A manuali [sic] of divine considerations delivered and concluded by ... Thomas White ; translated out of the original Latine copie.

8. Meditation. Of Death.

1. COnsider, how the last end of the foresaid effects of sin is death, which in one moment, in the very twinkling of an eye, ravish∣eth away all that which in the whole course of thy life was most amiable, and with which thou wert most ac∣quainted; as the food and delights of thy taste, the vanities of thy gar∣ments, the curiosities of thy eyes and ears, the pleasing inticements of smell and touch, thy Palaces, Farms, Honours, Dignities, Pow∣er, Friends, Wife, Children, the body it self, and all the bodies inte∣riour affections: so that there re∣mains to thy self thy soul alone, and

that all naked, which before thou didst hardly take notice of by some obscure reflexion.

2. Which soul moreover is wea∣ried with the weight of terrene affe∣ctions, and chained with corpore∣all phantasmes, trembling with the ignorance of it self, & of such things as are presently to come upon it, a∣stonished with the unknown ac∣count of life, torn away by violence from the embracement of the body, ignorant of all things, and fearing the worst.

3. To all this is joyned the ex∣treme torment of that sad hour: for if the losse of our liberty or substance, if the departure for a few dayes from the place of our friends or their com∣pany, if the extension or cramp of the sinewes, if the dissolution of any sensitive particle causeth such into∣lerable griefs, that the greatnesse of the sense of it doth sometimes take away sense it self: of what a strange nature will that hour be, when bit∣ter death at once shall divide us

from all these, without any the least hope of returning.

4. Adde, what will make that houre more grievous, the love of that which we must loose, the de∣spair of recovery, the foul consci∣ence of the sins we have committed, and the horrour of future punish∣ments.

5. But that which is of exceeding terrour, is, that no hour or moment of our life is free from death: in the morning who can promise to him∣self to see the evening, or at the eve∣ning who can promise himself the next morning? A cup of water, a morsell of meat, the biting of some beast, an intemperate exercise, and some things by the onely fight of them do break asunder the brittle thread of our life. We are the scorn of all chances; the slip of a foot, the errour of a hand, a stone falling down, and infinite other accidents do force us from our lives.

Conclude, that sin is abolished by a just fear of death, acknow∣ledge

it to be the cause of all thy mi∣series, and that the onely remedy is to abstain from it, and continually to kill it in thy body.