff, and visit them with thy mercies and sal-
vation, through Jesus Christ.
8. For all women with child, and for unborn Children.
O Lord God, who art the father of them that trust in
thee, and shewest mercy to a thousand generations of them,
that fear thee; have mercy upon all women great with child,
be pleased to give them a joyful and a safe deliverance: and
let thy grace preserve the fruit of their wombs, and conduct
them to the holy sacrament of baptism: that they, being re-
generated by thy Spirit, and adopted into thy family, and
the portion and duty of sons, may live to the glory of God,
to the comfort of their parents and friends, to the edification
of the Christian commonwealth, and the salvation of their
own souls, through Jesus Christ. Amen.
VOL. IV. X
306 PRAYERS FOR SEVERAL OCCASIONS.
9. For all estates of Men and Women, in the Christian church.
O holy God, king eternal, out of the infinite store-houses
of thy grace and mercy, give unto all virgins chastity, and a
religious spirit: to all persons dedicated to thee and to reli-
gion, continence and meekness, an active zeal and an ua-
wearied spirit ; to all married pairs, faith and holiness ; to
widows and fatherless, and all that are oppressed, thy pa-
tronage, comfort, and defence ; to all Christian women, sim-
plicity and modesty, humility and chastity, patience and
charity : give unto the poor, to all that are robbed and spoiled
of their goods, a competent support, and a contented spirit,
and a treasure in heaven hereafter : give unto prisoners and
captives, to them that toil in the mines, and row in the gal-
lies, strength of body and of spirit, liberty and redemption,
comfort aiid restitution : to all that travel by land, thy angel
for their guide, and a holy and prosperous return : to all that
travel by sea, freedom from pirates and shipwreck, and bring
them to the haven, where they would be; to distressed and
scrupulous consciences, to melancholy and disconsolate per-
sons, to all that are afflicted with evil and unclean spirits,
give a light from heaven, gieut grace and proportionable
comforts, and timely deliverance ; give them patience and
resignation; let their sorrows be changed into grace and
comfort, and let the storm waft them certainly to the regions
of rest and glory.
Lord God of mercy, give to thy martyrs, confessors, and
all thy persecuted, constancy and prudence, boldness and
hope, a full faith and a never-failing charity. To all who are
condemned to death, do thou minister comfort, a strong, a
quiet, and a resigned spirit : take from them the fear of death,
and all remaining affections to sin, and all imperfections of
duty, and cause them to die full of grace, full of hope. And
give to all faithful, and particularly to them, who have re-
commended themselves to the prayers of thy unworthy ser-
vant, a supply of all their needs temporal and spiritual, and
according to their several states and necessities, rest and
peace, pardon and refreshment: and shew us all a mercy in
the day of judgment. Amen.
Give, O Lord, to the magistrates equity, sincerity, coi-
rage, and prudence, that they may protect the good, defend
PRAYERS FOR SEVERAL OCCASIONS. 307
religion, and punish tlie wrong doers. Give to the nobility
wisdom, valour, and loyalty : to merchants, justice and faith-
fulness : to all artificers and labourers, truth and hojiesty : to
our enemies, forgiveness and brotherly kindness.
Preserve to us the heavens and the air in healthful in-
fluence and disposition, the earth in plenty, the kingdom in
peace and good government, our marriages in peace and
sweetness and innocence of society, thy people from famine
and pestilence, our houses from burning and robbery, our
persons from being burnt alive : from banishment and prison,
irom widowhood and destitution, from violence of pains and
passions, from tempests and earthquakes, from inundation
of waters, from rebellion or invasion, from impatience and
inordinate cares, from tediousness of spirit and despair, from
murder, and all violent, accursed, and unusual deaths, from
the surprise of sudden and violent accidents, from passionate
and unreasonable fears, from all thy wrath, and from all
our sins, good Lord, deliver and preserve thy servants for
ever. Amen.
Repress the violence of all implacable, warring, and tyrant
nations : bring home unto thy fold all that are gone astray:
call into the church all strangers : increase the number and
holiness of thine own people ; bring infants to ripeness of
age and reason : confirm all baptized people with thy grace
and with thy Spirit : instruct the novices and new Christians :
let a great grace and merciful providence bring youthful per-
sons safely and holily through the indiscretions and passions
and temptations of their younger years : and to those whom
tJiou hast or shalt permit to live to the age of a man, give
competent strength and wisdom ; take from them covetous-
ness and churlishness, pride and impatience ; fill them full of
devotion and charity, repentance and sobriety, holy thouo;hts
and longing desires after heaven and heavenly things ; o-jve
them a holy and a blessed death, and to us all a joyful resur-
rection through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Ad Sect. 10.] The manner of using these Devotions hy way
of preparation to the receiving the blessed sacrament of the
Lord's Supper.
The just preparation to this holy feast consisting prin-
cipally in a holy life, and consequently in the repetition of
X 2
308 PRAYERS FOR SEVERAL OCCASIONS.
the acts of all virtues, and especially of faith, repentance,
charity, and thanksgiving : to the exercise of these four
graces, let the person, that intends to communicate, in the
times set apart for his preparation and devotion, for the ex-
ercise of his faith recite the prayer or litany of the passion ;
for the exercise of repentance, the form of confession of sins
with the prayer annexed ; and for the graces of thanksgiving
and charity, let him use the special forms of prayer above
described. Or if a less time can be allotted for preparatory
devotion, the two first will be the more proper, as containing
in them all the personal duty of the communicant. To which,
upon the morning of that holy solemnity, let him add
A Prayer of preparation or address to the holy sacrament.
An Act of Love.
Omost gracious and eternal God, the helper of the help-
less, the comforter of the comfortless, the hope of the af-
flicted, the bread of the hungry, the drink of the thirsty,
and the Saviour of all them that wait upon thee ; I bless
and glorify thy name, and adore thy goodness, and delight
in thy love, that thou hast once more given me the oppor-
tunity of receiving the greatest favour, which I can receive
in this world, even the body and blood of my dearest Sa-
viour. O take from me all affection to sin or vanity ; let
not my affections dwell below, but soar upwards to the ele-
ment of love, to the seat of God, to the regions of glory, and
the inheritance of Jesus : that I may hunger and thirst for
the bread of life, and the wine of elect souls, and may know
no loves but the love of God, and the most merciful Jesus.
Amen.
An Act of Desire.
O blessed Jesus, thou hast used many arts to save me,
thou hast given thy life to redeem me, thy Holy Spirit to
sanctify me, thyself for my example, thy word for my rule,
thy grace for my guide, the fruit of thy body hanging on
the tree of the cross for the sin of my soul; and, after all
this, thou hast sent thy apostles and ministers of salvation to
call me, to importune me, to constrain me, to holiness, and
peace, and felicity. O now come. Lord Jesus, come quickly:
PRAYERS FOR SEVERAL OCCASIONS. 309
my heart is desirous of thy presence, and thifsty of thy
grace, and would fain entertain thee, not as a guest, but as
an inhabitant, as the Lord of all my faculties. Enter in and
take possession, and dwell with me for ever ; that I also may
dwell in the heart of my dearest Lord, which was opened for
rae with a spear and love.
A n Act of Contrition.
Lord, thou shalt find my heart full of cares and worldly
desires, cheated with love of riches, and neglect of holy
things, proud and unmortified, false and crafty to deceive it-
self, intricated and entangled with difficult cases of con-
science, with knots which my own wildness and inconsidera-
tion and impatience have tied and shuffled together. O my
dearest Lord, if thou canst behold such an impure seat, be-
hold the place, to which thou art invited, is full of passion
and prejudice, evil principles and evil habits, peevish and
disobedient, lustful and intemperate, and full of sad remem-
brances, that I have often provoked to jealousy and to anger
thee my God, my dearest Saviour, him that died for me, him
that suffered torments for me, that is infinitely good to me,
and infinitely good and perfect in himself. This, O dearest
Saviour, is a sad truth, and I am heartily ashamed, and truly
sorrowful for it, and do deeply hate all my sins, and am full
of indignation against myself for so unworthy, so careless,
so continued, so great a folly : and humbly beg of thee to
increase my sorrow, and my care, and my hatred, against
sin ; and make my love to thee swell up to a great grace,
and then to glory and immensity.
An Act of Faith.
This indeed is my condition : but I know, O blessed
Jesus, that thou didst take upon thee my nature, that thou
mightest suffer for my sins, and thou didst suffer to deliver
me from them and from thy Father's wrath : and I was de-
livered from this wrath, that I might serve thee in'holiness
and righteousness all my days. Lord, I am as sure thou
didst the great work of redemption for me and all mankind,
as that I am alive. This is my hope, the strength of my
spirit, my joy and my confidence : and do thou never let the
spirit of unbelief enter into me and take me from this rock.
310 PRAYERS FOR SEVERAL OCCASIONS.
Here I will dwell, for I have a delight therein : here I will
live, and here I desire to die.
The Petition.
Therefore, O blessed Jesu, who art my Saviour and my
God, whose body is my food, and thy righteousness is my
robe, thou art the priest and the sacrifice, the master of the
feast and the feast itself, the physician of my soul, the light
of my eyes, the purifier of my stains : enter into my heart
and cast out from thence all impurities, all the remains of
the old man ; and grant I may partake of this holy sacrament
with much reverence, and holy relish, and great effect, re-
ceiving hence the communication of thy holy body and
blood, for the establishment of an unreprovable faith, of an
unfeigned love, for the fulness of wisdom, for the healing my
soul, for the blessing and preservation of my body, for the
taking out the sting of temporal death, and for the assurance
of a holy resurrection, for the ejection of all evil from within
me, and the fulfilling all thy righteous commandments, and
to procure for me a mercy and a fair reception at the day of
judgment, through thy mercies, O holy and ever-blessed
Saviour Jesus.
[Here also may be added the prayer after receiving the
cup.]
Ejaculations to be said before, or at, the receiving the holif
Sacrament.
Like as the hart desireth the water-brooks : so longeth
jny soul after thee, O God. My soul is athirst for God, yea,
even for the living God : when sludl I come before the pre-
sence of God ? Psal. xlii. 1, 2.
O Lord my God, great are thy wondrous works which
thou hast done; like as be also thy thoughts, which are to ust
ward : and yet there is no man, that ordereth them unto thee.
Psal. xl. 6.
0 send out thy light and thy truth, that they may lead
me, and bring me unto thy holy hill and to thy dwelling :
and that I may go unto the altar of God, even unto the God
of my joy and gladness : and with my heart will I give thanks
to thee, O God my God. Psal. xliii. 3, 4.
1 will wash my hands in innocence, O Lord ; and so will
PRAYERS FOR SEVERAL OCCASIONS. 311
I go to thine altar : that I may shew the voice of thanks-
giving, and tell of all thy wondrous works. Psal. xxvi. 6, 7.
Examine me, O Lord, and prove me, try thou my reins
and my heart. For thy loving-kindness is now and ever be-
fore my eyes : and I will walk in thy truth, ver 2, 3.
Thou shalt prepare a table before me against them that
trouble me : thou hast anointed my head with oil, and my
cup shall be full. But thy loving-kindness and mercy shall
follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the
house of the Lord for ever. Psal. xxiii. 5, 6.
This is the bread that cometh down from heaven, that a
man may eat thereof and not die. John, vi. 50.
Whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood, dwelleth
in me and I in him, and hath eternal life abiding in him, and
I will raise him up at the last day. ver. 54. 56.
Lord, whither shall we go but to thee? thou hast the
words of eternal life. John, vi. 68.
If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink. John,
vii. 37.
The bread which we break, is it not the communication
of the body of Christ ? and the cup which we drink, is it not
the communication of the blood of Christ? 1 Cor. x. 16.
What are those wounds in thy hands ? They are those
with which I was wounded in the house of my friends. Zech.
xiii. 6.
Immediately before the receiving, say.
Lord, 1 am not worthy, that thou shouldest enter under
my roof. But do thou speak the word only, and thy servant
shall be healed. Matt. viii. 8.
Lord, open thou my lips, and my mouth shall shew thy
praise. O God, make speed to save me: O Lord, make haste
to help me.
Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly.
After receiving the consecrated and blessed Bread, say,
O taste and see how gracious the Lord is : blessed is the
man that trusteth in him. The beasts do lack and suffer
hunger ; but they which seek the Lord, shall want no manner
of thing that is good. Lord, what am I, that my Saviour
should become my food j that the Son of God should be the
312 PRAYERS FOR SEVERAL OCCASION*.
meat of worms, of dust and ashes, of a sinner, of him that
was his enemy ? But this thou hast done to me, because thou
art infinitely good and wonderfully gracious, and lovest to
bless every one of us, in turning us from the evil of our ways.
Enter into me, blessed Jesus : let no root of bitterness spring
up in my heart; but be thou Lord of all my faculties. O let
me feed on thee by faith, and grow up by the increase of God
to a perfect man in Christ Jesus. Amen. Lord, I believe:
help mine unbelief.
Glory be to God the Father, Son, Sec.
After the receiving the Cup of blessing.
It is finished. Blessed be the mercies of God revealed
to us in Jesus Christ. O blessed and eternal high-priest, let
the sacrifice of the cross, which thou didst once offer for
the sins of the whole world, and which thou dost now and
always represent in heaven to thy Father by thy never-ceas-
ing intercession, and which this day hath been exhibited on
thy holy table sacramentally, obtain mercy and peace, faith
and charity, safety and establishment, to thy holy church,
which thou hast founded upon a rock, the rock of a holy
faith ; and let not the gates of hell prevail against her, nor
the enemy of mankind take any soul out of thy hand, whom
thou hast purchased with thy blood, and sanctified by thy
spirit. Preserve all thy people from heresy and division of
Spirit, from scandal and the spirit of delusion, from sacrilege
and hurtful persecutions. Thou, O blessed Jesus, didst die
for us : keep me for ever in holy living, from sin and sinful
shame, in the communion of thy church, and thy church in
safety and grace, in truth and peace unto thy second coming.
Amen.
Dearest Jesu, since thou art pleased to enter into me, O
be jealous of thy house and the place, where thine honour
dwelleth : suffer no unclean spirit or unholy thought to come
near thy dwelling, lest it defile the ground, where thy holy
feet have trod. O teach me so to walk, that I may never
disrepute the honour of my religion, nor stain the holy robe,
which thou hast now put upon my soul, nor break my holy
vows, which I have made, and thou hast sealed, nor lose my
right of inheritance, my privilege of being co-heir with Jesus,
into the hope of which 1 have no further entered : but be
PRAYERS FOR SEVERAL OCCASIONS. 313
thou pleased to love me with the love of a father, and a bro-
ther, and a husband, and a lord ; and make me to serve thee
in the communion of saints, in receivinc; the sacrament, in
the practice of all holy virtues, in the imitation of thy life,
and conformity to thy sufferings ; that I, having now put on
the Lord Jesus, may marry his loves and his enmities, may
desire his glory, and may obey his laws, and be united to his
Spirit, and in the day of the Lord I may be found having on
the wedding-garment, and bearing in my body and soul the
marks of the Lord JeSus, that I may enter into the joy of
my Lord, and partake of his glories for ever and ever.
Amen.
Ejaculadom to be used any time that day, after the sohmnity
is ended.
Lord, if I had lived innocently, I could not have deserved
to receive the crumbs, that fall from thy table. How great is
thy mercy, w.ho hast feasted me with the bread of virgins,
with the wine of angels, with manna from heaven !
O when shall I pass from this dark glass, from this veil
of sacraments, to the vision of thy eternal clarity; from eating
thy body, to beholding thy face in thy eternal kingdom ?
Let not my sins crucify the Lord of life again : let it
never be said concerning me, " The hand of him that betray-
eth me, is with me on the table."
O that I might love thee as well as ever any creature
loved thee ! Let me think nothing but thee, desire nothing
but thee, enjoy nothing but thee.
O Jesus, be a Jesus unto me. Thou art all thing-s unto
me. Let nothing ever please me, but what savours of thee
and thy miraculous sweetness.
Blessed be the mercies of our Lord, who of God is made
unto me wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and
redemption.
" He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord." Amen,
THE END OF HOLY LIVING.
THE
RULE AND EXERCISES
HOLY DYING.
IN WHICH ARJE DESCRIBED
THE MEANS AND INSTRUMENTS OF PREPARING
OURSELVES AND OTHERS RESPECTIVELY FOR A BLESSED DEATH;
AND THE REMEDIES AGAINST
THE EVILS AND TEMPTATIONS PROPER TO THE STATE OF SICKNESS:
TOGETHER WITH
PRAYERS AND ACTS OF VIRTUE, TO BE USED BY SICK
AND DYING PERSONS, OR BY OTHERS STANDING IN THEIR ATTENDANCli
TO WHICH ARE ADDED
RULES FOR THE VISITATION OF THE SICK,
AND
OFFICES PROPER FOR THAT MINISTRY.
To |«Ev ri'KiuTnff'at ittatoit h TrfTTfiMfji.ivn xttTEJtgivE*
To 5i KaKiig a'oroBaviiY, i'Jiov ToTf a-TTOvSaioti h <fuiTif amnif*l.
Isoc. ad Demonic, p. 13. ed. Laugfo.
THE
RULE AND EXERCISES
OF
HOLY DYING.
IN WHICH ARE DESCRIBED
THE MEANS AND INSTRUMENTS OF PREPARING
OURSELVES AND OTHERS RESPECTIVELY FOR A BLESSED DEATH;
AND THE REMEDIES AGAINST
THE EVILS AND TEMPTATIONS PROPER TO THE STATE OF SICKNESS:
TOGETHER WITH
PRAYERS AND ACTS OF VIRTUE, TO BE USED BY SICK
AND DYING PERSONS, OR BY OTHERS STANDING IN THEIR ATTENDANCE
TO WHICH ARE ADDED
RULES FOR THE VISITATION OF THE SICK,
AND
OFFICES PROPER FOR THAT MINISTRY.
To Si xaXiJ; awoQa)/iTy, iJiov roXi; a-TtovSaioii h <fua-ti; anivitfjie.
Jsoc. ad Demonic, p. 13. cJ. Laugd.
TO
THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
AND NOBLEST LORD,
RICHARD, EARL OF CARBERY,
MY LORD,
I AM treating your Lordship, as a Roman gentleman
did St. Augustine and his mother ; I shall entertain
you in a charnel-house, and carry your meditations
awhile into the chambers of death, where you shall
find the rooms dressed up with melancholic arts,
and fit to converse with your most retired thoughts,
which begin with a sigh, and proceed in deep con-
sideration, and end in a holy resolution. The sight,
that St. Augustine most noted in that house of sor-
row, was the body of Caesar, clothed with all the
dishonours of corruption, that you can suppose in
a six months' burial. But I know, that, without
pointing, your first thoughts will remember the
change of a greater beauty, which is now dressing
for the briohtest immortality, and from her bed of
/
CCCXVlll DEDICATION.
darkness calls to you to dress your soul for that
change, which shall mingle your bones with that
beloved dust, and carry your soul to the same quire,
where you may both sit and sing for ever. My
Lord, it is your dear Lady's anniversary, and she de-
served the biggest honour, and the longest memory,
and the fairest monument, and the most solemn
mourning: and in order to it, give me leave, my
Lord, to cover her hearse with these following sheets.
This book was intended first to minister to her
piety; and she desired all good people should par-
take of the advantages, which are here recorded :
she knew how to live rarely well, and she desired to
know how to die ; and God taught her by an ex-
periment. But since her work is done, and God
supplied her with provisions of his own, before I
could minister to her, and perfect what she desired,
it is necessary to present to your Lordship those
bundles of cypress, which were intended to dress her
closet, but come now to dress her hearse. My Lord,
both your Lordship and myself have lately seen and
felt such sorrows of death, and such sad departure
of dearest friends, that it is more than high time we
should think ourselves nearly concerned in the ac-
cidents. Death hath come so near to you, as to
fetch a portion from your very heart ; and now you
cannot choose but dig your own grave, and place
your coffin in your eye, when the angel hath dressed
your scene of sorrow and meditation with so par-
DEDICATION. CCCXIX
ticular and so near an object: and therefore, as it is
my duty, I am come to minister to your pious
thoughts, and to direct your sorrows, that they may
turn into virtues and advantages.
And since I know your Lordship to be so con-
stant and regular in your devotions, and so tender
in the matter of justice, so ready in the expressions
of charity, and so apprehensive of reUgion ; and that
you are a person, whose work of grace is apt, and
must every day grow towards those degrees, where
when you arrive, you shall triumph over imperfec-
tion, and choose nothing, but what may please God ;
I could not by any compendium conduct and assist
your pious purposes so well, as by that, which is
the great argument and the great instrument of Holy
Living, the consideration and exercises of death.
My Lord, it is a great art to die well, and to be
learnt by men in health, by them that can discourse
and consider, by those whose understanding and I
acts of reason are not abated with fear or pains : and
as the greatest part of death is passed by the pre-
ceding years of our life, so also in those years are
the greatest preparations to it ; and he that prepares
not for death before his last sickness, is like him, that
begins to study philosophy, when he is going to
dispute publickly in the faculty. All that a sick and
dying man can do, is but to exercise those virtues,
which he before acquired, and to perfect that re-
pentance, which was begun more early. And of
VOL. IV. Y
CCCXX DEDICATION
this, my Lord, my book, I think, is a good testimony ;
not only because it represents the vanity of a late
and sick-bed repentance, but because it contains in
it so many precepts and meditations, so many pro-
positions and various duties, such forms of exercise,
and the degrees and difficulties of so many graces,
w^hich are necessary preparatives to a holy death,
that the very learning the duties requires study and
skill, time and understanding, in the v^rays of godli-
ness : and it were very vain to say so much is ne-
cessary, and not to suppose more time to learn them,
more skill to practise them, more opportunities to
desire them, more abilities both of body and mind,
than can be supposed in a sick, amazed, timorous,
and weak person ; whose natural acts are disabled,
whose senses are weak, whose discerning faculties
are lessened, whose principles are made intricate
and entangled, upon whose eye sits a cloud, and
the heart is broken with sickness, and the liver
pierced through with sorrows, and the strokes of
death. And therefore, my Lord, it is intended by
the necessity of affairs, that the precepts of dying
well be part of the studies of them, that live in
health, and the days of discourse and understand-
ing, which, in this case, hath another degree of
necessity superadded ; because, in other notices, an
imperfect study may be supplied by a frequent ex-
ercise and renewed experience ; here if we practise
imperfectly once, we shall never recover the error :
DEDICATION. CCCXXI
for we die but once ; and therefore it will be ne-
cessary, that our skill be more exact, since it is not
to be mended by trial, but the actions must be for
ever left imperfect, unless the habit be contracted
with study and contemplation beforehand.
And indeed I were vain, if I should intend this
book to be read and studied by dying persons : and
they were vainer, that should need to be instructed
in those graces, which they are then to exercise and
to finish. For a sick bed is only a school of severe
exercise, in which the spirit of a man is tried, and
his graces are rehearsed : and the assistances, which
I have, in the following pages, given to those vir-
tues, which are proper to the state of sickness, are
such, as suppose a man in the state of grace ; or
they confirm a good man, or they support the weak,
or add degrees, or minister comfort, or prevent an
evil, or cure the little mischiefs, which are incident
to tempted persons in their weakness. That is the
sum of the present design, as it relates to dying
persons. And therefore I have not inserted any
advices proper to old age, but such as are common
to it and the state of sickness ; for I suppose very
old age to be a longer sickness ; it is labour and
sorrow, when it goes beyond the common period of
nature : but if it be on this side that period, and be
healthful ; in the same degree it is so, I reckon it in
the accounts of life ; and therefore it can have no
distinct consideration. But I do not think it is a
Y 2
CCCXXll DEDICATION.
station of advantage to begin the change of an evil
life in : it is a middle state between life and death-
bed ; and therefore, although it hath more of hopes
than this, and less than that ; yet as it partakes of
either state, so it is to be regulated by the advices
of that state, and judged by its sentences.
Only this : I desire, that all old persons w^ould
sadly consider, that their advantages in that state
are very few, but their inconveniences are not few ;
their bodies are without strength, their prejudices
long and mighty, their vices (if they have lived
wicked) are habitual, the occasions of the virtues
not many, the possibilities of some (in the matter of
which they stand very guilty) are past, and shall
never return again (such are, chastity, and many
parts of self-denial) ; that they have some tempta-
tions proper to their age, as peevishness and pride,
covetousness and talking, wilfulness and unwilling-
ness to learn "" ; and they think, they are protected
by age from learning a new, or repenting the old ;
and do not leave, but change their vices ^ : and after
all this, either the day of their repentance is past, as
we see it true in very many ; or it is expiring and
towards the sun- set, as it is in all : and therefore,
although in these to recover is very possible, yet we
may also remember, that, in the matter of virtue and
^ Vel quia nil rectum nisi quod placuit sibi ducunt,
Vel quia lurpe putant parere miiioribus, et quae
linberbes didicere, senes perdonda fateri. — Hor. Ep. ii. 1. 84.
'• Tenellis adhncinfantiae suae persuasionibns in seneclutepuerascunt. — Mamertus.
DEDICATION. CCCXXlU
repentance, possibility is a great way off from per-
formance; and how few do repent, of whom it is only
possible, that they may ! and that many things more
are required to reduce their possibility to act; a
great grace, an assiduous ministry, an effective call-
ing, mighty assistances, excellent counsel, great in-
dustry, a watchful diligence, a well-disposed mind,
passionate desires, deep apprehensions of danger,
quick perceptions of duty, and time, and God's good
blessing, and effectual impression, and seconding all
this, that to will and to do, may, by him, be wrought
to great purposes, and with great speed.
And therefore, it will not be amiss, but it is hugely
necessary, that these persons, who have lost their
time and their blessed opportunities, should have the
diligence of youth, and the zeal of new converts, and
take account of every hour, that is left them, and
pray perpetually, and be advised prudently, and
study the interest of their souls carefully, with dili-
gence, and with fear ; and their old age, which, in
effect, is nothing but a continual death-bed, dressed
with some more order and advantages, may be a
state of hope, and labour, and acceptance ; through
the infinite mercies of God, in Jesus Christ.
But concerning sinners really under the arrest of
death, God hath made no death-bed covenant, the
Scripture hath recorded no promises, given no in-
structions; and therefore I had none to give, but
only the same, which are to be given to all men.
CCCXXIV DEDICATION.
that are alive, because they are so, and because it i^
uncertain, when they shall be otherwise. But then
this advice I also am to insert, That they are the
smallest number of Christian men, who can be di-
vided by the characters of a certain holiness, or an
open villany : and between these there are many de-
grees of latitude, and most are of a middle sort, con-
cerning which we are tied to make the judgments of
charity, and possibly God may do too. But how-
ever, all they are such, to whom the Rules of Holy
Dying are useful and applicable, and therefore no
separation is to be made in this world. But where
the case is not evident, men are to be permitted to
the unerring judgment of God ; where it is evident,
we can rejoice or mourn for them that die.
In the church of Rome, they reckon otherwise
concerning sick and dying Christians, than I have
done. For they make profession, that from death to
life, from sin to grace, a man may very certainly be
changed, though the operation begin not before his
last hour : and half this they do upon his death-bed,
and the other half when he is in his grave ; and they
take away the eternal punishment in an instant, by
a school-distinction, or the hand of the priest ; and
the temporal punishment shall stick longer, even
then, when the man is no more measured with time,
having nothing to do with any thing of, or under, the
sun ; but that they pretend to take away too, when
the man is dead ; and, God knows, the poor man, for
DEDICATION. CCOXXV
all this, pays them both in hell. The distinction of
temporal and eternal is a just measure of pain, when
it refers to this life and another : but to dream of a
punishment temporal, when all his time is done ; and
to think of repentance, when the time of grace is
past, are great errors, the one in philosophy, and
both in divinity, and are a huge folly in their pre-
tence, and infinite danger, if they are believed ; being
a certain destruction of the necessity of holy living,
when men dare trust them, and live at the rate of
such doctrines. The secret of these is soon disco-
vered : for by such means though a holy life be not
necessary, yet a priest is ; as if God did not appoint
the priest to minister to holy living, but to excuse it ;
so making the holy calling not only to live upon the
sins of the people, but upon the ruin, and the advan-
tages of their function to spring from their eternal
dangers. It is an evil craft to serve a temporal end
upon the death of souls ; that is an interest not to be
handled but with nobleness and ingenuity, fear and
caution, diligence and prudence, with great skill and
great honesty, with reverence, and trembling, and
severity : a soul is worth all that, and the need we
have, requires all that : and therefore those doctrines,
that go less than all this, are not friendly, because
they are not safe. -
I know no other difference in the visitation
and treating of sick persons, than what depends
upon the article of late repentance : for all churches
CCCXXVl DEDICATIOX.
agree in the same essential propositions, and assist
the sick by the same internal ministries. As for
external, I mean unction, used in the church of
Rome, since it is used, when the man is above half
dead, when he can exercise no act of understanding,
it must needs be nothing: for no rational man can
think, that any ceremony can make a spiritual
change, without a spiritual act of him that is to be
changed ; nor work by way of nature, or by charm,
but morally, and after the manner of reasonable crea-
tures ; and therefore I do not think that ministry
at all fit to be reckoned among the advantages of sick
persons. The fathers of the council of Trent first
disputed, and after their manner at last agreed, that
extreme unction was instituted by Clirist. But af-
terwards, being admonished by one of their theo-
logues, that the apostles ministered unction to infirm
people before they were priests (the priestly order,
according to their doctrine, being collated in the in-
stitution of the last supper), for fear that it should
be thought, that this unction might be administered
by him, that was no priest, they blotted out the
word instituted, and put in its stead insinuated, this
sacrament, and that it was published by St. James.
So it is in their doctrine : and yet, in their anathe-
matisms, they curse all them that shall deny it to
have been instituted by Christ. I shall lay no more
prejudice against it, or the weak arts of them that
maintain it, but add this only, that there being but
DEDICATION. CCCXXVIl
two places of Scripture pretended for this ceremony,
some chief men of their own side have proclaimed
those two invalid as to the institution of it : for Sau-
rez says, that the unction, used by the apostles in St.
Mark, vi. 1 3. is not the same with what is used in the
church of Rome ; and that it cannot be plainly ga-
thered from the Epistle of St. James, Cajetan af-
firms, and that it did belong to the miraculous gift
of healing, not to a sacrament. The sick man's ex-
ercise of grace formerly acquired, his perfecting re-
pentance begun in the days of health, the prayers
and counsels of the holy man that ministers, the
giving the holy sacrament, the ministry and assist-
ance of angels, and the mercies of God, the peace of
conscience, and the peace of the church, are all the
assistances and preparatives, that can help to dress
his lamp. But if a man shall go to buy oil, when
the bridegroom comes, if his lamp be not first fur-
nished and then trimmed, that in this life, this upon
his death-bed, his station shall be without-doors, his
portion with unbelievers, and the unction of the
dying man shall no more strengthen his soul than
it cures his body, and the prayers for him after his
death shall be of the same force, as if they should
pray, that he should return to life again the next day,
and live as long as Lazarus in his return. But I con-
sider, that it is not well that men should pretend
any thing will do a man good, when he dies ; and
yet the same ministries and ten times more assist-
CCCXXVlll DEDICATION.
ances are found for forty or fifty years together to be
ineffectual. Can extreme unction at last cure, what
the holy sacrament of the eucharist, all his life-time,
could not do ? Can prayers for a dead man do him
more good, than when he was alive ? If all his days
the man belonged to death and the dominion of sin,
and from thence could not be recovered by sermons,
and counsels, and perpetual precepts, and frequent
sacraments, by confessions and absolutions, by
prayers and advocations, by external ministries and
internal acts, it is but too certain, that his lamp can-
not then be furnished : his extreme unction is only
then of use, when it is made by the oil, that burned
in his lamp, in all the days of his expectation and
waiting for the coming of the bridegroom.
Neither can any supply be made in this case by
their practice of praying for the dead ; though they
pretend for this the fairest precedents of the church
and of the whole world^ The heathens, they say,
did it, and the Jews did it, and the Christians did it:
some were baptized for the dead in the days of the
apostles, and very many were communicated for the
dead for so many ages after. It is true, they were
so, and did so : the heathens prayed for an easy
grave '^, and a perpetual spring, that saffron would
rise from their beds of grass. The Jews prayed,
<^ Tertul. de Monog. S. Cyprian, lib. i. ep. 9. S. Athan. q. 33. S. Cjiil. myst.
cat. 5. Epipliaii. Hacres. 75. Aug. de Ilaeres. cap. 33. Concil. Carlh. 3. rap. 29.
"' Dii inajoiuiu umbris teiiueni et sinepondere terram,
Spirantesque crocos, et in urua perpeluum Ver. — Juvcn, 6'at. vii. '208.
DEDICATION. CCCXXIX
that the souls of their dead might be in the garden
of Eden, that they might have their part in paradise,
and in the world to come ; and that they might hear
the peace of the fathers of their generation, sleeping
in Hebron. And the Christians prayed for a joyful
resurrection, for mercy at the day of judgment, for
hastening of the coming of Christ, and the kingdom
of God; and they named all sorts of persons in their
prayers, all, I mean, but wicked persons, all but
them, that lived evil lives : they named apostles,
saints, and martyrs. And all this is so nothing to
their purpose, or so much against it, that the prayers
for the dead, used in the church of Rome, are most
plainly condemned, because they are against the
doctrine and practices of all the world, in other
forms, to other purposes, relying upon distinct doc-
trines, until new opinions began to arise about St.
Augustine's time, and changed the face of the pro-
position. Concerning prayers for the dead, the
church hath received no commandment from the
Lord ; and therefore concerning it we can have no
rules nor proportions, but from those imperfect re-
velations of the state of departed souls, and the mea-
sures of charity, which can relate only to the imper-
fection of their present condition, and the terrors
of the day of judgment : but to think that any sup-
pletory to an evil life can be taken from such devo-
tions, after the sinners are dead, may encourage a bad
man to sin, but cannot relieve him, when he hath.
CCCXXX DEDICATION.
But, of all things in the world, methinks, men
should be most careful not to abuse dying people ;
not only because their condition is pitiable, but be-
cause they shall soon be discovered, and, in the se-
cret regions of souls, there shall be an evil report
concerning those men, who have deceived them:
and if we believe we shall go to that place, where
such reports are made, we may fear the shame and
the amazement of being accounted impostors in the
presence of angels, and all the wise holy men of the
world. To be erring and innocent, is hugely piti-
able, and incident to mortality; that we cannot
help : but to deceive or to destroy so great an in-
terest as is that of a soul, or to lessen its advantages,
by giving it trifling and false confidences, is inju-
rious and intolerable. And therefore it were very
well, if all the churches of the world would be ex-
tremely curious concerning their offices and minis-
tries of the visitation of the sick : that their minis-
ters they send, be holy and prudent ; that their in-
structions be severe and safe ; that their sentences
be merciful and reasonable ; that their offices be suf-
ficient and devout ; that their attendances be fre-
quent and long; that their deputations be special
and peculiar ; that the doctrines, upon which they
ground their offices, be true, material, and holy ; that
their ceremonies be few, and their advices wary ;
that their separation be full of caution, their judg-
ments not remiss, their remissions not loose and dis-
DEDICATION. CCCXXXI
solute ; and that all the whole ministration be made
by persons of experience and charity. For it is a
sad thing to see our dead go out of our hands : they
live incuriously, and die without regard ; and the
last scene of their life, which should be dressed with
all spiritual advantages, is abused by flattery and
easy propositions, and let go with carelessness and
folly.
My Lord, I have endeavoured to cure some part
of the evil as well as I could, being willing to relieve
the needs of indigent people in such ways as I can ; 1
and therefore have described the duties, which every f
sick man may do alone, and such, in which he can
be assisted by the minister : and am the more confi-
dent, that these my endeavours will be the better en-
tertained, because they are the first entire body of
directions for sick and dying people, that I remember
to have been published in the church of England. In
the church of Rome, there have been many; but they 1
are dressed with such doctrines, which are* some-
times useless, sometimes hurtful, and their whole |
design of assistance, which they commonly yield, is ;
at the best imperfect, and the representment is too j
careless and loose for so severe an employment. So
that, in this affair, I was almost forced to walk alone ;
only that I drew the rules and advices from the foun-
tains of Scripture, and the purest channels of the
primitive church, and was helped by some experi-
ence in the cure of souls. I shall measure the sue-
CCCXXXll DEDICATION.
cess of my labours, not by popular noises or the
sentences of curious persons, but by the advantage,
which good people may receive. My work here is
not to please the speculative part of men, but to
minister to practice, to preach to the weary, to com-
fort the sick, to assist the penitent, to reprove the
confident, to strengthen weak hands and feeble
knees, having scarce any other possibilities left me
of doing alms, or exercising that charity, by which
we shall be judged at doomsday. It is enough for
me to be an under-builder in the house of God, and
I glory in the employment ; I labour in the founda-
tions ; and therefore the work needs no apology for
being plain, so it be strong and well laid. But, my
Lord, as mean as it is, I must give God thanks for
the desires and the strength ; and, next to him, to
you, for that opportunity and little portion of leisure,
which I had to do it in : for I must acknowledge it
publickly (and besides my prayers, it is all the re-
compence I can make you), my being quiet I owe
to your interest, much of my support to your boun-
ty, and many other collateral comforts I derive from
your favour and nobleness. My Lord, because I
much honour you, and because I would do honour
to myself, I have written your name in the entrance
of my book : I am sure you will entertain it, because
the design related to your dear lady, and because it
may minister to your spirit in the day of visitation,
when God shall call for you to receive your reward
DEDTCATIOX. CCCXXXlll
for your charity and your noble piety, by which you
have not only endeared very many persons, but in
great degrees have obliged me to be.
My noblest Lord,
Your Lordship's most thankful
and most humble servant,
JER. TAYLOR.
THE
RULE AND EXERCISES
OF
HOLY D Y I N G, &c.
CHAPTER I.
A GENERAL PREPARATION TOWARDS A HOLY AND
BLESSED DEATH, BY WAY OF CONSIDERATION.
SECTION I.
Consideration of the vanity and shortness of man'' s life.
A MAN is a bubble (said the Greek proverb) % whicb
Lucian represents with advantages and its proper circum-
stances, to this purpose ; saying, that all the world is a storm,
and men rise up in their several generations, like bubbles de-
scending a Jove i^luvio, from God and the dew of heaven,
from a tear and drop of rain, from nature and Providence :
and some of these instantly sink into the deluge of their first
parent, and are hidden in a sheet of water, having had no
other business in the world, but to be born, that they might
be able to die : others float up and down two or three turns,
and suddenly disappear, and give their place to others : and
they that live longest upon the face of the waters, are in per-
petual motion, restless and uneasy ; and, being crushed with
the great drop of a cloud, sink into flatness and a froth ; the
change not being great, it being hardly possible it should be
more a nothing, than it was before. So is every man : he is
Z
336 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS
born in vanity and sin ; he comes into the world hke morn-
ing 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 forgetfuhiess : some
of them without any other interest in the affairs of the world,
but that they made their parents a little glad, and very sor-
rowful : others ride longer in the storm ; it may be until
seven years of vanity be expired, and then peradventure the
sun shines hot upon their heads, and they fall into the shades
below, into the cover of death and darkness of the grave to
hide them. But if the bubble stands the shock of a bigger
drop, and outlives the chances of a child, of a careless nurse,
of drowning in a pail of water, of being overlaid by a sleepy
servant, or such little accidents, then the young man dances
like a bubble, empty and gay, and shines like a dove's neck,
or the image of a rainbow, which hath no substance, and
whose very imagery and colours are fantastical ; and so he
dances out the gaiety of his youth, and is all the while in
a storm, and endures, only because he is not knocked on the
head by a drop of bigger rain, or crushed by the pressure of
a load of indigested meat, or quenched by the disorder of an
ill-placed humour : and to preserve a man alive in the midst
of so many chances and hostilities, is as great a miracle as
to create him ; to preserve him from rushing into nothing,
arid at first to draw him up from nothing, were equally the
issues of an almighty power. And therefore the wise men
of the world have contended, who shall best fit man's condi-
tion 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 spake by a more excellent Spirit,
saying, " Our life is but a vapour V 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 ofa
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 vapour,
an apparition, nothing real : it is not so much as a mist, not
the matter of a shower, nor substantial enough to make a
f James, iv. 11. ttT/^iV. 8 <i)a!vc//.£'v>;.
PREPARATORY TO DEATH. 337
cloud ; but it is like Cassiopeia's chair, or Pelops' shouldef,
or the circles of heaven, ^atvo/iera, for which you cannot
have a word, that can signify a verier nothing. And yet the
expression is one degree more made diminutive : a vapour,
and fantastical, or a mere appearance, and this but for a little
while neither'' ; 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 for-
gotten, like the dream of a distracted person. The sum of
all is this : that thou art a man, than whom there is not in
the world any greater instance of heights and declensions,
of lights and shadows, of misery and folly, of laughter and
tears, of groans and death'.
And because this consideration is of great usefulness and
great necessity to many purposes of wisdom and the spirit ;
all the succession of time, all the changes in nature, all the
varieties of light and darkness, the thousand thousands of
accidents in the world, and every contingency to every man,
and to every creature, doth preach our funeral sermon, and
calls us to look and see, how the old sexton Time throws up
the earth, and digs a grave, where we must lay our sins or
our sorrows, and sow our bodies, till they rise again in a fair
or an intolerable eternity. Every revolution, which the sun
makes about the world, divides between life and death ; and
death possesses both those portions by the next morrow;
and we are dead to all those months, 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
I* Xl^lq oXi'yov.
' To nai X£ aXaiov xajy \oyaiv, av&piB'Zzrof it, oy fjitfa$ci\fiv SSttov Trpoj v^o;, Koi TraXiv
Ta'sreivoTiiTa, ^aJav oiijfv "Ka/j.Ba.lll.
•* Nihil sibi quisqnam de faliiro debet promitlere. Id quoque, quod tenetur, per
manus exit, et ip.^ain quam premimus, horaiii casus iiicidiu Volvitur tempus rata
quidem lege, sed per obscurum. — Seneca.
z 2
338 GENERAL CONSIDER ATIOXS
during that state, are as disinterested, as if our eyes were closed
with the clay, that weeps in the bowels of the earth. At the
end of seven years, our teeth fall and die before us, repre-
senting a formal prologue to the tragedy 5 and still, every
seven years, it is odds, but we shall finish the last scene :
and when nature, or chance, or vice, takes our body in pieces,
weakening some parts and loosing others, we taste the grave
and the solemnities of our own funerals, first, in those parts,
that ministered to vice ; and next, in them, that served for
ornament ; and in a short time, even they, that served for
necessity, become useless, and entangled like the wheels of
a broken clock. Baldness is but a dressing to our funerals^
the proper ornament of mourning, and of a person entered
very far into the regions and possession of death : and we
have many more of the same signification ; gray hairs, rotten
teeth, dim eyes, trembling joints, short breath, stiff limbs,
wrinkled skin, short memory, decayed appetite. Every day's
necessity calls for a reparation of that portion, which death
fed on all night, when we lay in his lap, and slept in his
outer chambers. The very spirits of a man prey upon the
daily portion 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, w'e have the less to live upon for every word we
speak.
Thus nature calls us to meditate of death by those things,
which are the instruments of acting it : and God, by all the
variety of his providence, makes us see death every where,
in all variety of circumstances, and dressed up for all the
fancies, and the expectation of every single person. Nature
hath given us one harvest every year, but death hath two :
and the spring and the autumn send throngs of men and
women to charnel-houses; and 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 provi-
sion, and the man that gathers them, eats and surfeits, and
dies and needs them not, and himself is laid up for eternity ;
' Ut mortem citius renire credas,
Scitojam capitis perisse partem.
PUEPAI^ATORY TO DEATH. 339
and he that escapes till winter, only stays for another oppor-
tunity, 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 bind upon our graves. Ca-
lentures and surfeit, cold and agues, are the four quarters of
the year, and all minister to death ; and you can go no whi-
ther, but you tread upon a dead man's bones.
The wild fellow in Petronius, that escaped upon a broken
table from the furies of a shipwreck, as he was sunning him-
self upon the rocky shore, espied a man, rolled upon his
floating bed of waves, ballasted with sand in the folds of his
garment, and carried by his civil enemy, the sea, towards
the shore to find a grave : and it cast him into some sad
thoughts"^: that peradventure this man's wife in some part
of the continent, safe and warm, looks next month for the
good man's return ; or, it may be, his son knows nothing of
the tempest ; or his father thinks of that affectionate kiss,
which still is warm upon the good old man's cheek, ever
since he took a kind farewell ; and he weeps with joy to
think, how blessed he shall be, when his beloved boy returns
into the circle of his father's arms. These are the thouo-hts
of mortals, this is the end and sum of all their designs : a
dark night and an ill guide, a boisterous sea and a broken
cable, a hard rock and a rough wind, dashed in pieces the
fortune of a whole family, and they that shall weep loudest
for the accident, are not yet entered into the storm, and yet
have suffered shipwreck. Then looking upon the carcass,
he knew it, and found it to be the master of the ship, who,
the day before, cast up the accounts of his patrimony and
his trade, and named the day, when he thought to be at
home : see how the man swims, who was so angry two days
since; his passions are becalmed with the storm, his ac-
counts cast up, his cares at an end, his voyage done, and his
"' Navigationes loiigas, et, pererralis litoribus alienis, seros iu patriam reditus
pioponinius, railitiaiii, et castrensiiim laborum tarda manu prelia, procuratlones, offi-
cioriimque per oflicia processus, ciim interim ad latus mors est ; qua; quouiaui nua-
(|Bara cogitatur nisi aliena, subiiide nobis ingerantur mortalilalis exenipla, noii diu-
lius quam miramur liaesura. — Seneca.
340 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS
gains are the strange events of death, which whether they be
good or evil, the men, that are alive, seldom trouble them-
selves concerning the interest of the dead. J}
But seas alone do not break our vessel in pieces : every
where we may be shipwrecked. A valiant general, when he
is to reap the harvest of his crowns and triumphs, fights un-
prosperously, or falls into a fever with joy and wine, and
changes his laurel into cypress, his triumphal chariot to a
hearse ; dying the night before he was appointed to perish,
in the drunkenness of his festival joys. It was a sad arrest
of the loosenesses and wilder feasts of the French court,
when their king (Henry II.) was killed really by the sportive
image of a fight. And many brides have died under the
hands of paranymphs and maidens, dressing them for vmeasy
joy, the new and undiscerned chains of marriage, according
to the saying of Bensirah, the wise Jew, " The bride went
into her chamber, and knew not, what should befal her
there." Some have been paying their vows, and giving
thanks for a prosperous return to their own house, and the
roof hath descended upon their heads, and turned their loud
religion into the deeper silence of a grave. And how many
teeming mothers have rejoiced over their swelling wombs,
and pleased themselves in becoming the channels of blessing
to a family; and the midwife hath quickly bound their
heads and feet, and carried them forth to burial ! Or else the
birth-day of an heir hath seen the cofiin of the father brought
into the house, and the divided mother hath 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 hath been soured by some sad instance of a
dying friend : a friendly meeting often ends in some sad mis-
chance, and makes an eternal parting : and when the poet
iEschylus 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.
" Quia lex eadem inanet omnes,
Gemitum dare sorte sub una,
Cognatfique fuiiera nobis
Aliena in inorle dolere.
Piud. Hymn, excquiis defunclor.
PREPARATORY TO DEATH. 341
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 stink of a mist, by the emissions of a cloud and the meet-
ing of a vapour, by the fall of a chariot and the stumbling at
a stone^ by a full meal or an empty stomach, by watching at
the wine or by watching at prayers; by the sun or the moon;
by a heat or a cold, by sleepless nights or sleeping days; by
water frozen into the hardness and sharpness of a dagger";
or water thawed into the floods of a river ; by a hair or a
raisin; by violent motion or sitting still; by severity or dis-
solution, 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 p, Eripitur persona, manet
res; we take pains to heap up things useful to our life, and
get our death in the purchase ; and the person is snatched
away, and the goods remain. And all this is the law and
constitution of nature ; it is a punishment to our sins, the
unalterable event of Providence, and the decree of Heaven.
The chains, that confine us to this condition, are strong
as destiny, and immutable as the eternal laws of God.
I have conversed with some men, who rejoiced in the
death or calamity of others, and accounted it as a judgment
upon them for being on the other side, and against them in
the contention ; but within tlie revolution of a few months,
the same man met with a more uneasy and unhandsome
death : which when I saw, I wept, and was afraid ; for I
knew that it must be so with all men; for we also shall die'';
and end our quarrels and contentions by passing to a final
sentence.
" Aut ubi mors non est, si jugulalis, aquas? — Martial.
P ■ Currit luortalibus wvuiii,
Nee nasci bis posse dattir ; fugit bora, lapitque
Tartarens tovrens, ac secum ferre snb umbras.
Si qua auimo placuere, negat. — Sil. ItaL 1. xv. 6L
1 TeSi'ctS'c Hrffo. S' eyii tote ii^ofxat, oTdtntk Mil In
Zeii; ISeXi riXes-ui, — 11. ^. 365,
342 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS
SECTION II.
The Consideration reduced to Practice.
It will be very material to our best and noblest purposes,
if we represent this scene of change and sorrow, a little more
dressed up in circumstances ; for so we shall be more apt to
practise those rules, the doctrine of which is consequent to
this consideration. It is a mighty change, that is made by the
death of every person, and it is visible to us, who are alive.
Reckon but from the sprightfulness of youth, and the fair
cheeks and full eyes of childhood, from the vigorousness and
strong flexure of the joints of five-and-twenty, to the hollo w-
ness and dead paleness, to the loathsomeness and horror of
a three days' burial, and we shall perceive the distance to be
very great and very strange. But so have I seen a rose newly
springing from the clefts of its hood, and, at first, it was fair
as the morning, and full with the dew of heaven, as a lamb's
fleece ; but when a ruder breath had forced open its virgin
modesty, and dismantled its too youthful and unripe retire-
ments, it began to put on darkness, and to decline to soft-
ness and the symptoms of a sickly age ; it bowed the head,
and broke its stalk, and, at night, having lost some of its
leaves and all its beauty, it fell into the portion of weeds and
outworn faces. The same is the portion of every man and
every woman ; the heritage of worms and serpents, rotten-
ness and cold dishonour, and our beauty so changed, that
our acquaintance quickly knew us not; and that change
mingled with so much horror, or else meets so with our
fears and weak discoursings, that they who, six hours ago,
tended upon us, either with charitable or ambitious services,
cannot, without some regret, stay in the room alone, where
the body lies stripped of its life and honour. I have read of
a fair young German gentleman, who, living, often refused
to be pictured, but put off" the importunity of his friends'
desire, by giving way, that, after a few days' burial, they
might send a painter to his vault, and, if they saw cause for
it, draw the image of his death unto the life. They did so,
and found his face half eaten, and his midriff" and backbone
full of serpents ; and so he stands pictured among his armed
PUEPARATORY TO DEATH. 343
ancestors. So does the fixirest beauty changes and it will
be as bad with you and me; and then, what servants shall
we have to wait upon us in the grave ? what friends to visit
us ? what officious people to cleanse away the moist and un-
wholesome cloud reflected upon our faces from the sides of
the weeping vaults, which are the longest weepers for our
funeral ?
This discourse will be useful, if we consider and practise
by the following rules and considerations respectively.
1. All the rich and all the covetous men in the world will
perceive, and all the world will perceive for'them, that it is
but an ill recompence for all their cares, that, by this time,
all that shall be left, will be thisS that the neighbours shall
say, " He died a rich man ;" and yet his wealth will not profit
him in the grave, but hugely swell the sad accounts of
/ doomsday. And he that kills the Lord's people with unjust
or ambitious wars for an unrewarding interest, shall have
this character', that he threw away all the days of his life,
that one year might be reckoned with his name, and com-
puted by his reign or consulship : and many men, by great
labours and affronts, many indignities and crimes, labour
only for a pompous epitaph, and a loud title upon their mar-
ble ; whilst those, into whose possessions their heirs or kin-
dred are entered, are forgotten, and lie unregarded as their
ashes, and without concernment or relation, as the turf upon
the face of their grave". A man may read a sermon, the
' Anceps forraa bnnuin morlalibus,
Exigui donum breve leinporis :
Ut fulgor, teneris qui radiat genis,
Momeiito rapitur, iiullaque non dies
Formosi spoliiim corporis abstulif. — Senec. Hipp. 770.
« Rape, congere, aiifer, posside ; relinquendum est. — Martial.
*■ .Aniios oimies prodegit, ut ex eo annus unus nuiiieretur, et per mille iudiguitales
labovavit in titulum sepalchri. — Sen.
" Jam eornni prscbendas alii possident, et nescio utrum de iis cogitanl. — Gerson.
■ M« veteruin frequeiis
Mempliis Pjramidum docel,
Jle pressse turoulo lacryma glorias,
Me projecta jacentiara
Passim per populos busta Qairitluui,
Et vilis Zepbyro jocus
Jaotati cineres et piocerum rogi,
Fiiniantumque cadavera
Regnoiurn tacito, Rufe, silentio
Micstum multa inoneDl. — Cos. 1. ii. od. 27.
844 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS
best and most passionate that ever man preached, if he shall
but enter into the sepulchres of kings. In the same Escu-
rial, where the Spanish princes live in greatness and power,
and decree war or peace, they have wisely placed a ceme-
tery, where their ashes and their glory shall sleep till time
shall be no more ; and where our kings have been crowned,
their ancestors lie interred, and they must walk over their
grandsire's head to take his crown. There is an acre sown
with royal seed, the copy of the greatest change, from rich
to naked, from ceiled roofs to arched coffins, from living like
gods to die like men. There is enough to cool the flames of
lust, to abate the heights of pride, to appease the itch of
covetous desires, to sully and dash out the dissembling co-
lours of a lustful, artificial, and imaginary beauty. There
the warlike and the peaceful, the fortunate and the misera-
ble, 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 or our crowns shall
be less. To my apprehension it is a sad record, which is left
by Athenseus concerning Ninus, the great Assyrian monarch,
whose life and death are summed up in these words : "Ninus,
the Assyrian, had an ocean of gold, and other riches more
than the sand in the Caspian sea; he never saw the stars,
and perhaps he never desired it : he never stirred up the
holy fire among the Magi, nor touched his god with the
sacred rod according to the laws : he never offered sacrifice,
nor worshipped tlie deity, nor administered justice, nor
spake to his people, nor numbered them ; but he was most
valiant to eat and drink, and, having mingled his wines, he
threw the rest upon the stones. This man is dead : behold
his sepulchre ; and now hear Vvhere Ninus is. Sometimes 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 v/hich I was esteemed blessed,
my enemies, meeting together, shall bear away, as the mad
Thyades carry a raw goat. 1 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 can better represent the evil con-
PREPARATORY TO DEATH. 345
dltion of a wicked man, or a changing greatness". 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 re-
ward of an unsanctified condition, a d a greatness ill gotten
or ill administered.
2. Let no man extend his thoughts, or let his hopes
wander towards future and far-distant events and accidental
contingencies. This day is mine and yours, but ye know
not what shall be on the morrow^'' : and every morning creeps
out of a dark cloud, leavino- behind it an ionorance and si-
lence deep as midnight, and undiscerned as are the phantasms
that make a chrisom-child to smile : so that we cannot dis-
cern what comes hereafter", unless we had a light from hea-
ven 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 predesti-
nation, that many, who are this day alive, shall to-morrow be
laid upon the cold earth, and the women shall weep over their
shroud, and dress them for their funeral. St. James, in his
epistle, notes the folly of some men, his contemporaries,
who were so impatient of the event of to-morrow, or the ac-
cidents of next year, or the good or evils of old age, that
they would consult astrologers and witches, oracles and de-
vils, what should befal them the next calends : what should
be the event of such a voyage, what God had written in his
book concerning the success of battles, the election of em-
perors, the heirs of families, the price of merchandise, the
return of the Tyrian fleet, the rate of Sidonian carpets : and
as they were taught by the crafty and lying demons, so they
would expect the issue ; and oftentimes by disposing their
'' 'A&avas-i'af S' ovK Etrnv, oiS av ainia.yi.yri^
Ta TavTttXou TaXavr' eniiva Xiyifxiva.
'aw' a.v a7ro&av?j, TouTa KaraXei^m; na-iv.
Menand. Clerc. p. 214.
* To crnfjci^ov /xi'kii (xoi.
To 5' av^iov T(j oTSa ; — Anaer. oJ. 1.5.
^ Quid sit futurum eras, fuge quaerere, et
Queiu fors dieruiu cuiique dabit, lucro
Appone. Horat, 1. ix. l5.
34<) GENERAL CONSIDEHyVTIONS
affairs in order towards such events, really did produce some
little accidents according to their expectation ; and that
made them trust the oracles in greater things, and in all.
Against this he opposes his counsel, that we should not
search after forbidden records^', much less by uncertain sig-
nifications : for 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 their causes conjoined, and the work brought for-
ward, and the sickle put into the harvest, and the first-fruits
offered and ready to be eaten, even then, if they put forth
their hand to an event, that stands but at the door, at that
door their body may be carried forth to burial, before the ex-
pectation shall enter into fruition. When Richilda, the widow
of Albert earl of Ebersberg, had feasted the emperor Henry
III. and petitioned in behalf of her nephew Welpho for some
lands formerly possessed by the Earl her husband; just as
the Emperor held out his hand to signify his consent, the
chamber-floor suddenly fell under them, and Richilda falling
upon the edge of a bathing vessel was bruised to death, and
stayed not to see her nephew sleep in those lands, which the
Emperor was reaching forth to her, and placed at the door of
restitution.
3. As our hopes must be confined, so must our de-
signs'': let us not project long designs, crafty plots, and dig-
gings so deep, that the intrigues of a design shall never be
unfolded, till our grand-children have forgotten our virtues
or our vices. The work of our soul is cut short, facile,
sweet, and plain, and fitted to the small portions of our
shorter life : and as we must not trouble our iniquity, so
neither must we intricate our labour and purposes with what
we shall never enjoy. This rule does not forbid us to plant
Nee Babvloiiiiis
Teiit.'iris nuraeros, ul melius, quicfjiiid eril, pati,
Seu plurcs lijeraes, scu triluiit Jupiter ultimaiii. — Horat. 1. ii. 2.
Incertam frustra, iiiorlales, fuiicris liorain
Quasritis, et qua sit mors adilura vi&.
Posna miiiur certani suljito perferre ruiiiaiii ;
Quod timeas gravius riustiunibse diu. — Catul. eleg. i. 29.
» Cerla amiUiinus, duin iucerta pelimus ; atque hoc evenit In labore alquc in do-
lore, ul mors obrepat interim. — Vlaut. Pseud. Act. 2. Seen. 3.
PREPARATORY TO DEATH. 347
orchards, which shall feed our nephews with their fruit; for
by such provisions they do something towards an imaginary
immortality, and do charity to their relatives : but such pro-
jects are reproved, which discompose our present duty by long
and future designs"; such, which by casting our labours to
events at distance, make us less to remember our death
standing at the door. It is fit for a man to work for his day's
wages, or to contrive for the hire of a week, or to lay a train
to make provisions for such a time, as is within our eye,
and in our duty, and within the usual periods of man's life;
for whatsoever is made necessary, is also made prudent: but
while we plot and busy ourselves in the toils of an ambitious
war, or the levies of a great estate, night enters in upon us,
and tells all the world, how like fools we lived, and how de-
ceived and miserably we died. Seneca tells of Senecio Cor-
nelius, a man crafty in getting, and tenacious in holding a
great estate, and one who was as diligent in the care of his
body as of his money, curious of his health as of his posses-
sions, that he all day long attended upon his sick and dying-
friend ; but, when he went away, was quickly comforted, sup-
ped merrily, went to bed cheerfully, and on a sudden being-
surprised by a squinancy, scarce drew his breath until the
morning, but by that time died, being snatched from the tor-
rent of his fortune, and the swelling tide of wealth, and a
likely hope bigger than the necessities often men. This ac-
cident was much noted then in Rome, because it happened
in so great a fortune, and in the midst of wealthy designs ;
and presently it made wise men to consider, how imprudent
a person he is, who disposes of ten years to come, when he
is not lord of 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 does con-
sist. We must take our waters as out of a torrent and sud-
den shower, which will quickly cease dropping from above,
^ Quid brevi fortes jacnlamurBEvo
Multa? 2. 16.
Jam te prerael nox, fabulaque Manes,
Et domus exilis Plutonia. 1. 4. — Horat,
^ lile euim ex futaro suspeuditur, cai irritam est piffisens, — Seneca,
348 QENERAL CONSIDERATIONS
and quickly cease running in our channels here below : this
instant will never return again, and yet, it may be, this in-
stant will declare or secure the fortune of a whole eternity.
The old Greeks and Romans taught us the prudence of this
rule : but Christianity teaches us the religion of it. They so
seized upon the present, that they Avould 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 drink-
ing, and that they might warm their veins with a fuller cha-
lice, as knowing the drink, that was poured upon their graves,
would be cold and without relish. " Break the beds, drink
your wine, crown your heads with roses, and besmear your
curled locks with nard; for God bids you to remember death :"
so the epigrammatist speaks the sense of their drunken prin-
ciples*'. Something towards this signification is that of So-
lomon, " There is nothing better for a man, than that he
should eat and drink, and that he should make his soul enjoy
good in his labour ; for that is his portion ; for v.'ho shall
bring him to see that, which shall be after him'' ?" But, al-
though he concludes all this to be vanity, yet because it was
the best thing that was then commonly known, that they
should seize upon the present with a temperate use of per-
mitted pleasures, I had reason to say*^, that Christianity
taught us to turn this into religion. For he that by a present
and constant holiness secures the present, and makes it use-
ful to his noblest purposes, he turns his condition into his
best advantage, by making his unavoidable fate become his
necessary religion.
To the purpose of this rule is that collect of Tuscan
Hieroglyphics, which we have from Gabriel Simeon. " Our
life is very short, beauty is a cozenage, money is false and
c jElate fruere ; mohili cursu ftiglt, — Seneca. '' Martial. I. ii. eplg. 59.
« Hccles. iii. 22. ii. 24.
f Araici.dnm vivimas, vivamns.
TlivB, XsyEi TO ykvfA.fA.a,, xai sV&ie, xai Tti^msi^o
"Av&ea" roiovTOi yiyyofA.iy l^amlmi;.
Hoc etiam faciunt, ubi discubuere, ten^ntque
Pocula sa?pe homines, et iniimbrant ora cororiis,
Ex animo ut dicant, brevis est Iiic friictus Loinullis ;
Jam fuerif, neque post unqaam revocare licebit.
Lncret. lib. iii. 925.
I
PREPARATORY TO DEATH. 349
fugitive ; empire is odious, and hated by them, that have
it not, and uneasy to them, that have ; victory is always un-
certain, and peace, most commonly, is but a fraudulent bar-
gain; old age is miserable, death is the period, and is a happy
one, if it be not soi'rowed by the sins of our life : but no-
thing continues but the effects of that wisdom, which em-
ploys the present time in the acts of a holy religion, and a
peaceable conscience :" for they make us to live even beyond
our funerals, embalmed in the spices and odours of a good
name, and entombed in the grave of the holy Jesus, where
we shall be dressed for a blessed resurrection to the state of
angels and beatified spirits.
5. Since we stay not here, being people but of a day's
abode, and our age is like that of a fly, and contemporary
with a gourd, we must look somewhere else for an abiding-
city, a place in another country to fix our house in, whose
walls and foundation is God, where w'e 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 te-
diousness': 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 forge tfulness ; and
where either there is sorrow or an end of joy, there can be
no true felicity : which, because it must be had by some in-
strument, and in some period of our duration, we must carry
up our affections to the mansions prepared for us above,
where eternity is the measure, felicity is the state, angels
are the company, the Lamb is the light, and God is the por-
tion and inheritance.
SECTION III.
Rules and spiritual arts of lengthening our days, and to lake
off the objection of a short life.
In the accounts of a man's life, we do not reckon (liat
portion of days, in which we are shut up in the prison of the
S Quis sapiens bono
Confidal fragili ? duin licet, ulerc:
Tenipus sed taciturn subiiiil, horilque
^ Semper praaterita deterior subit. — Sencc. llipiwL 77j.
350 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS
womb ; we tell our years from the day of our birth : and the
same reason, that makes our reckoning to stay so long-, says
also, that then it begins too soon. For then we are beholden
to others to make the account for us : for we know not of a
long time, whether we be alive or no, having but some little
approaches and symptoms of a life. To feed, and sleep, and
move a little, and imperfectly, is the state of an unborn
child; and when he is born, he does no more for a good
while ; and what is it, that shall make him to be esteemed
to live the life of a man r and when shall that account begin ?
For we should be loath to have the accounts of our age taken
by the measures of a beast : and fools and distracted per-
sons are reckoned as civilly dead ; they are no parts of the
commonwealth, not subject to lawS, but secured by them in
charity, and kept from violence as a man keeps his ox: and
a third part of our life is spent, before we enter into a higher
order, into the state of a man.
2. Neither must we think, that the life of a man begins,
when he can feed himself, or walk alone, when he can fight,
or beget his like ; for so he is contemporary with a camel or
a cow; but he is first a man, when he comes to a certain,
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 matins, and by and by gilds the fringes of a cloud, and
peeps over the eastern hills, thrusting out his golden horns,
like those, which decked the brows of Moses, when he was
forced to wear a veil, because himself had seen the face of
God; and still while a man tells the story, the sun gets up
higher, till he shews a fair face and a full light, and then he
shines one whole day, under a cloud often, and sometimes
weeping great and little show^ers, and sets quickly : so is a
man's reason and his life. He first begins to perceive him-
self 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
PREPARATORY TO DEATH. 351
enter into arts and little institutions, he is at first entertained
with trifles and impertinent things, not because he needs
them, but because his understanding is no bigger, and little
images of things are laid before him, like a cock-boat to a
whale, only to play withal: but before a man comes to be
wise, he is half dead with gouts and consumptions, with
catarrhs and aches, with sore eyes and a worn-out body.
So that if we must not reckon the life of a man but by the
accounts of his reason, he is long before his soul be dressed;
and he is not to be called a man without a wise and an
adorned soul, a soul at least furnished with what is neces-
sary towards his well-being : but by that time his soul is
thus furnished, his body is decayed ; and then you can
hardly reckon him to be alive, when his body is possessed
by so many degrees of death. J
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 im-
pediments of vice, and wants the strength of the spirit; and
we know that body and soul and spirit are the constituent
parts of every Christian man. And now let us consider,
what that thing is, which we call years of discretion^ The
young man is past his tutors, and arrived at the bondage
of a caitiff spirit ; he is run from discipline, and is let loose
to passion ; the man by this time hath wit enough to choose
his vice, to act his lust, to court his mistress, to talk confi-
dently 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 shew in the first stage of
their manhood ; they can discern good from evil ; and they
prove their skill by leaving all that is good, and wallowing in
the evils of folly and an unbridled appetite. And, by this
time, the young man hath contracted vicious habits, and is
a beast in manners, and therefore it will not be fitting to
reckon the beginning of his life : he is a fool in his under-
standing, and that is a sad death ; and he is dead in trespasses
and sins, and that is a sadder : so that he hath no life but a
natural, the life of a beast or a tree ; in all other capacities
he is dead ; he neither hath the intellectual or the spiritual
life, neither the life of a man nor of a Christian ; and this
VOL. IV. 2 A
352 GENERAL COXSIDERATIONS
sad truth lasts too long. For old age seizes upon mdst
men, while they still retain the minds of boys and vicious
youth, doing actions from principles of great folly, and a
mighty ignorance, admiring things useless and hurtful, and
filling up all the dimensions of their abode with businesses
of empty affairs, being at leisure to attend no virtue : they
cannot pray, because they are busy, and because they are
passionate : they cannot communicate, because they have
quarrels and intrigues of perplexed causes, complicated hos-
tilities, and things of the world ; and therefore they cannot
attend to the things of God : little considering, that they
must find a time to die in ; when death comes, they must
be at leisure for that. Such men are like sailors loosing from a
port, and tossed immediately with a perpetual tempest lasting
till their cordage crack, and either they sink, or return back
again to the same place : they did not make a voyage, though
they were long at sea. The business and impertinent affairs
of most men steal all their time, and they are restless in a
foolish motion : but this is not the progress of a man ; he is
no farther advanced in the course of a life, though he reckon
many years ''; for still his soul is childish, and trifling like
an untaught boy.
If the parts of this sad complaint find their remedy, we
have by the same instruments also cured the evils and the
vanity of a short life. Therefore,
1. Be infinitely curious you do not set back your life in
the accounts of God by the intermingling of criminal ac-
tions, or the 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. Every
vice of our own managing in the matter of carnality, of lust
or rage, ambition or revenge, is a sword of Satan put into
the hands of a man : these are the destroying angels ; sin
is the Apollyon, the destroyer that is gone out, not from the
Lord, but from the tempter; and we hug the poison, and
twist willingly with the vipers, till they bring us into the re-
gions of an irrecoverable sorrow. We use to reckon per-
sons as good as dead, if they have lost their limbs and their
'' — Bis jam Consul trigesimus instat, Et nutnerat paucos vix tua vita dies.
Mart, i. 16.
PREPARATORY TO DEATH. 353
teeth, and are confined to a hospital, and converse with
none but surgeons and physicians, mourners and divines,
those poUinctores, the dressers of bodies and souls to fune-
ral : but it is worse when the soul, the principle of life, is
employed wholly in the offices of death : and that man was
worse than dead, of whom Seneca tells, that being a rich
fool, when he was lifted up from the baths and set into a soft
couch, asked his slaves. An ego jam sedeo? Do I now sit?
The beast was so drowned in sensuality and the death of his
soul, that, whether he did sit or no, he was to believe another.
Idleness and every vice are as much of death as a long dis-
ease is, or the expense of ten years : and " she, that lives in
pleasures, is dead, while she liveth" (saith the apostle); and
it is the style of the Spirit concerning wicked persons, " they
are dead in trespasses and sins." For as every sensual plea-
sure and every day of idleness and useless living lops off a
little branch from our short life ; so every deadly sin and
every habitual vice does quite destroy us : but innocence
leaves us in our natural portions, and perfect period ; we
lose nothing of our life, if we lose nothing of our soul's
health; and therefore he that would live a full age, must
avoid a sin, as he would decline the regions of death and the
dishonours of the grave.
2. If we would have our life lengthened', let us begin
betimes to live in the accounts of reason and sober counsels,
of religion and the spirit, and then we shall have no reason
to complain that our abode on earth is so short; many men
find it lono; enouoh and indeed it is so to all senses. But
when we spend in waste what God hath given us in plenty,
when we sacrifice our youth to folly, our manhood to lust
and rage, our old age to covetousness and irreligion, not be-
oinnino- to live till we are to die, designing that time to vir-
tue 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 and healthful part of it, and pride and
animosity steal the manly portion, and craftiness and interest
possess old age ; velut ex pleno et abundanti perdimus, we
spend as if we had too much time, and knew not what to
do with it : we fear every thing, like weak and silly mortals ;
• ^depol, proinde ut bene vivitur, dia vivitur. — Plant. Trinum. Non aceepi-
mus brevem vitam, sed fecimus ; neo inopes ejus, sed prodigi sumus. — iitneca,
2 a2
354 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS
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. But so the treasure of the ca-
pitol is but a small estate, when Csesar comes to finger it,
and to pay with it all his legions : and the revenue of all
Egypt and the eastern provinces was but a little sum, when
they|were to support the luxury of Mark Antony, and feed
the riot of Cleopatra ; but a thousand crowns is a vast pro-
portion to be spent in the cottage of a frugal person, or to
feed a hermit. Just so is our life : it is too short to serve
the ambition of a haughty prince, or an usurping rebel; too
little time to purchase great wealth, to satisfy the pride of a
vain-glorious fool, to trample upon all the enemies of our just
or unjust interest: but for the obtaining virtue, for the pur-
chase of sobriety and modesty, for the actions of religion,
God gave us time sufficient, if we make the " outgoings of
the morning and evening," that is, our infancy and old age, to
be taken into the computations of a man. Which we may
see in the following particulars.
1. If our childhood being first consecrated by a forward
baptism, it be seconded by a holy education, and a comply-
ing obedience ; if our youth be chaste and temperate, modest
and industrious, proceeding through a prudent and sober
manhood to a religious old age ; then we have lived our
whole duration ^ and shall never die, but be changed, in a
just time, to the preparations of a better and an immortal life.
2. If, besides the ordinary returns of our prayers and
periodical and festival solemnities, and our seldom commu-
nions, 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 revel-
lings and banquets, all that, which w as spent viciously, and
all that time, that lay fallow and without employment, our
•' Sed potes, Publi, geminare magna
Secula faina.
Quem sui raptum geinnere cives,
Hie diuvixil. Sibi quisqne faniain
Scribat hseredein : rapiuiit avarae
Caetera Lunis?. — Casim. ii. "i.
PREPARATORY TO DEATH. 355
life would quickly amount to a great sum. Tostatus Abu-
lensis was a very painful person, and a great clerk, and in
the days of his manhood he wrote so many books, and they
not ill ones, that the world computed a sheet for every day
of his life ; I suppose they meant, after he came to the use
of reason and the state of a man : and John Scotus died
about the two-and-thirtieth year of his age ; and yet besidess
his public disputations, his daily lectures of divinity in pub-
lic and private, the books, that he wrote, being lately col-
lected and printed at Lyons, do equal the number of volumes
of any two the most voluminous fathers of the Latin church.
Every man is not enabled to such employments, but every
man is called and enabled to the works of a sober and a reli-
gious life ; and there are many saints of God, that can reckon
as many volumes of religion and mountains of piety, as those
others did of good books. St. Ambrose (and I think, from
his example, St. Augustine) divided every day into three
tertias of employment : eight hours he spent in the necessi-
ties of nature and recreation ; eight hours in charity and
doing assistance to others, dispatching their businesses, re-
conciling their enmities, reproving their vices, correcting
their errors, instructing their ignorances, transacting the af-
fairs of his diocess ; and the other eight hours he spent in
study and prayer. If we were thus minute and curious in
the spending our time, it is impossible, but our life would
seem very long. For so have I seen an amorous person tell
the minutes of his absence from his fancied joy, and while he
told the sands of his hour-glass, or the throbs and little beat-
ings of his watch, by dividing an hour into so many mem-
bers, he spun out its length by number, and so translated a
day into the tediousness of a month. And if we tell our days
by canonical hours of prayer, our weeks by a constant revo-
lution of fasting-days or days of special devotion, and over
all these draw a black cypress, a veil of penitential sorrow
and severe mortification, we shall soon answer the calumny
and objection of a short life. He that governs the day and
divides the hours, hastens from the eyes and observation of a
merry sinner ; but loves to stand still, and behold, and tell
the sighs, and number the groans and sadly-delicious accents
of a grieved penitent. It is a vast work, that any man may
do, if he never be idle : and it is a huge way, that a man may
356 GENERAL CONSIDERATION'S
go in virtue, if he never goes out of his way by a vicious
habit or a great crime : and he that perpetually reads good
books, if his parts be answerable, will have a huge stock of
knowledge. It is so in all things else. Strive, not to forget
your time, and suffer none of it to pass undiscerned ; and then
measure your life, and tell me, how you find the measure of
its abode. However, the time we live, is w^orth the money
we pay for it ; and therefore it is not to be thrown away,
3. When vicious men are dying, and scared with the af-
frighting 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, indncias usque ad matte, truce but
till the morning : — and if that year or some few months
were given, those men think, they could do miracles in it.
And let us awhile suppose, what Dives would have done, if
he had been loosed from the pains of hell, and permitted
to live on earth one year. Would all the pleasures of the
world have kept him one hour from the temple ? would he
not perpetually have been under the hands of priests, or at
the feet of the doctors, or by Moses' chair, or attending as
near the altar as he could get, or relieving poor Lazarus, or
praying to God, and crucifying all his sin ? I have read of a
melancholy 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 of that horror :
and such a person cannot be fancied, but that he would
spend a year in such holiness, that the religion of a few
months would equal the devotion of many years, even of a
good man. Let us but compute the proportions. If we should
spend all our years of reason so, as such a person would spend
that one, can it be thought, that life would be short and tri-
fling, in which he had performed such a religion, served God
with so much holiness, mortified sin with so great a labour,
purchased virtue at such a rate and so rare an industry ? It
must needs be, that such a man must die, when he ought to
die, and be like ripe and pleasant fruit falling from a fair
tree, and gathered into baskets for the planter's use. He
that hath done all his business, and is begotten to a glorious
hope by the seed of an immortal Spirit, can never die too
soon, nor live too long'.
' Huic neque defungi visum est, nee vivcre ]nilcliruin :
Cura fuit rccle vivere, sicqne iiiori.
PREPARATORY TO DEATH, 357
Xerxes wept sadly, when he saw his army of 2,300,000
men, because he considered, that, within a hundred years,
all the youth of that army should be dust and ashes : and
yet, as Seneca well observes of him, he was the man, that
should bring them to their graves ; and he consumed all that
army in two years, for whom he feared and wept the death
after a hundred. Just so we do all. We complain, that
within thirty or forty years, a little more, or a great deal less,
we shall descend again into the bowels of our mother, and
tliat our life is too short for any great employment ; and yet
we throw away five-and-thirty years of our forty, and the re-
maining five we divide between art and nature, civility and
customs, necessity and convenience, prudent counsels and
religion : but the portion of the last is little and contempti-
ble, 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 satis-
faction of your hopes, or the sating your desires : but let
every intermedial day and hour pass with observation. He
that reckons he hath lived but so many harvests, thinks they
come not often enough, and that they go away too soon" ;
some lose the day with longing for the night, and the night
in waiting for the day. Hope and fantastic expectations
spend much of our lives ; and while with passion we look for
a coronation, or the death of an enemy, or a day of joy, pass-
ing from fancy to possession without any intermedial no-
tices, we throw away a precious year, and use it but as the
burden of our time, fit to be pared off and thrown away, that
we may come at those little pleasures, which first steal our
hearts, and then steal our life.
5. A strict course of piety is the way to prolong our lives
in the natural sense, and to add good portions to the number
of our years : and sin is sometimes by natural 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 (to what I have somewhere else said of
™ III spe viventibus proximum qnodque tenipns elabitur, subitque aviditas tem-
px)ris, et niiserrinins, atque luiserrima omnia efliciens, metns mortis Ex hac
aiitem indigcnlia limor nascilur, et cujiiditas futuri exedens animuin.— Seneca.
358 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS
this article)", but only the observation of Epiphanius°; that
for three thousand three hundred and thirty-two years, even
to the twentieth age, there was not one example of a son,
that died before his father ; but the course of nature was
kept, that he who was first born in the descending line, did
first die (I speak of natural death, and therefore Abel cannot
be opposed to this observation), till that Terah, the father of
Abraham, taught the people a new religion, to make images
of clay and worship them ; and concerning him it was first
remarked, that " Haran died before his father Terah in the
land of his nativity :" God, by an unheard-of judgment and
a rare accident punishing his newly-invented crime, by the
untimely death of his son.
6. But if I shall describe a living man, a man that hath
that life that distinguishes him from a fool or a bird, that
which gives him a capacity next to angels, we shall find that
even a good man lives not long, because it is long before he
is born to this life, and longer yet before he hath a man's
growth, "He that can look upon death, and see its face
with the same countenance, with vidiich he hears its story P;
that can endure all the labours of his life with his soul sup-
porting his body ; that can equally despise riches, when he
hath them, and when he hath them not ; that is not sadder,
if they lie in his neighbour's trunks, nor more brag, if they
shine round about his own walls : he that is neither moved
with good fortune coming to him, nor going from him ; that
can look upon another man's lands evenly and pleasedly, as
if they were his own, and yet look upon his own, and use
them too, just as if they were another man's ; that neither
spends his goods prodigally and like a fool, nor yet keeps
them avariciously and like a wretch ; that weighs not bene-
fits by weight and number, but by the mind and circum-
stances of him that gives them ; that never thinks his cha-
rity expensive, if a worthy person be the receiver ; he that
does nothing for opinion sake, but every thing for consci-
ence, being as curious of his thoughts as of his actings in
markets and theatres, and is as much in awe of himself as
of a whole assembly : he that knows God looks on, and con-
trives his secret affairs as in the presence of God and his
" Life of Cliiist, part iii. Disc. It. " Li. i. torn. i. Piiiiar. sect. vi.
P Seneca de Vila bcala, cap. xx.
PREPARATORY TO J)EATH. 359
lioly angels ; that eats and drinks because he needs it, not
that he may serve a lust or load his belly ; he that is boun-
tiful and cheerful to his friends, and charitable and apt to
forgive his enemies ; that loves his country, and obeys his
prince, and desires and endeavours nothing more than that
he may do honour to God :" this person may reckon his life
to be the life of a man, and compute his months, not by the
course of the sun, but the zodiac and circle of his virtues ;
because these are such things, which fools and children and
birds and beasts cannot have ; these are therefore the actions
of life, because they are the seeds of immortality. That day
in which we have done some excellent thing, w-e may as
truly reckon to be added to our life, as were the fifteen years
to the days of Hezekiah.
SECTION IV.
Consideration of the Miseries of Man's Life.
As our life is very short, so it is very miserable; and
therefore it is well it is short. God in pity to mankind, lest
his burden should be insupportable, and his nature an into-
lerable load, hath reduced our state of misery to an abbre-
viature ; and the greater our misery is, the less while it is
like to last : the sorrows of a man's spirit being like ponder-
ous weights, which, by the greatness of their burden, make
a swifter motion, and descend into the grave to rest and ease
our wearied limbs ; for then only we shall sleep quietly, when
those fetters are knocked off, which not only bound our
souls in prison, but also ate the flesh, till the very bones
opened the secret garni eats of their cartilages, discovering
their nakedness and sorrow.
1. Here is no place to sit down in, but you must rise as
soon as you are set, for we have gnats in our chambers, and
worms in our gardens'', and spiders and flies in the palaces
of the greatest kings. How few men in the world are pros-
perous ! What an infinite number of slaves and beggars, of
persecuted and oppressed people, fill all corners of the earth
^ Nulla requles in lerris ; surgile, postquain sedeiitisj hie est locus pulicnm ct
culicum.
A
360 GENERAL COXSIDERATIOXS
I with groans, and herven itself with weeping, prayers, and
sad remembrances! How many provinces and kingdoms are
afflicted by a violent war, or made desolate by popular dis-
eases ! Some whole countries are remarked with fatal evils,
or periodical sicknesses. Grand Cairo in Egypt feels the
plague every three years returning like a quartan ague, and
destroying many thousands of persons. All the inhabitants of
Arabia the desert are in a continual fear of being buried in
huge heaps of sand, and therefore dwell in tents and ambu-
latory houses, or retire to unfruitful mountains, to prolong
an uneasy and wilder life. And all the countries round about
the Adriatic sea feel such violent convulsions by tempests
and intolerable earthquakes, that sometimes whole cities find
a tomb, and every man sinks with his own house made ready
to become his monument, and his bed is crushed into the
disorders of a grave. Was not all the world drowned at one
deluge, and breach of the Divine anger ? And shall not all
the world again be destroyed by fire "" ? Are there not many
thousands, that die every night, and that groan and weep
sadly every day ? But what shall we think of that great evil,
which for the sins of men God hath suffered to possess the
greatest part of mankind .'' Most of the men that are now
alive, or that have been living for many ages, are Jews, Hea-
thens, or Turks : and God was pleased to suffer a base epi-
leptic person, a villain and a vicious, to set up a religion
which hath filled all the nearer parts of Asia, and much of
Africa, and some part of Europe ; so that the greatest num-
ber of men and women born in so many kingdoms and pro-
vinces are infallibly made Mahometan, strangers and enemies
to Christ, by whom alone we can be saved. This consider-
ation is extremely sad, when we remember how universal
and how great an evil it is ; that so many millions of sons
and daughters are born to enter into the possession of devils
to eternal ages. These evils are the miseries of great parts
of mankind, and we cannot easily consider more particu-
larly the evils, which happen to us, being the inseparable af-
fections or incidents to the whole nature of man.
2. We find, that all the women in the world are either
born for barrenness or the pains of childbirth, and yet this
' "Earai Hal tafjiOi; a.f/,y,oq, la-itrat A^iXcj a^riX:^^
Kai Tiif^ri pi/A):,— Sihylt, Ontc.
PREPARATORY TO DEATH. 361
is one of our greatest blessings ; but such indeed are the
blessings of this world, we cannot be well with, nor without
many things. Perfumes make our heads ache, roses prick
our fingers, and in our very blood, where our life dwells, is
the scene, under which nature acts many sharp fevers and
heavy sicknesses. It were too sad, if I should tell how
many persons are afflicted with evil spirits, with spectres
and illusions of the night; and that huge multitudes of
men and women live upon man's flesh ; nay, worse yet, upon
the sins of men, upon the sins of their sons and of their
daughters, and they pay their souls down for the bread they
eat, buying this day's meal with the price of the last night's
sin.
3. Or if you please in charity to visit a hospital, which
is indeed a map of the whole world, there you shall see the
effects of Adam's sin, and the ruins of human nature ; bodies
laid up in heaps like the bones of a destroyed town, Jiomines
precaril spiritiis et male harentis, men whose souls seem to be
borrowed, and are kept there by art and the force of medicine,
whose miseries are so great, that few people have charity or
humanity enough to visit them, fewer have the heart to dress
them, and we pity them in civility or with a transient prayer,
but we do not feel their sorrows by the mercies of a reli-
gious pity ; and therefore as we leave their sorrows in many
degrees unrelieved and uneased, so we contract by our un-
mercifulness a guilt, by which ourselves become liable to
the same calamities. Those many that need pity, and
those infinities of people that refuse to pity, are miserable
upon a several charge, but yet they almost make up all man-
kind.
4. All wicked men are in love with that, which entangles
them in huge varieties of troubles ; they are slaves to the
worst of masters, to sin and to the devil, to a passion, and
to an imperious woman. Good men are for ever persecuted,
and God chastises every son, whom he receives, and what-
soever is easy, is trifling and worth nothing, and whatsoever
is excellent, is not to be obtained without labour and sorrow ;
and the conditions and states of men, that are free from great
cares, are such, as have in them nothing rich and orderly,
and those that have, are stuck full of tliorns and trouble.
Kings are full of care ; and learned men in all ages have been
362 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS
observed to be very poor% honestas miserias accitsanf, they
complain of their honest miseries.
5. But these evils are notorious and confessed ; even
they also, whose felicity men stare at and admire, besides
their splendour and the sharpness of their light, will, with
their appendant sorrows, wring a tear from the most resolved
eye : for not only the winter quarter is full of storms and
cold and darkness, but the beauteous spring hath blasts and
sharp frosts, the fruitful teeming summerismelted with heat,
and burnt with the kisses of the sun her friend, and choked
with dust, and the rich autumn is full of sickness ; and we
are weary of that, which we enjoy, because sorrow is its
biggest portion : and vt^hen we remember, that upon the
fairest face is placed one of the worst sinks of the body, the
nose, we may use it not only as a mortification to the pride
of beauty, but as an allay to the fairest outside of condition
which any of the sons and daughters of Adam do possess.
For look upon kings and conquerors : I will not tell, that
many of them fall into the condition of servants*, and their
subjects rule over them, and stand upon the ruins of their
families, and that to such persons the sorrow is bigger, than
usually happens in smaller fortunes : but let us suppose them
still conquerors, and see what a goodly purchase they get by
all their pains, and amazing fears, and continual dangers.
They carry their arms beyond Ister, and pass the Euphrates,
and bind the Germans with the bounds of the river Rhine :
I speak in the style of the Roman greatness ; for now-a-days
the biggest fortune swells not beyond the limits of a petty
province or two, and a hill confines the progress of their
prosperity, or a river checks it : but whatsoever tempts the
pride and vanity of ambitious persons, is not so big as the
» Vills adulator picto jacet ebrius ostro,
Et qui solicitat iiuptas, ad praimia peccat.
Sola pruinosis liorret i'licuiidia paiinis,
Atque inopi linguii desertas iiivccal arles.
Petron. c. 8j. p. '^49. ed. Ant.
Hinc eljocus apud Arislopbanera in Avilius: 934.
'ATroJuSl, xaj Scf TOO imawrn tJ crovfw.
• Vilis servns Iiabet regni bona, cellaque capti
Deiidet festain Koniuleainque casam. — Petrcn. frag;. '21.
Omnia, crede milii, ctiuin felicibiis diibia sunt. — Seneca,
PREPARATORY TO DEATH. 363
smallest star, which we see scattered in disorder and unre-
garded upon the pavement and floor of heaven. And if we
would suppose the pismires had but our understandings, they
also would have the method of a man's greatness, and divide
their little mole-hills into provinces and exarchates : and if
they also grew as vicious and as miserable, one of their princes
would lead an army out, and kill his neighbour ants, that he
might reign over the next handful of a turf. But then, if
we consider, at what price and with wdiat felicity all this is
purchased, the sting of the painted snake will quickly ap-
pear, and the fairest of their fortunes will properly enter into
this account of human infelicities.
We may guess at it by the constitution of Augustus's
fortune, who struggled for his power, first, with the Roman
citizens, then with Brutus and Cassius, and all the fortune
of the republic; tlien with his colleague Mark Antony; then
with his kindred and nearest relatives, and after he w^as
wearied with slaughter of the Romans, before he could sit
down and rest in his imperial chair, he was forced to carry
armies into Macedonia, Galatia, beyond Euphrates, Rhine,
and Danubius : and when he dwelt at home in greatness and
within the circles of a mighty power, he hardly escaped the
sword of the Egnatii, of Lepidus, Csepio, and Muraena : and
after he had entirely reduced the felicity and grandeur into
his own family, his daughter, his only child, conspired with
many of the young nobility, and being joined with adulterous
complications, as with an impious sacrament", they affrighted
and destroyed the fortune of the old man, and wrought him
more sorrow than all the troubles, that were hatched in the
baths and beds of Egypt, between Antony and Cleopatra'.
This was the greatest fortune, that the world had then or
ever since, and therefore we cannot expect it to be better in
a less prosperity.
6. The prosperity of this world is so infinitely soured
with the overflowing of evils, that he is counted the most
happy, who hath the fewest; all conditions being evil and
miserable, they are only distinguished by the number of ca-
lamities. The collector of the Roman and foreign examples,
when he had reckoned two-and-twenty instances of great
" Et adulterio velut sacramento adacti. — Tacit.
* Fl!is(jue et iteruiu limenda cum Antonio mulier.
364 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS
fortunes, every one of which had been allayed with great
variety of evils; in all his reading or experience, he could
tell but of two, who had been famed for an entire prosperity,
Quintus Metellus, and Gyges the king of Lydia : and yet
concerning the one of them he tells, that his felicity was so
inconsiderable (and yet it was the bigger of the two) that
the oracle said, that Aglaus Sophidius the poor Arcadian
shepherd, was more happy than he, that is, he had fewer
troubles; for so indeed we are to reckon the pleasures of this
life; the limit of our joy is the absence of some degree of
sorrow'", and he that hath the least of this, is the most pros-
perous person. But then we must look for prosperity, not
in palaces or courts of princes, not in the tents of conquerors,
or in the gaieties of fortunate and prevailing sinners; but
something rather in the cottages of honest, innocent, and
contented persons, whose mind is no bigger than their for-
tune, nor their virtue less than their security. As for others,
whose fortune looks bigger, and allures fools to follow it
like the wandering fires of the night, till they run into rivers,
or are broken upon rocks with staring and running after
them, they are all in the condition of Marius, than whose
condition nothing was more constant, and nothing more
mutable : if we reckon them amongst the happy, they are
the most happy men; if we reckon them amongst the mi-
serable, they are the most miserable''. For just as is a man's
condition, great or little, so is the state of his misery: all
have their share ; but kings and princes, great generals and
consuls, rich men and mighty, as they have the biggest bu-
siness and the biggest charge, and are answerable to God
for the greatest accounts, so they have the biggest trouble ;
that the uneasiness of their appendage may divide the good
and evil of the world, making the poor man's fortune as eli-
gible as the greatest; and also restraining the vanity of man's
spirit, which a great fortune is apt to swell from a vapour to
a bubble; but God in mercy hath mingled wormwood with
their wine, and so restrained the drunkenness and follies of
prosperity.
7. Man never hath one day to himself of entire peace
* "O^of TOu fxsyi^ov; TaJv fiSuVaJv, h 'Jtavroi; tou aXyetvou v-JtB^al^nrii;.
^ Quern si inter miseros posueris, luiserrimas ; inter felices, felicissimus reperie-
batar.
PREPARATORV TO DEATH. 365
from the things of the world, but either something troubles
him, or nothing satisfies him, or his very fulness swells him
and makes him breathe short upon liis bed. Men's joys are
troublesome; and besides that the fear of losing them takes
away the present pleasure (and a man hath need of another
felicity to preserve this), they are also wavering and full
of trepidation, not only from their inconstant nature, but
from their weak foundation : thev arise from vanity, and
they dwell upon ice, and they converse with the wind, and
they have the wings of a bird, and are serious but as the re-
solutions of a child, commenced by chance, and managed
by folly, and proceed by inadvertency, and end in vanity
and forgetfulness. So that as Livius Drusus said of himself,
he never had any play-days or days of quiet when he was
a boy^'; for he was troublesome and busy, a restless and un-
quiet man : the same may every man observe to be true of
himself; he is always restless and uneasy, he dwells upon
the waters, and leans upon thorns, and lays his head upon a
sharp stone.
SECTION V.
T/te Consideratmi reduced to Practice.
1. The effect of this consideration is this, that the sad-
nesses of this life, help to sweeten the bitter cup of death.
For let our life be never so long, if our strength were great
as that of oxen and camels, if our sinews were strong as the
cordage at the foot of an oak, if we were as fighting and
prosperous people as Siccius Dentatus, who was on the pre-
vailing side in a hundred and twenty .battles, who had three
hundred and twelve public rewards assigned him by his 2:;e-
nerals and princes for his valour and conduct in sieges and
sharp encounters, and, besides all this, had his «hare in nine
triumphs ; yet still the period shall be, that all this shall end
in death, and the people shall talk of us awhile, good or bad,
according as we deserve, or as they please, and once it shall
come to pass that concerning every one of us it shall be told
in the neighbourhood, that we are dead. This we are apt to
y Uni sibi nee puero unquam ferias coiUigisse. Sediliosns et foro gravis.
3GG GEXERAL CONSIDERATIONS
think a sad story; but therefore let us help it with a sadder:
for we therefore need not be much troubled, that we shall
die, because we are not here in ease, nor do we dwell in a
fair condition: but our davs are full of sorrow and ano-uish,
dishonoured, and made unhappy with many sins, with a
frail and a foolish spirit, entangled with difficult cases of
conscience, ensnared with passions, amazed with fears, full
of cares, divided with curiosities and contradictory inter-
ests, made airy and impertinent with vanities, abused with
ignorance and prodigious errors, made ridiculous with a
thousand weaknesses, worn away with labours, loaden with
diseases, daily vexed with dangers and temptations, and in
love with misery ; we are weakened with delights, afflicted
with want, with the evils of myself and of all my family, and
with the sadnesses of all my friends, and of all good men,
even of the whole church ; and therefore methinks we need
not be troubled, that God is pleased to put an end to all these
troubles, and to let them sit down in a natural period, which,
if we please, may be to us the beginning of a better life.
When the Prince of Persia wept because his army should all
die in the revolution of an age, Artabanus told him, that they
should all meet with evils so many and so great, that every
man of them should wish himself dead long before that. In-
deed it were a sad thing to be cut of the stone, and we that
are in health, tremble to think of it ; but the man that is
wearied with the disease, looks upon that sharpness as upon
his cure and remedy : and as none need to have a tooth
drawn, so none coufd well endure it, but he that felt the pain
of it in his head : so is our life so full of evils ; that there-
fore death is no evil to them, that have felt the smart of this,
or hope for the joys of abetter.
2. But as it helps to ease a certain sorrow, as a fire draws
out fire, and a nail drives forth a nail ; so it instructs us in a
present duty, that is, that we should not be so fond of a per-
petual storm, nor doat upon the transient gauds and gilded
thorns of this world. They are not worth a passion, nor
worth a sigh or a groan, not of the price of one night's
watching; and therefore they are mistaken and miserable
persons, who, since Adam planted thorns round about para-
dise, are more in love with that hedge than all the fruits of
the garden, sottish admirers of things that hurt them, of
PREPARATORY TO DEATH. 367
sweet poisons, gilded daggers, and silken halters. Tell them
they have lost a bounteous friend, a rich purchase, a fair
ftirm, a wealthy donative, and you dissolve their patience :
it is an evil bigger than their spirit can bear : it brings sick-
ness and death : they can neither eat nor sleep with such a
sorrow. But if you represent to them the evils of a vicious
habit, and the dangers of a state of sin ; if you tell them
they have displeased God, and interrupted their hopes of
heaven; it may be they will be so civil as to hear it pati-
ently, and to treat you kindly, and first to commend, and
then forget your story, because they prefer this world with
all its sorrows before the pure unmingled felicities of heaven.
But it is strange, that any man should be so passionately in
love with the thorns, which grow on his own ground, that
he should wear them for armlets, and knit them in his shirt,
and prefer them before a kingdom and immortality. No
man loves this world the better for his being poor ; but men
that love it, because they have great possessions, love it
because it is troublesome and chargeable, full of noise and
temptation, because it is unsafe and ungoverned, flattered and
abused ; and he that considers the troubles of an over-long
garment and of a crammed stomach, a trailing gown and
a loaden table, may justly understand that all that, for which
men are so passionate, is their hurt, and their objection, that
which a temperate man would avoid, and a wise man cannot
love.
He that is no fool, but can consider wisely, if he be in
love with this world, we need not despair, but that a witty
man mioht reconcile him with tortures, and make him think
charitably of the rack, and be brought to dwell with vipers
and dragons, and entertain his guests with the shrieks of
mandrakes, cats, and screech-owls, with the filing of iron, and
the harshness of rending of silk, or to admire the harmony,
that is made by a herd of evening wolves, when they miss
their draught of blood in their midnight revels. The groans
of a man in a fit of the stone are worse than all these ; and the
distractions of a troubled conscience are worse than those
groans ; and yet a careless merry sinner is worse than all
that. But if we could from one of the battlements of heaven
espy, how many men and women at this time lie fainting and
dying for want of bread, how many young men are hewn
VOL. IV. 2 B
368 GENERAL EXERCISES
down by the sword of war, how many poor orphans are now
weeping over the graves of their father, by whose life they
were enabled to eat : if we could but hear how many ma-
riners and passengers are at this present in a storm, and
shriek out because their keel dashes against a rock, or bulges
under them, how many people there are that weep v/ith want,
and are mad with oppression, or are desperate by too quick
a sense of a constant infelicity ; in all reason we should be
glad to be out of the noise and participation of so many
evils. This is a place of sorrows and tears, of great evils and
a constant calamity : let us remove from hence, at least in
affections and preparation of mind.
CHAPTER. II.
A GENERAL PREPARATION TOWARDS A HOLY AND
BLESSED death; BY WAY OF EXERCISE.
SECTION I.
Three Precepts preparatory to a holy Death, to he
practised in our whole life.
1. xXe 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
mischieP. This was the advice of all the wise and good men
of the world, who, especially in the days and periods of their
joy and festival egressions, chose to throw some ashes into
their chalices, some sober remembrances of their fatal pe-
riod''. Such was the black shirt of Saladine, the tombstone
presented to the Emperor of Constantinople on his corona-
tion-day ; the Bishop of Rome's two reeds with flax and a
wax-taper ; the Egyptian skeleton served up at feasts ; and
Propera vivere, et singulos dies singulas vitas puta. Nihil interest inter diem
et secnlam.
" Si sapis, ularis totis, Coline, diebus;
Extremumqne tibi semper adesse pates. — Martial,
PREPARATORY TO DEATH. 3G9
Trimalcion's banquet in Petronius, in which was brought in
the image of a dead man's bones of silver, with spondyles ex-
actly returning to every of the guests ^ and saying to every
one, that you and you must die, and look not one upon an-
other, for every one is equally concerned in this sad represent-
ment. These in fantastic semblances declare a severe counsel
and useful meditation ; and it is not easy for a man to be gay
in his imagination, or to be drunk with joy or wine, pride or
revenge, v/ho considers sadly, that he must, ere long, dwell
in a house of darkness and dishonour, and his body must be
the inheritance of worms, and his soul must be what he
pleases, even as a man makes it here by his living good or
bad. I have read of a young hermit, who, being passionately
in love with a young lady, could not, by all the arts of re-
ligion and mortification, suppress the trouble of that fancy,
till at last being told that she was dead, and had been buried
about fourteen days, he went secretly to her vault, and with
the skirt of his mantle wiped the moisture from the carcass,
and still at the return of his temptation laid it before him,
saying, Behold this is the beauty of the woman, thou didst
so much desire : and so the man found his cure. And if we
make death as present to us, our own death, dwelling and
dressed in all its pomp of fancy and proper circumstances;
if any thing will quench the heats of lust, or the desires of
money, or the greedy passionate affections of this world, this
must do it. But withal, the frequent use of this meditation,
by curing our present inordinations, will make death safe
and friendly, and by its very custom will make, that the
king of terrors shall come to us without his affrighting
dresses ; and that we shall sit down in the grave as we com-
pose ourselves to sleep, and do the duties of nature and
choice. The old people that lived near the Riphaean moun-
tains *=, were taught to converse with death, and to handle it
'' Heu, Leu, nos rniseros I quam totus liomnncio nil est'
Sic eriraus cuncti, postquain nos auferet Orcus :
Ergo vivamus, dum licet esse, bene.
« Certc populi quos despioit Arctos
Felices errore suo, quos ille tiinorum
Maximus haud urget, lathi metus
Inde rueiidi
In ferrum mens prona viris, animasque capaces
Mortis, et ignavura rediturps parcere vita?. — Lucan. i. 4;)8.
2 B 2
370 GENERAL EXERCISES
on all sides, and to discourse of it, as of a thing, that will
certainly come, and ought so to do. Thence their minds and
resolutions became capable of death, and they thought it a
dishonourable thing, with greediness to keep a life, that
must go from us, to lay aside its thorns, and to return again
circled with a glory and a diadem.
2. " He that would die well, must, all the days of his life,
lay up against the day of death '' ;" not only by the general
provisions of holiness and a pious life indefinitely, but pro-
visions proper to the necessities of that great day of ex-
pense, in which a man is to throw his last cast for an eter-
nity of joys or sorrows ; ever remembering, that this alone,
well performed, is not enough to pass us into paradise ; but
that alone, done foolishly, is enough to send us to hell : and
the want of either a holy life or death makes a man to fall
short of the mighty price of our high calling. In order to
this rule we are to consider what special graces we shall then
need to exercise, and by the proper arts of the spirit, by a
heap of proportioned arguments, by prayers and a great trea-
sure of devotion laid up in heaven, provide beforehand a
reserve of strength and mercy*. Men in the course of their
lives walk lazily and incuriously, as if they had both their
feet in one shoe : and when they are passively revolved to the
time of their dissolution, they have no mercies in store, no
patience, no faith, no charity to God, or despite of the world,
being without gust or appetite for the land of their inherit-
ance, which Christ with so much pain and blood had pur-
chased for them. When we come to die indeed, we shall be
very much put to it to stand firm upon the two feet of a
Christian, faith and patience. When we ourselves are to use
the articles, to turn our former discourses into present prac-
tice, and to feel what we never felt before, we shall find it to
be quite another thing, to be willing presently to quit this
life and all our present possessions for the hopes of a thing,
which we were never suffered to see, and such a thing, of
which we may fail so many ways, and of which if we fail any
way, we are miserable for ever. Then we shall find, how
much we have need to have secured the Spirit of God and
the grace of faith, by an habitual, perfect, unmoveable reso-
•^ Qui quotidie vitae suae inanum iinposuit, non inJiget tempore. — Seneca.
* lusere nunc, Melib(ce, pjros, pone ordine vitjs.
PREPARATORY TO DEATH. 371
lution. The same also is the case of patience, which will be
assaulted with sharp pains, disturbed fancies, great fears,
want of a present mind, natural weaknesses, frauds of the
devil, and a thousand accidents and imperfections. It con-
cerns us therefore highly, in the whole course of our lives,
not only to accustom ourselves to a patient suffering of inju-
ries and affronts, of persecutions and losses, of cross acci-
dents and unnecessary circumstances; but also by represent-
ing death as present to us, to consider with what arguments
then to fortify our patience, and by assiduous and fervent
prayer to God all our life long to call upon him to give us
patience and great assistances, a strong faith and a con-
firmed hope, the Spirit of God and his holy angels assistants
at that time, to resist and to subdue the devil's temptations
and assaults ; and so to fortify our heart, that it break not
into intolerable sorrows and impatience, and end in wretched-
ness and infidelity. But this is to be the work of our life, and
not to be done at once ; but, as God gives us time, by suc-
cession, by parts and little periods. For it is very remarka-
ble, that God who giveth plenteously to all creatures, he hath
scattered the firmament with stars, as a man sows corn in his
fields, in a multitude bigger than the capacities of human
order ; he hath made so much variety of creatures, and gives
us great choice of meats and drinks, although any one of
both kinds would have served our needs ; and so in all in-
stances of nature ; yet in the distribution of our time God
seems to be strait-handed, and gives it to us, not as na-
ture gives us rivers, enough to drown us, but drop by drop,
minute after minute, so that we never can have two minutes
together, but he takes away one when he gives us another.
This should teach us to value our time, since God so values
it, and by his so small distribution of it, tells us it is the
most precious thing we have. Since therefore, in the day of
our death, we can have still but the same little portion of
this precious time, let us in every minute of our life, I mean,
in every discernible portion, lay up such a stock of reason
and good works, that they may convey a value to the imper-
fect and shorter actions of our death-bed; while God re-
wards the piety of our lives by his gracious acceptation and
benediction upon the actions preparatory to our death-bed.
3. He that desires to die well and happily, above all
372 GENERAL EXERCISES
things, must be careful that he do not live a soft, a delicate,
j, and voluptuous life ; but a life severe, holy, and under the
I discipline of the cross, under the conduct of prudence and
' observation, a life of warfare and sober counsels, labour and
watchfulness. No man wants cause of tears and a daily
1 sorrow. Let every man consider what he feels, and acknow-
ledge his misery ; let him confess his sin, and chastise it ;
let him bear his cross patiently, and his persecutions nobly,
I and his repentances willingly and constantly ; let him pity
' the evils of all the world, and bear his share of the calamities
of his brother; let him long and sigh for the joys of heaven;
let him tremble and fear, because he hath deserved the pains
of hell ; let him commute his eternal fear with a temporal
suffering, preventing God's judgment by passing one of his
own ; let him groan for the labours of his pilgrimage, and
the dangers of his warfare : and by that time he hath summed
up all these labours, and duties, and contingencies, all the
proper causes, instruments, and acts of sorrow, he will find,
that for a secular joy and wantonness of spirit there are not
left many void spaces of his life. It was St. James's advice^,
" Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep ; let your laughter be
turned into mourning, and your joy into weeping:" and Bo-
naventure, in the life of Christ, reports that the holy Virgin-
mother said to St. Elizabeth, that grace does not descend
into the soul of a man but by prayer and affliction". Certain
it is, that a mourning spirit and an afflicted body are great
instruments of reconciling God tO a sinner, and they always
dwell at the gates of atonement and restitution. But besides
\ this, a delicate and prosperous life is hugely contrary to the
hopes of a blessed eternity. " Woe be to them that are at
ease in Sion ''," so it was said of old : and our blessed Lord
said, " Woe be to you 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 goeth on his way weeping, and beareth forth good
seed with him, shall doubtless come again with joy, and bring
his sheaves with him^" And certainly he that sadly considers
f Chap. iv. 9.
3 Nequu ciiiiii Deus ulla re perinde alque corporis ;iriiinn;i coiicilialur. — Nitz,
Onit. IB.
'' Amos, vi. 1. ' Luke, vi. 2.^. ^ MaU. v. 1. ' VhA. cx.wi. 6.
PREPARATORY TO DEATH. 373
the portion of Dives, and remembers that the account which
Abraham save him for the unavoidableness of his torment
was, because he had his good things in this life, must, in all
reason, with trembling run from a course of banquets, and
faring deliciously every day, as being a dangerous estate,
and a consignation to an evil greater, than all danger, the
pains and torments of unhappy souls. If either by patience j
or repentance, by compassion or persecution, by choice or |
by conformity, by severity or discipline, we allay the festi- !
val follies of a soft life, and profess under the cross of Christ,
we shall more willingly and more safely enter into our grave :
but the death-bed of a voluptuous man upbraids his little
and cozening prosperities, and exacts pains made sharper
by the passing from soft beds, and a softer mind'". He thati
Would die holily and happily, must in this world love tears, '
1 humility, solitude, and repentance.
SECTION II.
Of dailij Exam'wation of our actions in the ivhole course
of our health, preparatory to our Death-bed,
He that will die well and happily, must dress his soul by 'j
a diligent and frequent scrutiny : he must perfectly under >
stand and watch the state of his soul; he must set his hoxise
in order, before he be fit to die. And for this there is great
reason, and great necessity.
Reasons for a daily Examination.
1. For, if we consider the disorders of every day, the
multitude of impertinent words, the great portions of time
spent in vanity, the daily omissions of duty, the coldness of
our prayers, the indifference of our spirit in holy things, the
uncertainty of our secret purposes, our infinite deceptions
and hypocrisies, sometimes not known, very often not ob-
served by ourselves, our want of charity, our not know-
™ Sed longi pcsnas fortuna favoris
Exigit a niisero, qu;B tanto pontlcre faniEB
Res preniit adversas, latisque piioribus urgeU — Liican. I. viii.
374 GENERAL EXEUCISES
ing in how many degrees of action and purpose every virtue
is to be exercised, the secret adherences of pride, and too-
forw^ard complacency in our best actions, our failings in all
our relations, the niceties of difference between some vir-
tues and some vices, the secret indiscernible passages from
lawful to unlawful in the first instances of change, the perpe-
tual mistakings of permissions for duty, and licentious prac-
tices for permissions, our daily abusing the liberty that God
gives us, our unsuspected sins in the managing a course of
life certainly lawful, our little greedinesses in eating, our
surprises in the proportions of our drinkings, our too-great
freedoms and fondnesses in lawful loves, our aptness for
things sensual, and our deadness and tediousness of spirit in
spiritual employments; besides infinite variety of cases of
conscience that do occur in the life of every man, and in all
intercourses of every life, and that the productions of sin
are numerous and increasing, like the families of the north-
ern people, or the genealogies of the first patriarchs of the
world : from all this we shall find, that the computations of
a man's life are busy as the tables of sines and tangents, and
intricate as the accounts of eastern merchants : and therefore
it were but reason, we should sum up our accounts at the
foot of ev.ery page, I mean, that we call ourselves to scru-
tiny every night, when we compose ourselves to the little
images of death.
2. For, if we make but one general account, and never
reckon till we die, either we shall only reckon by great sums,
and remember nothing but clamorous and crying sins, and
never consider concerning particulars, or forget very many ;
or if we could consider all that we ought, we must needs be
confounded with the multitude and variety. But if we ob-
serve all the little passages of our life, and reduce them into
the order of accounts and accusations, we shall find them
multiply so fast, that it will not only appear to be an ease to
the accounts of our death-bed, but by the instrument of shame
will restrain the inundation of evils ; it being a thing into-
lerable to human modesty, to see sins increase so fast, and vir-
tues grow up so slow; to see every day stained with the spots
of leprosy, or sprinkled with the marks of a lesser evil.
3. It is not intended, we should take accounts of our lives
only to be thought religious, but that we may see our evil
PREPARATORY TO DEATH. 375
and amend it, tliat we dash our sins against the stones, that
we may go to God, and to a spiritual guide, and search for
remedies, and apply them. And indeed no man can well ob-
serve 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, accord-
ing as he makes his inquiries and search after himself. In
order to this it was that St. Paul wrote, before receiving the
holy sacrament, " Let a man examine himself, and so let him
eat," This pi-ecept was given in those days, when they com-
municated every day ; and therefore a daily examination also
was intended.
4. And it will appear highly fitting, if we remember, that,
at the day of judgment, not only the greatest lines of life, but
every branch and circumstance of every action, every word
and thought, shall be called to scrutiny and severe judgment:
insomuch that it was a great truth which one said. Woe be
to the most innocent life, if God should search into it without
mixtures of mercy. And therefore we are here to follow St.
Paul's advice, " Judge yourselves, and you shall not be judged
of the Lord." The way to prevent God's anger is to be angry
with ourselves ; and by examining our actions, and con-
demning the criminal, by being assessors in God's tribunal,
at least we shall obtain the favour of the court. As therefore
every night we must make our bed the memorial of our grave,
so let our evening thoughts be an image of the day of judg-
ment.
5. This advice was so reasonable and proper an instru-
ment of virtue, that it was taught even to the scholars of
Pythagoras by their master": " Let not sleep seize upon the
regions of your senses, before you have three times recalled
the conversation and accidents of the day." Examine what
you have committed against the Divine law, what you have
omitted of your duty, and in what you have made use of the
Divine grace to the purposes of virtue and religion; joining
the judge, reason, to the legislative mind or conscience,
that God may reign there as a lawgiver and a judge. Then
Christ's kingdom is set up in our hearts : then we always
live in the eye of our Judge, and live by the measures of rea-
son, religion, and sober counsels.
" HierocK
37G GENERAL EXERCISES
The benefits, we shall receive by practising this advice, in
order to a blessed death, will also add to the account of
reason and fair inducements.
The Benefits of this Exercise.
L By a daily examination of our actions, we shall the
easier cure a great sin, and prevent its arrival to become ha-
bitual. For to examine we suppose to be a relative duty,
and instrumental to something else. We examine ourselves,
that we may find out our failings and cure them : and there-
fore if we use our remedy when the wound is fresh and bleed-
ing, we shall find the cure more certain and less painful.
For so a taper, when its crown of flame is newly blown off,
retains a nature so symbolical to light, that it will with gree-
diness rekindle and snatch a ray from the neighbour fire.
So is the soul of man, when it is newly fallen into sin ; al-
though God be angry with it, and the state of God's favour
and its own graciousness is interrupted, yet the habit is not
naturally changed ; and still God leaves some roots of virtue
standing, and the man is modest, or apt to be made ashamed,
and he is not grown a bold sinner ; but if lie sleeps on it,
and returns again to the same sin, and by degrees grows in
love with it, and gets the custom, and the strangeness of it
is taken away, then it is his master, and is swelled into a
heap, and is abetted by use, and corroborated by newly-
entertained principles, and is insinuated into his nature, and
hath possessed his affections, and tainted the will and the
understanding : and by this time, a man is in the state of a
decaying merchant, his accounts are so great, and so intri-
cate, and so much in arrear, that to examine it will be but to
represent the particulars of his calamity : therefore they think
it better to pull the napkin before their eyes, than to stare
upon the circumstances of their death.
2. A daily or frequent examination of the parts of our
life will interrupt the proceeding and hinder the journey of
little sins into a heap. For many days do not pass the best
persons, in which they have not many idle words or vainer
thoughts to sully the fair whiteness of their souls; some in-
discreet passions of trifling purposes, some impertinent dis-
contents or unhandsome usages of their own persons or their
PREPARATORY TO DEATH. 377
dearest relatives. And though God is not extreme to mark
what is done amiss, and therefore puts these upon the accounts
of his mercy, and the title of the cross ; yet in two cases these
little sins combine and cluster ; and, we know, that grapes
were once in so great a bunch, that one cluster was the load
of two men; that is, 1. When either we are in love with small
sins ; or, 2. When they proceed from a careless and incu-
rious spirit into frequency and continuance. For so the
smallest atoms that dance in all the little cells of the world
are so trifling and immaterial, that they cannot trouble an
eye, nor vex the tenderest part of a wound where a barbed
arrow dwelt ; yet, when by their infinite numbers (as Melissa
and Parmenides affirm), they danced first into order, then
into little bodies, at last they made the matter of the world :
so are the little indiscretions of our life : they are always,
inconsiderable, if they be considered, and contemptible, if
they be not despised, and God does not regard them, if we
do. We may easily keep them asunder by our daily or
nightly thoughts, and prayers, and severe sentences; but.
even the least sand can check the tumultuous pride, and be-,
come a limit to the sea, when it is in a heap and in united
multitudes; but if the wind scatter and divide them, the little
drops and the vainer froth of the water begin to invade the
strand. Our sighs can scatter such little offences ; but then
be sure to breathe such accents frequently, lest they knot,
and combine, and grow big as the shore, and we perish in
sand, in trifling instances. " He that despiseth little things,
shall perish by little and little :" so said the son of Sirach".
3. A frequent examination of our actions will intenerate
and soften our consciences, so that they shall be impatient
of any rudeness or heavier load : and he that is used to
shrink, when he is pressed with a branch of twining osier p,
will not willingly stand in the ruins of a house, when the
beam dashes upon the pavement. And provided that our
nice and tender spirit be not vexed into scruple, nor the
scruple turn into unreasonable fears, nor the fears into su-
perstition ; he, that, by any arts, can make his spirit tender
and apt for religious impressions, hath made the fairest seat
" Ecclu.s, xix. 1.
i' Qui levi conimiuatione pellilur, iion opus est, ut forliludiiie et iirinis iiivadutur.
— Seneca,
378 GENERAL EXERCISES
for religion, and the iinaptest and uneasiest entertainment
for sin and eternal death, in the whole world.
4. A frequent examination of the smallest parts of our
lives is the best instrument to make our repentance particu-
lar, and a fit remedy to all the members of the whole body
of sin. For our examination, put off to our death-bed, of
necessity brings us into this condition, that very many
thousands of our sins must be (or not be at all) washed off
with a general repentance, which the more general and inde-
finite it is, it is ever so much the worse. And if he that re-
pents the longest and the oftenest, and upon the most in-
stances, is still, during his whole life, but an imperfect peni-
tent, and there are very many reserves left to be wiped off by
God's mercies, and to be eased by collateral assistances, or
to be groaned for at the terrible day of judgment; it will be
but a sad story to consider, that the sins of a whole life, or
of very great portions of it, shall be put upon the remedy of
one examination, and the advices of one discourse, and the
activities of a decayed body, and a weak and an amazed
spirit. Let us do the best we can, we shall find that the
mere sins of ignorance and unavoidable forgetfulness will
be enough to be entrusted to such a bank; and if that a ge-
neral repentance will serve towards their expiation, it will be
an infinite mercy : but we have nothing to warrant our con-
fidence, if we shall think it to be enough on our death-bed
to confess the notorious actions of our lives, and to say,
" The Lord be merciful unto me for the infinite transgress-
ions of my life, which I have wilfully or carelessly forgot ;"
for very many, of which the repentance, the distinct, parti-
cular, circumstantiate re}>entance of a whole life would have
been too little, if we coidd have done more.
5. After the enumeration of these advantages, I shall
not need to add, that if we decline or refuse to call ourselves
frequently to account, and to use daily advices concerning
tlie state of our souls, it is a very ill sign, that our souls are
not right with God, or that they do not dwell in religion.
But this I shall say, that they, who do use this exercise
frequently, will make their conscience much at ease, by cast-
ing out a daily load of humour and surfeit, the matter of dis-
eases and the instruments of death. " He that does not
frequently search his conscience, is a house without a win
PREPARATORY TO DEATH. 379
dow," and like a wild untutored son of a fond and undis-
cerning widow.
But if this exercise seem too great a trouble, and that by-
such advices religion will seem a burden ; 1 have two things
to oppose against it.
1. One, is that we had better bear the burden of the
Lord, than the burden of a base and polluted conscience.
Religion cannot be so great a trouble as a guilty soul; and
whatsoever trouble can be fancied in this or any other
action of religion, it is only to inexperienced persons. It
may be a trouble at first, just as is every change and every
new accident: but if you do it frequently and accustom your
spirit to it, as the custom will make it easyi, so the advan-
tages will make it delectable ; that will make it facile as
nature, these will make it as pleasant and eligible as reward.
2. The other thing I have to say is this ; that to examine
our lives will be no trouble, if we do not intricate it with
businesses of the world and the labyrinths of care and imper-
tinent affairs'". A man had need have a quiet and disen-
tangled life, who comes to search into all his actions, and
to make judgment concerning his errors and his needs, his
remedies and his hopes. They that have great intrigues of
the world, have a yoke upon their necks, and cannot look
back : and he that covets many things greedily, and snatches
at high things ambitiously, that despises his neighbour
proudly, and bears his crosses peevishly, or his prosperity
impotently and passionately ; he that is prodigal of his pre-
cious time, and is tenacious and retentive of evil purposes, is
not a man disposed to this exercise ; he hath reason to be
afraid of his own memory, and to dash his glass in pieces,
because it must needs represent to his own eyes an intolera-
ble deformity. He therefore that resolves to live well, what-
soever it costs him ; he that will go to heaven at any rate,
shall best tend this duty by neglecting the affairs of the world
in all things, where prudently he may. But if we do other-
wise, we shall find that the accounts of our death-bed and
the examination made by a disturbed understanding will be
very empty of comfort and full of inconveniences.
1 Elige vitam optimron, consuetndo faciei juciindis;>iiiiani. — Scn:cii,
■■ Secura3 et quietit; mentis est in omnes vit* partes di^eiiricre ; oei'tij^atoram ant-
mi velut subjigc sunt, respicere non possunt. — Senrcu.
380 GENERAL EXERCISES
6. For hence it comes, that men die so timorously and
uncomfortably, as if they were forced out of their lives by
the violences of an executioner. Then, without much exami-
nation, they remember, how wickedly they have lived, without
religion, against the laws of the covenant of grace, without
God in the world : then they see sin goes off like an amazed,
wounded, affrighted person from a lost battle, without honour,
without a veil, with nothing but shame and sad remem-
brances : then they can consider, that if they had lived vir-
tuously, all the trouble and objection of that would now be
past, and all that had remained, should be peace and joy,
and all that good, which dwells within the house of God,
and eternal life. But now they find, they have done amiss
and dealt wickedly, they have no bank of good works, but a
huge treasure of wrath, and they are going to a strange place,
and what shall be their lot is uncertain (so they say, when
they would comfort and flatter themselves) : but in truth of
religion their portion is sad and intolerable, without hope
and without refreshment, and they must use littk silly arts
to make them go off from their stage of sins with some hand-
some circumstances of opinion : they will in civility be
abused, that they may die quietly, and go decently to their
execution, and leave their friends indifferently contented,
and apt to be comforted ; and by that time they are gone
awhile, they see, that they deceived themselves all their days,
and were by others deceived at last.
Let us make it our own case : we shall come to that state
and period of condition, in which we shall be infinitely com-
forted, if we have lived well ; or else be amazed and go off
trembling, because we are guilty of heaps of unrepented and
unforsaken sins. It may happen, we shall not then under-
stand it so, because most men of late ages have been abused
with false principles, and they are taught (or they are willing
to believe) that a little thing is enough to save them, and
that heaven is so cheap a purchase, that it will fall upon
them, whether they will or no. The misery of it is, they
will not suffer themselves to be confuted, till it be too late to
recant their error. In the interim, they are impatient to be
examined, as a leper is of a comb, and are greedy of the
world, as children of raw fruit ; and they hate a severe re-
proof, as they do thorns in their bed ; and they love to lay
PREPARATORY TO DEATH. 381
aside religion, as a drunken person does to forget his sorrow;
and all the way they dream of fine things, and their dreams
prove contrary, and become the hieroglyphics of an eternal
sorrow. The daughter of Polycrates dreamed, that her father
was lifted up, and that Jupiter washed him, and the sun
anointed him; but it proved to him but a sad prosperity:
for after a long life of constant prosperous successes he was
surprised by his enemies, and hanged up till the dew of hea-
ven wet his cheeks, and the sun melted his grease. Such is
the condition of those persons v/ho, living either in the de-
spite or in the neglect of religion, lie wallowing in the drunk-
enness of prosperity or worldly cares : they think themselves
to be exalted, till the evil day overtakes them ; and then they
can expound their dream of life to end in a sad and hopeless
death. I remember that Cleomenes was called a god by the
Egyptians, because when he was hanged, a serpent grew out
of his body, and wrapped itself about his head ; till thepliilo-
sophers of Egypt said, it was natural, that from the marrow
of some bodies such productions should arise. And indeed
it represents the condition of some men, who being dead are
esteemed saints and beatified persons, when their head is
encircled with dragons, and is entered into the possession of
devils, that old serpent and deceiver. For indeed their life,
was secretly so corrupted, that such serpents fed upon the
ruins of the spirit, and the decays of grace and reason. To
be cozened in making judgments concerning our final condi-
tion is extremely easy ; but if we be cozened, we are infi-
nitely miserable.
SECTION III.
Of exercising Charity during our whole life.
He that would die well and happily, must, in his life-time,
according to all his capacities, exercise charity^ ; and because
religion is the life of the soul, and charity is the life of reli-
gion, the same which gives life to the better part of man,
' Respice quid prodest praesentis teinporis aevum ;
Omne quud est, nihil est, prseter arnare Deuni.
382 GE?CERAL EXERCISES
which never dies, may obtain of God a mercy to the inferior
part of man in the day of its dissolution.
L Charity is the great channel, through which God passes
all his mercy upon mankind. For we receive absolution of
our sins in proportion to our forgiving our brother. This is
the rule of our hopes, and the measure of our desire in this
world ; and in the day of death and judgment the great sen-
tence upon mankind shall be transacted according to our
alms, which is the other part of charity. Certain it is, that
God cannot, will not, never did, reject a charitable man in his
greatest needs and in his most passionate prayers'; for God
himself is love, and every degree of charity that dwells in us,
is the participation of the Divine nature : and therefore,
when upon our death-bed a cloud covers our head, and we
are enwrapped with sorrow ; when we feel the weight of a
sickness, and do not feel the refreshing visitations of God's
loving-kindness ; when we have many things to trouble us,
and looking round about us we see no comforter ; then call
to mind, what injuries you have forgiven, how apt you were
to pardon all affronts and real persecutions, how you em-
braced peace, when it was offered you, how you followed
after peace, when it ran from you : and when you are weary
of one side, turn upon the other, and remember the alms,
that by the grace of God and his assistances, you have done,
and look up to God, and with the eye of faith behold him
coming in the cloud, and pronouncing the sentence of dooms-
day according to his mercies and thy charity.
2. Charity with its twin-daughters, alms and forgiveness,
is especially effectual for the procuring God's mercies in the
day and the manner of our death. " Alms deliver from death,"
said old Tobias " ; and " alms make an atonement for sins,"
said the son of Sirach^': and so said Daniel", and so say
all the wise men of the world. And in this sense also, is
that of St. Peter", "Love covers a multitude of sins;" and
St. Clement^ in his Constitutions gives this counsel, " If
' Qiioi! expenili habui.
Quod donavi habeo ;
Quod negavi puiilor,
Quod servavi perdidi.
"Tob. iv. 10. \ii. 9. '' Ecchis. iii.30. « Dan. i v. 27'. « 1 Pel. iv. 0. Tsa. i. 17.
y Lib. vii. cap. l.'i. 'Eav 'i)(Si^ Sii riv %ei$5v -rou, Jo;, I'm t^yao-ji 6ic Xijxpajriv aua^'
PREPARATORY TO DEATH. 383
you have any thincr in your hands, give it, that it nlay work
to the remission of thy sins : for by faith and alms sins are
purged." The same also is the counsel of Salvian, who won-
ders, that men, who are guilty of great and many sins, will
not work out their pardon by alms and mercy. But this also
must be added out of the words of Lactantius, who makes
this rule complete and useful ; " But think not, because sins
are taken away by alms, that, by thy money, thou mayest
purchase a licence to sin. For sins are abolished, if, because
thou hast sinned, thou givest to God," that is, to God's poor
servants, and his indigent necessitous creatures : but if thou
sinnest upon confidence of giving, thy sins are not abolished.
For God desires infinitely, that men should be purged from
their sins, and therefore commands us to repent ; but to re-
pent is nothing else but to profess and affirm (that is, to pur-
pose, and to make good that purpose), that they will sin no
more "".
Now alms are therefore effective to the abolition and
pardon of our sins, because they are preparatory to, and im-
petratory of, the grace of repentance, and are fruits of repent-
ance: and therefore St. Chrysostom affirms % that repentance
without alms is dead, and without wings, and can never soar
upwards to the element of love. But because they are a part of
repentance, and hugely pleasing to Almighty God, therefore
they deliver us from the evils of an unhappy and accursed
death; for so Christ delivered his disciples from the sea, when
he appeased the storm, though they still sailed in the chan-
nel : and this St. Jerome verifies with all his reading and expe-
rience, saying, " I do not remember to have read, that ever any
charitable person died an evil death''." And although a long
experience hath observed God's mercies to descend upon
charitable people, like the dew upon Gideon's fleece, when
all the world was dry; yet for this also we have a promise,
which is not only an argument of a certain number of years
(as experience is), but a security for eternal ages. " Make
ye friends of the mammon of unrighteousness ; that, when
^ Agere aatem pceuitenliani nihil aliud est quam profiteri et aflSrmare se non ul-
teriiis peccataram.
* Orat. ii. de pcenitentia.
•• Nunquam memini me legisse, mala morte mortuam, qui libenter opera charitatis
exercait. — Ad Nepot.
VOL. IV. 2 c
384 . GENERAL EXERCISES
ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations,"
When faith fails, and chastity is useless, and temperance
shall be no more, then charity shall bear you upon wings of
cherubim to the eternal mountain of the Lord. " I have
been a lover of mankind, and a friend, and merciful ; and
now I expect to communicate in that great kindness, which
he shews, that is the great God and father of men and mer-
cies ;" said Cyrus the Persian, on his death-bed ".
I do not mean, this should only be a death-bed charity,
any more than a death-bed repentance ; but it ought to be
the charity of our life and healthful years, a parting with
portions of our goods then*^, when we can keep them : we
must not first kindle our lights, when we are to descend into
our houses of darkness, or bring a glaring torch suddenly to
a dark room, that will amaze the eye, and not delight it, or
instruct the body ; but if our tapers have, in their constant
course, descended into their grave, crowned all the way with
light, then let the death-bed charity be doubled, and the
light burn brightest, when it is to deck our hearse. But con-
cerning this I shall afterwards give account.
SECTION IV.
General Considerations to enforce the former Practices.
These are the general instruments of preparation in
order to a holy death : it will concern us all to use them
diligently and speedily ; for we must be long in doing that,
which must be done but once'': and therefore we must begin
betimes, and lose no time; especially since it is so great a
venture, and upon it depends so great a state. Seneca said
well, " There is no science or art in the world so hard as to
live and die well : the professors of other arts are vulgar and
many ^:" but he that knows how to do this business, is cer-
c EySb <}>iXdv9ja)7rof syevofxm, koI vvv hSex^ av /xoi SokZ xotvcovntrat tou EiiEpyEroUvTOf ay-
'^ Da dum tempos habes; libi propria sil mauus liaeres ;
Auferet hoc nemo, quod dabis ipse Deo.
^ Quod sa;pe fieri non potest, fiat diu. — Seneca.
f Nullius rei quam vivere difiicilior est s^ientia : Professores aliarum artiam vul-
go multique sunt. — Seneca.
PREPARATORY TO DEATH. 385
tainly instructed to eternity. But then let me remember
this, that a wise person will also put most upon the greatest
interest. Common prudence will teach us this. No man
will hire a general to cut wood, or shake hay with a sceptre,
or spend his soul and all his faculties upon the purchase of
a cockle-shell; but he will fit instruments to the dignity and
exigence of the design : and therefore since heaven is so
glorious a state, and so certainly designed for us, if we
please, let us spend all that we have, all our passions and af-
fections, all our study and industry, all our desires and stra-
tagems, all our witty and ingenious faculties ^, towards the
arriving thither; whither if we do come, every minute will
infinitely pay for all the troubles of our whole life ; if we do
not, we shall have the reward of fools, an unpitied and an
upbraided misery ''.
To this purpose I shall represent the state of dying and
dead men in the devout words of some of the fathers of the
church, whose sense I shall exactly keep, but change their
order ; that by placing some of their dispersed meditations
into a chain or sequel of discourse, I may with their precious
stones make a union, and compose them into a jewel: for
though the meditation is plain and easy, yet it is affection-
ate, and material, and true, and necessary.
The circumstances of a di/ing tnan^s sorrow, and danger.
When the sentence of death is decreed, and begins to be
put in execution, it is sorrow enough to see or feel respect-
ively the sad accents of the agony and last contentions of
the soul, and the reluctances and unwillingnesses of the
body : the forehead washed with a new and stranger bap-
tism, 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 shews
his anger in a prodigious storm ; the feet cold, the hands
stiff, the physicians despairing, our friends weeping, the
rooms dressed with darkness and sorrow, and the exterior
S Nunc ratio nulla est, lestandi nulla facultas, jEternas quoniam poenas in m irte
timendum. — Lucret. i. 112.
'' V'irtuteia videanl, iutabescantque relicta. ' Nilus.
2 c2
386 GENERAL EXERCISES
parts betraying what are the violences, which the soul and
spirit suffer''; the nobler part, like the lord of the house,
being assaulted by exterior rudenesses, and driven from all
the outworks, at last faint and weary with short and frequent
breathings, interrupted with the longer accents of sighs,
without moisture, but the excrescences of a spilt humour,
when the pitcher is broken at the cistern, it retires to its last
fort, the heart; whither it is pursued, and stormed, and
beaten out, as when the barbarous Thracian sacked the glory
of the Grecian empire. Then calamity is great, and sorrow
rules in all the capacities of man: then the mourners weep,
because it is civil, or because they need thee, or because
they fear : but who suffers for thee with a compassion sharp
as is thy pain ? Then the noise is like the faint echo of a
distant valley, and few hear, and they will not regard thee,
who seemest like a person void of understanding and of a
departing interest. Ver^ tremenchim est mortis sncramen-
tum. But these accidents are common to all that die ; and
when a special Providence shall distinguish them, they shall
die with easy circumstances ; but as no piety can secure it, so
must no confidence expect it; but wait for the time, and ac-
cept the manner of the dissolution. But that which distin-
guishes them, is this :
He that hath lived a wicked life, if his conscience be
alarmed, and that he does not die like a wolf or a tiger, with-
out sense or remorse of all his wiidness and his injury, his
beastly nature, and desert and untilled manners, if he have
but sense of what he is going to suffer, or what he may ex-
pect to be his portion ; then we may imagine the terror of
their abused fancies, how they see affrighting shapes, and
because they fear them, they feel the gripes of devils, urging
the unwilling souls from the kinder and fast embraces of the
body, calling to the grave and hastening to judgment, exhi-
biting great bills of uncancelled crimes, awaking and amazing
the conscience, breaking all their hope in pieces, and mak-
i ing faith useless and terrible, because the malice was great,
and the charity was none at all. Then they look for some to
have pity on them, but there is no man'. No man dares be
their pledge: no man can redeem their soul, which now feels,
what it never feared. Then the tremblings and the sorrow,
I' St. Basil. I ' St. Chrjsostomus.
rREPAKATORV TO DEATH. 387
the memory of the past sin, and the fear of future pains, and
the sense of an angry God, and the presence of some devils,
consign him to the eternal company of all the damned and
accursed spirits™. Then they want an angel for their guide,
and the Holy Spirit for their comforter, and a good consci-
ence 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 w^eep and tremble, and infinitely to
fear the coming of the day of Christ ; at which time they
shall be brouo;ht forth to chansfe 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 hath lived inno-
cently, or made joy in heaven at his timely and effective
repentance, and in whose behalf the holy Jesus hath inter-
ceded prosperously, and for whose interest the Spirit makes
interpellations with groans and sighs unutterable, and in
whose defence the angels drive away the devils on his death-
bed, because his sins are pardoned, and because he resisted
the devil in his life-time, and fought successfully, and per-
severed unto the end ; then the joys break forth through the
clouds of sickness, and the conscience stands upright, and
confesses the glories of God, and owns so much integrity,
that it can hope for pardon, and obtain it too : then the sor-
rows of the sickness, and the flames of the fever, or the
faintness of the consumption, do but untie the soul from its
chain, and let it go forth, first into liberty, and then to glory :
for it is but for a little while that the face of the sky was
black, like the preparations of the night, but quickly the
cloud was torn and rent, the violence of thunder parted it into
little portions, that the sun might look forth with a watery
eye, and then shine without a tear. But it is an infinite re-
freshment to remember all the comforts of his prayers, the
frequent victory over his temptations, the mortification of
his lust, the noblest sacrifice to God, in which he most de-
lights, that we have given him our wills, and killed our ap-
petites for the interests of his services : then all the trouble
of that is gone; and what remains, is a portion in the inherit-
ance of Jesus, of which he now talks no more as a thing at
distance, but is entering into the possession. When the veil
" Epliram Syras.
I /
388 GENERAL EXERCISES, &C.
is rent", and the prison-doors are open at the presence of
God's angel, the soul goes forth full of hope, sometimes with
evidence, but always with certainty in the thing, and in-
stantly it passe¥ into the throngs of spirits, w here angels
meet it singing, and the devils flock with malicious and vile
purposes, desiring to lead it away with them into their houses
of sorrow : there they see things which they never saw, and
hear voices which they never heard. There the devils charge
them with many sins, and the angels remember, that them-
selves rejoiced, when they were repented of. Then the devils
aggravate and describe all the circumstances of the sin, and
add calumnies ; and the angels bear the sword forward still,
because their Lord doth answer for them. Then the devils
rage and gnash their teeth"; they see the soul chaste and
pure, and they are ashamed ; they see it penitent, and they
despair ; they perceive, that the tongue was refrained and
sanctified, and then hold their peace. Then the soul passes
forth and rejoices, passing by the devils in scorn and triumph,
being securely carried into the bosom of the Lord, where
they shall rest, till their crowns are finished, and their man-
sions are prepared ; and then they shall feast and sing, re-
joice and worship, for ever and ever?. Fearful and formidable
to unholy persons is the first meeting with spirits in their
separation. But the victory, which holy souls receive by
the mercies of Jesus Christ and the conduct of anaels, is a
joy, that we must not understand, till we feel it: and yet
such which by an early and a persevering piety we may se-
cure ; but let us inquire after it no further, because it is
secret.
" S. Martjrius S. Eiistratius Martjr. * S. Chiysostomus,
THE REMEDIES OV TEMrTATIONS, SiC. 389
CHAPTER III.
OF THE STATE OF SICKNESS, AND THE TEMPTATIONS
liNCIDENT TO IT, WITH THEIR PROPER REMEDIES.
SECTION I.
Of the state of Sickness.
«=^ Adam's sin brought death into the world, and man did die
the same day in which he sinned, according as God had
threatened. He did not die, as death is taken for a separa-
tion of soul and body ; that is not death properly, but the
ending of the last act of death ; just as a man is said to be
born, when he ceases any longer to be born in his mother's
womb : but whereas to man was intended a life long and happy,
without sickness, sorrow, or infelicity, and this life should
be lived here or in a better place, and the passage from one
to the other should have been easy, safe, and pleasant, now
that man sinned, he fell from that state to a contrary.
If Adam had stood, he should not always have lived in
this world ; for this world was not a place capable of giving
a dwelling to all those myriads of men and women, which
should have been born in all the generations of infinite and
eternal ages ; for so it must have been, if man had not died
at all, nor yet have removed hence at all. Neither is it likely
that man's innocence should have lost to him all possibility
of going thither, where the duration is better, measured by a
better time, subject to fewer changes, and which is now the
reward of a returning virtue, which in all natural senses is
less than innocence, save that it is heightened by Christ to
an equality of acceptation with the state of innocence : but
so it must have been, that his innocence should have been
punished with an eternal confinement to this state, which in
all reason is the less perfect, the state of a traveller, not of
one possessed of his inheritance. It is therefore certain,
man should have changed his abode : for so did Enoch, and
so did Elias, and so shall all the world, that shall be alive
at the day of judgment; they shall not die, but they shall
390 THE REMEDIES OF TEMPTATIONS
change their place and their abode, their duration and their
state, and all this without death.
That death therefore, which God threatened to Adam,
and which passed upon his posterity, is not the going out of
this world, but the manner of going. If he had stayed in in-
nocence, he should have gone from hence placidly and fairly,
without vexations and afflictive circumstances ; he should
not have died by sickness, misfortune, defect, or unwilling-
ness : but when he fell, then he began to die ; the same day
(so said God): and that must needs be true: and therefore it
must mean, that upon that very day, he fell into an evil and
dangerous condition, a state of change and affliction'' ; then
death began, that is, the man began to die by a natural di-
minution, and aptness to disease and misery. His first state
was, and should have been (so long as it lasted) a happy
duration ; his second, was a daily and miserable change : and
this was the dying properly.
This appears in the great instance of damnation, which,
in the style of Scripture, is called eternal death : not because
it kills or ends the duration; it hath not so much good in it;
but because it is a perpetual infelicity. Change or separation
of soul and body is but accidental to death ; death may be
with or without either : but the formality, the curse and the
sting of death, that is, misery, sorrow, fear, diminution, de-
fect, anguish, dishonour, and whatsoever is miserable and
afflictive in nature, that is death. Death is not an action,
but a whole state and condition ; and this was first brought
in upon us by the offence of one man.
But this went no farther than thus to subject us to tem-
poral infelicity. If it had proceeded so far as was supposed,
man had been much more miserable ; for man had more than
one original sin, in this sense : and though this death entered
first upon us by Adam's fault, yet it came nearer unto us and
increased upon us by the sins of more of our forefathers.
For Adam's sin left us in streno-th enough to contend with
human calamities for almost a thousand years together. But
the sins of his children, our forefathers, took off from us
half the strength about the time of the flood ; and then from
five hundred to two hundred and fifty, and from thence to
1 Prima quic vitam dedit hora carpsit. — Hercul. Fur. Nascentes raorimur, tinis-
«jue ab origine pendet. — Manil.
PROPER IN SICKNESS. 391
one hundred and twenty, and from thence to threescore and
ten : so often halvins; it, till it is almost come to nothino-.
But by the sins of men in the several generations of the
world, death, that is, misery and disease, is hastened so upon
us, that we are of a contemptible age : and because we are
to die by suffering evils, and by the daily lessening of our
strength and health ; this death is so long a doing, that it
makes so great a part of our short life useless and unservice-
able, that we have not time enough to get the perfection of
a single manufacture, but ten or twelve generations of the
world must go to the making up of one wise man, or one ex-
cellent art : and in the succession of those ages there happen
so many changes and interruptions, so many wars and vio-
lences, that seven years' fighting sets a whole kingdom back
in learning and virtue, to which they were creeping, it may
be, a whole age.
And thus also we do evil to our posterity, as Adam did
to his, and Cham did to his, and Eli to his, and all they to
theirs, who by sms caused God to shorten the life and mul-
tiply the evils of mankind : and for this reason it is, the
world grows worse and worse, because so many original sins
are multiplied, and so many evils from parents descend upon
the succeeding generations of men, that they derive nothing
from us but original misery.
But he who restored the law of nature, did also restore
us to the condition of nature ; which, being violated by the
introduction of death, Christ then repaired, when he suffered
and overcame death for us ; that is, he hath taken away the
unhappiness of sickness, and the sting of death, and the
dishonours of the grave, of dissolution and weakness, of de-
cay and change, and hath turned them into acts of favour,
into instances of comfort, into opportunities of virtue ; Christ
hath now knit them into rosaries and coronets ; he hath put
them into promises and rewards ; he hath made them part of
the portion of his elect : they are instruments, and earnests,
and securities, and passages, to the greatest perfection of hu-
man nature, and the Divine promises. So that it is possible
for us now to be reconciled to sickness ; it came in by sin,
and therefore is cured, when it is turned into virtue ; and al-
though it may have in it the uneasiness of labour, yet it will
not be uneasy as sin, or the restlessness of a discomposed
302 OF IMPATIENCE.
conscience. If, therefore, we can well manage our state of
sickness, that we may not fall by pain, as we usually do by
pleasure, we need not fear; for no evil shall happen to us.
SECTION II. .
Of the first Temptation proper to the slate of Sickness,
Impatience.
Men, that are in health, are severe exactors of patience
at the hands of them, that are sick ; and they usually judge
it not by terms of relation between God and the suffering
man, but between him and the friends, that stand by the bed-
side. It will be therefore necessary, that we truly under-
stand, to what duties and actions the patience of a sick man
ought to extend.
1. Sighs and groans, sorrow and prayers, humble com-'
plaints 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,' or grave like a dramatic person: it were well, if all
men could bear an exterior decency in their sickness, and
regulate their voice, their face, their discourse, and all their
circumstances, by the measures and proportions of comeli-
ness, and satisfaction to all the standers by. But this would
better please them, than assist him ; the sick man would do
more good to others, than he would receive to himself.
2. Therefore, silence and still composures, and not com-
plaining, are no parts of a sick man's duty; they are not ne-
cessary parts of patience ^ We find, that David roared for
the very disquietness of his sickness : and he lay chattering
like a swallow, and his throat was dry with calling for help
upon his God. That's the proper voice of sickness: and
certain it is, that the proper voices of sickness are expressly
vocal and petitory in the ears of God, and call for pity in
the same accent, as the cries and oppressions of widows and
orphans do for vengeance upon their persecutors, though
'' Ejtilatu, e|uestii, geinitn, freniitibus,
Resonando mulli'im llebiles voces refert. — Cic. Tu$c. ii. 13.
' Conccdendiim cat gcmcnti.
OF IMPATIENCE. 393
Ihey say no collect against them. For there is the voice of
man, and there is the voice of the disease, and God hears
both ; and the louder the disease speaks, there is the greater
need of mercy and pity, and therefore God will the sooner
hear it. Abel's blood had a voice, and cried to God; and
humility hath a voice, and cries so loud to God, that it
pierces the clouds; and so hath every sorrow and every sick-
ness: and when a man cries out, and complains but accord-
ing to the sorrows of his pain*, it cannot be any part of a
culpable impatience, but an argument for pity.
3. Some men's senses are so subtile, and their percep-
tions so quick and full of relish, and their spirits so active,
that the same load is double upon them, to what it is to an-
other person : and therefore comparing the expressions of
the one to the silence of the other, a different judgment can-
not be made concerning their patience. Some natures are
querulous, and melancholy, and soft, and nice, and tender,
and weeping, and expressive ; others are sullen, dull, without
apprehension, apt to tolerate and carry burdens: and the
crucifixion of our blessed Saviour, falling upon a delicate
and virgin body, of curious temper, and strict, equal com-
position, was naturally more full of torment than that of the
ruder thieves, whose proportions were coarser and uneven.
4. In this case, it was no imprudent advice, which Cicero
Sfave": nothing; in the world is more amiable than an even
temper in our Avhole life, and in every action : but this even-
ness cannot be kept, unless every man follows his own na-
ture, without striving to imitate the circumstances of an-
other. And what is so in the thing itself, ought to be so in
our judgments concerning the things. We must not call
any one impatient, if he be not silent in a fever, as if he were
asleep ; or as if he were dull, as Herod's son of Athens.
5. Nature, in some cases, hath made cryings out and ex-
clamations to be anentertainmentof the spirit, and an abate-
ment or diversion of the pain. For so did the old cham-
pions, when they threw their fatal nets, that they might
• — Flagraiitior aequo
>ion debet dolor esse viii, nee vuliiere major. — Ju. Sat. xiii. 11.
" Omnino ^i quicquam est decoiuiii, nihil est profecto magis quani arquabiiitas
nnivcrsac vita', turn singiilarum actioiiuin ; qiiain autem conservare non |>05^is, si atiu-
rum Hiluram imiliiiis oniillas luara. 1 Offic, 88.
394 OF PATIENCE.
load their enemy with the snares and weights of death ; they
groaned aloud, and sent forth the anguish of their spirit into
the eyes and heart of the man, that stood against them" : so
it is in the endurance of some sharp pains, the complaints
and shriekings, the sharp groans and the tender accents, send
forth the afflicted spirits, and force a way, that 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 Saviour suffered his last and sharpest pang of
sorrow, he cried out with a loud voice, and resolved to die,
and did so.
SECTION III.
Constituent or integral parts of Patience.
1. That we may secure our patience, we must take care,
that our complaints be v/ithout 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 hell-fire, and turns a natural evil
into an intolerable ; it hinders prayers, and fills up the inter-
vals 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 vii'tue and exercise of patience are, 1.
Praying to God for help and remedy; 2. Sending for the
guides of souls ; 3. Using all holy exercises and acts of grace
proper to that state : which whoso does, hath not the impa-
tience of despair ; every man that is patient, hath hope in
God in the day of his sorrows.
2. Our complaints in sickness must be without murmur.
Murmur sins against God's providence and government : by
^ Quia profundenda voce onine corpus intenditur, veuitque p'aga vehementior.
— Ck. Pro Miiren. 18.
OF FATIENCE. 395
it we grow rude, and, like the f\illing angels, displeased at
God's supremacy ; and nothing is more unreasonable : it
talks against God, for whose glory all speech was made ; it
is proud and fantastic, hath better opinions of a sinner than
of the Divine justice, and would rather accuse God than
himself.
Against this is opposed that part of patience, which re-
signs the man into the hands of God, saying with old Eli,
" It is the Lord ; let him do what he will ;" and, " Thy will
be done in earth as it is in heaven :" and so by admiring God's
justice and wisdom, does also dispose the sick person for re-
ceiving God's mercy, and secures him the rather in the grace
of God. The proper acts of this part of patience are, 1. To
confess our sins and our own demerits : 2. It increases and
exercises humility : 3. It loves to sing praises to God, even
from the lowest abyss of human misery.
3. Our complaints in sickness must be without peevish-
ness. 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 trouble-
some to them, that stand there to ease ours. It hath in it
harshness of nature and ungentleness, wilfulness and fan-
tastic opinions, morosity and incivility.
Against it are opposed obedience, tractability, easiness
of persuasion, aptness to take counsel. The acts of this part
of patience are, 1. To obey our physicians; 2, To treat our
persons with respect to our present necessities ; 3. Not to
be ungentle and uneasy to the ministers and nurses, that
attend us^"; but to take their diligent and kind offices, as
sweetly as we can, and to bear their indiscretions or unhand-
some accidents contentedly and without disquietness within,
or evil language or angry words without ; 4. Not to use un-
lawful means for our recovery.
If we secure these particulars, we are not lightly to be
judged of by noises and postures, by colours and images of
things, by paleness, or tossings from side to side. For it
were a hard thing, that those persons, who are loaden with
the greatest of human calamities, should be strictly tied to
ceremonies and forms of things. He is patient, that calls
upon God ; that hopes for health or heaven ; that believes
* Vide cL. iv. sect. i.
39G REMEDIES AGAINST IMPATIEXCE.
God is wise and just in sending him afflictions; that con-
fesses his sins ; and accuses himself, and justifies God ; that
expects God will turn this into good; that is civil to his phy-
sicians and his servants ; that converses with the guides of
souls, the ministers of religion; and, in all things, submits
to God's will, and would use no indirect means for his reco-
very ; but had rather be sick and die, than enter at all into
God's displeasure.
SECTION IV.
Remedies against Impatience, by way of consideration.
As it happens concerning death, so it is in sickness,
which is death's handmaid. It hath the fate to suffer ca-
lumny and reproach, and hath a name worse than its nature.
1. For there is no sickness so great but children endure
it, and have natural strengths to bear them out quite through
the calamity, what period soever nature hath allotted it.
Indeed they make no reflections upon their suff'erings, and
complain of sickness with an uneasy sigh or a natural groan,
but consider not, what the sorrows of sickness mean ; and so
bear it by a direct sufferance, and as a pillar bears the weight
of a roof. But then why cannot we bear it so too ? For
this which we call a reflection upon, or a considering of our
sickness, is nothing but a perfect instrument of trouble, and
consequently a temptation to impatience. It serves no end
of nature : it may be avoided, and we may consider it only
as an expression of God's anger, and an emissary or procu-
rator of repentance. But all other considering it% except
where it serves the purposes of medicine and art, is nothing
but, under the colour of reason, an unreasonable device to
heighten the sickness and increase the torment. But then,
as children want this act of reflex perception or reasonable
sense, whereby their sickness becomes less pungent and do-
lorous ; so also do they want the helps of reason, whereby
they should be able to support it. For certain it is, reason
* Praetulerim — delirus in6r.sque videii,
» Dum niea delecteiit mala me, vel detiique fallant,
Qiiara sapere et ringi, — Horat. lib. ii. ep. 2.
REMEDIES A(rAIN'.ST IMPATIE\XE. 397
was as woll given ns to harden our spirits, and stiffen them
in passions and sad accidents, as to make us bending and
apt for action : and if in men God hath heightened the fa-
culties of apprehension, he hath increased the auxiliaries of
reasonable strengths ; that God's rod and God's staff might
go together, and the beam of God's countenance may as
well refresh us with its light, as scorch us with its heat. For
poor children that endure so much, have not inward supports
and refreshments to bear them through it : they never heard
the sayings of old men, nor have been taught the principles
of severe philosophy, nor are assisted with the results of a
long experience, nor know they, how to turn a sickness into
virtue, and a fever into a reward ; nor have they any sense
of favours, the remembrance of which may alleviate their
burden ; and yet nature hath in them teeth and nails enough
to scratch, and fight against the sickness, and by such aids,
as God is pleased to give them, they wade through the
storm, and murmur not. And besides this, yet, although
infants have not such brisk perceptions upon the stock of
reason, they have a more tender feeling upon the accounts of
sense, and their flesh is as uneasy by their natural softnes,?
and weak shoulders, as ours by too forward apprehensions.
Therefore bear up^: either you or I, or some man wiser,
and many a woman weaker than us both, or the very chil-
dren, have endured worse evil than this, that is upon thee
now.
■ That sorrow is hugely tolerable, which gives its smart but
by instants and smallest proportions of time. No man at
once feels the sickness of a week, or of a whole day ; but
the smart of an instant : and still every portion of a minute
feels but its proper share; and the last groan ended all the
sorrow of its peculiar burden. And what minute can that
be, which can pretend to be intolerable .? and the next mi-
nute is but the same as the last, and the pain flows like the
drops of a river, or the little shreds of time ; and if we do
but take care of the present minute, it cannot seem a great
charge or a great burden ; but that care will secure our duty,
if we still but secure the present minute.
y StH&o? Je TrX^^a;, K^a^inv hvl-waTri jAv^ai'
. . TerXaSf In, ;tpaSi)!" xai xuVTEpov aXXo •aror' 'irXnq.
Ulvsses, apad Hora. Od. J. 17.
398 REMEDIES AGATXST IMPATIENCE.
3. If we consider, how much men can suffer, if they list,
and how much they do suffer for greater and little causes,
and that no causes are greater than the proper causes of
patience in sickness (that is necessity and religion), we can-
not, without huge shame to our nature, to our persons, and
to our manners, complain of this tax and impost of nature.
This experience added something to the old philosophy.
When the gladiators were exposed naked to each other's
short swords, and were to cut each other's souls away in por-
tions of flesh, as if their forms had been as divisible as the
life of worms, they did not sigh or groan, it was a shame to
decline the blow, but according to the just measures of art.
The women that saw the wound ^ shriek out; and he that re-
ceives it, holds his peace. He did not only stand bravely,
but would also fall so ; and when he was down, scorned to
shrink his head, when the insolent conqueror came to lift it
from his shoulders : and yet this man, in his first design, only
aimed at liberty, and the reputation of a good fencer ; and
when he sunk down, he saw he could only receive the honour
of a bold man, the noise of which he shall never hear, when
his ashes are crammed in his narrow urn. And what can
we complain of the weakness of our strengths, or the pres-
sures of diseases, when we see a poor soldier stand in a breach
almost starved with cold and hunger, and his cold apt to be
relieved only by the heats of anger, a fever, or a fired musket,
and his hunger slackened by a greater pain and a huge fear ?
this man shall stand in his arms and wounds, patiens luminis
atqiie soils, pale and faint, weary and watchful ; and at night
shall have a bullet pulled out of his flesh, and shivers from
his bones, and endure his mouth to be sewed up from a vio-
lent rent to its own dimension ; and all this for a man whom
he never saw, or, if he did, was not noted by him ; but one
that shall condemn him to the gallows, if he runs from all
this misery. It is seldom that God sends such calamities
upon men, as men bring upon themselves, and suffer willingly.
But that, which is most considerable is, that any passion and
violence upon the spirit of man makes him able to suffer
huge calamities with a certaia constancy and an unwearied
* Spectatores vociferantar, ictus tacet. — Quis mediocris gladiator ingemuit ?
Quis vultam matavit anqQam ? Quis non modu stetit, verum etiani decabuit tur-
piter ? — TuK. Q. lib. ii. 16.
REMEDIES AGAINST IMPATIENCE. 399
patience. Scipio Africanus was wont to commend that say-
ing in Xenophon, That the same labours of warfare were
easier far to a general than to a common soldier ; because he
was supported by the huge appetites of honour, which made
his hard marches nothing but stepping forward and reaching
at a triumph. Did not the lady of Sabinus, for others' in-
terest, bear twins privately and without groaning ? Are not
the labours and cares, the spare diet and the waking nights
of covetous and adulterous, of ambitious and revengeful
persons, greater sorrows and of more smart than a fever, or
the short pains of child-birth .? What will not tender women
suffer to hide their shame ? And if vice and passion, lust
and inferior appetites can supply to the tenderest persons
strengths more than enough for the sufferance of the greatest
natural violences, can we suppose that honesty and religion
and the grace of God are more nice, tender and effeminate ?
4. Sickness is the more tolerable, because it cures very
many evils, and takes away the sense of all the cross fortunes,
which amaze the spirits of some men, and transport them
certainly beyond all the limits of patience. Here all losses
and disgraces, domestic cares and public evils, the appre-
hensions of pity and a sociable calamity, the fears of want
and the troubles of ambition, lie down and rest upon the
sick man's pillow. One fit of the stone takes away from the
fancies of men all relations to the world and secular interests :
at least they are made dull and flat, without sharpness and
an edo-e.
And he, that shall observe the infinite variety of troubles,
which afflict some busy persons and almost all men in very
busy times, will think it not much amiss, that those huge
numbers were reduced to certainty, to method and an order :
and there is no better compendium for this, than that they
be reduced to one. And a sick man seems so unconcerned
in the things of the world, that, although this separation be
done with violence, yet it is no otherwise than all noble con-
tentions are, and all honours are purchased, and all virtues
are acquired, and all vices mortified, and all appetites
chastised, and all rewards obtained : there is infallibly to all
these a difficulty and a sharpness annexed, without which
there could be no proportion between a work and a reward.
To this add, that sickness does not take off the sense of se-
VOL. IV, 2 D
400 KEMEDIES AGAINST IMPATIENCE.
cular troubles and worldly cares from us, by employing all
the perceptions and apprehensions of men ; by filling all
faculties with sorrow, and leaving no room for the lesser in-
stances of troubles, as little rivers are swallowed up in the
sea : but sickness is a messenger of God, sent with purposes
of abstraction and separation, with a secret power and a pro-
per efficacy to draw us off from unprofitable and useless sor-
rows : and this is effected partly, by reason that it represents
the uselessness of the things of this world, and that there is
a portion of this life, in which honours and things of the
world cannot serve us to many purposes ; partly, by preparing
us to death, and telling us, that a man shall descend thither,
whence this world cannot redeem us, and where the goods of
this world cannot serve us.
5. And yet, after all this, sickness leaves in us appetites
so strong, and apprehensions so sensible, and delights so
many, and good things in so great a degree, that a health-
less body and a sad disease do seldom make men weary of
this world, but still they would fain find an excuse to live^
The gout, the stone, and the tooth-ache, the sciatica, sore
eyes, and an aching head, are evils indeed ; but such, which,
rather than die, most men are willing to suffer; and Mecoe-
nas added also a wish, rather to be crucified than to die :
and though his wish was low, timorous and base, yet we
find the same desires in most men, dressed up with bet-
ter circumstances. It was a cruel mercy in Tamerlane, who
commanded all the leprous persons to be put to death, as
we knock some beasts quickly on their head, to put them
out of pain, and lest they should live miserably : the poor
men would rather have endured another leprosy, and have
more willingly taken two diseases than one death. There-
fore Ceesar wondered, that the old crazed soldier begged
leave he might kill himself, and asked him, " Dost thou think
then to be more alive, than now thou art ?" We do not die
suddenly, but we descend to death by steps and slow pas-
sages : and therefore men (so long as they are sick) are un-
willing to proceed and go forward in the finishing that sad
employment. Between a disease and death there are many
degrees, and all those are like the reserves of evil things, the
* Debilem facito roanu, debilem pede, coxa, lubricos quate denies ; -vita duin
superest, bene est. Hanc niilii, vel aciitam, si das, sustiaeo c'aceni, — Sen, ep. x. 1.
REMEDIES AGAINST IMPATIENCE. 401
declining of every one of which is justly reckoned amongst
those good things, which alleviate the sickness and make it
tolerable. Never account that sickness intolerable, in which
thou hadst rather remain than die : and yet if thou hadst
rather die than suffer it, the worst of it that can be said is
this, that this sickness is worse than death ; that is, it is
worse than that, which is the best of all evils, and the end
of all troubles; and then you have said no great harm
against it.
6. Remember, that thou art under a supervening neces-
sity. Nothing is intolerable, that is necessary : and there-
fore when men are to suffer a sharp incision, or what they
are pleased to call intolerable, tie the man down to it, and
he endures it"". Now God hath bound this sickness upon thee
by the condition of nature ; for every flower must wither
and droop ; it is also bound upon thee by special provi-
dence, and with a design to try thee, and with purposes to
reward and to crown thee. These cords thou canst not
break; and therefore lie thou down gently, and suffer the
hand of God to do what he please, that at least thou mayest
swallow an advantage, which the care and severe mercies of
God force down thy throat.
7. Remember, that all men have passed this way*^, the
bravest, the wisest and the best men have been subject to
sickness and sad diseases ; and it is esteemed a prodigy, that
a man should live to a long; ao;e and not be sick : and it is
recorded for a wonder concerning Xenophilus the musician,
that he lived to one hundred and six years of age in a per-
fect and continual health. No story tells the like of a prince,
or a great or a wise person*^ ; unless we have a mind to be-
lieve the tales concerning Nestor and the Euboean Sybil, or
reckon Cyrus of Persia, or Masinissa the Mauritanian to be
rivals of old age, or that Argantonius the Tartesian king did
really outstrip that age, according as his story tells, report-
ing him to have reigned eighty years*, and to have lived one
hundred and twenty. Old age and healthful bodies are sel-
'' Iraprobaeque Tigres indulgent pallentiain flagello. Implger et fortis virtule co-
aclQS.
"= Cerno equidem gemin^ constratos morte Philippos,
Thessalia;que rogos, et fanera gentis Iberae,
•^ Rara est in nobililate senectus. * Cicero de Senect.
2 D 2
402 REMEDIES AGAINST IMPATIENCE.
dom made the appendages to great fortunes : and under so
great and so universal precedents^, so common fate of men,
he that will not suffer his portion, deserves to be something
else than a man, but nothing that is better.
8. We find in story, that many gentiles, who walked by
no light but that of reason, opinion, and human examples,
did bear their sickness nobly, and with great contempt of
pain, and with huge interests of virtue. When Pompey
came from Syria, and called at Rhodes, to see Posidonius
the philosopher, he found him hugely afflicted with the gout,
and expressed his sorrow, that he could not hear his lec-
tures, from which by this pain he must needs be hindered.
Posidonius told him, " But you may hear me for all this :"
and he discoursed excellently in the midst of his tortures,
even then, when the torches were put to his feet", "That no-
thing was good, but what was honest ;" and therefore " no-
thing could be an evil, if it were not criminal :" and summed
up his lectures with this saying, " O pain, in vain dost thou
attempt me ; for I will never confess thee to be an evil, as
long as I can honestly bear thee." And when Pompey him-
self was desperately sick at Naples, the Neapolitans wore
crowns and triumphed, and the men of Puteoli came to con-
gratulate his sickness, not because they loved him not, but
because it was the custom of their country to have better
opinions of sickness than we have. The boys of Sparta
would, at their altars, endure whipping, till their very entrails
saw the light through their torn flesh ; and some of them to
death, without crying or complaint. Ceesar would drink
his portions of rhubarb rudely mixed, and unfitly allayed,
with little sippings, and taking the horror of the medicine,
spreading the loathsomeness of his physic so, that all the
parts of his tongue and palate might have an entire share :
and when C. Marius suffered the veins of his leg to be cut
out for the curing his gout, and yet shrunk not, he declared
not only the rudeness of their physic, but the strength of a
man's spirit, if it be contracted and united by the aids of
reason or religion, by resolution or any accidental harshness,
against a violent disease.
9. All impatience, howsoever expressed, is perfectly use-
f Ferre quain sortetn patiantur omnes. Nemo recusat.
» Tasc. 1. ii. Cum faces doluris admovereutnr.
REMEDIES AGAINST IMPATIENCE.- 403
less to all purposes of ease, but huoely effective to the multi-
plying the trouble ; and the impatience and vexation is an-
other, but the sharper disease of the two : it does mischief by
itself, and mischief by the disease. For men grieve them-
selves, as much as they please''; and when, by impatience,
they put themselves into the retinue of sorrows, they become
solemn mourners. For so I have seen the ravs of the sun or 1
moon dash upon a brazen vessel, whose lips kissed the face <
of those waters, that lodged within its bosom ; but being
turned back, and sent off with its smooth pretences or
rougher waftings, it wandered about the room, and beat upon
the roof, and still doubled its heat and motion. So is a sick-
ness and a sorrow, entertained by an unquiet and a discon-
tented man, turned back either with anger or with excuses;
but then the pain passes from the stomach to the liver, and
from the liver to the heart, and from the heart to the head>
and from feeling to consideration, from thence to sorrow,
and at last ends in impatience and useless murmur ; and all
the way the man was impotent and weak, but the sickness
was doubled, and grew imperious and tyrannical over the
soul and body. Masurius Sabinus tells, that the image of
the goddess Angerona was, with a muffler upon her mouth,
placed upon the altar of Volupia, to represent, that those
persons, who bear their sicknesses and sorrows without mur-
murs', shall certainly pass from sorrow to pleasure, and the
ease and honours of felicity ; but they, that with spite and
indignation bite the burning coal, or shake the yoke upon
their necks, gall their spirits, and fret the skin, and hurt no-
thing but themselves.
10. Remember, that this sickness is but for a short time:
if it be sharp, it will not last long; if it be long, it will be
■> Tantum doluerunt, quantum doloribus se Inseruu'.-unt. — St. August. Virg.
1. viii. V. 4.
Ceu lore seges viret,
Sic crescnnt rigiiis tristia fletibus ;
Urget lacryiiia Jacrjmara,
Foecundusque sui se numerat dolor.
Quern fortuiia semel virum
Udodegenerum lumiiie viderit.
Ilium sape ferlt
' Levius fit patientiii
Qaicquid corrigere est nefas, — Horat.
404 REMEDIES AGAINST IMPATIENCE.
easy and very tolerable. And although St. Eadsine, arch-
bishop of Canterbury, had twelve years of sickness, yet, all
that while, he ruled his church prudently, gave example of
many virtues, and, after his death, was enrolled in the ca-
lendar of saints, who had finished their course prosperously.
Nothing is more unreasonable than to entangle our spirits
in wildness and amazement, like a partridge fluttering in a
jiet, which she breaks not, though she breaks her wings.
SECTION V.
Remedies against Impatience, by way of Exercise.
1. The fittest instrument of esteeming sickness easily
tolerable is, to remember that, which indeed makes it so ;
and that is, that God doth minister proper aids and supports
to every of his servants, whom he visits with his rod. He
knows our needs, he pities our sorrows, he relieves our mi-
series, he supports our weakness, he bids us ask for help,
and he promises to give us all that, and he usually gives us
more : and indeed it is observable, that no story tells of any
godly man, who, living in the fear of God, fell into a violent
and unpardoned impatience in his natural sickness, if he used
those means, which God and his holy church have appointed.
We see almost all men bear their last sickness with sorrows
indeed, but without violent passions ; and unless they fear
death violently, they suffer the sickness with some indiffer-
ency : and it is a rare thing to see a man, who enjoys his
reason in his sickness, to express the proper signs of a direct
and solemn impatience. For when God lays a sickness upon
us, he seizes commonly on a man's spirits, which are the in-
struments of action and business; and when they are secured
from being tumultuous, the sufferance is much the easier :
and therefore sickness secures all that, which can do the
man mischief; it makes him tame and passive, apt for suffer-
ing, and confines him to an unactive condition. To which
if we add, that God then commonly produces fear, and all
those passions, which naturally tend to humility and poverty
of spirit, we shall soon perceive by what instruments God
verifies his promise to us (which is the great security for our
REMEDIES AGAINST IMPATIENCE. 405
patience, and the easiness of our condition) that God will
lay no more upon us, than he will make us able to bear, but,
together with the affliction, he will find a way to escaped
Nay, if any thing can be more than this, we have two or three
promises, in which we may safely lodge ourselves, and roll ,
from off our thorns, and find ease and rest: God hath pro-
mised to be with us in our trouble, and to be with us in our
prayers, and to be with us in our hope and confidence ^
2. Prevent the violence and trouble of thy spirit by an
act of thanksgiving; for which in the worst of sicknesses
thou canst not want cause, especially if thou rememberest,
that this pain is not an eternal pain. Bless God for that :
but take heed also, lest you so order your affairs, that you
pass from hence to an eternal sorrow. If that be hard, this
will be intolerable : but as for the present evil, a few days
will end it,
3. Remember, that thou art a man, and a Christian : as
the covenant of nature hath made it necessary, so the cove-
nant of grace hath made it to be chosen by thee, to be a suf-
fering person : either you must renounce your religion, or
submit to the impositions of God, and thy portion of suffer-
ings. So that here we see our advantages, and let us use
them accordingly. The barbarous and warlike nations of
old could fight well and willingly, but could not bear sick-
ness manfully. The Greeks were cowardly in their fights,
as most wise men are; but because they were learned and
well taught, they bore their sickness with patience and se-
verity. The Cimbrians and Celtibei'ians, rejoice in battle,
like giants ; but, in their diseases, they weep like women.
These according to their institution and designs had unequal
courages, and accidental fortitude. But since our religion
hath made a covenant of sufferings, and the great business
of our lives is sufferings, and most of the virtues of a
Christian are passive graces, and all the promises of the
gospel are passed upon us through Christ's cross, we have a
necessity upon us to have an equal courage in all the variety
of our sufferings : for, without an universal fortitude, we can
do nothing of our duty.
^' 1 Cor. X. 13.
J Psal. is. 9. Mall.vii. 7. Jaw. v, 13. Psal. xxxi. 19. 21. xxxiv.
40G REMEDIES AGAINST IMPATIENCE,
4. Resolve to do as much as you can ; for certain it is,
we can suffer very much, if we list ; and many men have af-
flicted themselves unreasonably by not being skilful to con-
sider, how much their strength and state could permit ; and
our flesh is nice and imperious, crafty to persuade reason,
that she hath more necessities, than indeed belong to her, and
that she demands nothing superfluous. Suffer as much in
obedience to God, as you can suffer for necessity or passion,
fear or desire. And if you can for one thing, you can for
another, and there is nothing wanting but the mind. Never
say, I can do no more, I cannot endure this : for God would
not have sent it, if he had not known thee strong enough to
abide it ; only he, that knows thee well already, would also
take this occasion to make thee know thyself, but it will be
fit, that you pray to God to give you a discerning spirit, that
you may rightly distinguish just necessity from the flattery
and fondness of flesh and blood.
5. Propound to your eyes and heart the example of the
holy Jesus upon the cross; he endured more for thee, than
thou canst either for thyself or him : and remember, that if we
be put to suffer, and do suffer in a good cause, or in a good
manner, so that in any sense your sufferings be conformable
to his sufferings, or can be capable of being united to his, we
shall reign together with him. The high way of the cross,
which the King of sufferings hath trodden before us, is the
way to ease, to a kingdom, and to felicity.
6. The very suffering is a title to an excellent inheritance :
for God chastens every son, whom he receives ; and if we be
not chastised, we are bastards, and not sons. And be con-
fident, that although God often sends pardon without correc-
tion, yet he never sends correction without pardon, unless it
be thy fault : and therefore take every or any affliction as an
earnest-penny of thy pardon ; and, upon condition there may
be peace with God, let 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 con-
tent to be under discipline, when the reward of that is to be-
come the son of God : and by such inflictions he hews and
breaks thy body, first dressing it to funeral, and then pre-
paring it for immortality. And, if this be the effect of the
design of God's love to thee, let it be occasion of thy love to
REMEDIES AGAINST IMPATIENCE. 407
him : and remember, that the truth of love is hardly known
but by somewhat, that puts us to pain.
7. Use this as a punishment for thy sins ; and so God in-
tends it most commonly ; that is certain : if therefore thou
submittest to it, thou approvest of the Divine judgment : and
no man can have cause to complain of any thing but him-
self, if either he believes God to be just, or himself to be a
sinner ; if he either thinks, he hath deserved hell, or that this
little may be a means to prevent the greater, and bring him
to heaven.
8. It may be, that this may be the last instance and the
last opportunity, that ever God will give thee to exercise any
virtue, to do him any service, or thyself any advantage : be
careful, that thou losest not this ; for to eternal ages this never
shall return again.
9. Or if thou, peradventure, shalt be restored to health,
be careful, that, in the day of thy thanksgiving, thou mayest
not be ashamed of thyself, for having behaved thyself poorly
and weakly upon thy bed. It will be a sensible and excel-
lent comfort to thee, and double upon thy spirit, if, when
thou shalt worship God for restoring thee, thou shalt also
remember, that thou didst do him service in thy suffering,
and tell that God was hugely gracious to thee in giving thee
the opportunity of a virtue at so easy a rate as a sickness,
from which thou didst recover.
10. Few men are so sick, but they believe, that they may
recover ; and we shall seldom see a man lie down with a
perfect persuasion, that it is his last hour : for many men
have been sicker, and yet have recovered ; bat whether thou
dost or no, thou hast a virtue to exercise, which may be a
handmaid to thy patience. Epaphroditus was sick, sick unto
death ; and yet God had mercy upon him : and he hath done
so to thousands, to whom he found it useful in the great or-
der of things, and the events of universal providence. If,
therefore, thou desirest to recover, here is cause enough of
hope ; and hope is designed in the arts of God and of the
Spirit to support patience. But if thou recoverest not, yet
there is something, that is matter of joy naturally, and very
much spiritually, if thou belongest to God; and joy is as
certain a support to patience as hope : and it is no small
cause of being pleased, when we remember, that if we reco-
408 REMEDIES AGAINST IMPATIENCE.
v€r not, our sickness shall the sooner sit down in rest and
joy. For recovery by death, as it is easier and better than
the recovery by a sickly health, so it is not so long in doing:
it suffers not the tediousness of a creeping restitution, nor
the inconvenience of surgeons and physicians, watchfulness
and care, keepings in and suffering trouble, fears of relapse,
and the little relics of a storm.
11. While we hear, or use, or think of, these remedies,
part of the sickness is gone away, and all of it is passing.
And if, by such instruments, we stand armed and ready
dressed beforehand, we shall avoid the mischiefs of amaze-
ments and surprise"; while the accidents of sickness are
such as were expected, and against which we stood in readi-
ness, with our spirits contracted, instructed, and put upon
the defensive.
12. But our patience will be the better secured, if we
consider, that it is not violently tempted by the usual arrests
of sickness ; for patience is, with reason, demanded while
the sickness is tolerable, that is, so long as the evil is not
too great ; but if it be also eligible, and have in it some de-
grees of good, our patience will have in it the less difficulty
and the greater necessity. This, therefore, will be a new
stock of consideration : sickness is, in many degrees, eligible
to many men, and to many purposes.
SECTION VI.
Advantages of Sickness.
1. 1 CONSIDER, one of the greatest felicities of heaven con-
sists in an immunity from sin : then we shall love God with-
out mixtures of malice : then we shall enjoy without envy:
then we shall see fuller vessels running over with glory, and
crowned with bigger circles ; and this we shall behold with-
out spilling from our eyes (those vessels of joy and grief)
any sign of anger, trouble, or a repining spirit : our passions
shall be pure, our charity without fear, our desire without
"' Nulla mihi nova nunc facies inoplnave surgit :
Omnia pr^cepi atque aiiimo iiiccum ante peregi. — Virgil, lib. vi.
REMEDIES AGAINST IMPATIENCE. 409
lust, our possessions all our own ; and all in the inheritance
of Jesus, in the richest soil of God's eternal kingdom. Now
half of this reason, which makes heaven so happy by being
innocent, is also in the state of sickness, making the sor-
rows of old age smooth, and the groans of a sick heart apt
to be joined to the music of angels : and, though they sound
harsh to our untuned ears and discomposed organs ; yet
those accents must needs be in themselves excellent, which
God loves to hear, and esteems them as prayers, and argu-
ments of pity, instruments of mercy and grace, and prepara-
tives to glory.
In sickness, the soul begins to dress herself for immorta-
lity. And first, she unties the strings of vanity, that made
her upper garment cleave to the world and sit uneasy : first
she puts off the light and fantastic summer robe of lust and
wanton appetite : and as soon as that cestus, that lascivious
girdle, is thrown away, then the reins chasten us, and give
us warning in the night; then that, which called us formerly
to serve the manliness of the body, and the childishness of
the soul, keeps us waking, to divide the hours with the in-
tervals of prayer, and to number the minutes with our peni-
tential groans ; then the flesh sits uneasily and dwells in sor-
row ; 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, always dancing,
and always busy, and never sitting down, till a sad night of
grief and uneasiness draws the veil, and lets them die alone
in secret dishonour.
2. Next to this ; the soul by the help of sickness knocks
off the fetters of pride and vainer complacencies. Then she
draws the curtains, and stops the light from coming in, and
takes the pictures down, those fantastic images of self-love",
and gay remembrances of vain opinion, and popular noises.
Then the spirit stoops into the sobrieties of humble thoughts,
and feels corruption chiding the forwardness of fancy, and
allaying the vapours of conceit and factious opinions. For
humility is the soul's grave, into which she enters, not to die,
but to meditate and inter some of its troublesome appendages.
There she sees the dust, and feels the dishonours of the
" Nunc festinatos nitnium sibi sentit honores,
Aclaque lauriferDD damuat S^llaiia juventa;. — Lucan. lib. viji.
410 REMEDIES AGAIXST IMTATIENCE.
l)ody, and reads the register of all its sad adherences ; and
then she lays by all her vain reflections, beating upon her
crystal and pure mirror from the fancies of strength and
beauty, and little decayed prettinesses of the bodyi And
v.hen, in sickness, we forget all our knotty discourses of
philosophy, and a syllogism makes our head ache, and we
feel our many and loud talkings served no lasting end of
the soul, no purpose that now we must abide by, and that
the body is like to descend to the land, where all things are
forgotten ; then she lays aside all her remembrances of ap-
plauses, all her ignorant confidences, and cares only to know
" Christ Jesus and him crucified," to know him plainly, and
with much heartiness and simplicity. And I cannot think
this to be a contemptible advantage. For ever since man
tempted himself by his impatient desires of knowing, and
being as God, man thinks it the finest thing in the world to
know much, and therefore is hugely apt to esteem himself
better than his brethren, if he knows some little imperti-
nences, and them imperfectly, and that with infinite uncer-
tainty : but God hath been pleased, with a rare art, to pre-
vent the inconveniences apt to arise by this passionate long-
ing after knowledge ; even by giving to every man a suffi-
cient opinion of his own understanding : and who is there in
the world, that thinks himself to be a fool, or indeed not fit
to govern his brother ? There are but few men, but they think
they are wise enough, and every man believes his own opi-
nion the soundest; and, if it were otherwise, men would
burst themselves with envy, or else become irrecoverable
slaves to the talking and disputing man. But when God in-
tended this permission to be an antidote of envy, and a satis-
faction and allay to the troublesome appetites of knowing,
and made, that this universal opinion, by making men in
some proportions equal, should be a keeper out or a great
restraint to slavery and tyranny respectively ; man (for so he
uses to do) hath turned this into bitterness : for when nature
had made so just a distribution of understanding, that every
man might think he had enough, he is not content with that,
but will think, he hath more than his brother : and whereas
it might well be employed in restraining slavery, he hath
used it to break off the bands of all obedience, and it ends
in pride and schisms, in heresies and tyrannies; and it being
llhMKDlES AGAIXST IMPATIENCE. 411
a spiritual evil, it grows upon the soul with old age and flat-
tery, with health and the supports of a prosperous fortune.
Now, besides the direct operations of the Spirit, and a pow-
erful grace, there is, in nature, left to us no remedy for this
evil, but a sharp sickness, or an equal sorrow, and allay of
fortune : and then we are humble enouoh to ask counsel of
a despised priest, and to think, that even a common sentence,
from the mouth of an appointed comforter, streams forth
more refreshment than all our own wiser and more reputed
discourses: then our understandings and our bodies", peep-
ing through their own breaches, see their shame and tlieir
dishonour, their dangerous follies and their huge deceptions ;
and they go into the clefts of the rock, and every little hand
may cover them.
3. Next to these, as the soul is still undressing, she takes
off the roughness of her great and little angers and animo-
sities, and receives the oil of mercies and smooth forgiveness,
fair interpretations and gentle answers, designs of reconcile-
ment and Christian atonement in their places. For so did
the wrestlers in Olympus, they stripped themselves of all
their garments, and then anointed their naked bodies with
oil, smooth and vigorous ; with contracted nerves and en-
larged voice they contended vehemently, till they obtained
their victoiy, or their ease ; and a crown of olive, or a huge
pity, was the reward of their fierce contentions. Some wise
men have said, that anger sticks to a man's nature as inse-
parably!', as other vices do to the manners of fools, and that
anger is never quite cured : but God, that hath found out
remedies for all diseases, hath so ordered the circumstances
of man, that, in the worser sort of men, anger and great in-
dignation consume and shrivel into little peevishnesses and
uneasy accents of sickness, and spend themselves in trifling-
instances ; and, in the better and more sanctified, it o-oes oft'
in prayers, and alms, and solemn reconcilement. And how-
ever the temptations of this state, such I mean, which are
proper to it, are little and inconsiderable ; the man is apt to
o — Ubi jam validis qaassatnm estviribus aevi
Corpus, et obdisis cecideriint vivibus artus,
Claadicat ingcniam, delirat linguaque mensqiie.- — Lncr. 1. iii.
P Quatenus excidi penitns vitiuin ii;r,
Caetera item nequcuat stulus hvureniia ILf. lib. i. sat. 3.
412 REMEDIES AGAINST IMPATIENCE.
chide a servant too bitterly, and to be discontented with his
nurse, or not satisfied with his physician, and he rests un-
easily, and (poor man !) nothing can please him : and indeed
these little indecencies must be cured and stopped, lest they
run into an inconvenience. But sickness is, in this particular,
a little image of the state of blessed souls, or of Adam's
early morning in paradise, free from the troubles of lust, and
violences of anger, and the intricacies of ambition, or the
restlessness of covetousness. For though a man may carry
all these along with him into his sickness, yet there he will
not find them ; and in despite of all his own malice, his
soul shall find some rest from labouring in the galleys, and
baser captivity of sin : and if we value those moments of
being in the love of God and in the kingdom of grace, which
certainly are the beginnings of felicity, we may also remem-
ber, that the not sinning actually is one step of innocence;
and therefore that state is not intolerable, which, by a sen-
sible trouble, makes it in most instances impossible to com-
mit those great sins, which make death, hell, and horrid
damnations. And then let us but add this to it, that God
sends sicknesses, but he never causes sin ; that God is angry
with a sinning person, but never with a man for being sick ;
that sin causes God to hate us, and sickness causes him to
pity us ; that all wise men in the world choose trouble rather
than dishonour, affliction rather than baseness ; and that
sickness stops the torrent of sin, and interrupts its violence,
and even to the worst men makes it to retreat many degrees.
We may reckon sickness amongst good things, as we reckon
rhubarb, and aloes, and child-birth, and labour, and obedi-
ence, and discipline : these are unpleasant, and yet safe ;
they are troubles in order to blessings, or they are securi-
ties from danger, or the hard choices of a less and a more
tolerable evil.
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 the grace
of faith, that it is the life of just men, the restitution of the
dead in trespasses and sins, the justification of a sinner, the
1 Nolo quod oupio statim tenere.
Nee victoria mi placet parala. — Petron,
REMEDIES AGAINST IMPATIENCE. 413
support of the weak, the confidence of the strong, the ma-
gazine of promises, and the title to very glorious rewards ;
we may easily imagine, that it must have in it a work and a
difficulty, in some proportion answerable to so great effects.
But when we are bidden to believe strange propositions, we
are put upon it, when we cannot judge, and those proposi-
tions have possessed our discerning faculties, and have made
a party there, and are become domestic, before they come to
be disputed ; and then the articles of faith are so few, and
are made so credible, and, in their event and in their object,
are so useful and gaining upon the affections, that he were a
prodigy of man, and would be so esteemed, that should, in
all our present circumstances, disbelieve any point of faith :
and all is well as long as the sun shines, and the fair breath
of heaven gently wafts us to our own purposes. But if you
will try the excellency, and feel the work of faith, place the
man in a persecution, let him ride in a storm, let his bones
be broken with sorrow, and his eyelids loosened with sick-
ness, let his bread be dipped in tears, and all the daugh-
ters of music be brought low ; let God commence a quarrel
against him, and be bitter in the accents of his anger or his
discipline ; then God tries your faith. Can you then trust
his goodness ; and believe him to be a father, when you
groan under his rod ? Can you rely upon all the strange pro-
positions of Scripture, and be content to perish, if they be
not true ? Can you receive comfort in the discourses of
death and heaven, of immortality and the resurrection, of
the death of Christ and conforming; to his sufferino-s ? Truth
is, there are but two great periods, in which faith demon-
strates itself to be a powerful and mighty grace : and they
are persecution and the approaches of death, for the passive
part: and a temptation, for the active. In the days of
pleasure and the night of pain, faith is to fight her agouis-
ticon, to contend for mastery : and faith overcomes all al-
luring and fond temptations to sin, and faith overcomes all
our weaknesses and faintings in our troubles. By the faith
of the promises, we learn to despise the world, choosing
those objects which faith discovers ; and, by expectation of
the same promises, we are comforted in all our sorrows, and
enabled to look through and see beyond the cloud : but the
vigour of it is pressed and called forth, when all our fine dis-
414 REMEDIES AGAINST IMPATIENCE.
courses come to be reduced to practice. For in our health
and clearer days it is easy to talk of putting trust in God' ;
we readily trust him for life, when we are in health; for pro-
visions, when we have fair revenues ; and for deliverance,
when we are newly escaped : but let us come to sit upon the
margent of our grave, and let a tyrant lean hard upon our
fortunes, and dwell upon our wrong, let the storm arise, and
the keels toss till the cordage crack, or that all our hopes
bulo-e under us, and descend into the hollowness of sad mis-
fortunes ; then can you believe, when you 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 abides but to the end of the con-
tention, we may see the v/ork of faith, which God will hugely
crown. The same I say of hope, and of charity, or the love
of God, and of patience, which is a grace produced from the
mixtures of all these : they are virtues, which are greedy of
danger, and no man was ever honoured by any wise or dis-
cerning person for dining upon Persian carpets, nor rewarded
with a crown for being at ease^ It was the fire, that did
honour to Mutius Scaevola ; poverty made Fabricius famous ;
Rutilius was made excellent by banishment; Ilegulus by
torments ; Socrates by prison ; Cato by his death : and God
hath crowned the memory of Job with a wreath of glory,
because he sat upon his dunghill wisely and temperately ;
and his potsherd and his groans, mingled with praises and
justifications of God, pleased him like an anthem, sung by
angels in the morninp- of the resurrection. God could not
choose but be pleased with the delicious accents of martyrs,
when in their tortures they cried out nothing but " Holy
Jesus" and " Blessed be God ;" and they also themselves,
who, with a hearty designation to the Divine pleasure, can
delight in God's severe dispensation, will have the transpor-
tations of cherubim, when they enter into the joys of God.
■■ Mors ipsa beatior ind6 est,
Qiiod per crncianiina lellii
Via paiiditur ardua jiistis,
£t ad astra doloribus itur.
Prud. hymji. in Exeq. defunct.
• Virtutes avldae pericnli inoustrant, quam non iiosniteat tanlo pretio seslimasse
virtutem. — Senec. Non enim liilaritate, nee lascivia, nee risu, ant joco coniite levi-
tatis, sed saepe etiam tiisles firmitate et constanti^ sunt beati. — Cic. de Fin. 1. xxii.
REMEDIES AGAINST IMPATIENCE. 415
If God be delicious to his servants, when he smites them,
he will be nothing but ravishments and ecstasies to their
spirits, when he refreshes them with the overflowings of joy
in the day of recompences. No man is more miserable, than
he that hath no adversity ; that man is not tried', whether
he be good or bad : and God never crowns those virtues,
which are only faculties and dispositions : but every act of
virtue is an ingredient into reward. And we see many chil-
dren fairly planted, whose parts of nature were never dressed
by art, nor called from the furrows of their first possibilities
by discipline and institution, and they dwell for ever in igno-
rance, and converse with beasts; and yet, if they had been
dressed and exercised, might have stood at the chairs of
princes, or spoken parables amongst the rulers of cities. Our
virtues are but in the seed, when the grace of God comes
upon us first : but this grace must be thrown into broken
furrows, and must twice feel the cold, and twice feel the
heat", and be softened with storms and showers, and then it
wall arise into fruitfulness and harvests. And what is there
in the world to distinguish virtues from dishonours, or the
valour of Csssar from the softness of the Egyptian eunuchs,
or that can make any thing rewardable, but the labour and
the danger, the pain and the difficulty ? Virtue could not be
any thing but sensuality, if it were the entertainment of our
senses and fond desires ; and Apicius had been the noblest
of all the Romans, if feeding a great appetite and despising
the severities of temperance had been the work and proper
employment of a wise man. But otherwise do fathers, and
otherwise do mothers handle their children. These soften
them with kisses and imperfect noises, with the pap and
breast-milk of soft endearments ; they rescue them from tu-
tors, and snatch them from discipline ; they desire to keep
them fat and warai^', and their feet dry, and their bellies full;
and then the children govern, and cry, and prove fools and
troublesome, so long as the feminine republic does endure.
' Nihil infelicius eo cui nihil unquain contigit adversi. Noq licuit illi se expe-
riri. — Seneca.
" Ilia seges votls respundet avari
Agricolffi, bis quaa solera, bis fiigora sensit. — Virg. Georg. 1.
'*' Languent per inertiara saginata, nee labora tantum, sed mole el ipso sui onece
deficiunt. — Seneca.
VOL. IV. 2 R
416 REMEDIES AGAINST IMPATIEXCE.
But fathers, because they design to have tlieir cliildren wise
and valiant, apt for counsel or for arms, send them to severe
governments''', and tie them to study, to hard labour, and af-
flictive contingencies. They rejoice, vi'hen the bold boy strikes
a lion with his hunting spear, and shrinks not when the beast
comes to affright his early courage. Softness is for slaves
and beasts", for minstrels and useless persons, for such who
cannot ascend higher than the state of a fair ox, or a servant
entertained for vainer offices : but the man, that designs his
son for noble employments, to honours and to triumphs, to
consular dignities and presidencies of councils, loves to see
him pale with study, or panting with labour, hardened with
sufferance, or eminent by dangers. And so God dresses us
for heaven. He loves to see us struggling with a disease,
and resisting the devil, and contesting against the weak-
nesses of nature, and against hope to believe in hope, resign-
ing ourselves to God's will, praying him to choose for us,
and dying in all things but faith and its blessed consequences;
ut ad ojficium cum periculo simus prompti; and the danger and
the resistance shall endear the office. For so have I known
the boisterous north wind pass through the yielding air^',
which opened its bosom, and appeased its violence by en-
tertaining it with easy compliance in all the regions of its re-
ception : but when the same breath of heaven hath been
checked with the stiffness of a tower, or the united strength
of wood, it grew mighty, and dwelt there, and made the
highest branches stoop, and make a smooth path for it on
the top of all its glories. So is sickness, and so is the grace
of God : when sickness hath made the difficulty, then God's
grace hath made a triumph, and by doubling its power hath
created new proportions of a reward; and then shews its
biggest glory % when it hath the greatest difficulty to master,
the greatest weaknesses to support, the most busy tempta-
tions to contest with ; for so God loves, that his strength
should be seen in our weakness and our danger. Happy is
* Callum per injurias dacant;
Ut sit luminis atque aqusc ccelestis patiens latus.
" Modestia filioriim delectantur ; vernularum liceutia et canum, non pueroruiu.
y Ventus nt amittit vires, nisi roborc ilensae
Occurrunt sylvae, spatio ditTusus inaiii. — Lucan.
» Marcet sine adversario virtus.
REMF.DIES AllAINST IMPATIEXCE. 417
that state of life, in which our services to God are the dearest
and the most expensive ^
5. Sickness hath some degrees of eligibility, at least by
an after-choice ; because to all persons, which are within
the .possibilities and state of pardon, it becomes a great in-
strument of pardon of sins. For as God seldom rewards
here and hereafter too; so it is not very often, that he
punishes in both states. In great and final sins, he doth so ;
but we find it expressed only in the case of the sin against
the Holy Ghost, " which shall never be forgiven in this
world, nor in the world to come," that is, it shall be punished
in both worlds, and the infelicities of this world shall but
usher in the intolerable calamities of the next. But this is
in a case of extremity, and in sins of an unpardonable ma-
lice : in those lesser stages of death, which are deviations
from the rule, and not a destruction and perfect antinomy to
the whole institution, God very often smites with his rod of
sickness, that he may not for ever be slaying the soul with
eternal death. " I will visit their offences with the rod, and
their sin with scourges : nevertheless my loving-kindness will
I not utterly take from him, nor suffer my truth to faiP."
And there is, in the New Testament, a delivering over to
Satan% and a consequent bufietting, for the mortification of
the flesh indeed, but that the soul may be saved in the day
of the Lord. And to some persons the utmost process of
God's anger reaches but to a sharp sickness, or at most but
to a temporal death ; and then the little momentary anger is
spent, and expires in rest and a quiet grave. Origen, St.
Augustine, and Cassian, say, concerning Ananias and Sap-
phira*^, that they were slain with a sudden death, that by
such a judgment their sin might be punished, and their guilt
expiated, and their persons reserved for mercy in the day of
judgment. And God cuts off" many of his children froiri the
land of the living ; and yet, when they are numbered amongst
the dead, he finds them in the book of life, written amongst
those that shall live to him for ever. And thus it happened
" Laetius est, quolies magno tibi constat honestum. *> Psal. Ixxxix. 32, 33.
<= 1 Cor. V. 5. 1 Tim. i. 20.
*• Digni eranl in hoc seculo recijiere peccatum suum, ut nnindiores exeanl ab Uac
vita, inundati casligatione sibi illata, per mortem corainuiiem, tjuoniam credentes
«runl in Christum. — Origen, St. Atignst. I. iii. c. 1. roiitr. Parmen et Cassian. collat,
vi. c. 11.
2 E 2
418 REMEDIES AGAINST IMPATIENCE,
to many new Christians, in the church of Corinth, for their
little indecencies and disorders in the circumstances of re-
ceiving the holy sacrament. St. Paul says, that " many
amongst them were sick, many were weak, and some were
fallen asleep^." He expresses the Divine anger against
those persons in no louder accents ; which is according to
the style of the New Testament, where all the great trans-
actions of duty and reproof are generally made upon the
stock of heaven, and hell is plainly a reserve, and a period
set to the declaration of God's wrath. For God knows, that
the torments of hell are so horrid, so insupportable a cala-
mity, that he is not easy and apt to cast those souls, which
he hath taken so much care, and hath been at so much
expense to save, into the eternal never-dying flames of hell,
lightly, for smaller sins, or after a fairly-begun repentance,
and in the midst of holy desires to finish it ; but God takes
such penalties, and exacts such fines of us, which we may
pay salvo contenemento, saving the main stake of all, even our
precious souls. And therefore St. Augustine prayed to
God in his penitential sorrows, " Here, O Lord, burn and
cut my flesh, that thou mayest spare me for ever." For so
said our blessed Saviour, " Every sacrifice must be seasoned
with salt, and every sacrifice must be burnt with fire:" that
is, we must abide in the state of grace ; and, if we have com-
mitted sins, we must expect to be put into the state of af-
fliction ; and yet the sacrifice will send up a right, and un-
troubled cloud, and a sweet smell to join with the incense of
the altar, where the eternal priest oflers a never-ceasing sa-
crifice. And now I have said a thing, against which there
can be no exceptions, and of which no just reason can make
abatement. For when sickness, which is the condition of
our nature, is called for with purposes of redemption; when
we are sent to death to secure eternal life ; when God strikes
us, that he may spare us, it shews, that we have done things,
which he essentially hates ; and therefore we must be smitten
with the rod of God : but, in the midst of judgment, God
remembers mercy, and makes the rod to be medicinal, and,
like the rod of God in the hand of Aaron, to shoot forth buds
and leaves, and almonds, hopes and mercies, and eternal re-
compences, in the day of restitution. This is so great a
e 1 Cor. xi. 30.
REMEDIES AGAINST IMPATIENCE. 419
good to US, if it be well conducted in all the channels of its
intention and design, that if we had put off the objections of
the flesh, with abstractions, contempts, and separations, so
as we ought to do, it were as earnestly to be prayed for as
any gay blessing, that crowns our cups with joy, and our
heads with garlands and forgetfulness. But this was it
which I said, that this may, nay, that it ought to be chosen,
at least by an after-election: for so said St. Paul, " If we
judge ourselves, we shall not be condemned of the Lord :"
that is, if we judge ourselves worthy of the sickness, if we
acknowledge and confess God's justice in smiting us, if we
take the rod of God in our own hands, and are willing to im-
print it in the flesh, we are workers together with God in the
infliction ; and then the sickness, beginning and being ma-
naged in the virtue of repentance, and patience, and resigna-
tion, and charity, will end in peace, and pardon, and justifi-
cation, and consignation to glory. That I have spoken
truth, I have brought God's Spirit speaking in Scripture for
a witness. But if this be true, there are not many states of
life that have advantages, which can outweioh. this o-reat in-
strument of security to our final condition. Moses died at
the mouth of the Lord, said the story ; he died with the
kisses of the Lord's mouth "^ (so the Chaldee paraphrase) : it
was the greatest act of kindness that God did to his servant
Moses ; he kissed him, and he died. But I have some things
to observe for the better finishing this consideration.
1. All these advantages and lessenings of evils in the
state of sickness are only upon the stock of virtue and reli-
gion. Tliere is nothing can make sickness in any sense eli-
gible, or in many senses tolerable, but only the grace of
God": that only turns sickness into easiness and felicity,
which also turns it into virtue. For whosoever goes about
to comfort a vicious person, when he lies sick upon his bed,
can only discourse of the necessities of nature, of the un-
avoidableness of the suft'ering, of the accidental vexations and
f Dent, xxxiv. 5.
5 llaic L'lenienlia non paratur arte : sed nornnt cui serviunt lecne,s.
Si latus aut runes niorbo teiitentur aculo,
Quaere fugaiii raorbi. Vis recte vivere? quis non ?
Si virtus Iioc una potest dare, fortis omissis
Hoc age deliciis Ilorat. 1, i. ep. 6.
420 REMEDIES AGAINST IMPATIENCE.
increase of torments by impatience, of the fellowship of ail
th.^ sons of Adam, and such other little considerations; which
indeed, if sadly reflected upon, and found to stand alone,
teach him nothing but the degree of his calamity, and the
evil of his condition, and teach him such a patience, and mi-
nister to him such a comfort, which can only make him to
observe decent gestures in his sickness, and to converse with
his friends and standers-by so as may do them comfort, and
ease their funeral and civil complaints ; but do him no true
advantage : for, all that may be spoken to a beast when he
is crowned with hair-laces, and bound with fillets to the altar,
to bleed to death to appease the anger of the Deity, and to
ease the burden of his relatives. And indeed what comfort
can he receive, whose sickness, as it looks back, is an effect
of God's indignation and fierce vengeance, and if it goes for-
ward and enters into the gates of the grave, is the beginning
of a sorrow, that shall never have an ending ? But when the
sickness is a messenger sent from a chastising father ; when
it first turns into degrees of innocence, and then into virtues,
and thence into pardon ; this is no misery, but such a method
of the Divine economy and dispensation as resolves to bring
us to heaven without any new impositions, but merely upon
the stock and charges of nature.
2. Let it be observed, that these advantages, which spring
from sickness, are not in all instances of virtue, nor to all per-
sons. Sickness is the proper scene for patience and resigna-
tion, for all the passive graces of a Christian, for faith and
hope, and for some single acts of the love of God. But sick-
ness is not a fit station for a penitent ; and it can serve the
ends of the grace of repentance but accidentally. Sickness
may begin a repentance*^, if God continues life, and if we co-
operate with the Divine grace ; or sickness may help to alle-
viate the wrath of God, and to facilitate the pardon, if all the
other parts of this duty be performed in our healthful state ;
so that it may serve at the entrance in, or at the going out.
But sickness, at no hand, is a good stage to represent all the
substantial parts of this duty. I. It invites to it; 2. It makes
it appear necessary ; 3. It takes olf the fancies of vanity ;
4. It attempers the spirit; 5. It cures hypocrisy ; 6. It tames
the fumes of pride ; 7. It is the school of patience ; 8. And
'' Nee tamcn putaveiant ad rem pertinere, ubi inciperent, quod placuerat ut fieicl.
REMEDIES AGAIXST I IMPATIENCE. 421
by taking us from off the brisker relishes of the world, it
makes us with more gust to taste the things of the Spirit;
and all this, only when God fits the circumstances of the
sickness so as to consist with acts of reason, consideration,
choice, and a present and reflecting mind ; which then God
sends, when he means that the sickness of the body should
be the cure of the soul. But let no man so rely upon it as
by design, to trust the beginning, the progress, and the con-
summation, of our piety to such an estate, which for ever
leaves it imperfect : and though to some persons it adds de-
grees, and ministers opportunities, and exercises single acts
with great advantage, in passive graces; yet it is never an
entire or sufficient instrument for the change of our condi-
tion from the state of death to the liberty and life of the sons
of God.
3. It were good, if we would transact the affairs of our
souls with nobleness and ingenuity, and that we would, by
an early and forward religion, prevent the necessary arts of
the Divine providence. It is true, that God cures some by
incision, by fire and torments ; but these are ever the more
obstinate and more unrelenting natures. God's providence
is not so afflictive and full of trouble', as that it hath placed
sickness and infirmity amongst things simply necessary ;
and, in most persons, it is but a sickly and an effeminate vir-
tue, which is imprinted upon our spirits with fears, and the
sorrows of a fever, or a peevish consumption. It is but a
miserable remedy to be beholden to a sickness for our health :
and though it be better to suffer the loss of a finger, than
that the arm and the whole body should putrefy : yet even
then also it is a trouble and an evil to lose a finger. He that
mends with sickness, pares the nails of the beast, when they
have already torn oft' part of the flesh : but he that would
have a sickness become a clear and an entire blessing, a thing
indeed to be reckoned among the good things of God, and
the evil things of the world, must lead a holy life, and judge
himself with an early sentence, and so order the affairs of his
soul, that, in the usual method of God's saving us, there may
be nothing left to be done, but that such virtues should be
exercised, which God intends to crown : and then, as when
' Nerjue laiu aversa unquam vidcl)ilur ab opere suo piovidentia, ut debiiitas iiilei
optima inveiita sit.
422 REMEDIES AGAINST IMPATIENCE.
the Athenians upon a day of battle with longing and un-
certain souls sitting in their common-hall, expecting what
would be the sentence of the day, at last received a mes-
senger, who only had breath enough left him to say, "We are
conquerors," and so died ; so shall the sick person, who hath
" fought a good fight and kept the faith," and only waits for
his dissolution and his sentence, breathe forth his spirit with
the accents of a conqueror, and his sickness and his death
shall only make the mercy and the virtue more illustrious.
But for the sickness itself; if all the calumnies were true
concerning it, with which it is aspersed, yet it is far to be
preferred before the most pleasant sin, and before a great
secular business and a temporal care : and some men wake
as much in the foldings of the softest beds, as others on the
cross : and sometimes the very weight of sorrow and the
weariness of a sickness press the spirit into slumbers and
the images of rest, when the intemperate or the lustful per-
son rolls upon his uneasy thorns, and sleep is departed from
his eyes. Certain it is, some sickness is a blessing. Indeed,
blindness were a most accursed thing ^, if no man were ever
blind, but he, whose eyes were pulled out with tortures or
burning basins : and if sickness were always a testimony of
God's anger, and a violence to a man's whole condition, then
it were a huge calamity : but because God sends it to his
servants, to his children, to little infants, to apostles and
saints, with designs of mercy, to preserve their innocence, to
overcome temptation, to try their virtue, to fit them for re-
wards ; it is certain that sickness never is an evil but by our
own faults ; and if we will do our duty, we shall be sure to
turn it into a blessing. If the sickness be great, it may end
in death, and the greater it is', the sooner : and if it be very
little, it hath great intervals of rest : if it be between both,
we may be masters of it, and by serving the ends of Provi-
dence serve also the perfective end of human nature, and
enter into the possession of everlasting mercies.
The sum is this : He that is afraid of pain, is afraid of his
own nature ; and if his fear be violent, it is a sign, his pati-
ence is none at all ; and an impatient person is not ready-
'' Detestabilis eiil caccilas, si nemo oculos perdiclerit, nisi cui evuendi sunt.
' Mciuineris ergo maximos dolorcs moite finiri, paivos habere multa intervulla re-
<]uielis, inediocrium nos esse dominos. — Cicero,
REMEDIES AGAINST FEAR OF DEATH. 423
dressed for heaven. None but suffering, humble, and pa-
tient persons can go to heaven ; and when God hath given
us the whole stasre of our life to exercise all the active virtues
of religion, it is necessary in the state of virtues, that some
portion and period of our lives be assigned to passive graces;
for patience, for Christian fortitude, for resignation, or con-
formity to the Divine will. But as the violent fear of sick-
ness makes us impatient, so it will make our death without
comfort and without religion; and we shall go off from our
stao-e of actions and sufferings with an unhandsome exit,
because we were willino; to receive the kindness of God,
when he expressed it as we listed ; but we would not suffer
him to be kind and gracious to us in his own method, nor
were willing to exercise and improve our virtues at the charge
of a sharp fever, or a lingering consumption. "Woe be to
the man, that hath lost patience ; for what will he do, when
the Lord sliall visit him'"?"
SECTION VIT.
The second temptation proper to the state of Sickness, Fear of
Death, with its Remedies.
There is nothing, which can make sickness unsanc-
tified, but the same also will give us cause to fear death.
If, therefore, we so order our aifairs and spirits that we do
not fear death, our sickness may easily become our advan-
tage ; and we can then receive counsel, and consider, and
do those acts of virtue, which are, in that state, the pro-
per services of God ; and such which men in bondage and
fear are not capable of doing, or of advices how they should,
when they come to the appointed days of mourning. And
indeed, if men would but place their design of being happy
in the nobleness, courage, and perfect resolutions, of doino-
handsome things, and passing through our unavoidable ne-
cessities, in the contempt and despite of the things of this
world, and in holy living, and the perfective desires of our
natures, the longings and pursuances after heaven ; it is
'" Ecclus. ii. 15.
424 REMEDIES AGAINST FEAR OF DEATH.
certain, they could not be made miserable by chance and
change, by sickness and death. But we are so softened, and
made effeminate with delicate thoughts, and meditations of
ease, and brutish satisfactions, that, if our death come, be-
fore we have seized upon a great fortune, or enjoy the pro-
mises of the fortune-tellers, we esteem ourselves to be robbed
of our goods, to be mocked, and miserable. Hence it comes,
that men are impatient of the thoughts of death : hence
come those arts of protraction and delaying the significa-
tions of old age : thinking to deceive the world, men cozen
themselves", and by representing themselves youthful, they
certainly continue their vanity, till Proserpina pull the pe-
ruke from their heads. We cannot deceive God and nature :
for a coffin is a coffin, thougli it be covered with a pompous
veil ; and the minutes of our time strike on, and are counted
by angels, till the period comes, which must cause the pass-
ing-bell to give warning to all the neighbours, that thou art
dead, and they must be so : and nothing can excuse or re-
tard this. And if our death could be put off a little longer,
what advantage can it be, in thy accounts of nature or feli-
city ? They that, three hundred years agone, died unwillingly,
and stopped death two days, or stayed it a week, what is their
gain ? where is that week ? And poor-spirited men use
arts of protraction", and make their persons pitiable, but
their condition contemptible ; being like the poor sinners
at Noah's flood : the waters drove them out of their lower
rooms; then they crept up to the roof, having lasted half a
day longer, and then they knew not how to get down : some
crept upon the top-branch of a tree, and some climbed up
to a mountain, and stayed, it may be, three days longer ; but
all that while they endured a worse torment than death : they
" Mentirls jiivcnem tinctis, Lcniine, capillis,
Tatii suliito corvus, tjui iiiodo cygnus eras.
Noil oinnes fallis, scit te Pro.surpiiiii caiium ;
Personam capiti deliahet ilia tuo. — Mart. 1, iii. cp. 43.
" Audet iter, iiunieratquc dies, spati6(]uc viaruin
RIelitur vitani, torquelur iiioric fuluia.
Ti yu-^ BfOTuiv av ov Kan'jig fx2(Aiyy.iV0]/ ;
GnaKitv 0 fiiKKciiv tsu ^^ovou iii^^o; <^ipoi, — Sojili.
Nihil est miserius dubilutionc volutaiitium ipiorsuin cvadant, quantum sit illtul
(jiiod rcslat, aul quale— &ie«(. 1, xvii. ep. 102.
REMEDIES AGAINST FEAR OF DEATH. 425
lived with amazement, and were distracted with the ruins
of mankind, and the horror of a universal deluge.
Remedies against the Fear of Death, by way of consideration.
1 . God having in this world placed us in a sea, and trou-
bled the sea with a continual storm, hath appointed the
church for a ship, and religion to be the stern ; but there is
no haven or port but death. Death is that harbour, whither
God hath designed every one, that there he may find rest
from the troubles of the world. How many of the noblest
Romans have taken death for sanctuary, and have esteemed
it less than shame or a mean dishonour? and Caesar was
cruel to Domitius, captain of Corfinium, when he had taken
the town from him, that he refused to sign his petition of
death. Death would have hid his head with honour, but
that cruel mercy reserved him to the shame of surviving his
disgrace P. The holy Scripture, giving an account of the rea-
sons of the Divine providence taking godly men from this
world, and shutting them up in a hasty grave, says, " that
they are taken from the evils to come ;" and concerning our-
selves it is certain, if we had ten years agone taken seizure of
our portion of dust, death had not taken us from good things,
but from infinite evils, such which the sun hath seldom seen.
Did not Priamus weep oftener than Troilus''? and happy
had he been, if he had died, when his sons were livino-, and
his kingdom safe, and houses full, and his city unburnt. It
was a long life that made him miserable, and an early death
only could have secured his fortune. And it hath luippened
many times, that persons of a fair life and a clear reputation,
of a good fortune and an honourable name, have been tempt-
ed in their age to folly and vanity"", have fallen under the
disgrace of dotage, or into an unfortunate marriage, or have
besotted themselves with drinking, or outlived their for-
P Hen, quanto melius vel ca;dc pera: tA
Parcere Runiauo poluit foi-liiua puiloil ! — Lucanus.
1 IJo-'c omnia vidit inilamiuuri, Jovis aiain .sanguine turpari.
•' Sic longiusasvum
Deslruit iugentt'saninios, et vita .supeistcs
Iraperiu ; iii>ii sumnia dies cum line bonorum
Adfuit, ct ccleri pr;evertit trislia Icto,
Dcdecnri rst fortiina prior. — Lucan. lib. viii. 30.
426 REMEDIES AGAINST FEAR OF DEATH.
tunes, or become tedious to their friends, or are afflicted
with lino-erins: and vexatious diseases, or lived to see their
excellent parts buried, and cannot understand the wise dis-
courses and productions of their younger years. In all these
cases, and infinite more, do not all the world say, that it had
been better, this man had died sooner ^'' But so have I
known passionate women to shriek aloud, when their near-
est relatives were dying, and that horrid shriek hath stayed
the spirit of the man awhile to wonder at the folly, and re-
present the inconvenience; and the dying person hath lived
one day longer full of pain, amazed with an indeterminate
spirit, distorted with convulsions, and only come again to
act one scene more of a new calamity, and to die with less
decency. So also do very many men ; vv'ith passion and a
troubled interest they strive to continue their life longer ;
and, it may be, they escape this sickness, and live to fall into
a disgrace : they escape the storm, and fall into the hands
of pirates ; and, instead of dying with liberty, they live
like slaves, miserable and despised, servants to a little time,
and sottish admirers of the breath of their own lungs. Pau-
lus iEmilius did handsomely reprove the cowardice of the
King of Macedon, who begged of him, for pity's sake and
humanity, that having conquered him and taken his king-
dom from him, he would be content with that, and not lead
him in triumph a prisoner to Rome. iEmilius told him, he
need not be beholden to him for that ; himself might pre-
vent that in despite of him. But the timorous king durst
not die. But certainly every wise man will easily believe,
that it had been better the Macedonian kings should have
died in battle, than protract their life so long, till some of
them came to be scriveners and joiners at Rome: or that
the tyrant of Sicily better had perished in the Adriatic, than
to be wafted to Corinth safely, and there turn schoolmaster.
It is a sad calamity, that the fear of death shall so imbecile
man's courage and understanding, that he dares not suffer
the remedy of all his calamities ; but that he lives to say as
Laberius did, " I have lived this one day longer than I
should'." Either, therefore, let us be willing to die, when
*• Murs illi melius <juam lu consuluit qiiideni. — quisqunin nc tit'cuiuUs Tradere se
falls andct nisi iiiorlu |iar;ila ? — Iah\ 1. viii.
' Niiuiriim hac die una plus vixi, iiiilii queii!! vivciiditm full.
REMEDIES AGAINST FEAR OF DEATH. 427
God calls, or let us never more complain of the calamities
of our life, which we feel so sharp and numerous. And when
God sends his ang-el to us with the scroll of death, let us
look on it as an act of mercy, to prevent many sins and
many calamities of a longer life, and lay our heads down
softly, and go to sleep without wrangling like babies and
froward children. For a man (at least) gets this by death,
that his calamities are not immortal".
But I do not only consider death by the advantages of
comparison ; but if we look on it in itself, it is no such for-
midable thing, if we view it on both sides and handle it, and
consider all its appendages.
2. It is necessary, and therefore not intolerable : and
nothing is to be esteem.ed evil, which God and nature have
fixed with eternal sanctions^'. It is a law of God, it is a
punishment of our sins, and it is the constitution of our
nature. Two differing substances were joined together with
the breath of God'"', and when that breath is taken away,
they part asunder, and return to their several principles ;
the soul to God our father, the body to the earth our mother:
and what in all this is evil ? Surely nothing, but that we are
men ; nothing, but that we were not born immortal : but by
declining this change with great passion, or receiving it with
a huge natural fear, we accuse the Divine Providence of
tyranny, and exclaim against our natural constitution, and
are discontent, that we are men.
3. It is a thing, that is no great matter in itself; if we
consider, that we die daily, that it meets us in every accident,
that every creature carries a dart along- with it, and can kill
us. And therefore when Lysimachus threatened Theodorus
to kill him, he told him, that was no great matter to do, and
he could do no more than the cantharides could : a little fly
could do as much.
4. It is a thing, that every one suffers'', even persons of
the lowest resolution, of the meanest virtue, of no breeding, ;
" Hoc homo raorte lucratur, ne malum esset iminorlale. — Xuz.
^ Nihil ia iiialis ducaiuus, quod sit a Diis immortalibus vel a. Natura parente om-
nium, constituluin.
" Coiicretum fuit, discretnm est; rediilque unde veuernt; terra deorsuni, spiritus
sursum. Quid ex his omnibus iniquam est? nihil. — EpicJiar. '
^ Nalura dedit usuram \\lx tanquara pecuuiae; quid est ergo quod querare, si
repetal cum vult? eadem euim lege acceperas. — Seneca.
428 REMEDIES AOATXST FEAR OF DEATH.
of no discourse. Take away but the pomps of death, the
disguises and solemn bugbears, the tinsel, and the actings
by candle-light, and proper and fantastic ceremonies, the
minstrels and the noise- makers, the women and the weepers,
the swoonings and the shriekings, the nurses and the phy-
sicians, the dark room and the ministers, the kindred and
the watchers ; and then to die is easy, ready and quitted
from its troublesome circumstances. It is the same harm-
less thing, that a poor shepherd suffered yesterday, or a
maid-servant to-day; and at the same time in which you
die, in that very night a thousand creatures die with you^,
some wise men, and many fools ; and the wisdom of the first
will not quit him, and the folly of the latter does not make
him unable to die.
5. Of all the evils of the world which are reproached with
an evil character, death is the most innocent of its accusa-
tion. For when it is present, it hurts nobody^; and when
it is absent, it is indeed troublesome, but the trouble is
owing to our fears, not to the affrighting and mistaken ob-
ject : and besides this, if it were an evil, it is so transient,
that it passes like the instant or undiscerned portion of the
present time ; and either it is past, or it is not yet''; for just
when it is, no man hath reason to complain of so insensible,
so sudden, so undiscerned a change.
6. It is so harmless a thing, that no good man was ever
thouo-ht 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 among the wisest
Romans think them unhappy ? And when St. Paul fell under
the sword of Nero, and St. Peter died upon the cross, and St.
Stephen from a heap of stones was carried into an easier
grave, they that made great lamentation over them, wept for
their own interest, and after the manner of men ; but the
martyrs were accounted happy, and their days kept solemnly,
and their memories preserved in never-dying honours. When
St. Hilary, bishop of Poictiers in France, went into the East
y Vitee est avidua, quisquis non vult Mundo sccucn pereunte mori. — Seneca.
^ Tol/f yap &avovTa{ oipj opS >iV'a70Uf/,BV0u^.
Par est inoiiri : neque est melius iiiorto in inalis rebus iiiiseris. — Plaut. End.
a Aut Cuit, aut veniel; nihil est praesentis in ilia ;
M6rsque minus pocnas quain mora mortis Labet.
REMEDIES AGAINST FEAR OF DEATH. 429
lo reprove the Arian heresy, he heard, that a young nobh'
gentleman treated with his daughter Abra for marriage. The
Bishop wrote to his daughter, that she shoukl not engage her
promise, nor do countenance to that request, because he had
provided for her a husband fair, rich, wise, and noble, far
beyond her present offer. The event of which was this : she
obeyed: and when her father returned from his eastern tri-
umph to his western charge, he prayed to God that his daugh-
ter might die quickly: and God heard his prayers, and Christ
took her into his bosom, entertaining her with antepasts and
caresses of holy love, till the day of the marriage-supper of the
Lamb shall come. But when the Bishop's wife observed this
event, and understood of the good man her husband what was
done, and why, she never let him alone, till he obtained the
same favour for her ; and she also, at the prayers of St.
Hilary, went into a more early grave and a bed of joys.
7. It is a sottish and an unlearned thing to reckon the
time of our life, as it is short or long, to be good or evil for-
tune ; life in itself being neither good nor bad, but just as
we make it; and therefore so is death.
8. But when we consider, death is not only better than
a miserable life, not only an easy and innocent thing in it-
self, but also that it is a state of advantage, we shall have
reason not to double the sharpnesses of our sickness by our
fear of death. Certain it is, death hath some good upon its
proper stock ; praise, and a fair memory, a reverence and re-
ligion towards them so great, that it is counted dishonest to
speak evil of the dead ^ ; then they rest in peace, and are
quiet from their labours, and are designed to immortality.
Cleobis and Biton, Trophonius and Agamedes, had an early
death sent them as a reward; to the former, for their piety to
their mother; to the latter, for building of a temple. To this
all those arguments will minister, which relate the advan-
tages of the state of separation and resurrection.
'• Virtutein incolumeiti odimus,
Sublntain ex KCiilis quaeriinus invidi. — Horcit.
Jit l»adas nuUos nisi mortuos poetas. — Mart.
430 REMEDIES AGAINST FEAR OF DEATH.
SECTION VIII.
Remedies against Fear of Death, bi/ uai/ 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 liveth at rest in his possessions, to a man, that hath
nothing to vex him, and that hath prosperity in all things ;
yea, unto him that is yet able to receive meat !" said the son
of Sirach. But the parts of this exercise help each other.
If a man be not incorporated in all his passions to the things
of this world, he will less fear to be divorced from them by
a supervening death ; and yet because he must part with
them all in death, it is but reasonable, he should not be pas-
sionate for so fugitive and transient interest. But if any
man thinks well of himself for being a handsome person, or
if he be stronger and wiser than his neighbours, he must re-
member'', that what he boasts of, will decline into weakness
and dishonour; but that very boasting and complacency will
make death keener and more unwelcome, because it comes
to take him from his confidences and pleasures, making his
beauty equal to those ladies, that have slept some years in
charnel-houses, and their strength not so stubborn as the
breath of an infant, and their wisdom such, which can be
looked for in the land, where all things are forgotten.
2. He that would not fear death, must streno-then his
spirits with the proper instruments of Christian fortitude.
All men are resolved upon this, that to bear grief honestly
and temperately, and to die willingly and nobly, is the duty
of a good and valiant man'': and they that are not so, are
vicious, and fools, and cowards. All men praise the valiant
*-■ El Je Ti; oX/3ov e^ii'J Mop<f)a 'sra.^ct.fxtva'erai aXXnv,
'Ev t aiflXoio-iv aji — a-Ttvaiv imhi^VJ Qiav
Qvara fxifAiias-^tt) irEpts-TEXXiDV fj.i'hn,
Ka» TEXei/riv kltLvTOov yav iTenj-iro/xivoi;. — Pindar. Nein. 10.
Die, homo, vas cineruni, quid coiifert flos facierum?
Copia quid rerum ? mors ultima jnela dieruin.
"J Amittenda fortitudo est, aut sepeliendus dolor. — Cicero.
Forlein posce animuin mortis lerrore carentem,
Qui spatiura vitae extremuin inter munera ponat.
REMEDIES AGAINST FEAR OF DEATH. 431
and honest ; and that, which the very heathen admired in
their noblest examples, is especially patience and contempt
of death. Zeno Eleates endured torments rather than dis-
cover his friends, or betray them to the danger of the tyrant:
and Calanus, the barbarous and unlearned Indian, willingly
suffered himself to be burnt alive: and all the women did so,
to do honour to their husbands' funeral, and to represent and
prove their affections great to their lords. The religion of
a Christian does more command fortitude, than ever did any
institution; for we are commanded to be willing to die for
Christ, to die for the brethren, to die rather than to giv^e of-
fence or scandal : the effect of which is this, that he, that is
instructed to do the necessary parts of his duty, is, by the
same instrument, fortified against death : as he that does his
duty, need not fear death, so neither shall he ; the parts of
his duty are parts of his security. It is certainly a great
baseness and pusillanimity of spirit, that makes death terri-
ble, and extremely to be avoided.
3. Christian prudence is a great security against the fear
of death. For if we be afraid of death, it is but reasonable
to use all spiritual arts to take off the apprehension of the
evil : but therefore we ought to remove our fear, because
fear gives to death wings, and spurs, and darts. Death
hastens to a fearful man : if therefore you would make death
harmless and slow, to throw off fear is the way to do it; and
prayer is the way to do that. If therefore you be afraid of
death, consider you will have less need to fear it, by how
much the less you do fear it : and so cure your direct fear
by a reflex act of prudence and consideration. Fannius had
not died so soon % if he had not feared death : and when
Cneius Carbo begged the respite of a little time for a base
employment of the soldiers of Pompey, he got nothing, but
that the baseness of his fear dishonoured the dignity of his
third consulship ; and he chose to die in a place, where
none but his meanest servants should have seen him. I
remember a story of the wrestler Polydamas, that, running
into a cave to avoid the storm, the water at last swelled so
high, that it began to press that hollowness to a ruin: which
when his fellows espied, they chose to enter into the com-
mon fate of all men, and went abroad : but Polydamas thought
^ Hostera cum fageret, se Fannias ipse peremit. — Mart
VOL. IV. 2 F
432 REMEDIES AGAINST FEAR OF DEATH.
by his strength to support the earth, till its intolerable weight
crushed him into flatness and a grave. Many men run for a
shelter to a place, and they only find a remedy for their fears
by feeling the worst of evils : fear itself finds no sanctuary
but the worst of sufferance : and they, that fly from a battle,
are exposed to the mercy and fury of the pursuers, who, if
they faced about, were as well disposed to give laws of life
and death as to take them, and at worst can but die nobly ;
but now, even at the very best, they live shamefully, or die
timorously. Courage is the greatest security; for it does
most commonly safeguard the man, but always rescues the
condition from an intolerable evil.
4. If thou wilt be fearless of death, endeavour to be in
love with the felicities of saints and angels, and be once per-
suaded to believe, that there is a condition of living better
than this ; that there are creatures more noble than we ; that
above there is a country better than ours ; that the inhabit-
ants know more and know better, and are in places of rest
and desire ; and first learn to value it, and then learn to pur-
chase it, and death cannot be a formidable thing, which lets
us into so much joy and so much felicity. And indeed who
would not think his condition mended, if he passed from
conversing with dull mortals, with ignorant and foolish per-
sons, with tyrants and enemies of learning, to convei'se with
Homer and Plato, with Socrates and Cicero, with Plutarch
and Fabricius ^ So the heathens speculated, but we consider
higher. " The dead that die in the Lord," shall converse with
St. Paul, and all the college of the apostles, and all the saints
and martyrs, with all the good men, whose memory we pre-
serve in honour, with excellent kings and holy bishops, and
with the great shepherd and bishop of our souls Jesus Christ,
and with God himself. For " Christ died for us, that, whe-
ther we wake or sleep, we might live together with him."
Then we shall be free from lust and envy*^, from fear and
rage, from covetousness and sorrow, from tears and cowardice :
and these indeed properly are the only evils, that are con-
trary to felicity and wisdom. Then we shall see strange
things, and know new propositions, and all things in another
^ Beat! «;rimus, cum, corporibus relictis, et cnpiclitatuni et xniiilalionuni eriinus
expertes, qu6dquenunc facimus, cum laxati curis suiuus, ut speclare aliqaid velimus
et visere. — TuscuL Q.
REMEDIES AGAINST FEAR OF DEATH. 433
manner, and to higher purposes. Cleombrotus was so taken
with this speculation, that, having learned from Plato's Phse-
don the soul's abode, he had not patience to stay nature's
dull leisure, but leaped from a wall to his portion of immor-
tality. And when Pomponius Atticus resolved to die by fa-
mine, to ease the great pains of his gout, in the abstinence
of two days he found his foot at ease: but when he beo-an
to feel the pleasures of an approaching death, and the deli-
cacies of that ease he was to inherit below, he would not
withdraw his foot, but went on and finished his death : and
so did Cleanthes. And every wise man will despise the little
evils of that state, which indeed is the daughter of fear, but
the mother of rest, and peace, and felicity.
5. If God should say to us. Cast thyself into the sea (as
Christ did to St. Peter, or as God concerning Jonas), I have
provided for thee a dolphin, or a whale, or a port, a safety or
a deliverance, security or a reward, were we not incredulous
and pusillanimous persons, if we should tremble to put such
a felicity into act, and ourselves into possession ? The very
duty of resignation and the love of our own interest are
good antidotes against fear. In forty or fifty years we find
evils enough, and arguments enough to make us weary of this
life : and to a good man there are very many more reasons to
be afraid of life than death, this having in it less of evil and
more of advantage. And it was a rare wish of that Roman 8,
that death might come only to wise and excellent persons,
and not to fools and cowards; that it might not be a sanc-
tuary for the timorous, but the reward of the virtuous : and
indeed they only can make advantage of it.
6. Make no excuses to make thy desires of life seem rea-
sonable ; neither cover thy fear with pretences, but suppress
it rather with arts of severity and ingenuity. Some are not
willing to submit to God's sentence and arrest of death, till
they have finished such a design ^ or made an end of the
last paragraph of their book, or raised such portions for their
children, or preached so many sermons, or built their house,
or planted their orchard, or ordered their estate with such
advantages. It is well for the modesty of these men, that
s Mors, utinam pavidos vit^ sabducere nolles,
Sed virtus te sola daret Lucan.
* Pendent opera interrupta, minaeque Muroruiu ingentes.
2f2
434 REMEDIES AGAINST FEAR OF DEATH.
the excuse is ready; but if it were not, it is certain they
would search one out: for an idle man is never ready to die,
and is glad of any excuse ; and a busied man hath always
something ixnfinished, and he is ready for every thing but
death. And I remember, that Petronius brings in Eumolpus
composing verses in a desperate storm; and being called
upon to shift for himself when the ship dashed upon the
rock, crying out to let him alone, till he had trimmed and
finished his verse, which was lame in the hinder leg: the
man either had too strong a desire to end his verse, or too
great a desire not to end his life. But we must know, God's
times are not to be measured by our circumstances ; and
what I value, God regards not : or if it be valuable in the
accounts of men, yet God will supply it with other contin-
gencies of his providence : and if Epaphroditus had died,
when he had his great sickness St. Paul speaks of, God
would have secured the work of the gospel without him ; and
he could have spared Epaphroditus as well as St. Stephen,
and St. Peter as well as St. James. Say no more ; but, when
God calls, lay aside thy papers; and first dress thy soul, and
then dress thy hearse.
Blindness is odious, and widowhood is sad, and destitu-
tion is without comfort, and persecution is full of trouble,
and famine is intolerable, and tears are the sad ease of a
sadder heart: but these are evils of our life, not of our death.
For the dead that die in the Lord, are so far from wanting
the commodities of this life, that they do not want life itself.
After all this, I do not say it is a sin to be afraid of
death: we find the boldest spirit, that discourses of it with
confidence, and dares undertake a danger as big as death,
yet doth shrink at the horror of it, when it comes dressed in
its proper circumstances. And Brutus, who was as bold a
Roman to undertake a noble action as any was, since they
first reckoned by consuls, yet when Furius came to cut his
throat after his defeat by Anthony, he ran from it like a girl,
and being admonished to die constantly, he swore by his
life, that he would shortly endure death. But what do I
speak of such imperfect persons ? Our blessed Lord was
pleased to legitimate fear to us by his agony and prayers in
the garden. It is not a sin to be afraid, but it is a great fe-
licity to be without fear; which felicity our dearest Saviour
KEMEDIES AGAINST FEAR OF DEATH, 435
refused to have, because it was agreeable to his purposes to
suffer any thing, that was contrary to felicity, every thing
but sin. But when men will by all means avoid death, they
are like those, who at any hand resolve to be rich'. The case
may happen, in which they will blaspheme, and dishonour
Providence, or do a base action, or curse God and die: but,
in all cases, they die miserable and ensnared, and in no case
do they die the less for it. Natvire hath left us the key of
tliQ churchyard, and custom hath brought cemeteries and
chai^el-houses into cities and churches, places most fre-
quented, that we might not carry ourselves strangely in so
certain '', so expected, so ordinary, so unavoidable an acci-
dent. All reluctancy or unwillingiiess to obey the Divine
decree is but a snare to ourselves, and a load to our spirits',
and is either an entire cause, or a great aggravation, of the
calamity. Who did not scorn to look upon Xerxes, when
he caused three hundred stripes to be given to the sea, and
sent a chartel of defiance against the mountain Athos? Who
did not scorn the proud vanity of Cyrus, when he took so
goodly a revenge upon the river Cyndus for his hard passage
over it? or did not deride or pity the Thracians, for shooting
arrows against heaven when it thunders ? To be angry with
God "", to quarrel with the Divine providence, by repining
against an unalterable, a natural, an easy sentence, is an ar-
gument of a huge folly, and the parent of a great trouble ; a
man is base and foolish to no purpose", he throws away a
vice to his ovv'n misery, and to no advantages of ease and
pleasure. Fear keeps men in bondage all their life, saith
St. Paul ; and patience makes him his own man, and lord of
his own interest and person. Therefore possess yourselves
in patience, with reason and religion, and you shall die with
ease".
If all the parts of this discourse be true, if they be bet-
ter than dreams, and unless virtue be nothing but words, as
a grove is a heap of trees P; if they be not the fantasms of
• 'aXX' 01 1^ ttTravTOj (pevyovre; tov bavarov.
I" Quam pellaut lacryraas, foveut sortem : Dura negant cedere nioilibus.
' Siccas si videat genas, Dura? cedet hebes sors patientiae.
■" NWioi, ol' Z»vl fA.ivsaivoiJi.iv a<}>pov£i!VTe?. — Iliad, o.
» Et cum nihil imminuat dolores, cur frustra turpes esse voluraus ? — Seneca.
" Non levat miseros dolor. P Virtutem verba putas, nt lucum ligna.
436 GENERAL RULES TO MAKE
hypochondriacal persons, and designs upon the interest of
men and their persuasions to evil purposes; then there is no,
reason, but that we should really desire death, and account
it among the good things of God, and the sour and laborious
felicities of man. St. Paul understood it well, when he de-
sired to be dissolved : he well enough knew his own advan-
tages, and pursued them accordingly. But it is certain, that
he, that is afraid of death, I mean, with a violent and trans-
porting fear, with a fear apt to discompose his duty or his
patience, that man either loves this world too much, or dares
not trust God for the next.
SECTION IX.
General Rules and Exercises wherebi/ our Sickness
may become safe and sanctified.
I. Take care that the cause of thy sickness be such, as
may not sour it in the principal and original causes of it. It
is a sad calamity to pass into the house of mourning through
the gates of intemperance, by a drunken meeting, or the sur-
feits of a loathed and luxurious table ; for then a man suf-
fers the pain of his own folly, and he is like a fool smarting
under the whip, which his own viciousness twisted for his
back; then a man pays the price of his sin, and hath a pure
and an unmingled sorrow in his suffering ; and it cannot be
alleviated by any circumstances, for the whole affair is a mere
process of death and sorrow. Sin is in the head, sickness is
in the body, and death and an eternity of pains in the tail ;
and nothing can make this condition tolerable, unless the
miracles of the Divine mercy will be pleased to exchange the
eternal anger for the temporal. True it is, that, in all suf-
ferings, the cause of it makes it noble or ignoble, honour or
shame, tolerable or intolerable''. For when patience is as-
saulted by a ruder violence, by a blow from heaven or earth,
from a gracious God or an unjust man, patience looks forth
to the doors, which way she may escape. And if innocence
or a cause of religion keep the first entrance, then, whether
1 Solatium est prolionesto dura tokrare, et ad causam patientias respicil. — IPet.
ii. 19. Heb. xi. 36. Matt. v. 11.
SICKNESS SAFE AND HOLY. 437
she escapes at the gates of life or death, there is a good to
be received, greater than the evils of a sickness : but if sin
thrust in that sickness, and that hell stands at the door, then
patience turns into fury, and seeing it impossible to go forth
with safety, rolls up and down with a circular and infinite
revolution, makes its motion not from, but upon, its own
centre; it doubles the pain"^, and increases the sorrow, till
by its weight it breaks the spii'it, and bursts into the agonies
of infinite and eternal ages. If we had seen St. Polycarp
burning to death, or St. Laurence roasted upon his gridiron,
or St. Ignatius exposed to lions, or St. Sebastian pierced
with arrows, or St. Attalus carried about the theatre with
scorn unto his death for the cause of Jesus, for religion, for
God and a holy conscience ; we should have been in love
with flames, and have thought the gridiron fairer than the
sponda, the ribs of a marital bed ; and we should have chosen
to converse with those beasts, rather than those men, that
brought those beasts forth: and estimated the arrows to be
the rays of light brighter than the moon ; and that disgrace
and mistaken pageantry were a solemnity richer and more
magnificent than Mordecai's procession upon the king's horse,
and in the robes of majesty : for so did these holy men ac-
count them; they kissed their stakes, and hugged their
deaths, and ran violently to torments, and counted whippings
and secular disgraces to be the enamel of their persons, and
the ointment of their heads, and the embalming their names,
and securing them for immortality. But to see Sejanus torn
in pieces by the people, or Nero crying or creeping timo-
rously to his death, when he was condemned to die more ma-
jorum; to see Judas pale and trembling, full of anguish, sor-
row, and despair ; to observe the groanings and intolerable
agonies of Herod and Antiochus, will tell and demonstrate
the causes of patience and impatience to proceed from the
causes of the suffering t and it is sin only, that makes the
cup bitter and deadly. When men, by vomiting, measure up
the drink they took in% and sick and sad do again taste their
meat turned into choler by intemperance, the sin and its
punishment are mingled so, that shame covers the face, and
'■ Magis liis qune palilur, vexal causa paliendi.
' Hi qiiicquid biberint, vomitu lenietientur tristes, et bilem suara regastarites,
— Seneca.
438 GENERAL RULES TO MAKE
sorrow puts a veil of darkness upon the heart : and we scarce
pity a vile person, that is haled to execution for murder or
for treason, but We say he deserves it, and that every man is
concerned in it, that he should die. If lust brought the
sickness or the shame, if we truly suffer the rewards of our
evil deeds, we must thank ourselves ; that is, we are fallen
into an evil condition, and are the sacrifice of the Divine jus-
tice. But if we live holy lives, and if we enter well in, we
are sure to pass on safe, and to go forth with advantage, if
we list ourselves.
2. To this relates, that we should not counterfeit sick-
ness : for he, that is to be careful of his passage into a sick-
ness, will think himself concerned, that he fall not into it
through a trap-door : for so it hath sometimes happened,
that such counterfeiting to light and evil purposes hath ended
inareal-sufferaiice. Appian tells of a Roman gentleman, who,
to escape the proscription of the triumvirate, fled, and to se-
cure his privacy counterfeited iiimself blind on one eye, and
wore a plaister upon it, till beginning to be free from the ma-
lice of the three prevailing princes, he opened his hood, but
could not open 'ais eye, but for ever lost the use of it, and
with his eye paid for his liberty and hypocrisy. And Caelius
counterfeited the gout', and all its circumstances and pains,
its dressings and arts of remedy, and complaint, till at last
the gout really entered and spoiled the pageantry. His arts
of dissimulation were so witty, that they put life and motion
into the very image of the disease ; he made the very pic-
ture to sigh and groan.
It is easy to tell, upon the interest of what virtue such
counterfeiting is to be reproved. But it will be harder to
snatch the politics of the world from following that, which
they call a canonized and authentic precedent : and David's
counterfeiting himself mad before the King of Gath, to save
his life and liberty, will be sufficient to entice men to serve
an end upon the stock and charges of so small an irregular-
ity, not in the matter of manners, but in the rules and de-
cencies of natural or civil deportment, I cannot certainly
tell, what degrees of excuse David's action might put on.
This only; besides his present necessity, the laws, whose
' Tanlum cura potest el ars doloris ; Desit fingere Coelius podagrara. — Mart.
J. Tii. ep. 38.
SICKNESS SAFE AND HOLY. 439
coercive or directive power David lived under, had less of
severity, and more of liberty, and tov/ards enemies had so
little of restraint and so great a power, that what amongst
them was a direct sin, if used to their brethren the sons of
Jacob, was lawful and permitted to be acted against enemies.
To which also I add this general caution, that the actions of
holy persons in Scripture are not always good precedents to
us Christians, who are to walk hj a rule and a greater strict-
ness, with more simplicity and heartiness of pursuit. And
amongst them, sanctity and holy living did, in very many of
its instances, increase in new particulars of duty; and the
prophets reproved man^: things, which the law forbad not ;
and taught many duties, which Lioses prescribed not; and
as the time of Christ's approacli came, i^o the sermons and
revelations too were more evangelical, and like the patterns,
which were fully to be exhibited by the Son of God. Amongst
which, it is certain, that Christian simplicity and godly sin-
cerity are to be accounted : and counterfeiting of sickness is
a huge enemy to this : it is an upbraiding the Divine Pro-
vidence, a jesting with fire, a playing with a thunderbolt, a
making the decrees of God to serve the vicious or secular
ends of men ; it is a tempting of a judgment, a false accusa-
tion of God, a forestalling and antedating his anger; it is a
cozening of men by making God a party in the fraud : and
therefore, if the cozenage returns upon the man's own head,
he enters like a fox into his sickness, and perceives himself
catched in a trap, or earthed in the intolerable dangers of
the grave.
3. Althor.gh we must be infinitely careful to prevent it,
that sin does not thrust us into a sickness; yet, when we are
in the house of sorrow, we should do well to take physic
against sin, and suppose that it is the cause of the evil ; if
not by way of natural causality and proper effect, yet by a
moral influence, and by a just demerit. We can easily see,
when a man hath got a surfeit ; intemperance is as plain as
the handwriting upon the wall, and easier to be read ; but
covetousness may cause a fever as well as drunkenness, and
pride can produce a falling-sickness as well as long washings
and dilutions of the brain, and intemperate lust : and we find
it recorded in Scripture, that the contemptuous and unpre-
pared manner of receiving of the holy sacraments caused
440 GENERAL RULES TO MAKE
sickness and death ; and sacrilege and vow-breach in Ana-
nias and Sapphira made them to descend quick into their
graves. Therefore, when sickness is upon us, let us cast
about; and, if we can, let us find out the cause of God's dis-
pleasure; that, it being removed, we may return into the
health and securities of God's loving-kindness. Thus, in the
three years' famine, David inquired of the Lord, what was
the matter : and God answered, " It is for Saul and his
bloody house :" and then David expiated the guilt, and the
people were full again of food and blessing. And when Israel
was smitten by the Amorites, Joshua cast about, and found
out the accursed thing, and cast it out ; and the people, after
that, fought prosperously. And what God in that case said
to Joshua, he will also verify to us ; " I will not be with you
any more, unless you destroy the accursed thing from among
you "." But in pursuance of this we are to observe, that al-
though, in case of loud and clamorous sins, the discovery is
easy, and the remedy not difficult ; yet because Christianity
is a nice thing, and religion is as pure as the sun, and the
soul of man is apt to be troubled from more principles than
the intricate and curiously-composed body in its innumerable
parts, it will often happen, that if we go to inquire into the
particular, we shall never find it out ; and we may suspect
drunkenness, when it may be also a morose delectation in
unclean thoughts, or covetousness, or oppression, or a crafty
invasion of my neighbour's rights, or my want of charity, or
my judging unjustly in my own cause, or my censuring my
neighbours, or a secret pride, or a base hypocrisy, or the
pursuance of little ends with violence and passion, that may
have procured the present messenger of death. Therefore
ask no more after any one, but heartily endeavour to reform
all : " Sin no more, lest a worse thing happen':" for a single
search or accusation may be the design of an imperfect re-
pentance; but no man does heartily return to God, but he
that decrees against every irregularity ; and then only we
can be restored to health or life, when we have taken away
the causes of sickness and a cursed death.
4. lie, that means to have his sickness turn into safety
and life, into health and virtue, must make religion the em-
ployment of his sickness, and prayer the employment of his
" Josh. vii. 13. * "Ofa HanZ; TrpacTovTi;, [m iMi^x nana, K.r>ir»jfA,t^a. — Soith.
SICKNESS SAFE AND HOLY. 441
religion. For there are certain compendiums or abbrevia-
tures and shortenings of religion, fitted to several states.
They, that first gave up their names to Christ, and that
turned from Paganism to Christianity, had an abbreviature
fitted for them ; they were to renounce their false worship-
pings, and give up their belief, and vow their obedience
unto Christ ; and in the very profession of this they were
forgiven in baptism. For God hastens to snatch them from
the power of the devil, and therefore shortens the passage,
and secures the estate. In the case of poverty, God hath
reduced this duty of man to an abbreviature of those few
graces, which they can exercise ; such as are patience, con-:
tentedness, truth, and diligence ; and the rest he accepts in
good will, and the charities of the soul, in prayers, and the
actions of a cheap religion. And to most men charity is also
an abbreviature. And as the love of God shortens the way
to the purchase of all virtues ; so the expression of this to
the poor goes a huge way in the requisites and towards the
consummation of an excellent religion. And martyrdom is
another abbreviature ; and so is every act of an excellent and
hd'oical virtue. But when we are fallen into the state of
sickness, and that our understanding is weak and troubled,
our bodies sick and useless, our passions turned into fear,
and the whole state into suffering, God, in compliance with
man's infirmity, hath also turned our religion into such a
duty, which a sick man can do most passionately, and a sad
man and a timorous can perform effectually, and a dying
man can do to many purposes of pardon and mercy ; and
that is, prayer. For although a sick man is bound to do
many acts of virtue of several kinds, yet the most of them
are to be done in the way of prayer. Prayer is not only the
religion that is proper to a 'sick man's condition, but it is
the manner of doing other graces, which is then left, and in
his power. For thus the sick man is to do his repentance
and his mortifications, his temperance and his chastity, by a
fiction of imagination bringing the offers of the virtue to the
spirit, and making an action of election : and so our prayers
are a direct act of chastity, when they are made in the
matter of that grace ; just as repentance for our cruelty is an
act of the grace of mercy ; and repentance for uncleanness
is an act of chastity, is a means of its purchase, an act in
442 GENERAL RULES TO MAKE
order to the habit. And though such acts of virtue, which
are only in the way of prayer, are ineffective to the entire
purchase, and of themselves cannot change the vice into
virtue; yet they are good renewings of the grace, and proper
exercise of a habit already gotten.
The purpose of this discourse is, to represent the excel-
lency of prayer, and its proper advantages, which it hath
in the time of sickness. For besides that it moves God to
pity, piercing the clouds, and making the heavens, like a
pricked eye, to weep over us, and refresh us with showers
of pity ; it also doth the work of the soul, and expresses the
virtue of his whole life in effigy, in pictures and lively re-
presentments, so preparing it for a never-ceasing crown, by
renewing the actions in the continuation of a never-ceasing,
a never-hindered affection. Prayer speaks to God, when
the tongue is stiffened with the approachings of death : prayer
can dwell in the heart, and be signified by the hand or eye,
by a thought or a groan : prayer of all the actions of religion
is the last alive, and it serves God without circumstances,
and exercises material graces by abstraction from matter,
and separation, and makes them to be spiritual ; and there-
fore best dresses our bodies for funeral or recovery, for the
mercies of restitution or the mercies of the grave.
5. In every sickness, whether it will, or will not, be so
in nature and in the event, yet in thy spirit and preparations
resolve upon it, and treat thyself accordingly, as if it were a
sickness unto death. For many men support their unequal
courages by flattery and false hopes ; and because sicker
men have recovered, believe, that they shall do so ; but
therefore they neglect to adorn their souls, or set their house
in order: besides the temporal inconveniences, that often
happen by such persuasions, and putting off the evil day,
such as are, dying intestate, leaving estates entangled, and
some relatives unprovided for ; they suffer infinitely in the
interest and affairs of their soul, they die carelessly and sur-
prised, their burdens on, and their scruples unremoved, and
their cases of conscience not determined, and, like a sheep,
without any care taken concerning their precious souls.
Some men will never believe, that a villain will betray them,
though they receive often advices from suspicious persons
and likely accidents, till they are entered into the snare ; and
SICKNESS SAFE AND HOLY. 443
then they believe it, when they feel it, and when they cannot
return : but so the treason entered, and the man was betrayed
by his own folly, placing the snare in the regions and ad-
vantages of opportunity. This evil looks like boldness and
a confident spirit, but it is the greatest timorousness and
cowardice in the world. They are so fearful to die, that they
dare not look upon it as possible; and think that the making
of a will is a mortal sign, and sending for a spiritual man an
irrecoverable disease ; and they are so afraid, lest they should
think and believe now they must die, that they will not take
care, that it may not be evil, in case they should. So did the
eastern slaves drink wine, and v^rapped their heads in a veil,
that they might die without sense or sorrow, and wink hard,
that they might sleep the easier. In pursuance of this rule,
let a man consider, that whatsoever must be done in sick-
ness, ought to be done in health; only let him observe, that
his sickness as a good monitor chastises his neglect of duty,
and forces him to live as he always should ; and then all
these solemnities and dressings for death are nothins' else
but the part of a religious life ; which he ought to have exer-
cised all his days ; and if those circumstances can affright
him, let him please his fancy by this truth, that then he does
but begin to live. But it will be a huge folly, if he shall
think that confession of his sins will kill him; or receiving
the holy sacrament will hasten his agony, or the priest shall
undo all the hopeful language and promises of his physician.
Assure thyself, thou canst not die the sooner; but, by such
addresses, thou mayest die much the better.
6- Let the sick person be infinitely careful, that he do
not fall into a state of death upon a new account: that is,
at no hand commit a deliberate sin, or retain any affection
to the old; for, in both cases, he falls into the evils of a sur-
prise, and- the horrors of a sudden death ; for a sudden death
is but a sudden joy, if it takes a man in the state and exer-
cises of virtue : and it is only then an evil, when it finds a
man unready. They were sad departures, when Tigillinus,
Cornelius G alius the pretor, Lewis the son of Gonzaoa duke
of Mantua, Ladislaus king of Naples, Speusippus, Giache-
tius of Geneva, and one of the popes, died in the forbidden
embraces of abused women ; or if Job had cursed God, and
so died ; or when a man sits down in despair, and in the ac-
444 GENERAL RULES TO MAKE, &C.
cusation and calumny of the Divine mercy: they make their
night sad, and stormy, and eternal. When Herod began to
sink with the shameful torment of his bowels, and felt the
grave open under him, he imprisoned the nobles of his king-
dom, and commanded his sister, that they should be a sacri-
fice to his departing ghost. This was an egress fit only for
such persons, who meant to dwell with devils to eternal ages :
and that man is hugely in love with sin, who cannot forbear
in the week of the assizes, and when himself stood at the
bar of scrutiny, and prepared for his final, never-to-be-re-
versed sentence. He dies suddenly to the worse sense and
event of sudden death, who so manages his sickness, that
even that state shall not be innocent, but that he is surprised
in the guilt of a new account. It is a sign of a reprobate
spirit, and an habitual, prevailing, ruling sin, which exacts
obedience, when the judgment looks him in the face. At
least go to God with the innocence and fair deportment of
thy person in the last scene of thy life, that when thy soul
breaks into the state of separation, it may carry the relishes
of religion and sobriety to the places of its abode and sen-
tence''^.
7. When these things are taken care for, let the sick man
so order his affairs, that he have but very little conversation
with the world, but wholly (as he can) attend to religion, and
antedate his conversation in heaven, always having inter-
course with God and still conversing with the holy Jesus,
kissing his wounds, admiring his goodness, begging his
mercy, feeding on him with faith, and drinking his blood:
to which purpose it were very fit (if all circumstances be
answerable) that the narrative of the passion of Christ be
read or discoursed to him at length, or in brief, according to
the style of the four gospels. But, in all things, let his care
and society be as little secular as is possible.
3!ntoart)Ip anD oft
J^oti) Tjaru it tocrc to flit
jf torn lien unto tt)c pit,
Jrompit unto pain
tlljat ncrc &i)M ceagc again,
!!;e iMouln not Bo one jsin
an tlje toorlD to toin.
Inscript. marraori in Eccles. paroch. de Feversliam in agio Cantiano.
THE PRIVATE PRACTICE OF GRACES, ScC. 445
CHAPTER IV.
OF THE PRACTICE OF THE GRACES PROPER TO THE
STATE OF SICKNESS, WHICH A SICK MAN MAY PRAC-
TISE ALONE.
SECTION I.
Of the Practice of Patience.
J\ow we suppose the man entering npon his scene of sor-
rows, and passive graces. It may be, he went yesterday to
a wedding, merry and brisk, and there he felt his sentence,
that he must return home and die (for men very commonly
enter into the snare singing, and consider not, whither their
fate leads them) : nor feared, that then the angel was to strike
his stroke, till his knees kissed the earth, and his head trem-
bled with the weight of the rod, which God put into the
hand of an exterminating anoel. But whatsoever the inoress
was, when the man feels his blood boil, or his bones weary,
or his flesh diseased with a load of a dispersed and disor-
dered humour, or his head to ache, or his faculties discom-
posed, then he must consider, that all those discourses, he
hath heard concerning patience and resignation, and con-
formity to Christ's sufferings, and the melancholy lectures of
the cross, must, all of them, now be reduced to practice, and
pass from an ineffective contemplation to such an exercise,
as will really try, whether we were true disciples of the cross,
or only believed the doctrines of religion, when we were at
ease, and that they never passed through the ear to the heart,
and dwelt not in our spirits. But every man should consi-
der, God does nothing in vain ; that he would not, to no pur-
pose, send us preachers, and give us rules, and furnish us
with discourse, and lend us books, and provide sermons, and
make examples, and promise his Spirit, and describe the
blessedness of holy sufferings, and prepare us with daily
alamas, if he did not really purpose to order our affairs, so
that we should need all this, and use it all. There were no
such thing as the grace of patience, if we were not to feel
446 THE PRACTICE OF THE GRACE
a sickness, or enter into a state of sufferings : whither, when
we are entered, we are to practise by the following rules.
The Practice and Acts of Patience, hj/ tcay of Rule.
1. At the first address and presence of sickness, stand
still and arrest thy spirit, that it may, without amazement or
affright, consider, that this was that thou lookedst for, and
wert always certain should happen; and that now thou art to
enter into the actions of a new religion, the agony of a
strange constitution ; but at no hand suffer thy spirits to be
dispersed with fear, or wildness of thought, but stay their
looseness and dispersion by a serious consideration of the
present and future employment. For so doth the Libyan
lion, spying the fierce huntsman, first beats himself with the
strokes of his tail, and curls up his spirits, making them
strong with union and recollection, till, being struck with a
Mauritanian spear, he rushes forth into his defence and
noblest contention; and either 'scapes into the secrets of his
own dwelling, or else dies the bravest of the forest. Every
man, when shot with an arrow from God's quiver, must then
draw in all the auxiliaries of reason, and know, that then is
the time to try his strength, and to reduce the words of his
religion into action, and consider, that if he behaves himself
weakly and timorously, he suffers nevertheless of sickness ;
but if he returns to health, he carries along with him the
mark of a coward and a fool ; and if he descends into his
grave, he enters into the state of the faithless and unbe-
lievers. Let him set his heart firm upon this resolution; " I
must bear it inevitably, and I will, by God's grace, do it
nobly."
2. Bear in thy sickness all along the same thoughts, pro-
positions, and discourses, concerning thy person, thy life and
death, thy soul and religion, which thou hadst in the best
days of thy health : and when thou didst discourse wisely
concerning things spiritual. For it is to be supposed (and
if it be not yet done, let this rule remind thee of it, and di-
rect thee) that thou hast cast about in thy health and con-
sidered concerning thy change and the evil day, that thou
must be sick and die, that thou must need a comforter, and
that it was certain, thou shouldst fall into a state, in which all
OF PATIENCE IN SICKNESS. 447
the cords of thy anchor should be stretched, and the verv
rock and foundation of faith should be attempted; and what-
soever fancies may disturb you, or whatsoever weaknesses
may invade you, yet consider, when you were better able to
judge and govern the accidents of your life, yoU cohcluded
it necessary to trust in God, and possess yoiir souls with
patience./ Think of things, as they think that stand by you,
and as you did, when you stood by others ; that it is a blessed
thing to be patient ; that a quietness of spirit hath a certain
reward ; that still there is infinite truth and reality in the
promises of the gospel ; that still thou art in the care of
Godt in the condition of a son^ and working out thy salva-
tion with labour and pain, with fear and trembling ; that now
the sun is under a cloud, but it still sends forth the same in-
fluence : and be sure to make no new principles upon the
stock of a quick and an impatient sense, or too busy an ap-
prehension : keep your old principles, and, upon their stock,
discourse and practise on towards your conclusion.
3. Resolve to bear your sickness like a child, that is,
without considering the evils and the pains, the sorrows and
the danger ; but go straight forward, and let thy thoughts
cast about for nothing, but how to make advantages of it by
the instrument of religion. He that from a high tower looks
down upon the precipice, and measures the space, through
which he must descend, and considers what a huge fall he
shall have, shall feel more by the horror of it than by the last
dash on the pavement: and he that tells his groans and
numbers his sighs, and reckons one for every gripe of his
belly or throb of his distempered pulse, will make an arti-
ficial sickness greater than the natural. And if thou beest
ashamed, that a child should bear an evil better than thou,
then take his instrument, and allay thy spirit with it ; re-
flect not upon thy evil, but contrive as much as you can for
duty, and, in all the rest, inconsideratio-n will ease your pain.
4. If thou fearest thou shalt need, observe and draw toge-
ther all such things as are apt to charm thy spirit, and ease
thy fancy in the sufferance. It is the counsel of Socrates :
*' It is (said he) a great danger, and you must, by discourse
and arts of reasonino- enchant it into slumber and some
rest"." It may be, thou wert moved much to see a penion
" KnXo? yaj o xi'vJuvoj, xai ;^pfl ra ToittCTd olr«rij ETraSfiv lavru.
VOL. IV. 2 G
448 THE PRACTICE OF THE GRACE
of honour to die untimely ; or thou didst love the religion
of that death-bed, and it was dressed up in circumstances
fitted to thy needs, and hit thee on that part, where thou
wert most sensible ; or some little saying in a sermon or
passage of a book was chosen and singled out by a peculiar
apprehension, and made consent lodge awhile in thy spirit,
even then, when thou didst place death in thy meditatioui
and didst view it in all its dress of fancy. Whatsoever that
was, which, at any time, did please thee in thy most pas-
sionate and fantastic part, let not that go, but bring it home
at that time especially ; because when thou art in thy weak-
ness, such little things will easier move thee than a more
severe discourse and a better reason. For a sick man is like.
a scrupulous : his case is gone beyond the cure of argu-
ments, and it is a trouble, that can only be helped by chance,
or a lucky saying : and Ludovico Corbinelli was moved at
the death of Henry the Second, more than if he had read the
saddest elegy of all the unfortunate princes in Christendom,
or all the sad sayings of Scripture, or the threnes of the fu-
neral prophets. I deny not but this course is most proper
to weak persons ; but it is a state of weakness, for which we
are now providing remedies and instruction : a strong man
will not need it ; but when our sickness hath rendered us
weak in all senses, it is not good to refuse a remedy, because
it supposes us to be sick. But then, if to the catalogue of
weak persons we add all those, who are ruled by fancy, we
shall find, that many persons in their health, and more in
their sickness, are under the dominion of fancy, and apt to
be helped by those little things, which themselves have found
fitted to their apprehension, and which no other man can mi-
nister to their needs, unless by chance, or in a heap of other
things. But therefore every man should remember, by what,
instruments he was at any time much moved, and try them
upon his spirit, in the day of his calamity.
5. Do not choose the kind of thy sickness, or the manner
of thy death; but let it be, what God please, so it be no
greater than thy spirit or thy patience : and for that you are
to rely upon the promise of God, and to secure thyself by
prayer and industry; but in all things else let God be thy
chooser, and let it be thy work to submit indifferently, and
attend thy duty. It is lawful to beg of God, that thy sick
OF PATIEXCE IX SICKNESS. 449
ness may not be sharp or noisome, infectious or unusual, be-
cause these are circumstances of evil, which are also proper
instruments of temptation : and though it may well concern
the prudence of thy religion to fear thyself, and keep thee,
from violent temptations, who hast so often fallen in little
ones ; yet, even in these things, be sure to keep some de-
grees of indifferency ; that is, if God will not be entreated
to ease thee, or to change thy trial, then be importunate,
that thy spirit and its interest be secured, and let him do,
what seemeth good in his eyes. But as, in the degrees of
sickness, thou art to submit to God, so in the kind of it
(supposing equal degrees) thou art to be altogether incuri-
ous, whether God call thee by a consumption or an asthma,
by a dropsy or a palsy, by a fever in thy humours, or a fever
in thy spirits ; because all such nicety of choice, is nothing
but a colour to a legitimate impatience, and to make an ex-
cuse to murmur privately, and for circumstances, when in
the sum of affairs we durst not own impatience. I have
known some persons vehemently wish, that they might die
of a consumption, and some of these had a plot upon hea-
ven, and hoped by that means to secure it after a careless
life ; as thinking a lingering sickness would certainly infer a
lingering and a protracted repentance ; and, by that means,
they thought, they should be safest : others of them dream-
ed, it would be an easier death ; and have found themselves
deceived, and their patience hath been tired with a weary
spirit and a useless body, by often conversing with health-
ful persons and vigorous neighbours, by uneasiness of the
Hesh and the sharpness of their bones, by want of spirits and
a dying life ; and, in conclusion, have been directly debauch-
ed by peevishness and a fretful sickness : and these men had
better have left it to the wisdom and goodness of God 5 for
they both are infinite.
6. Be patient in the desires of religion ; and take care
that the forwardness of exterior actions do not discompose
thy spirit; while thou fearest, that, by less serving God in
thy disability, thou runnest backward in the accounts of
pardon and the favour of God. Be content, that the time,
which was formerly spent in prayer, be now spent in vomit-
ing and carefulness and attendances ; since God hath pleased
it should be so, it does not become us to think hard thoughts
2 G 2
450 THE PRACTICE OF THE GRACE
concerning it. Do not think, that God is only to be fonnd
in a great prayer, or a solemn office : he is moved by a sigh;
by a groan, by an act of love ; and therefore, when your pain
IS great and pungent, lay all your strength upon it, to bear
it patiently : when the evil is something more tolerable, let
your mind think some pious, though short, meditation : let
it not be very busy, and full of attention : for that w ill be
)3ut a new temptation to your patience, and render your re*
ligion tedious and hateful. But record your desires, and
present yourself to God by general acts of will and under-
standing, and by habitual remembrances of your former vi-
gorousness, and by verification of the same grace, rather
than proper exercises. If you can do more, do it 5 but il
you cannot, let it not become a scruple to thee. We must
not think, man is tied to the forms of health, or that he who
swoons and faints, is obliged to his usual forms and hours of
prayer : if we cannot labour, yet let us love. Nothing can
hinder us from that, but our own uncharitableness.
7. Be obedient to thy physician in those things, that con-
cern him, if he be a person fit to minister unto thee. God
is he only, that needs no help^, and God hath created the
physician for thine : therefore use him temperately, without
violent confidences ; and sweetly, without uncivil distrust*
ings, or refusing his prescriptions upon humours or impotent
fear. A man may refuse to have his arm or leg cut off, or
to suffer the pains of Marius's incision : and if he believes,
that to die is the less evil, he may compose himself to it,
without hazarding his patience, or introducing that, which
he thinks a worse evil ; but that, which, in this article, is
to be reproved and avoided, is, that some men will choose
to die out of fear of death, and send for physicians, and do
what themselves list, and call for counsel, and follow none.
When there is reason they should decline him, it is not to
be accounted to the stock of a sin; but where there is no just
cause, there is a direct impatience.
Hither is to be reduced, that we be not too confident of
the physician, or drain our hopes of recovery from the foun-
tain through so imperfect channels ; laying the wells of God
dry, and digging to ourselves broken cisterns. Physicians
y Ipsi ceu vi Deo nullo est opus ; apud Senecam. Soaliger recte emendat, ipsJ
cen Deo, &C: Ex Gricco scilicet, Mo'voj ©eJj avEXXiw^? xai avevSEiif.
OF PATIENCE IN SICKNESS. 451
are the ministers of God's mercies and providence, in the j
matter of health and ease, of restitution or death ; and when /
God shall enable their judgments, and direct their counsels, f
and prosper their medicines, they shall do thee good, for
which you must give God thanks, and to the physician the \
honour of a blessed instrument. But this cannot always be I
done : and Lucius Cornelius '', the lieutenant in Portugal
under Fabius the consul, boasted in the inscription of his
monument, that he had lived a healthful and vegete age till
his last sickness, but then complained he was forsaken by
his physician, and railed upon iEsculapius, for not accepting
his vow and passionate desire of preserving his life longer;
and all the effect of that impatience and folly was, that
it is recorded to following ages, that he died without reason
and without relio-ion. But it was a sad sio;ht to see the fa-
vour of all France confined to a physician and a barber, and
the king (Louis XL) to be so much their servant, that he
should acknowledge and own his life from them, and all his
ease to their gentle dressing of his gout and friendly minis-
tries ; for the king thought himself undone and robbed, if he
should die : his portion here was fair ; and he was loath to
exchange his possession for the interest of a bigger hope".
8. Treat thy nurses and servants sweetly, and as it be-
comes an obliged and a necessitous person. Remember,
that thou art very troublesome to them; that they trouble
not thee willingly ; that they strive to do thee ease and be-
nefit, that they wish it, and sigh and pray for it, and are
glad, if thou likest their attendance : that whatsoever is
amiss, is thy disease, and the uneasiness of thy head or thy
side, thy distemper or thy disaffections ; and it will be an
unhandsome injustice to be troublesome to them, because
thou art so to thyself; to make them feel a part of thy sor-
rows, that thou mayest not bear them alone ; evilly to requite
their care by thy too curious and impatient wrangling and
' L. Cornel. Legatus sub Fabio Consule vividam naturam et virilem aiiiinum ser-
V3ivi, quoad aniinam efflavi ; el tandem deserlns ope inedicorum et jEscuIapii Dei
incrali, cui lue voveiam sodalem perpetuo faturum, si fila aliquantulutu optata pro-
liilissel. — Vetus Iiiscriptio in Lusitania.
Nunc omnibus anxius aris
Illacrymat, signatque fores, el pcclore lergit
Limiaa; nunc frustra vocal eiiorabile namen. — Paj)in. lib. v.
452 THE PRACTICE OF THE GRACE
fretful spirit. That tenderness is vicious and unnatural, that
shrieks out under the weight of a gentle cataplasm ; and
he will ill comply with God's rod, that cannot endure his
friend's greatest kindness ; and he will be very angry (if he
durst) with God's smiting him, that is peevish with his ser-
vants that go about to ease him.
9. Let not the smart of your sickness make you to call
violently for death : you are not patient, unless you be con-
tent to live''; God hath wisely ordered that we may be the
better reconciled with death, because it is the period of
many calamities ; but wherever the general hath placed thee,
stir not from thy station, until thou beest called off, but
abide so, that death may come to thee by the design of him,
who intends it to be thy advantage. God hath made suf-
ferance to be thy work; and do not impatiently long for
evening, lest, at night, thou findest the reward of him, that
was weary of his work : for he that is weary before his time,
is an unprofitable servant, and is either idle or diseased.
10. That which remains in the practice of this grace, is,
that the sick man should do acts of patience by way of
prayer and ejaculations : in which he may serve himself of
the following collection.
SECTION 11.
Acts of Patience by tcay of Prayer and Ejaculation.
I WILL seek unto God, unto God will I commit my cause,
which doth great things and unsearchable, marvellous things
without number. Job, v. 8, 9. 11. 16 — 20.
To set up on high those that be low, that those which
mourn, may be exalted to safety.
So the poor have hope, and iniquity stoppeth her mouth.
Behold, happy is the man whom God correcteth : there-
fore despise not thou the chastening of the Almighty.
For he maketh sore, and bindeth up ; he woundeth, and
his hands make whole.
He shall deliver thee in six troubles ; yea, in seven there
shall no evil touch thee.
*• ' ATfona^ri^ih Graeci vocant, cum Mors propter Iiiipalicnliam pctitur.
OF PATIENCE IN SICKNESS. 453
Thou shall come to thy grave in a just age, like as a
shock of corn cometh in his season.
I remember thee upon my bed, and meditate upon thee
in the night watches. Because thou hast been my help,
therefore under the shadow of thy wings will I rejoice. My
soul followeth hard after thee ; for thy right hand hath up-
holden me. Psal. Ixiii. 6 — 8.
God restoreth my soul : he leadeth me in the path of
righteousness for his name's sake. Yea, though I walk
through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil :
for thou art with me ; thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.
Psal. xxiii. 3, 4.
In the time of trouble he shall hide me in his pavilion : in
the secret of his tabernacle shall he hide me, he shall set me
up upon a rock. Psal. xxvii. 5.
The Lord hath looked down from the height of his sanc-
tuary ; from the heaven did the Lord behold the earth : to
hear the groaning of his prisoners ; to loose those, that are
appointed to death. Psal. cii. 19, 20.
I cried unto God with my voice, even unto God with my
voice, and he gave ear unto me. In the day of my trouble I
sought the Lord; my sore ran in the night and ceased not;
my soul refused to be comforted, I remembered God, and
was troubled : I complained, and my spirit was overwhelmed.
Thou boldest mine eyes waking : I am so troubled that I can-
not speak. Will the Lord cast me off for ever ? and will he
be favourable no more ? Is his promise clean gone for ever ?
Doth his promise fail for evermore ? Hath God forgotten to
be gracious ? hath he in anger shut up his tender mercies ?
And I said, This is my infirmity : but I will remember the
years of the right hand of the Most High. Psal. Ixxvii. 1 — 4.
7—10.
No temptation hath taken me, but such as is common
to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer me to be
tempted above what I am able; but will, with the temptation,
also make a way to escape, that I may be able to bear it.
1 Cor. X. 13.
Whatsoever things were written aforetime, were written
for our learning; that we, through patience and comfort of
the Scriptures, might have hope. Now the God of peace and
consolation grant me to be so minded. Rom. xv. 4, 5.
454 THE PRACTICE OF THE C>KACE
It is the Lord: let him do what seemeth good in his eyes.
1 Sam. iii. 18.
Surely the word, that the Lord hath spoken, is very good :
but thy servant is weak : O remember mine infirmities : and
lift thy servant up, that leaneth upon thy right hand.
There is given unto me a thorn in the flesh to buffet me.
For this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might de-
part from me. And he said unto me. My grace is sufficient
for thee : for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most
gladly therefore will I glory in my infirmities, that the power
of Christ may rest upon me. For when I am weak, then am
I strong. 2 Cor. xii. 7 — 10.
Q Lord, thou hast pleaded the causes of my soul ; thou
hast redeemed my life. And I said. My strength and my
hope is in the Lord ; remembering my affliction and my mi-
sery, the wormwood and the gall. My soul hath them still
in remembrance, and is humbled within me. This I recal
to my mind, therefore I have hope.
It is the Lord's mercies, that we are not consumed, be-
cause his compassions fail not. They are new every morn-
ing; great is thy faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, said
my soul ; therefore will I hope in bim.
The Lord is good to them, that wait for him ; to the soul,
that seeketh him. It is good, that a man should both hope
and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord. For the Lord
will not cast olf for ever. But though he cause grief, yet
will he have compassion according to the multitude of his
mercies. For he doth not afflict willingly, nor grieve the
children of men. Lam. iii. 58. 18 — 26. 31 — 33. 39.
Wherefore doth a living man complain ^ a man for the
punishn^ent of his sins ? O that thou wouldest hide me in the
grave [of Jesus], that thou wouldest keep me secret, until
thy wrath be past : that thou wouldest appoint me a set time,
and remember me ! Job, xiv. 13.
Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we
not receive evil ? Job, ii, 20.
OF PATIENCE IN SICKNESS. 455
The sick man may recite, or hear recited, the following
Psalms in the intervals of his agony.
I.
0 Lord, rebuke me not in thine anger, neither chasten
me in thy hot displeasure. Psalm, vi.
Have mercy upon me, O Lord, for I am weak ; O Lord,
heal me, for my bones are vexed.
My soul is also sore vexed : but thou, O Lord, how long.?
Return, O Lord, deliver my soul : O save me for thy
mercies' sake.
For in death no man remembereth thee : in the grave who
shall give thee thanks ?
1 am weary with my groaning ; all the night make I my
bed to swim: I water my couch with my tears.
Mine eye is consumed because of grief; it waxeth old
because of all my \sorrow&^
Depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity ; for the Lord
hath heard the voice of my weeping.
The Lord hath heard my supplication: the Lord will re-
ceive my prayer.
Blessed be the Lord, who hath heard my prayer, and
hath not turned his mercy from me.
IL
In the Lord put I my trust : how say ye to my soul. Flee
as a bird to your mountain ? Psalm, xi.
The Lord is in his holy temple, the Lord's throne is in
heaven; his eyes behold, his eyelids try, the children of men.
Preserve me, O God ; for in thee do I put my trust.
Psal. xvi. L
0 my soul, thou hast said unto the Lord, Thou art my
Lord ; my goodness extendeth not to thee.
The Lord is the portion of mine inheritance and of my
cup: thou maintainest my lot.
1 will bless the Lord, who hath given me counsel : my
reins also instruct me in the ni^ht seasons.
I have set the Lord aUvays before me : because he is at
my right hand, I shall not be moved.
Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoiceth ; my
tiesh also shall rest in hope.
456 THE PRACTICE OF THE GRACE
Thou wilt shew me the path of life: in thy presence is
the fulness of joy, at thy right hand there are pleasures for
evermore.
As for me, I will behold thy face in righteousness: I shall
be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness. Psalm, xvii.
III.
Have mercy upon me, O Lord, for I am in trouble : mine
eye is consumed with grief; yea, my soul and my belly.
Psalm, xxxi.
For my life is spent with grief, and my years with sigh-
ing : my strength faileth because of mine iniquity, and my
bones are consumed.
I am like a broken vessel.
But I trusted in thee, O Lord; I said, Thou art my God,
My times are in thy hand : make thy face to shine upon
thy servant: save me for thy mercy's sake.
When thou saidst. Seek ye my face, my heart said unto
thee. Thy face. Lord, will I seek. Psalm, xxvii.
Hide not thy face from me ; put not thy servant away in
thine anger: thou hast been my help ; leave me not, neither
forsake me, O God of my salvation.
I had fainted, unless I had believed to see the goodness
of the Lord in the land of the living.
0 how great is thy goodness, which thou hast laid up
for them that fear thee ; which thou hast wrought for them,
that trust in thee before the sons of men ! Psalm, xxxi.
Thou shalt hide them in the secret of thy presence from
the pride of man : thou shalt keep them secretly in a pavilion
from the strife of tongues, [Ji'om the cahinmies and aggravaiiou
()/' sins by devils.}
1 said in my haste, I am cut off from before thine eyes :
nevertheless thou heardest the voice of my supplication when
I cried unto the^.
O love the Lord, all ye his saints : for the Lord preserveth
the faithful, and plenteously rewardeth the proud doer.
Be of good courage, and he shall strengthen your heart,
all ye that hope in the Lord.
The Prayer to be said in the beginning of a Sickness.
O Almighty God, merciful and gracious, who, in ihy
OF PATIENCE IK SICKNESS. 457
justice, didst send sorrow and tears, sickness and death, into
the world, as a punishment for man's sins, and hast compre-
hended all under sin, and this sad covenant of sufferings, not
to destroy us, but that thou mightest have mercy upon all,
making thy justice to minister to mercy, short afflictions to
an eternal weight of glory ; as thou hast turned my sins into
sickness, so turn my sickness to the advantages of holiness
and religion, of mercy and pardon, of faith and hope, of
grace and glory. Thou hast now called me to the fellowship
of sufferings : Lord, by the instrument of religion let my
present condition be so sanctified, that my sufferings may
be united to the sufferings of my Lord, that so thou mayest
pity me and assist me. Relieve my sorrow, and support my
spirit : direct my thoughts, and sanctify the accidents of my
sickness, and that the punishment of my sin may be the
school of virtue : in which, since thou hast now entered me.
Lord, make me a holy proficient; that I may behave myself
as a son under discipline, humbly and obediently, evenly and
penitently, that I may come by this means nearer unto thee ;
that if I shall go forth of this sickness by the gate of life
and health, I may return to the world with great strengths
of spirit, to run a new race of a stricter holiness and a more
severe religion : or if I pass from hence with the outlet of
death, I may enter into the bosom of my Lord, and may feel
the present joys of a certain hope of that sea of pleasures,
in which all thy saints and servants shall be comprehended
to eternal ages. Grant this for Jesus Christ's sake, our
dearest Lord and Saviour. Amen.
An act of He&ignation to he said bi/ a sick person in
all the evil accidents of his sickness.
O eternal God, thou hast made me and sustained me ;
thou hast blessed me in all the days of my life, and hast
taken care of me in all variety of accidents ; and nothing
happens to me in vain, nothing without thy providence ; and
I know thou smitest thy servants in mercy, and with designs
of the greatest pity in the world : Lord, I humbly lie down
under thy rod ; do with me, as thou pleasest ; do thou choose
for me, not only the whole state and condition of being, but
every little and great accident of it. Keep me safe by thy
458 THE PllACTICK OF THE (JUACE
grace, and then use what instrument thou pleasest, of bring-
ing me to thee. Lord, I am not solicitous of the passage, so
I may get to thee. Only, O Lord, remember my infirmities,
and let thy servant rejoice in thee always, and feel and con-
fess, and glory in thy goodness. O be thou as delightful to
me in this my medicinal sickness, as ever thou wert in any
of the dangers of my prosperity: let me not peevishly refuse
thy pardon at the rate of a severe discipline. I am thy ser-
vant and thy creature, thy purchased possession, and thy
son; I am all thine: and because thou hast mercy in store
for all, that trust in thee, I cover mine eyes, and in silence
wait for the time of my redemption. Amen.
A Prayer for the grace of Patience.
Most merciful and gracious Father, who, in the redemp-
tion of lost mankind by the passion of thy most holy Son,
hast established a covenant of sufferings, I bless and mag-
nify thy name, that thou hast adopted me into the inherit-
ance of sons, and hast given me a portion of my elder bro-
ther. Lord, the cross falls heavy and sits uneasy upon my
shoulders ; my spirit is willing, but my flesh is weak : I
humbly beg of thee, that I may now rejoice in this thy dis-
pensation and effect of providence. I know and am per-
suaded, that thou art then as gracious, when thou smitest
us for amendment or trial, as when thou relievest our wearied
bodies, in compliance with our infirmity. I rejoice, O Lord,
in thy rare and mysterious mercy, Vv'ho, by sufferings, hast
turned our misery into advantages unspeakable : for so thou
makest us like to thy Son, and givest us a gift, that the angels
never did receive : for they cannot die in conformity to, and
imitation of, their Lord and ours ; but, blessed be thy name,
we can; and, dearest Lord, let it be so. Amen.
IL
Thou, who art the God of patience and consolation,
strengthen me in the inner man, that I may bear the yoke
and burden of the Lord without any uneasy and useless mur-
murs and ineffective unwillingness. Lord, I am unable to
stand under the cross, unable of myself: but thou, O holy
Jesus, who didst feel the burden of it, who didst sink under
il, and wert pleased to admit a man to bear part of the load>
OF PATIENCE IK SICKNESS. 459
when thou underwentest all for him, be thou pleased to ease
this load by fortifying my spirit, that I may be strongest
when I am weakest, and may be able to do and suffer every
thing thou pleasest, through Christ, who strengthens me.
Lord, if thou wilt support me, I will for ever praise thee : if
thou wilt suffer the load to press me yet more heavily, I will
cry unto thee, and complain unto my God ; and at last I will
lie down and die, and by the mercies and intercession of the
holy Jesus, and the conduct of thy blessed Spirit, and the
ministry of angels, pass into those mansions, where holy
souls rest, and weep no more. Lord, pity me ; Lord, sanctify
this my sickness ; Lord, strengthen me; holy Jesus, save me,
and deliver me. Thou knowest, how shamefully I have fallen
with pleasure : in thy mercy and very pity, let me not fall
with pain too. O let me never charge God foolishly, nor of-
fend thee by my impatience and uneasy spirit, nor weaken
the hands and heax'ts of those, that charitably minister to my
needs : but let me pass through the valley of tears and the
valley of the shadow of death with safety and peace, with a
meek spirit and a sense of the Divine mercies : and though
thou breakest me in pieces, my hope is, thou wilt gather me
up in the gatherings of eternity. Grant this, eternal God,
gracious Father, for the merits and intercession of our mer-
ciful high-priest, who once suffered for me, and for ever in-
tercedes for me, our most gracious and ever-blessed Saviour
Jesus.
A Prayer to he said, when the sick man takes Physic.
O most blessed and eternal Jesus, thou, who art the great
physician of our souls, and the Sun of Righteousness arising
with healing in thy wings, to thee is given by thy heavenly
Father the government of all the world, and thou disposest
every great and little accident to thy Father's honour, and to
the good and comfort of them, that love and serve thee : be
pleased to bless the ministry of thy servant in order to my
ease and health, direct his judgment, prosper the medicines,
and dispose the chances of my sickness fortunately, that I
may feel the blessing and loving-kindness of the Lord in the
ease of my pain and the restitution of my health : that I,
being restored to the society of the living, and to thy solemn
assemblies, may praise thee and thy goodness, secretly
460 THE PHACTICE OF FAITH
among the faithful, and irt the congregation of thy redeemed
ones, here in the outer-courts of the Lord, and hereafter in
thy eternal temple for ever and ever. Amen.
SECTION III.
Of the practice of the grace of Faith in the time of Sickness.
Now is the time, in which the faith appears most neces-
sary, 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 tempt-
ation, to prevent despair ; upon the belief of the articles of
our religion, we can do the works of a holy life ; but upon
belief of the promises, we can bear our sickness patiently,
and die cheerfully. The sick man may practise it in the fol-
lowing instances.
1. Let the sick man be careful, that he do not admit of
any doubt concerning that, which he believed and received
from a common consent in his best health and days of elec-
tion and religion. For if the devil can but prevail so far as
to unfix and unrivet the resolution and confidence or fulness
of assent, it is easy for him so to unwind the spirit, that from
whi/ to whether or no, from whether or no to scarcelj/ not,
from scarcely not to ahsohitely not at all, are steps of a de-
scending and falling spirit : and whatsoever a man is made
to doubt of by the weakness of his understanding in a sick-
ness, it will be hard to get an instrument strong or subtle
enough to reinforce and insure : for when the strengths are
gone, by which faith held, and it does not stand firm by
the weight of its own bulk and great constitution, nor yet
by the cordage of a tenacious root ; then it is prepared for
a ruin, which it cannot escape in the tempests of a sick-
ness and the assaults of a devil. Discourse and argument,
the line of tradition, and a never-failing experience, the Spi-
rit of God, and the truth of miracles, the word of prophecy,
and the blood of martyrs, the excellency of the doctrine, and
the necessity of men, the riches of the promises, and the
IN TIMK OF SICKNESS, 4C1
wisdom of tlio revelations, the reasonableness and sublimity,
the concordance and the usefulness, of the articles, and their
compliance with all the needs of man, and the government
of commonwealths, are like the strings and branches of the
roots, by which faith stands fnm and unmoveable in the spi-
rit and understanding of a man. But in sickness, the under-
standing is shaken, and the ground is removed in which the
root did grapple, and support its trunk '^; and therefore there
is no way now, but that it be left to stand upon the old con-
fidences, and by the firmament of its own weight : it must
be left to stand, because it always stood there before : and
as it stood all his life-time in the ground of understanding,
so it must now be supported with will, and a fixed I'esolu-
tion''. But disputation tempts it, and shakes it with trying,
and overthrows it with shaking. Above all things in the
world, let the sick man fear a proposition, which his sick-
ness hath put into him contrary to the discourses of health
and a sober untroubled reason.
2. Let the sick man mingle the recital of his creed toge-
ther with his devotions, and in that let him account his faith;
not in curiosity and factions, in the confessions of parties
and interests'': for some over-forward zeals are so earnest to
profess their little and uncertain articles, and glory so to die
in a particular and divided communion, that, in the profes-
sion of their faith, they lose or discompose their charity. Let
it be enough, that we secui'e our interest of heaven, though
we do not go about to appropriate the mansions to our sect :
for every good man hopes to be saved, as he is a Christian,
* — Non jam vnliilis radlcibus ha?rens, Pondero fixa suo — ,
** Sancliusque ac reverentius visum de aclis Deoriim credere quum scire, — Tacit.
8 Fides tna te salvuiri faciei : non exercitatio Scriplurarum. Fides in regula po-
sita est ; (scil. in Symbolo quod jam recilaverat) Iiabet legem, et salutem de obser-
vatione legis : Exercitatio aiitem in curiosilate consislit, iiabens gloriam sulam de
peritiae studio. Cedat cnriosiias Fidci; cedat Gloria Saluti. — Tert. de prtgscript.
St. .Auguslinus vocat Sj-mbolum compreliensionem Fidci veslra? alque perfectionem;
Cordis signaculum, et nostras mililiac sacraraentum. Amb. lib. iii. de Veland, Vir-
gin. Aug. senn, 115, T^on per difilciles nos Dens ad beatam vitam quxstiones vo-
cat. In absolulo nrbiset facili est asternilas j Jesnm snscitatnm a mortuisper Deum
credere, el ipsum esse Dominum cotifiteri. — Sf, Hilar, lib. 10. de Trinit. Usee est
fides Catholica, de Sjmbolo suo dixit Athanasius, vel quicuuque author est St. Atha-
iias. de fide Nicena.
Taf 6v aurn ira^a. t£v •nraTEgaiV nara. Taj &£iaf y^a<^ai ofxuXoynQiTca ttIs-tk; ttuTopxti;
eitt; «rpof oi/aTpo'rrri'J fJtev itatrri:; aa-cQdai, a-uarcta-iy Je -rrj; sys-fffiaj Iv X{i«-tm.
E]), ad Epict,
4G2 THE PRACTICE OF FAITH
and not as he is a Lutheran, or of another division. How-
ever, those articles, upon which he can build the exercise of
any virtue in his sickness, or upon the stock of which he
can improve his present condition, are such as consist in
the greatness and goodness, the veracity and mercy, of God
through Jesus Christ; nothing of which can be concerned
in the fond disputations, which faction and interest hath too
Ions: maintained in Christendom.
3. Let the sick man's faith especially be active about the
promises of grace, and the excellent things of the gospel :
those, which can comfort his sorrows, and enable his pati-
ence : those, upon the hopes of which he did the duties of
his life, and for which he is not unwilling to die ; such as
the intercession and advocation of Christ, remission of sins,
the resurrection, the mysterious arts and mercies of man's
redemption, Christ's triumph over death, and all the powers
of hell, the covenant of grace, or the blessed issues of re-
pentance ; and, above all, the article of eternal life, upon the
strength of vs^hich, eleven thousand virgins went cheerfully
together to their martyrdom, and twenty thousand Christ-
ians were burned by Dioclesian on a Christmas-day, and
whole armies of Asian Christians offered themselves to the
tribunals of Arius Antonius, and whole colleges of severe
persons were instituted, who lived upon religion, whose din-
ner was the eucharist, whose supper was praise, and their
nights were watches, and their days were labour; for the
hope of which, then, men counted it gain to lose their estates,
and gloried in their sufferings, and rejoiced in their perse-
cutions, and were glad at their disgraces. This is the ar-
ticle, that hath made all the martyrs of Christ confident and
glorious ; and if it does not more than sufficiently strengthen
our spirits to the present suffering, it is because we under-
stand it not, but have the appetites of beasts and fools. But
if the sick man fixes his thoughts, and sets his habitation to
dwell here, he swells his hope, and masters his fears, and
eases his sorrows, and overcomes his temptations.
4. Let the sick man endeavour to turn his faith of the
articles into the love of them : and that will be an excellent
instrument, not only to refresh his sorrows, but to confirm his
faith in defiance of all temptations. For a sick man and a
disturbed understanding are not competent and fit instru-
IK ti:me or sickness. 4G3
ments to jiulge concerning- the reasonableness of a proposi-
tion. 13iit therefore let him consider and love it, because it
is useful and necessary, profitable and gracious : and when
he is once in love with it, and then also renews his love to it,
when he feels the need of it, he is an interested person, and
for his own sake will never let it go, and pass into the shadows
of doubting, or the utter darkness of infidelity. An act of
love will make him have a mind to it ; and we easily believe
what we love, but very uneasily part with our belief, which
we for so great an interest have chosen, and entertained with
a great ati'ection.
5. Let the sick person be infinitely careful, that his faith
be not tempted by any man, or any thing; and when it is in
any degree weakened, let him lay fast hold upon the con-
clusion, upon the article itself, and by earnest prayer beg of
God to guide him in certainty and safety. For let him con-
sider, that the article is better than all its contrary or contra-
dictory, and he is concerned, that it be true, and concerned
also, that he do believe it: but he can receive no good at all,
if Christ did not die, if there be no resurrection, if his creed
hath 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 1 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 possibi-
lity 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 as-
sault? Therefore seize upon the article, and secure the great
object, and the great instrument, that is, the hopes of par-
don and eternal life through Jesus Christ; and do this by
f In Phacdon.
VOL. IV. . 2 H
464 THE PRACTICE OF TAITH
all means, and by any instrument, artificial or inartificial, by
argument or by stratagem, by perfect resolution or by dis-
course, by the hand and ears of premises or the foot of the
conclusion, by right or by wrong, because we understand it ;
or because we love it, super totani materiam ; because 1 will,
and because I ought ; because it is safe to do so, and because
it is not safe to do otherwise ; because if I do, I may receive
a good ; and because if I do not, I am miserable ; either for
that I shall have a portion of sorrows, or tliat I can have no
portion of good things, without it.
SECTION IV.
Ads of Faith, by way of Prayer and Ejaculation, to he said by
sick men, in the days of their Temptation.
Lord, whither shall I go? thou hast the words of eternal
life. John, vi. 68.
I believe in God the Father Almighty, and in Jesus
Christ, his only Son, our Lord, 8cc.
And I believe in the Holy Ghost, 8cc.
Lord, I believe ; help thou mine unbelief. Mark, ix. 24.
I know and am persuaded by the Lord Jesus, that none
of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself: for
whether we live, we live unto the Lord ; and whether we die,
we die unto the Lord : whether we live therefore or die, we
are the Lord's. Rom. xiv. 14. 7, 8.
If God be for us, who can be against us? Rom. viii. 31 — 34.
He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for
us all, how shall he not with him give us all things ?
Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect ? It
is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth ? It is
Christ that died ; yea, rather that is risen again, who is even
at the right hand of God ; who also maketh intercession
for us.
If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father,
Jesus Christ the righteous : and he is the propitiation for
our sins. 1 John, ii. 1, 2.
This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation.
IN TIMF. OF SICKNESS. 465
that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners.
1 Tim. i. 15.
0 grant that I may obtain mercy, that in me Jesus Christ
may shew forth all long-suffering, that I may believe in him
to life everlasting.
1 am bound to give thanks unto God alway, because God
hath from the beginnino- chosen me to salvation, throusfh
sanctification of the Spirit, and belief of the truth, where-
unto he called me by the gospel, to the obtaining of the
glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. 2 Thess. ii. 13, 14. 16, 17.
Now our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God even our
Father which hath loved us, and hath given us everlasting
consolation, and good hope through grace, comfort my
heart, and stablish me in every good word and work.
The Lord direct my heart into the love of God, and into
the patient waiting for Christ. 2 Thess. iii. 5.
O that our God would count me worthy of this calling,
and fulfil all the good pleasure of his goodness, and the
work of faith with power : that the name of our Lord Jesus
Christ may be glorified in me, and I in him, according to
the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ. 2 Thess. i.
11,12.
Let us who are of the day, be sober, putting on the breast-
plate of faith and love, and for an helmet, the hope of salva-
tion. For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to ob-
tain salvation by our Lord J^sus Christ, who died for us,
that whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with
him. Wherefore comfort yourselves together, and edify one
another. 1 Thes. v. 8—10. 12.
There is no name under heaven, whereby we can be saved,
but only the name of the Lord Jesus. Acts, iv. 12. And
every soul which will not hear that prophet, shall be de-
stroyed from among the people. Acts, iii. 23.
God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of Jesus
Christ. Gal. vi. 14. I desire to know nothing but Jesus
Christ and him crucified. 1 Cor. ii. 2. For to me to live is
Christ, and to die is gain. Phil. i. 21.
Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils : for
wherein is he to be accounted of? Isa. ii. 22. But the just
shall live by faith. Hab. ii. 4.
Lord, I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God,
2 H 2
4G6 THE PRACTICE OF FATTH, ScC.
John, xi. 27. the Saviour of the work!, John, iv. 42, the re-
surrection and the life ; and he that believeth in thee, though
he were dead^ yet shall he live. John, xi. 25. 40.
Jesus said unto her. Said I not to thee, that if thou
vv^ouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God ?
O death, where is thy sting ? O grave, where is thy vic-
tory ? The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is
the' law. But thanks be to God, who giveth us the victory
through our Lord Jesus Christ. Lord, make me steadfast and
unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord : for
I know that my labour is not in vain in the Lord. 1 Cor. xv.
65—58.
The Prayer for the Grace and strengths of Faith.
O holy and eternal Jesus, who didst die for me and all
mankind, abolishing our sin, reconciling us to God, adopt-
ing us into the portion of thine heritage, and establishing
with us a covenant of faith and obedience, making our souls
to rely upon spiritual strengths, by the supports of a holy
belief, and the expectation of rare promises, and the infalli-
ble truths of God : O let me for ever dwell upon the rock,
leaning upon thy arm, believing thy word, trusting in thy
promises, waiting for thy mercies, and doing thy command-
ments; that the devil may not prevail upon me, and my
own weaknesses may not abuse or unsettle my persuasions,
nor my sins discompose my just confidence in thee and thy
eternal mercies. Let me always be thy servant and thy dis-
ciple, and die in the communion of thy church, of all faith-
ful people. Lord, I renounce whatsoever is against thy truth ;
and if secretly I have, or do believe, any false proposition, I
do it in the simplicity of my heart and great weakness ; and
if I could discover it, would dash it in pieces by a solemn
disclaiming it : for thou art the way, the truth, and the life.
And I know, that whatsoever thou hast declared, that is the
truth of God : and I do firmly adhere to the religion thou
hast taught, and glory in nothing so much as that I am a
Christian, that thy name is called upon me. O my God,
though I die, yet will I put my trust in thee. In thee, O
Lord, have I trusted; let me never be confounded. Amen.
THE PRACTICE OF REPENTANCE, &C. 4G7
SECTION V.
Of the practice of the grace of' Repentance in the
time ()f' Sickness.
Men generally do very much dread sudden death, and
pray against it passionately; and certainly it hath in it great
inconveniences accidentally to men's estates, to the settle-
ment of families, to the culture and trimming of souls, and
it robs a man of the blessings, which may be consequent to
sickness, and to the passive graces and holy contentions of
a Christian, while he descends to his grave without an ad-
versary or a trial s: and a good man may be taken at such a
disadvantage, that a sudden death would be a great evil, even
to the most excellent person, if it strikes him in an unlucky
circumstance. But these considerations are not the only in-
gredients into those men's discourse, who pray violently
against sudden deaths ; for possibly, if this were all, there
may be in the condition of sudden death something to make
recompence for the evils of the over-hasty accident. For
certainly, it is a less temporal evil to fall by the rudeness of
a sword, than the violences of a fever, and the axe is much a
less affliction than a strangury ; and though a sickness tries
our virtues, yet a sudden death is free from temptation : a
sickness may be more glorious, and a sudden death more safe.
The deadest deaths are best, the shortest and least premedi-
tate"', so Caesar said: and Pliny called a short death the
greatest fortune of a man's life. For even good men have
been forced to an indecency of deportment by the violences
of pain': and Cicero observes concerning Hercules, that he
was broken in pieces with pain even then, when he sought
for immortality by his death, being tortured with a plague,
knit up in the lappet of his shirt''. And therefore as a sud-
den death certainly loses the rewards of a holy sickness, so
it makes, that a man shall not so much hazard and lose the
rewards of a holy life.
But the secret of this affair is a worse matter : men live
s Descendibli ad Olympia, sed nemo praeter te : coronaiu habes, victoiiam non
babes.
t" Milius ille peril, subitri qui mcrgiUii iiuda,
Quam sua qui liquidis brachia lass^it aquis. — Otid.
Eliam innocenles mentiri cogit dolor. ^ Ipse illigatus pesle iuteriiiior texlili.
4G8 THE PRACTICE OF REPENTANCE
at that rate, either of an habitual wickedness, or else a fre-
quent repetition of single acts of killing and deadly sins, that
a sudden death is the ruin of all their hopes, and a perfect
consignation to an eternal sorrow. But in this case also,
so is a lingering sickness : for our sickness may change us
from life to health, from health to strength, from strength to
the firmness and confirmation of habitual graces ; but it
cannot change a man from death to life, and begin and finish
that process, which sits not down but in the bosom of bless-
edness. He that washes in the morning, when his bath is
seasonable and healthful', is not only made clean, but
sprightly, and the blood is brisk and coloured like the first
springing of the morning ; but they that wash their dead,
cleanse the skin, and leave paleness upon the cheek, and
stiffness in all the joints. A repentance upon our death-bed
is like washing the corpse: it is cleanly and civil ; but makes
no change deeper than the skin. But God knows, it is a
custom so to wash them, that are going to dwell with dust,
and to be buried in the lap of their kindred earth '", but all
their lives-time wallow in pollutions without any washing
at all; or if they do, it is like that of the Dardani", who
washed but thrice all their life-time, when they are born, and
when they marry, and when they die ; when they are bap-
tized, or against a solemnity, or for the day of their funeral :
but these are but ceremonious washings, and never purify
the soul, if it be stained and hath sullied the whiteness of its
baptismal robes.
God intended we should live a holy life : he contracted
with us in Jesus Christ for a holy life : he made no abate-
ments of the strictest sense of it", but such as did necessa-
rily comply with human infirmities or possibilities ; that is,
he understood it in the sense of repentance, which still is so
to renew our duty, that it may be a holy life in the second
sense ; that is, some great portion of our life to be spent in
living, as Christians should. A resolving to repent upon
' Lavor honest^ hor.\ et salubri, quae mlhi et calorem et sanguiuem servet : Rigere
et pallere post lavacruin mortuus possum. — Tertul. Apol. c. 42.
'" — Co^^nata fipce sepulti.
" AajSavs"? Tou? Itto rrig 'aXXm^iSo; a>tcCcii Tfij XouEi-Qai fxovov •nafa isavta. Tov 'saurZv
$Uv, e| iSi'vwv, x,al yafjiovvrag xai aTro&avovTaj. — JElian. lib. iv. var. hist. cap. 1.
" Vide Aug. lib. 5. Horn. iv. et Scrni. 57. de Tempore. Faustuin ad Paiilinuin
Ep. 1. in Bibliolli. pp, toin. 5. vet edit. Uoncil. Arelal, i. c. 3. Carlhag. 4. cap. 7,8.
IN TIME OF SICKNESS. 469
our death-bed, is the greatest mockery of God in the world,
and the most perfect contradictory to all his excellent de-
signs of mercy and holiness : for therefore he threatened us
with hell, if we did not, and he promised heaven, if we did
live a holy life ; and a late repentance promises heaven to
us upon other conditions?, even when we have lived wick-
edly. It renders a man useless and intolerable to the world;
taking oft' the great curb of religion, of fear and hope, and
permitting all impiety with the greatest impmiity and en-
couragement in the world. By this means we see so many
TToiSag 7ro\v>(poviovg'^, as Philo calls them, or, as the pro-
phets, pueros centum annonim, children of almost a hundred
years old, upon whose grave we may write the inscription
which was upon the tomb of Siniilis in Xiphilin"^. "Here
he lies, who was so many years, but lived but seven." And
the course of nature runs counter to the perfect designs of
piety; and God, who gave us a life to live to him, is only
served at our death, when we die to all the world : and we
undervalue the great promises made by the holy Jesus% for
which the piety, the strictest unerring piety, of ten thousand
ages is not a proportionable exchange : yet we think it a
hard bargain to get heaven, if we be forced to part with one
lust, or live soberly twenty years ; but, like Demetrius Afer
(who, having lived a slave all his life-time, yet desiring to
descend to his grave in freedom', begged manumission of
his lord), we lived in the bondage of our sin all our days, and
hope to die the Lord's freed-men. But above all, this course
of a delayed repentance must of necessity therefore be in-
effective and certainly mortal, because it is an entire destruc-
tion of the very formality and essential constituent reason
of religion : which I thus demonstrate.
When God made man, and propounded to him an im-
mortal and a blessed state, as^ the end of his hopes and the
P Qnis luce snprem-i
Dimisisse meas sero non ingemit Iioras ? — Sil, Jtal. 1. 15.
1 Sic contra rerum naturae mnnera nola, Corvus niaturis frugibns ova refert.
■■ In Adrian. Zi'^iXij /xiv |y TuZSa XEiVai, BioZ^ Kara, srn Toa-a, ^na-af SI £t» i-rra.
' Vide the Life of Christ, Disc, of Repentance; Rule of Holy Living, chap. iv.
Sect, of Repentance ; and volume of Serra. Serra. v, vi.
• Ne tamcn ad Stygias famulus descenderet umbras,
Ureret implicilum ciini scderata lues,
I Cavimus
470 THE PRACTICE OF UEPENTAXCE
perfection of his condition, lie did not give it him for' no-
t-liing, but upon, certain conditions; which, although they
could add nothing to God, yet they were such things, which
man could value, and they were his best: and God had made
appetites of pleasure in man, that in them the scene of his
obedience should lie. For when God made instances of
man's obedience, he, 1. either commanded such things to
be done, which man did naturally desire ; or, 2. such things
which contradict his natural desires; or, 3. such which were
indifferent. Not the first and the last: for it could be no
effect of love or duty towards God for a man to eat, when
he was impatiently hungry, and could not stay from eating;
neither was it any contention of obedience or labour of love
for a man to look eastward once a day, or turn his back
when the north wind blew fierce and loud. Therefore for
the trial and instance of obedience, God made his laws so,
that they should lay restraint upon man's appetites, so that
man might part with something of his own, that he may give
to God his will, and deny it to himself for the interest of
his service : and chastity is the denial of a violent desire ;
and justice is parting with money, that might help to enrich
me ; and meekness is a huge contradiction to pride and re-
venge; and the wandering of our eyes, and the greatness of
our fancy, and our imaginative opinions, are to be lessened,
that we may serve God. "^I'here is no other way of serving
God, we have nothing else to present unto him : we do not
else give him any thing or part of ourselves, but when we, for
his sake, part with what we -naturally desire; and difficulty
•is essential to virtue, and without choice there can be no
reward, and in the satisfaction of our natural desires there
is no election, we run to them, as beasts to the river or the
crib. If, therefore, any man shall teach or practise such a
religion, that satisfies all our natural desires in the days of
desires and passion, of lust and appetites, and only turns to
God, when his appetites are gone, and his desires cease;
this man hath overthrown the very being of virtues, and
the essential constitution of religion : religion is no reli-
gion, and virtue is no act of choice, and reward comes by
chance and without condition, if we only are religious, when
we cannot choose ; if we part with our money, when we can-
not keep it ; with our lust, when we cannot act it; with our
liV TIME OF SICKNESS. 471
desires, when they have left us. Death is a certain morti-
fier ; but that mortification is deadly, not useful to the pur-
poses of a spiritual life. When we are compelled to depart
fiom our evil customs", and leave to live, that we may be-
gin to live, then we die to die ; that life is the prologue to
death, and thenceforth we die eternally.
St. Cyril speaks of certain people, that chose to worship
the sun, because he was a day-god : for, believing that he
was quenched every night in the sea, or that he had no in-
fluence upon them, that light up candles, and lived by the
light of fire, they were confident, they might be Atheists all
night, and live as they list. Men, who divide their little
portion of time between religion and pleasures, between
God and God's enemy, think, that God is to rule but in
his certain period of time, and that our life is the stage for
passion and folly, and the day of death for the work of our
life. But as to God both the day and night are alike, so are the
first and last of our days : all are his due, and he will account
severely with us for the follies of the first, and the evil of the
last. The evils and the pains are great, which are reserved
for those, who defer their restitution to God's favour till their
death''. And therefore Antisthenes said well, " It is not the
happy death, but the happy life, that makes man happy." It
is in piety, as in fame and reputation : he secures a good
name but loosely y, that trusts his fame and celebrity only to
his ashes ; and it is more a civility than the basis of a firm
reputation, that men speak honour of their departed rela-
tives ; but if their life be virtuous, it forces honour from
contempt, and snatches it from the hand of envy, and it
shines through the crevices of detraction ; and as it anointed
the head of the living, so it embalms the body of the dead^.
From these premises it follows, that when we discourse of a
sick man's repentance, it is intended to be, not a beginning,
" Cogimur a siielis animtiin suspendere rebus,
At<|ue III vivamus, vivere desiniiiius. — Corn. Gall.
^ Gnossiiis liKc Rliadamantlias habel durissiina reijiia,
Cusligatqne, audilquc dolos, sabigitque fateri
Qua: quis apud superos fiiilo la['tatus inani
Di;.lulit in seraiii coinniissa piacula morlem. — JEneid. 6,
y Cineri gloria sera venit.
^ Tu mihi, quod rarum csl, vivo .sablimc dcdisli
Nomcii, ab cxsequiis quod dare fama solet.
472 THE PRACTICE OF REPENTANCE
but the prosecution and consummation of the covenant of
repentance, which Christ stipulated with us in baptism, and
which we needed all our life, and which we began long before
this last arrest, and in which we are now to make farther
progress, that we may arrive to that integrity and fulness of
duty, " that our sins may be blotted out, when the times of
refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord"."
SECTION VI.
Rules for the practice of Repentance in Sickness.
1. Let the sick man consider, at what gate this sickness
entered : and if he can discover the particular, let him in-
stantly, 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 governed by the following
measures.
2. Inquire into the repentance of thy former life particu-
larly ; whether it were of a great and perfect grief, and pro-
ductive of fixed resolutions of holy living, and reductive of
these to act ; how many days and nights we have spent in
sorrow or care, in habitual and actual pursuances of virtue ;
what instrument we have chosen and used for the eradication
of sin; how we have judged ourselves, and how punished;
and, in sum, whether we have, by the grace of repentance,
changed our life from criminal to virtuous, from one habit to
another ; and whether we have paid for the pleasure of our
sin by smart or sorrow^ by the effusion of alms, or pernocta-
tions or abodes in prayers, so as the spirit hath been served
in our repentance as earnestly and as greatly, as our appe-
tites have been provided for, in the days of our shame and
folly.
3. Supply the imperfections of thy repentance by a ge-
neral or universal sorrow for the sins, not only since the last
communion or absolut'^n, but of thy whole life ; for all sins,
» Acts, iii. 10.
IN TIME OF SICKNESS. 473
known and unknown, repented and unrepented, of ignorance
or infirmity, which thou knowest, or which others have ac-
cused thee of; thy clamorous and thy whispering sins, the
sins of scandal and the sins of a secret conscience, of the
flesh and of the spirit : for it would be but a sad arrest to
thy soul wandering in strange and unusual regions, to see a
scroll of uncancelled sins represented and charged upon thee
for want of care and notices, and that thy repentance shall
become invalid, because of its imperfections.
4. To this purpose it is usually advised by spiritual per-
sons, that the sick man make an universal confession, or a
renovation and repetition of all the particular confessions
and accusations of his whole life ; that now, at the foot of
his account, he may represent the sum total to God and his
conscience, and make provisions for their remedy and pardon,
according to his present possibilities.
5. Now is the time to make reflex acts of repentance :
that as, by a general repentance, we supply the want of the
just extension of parts ; so, by this, we may supply the
proper measures of the intension of degrees. In our health,
we can consider concerning our own acts, whether they be
real or hypocritical, essential or imaginary, sincere or upon
interest, integral or imperfect, commensurate or defective.
And although it is a good caution of securities, after all our
care and diligence still to suspect ourselves and our own de-
ceptions, and for ever to beg of God pardon and acceptance
in the union of Christ's passion and intercession : yet, in
proper speaking, reflex acts of repentance, being a suppletory
after the imperfection of the direct, are then most fit to be
used, when we cannot proceed in and prosecute the dirept
actions. To repent because we cannot repent, and to grieve
because we cannot grieve, was a device invented to serve the
turn of the mother of Peter Gratian : but it was used by her,
and so advised to be, in her sickness, and last actions of re-:
pentance : for in our perfect health and understanding if we
do not understand our first act, we cannot discern our se-
cond ; and if we be not sorry for our sins, we cannot be sorry
for want of sorrows : it is a contradiction to say we can; be-
cause want of sorrow, to which we are obliged, is certainly a
great sin ; and if we can grieve for that, then also for the
rest; if not for all., then not for this. But in the days of
474 THE PRACTICE OF REPENTANCE
.weakness the case is otherwise ; for then our actions are im-
perfect, our discourse weak, our internal actions not discern-
ible, our fears great, our work to be abbreviated, and our
defects to be supplied by spiritual arts: and therefore it is
proper and proportionate to our state, and to our necessity,
to beg of God pardon for the imperfections of our repentance,
acceptance of our weaker sorrows, supplies out of the trea-
sures of grace and mercy. And thus repenting of the evil
and unhandsome adherences of our repentance, in the whole
integrity of the duty it will become a repentance not to be
repented of.
G. Now is the time, beyond which the sick man must, at
no hand, defer to make restitution of all his unjust posses-
sions ^ or other men's rights, and satisfactions for all injuries
and violences, according to his obligation, and possibilities:
for although many circumstances might impede the acting
it in our life-time, and it was permitted to be deferred in
many cases, because by it justice was not hindered, and
oftentimes piety and equity were provided for; yet because
this is the last scene of our life, he that does not act it, so
far as he can, or put it into certain conditions and order of
effecting, can never do it again, and therefore then to defer it
is to omit, and leaves the repentance defective in an integral
and constituent part.
7. Let the sick man be diligent and watchful, that the
principle of his repentance be contrition, or sorrow for sins,
commenced upon the love of God. For although sorrow for
sins upon any motive may lead us to God by many interme-
dial passages, and is the threshold of returning sinners; yet
it is not good nor effective upon our death-bed ; because re-
pentance is not then to begin, but must then be finished and
completed ; and it is to be a supply and preparation of all
tlie imperfections of that duty, and therefore it must by tliat
time be arrived to contrition; that is, it must have grown
from fear to love, from the passions of a servant to the affec-
tions of a son. The reason of which (besides the precedent)
is this. Because, when our repentance is in this state, it sup^
poses the man also in a state of grace, a well-grown Christian ;
for to hate sin out of the love of God is not the felicity of a
b Ou i>L'ndic, ourendre, on Ics jicincs d'ciilers allcadic.
IX TT:^r[^ of sickness. 475
new convert, or an infant grace, (or if it be, that love also is
in its infancy ;) bnt it supposes a good progress, and the man
habitually virtuous, and tending to perfection: and therefore
contrition, or repentance so qualified, is useful to great de-
grees of pardon, because the man is a gracious person, and
that virtue is of good degree, and consequently a fit enijdoy-
ment for him, that shall work no more, but is to appear be-
fore his Judge to receive the hire of his day. And if his re-
pentance be contrition even before this state of sickness, let
it be increased by spiritual arts, and the proper exercises of
charity.
Means of exciting Contrition, or repentance of Sins, proceeding
from the Love of God.
To which purpose the sick man may consider, and is to
be reminded (if he does not) that there are in God all the
motives and causes of amiability in the world : that God is
so infinitely good, that there are some of the greatest and
most excellent spirits of heaven, whose work, and whose fe-
licity, and whose perfections, and whose nature it is, to
flame and burn in the brightest and most excellent love :
that to love God is the greatest glory of heaven : that in
him there are such excellences, that the smallest rays of
them, communicated to our weaker understandings, are yet
sufficient to cause ravishments, and transportations, and sa-
tisfactions, and joys unspeakable and full of glory : that all
the wise Christians of the world know and feel such causes
to love God, that they all profess themselves ready to die
for the love of God, and the apostles and millions of the
martyrs did die for him : and although it be harder to live in
his love than to die for it, yet all the good people, that ever
gave their names to Christ, did, for his love, endure the cru-
cifying their lusts, the mortification of their appetites, the
contradictions and death of their most passionate, natural
desires: that kings and queens have quitted their diadems,
and many married saints have turned their mutual vows into
the love of Jesus, and married him only, keeping a virgin
chastity in a married life, that they may more tenderly ex-
press their love to God : that all the good we have, derives
from God's love to us, and all the good we can hope for, is
47G THE PRACTICE OF REPENTANCE
the effect of his love, and can descend only upon them, that
love him : that by his love it is, that we receive the holy
Jesus, and by his love we receive the Holy Spirit, and by his
love we feel peace and joy within our spirits, and by his
love we receive the mysterious sacrament. And what can
be greater, than that from the goodness and love of God we
receive Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost, and adoption, and
the inheritance of sons, and to be coheirs with Jesus, and to
have pardon of our sins, and a Divine nature, and restraining
grace, and the grace of sanctification, and rest and peace
within us, and a certain expectation of glory ? Who can
choose but love him, who, when we had provoked him ex-
ceedingly, sent his Son to die for us, that we might live with
him; who does so desire to pardon us and save us, that he
hath appointed his holy Son continually to intercede for us ?
that his love is so great, that he offers us great kindness, and
entreats us to be happy, and makes many decrees in heaven
concerning the interest of our soul, and the very provision
and support of our persons, that he sends an angel to attend
upon every of his servants, and to be their guard and their
guide in all their dangers and hostilities : that for our sakes
he restrains the devil, and put his mightiness in fetters and
restraints, and chastises his malice with decrees of grace and
safety : that he it is, who makes all the creatures serve us,
and takes care of our sleeps, and preserves all plants and
elements, all minerals and veiretables, all beasts and birds,
all fishes and insects, for food to us and for ornament, for
physic and instruction, for variety and wonder, for delight
and for religion : that as God is all good in himself, and all
good to us, so sin is directly contrary to God, to reason, to
religion, to safety and pleasure, and felicity : that it is a great
dishonour to a man's spirit to have been made a fool by a
weak temptation and an empty lust; and to have rejected
God, who is so rich, so wise, so good, and so excellent, so
delicious, and so profitable to us : that all the repentance in
the world of excellent men does end in contrition, or a sorrow
for sins proceeding from the love of God ; becavise they that
are in the state of grace, do not fear hell violently, and so
long as they remain in God's favour, although they suffer
the infirmities of men, yet they are God's portion; and there-
fore all the repentance of just and holy men, which is cer-
IN TIME OF SICKNESS. 477
tainly the best, is a repentance not for lower en3s, but be-
cause they are the friends of God, and they are full of indig-
nation, that they have done an act against the honour of
their patron, and their dearest Lord and Father : that it is a
huge imperfection and a state of weakness to need to be
moved with fear or temporal respects; and they that are so,
as yet are either immerged in the affections of the world or
of themselves ; and those men that bear such a character, are
not yet esteemed laudable persons, or men of good natures,
or the sons of virtue : that no repentance can be lasting, that
relies upon any thing but the love of God; for temporal mo-
tives may cease, and contrary contingencies may arise, and
fear of hell may be expelled by natural or acquired hard-
nesses, and is always the least, when we have most need of
it, and most cause for it ; for the more habitual our sins are,
the more cauterized our conscience is, the less is the fear of
hell, and yet our danger is much the greater : that although
fear of hell or other temporal motives may be the first inlet
to a repentance, yet repentance, in that constitution and
under those circumstances, cannot obtain pardon, because
there is in that no union with God, no adhesion to Christ,
no endearment of passion or of spirit, no similitude or con-
formity to the great instrument of our peace, our glorious
Mediator : for as yet a man is turned from his sin, but not
converted to God ; the first and last of our returns to God
beino; love, and nothino- but love: for obedience is the first
part of love, and fruition is the last; and because he that
does not love God, cannot obey him, therefore he that does
not love him, cannot enjoy him.
Now that this may be reduced to practice, the sick man
may be advertised, that in the actions of repentance, he se-
parate low, temporal, sensual and self-ends from his thoughts,
and so do his repentance, that he may still reflect honour
upon God, that he confess his justice in punishing, that he
acknowledge himself to have deserved the worst of evils;
that he heartily believe and profess, that if he perish finally,
yet that God ought to be glorified by that sad event, and
that he hath truly merited so intolerable a calamity : that he
also be put to make acts of election and preference, profess-
ing that he would willingly endure all temporal evils, rather
than be in the disfavour of God or in the state of sin ; for,
478 THE PRACTICE OF REPEN'TAX
by this last instance, he will be quitted from the sus|jicion
of leaving sin for temporal respects, because he, by an act
of imagination or feigned presence of the object to him, en-
tertains the temporal evil, that he may leave the sin; and
therefore, unless he be a hypocrite, does not leave the sin
to be quit of the temporal evil. And as for the other motive
of leaving sin out of the fear of hell, because that is an evan-
gelical motive conveyed to us by the Spirit of God, and is
immediate to the love of God ; if the schoolmen had pleased,
they might have reckoned it as the handmaid, and of the
retinue of contrition : but the more the considerations are
sublimed above this, of the greater effect and the more im-
mediate to pardon will be the repentance.
5. Let the sick persons do frequent actions of repent-
ance, by way of prayer for all those sins, which are spiritual,
and in which no restitution or satisfaction material can be
made, and whose contrary acts cannot in kind be exercised.
For penitential prayers, in some cases, are the only instances
of repentance that can be. An envious man, if he gives God
hearty thanks for the advancement of his brother, hath done
an act of mortification of his envy, as directly as corporal
austerities are an act of chastity, and an enemy to unclean-
ness : and if I have seduced a person, that is dead or absent,
if I cannot restore him to sober counsels by my discourse
and undeceiving him, I can only repent of that, by way of
prayer : and intemperance is no way to be rescinded or
punished by a dying man but by hearty prayers. Prayers
are a great help in all cases ; in some they are proper acts of
virtue, and direct enemies to sin: but althouoh alone and in
long continuance they alone can cure some one or some few
little habits, yet they can never alone change the state of the
man ; and therefore are intended to be a suppletory to the
imperfections of other acts : and, by that reason, are the
proper and most pertinent employment of a clinic or death-
bed penitent.
9. In' those sins, whose proper cure is mortification cor-
poral, the sick man is to supply that part of his repentance
by a patient submission to the rod of sickness : for sickness
does the work of penances, or sharp afflictions and dry diet,
perfectly well: to which if we also put our wills, and make
it our act by an after-election, by confessing the justice of
TX TIMF. OF SICKNESS. 479
God, by bearing; it sweetly, by begging it may be medicinal,
there is nothing wanting to the perfection of this part, but
that God confirm our patience, and hear our prayers. When
the guilty man runs to punishment^, the injured person is
prevented, and hath no whither to go but to forgiveness.
10. I have learned but of one suppletory more for the
perfection and proper exercise of a sick man's repentance ;
but it is such an one, as will go a great way in the abolition
of our past sins, and making our peace with God, even after
a less severe life ; and that is, that the sick man do some
heroical actions in the matter of charity, or religion, of jus-
tice, or severity. There is a story of an infamous thief, who,
having begged his pardon of the emperor Mauricius, was
yet put into the hospital of St. Sampson, where he so plenti-
fully bewailed his sins in the last aoonies of his death, that
the physician who attended, found him unexpectedly dead,
and over his face a handkerchief bathed in tears ; and soon
after somebody or other pretended to a revelation of this
man's beatitude. It was a rare grief, that was noted in this
man, which begot in that age a confidence of his being
saved ; and that confidence (as things then went) was quickly
called a revelation. But it was a stranger severity, which is
related by Thomas Cantipratanus concerning a young gen-
tleman condemned for robbery and violence, who had so
deep a sense of his sin, that he was not content with a single
death, but begged to be tormented, and cut in pieces joint
by joint, with intermedial senses, that he might, by such a
smart, signify a greater sorrow- Some have given great
estates to the poor and to religion ; some have built colleges
for holy persons ; many have suffered martyrdom : and
though those that died under the conduct of the Maccabees,
in defence of their country and religion, had pendants on
their breasts consecrated to the idols of the Jamnenses; yet
that they gave their lives in such a cause with so great a
duty (the biggest things they could do or give), it was es-
teemed to prevail hugely towards the pardon and accepta-
tion of their persons. An heroic action of virtue is a huge
compendium of religion: for if it be attained to by the usual
measures and progress of a Christian, from inclination to
' Quid debeul lafsi facere, ubi rei ad prenain confugiunl ?
VOL. IV. 2 I
480 THE PRACTICE OF REPENTANCE
act, from act to habit, from habit to abode, from abode to
reigning, from reigning to perfect possession, from posses-
sion to extraordinary emanations, that is, to heroic actions,
then it must needs do the work of man, by being so great to-
wards the work of God : but if a man comes thither per sal-
tiim, or on a sudden (which is seldom seen), then it supposes
the man always well inclined, but abased by accident or
hope, by confidence or ignorance; then it supposes the man
for the present in a great fear of evil, and a passionate desire
of pardon : it supposes his apprehensions great, and his time
little ; and what the event of that will be, no man can tell ;
but it is certain, that to some purposes God will account for
our religion on our death-bed, not by the measures of our
time, but the eminency of affection (as said Celestine the
First''); that is, supposing the man in the state of grace, or
in the revealed possibility of salvation, then an heroical act
hath the reward of a longer series of good actions, in an
even and ordinary course of virtue.
11. In what can remain for the perfecting of a sick man's
repentance, he is to be helped by the ministries of a spiritual
guide.
SECTION VII.
Acts of Hepentance, hij way of Prayer and Tljaculation, to he
used especialh/ hy Old Men in their Age, and by all Men in
their Sickness.
Let us search and try our ways, and turn again to the
Lord. Let us lift up our hearts with our hands unto God in
the heavens. We have transgressed and rebelled ; and thou
hast not pardoned. Thou hast covered with anger and per-
secuted us : thou hast slain, thou hast not pitied. O cover
not thyself with a cloud; but let our prayer pa&s through.
Lam. iii. 40 — 44.
I have sinned : what shall I do unto thee, O thou pre-
server of men ? Why hast thou set me as a mark against thee,
^ Vera ad Denni conversio in ultiinis positorura mente potius est iestiinanda qaam
tempore. Col. P. ep. ii. c. 9. Vera conversio sci). ab infidelitate ad tidera Christi
per Baptisniuui.
IN TIME OF SICKNESS. 481
SO that I am a burthen to myself? And why dost not thou
])ardon my transgression, and take away mine iniquity ? for
now shall I sleep in the dust, and thou shalt seek me in the
morning, but I shall not be. Job, vii. 20, 21.
The Lord is ri<2;hteous; for I have rebelled against his
commandments. Hear, I pray, all ye people, behold my sor-
row. Behold, O Lord, I am in distress : my bowels are trou-
bled : my heart is turned within me ; for I have grievously
rebelled. Lam. i. 18. 40.
Thou, O Lord, remainest for ever ; thy throne from ge-
neration to generation. Wherefore dost thou forget us for
ever, and forsake us so long time ? Turn thou us unto thee,
O Lord, and so shall we be turned : renew our days as of old.
O reject me not utterly, and be not exceeding wroth against
thy servant. Lam. v. 19 — 22.
0 remember not the sins of my youth, nor my transgres-
sions ; but according to thy mercies remember thou me, for
thy goodness' sake, O Lord. Psal. xxv. 7. Do thou for me,
O God the Lord, for thy name's sake : because thy mercy is
good, deliver thou me. For I am poor and needy, and my
heart is wounded Vvithin me. I am gone like the shadow that
declineth : I am tossed up and down as the locust. Psal. cix.
21—23.
Then Zaccheus stood forth, and said. Behold, Lord, half
of my goods I give to the poor ; and if I have wronged any
man, I restore him fourfold. Luke, xix. 8.
Hear my prayer, O Lord, and consider my desire. Psal.
cxliii. 1. Let my prayer be set forth in thy sight as the in-
cense, and let the lifting up of my hands be an evening sacri-
fice. Psal. cxli. 3. And enter not into judgment with thy
servant; for in thy sight shall no man living be justified.
Teach me to do the thing that pleaseth thee, for thou art my
God : let thy loving Spirit lead me forth into the land of
righteousness. Psal. cxliii. 2. 10.
1 will speak of mercy and judgment : unto thee, O Lord,
will I make my prayer. I will behave myself wisely in a per-
fect way. O when wilt thou come unto me ? I will walk in
my house with a perfect heart. I will set no wicked thing
before mine eyes : I hate the work of them that turn aside :
it shall not cleave to me. Psal. ci. 1 — 3.
Hide thy face from my sins, and blot out all mine iniqui-
2 i2
482 THE PRACTICE OF REPEXTANCE
ties. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right
spirit within me. DeHver me from blood-guiltiness, O God,
from malice, envy, the follies of lust and violences, of pas-
sion, &c. thou God of my salvation ; and my tongue shall
sing aloud of thy righteousness. Psal.li. 9, 10. 14.
The sacrifice of God is a broken heart : a broken and a
contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise, ver. 17.
Lord, I have done amiss ; I have been deceived : let so
great a wrong as this be removed, and let it be so no more.
The Prayer for the Grace and perfection of Repentance.
I.
O almighty God, thou art the great judge of all the world,
the father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the father of mercies,
the father of men and angels ; thou lovest not, that a sinner
should perish, but delightest in our conversion and salva-
tion, and hast, in our Lord Jesus Christ, established the co-
venant of repentance, and promised pardon to all them, that
confess their sins and forsake them : O my God, be thou
pleased to work in me, what thou hast commanded should
be in me. Lord, I am a dry tree, who neither have brought
forth fruit unto thee and unto holiness, nor have wept out
salutary tears, the instrument of life and restitution, but have
behaved myself like an unconcerned person in the ruins and
breaches of my soul : but, O God, thou art my God, early
will I seek thee : my soul thirsteth for thee in a barren and
thirsty land, where no water is''. Lord, give me the grace of
tears and pungent sorrow: let my heart be as a land of rivers
of waters, and my head a fountain of tears : turn my sin into
repentance, and let my repentance proceed to pardon and
refreshment.
n.
Support me with thy graces, strengthen me with thy Spi-
rit, soften my heart with the fire of thy love, and the dew of
heaven, with penitential showers : make my care prudent,
and the remaining portion of my days like the perpetual
watches of the night, full of caution and observance, strong
and resolute, patient and severe. I remember, O Lord, that
e Psal. Ixiii. 1.
IN TIME OF SICKNESS. 483
I did sin with greediness and passion, with great desires and
an unabated choice : O let me be as great in my repentance,
as ever I have been in my calamity and shame : let my hatred
of sin be as great as my love to thee, and both as near to in-
finite, as my proportion can receive.
III.
O Lord, I renounce all affection to sin, and would not
buy my health nor redeem my life with doing any thing
against the laws of my God, but would rather die than offend
thee. O dearest Saviour, have pity upon thy servant : let
me, by thy sentence, be doomed to perpetual penance during
the abode of this life : let every sigh be the expression of
a repentance, and every groan an accent of spiritual life, and
every stroke of my disease a punishment of my sin, and an
instrument of pardon ; that, at my return to the land of in-
nocence and pleasure, I may eat of the votive sacrifice of the
supper of the Lamb, that was, from the beginning of the
world, slain for the sins of every sorrowful and returninp-
sinner. O grant me sorrow here and joy hereafter, through
Jesus Christ, who is our hope, the resurrection of the dead,
the justifier of a sinner, and the glory of all faithful souls.
Amen.
A Prayer for Pardon of Sins, to be said frequently in time of
Sickness, and in all the portions of Old Age.
I.
O eternal and most gracious Father, I humbly throw my-
self down at the foot of thy mercy-seat, upon the confidence
of thy essential mercy, and thy commandment, that we
should come boldly to the throne of grace, that we inay find
mercy in time of need. O my God, hear the prayers and
cries of a sinner, who calls earnestly for mercy. Lord, my
needs are greater, than all the degrees of my desire can be ;
unless thou hast pity upon me, I perish infinitely and into-
lerably ; and then there will be one voice fewer in the choir
of singers, who shall recite thy praises to eternal ages. But,
O Lord, in mercy deliver my soul. O save me for thy mercy'^
sake^. For, in the second death, there is no remembrance
of thee : in that grave, who shall give thee thanks .''
f Psal. vi. 4, 5.
484 THE PRACTICE OF REPENTANCE
II.
O just and dear God, my sins are innumerable ; they are
upon my soul in multitudes ; they are a burden too heavy for
me to bear ; they already bring sorrow and sickness, shame
and displeasure, guilt and a decaying spirit, a sense of thy
present displeasure, and fear of worse, of infinitely worse.
But it is to thee so essential, so delightful, so usual, so de-
sired by thee to shew mercy, that although my sin be very
great, and my fear proportionable, yet thy mercy is infinitely
greater than all the world, and my hope and my comfort rise
up in proportions towards it, that I trust the devils shall
never be able to reprove it, nor my own weakness discom-
pose it. Lord, thou hast sent thy Son to die for the pardon
of my sins : thou hast given me thy Holy Spirit, as a seal of
adoption to consign the article of remission of sins : thou
hast, for all my sins, still continued to invite me to condi-
tions of life by thy ministers the prophets ; and thou hast,
with variety of holy acts, softened my spirit, and possessed
my fancy, and instructed my understanding, and bended and
inclined my will, and directed or overruled my passions in
order to repentance and pardon : and why should not thy
servant beg passionately, and humbly hope for, the effects of
all these thy strange and miraculous acts of loving-kindness ?
Lord, I deserve it not, but I hope thou wilt pardon all my
sins ; and I beg it of thee for Jesus Christ's sake, whom
thou hast made the great endearment of thy promises, and
the foundation of our hopes, and the mighty instrument
whereby we can obtain of thee whatsoever we need and can
receive.
HI.
O my God, how shall thy servant be disposed to receive
such a favour, which is so great, that the ever-blessed Jesus
did die to purchase it for us ; so great that the falling angels
never could hope, and never shall obtain it ? Lord, I do from
my soul forgive all, that have sinned against me : O forgive
me my sins, as I forgive them, that have sinned against me.
Lord, I confess my sins unto thee daily, by the accusations
and secret acts of conscience ; and if we confess our sins,
thou hast called it a part of justice to forgive us our sins, and
IN TIME OF SICKNESS. 485
to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Lord, I put my trust
in thee ; and thou art ever gracious to them, that put their
trust in thee. I call upon my God for mercy ; and thou art
always more ready to hear, than we to pray. But all that I
can do, and all that I am, and all that 1 know of myself, is
nothing but sin, and infirmity, and misery; therefore I go
forth of myself, and throw myself wholly into the arms of
thy mercy through Jesus Christ, and beg of thee for his
death and passion's sake, by his resurrection and ascension,
by all the parts of our redemption, and thy infinite mercy,
in which thou pleasest thyself above all the works of the
creation, to be pitiful and compassionate to thy servant in
the abolition of all my sins : so shall I praise thy glories with
a tongue not defiled with evil language, and a heart purged
by thy grace, quitted by thy mercy, and absolved by thy
sentence, from generation to generation. Amen,
An Act of holi/ Resolution of Amendment of Life,
in case of' Recoveiy.
O most just and most merciful Lord God, who hast sent
evil diseases, sorrow and fear, trouble and uneasiness, briers
and thorns, into the world, and planted them in our houses,
and round about our dwellings, to keep sin from our
souls, or to drive it thence ; I humbly beg of thee, that this
my sickness may serve the ends of the spirit, and be a mes-
senger of spiritual life, an instrument of reducing me to
more religious and sober courses. I say, O Lord, that I am
unready and unprepared in my accounts, having thrown away
great portions of my time in vanity, and set myself hugely
back in the accounts of eternity ; and I had need live my
life over again, and live it better : but thy counsels are in
the great deep, and thy footsteps in the water; and I know
not what thou wilt determine of me. If I die, I throw my-
self into the arms of the holy Jesus, whom I love above all
things ; and if I perish, I know I have deserved it ; but thou
wilt not reject him that loves thee. But if I recover, I will
live, by thy grace and help, to do the work of God, and pas-
sionately pursue my interest of heaven, and serve thee in
the labour of love, with the charities of a holy zeal, and the
diligence of a firm and humble obedience. Lord, I will
dwell in thy temple, and in thy service : religion shall be
to
486 AN ANALYSIS OR EXPLICATION
my employment, and alms shall be my recreation, and pa-
tience shall be my rest, and to do thy will shall be my meat
and drink ; and to live shall be Christ, and then to die shall
be gain.
. " O spare me a little, that I may recover my strength,
before I go hence, and be no more seen." " Thy will be
done on earth, as it is in heaven." Amen.
SECTION VIII.
An Analysis or Resolution of the Decalogue, and the special
Precepts of the Gospel, describing the Duties enjoined, and
the Sins forbidden respectiveli/ ; for the assistance of sick
Men in making their Confessions to God and his Ministers,
and the rendering their Repentance more particular and
petfect.
1. Thou shalt have none other gods but me.
Duties commanded are, 1. To love God above all things.
2. To obey him and fear him. 3. To worship him with pray-
ers, vows, thanksgivings, presenting to him our souls and
bodies, and all such actions and expressions, which the con-
sent of nations, or the laws and customs of the place where
we live, have appropriated to God. 4. To design all to God's
o-lory. 5. To inquire after his will. 6. To believe all his
word. 7. To submit to his providence. 8. To proceed towards
all our lawful ends by such means as himself hath appointed.
9. To speak and think honourably of God, and recite his
praises, and confess his attributes and perfections.
They sin against this commandment, 1 . Who love them-
selves or any of the creatures inordinately and intemperately.
2. They that despise or neglect any of the Divine precepts.
3. They that pray to unknown, or false gods. 4. They that
disbelieve, or deny, there is a God. 5. They that make vows
to creatures. 6. Or say prayers to the honour of men or wo-
men, or angels ; as paternosters to the honour of the Virgin
Mary, or St. Peter, which is a taking a part of that honour,
which is due to God, and giving it to the creature: it is a
religion paid to men and women out of God's proper portion,
out of prayers directed to God immediately; and it is an act
OF THE DECALOGUE. 487
contrary to that religion, which makes God the last end of
all things; for this, through Our addresses to God, passes
something to the creatures, as if they stood beyond him ; for
by the intermedial worship paid to God, they ultimately do
honour to the man, or angel. 7. They that make consump-
tive oblations to the creatures ; as the Collyridians, who
offered cakes, and those that burnt incense or candles to the
Virgin Mary. 8. They that give themselves to the devil, or
make contracts with him, and use fantastic conversation
with him. 9. They that consult witches and fortune-tellers.
10. They that rely upon dreams and superstitious observ-
ances. 11. That use charms, spells, superstitious words and
characters, verses of psalms, the consecrated elements, to
cure diseases, to be shot-free, to recover stolen goods, or in-
quire into secrets. 12. That are wilfully ignorant of the laws
of God, or love to be deceived in their persuasions, that they
may sin with confidence. 13. They that neglect to pray to
God. 14. They that arrogate to themselves the glory of any
action or power, and do not give the glory to God, as Herod.
15. They that doubt of, or disbelieve, any article of the
Creed, or any proposition of Scripture, or put false glosses
to serve secular or vicious ends, against their conscience,
or with violence any way done to their reason. 16. They
that violently or passionately pursue any temporal end with
an eagerness greater, than the thing is, in prudent account.
17. They that make religion to serve ill ends, or do good to
evil purposes, or evil to good purposes. 18. They that ac-
cuse God of injustice or unmercifulness, remissness or cru-
elty; such as are the presumptuous, and the desperate.
19. All hypocrites and pretenders to religion, walking in
forms and shadows, but denying the power of godliness.
20. All irxipatient persons : all that repine or murmur against
the prosperities of the wicked, or the calamities of the godly,
or their own afflictions. 21. All that blaspheme God, or
speak dishonourable things of so sacred a Majesty. 22. They
that tempt God, or rely upon his protection against his rules,
and without his promise, and besides reason, entering into
danger, from which, without a miracle, they cannot be res-
cued. 23. They that are bold, in the midst of judgment, and
fearless in the midst of the Divine vengeance, and the ac
cents of his anger
488 AN ANALYSIS OR EXPLICATION
II. Comm. Thou shah not make to thi/sclf any
graven image, nor icorsh/p it.
The moral duties of this commnndinent are, 1. To wor-
ship God with all bodily worship and external forms of ad-
dress, according to the custom of the church we live in.
2. To believe God to be a spiritual and pure substance, with-
out any visible form or shape. 3. To worship God in ways
of his own appointing, or by his proportions, or measures of
nature, and right reason ; or public and holy customs.
They sin against this commandment, 1. That make any
image or pictures of the Godhead, or fancy any likeness to
him. 2. They that use images in their religion, designing or
addressing any religious worship to them : for if this thing
could be naturally tolerable, yet it is too near an intolerable
for a jealous God to suffer. 3. They that deny to worship
God with lowly reverence of their bodies, according as the
church expresses her reverence to God externally. 4. They
that invent or practise superstitious worshippings, invented
by man against God's word, or without reason, or besides
the public customs or forms of worshipping, either foolishly
or ridiculously, without the purpose of order, decency, pro-
portion to a wise or a religious end, in prosecution of some
virtue or duty.
III. Comm. Thou shalt not lake God's name in vain.
The duties of this commandment are, 1. To honour and
revere the most holy name of God. 2. To invocate his name
directly, or by consequence, in all solemn and permitted ad-
jurations, or public oaths. 3. To use all things and persons,
upon whom his name is called, or any ways imprinted, with
a regardful and separate manner of usage, different from
common, and far from contempt and scorn. 4. To swear in
truth and judgment.
They sin against this commandment, 1. Who swear vainly
and customarily, without just cause, without competent au-
thority. 2. They that blaspheme or curse God. 3. They that
speak of God without grave cause or solemn occasion.
4. They that forswear themselves ; that is, they that do not
perform their vows to God ; or that swear, or call God to
witness to a lie. 5. They that swear rashly, or maliciously.
or THE DECALOGUE. 489
to commit a sin, or an act of revenge. 6. They that swear by
any creature falsely, or any way, but as it relates to God, and
consequently invokes his testimony. 7. All curious inquirers
into the secrets, and intruders into the mysteries and hidden
things of God. 8. They that curse God, or curse a creature
by God. 9. They that profane churches, holy utensils, holy
persons, holy customs, holy sacraments. 10. They that pro-
voke others to swear voluntarily, and by design, or incuri-
ously, or negligently, when they might avoid it. 11. They
that swear to thino;s uncertain and unknown.
IV. Comm. Remember that thou keep holy the Sahhath-day.
The duties of this commandment are, 1. To set apart
some portions of our time for the immediate offices of reli-
gion, and glorification of God. 2. This is to be done, ac-
cording as God or his holy church hath appointed. 3. One
day in seven is to be set apart. 4. The Christian day is to
be subrogated into the place of the Jew's day : the resurrec-
tion of Christ and the redemption of man was a greater
blessing than to create him. 5. God on that day to be wor-
shipped and acknowledged as our Creator, and as our Sa-
viour. 6. The day to be spent in holy offices, in hearing Di-
vine service, public prayers, frequenting the congregations,
hearing the word of Gud read or expounded, reading good
books, meditation, alms, reconciling enmities, remission of
burdens and of offences, of debts and of work : friendly of-
fices, neighbourhood, and provoking one another to good
works; and to this end all servile works must be omitted,
excepting necessary and charitable offices to men or beasts,
to ourselves or others.
They sin against this commandment, 1. That do, or
compel or entice others to do, servile works without the
cases of necessity or charity, to be estimated according to
conmion and prudent accounts. 2. They that refuse or neg-
lect to come to the public assemblies of the church, to hear
and assist at the Divine offices entirely. 3. They that spend
the day in idleness, forbidden or vain recreations, or the
actions of sin and folly. 4. They that buy and sell without
the cases of permission. 5. They that travel unnecessary
journeys. 6. They that act or assist in contentions or law-
suits, markets, fairs, &c. 7. They that on tliat day omit their
490 AN ANALYSIS OR EXPLICATION
private devotion, unless the whole day be spent in public.
8. They that, by any cross or contradictory actions against
the customs of the church, do purposely desecrate or un-
hallow and make the day common ; as they that, in despite
and contempt, fast upon the Lord's day, lest they may cele-
brate the festival after the manner of the Christians.
V. Coram. Honour thy fallier and thy mother.
The duties are, 1. To do honour and reverence to, and
to love our natural parents. 2. To obey all their domestic
commands; for in them the scene of their authority lies.
3. To give them maintenance and support in their needs.
4. To obey kings and all that are in authority. 5. To pay
tribute and honours, custom and reverence. 6. To, do reve-
rence to the aged and all our betters. 7. To obey our masters,
spiritual governors and guides, in those things, which con-
cern their several respective interest and authority.
They sin against this commandment, 1. That despise
their parents' age or infirmity. 2. That are ashamed of their
poverty and extraction. 3. That publish their vices, errors,
and infirmities, to shame them. 4. That refuse and reject all
or any of their lawful commands. 5. Children that marry
without or against their consent, when it may be reasonably
obtained. 6. That curse them, from whom they receive so
many blessings. 7. That grieve the souls of their parents by
not complying in their desires, and observing their circum-
stances. 8. That hate their persons, that mock them, or use
uncomely jestings. 9. That discover their nakedness volun-
tarily. 10. That murmur against their injunctions, and obey
them involuntarily. 11. All rebels against their kings, or
the supreme power, where it is legally and justly invested.
12. That refuse to pay tributes and impositions imposed le-
gally. 13. They that disobey their masters, murmur or re-
pine against their commands, abuse or deride their persons,
talk rudely, &c. 14. They that curse the king in their heart,
or speak evil of the ruler of their people. 15. All that are
uncivil and rude towards aged persons, mockers and scorners
of them s,
g Credebanl hoc graiulo nefas ct moile piaricliiin,
Si juvctiis veliilo non assuirexeral, et si
JJarbalo cuicunqiie iiucr. JavcH, Stit. V3...
OF THE DKCALOGItE. 491
VI. Comm. Thou shalt do no murder.
The duties are, 1. To preserve our own lives, the lives of
our relatives, and all with whom we converse (or who can
need us, and we assist), by prudent, reasonable and wary
defences, advocations, discoveries of snares, &c. 2. To pre-
serve our health, and the integrity of our bodies and minds,
and of others. 3. To preserve and follow peace with all
men.
They sin against this commandment, 1. That destroy the
life of a man or woman, himself, or any other. 2. That do
violence to, or dismember or hurt, any part of the body with
evil intent. 3. That fight duels, or commence unjust wars.
4. They that willingly hasten their own or others' death.
5. That by oppression or violence embitter the spirits of any,
so as to make their life sad, and their death hasty. 6. They
that conceal the dangers of their neighbour, which they can
safely discover. 7. They that sow strife and contention
among neighbours. 8. They that refuse to rescue or pre-
serve those, whom they can, and are obliged to, preserve.
9. They that procure abortion. 10. They that threaten, or
keej) men in fears, or hate them.
VII, Comm. Thou shalt not cor/unit aduUeri/.
The duties are, 1. To preserve our bodies in the chastity
of a single life, or of marriage. 2. To keep all the parts of
Qur bodies in the care and severities of chastity ; so that we
be restrained in our eyes as well as in our feet.
They sin against this commandment. 1 . Who are adulter-^
ous, incestuous, sodomitical, or commit fornication. 2. They
that commit folly alone, dishonouring their own bodies with
softness and wantonness. 3. They that immoderately let
loose the reins of their bolder appetite, though within the
protection of marriage. 4. They that by wanton gestures,
wandering eyes, lascivious dressings, discovery of the naked-
ness of themselves or others, filthy discourse, high diet,
amorous songs, balls and revellings, tempt and betray them-
selves or others to folly. 5. They that marry a woman di-
vorced for adultery. 6. They that divorce their w ives, except
for adultery, and marry another.
492 AN ANALYSIS OR HXPLtCATION
VIII. Comm. Thou shaft not steal.
The duties are, 1. To give every man his due. 2. To per-
mit every man to enjoy his own goods and estate quietly.
They sin against this commandment, 1. That injure any
man's estate by open violence or by secret robbery, by stealth
or cozenage, by arts of bargaining or vexatious law-suits.
2. That refuse or neglect to pay their debts, when they are
able. 3. That are forward to run into debt knowingly beyond
their power, without hopes or purposes of repayment. 4. Op-
pressors of the poor. 5. That exact usury of necessitous per-
sons, or of any beyond the permissions of equity, as deter-
mined by the laws. 6. All sacrilegious persons ; people, that
rob God of his dues or of his possessions. 7. All that game,
viz. at cards and dice, &c. to the prejudice and detriment of
other men's estates. 8. They that embase coin and metals,
and obtrude them for perfect and natural. 9. That break
their promises to the detriment of a third person. 10. They
that refuse to stand to their bargains. 11. They that by neg-
ligence imbecile other men's estates, spoiling or letting any
thing perish, which is entrusted to them. 12. That refuse to
restore the pledge.
IX. Comm. Thoii shalt not bear false idtness.
The duties are, 1. To give testimony to truth, when we
are called to it by competent authority. 2. To preserve the
good name of our neighbours. 3. To speak well of them, that
deserve it.
They sin against this commandment, 1. That speak false
things in judgment, accusing their neighbour unjustly, or
denying his crime publicly, when they are asked, and can be
commanded lawfully to tell it. 2. Flatterers, aad 3. Slan-
derers; 4. Backbiters, and 5. Detractors. 6. They that se-
cretly raise jealousies and suspicion of their neighbours,
causelessly.
X. Comm. Thou shalt not covet.
The duties are, 1. To be content with the portion God
hath given us. 2. Not to be covetous of other men's o-oods.
They sin against this commandment, 1 . That envy the
prosperity of other men. 2. They that desire passionately to
OF THE DECALOGUE. 493
be possessed of what is their neighbour's. 3. They that with
greediness pursue riches, honours, pleasures, and curiosities.
4. They that are too careful, troubled, distracted, or amazed,
affrighted and afflicted with beiu'j; solicitous in the conduct
of temporal blessings.
These are the general lines of duty, by which we may
discover our failings, and be humbled, and confess accord-
ingly : only the penitent person is to remember, that al-
though these are the kinds of sins described after the sense
of the Jewish church, which consisted principally in the ex-
ternal action or the deed done, and had no restraints upon
the thoughts of men, save only in the tenth commandment,
which was mixed, and did relate as much to action as to
thought (as appears in the instances ;) yet upon us Christians
there are many circumstances and degrees of obligation,
which endear our duty with greater severity and observa-
tion: and the penitent is to account of himself and enume-
rate his sins, not only by external actions or the deed done,
but by words and by thoughts ; and so to reckon, if he have
done it directly or indirectly, if he have caused others to do
it, by tempting or encouraging, by assisting or counselling,
by not dissuading when he could and ought, by fortifying'
their hands or hearts, or not weakening their evil purposes ;
if he have desigiied or contrived its action, desired it or loved
it, delighted in the thought, remembered the past sin with
pleasure or without sorrow : these are the by-ways of sin,
and the crooked lanes, in which a man may wander and be
lost, as certainly as in the broad highways of iniquity.
But besides this, our blessed Lord and his aposiles have
added divers other precepts ; some of which have been with
some violence reduced to the decalogue, and others have not
been noted at all in the catalogues of confession. I shall
therefore describe them entirely, that the sick man may dis-
cover his failings, that, by the mercies of God in Jesus
Christ, and by the instrument of repentance, he may be pre-
sented pure and spotless, before the throne of God.
The special Precepts of the Gospel.
1. Prayer, frequent, fervent, holy, and persevering'"'.
•>! Thess, V. 17. Luke, xviii. 1.
494 THE SPECIAL PRECEPTS
2. Faith'. 3. Repentance ''. 4, Poverty of spirit, as opposed
to ambition and high designs', 5. And in it is humility, or
sitting down in the lowest place, and in giving honour to go
before another"". 6. Meekness, as it is opposed to wayward-
ness, fretfulness, immoderate grieving, disdain and scorn".
7. Contempt of the world. 8. Prudence, or the advantage-
ous conduct of religion". 9. Simplicity, or sincerity in words
and actions, pretences and substances". 10. Hope^ .11. Hear-
ing the w^ord^i. 12. Reading''. 13. Assembling together ^
14 Obeying them that have the rule over us in spiritual af-
fairs'. 15. Refusing to communicate with persons excom-
municate": whither also maybe reduced, to reject heretics''^
16. Charity'''': viz. Love to God above all things; brotherly
kindness, or profitable love to our neighbours as ourselves^
to be expressed in alms", forgiveness y, and to die for our
brethren''. 17. To pluck out the right eye, or violently to
rescind all occasions of sins, though dear to us as an eye".
18. To reprove our erring brother''. 19. To be patient in
afflictions '': and longanimity is referred hither, or long-suf-
ferance''; which is the perfection and perseverance of pa-
tience, and is opposed to hastiness and weariness of spirit.
20. To be thankful to our benefactors ; but above all, in all
things, to give thanks to God". 21. To rejoice in the Lord
always*^. 22. Not to quench s, not to grieve *", not to resist
the Spirit'. 23. To love our wives as Christ loved his church,
and to reverence our husbands''. 24. To provide for our fa-
milies'. 25. Not to be bitter to our children'". 27. To bring
them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord". 26. Not
to despise prophesying". 28. To be gentle, and easy to be
entreated''. 29. To give no scandal or oiFence''. 30. To follow
after peace with all men, and to make peace"". 31. Not to go>
' Mark, xvi. 16. '' Luke, xiii. 3. Acts, iii. 19. ' Malt. v. .S.
'" Luke, xiv. 10. John, xiii. 14. " Matt. v. 5. Col. iii. 12.
" Malt. X. 16. 1 Thess. v. 8. P Rom. viii. 24. i Luke, xvi. 29. Mark, iv. 24.
"• 1 '1 im. iv. 13. 5 Heb. x. 25. ' Heb. xiii. 17. Malt, xviii. 17.
" 2 Thess. iii. 6. 2 John, x. " Titus, iii. 10.
« Coloss. iii. 14. 1 Tim. i. v. 2 Tim. ii. 22. ^Mark, xii. 30. y Matt. vi. 14.
•' 1 John, iii. 16. * Matt, xviii. 9. •• Matt, xviii. 15. « James, i. 4. Luke, xxi. 19.
d Heb, xii. 3. Gal. vi. 9. « Eph. v. 20, 2 Thess. i. 3. Luke, vi, 32. 2 Tim. iii, 2.
f 1 Thess. v. 16. Philip, iii. 1. aud vi. 4. e 1 Thess. v. 19, ^ Eph. iy. 30.
' Acts, vii. 51. ^ Ephes. v. 33. ' 1 Tim. v. 8. "' Coloss. iii. 21. " Ephes. vi, 4-
" 1 Thess, V, 20, P 2 Tim, ii. 24. n Matt, xviii. 7, 1 Cor. x. 32. •■ Heb. xii. 14.
OF THE GOSPEL. 495
to law before the unbelievers'. 32. To do all things that are
of good report, or the actions of public honesty *; abstain-
ing from all appearances of evil ". 33. To convert souls, or
turn sinners from the error of their ways''. 34. To confess
Christ before all the world '\ 35. To resist unto blood, if
God calls us to it". 36. To rejoice in tribulation for Christ's
sake^. 37. To remember and shew forth the Lord's death till
his second coming% by celebrating the Lord's supper ^ 38. To
believe all the New Testament''. 39. To add nothing to St.
John's last book, that is, to pretend to no new revelations ^.
40. To keep the customs of the church, her festivals and so-
lemnities ; lest we be reproved, as the Corinthians were by
St. Paul, " We have no such customs, nor the churches of
God**." 41. To contend earnestly for the faith ^ Not to be
contentious in matters not concerning the eternal interest of
our souls : but in matters indifferent to have faith to our-
selves ^ 42. Not to make schisms or divisions in the body of
the church^. 43. To call no man master upon earth, but to
acknowledge Christ our master and lawgiver''. 44. Not to
domineer over the Lord's heritage'. 45. To try all things,
and keep that which is best ''. 46. To be temperate in all
things'. 47. To deny ourselves"". 48. To mortify our lusts
and their instruments". 49. To lend, looking: for nothinof
again, nothing by way of increase, nothing by way of re-
compence". 50. To watch and stand in readiness against
the coming of the Lord P. 51. Not to be angry without cause''.
52. Not at all to revile"". 53. Not to swear ^ 54. Not to re-
spect persons*. 55. To lay hands suddenly on no man". [This
especially pertains to bishops ; to whom also, and to all the
ecclesiastical order, it is enjoined, that they preach the
word'', that they be instant in season and out of season, that
they rebuke, reprove, exhort with all long-suffering and doc-
trine.] 56. To keep the Lord's day, (derived into an obliga-
tion from a practice apostolical.) 57. To do all things to the
» 1 Cor. vi. 1. » Philip, iv. 8. 2 Cor. viii. 21. " 1 Thess. v. 22.
'' James, v. 19, 20. "■" MaU. x. 32. '' Heb. xii. 4. ? Matt. v. 12. James, i. 2.
« Luke, xxii. 19. '<■ 1 Cor. xi. 26. •> John, xx. 30, 31. Acts, iii. 23. Mark, i. 1.
Luke, X. 16. c Rev. xxii. 18. •' 1 Cor. xi. 16. <= Jude, 3. ' Rom. xiv. 13, 22.
8 Rom. xvi. 17. . I> Matl. xxiii. 8—10. ' 1 Pet. v. 3. ''I John, iv. 1. 1 Thess. v. 21.
1 1 Cor. ix. 25. Tit. ii. SI. ™ Matt. xvi. 24. " Col. iii. 5. Rom. viii. 13.
" Luke, vi. 3.5. p MaU. xxiv. 42. T MaU. v. 22. ■■ 1 Cor. vi. 10.
» Matt. V, 34. ' James, ii. 1. " 1 Tim. v. 22. * 2 Tim. iv. 2.
VOL. IV. 2 K
49G THE PRACTICE OF CHARITY
glory of God '^ 58. To hunger and thirst after righteousness
and its rewards". 59. To avoid foolish questions >'. 60. To
pray for persecutors, and to do good to them that persecute
us, and despitefuUy use us^ 61. To pray for all men\
62. To maintain good works for necessary uses'*. 63. To
work with our own hands, that we be not burdensome to
others, avoiding idleness ^ 64. To be perfect as our hea-
venly Father is perfect''. 65. To be liberal and frugal : for
he that will call us to account for our time, will also for the
spending our money ^ 66. Not to use uncomely jestings*".
67. Modesty ; as opposed to boldness, to curiosity, to inde-
cencys. 68. To be swift to hear, slow to speak''. 69. To
worship the holy Jesus at the mention of his holy name ; as
of old God was, at the mention of Jehovah'.
These are the straight lines of Scripture by which we
may also measure our obliquities, and discover crooked
walkino-. If the sick man hath not done these things, or if
he have done contrary to any of them in any particular, he
hath cause enough for his sorrow, and matter for his confes-
sion; of which he needs no other forms, but that he heartily
deplore and plainly enumerate his follies, as a man tells the
sad stories of his own calamity.
SECTION IX.
Of the Sick Man's Practice of Charity and Justice,
bif wai/ 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, reunite brethren, cause right understandings, and
remove jealousies; give good counsels for the future conduct
of their persons and estates, charm them into religion by the
authority and advantages of a dying person; because the last
words of a dying man are like the tooth of a wounded lion,
"ICor. X.31. '^ Matt. V. 6. yJit. Hi. 9. ^ Matt. v. 44. Rom. xii. 14.
aiTiin. ii. 1. "» Titus, iii. 14. "= Ephes. iv. 28. <J Matt. v. 48.
e 1 Pet. iii. 8. 2 Pet. i. 6, 7. 2 Cor. viii. 7. ix. 5. f Eplies. v. 4.
S 1 Tim. ii. 9, " James, i. 19. 'Phil. ii. 10.
AXD JUSTICE IX SICKNESS. 497
making a deeper impression in the agony, than in the most
vigorous strength''.
2. Let the sick man discover eveiy secret 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 un-
charitably envious, that they are willing, that a secret re-
ceipt should die with them, and be buried in their grave, like
treasure in the sepulchre of David. But this, which is a
design of charity, must therefore not be done to any man's
prejudice ; and the mason of Herodotus the king of Egypt,
who kept secret his notice of the king's treasure, and when
he was a dying, told his son, betrayed his trust then, when
he should have kept it most sacredly for his own interest.
In all other cases let thy charity outlive thee, that thou may-
est rejoice in the mansion of rest, because, by thy means,
many living persons are eased or advantaged.
3. Let him make his will with great justice and piety,
that is, that the right heirs be not defrauded for collateral
respects, fancies, or indirect fondnesses ; but the inherit-
ances descend in their legal and due channel : and in those
things, where we have a liberty, that we take the opportunity
of doing virtuously, that is, of considering how God may be
best served by our donatives, or how the interest of any vir-
tue may be promoted ; in which we are principally to regard
the necessities of our nearest kindred and relatives, servants
and friends.
4. Let the will or testament be made with ingenuity,
openness, and plain expression"', that he may not entail a
lawsuit upon his posterity and relatives, and make them lose
their charity, or entangle their estates, or make them poorer
by the gift. He hath done me no charity, but dies in my
debt, that makes me sue for a legacy.
5. It is proper for the state of sickness, and an excellent
annealing us to burial, that we give alms in this state, so bu-
rying treasure in our graves, that will not perish, but rise
again in the resurrection of the just. Let the dispensation
of our alms be as little intrusted to our executors as may be,
^ Magniiica verba mors prope adraota excntit.
•Nam vera; voces turn demam pectore ab imo Ejicinntur Lucret, iii. 57.
■" At~ 5i xai TW ^tttriXiietv fjii »IJii j-a<f>inVavTa x.ara\iwiiv, ic av fA.fi a[X^i)i.fyoi yeyt-
fJLiin, ir^a.yfj,artt iy,7y Tta^aff-^ri. — Cyrus apud Xeno])h. I. viii. iiistitut.
2 K 2
498 THE PRACTICE OF CHARITY
excepting the lasting and successive portions"; but, with
our own present care, let us exercise the charity, and secure
the stewardship °. It was a custom amongst the old Greeks,
to bury horses, clothes, arms, and whatsoever was dear
to the deceased person, supposing they might need them,
and that, without clothes, they should be found naked by
their judges ; and all the friends did use to bring gifts p, by
such liberality thinking to promote the interest of their dead.
But we may offer our £i'ra(/)ta ourselves best of all''; our
doles and funeral meals, if they be our own early provisions,
will then spend the better : and it is good so to carry our
passing penny in our hand, and by reaching that hand to the
poor, make a friend in the everlasting habitations. He that
gives with his own hand, shall be sure to find "it, and the
poor shall find it"^; but he that trusts executors with his
charity, and the economy and issues of his virtue, by which
he must enter into his hopes of heaven and pardon, shall
find but an ill account, when his executors complain he died
poor. Think on this. To this purpose, wise and pious was
the counsel of Salvian^: "Let a dying man, who hath no-
thing else, of which he may make an effective oblation, offer
up to God of his substance : let him offer it with compunc-
tion and tears, with grief and mourning, as knowing that all
our oblations have their value, not by the price, but by the
afTection ; and it is our faith that commendeth the money,
since God receives the money by the hands of the poor, bub
" Luciati. de luctu.
° Vide reg. 6. paulo infr. Herodot. Musa 5. Plin. lib. iv. cap, 11, Xiphilin.
iu Se<^ero.
©£g|Utt Jtara -^v^^ov Saitpua ;;^£i'te ra.'fov. — -Nicarchus.
1 Fallax sEspe fides, testataque vota peribuiit:
Constitues tamuluin, si sapis, ipse tuuin,
•■ i^ait, 11:)^ tcTjoiJcrt) oft to lyn^e t1)i^ tn minn,
^i)at tl;ou gibctt) totti) tijine ^)aitti, tl)at s^alt t^ou fitm,
jFor toiiiotD0 he glotTjfui, ann djilurcn ticti) unfeinn,
<JE]cerutor0 lietlj cotetoits, anB "fecep aH tT)at tlicp finD.
31f anp toDp asife tol&ere tijc iicati'0 goon^ tecainr j
They answer,
%o ©ot] me TjcTp ann l^alinam, l)c Bien a poor man.
Think on Uiis,
Written upon a vfall in St. Kdmund's Church in Lombard Street.
* Contra avaritiam.
AND JUSTICE IN SICKNESS. 490
at the same time gives, and does not take the blessing ; be-
cause he receives nothing but his own, and man gives that
which is none of his own, that of which he is only a steward,
and shall be accountable for every shilling. Let it therefore
be offered humbly, as a creditor pays his debts ; not magni-
fically, as a prince gives a donative : and let him remember,
that such doles do not pay for the sin, but they ease the
punishment: they are not proper instruments of redemption,
but instances of supplication, and advantages of prayer; and
when w^e have done well, remember that we have not paid
our debt, but shewn our willingness to give a little of the
vast sum we owe : and he that gives plentifully according
to the measure of his estate, is still behind-hand according
to the measure of his sins. Let him pray to God, that this
late oblation may be accepted ; and so it will, if it sails to
him in a sea of penitential tears or sorrows that it is so little,
and that it is so late."
6. Let the sick man's charity be so ordered, that it may
not come only to deck the funeral and make up the pomp ;
charity waiting like one of the solemn mourners ; but let it
be continued, that, besides the alms of health and sickness,
there may be a rejoicing in God for his charity long after
his funerals, so as to become more beneficial and less pub-
lic ; that the poor may pray in private, and give God thanks
many days together. This is matter of prudence, and yet
in this we are to observe the same regards, which we had in
the charity and alms of our lives ; with this only difference,
that, in the funeral alms also of rich and able persons, the
public customs of the church are to be observed, and de-
cency and solemnity, and the expectations of the poor, and
matter of public opinion, and the reputation of religion ; in
all other cases, let thy charity consult with humility and pru-
dence, that it never minister at all to vanity, but be as full of
advantage and usefulness as it may.
7. Every man will forgive a dying person*; and therefore
let the sick man be ready and sure, if he can, to send to
such persons, whom he hath injured, and beg their pardon,
and do them right : for, in this case, he cannot stay for aii
opportunity of convenient and advantageous reconcilement :
500 THE PRACTICE OF CHARITY
he cannot then spin out a treaty, nor beat down the price of
composition, nor lay a snare to be quit from the obligation
and coercion of laws ; but he must ask forgiveness down-
right, and make him amends as he can, being greedy of
making use of this opportunity of doing a duty, that must
be done, but cannot any more, if not now, until time returns
again, and tells the minutes backwards, so that yesterday
shall be reckoned in the portions of the future.
8. In the intervals of sharper pains, when the sick man
amasses together all the arguments of comfort and testimo-
nies of God's love to him, and care of him, he must needs
find infinite matter of thanksgiving and glorification of God :
and it is a proper act of charity and love to God, and justice
too, that he do honour to God on his death-bed for all the
blessings of his life, not only in general communications, but
those by which he hath been separate and discerned from
others, or supported and blessed in his own person ; such
as are, " In all my life-time I never broke a bone ; I never fell
into the hands of robbers, never into public shame, or into
noisome diseases : I have not begged my bread, nor been
tempted by great and unequal fortunes : God gave me a good
understanding, good friends, or delivered me in such a dan-
ger ; and heard my prayers in such particular pressures of
my spirit." This or the like enumeration and consequent acts
of thanksgiving are apt to produce love to God, and confi-
dence in the day of trial ; for he that gave me blessings in
proportion to the state and capacities of my life, I hope also
will do so in proportion to the needs of my sickness and my
death-bed. This we find practised, as a most reasonable
piece of piety, by the wisest of the heathens. So Antipater
Tarsensis gave God thanks for his prosperous voyage into
Greece ; and Cyrus made a handsome prayer upon the tops
of the mountains, when by a fantasm he was warned of
his approaching death. " Receive, O God my father, these
holy rites, by which I put an end to many and great affairs;
and I give thee thanks for thy celestial signs and prophetic
notices, whereby thou hast signified to me what I ought to
do, and what I ought not. I present also very great thanks,
that I have perceived and acknowledged your care of me,
and have never exalted myself above my condition for any
prosperous accident. And I pray that you will grant felicity
AND JUSTICE IN SICKNESS. 501
to ray wife, my children, and friends, and to me a death such
as my life hath been." But that of Philagrius in Gregory
Nazianzen is eucharistical, but it relates more especially to
the blessings and advantages, which are accidentally conse-
quent to sickness. " I thank thee, O Father, and maker of
all thy children, that thou art pleased to bless and to sanc-
tify us even against our wills, and by the outward man
purgest the inward, and leadest us through cross-ways to a
blessed ending, for reasons best known unto thee." How-
ever, when we go from our hospital and place of little inter-
medial rest in our journey to heaven, it is fit, that we give
thanks to the Major-domo for our entertainment. When
these parts of religion are finished, according to each man's
necessity, there is nothing remaining of personal duty to be
done alone, but that the sick man act over these virtues by
the renewings of devotion, and in the way of prayer ; and
that js to be continued as long as life, and voice, and reason
dwell with us.
SECTION X.
Ads of Chanty, hy icay of Prayer and Ejaculation; which may
also be used for Thanksgiving, in case of recovery.
O MY soul, thou hast said unto the Lord, Thou art my
Lord : my goodness extendeth not to thee ; but to the
saints, that are in the earth, and to the excellent, in whom is
all my delight. The Lord is the portion of my inheritance
and of my cup : thou maintainest my lot. Psal. xvi. 2, 3. 5.
As for God, his way is perfect : the word of the Lord is
tried : he is a buckler to all those, that trust in him. For
who is God, except the Lord ? or who is a rock, save our
God ? It is God, that girdeth me with strength, and maketh
my way perfect. Psal. xviii. 30 — 32.
Be not thou far from me, O Lord : O my strength, haste
thee to help me. Psal. xxii. 19.
Deliver my soul from the sword, my darling from the
power of the dog. Save me from the lion's mouth : and thou
hast heard me also from among the horns of the unicorns,
ver. 20,21.
502 THE PRACTICE OF CHARITY
I will declare thy name unto my brethren : in the midst
of the congregation will I praise thee. ver. 22.
Ye that fear the Lord, praise the Lord : ye sons of God,
glorify him, and fear before him, all ye sons of men. For he
hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted,
neither hath he hid his face from him ; but when he cried
unto him, he heard, ver. 23, 24.
As the hart panteth after the water-brooks, so longeth my
soul after thee, O God, Psal. xlii. 1.
My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God : when shall
I come and appear before the Lord ? ver. 2.
0 my God, my soul is cast down within me. All thy
waves and billows are gone over me. As with a sword in
my bones I am reproached. Yet the Lord will command his
loving-kindness in the day-time ; and in the night his song
shall be with me, and my prayer unto the God of my life,
ver. 6—8. 10.
Bless ye the Lord in the congregations ; even the Lord
from the fountains of Israel. Psal. Ixviii. 26.
My mouth shall shew forth thy righteousness and thy
salvation all the day ; for I know not the numbers thereof.
Psal. Ixxi. 15.
1 will go in the strength of the Lord God : I will make
mention of thy righteousness, even of thine only. O God,
thou hast taught me from my youth ; and hitherto have I
declared thy wondrous works. But I will hope continually,
and will yet praise thee more and more. ver. 16, 17. 14.
Thy righteousness, O God, is very high, who hast done
great things. O God, who is like unto thee ? Thou which
hast shewed me great and sore troubles, shalt quicken me
again, and shalt bring me up again from the depths of the
earth, ver. 19, 20.
Thou shalt increase thy goodness towards me, and com-
fort me on every side. ver. 21.
My lips shall greatly rejoice when I sing unto thee ; and
my soul, which thou hast redeemed. Blessed be the Lord
God, the God of Israel, who only doth wondrous things.
And blessed be his glorious name for ever; and let the whole
earth be filled with his glory. Amen, Amen. ver. 23. Psal.
Ixxii. 18, 19.
I love the Lord, because he hath heard my voice and my
AND JUSTICE IN SICKNESS. 503
supplication. The sorrows of death compassed me : I found
trouble and sorrow. Then called I upon the name of the
Lord : O Lord, I beseech thee, deliver my soul. Gracious is
the Lord and righteous ; yea our God is merciful. Psal. cxvi.
L 3—5.
The Lord preserveth the simple : I was brought low, and
he helj)ed me. Return to thy rest, O my soul : the Lord hath
dealt bountifully with me. For thou hast delivered my soul
from death, mine eyes from tears, and my feet from falling,
ver. 6 — 8.
Precious in the sight of the Lord, is the death of his
saints. O Lord, truly I am thy servant ; I am thy servant,
and the son of thine handmaid : thou shalt loose my bonds,
ver. 15, 16.
He that loveth not the Lord Jesus, let him be accursed.
1 Cor. xvi. 22.
O that I might love thee as well as ever any creature loved
thee ! He that dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God. There is
no fear in love. 1 John, iv. 16. 18.
The Prayer.
O most gracious and eternal God and loving Father, who
hast poured out thy bowels upon us, and sent the Son of thy
love unto us to die for love, and to make us dwell in love,
and the eternal comprehensions of thy Divine mercies, O be
pleased to inflame my heart with a holy charity towards thee
and all the world. Lord, I forgive all, that ever have offended
me, and beg, that both they and I may enter into the pos-
session of thy mercies, and feel a gracious pardon from the
same fountain of grace : and do thou forgive me all the acts
of scandal, whereby I have provoked, or tempted, or lessen-
ed, or disturbed any person. Lord, let me never have my
portion amongst those that divide the union, and disturb
the peace, and break the charities of the church, and Christ-
ian communion. And though I am fallen into evil times,
in which Christendom is divided by the names of an evil
division ; yet I am in charity with all Christians, with all that
love the Lord Jesus, and long for his coming, and I would
give my life to save the soul of any of my brethren; and I
504 VISITATION OF THE SICK.
humbly beg of tbee, that the public calamity of the several
societies of the church may not be imputed to my soul, to
any evil purposes.
IL
Lord, preserve me in the unity of thy holy church, in the
love of God and of my neighbours. Let thy grace enlarge
my heart to remember, deeply to resent, faithfully to use,
wisely to improve, and humbly to give thanks to thee for all
thy favours, with which thou hast enriched my soul, and
supported my estate, and preserved my person, and rescued
me from danger, and invited me to goodness in all the days
and periods of my life. Thou hast led me through it with
an excellent conduct ; and I have gone astray after the man-
ner of men ; but my heart is towards thee. O do unto thy
servant, as thou usest to do unto those, that love thy name :
let thy truth comfort me; thy mercy deliver me; thy staff
support me ; thy grace sanctify my sorrow ; and thy good-
ness pardon all my sins : thy angels guide me with safety in
this shadow of death, and tliy most Holy Spirit lead me into
the land of righteousness, for thy name's sake, which is so
comfortable, and for Jesus Christ's- sake, our dearest Lord
and most gracious Saviour. Amen.
CHAPTER V.
OF VISITATION OF THE SICK: OR THE ASSISTANCE,
THAT IS TO HE DONE TO DYING PERSONS BY THE
MINISTRY OF THEIR CLERGY-GUIDES.
SECTION J.
(jro D, who halli made no new covenant with dying persons
distinct from the covenant of the living, hath also appointed
no distinct sacraments for them, no other manner of usages
but such as are common to all the spiritual necessities of
VISITATION OF THE SICK. 505
living and healthful persons. In all the days of our religion
from our baptism to the resignation and delivery of our soul,
God hath appointed his servants to minister to the necessi-
ties, and eternally to bless, and prudently to guide, and
wisely to judge concerning souls; and the Holy Ghost, that
anointing from above, descends upon us in several effluxes,
but ever by the ministries of the church. Our heads are
anointed with that sacred unction, baptism (not in ceremony,
but in real and proper effect), our foreheads in confirmation,
our hands in ordinations, all our senses in the visitation of
the sick ; and all by the ministry of especially-deputed and
instructed persons: and we, who all our life-time derive bless-
ings from the fountains of grace, by the channels of eccle-
siastical ministries, must do it then especially, when our
needs are most pungent and actual. 1. We cannot give up
our names to Christ, but the holy man, that ministers in re-
ligion, must enrol them, and present the persons, and con-
sign the grace : when we beg for God's Spirit, the minister
can best present our prayers, and by his advocation hallow
our private desires, and turn them into public and potent
offices. 2. If we desire to be established and confirmed in
the grace and religion of our baptism, the holy man, whose
hands were anointed by a special ordination to that and its
symbolical purposes, lays his hands upon the catechumen,
and the anointing from above descends by that ministry.
3. If we would eat the body and drink the blood of our
Lord, we must address ourselves to the Lord's table, and he
that stands there to bless and to minister, can reach it forth,
and feed thy soul; and without his ministry thou canst not
be nourished with that heavenly feast, nor thy body con-
signed to immortality, nor thy soul refreshed with the sacra-
mental bread from heaven, except by spiritual suppletories,
in cases of necessity and an impossible communion. 4. If
we have committed sins, the spiritual man is appointed to
restore us, and to pray for us, and to receive our confessions,
and to inquire into our wounds, and to infuse oil and re-
medy, and to pronounce pardon. 5. If we be cut off from
the communion of the faithful by our own demerits, their
holy hands must reconcile us and give us peace ; they are
our appointed comforters, our instructors, our ordinary
judges: and in the whole, what the children of Israel begged
5CG THE MANNER OF VISITATION
of Moses" , that God would no more speak to them alone,
but by his servant Moses, lest they should be consumed ;
God, in compliance with our infirmities, hath of his own
goodness established as a perpetual law in all ages of Christ-
ianity, that God will speak to us by his ministers, and our
solemn prayers shall be made to him by their advocation,
and his blessings descend from heaven by their hands, and
our offices return thither by their presidencies, and our re-
pentance shall be managed by them, and our pardon in many
degrees ministered by them : God comforts us by their ser-
mons, and reproves us by their discipline, and cuts off some
by their severity, and reconciles others by their gentleness,
and relieves us by their prayers, and instructs us by their
discourses, and heals our sicknesses by their intercession
presented to God, and united to Christ's advocation: and in
all this, they are no causes, but servants, of the will of God,
instruments of the Divine grace and order, stewards and
dispensers of the mysteries, and appointed to our souls to
serve and lead, and to help in all accidents, dangers and ne-
cessities.
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 esta-
blished as an apostolical rule, '* Is any man sick among your
let him send for the elders of the church, and let them pray
over him"^," &.c.
The sum of the duties and offices, respectively implied in
these words, is in the following rules.
SECTION II.
Rules for the manner of Visitation of Sick persons.
1. Let the minister of religion be sent to not only against
the agony or death, but be advised with in the whole con-
duct of the sickness : for in sickness indefinitely, and there-
fore in every sickness, and therefore in such which are not
" Exo<I. XX. 19.
*■ Owv wsp aiivtt oi^Jinart, rcictvrKV Km teXcutjjV SaJvai, Xcnoph, wi£i waiJ. lib. viii.
* James, v. 1 i.
OF SICK PERSONS. 507
mortal, wlilch end in health, which have no agony, or fnial
temptations, St. James gives the advice ; and the sick man,
being bound to require them, is also tied to do it, when he
can know them, and his own necessity. It is a very great
evil, both in the matter of prudence and piety, that they
fear the priest, as they fear the embalmer or the sexton's
spade ; and love not to converse with him, unless they can
converse with no man else ; and think his office so much to
relate to the other world, that he is not to be treated with,
while we hope to live in this; and, indeed, that our religion
be taken care of only, when we die : and the event is this (of
which I have seen some sad experience), that the man is
deadly sick, and his reason is useless, and he is laid to sleep,
and his life is in the confines of the grave, so that he can do
nothing towards the trimming of his lamp ; and the curate
shall say a few prayers by him, and talk to a dead man, and
the man is not in a condition to be helped, but in a condition
to need it hugely. He cannot be called upon to confess his
sins, and he is not able to remember them, and he cannot
understand an advice, nor hear a free discourse, nor be al-
tered from a passion, nor cured of his fear, nor comforted
upon any grounds of reason or religion, and no man can tell,
what is likely to be his fate; or if he does, he cannot pro-
phesy good things concerning him, but evil. Let the spiri-
tual man come when the sick man can be conversed withal
and instructed, when he can take medicine and amend, when
he understands, or can be taught to understand the case of
his soul, and the rules of his conscience ; and then his advice
may turn into advantage : it cannot otherwise be useful.
2. The intercourses of the minister with the sick man
have so much variety in them, that they are not to be trans-
acted at once : and therefore they do not well, that send once
to see the good man with sorrow, and hear him pray, and
thank him, and dismiss him civilly, and desire to see his face
no more. To dress a soul for funeral, is not a work to be
dispatched at one meeting : at first he needs a comfort, and
anon something to make him willing to die; and by and by
he is tempted to impatience, and that needs a special cure ;
and it is a great work to make his confessions well and with
advantages ; and it may be the man is careless and indiffe-
rent, and then he needs to understand the evil of his sin, and
508 THE MANNER OF VISITATION
the clanger of his person ; and his cases of conscience may
be so many and so intricate, that he is not quickly to be re-
duced 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 as-
sisted and called upon, and reminded of the several parts of
his duty, in every instant of his temptation. This article
was well provided for among the easterlings ; for the priests
in their visitations of a sick person did abide in their attend-
ance and ministry for seven days together. The want of this
makes the visitations fruitless, and the calling of the clergy
contemptible, while it is not suffered to imprint its proper
effects upon them, that need it in a lasting ministry.
3. St. James advises, that when a man is sick, he should
send for the elders "; one sick man for many presbyters, and
so did the eastern churches ^, they sent for seven : and, like a
college of physicians, they ministered spiritual remedies, and
sent up prayers like a choir of singing clerks. In cities
they might do so, while the Christians were few, and the
priests many. But when they that dwelt in the pagi or vil-
lages ceased to be Pagans, and were baptized, it grew to be
an impossible felicity, unless in few cases, and to some more
eminent persons : but because they need it most, God hath
taken care, that they may best have it ; and they that can,
are not very prudent, if they neglect it.
4. Whether they be many or few, that are sent to the
sick person, let the curate of his parish, or his own confessor,
be amongst them ; that is, let him not be wholly advised by
strangers, who know not his particular necessities; but he
that is the ordinary judge cannot safely be passed by in his
extraordinary necessity, which, in so great portions, depends
■upon his whole life past : and it is a matter of suspicion,
when we decline his judgment, that knows us best, and with
whom we formerly did converse, either by choice or by law,
by private election or public constitution. It concerns us
then to make severe and profitable judgments, and not to
conspire against ourselves, or procure such assistances, which
« James, v. 14. ^ Gabriel in 4. sent, ilist. 23.
OF SICK PERSON'S. 509
may handle us softly, or comply with our weaknesses more
than relieve our necessities.
5. When the ministers of religion are come, first let them
do their ordinary offices, that is, pray for grace to the sick
man, for patience, for resignation, for health, (if it seems
good to God in order to his great ends.) For that is one of
the ends of the advice of the apostle. And therefore the mi-
nister is to be sent for, not while the case is desperate, but
before the sickness is come to its crisis or period. Let him
discourse concerning the causes of sickness, and by a general
instrument move him to consider concerning his condition.
Let him call upon him to set his soul in order; to trim his
lamp ; to dress his soul ; to renew acts of grace by way of
prayer; to make amends in all the evils he hath done ; and
to supply all the defects of duty, as much as his past condi-
tion requires, and his present can admit.
6. According as the condition of the sickness or the
weakness of the man is observed, so the exhortation is to be
less, and the prayers more, because the life of the man was
his main preparatory ; and therefore, if his condition be full
of pain and infirmity, the shortness and small number of his
own acts is to be supplied by the acts of the ministers and
standers-by, who are, in such case, to speak more to God
for him than to talk to him. For the prayer of the righte-
ous% when it is fervent, hath a promise to prevail much in
behalf of the sick person. But exhortations must prevail
with their own proper weight, not by the passion of the
speaker. But yet this assistance by way of prayers is not
to be done by long offices, but by frequent, and fervent, and
holy: in which offices if the sick man joins, let them be
short and apt to comply with his little strength and great in-
firmities: if they be said in his behalf without his conjunc-
tion, they that pray, may prudently use their own liberty,
and take no measures, but their own devotions and opportu-
nities, and the sick man's necessities.
When he hath made this general address and preparatory
entrance to the work of many days and periods, he may de-
scend to particulars by the following instruments and dis-
courses.
« Jamep, v. 16.
510 OF MINISTERING AT THE SICKvJMAN's
SECTION III.
Of ministering in the Sick MaiCs Confession of sins
and Repentance.
The first necessity, that is to be served, is that of repent-
ance, in which the ministers can in no way serve him, but
by first exhorting him to confession of his shis, and declara-
tion 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 cer-
tainty. His discourses, like Jonathan's arrows, may shoot
short, or shoot over, but not wound where they should, nor
open those humours, that need a lancet or a cautery. To
this purpose the sick man may be reminded.
Amnnients and Exhortations to mme the Sick Man
to Confession of sins.
1. That God hath made a special promise to confession
of sins. " He that confesseth his sins, and forsaketh them,
shall have mercy^:" and, " If we confess our sins, God is
righteous to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all
unrighteousness''. 2. That confession of sins is a proper act
and introduction to repentance. 3. That when the Jews,
being warned by the sermons of the Baptist, repented of
their sins, they confessed their sins to John, in the suscep-
tion of baptism '^. 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 con-
fessed to the apostles. 5. That confession is an act of many
virtues together. 6. It is the gate of repentance. 7. An in-
strument of shame and condemnation of our sins ; 8. A glo-
rification of God, so called by Joshua, particularly in the
case of Achan ; 9. An acknowledgment, that God is just in
punishing; for, by confessing of our sins, we also confess his
justice, and are assessors with God in this condemnation of
ourselves. 10. That, by such an act of judging ourselves,
we escape the more angry judgment of God: St. Paul ex-
» Prov. xxviii. 13. •< John, i. <\ •= Matt. iii. 6. "1 Acts, xix. 18,
co.vrEssiox OF srxs. 511
pressly exhorting us to it, upon that very inducement*.
11. That confession of sins is so necessary a duty, that, in
all Scriptures, it is the immediate preface to pardon, and the
certain consequent of godly sorrow, and an integral or con-
stituent part of that grace, which, together with faith, makes
up the whole duty of the gospel. 12. That in all ages of the
gospel, it hath been taught and practised respectively, that
all the penitents made confessions proportionable to their
repentance, that is public or private, general or particular.
13. That God by testimonies from heaven, that is, by his
word, and by a consequent rare peace of conscience, hath
given approbation to this holy duty. 14. That by this instru-
ment, those, whose office it is to apply remedies to every
spiritual sickness, can best perform their offices. 15. That
it is by all churches esteemed a duty, necessary to be done
in cases of a troubled conscience. 16. That what is neces-
sary to be done in one case, and convenient in all cases, is
fit to be done by all persons. 17. That, without confession,
it cannot easily be judged concerning the sick person, whe-
ther his conscience ought to be troubled or no, and there-
fore it cannot be certain, that it is not necessary. 18. That
there can be no reason against it, but such as consults with
flesh and blood, with infirmity and sin, to all which confes-
sion of sins is a direct enemy. 19. That now is that time, when
all the imperfections of his repentance and all the breaches
of his duty are to be made up, and that, if he omits this op-
portunity, he can never be admitted to a salutary and medi-
cinal confession. 20. That St. James gives an express pre-
^cept, that we Christians should confess our sins to each
other ^, that is. Christian to Christian, brother to brother,
the people to their minister ; and then he makes a specifica-
tion of that duty, which a sick man is to do, when he hath
sent for the elders of the church. 21. That, in all this, there
is no more lies upon him; but " if he hides his sins, he shall
not be directed," so said the wise man; but ere long he must
« 1 Cor. xi. 31.
Si tacuerit qui percussus est, et non egerit pcEnitentiam, nee vulnus snnm firatri
et magistro voluerit confiteri, inagister qui linguam habet ad curandura, facile ei pro-
desse non poterit. Si enim erabescat a:grotus vulnus medico confiteri, quod ignorat
medicina non curat. St. Hierom. ad caput. 10. Eccles. Si enim hoc fecerimus, etre-
velaverimus peccata nostra non solum Deo, sed et his qui possnnt mederi vulneribus
nostris atque peccatis, delebuiitur peccata nostra. — Orig. horn. 17. in Lucam.
VOL. IV. 2 L
512 OF MINISTERING AT THE SICK MAn's
appear before the great Judge of men and angels : and his
spirit will be more amazed and confounded to be seen among
the angels of light with the shadows of the works of dark-
ness upon him, than he can suffer by confessing to God in
the presence of him, whom God hath sent to heal him.
However, it is better to be ashamed here, than to be con-
founded hereafter. " Pol pudere prsestat quam pigere, toti-
dem literis^." 22. That confession, being in order to pardon
of sins, it is very proper and analogical to the nature of the
thing, that it be made there, where the pardon of sins is to
be administered : and that, of pardon of sins God hath made
the minister the publisher and dispenser : and all this is be-
sides the accidental advantages, which accrue to the con-
science, which is made ashamed, and timorous, and re-
strained by the mortifications and blushings of discovering
to a man the faults committed in secret. 23. That the mi-
nisters of the gospel are the ministers of reconciliation, are
commanded to restore such persons, as are overtaken in a
fault ; and to that purpose they come to offer their ministry,
if they may have cognizance of the fault and person. 24. That,
in the matter of prudence, it is not safe to trust a man's self
in the final condition and last security of a man's soul, a
man being no good judge in his own case. And when a
duty is so useful in all cases, so necessary in some, and en-
couraged by promises evangelical, by Scripture precedents,
by the example of both Testaments, and presciibed by in-
junctions apostolical, and by the canon of all churches, and
the example of all ages, and taught us even by the propor-
tions of duty, and the analogy to the power ministerial, and
the very necessities of every man ; he that for stubbornness,
or sinful shamefacedness, or prejudice, or any other criminal
weakness, shall decline to do it in the days of his danger,
when the vanities of the world are worn off, and all affec-
tions to sin are wearied, and the sin itself is pungent and
grievous, and that we are certain we shall not escape shame
for them hereafter, unless we be ashamed of them here'', and
use all the proper instruments of their pardon ; this man, I
6 Plaut. Tiiiimu. Tarn facile et pronum est superos conlemnere testes. Si mortalis
idem nerco sciat. — Juv. Sat. 13.
^ Qui homo culpani admisit in se, nuUiis est tarn parvi pretii Quin pudeat, quia
parget sese. — Plaut. Aulul, Act. 4. Sc. 10. 60.
CONFESSION OF SINS. 513
say, is very near death, but very far off from the kingdom of
heaven.
2. The spiritual man will find in the conduct of this duty
many cases and varieties of accidents, which will alter his
course and forms of proceedings. Most men are of a rude
indifferency, apt to excuse themselves', ignorant of their con-
dition, abused by evil principles, content with a general and
indefinite confession ; and if you provoke them to it by the
foregoing considerations, lest their spirits should be a little
uneasy, or not secured in their own opinions, will be apt to
say, they are sinners, as every man hath his infirmity, and
he as well as any man : but, God be thanked, they bear no
ill-will to any man, or are no adulterers, or no rebels, or they
have fought on the right side ; and God be merciful to them,
for they are sinners. But you shall hardly open their breasts
farther : and to inquire beyond this, would be to do the office
of an accuser.
3. But, which is yet worse, there are very many persons,
who have been so used to an habitual course of a constant
intemperance, or dissolution in any other instance, that the
crime is made natural and necessary, and the conscience
hath dioested all the trouble, and the man thinks himself in
a good estate, and never reckons any sins, but those which
are the egressions and passings beyond his ordinary and
daily drunkenness. This happens in the cases of drunken-
ness, and intemperate eating, and idleness, and unchari-
tableness, and in lying and vain jestings, and particularly
in such evils, which the laws do not punish, and public
customs do not shame, but which are countenanced by po-
tent sinners, or evil customs, or good nature, and mistaken
civilities.
Imtruments by way of Consideration, to aivaken a careless Person,
and a stupid Conscience.
In these and the like cases, the spiritual man must
awaken the lethargy, and prick the conscience, by represent-
ing to him, 1. That Christianity is a holy and a strict reli-
gion. 2. That many are called, but few are chosen. That
' Veriim hoc se ampleclitiir iino,
Hoc araat, boo landat, Matronam nallain ego tango,
llorat.Ser. I. 1. sat. 2.
2 L 2
514 MEANS OF AWAKENINO
the number of them, that are to be saved, is but a very few
in respect of those, that are to descend into sorrow and
everlasting- darkness. That we have covenanted with God
in baptism to live a holy life. That the measures of holiness
in the Christian religion are not to be taken by the evil pro-
portions of the multitude, and common fame of looser and
less severe persons; because the multitude is that, which
does not enter into heaven, but the few, the elect, the holy
servants of Jesus. That every habitual sin does amount to
a very great guilt in the whole, though it be but in a small
instance. That if the righteous scarcely be saved, then
there will be no place for the unrighteous and the sinner to
appear in, but places of horror and amazement. That confi-
dence hath destroyed many souls, and many have had a sad
portion, who have reckoned themselves in the calendar of
saints. That the promises of heaven are so great, that it is
not reasonable to think that every man, and every life, and
an easy religion, shall possess such infinite glories. That
although heaven is a gift, yet there is a great severity and
strict exacting of the conditions on our part to receive that
gift. That some^persons, who have lived strictly for forty
years together, yet have miscarried by some one crime at
last, or some secret hypocrisy, era latent pride, or a creep-
ing ambition, or a fantastic spirit ; and therefore much less
can they hope to receive so great portions of felicities, when
their life hath been a continual declination from those seve-
rities, which might have created confidence of pardon and
acceptation, through the mercies of God and the merits of
Jesus. That every good man ought to be suspicious of him-
self, and in his judgment concerning his own condition to
fear the worst, that he may provide for the better. That we
are commanded to work out our salvation with fear and
trembling. That this precept was given with great reason,
considering the thousand thousand ways of miscarrying.
That St. Paul himself, and St. Arsenius, and St. Elzearius,
and divers other remarkable saints, had, at some times, great
apprehensions of the dangers of failing of the mighty price
of their high calling''. That the stake that is to be se-
cured, is of so great an interest, that all our industry and all
I* Apud Surium, die 27. Sept.
A SLEEPING CONSCIENCE. 515
the violences, we can suffer in the prosecution of it, are not
considerable. That this affair is to be done but once, and
then never any more unto eternal ages. That they who pro-
fess themselves servants of the institution, and servants of the
law and discipline of Jesus, will find, that they must judge
themselves by the proportions of that law, by which they
were to rule themselves. That the laws of society and
civility, and the voices of my company are as ill judges as
4hey are guides ; but we are to stand or fall by his sentence,
who will not consider or value the talk of idle men, or the
persuasion of wilfully abused consciences, but of him who
hath felt our infirmity in all things but sin, and knows
where our failings are unavoidable, and where, and in what
degree, they are excusable ; but never will endure, a sin
should seize upon any part of our love, and deliberate choice,
or careless cohabitation. That if our conscience accuse us
not', yet are we not hereby justified ; for God is greater than
our consciences'". That they who are most innocent, have
their consciences most tender and sensible. That scrupu-"
lous persons are always most religious ; and that to feel no-
thing, is not a sign of life, but of death. That nothing can
be hid from the eyes of the Lord, to whom the day and the
night, public and private, words and thoughts, actions and
designs, are equally discernible. That a lukewarm person
is only secured in his own thoughts, but very unsafe in the
event, and despised by God. That we live in an age, in
which that which is called and esteemed a holy life, in the
days of the apostles and holy primitives would have been
esteemed indifferent, sometimes scandalous, and always
cold. That what was a truth of God then, is so now; and
to what severities they were tied, for the same also we are
to be accountable; and heaven is not now an easier pur-
chase than it was then. That if he will cast up his accounts,
even with a superficial eye, let him consider how few good
works he hath done; how inconsiderable is the relief which
he gave to the poor ; how little are the extraordinaries of
his religion; and how inactive and lame, how polluted and
disordered, how unchosen and unpleasant were the ordinary
parts and periods of it : and how many and great sins have
' 1 John, iii. 20. •» 1 Cor. iv. 4.
516 OF MINISTERING AT THE SICK MAN S
stained his course of life: and till he enters into a particular
scrutiny, let him only revolve in his mind what his general
course hath been ; and in the way of prudence, let him say
whether it was laudable and holy, or only indifferent and
excusable : and if he can think it only excusable, and so as
to hope for pardon by such suppletories of faith, and arts of
persuasion, which he and others used to take in for auxilia-
ries to their unreasonable confidence ; then he cannot but
think it very fit, that he search into his own state, and take
a guide, and erect a tribunal, or appear before that, which
Christ hath erected for him on earth, that he may make his
access fairer, when he shall be called before the dreadful
tribunal of Christ in the clouds ". For if he can be confident
upon the stock of an unpraised or a looser life, and should
dare to venture upon wild accounts, without order, without
abatements, without consideration, without conduct, without
fear, without scrutinies and confessions, and instruments of
amends or pardon, he either knows not his danger, or cares
not for it, and little understands how great a horror that is,
that a man should rest his head for ever upon a cradle of
flames, and lie in a bed of sorrows, and never sleep, and
never end his groans or the gnashing of his teeth.
This is that, which some spiritual persons call awakening
of the sinner by the terrors of the law ; which is a good ana-
logy or tropical expression to represent the threatenings of
the Gospel, and the dangers of an incurious and a sinning
person : but we have nothing else to do with the terrors of
the law; for, blessed be God, they concern us not. The
terrors of the law were the intermination of curses upon all
those, that ever broke any of the least commandments, once,
or in any instance : and to it the righteousness of faith is
opposed. The terrors of the law admitted no repentance,
no pardon, no abatement ; and were so severe, that God
never inflicted them at all according to the letter, because
he admitted all to repentance, that desired it with a timely
prayer, unless in very few cases, as of Achan, or Korah, the
gatherer of sticks upon the sabbath-day, or the like : but
the state of threatenings in the Gospel is very fearful, because
" Jlli mors gravis incubat. Qui notus nimis omnibus, Igiiolus moritur sibi. —
Thyc!-(. lOl.
CONFESSION OF SINS. 517
the conditions of avoiding them are easy and ready, and
they happen to evil persons after many warnings, second
thoughts, frequent invitations to pardon and repentance,
and after one entire pardon consigned in baptism. And in
this sense it is necessary, that such persons, as we now deal
withal, should be instructed concerning their danger.
4. When the sick man is either of himself, or by these
considerations, set forward with purposes of repentance, and
confession of his sins, in order to all its holy purposes and
effects, then the minister is to assist him in the understanding
the number of his sins, that is, the several kinds of them, and
the various manners of prevaricating the Divine command-
ments : for as for the number of the particulars in every
kind, he will need less help ; and if he did, he can have it
no where but in his own conscience, and from the witnesses
of his conversation. Let this be done by prudent insinua-
tion, by arts of remembrance, and secret notices, and pro-
pounding occasions and instruments of recalling such things
to his mind, which either by public fame he is accused of,
or by the temptations of his condition, it is likely, he might
have contracted.
5. If the person be truly penitent, and forward to con-
fess all, that are set before him or offered to his sight at a
half face, then he may be complied withal in all his inno-
cent circumstances, and his conscience made placid and
willing, and he be drawn forward by good nature and ci-
vility, that his repentance in all the parts of it, and in every
step of its progress and emanation, may be as voluntary and
chosen as it can. For by that means if the sick person can
be invited to do the work of religion, it enters by the door of
his will and choice, and will pass on toward consummation
by the instrument of delight.
6. If the sick man be backward and without apprehension
of the good-natured and civil way, let the minister take care,
that by some way or other the work of God be secured ; and
if he will not understand, when he is secretly prompted, he
must be hallooed to, and asked in plain interrogatives, con-
cerning the crime of his life. He must be told of the evil
things that are spoken of him in markets and exchanges, the
proper temptations and accustomed evils of his calling and
condition, of the actions of scandal : and in all those actions.
518 OF MIXISTERING AT THE SICK MAn's
which are public, or of which any notice is come abroad, let
care be taken, that the right side of the case of conscience
be turned toward him, and the error truly represented to
him by which he was abused ; as the injustice of his con-
tracts, his oppressive bargains, his rapine and violence : and
if he hath persuaded himself to think well of a scandalous
action, let him be instructed and advertised of his folly and
his danger.
7. And this advice concerns the minister of religion to
follow without partiality, or fear, or interest, in much sim-
plicity, and prudence, and hearty sincerity; having no other
consideration, but that the interest of the man's soul be
preserved, and no caution used, but that the matter be re-
presented with just circumstances, and civilities fitted to the
person with prefaces of honour and regard ; but so that no-
thing of the duty be diminished by it, that the introduction
do not spoil the sermon, and both together ruin two souls,
of the speaker, and the hearer. For it may soon be consi-
dered, if the sick man be a poor or an indifferent person in
secular account, yet his soul is equally dear to God, and
was redeemed with the same highest price, and therefore to
be highly regarded : and there is no temptation, but that the
spiritual man may speak freely without the allays of in-
terest, or fear, or mistaken civilities. But if the sick man
be a prince, or a person of eminence or wealth, let it be re-
membered, it is an ill expression of reverence to his autho-
rity, or of regard to his person, to let him perish for the want
of an honest, and just, and a free homily.
8. Let the sick man, in the scrutiny of his conscience
and confession of his sins, be carefully reminded to consider
those sins, which are only condemned in the court of con-
science, and no where else. For there are certain secrecies
and retirements, places of darkness and artificial veils, with
which the devil uses to hide our sins from us, and to incor-
porate them into our affections by a constant uninterrupted
practice, before they be prejudiced or discovered. 1. There
are many sins, which have reputation, and are accounted
honour ; as fighting a duel, answering a blow with a blow,
carrying armies into a neighbour-country, robbing with
a navy, violently seizing upon a kingdom. 2. Others are
permitted by law ; as usury in all countries : and because
CONFESSION OF SINS. 519
every excess of it is a certain sin, the permission of so sus-
pected a matter makes it ready for us, and instructs the
temptation. 3. Some things are not foi'bidden by laws; as
lying in ordinary discourse, jeering, scoffing, intemperate
eating, ingratitude, selling too dear, circumventing another
in contracts, importunate entreaties, and temptation of per-
sons to many instances of sin, pride, and ambition. 4. Some
others do not reckon, they sin against God, if the laws have
seized upon the person ; and many that are imprisoned for
debt, think themselves disobliged from payment ; and when
they pay the penalty, think they owe nothing for the scan-
dal and disobedience. 5. Some sins are thought not con-
siderable, but go under the title of sins of infirmity, or in-
separable accidents of mortality ; such as idle thoughts,
foolish talking, looser revellings, impatience, anger, and all
the events of evil company. 6. Lastly, many things are
thought to be no sins; such as mispending of their time,
whole days or months of useless and impertinent employ-
ment, long gaming, winning men's money in greater por-
tions, censuring men's actions, curiosity, equivocating in
the prices and secrets of buying and selling, rudeness, speak-
ing truths enviously, doing good to evil purposes, and
the like. Under the dark shadow of these unhappy and
fruitless yew-trees the enemy of mankind makes very many
to lie hid from themselves, sewing before their nakedness
the fig-leaves of popular and idol reputation, and impu-
nity, public permission, a temporal penalty, infirmity, preju-
dice, and direct error in judgment, and ignorance. Now, in
all these cases, the ministers are to be inquisitive and ob-
servant, lest the fallacy prevail upon the penitent to evil
purposes of death or diminution of his good ; and that those
things, which in his life passed without observation, may
now be brought forth, and pass under saws and harrows, that
is, the severity and censure of sorrow and condemnation.
9. To which I add, for the likeness of the thing, that the
matter of omission be considered ; for in them lies the bi!>-ger
half of our failings ; and yet, in many instances, they are un-
discerned, because they very often sit down by the con-
science, but never upon it; and they are usually looked upon
as poor men do upon their not having coach and horses, or
as that knowledge is missed by boys and hinds, which they
520 OF MINIS'^ERING AT THE SICK MvVn's
never had : it will be hard to make them understand their
ignorance: it requires knowledge to perceive it; and there-
fore he, that can perceive it, hath it not. But by this press-
ing the conscience with omissions, I do not mean recessions,
or distances from states of eminency or perfection : for al-
though they may be used by the ministers as an instrument
of humility, and a chastiser of too big a confidence ; yet
that, which is to be confessed and repented of, is omission
of duty in direct instances and matters of commandment, or
collateral and personal obligations, and is especially to be
considered by kings and prelates, by governors and rich
persons, by guides of souls and presidents of learning in
public charge, and by all other in their proportions.
10. The ministers of religion must take care, that the
sick man's confession be as minute and particular as it can,
and that as few sins, as may be, be entrusted to the general
prayer of pardon for all sins ; for by being particular and
enumerative of the variety of evils, which have disordered
his life, his repentance is disposed to be more pungent and
afflictive, and therefore more salutary and medicinal : it
hath in it more sincerity, and makes a better judgment of the
final condition of the man ; and from thence it is certain, the
hopes of the sick man can be more confident and reason-
able.
11. The spiritual man, that assists at the repentance of
the sick, must not be inquisitive into all the circumstances
of the particular sins, but be content with those, that are
direct parts of the crime, and aggravations of the sorrow ;
such as frequency, long abode, and earnest choice in acting
them ; violent desires, great expense, scandal of others ; dis-
honour to the religion, days of devotion, religious solemni-
ties, and holy places ; and the degrees of boldness and im-
pudence, perfect resolution and the habit. If the sick per-
son be reminded or inquired into concerning these, it may
prove a good instrument to increase his contrition, and per-
fect his penitential sorrows, and facilitate his absolution,
and the means of his amendment. But the other circum-
stances, as of the relative person in the participation of the
crime, the measures or circumstances of the impure action,
the name of the injured man or woman, the quality or acci-
dental condition : these and all the like are but questions
CONFESSION OF SINS. 521
springing from curiosity, and producing scruple, and apt to
turn into many inconveniences.
12. The minister in this duty of repentance, must be dili-
gent to observe concerning the person, that repents, that he
be not imposed upon by some one excellent thing, that was
remarkable in the sick man's former life". For there are
some people of one good thing. Some are charitable to the
poor out of kind-heartedness, and the same good nature
makes them easy and compliant with drinking persons, and
they die with drink, but cannot live with charity : and their
alms, it may be, shall deck their monument, or give them
the reward of loving persons, and the poor man's thanks for
alms, and procure many temporal blessings ; but it is very
sad, that the reward should be soon spent in this world.
Some are rarely just persons, and punctual observers of their
word with men, but break their promises with God, and
make no scruple of that. In these and all the like cases, the
spiritual man must be careful to remark, that good proceeds
from an entire and integral cause, and evil from every part :
that one sickness can make a man die ; but he cannot live
and be called a sound man without an entire health ; and
therefore, if any confidence arises upon that stock, so as
that it hinders the strictness of the repentance, it must be
allayed with the representment of this sad truth, " that he
who reserves one evil in his choice, hath chosen an evil por-
tion," and Coloquintida and death is in the pot : and he that
worships the God of Israel with a frequent sacrifice, and yet
upon the anniversary Avill bow in the house of Venus, and
loves to see the follies and the nakedness of Rimmon, may
eat part of the flesh of the sacrifice, and fill his belly, but
shall not be refreshed by the holy cloud arising from the
altar, or the dew of heaven descending upon the mysteries.
13. And yet the minister is to estimate, that one, or more
good things, is to be an ingredient into his judgment con-
cerning the state of his soul, and the capacities of his resti-
tution, and admission to the peace of the church : and ac-
cording as the excellency and usefulness of the grace hath
been, and according to the degrees and the reasons of its
" Nunc si depositara non inficialur arnicas.
Si rcddat veterem cum tola arugine foUem,
Prodigiosa fides et Thuscis digna libellis. — Juven, Sat. xiii. 63.
522 .OF MINISTERING, &C.
prosecution, so abatements are to be made in the inj mictions-
and impositions upon the penitent. For every virtue is one
degree of approach to God; and though, in respect of the
acceptation, it is equally none at all, that is, it is as certain
a death if a man dies with one mortal wound, as if he had
twenty ; yet in such persons, who have some one or more
excellences, though not an entire piety, there is naturally a
nearer approach to the estate of grace, than in persons, who
have done evils, and are eminent for nothing that is good.
But in making judgment of such persons, it is to be mquired
into, and noted accordingly, why the sick person was so
eminent in that one good thing ; whether by choice and ap-
prehension of his duty, or whether it was a virtue from which
his state of life ministered nothing to dehort or discourage
him, or whether it was only a consequent of his natural
temper and constitution. If the first, then it supposes him
in the neighbourhood of the state of grace, and that in other
things he was strongly tempted. The second is a felicity of
his education, and an effect of Providence. The third is a
felicity of his nature, and a gift of God in order to spiritual
purposes. But yet of every one of these, advantage is to
be made. If the conscience of his duty was the principle,
then he is ready formed to entertain all other graces upon
the same reason, and his repentance must be made more
sharp and penal ; because he is convinced to have done
against his conscience in all the other parts of his life ; but
the judgment concerning his final state ought to be more
gentle, because it was a huge temptation, that hindered the
man and abused his infirmity. But if either his calling or his
nature were the parents of the grace, he is in the state of
a moral man (in the just and proper meaning of the word),
and to be handled accordingly : that virtue disposed him
rarely well to many other good things, but was no part of
the grace of sanctification ; and therefore the man's repent-
ance is to begin anew, for all that, and is to be finished in
the returns of health, if God grants it; but if he denies it,
it is much, very much the worse for all that sweet-natured
virtue.
14. When the confession is made, the spiritual man is to
execute the office of a restorer and a judge, in the following
particulars and manner.
OF ABSOLVING AND COMMUNICATING, &C. 523
SECTION IV.
Of the minlsfering to the Restitution and Pardon, or Recon-
cUuition of the sick Person, by administering the holy Sacra-
ment.
"If any man be overtaken in a fault, ye, which are spi-
ritual, restore such a one in the spirit of meekness'';" that is
the commission : and, " Let the elders of the church pray
over the sick man ; and, if he have committed sins, they
shall be forgiven him'';" that is the effect of his power and
his ministry. But concerning this, some few things are to.
be considered.
1. It is the office of the presbyters and ministers of reli-
gion to declare public criminals and scandalous persons to
be such, that, when the leprosy is declared, the flock may
avoid the infection ; and then the man is excommunicate,
when the people are warned to avoid the danger of the man,
or the reproach of the crime, to withdraw from his society,
and not to bid him God speed, not to eat and celebrate sy-
naxes and church-meetings with such, who are declared cri-
minal and dangerous. And therefore excommunication is,
in a very great part, the act of the congregation and commu-
nities of the faithful : and St. Paul said to the church of the
Corinthians ^ that they had inflicted the evil upon the inces-
tuous person, that is, by excommunicating him : all the acts'
of which are, as they are subjected in the people, acts of cau-
tion and liberty ; but no more acts of direct, proper power
or jurisdiction, than it was, when the scholars of Simon
Magus left his chair, and went to hear St. Peter : but as they
are actions of the rulers of the church, so they are declara-
tive, ministerial, and effective too by moral causality, that is,
by persuasion and discourse, by argument and prayer, by
homily and material representment, by reasonableness of
order and the superinduced necessities of men ; though not
by any real change of state as to the person, nor by diminu-
tion of his right, or violence to his condition.
2. He that baptizes, and he that ministers the holy sacra-
P Gal. vi. 1. '' James, V. 14, 15.
f iCor. V. 5. 12, 13. 2 Cor. ii. 6.
524 OF ABSOLVING AND COMMUNICATING
ment, and he that prays, does holy offices of great advan-
tage ; but in these also, just as in the former, he exercises
no jurisdiction or pre-eminence after the manner of secular
authority^; and the same is also true, if he should deny
them. He that refuseth to baptize an indisposed person,
hath, by the consent of all men, no power or jurisdiction
over the unbaptized man: and he, that, for the like reason,
refuseth to give him the communion, preserves the sacred-
ness of the mysteries, and does charity to the undisposed
man, to deny that to him, vs^hich will do him mischief: and
this is an act of separation, just as it is for a friend or physi-
cian to deny water to an hydropic person, or Italian wines
to a hectic fever, or as if Cato should deny to salute Bibulus,
or the censor of manners to do countenance to a wanton and
a vicious person. And though this thing was expressed by
words of power, such as separation, abstention, excommu-
nication, deposition ; yet these words we understand by the
thing; itself, which was notorious and evident to be matter
of prudence, security, and a free, unconstrained discipline :
and they passed into power by consent and voluntary sub-
mission ; having the same effect of constraint, fear and au-
thority, which we see in secular jurisdiction; not because
ecclesiastical discipline hath a natural proper coercion as
lay-tribunals have, but because men have submitted to it,
and are bound to do so upon the interest of two or three
Christian graces.
In pursuance of this caution and provision, the church
superinduced times and manners of abstention, and expres-
sions of sorrow, and canonical punishments, which they tied
the delinquent people to suffer, before they would admit
them to the holy table of the Lord. For the criminal having f
obliged himself by his sin, and the church having declared
it, when she should take notice of it, he is bound to repent,
to make him capable of pardon with God ; and to prove that
he is penitent, he is to do such actions, which the church, in
the virtue and pursuance of repentance, shall accept as a tes-
timony of it, sufficient to inform her: for as she could not
» Homines in remissione peccatorutn ministerium suum exLibent, non jus alicujus
potestatis exercent: Neque enim in suo, sed in nomine Palris, Filii, et Spiritus
Sancti, peccala dimittuntur : Isti rogant, Divinitas donat. — St.Amb. de Spir. S. l.iii.
c. 10.
THE SICK PENITENT. 525
bind at all (in this sense) till the crime was public, though
the man had bound himself in secret; so neither can she set
him free, till the repentance be as public as the sin, or so as
she can note it and approve it. Though the man be free,
as to God, by his internal act; yet, as the publication of the
sin was accidental to it, and the church-censure consequent
to it, so is the publication of repentance and consequent ab-
solution extrinsical to the pardon, but accidentally and in
the present circumstances necessary. This was the same,
that the Jews did (though in other instances and expres-
sions), and do to this day to their prevaricating people; and
the Essenes in their assemblies, and private colleges of scho-
lars, and public universities. For all these being assemblies
of voluntary persons, and such as seek for advantage, are
bound to make an artificial authority in their superiors, and
so to secure order and government by their own obedience
and voluntary subordination, which is not essential and of
proper jurisdiction in the superior; and the band of it, is not
any coercitive power, but the denying to communicate such
benefits, which they seek in that communion and fellowship.
4. These, I say, were introduced in the special manners
and instances by positive authority, and have not a Divine au-
thority commanding them; but there is a Divine power, that
verifies them, and makes these separations effectual and for-
midable : for because they are declarative and ministerial in
the spiritual man, and suppose a delinquency and demerit in
the other, and a sin against God, our blessed Saviour hath
declared, that " what they bind on earth, shall be bound in
heaven ;" that is, in plain signification, the same sins and
sinners, which the clergy condemn in the face of their as-
semblies, the same are condemned in heaven before the face
of God, and for the same reason too. God's law hath sen-
tenced it, and these are the preachers and publishers of his
law, by which they stand condemned ; and these laws are
they, that condemn the sin, or acquit the penitent, there and
here; whatsoever they bind here, shall be bound there, that
is, the sentence of God at the day of judgment shall sen-
tence the same men*, whom the church does rightly sentence
' Sumnium futuri jndicii praejudicinm est, si quis ita deliquerit ut acommnnicatlone
oratioiiis et conventus et omois sancti comniercii relegetur. — Tertid. Apol. cap. 39.
Atque boc idem innuitur per summain Apostoli ceDsuram in reos maximi cri-
52G OF ABSOLVING AND COMMUNICATING
here. It is spoken in the future, it shall be bound in heaven;
not but that the sinner is first bound there, or first absolved
there ; but because all binding and loosing in the interval is
imperfect and relative to the day of judgment, the day of the
great sentence, therefore it is set down in the time to come,
and says this only, the clergy are tied by the word and laws
of God to condemn such sins and sinners; and that you may
not think it ineffective, because after such sentence the man
lives, and grows rich, or remains in health and power, there-
fore be sure, it shall be verified in the day of judgment.
This is hugely agreeable with the words of our Lord, and
certain in reason: for that the minister does nothing to the
final alteration of the state of the man's soul by way of sen-
tence, is demonstratively certain, because he cannot bind a
man, but such as hath bound himself, and who is bound in
heaven by his sin before his sentence in the church : as also
because the binding of the church is merely accidental, and
upon publication only ; and when the man repents, he is ab-
solved before God, before the sentence of the church, upon
his contrition and dereliction only ; and if he were not, the
church could not absolve him. The consequent of which
evident truth is this, that whatsoever impositions the church-
officers impose upon the criminal, they are to avoid scandal,
to testify repentance, and to exercise it, to instruct the
people, to make them fear, to represent the act of God, and
the secret and the true state of the sinner : and although they
are not essentially necessary to our pardon, yet they are be-
come necessary, when the church hath seized upon the
sinner, by public notice of the crime; necessary (I say) for
the removing the scandal, and giving testimony of our con-
trition, and for the receiving all that comfort, which he needs,
and can derive from the promises of pardon as they are pub-
lished by him, that is commanded to preach them to all
them, that repent. And therefore although it cannot be ne-
cessary as to the obtaining pardon, that the priest should, in
private, absolve a sick man from his private sins, and there is
no loosing, where there was no precedent binding, and he,
mink : sit aviStefxa fxa^aviba, id est, excnramunicatus major! Escommunicatione ;
Doininas veniet, scil, ad judicandum eum : ad quod judicium base censura Ecclesiae
est relativa et in ordine. Turn denium poenas dabit : ad quas, nisi resipiscat, hie oon-
signatur.
I
THE SlfK PENITENT. 527
that was only bound before God, can, before him only, be
loosed : yet as to confess sins to any Christian in private
may have many good ends, and to confess them to a clergy-
man may have many more ; so to hear God's sentence at
the mouth of the minister, pardon pronounced by God's am-
bassador, is of huge comfort to them, that cannot otherwise
be comforted, and whose infirmity needs it ; and therefore it
were very fit, it were not neglected in the days of our fear
and danger, of our infirmities and sorrow.
5. The execution of this ministry being an act of pru-
dence and charity, and therefore relative to changing circum-
stances, it hath been, and in many cases may, and in some
must be, rescinded and altered. The time of separation may
be lengthened and shortened, the condition made lighter or
heavier, and for the same offence the clergyman is deposed,
but yet admitted to the communion, for which one of the
people, who hath no office to lose, is denied the benefit of
communicating ; and this sometimes, when he might law-
fully receive it : and a private man is separate, when a mul-
titude or a prince is not, cannot, ought not : and, at last,
when the case of sickness and danger of death did occur,
they admitted all men that desired it; 'sometimes without
scruple or difficulty, sometimes with some little restraint in
great or insolent cases (as in the case of apostacy, in which
the council of Aries denied absolution", unless they received
and gave public satisfaction by acts of repentance ; and some
other councils denied, at any time, to do it to such persons)
according as seemed fitting to the present necessities of the
church. All which particulars declare it to be no part of a
Divine commandment, that any man should be denied to re-
ceive the communion, if he desires it, and if he be in any
probable capacity of receiving it.
6^ Since the separation was an act of liberty and a direct
negative ^ it follows that the restitution was a mere doing
that, which they refused formerly, and to give the holy com-
munion was the formality of absolution, and all the instru-
ment and the whole matter of reconcilement ; the taking off"
the punishment is the pardoning of the sin : for this without
the other is but a word ; and if this be done, I care not, whe-
ther any thing be said or no. Virium Dominieum ministratoris
« Arelat. cap. 3. » vide 2 Cor. ii. 10. et S. Cjprian. ep. 73.
VOL. IV. 2 M
528 OF ABSOLVING AND COMMUNICATING
gratia est, is also true in this sense ; to give the chalice and
cup is the grace and indulgence of the minister : and when
that is done, the man hath obtained the peace of the church;
and to do that is all the absolution, the church can give.
And they w^ere vain disputes, which were commenced, some
few ages since, concerning the forms of absolution, whether
they were indicative or optative, by way of declaration or
by way of sentence : for, at first, they had no forms at all,
but they said a prayer, and, after the manner of the Jews,
laid hands upon the penitent, when they prayed over him,
and so admitted him to the holy communion : for since the
church had no power over her children, but of excommuni-
cating and denying them to attend upon holy offices and
ministries respectively, neither could they have any absolu-
tion, but to admit them thither, from whence formerly they
were forbidden : whatsoever ceremony or forms did signify,
this was superinduced and arbitrary, alterable and accidental;
it had variety, but no necessity.
7. The practice, consequent to this, is, that if the peni-
tent be bound by the positive censures of the church, he is
to be reconciled upon those conditions, which the laws of
the church tie him to, in case he can perform them : if he
cannot, he can no longer be prejudiced by the censure of
the church "■", which had no relation but to the people, with
whom the dying man is no longer to converse : for whatso-
ever relates to God, is to be transacted in spiritual ways, by
contrition, and internal graces; and the mercy of the church
is such, as to give him her peace and her blessing upon his
undertaking to obey her injunctions, if he shall be able :
which injunctions, if they be declared by public sentence,
the minister hath nothing to do in the affairs, but to remind
him of his obligation, and reconcile him, that is, give him
the holy sacrament.
8. If the penitent be not bound by public sentence, the
minister is to make his repentance as great, and his heart as
contrite, as he can; to dispose him by the repetition of acts
of grace in the way of prayer, and in real and exterior in-'
stances, where he can ; and then to give him the holy com-
munion in all the same cases, in which he ought not to have
denied it to him in his health ; that is, even in the beginnings
« Caus. 26. Q. 6. el q. 7.
THE SICK PENITENT. 529
of such a repentance, which, by human signs, he believes
to be real and holy; and after this, the event must be left
to God. The reason of the rule depends upon this ; be-
cause there is no Divine commandment directly forbidding
the rulers of the church to give the communion to any
Christian that desires it, and professes repentance of his
sins. And all church-discipline in every instance, and to
every single person, was imposed upon him by men, who
did it according to the necessities of this state and constitu-
tion of our affairs below : but we, who are but ministers and
delegates of pardon and condemnation, must resign and
give up our judgment, when the man is no more to be judged
by the sentences of man, and by the proportions of this
world, but of the other : to which if our reconcihation does
advantage, we ought in charity to send him forth with all the
advantages he can receive ; for he will need them all. And
therefore the Nicene council commands ^ that no man be de-
prived of this necessary passport in the article of his death,
and calls this the ancient and canonical law of the church ;
and to minister it, only supposes the man in the communion
of the church, not always in the state, but ever in the possi-
bilities of sanctification. They who in the article and danger
of death, were admitted to the communion, and tied to pe-
nance if they recovered (which was ever the custom of the
ancient church, unless in very few cases), were but in the
threshold of repentance, in the commencement and first in-
troductions to a devout life: and indeed then it is a fit mi-
nistry, that it be given in all the periods of time, in which
the pardon of sins is working, since it is the sacrament of
that great mystery ', and the exhibition of that blood, which
is shed for the remission of sins.
9. The minister of religion ought not to give the commu-
nion to a sick person, if he retains the affection to any sin,
and refuses to disavow it, or profess repentance of all sins
whatsoever, if he be required to do it. The reason is, be-
cause it is a certain death to him % and an increase of his
^ Can. 13. Vide etiam Con. Ancyr. cap. 6. Aarel. 2. cap. 12.
y O sacrum convivium in quo Christus sumitur, recolitur memoria Passionis ejus,
mens impletur gratia, el futuras gloriae nobis pignus datur!
"= Ita vide, ut prosit, iilis ignosci, quos ad poenam ipse Deus deduxit : quod ad
me attinet, non sum crudelis, sed vereor, ne, quod remisero, patiar. Tryphaena dixit
apud Petronium. 106. 3.
2m 2
530 OF ABSOLVING AND COIMMUNICATING
misery, if he shall so profane the body and blood of Christ,
as to take it into so unholy a breast, where Satan reigns, and
sin is principal, and the Spirit is extinguished, and Christ
loves not to enter, because he is not suffered to inhabit. But
when he professes repentance % and does such acts of it, as
his present condition permits, he is to be presumed to intend
heartily, what he professes solemnly ; and the minister is only
the judge of outward act, and by that only he is to take
information concerning the inward. But whether he be so
or no, or if he be, whether that be timely, and effectual and
sufficient toward the pardon of sins before God, is another
consideration, of which we may conjecture here, but we
shall know it at doomsday. The spiritual man is to do his
ministry by the rules o'f Christ, and as the customs of the
church appoint him, and after the manner of men : the event
is in the hands of God, and is to be expected, not directly
and wholly according to his ministry, but to the former life,
or the timely internal repentance and amendment'', of which
I have already given accounts. These ministries are acts of
order and great assistances, but the sum of affairs does not
rely upon them. And if any man puts his whole repentance
upon this time, or all his hopes upon these ministries, he
will find them and himself to fail.
10. It is the minister's office to invite sick and dying
persons to the holy sacrament ; such, whose lives were fair
and laudable, and yet their sickness sad and violent, making
them listless and of slow desires, and slower apprehensions :
that such persons, who are in the state of grace, may lose no
accidental advantages of spiritual improvement, but may re-
ceive into their dying bodies the symbols and great consig-
nations of the resurrection, and into their souls the pledges
of immortality; and may appear before God their father in
the union and with the impresses and likeness of their elder
brother. But if the persons be of ill report, and have lived
wickedly, they are not to be invited; because tlieir case is
hugely suspicious, though they then repent and call for
^ Sa;vi quoqae et implacabiles clomini crudelilatein sup.ni Impediunt, si, quando
peenitentia fugitivos reduxit, dedititiiii lioslibus parciinus.
'' Quascunque ergo de peenitentia jubendo dicta sunt, non ad exteriorem, sed ad
interiorem referenda sunt, sine qua nuUus unquam Deo recouciliari poterit. — Cratiun.
depoenit. d. 1. Quis aliqnando.
THE SICK PENITENT. 531
mercy : but if they demand it, they are not to be denied : only
let the minister, in general, represent the evil consequence
of an unworthy participation; and if the penitent will judge
himself unworthy, let him stand candidate for pardon at the
hands of God, and stand or fall by that unerring and merci-
ful sentence ; to which his severity of condemning himself
before men will make the easier and more hopeful address.
And the strictest among the Christians, who denied to re-
concile lapsed persons after baptism, yet acknowledged, that
there were hopes reserved in the court of heaven for them,
though not here : since we, who are easily deceived by the
pretences of a real return, are tied to dispense God's graces,
as he hath given us commission, with fear and trembling '^j
and without too forward confidences ; and God hath mercies,
which we know not of; and therefore, because we know them
not, such persons were referred to God's tribunal, where he
would find them, if they were to be had at all.
11. When the holy sacrament is to be administered, let the
exhortation be made proper to the mystery, but fitted to the
man ; that is, that it be used for the advantages of faith, or
love, or contrition : let all the circumstances and parts of
the Divine love be represented, all the mysterious advan-
tages of the blessed sacrament be declared ; that it is the
bread which came from heaven ; that it is the representation
of Christ's death to all the purposes and capacities of faith,
and the real exhibition of Christ's body and blood 4;o all the
purposes of the Spirit; that it is the earnest of the resurrec-
tion, and the seed of a glorious immortality; that as, by our
cognation to the body of the first Adam, we took in death,
so, by our union with the body of the second Adam, we
shall have the inheritance of life (for as by Adam came death,
80 by Christ cometh the resurrection of the dead**); that if
we, being worthy communicants of these sacred pledges, be
presented to God with Christ within us, our being accepted
of God is certain, even for the sake of his well-beloved, that
dwells within us ; that this is the sacrament of that body,
which was broken for our sins, of that blood, which purifies
our souls, by which we are presented to God pure and holy
in the beloved ; that now we may ascertain our hopes, and
make our faith confident ; " for he that hath given us his Son,
<■ 1 Cor. ii. 3. •• 1 Cor. xv. 22.
532 OF ABSOLVING AND COMMUNICATING, &C.
how should not he, with him, give us all things else^^" Upon
these, or the like considerations, the sick man may be as-
sisted in his address, and his faith strengthened, and his
hope confirmed, and his charity be enlarged.
12. The manner of the sick man's reception of the holy
sacrament, hath in it nothing differing from the ordinary so-
lemnities of the sacrament*^, save only that abatement is to be
made of such accidental circumstances, as by the laws and
customs of the church, healthful persons are obliged to ;
such as fasting, kneeling, &c. Though I remember, that it
was noted for great devotion in the legate that died at Trent,
that he caused himself to be sustained upon his knees, when
he received the viaticum or the holy sacrament before his
death ; and it was greater in Huniades, that he caused him-
self to be carried to the church, that there he might receive
his Lord, in his Lord's house ; and it was recorded for honour,
that William, the pious archbishop of Bourges, a small time
before his last agony, sprang out of his bed at the presence
of the holy sacrament, and, upon his knees and his face, re-
commended his soul to his Saviour. But in these things,
no man is to be prejudiced or censured.
13. Let not the holy sacrament be administered to dying
persons, when they have no use of reason to make that duty
acceptable, and the mysteries effective to the purposes of
the soul. For the sacraments and ceremonies of the gospel
operate not without the concurrent actions and moral in-
fluences of the suscipient. To infuse the chalice into the
cold lips of the clinic may disturb his agony ; but cannot re-
lieve the soul, which only receives improvement by acts of
grace and choice, to which the external rites are apt and
appointed to minister in a capable person. All other per-
sons, as fools, children, distracted persons, lethargical, apo-
plectical, or any ways senseless and incapable of human
and reasonable acts, are to be assisted only by prayers: for
they may prevail even for the absent, and for enemies, and
for all those who join not in the office.
«= Rom. viii, 32.
f Viile Rule of Holy Living, cliap. 4. sect. 10. and Hist, of the Life of Jesus,
part 3. Disc. 18.
VISITATION OF SICK PERSONS. 533
SECTION V.
Of ministering to the sick person hy the spiritual man, as he is
the Physician of Souls.
1. In all cases of receiving confessions of sick men, and
the assisting to the advancement of repentance, the minister
is to apportion to every kind of sin such spiritual remedies,
which are apt to mortify and cure the sin; such as abstinence
from their occasions and opportunities, to avoid temptations,
to resist their beginnings, to punish the crime by acts of in-
dignation against the person, fastings and prayer, alms and
all the instances of charity, asking forgiveness, restitution of
wrongs, satisfaction of injuries, acts of virtue contrary to
the crimes. And although, in great and dangerous sick-
nesses, they are not directly to be imposed, unless they are
direct matters of duty; yet where they are medicinal, they
are to be insinuated, and in general signification remarked
to him, and undertaken accordingly : concerning which,
when he returns to health, he is to receive particular advices.
And this advice was inserted into the penitential of England,
in the time of Theodore, archbishop of Canterbury, and af-
terwards adopted into the canon of the western churches-^.
2. The proper temptations of sick men, for which a re-
medy is not yet provided, are unreasonable fears, and un-
reasonable confidences, which the minister is to cure by the
following considerations.
Considerations against unreasonable Fears of not having
our Sins pardoned.
Many good men, especially such, who have tender con-
sciences, impatient of the least sin, to which they are arrived
by a long grace, and a continual observation of their actions,
and the parts of a lasting repentance, many times overact
their tenderness, and turn their caution into scruple, and
care of their duty into inquiries after the event, and askings
after the counsels of God, and the sentences of doomsday.
He that asks of the standers-by, or of the minister, whe-
ther they think he shall be saved or damned, is to be an-
swered with the words of pity and reproof. Seek not after
s Caus. 26. Q. 7. ab infirrais.
534 CONSIDERATIONS AGAINST
new light for the searching into the private records of God :
look as much as you list into the pages of revelation, for
they concern your duty : but the event is registered in
heaven, and we can expect no other certain notices of it,
but that it shall be given to them, for whom it is prepared
by the Father of mercies. We have light enough to tell our
duty ; and if we do that, we need not fear, what the issue will
be; and if we do not, let us never look for more light, or in-
quire after God's pleasure concerning our souls, since we so
little serve his ends in those things, where he hath given us
light. But yet this I add, that as pardon of sins, in the
Old Testament'', was nothing but removing the punishment,
which then was temporal, and therefore many times they
could tell, if their sins were pardoned ; and concerning pardon
of sins they then had no fears of conscience, but while the
punishment was on them, for so long indeed it was unpar-
doned, and how long it would so remain, it was matter of
fear, and of present sorrow : besides this, in the gospel,
pardon of sins is another thing; pardon of sins is a sanctifi-
cation ; Christ came to take away our sins, by turning every
one of us from our iniquities'; and there is not in the nature
of the thing any expectation of pardon, or sign or significa-
tion of it, but so far as the thing itself discovers itself. As
we hate sin, and grow in grace, and arrive at the state of ho-
liness, which is also a state of repentance and imperfection,
but yet of sincerity of heart and diligent endeavour; in the
same degree we are to judge concerning the forgiveness of
sins : for indeed that is the evangelical forgiveness, and it
signifies our pardon, because it effects it, or rather it is in
the nature of the thing ; so that we are to inquire into no
hidden records : forgiveness of sins is not a secret sentence,
a word or a record ; but it is a state of change, and effected
upon us ; and upon ourselves we are to look for it, to read
it, and understand it. We are only to be curious of our
duty, and confident of the article of remission of sins'"; and
the conclusion of these premises will be, that we shall be full
of hopes of a prosperous resurrection ; and our fear and
trembling are no instances of our calamity, but parts of
h Matt. ix. 6. 'Acts, iii.26.
^ Est iiiudus gloiiaiidi in c.onscienlia, ut noveris fidcm tuam esse sinceram, spein
taain esse cerlsiu. — Augiat. PuiL cxli\.
UNREASONABLE FEARS IN SICKNESS. 535
duty ; we shall sure enough be wafted to the shore, although
we be tossed with the winds of our sighs, and the uneven-
ness of our fears, and the ebbings and flowings of our pas-
sions, if we sail in a right channel, and steer by a perfect
compass, and look up to God, and call for his help, and do
our own endeavour. There are very many reasons, why men
ought not to despair; and there are not very many men, that
ever go beyond a hope, till they pass into possession. If
our fears have any mixture of hope, that is enough to enable
and to excite our duty ; and if we have a strong hope, when
we cast about, we shall find reason enough to have many
fears. Let not this fear weaken our hands'; and if it allay
our gaieties and oin* confidences, it is no harm. In this un-
certainty we must abide, if we have committed sins after bap-
tism : and those confidences, which some men glory in, are
not real supports or good foundations. The fearing man is
the safest ; and if he fears on his death-bed, it is but what
happens to most considering men, and what was to be look-
ed for all his life-time : he talked of the terrors of deatli, and
death is the king of terrors ; and therefore it is no strange
thing, if then he be hugely afraid : if he be not, it is either a
great felicity, or a great presumption. But if he wants some
degree of comfort, or a greater degree of hope, let him be
refreshed by considering,
1. That Christ came into the world to save sinners ""#
2. That God delights not in the confusion and death of sin-
ners". 3. That in heaven there is great joy at the conversion
of a sinner". 4. That Christ is a perpetual advocate, daily
interceding with his Father for our pardon?. 5. That God
uses infinite arts, instruments, and devices, to reconcile us
to himself. 6. That he prays us to be in charity with him,
and to be forgiven''. 7. That he sends angels to keep us
from violence and evil company, from temptations and sur-
prises, and his Holy Spirit to guide us in holy ways, and his
servants to warn lis and remind us perpetually : and there-
fore since certainly he is so desirous to save us, as appears
by his word, by his oaths, by his very nature, and his daily
' Una est nobilitas, argumeiitumqne coloris
Ingenui, timidas non habuisse mauus.
«' ITim.i. l-». n Ezek. xxxiii. 11. <> Luke, xv. 7.
P 1 JuLii, ii. 1. 12 Cor. t. 20.
536 CONSIDERATIONS AGAINST
artifices of mercy ; it is not likely that he will condemn
us without great provocations of his majesty, and perse-
verance in them. 8. That the covenant of the gospel is a
covenant of grace and of repentance, and being established
with so many great solemnities and miracles from heaven,
must signify a huge favour and a mighty change of things ;
and therefore that repentance, which is the great condition
of it, is a grace, that does not expire in little accents and
minutes, but hath a great latitude of signification and large
extension of parts, under the protection of all which persons
are safe, even when they fear exceedingly. 9. That there
are great degrees and differences of glory in heaven ; and
therefore, if we estimate our piety by proportions to the
more eminent persons and dev outer people, we are not to
conclude, we shall not enter into the same state of glory,
but that we shall not go into the same degrees. 9. That al-
though forgiveness of sins is consigned to us in baptism, and
that this baptism is but once, and cannot be repeated ; yet
forgiveness of sins is the grace of the gospel, which is per-
petually remanent upon us, and secured unto us so long, as
we have not renounced our baptism : for then we enter into
the condition of repentance ; and repentance is not an in-
divisible grace, or a thing performed at once, but it is work-
ing all our lives ; and therefore so is our pardon, which ebbs
and flows, according as we discompose or renew the decency
of our baptismal promises ; and therefore it ought to be cer-
tain, that no man despair of pardon, but he that hath volun-
tarily renounced his baptism, or willingly estranged himself
from that covenant. He that sticks to it, and still professes
the religion, and approves the faith, and endeavours to obey
and to do his duty, this man hath all the veracity of God to
assure him and give him confidence, that he is not in an im-
possible state of salvation, unless God cuts him off, before
he can work, or that he begins to work, when he can no
longer choose. 10. And then let him consider, the more he
fears, the more he hates his sin, that is the cause of it, and
the less he can be tempted to it, and the more desirous he is
of heaven ; and therefore such fears are good instruments of
grace, and good signs of a future pardon. 11. That God in
tjie old law, although he made a covenant of perfect obedi-
ence, and did not promise pardon at all after great sins, yet
UNREASONABLE FEARS IN SICKNESS. 537
he did give pardon, and declared it so to them for their own
and for our sakes too. So he did to David, to Manasses,
to the whole nation of the Israelites, ten times in the wilder-
ness, even after their apostacies and idolatries. And in the
prophets '^, the mercies of God and his remissions of sins were
largely preached, though, in the law, God put on the robes
of an angry judge, and a severe lord. But therefore in the
gospel, where he hath established the whole sum of affairs
upon faith and repentance, if God should not pardon great
sinners, that repent after baptism with a free dispensation,
the gospel were far harder than the intolerable covenant of
the law. 12. That if a proselyte went into the Jewish com-
munion, and were circumcised and baptized, he entered into
all the hopes of good things, which God had promised, or
would give, to his people ; and yet that was but the cove-
nant of works. If then the gentile proselytes, by their
circumcision and legal baptism, were admitted to a state
of pardon, to last so long as they were in the covenant,
even after their admission, for sins committed against
Moses's law, which they then undertook to observe ex-
actly; in the gospel, which is the covenant of faith, it
must needs be certain, that there is a greater grace given,
and an easier condition entered into, than was that of the
Jewish law : and that is nothing else, but that abatement is
made for our infirmities, and our single evils, and our timely-
repented and forsaken habits of sin, and our violent pas-
sions, when they are contested withal, and fought with, and
under discipline, and in the beginnings and progresses of
mortification. 13. That God hath erected in his church a
whole order of men, the main part and dignity of whose
work it is to remit and retain sins by a perpetual and daily
ministry : and this they do, not only in baptism, but in all
their offices to be administered afterwards ; in the holy sa-
crament of the eucharist, which exhibits the symbols of
that blood which was shed for pardon of our sins, and there-
fore by its continued mystery and repetition declares, that
all that loliile we are within the ordinary powers and usual
dispensations of pardon, even so long as we are in any pro-
bable dispositions to receive that holy sacrament. And the
"■ Ezek. xviii. Joel, ii.
538 CONSIDERATIONS AGAINST
same effect is also signified and exhibited in the whole power
of the keys, which, if it extends to private sins, sins done
in secret, it is certain it does also to public. But this is a
greater testimony of the certainty of the remissibility of our
greatest sins : for public sins, as they always have a sting
and a superadded formality of scandal and ill example, so
they are most commonly the greatest ; such as murder,
sacrilege, and others of unconcealed nature, and unprivate
action ; and if God, for these worst of evils, hath appointed
an office of ease and pardon, which is, and may, daily be ad-
ministered, that will be an uneasy pusillanimity and fond
suspicion of God's goodness, to fear, that our repentance
shall be rejected, even although we have committed the
greatest or the most of evils. 14. And it was concerning
baptized Christians that St. John said, " If any man sin, we
have an advocate with the Father, and he is the propitiation
for our sins;" and concerning lapsed Christians St. Paul gave
instruction, that, " If any man be overtaken in a fault, ye,
■which are spiritual, restore such a man in the spirit of meek-
ness ; considering, lest ye also be tempted." The Corinthian
Christian committed incest, and was pardoned : and Simon
Magus, after he was baptized, offered to commit his own sin
of simony ; and yet St. Peter bid him pray for pardon : and
St. James tells, that " if the sick man sends for the elders of
the church, and they pray over him, and he confess his sins,
they shall be forgiven him." 15. That only one sin is de-
clared to be irremissible, " the sin against the Holy Ghost,
the sin unto death," as St. John calls it, for which we are
not bound to pray, for all others we are : and, certain it is,
no man commits a sin against the Holy Ghost, if he be afraid
he hath, and desires that he had not ; for such penitential
passions are against the definition of that sin. 16. That all
the sermons in the Scripture written to Christians and dis-
ciples of Jesus, exhorting men to repentance, to be afflicted,
to mourn and to weep, to confession of sins, are sure testi-
monies of God's purpose and desire to forgive us, even when
we fall after baptism : and if our fall after baptism were ir-
recoverable, then all preaching were in vain, and our faith
were also vain, and we could not with comfort rehearse the
Creed, in which, as soon as ever we profess Jesus to have
died for our sins, we also are condemned by our own
UNREASONABLE FEARS IN SICKNESS. 539
conscience of a sin, that shall not be forgiven ; and then
all exhortations, and comforts, and fasts, and disciplines
were useless and too late, if they were not oiven us before
we can understand them ; for most commonly, as soon as
we can, we enter into the regions of sin ; for we commit evil
actions befoi'e we understand, and together with our under-
standing they begin to be imputed. 17. That if it could be
otherwise, infants were very ill provided for in the church,
who were baptised, when they have no stain upon their
brows, but the misery they contracted from Adam : and they
are left to be angels for ever after, and live innocently in the
midst of their ignorances, and weaknesses, and temptations,
and the heat and follies of youth ; or else to perish in an
eternal ruin. We cannot think or speak good things of God,
if we entertain such evil suspicions of the mercies of the
Father of our Lord Jesus. 18. That the long-sufferance and
patience of God is indeed wonderful ; but therefore it leaves
US in certainties of pardon, so long as there is a possibility
to return, if we reduce the power to act. 19. That God calls
upon us to forgive our brother seventy times seven times ; and
yet all that is but like the forgiving a hundred pence for his
sake, who forgives us ten thousand talents : for so the Lord
professed, that he had done to him, that was his servant and
his domestic. 20. That if we can forgive a hundred thou-
sand times, it is certain God will do so to us ; our blessed
Lord having commanded us to pray for pardon, as we par-
don our offending and penitent brother. 21. That even in
the case of very great sins, and great judgments inflicted
upon the sinners, wise and good men and presidents of reli-
gion have declared their sense to be, that God spent all his
anger, and made it expire in that temporal misery ; and so
it was supposed to have been done in the case of Ananias ;
but that the hopes of any penitent man may not rely upon
any uncertainty, we find in holy Scripture, that those Christ-
ians, who had, for their scandalous crimes, deserved to be
given over to Satan to be buffetted, yet had hopes to be saved
in the day of the Lord. 22. That God glories in the titles
of mercy and forgiveness, and will not have his appellatives
so finite and limited as to expire in one act, or in a seldom
pardon. 23. That man's condition were desperate, and like
that of the fallen angels, equally desperate, but unequally
540 CONSIDERATIONS AGAINST FEAR, &C.
oppressed, considering our infinite weaknesses and igno-
rances (in respect of their excellent understanding and per-
fect choice), if he could be admitted to no repentance after
his infant-baptism : and if he may be admitted to one, there
is nothing in the covenant of the gospel, but he may also to
a second, and so for ever, as long as he can repent, and re-
turn and live to God in a timely religion. 24. That every
man is a sinner : " In many things we offend all';" and, " if
we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves":" and there-
fore either all must perish, or else there is mercy for all ; and
so there is upon this very stock, because " Christ died for
sinners %" and, "God hath comprehended all under sin, that
he might have mercy upon all^." 25. That if ever God sends
temporal punishments into the world with purposes of
amendment, and if they be not, all of them, certain con-
signations to hell, and unless every man, that breaks his leg,
or in punishment loses a child or wife, be certainly damned,
it is certain, that God, in these cases, is angry and loving,
chastises the sin to amend the person, and smites, that he
may cure, and judges, that he may absolve. 26. That he,
that will not quench the smoaking flax, nor break the bruised
reed, will not tie us to perfection, and the laws and mea-
sures of heaven upon earth : and if, in every period of our
repentance, he is pleased with our duty, and the voice of our
heart and the hand of our desires, he hath told us plainly,
that he will not only pardon all the sins of the days of our
folly, but the returns and surprises of sins in the days of re-
pentance, if we give no way, and allow no affection, and give
no place to any thing, that is God's enemy ; all the past sins,
and all the seldom-returning and ever-repented evils being
put upon the accounts of the cross.
An Exercise against Despair in the day of our Death.
To which may be added this short exercise, to be used
for the curing the temptation to direct despair, in case that
the hope and faith of good men be assaulted in the day of
their calamity.
I consider that the ground of my trouble is my sin ; and
if it were not for that, I should not need to be troubled : but
•James, iii. 2. " 1 John, i. 8. " Rom. v. 8. v Rom. xi. 32.
AN EXERCISE AGAINST DESPAIR. 541
tlie help, that all the world looks for, is such, as supposes a
man to be a sinner. Indeed if, from myself, I were to derive
my title to heaven, then my sins were a just argument of de-
spair ; but now that they bring me to Christ, that they drive
me to an appeal to God's mercies, and to take sanctuary in
the cross, they ought not, they cannot infer a just cause of
despair. I am sure it is a stranger thing, that God should
take upon him hands and feet, and those hands and feet
should be nailed upon a cross, than that a man should be
partaker of the felicities of pardon and life eternal : and it
were stranger yet that God should do so much for man, and
that a man that desires it, that labours for it, that is in life
and possibilities of working his salvation, should inevitably
miss that end, for which that God suffered so much. For
what is the meaning, and what is the extent, and what are
the significations of the Divine mercy in pardoning sinners?
If it be thought a great matter, that I am charged with ori-
ginal sin, I confess I feel the weight of it in loads of temporal
infelicities, and proclivities to sin: but I fear not the guilt
of it, since I am baptised ; and it cannot do honour to the
reputation of God's mercy, that it should be all spent in re-
missions of what I never chose, never acted, never knew of,
could not help, concerning which I received no command-
ment, no prohibition. But, blessed be God, it is ordered in
just measures, that that original evil, which I contracted
without my will, should be taken away without my know-
ledge ; and what I suffered, before I had a being, was clean-
sed before I had an useful understanding. But I am taught
to believe God's mercies to be infinite, not only in himself,
but to us : for mercy is a relative term, and we are its cor-
respondent : of all the creatures which God made, we only,
in a proper sense, are the subjects of mercy and remission.
Angels have more of God's bounty than we have, but not so
much of his mercy : and beasts have little rays of his kind-
ness, and effects of his wisdom and graciousness in petty
donatives ; but nothing of mercy;: for they have no laws, and
therefore no sins, and need no mercy, nor are capable of any.
Since therefore man alone is the correlative or proper object
and vessel of reception of an infinite mercy, and that mercy
is in giving and forgiving, I have reason to hope, that he
will so forgive me, that my sins shall not hinder me of hea-
542 AN EXERCISE AGAINST DESPAIR.
veil : or because it is a gift, I may also, upon the stock of
the same infinite mercy, hope, he will give heaven to me ;
and if I have it either upon the title of giving or forgiving,
it is alike to me, and will alike magnify the glories of the
Divine mercy. And because eternal life is the gift of God "",
I have less reason to despair : for if my sins were fewer, and
my disproportions towards such a glory were less, and my
evenness more ; yet it is still a gift, and I could not receive
it but as a free and a gracious donative ; and so I may still :
God can still give it me ; and it is not an impossible expecta-
tion to wait and look for such a gift at the hands of the God
of mercy : the best men deserve it not ; and I, who am the
worst, may have it given me. And I consider, that God hath
set no measures of his mercy, but that we be within the
covenant, that is, repenting persons, endeavouring to serve
him with an honest single heart ; and that, within this cove-
nant, there is a very great latitude, and variety of persons,
and degrees, and capacities ; and therefore, that it cannot
stand with the proportions of so infinite a mercy, that obe-
dience be exacted to such a point, which he never expressed,
unless it should be the least, and that to which all capaci-
ties, though otherwise unequal, are fitted and sufficiently
enabled. But however, I find, that the Spirit of God taught
the writers of the New Testament to apply to us all, in ge-
neral, and to every single person in particular, some gra-
cious words, which God, in the Old Testament spake to one
man, upon a special occasion, in a single and temporal in-
stance. Such are the words, which God spake to Joshua:
" I will never fail thee, nor forsake thee:" and, upon the
stock of that promise, St. Paul forbids covetousness and
persuades contentedness% because those words were spoken
by God to Joshua in another case. If the gracious words
of God have so great extension of parts, and intention of
kind purposes, then how many comforts have we, upon the
stock of all the excellent words, which are spoken in the
prophets and in the Psalms ? and I will never more question,
whether they be spoken concerning me, having such an au-
thentic precedent so to expound the excellent words of God:
all the treasures of God, which are in the Psalms, are my
* Rom. Ti. 23. a Htb. xiii. 5.
AN EXERCISE AGAINST DESPAIR. 543
own riches, and the wealth of my hope : there will I look ;
and whatsoever I can need, that I will depend upon. For
certainly, if we could understand it, that which is infinite
(as God is) must needs be some such kind of thing : it must
go, whither it was never sent, and signify, what was not first
intended, and it must warm with its light, and shine with its
heat, and refresh when it strikes, and heal when it wounds,
and ascertain where it makes afraid, and intend all when it
warns one, and mean a great deal in a small word. And as
the sun, passing to its southern tropic, looks with an open
eye upon his sun-burnt Ethiopians, but at the same time
sends light from its posterns, and collateral influences from
the back-side of his beams, and sees the corners of the east,
when his face tends towards the west, because he is a round
body of fire, and hath some little images and resemblances
of the Infinite : so is God's mercy : when it looked upon
Moses, it relieved St. Paul, and it pardoned David, and gave
hope to Manasses, and might have restored Judas, if he
would have had hope, and used himself accordingly. But
as to my own case, I have sinned grievously and frequently '';
but I have repented it ; but I have begged pardon : I have
confessed it and forsaken it. I cannot undo what was done,
and I perish, if God hath appointed no remedy, if there be
no remission; but then my religion falls together with my
hope, and God's word fails, as well as I. But I believe the
article of forgiveness of sins ; and if there be any such thing,
1 may do well, for I have, and do, and will do that, which
all good men call repentance, that is, I will be humbled be-
fore God, and mourn for my sin, and for ever ask forgiveness,
and judge myself, and leave it with haste, and mortify it
with diligence, and watch against it carefully. And this I
can do but in the manner of a man : I ceui but mourn for my
sins, as I apprehend grief in other instances ; but I will rather
choose to suffer all evils, than to do one deliberate act of
sin. I know, my sins are greater than my sorrow, and too
many for my memory, and too insinuating to be prevented
by all my care : but I know also, that God knows and pities
my infirmities ; and how far that will extend, I know not, but
that it will reach so far, as to satisfy my needs, is the mat-
*> Vixi, peccavi, pcEnitni, naturae cessi.
VOL. IV. 2 N
544 AN EXERCISE AGAINST DESPAIR.
ter of my hope. But this I am sure of, that I have, in my
great necessity, prayed humbly and with great desire, and
sometimes I have been heard in kind, and sometimes have
had a bigger mercy instead of it ; and I have the hope of
prayers, and the hope of my confession, and the hope of my
endeavour, and the hope of many promises, and of God's
essential goodness ; and I am sure, that God hath heard my
prayers, and verified his promises in temporal instances, for
he ever gave me sufficient for my life ; and although he pro-
mised such supplies, and grounded the confidences of them
upon our first seeking the kingdom of heaven and its righte-
ousness, yet he hath verified it to me, who have not sought
it, as I ought ; but therefore I hope he accepted my endea-
vour, or will give his great gifts and our great expectation
even to the weakest endeavour, to the least, so it be a hearty,
piety. And sometimes I have had some cheerful visitations
of God's Spirit, and my cup hath been crowned with com-
fort, and the wine, that made my heart glad, danced in the
chalice, and I was glad, that God would have me so; and
therefore, I hope, this cloud may pass : for that, which was
then a real cause of comfort, is so still, if I could discern it;
and I shall discern it, when the veil is taken from mine
eyes. And, blessed be God, I can still remember, that there
are temptations to despair ; and they could not be tempta-
tions, if they were not apt to persuade, and had seeming
probability on their side ; and they that despair, think they
do it with greatest reason : for if they were not confident of
the reason, but that it were such an argument as might be
opposed or suspected, then they could not despair. Despair
assents as firmly and strongly as faith itself; but because it
is a temptation, and despair is a horrid sin, therefore it is
certain, those persons are unreasonably abused, and they
have no reason to despair, for all their confidence : and
therefore, although I have strong reasons to condemn my-
self, yet I have more reason to condemn my despair, which
therefore is unreasonable because it is a sin, and a dishonour
to God, and a ruin to my condition, and verifies itself, if I
do not look to it. For as the hypochondriac person, that
thought himself dead, made his dream true, when he starved
himself, because dead people eat not ; so do despairing sin-
ners lose God's mercies, by refusing to use and to believe
AN EXERCISE AGAINST DESPAIR. 545
them. And I hope it is a disease of judgment, not an in-
tolerable condition, that I am falling into ; because I have
been told so concerning others, who therefore have been
afflicted, because they see not their pardon sealed after the
manner of this world, and the affairs of the Spirit are trans-
acted by immaterial notices, by propositions and spiritual
discourses, by promises, which are to be verified hereafter;
and here we must live in a cloud, in darkness under a veil,
in fear and uncertainties, and our very living by faith and
hope is a life of mystery and secrecy, the only part of the
manner of that life, in which we shall live in the state of se-
paration. And when a distemper of body or an infirmity of
mind, happens in the instances of such secret and reserved
affairs, we may easily mistake the manner of our notices for
the uncertainty of the thing : and therefore it is but rea-
son, I should stay, till the state and manner of my abode be
changed, before I despair: there it can be no sin, nor error;
here it may be both ; and if it be that, it is also this ; and
then a man may perish for being miserable, and be undone
for being a fool. In conclusion, my hope is in God, and I
will trust him with the event, which I am sure will be just,
and I hope full of mercy. However, now I will use all the
spiritual arts of reason and religion to make me more and
more to love God, that if I miscarry, charity also shall fail,
and something that loves God, shall perish and be damned;
which if it be possible, then I may do well.
These considerations may be useful to men of little hearts,
and of great piety : or if they be persons, who have lived
without infamy, or begun their repentance so late, that it is
very imperfect, and yet so early, that it was before the arrest
of death. But if the man be a vicious person, and hath per-
severed in a vicious life till his death-bed, these considera-
tions are not proper. Let him inquire in the words of the
first disciples after Pentecost, " Men and brethren, what
shall we do to be saved f" and if they can but entertain so
much hope as to enable them to do so much of their duty,
as they can for the present, it is all, that can be provided for
them : an inquiry, in their case, can have no other purposes
of religion or prudence. And the minister must be infinitely
careful, that he do not go about to comfort vicious persons
with the comforts belonging to God's elect, lest he prosti-
2n 2
54G CONSIDERATIONS AGAINST PRESUMPTION.
tute lioly things, and make them common, and his sermons
deceitful, and vices be encouraged in others, and the man
himself find, that he was deceived, when he descends into
his house of sorrow.
But because very few men are tempted with too great
fears of failing, but very many are tempted by confidence and
presumption; the ministers of religion had need be instruct-
ed with spiritual armour to resist this fiery dart of the devil,
when it operates to evil purposes.
SECTION VI.
Considerations against Presumption.
I HAVE already enumerated many particulars to provoke
a drowsy conscience to a scrutiny and to a suspicion of him-
self, that by seeing cause to suspect his condition, he might
more freely accuse himself, and attend to the necessities and
duties of repentance; but if either before, or in, his repent-
ance, he grow too big in his spirit, so as either he does some
little violences to the modesties of humility, or abate his
care and zeal of his repentance, the spiritual man must allay
his forwardness by representing to him, 1. That the growths
in grace are long, difiicult, uncertain, hindered, of many parts
and great variety. 2. That an infant grace is soon dashed
and discountenanced, often running into an inconvenience
and the evils of an imprudent conduct, being zealous, and
forward, and therefore confident, but always with the least
reason, and the greatest danger; like children and young
fellows, whose confidence hath no other reason but that they
understand not their danger and their follies. 3. That he
that puts on his armour, ought not to boast, as he that puts
it off; and the apostle chides the Galatians for ending in
the flesh, after they had begun in the spirit. 4. That a
man cannot think too meanly of himself, but very easily he
may think too high. 5. That a wise man will always in a
matter of great concernment think the worst, and a good
man will condemn himself with hearty sentence. (J. That
humility and i^iodesty of judgment and of hope are very
REMEDIES AGAINST PRESUAIPTIOX. 547
good instruments to procure a mercy and a fair reception at
the day of our death; but presumption or bold opinions serve
no end of God or man, and is always imprudent, ever fatal,
and of all things in the world is its own greatest enemy ; for
the more any man presumes, the greater reason he hath to
fear. 7. That a man's heart is infinitely deceitful, unknown
to itself, not certain in his own acts, praying one way, and
desiring another, wandering and imperfect, loose and vari-
ous, worshipping God, and entertaining sin, following what
it hates, and running from what it flatters, loving to be
tempted and betrayed; petulant like a wanton girl running
from, that it might invite the fondness and enrage the appe-
tite of the foolish young man, or the evil temptation that
follows it ; cold and indifferent one while, and presently zeal-
ous and passionate, furious and indiscreet ; not understood
of itself, or any one else, and deceitful beyond all the arts
and numbers of observation. 8. That it is certain, we have
highly sinned against God, but we are not so certain, that
our repentance is real and eflfective, integral and sufficient.
9. That it is not revealed to us, whether or no the time of our
repentance be not past; or, if it be not, yet how far God
will give us pardon, and upon what condition, or after what
sufferinos or duties, is still under a cloud. 10. That virtue
and vice are oftentimes so near neighbours, that we pass
into each other's borders without observation, and think we
do justice, when we are cruel; or call ourselves liberal, when
we are loose and foolish in expenses ; and are amorous, when
we commend our own civilities and good nature. 11. That
we allow to ourselves so many little irregularities, that insen-
sibly they swell to so great a heap, that from thence we have
reason to fear an evil : for an army of frogs and flies may
destroy all the hopes of our harvest. 12. That when we do
that, which is lawful, and do all that we can in those bounds,
we commonly and easily run out of our proportions. 13.
That it is not easy to distinguish the virtues of our nature
from the virtues of our choice : and we may expect the re-
ward of temperance, when it is against our nature to be
drunk ; or we hope to have the coronet of virgins for our
morose disposition, or our abstinence from marriage upon
secular ends. 14. That, it may be, we call every little sigh
or the keeping a fish-day the duty of repentance, or have
548 REMEDIES AGAINST PRESUMPTION.
entertained false principles in the estimate and measures of
virtues; and, contrary to the steward in that gospel, we
write down fourscore, when we should set down but fifty.
15. That it is better to trust the goodness and justice of God
with our accounts, than to offer him large bills, 16. That we
are commanded by Christ to sit down in the lowest place, till
the master of the house bids us sit up higher. 17. That
" when we have done all that we can, we are unprofitable
servants :" and yet no man does all that he can do ; and
therefore is more to be despised and undervalued. 18. That
the self-accusing publican was justified rather than the
thanksgiving and confident Pharisee. 19. That if Adam in
paradise, and David in his house, and Solomon in the tem-
ple, and Peter in Christ's family, and Judas in the college
of apostles, and Nicolas among the deacons, and the angels
in heaven itself, did fall so foully and dishonestly; then it is
prudent advice, that we be not high-minded, but fear ; and,
when we stand most confidently, take heed lest we fall : and
yet there is nothing so likely to make us fall as pride and
great opinions, which rained the angels, which God resists,
which all men despise, and which betrays us into careless-
ness, and a reckless, undiscerning, and an unwary spirit.
4. Now the main parts of the ecclesiastical ministry are
done; and that which remains is, that the minister pray
over him, and remind him to do good actions as he is capa-
ble ; to call upon God for pardon ; to put his whole trust in
him ; to resign himself to God's disposing ; to be patient
and even ; to renounce every ill word, or thought, or inde-
cent action, which the violence of his sickness may cause
in him ; to beg of God to give him his Holy Spirit to guide
him in his agony ; and his holy angels to guard him in his
passage.
5. Whatsoever is besides this, concerns the standers-by :
that they do all their ministries diligently and temperately;
that they join with much charity and devotion in the prayer
of the minister ; that they make no outcries or exclamations
in the departure of the soul ; and that they make no judg-
ment concerning the dying person, by his dying quietly or
violently, with comfort or without, with great fears or a
cheerful confidence, with sense or without, like a lamb or
like a lion, with convulsions or semblances of great pain, or
VISITATION OF THE SICK. 549
like an expiring and a spent candle : for these happen to all
men, without rule, without any known reason, but according
as God pleases to dispense the grace or the punishment, for
reasons only known to himself. Let us lay our hands upon
our mouth, and adore the mysteries of the Divine wisdom
and providence, and pray to God to give the dying man rest
and pardon, and to ourselves grace to live well, and the
blessing of a holy and a happy death.
SECTION VII.
Offices to be said by the Blinister, in his Visitation of the Sick.
In the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy
Ghost.
" Our Father, which art in heaven," &c.
Let the Priest say this Prayer secretly.
O eternal Jesus, thou great lover of souls, who hast con-
stituted a ministry in the church to glorify thy name, and
to serve in the assistance of those, that come to thee, pro-
fessing thy discipline and service, give grace to me the un-
worthiest of thy servants, that I, in this my ministry, may
purely and zealously intend thy glory, and effectually may
minister comfort and advantages to this sick person (whom
God assoil from all his offences) ; and grant that nothing of
thy grace may perish to him by the unworthiness of the
minister ; but let thy Spirit speak by me, and give me pru-
dence and charity, wisdom and diligence, good observation
and apt discourses, a certain judgment and merciful dispen-
sation, that the soul of thy servant may pass from this state
of imperfection to the perfections of the state of glory,
through thy mercies, O eternal Jesus. Amen,
The Psalm.
Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord. Lord,
hear my voice : let thine ears be attentive to the voice of my
supplications. Psal. cxxx.
550 PRAYERS AT THE
If thou. Lord, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who
should stand ?
But there is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be
feared.
I wait for the Lord ; my soul doth wait; and in his word
do I hope.
My soul waiteth for the Lord, more than they that watch
for the morning.
Let Israel hope in the Lord ; for with the Lord there is
mercy, and with him is plenteous redemption.
And he shall redeem his servants from all their iniquities.
Psal. cxxx.
Wherefore should I fear in the days of evil, when the
wickedness of my heels shall compass me about? Psal.
xlix. 5.
No man can, by any means, redeem his brother, nor give
to God a ransom for him. ver. 7.
For the redemption of their soul is precious and it ceas-
eth for ever. ver. 8.
That he should still live for ever, and not see corruption,
ver. 9.
But wise men die, likewise the fool and the brutish per-
son perish, and leave their wealth to others, ver. 10.
But God will redeem my soul from the power of the grave:
for he shall receive me. ver. 15.
As for me, I will behold thy face in righteousness : I shall
be satisfied, when I awake in thy likeness. Psal. xvii. 15.
Thou shalt shew me the path of life : in thy presence is
the fulness of joy: at thy right hand there are pleasures for
evermore. Psal. xvi. 11.
Glory be to the Father, &c.
As it was in the beginning, &c.
Let us pray.
Almighty God, father of mercies, the God of peace and
comfort, of rest and pardon, we, thy servants, though unwor-
thy to pray to thee, yet, in duty to thee and charity to our
brother, humbly beg mercy of thee for him to descend upon
his body and his soul; one sinner, O Lord, for another, the
miserable for the afflicted, the poor for him that is in need :
but thou givest thy graces and thy favours by the measures
VISITATION OF THE SICK. 551
of thy own mercies, and in proportion to our necessities. We
liumbly come to thee in the name of Jesus, for the merit
of our Saviour, and the mercies of our God, praying thee to
pardon the sins of this thy servant, and to put them all upon
the accounts of the cross, and to bury them in the grave of
Jesus ; that they may never rise up in judgment against thy
servant, nor bring him to shame and confusion of face in the
day of final inquiry and sentence. Amen.
II.
Give thy servant patience in his sorrows, comfort in this
his sickness, and restore him to health, if it seem good to
thee, in order to thy great ends, and his greatest interest.
And however thou shalt determine concerning him in this
affair, yet make his repentance perfect, and his passage safe,
and his faith strong, and his hope modest and confident;
that, when thou shalt call his soul from the prison of the
body, it may enter into the securities and rest of the sons of
God, in the bosom of blessedness, and the custodies of Jesus.
Amen.
III.
Thou, O Lord, knowest all the necessities and all the in-
firmities of thy servant : fortify his spirit with spiritual joys
and perfect resignation, and take from him all degrees of
inordinate or insecure affections to this world, and enlarge
his heart with desires of being with thee, and of freedom
from sins, and fruition of God.
IV.
Lord, let not any pain or passion discompose the order
and decency of his thoughts and duty; and lay no more
upon thy servant, than thou wilt make him able to bear, and
together with the temptation do thou provide a way to es-
cape ; even by the mercies of a longer and a more holy life,
or by the mercies of a blessed death : even as it pleaseth
thee, O Lord, so let it be.
V.
Let the tenderness of his conscience and the Spirit of
God call to mind his sins, that they may be confessed and
552 PRAYERS AT THE
repented of : becfiuse thou hast promised, that if we confess
our sins, we shall have mercy. Let thy mighty grace draw
out from his soul every root of bitterness, lest the remains
of the old man be accursed with the reserves of thy wrath :
but in the union of the holy Jesus, and in the charities of
God and of the world, and the communion of all the saints,
let this soul be presented to thee blameless, and entirely par-
doned, and thoroughly washed, through Jesus Christ our
Lord.
Here also may he inserted the Prayers set down after the Holy
Communion is administered.
The prayer of St. Eustatius the Martyr, to be used by the
sick or dying man, or by the priests or assistants in his
behalf, which he said, when he was going to martyrdom.
I will praise thee, O Lord, that thou hast considered my
low estate, and hast not shut me up in the hands of mine
enemies, nor made my foes to rejoice over me: and now let
thy right hand protect me, and let thy mercy come upon me;
for my soul is in trouble and anguish because of its de-
parture from the body. O let not the assemblies of its
wicked and cruel enemies meet it in the passing forth, nor
hinder me by reason of the sins of my past life. O Lord, be
favourable unto me, that my soul may not behold the hellish
countenance of the spirits of darkness, but let thy bright
and joyful angels entertain it. Give glory to thy holy name
and to thy majesty; place me by thy merciful arm before
thy seat of judgment, and let not the hand of the prince of
this world snatch me from thy presence, or bear me into
hell. Mercy, sweet Jesu. Amen.
A prayer taken out of the Euchologion of the Greek church,
to be said by, or in behalf of, people, in their danger, or
near their death.
B£j3o|o/3opa»/x£voc Toig aixapnaig, &c.
I.
Bemired with sins and naked of good deeds, I, that am
the meat of worms, cry vehemently in spirit ; cast not me a
wretch away from thy face ; place me not on the left hand,
who with thy hands didst fashion me ; but give rest unto my
soul, for thy great m.ercy's sake, O Lord.
VISITATION OF THE SICK. 553
II.
Supplicate with tears unto Christ, who is to judge my
poor soul, that he will deliver me from the fire that is un-
quenchable. I pray you all, my friends and acquaintance,
make mention of me in your prayers, that in the day of judg-
ment I may find mercy at that dreadful tribunal.
III.
Then may the Standers-by pray.
When in unspeakable glory, thou dost come dreadfully
to judge the whole world, vouchsafe, O gracious Redeemer,
that this thy faithful servant may in the clouds meet thee
cheerfully. They, who have been dead from the beginning,
with terrible and fearful trembling stand at thy tribunal,
waiting thy just sentence. O blessed Saviour Jesus. None
shall there avoid thy formidable and most righteous judg-
ment. All kings and princes with servants stand together,
and hear the dreadful voice of the judge condemning the
people, which have sinned, into hell: from which sad sen-
tence, O Christ, deliver thy servant. Amen.
Then let the sick man be called upon to rehearse the arti-
cles of his faith ; or, if he be so weak he cannot, let him
(if he have not before done it) be called to say. Amen,
when they are recited, or to give some testimony of his
faith and confident assent to them.
After which it is proper (if the person be in capacity) that
the minister examine him, and invite him to confession,
and all the parts of repentance, according to the fore-
going rules : after which, he may pray the prayer of ab-
solution.
Our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath given commission to
his church, in his name to pronounce pardon to all, that are
truly penitent, he, of his mercy, pardon and forgive thee all
thy sins, deliver thee from all evils past, present, and future,
preserve thee in the faith and fear of his holy name to thy
life's end, and bring thee to his everlasting kingdom, to live
with him for ever and ever. Amen.
554 PRAYERS AT THE
Then let the sick man renounce all heresies, and whatsoever
is against the truth of God or the peace of the church,
and pray for pardon for all his ignorances and errors,
known and unknown.
After which let him (if all other circumstances be fitted) be
disposed to receive the blessed sacrament, in which the
curate is to minister according to the form prescribed by
the church.
When the rites are finished, let the sick man in the days of
his sickness be employed with the former offices and
exercises before described : and when the time draws
near of his dissolution, the minister may assist by the
following order of recommendation of the soul.
I.
O holy and most gracious Saviour Jesus, we humbly re-
commend the soul of thy servant into thy hands, thy most
merciful hands ; let thy blessed angels stand in ministry
about thy servant, and defend him from the violence and
malice of all his ghostly enemies, and drive far from hence
all the spirits of darkness. Amen.
II.
Lord, receive the soul of this thy servant: enter not into
judgment with thy servant: spare him whom thou hast re-
deemed with thy most precious blood : deliver him from all
evil, for whose sake thou didst suffer all evil and mischief;
from the crafts and assaults of the devil, from the fear of
death, and from everlasting death, good Lord, deliver him.
Amen.
III.
Impute not unto him the follies of his youth, nor any of
the errors and miscarriages of his life ; but strengthen him
in his agony, let not his faith waver, nor his hope fail, nor
his charity be disordered : let none of his enemies imprint
upon him any afflictive or evil fantasm ; let him die in peace,
and rest in hope, and rise in glory. Amen.
IV.
Lord, we know and believe asisuredly, that whatsoever is
VISITATION OF THE SICK. 550
under thy custody cannot be taken out of thy hands, nor by
all the violences of hell robbed of thy protection : preserve
the work of thy hands, rescue him from all evil ; take into
the participation of thy glories him, to whom thou hast
given the seal of adoption, the earnest of the inheritance of
the saints. Amen.
V.
Let his portion be with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob ; with
Job and David, with the prophets and apostles, with martyrs
and all thy holy saints, in the arms of Christ, in the bosom
of felicity, in the kingdom of God to eternal ages. Amen.
These following prayers are fit also to be added to the fore-
going offices, in case there be no communion or inter-
course, but prayer.
Let us pray.
O almighty and eternal God, there is no number of thy
days or of ihy mercies : thou hast sent us into this world to
serve thee, and to live according to thy laws ; but we by our
sins have provoked thee to wrath, and we have planted
thorns and sorrows round about our dwellings : and our life
is but a span long, and yet very tedious, because of the ca-
lamities that enclose us in on every side ; the days of our
pilgrimage are few and evil ; we have frail and sickly bodies,
violent and distempered passions, long designs and but a
short stay, weak understandings and strong enemies, abused
fancies, perverse wills. O dear God, look upon us in mercy
and pity : let not our weaknesses make us to sin against thee,
nor our fear cause us to betray our duty, nor our former fol-
lies provoke thy eternal anger, nor the calamities of this
world vex us into tediousness of spirit and impatience : but
let thy Holy Spirit lead us through this valley of misery
with safety and peace, with holiness and religion, with spi-
ritual comforts and joy in the Holy Ghost: that, when we
have served thee in our generations, we may be gathered
unto our fathers, having the testimony of a holy conscience,
in the communion of the catholic church, in the confidence
of a certain faith, and the comforts of a reasonable, religious,
and holy hope, and perfect charity with thee our God and
556 PRAYERS AT THE
all the world; that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor
principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to
come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, may be
able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ
Jesus our Lord. Amen.
II.
O holy and most gracious Saviour Jesus, in whose hands
the souls of all ftiithful people are laid up till the day of re-
compence, have mercy upon the body and soul of this thy
servant, and upon all thy elect people, who love the Lord
Jesus, and long for his coming; Lord, refresh the imperfec-
tion of their condition with the aids of the Spirit of grace
and comfort, and with the visitation and guard of angels,
and supply to them all their necessities known only unto
thee ; let them dwell in peace, and feel thy mercies pitying
their infirmities, and the follies of their flesh, and speedily
satisfying the desires of their spirits : and when thou shalt
bring us all forth in the day of judgment, O then shew thy-
self to be our Saviour Jesus, our advocate and our judge.
Lord, then remember, that thou hast, for so many ages,
prayed for the pardon of those sins, which thou art then to
sentence. Let not the accusations of our consciences, nor
the calumnies and aggravation of devils, nor the effects of
thy wrath, press those souls, which thou lovest, which thou
didst redeem, which thou dost pray for ; but enable us all,
by the supporting hand of thy mercy, to stand upright in
judgment. O Lord, have mercy upon us, have mercy upon
us: O Lord, let thy mercy lighten upon us, as our trust is
in thee. O Lord, in thee have we trusted, let us never be
confounded. Let us meet with joy, and for ever dwell with
thee, feeling thy pardon, supported with thy graciousness,
absolved by thy sentence, saved by thy mercy, that we may
sing to the glory of thy name eternal hallelujahs. Amen.
Amen. Amen.
Then may be added in the behalf of all, that are present,
these ejaculations.
O spare us a little, that we may recover our strength, be-
fore we go hence, and be no more seen. Amen.
VISITATION OF THE SICK. 557
Cast us not away, in the time of age; O forsake us not,
when strength faileth. Amen.
Grant, that we may never sleep in sin or death eternal,
but that we may have our part of the first resurrection, and
that the second death may not prevail over us. Amen.
Grant, that our souls may be bound up in the bundle of
life; and in the day, when thou bindest up thy jewels, re-
member thy servants for good, and not for evil, that our
souls may be numbered amongst the righteous. Amen.
Grant unto all sick and dying Christians mercy and aids
from heaven; and receive the souls returning unto thee,
whom thou hast redeemed with thy most precious blood.
Amen.
Grant unto thy servants to have faith in the Lord Jesus,
a daily meditation of death, a contempt of the world ; a long-
ing desire after heaven ; patience in our sorrows ; comfort in
our sicknesses; joy in God ; a holy life and a blessed death;
that our souls may rest in hope, and my body may rise in
glory, and both may be beatified in the communion of saints,
in the kingdom of God, and the glories of the Lord Jesus.
Amen.
The Blessing;.
Now the God of peace*^, that brought again from the dead
our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep, through
the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you perfect in
every good work, to do his will, working in you, that which
is pleasing in his sight; to whom be glory, for ever and ever.
Amen.
The Doxology.
To the blessed and only potentate, the King of kings'',
and the Lord of lords, who only hath immortality, dwelling"
in the light, which no man can approach unto, whom no
man hath seen nor can see, be honour and power everlasting.
Amen.
After the sick man is departed, the minister, if he be pre-
sent, or the major-domo, or any other fit person, may
use the following prayers in behalf of themselves.
<= Heb. xiii. 20, 21. "^ 1 Tira. vi. 15, 16.
558 PRAYERS AT THE
Almighty God, with whom do live the spirits of them
that depart hence in the Lord, we adore thy majesty, and
submit to thy providence, and revere thy justice, and mag-
nify thy mercies, thy infinite mercies, that it hath pleased
thee to deliver this our brother out of the miseries of this
sinful world. Thy counsels are secret, and thy wisdom is
infinite : with the same hand thou hast crowned him, and
smitten us; thou hast taken him into regionsof felicity, and
placed him among saijits and angels, and left us to mourn
for our sins, and thy displeasure, which thou hast signified
to us by removing him from us to a better, a far better place.
Lord, turn thy anger into mercy, thy chastisements into
virtues, thy rod into comforts, and do thou give to all his
nearest relatives comforts from heaven, and a restitution of
blessings equal to those, which thou hast taken from them.
And we humbly beseech thee, of thy gracious goodness,
shortly to satisfy the longing desires of those holy souls,
who pray, and wait, and long for thy second coming. Ac-
complish thou the number of thine elect, and fill up the
mansions in heaven, which are prepared for all them, that
love the coming of the Lord Jesus, that we, with this our
brother, and all others departed this life in the obedience
and faith of the Lord Jesus, may have our perfect consum-
mation and bliss in thy eternal glory, which never shall have
ending. Grant this for Jesus Christ's sake, our Lord and
only Saviour. Amen.
IL
O merciful God, father of our Lord Jesus, who art the
first-fruits of the resurrection, and by entering into glory
hath opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers, we
humbly beseech thee to raise us up from the death of sin to
the life of righteousness, that being partakers of the death
of Christ, and followers of his holy life, we maybe partakers
of his Spirit and of his promises ; that when we shall depart
this life, we may rest in his arms, and lie in his bosom, as
our hope is, this our brother doth. O suffer us not for any
temptation of the world, or any snares of the devil, or any
pains of death, to fall from thee. Lord, let thy Holy Spirit
VISITATION OF THE SICK. 559
enable us with his grace to fight a good fight with perse-
verance, to finish our course with holiness, and to keep the
faith with constancy unto the end, that, at the day of judg-
ment we may stand at the right hand of the throne of God,
and hear the blessed sentence of " Come, ye blessed children
of my Father, receive the kingdom prepared for you from
the beo-innins: of the world." O blessed Jesus, thou art our
judge, and thou art our advocate; even because thou art
good and gracious, never suffer us to fall into the intolerable
pains of hell, never to lie down in sin, and never to have our
portion in the everlasting burning. Mercy, sweet Jesu,
mercy. Amen.
A Prayer to be said in the Case of a sudden Siajmse by Death,
as bi/ a mortal Wound, or evil Accidents in Childbirth, ichen
the Forms and Solemnities of F reparation cannot be used.
O most gracious Father, Lord of heaven and earth. Judge
of the living and the dead, behold thy servants running to
thee for pity and mercy, in behalf of ourselves, and this thy
servant, whom thou hast smitten with thy hasty rod, and a
swift angel ; if it be thy will, preserve his life, that there
may be place for his repentance and restitution : O spare
him a little, that he may recover his strength, before he go
hence and be no more seen. But if thou hast otherwise de-
creed, let the miracles of thy compassion and thy wonder-
ful mercy supply to hini the want of the usual measures of
time, and the periods of repentance, and the trimming of his
lamp : and let the greatness of the calamity be accepted by
thee as an instrument to procure pardon for those defects
and degrees of unreadiness, which may have caused this ac-
cident upon thy servant. Lord, stir up in him a great and
effectual contrition ; that the greatness of the sorrow, and
hatred against sin, and the zeal of his love to thee, may, in a
short time, do the work of many days. And thou, who re-
gardest the heart and the measures of the mind more than
the delay and the measures of time, let it be thy pleasure to
rescue the soul of thy servant from all the evils he hath de-
served, and all the evils that he fears ; that in the glorifica-
tions of eternity, and the songs, which to eternal age? thy
VOL. IV. 2 o
560 OF THE CONTINGENCIES
saints and holy angels shall sing to the honour of thy mighty
name and invaluable mercies, it may be reckoned among thy
glories, that thou had redeemed this soul from the dangers
of an eternal death, and made him partaker of the gift of
God, eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
If there be time, the prayers in the foregoing offices may be
added, according as they can be fitted to the present
circumstances.
SECTION Vllt.
A Peroration concerning the Contingencies and Treating^ of our
departed Friends after Death, in Order to their Burial, &c.
When we have received the last breath of our friend*,
and closed his eyes, and composed his body for the grave,
then seasonable is the counsel of the son of Sirach ; " Weep
bitterly, and make great moan, and use lamentation, as he is
worthy; and that a day or two ; lest thou be evil spoken of;
and then comfort thyself for thy heaviness. But take no
grief to heart ; for there is no turning again : thou shalt not
do him good, but hurt thyself*^." Solemn and appointed
mournings are good expressions of our dearness to the de-
parted soul, and of his worth, and our value of him ; and it
hath its praise in nature, and in manners ^, and in public
customs : but the praise of it is not in the gospel, that is, it
hath no direct and proper uses in religion. For if the dead
did die in the Lord, then there is joy to him, and it is an ill
expression of our affection and our charity, to weep uncom-
• TttJi J* afji.'^i'rrovia-i/jiiy ottri jttaXis-Ta KiiJeof la-Ti vsxuj Iliad, 4'.
' Ecclus. xxxviii. 17. 20.
( 'ilf yfvvaiat aTroJeSaxpDxi fxi ; dixit Socrates de Ergastulario lugeute.
Nemo me lacrymis decoret, nee funera fletu
Faxit : cur ? volito vivu' per ora virum. — I^nnius.
riEjffac fjclvroi iravrat ewj to fM^fjia <rolfjioy 7rapa)ia\e"rt avvno-^tia-of^hovt Ejt*oi, oV( Iv
TM aa-<fttXit hit] ia-oy.ai, in; /xnJsv av sti xanov Tra?rt7v, y,r\Ti hv |M£Ta Tet! Qmv •y'lvxfA.ai fxntt
w f*n^iv Irt 2. — Cyrus apud Xenojih. riii. 7. 27.
AXD TREATING OUR DEAD. 5G1
fortably at a change, that, hath caviied my friend to the state
of a huge felicity. But if the man did perish in his folly and
his sins, there is indeed cause to mourn, but no hopes of
being comforted ; for he shall never return to light, or to
hopes of restitution : therefore beware, lest thou also come
into the same place of torment; and let thy grief sit down
and rest upon thy own turf, and weep till a shower springs
from thy eyes to heal the wounds of thy spirit; turn thy
sorrow into caution, thy grief for him that is dead, to thy
care for thyself who art alive, lest thou die and fall like one
of the fools, whose life is worse than death, and their death
is the consummation of all felicities. The church in her fu-
nerals of the dead used to sing psalms ''j and to give thanks
for the redemption and delivery of the soul from the evils
and dangers of mortality. And therefore we have no reason
to be angry, when God hears our prayers, who call upon him
to hasten his coming, and to fill up his numbers, and to do
that, which we pretend to give him thanks for. And St.
Chrysostom asks, " To what purpose is it that thou singest,
' Return unto thy rest, O my soul,' 8cc. if thou dost not be-
lieve thy friend to be in rest? and if thou dost, why dost
thou weep impertinently and unreasonably r" Nothing but
our own loss can justly be deplored": and him, that is pas-
sionate for the loss of his money or his advantages, we
esteem foolish and imperfect ; and therefore have no reason
to love the immoderate sorrows of those, who too earnestly
mourn for their dead, when, in the last resolution of the in-
quiry, it is their own evil and present or feared inconve-
niences they deplore : the best, that can be said of such a
grief, is, that those mourners love themselves too well.
Something is to be given to custom, something to fame, to
nature, and to civilities, and to the honour of the deceased
friends ; for that man is esteemed to die miserable, for whom
no friend or relative sheds a tear\ or pays a solemn sigh.
I desire to die a dry death, but am not very desirous to have
•• St. Chrysost. hom. 4, Heb.
• naTjoKXov xXaiaofAlM, o yap yi^a.; la-r) SavoVTii/. — II. -^ .
* Mors optima est, perire dam lacrymant sui. — Sen. HippoL
Mr,U jUOi ttJcXttua-TO? QavnT!); jUoXoi, oXXa <}>iXoja-<
2 o 2
562 OF THE CONTINGENCIES
a dry funeral : some flowers sprinkled upon my grave would
do well and comely ; and a soft shower to turn those flowers
into a springing memory or a fair rehearsal, that I may not
go forth of my doors, as my servants carry the entrails of
beasts.
But that which is to be faulted in this particular is, when
the grief is immoderate and unreasonable : and Paula Ro-
mana deserved to have felt the weight of St. Jerome's se-
vere reproof, when at the death of every of her children she
almost wept herself into her grave. But it is worse yet,
when people, by an ambitious and a pompous sorrow, and
by ceremonies invented for the ostentation of their grief,
fill heaven and earth with exclamations'", and grow trouble-
some, because their friend is happy, or themselves want his
company. It is certainly a sad thing in nature to see a
friend trembling with a palsy, or scorched with fevers, or
dried up like a potsherd with immoderate heats, and roll-
ing upon his uneasy bed without sleep, which cannot be in-
vited with music", or pleasant murmurs, or a decent still-
ness ; nothing but the servants of cold death. Poppy and
Weariness, can tempt the eyes to let their curtains down ;
and then they sleep only to taste of death, and make an
essay of the shades below : and yet we weep not here : the
period and opportunity for tears we choose, when our friend
is fallen asleep, when he hath laid his neck upon the lap of
his mother; and let his head down°, to be raised up to
heaven. This grief is ill placed and indecent. But many
times it is worse: and it hath been observed, that those
greater and stormy passions do so spend the whole stock of
grief, that they presently admit a comfort and contrary af-
' Expectavimus lacrymas ad ostentatioiiem doloris paratas : ut ergo ambitiosus
detonuit, texit superbum pallio caput, et inanibus inter se usque ad articulorum
strepituiu contritis, &c. — Petron. 17. 3.
■" 'l2? 5l warhp ov 'ZEraiJcj l^u^trai oirria, naioov
Nu|M.<f)iOi;, oj TE Saviiv SitXovg aKa^nas roKvai;'
'il;, A'^t'Kihi; tTtt^oio oSu^sro oa-Tia, xaicov,
EfTTv^wv ira^a ■nrupxai'w, dSiva irTEva^i^iwv.
" Non Sicula; dapes Dulcem elaborabunt saporeni, Noii avium citbaraeque canius
Suuiuum reducent. — Od, 3. 1. 18.
* — Tremuldiiique caput desceiidere jussit
III ccelum, et longam inanautia labra sulivani.
AND TREATING OUR DEAD. 563
fection, while a sorrow that is even and temperate, goes on
to its period with expectation and the distances of a just
time. The Ephesian woman, that the soldier told of in Pe-
tronius, was the talk of all the town, and the rarest example
of a dear affection to her husband ; she descended wdth the
corpse into the vault, and there being attended with her
maiden resolved to weep to death, or die with famine or a
distempered sorrow : from which resolution nor his nor her
friends, nor the reverence of the principal citizens, who used
the entreaties of their charity and their power, could per-
suade her. But a soldier that watched seven dead bodies
hanging upon trees just over against thisi monument, crept
in, and awhile stared upon the silent and comely disorders
of the sorrow : and having let the wonder awhile breathe out
at each other's eyes, at last he fetched his supper and a bottle
of wine, with purpose to eat and drink, and still to feed
himself with that sad prettiness. His pity and first draught
of wine, made him bold and curious to try if the maid would
drink ; who, having, many hours since, felt her resolution
faint as her wearied body, took his kindness, and the light
returned into her eyes, and danced like boys in a festival :
and fearing lest the pertinaciousness of her mistress's sorrows
should cause her evil to revert, or her shame to approach,
assayed whether she would endure to hear an argument to
persuade her to drink and live. The violent passion had
laid all her spirits in wildness and dissolution, and the maid
found them willing to be gathered into order at the arrest of
any new object, being weary of the first, of which, like
leeches, they had sucked their fill, till they fell down and
burst. The weeping woman took her cordial, and was not
angry with her maid, and heard the soldier talk : and he was
go pleased with the change, that he who first loved the si-
lence of the sorrow, was more in love with the music of her
returning voice, especially which himself had strung and put
in tune : and the man began to talk amorously, and the wo-
man's weak head and heart were soon possessed with a little
wine, and grew gay, and talked, and fell in love ; and that
very night, in the morning of her passion, in the grave of
her husband, in the pomps of mourning, and in her funeral
garments, married her new and stranger guest. For so the
5G4 OF THE CONTINGENCIES
wild foragers of Lybia being spent with heat, and dissolved
by the too fond kisses of the sun, do melt with their common
fires, and die with faintness, and descend with motions slow
and unable to the little brooks, that descend from heaven in
the wilderness ; and when they drink, they return into the
vigour of a new life, and contract strange marriages; and
the lioness is courted by a panther, and she listens to his
love, and conceives a monster that all men call unnatural,
and the daughter of an equivocal passion and of a sudden
refreshment. And so also was it in the cave at Ephesus :
for by this time the soldier began to think it was fit, he
should return to his watch, and observe the dead bodies he
had in charge : but when he ascended from his mourning
bridal-chamber, he found that one of the bodies was stolen
by the friends of the dead, and that he was fallen into an
evil condition, because, by the laws of Ephesus, his body
was to be fixed in the place of it. The poor man returns to
his woman, cries out bitterly, and in her presence resolves to
die to prevent his death, and in secret to prevent his shame :
but now the woman's love was raoino; like her former sad-
ness, and grew witty, and she comforted her soldier, and
persuaded him to live, lest by losing him, who had brought
her from death and a more grievous sorrow, she should re-
turn to her old solemnities of dying, and lose her honour
for a dream, or the reputation of her constancy without the
change and satisfaction of an enjoyed love. The man would
fain have lived, if it had been possible, and she found out
this way for him; that he should take the body of her first
husband, whose funeral she had so strangely mourned, and
put it upon the gallows in the place of the stolen thief: he
did so, and escaped the present danger, to possess a love,
which might change as violently, as her grief had done.
But so have I seen a crowd of disordered people rush vio-
lently and in heaps, till their utmost border was restrained
by a wall, or had spent the fury of the first fluctuation and
watery progress, and by-and-by it returned to the contrary
with the same earnestness, only because it was violent and
ungoverned. A raging passion is this crowd, which when
it is not under discipline and the conduct of reason, and the
proportions of temperate humanity, runs passionately the
AND TREATING OUR DEAD. 565
nay it happens, and by and by as greedily to another side,
being swayed by its own weight, and driven any whither by
chance, in all its pursuits having no rule, but to do all it
can, and spend itself in haste, and expire with some shame
and much indecency.
^Vhen thou hast wept awhile, compose the body to burial:
which that it be done gravely, decently, and charitably, we
have the example of all nations to engage us, and of all ages
of the world to warrant : so that it is against common
honesty, and public fame and reputation, not to do this
office.
It is good that the body be kept veiled and secret, and
not exposed to curious eyes, or the dishonours wrought by
the changes of death discerned and stared upon by imperti-
nent persons. When Cyrus was dying, he called his sons
and friends to take their leave, to touch his hand, to see him
the last time, and gave in charge, that when he had put his
veil over his face no man should uncover it; and Epipha-
nius's body was rescued from inquisitive eyes by a miracle.
Let it be interred after the manner of the country, and the
laws of the placed and the dignity of the person. For so
Jacob was buried with great solemnity, and Joseph's bones
were carried into Canaan, after they had been embalmed
and kept four hundred years ; and devout men carried St.
Stephen to his burial, making great lamentation over him.
And iElian tells that those who were the most excellent per-
sons were buried in purple ; and men of an ordinary courage
and fortune, had their graves only trimmed with branches of
olive, and mourning flowers. But when Mark Anthony
gave the body of Brutus to his freed-man to be buried ho-
nestly, lie gave also his own mantle to be thrown into his
funeral pile : and the magnificence of the old funeral we
may see largely described by Virgil in the obsequies of Mi-
Senas'*, and by Homer in the funeral of Patroclus. It was
noted for piety in the men of Jabesh-Gilead, that they
shewed kindness to their lord Saul and buried him; and
'A>.X' iTTHUiO' ToToV, Iliad, 'I' t
1 Lib. tI. Vnr. Histor. cap. 6. Tth: TEXiwf a{ia-nu9"«VT«f h ^omxi'Ji rafwi.
566' OF THE CONTINGENCIES
they did it honourably. And our blessed Saviour, who was
temperate in his expense, and grave in all the parts of his
life and death, as age and sobriety itself, yet was pleased to
admit the cost of Mary's ointment upon his head and feet,
because she did it against his burial: and though she little
thought, it had been so nigh, yet because he accepted it for
that end, he knew, he had made her apology sufficient : by
which he remarked it to be a great act of piety, and honour-
able, to inter our friends and relatives according to the pro-
portions of their condition, and so to give a testimony of
our hope of their resurrection ^ So far is piety; beyond it
may be the ostentation and bragging of a grief, or a design
to serve worse ends. Such was that of Herod, when he
made too studied and elaborate a funeral for Aristobulus,
whom he had murdered; and of Regulus for his boy% at
whose pile he killed dogs, nightingales, parrots, and little
horses : and such also was the expense of some of the Ro-
mans, who hating their left wealth, gave order by their tes-
tament to have huge portions of it thrown into their fires,
bathing their locks, which were presently to pass through
the fire, with Arabian and Egyptian liquors, and balsam of
Judea. In this, as in every thing else, as our piety must
not pass into superstition or vain expense, so neither must
the excess be turned into parsimony, and chastised by neg-
ligence and impiety to the memory of their dead.
But nothing of this concerns the dead in real and efiec-
tive purposes ; nor is it with care to be provided for by them-
selves : but it is the duty of the living *. For to them it is
all one", whether they be carried forth upon a chariot or a
wooden bier ; whether they rot in the air or in the earth ;
■■ Nam quid sibi saxa cavala,
Quid pulchra volunt monuraenta,
Nisi quod res creditur illis
Noil raortua, sed datasoiuno?
Priid. hymn, in E.ieq. defunct.
Cupit omnia ferre
Prodigus, el lotos Melior succendere census,
Desertas exosus opes Statins lib. ii. Sylvar.
' Totus bic locus contemnendus est in nobis, non iiegligendus in nostris. — Cicero.
" Id cin^rem aut manes credis curare sepultos?
AND TREATING OUR DEAD. 567
wliethier they be devoured by fishes or by worms, by birds or
by sepulchral dogs, by water or by fire, or by delay. When
Criton asked Socrates how he would be buried, he told him,
I think I shall escape from you, and that you cannot catch
me : but so much of me as you can apprehend, use it as you
see cause for, and bury it; but however do it according to
the laws ''. There is nothing in this but opinion and the de-
cency of fame to be served. When it is esteemed an honour
and the manner of blessed people to descend into the graves
of their fathers, there also it is reckoned as a curse to be
buried in a strange land, or that the birds of the air devour
them y. Some nations used to eat the bodies of their friends,
and esteemed that the most honoured sepulture ; but they
were barbarous. The magi never buried any, but such as
were torn of beasts. The Persians besmeared their dead
with wax, and the Egyptians with gums, and with great art
did condite the bodies, and laid them in charnel-houses.
But Cyrus the elder would none of all this, but gave com-
mand, that his body should be interred, not laid in a coflin
of gold or silver, but just into the earthy from whence all
living creatures receive birth and nourishment, and whither
they must return. Among Christians the honour which is
valued in the behalf of the dead is, that they be buried in
holy ground, that is, in appointed cemeteries, in places of
religion, there where the field of God is sown with the seeds
of the resurrection % that their bodies also may be among
^"O'sra); av aoi <f>i'Xov n, x.m fMoKifra nyr, vo/a,1[a,<iv livai.
y Fugientibas Trojauis minatus est Hector,
AvroZ ol ^ivctrov jj.ttTiTO'ofX.ai, ouSe m tov ye
lytt-Toi re yvtttTai ts ffupoj \l\a.yji}iTi Qavovra,
'AXXtt v-xJ^ii; i^voua-t 'Wfo bctteoj hfxtri^oio. — Iliad. 6,
^ Ti yap TOvTou uana^iairs^ov, rti y» fx.i'x^nvai, n ttoMta. fjitv to. tuiXa, mavTo, r ayaSrk
^vii T6 xal TpE<])6) ; Xeiioph. W£f( •n'ttiS.
Sit tibi terra levis, mollique tegaris aren^,
Ut tna non possint eruere ossa canes. — Mart.
" Nam quod requiescere corpas
Vacuum sine mente videmus,
Spatium breve restal, ut aiti
Repetat collegia sensus.
Hiuc maxima cura sepulchris
Impenditur
Prud. hym. in Exeq. defunct.
568 OF THE CONTINGENCIES
the Christians, with whom their hope and their portion 13,
and shall be for ever. " Quicquid feceris, omnia hsec eodem
Ventura sunt." That we are sure of; our bodies shall all be
restored to our souls hereafter, and in the interval they shall
all be turned into dust, by what way soever you or your
chance shall dress them. Licinus the freed-man slept in a
marble tomb''; but Cato in a little one, Pompey in none :
and yet they had the best fate among the Romans, and a
memory of the biggest honour. And it may happen, that
to want a monument may best preserve their memories,
while the succeeding ages shall, by their instances, remem-
ber the changes of the world, and the dishonours of death,
and the equality of the dead : and James the Fourth ^, king
of the Scots, obtained an epitaph for wanting of a tomb ;
and King Stephen is remembered with a sad story, because,
four hundred years after his death, his bones were thrown
into a river, that evil men might sell the leaden coffin. It is
all one in the final event of things. Ninus the Assyrian had
a monument erected, whose height was nine furlongs, and
and the breadth ten, saith Diodorus : but John the Baptist
had more honour, when he was humbly laid in the earth be-
tween the bodies of Abdias and Elizeus. And St. Ignatius,
who was buried in the bodies of lions, and St. Polycarp, who
was burned to ashes, shall have their bones and their flesh
again, with greater comfort than those violent persons who
slept among kings, having usurped their thrones when they
were alive, and their sepulchres, when they were dead.
Concerning doing honour to the dead, the consideration
is not long. Anciently the friends of the dead used to
make their funeral orations^ and what they spake of greater
*> Marmoreo Licinus tumulo jaoet, al Cato parvo,
Poinpeius nuUo; crediimis esse Decs? — Varro Ataciivis.
« Fama orbcm replet, mortem sois occulit, at tii
Desine scrutari quod tegit ossa solum.
Si inilii dent aninio non impar fata sepulcnim,
Angusta esttunuiio terra Britanna iiieo.
^ Cernit ibi mocstos el morlis Iioiiore carentes '
Leucaspim, et Lyciaa ductoreni clas.sis Oronlem.—JUneid. 6.
• Lu5tia\itqUB viros, di.siliiiie novijsinia \erha.~-.Encid.
AND TREATING OUR DEAD. oG9
commendation, was pardoned upon the accounts of friend-
ship; but when Christianity seized upon the possession of the
world, this charge was devolved upon priests and bishops,
and they first kept the custom of the world, and adorned it
with the piety of truth and of religion ; but they also so or-
dered it, that it should not be cheap ; for they made funeral
sermons only at the death of princes, or of such holy per-
sons, " who shall judge the angels." The custom descended,
and in the channels mingled with the veins of earth, through
which it passed ; and now-a-days men that die, are com-
mended at a price, and the measure of their legacy is the
degree of their virtue. But these things ought not so to be:
the reward of the greatest virtue ought not to be prostitute
to the doles of common persons, but preserved like laurels
and coronets, to remark and encourage the noblest things.
Persons of an ordinary life should neither be praised pub-
licly nor reproached in private : for it is an office and
charge of humanity to speak no evil of the dead (which, I
suppose, is meant concerning things not public and evi-
dent); but then neither should our charity to them teach us
to tell a lie, or to make a great flame from a heap of rushes
and mushrooms, and make orations crammed with the nar-
rative of little observances, and acts of civil, and necessary,
and eternal religion.
But that which is most considerable is, that we should
do something for the dead*^^, something that is real, and of
proper advantage. That we perform their will, the laws
oblige us, and will see to it ; but that we do all those parts
of personal duty, which our dead left unperformed, and to
which the laws do not oblige us, is an act of great charity
and perfect kindness : and it may redound to the advantage
of our friends also, that their debts be paid even beyond the
inventory of their moveables.
Besides this, let us right their causes, and assert their
honour. When Marcus Regulus had injured the memory of
Herennius Senecio, Metius Carus asked him, what he had
tp do with his dead; and became his advocate after death,
''Xa~p£ f*(Ji, S na.Tpox.Xs, Koi e'v aiJao iof^oicri,
riavra. ya^ ^S>) rot rtXcoJ ra Ka^ti^tv hvjifrny, — Iliad. 4- .
570 OF THE COXTIXGEXCIES
of whose cause he was patron, when he was alive. And
David added this also, that he did kindness to Mephibo-
sheth for Jonathan's sake : and Solomon pleaded his father's
cause by the sword against Joab and Shimei. And cer-
tainly it is the noblest thing in the world to do an act of
kindness to him, whom we shall never see", but yet hath
deserved it of us, and to whom we would do it if he were
present ; and unless we do so, our charity is mercenary, and
our friendships are direct merchandize, and our gifts are
brocage : but what we do to the dead, or to the living for
their sakes, is gratitude, and virtue for virtue's sake, and the
noblest portion of humanity.
And yet I remember, that the most excellent prince
Cyrus, in his last exhortation to his sons upon his death-
bed, charms them into peace and union of hearts and de-
signs, by telling them, that his soul would be still alive, and
therefore fit to be revered and accounted as awful and ve-
nerable, as when he was alive : and what we do to our dead
friends, is not done to persons undiscerning as a fallen tree,
but to such, who better attend to their relatives, and to
greater purposes, though in other manner, than they did
here below. And therefore those wise persons, who in their
funeral orations made their doubt, with an d ng al(j^t](ng
ToiQ TerfXfvrrjKocTj TTfpt rwv tvS'aSe yiyvofxivwv, " If the dead
have any perception of what is done below," which are the
words of Isocrates, in the funeral encomium of Evagoras,
did it upon the uncertain opinion of the soul's immortality ;
but made no question, if they were living, they did also un-
derstand what could concern them. The same words Nazi-
anzen uses at the exequies of his sister Gorgonia, and in the
former invective against Julian : but this was upon another
reason; even because it was uncertain, what the state of
separation was, and whether our dead perceive any thing of
us, till we shall meet in the day of judgment. If it was un-
certain then, it is certain, since that time we have had no
new revelation concerning it; but it is ten to one but, when
S Xph Se nal tZv Tt^oyoynv Ttofha-ao'^ai rtva. it^ovoiav, xai fxn 'arapafjt.f.'kriaa.i, u.nti t^j
VEjt iKi'mvi iva-iQilaq. — hue. Ptataic. c. 24. Lange. p. 534.
Miseiium in littore Teucri
Rebaut, el ciiieii ingrato siiprema ferebaiil. — ^Eneid. 6.
AXD TREATIXG OUR- DEAD. 571
we die, we shall find the state of affairs wholly differing from
all our opinions here, and that no man or sect hath guessed
any thing at all of it, as it is. Here I intend not to dispute,
but to persuade ; and therefore in the general, if it be proba-
ble, that they know or feel the benefits done to them, though
but by a reflex revelation from God, or some under-com-
munication from an angel, or the stock of acquired notices
here below, it may the rather endear us to our charities or
duties to them respectively ; since our virtues use not to live
upon abstractions, and metaphysical perfections, or induce-
ments, but then thrive., when they have material arguments,
such which arc not too far from sense. However it be, it is
certain they are not dead''; and though we no more see the
souls of our dead friends, than we did, when they were alive,
yet we have reason to believe them to know more things and
better : and if our sleep be an image of death, we may also
observe concerning it, that it is a state of life so separate
from communications with the body, that it is one of the
ways of oracle and prophecy' by which the soul best de-
clares her immortality, and the nobleness of her actions,
and powers, if she could get free from the body (as in the
state of separation, or a clear dominion over it), as in the
resurrection. To which also this consideration may be
added, that men a long time live the life of sense, before
they use their reason ; and till they have furnished their
head with experiments and notices of many things, they
cannot at all discourse of any thing : but when they come
to use their reason, all their knowledge is nothing but re-
membrance''; and we know by proportions, by similitudes
and dissimilitudes, by relations and oppositions, by causes
and effects, by comparing things with things ; all which are
nothing but operations of understanding upon the stock of
former notices, of something we knew before, nothing but
xai fji.iv Tr^s? fjiZdov eeittev,
EL'Jsij, atTiip liAtio XEXaa-jUEvo? ewXeu, 'Ap(^iXXE!/ ;
Ou fjtiv fxiv ^ooovTOj aiciijEic, oKXa, bttvcVTog. — Iliad, vf.'.
• 'H Ss toZ ayQfdoTeou -^vyh tote Siiwcu ^itorarn KaTa<paivtrat, xat tots Tt rZv fitWoirotf
it^Do^a, tote yaj ij eoike ^aXis-Ta IxsuSEjouTat. — Cyrus apud Xeiwph. lib. viii. instit.
'' — Ti? lo-Ti xai liv oLiSao io^Aowi, "Vvx/i xat iliii>.(>y, araf f psvej qIk, £vj icif^itay, — ■
Iliad. I'.
572 OF THE COXTIXGEXCIES
remembrances : all the heads of topics, which are the stock
of all arguments and sciences in the world, are a certain de-
monstration of this ; and he is the wisest man, that remem-
bers most, and joins those remembrances together, to the
best purposes of discourse. From whence it may not be
improbably gathered, that in the state of separation, if there
l)e any act of understanding, that is, if the understanding
be alive, it must be relative to the notices it had in this
world ; and therefore the acts of it must be discourses upon
all the parts and persons of their conversation and relation,
excepting only such new revelation, which may be commu-
nicated to it ; concerning which we know nothing. But if
by seeing Socrates I think upon Plato, and by seeing a pic-
ture I remember a man, and by beholding two friends, 1 re-
member my own and my friend's need (and he is wisest that
draws most lines from the same centre, and most discourses
from the same notices) ; it cannot but be very probable to
believe, since the separate souls understand better, if they
understand at all, that from the notices they carried from
hence, and what they find there equal or unequal to those
notices, they can better discover the things of their friends,
than we can here by our conjectures and craftiest imagina-
tions : and yet many men here can guess shrewdly at the
thoughts and designs of such men with whom they discourse,
or of whom they have heard, or whose characters they pru-
dently have perceived. I have no other end in this discourse,
but that we may be engaged to do our duty to our dead ; lest
peradventure they should perceive our neglect, and be wit-
nesses of our transient affections and forgetfulness. Dead
persons have religion passed upon them, and a solemn re-
verence : and if we think a ghost beholds us, it may be, we
may have upon us the impressions likely to be made by love,
and fear, and religion. However, we are sure, that God sees
us, and the world sees us: and if it be matterof duty towards
our dead, God will exact it ; if it be matter of kindness, the
world will : and as religion is the band of that, so fame and
reputation are the endearment of this.
It remains, that we who are alive, should so live, and by
the actions of religion attend the coming of the day of the
Lord, that we neither be surprised, nor leave our duties im-
AND TREATING OUR DEAD. 573
perfect, nor our sins uncancelled, nor our persons unrecon-
ciled, nor God unappeased ; but that, when we descend to
our graves, we may rest in the bosom of the Lord, till the
mansions be prepared, where we shall sing and feast eter-
nally. Amen.
Te Deuin laudamus.
END OF VOL. IV.
J. F. UoVE, Printer, St. John's Square.
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