The pilgrims guide from the cradle to his death-bed with his glorious passage from thence to the New-Jerusalem, represented to the life in a delightful new allegory, wherein the Christian traveller is more fully and plainly directed than yet he hath been by any, in the right and nearest way to the celestial paradice : to which is added The sick-mans passing-bell : with no less than fifty several pleasant treatises ... : to these are annext, The sighs and groans of a dying man / by John Dunton ... ; illustrated with eight curious copper plates.

MEDITATION III. From the Bells of the Church adjoyning, I am daily re∣membred of my burial, in the Funerals of others.

WE have an ingenious Author, who writ a Discourse of Bells, when he was Prisoner in Turkie. How would he have inlarged himself, if he had been my fellow-prisoner in this sick-bed, so near to that Steeple, which never ceases, no more than the harmony of the Spheres, but is more heard. When the Turks took Constantinople, they melted the Bells into Ordnance; I have heard both Bells and Ordnance, but never been so much affected with those, as with these Bells. I have lain near a Steeple, by which there are said to be more than thirty Bells; and ne're another, where there is one so big, as

that the Clapper is said to weigh more than six hun∣dred pound, yet never so affected as here. Here the Bells can scarce solemnize the Funeral of any person, but that I knew him, or knew that he was my Neighbour: we dwelt in Houses near to one a∣ther before, but now he is gone into that House, in∣to which I must follow him. There is a way of cor∣recting the Children of great Persons, that other Children are corrected in their behalf, and in their names, and this works upon them, who indeed had more deserved it. And when these Bells tell me, that now one, and now another is buried, must not I acknowledge, that they have the Correction due t•• me, and paid the Debt that I owe? There is a story of a Bell in a Monastery, which, when any of t••e house was s••ck to death, rung always voluntarily, and they knew the inevitableness of the danger by that. It rung once, when no man was sick, but the next day one of the House fell from the Steeple and died, and the Bell held the reputation of Pro∣phet still. If these Bells that warn to a Funeral now, were appropriated to none, may not I, by the hour of the Funeral supply? How many men that stand at an Execution, if they would ask, for what dies that man, should hear their own faults condemned, and see themselves executed, by Atturney? We scarce hear of any preferred, but we think our selves, that we might very well have been that man, that is carried to his Grave now? Could I I fit my self to stand or f••t in any mans place, and not to lie in any mans grave? I may lack much of the good parts of the meanest, but I lack nothing of the mor∣tality of the weakest; they may have acquired bet∣ter abil••ti••s than I, but I was born to as many infir∣mities as they. To be an Incumbent by lying down in a Grave, to be a Doctor by teaching Mortifica∣tion by Example, by dying, though I may have Se∣niors,

others may be elder than I, yet I have pro∣ceeded apace in a good Ʋniversity, and gone a great way in a little time, by the furtherance of a vehement Fever, and whomsoever these Bells bring to the ground to day, if he and I had been com∣pared yesterday, perchance I should have been thought likelier to have come to this preferment then, than he. God hath kept the power of Death in his own hands, lest any man should bribe death. If man knew the gain of death, the ease of death, he would provoke Death to assist him, by any hand which he might use. But as men see many of their own Professions preferred, it ministers a hope that may be light upon them; so when these hourly Bells tell me of so many Funerals of men, like me, it presents, if not a desire that it may, yet a com∣fort whensoever mine shall come.

But he for whose Funeral these Bells ring now, was at home, at his journeys end, yesterday; why ring they now? A man, that is a world, is all the things in the world; He is an Armie, and when an Army marches, the Van may lodge to night, where the Rear comes not till to morrow. A man extends to his act, and to his example; to that which he does, and that which he teaches, so do those things that concern him, so do these Bells; that which rung yesterday was to convey him out of the world, in his Vant, in his soul, that which rung to day, was to bring him in his Rear, in his body, to the Church; and this continuing of ringing after his entring, is to bring him to me in the Application. Where I lie I could hear the Psalm, and did joyn with the Congregation in it; but I could not hear the Sermon, and these later Bells are a repetition Sermon to me. But O my God, my God, do I that have this Fever, need other remembrances of my mortality? Is not mine own hollow voice, voice enough to pronounce

that to me? Need I look upon a Deaths Head in a Ring, that have one in my Face, or go for Death to my Neighbours house, that have him in my bo∣som?

The PRAYER.

O Eternal and most gracious God, who having con∣secrated our living bodies to thine own Spirit, and made us temples of the Holy Ghost, dost also require a respect to be given to these Temples, even when the Priest is gone out of them; to these bodies, when the soul is departed from them; I bless and glorifie thy name, that as thou takest care in our life, of every hair of our head, so dost thou also of every grain of ashes after our death. Neither dost thou only do good to us all, in life and death, but also wouldst have us do good to one another, as in holy life, so in those things which accom∣pany our death. In that contemplation I make account, that I hear this dead brother of ours, who is now carri∣ed out to his burial, to speak to me, and to preach my Funeral Sermon, in the voice of these Bells. In him, O God, thou hast accomplished to me, even the request of Dives to Abraham; Thou hast sent one from the dead to speak unto me. He speaks to me aloud from that Steeple; he whispers to me at these C••••tains, and he speaks thy words; Blessed are the dead, which dye in the Lord, from henceforth, Rev. 14.13. Let this Prayer, therefore, O my God, be as my last gasp, my expiring, my dying in thee; that if this be the hour of my Transmigration, I may dye the death of a Sinner, drowned in my Sins, in the blood of thy Son; and if I live longer, yet I may now dye the death of the Righteous, die to Sin; which death is a Resurrection to a new life: Thou killest, and thou gi∣vest

life: which soever comes, it comes from thee, which way soever it comes, let me come to thee.