councils, loves to see him pale with study, or pant- | most but to a temporal death; and then the little ing 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 weaknesses of nature, and against hope to believe in hope, resigning ourselves to God's will, praying him to choose for us, and dying in all things but faith and its blessed consequences; ut ad officium cum periculo simus prompti; and the danger and the resistance shall endear the office. For so I have known the boisterous north wind pass through the yielding air, which opened its bosom, and appeased its violence by entertaining it with easy compliance in all the regions of its reception: but when the same breath of heaven hath been checked with the stiffness of a tower, or the united strength of wood, it grew mighty, and dwelt there, and made the highest branches stoop, and made a smooth pass for it on the top of all its glories. So is sickness, and so is the grace of God: when sickness hath made the difficulty, then God's grace hath made a triumph, and by doubling its power hath created new proportions of a reward; and then shows its biggest glory, when it hath its greatest difficulty to master, the greatest weaknesses to support, the most busy temptations to contest with; for so God loves, that his strength should be seen in our weakness and our danger. Happy is that state of life, in which our services to God are the dearest and the most expensive.a 5. Sickness hath some degrees of elegibility, at least by an after-choice; because to all persons, which are within the possibilities and state of pardon, it becomes a great instrument of pardon of sins. For as God seldom rewards here and hereafter too; so it is not very often that he punishes in both states. In great and final sins he doth so; but we find it expressed only in the case of the sin against the Holy Ghost, "which shall never be forgiven in this world, nor in the world to come," that is, it shall be punished in both worlds, and the infelicities of this world shall but usher in the intolerable calamities of the next. But this is in a case of extremity, and in sins of an unpardonable malice in those lesser stages of death, which are deviations from the rule, and not a destruction and perfect antinomy to the whole institution, God very often smites with his rod of sickness, that he may not for ever be slaying the soul with eternal death. "I will visit their offences with the rod, and their sin with scourges: nevertheless my loving-kindness will I not utterly take from him, nor suffer my truth to fail." And there is, in the New Testament, a delivering over to Satan, and a consequent buffetting, for the mortification of the flesh indeed, but that the soul may be saved in the day of the Lord. And to some persons the utmost process of God's anger reaches but to a sharp sickness, or at z Marcet sine adversario virtus. с y Ventus ut amittit vires, nisi robore densæ Occurrunt sylvæ, spatio diffusus inani. -LUCAN. Lætius est, quoties magno tibi constat honestum. b Psalm lxxxix. 32, 33. 1 Cor. v. 5. 1 Tim. i. 20. | 66 momentary anger is spent, and expires in rest and a quiet grave. Origen, St. Augustine, and Cassian say, concerning Ananias and Sapphira,d that they were slain with a sudden death, that by such a judgment their sin might be punished, and their guilt expiated, and their persons reserved for mercy in the day of judgment. And God cuts off many of his children from the land of the living; and yet, when they are numbered amongst the dead, he finds them in the book of life, written amongst those that shall live to him for ever. And thus it happened to many new christians, in the church of Corinth, for their little indecencies and disorders in the circumstances of receiving the holy sacrament. St. Paul says, that many amongst them were sick, many were weak, and some were fallen asleep." He expresses the Divine anger against those persons in no louder accents; which is according to the style of the New Testament, where all the great transactions of duty and reproof are generally made upon the stock of heaven, and hell is plainly a reserve, and a period set to the declaration of God's wrath. For God knows, that the torments of hell are so horrid, so insupportable a calamity, that he is not easy and apt to cast those souls, which he hath taken so much care, and hath been at so much expense to save, into the eternal, never-dying flames of hell, lightly, for smaller sins, or after a fairly-begun repentance, and in the midst of holy desires to finish it; but God takes such penalties, and exacts such fines of us, which we may pay salvo contenemento, saving the main stake of all, even our precious souls. And therefore St. Augustine prayed to God in his penitential sorrows, "Here, O Lord, burn and cut my flesh, that thou mayest spare me for ever." For so said our blessed Saviour, "Every sacrifice must be 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 committed sins, we must expect to be put into the state of affliction; and yet the sacrifice will send up a right and untroubled cloud, and a sweet smell to join with the incense of the altar, where the eternal Priest offers a neverceasing sacrifice. And now I have said a thing, against which there can be no exceptions, and of which no just reason can make abatement. For when sickness, which is the condition of our nature, is called for with purposes of redemption; when we are sent to death to secure eternal life; when God strikes us, that he may spare us, it shows, that we have done things which he essentially hates; and therefore we must be smitten with the rod of God: but in the midst of judgment God remembers mercy, and makes the rod to be medicinal, and, like the rod of God in the hand of Aaron, to shoot forth buds, and leaves, and almonds, hopes and mercies, and eternal recompences, in the day of restitution. This is so great a good to us, if it be well conducted d Digni erant in hoc sæculo recipere peccatum suum, ut mundiores exeant ab hac vitâ, mundati castigatione sibi illatâ per mortem communem, quoniam credentes erant in Christum.-ORIGEN, ST. AUGUST. 1. iii. c. 1. contr. Parmen. et CASSIAN. collat. vi. c. 11. e 1 Cor. xi. 20. 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 imprint it in the flesh, we are workers together with God in the infliction; and then the sickness, beginning and being managed in the virtue of repentance, and patience, and resignation, and charity, will end in peace, and pardon, and justification, and consignation to glory. That I have spoken truth, I have brought God's Spirit speaking in Scripture for a witness. But if this be true, there are not many states of life that have advantages, which can outweigh this great instrument of security to our final condition. Moses died at the mouth of the Lord, said the story; he died with the kisses of the Lord's mouth (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 religion. There is nothing can make sickness in any sense eligible, 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 unavoidableness of the suffering, of the accidental vexations and increase of torments by impatience, of the fellowship of all the sons of Adam, and such other little considerations; which indeed, if sadly reflected upon, and found to stand alone, teach him nothing but the degree of his calamity, and the evil of his condition, and teach him snch a patience, and minister 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 forward and enters into the gates of f Deut. xxxiv. 5. 8 Hæc clementia non paratur arte: sed nôrunt cui serviunt leones. Si latus aut renes morbo tententur acuto, the grave, is the beginning of a sorrow that shall never have an ending? But when the sickness is a messenger sent from a chastising Father; when it first turns into degrees of innocence, and then into virtues, and thence into pardon; this is no misery, but such a method of the Divine economy and dispensation as resolves to bring us to heaven without any new impositions, but merely upon the stock and charges of nature. 2. Let it be observed, that these advantages, which spring from sickness, are not in all instances of virtue, nor to all persons. Sickness is the proper scene for patience and resignation, for all the passive graces of a christian, for faith and hope, and for some single acts of the love of God. But sickness is not a fit station for a penitent; and it can serve the ends of the grace of repentance but accidentally. Sickness may begin a repentance, if God continues life, and if we co-operate with the Divine grace; or sickness may help to alleviate the wrath of God, and to facilitate the pardon, if all the other parts of this duty be performed in our healthful state; so that it may serve at the entrance in, or at the going out. But sickness, at no hand, is a good stage to represent all the substantial parts of this duty. 1. It invites to it; 2. It makes it appear necessary; 3. It takes off the fancies of vanity; 4. It attempers the spirit; 5. It cures hypocrisy; 6. It tames the fumes of pride; 7. It is the school of patience; 8. And by taking us from off the brisker relishes of the world, it makes us with more gust to taste the things of the Spirit: and all this, only when God fits the circumstances of the sickness so as to consist with acts of reason, consideration, choice, and a present and reflecting mind; which then God sends, when he means that the sickness of the body should be the cure of the soul. But let no man so rely upon it as by design, to trust the beginning, the progress, and the consummation of our piety to such an estate, which for ever leaves it imperfect; and though to some persons it adds degrees, and ministers opportunities, and exercises single acts with great advantage, in passive graces; yet it is never an entire or sufficient instrument for the change of our condition from the state of death to the liberty and life of the sons of God. 3. It were good, if we would transact the affairs of our souls with nobleness and ingenuity, and that we would, by an early and forward religion, prevent the necessary arts of the Divine providence. It is true, that God cures some by incision, by fire and torments; but these are ever the more obstinate and more 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 virtue, which is imprinted upon our spirits with fears, and the sorrows of a fever, or Si virtus hoc una potest dare, fortis omissis h Nec tamen putaverant ad rem pertinere, ubi inciperent, quod placuerat ut fieret. Neque tam aversa unquam videbitur ab opere suo provi dentia, ut debilitas inter optima inventa sit. a peevish consumption. It is but a miserable remedy to be beholden to a sickness for our health; and though it be better to suffer the loss of a finger, than that the arm and the whole body should putrefy; yet even then also it is a trouble and an evil to lose a finger. He that mends with sickness, pares the nails of the beast, when they have already torn off part of the flesh; but he that would have a sickness become a clear and an entire blessing, a thing indeed to be reckoned among the good things of God, and the evil things of the world, must lead a holy life, and judge himself with an early sentence, and so order the affairs of his soul, that, in the usual method of God's saving us, there may be nothing left to be done, but that such virtues should be exercised, which God intends to crown; and then, as when the Athenians upon a day of battle, with longing and uncertain souls, sitting in their common-hall, expecting what would be the sentence of the day, at last received a messenger, who only had breath enough left him to say, "We are conquerors," and so died; so shall the sick person, who hath "fought a good fight and kept the faith," and only waits for his dissolution and his sentence, breathe forth his spirit with the accents of a 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 person rolls upon his uneasy thorns, and sleep is departed from his eyes. Certain it is, some sickness is a blessing. Indeed, blindness were a most accursed thing, 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 rewards; it is certain that sickness never is an evil but by our own faults; and if we will do our duty, we shall be sure to turn it into a blessing. If the sickness be great, it may end in death, and the greater it is, the sooner; and if it be very little, it hath great intervals of rest: if it be between both, we may be masters of it, and by serving the ends of Providence serve also the perfective end of human nature, and enter into the possession of everlasting mercies. The sum is this: he that is afraid of pain, is Detestabilis erit cæcitas, si nemo oculos perdiderit, nisi cui eruendi sunt. Memineris ergò maximos dolores morte finiri, parvos habere multa intervalla requietis, mediocrium nos esse domi -- CICERO. nos. m Ecclus. ii. 15. afraid of his own nature; and if his fear be violent, it is a sign his patience is none at all; and an impatient person is not ready-dressed for heaven. None but suffering, humble, and patient persons can go to heaven; and when God hath given us the whole stage of our life to exercise all the active virtues of religion, it is necessary in the state of virtues, that some portion and period of our lives be assigned to passive graces; for patience, for christian fortitude, for resignation or conformity to the Divine will. But as the violent fear of sickness makes us impatient, so it will make our death without comfort and without religion; and we shall go off from our stage of actions and sufferings with an unhandsome exit, because we were willing to receive the kindness of God, when he expressed it as we listed; but we would not suffer him to be 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 shall visit him?" m SECTION VII. The second Temptation proper to the State of Sickness, Fear of Death, with its Remedies. THERE is nothing which can make sickness unsanctified, but the same also will give us cause to fear death. If, therefore, we so order our affairs and spirits that we do not fear death, our sickness may easily become our advantage; and we can then receive counsel, and consider, and do those acts of virtue, which are, in that state, the proper services of God; and such which men in bondage and fear are not capable of doing, or of advices how they should, when they come to the appointed days of mourning. And indeed, if men would but place their design of being happy in the nobleness, courage, and perfect resolutions of doing handsome things, and passing through our unavoidable necessities, in the contempt and despite of the things of this world, and in holy living, and the perfective desires of our natures, the longings and pursuances after heaven; it is certain, they could not be made miserable by chance and change, by sickness and death. But we are so softened, and made effeminate with delicate thoughts, and meditations of ease, and brutish satisfactions, that, if our death come, before we have seized upon a great fortune, or enjoy the promises of the fortune-tellers, we esteem ourselves to be robbed of our goods, to be mocked, and miserable. Hence it comes, that men are impatient of the thoughts of death: hence come those arts of protraction and delaying the significations of old age: thinking to deceive the world, men cozen themselves," and by representing themselves youth Mentiris juvenem tinctis, Lentine, capillis, ful, they certainly continue their vanity, till Proserpina pull the peruke from their heads. We cannot deceive God and nature: for a coffin is a coffin, though it be covered with a pompous veil; and the minutes of our time strike on, and are counted by angels, till the period comes, which must cause the passing bell to give warning to all the neighbours, that thou art dead, and they must be so: and nothing can excuse or retard this. And if our death could be put off a little longer, what advantage can it be, in thy accounts of nature or felicity? They that, three hundred years agone, died unwillingly, and stopped death two days, or stayed it a week, And what is their gain? where is that week? 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 lived with amazement, and were distracted with the ruins of mankind, and the horror of a universal deluge. Remedies against the Fear of Death, by Way of Consideration. 1. God having in this world placed us in a sea, and troubled the sea with a continual storm, hath appointed the church for a ship, and religion to be the stern; but there is no haven or port but death. Death is that harbour, whither God hath designed every one, that there he may find rest from the troubles of the world. How many of the noblest Romans have taken death for sanctuary, and have esteemed it less than shame or a mean dishonour! and Cæsar 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. The holy Scripture, giving an account of the reasons 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 ourselves it is certain, if we had ten years agone taken seizure of our portion of dust, death had not taken us from good| things, but from infinite evils, such which the sun hath seldom seen. Did not Priamus weep oftener than Troilus? ¶ and happy had he been, if he had died, when his sons were living, and his kingdom safe, and houses full, and his city unburnt. It was a long life that made him miserable, and an early S And it death only could have secured his fortune. hath happened many times, that persons of a fair life and a clear reputation, of a good fortune and an honourable name, have been tempted in their age to folly and vanity,' have fallen under the disgrace of dotage, or into an unfortunate marriage, or have besotted themselves with drinking, or outlived their fortunes, or become tedious to their friends, or are afflicted with lingering and vexatious diseases, or lived to see their excellent parts buried, and cannot understand the wise discourses and productions of their younger years. In all these cases and infinite more, do not all the world say, that it had been better this man had died sooner? But so have I known passionate women to shriek aloud, when their nearest relatives were dying, and that horrid shriek hath stayed the spirit of the man awhile to wonder at the folly, and represent the inconvenience; and the dying person hath lived one day longer full of pain, amazed with an indeterminate spirit, distorted with convulsions, and only come again to act one scene more of a new calamity, and to die with less decency. So also do very many men; with passion and a troubled interest they strive to continue their life longer; and, it may be, they escape this sickness, and live to fall into a disgrace; they escape the storm, and fall into the hands of pirates; and, instead of dying with liberty, they live like slaves, miserable and despised, servants to a little time, and sottish admirers of the breath of their own lungs. Paulus Æmilius 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 kingdom from him, he would be content with that, and not lead him in triumph a prisoner to Rome. Emilius told him, he need not be beholden to him for that; himself might prevent that in despite of him. But the timorous king durst not die. But certainly every wise man will easily believe, that it had been better the Macedonian kings should have died in battle, than protract their life so long, till some of them came to be scriveners and joiners at Rome: or that the tyrant of Sicily better had perished in the Adriatic, than to be wafted to Corinth safely, and there turn schoolmaster. It is a sad calamity, that the fear of death shall so imbecile man's courage and understanding, that he dares not suffer the remedy of all his calamities; but that he lives to say, as Laberius did, "I have lived this one day longer than I should." Either, therefore, let us be willing to die when God calls, or let us never more complain of the calamities of our life, which we feel so sharp and numerous. And when God sends his angel to us with the scroll of death, let us look on it as an act of mercy, to prevent many sins and nany 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 formidable thing, if we view it on both sides, and handle it, and consider all its appendages. 2. It is necessary, and therefore not intolerable :| and nothing is to be esteemed evil which God and nature have fixed with eternal sanctions. 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. W : 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. X 4. It is a thing that every one suffers, even persons of the lowest resolution, of the meanest virtue, of no breeding, of no discourse. Take away but the pomps of death, the disguises and solemn bugbears, the tinsel, and the actings by 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 physicians, the dark room and the ministers, the kindred and the watchers; and then to die is easy, ready and quitted from its troublesome circumstances. It is the same harmless thing, that a poor shepherd suffered yesterday, or a maid-servant to-day; and at the same time in which you die, in that very night a thousand creatures die with you,y some wise men, and many fools; and the wisdom of the first will not quit him, and the folly of the latter does not make him unable to die. 5. Of all the evils of the world which are reproached with an evil character, death is the most innocent of its accusation. For when it is present, it hurts nobody; and when it is absent, it is indeed troublesome, but the trouble is owing to our fears, not to the affrighting and mistaking object: Hoc homo morte lucratur, ne malum esset immortale.NAZ. ▾ Nihil in malis ducamus, quod sit à Diis immortalibus vel à Naturâ parente omnium, constitutum. w Concretum fuit, discretum est; rediitque unde venerat; terra deorsum, spiritus sursum. Quid ex his omnibus iniquum est? nihil.-EPICHAR. * Natura dedit usuram vitæ tanquam pecuniæ; quid est ergo quod querare, si repetat cùm vult? eadem ením lege acreperas.-SENECA. 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; a for just when it is, no man hath reason to complain of so insensible, so sudden, so undiscerned a change. 6. It is so harmless a thing, that no good man was ever thought the more miserable for dying, but much the happier. When men saw the graves of Calatinus, of the Servilii, the Scipios, the 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 to reprove the Arian heresy, he heard, that a young noble gentleman treated with his daughter Abra for marriage. The bishop wrote to his daughter, that she should not engage her promise, nor do countenance to that request, because he had provided for her a husband fair, rich, wise, and noble, far beyond her present offer. The event of which was this: she obeyed; and when her father returned from his eastern triumph to his western charge, he prayed to God that his daughter might die quickly; and God heard his prayers, and Christ took her into his bosom, entertaining 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 fortune; life in itself being neither good nor bad, but just as we make it; and therefore so is death. 8. But when we consider, death is not only better than a miserable life, not only an easy and innocent thing in itself, but also that it is a state of advantage, we shall have reason not to double the sharpnesses of our sickness by our fear of death. Certain it is, death hath some good upon its proper stock; praise, and a fair memory, a reverence and religion towards them so great, that it is counted dishonest to speak evil of the dead; then they rest in peace, and are quiet from their labours, and are designed to immortality. Cleobis and Biton, Trophonius y Vitæ est avidus, quisquis non vult mundo secum pereunte mori.- SENECA. 2 Τοὺς γὰρ θανόντας οὐχ ὁρῶ λυπουμένους. Par est moriri: neque est melius morte in malis rebus miseris.-PLAUT. Rud. a Aut fuit, aut veniet; nihil est præsentis in illâ : b Virtutem incolumem odimus, Sublatam ex oculis quærimus invidi.-HORAT. |