Certè populi quos defpicit Arctos Felices errore fuo, quos ilie timorum Maximus haud urget, Lethi metus 11 Inde ruendi In ferrum mens prona vi ris, animæque capaces down in the grave as we compofe ourselves to fleep, and do the duties of nature and choice. The old people that lived near the Riphaan mountains were taught to converse with death, and to handle it on all fides, and to difcourse of it, as of a thing that will certainly come, and ought fo to do. Thence their minds and resolutions became capable of death, and they thought it a dishonourable thing, with greediness to keep a life that must go from us, to lay afide its thorns, and to return again circled with a glory and a Diadem. Mortis, et ignavum redi turæ parcere vitæ. Qui quotidie vitæ fuæ manum impofuit, non indiget tempore. Seneca. 2. He that would die well, muft all the days of his life lay up against the day of death; not only by the general provifions of holiness and a pious life indefinitely, but provifions proper to the neceffities of that Great day of expense, in which a man is to throw his last cast for an eternity of joys or forrows; ever remembering, that this alone well performed is not enough to pass us into Paradife, but that alone done foolishly is enough to fend us to Hell: and the want of either a holy life or death makes a man to fall short of the mighty price of our high calling. * In order to this rule we are to confider what special graces we shall then need to exercise, and by the proper arts of the Spirit, by a heap of proportioned arguments, by prayers and a great treasure of devotion laid up in Heaven, provide before-hand a reserve of strength and mercy. Men in the course of their lives walk lazily and incuriously, as if they had both their feet Infere nunc, Meliboe, pyros, pone ordine vites. fo in one shoe; and when they are paffively revolved to the time of their diffolution, they have no mercies in store, no patience, no faith, no charity to God, or despite of the world, being without guft or appetite for the land of their inheritance, which Christ with fo much pain and blood had purchased for them. When we come to die indeed, we shall be very much put to it to stand firm upon the two feet of a Chrif tian, faith and patience. When we ourselves are to use the articles, to turn our former difcourfes into prefent practice, and to feel what we never felt before, we shall find it to be quite another thing, to be willing presently to quit this life and all our present poffeffions for the hopes of a thing which we were never fuffered to fee, and fuch a thing of which we may fail so many ways, and of which if we fail any way we are miserable for ever. Then we shall find how much we have need to have secured the Spirit of God and the grace of Faith by an habitual, perfect, unmoveable refolution. *The fame alfo is the cafe of Patience, which will be assaulted with sharp pains, disturbed fancies, great fears, want of a prefent mind, natural weakneffes, frauds of the Devil, and a thousand accidents and imperfections. It concerns us therefore highly in the whole course of our lives, not only to accustom ourselves to a patient suffering of injuries and affronts, of persecutions and loffes, of cross accidents and unneceffary circumstances; but also by representing death as present to us, to confider with what argument then to fortify our Patience, and by affiduous and fervent prayer to God all our life long to call upon him to give us patience and great affiftances, a strong faith and a confirmed hope, the Spirit of God and his holy Angels affiftants at that time, to refift and to subdue the Devil's temptations and affaults; and fo to fortify our heart, that it break not into intolerable forrows and impatience, and end in wretchlesness and infidelity. *But this is to be the work of our life, and not to be done at once; but, as God gives us time, by fucceffion, by parts and little periods. For it is very remarkable, that God who giveth plenteously to all creatures, he hath scattered the firmament with Stars as a man fows corn in his fields, in a multitude bigger than the capacities of human order; he hath made so much variety of creatures, and gives us great choice of meats and drinks, although any one of both kinds would have ferved our needs; and fo in all instances of nature; yet in the distribution of our Time God seems to be straight-handed, and gives it to us, not as nature gives us Rivers, enough to drown us, but drop by drop, minute after minute, so that we never can have two minutes together, but he takes away one when he gives us another. This should teach us to value our Time, fince God fo values it, and by his fo small distribution of it, tells us it is the most precious thing we have. Since therefore in the day of our death we can have still but the fame little portion of this precious time, let us in every minute of our life, I mean, in every discernible portion, lay up fuch a stock of reason and good works, that they may convey a value to the imperfect and shorter actions of our death-bed; while God rewards the piety of our lives by his gracious acceptation and benediction upon the actions preparatory to our Death-bed. 3. He that defires to die well and happily, above all things must be careful that he do not live a foft, a delicate and a voluptuous life; but a life fevere, holy, and under the difcipline of the Crofs, under the conduct of prudence and observation, a life of warfare and fober counfels, labour and watchfulness. No man wants cause of tears and a daily sorrow. Let every man confider what he feels, and acknowledge his misery; let him confess his fin, and chastise it; let him bear his cross patiently, and his perfecutions nobly, and his repentance willingly and constantly; let him pity the evils of all the world, and bear his share of the calamities of his Brother; let him long and figh for the joys of Heaven; let him tremble and fear because he hath deserved the pains of Hell; let him commute his eternal fear with a temporal suffering, preventing God's judgment by paffing one of his own; let him groan for the labours of his pilgrimage, and the dangers of his warfare; and by that time he hath summed up all these labours, and duties, and contingencies, all the proper causes, inftruments and acts of forrow, he will find, that for a fecular joy and wantonness of spirit there are not left many void spaces of his life. It was S. James's advice, Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep; let your laughter be turned into mourning, and your joy into weeping: And Bonaventure, in the life of Chrift, reports that the Holy Virgin Mother faid to Saint Elizabeth, That Grace does not defcend into the foul of a man but by prayer affliction. Certain it is, that a Neque enim Deus ullâ mourning fpirit, and an afflicted re perinde atque corporis body are great inftruments of re Chap. 4. 9. and ærumnâ conciliatur. conciling God to a finner, and they always dwell at the gates of atonement and reftitution. * But befides this, a delicate and profperous life is hugely contrary to the hopes of a bleffed eternity. Wo be to them that are at eafe in Sion, fo it was faid of old and our Bleffed Lord faid, Wo be to you that laugh, for ye shall weep; but, Bleed are they that mourn, Amos 6: 1. Luke 6. 25. Matth. 5. 4. Pfal. 126. 6. He for they shall be comforted. Here or hereafter we must have our portion of forrows. that now goeth on his way weeping, and beareth forth good feed with him, fhall doubtless come again with joy, and bring his sheaves with him. And certainly he that fadly confiders the portion of Dives, and remembers that the account which Abraham gave him for the unavoidableness of his torment was, because he had his good things in this life, must in all reason with trembling run from a course of banquets, and faring deliciously every day, as being a dangerous eftate, and a confignation to an evil greater, than all danger, the pains and torments of unhappy fouls. If either by patience or repentance, by compaffion or perfecution, by choice or by conformity, by severity or discipline, we allay the festival follies of a soft life, and profess under the Cross of Christ, we shall more willingly and more fafely enter into our grave: but the Death-bed of a voluptuous man upbraids his little and cofening profperities, and exacts pains made * sharper by the paffing from soft beds, and a fofter mind. He that would die Lucan. 1. 8. holily and happily, must in this world love tears, humility, folitude and repentance. * Sed longi poenas fortuna favoris Exigit à mifero, quæ tanto pondere famæ Res premit adversas, satisque prioribus urget. |