without condition, if we only are religious when we cannot choose, if we part with our money when we cannot keep it, with our luft when we cannot act it, with our defires when they have left us. Death is

cogimur à fuetis animum

a certain mortifier; but that mortification is deadly, not useful to the purposes of a spiritual life. When we are compelled to depart from our evil customs, and leave to live that we may begin to live, then we die to die; that life is the prologue to death, and thenceforth we die eternally.

fufpendere rebus, Atque ut vivamus vivere definimus. Corn. Gall.

S. Cyril speaks of certain people that chose to worship the Sun because he was a day God; for, believing that he was quenched every night in the Sea, or that he had no influence upon them that light up candles and lived by the light of fire, they were confident they might be Atheists all night and live as they lift. Men who divide their little portion of time between Religion and Pleasures, between God and God's enemy, think that God is to rule but in his certain period of time, and that our life is the stage for paffion and folly, and the day of death for the work of our life. But as to God both the day and the night are alike, so are the first and last of our days; all are his due, and he will account feverely with us for the follies of the firft, and the evil of the laft. The evils and the pains are great which are referved for thofe who defer Gnoffius hæc Rhadamantheir reftitution to God's favour till their death. And therefore Antifthenes faid well, it is not the happy death, but the happy life, that makes man happy. It is in Piety as

thus habet duriffima

regna,

Caftigátque, audítque do-
los, fubigitque fateri
Quae quis apud fuperos
Diftulit in feram commiffa

furto lætatus inani

piacula mortem.

Eneid. 6.

Cineri gloria fera venit.

in Fame and reputation; he fecures a good name but loosely that trufts his fame and celebrity only to his afhes; and it is more a civility than the basis of a firm reputation, that men speak honour of their departed relatives: but if their life be virtuous, it forces honour from contempt, and snatches it from the hand of envy, and it shines through the crevices of detraction, and as it anointed the head of the living, so

Tu mihi, quod rarum eft,
Nomen, ab exfequiis quod

vivo fublime dedisti

dare fama folet.

it embalms the body of the dead. From these premises it follows, that when we difcourse of a fick man's repentance, it is intended to be, not a beginning, but the prosecution and confummation of the covenant of Repentance, which Chrift ftipulated with us in Baptism, and which we needed all our life, and which we began long before this last arrest, and in which we are now to make farther progress, that we may arrive to that integrity and fulness of duty, that our fins may blotted out, when the times of re

Acts 3. 19.

freshing shall come from the prefence of the Lord.

be

ET the fick man confider at what gate this Sickness entered: and if he can discover the particular, let him inftantly, paffionately, and with great contrition dafh the crime in pieces,

left he descend into his grave in the midst of a fin, and thence remove into an ocean of eternal forrow. But if he only suffers the common fate of man, and knows not the particular inlet, he is to be governed by the following measures.

2. Enquire into the Repentance of thy former life particularly; whether it were of a great and perfect grief, and productive of fixed refolutions of holy living and reductive of these to act; how many days and nights we have spent in forrow or care, in habitual and actual pursuance of Virtue; what inftrument we have chofen and ufed for the eradication of fin; how we have judged ourselves, and how punished; and, in fome, whether we have by the grace of Repentance changed our life from criminal to virtuous, from one habit to another; and whether we have paid for the pleasure of our fin by smart or forrow, by the effufion of Alms, or pernoctations or abodes in Prayers, so as the spirit hath been served in our Repentance as earneftly and as greatly as our appetites have been provided for in the days of our fhame and folly.

3. Supply the imperfections of thy repentance by a general or univerfal forrow for the fins not only fince the laft Communion or abfolution, but of thy whole life; for all fins known or unknown, repented and unrepented, of ignorance or infirmity, which thou knoweft, or which others have accused thee of; thy clamorous and thy whispering fins, the fins of fcandal and the fins of a fecret confcience, of the flesh and of the spirit: for it would but be a fad arreft to thy Soul wandering in ftrange and unusual regions, to see a scroll of uncancelled fins reprefented

and charged upon thee for want of care and notices, and that thy Repentance fhall become invalid because of its imperfections.

4. To this purpose it is usually advised by Spiritual persons, that the fick man make an universal confeffion, or a renovation and repetition of all the particular confeffions and accufations of his whole life; that now at the foot of his account he may represent the fum total to God and his Confcience, and make provisions for their remedy and pardon according to his present poffibilities.

5. Now is the time to make reflex acts of Repentance: that as by a general Repentance we fupply the want of the juft extenfion of parts; fo by this we may supply the proper measures of the intenfion of degrees. In our health we can confider concerning our own acts whether they be real or hypocritical, effential or imaginary, fincere or upon intereft, integral or imperfect, commenfurate or defective. And although it is a good caution of securities, after all our care and diligence ftill to fufpect ourselves and our own deceptions, and for ever to beg of God pardon and acceptance in the union of Chrift's Paffion and Interceffion: yet, in proper fpeaking, reflex acts of Repentance, being a fuppletory after the imperfection of the direct, are then most fit to be used when we cannot proceed in and profecute the direct actions. To repent because we cannot repent, and to grieve because we cannot grieve, was a device invented to serve the turn of the mother of Peter Gratian: but it was used by her, and fo advised to be, in her sickness, and last actions of Repentance: For in our perfect health and understanding if we do not

understand our first act, we cannot discern our second; and if we be not forry for our fins, we cannot be forry for want of forrows: it is a contradiction to fay we can; because want of forrow to which we are obliged is certainly a great fin; and if we can grieve for that, then alfo for the reft; if not for all, then not for this. But in the days of weakness the case is otherwise; for then our actions are imperfect, our discourse weak, our internal actions not difcernible, our fears great, our work to be abbreviated, and our defects to be supplied by spiritual arts: and therefore it is proper and proportionate to our state, and to our neceffity, to beg of God pardon for the imperfections of our Repentance, acceptance of our weaker forrows, fupplies out of the treasures of grace and mercy. And thus repenting of the evil and unhandsome adherencies of our Repentance, in the whole integrity of the duty it will become a Repentance not to be repented of.

Ou pendre, ou rendre, ou les peines denfers attendre.

6. Now is the time beyond which the fick man must at no hand defer to make reftitution of all his unjust possessions, or other men's rights, and fatisfactions for all injuries and violencies, according to his obligation and poffibilities: for although many circumstances might impede the acting it in our lifetime, and it was permitted to be deferred in many cafes, because by it juftice was not hindered, and oftentimes piety and equity were provided for; yet because this is the last scene of our life, he that does not act it so far as he can, or put it into certain conditions and order of effecting, can never do it again, and therefore then to defer it is to omit, and leaves