his disciples from the sea, when he appeased the storm, though they still sailed in the channel. And this St. Hierome verifies with all his reading and Nunquam memini me le- experience, saying, I do not regisse mala morte mortuum, member to have read that ever qui libenter opera- charitatis exercuit. Ad Nepot. any charitable person died an evil death. And although a long experience hath observed God's mercies to descend upon charitable people, like the dew upon Gideon's fleece when all the world was dry, yet for this also we have a promise, which is not only an argument of a certain number of years, as experience is, but a security for eternal ages. Make ye friends of the mammon of unrighteousness, that when ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations. When faith fails, and chastity is useless, and temperance shall be no more, then charity shall bear you upon wings of cherubim to the eternal mountain of the Lord. I have been a lover of mankind, and a friend and merciful; and now I expect to communicate in that great kindness which he shows that is the great God and Father of men and mercies, said Cyrus the Persian on his deathbed.

Luke 16.9.

Ἐγὼ φιλάνθρωπος ἐγενό

unv, kai vûv ndéws ar μοι δοκῶ κοινωνῆσαι τοῦ εὐεργετοῦντος ἀνθρώπους.

Xen. Cyrop. viii. 7. 25.

I do not mean this should only be a death-bed charity, any more than a death-bed repentance; but it ought to be the charity of our life and healthful years, a parting with portions of our goods then

Da dum tempus habes, tibi propria sit manus heres. Auferet hoc nemo quod dabis ipse Deo.*

when we can keep them. We must not first kindle our lights when we are to descend into our houses of darkness, or bring a glaring torch suddenly to a dark room; that will amaze the eye, and not delight it, or instruct the body: but if our tapers have, in their constant course, descended into their grave crowned all the way with light, then let the death-bed charity be doubled, and the light burn brightest when it is to deck our hearse. concerning this I shall afterwards give account.

But

SECT. IV.. General Considerations to enforce the

THE

former Practices.

HESE are the general instruments of preparation in order to a holy death: it will concern us all to use them diligently and speedily; for we must be long in doing

Quod sæpe fieri non potest

fiat diu. Sen. Ed. v. 948.

Nullius rei quam vivere

difficilior est scientia: pro

that which must be done but once; and therefore we must begin betimes, and lose no time; especially since it is so great a venture, and upon it depends so great a state. Seneca said well, There is no science or art in the world so hard as to live

and die well; the professors of other arts are vulgar and many;

fessores aliarum artium vul

go multique sunt.

Sen. De Brev. Vit. c. 6.

Nunc ratio nulla est restandi, nulla facultas, ter

nas quoniam pœnas in morte

timendum.-Lucret. i. 112.

Virtutem videant, intabes

cantque relicta.

Pers. Sat. iii. 38.

These lines are found in the Cotton MS. of Gower's Vox Clamantis. See the note in Eden's edition of Taylor's Works. Compare Weever's Funeral Monuments, p. 19.

but he that knows how to do this business is certainly instructed to eternity. But then let me remember this, that a wise person will also put most upon the greatest interest. Common prudence will teach us this. No man will hire a general to cut wood, or shake hay with a sceptre, or spend his soul and all his faculties upon the purchase of a cockle-shell; but he will fit instruments to the dignity and exigence of the design. And therefore since heaven is so glorious a state, and so certainly designed for us if we please, let us spend all that we have, all our passions and affections, all our study and industry, all our desires and stratagems, all our witty and ingenious faculties, toward the arriving thither, whither if we do come, every minute will infinitely pay for all the troubles of our whole life; if we do not, we shall have the reward of fools, an unpitied and an upbraided misery.

To this purpose I shall represent the state of dying and dead men in the devout words of some of the fathers of the Church, whose sense I shall exactly keep, but change their order; that by placing some of their dispersed meditations into a chain or sequel of discourse, I may with their precious stones make a union, and compose them into a jewel; for though the meditation is plain and easy, yet it is affectionate, and material, and true, and necessary.

The Circumstances of a Dying Man's Sorrow and

Danger.

When the sentence of death is decreed, and begins to be put in execution, it is sorrow enough to see or feel respectively the sad accents of the agony and last contentions of the soul, and the reluctances and unwillingnesses of the body: the forehead washed with a new and stranger baptism, besmeared with a cold sweat, tenacious and clammy, apt to make it cleave to the roof Nilus. Perist. vii. 1. (Ap. of his coffin; the nose cold and Anast. Sinait. Quest. 21.) undiscerning, not pleased with perfumes, nor suffering violence with a cloud of unwholesome smoke; the eyes dim as a sullied mirror, or the face of heaven when God shows his anger in a prodigious storm; the feet cold, the hands stiff; the physicians despairing, our friends weeping, S. Basil. Hom. de Grat. the rooms dressed with darkness and sorrow; and the exterior parts betraying what are the violences which the soul and spirit suffer: the nobler part, like the lord of the house, being assaulted by exterior rudenesses, and driven from all the outworks: at last, faint and weary with short and frequent breathings, interrupted with the longer accents of sighs, without moisture but the excrescences of a spilt humor when the pitcher is broken at the cistern, it retires to its last fort, the heart, whither it is pursued, and stormed, and beaten out, as when the barbarous Thracian sacked the

Act. c. 6.

glory of the Grecian empire. Then calamity is great, and sorrow rules in all the capacities of man; then the mourners weep because it is civil, or because they need thee, or because they fear: but who suffers for thee with a compassion sharp as is thy pain? Then the noise is like the faint echo of a distant valley, and few hear, and they will not regard thee, who seemest like a person void of understanding, and of a departing interest. Verè tremendum est mortis sacramentum. But these acci

dents are common to all that die; and when a special providence shall distinguish them, they shall die with easy circumstances; but as no piety can secure it, so must no confidence expect it, but wait for the time, and accept the manner of the dissolution. But that which distinguishes them is this :

He that hath lived a wicked life, if his conscience be alarmed, and that he does not die like a wolf or a tiger, without sense or remorse of all his wildness and his injury, his beastly nature, and desert and untilled manners, if he have but sense of what he is going to suffer, or what he may expect to be his portion; then we may imagine the terror of their abused fancies, how they see affrighting shapes, and, because they fear them, they feel Anastas. Sinait. Quæst. 21.) the gripes of devils, urging the unwilling souls from the kinder and fast embraces of the body, calling to the grave, and hastening to judgment, exhibiting great bills of uncancelled crimes, awakening and amazing the conscience,

S. Chrysost. in Matth. (Ap.