Soul goes forth full of hope, fometimes with evidence, but always with certainty in the thing, and inftantly it paffes into the throngs of Spirits, where Angels meet it finging, and the Devils flock with malicious and vile purposes, defiring to lead it away with them into their houses of sorrow: there they see things which they never faw, and hear voices which they never heard. There the Devils charge them with many fins, and the Angels remember that themselves rejoiced when they were repented of. Then the Devils aggravate and describe all the circumstances of the fin, and add calumnies; and the Angels bear the Sword forward ftill, because their Lord doth answer for them. Then

S. Chryfoftomus.

the Devils rage and gnash their teeth; they see the Soul chafte and pure, and they are ashamed; they see it penitent, and they despair; they perceive that the tongue was refrained and fanctified, and then hold their peace. Then the Soul paffes forth and rejoices, paffing by the Devils in scorn and triumph, being fecurely carried into the bofom of the Lord, where they fhall reft till their crowns are finished, and their mansions are prepared; and then they shall feast and fing, rejoice and worship for* ever and ever. Fearful and formidable to unholy perfons éade àbavaríčeras n is the first meeting with spirits in their separation. But the victory which holy fouls receive by the mercies of Jefus Christ and the conduct of Angels, is a joy that we must not understand till we feel it and yet fuch which by an early and a perfevering piety we may fecure: but let us inquire after it no further, because it is secret.

Μεγίστη τῶν αἱρετῶν θεοtux. Philo.

CHAPTER III.

Of the State of Sickness, and the Temptations incident to it, with their proper Remedies.

SECT. I.

Of the State of Sickness.

DAM'S fin brought death into the world, and man did die the fame day in which he finned, according as God had threatened. He did not die, as Death is taken for a separation of foul and body; that is not Death properly, but the ending of the last act of Death; just as a man is said to be born, when he ceases any longer to be borne in his mother's womb: But whereas to man was intended a life long and happy, without fickness, forrow, or infelicity, and this life should be lived here or in a better place, and the paffage from one to the other should have been easy, safe and pleafant, now that man finned, he fell from that state to a contrary.

If Adam had ftood, he should not always have lived in this world: for this world was not a place capable of giving a dwelling to all those myriads of men and women which should have been born in all the generations of infinite and eternal ages; for fo it must have been if man had not died at all, nor yet have

removed hence at all. Neither is it likely that man's Innocence should have loft to him all poffibility of going thither where the duration is better, measured by a better time, subject to fewer changes, and which is now the reward of a returning virtue, which in all natural fenfes is less than innocence, fave that it is heightened by Chrift to an equality of acceptation with the state of Innocence: But fo it must have been, that his innocence fhould have been punished with an eternal confinement to this ftate, which in all reason is the less perfect, the state of a traveller, not of one poffeffed of his inheritance. It is therefore certain Man should have changed his abode : for fo did Enoch, and fo did Elias, and fo fhall all the world that shall be alive at the day of Judgment; They shall not die, but they shall change their place and their abode, their duration and their ftate, and all this without death.

That death therefore which God threatened to Adam, and which paffed upon his pofterity, is not the going out of this world, but the manner of going. If he had staid in Innocence, he should have gone from hence placidly and fairly, without vexatious and afflictive circumstances; he should not have died by fickness, misfortune, defect, or unwillingness : but when he fell, then he began to

Prima quæ vitam dedit die; the fame day (fo faid God:) hora carpfit. and that must needs be true, and

Hercul. Fur.

therefore it must mean, that upon that very day he fell into an evil and dangerous condition, a state of change and affliction; then death Nafcentes morimur, fibegan, that is, the man began, to nifq; ab origine pendet. die by a natural diminution, and

Manil.

aptnefs, to disease and mifery. His firft ftate was

and should have been (fo long as it lafted) a happy duration; his fecond was a daily and miferable change and this was the dying properly.

This appears in the great inftance of Damnation, which in the style of Scripture, is called eternal death; not because it kills or ends the duration, it hath not fo much good in it; but because it is a perpetual infelicity. Change or separation of Soul and body is but accidental to Death, Death may be with or without either but the formality the curfe and the sting of death, that is, mifery, forrow, fear, diminution, defect, anguish, dishonour, and whatsoever is miferable and afflictive in nature, that is Death. Death is not an action, but a whole state and condition; and this was first brought in upon us by the offence of

one man.

But this went no farther than thus to subject us to temporal infelicity. If it had proceeded fo as was supposed, Man had been much more miserable; for man had more than one original fin in this fense: and though this death entered first upon us by Adam's fault, yet it came nearer upon us and increased upon us by the fins of more of our forefathers. For Adam's fin left us in ftrength enough to contend with human calamities for almost a thoufand years together. But the fins of his children, our forefathers, took off from us half the ftrength about the time of the Flood; and then from 500 to 250, and from thence to 120, and from thence to threescore and ten; so often halving it, till it is almost come to nothing. But by the fins of men in the several generations of the world, Death, that is, mifery and disease, is haftened fo upon us, that we

are of a contemptible age: and because we are to die by fuffering evils, and by the daily leffening of our strength and health; this Death is fo long a doing, that it makes so great a part of our short life useless and unserviceable, that we have not time enough to get the perfection of a single manufacture, but ten or twelve generations of the world must go to the making up of one wise man, or one excellent Art and in the fucceffion of thofe ages there happen fo many changes and interruptions, so many wars and violencies, that seven years' fighting fets a whole Kingdom back in learning and virtue, to which they were creeping it may be a whole age.

And thus also we do evil to our posterity, as Adam did to his, and Cham did to his, and Eli to his, and all they to theirs who by fins caufed God to fhorten the life and multiply the evils of mankind: and for this reason it is the world grows worse and worse, because so many original fins are multiplied, and fo many evils from parents defcend upon the fucceeding generations of men, that they derive nothing from us but original mifery.

But he who restored the Law of Nature did alfo reftore us to the condition of Nature; which, being violated by the introduction of Death, Christ then repaired when he suffered and overcame Death for us; that is, he hath taken away the unhappiness of Sickness, and the sting of Death, and the dishonours of the Grave, of diffolution and weakness, of decay and change, and hath turned them into acts of favour, into instances of comfort, into opportunities of virtue Chrift hath now knit them into Rofaries and Coronets, he hath put them into promises and