My Lord,
I am treating your Lordship as a Roman
gentleman did St. Augustine and his mother: I shall entertain you in a
charnel-house, and carry your meditations awhile into the chambers of death,
where you shall find the rooms dressed up with melancholic arts, and fit to
converse with your most retired thoughts, which begin with a sigh, and proceed
in deep consideration, and end in a holy resolution. The sight that St.
Augustine most noted in that house of sorrow, was the body of Caesar, clothed
with all the dishonours of corruption that you can suppose in a six months'
burial. But I know, that, without pointing, your first thoughts will remember
the change of a greater beauty, which is now dressing for the brightest
immortality, and from herbed of darkness calls to you to dress your soul for
that change which shall mingle your bones with that beloved dust, and carry
your soul to the same quire, where you may both sit and sing for ever. My Lord,
it is your dear Lady's anniversary, and she deserved the biggest honour, and
the longest memory, and the fairest monument, and the most solemn mourning: and
in order to it, give me leave, my Lord, to cover her hearse with these
following sheets. This book was intended first to minister to her piety; and
she desired all good people should partake of the advantages which are here
recorded; she knew how to live rarely well, and she desired to know how to die;
and God taught her by an experiment. But since her work is done, and God
supplied her with provisions of his own, before I could minister to her, and
perfect what she desired, it is necessary to present to your Lordship those
bundles of cypress which were intended to dress her closet, but come now to
dress her hearse. My Lord, both your Lordship, and myself have lately seen and
felt such sorrows of death, and such sad departure of dearest friends, that it
is more than high time we should thing ourselves nearly concerned in the
accidents. Death hath come so near to you, as to fetch a portion from your very
heart; and now you cannot choose but dig your own grave, and place your coffin
in your eye, when the angel hath dressed your scene of sorrow and mediation
with so particular and so near an object: and, therefore, as it is my duty, I
am come to minister to your pious thoughts, and to direct your sorrows, that
they may turn into virtues and advantages.
And since I know your Lordship to be so constant
and regular in your devotions, and so tender in the matter of justice, so ready
in the expressions of charity, and so apprehensive of religion; that you are a
person whose work of grace is apt and must every day grow toward those degrees
where, when you arrive, you shall triumph over imperfection, and choose nothing
but what may please God; I could not by any compendium conduct and assist your
pious purposes so well as by that which is the great argument and the great
instrument of Holy Living, the consideration and exercises of death.
My Lord, it is a great art to die well, and to be
learnt by men in health, by them that can discourse and consider, by those
whose understanding and act of reason are not abated with fear or pains; and as
the greatest part of death is passed by the preceeding years of our life, so
also in those years are the greatest preparations to it; and he that prepares
not for death before his last sickness, is like him that begins to study
philosophy when he is going to dispute publicly in the faculty. All that a sick
and dying man can do, is but to exercise those virtues which he before
acquired, and to perfect that repentance, which was begun more early. And of
this, my Lord, my book, I think, is a good testimony; not only because it
represents the vanity of a late and sick-bed repentance, but because it
contains in it so many precepts and meditations, so many propositions and
various duties, such forms of exercise, and the degrees and difficulties of so
many graces, which are necessary preparatives to a holy death, that the very
learning the duties requires study and skill, time and understanding, in the
ways of godliness; and it were very vain to say so much is necessary, and not
to suppose more time to learn them, more skill to practise them, more
opportunities to desire them, more abilities both of body and mind, that can be
supposed in a sick, amazed, timorous, and weak person; whose senses are weak,
whose discerning facilities are lessened, whose principles are mane intricate
and entangles, upon whose eye sits a cloud, and the heart is broken with
sickness, and the liver pierced through with sorrows and the strokes of death.
And, therefore, my Lord, it is intended by the necessity of affairs that the
pre-health, and the days of discourse and understanding which, in this case
hath another degree of necessity superadded; because in other notices, an
imperfect study may be supplied by a frequent exercise and renewed experience;
her, if we practise imperfectly once, we shall never recover the error, for we
die but once; and therefore it will be necessary that our skill be more exact,
since it is not to be mended by trial, but the actions must be for ever left
imperfect, unless the habit be contracted with study and contemplation
beforehand.
And indeed I were vain if I should intend this
book to be read and studied by dying persons; and they were vainer that should
need to be instructed in those graces, which they are then to exercise and to
finish. For a sick bed is only a school of severe exercise, in which the spirit
of a man is tried and his graces are rehearsed; and the assistances which I
have, in the following pages, given to those virtues, which are proper to the
state of sickness, are such as suppose a man in the state of grace; or they
confirm a good man, or they support the weak, or add degrees, or minister
comfort, or prevent an evil, or cure the little mischiefs which are incident to
tempted persons in their weakness. That is the sum of the present design, as it
relates to dying persons. And therefore I have not inserted any advices proper
to old age, but such as are common to it and the state of sickness, for I
suppose very old age to be a longer sickness; it is a labour and sorrow when it
goes beyond the common period of nature; but if it be on this side that period,
and be healthful, in the same degree it is so I reckon it in the accounts of
life, and therefore it can have no distinct consideration. But I do not think
it is a station of advantage to begin the change of an evil life in; it is a
middle state between life and death-bed; and, therefore, although it hath more
of hopes than this, and less than that, yet as it partakes of either state, so
it is to be regulated by the advices of that state, and judged by its
sentences.
Only this; I desire that all old persons would
sadly consider that their advantages in that state are very few; their bodies
are without strength, their prejudices long and mighty, their vices (if they
have lived wicked) are habitual, the occasions of the virtues not many, the
possibilities of some (in the matter of which they stand very guilty) are past,
and shall never return again (such are chastity and many parts of self-denial;)
that they have some temptations proper to their age, as peevishness and pride,
covetousness and talking, wilfulness and unwillingness to learn: and they think
they are protected by age from learning anew, or repenting the old, and do not
leave but change their vices; and after all this, either the day of their
repentance is past, as we see it true in very many, or it is expiring and
towards the sunset, as it is in all; and, therefore, although in in these to
recover is very possible, yet we may also remember that, in the matter of
virtue and repentance, possibility is a great way off from performance; and how
few do repent of whom it is only possible that they may! and that many things
more are required to reduce their possibility to act; a great grace, an
assiduous ministry, an effective calling, mighty assistances, excellent
counsel, great industry, a watchful diligence, a well-disposed mind, passionate
desires, deep apprehensions of danger, quick perceptions of duty, and time, and
God's good blessing, and effectual impression, and seconding all this, that to
will and do may, by him, be wrought to great purposes and with great speed.
And, therefore, it will not be amiss, but it is
hugely necessary, that these persons who have lost their time and their blessed
opportunities should have the diligence of youth, and the zeal of new converts,
and take account of every hour that is left them, and pray perpetually, and be
advised prudently, and study the interest of their souls carefully, with
diligence, and with fear; and their old age, which, in effect, is nothing but a
continual death-bed, dressed with some more order and advantages, may be a
state of hope, and labour, and acceptance; through the infinite mercies of God,
in Jesus Christ.
But concerning sinners really under the arrest of
death, God hath made no death-bed covenant, the Scriptures hath recorded no
promises, given no instructions; and therefore I had none to give, but only the
same which are to be given to all men that are alive, because they are so, and
because it is uncertain when they shall be otherwise. But then this advice I
also am to insert, that they are the smallest number of Christian men who can
be divided by the characters of a certain holiness or an open villainy; and
between these there are many degrees of latitude, and most are of a middle
sort, concerning which we are tied to make the judgments of charity, and
possibly God may do too. But, however, all they are such to whom the rules of
Holy Dying are useful and applicable, and therefore no separation is to be made
in this world. But where the case is not evident, men are to be permitted to
the unerring judgment of God; where it is evident we can rejoice or mourn for
them that die.
In the church of Rome they reckon otherwise
concerning sick and dying Christians than I have done. For they make
profession, that from death to life, from sin to grace, a man may very
certainly be changed, though the operation begin not before his last hour; and
half this they do upon his death-bed, and the other half when he is in his
grave; and they take away the eternal punishment in an instant, by a
school-distinction, or the hand of the priest; and the temporal punishment
shall stick longer, even then, when the man is no more measured with time,
having nothing to do with any thing of or under the sun; but that they pretend
to take away too, when the man is dead; and, God knows, the poor man for all
this pays them both in hell. The distinction of temporal and eternal is a just
measure of pain when it refers to this life and another; but to dream of a
punishment temporal, when all his time is done, and to think of repentance when
the time of grace is past, are great errors, the one in philosophy and both in
divinity, and are a huge folly in their pretence, and infinite danger if they
are believed being a certain destruction of the necessity of holy living, when
men dare trust them, and live at the rate of such doctrines. The secret of
these is soon discovered; for by such means, though holy life be not necessary,
yet a priest is; as if God did not appoint the priest to minister to holy
living, but to excuse it; so making the holy calling not only to live upon the
sins of the people, but upon their ruin, and the advantages of their function
to spring from their eternal dangers. It is an evil craft to serve a temporal
end upon the death of souls; that is an interest not to be handled but with
nobleness and ingenuity, fear and caution, diligence and prudence, with great
skill and great honesty, with reverence, and trembling, and severity; a soul is
worth all that, and the need we have requires all that; and therefore those
doctrines that go less than all this are not friendly, because they are not
safe.
I know no other difference in the visitation and
treating of sick persons than what depends upon the article of late repentance;
for all churches agree in the same essential propositions, and assist the sick
by the same internal ministries. As for external, I mean unction, used in the
church of Rome, since it is used when the man is above half dead, when he can
exercise no act of understanding, it must needs be nothing; for no rational man
can think that any ceremony can make a spiritual change, without a spiritual
act of him that is to be changed; nor work by way of nature, or by charm, but
morally, and after the manner of reasonable creatures; and therefore I do not
think that ministry at all fit to be reckoned among the advantages of sick
persons. The fathers of the Council of Trent first disputed, and after this
manner at last agreed, that extreme unction was instituted by Christ. But
afterwards, being admonished by one of their theologues, that the apostles
ministered unction to inform people before they were priests, (the priestly
order, according to their doctrine being collated in the institution of the
Last Supper,) for fear that it should be taught that this unction might be
administered by him that was no priest, they blotted out the word instituted,
and put in its stead insinuated, this sacrament, and that it was published by
St. James. So it is in their doctrine; and yet in their anathomatisms, they
curse all them that shall deny it to have been instituted by Christ. I shall
lay no more prejudice against it, or the weak arts of them that maintain it,
but add this only, that there being but two places of Scripture pretended for
this ceremony, some chief men of their own side have proclaimed these two
invalid as to the institution of it; for Suarez says, that the unction used by
the apostles, in St. mark, vi.13, is not the same with what is used in the
church of Rome; and that it cannot be plainly gathered from the Epistle of St.
James, Cajetan affirms, and that it did belong to the miraculous gift of
healing, not to a sacrament. The sick man's exercise of grace formerly
acquired, his perfecting repentance began in the days of health, the prayers
and counsels of the holy man that ministers, the giving the holy sacrament, the
ministry and assistance of angels, and the more mercies of God, the peace of
conscience, and the peace of the church, are all the assistances and
preparatives that can help to dress his lamp. But if a man shall go to buy oil
when the bridegroom comes, if his lamp be not first furnished and then trimmed,
that in this life, this upon his death-bed, his station will be without doors,
his portion with unbelievers; and the unction of the dying man shall no more
strengthen his soul than it cures his body; and the prayers for him after his
death shall be of the same force, as if they should pray that he should return
to life again the next day, and live as long as Lazarus in his return. But I
consider that it is not well that men should pretend any thing will do a man
good when he dies; and yet the same ministries, and ten times more assistances,
are found for forty or fifty years together to be ineffectual. Can extreme
unction at last cure what the holy sacrament of the eucharist, all his
life-time, could not do? Can prayers for a dead man do him more good than when
he was alive? If all his days the man belonged to death and the dominion of
sin, and from thence could not be recovered by sermons, and counsels, and
perpetual precepts, and frequent sacraments, by confessions and absolutions, by
prayers and advocations, by external ministries and internal acts, it is but
too certain that his lamp cannot then be furnished: his extreme unction is only
then of use when it is made by the oil that burned in his lamp in all the days
of his expectation and waiting for the coming of the bridegroom.
Neither can any supply be made in this case by
their practice of praying for the dead; though they pretend for this the
fairest precedents of the church and of the whole world. The heathens, they
say, did it, and the Jews did it, and the Christians did it; some were baptized
for the dead in the days of the apostles, and very many were communicated for
the dead for so many ages after. It is true they were so, and did so; the
heathens prayed for any easy grave, and a perpetual spring, that saffron would
rise from their beds of grass. The Jews prayed that the souls of their dead
might be in the garden of Eden, that they might have their part in Paradise,
and in the world to come; and that they might hear the peace of the fathers of
their generation, sleeping in Hebron. And the Christians prayed for a joyful
resurrection, for mercy at the day of judgment, for hastening of the coming of
Christ, and the kingdom of God; and they named all sorts of persons in their
prayers, all, I mean, but wicked persons, all but them that lived evil lives;
they named apostles, saints and martyrs. And all this is so nothing to their
purpose, or so much against it, that the prayers for the dead used in the
church of Rome are most plainly condemned, because they are against the
doctrine and practices of all the world, in other forms, to other purposes,
relying upon distinct doctrines, until new opinions began to arise, about St.
Augustine's time, and changed the face of the proposition. Concernment from the
Lord; and therefore concerning it we can have no rules nor proportions, but
from those imperfect revelations of the state of departed souls, and the
measures of charity, which can relate only to the imperfection of their present
condition, and the terrors of the day of judgment; but to think that any
suppletory to an evil life can be taken from such devotions, after the sinners
are dead, may encourage a bad man to sin, but cannot relieve him when he
hath.
But, of all things in the world, methinks, men
should be most careful not to abuse dying people; not only because their
condition is pitiable, but because they shall soon be discovered, and, in the
secret regions of souls, there shall be an evil report concerning those men who
have deceive them: and if we believe we shall go to that place where such
reports are made, we may fear the shame and the amazement of being accounted
impostors in the presence of angels, and all the wise holy men of the world. To
be erring and innocent, is hugely pitiable, and incident to mortality; that we
cannot help; but to deceive or to destroy so great an interest as is that of a
soul, or to lessen its advantages, by giving it trifling and false confidences,
is injurious and intolerable. And therefore it were very well if all the
churches of the world would be extremely curious concerning their offices and
ministries of the visitation of the sick: that their ministers they send be
holy and prudent; that their instructions be severe and safe; that their
sentences be merciful and reasonable, that their offices be sufficient and
devout; that their attendances be frequent and long; that their deputations be
special and peculiar; that the doctrines upon which they ground their offices
be true, material and holy; that their ceremonies be few, and their advices
wary; that their separation be full of caution, their judgments not remiss,
their remissions not loose and dissolute; and that all the whole ministration
be made by persons of experience and charity. For it is a sad thing to see our
dead go out of our hands: they live incuriously, and die without regard; and
the last scene of their life, which should be dressed with all spiritual
advantages, is abused by flattery and easy propositions, and let go with
carelessness and folly.
My Lord, I have endeavoured to cure some part of
the evil as well as I could, being willing to relieve the needs of indigent
people in such ways as I can; and, therefore, have described the duties which
every sick man may do alone, with such in which he can be assisted by the
minister; and am the more confident that these my endeavours will be the better
entertained because they are the first entire body of directions for sick and
dying people that I remember to have been published in the church of England.
In the church of Rome there have been many; but they are dressed with such
doctrines, which are sometimes useless, sometimes hurtful, and their whole
design of assistance, which they commonly yield, is at the best imperfect, and
the representment is too careless and loose for so severe an employment. So
that, in this affair, I was almost forced to walk alone; only that I drew the
rules and advices from the fountains of Scripture, and the purest channcla of
the primitive church, and was helped by some experience in the cure of souls. I
shall measure the success of my labours, not by popular noises or the sentences
of curious persons, but by the advantage which good people may receive. My work
here is not to please the speculative part of men, but to minister, to
practice, to preach to the weary, to comfort the sick, to assist the penitent,
to reprove the confident, to strengthen weak hands and feeble knees, having
scarce any other possibilities left me of doing alms, or exercising that
charity by which we shall be judged at doomsday. It is enough for me to be an
under-builder in the house of God, and I glory in the employment; I labour in
the foundations; and therefore the work needs no apology for being plain, so it
be strong and well laid. But, my Lord, as mean as it is, I must give God thanks
for the desires and the strength; and, next to him, to you, for that
opportunity and little portion of leisure which I had to do it in: for I must
acknowledge it publicly (and, besides my prayers, it is all the recompense I
can make you,) my being quiet I owe to your interest, much of my support to
your bounty, and many other collateral comforts I derive from your favour and
nobleness. My Lord, because I much honour you, and because I would do honour to
myself, I have written your name in the entrance of my book: I am sure you will
entertain it because the design related to your dear Lady, and because it may
minister to your spirit in the day of visitation; when God shall call for you
to receive your reward for your charity and your noble piety, by which you have
not only endeared very many persons, but in great degrees have obliged me to
be.
My noblest Lord,
Your Lordship's
most thankful
and
most humble servant,
Jer.
Taylor.
