The rule and exercises of holy dying in which are described the means and instruments of preparing our selves and others respectively, for a blessed death, and the remedies against the evils and temptations proper to the state of sicknesse : together with prayers and acts of vertue 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 ministery.

CHAP. I. A general preparation to∣wards a holy and blessed Death: by way of consideration. (Book 1)

SECT. I. Consideration of the vanity, and shortnesse of Mans life.

A Man is a Bubble (said the Greek Proverb);* 1.1 which Lucian repre∣sents with advantages and its pro∣per circumstances, to this pur∣pose; saying, that all the world is a storm, and Men rise up in their several ge∣nerations like bubbles descending à Iove plu∣vio, from God, and the dew of Heaven, from a tear and drop of Man, from Nature and Pro∣vidence: 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 busi∣nesse 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 disap∣pear and give their place to others: and they

that live longest upon the face of the waters are in perpetual motion, restlesse 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 then it was before. So is every man: He is born in vanity and sin; he comes into the world like morning Mush∣romes, soon thrusting up their heads into the air and conversing with their kinred of the same production, and as soon they turn into dust and forgetfulnesse; some of them with∣out any other interest in the affairs of the world, but that they made their parents a little glad, and very sorrowful: others ride longer in the storm; it may be until seven yeers 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 darknesse of the grave to hide them. But if the bubble stands the shock of a bigger drop, and outlives the chances of a childe, of a carelesse 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 Doves neck or the image of a rainbow, which hath no substance, and whose very imagery and colours are phantastical; and so he dances out the gayety of his youth, and is all the while in a storm, and endures, onely 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 humor: and to preserve a man alive in the midst of so many chances, and

hostilities, is as great a miracle as to create him; to preserve him from rushing into nothing and at first to draw him up from nothing were e∣qually the issues of an Almighty power. And therefore the wise men of the world have con∣tended who shall best fit mans condition with words signifying his vanity and short abode. Homer cals a man a leaf, the smallest, the weakest piece of a short liv'd, unsteady plant. Pindar calls him the dream of a shadow: Another, the dream of the shadow of smoak. But S. Iames spake by a more excellent Spirit, saying,* 1.2 Our life is but a vapor] viz. drawn from the earth by a coelestial influence; made of smoak, or the lighter parts of water, tossed with every winde, moved by the motion of a superiour body, without vertue in it self, 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.* 1.3 A phantastic vapor, an apparition, nothing real; it is not so much as a mist, not the matter of a shower, nor substantial enough to make a cloud; but it is like Cassiopeia's chair, or Pelops shoulder, or the circles of Heaven, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉, for which you cannot have a word that can signify a veryer nothing.* 1.4 And yet the ex∣pression is one degree more made diminutive: A vapor, and phantastical, or a meer 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 forgotten like the dream of a distracted person. The summe of all is

this:* 1.5 That thou art a man, then whom there is not in the world any great∣er instance of heights and declen∣sions, of lights and shadows, of mi∣sery and folly, of laughter and tears, of groans and death.

And because this consideration is of great usefulnesse and great necessity to many purpo∣ses of wisdom and the Spirit; all the succession of time, all the changes in nature, all the va∣rieties of light and darknesse, the thousand thousands of accidents in the world, and every contingency to every man, and to every crea∣ture does preach our funeral sermon, and calls us to look, and see, how the old Sexton Time throws up the earth, and digs a Grave where we must lay our sins, or our sorrows, and sowe our bodies till they rise again in a fair, or in an intolerable eternity.* 1.6 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 moneths which we have al∣ready 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 wilde boar destroy our vineyards, or our King be sick, we regard it not, but, during that state, are as disinterest, 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 dye before us, representing a formal prologue to the Tragedie; and still every seven year it is oddes 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 solennities of our own Funerals, first in those parts that ministred to Vice, and next in them that served for Ornament; and in a short time even they that served for necessity become uselesse,* 1.7 and intangled like the wheels of a broken clock. Baldnesse is but a dressing to our funerals, the proper or∣nament of mourning, and of a person en∣tred 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 joynts, short breath, stiffe limbs, wrinkled skin, short memory, decayed appetite. Every dayes necessity calls for a re∣paration 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 layes up for another; and while we think a thought, we die; and the clock strikes, and reckons on our portion of Eternity; we form our words with the breath of our nostrils, we have the lesse 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 har∣vest 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 dayes come, and then the Syrian star makes the summer deadly; And the fruits of Autumn are laid up for all the years provision, and the man that gathers them eats and sursets, and dies and needs them not, and himself is laid up for Eternity; and he that escapes till winter, only stayes for another opportunity, which the di∣stempers of that quarter minister to him with great variety. Thus death reigns in all the por∣tions of our time. The Autumn with its fruits provides disorders for us: and the Winters cold turns them into sharp diseases, and the Spring brings flowers to strew our herse, and the Summer gives green turfe and brambles to binde upon our graves. Calentures, and Sur••et, Cold, and Agues, are the four quarters of the year, and all minister to Death; and you can go no whither, but you tread upon a dead mans bones.

The wilde fellow in Petronius that escaped upon a broken table from the furies of a ship∣wrack, as he was sunning himself upon the rocky shore espied a man rolled upon his float∣ing bed of waves, ballasted w^th sand in the folds of his garment, and carried by his civil enemy the sea towards the shore to finde a grave; and it cast him into some sad thoughts: that perad∣venture

this mans wife in some part of the Continent, safe and warme looks next moneth for the good mans re∣turn;* 1.8 or it may be his son knows nothing of the tempest; or his fa∣ther thinks of that affectionate kiss which still is warm upon the good old mans cheek ever since he took a kinde farewel; and he weeps with joy to think how blessed he shall be when his beloved boy returns into the circle of his Fathers arms. These are the thoughts of mortals, this is the end and sum of all their designes: a dark night, and an ill Guide, a boysterous sea, and a bro∣ken Cable, a hard rock, and a rough winde dash'd in pieces the fortune of a whole family, and they that shall weep loudest for the acci∣dent, are not yet entred into the storm, and yet have suffered shipwrack. Then looking upon the carkasse, 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 dayes since; his passions are be∣calm'd with the storm, his accounts cast up, his cares at an end, his voyage done, and his gains are the strange events of death, which whither they be good or evil, the men that are alive, seldom trouble themselves concerning the in∣terest of the dead.

But seas alone do not break our vessel in pieces: Every where we may be shipwracked. A valiant General when he is to reap the har∣vest

of his crowns and triumphs, fights unpro∣sperously, or falls into a Feaver with joy and wine, and changes his Lawrel into Cypresse, his triumphal chariot to an Hearse; dying the night before he was appointed to perish in the drunkennesse of his festival joyes. It was a sad arrest of the loosenesses and wilder feasts of the French Court, when their King [Henry 2.] was killed really by the sportive image of a fight. And many brides have died under the hands of Paranymphs and Maidens dressing them for uneasy joy, the new and undiscerned chains of Marriage: according to the saying of Bensirah the wise Jew,

The Bride went into her chamber, and knew not what should befall her there.

Some have been paying their vows, and giving thanks for a prosperous return to their own house, and the roof hath descended upon their heads, and turned their loud religi∣on into the deeper silence of a grave: And how many teeming Mothers have rejoyced over their swelling wombs, and pleased themselves in becoming the chanels of blessing to a fami∣lie; and the Midwife hath quickly bound their heads and feet,* 1.9 and carried them forth to burial? Or else the birth day of an Heir hath seen the Coffin of the Father brought into the house, and the divided Mother hath been forced to travel twice, with a painful birth, and a sadder death.

There is no state, no accident no circum∣stance of our life, but it hath been sowred by some sad instance of a dying friend: a friendly meeting often ends in some sad mischance, and

makes an eternal parting: and when the Poet Eschylus was sitting under the walls of his house, an eagle hovering over his bald head, mistook it for a stone, and let fall his oyster, hoping there to break the shell, but pierced the poor mans skull.

Death meets us every where, and is pro∣cured by every instrument, and in all chances, and enters in at many doors: by violence, and secret influence, by the aspect of a star, and the stink of a mist, by the emissions of a cloud, and the meeting of a vapor, by the fall of a chariot, and the stumbling at a stone, by a full meal, or an empty stomach, by watching at the wine, or by watching at prayers, by the Sun or the Moon, by a heat or a cold, by sleep∣lesse nights,* 1.10 or sleeping dayes, by water frozen into the hardnesse, and sharpnesse of a dagger, or water thawd into the floods of a river; by a hair, or a raisin, by violent motion, or sitting still, by severity, or dissolution, by Gods mercy, or Gods anger, by every thing in providence, and every thing in manners, by every thing in nature and every thing in chance.* 1.11 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 snatch••ed away, and the goods remain: and all this is the law and constitu∣tion 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 re∣joyced in the death or calamity upon others, and accounted it as a judgement upon them, for being on the other side, and against them in the contention; but within the revolution of a few moneths the same man met with a more uneasy and unhandsom death: which when I saw, I wept, and was afraid: for I knew that it must be so with all men,* 1.12 for we also shall die and end our quarrels and conten∣tions by passing to a final sentence.

SECT. II. The Consideration reduced to practice.

IT will be very material to our best and no∣blest purposes, if we represent this scene of change and sorrow a little more dressed up in Circumstances, for so we shall be more apt to practice those Rules, the doctrine of which is consequent to this consideration. * It is a mighty change that is made by the death of every person, and it is visible to us who are a∣live. Reckon but from the spritefulnesse of youth, and the fair cheeks and full eyes of childehood, from the vigorousnesse, and strong flexure of the joynts of five and twenty, to the hollownesse and dead palenesse, to the loath∣somnesse and horrour of a three dayes 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 Lambs fleece; but when a ruder breath had forced open its virgin modesty, and dismantled its too youthful and unripe retirements, it began to put on darknesse, and to decline to softnesse, and the symptomes of a sickly age; it bowed the head, and broke its stalk, and at night having lost some of its leaves, and all its beau∣ty, it fell into the portion of weeds and out∣worn faces: The same is the portion of every man, and every woman; the heritage of worms and serpents, rottennesse and cold dishonour, and our beauty so changed that our acquain∣tance quickly knew us not, and that change mingled with so much horrour, 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 of•• the importunity of his friends desire, by giving way that after a few dayes burial they might send a painter to his vault,* 1.13 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 midriffe and back bone full of serpents, and so he stands pictured among his armed Ancestours. So does the fairest beauty change, 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 unwholsom 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 Con∣siderations respectivly.

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 re∣compence for all their cares,* 1.14 that by this time all that shall be left will be this, 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 Lords people with unjust or ambitious wars for an unrewarding interest,* 1.15 shall have this character, that he threw away all the dayes of his life, that one year might be reckoned with his Name, and computed by his reign, or con∣sulship; and many men by great la∣bors and affronts,* 1.16 many indignities and crimes labour onely for a pompous E∣pitaph, and a loud title upon their Marble; whilest those into whose pos∣sessions their heirs, or kinred are entred, are forgotten, and lye unregarded as their ashes, and without concernment or relation, as the turf upon the face of their grave.* 1.17 A man may read a ser∣mon, the best and most passionate that ever men preached, if he shall but en∣ter

into the sepulchres of Kings.* 1.18 In the same Escurial where the Spanish Prin∣ces live in greatnesse and power, and decree war or peace, they have wisely placed a coemeterie where their ashes and their glories shall sleep till time shall be no more: and where our Kings have been crowned, their Ancestours lay interred, and they must walk over their Grandsires head to take his crown. There is an acre sown with royal seed, the copy of the greatest change, from rich to naked, from ci••led roofs to arched coffins, from living like Gods to dye 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 ••ully and dash out the dissembling colours of a lust∣ful, artificial, and imaginary beauty. There the warlike and the peaceful, the fortunate and the miserable, the beloved and the despised Princes mingle their dust, and pay down their symbol of Mortality, and tell all the world, that when we die, our ashes shall be equal to Kings, and our accounts easier, and our pains or our crowns shall be lesse. * To my apprehension it is a sad record which is left by Athenaeus con∣cerning Ninus the great Assyrian Monarch, whose life and death is summed up in these words:

Ninus the Assyrian had an Ocean of gold, and other riches more then the sand in the Caspian sea: he never saw the stars, and per∣haps 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 wor∣shipped the Deity, nor administred justice, nor

spake to his people, nor numbred 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 where Ninus is. Some times 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 my self in lust [that was and is all my portion;] the wealth with which I was [esteemed] blessed, my enemies meet∣ing together shall bear away, as the mad Thy∣ades carry a raw Goat. I am gone to Hell, and when I went thither, I neither carried Gold, nor Horse, nor silver Chariot. I that wore a Miter, am now a little heap of dust.

* 1.19 I know not any thing that can better repre∣sent the evil condition of a wicked man, or a changing greatnesse. 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 intollerable calamity. This is the reward of an unsanctified condition, and a greatnesse ill gotten, or ill ad∣ministred.

* 1.202. Let no man extend his thoughts, or let his hopes wander towards future and far distant events and accidental contingencies. This day is mine and yours, but ye know not what shall be on the morrow: and every morning creeps out of a dark cloud, leaving behinde it an igno∣rance and silence deep as midnight and un∣discerned as are the phantasms that make a

Chrysome childe to smile:* 1.21 so that we cannot discern what comes hereafter, unlesse we had a light from Heaven, brighter then the vision of an Angel, even the Spirit of Prophesie. Without revelation we cannnot tell whether we shal eat to morrow, or whether a Squin∣zy shall choak us: and it is written in the un∣revealed folds of Divine Predestination, that many who are this day alive, shall to morrow be laid upon the cold earth, and the women shall weep over their shrowd, and dresse them for their funeral. S. Iames in his Epistle notes the solly of some men his contemporaries, who were so impatient of the event of to morrow, or the accidents of next year, or the good or evils of old age, that they would consult Astro∣logers and witches, Oracles and Devils what should befall them the next Calends? what should be the event of such a voyage, what God had written in his book concerning the successe of battels, the Election of Emperors, the Heir of families, the price of Merchan∣dise, the return of the Tyrian fleer, the rate of Sidonian Carpets, and as they were taught by the crafty and lying Daemons, so they would expect the issue; and oftentimes by disposing their affairs in order toward such events, really did produce some litle 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 lesse by uncertain significations: for whatsoever is disposed to happen by the order of natural cau∣ses, or civil counsels may be rescinded by a pe∣culiar

decree of providence or be prevented by the death of the interested per∣sons;* 1.22 who while their hopes are full, and their causes conjoyned, and the work brought forward, and the sickle put into the harvest, and the first fruits offered, and ready to be eaten, even then if they put forth their hand to an event that stands but at the door, at that door their body may be carried forth to burial, before the expecta∣tion shall enter into fruition. When Richil∣da the Widow of Albert Earl of Ebersberg had feasted the Emperour Henry III. and petiti∣oned in behalf of her Nephew Welpho for some lands formerly possessed by the Earl her Hus∣band; just as the Emperour held out his hand to signifie his consent, the chamber-floor sud∣denly fell under them, and Richilda falling up∣on the edge of a bathing vessel, was bruised to death, and stayed not to see her Nephew sleep in those lands which the Emperour was reaching forth to her,* 1.23 and placed at the door of restitution.

3. As our hopes must be confined, so must our designes; let us not project long designes; crafty plots, and diggings so deep that the in∣trigues of a designe shall never be unfolded till our Grand children have forgotten our vertues 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 inquiry, so neither

must we intricate our labour and purposes with what we shall never enjoy. This rule does not forbid us to plant Orchards which shall feed our Nephews with their fruit; for by such provisions they do something towards an imaginary immortality, and do charity to their Relatives: But such projects are reproved which discompose our present duty by long and future designes; such which by casting our labours to events at di∣stance,* 1.24 make us lesse to re∣member our death stand∣ing at the door. It is fit for a Man to work for his dayes wages, or to contrive for the hire of a week, or to lay a train to make pro∣visions for such a time as is within our eye, and in our duty, and within the usual periods of Mans life, for whatsoever is made necessary, is also made prudent; but while we plot, and buisy our selves in the toils of an ambitious war, or the levies of a great estate, Night en∣ters in upon us, and tells all the world, how like fools we lived, and how deceived and mi∣serably we dyed.* 1.25 Seneca tells of Senecio Corne∣lius, a man crafty in getting, and tenacious in holding a great estate, and one who was as di∣ligent in the care of his body, as of his money, curious of his health, as of his possessions; that he all day long attended upon his sick and dying friend; but when he went away was quickly comforted, supped merrily, went to bed cheerfully, and on a sudden being surpri∣zed by a Squinzy, scarce drew his breath until the Morning, but by that time dyed, being snatched from the torrent of his fortune, and

the swelling tide of wealth, and a likely hope bigger then the necessities of ten men. This accident was much noted then in Rome, be∣cause it happened in so great a fortune, and in the midst of wealthy designes; 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.

* 1.264. Though we must not look so far of••, and prey abroad, yet we must be buisie neer 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 consist. We must take our wa∣ters as out of a torrent and sudden shower, which will quickly cease dropping from above, and quickly cease running in our chanels here below; This instant will never return again, and yet it may be this instant will declare, or secure the fortune of a whole eternity. The old Greeks and Romans taught us the pru∣dence of this rule: but Christianity teaches us the Religion of it. They so seized upon the present that they would lose nothing of the dayes pleasure.* 1.27 Let us eat and drink for to mo∣rrow we shall die; that was their philosophy; and at their solemn feasts they would talk of death to heighten the present drinking, and that they might warm their veins with a fuller chalice, as knowing the drink that was poured upon their graves would be cold and without relish.* 1.28 Break the beds, drink your wine, crown your heads with roses, and besinear your curled locks with Nard; for God bids you to remember death; so the Epigrammatist speaks the sence of their drunken principles. Something towards

this signification is that of Solomon, There is no∣thing better for a man then that he should eat and drink,* 1.29 and that he should make his soul enjoy good in his labour, for that is his portion, for who shall bring him to see that which shall be after him? But al∣though he concludes all this to be vanity, yet because it was the best thing that was then commonly known * 1.30 that they should seize upon the present with a temperate use of permit∣ed pleasures, had reason to say that Christianity taught us to turn this into religi∣on. For he that by a pre∣sent and a constant holiness secures the present, and makes it useful to his no∣blest purposes, he turns his condition into his best advantage, by making his unavoidable fate become his necessary re∣ligion.

To the purpose of this rule is that collect of Tuscan hieroglyphics which we have from Gabriel Simeon.

Our life is very short, beauty is a cosenage, money is false and fugitive, Empire is odious, and hated by them that have it not, and uneasy to them that have, victory is alwayes uncertain, and peace most com∣monly is but a fraudulent bargain; old age is miserable, death is the period, and is a hap∣py one if it be not sowred by the sins of our life: but nothing continues but the ef∣fects of that wisdom which imployes the pre∣sent 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 en∣tombed in the grave of the Holy Jesus where we shall be dressed for a blessed resurrection to the state of Angels and beatified Spirits.

5. Since we stay not here, being people but of a dayes abode, and our age is like that of a flie, and contemporary with a gourd, we must look some where else for an abiding city, a place in another countrey to fix our house in, whose walls and foundation is God, where we must finde rest, or else be restlesse for ever. For whatsoever ease we can have or fancy here is shortly to be changed into sadnesse,* 1.31 or tediousnesse: it goes away too soon like the periods of our life; or stayes too long, like the sorrows of a sinner: its own wearinesse or a contrary disturbance is its load; or it is eased by its revolution into vanity & forgetfulness; and where either there is sorrow or an end of joy, there can be no true felicity: which because it must be had by some instrument, and in some period of our duration, we must carry up our affections to the mansi∣ons prepared for us above, where eternity is the measure, felicity is their state, Angels are the Company, the Lamb is the light, and God is the portion, and inheritance.

SECT. III. Rules and Spiritual arts of lengthening our dayes, and to take off the objection of a short life.

IN the accounts of a mans life we do not reckon that portion of dayes in which we are shut up in the prison of the womb: we tell our years from the day of our birth: and the same reason that makes our reckning to stay so long, sayes also that then it begins too soon. For then we are beholding to others to make the account for us: for we know not of a long time, whether we be alive or no, having but some little approaches and symptoms of a life. To feed, and sleep, and move a little, and im∣perfectly, is the state of an unborn childe; and when it is born, he does no more for a good while; and what is it that shall make him to be esteemed to live the life of a man? and when shall that account begin? For we should be loath to have the accounts of our age taken by the measures of a beast: and fools and distracted persons are reckoned as civilly dead; they are no parts of the Com∣mon-wealth, not subject to laws, but secured by them in Charity, and kept from violence as a man keeps his Ox; and a third part of our life is spent, before we enter into a higher order, into the state of a man.

2. Neither must we think, that the life of a Man begins when he can feed himself or walk alone, when he can fight, or beget his like; for so he is contemporary with a camel, or a cow; but he is first a man when he comes to a cer∣tain, steddy use of reason, according to his pro∣portion, 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 dark∣nesse, and gives light to a cock, and calls up the lark to Mattins, and by and by gilds the fringes of a cloud and peeps over the Eastern hills, thrusting out his golden horns, like those which decked the browes of Moses when he was forced to wear a vail, because himself had seen the face of God; and still while a man tells the story, the sun gets up higher, till he showes a fair face and a full light, and then he shines one whole day, under a cloud often, and sometimes weeping great and little showers, and sets quickly: so is a mans reason and his life. He first begins to perceive himself to see or taste, making little reflections upon his actions of sense, and can discourse of flies and dogs, shells and play, horses and liberty; but when he is strong enough to enter into arts and little institutions, he is at first entertained with trifles and impertinent things, not be∣cause he needs them, but because his under∣standing is no bigger; and little images of things are laid before him, like a cock-boat to

a whale onely to play withall: but before a man comes to be wise he is half dead with gouts and consumptions, with Catarrhes and aches, with sore eyes, and a worn out body: so that if we must not reckon the life of a man but by the accounts of his reason, he is long before his soul be dressed; and he is not to be called a man without a wise and an adorned soul, a soul at least furnished with what is ne∣cessary towards his well being; but by that time his soul is thus furnished, his body is de∣cayed; and then you can hardly reckon him to be alive, when his body is possessed by so many degrees of death.

3. But there is yet another arrest. At first he wants strength of body, and then he wants the use of reason; and when that is come, it is ten to one, but he stops by the impediments of vice, and wants the strengths of the spirit; and we know that Body and Soul and Spirit are the constituent parts of every Christian man. And now let us consider, what that thing is, which we call years of discretion? The young man is passed his Tutors, and arrived at the bondage of a caytive spirit; he is run from di∣scipline, and is let loose to passion; the man by this time hath wit enough to chuse his vice, to act his lust, to court his Mistresse, to talk confidently, and ignorantly, and perpetually, to despise his betters, to deny nothing to his appetite, to do things, that when he is indeed a man he must for ever be ashamed of; for this is all the discretion that most men show in the first stage of their Manhood; they can discern good from evil; and they prove their skill by leaving all that is good, and wallowing in the

evils of folly, and an unbridled appetite. And by this time, the young man hath contracted vitious habits, and is a beast in manners, and therefore it will not be fitting to reckon the beginning of his life; he is a fool in his un∣derstanding, and that is a sad death; and he is dead in trespasses and sins, and that is a sadder: so that he hath no life but a natural, the life of a beast or a tree; in all other capacities he is dead; he neither hath the intellectual, nor the spiritual life, neither the life of a man, nor of a Christian; and this sad truth lasts too long. For old age seizes upon most men while they still retain the minds of boyes and vitious youth, doing actions from principles of great folly, and a mighty ignorance, admiring things uselesse and hurtfull, and filling up all the di∣mensions of their abode with businesses of empty affairs, being at leasure to attend no vertue: they cannot pray, because they are busie, and because they are passionate: they cannot communicate because they have quar∣rels and intrigues of perplexed causes, com∣plicated hostilities, and things of the world; and therefore they cannot attend to the things of God, little considering, that they must find a time to die in; when death comes, they must be at leisure for that. Such men are like Sailers loosing from a port, and tost immediatly with a perpetual tempest lasting till their cordage crack, and either they sink, or return back again to the same place: they did not make a voyage, though they were long at sea. The businesse and impertinent affairs of most men, steal all their time, and they are restlesse in a foolish motion; but this is not the progress of a man;

he is no further advanc'd in the course of a life though he reckon many years:* 1.32 for still his soul is childish, and trifling like an untaught boy.

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

1. Be infinitely curious you doe not set back your life in the accounts of God by the intermingling of criminal actions, or the con∣tracting vitious habits. There are some vices which carry a sword in their hand and cut a man off before his time. There is a sword of the Lord, and there is a sword of a Man; and there is a sword of the Devil. Every vice of our own managing in the matter of carnality, of lust, or rage, ambition or revenge is a sword of Sathan put into the hands of a man: These are the destroying Angels, sin is the Apollyon, the destroyer that is gone out, not from the Lord, but from the Tempter; and we hug the poison, and twist willingly with the vipers, till they bring us into the Regions of an irre∣coverable sorrow. We use to reckon persons as good as dead if they have lost their limbs and their teeth, and are confined to an Hospi∣tal, and converse with none but Surgeons and Physicians, Mourners and Divines, those pollin∣ctores, the Dressers of bodies and souls to Funeral: But it is worse when the soul, the principle of life is imployed wholly in the offices of death: and that man was worse then dead of whom Seneca tells, that being a rich fool, when he was lifted up from the baths and set into a soft couch, asked his slaves

An ego jam sedeo? Do I now sit. The beast was so drownd in sensuality and the death of his soul, that whether he did sit or no, he was to be∣lieve another. Idlenesse and every vice is as much of death as a long disease is, or the ex∣pence of ten years: and she that lives in pleasures is dead while she liveth (saith the Apostle), and it is the stile of the Spirit concerning wicked persons, They are dead in trespasses and sins. For as every sensual pleasure and every day of idlenes and useless living lops off a little branch from our short life; so every deadly sin and every habitual vice does quite destroy us: but innocence leaves us in our na∣tural portions, and perfect period; we lose no∣thing of our life, if we lose nothing of our souls health; and therefore he that would live a full age must avoid a sin, as he would decline the Regions of death, & the dishonors of the grave.

2. If we would have our life lengthened, let us begin b••times to live in the accounts of reason and sober counsels,* 1.33 of reli∣gion and the Spirit, and then we shall have no reason to complain that our abode on earth is so short: Many men finde it long enough, and indeed it is so to all senses. But when we spend in waste, what God hath given us in plenty, when we sacrifice our youth to folly, our manhood to lust and rage, our old age to covetousnesse and irreligion, not beginning to live till we are to die, designing that time to Vertue which indeed is infirm to every thing and profit••ble to nothing, then we make our lives short, and lust runs away with all the vi∣gorous and healthful part of it; and pride and animosity steal the manly portion, and craftinesse and interest possesse old age; velut

ex pleno & 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; and desire strangely and greedily as if we were immortal: we com∣plain 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 Capitol is but a small ••state when Caesar comes to finger it, and to pay with it all his Legions; and the Revenue of all Egypt and the Eastern provinces was but a little summe when they were to support the luxury of Marc. Antony, and feed the riot of Cleopatra: But a thousand crowns is a vast proportion to be spent in the cottage of a frugal person, or to feed a Hermit. Just so is our life; it is too short to serve the ambition of a haughty Prince, or an usurping Rebel: too little time to purchase great wealth, to satisfie the pride of a vain-glorious fool, to trample upon all the enemies of our just, or unjust interest; but for the obtaining vertue; for the purchase of sobriety and modesty, for the actions of Reli∣gion God gave us time sufficient, if we make the outgoings of the Morning and Evening, that is, our infancy and old age to be t••ken into the computations of a man. Which we may see in the following particulars.

1. If our childhood being first consecrated by a forward baptisme, it be seconded by a holy education, and a complying obedi∣ence; If our youth be chast and tempe∣rate, modest and industrious, proceeding

through a prudent and sober Manhood to a Re∣ligious old age,* 1.34 then we have lived our whole dura∣tion, 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 communions we would allow to religion & the studies of wisdom, those great shares that are trifled away upon vain sorrow, foolish mirth, troublesome ambition, buisy co∣vetousnesse, watchful lust, and impertinent a∣mours, and balls and revellings and banquets, all that which was spent vitiously & all that time that lay fallow & without imployment, our life would quickly amount to a great sum. Tostatus Abulensis was a very painful person and a great Cleark, and in the dayes 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 Iohn Scotus died about the two and thirtieth year of his age; and yet be∣sides his publike disputations, his dayly Le∣ctures of Divinity in publike and private, the Books that he wrote being lately collected and printed at Lyons do equal the number of volumes of any two the most voluminous Fa∣thers of the Latine Church. Every man is not inabled to such imployments, but every man is called and inabled to the works of a sober and a religious life; and there are many Saints of God that can reckon as many

volumes of religion and mountains of piety, as those others did of good books. S. Ambrose (and I think from his example, S. Augustine) divided every day into three tertia's of im∣ployment: eight hours he spent in the ne∣cessities of nature and recreation, eight hours in charity and doing assistance to others, dispatching their bu••sinesses, recon∣ciling their enmities, reproving their vices, correcting their errors, instructing their ig∣norances, transacting the affairs of his Diocesse, 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-glasse, or the throbs and little beatings of his watch, by dividing an hour into so many members, he spun out its length by number, and so translated a day into the tediousnesse of a moneth. And if we tell our dayes by Canonical hours of prayer, our weeks by a constant revolution of fasting dayes, or dayes of special devotion, and over all these draw a black Cypresse 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 observa∣tion of a merry sinner; but loves so stand still, and behold, and tell the sighs, and number the groans, and sadly delicious accents of a grieved penitent. It is a vast work that any man may do if he never be idle; and it is a huge way that a man may go in vertue if he never goes out of his way by a vitious 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 passe undiscerned, and then measure your life, and tell me how you finde the measure of its abode. How∣ever, the time we live, is worth the money we pay for it: and therefore it is not to be thrown a∣way.

3. When vitious men are dying, and scar'd with the affrighting truths of an evil consci∣ence, they would give all the world for a year, for a moneth; nay we read of some that called out with amazement inducias us{que} ad mane, truce but till the morning: and if that year, or some few moneths were given, those men think they could do miracles in it. And let us a while suppose what Dives would have done if he had been loosed from the pains of hell and permitted to live on earth one year. Would all the pleasures of the world have kept him one hour from the Temple? would he not perpetually have been under the hands of Priests, or at the feet of the Doctors, or by Moses chair, or attending as neer the Altar as he could get, or relieving poor Lazars, 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 amaze∣ment was such that he would have chosen ten times to die, rather then feel again so much of that horror: and such a person cannot be fan∣cied but that he would spend a year in such holinesse, that the religion of a few moneths would equal the devotion of many years, even

of a good man. Let us but compute the pro∣portions. If we should spend all our years of reason so as such a person would spend that one, can it be thought that life would be short and trifling in which he had performed such a religion, served God with so much holinesse, mortified sin with so great a labour, purchased vertue at such a rate, and so rare an industry? It must needs be that such a man must dye when he ought to die, and be like ripe and pleasant fruit falling from a fair tree and ga∣thered into baske••s for the planters use: He that hath done ••ll his busi∣nesse,* 1.35 and is begotten to a glorious hope by the seed of an immortal Spirit, can never die too soon, nor live too long.

Xerxes wept sadly when he saw his army of 2300000 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 an hundred. Just so we do all. We complain that within thirty or fourty years, a little more, or a great deal lesse we shall descend again into the bowels of our Mother, and that our life is too short for any great imployment; and yet we throw away five and ••hirty yeers of our fourty, and the remaining five we divide between art and nature, civility and customs, necessity and convenience, prudent counsels and religion; but the portion of the last, is little and contemptible, and yet that little is

all that we can prudently account of our lives: We bring that fate and that death neer us, of whose approach we are so sadly appre∣hensive.

4. In taking the accounts of your life do not reckon by great distances, and by the periods of pleasure, or the satisfaction of your hopes, or the stating your desires: but let every intermedial day and hour passe with ob∣servation. He that reckons he hath lived but so many harvests,* 1.36 thinks, they come not often e∣nough, and that they go a∣way too soon. Some lose the day with longing for the night, and the night in waiting for the day. Hope and phantastic expectati∣ons spend much of our lives; and while with passion we look for a coronation, or the death of an enemy, or a day of joy, passing from fancy to possession without any interme∣dial notices, we throw away a precious year, and use it but as the burden of our time, fit to be pared off, and thrown away, that we may come at those little pleasures which first steal our hearts, and then steal our life.

5. A strict course of piety is the way to prolong our lives in the natural sense, and to adde good portions to the number of our years; and sin is sometimes by natural causa∣lity, very often by the anger of God, and the Divine judgement, a cause of sudden and untimely death. Concerning which I shall adde nothing (to what I have some where else * 1.37 said of this article) but onely the observa∣tion of Epiphanius: that for 3332 years, even

to the twentieth age, there was not one ex∣ample of a son that died before his Father,* 1.38 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 there∣fore Abel cannot be opposed to this observa∣tion) 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 judge∣ment, 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 finde that even a good man lives not long, because it is long before he is born to this life,* 1.39 and longer yet before he hath a mans growth.

He that can look upon death, and see its face with the same countenance with which he hears its story; that can endure all the labours of his life with his soul supporting his body; that can equally despise riches when he hath them, and when he hath them not; that is not sadder if they lye in his Neighbours trunks, nor more brag if they shine round about his own walls; he that is nei∣ther moved with good fortune coming to him, nor going from him; that can look upon another mans lands evenly and pleased∣ly as if they were his own; and yet look up∣on his own, and use them too, just as if they were another mans; that neither spends his

goods prodigally, and like a fool, nor yet keeps them avaritiously and like a wretch; that weighs not benefits by weight and num∣ber, but by the mind & circumstances 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 conscience, being as curious of his thoughts, as of his actings in markets and Theaters, and is as much in awe of himself, as of a whole assembly;

he that knowes God looks on, and contrives his secret affairs as in the presence of God and his holy Angels; that eats and drinks because he needs it, not that he may serve a lust or load his belly; he that is bountifull and cheerfull to his friends, and charitable and apt to for∣give his enemies; that loves his countrey and obeyes his Prince, and desires and endeavours nothing more then that he may do honour to God, this person may reckon his life, to be the life of a man, and compute his moneths, not by the course of the sun, but the Zodiac and circle of his vertues: because these are such things which fools and children, and birds and beasts cannot have: These are there∣fore the actions of life, because they are the feeds of immortality. That day in which we have done some excellent thing, we may as truly reckon to be added to our life, as were the fifteen years to the dayes of Hezekiah.

SECT. IV. Consideration of the miseries of Mans life.

AS our life is very short so it is very mi∣serable, and therefore it is well it is short: God in pity to mankinde, lest his burden should be insupportable and his nature an intolerable load, hath reduced our state of misery to an abbreviature; and the greate•• our misery is, the lesse while it is like to last; the sorrows of a mans spirit being like pon∣derous weights which by the greatnesse of their burden make a swifter motion and de∣scend into the grave to rest and ease our wea∣ried limbs; for then onely we shall sleep quietly when those fetters are knocked off which not onely bound our souls in prison, but also eat the flesh till the very bones open'd the secret garments of their cartilages, disco∣vering their nakednesse and sorrow.

1. Here is no place to sit down in, but you must rise as soon as you are set:* 1.40 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 prosperous? what an infinite number of slaves and beggers, of persecuted and op∣pressed people fill all corners of the earth with groans, and Heaven it self with weeping prayers, and sad remembrances? how many Provinces and Kingdoms are afflicted by a

violent war, or made desolate by popular dis∣eases? some whole countreyes are remarked with fatal evils, or periodical sicknesses. Gran Cairo in Egypt feels the plague every three years, returning like a Quartan ague, and de∣stroying many thousands of persons. All the inhabitants of Arabia the desert are in con∣tinuall fear of being buried in huge heaps of sand, and therefore dwell in tents and ambu∣••atory houses or retire to unfruitful mountains to prolong an uneasy and wilder life: and all the Countreyes round about the Adriatic sea feel such violent convulsions by Tempests and intolerable Earthquakes, that sometimes whole cities finde a Tombe, and every man ••inks with his own house made ready to be∣come 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 * 1.41 a∣gain be destroyed by fire? Are there not many thou∣sands that die every night, and that groan and weep sadly every day? But what shall we think of that great evil, which for the sins of men, God hath suffered to possess the greatest part of Mankinde? Most of the men that are now alive, or that have been living for many ages, are Jews, Heathens, or Turcs: and God was pleased to suffer a base Epileptic person, a villain and a vitious to set up a religion which hath filled almost all Asia, and Africa, and some parts of Europe; so that the greatest number of men and women born in so many king∣doms and provinces are infallibly made Ma∣humetans,

strangers and enemies to Christ, by whom alone we can be saved. This consi∣deration is extremely sad, when we remember how universal, and how great an evil it is, that so many millions of sons and daughters are born to enter into the possession of Devils to eternal ages. These evils are the miseries of great parts of mankinde, and we cannot easily consider more particularly, the evils which happen to us, being the inseparable affections, or incidents to the whole nature of man.

2. We finde that all the women in the world are either born for barrennesse or the pains of Child-birth, and yet this is one of our greatest blessings; but such indeed are the blessings of this world: we cannot be well with, nor with∣out many things. Perfumes make our heads ake, roses prick our fingers, and in our very blood where our life dwells is the Scene under which nature acts many sharp Feavers and heavy sick∣nesses. It were too sad if I should tell how many persons are afflicted with evil spirits, with spe∣ctres and illusions of the night; and that huge multitudes of men and women live upon mans flesh: Nay worse yet, upon the sins of men, up∣on the sins of their sons and of their daughters, and they pay their souls down for the bread they eat, buying this dayes meal with the price of the last nights sin.

3. Or if you please in charity to visit an Hospital, which is indeed a map of the whole world, there you shall see the effects of Adams sin and the ruines of humane nature, bodies laid up in heaps like the bones of a destroyed town, homines precarii spiritus, & malè haerentis, men whose souls seem to be borrowed, and are kept there by art and the force of Medicine;

whose miseries are so great, that few people have charity or humanity enough to visit them, fewer have the heart to dresse them, and we pity them in civility or with a transient prayer, but we do not feel their sorrows by the mercies of a religious pity, and therefore as we leave their sorrows in many degrees un∣relieved and uneased, so we contract by our unmercifulnesse a guilt by which our selves become liable to the same calamities. Those many that need pity, and those infinites of people that refuse to pity are miserable upon a several charge, but yet they almost make up all mankinde.

4. All wicked men are in love with that which intangles them in huge variety of trou∣bles, they are slaves to the worst of Masters, to sin and to the Devil, to a passion, and to an imperious woman. Good men are for ever persecuted, and God chastises every son whom he receives, and whatsoever is easy is trifling and worth nothing, and whatsoever is excel∣lent is not to be obtained without labour and sorrow; and the conditions and states of men that are free from great cares, are such as have in them nothing rich and orderly, and those that have are stuck full of thorns and trouble. Kings are full of care; and learned men * 1.42 in all ages have been ob∣served to be very poor, & honestas miserias accusant; they complain of their ho∣nest miseries.

5. But these evils are notorious and con∣fessed; even they also whose felicity men stare at and admire, besides their splendour and the sharpnesse of their light, will with their appendant sorrows wring a tear from the most resolved eye. For not only the winter quarter is full of storms and cold and darknesse, but the beauteous spring hath blasts and sharp frosts, the fruitful teeming summer is melted with heat, and burnt with the kisses of the sun her friend, and choaked with dust, and the rich Autumn is full of sicknesse, and we are weary of that which we enjoy, because sorrow is its biggest portion: and when we remember that upon the fairest face is placed one of the worst sinks of the body, the nose, we may use it, not only as a mortification to the pride of beauty, but as an allay to the fairest outside of condition which any of the sons and daughters of Adam do possesse. * 1.43 For look upon Kings and conquerours: I will not tell that many of them fall into the condition of servants, and their subjects rule over them, and stand upon the ruines of their families, and that to such persons, the sorrow is bigger then usually happens in smaller fortunes: but let us sup∣pose them still conquerers, and see what a goodly purchase they get by all their pains and amazing fears, and continual dangers. They carry their arms beyond Ister, and passe the Euphrates, and binde the Germans with the bounds of the river Rhyne: I speak in the stile of the Roman greatnesse: for now adayes, the biggest fortune swells not beyond the limits of a petty

province or two, and a hill confines the pro∣gresse of their prosperity, or a river checks it: But whatsoever tempts the pride and vanity of ambitious persons is not so big as the smallest star which we see scattered in disorder, and unregarded upon the pavement and floor of Heaven. And if we would suppose the pismires had but our understandings, they also would have the method of a Mans greatnesse, and divide their little Mole-hils into Provinces and Exarchats: and if they also grew as vi∣tious and as miserable, one of their princes would lead an army out, and kill his neigh∣bour Ants that he might reign over the next handfull of a Turse. But then if we consider at what price, and with what felicity all this is purchased, the s••ing of the painted snake will quickly appear, and the fairest of their for∣tunes will properly enter into this account of humane infelicities.

We may guesse at it by the constitution of Augustus fortune; who strugled for his power, first with the Roman Citizens, then with Brutus and Cassius and all the fortune of the Republike; then with his Collegue Marc. Anthony; then with his kinred and neerest Relatives; and after he was wearied with slaughter of the Romans, before he could sit down and rest in his imperial chair he was forced to carry armies into Macedonia, Galatia, beyond Euphrates, Rhyne, and Danubius: And when he dwelt at home in greatnesse and within the circles of a mighty power, he hard∣ly escaped the sword of the Egnatii, of Lepidus, Caepio, and Muraena: and after he had entirely reduced the felicity and Grandeur into his own family, his Daughter, his onely childe con∣spired

with many of the young Nobility,* 1.44 and being joyned with adulterous complications as with an impious sacrament they affrighted and destroyed the fortune of the old man, and wrought him more sorrow then all the troubles that were hatched in the baths and beds of Egypt, between Anthony and Cleopatra. This was the greatest fortune that the world had then, or ever since, and therefore we can∣not expect it to be better in a lesse prosperity.

6. The prosperity of this world is so in∣finitely sowred with the overflowing of evils, that he is counted the most happy who hath the fewest; all conditions being evil and miserable, they are onely distinguished by the Number of calamities. The Collector of the Roman and forreign examples, when he had reckoned two and twenty instances of great fortunes every one of which had been allayed with great variety of evils; in all his reading or experience he could tell but of two who had been famed for an intire 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 Ar∣cadian Shepherd was more happy then he, that is, he had fewer troubles; for so indeed we are to reckon the pleasures of this life;* 1.45 the limit of our joy is the absence of some degrees of sorrow, and he that hath the least of this, is the most prosperous person. But then we must look for prosperity, not in Palaces or Courts of Princes, not in the tents of Conquerers, or in the gaieties of fortunate and prevailing sin∣ners; but something rather in the Cottages of

honest innocent and contented persons, whose minde is no bigger then their fortune, nor their vertue lesse then their security. As for others whose fortune looks bigger, and allures fools to follow it like the wand••ing fires of the night, till they run into rivers or are bro∣ken upon rocks with staring and running af∣ter them, they are all in the condition of Marius,* 1.46 then 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 miserable, they are the most miserable. For just as is a mans 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 businesse and the biggest charge, and are answerable to God for the greatest accounts, so they have the biggest trouble; that the uneasinesse of their appendage may divide the good and evil of the world, making the poor mans fortune as eligible as the Greatest; and also restraining the vanity of mans spirit which a great Fortune is apt to swell from a vapour to a bub∣ble; but God in mercy hath mingled worm∣wood with their wine, and so restrained the drunkennesse and follies of prosperity.

7. Man never hath one day to himself of en∣tire peace from the things of this world, but ei∣ther somthing troubles him, or nothing satisfies him, or his very fulnesse swells him and makes him breath short upon his bed. Mens joyes are troublesome, and besides that the fear of losing them takes away the present pleasure (and a man had need of another felicity to

preserve this) they are also wavering and full of trepidation, not onely from their incon∣stant nature, but from their weak founda∣tion: They arise from vanity, and they dwell upon ice, and they converse with the winde, and they have the wings of a bird, and are serious but as the resolutions of a childe, com∣menced by chance, and managed by folly and proceed by inadvertency, and end in vanity and forgetfulnesse. So that as Livius Drusus said of himself, he never had any play dayes, or dayes of quiet when he was a boy,* 1.47 for he was troublesome and busie, a restlesse and unquiet man, the same may every man observe to be true of himself: he is alwayes restlesse and uneasy, he dwells upon the waters and leans upon thorns, and layes his head upon a sharp stone.

SECT. V. This Consideration reduced to practice.

1. THe effect of this consideration is this▪ That the sadnesses of this life help to sweeten the bitter cup of Death. For let our life be never so long, if our strength were great as that of oxen and camels; if our sinews were strong as the cordage at the foot of an Oke, if we were as fighting and prosperous people as Siccius Dentatus, who was on the pre∣vailing side in 120 battels, who had 312 pub∣like rewards assigned him by his Generals and Princes for his valour, and conduct in sieges

and short encounters, and besides all this had his share in nine triumphs, yet still the pe∣riod shall be, that all this shall end in death, and the people shall talk of us a while, good or bad, according as we deserve, or as they please; and once it shall come to passe, that concerning every one of us it shall be told in the Neighbourhood that we are dead. This we are apt to think a sad story; but therefore let us help it with a sadder; For we therefore need not be much troubled that we shall die, because we are not here in ease, nor do we dwell in a fair condition. But our dayes are full of sor∣row and anguish, dishonoured and made unhappy with many sins, with a frail and a foolish spirit, intangled with difficult cases of conscience, ins••ared with passions, ama∣zed with fears, full of cares, divided with curiosities and contradictory interests, made aëry and impertinent with vanities, abused with ignorance and prodigious errours, made ridiculous with a thousand weaknesses, worne away with labours, loaden with diseases, daily vexed with dangers and temptations, and in love with misery; we are weakned with delights, afflicted with want, with the evils of my self, and of all my family, and with the sadnesses of all my friends, and of all good men, even of the whole Church; and therefore me thinks we need not be trou∣bled 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 him∣self dead long before that. Indeed it were a sad thing to be cut of the stone; and we that are in health tremble to think of it; but the man that is wearied with the dis∣ease, looks upon that sharpnesse as upon his cure and remedie: and as none need to have a tooth drawn, so none could well endure it, but he that hath felt the pain of it in his head: so is our life so full of evils, that therefore death is no evil to them that have felt the smart of this, or hope for the joyes of a better.

2. But as it helps to ease a certain sor∣row, as a fire drawes out fire, and a nail drives forth a nail; so it instructs us in a present duty; that is; that we should not be so fond of a perpetual storm, nor doat upon the transient gaudes and gilded thorns of this world. They are not worth a passion, not worth a sigh or a groan, not of the price of one nights watching; and therefore they are mistaken and miserable persons who since Adam planted thorns round about Paradise, are more in love with that hedge, then all the fruits of the garden, sottish admirers of things that hurt them, of sweet poisons, gilded daggers and silken halters. Tell them they have lost a bounteous friend, a rich purchase, a fair farm, a wealthy donative, and you dissolve their patience; it is an evil bigger then their spirit can bear, it brings sicknesse and death, they can neither eate nor sleep with such a sorrow. But if you represent to them the evils of a vitious ha∣bit,

and the dangers of a state of sin; if you tell them they have displeased God, and interrupted their hopes of heaven, it may be they will be so civil as to hear it patiently, and to treat you kindly, and first commend, and then to forget your story, because they prefer this world with all its sorrowes, before the pure unmingled felicities of heaven. But it is strange that any man should be so passionately in love with the thorns that grow on his own ground, that he should wear them for armelets, and knit them in his shirt, and prefer them before a kingdom and immortality. No man loves this world the better for his being poor; but men that love it, because they have great possessions, love it because it is troublesome and chargeable, full of noise and temptation; because it is unsafe and ungoverned, flattered and abused: and he that considers the trou∣bles of an overlong garment, and of a cram∣med stomach, a trailing gown and a loaden Table, may justly understand that all that for which men are so passionate, is their hurt and their objection, that which a temperate man would avoid, and a wise man cannot love.

He that is no fool, but can consider wisely; if he be in love with this world; we need not despair but that a witty man might reconcile him with tortures, and make him think chari∣tably of the Rack, and be brought to dwell with Vipers and Dragons, and entertain his Guests with the shrikes of Mandrakes, Cats and Scrich Owls, with the filing of iron, and the harshnesse of rending silk; or to admire the harmony that is made by a herd of E∣vening wolves when they misse their draught of blood in their midnight Revels. The groans

of a man in a fit of the stone are worse then all these; and the distractions of a troubled conscience are worse then those groans; and yet a carelesse merry sinner is worse then all that. But if we could from one of the battlements of Heaven espie how many men and women at this time lye fainting and dying for want of bread, how many young men are hewen down by the sword of war; how many poor Orphans are now weeping over the graves of their Father, by whose life they were enabled to eat. If we could but hear how many Mariners, and Passengers are at this present in a storm, and shrike out because their keel dashes a∣gainst a Rock, or bulges under them; how many people there are that weep with want, and are mad with oppression, or are desperate by too quick a sense of a constant infelicity, in all reason we should be glad to be out of the noise and participation of so many evils. This is a place of sorrows and tears, of great evils and a constant calamity; let us remove from hence, at least in affections and prepa∣ration of minde.

Notes

• * 1.1

  〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉.
• * 1.2

  4 James 14. 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉.
• * 1.3

  〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉
• * 1.4

  〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉.
• * 1.5

  〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉.
• * 1.6

  Nihil sibi quisquam de futuro debet promit∣tere. Id quo{que} quod te∣••etur per 〈◊〉〈◊〉 anus exit, & ipsam quam premi∣rous horam, casus inci∣••it. Volvitur tempus rata quidem lege, sed per obscurum

  Senec.
• * 1.7

  Ut mortem citius venire credas, Scito jam capitis perisse partem.
• * 1.8

  Navigatione longas & pererratis littoribus alienis, seros in patriam redicus proponimus militiam, & castrensi∣um laborumtarda ma∣nu pretia, procuratio∣nes, officiorum{que} per officia processus, cum interim ad latus a ors est: quae q••oniam nun•• quam cogitatur nisi aliena, subinde nobis ingerantur •• o••talita∣tis exempla, non diu∣tius quam mi••annur haesura

  Senec.
• * 1.9

  Quia lex eadem manet omnes Gemitum dare sorte sub una, Cognata{que} funera no∣bit Aliena in mortedolere. Prud. hymn. exequiis defunctor.
• * 1.10

  Aut ubi mors non est si ju∣gulatis a∣quae?

  Martial.
• * 1.11

  —Cur••it mortalibus aevum Nec nasci bis posse da∣tur, fugit hora, ra∣••it{que} Tartareus terrens, ac secum ferre sub um∣bras Si qua animo placuere negat— Sil. Ital. l. 15.
• * 1.12

  〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉.
• * 1.13

  Anceps forma bonum mortalibus. ••xigui donum breve temporis Utsulgor teneris qui radiat genis Momento rapitur, nula la{que} non dies For•• osi spolium cor∣poris abs••ulit, Senec.
• * 1.14

  Rape, congere, auser, posside, re∣linquendum est. Martial
• * 1.15

  Annos omnes prodeg••t ut ex eo annus unus nu∣meretur, & per mille indignita∣tes laboravit in ••itulum sepulchri Senec.
• * 1.16

  Jam eorum prae∣bendas alii possi∣dent, & nes••io u∣trum de iis cogi∣••ant. Gerson.
• * 1.17

  —Me veterum frequens Memphis Pyra∣midum docet Me pressae tumu∣lo lachryma gloriae
• * 1.18

  Me projecta ja∣centium, passum Per populos Bu∣sta quiritium Et vilis Zephyro jocus, jactati ci∣neres & proce∣rum rogi Lyric. Cas l 2. od. 27.
• * 1.19

  〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 Menand.
• * 1.20

  〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉;
• * 1.21

  Quid sit futurum cras fuge quae∣rer•• Et quem fors di∣crum Cun{que} da•• it, lu∣cro appone. Horat.
• * 1.22

  Nec Babylonios tentaris nume∣ros Vt melius quicquid erit, pati Seu plures hyemes, seu tribuit Jupiter ultimam. Horat. Incertam frustia Mortales fune∣ris horam Quaeritis & qua sit mors aditu∣tura via. Po••na minor certam subito per∣ferre ruinam, Quod timeas gravius sustinu∣isse diu. Catul. eleg. 1.29
• * 1.23

  Certa a∣mictimus dum in∣certa po∣tim{us} at{que} hoc eve nit in la∣bore at{que} indolor ut mors obrepat interim. Plaut. Pseud.
• * 1.24

  Quid brevi fortes iaculemur 〈◊〉〈◊〉 Multa? Jam te premet nox, Fabulae•• Manes Et domus exilis Plutonia. Horat.
• * 1.25

  Epist. 1••
• * 1.26

  I••le enim ex futuro suspendi∣tur, cui i••••itum est prae∣••••ns

  Senec.
• * 1.27

  E••tate fruere, mobili c••••su su∣g••t. Senec
• * 1.28

  Martial. l 2. epig. 59.
• * 1.29

  Eccles 3.12. & chap. 2.4.
• * 1.30

  A 〈◊〉〈◊〉 du••n vivimus, vivamus. 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉. Hoc etiam faciunt ubi discubu∣ere, te ent{que} Pocula saep homines, & inum∣brant ora coronis Ex animo ut dicant brevis est hic ••ructus homillis, Jam fuerit neq post unquam re∣vocare licebit Lucret lib. 3.
• * 1.31

  Quis sapiens bono Confidat fragili: dum licet, utere: Tempus sed tacitum subruit: hora Se••per prae••erita deterior subit. Hippol.
• * 1.32

  Bis jam consul trigesimus instat Et numerat paucos vi•• tua vita dies.
• * 1.33

  Aedepol proinde ut bene vivitur, diu vivi∣tur. Plaut Trinum. Non ac∣cepimus brevem vitam, fed feci∣mus, nec inopes e∣jus, sed prodigi sumus. Senec.
• * 1.34

  Sed potes, Publi, geminare magna Secula fama. Quem sui raptum gemuere ••ives Hic diu vixit. Sibi quis{que} fa∣mam Scribat haeredem: rapiunt a∣varae Caetera Lunae.
• * 1.35

  Huic ne{que} defungi visum est, nec vivere pulchrum; Cura f••it recte vivere, sic{que} mori.
• * 1.36

  In spe viventibus, proximum quod{que} tempus elabitur, sub∣at{que} aviditas temporis, & mi∣serrimus, at{que} miserrim•• omnia efficiens, me••us mortis..... Ex hac autem indigentia timer nascitur, & cupiditas futuri ex∣••dens animum. Senec.
• * 1.37

  Life of Christ, Part. 3. Disc. 14.
• * 1.38

  Lib. 1. To••. 1. Panar. Sect. 6.
• * 1.39

  Seneca de vita beata. c. 20.
• * 1.40

  Nulla 〈◊〉〈◊〉 in 〈◊〉〈◊〉 surg••te post quam seder••t••s; hic es ••o∣cus puli∣cu•• & culicu••••.
• * 1.41

  〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 Sibyll. Ora••:
• * 1.42

  Vilis adulator picto iacete, brius ostro Et qui solicitat nuptas, ad pr••∣mia peccat. Sola prumo••is horret facundia pannis At{que} inopi lingua desertas in∣vocat artes. Petron.

  Hinc & jocus apud Aristopha∣nem in avibus; 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉.
• * 1.43

  Vilis servus habet re∣gni bona, cella{que} capti Deridet sestam Ro∣muleam{que} casa ••. Petron. Omnia crede ••••hi e∣tia ••f licibu dubia sunt. Senec.
• * 1.44

  Et adul∣terio ve∣lut sacra∣mento adacti. facit. Plus{que} & iterum••ia ••enda cum An∣tonio mulier.
• * 1.45

  〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉
• * 1.46

  Quem si inter mi sero ••o ••ueri mi serrimus, inter feli∣ces, ••eli∣cissimus reperte ba••ur.
• * 1.47

  ••ni sibi necpuer•• unquam ferias conti∣gisse. S••di••io∣su & fo∣••o gravis.