CHAPTER V.
OF VISITATION OF THE SICK: OR THE ASSISTANCE THAT IS TO BE DONE
TO DYING PERSONS BY THE MINISTRY OF THEIR CLERGY-GUIDES.
God, who hath made no new covenant with
dying persons distinct from the covenant of the living, hath also appointed no
distinct sacraments for them, no other manner of usages but such as are common
to all the spiritual necessities of living and healthful persons. In all the
days of our religion, from our baptism to the resignation and delivery of our
soul, God hath appointed his servants to minister to the necessities, and
eternally to bless, and prudently to guide, and wisely to judge, concerning
souls; and the Holy Ghost, that anointing from above, descends upon us in
several effluxes, but ever by the ministries of the church. Our heads are
anointed with that sacred unction, baptism, (not in ceremony, but in real and
proper effect,) our foreheads in confirmation, our hands in ordinations, all
our senses in the visitation of the sick; and all by the ministry of especially
deputed and instructed persons: and we, who all our life-time derive blessings
from the fountains of grace by the channels of ecclesiastical ministries, must
do it then especially, when our needs are most pungent and actual. 1. We cannot
give up our names to Christ, but the holy man that ministers in religion must
enrol them, and present the persons and consign the grace: when we beg for
God's Spirit the minister can best present our prayers, and by his advocation
hallow our private desires and turn them into public and potent offices. 2. If
we desire to be established and confirmed in the grace and religion of our
baptism, the holy man whose hands are anointed by a special ordination to that
and its symbolical purposes, lays his hands upon the catechumen, and the
anointing from above descends by that ministry. 3. If we would eat the body and
drink the blood of our Lord, we must address ourselves to the Lord's table, and
he that stands there to bless and to minister can reach it forth and feed thy
soul; and without his ministry thou canst not be nourished with that heavenly
feast, nor thy body consigned to immortality, nor thy soul refreshed with the
sacramental bread from heaven, except by spiritual suppletories in cases of
necessity and an impossible communion. 4. If we have committed sins, the
spiritual man is appointed to restore us, and to pray for us, and to receive
our confessions, and to inquire into our wounds, and to infuse oil and remedy,
and to pronounce pardon. 5. If we be cut off from the communion of the faithful
by our own demerits, their holy hands must reconcile us and give us peace; they
are our appointed comforters, our instructors, our ordinary judges; and, in the
whole, what the children of Israel begged of Moses,[148] - that God would no more speak to them alone, but by
his servant Moses, lest they should be consumed - God, in compliance with our
infirmities, hath of his own goodness established as a perpetual law in all
ages of Christianity, that God will speak to us by his ministers, and our
solemn prayers shall be made to him by their advocation, and his blessings
descend from heaven by their hands, and our offices return thither by their
presidencies, and our repentance shall be managed by them, and our pardon in
many degrees ministered by them: God comforts us by their sermons, and reproves
us by their discipline, and cuts off some by their severity, and reconciles
others by their gentleness, and relieves us by their prayers, and instructs us
by their discourses, and heals our sicknesses by their intercession presented
to God, and united to Christ's advocation: and in all this they are no causes
but servants of the will of God, instruments of the divine grace and order,
stewards and dispensers of the mysteries, and appointed to our souls to serve
and lead, and to help in all accidents, dangers, and necessities.
And they who received us in our baptism are also
to carry us to our grave, and to take care that our end be as our life was or
should have been; and therefore it is established as an apostolical rule, `Is
any man sick among you? let him send for the elders of the church, and let them
pray over him,[149] etc.
The sum of the duties and offices
respectively implied in these words is in the following rules.
1. Let the minister of religion be sent
to, not only against the agony or death, but be advised with in the whole
conduct of the sickness; for in sickness indefinitely, and therefore in every
sickness, and therefore in such which are not mortal, which end in health,
which have no agony or final temptations, St. James gives the advice; and the
sick man, being bound to require them, is also tied to do it, when he can know
them and his own necessity. It is a very great evil both in the matter of
prudence and piety that they fear the priest as they fear the embalmer or the
sexton's spade; and love not to converse with him unless they can converse with
no man else; and think his office so much to relate to the other world that he
is not to be treated with while we hope to live in this; and, indeed, that our
religion be taken care of only when we die: and the event is this, (of which I
have seen some sad experience,) that the man is deadly sick, and his reason is
useless, and he is laid to sleep, and his life is in the confines of the grave,
so that he can do nothing towards the trimming of his lamp; and the curate
shall say a few prayers by him, and talk to a dead man, and the man is not in a
condition to be helped but in a condition to need it hugely. He cannot be
called upon to confess his sins, and he is not able to remember them, and he
cannot understand an advice, nor hear a free discourse, nor be altered from a
passion, nor cured of his fear, nor comforted upon any grounds of reason or
religion, and no man can tell what is likely to be his fate; or, if he does, he
cannot prophesy good things concerning him, but evil. Let the spiritual man
come when the sick man can be conversed withal and instructed, when he can take
medicine and amend, when he understands or can be taught to understand the case
of his soul, and the rules of his conscience; and then his advice may turn into
advantage; it cannot otherwise be useful.
2.The intercourses of the minister with
the sick man have so much variety in them that they are not to be transacted at
once; and therefore they do not well that send once to see the good man with
sorrow, and hear him pray and thank him, and dismiss him civilly, and desire to
see his face no more. To dress a soul for funeral is not a work to be
dispatched at one meeting: at first he needs a comfort, and anon something to
make him willing to die; and by and by he is tempted to impatience, and that
needs a special cure; and it is a great work to make his confessions well and
with advantages; and it may be the man is careless and indifferent, and then he
needs to understand the evil of his sin, and the danger of his person; and his
cases of conscience may be so many and so intricate that he is not quickly to
be reduced to peace, and one time the holy man must pray, and another time he
must exhort, a third time administer the holy sacrament; and he that ought to
watch all the periods and little portions of his life, lest he should be
surprised and overcome, had need be watched when he is sick, and assisted and
called upon and reminded of the several parts of his duty in every instant of
his temptation. This article was well provided for among the easterlings; for
the priests in their visitations, of a sick person did abide in their
attendance and ministry for seven days together. The want of this makes the
visitations fruitless, and the calling of the clergy contemptible, while it is
not suffered to imprint its proper effects upon them that need it in a lasting
ministry.
3. St. James advises that when a man is sick he
should send for the elders;[150] one sick
man for many presbyters; and so did the eastern churches,[151] they sent for seven; and like a college of physicians
they ministered spiritual remedies, and sent up prayers like a choir of singing
clerks. In cities they might do so while the Christians were few and the
priests many. But when they that dwelt in the pagi, or villages, ceased to be
Pagans, and were baptized, it grew to be an impossible felicity, unless in few
cases, and to some more eminent persons: but because they need it most God hath
taken care that they may best have it; and they that can are not very prudent
if they neglect it.
4. Whether they be many or few that are sent to
the sick person, let the curate of his parish, or his own confessor, be amongst
them; that is, let him not be wholly advised by strangers who know not his
particular necessities; but he that is the ordinary judge cannot safely be
passed by in his extraordinary necessity, which in so great portions depends
upon his whole life past: and it is a matter of suspicion, when we decline his
judgment that knows us best, and with whom we formerly did converse either by
choice or by law, by private election or public constitution. It concerns us
then to make severe and profitable judgments, and not to conspire against
ourselves, or procure such assistances which may handle us softly, or comply
with our weaknesses more than relieve our necessities.
5. When the ministers of religion are come, first
let them do their ordinary offices, that is, pray for grace to the sick man for
patience, for resignation, for health, (if it seems good to God in order to his
great ends.) For that is one of the ends of the advice of the apostle. And
therefore the minister is to be sent for not while the case is desperate, but
before the sickness is come to its crisis or period. Let him discourse
concerning the causes of sickness, and by a general instrument move him to
consider concerning his condition. Let him call upon him to set his soul in
order; to trim his lamp; to dress his soul; to renew acts of grace by way of
prayer; to make amends in all the evils he hath done; and to supply all the
defects of duty as much as his past condition requires, and his present can
admit.
6. According as the condition of the sickness or
the weakness of the man is observed, so the exhortation is to be less, and the
prayers more, because the life of the man was his main preparatory; and,
therefore, if his condition be full of pain and infirmity, the shortness and
small number of his own acts is to be supplied by the acts of the ministers and
standers-by, who are in such case to speak more to God for him than to talk to
him. For the prayer of the righteous,[152]
when it is fervent, hath a promise to prevail much in behalf the sick person.
But exhortations must prevail with their own proper weight, not by the passion
of the speaker. But yet this assistance by way of prayers is not to be done by
long offices, but by frequent and fervent and holy; in which offices, if the
sick man joins, let them be short and apt to comply with his little strength
and great infirmities: if they be said in his behalf without his conjunction,
they that pray may prudently use their liberty, and take no measures but their
own devotions and opportunities, and the sick man's necessities.
When he hath made this general address and
preparatory entrance to the work of many days and periods, he may descend to
particulars by the following instruments and discourses.
The first necessity that is to be served
is that of repentance, in which the ministers can in no way serve him but by
first exhorting him to confession of his sins, and declaration of the state of
his soul. For unless they know the manner of his life, and the degrees of his
restitution, either they can do nothing at all, or nothing of advantage and
certainty. His discourses, like Jonathan's arrows, may shoot short or shoot
over, but not wound where they should, nor open those humours that need a
lancet or a cautery. To this purpose the sick man may be reminded:--
Arguments and Exhortations to move the Sick Man to Confession of Sins.
1. That God hath made a special promise to
confession of sins. `He that confesseth his sins, and forsaketh them, shall
have mercy;' and `If we confess our sins, God is righteous to forgive us our
sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.'[153] 2. That confession of sins is a proper act and
introduction to repentance. 3. That when the Jews, being warned by the sermons
of the Baptist, repented of their sins, they confessed their sins to John in
the susception of baptism.[154] 4. That the
converts in the days of the apostles, returning to Christianity, instantly
declared their faith and their repentance by confession and declaration of
their deeds,[155] which they then renounced,
abjured, and confessed to the apostles. 5. That confession is an act of many
virtues together. 6. It is the gate of repentance. 7. An instrument of shame
and condemnation of our sins. 8. A glorification of God, so called by Joshua,
particularly in the case of Achan. 9. An acknowledgment that God is just in
punishing; for by confessing of our sins we also confess his justice, and are
assessors with God in this condemnation of ourselves. 10. That by such an act
of judging ourselves, we escape the more angry judgment of God; St. Paul
expressly exhorting us to it upon that very inducement.[156] 11. That confession of sins is so necessary a duty,
that, in all Scriptures, it is the immediate preface to pardon, and the certain
consequence of godly sorrow, and an integral or constituent part of that grace
which, together with faith, makes up the whole duty of the gospel. 12. That in
all ages of the gospel it hath been taught and practised respectively, that all
the penitents made confessions proportionable to their repentance, that is,
public or private, general or particular. 13. That God, by testimonies from
heaven, that is by his word, and by a consequent rare peace of conscience, hath
given approbation to this holy duty. 14. That by this instrument those whose
office it is to apply remedies to every spiritual sickness can best perform
their offices. 15. That it is by all churches esteemed a duty necessary to be
done in cases of a troubled conscience. 16. That what is necessary to be done
in one case, and convenient in all cases, is fit to be done by all persons. 17.
That without confession it cannot easily be judged concerning the sick person
whether his conscience ought to be troubled or no, and therefore it cannot be
certain that it is not necessary. 18. That there can be no reason against it,
but such as consults with flesh and blood, with infirmity and sin, to all which
confession of sins is a direct enemy. 19. That now is that time when all the
imperfections of his repentance and all the breaches of his duty are to be made
up, and that if he omits this opportunity he can never be admitted to a
salutary and medicinal confession. 20. That St. James gives an express precept
that we Christians should confess our sins to each other,[157] that is, Christian to Christian, brother to brother,
the people to their minister; and then he makes a specification of that duty
which a sick man is to do when he hath sent for the elders of the church. 21.
That in all this there is no more lies upon him; but `if he hides his sins he
shall not be directed,' so said the wise man; but ere long he must appear
before the great Judge of men and angels; and his spirit will be more amazed
and confounded to be seen among the angels of light with the shadows of the
works of darkness upon him, than he can suffer by confessing to God in the
presence of him whom God hath sent to heal him. However, it is better to be
ashames here than to be confounded hereafter. "Polpudere praestat quam pigere,
totidem literis."[158] 22. That confession
being in order to pardon of sins, it is very proper and analogical to the
nature of the thing that it be made there where the pardon of sins is to be
administered; and that of pardon of sins God hath made the minister the
publisher and dispenser; and all this is besides the accidental advantages
which accrue to the conscience, which is made ashamed and timorous, and
restrained by the mortifications and blushings of discovering to a man the
faults committed in secret. 23. That the ministers of the gospel are the
ministers of reconciliation, are commanded to restore such persons as are
overtaken in a fault; and to that purpose they come to offer their ministry, if
they may have cognizance of the fault and person. 24. That in the matter of
prudence it is not safe to trust a man's self in the final condition and last
security of a man's soul, a man being no good judge of his own case. And when a
duty is so useful to all cases, so necessary in some, and encouraged by
promises evangelical, by Scripture precedents, by the example of both
Testaments, and prescribed by injunctions apostolical, and by the canon of all
churches, and the example of all ages, and taught us even by the proportions of
duty, and the analogy to the power of ministerial, and the very necessities of
every man; he that for stubbornness or sinful shamefacedness, or prejudice, or
any other criminal weakness, shall decline to do it in the days of his danger,
when the vanities of the world are worn off, and all affections to sin are
wearied, and the sin itself is pungent and grievous, and that we are certain we
shall not escape shame for them hereinafter, unless we be ashamed of them
here,[159] and use all the proper
instruments of their pardon; this man, I say, is very near death, but very far
off from the kingdom of heaven.
2. The spiritual man will find in the conduct of
this duty many cases and varieties of accidents which will alter his course and
forms of proceedings. Most men are of a rude indifferency, apt to excuse
themselves, ignorant of their condition abused by evil principles, content with
a general and indefinite confession; and, if you provoke them to it by the
forgoing considerations, lest their spirits should be a little uneasy, or not
secured in their own opinions, will be apt to say they are sinners, as every
man hath his infirmity, and he as well as any man: but, God be thanked, they
bear no ill-will to any man, or are no adulterers, or no rebels, or they have
fought on the right side; and God be merciful to them, for they are sinners.
But you shall hardly open their breasts further; and to inquire beyond this
would be to do the office of an accuser.
3. But which is yet worse, there are very many
persons who have been so used to an habitual course of a constant intemperance,
or dissolution in any other instance, that the crime is made natural and
necessary, and the conscience hath digested all the trouble, and the man thinks
himself to a good estate, and never reckons any sins but those which are the
egressions and passings beyond his ordinary and daily drunkenness. This happens
in the case of drunkenness and intemperate eating and idleness and
uncharitableness, and in lying and vain jestings, and particularly in such
evils which the laws do not punish, and public customs do not shame, but which
are countenanced by potent sinners, or evil customs, or good nature and
mistaken civilities.
Instruments by way of Consideration, to awaken a careless Person, and a
stupid Conscience.
In these and the like cases the spiritual
man must awaken the lethargy, and prick the conscience, by representing to him,
1. That Christianity is a holy and a strict religion. 2. That many are called,
but few are chosen. That the number of them that are to be saved is but a very
few in respect of those that are to descent into sorrow and everlasting
darkness. That we have covenanted with God in baptism to live a holy life. That
the measures of holiness in the Christian religion are not to be taken by the
evil proportions of the multitude and common fame of looser and less severe
persons; because the multitude is that which does not enter into heaven, but
the few, the elect, the holy servants of Jesus. That every habitual sin does
amount to a very great guilt in the whole, though it be but in a small
instance. That if the righteous scarcely be saved, then there will be no place
for the unrighteous and the sinner to appear in but places of horrow and
amazement. That confidence hath destroyed many souls, and many have had a sad
portion who have reckoned themselves in the calendar of saints. That the
promises of heaven are so great that it is not reasonable to think that every
man and every life and an easy religion shall possess such infinite glories.
That although heaven is a gift, yet there is a great severity and strict
exacting of the conditions on our part to receive that gift. That some persons
who have lived strictly for forty years together, yet have misearned by some
one crime at last, or some secret hypocrisy, or a latent pride, or a creeping
ambition, or a fantastic spirit; and therefore much less can they hope to
receive so great portions of felicities, when their life hath been a continual
declination from those severities which might have created confidence of pardon
and acceptation through the mercies of God and the merits of Jesus. That every
good man ought to be suspicious of himself, and in his judgment concerning his
own condition to fear the worst that he may provide for the better. That we are
commanded to work our out salvation with fear and trembling. That this precept
was given with great reason, considering the thousand thousand ways of
miscarrying. That St. Paul himself, and St. Arenius and St. Elzearius and
divers other remarkable saints, had at some times great apprehensions of the
dangers of failing of the mighty price of their high calling. That the stake
that is to be secured is of so great an interest that all our industry and all
the violatences we can suffer in the prosecution of it are not considerable.
That this affair is to be done but once, and then never any more unto eternal
ages. That they who profess themselves servants of the institution, and
servants of the law and discipline of Jesus, will find that they must judge
themselves by the proportions of that law by which they were to rule
themselves. That the laws of society and civility, and the voices of my company
are as ill judges as they are guides; but we are to stand or fall by his
sentence who will not consider or value the talk of idle men or the persuasion
of wilfully-abused consciences, but of him who hath felt our infirmity in all
things but sin, and knows where our failings are unavoidable, and where, and in
what degree they are excusable; but never will endure a sin should seize upon
any part of our love and deliberate choice or careless cohabitation. That if
our conscience accuse us not, yet are we not hereby justified; for God is
greater than our consciences. That they who are most innocent have their
consciences most tender and sensible. That scrupulous persons are always most
religious; and that to feel nothing is not a sign of life, but of death. That
nothing can be hid from the eyes of the Lord, to whom the day and the night,
public and private, words and thoughts, actions and desires, are equally
discernible. That a lukewarm person is only secured in his own thoughts, but
very unsafe in the event, and despised by God. That we live in an age in which
that which is called and esteemed a holy life, in the days of the apostles and
holy primitives would have been esteemed indifferent, sometimes scandalous, and
always cold. That what was a truth of God then is so now; and to what
severities they were tied, for the same also we are to be accountable; and
heaven is not now an easier purchase than it was then. That if he will cast up
his accounts, even with a superficial eye, let him consider how few good works
he hath done; how inconsiderable is the relief which he gave to the poor; how
little are the extraordinaries of his religion; and how inactive and lame, how
polluted and disordered, how unchosen and unpleasant were the ordinary parts
and periods of it; and how many and great sins have stained his course of life;
and till he enters into a particular scrutiny, let him only revolve in his mind
what his general course hath been; and, in the way of prudence, let him say
whether it was landable and holy or only indifferent and excusable; and if he
can think it only excusable, and so as to hope for pardon by such suppletories
of faith and arts of persuasion which he and others used to take in for
auxiliaries to their unreasonable confidence, then he cannot but think it very
fit that he search into his own state, and take a guide,and erect a tribunal,
or appear before that which Christ hath erected for him on earth, that he may
make his access fairer when he shall be called before the dreadful tribunal of
Christ in the clouds.[160] For if he can be
confident upon the stock of an unpraised or a looser life, and should dare to
venture upon wild accounts, without order, without abatements, without
consideration, without conduct, without fear, without scrutinies and
confessions and instruments of amends or pardon, he either knows not his danger
or cares not for it, and little understands how great a horror that is that a
man should rest his head for ever upon a cradle of flames, and lie in a bed of
sorrows, and never sleep, and never end his groans or the gnashing of his
teeth.
This is that which some spiritual persons call a
wakening of the sinner by the terrors of the law, which is a good analogy or
tropical expression to represent the threatenings of the Gospel, and the
dangers of an incurious and a sinning person; but we have nothing else to do
with the terrors of the law, for, blessed be God, they concern us not. The
terrors of the law were the intermination of curses upon all those that ever
broke any of the least commandments once or in any instance; and to it the
righteousness of faith is opposed. The terrors of the law admitted no
repentance, no pardon, no abatement, and were so severe that God never
inflicted them at all according to the letter, because he admitted all to
repentance that desired it with a timely prayer, unless in very few cases, as
of Achan, or Korah the gatherer of sticks upon the Sabbath day, or the like;
but the state of threatenings in the Gospel is very fearful, because the
conditions of avoiding them are easy and ready, and they happen to evil persons
after many warnings, second thoughts, frequent invitations to pardon and
repentance, and after one entire pardon consigned in baptism. And in this sense
it is necessary that such persons as we now deal withal should be instructed
concerning their danger.
4. When the sick man is, either of himself or by
these considerations, set forward with purposes of repentance and confession of
his sins, in order to all its holy purposes and effects then the minister is to
assist him in the understanding the number of his sins, that is, the several
kinds of them, and the various manners of prevaricating the divine
commandments: for, as for the number of the particulars in every kind, he will
need less help; and if he did he can have it nowhere but in his own conscience
and from the witnesses of his conversation. Let this be done by prudent
insinuation, by arts of remembrance, and secret notices, and propounding
occasions and instruments of recalling such things to his mind, which either by
public fame he is accused of, or by the temptations of his condition it is
likely he might have contracted.
5. If the person be truly penitent, and forward
to confess all that are set before him, or offered to his sight at a half face,
then he may be complied withal in all his innocent circumstances, and his
conscience made placid and willing, and he be drawn forward by good-nature and
civility, that his repentance in all the parts of it, and in every step of its
progress and emanation, may be as voluntary and chosen as it can. For by that
means, if the sick person can be invited to do the work of religion, it enters
by the door of his will and choice, and will pass on toward consummation by the
instrument of delight.
6. If the sick man be backward and without
apprehension of the good-natured and civil way, let the minister take care that
by some way or other the work of God be secured; and if he will not understand
when he is secretly prompted, he must be hallowed to, and asked in plain
interrogatives concerning the crime of his life. He must be told of the evil
things that are spoken of him in markets and exchanges, the proper temptations
and accustomed evils of his calling and condition, of the actions of scandal;
and in all those actions which are public, or of which any notice is come
abroad, let care be taken that the right side of the case of conscience be
turned toward him, and the error truly represented to him by which he was
abused, as the injustice of his contracts, his oppressive bargains, his rapine
and violence; and if he hath persuaded himself to think well of a scandalous
action, let him be instructed and advertised of his folly and his danger.
7. And this advice concerns the minister of
religion to follow without partiality, or fear, or interest, in much
simplicity, and prudence, and hearty sincerity; having no other consideration
but that the interest of the man's soul be preserved, and no caution used but
that the matter be represented with just circumstances and civilities, fitted
to the person with prefaces of honour and regard; but so that nothing of the
duty be diminished by it, that the introduction do not spoil the sermon, and
both together ruin two souls, of the speaker and the hearer. For it may soon be
considered, if the sick man be a poor or an indifferent person in secular
account, yet his soul is equally dear to God, and was redeemed with the same
highest price, and therefore to be highly regarded; and there is no temptation
but that the spiritual man may speak freely without the allays of interest, or
fear, or mistaken civilities. But if the sick man be a prince, or a person of
eminence or wealth, let it be remembered it is an ill expression of reverence
to his authority, or of regard to his person, to let him perish for the want of
an honest, and just, and free homily.
8. Let the sick man, in the scrutiny of his
conscience and confession of his sins, be carefully reminded to consider those
sins which are only condemned in the court of conscience, and nowhere else. For
there are certain secresies and retirements, places of darkness and artificial
veils, with which the devil uses to hide our sins from us, and to incorporate
them into our affections by a constant uninterrupted practice before they be
prejudiced or discovered. 1. There are many sins which have reputation and are
accounted honour; as fighting a duel, answering a blow with a blow, carrying
armies into a neighbour-country, robbing with a navy, violently seizing upon a
kingdom. 2. Others are permitted by law, as usury in all countries; and because
every excuse of it is a certain sin, the permission of so suspected a matter
makes it ready for us, and instructs the temptation. 3. Some things are not
forbidden by laws, as lying in ordinary discourse, jeering, scoffing,
intemperate eating, ingratitude, selling too high, circumventing another in
contracts, importunate entreaties, and temptation of persons to many instances
of sin, pride, and ambition. 4. Some others do not reckon they sin against God
if the laws have seized upon the person; and many that are imprisoned for debt
think themselves disobliged from payment, and when they pay the penalty think
they owe nothing for the scandal and disobedience. 5. Some sins are thought not
considerable, but go under the title of sins of infirmity, or inseparable
accidents of mortality; such as idle thoughts, foolish talking, looser
revellings, impatience, anger, and all the events of evil company. 6. Lastly,
many things are thought to be no sins; such as mispending of their time, whole
days or months of useless and impertinent employment, long gaming, winning
men's money in greater portions, censuring men's actions, curiosity,
equivocating in the prices and secrets of buying and selling, rudeness,
speaking truths enviously, doing good to evil purposes, and the like. Under the
dark shadow of these unhappy and fruitless yew-trees the enemy of mankind makes
very many to lie hid from themselves, sewing before their nakedness the
fig-leaves of popular and idol reputation and impunity, public permission, a
temporal penalty, infirmity, prejudice, and direct error in judgment and
ignorance. Now in all these cases the ministers are to be inquisitive and
observant, lest the fallacy prevail upon the penitent to evil purposes of death
or diminution of his good; and that those things, which in his life passed
without observation, may now be brought forth, and pass under saws and harrows,
that is, the severity and censure of sorrow and condemnation.
9. To which I add, for the likeness of the thing,
that the matters of omission be considered, for in them lies the bigger half of
our failings; and yet, in many instances, they are undiscerned, because they
very often sit down by the conscience but never upon it; and they are usually
looked upon as poor men's do upon their not having coach and horses, or as that
knowledge is missed by boys and hinds which they never had; it will be hard to
make them understand their ignorance - it requires knowledge to perceive it,
and therefore he that can perceive it hath it not. But by this pressing the
conscience with omissions, I do not mean recessions or distances from states of
eminency or perfection; for although they may be used by the ministers as an
instrument of humility, and a chastiser of too big a confidence, yet that which
is to be confessed and repented of is omission of duty in direct instances and
matters of commandment, or collateral and personal obligations, and is
especially to be considered by kings and prelates, by governors and rich
persons, by guides of souls and presidents of learning in public charge, and by
all other in their proportions.
10. The ministers of religion must take care that
the sick man's confession be as minute and particular as it can, and that as
few sins as may be, be entrusted to the general prayer of pardon for all sins;
for by being particular and enumerative of the variety of evils which have
disordered his life, his repentance is disposed to be more pungent and
afflictive, and therefore more salutary and medicinal; it hath in it more
sincerity, and makes a better judgment of the final condition of the man; and
from thence it is certain the hopes of the sick man can be more confident and
reasonable.
11. The spiritual man that assists at the
repentance of the sick must not be inquisitive into all the circumstances of
the particular sins, but be content with those that are direct parts of the
crime and aggravations of the sorrow; such as frequency, long abode, and
earnest choice in acting them; violent desires, great expense, scandal of
others, dishonour to the religion, days of devotion, religious solemnities, and
holy places; and the degrees of boldness and impudence, perfect resolution, and
the habit. If the sick person be reminded or inquired into concerning these, it
may prove a good instrument to increase his contrition, and perfect his
penitential sorrows, and facilitate his absolution and the means of his
amendment. But the other circumstances, as of the relative person in the
participation of the crime, the measures or circumstances of the impure action,
the name of the injured man or woman, the quality or accidental condition;
these and all the like are but questions springing from curiosity, and
producing scruple, and apt to turn into many inconveniences.
12. The minister in this duty of repentance must
be diligent to observe concerning the person that repents, that he be not
imposed upon by some one excellent thing that was remarkable in the sick man's
former life.[161] For there are some people
of one good thing. Some are charitable to the poor out of kind-heartedness; and
the same good nature makes them easy and compliant with drinking persons; and
they die with drink but cannot live with charity; and their alms, it may be,
shall deck their monument, or give them the reward of loving persons, and the
poor man's thanks for alms, and procure many temporal blessings; but it is very
sad that the reward should be soon spent in this world. Some are rarely just
persons and punctual observers of their word with men, but break their promises
with God, and make no scruple of that. In these and all the like cases, the
spiritual man must be careful to remark, that good proceeds from an entire and
integral cause, and evil from every part; that one sickness can make a man die,
but he cannot live and be called a sound man without an entire health; and
therefore, if any confidence arises upon that stock, so as that it hinders the
strictness of the repentance, it must be allayed with the representment of this
sad truth "that he who reserves one evil in his choice hath chosen an evil
portion," and coloquintida and death is in the pot; and he that worships the
God of Israel with a frequent sacrifice, and yet upon the anniversary will bow
in the house of Venus, and loves to see the follies and the nakedness of
Rimmon, may eat part of the flesh of the sacrifice and fill his belly, but
shall not be refreshed by the holy cloud arising from the alter, or the dew of
heaven descending upon the mysteries.
13. And yet the minister is to estimate, that one
or more good things is to be an ingredient into his judgment concerning the
state of his soul, and the capacities of his restitution, and admission to the
peace of the church; and according as the excellency and usefulness of the
grace hath been, and according to the degrees and the reasons of its
prosecution, so abatements are to be made in the injunctions and impositions
upon the penitent. For every virtue is one degree of approach to God; and
though in respect of the acceptation it is equally none at all, that is, it is
as certain a death if a man dies with one mortal wound as if he had twenty: yet
in such persons who have some one or more excellences, though not an entire
piety, there is naturally a nearer approach to the estate of grace than in
persons who have done evils and are eminent for nothing that is good. But in
making judgment of such persons, it is to be inquired into and noted
accordingly, why the sick person was so eminent in that one good thing; whether
by choice and apprehension of his duty, or whether it was a virtue from which
his state of life ministered nothing to dehort or discourse him, or whether it
was only a consequent of his natural temper and constitution. If the first,
then, it supposes him in the neighbourhood of the state of grace, and that in
other things he was strongly tempted. The second is a felicity of his
education, and an effect of Providence. The third is felicity of his nature,
and a gift of God in order to spiritual purposes. But yet of every one of these
advantages is to be made. If the conscience of his duty was the principle, then
he is ready formed to entertain all other graces upon the same reason, and his
repentance must be made more sharp and penal; because he is convinced to have
done against his conscience in all the other parts of his life; but the
judgment concerning his final state ought to be more gentle, because it was a
huge temptation that hindered the man and abused his infirmity. But if either
his calling or his nature were the parents of the grace, he is in the state of
a moral man, (in the just and proper meaning of the word,) and to be handled
accordingly; that virtue disposed him rarely well to many other good things,
but was no part of the grace of sanctification; and therefore the man's
repentance is to begin anew, for all that, and is to be finished in the returns
of health, if God grants it; but if he denies it, it is much, very much, the
worse for all that sweet-natured virtue.
14. When the confession is made, the spiritual
man is to execute the office of a restorer and a judge in the following
particulars and manner.
`If any man be overtaken in a fault ye
which are spiritual restore such a one in the spirit of meekness,'[162] that is the commission: and, `Let the
elders of the church pray over the sick man; and if he have committed sins they
shall be forgiven him;'[163] that
is the effect of his power and his ministry. But concerning this some few
things are to be considered.
1. It is the office of the presbyters and
ministers of religion to declare public criminals and scandalous persons to be
such, that, when the leprosy is declared, the flock may avoid the infection;
and then the man is excommunicate, when the people are warned to avoid the
danger of the man or the reproach of the crime, to withdraw from his society,
and not to bid him God speed, not to eat and celebrate syntaxes and
church-meetings with such who are declared criminal and dangerous. And
therefore excommunication is, in a very great part, the act of the congregation
and communities of the faithful: and St. Paul said to the church of the
Corinthians,[164] that they had
inflicted the evil upon the incestuous person, that is, by excommunicating him:
all the acts of which are, as they are subjected in the people, acts of caution
and liberty; but no more acts of direct proper power or jurisdiction than it
was when the scholars of Simon Magus left his chair and went to hear St. Peter;
but as they are actions of the rulers of the church, so they are declarative,
ministerial, and effective too by moral causality; that is, by persuasion and
discourse, by argument and prayer, by homily and material representment, by
reasonableness of order and the superinduced necessities of men; though not by
any real change of state as to the person, nor by diminution of his right, or
violence to his condition.
2. He that baptizes, and he that ministers the
holy sacrament, and he that prays, does holy offices of great advantage; but in
these also, just as in the former, he exercises no jurisdiction or pre-eminence
after the manner of secular authority;[165] and the same is also true if he should deny them. He
that refuseth to baptize an indisposed person hath, by the consent of all men,
no power or jurisdiction over the unbaptized man; and he that, for the like
reason, refuseth to give him the communion, preserves the sacredness of the
mysteries, and does charity to the undisposed man, to deny that to him which
will do him mischief: and this is an act of separation, just as it is for a
friend or physician to deny water to an hydropic person, or Italian wines to a
hectic fever, or as if Cato should deny to salute Bibulus, or the censor of
manners to do countenance to a wanton and a vicious person. And though this
thing was expressed by words of power, such as separation, abstention,
excommunication, deposition; yet these words we understand by the thing itself,
which was notorious and evident to be matter of prudence, security, and a free,
unconstrained discipline; and they passed into power by consent and voluntary
submission, having the same effect of constraint, fear, and authority, which we
see in secular jurisdiction: not because ecclesiastical discipline hath a
natural proper coercion as lay tribunals have, but because men have submitted
to it, and are bound to do so upon the interest of two or three Christian
graces.
In pursuance of this caution and
provision, the church superinduced times and manners of abstention, and
expressions of sorrow, and canonical punishments, which they tied the
delinquent people to suffer before they would admit them to the holy table of
the Lord. For the criminal having obliged himself by his sin, and the church
having declared it, when she should take notice of it, be is bound to repent,
to make him capable of pardon with God; and to prove that he is penitent he is
to do such actions which the church, in the virtue and pursuance of repentance,
shall accept as a testimony of it sufficient to inform her; for as she could
not bind at all (in this sense) till the crime was public, though the man had
bound himself in secret; so neither can she set him free till the repentance be
as public as the sin, or so as she can note it and approve it. Though the man
be free, as to God, by his internal act, yet, as the publication of the sin was
accidental to it, and the church-censure consequent to it, so is the
publication of repentance and consequent absolution extrinsieal to the pardon,
but accidentally and in the present circumstances necessary. This was the same
that the Jews did, (though in other instances and expressions,) and do to this
day to their prevaricating people; and the Essences in their assemblies, and
private colleges of scholars, and public universities. For all these being
assemblies of voluntary persons, and such as seek for advantage, are bound to
make an artificial authority in their superiors, and so to secure order and
government by their own obedience and voluntary subordination in the superior;
and the band of it is not any coercitive power, but the deny to communicate
such benefits which they seek in that communion and fellowship.
4. These, I say, were introduced in the special
manners and instances by positive authority, and have not a divine authority
commanding them; but there is a divine power that verifies them and makes these
separations effectual and formidable; for because they are declarative and
ministerial in the spiritual man, and suppose a delinquency and demerit in the
other, and a sin against God, our blessed Saviour hath declared that `what they
bind on earth shall be bound in heaven;' that is in plain signification, the
same sins and sinners which the clergy condemn in the face of their assemblies,
the same are condemned in heaven before the face of God, and for the same
reason too. God's law hath sentenced it, and these are the preachers and
publishers of his law by which they stand condemned; and these laws are they
that condemn the sin or acquit the penitent there and here; whatsoever they
bind here shall be bound there, that is, the sentence of God at the day of
judgment shall sentence the same men[166]
whom the church does rightly sentence here. It is spoken in the future, it
shall be bound in heaven; not but that the sinner is first bound there or
first absolved there; but because all binding and loosing in the interval is
imperfect and relative to the day of judgment, the day of the great sentence,
therefore it is set down in the time to come; and says this only, the clergy
are tied by the word and laws of God to condemn such sins and sinners; and that
you may not think it ineffective, because after such sentence the man lives and
grows rich, or remains in health and power, therefore be sure it shall be
verified in the day of judgment. This is hugely agreeable with the words of our
Lord and certain in reason; for that the minister does nothing to the final
alteration of the state of the man's soul by way of sentence, is
demonstratively certain, because he cannot bind a man but such as hath bound
himself and who is bound in heaven by his sin before his sentence in the
church; as also because the binding of the church is merely accidental and upon
publication only; and when the man repents he is absolved before God, before
the sentence of the church, upon his contrition and dereliction only; and if he
were not the church could not absolve him. The consequent of which evident
truth is this, that, whatsoever impositions the church-officers impose upon the
criminal, they are to avoid scandal, to testify repentance and to exercise it,
to instruct the people, to make them fear, to represent the act of God and the
secret and the true state of the sinner: and although they are not essentially
necessary to our pardon, yet they are become necessary when the church hath
seized upon the sinner by public notice of the crime; necessary (I say) for the
removing the scandal and giving testimony of our contrition, and for the
receiving all that comfort which he needs and can derive from the promises of
pardon as they are published by him that is commanded to preach them to all
them that repent. And therefore, although it cannot be necessary as to the
obtaining pardon that the priest should in private absolve a sick man from his
private sins, and there is no loosing where there was no precedent binding, and
he that was only bound before God, can before him only be loosed - yet as to
confess sins to any Christian in private may have many good ends, and to
confess them to a clergyman may have many more, so to hear God's sentence at
the mouth of the minister, pardon pronounced by God's ambassador, is of huge
comfort to them that cannot otherwise be comforted, and whose infirmity needs
it; and therefore it were very fit it were not neglected in the days of our
fear and danger, of our infirmities and sorrow.
5. The execution of this ministry being an act of
prudence and charity, and therefore relative to changing circumstances, it hath
been, and in many cases may, and in some must, be rescinded and altered. The
time of separation may be lengthened and shortened, the condition made lighter
or heavier, and for the same offence the clergyman is deposed, but yet admitted
to the communion for which one of the people who hath no office to lose is
denied the benefit of communicating; and this sometimes when he might lawfully
receive it: and a private man is separate when a multitude or a prince is not,
cannot, ought not; and at last, when the case of sickness and danger of death
did occur, they admitted all men that desired it; sometimes without scruple or
difficulty, sometimes with some little restraint in great or insolent cases,
(as in the case of apostasy, in which the council of Arles denied absolution
unless they received and gave public satisfaction by acts of repentance; and
some other councils denied at any time to do it to such persons,) according as
seemed fitting to the present necessities of the church. All which particulars
declare it to be no part of a divine commandment that any man should be denied
to receive the communion if he desires it, and if he be in any probable
capacity of receiving it.
6. Since the separation was an act of liberty and
a direct negative, it follows that the restitution was a mere doing that which
they refused formerly, and to give the holy communion was the formality of
absolution, and all the instrument and the whole matter of reconcilement; the
taking off the punishment is the pardoning of the sin; for this without the
other is but a word; and if this be done, I care not whether any thing is said
or no Vinum Dominicum ministratoris gratia est is also true in this
sense; to give the chalice and cup is the grace and indulgence of the minister;
and when that is done, the man hath obtained the peace of the church; and to do
that is all the absolution the church can give. And they were vain disputes
which were commenced some few ages since, concerning the forms of absolution,
whether they were indicative or optative, by way of declaration or by way of
sentence, for at first they had no forms at all, but they said a prayer, and,
after the manner of the Jews, laid hands upon the penitent when they prayed
over him, and so admitted him to the holy communion; for since the church had
no power over her children but of excommunicating and denying them to attend
upon holy offices and ministries respectively, neither could they have any
absolution but to admit them thither from whence formerly they were forbidden;
whatsoever ceremony or forms did signify, this was superinduced and arbitrary,
alterable and accidental; it had variety but no necessity.
7. The practice consequent to this is, that if
the penitent be bound by the positive censures of the church, he is to be
reconciled upon those conditions which the laws of the church tie him to in
case he can perform them: if he cannot, he can no longer be prejudiced by the
censure of the church,[167] which had no
relation but the people, with whom the dying man is no longer to converse: for
whatsoever relates to God is to be transacted in spiritual ways by contrition
and internal graces; and the mercy of the church is such as to give him her
peace and her blessing upon his undertaking to obey her injunctions, if he
shall be able: which injunctions, if they be declared by public sentence, the
minister hath nothing to do in the affairs but to remind him of his obligation
and reconcile him, that is, give him the holy sacrament.
8. If the penitent be not bound by public
sentence, the minister is to make his repentance as great, and his heart as
contrite, as he can; to dispose him by the repetition of acts of grace in the
way of prayer, and in real and exterior instances where he can; and then to
give him the holy communion in all the same cases in which he ought not to have
denied it to him in his health; that is, even in the beginnings of such a
repentance which by human signs he believes to be real and holy; and after this
the event must be left to God. The reason of the rule depends upon this,
because there is no divine commandment directly forbidding the rulers of the
church to give the communion to any Christian that desires it and professes
repentance of his sins. And all church-discipline in every instance, and to
every single person, was imposed upon him by men who did it according to the
necessities of this state and constitution of our affairs below: but we, who
are but ministers and delegates of pardon and condemnation, must resign and
give up our judgment when the man is no more to be judged by the sentences of
man, and by the proportions of this world, but of the other: to which, if our
reconciliation does advantage, we ought in charity to send him forth with all
the advantages he can receive; for he will need them all. And therefore the
Niceen council commands[168] that no man be
deprived of this necessary passport in the article of his death, and calls this
the ancient and canonical law of the church; and to minister it only supposes
the man in the communion of the church, not always in the state, but ever in
the possibilities, of sanctification. They who in the article and danger of
death were admitted to the communion, and tied to penance if they recovered,
(which was ever the custom of the ancient church, unless in very few cases,)
were but in the threshold of repentance in the commencement and first
introductions to a devout life; and, indeed, then it is a fit ministry that it
be given in all the periods of time in which the pardons of sins is working,
since it is the sacrament of that great mystery, and the exhibition of that
blood which is shed for the remission of sins.
9. The minister of religion ought not to give the
communion to a sick person if he retains the affection to any sin, and refuses
to disavow it, or profess repentance of all sins whatsoever, if he be required
to do it. The reason is, because it is a certain death to him, and an increase
of his misery, if he shall so profane the body and blood of Christ as to take
it into so unholy a breast, where Satan reigns, and sin is principal, and the
Spirit is extinguished, and Christ loves not to enter, because he is not
suffered to inhabit. But when he professes repentance,[169] and does such acts of it as his present condition
permits, he is to be presumed to intend heartily what he professes solemnly;
and the minister is only the judge of outward act, and by that only he is to
take information concerning the inward. But whether he be so or no, or if he
be, whether that be timely, and effectual, and sufficient toward the pardon of
sins before God, is another consideration of which we may conjecture here, but
we shall know it at dooms-day. The spiritual man is to do his ministry by the
rules of Christ, and as the customs of the church appoint him, and after the
manner of men: the event is in the hands of God, and is to be expected, not
directly and wholly according to his ministry, but to the former life, or the
timely internal repentance and amendment, of which I have already given
accounts. These ministries are acts of order and great assistances, but the sum
of affairs does not rely upon them. And if any man puts his whole repentance
upon this time, or all his hopes upon these ministries, he will find them and
himself to fail.
10. It is the minister's office to invite sick
and dying persons to the holy sacrament; such whose lives were fair and
laudable, and yet their sickness sad and violent, making them listless and of
slow desires, and slower apprehensions; that such persons who are in the state
of grace may lose no accidental advantages of spiritual improvement, but may
receive into their dying bodies the symbols and great consignations of the
resurrection, and into their souls the pledges of immortality, and may appear
before God their father in the union and with the impresses and likeness of
their elder brother. But if the persons be of ill report, and have lived
wickedly, they are not to be invited; because their case is hugely suspicious,
though they then repent and call for mercy: but if they demand it, they are not
to be denied; only let the minister in general represent the evil consequence
of an unworthy participation; and if the penitent will judge himself unworthy,
let him stand candidate for pardon at the hands of God, and stand or fall by
that unerring and merciful sentence, to which his severity of condemning
himself before men will make the easier and more hopeful address. And the
strictest among the Christians who denied to reconcile lapsed persons after
baptism, yet acknowledged that there were hopes reserved in the court of heaven
for them, though not here; since we, who are easily deceived by the pretenses
of a real return, are tied to dispense God's graces, as he hath given us
commission, with fear and trembling, and without too forward confidences; and
God hath mercies which we know not of; and therefore, because we know them not,
such persons were referred to God's tribunal, where he would find them if they
were to be had at all.
11. When the holy sacrament is to be
administered, let the exhortation be made proper to the mystery, but fitted to
the man; that is, that it be used for the advantages of faith, or love, or
contrition: let all the circumstances and parts of the divine love be
represented, all the mysterious advantages of the blessed sacrament be
declared, that it is the bread which came from heaven; that it is the
representation of Christ's death to all the purposes and capacities of faith,
and the real exhibition of Christ's body and blood to all the purposes of the
Spirit; that it is the earnest of the resurrection, and the seed of a glorious
immortality; that as by our cognation to the body of the first Adam we took in
death, so, by our union with the body of the second Adam, we shall have the
inheritance of life; (for as by Adam came death, so by Christ cometh the
resurrection of the dead;[170]) that if we,
being worthy communicants of these sacred pledges, being presented to God with
Christ within us, our being accepted of God is certain, even for the sake of
his well-beloved that dwells within us; that this is the sacrament of that body
which was broken for our sins, of that blood which purifies our souls, by which
we are presented to God pure and holy in the beloved; that now we may ascertain
our hopes and make our faith confident; `for he that hath given us his Son, how
should not he with him give us all things else?'[171] Upon these or the like considerations the sick man may
be assisted in his address, and his faith strengthened, and his hope confirmed,
and his charity be enlarged.
12. The manner of the sick man's reception of the
holy sacrament hath in it nothing differing from the ordinary solemnities of
the sacrament,[172] save only that
abatement is to be made of such accidental circumstances as by the laws and
customs of the church healthful persons are obliged to, such as fasting,
kneeling, etc. Though I remember that it was noted for great devotion in the
legate that died at Trent, that he caused himself to be sustained upon his
knees when he received the viaticum, or the holy sacrament, before, his
death; and it was greater in Huniades that he caused himself to be carried to
the church, that there he might receive his Lord in his Lord's house; and it
was recorded for honour, that William, the pious archbishop of Bourges, a small
time before his last agony, sprang out of his bed at the presence of the holy
sacrament, and, upon his knees and his face, recommended his soul to his
Saviour. But in these things no man is to be prejudiced or censured.
13. Let not the holy sacrament be administered
to dying persons, when they have no use of reason to make that duty acceptable,
and the mysteries effective to the purposes of the soul. For the sacraments and
ceremonies of the gospel operate not without the concurrent actions and moral
influences of the suscipient. To infuse the chalice into the cold lips of the
clinic may disturb his agony, but cannot relieve the soul which only receives
improvement by acts of grace and choice, to which the external rites are apt
and appointed to minister in a capable person. All other persons, as fools,
children, distracted persons, lethargieal, apoplectical, or any ways senseless
and incapable of human and reasonable acts, are to be assisted only by prayers;
for they may prevail even for the absent, and for enemies, and for all those
who join not in the office.
1. In all cases of receiving confessions
of sick men, and the assisting to the advancement of repentance, the minister
is to apportion to every kind of sin such spiritual remedies which are apt to
mortify and cure the sin; such as abstinence from their occasions and
opportunities, to avoid temptations, to resist their beginnings, to punish the
crime by acts of indignation against the person, fastings and prayer, alms and
all the instances of charity, asking forgiveness, restitution of wrongs,
satisfaction of injuries, acts of virtue contrary to the crimes. And although,
in great and dangerous sicknesses, they are not directly to be imposed unless
they are not directly to be imposed unless they are direct matters of duty;
yet, where they are medicinal, they are to be insinuated, and in general
signification remarked to him, and undertaken accordingly; concerning which,
when he returns to health, he is to receive particular advices. And this advice
was inserted into the penitential of England, in the time of Theodore,
archbishop of Canterbury, and afterwards adopted into the canon of the western
churches.[173]
2. The proper temptations of sick men,
for which a remedy is not yet provided, are unreasonable fears and unreasonable
confidences, which the minister is to cure by the following considerations:
Considerations against Unreasonable Fears of not having our Sins
pardoned.
Many good men, especially such who have
tender consciences, impatient of the least sin, to which they are arrived by a
long grace, and a continual observation of their actions, and the parts of a
lasting repentance, many times overact their tenderness, and turn their caution
into scruple, and care of their duty into inquiries after the event, and
askings after the counsels of God and the sentences of doomsday.
He that asks of the standers-by, or of the
minister, whether they think he shall be saved or damned, is to be answered
with the words of pity and reproof. Seek not after new light for the searching
into the private records of God: look as much as you list into the pages of
revelation, for they concern your duty; but the event is registered in heaven,
and we can expect no other certain notices of it, but that it shall be given to
them for whom it is prepared by the Father of mercies. We have light enough to
tell our duty; and if we do that, we need not fear what the issue will be; and
if we do not, let us never look for more light, or inquire after God's pleasure
concerning our souls, since we so little serve his ends in those things where
he hath given us light. But yet this I add, that as pardon of sins in the Old
Testament[174] was nothing but removing the
punishment, which then was temporal, and therefore many times they could tell
if their sins were pardoned; and concerning pardon of sins, they then had no
fears of conscience but while the punishment was on them, for so long indeed it
was unpardoned, and how long it would so remain it was matter of fear and of
present sorrow; besides this, in the Gospel pardon of sins is another thing;
pardon for sins is a sanctification; Christ came to take away our sins, by
turning every one of us from our iniquities;[175] and there is not in the nature of the thing any
expectation of pardon, or sign or signification of it, but so far as the thing
itself discovers itself. As we hate sin, and grow in grace, and arrive at the
state of holiness, which is also a state of repentance and imperfection, but
yet of sincerity of heart and diligent endeavour; in the same degree we are to
judge concerning the forgiveness of sins: for indeed that is the evangelical
forgiveness, and it signifies our pardon, because it effects it, or rather it
is in the nature of the thing; so that we are to inquire into no hidden
records: forgiveness of sins is not a secret sentence, a word, or a record; but
it is a state of change, and effected upon us; and upon ourselves we look for
it, to read it, and understand it. We are only to be curious of our duty, and
confident of the article of the remission of sins;[176] and the conclusion of these premises will be, that we
shall be full of hopes of a prosperous resurrection; and our fear and trembling
are no instances of our calamity, but parts of duty; we shall sure enough be
wafted to the shore, although we be tossed with the winds of our sighs, and the
unevenness of our fears, and the ebbings and flowings of our passions, if we
sail in a right channel, and steer by a perfect compass, and look up to God,
and call for his help, and do our own endeavour. There are very many reasons
why men ought not to despair; and there are not very many men that ever go
beyond a hope till they pass into possession. If our fears have any mixture of
hope, that is enough to enable and to excite our duty; and if we have a strong
hope, when we cast about we shall find reason enough to have many fears. Let
not this fear weaken our hands; and if it allay our gaieties and our
confidences, it is no harm. In this uncertainty we must abide if we have
committed sins after baptism; and those confidences which some men glory in are
not real supports or good foundations. The fearing man is the safest; and if he
fears on his death-bed, it is but what happens to most considering men, and
what was to be looked for all his life time: he talked of the terrors of death,
and death is the king of terrors; and therefore it is no strange thing if then
he be hugely afraid; if he be not, it is either a great felicity or a great
presumption. But if he want some degree of comfort, or a greater degree of
hope, let him be refreshed by considering,
1. That Christ came into the world to save
sinners.[177] 2. That God delights not in
the confusion and death of sinners. 3. That in heaven there is great joy at the
conversion of a sinner. 4. That Christ is a perpetual advocate, daily
interceding with his Father for our pardon. 5. That God uses infinite arts,
instruments, and devices, to reconcile us to himself. 6. That he prays us to be
in charity with him, and to be forgiven. 7. That he sends angels to keep us
from violence and evil company, from temptations and surprises, and his Holy
Spirit to guide us in holy ways, and his servants to warn us and remind us
perpetually: and therefore since certainly he is so desirous of save us, as
appears by his word, by his oaths, by his very nature, and his daily artifices
of mercy, it is not likely that he will condemn us without great provocations
of his majesty, and perserverance in them. 8. That the covenant of the Gospel
is a covenant of grace and of repentance, and being established with so many
great solemnities and miracles from heaven, must signify a huge favour and a
mighty change of things; and therefore that repentance, which is the great
condition of it is a grace that does not expire in little accents and minutes,
but hath a great latitude of signification, and large extension of parts, under
the protection of all which persons are safe even when they fear exceedingly.
9. That there are great degrees and differences of glory in heaven; and
therefore, if we estimate our piety by proportions to the more eminent persons
and devouter people, we are not to conclude we s hall not enter into the same
state of glory, but that we shall not go into the same degree. 10. That
although forgiveness of sins is consigned to us in baptism, and that this
baptism is but once, and cannot be repeated; yet forgiveness of sins is the
grace of the Gospel, which is perpetually remanent upon us, and secured unto us
so long as we have not renounced our baptism: for then we enter into the
condition of repentance; and repentance is not an indivisible grace, or a thing
performed at once, but it is working all our lives: and therefore so is our
pardon, which ebbs and flows according as we discompose or renew the decency of
our baptismal promises; and therefore it ought to be certain that no man
despair of pardon but he that hath voluntarily renounced his baptism, or
willingly estranged himself from that covenant. He that sticks to it, and still
professes the religion, and approves the faith, and endeavours to obey and to
do his duty, this man hath all the veracity of God to assure him and give him
confidence that he is not in an impossible state of salvation unless God cuts
him off before he can work, or that he begins to work when he can no longer
choose. 11. And then let him consider, the more he fears the more he hates his
sin that is the cause of it, and the less he can be tempted to it, and the more
desirous he is of heaven; and therefore such fears are good instruments of
grace, and good signs of a future pardon. 12. That God in the old law although
he made a covenant of perfect obedience and did not promise pardon at all after
great sins, yet he did give pardon, and declared it so to them for their own
and for our sakes too. So he did to David, to Manasses, to the whole nation of
the Israelites, ten times in the wilderness, even after their apostacies and
idolatries. And in the prophets the mercies of God and his remissions of sins
were largely preached, though in the law God put on the robes of an angry judge
and a severe lord. But therefore in the Gospel, where he hath established the
whole sum of affairs upon faith and repentance, if God should not pardon great
sinners that repent after baptism with a free dispensation, the Gospel were far
harder than the intolerable covenant of the law. 13. That if a proselyte went
into the Jewish communion, and were circumcised and baptized, he entered into
all the hopes of good things which God had promised or would give to his
people; and yet that was but the covenant of works. If, then, the Gentile
proselytes, by their circumcision and legal baptism, were admitted to a state
of pardon, to last so long as they were in the covenant, even after their
admission, for sins committed against Moses's law, which they then undertook to
observe exactly; in the Gospel, which is the covenant of faith, it must needs
be certain that there is a greater grace given, and an easier condition entered
into, than was that of the Jewish law; and that is nothing else but that
abatement is made for our infirmities, and our single evils, and our
timely-repented and forsaken habits of sin, and our violent passions, when they
are contested withal, and fought with, and under discipline, and in the
beginnings and progresses of mortification. 14. That God hath erected in his
church a whole order of men, the main part and dignity of whose work it is to
remit and retain sins by a perpetual and daily ministry; and this they do, not
only in baptism, but in all their offices to be administered afterwards, in the
holy sacrament of the eucharist, which exhibits the symbols of that blood which
was shed for pardon of our sins, and therefore, by its continued mystery and
repetition declares that all that while we are within the ordinary powers and
usual dispensations of pardon, even so long as we are in any probable
dispositions to receive that holy sacrament. And the same effect is also
signified and exhibited in the whole power of the keys, which, if it extends to
private sins, sins done in secret, it is certain it does also to public. But
this is a greater testimony of the certainty of the remissibility of our
greatest sins; for public sins, as they always have a sting and a superadded
formality of scandal and ill example, so they are most commonly the greatest;
such as murder, sacrilege, and others of unconcealed nature, and unprivate
action; and if God, for these worst of evils, hath appointed an office of ease
and pardon, which is and may daily be administered, that will be an uneasy
pusillanimity and fond suspicion of God's goodness to fear that our repentance
shall be rejected, even although we have committed the greatest or the most of
evils. 15. And it was concerning baptized Christians that St. John said, `If
any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, and he is the propitiation
for our sins;' and concerning lapsed Christians St. Paul gave instruction, that
`if any man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual restore such a man
in the spirit of meekness; considering lest ye also be tempted.' The Corinthian
Christian committed incest, and was pardoned; and Simon Magus after he was
baptized, offered to commit his own sin of simony, and yet St. Peter bid him
pray for pardon; and St. James tells, that `if the sick man sends for the
elders of the church, and they pray over him, and he confess his sins, they
shall be forgiven him.' 16. That only one sin is declared to be irremissible,
`the sin against the Holy Ghost, the sin unto death,' as St. John calls it, for
which we are not bound to pray - for all others we are; and certain it is no
man commits a sin against the Holy Ghost, if he be afraid he hath, and desires
that he had not; for such penitential passions are against the definition of
that sin. 17. That all the sermons in the Scripture written to Christians and
disciples of Jesus, exhorting men to repentance, to be afflicted, to mourn and
to weep, to confession of sins, are sure testimonies of God's purpose and
desire to forgive us, even when we fall after baptism; and if our fall after
baptism were irrecoverable, than all preaching were in vain, and our faith were
also vain, and we could not with comfort rehearse the creed, in which, as soon
as ever we profess Jesus to have died for our sins, we also are condemned by
our own conscience of a sin that shall not be forgiven; and then all
exhortations and comforts and fasts and disciplines were useless and too late,
if they were not given us before we can understand them; for, most commonly, as
soon as we can, we enter into the regions of sin, for we commit evil actions
before we understand, and together with our understanding they begin to be
imputed. 18. That if it could be otherwise, infants were very ill provided for
in the church who were baptized, when they have no stain upon their brows but
the misery they contracted from Adam; and they are left to be angels for ever
after, and live innocently in the midst of their ignorances and weaknesses and
temptations and the heat and follies of youth, or else to perish in an eternal
ruin. We cannot think of speak good things of God if we entertain such evil
suspicions of the mercies of the Father of our Lord Jesus. 19. That the
long-sufferance and patience of God is indeed wonderful; but therefore it
leaves us in certainties of pardon, so long as there is the possibility to
return, if we reduce the power to act. 20. That God calls upon us to forgive
our brother seventy times seven times, and yet all that is but like the
forgiving a hundred pence for his sake who forgives us ten thousand talents;
for so the Lord professed that he had done to him that was his servant and his
domestic. 21. That if we can forgive a hundred thousand times, it is certain
God will do so to us, our blessed Lord having commanded us to pray for pardon
as we pardon our offending and penitent brother. 22. That even in the case of
very great sins, and great judgments inflicted upon the sinners, wise and good
men and presidents of religion have declared their sense to be, that God spent
all his anger, and made it expire in that temporal misery; and so it was
supposed to have been done in the case of Ananias: but that the hopes of any
penitent man may not rely upon any uncertainty, we find in holy Scripture that
those Christians who had for their scandalous crimes deserved to be given over
to Satan to be buffeted, yet had hopes to be saved in the day of the Lord. 23.
That God glories in the titles of mercy and forgiveness, and will not have his
appellatives so finite and limited as to expire in one act, or in a seldom
pardon. 24. That man's condition were desperate, and like that of the fallen
angels, equally desperate, but unequally oppressed, considering our infinite
weaknesses and ignorances, (in respect of their excellent understanding and
perfect choice,) if he could be admitted to no repentance after his infant
baptism; and if he may be admitted to one, there is nothing in the covenant of
the Gospel but he may also to a second, and so for ever, as long as he can
repent and return and live to God in a timely religion. 25. That every man is a
sinner - `in many things we offend all;'[178] and `if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves;'[179] and therefore either all must perish, or
else there is mercy for all; and so there is, upon this very stock, because
`Christ died for sinners,'[180] and `God
hath comprehended all under sin, that he might have mercy upon all.'[181] 26. That if ever God sends temporal
punishments into the world with purposes of amendment, and if they be not all
of them certain consignations to hell, and unless every man that breaks his
leg, or in punishment loses a child or wife, be certainly damned, it is certain
that God in these cases is angry and loving, chastises the sin to amend the
person, and smites that he may cure, and judge that he may absolve. 27. That he
that will not quench the smoking flax, nor break the bruised reed - will not
tie us to perfection and the laws and measures of heaven upon earth; and if, in
every period of our repentance, he is pleased with our duty, and the voice of
our heart, and the hand of our desires, he hath told us plainly that he will
not only pardon all the sins of the days of our folly, but the returns and
surprises of sins in the days of repentance, if we give no way, and allow no
affection, and give no place to anything that is God's enemy; all the past
sins, and all the seldom-returning and ever-repented evils put upon the
accounts of the cross.
An Exercise against Despair in the Day of our Death.
To which may be added this short exercise,
to be used for the curing the temptation to direct despair, in case that the
hope and faith of good men be assaulted in the day of their calamity.
I consider that the ground of my trouble is my
sin; and if it were not for that, I should not need to be troubled; but the
help that all the world looks for is such as supposes a man to be a sinner.
Indeed, if from myself I were to derive my title to heaven, then my sins were a
just argument of despair; but now that they bring me to Christ, that they drive
me to an appeal to God's mercies, and to take sanctuary in the cross, they
ought not, they cannot, infer a just cause of despair. I am sure it is a
stranger thing that God should take upon him hands and feet, and those hands
and feet should be nailed upon a cross, than that a man should be partaker of
the felicities of pardon and life eternal; and it were stranger yet that God
should do so much for man, and that a man that desires it, that labours for it,
that is in life and possibilities of working his salvation, should inevitably
miss that end for which that God suffered so much. For what is the meaning, and
what is the extent, and what are the significations, of the divine mercy in
pardoning sinners? If it be thought a great matter that I am charged with
original sin, I confess I feel the weight of it in loads of temporal
infelicities and proclivities to sin; but I fear not the guilt of it, since I
am baptized, and it cannot do honour to the reputation of God's mercy that it
should be all spent in remissions of what I never chose, never acted, never
knew of, could not help, concerning which I received no commandment, no
prohibition. But, blessed be God, it is ordered in just measures that that
original evil which I contracted without my knowledge; and what I suffered
before I had a being was cleansed before I had an useful understanding. But I
am taught to believe God's mercies to be infinite, not only in himself but to
us; for mercy is a relative term, and we are its correspondent: of all the
creatures which God made, we only, in a proper sense, are the subjects of mercy
and remission. Angels have more of God's bounty than we have, but not so much
of his mercy; and beasts have little rays of his kindness, and effects of his
wisdom and graciousness in petty donatives, but nothing of mercy; for they have
no laws, and therefore no sins, and need no mercy, nor are capable of any.
Since, therefore, man alone is the correlative, or proper object and vessel of
reception of an infinite mercy, and that mercy is in giving and forgiving, I
have reason to hope that he will so forgive me that my sins shall not hinder me
of heaven; or because it is a gift, I may also, upon the stock of the same
infinite mercy, hope he will give heaven to me; and if I have it either upon
the title of giving or forgiving, it is alike to me, and will alike magnify the
glories of the divine mercy. And because eternal life is the gift of God,[182] I have less reason to despair; for if my
sins were fewer, and my disproportions towards such a glory were less, and my
evenness more, yet it is still a gift, and I could not receive it but as a free
and a gracious donative, and so I may still: God can still give it me; and it
is not an impossible expectation to wait and look for such a gift at the hands
of the God of mercy; the best men deserve it not, and I, who am the worst, may
have it given me. And I consider that God hath set no measures of his mercy,
but that we be within the covenant, that is, repenting persons, endeavouring to
serve him with an honest, single heart; and that within this covenant there is
a very great latitude and variety of persons and degrees and capacities; and
therefore that it cannot stand with the proportions of so infinite a mercy that
obedience be exacted to such a point, which he never expressed, unless it
should be the least, and that to which all capacities, though otherwise
unequal, are fitted and sufficiently enabled. But, however, I find that the
Spirit of God taught the writers of the New Testament to apply to us all in
general, and to every single person in particular, some gracious words which
God in the Old Testament spake to one man upon a special occasion in a single
and temporal instance. Such are the words which God spake to Joshua; `I will
never fail thee, nor forsake thee:' and upon the stock of that promise St. Paul
forbids covetousness and persuades contentedness,[183] because those words were spoken by God to
Joshua in another case. If the gracious words of God have so great an extension
of parts, and intention of kind purposes, then how many comforts have we upon
the stock of all the excellent words which are spoken in the prophets and in
the Psalms? and I will never more question whether they be spoken concerning
me, having such an authentic precedent so to expound the excellent words of
God; all the treasures of God which are in the Psalms are my own riches, and
the wealth of my hope; there will I look, and whatsoever I can need, that I
will depend upon. For certainly, if we could understand it, that which is
infinite (as God is) must needs be some such kind of thing: it must go whither
it was never sent, and signify what was not first intended, and it must warm
with its light, and shine with its heat, and refresh when it strikes, and heal
when it wounds, and ascertain where it makes afraid, and intend all when it
warns one, and mean a great deal in a small word. And as the sun, passing to
its southern tropic, looks with an open eye upon his sun-burnt Ethiopians, but
at the same time sends light from its posterns, and collateral influences from
the back side of his beams, and sees the corners of the east when his face
tends towards the west, because he is a round body of fire, and hath some
little images and resemblances of the Infinite; so is God's mercy when it
looked upon Moses: it relieved St. Paul, and it pardoned David, and gave hope
to Manasses, and might have restored Judas if he would have had hope, and used
himself accordingly. But as to my own case, I have sinned grievously and
frequently;[184] but I have repented it;
but I have begged pardon; I have confessed it and forsaken it. I cannot undo
what was done, and I perish if God hath appointed no remedy, if there be no
remission; but then my religion falls together with my hope, and God's word
fails as well as I. But I believe the article of forgiveness of sins; and if
there be any such thing I may do well, for I have and do and will do that which
all good men call repentance, that is, I will be humbled before God, and mourn
for my sin, and for ever ask forgiveness, and judge myself, and leave it with
haste, and mortify it with diligence, and watch against it carefully. And this
I can do but in the manner of man; I can but mourn for my sins, as I apprehend
grief in other instances, but I will rather choose to suffer all evils than to
do one deliberate act of sin. I know my sins are greater than my sorrow, and
too many for my memory, and too insinuating to be prevented by all my are; but
I know also that God knows and pities my infirmities, and how far that will
extend I know not, but that it will reach so far as to satisfy my needs is the
matter of my hope. But this I am sure of, that I have in my great necessity
prayed humbly and with great desire, and sometimes I have been heard in kind,
and sometimes have had a bigger mercy instead of it; and I have the hope of
prayers, and the hope of my confession, and the hope of my endeavour, and the
hope of many promises, and of God's essential goodness; and I am sure that God
hath heard my prayers, and verified his promises in temporal instances, for he
ever gave me sufficient for my life; and although he promised such supplies,
and grounded the confidences of them upon our last seeking the kingdom of
heaven and its righteousness, yet he hath verified it to me who have not sought
it as I ought; but therefore I hope he accepted my endeavour, or will give his
great gifts and our great expectation even to the weakest endeavour, to the
least, so it be a hearty piety. And sometimes I have had some cheerful
visitations of God's Spirit, and my cup hath been crowned with comfort, and the
wine that made my heart glad danced in the chalice, and I was glad that God
would have me so; and therefore I hope this cloud may pass; for that which was
then a real cause of comfort is so still if I could discern it, and I shall
discern it when the veil is taken from mine eyes. And, blessed be God, I can
still remember that there are temptations to despair; and they could not be
temptations if they were not apt to persuade, and had seeming probability on
their side; and they that despair think they do it with the greatest reason;
for if they were not confident of the reason, but that it were such an argument
as might be opposed or suspected, then they could not despair. Despair assents
as firmly and strongly as faith itself; but because it is a temptation, and
despair is a horrid sin, there it is certain those persons are unreasonably
abused, and they have no reason to despair, for all their confidence; and,
therefore, although I have strong reasons to condemn my despair, which
therefore is unreasonable, because it is a sin, and a dishonour to God, and a
ruin to my condition, and verifies itself if I do not look to it. For as the
hypochondriac person that thought himself dead made his dream true when he
starved himself because dead people eat not; so do despairing sinners lose
God's mercies by refusing to use and to believe them. And I hope it is a
disease of judgment, not an intolerable condition, that I am falling into;
because I have been afflicted, because they see not their pardon sealed after
the manner of this world; and the affairs of the Spirit are transacted by
immaterial notices, by propositions and spiritual discourses, by promises which
are to be verified hereafter: and here we must live in a cloud, in darkness
under a veil, in fear and uncertainties; and our very living by faith and hope
is a life of mystery and secrecy, the only part of the manner of that life in
which we shall live in the state of separation. And when a distemper of body or
an infirmity of mind happens in the instances of such secret and reserved
affairs, we may easily mistake the manner of our notices for the uncertainty of
the thing; and therefore it is but reason I should stay till the state and
manner of my abode be changed before I despair: there it can be no sin nor
error, here it may be both; and if it be that, it is also this, and then a man
may perish for being miserable, and be undone for being a fool. In conclusion,
my hope is in God, and I will trust him with the event, which I am sure will be
just, and I hope full of mercy. However now I will use all the spiritual arts
of reason and religion to make me more and more to love God, that if I
miscarry, charity also shall fail, and something that loves God shall perish
and be damned, which if it be possible than I may do well.
These considerations may be useful to men of
little hearts and of great piety; or if they be persons who have lived without
infamy, or begun their repentance so late that it is very imperfect, and yet so
early that it was before the arrest of death. But if the man be a vicious
person, and hath persevered in a vicious life till his death-bed, these
considerations are not proper. Let him inquire, in the words of the first
disciples after Pentecost, `Men and brethren, what shall we do to be saved?'
and if they can but entertain so much hope as to enable them to do so much of
their duty as they can for the present, it is all that can be provided for
them: an inquiry, in their case, can have no other purposes of religion or
prudence. And the minister must be infinitely careful that he do not go about
to comfort vicious persons with the comforts belonging to God's elect, lest he
prostitute holy things, and make them common, and his sermons deceitful, and
vices be encouraged in others, and the man himself find that he was deceived,
when he descends into his house of sorrow.
But because very few men are tempted with too
great fears of failing, but very many are tempted by confidence and
presumption, the ministers of religion had need be instructed with spiritual
armour to resist this firey dart of the devil, when it operates to evil
purposes.
I have already enumerated many
particulars to provoke drowsy conscience to a scrutiny and to a suspection of
himself, that by seeing cause to suspect his condition he might more freely
accuse himself, and attend to the necessities and duties of repentance; but if
either before or in his repentance he grow too big in his spirit, so as either
he does some little violences to the modesties of humility, or abates his care
and zeal to his repentance, the spiritual man must allay his forwardness by
representing to him, 1. That the growths in grace are long, difficult,
uncertain, hindered, of many parts and great variety. 2. That an infant grace
is soon dashed and discountenanced, often running into an inconvenience and the
evils of an imprudent conduct, being zealous and forward, and therefore
confident, but always with the least reason and the greatest danger; like
children and young fellows, whose confidence hath no other reason but that they
understand not their danger and their follies. 3. That he that puts on his
armour ought not to boast as he that puts it off; and the apostle chides the
Galatians for ending in the flesh after they had begun in the spirit. 4. That a
man cannot think too meanly of himself, but very easily he may thing too high.
5. That a wise man will always, in a matter of great concernment, think the
worst, and a good man will condemn himself with hearty sentence. 6. That
humility and modesty of judgment and of hope are very good instruments to
procure a mercy and a fair reception at the day of our death; but presumption
or bold opinions serve no end of God or man, and is always imprudent, ever
fatal, and of all things in the world is its own greatest enemy; for the more
any man presumes, the greater reason he hath to fear. 7. That a man's heart is
infinitely deceitful, unknown to itself, not certain in his own acts, praying
one way and desiring another, wandering and imperfect loose and various,
worshipping God and entertaining sin, following what it hates, and running from
what it flatters, loving to be tempted and betrayed; petulant, like a wanton
girl running from, that it might invite the fondness and enrage the appetite of
the foolish young man, or the evil temptation that follows it; cold and
indifferent one while, and presently zealous and passionate, furious and
indiscreet; not understood of itself, or any one else, and deceitful beyond all
the arts and numbers of observation. 8. That it is certain we have highly
sinned against God, but we are not so certain that our repentane is real and
effective, integral and sufficient. 9. That it is not revealed to us whether or
no the time of our repentance be not past; or, if it be not, yet how far God
will give us pardon, and upon what condition, or after what sufferings or
duties, is still under a cloud. 10. That virtue and vice are oftentimes so near
neighbours that we pass into each other's borders without observation, and
think we do justice when we are cruel; or call ourselves liberal when we are
loose and foolish in expenses; and are amorous when we commend our own
civilities and good nature. 11. That we allow to ourselves so many little
irregularities, that insensibly they swell to so great a heap that from thence
we have reason to fear an evil; for an army of frogs and flies may destroy all
the hopes of our harvest. 12. That when we do that which is lawful, and do all
that we can in those bounds, we commonly and easily run out of our proportions.
13. That it is not easy to distinguish the virtues of our nature from the
virtues of our choice: and we may expect the reward of temperance, when it is
against our nature to be drunk; or we hope to have the coronet of virgins for
our morose disposition, or our abstinence from marriage upon secular ends. 14.
That it may be we call every little sigh or the keeping a first-day the duty of
repentance, or have entertained false principles in the estimate and measures
of virtues; and, contrary to the steward in that gospel, we write down
fourscore when we should be set down but fifty. 15. That it is better to trust
the goodness and justice of God with our accounts than to offer him large
bills. 16. That we are commanded by Christ to sit down bids us sit up higher.
17. That `when we have done all that we can, we are unprofitable servants;' and
yet no man does all that he can do, and therefore is more to be despised and
undervalued. 18. That the self-accusing publican was justified rather than the
thanksgiving and confident Pharisee. 19. That if Adam in paradise, and David in
his house, and Solomon in the temple, and Peter in Christ's family, and Judas
in the college of apostles, and Nicholas among the deacons, and the angels in
heaven itself, did fall so foully and dishonestly, then it is prudent advice
that we be not high-minded, but fear; and when we stand most confidently take
heed lest we fall: and yet there is nothing so likely to make us fall as pride
and great opinions, which ruined the angels, which God resists, which all men
despise, and which betrays us into artlessness, and a reckless, undiscerning
and an unwary spirit.
4. Now the main parts of the
ecclesiastical ministry are done; and that which remains is, that the minister
pray over him and remind him to do good actions as he is capable; to call upon
God for pardon; to put his whole trust in him; to resign himself to God's
disposing; to be patient and even; to renounce every ill word or thought, or
indecent action, which the violence of his sickness may cause in him; to beg of
God to give him his Holy Spirit to guide him in his agony, and his holy angels
to guard him in his passage.
5. Whatsoever is besides this concerns the
standers by; that they do all their ministers diligently and temperately; that
they join with much charity and devotion in the prayer of the minister; that
they make no outcries or exclamations in the departure of the soul; and that
they make no judgment concerning the dying person, by his dying quietly or
violently, with comfort or without, with great fears or a cheerful confidence,
with sense or without, like a lamb or like a lion, with convulsions or
semblances of great pain, or like an expiring and a spent candle; for these
happen to all men without rule; without any known reason, but according as God
pleases to dispense the grace or the punishment, for reasons only known to
himself. Let us lay our hands upon our mouth, and adore the mysteries of the
divine wisdom and providence, and pray to God to give the dying man rest and
pardon, and to ourselves grace to live well, and the blessing of a holy and a
happy death.
In the name of the Father, of the
Son, and of the Holy Ghost. "Our Father, which art in heaven," etc.
Let the Priest say this Prayer secretly
O eternal Jesus, thou great lover of
souls, who hast constituted a ministry in the church to glorify thy name, and
to serve in the assistance of those that come to thee, prefessing thy
discipline and service, give grace to me the unwrothiest of thy servants that
I, in this my ministry, may purely and zealously intend thy glory, and
effectually may minister comfort and advantages to this sick person; (whom God
assoil from all his offences;) and grant that nothing of thy grace may perish
to him by the unworthiness of the minister; but let thy Spirit speak to me, and
give me prudence and charity, wisdom and diligence, good observation and apt
discourses a certain judgment and merciful dispensation, that the soul of thy
servant may pass from this state of imperfection to the perfections of the
state of glory, through thy mercies, O eternal Jesus. Amen.
The Psalm.
Out of the depths have I cried unto thee,
O Lord. Lord, hear my voice; let thine ears be attentive to the voice of my
supplications. Psalm cxxx.
If thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord,
who should stand.
But there is forgiveness with thee, that thou
mayst be feared.
I wait for the Lord; my soul doth wait; and in
his word do I hope.
My soul waiteth for the Lord, more than they that
watch for the morning.
Let Israel hope in the Lord; for with the Lord
there is mercy, and with him is plenteous redemption.
And he shall redeem his servants from all their
iniquities. Psalm cxxx.
Wherefore should I fear in the days of evil, when
the wickedness of my heels shall compass me about? Psalm xlix.5.
No man can be any means redeem his brother, nor
give to God a ransom for him. Ver. 7.
For the redemption of their soul is precious, and
it ceasern for ever. Ver. 8.
That he should still live for ever, and not see
corruption. Ver. 9.
But wise men die, likewise the fool and the
brutish person perish, and leave their wealth to others. Ver. 10.
But God will redeem my soul from the power of the
grave: for he shall receive me. Ver. 15.
As for me, I will behold thy face in
righteousness: I shall be satisfied when I awake in thy likeness. Psalm
xvii.15.
Thou shalt show me the path of life: in thy
presence is the fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for
evermore. Psalm xvi. 11.
Glory be to the Father, etc.
As it was in the beginning, etc.
Let us Pray.
Almighty God, Father of mercies, the God
of peace and comfort, of rest and pardon, we thy servants, though unworthy to
pray for thee, yet, in duty to thee and charity to our brother, humbly beg
mercy of thee for him, to descend upon his body and his soul; one sinner, O
Lord, for another, the miserable for the afflicted, the poor for him that is in
need; but thou givest thy graces and thy favours by the measures of thy own
mercies, and in proportion to our necessities. We humbly come to thee in the
name of Jesus, for the merit of our Saviour, and the mercies of our God,
praying thee to pardon the sins of this thy servant, and to put them all upon
the accounts of the cross, and to bury them in the grave of Jesus; that they
may never rise up in judgment against thy servant, nor bring him to shame and
confusion of face in the day of final inquiry and sentence. Amen.
II.
Give thy servant patience in his sorrows,
comfort in this his sickness, and restore him to health, if it seems good to
thee, in order to thy great ends and his greatest interest. And however thou
shalt determine concerning him in this affair, yet make his repentance perfect,
and his passage safe, and his faith strong, and his hope modest and confident;
that when thou shalt call his soul from the prison of the body, it may enter
into the securities and rest of the sons of God in the bosom of blessedness and
the custodies of Jesus. Amen.
III.
Thou, O Lord, knowest all the necessities and
all the infirmities of thy servant; fortify his spirit with spiritual joys and
perfect resignation, and take from him all degrees of inordinate or insecure
affections to this world, and enlarge his heart with desires of being with
thee, and of freedom from sins, and fruition of God.
IV.
Lord, let not any pain or passion discompose
the order and decency of his thoughts and duty; and lay no more upon thy
servant than thou wilt make him able to bear; and together with the temptation
do thou provide a way to escape, even by the mercies of a longer and a more
holy life, or by the mercies of a blessed death; even as it pleaseth thee, O
Lord, so let it be.
V.
Let the tenderness of his conscience and the
Spirit of God call to mind his sins, that they may be confessed and repented
of; because thou hast promised that if we confess our sins we shall have mercy.
Let thy mighty grace draw out from his soul every root of bitterness, lest the
remains of the old man be accursed with the reserves of thy wrath; but in the
union of the holy Jesus, and in the charities of God and of the world, and the
communion of all the saints, let this soul be presented to thee blameless and
entirely pardoned, and thoroughly washed, through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Here also may be inserted the Prayers set down after the holy Communion is
administered.
The prayer of St. Eustatius the Martyr, to be
used by the sick of dying man, or by the priests or assistants in his behalf,
which he said when he was going to martyrdom.
I will praise thee, O Lord, that thou hast
considered my low estate, and hast not shut me up in the hands of mine enemies,
nor made my foes to rejoice over me; and now let thy right hand protect me, and
let thy mercy come upon me; for my soul is in trouble and anguish because of
its departure from the body. O let not the assemblies of its wicked and cruel
enemies meet it in the passing forth, nor hinder me by reason of the sins of my
past life. O Lord, be favourable unto me, that my soul may not behold the
hellish countenance of the spirits of darkness, but let thy bright and joyful
angels entertain it. Give glory to thy holy name and thou thy majesty; place me
by thy merciful arm before thy seat of judgment, and let not the hand of the
prince of this world snatch me from thy presence, or beat me into hell. Mercy,
sweet Jesus. Amen.
A prayer taken out of the Euchologion of the
Greek church to be said by, or in behalf of, people in their danger, or at
their death.
beborborwnenos taiz
anartiaiz, etc.
I.
Bemired with sins and naked of good deeds, I
that am the meat of worms cry vehemently in spirit; cast not me a wretch away
from thy face; place me not on the left hand, who with thy hands didst fashion
me; but give me rest unto my soul, for thy great mercy's sake, O Lord.
II.
Supplicate with tears unto Christ, who is to
judge my poor soul, that he will deliver me from the fire that is unquenchable.
I pray you all, my friends and acquaintance, make mention of my in your
prayers, that in the day of judgment I may find mercy at that dreadful
tribunal.
III.
Then may the Standers-by pray.
When in unspeakable glory thou dost come
dreadfully to judge the whole world, vouchsafe, O gracious Redeemer, that this
thy faithful servant may in the clouds meet thee cheerfully. They who have been
dead from the beginning, with terrible and fearful trembling stand at thy
tribunal, waiting thy just sentence. O blessed Saviour Jesus! None shall there
avoid thy formidable and most righteous judgment. All kings and princes with
servants stand together, and hear the dreadful voice of the judge condemning
the people which have sinned into hell; from which sad sentence, O Christ,
deliver thy servant. Amen.
Then let the sick man be called to rehearse the
articles of his faith; or, if he be so weak he cannot, let him (if he have not
before done it) be called to say Amen when they are recited, or to give some
testimony of his faith and confident assent to them.
After which it is proper (if the person be in
capacity) that the minister examine him, and invite him to confession, and all
the parts of repentance, according to the foregoing rules; after which he may
pray the prayer of absolution.
O Lord Jesus Christ, who hath given commission to
his church, in his name to pronounce pardon to all that are truly penitent, he
of his mercy pardon and forgive thee all thy sins, deliver thee from all evils
past, present, and future, preserve thee in the faith and fear of his holy name
to thy life's end, and bring thee to his everlasting kingdom, to live with him
for ever and ever. Amen.
Then let the sick man renounce all heresies, and
whatsoever is against the truth of God or the peace of the church, and pray for
pardon for all his ignorances and errors, known and unknown.
After which let him (if all other circumstances
be fitted) be disposed to receive the blessed sacrament, in which the curate is
to minister according to the form prescribed by the church.
When the rites are finished, let the sick man, in
the days of his sickness, be employed with the former offices and exercises
before described; and when the time draws near of his dissolution, the minister
may assist by the following order of recommendation of the soul.
I.
O holy and most gracious Saviour Jesus, we
humbly recommend the soul of thy servant into thy hands, thy most merciful
hands; let thy blessed angels stand in ministry about thy servant, and defend
him from the violence and malice of all his ghostly enemies; and drive far from
hence all the spirits of darkness. Amen.
II.
Lord, receive the soul of this thy servant;
enter not into judgment with thy servant, spare him whom thou hast redeemed
with thy most precious blood; deliver him from all evil, for whose sake thou
didst suffer evil and mischief; from the crafts and assaults of the devil, from
the fear of death, and from everlasting death, good Lord, deliver him. Amen.
III.
Impute not unto him the follies of his youth,
nor any of the errors and miscarriages of his life; but strengthen his in his
agony; let not his faith waver, nor his hope fail, nor his charity be
disordered; let none of his enemies imprint upon him any afflictive or evil
phantasm; let him die in peace, and rest in hope, and rise in glory. Amen.
IV.
Lord, we know, and believe assuredly, that
whatsoever is under thy custody cannot be taken out of thy hands, nor by all
the violences of hell robbed of thy protection: preserve the work of thy hands;
rescue him from evil; take into the participation of thy glories him to whom
thou hast given the seal of adoption, the earnest of the inheritance of the
saints. Amen.
V.
Let his portion be with Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob; with Job and David, with the prophets and apostles, with martyrs and all
thy holy saints, in the arms of Christ, in the bosom of felicity, in the
kingdom of God, to eternal ages. Amen.
These following prayers are fit also to be added
to the foregoing offices in as there be no communion or intercourse but
prayer.
Let us Pray.
O almighty and eternal God, there is no
number of thy days, or of thy mercies; thou hast sent us into this world to
serve thee, and to live according to thy laws; but we by our sins have provoked
thee to wrath, and we have planted thorns and sorrows round about our
dwellings; and our life is but a span long and yet very tedious, because of the
calamities that enclose us in on every side; the days of our pilgrimage are few
and evil; we have frail and sickly bodies, violent and distempered passions,
long designs and but a short stay, weak understandings and strong enemies,
abused fancies, perverse wills. O dear God, look upon us in mercy and pity; let
not our weaknesses make us to sin against thee, nor our fear cause us to betray
our duty, nor our former follies provoke thy eternal anger, nor the calamities
of this world vex us into tediousness of spirit and impatience; but let thy
Holy Spirit lead us through this valley of misery with safety and peace, with
holiness and religion, with spiritual comforts and joy in the Holy Ghost; that,
when we have served thee in our generations, we may be gathered unto our
fathers, having the testimony of a holy conscience in the communion of the
catholic church, in the confidence of a certain faith, and the comforts of a
reasonable, religious, and holy hope, and perfect charity with thee our God and
all the world; that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities,
nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor
any other creature, may be able to separate us from the love of God, which is
in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.
II.
O holy and most gracious Saviour Jesus, in
whose hands the souls of all faithful people are laid up till the day of
recompence, have mercy upon the body and soul of this thy servant, and upon all
thy elect people who love the Lord Jesus and long for his coming, Lord, refresh
the imperfection of their condition with the aids of the Spirit or grace and
comfort, and with the visitation and guard of angels, and supply to them all
their necessities known only unto thee; let them dwell in peace, and feel thy
mercies pitying their infirmities, and the follies of their flesh, and speedily
satisfying the desires of their spirits; and when thou shalt bring us all forth
in the day of judgment, O then show thyself to be our Saviour Jesus, our
advocate, and our judge. Lord, then remember that thou hast for so many ages
prayed for the pardon of those sins which thou art then to sentence. Let not
the accusations of our consciences, nor the calumnies and aggravation of
devils, nor the effects of thy wrath, press those souls which thou lovest,
which thou didst redeem, which thou dost pray for; but enable us all, by the
supporting hand of thy mercy, to stand upright in judgment. O Lord, have mercy
upon us, have mercy upon us; O Lord, let thy mercy lighten upon us, as our
trust is in thee. O Lord, in thee have we trusted; let us never be confounded.
Let us meet with joy, and for ever dwell with thee, feeling thy pardon,
supported with thy graciousness, absolved by thy sentence, saved by thy mercy,
that we may sing to the glory of thy name eternal hallelujahs. Amen. Amen.
Amen.
Then may be added in the behalf of all that are
present those ejaculations.
O spare us a little, that we may recover our
strength before we go hence and be no more seen. Amen.
Cast us not away in the time of age; O forsake us
not when strength faileth. Amen.
Grant that we may never sleep in sin or death
eternal, but that we may have our part of the first resurrection, and that the
second death may not prevail over us. Amen.
Grant that our souls may be bound up in the
bundle of life; and in the day when thou bindest up thy jewels remember thy
servants for good, and not for evil, that our souls may be numbered amongst the
righteous. Amen.
Grant unto all sick and dying Christians mercy
and aids from heaven; and receive the souls returning unto thee, whom thou hast
redeemed with thy most precious blood. Amen.
Grant unto thy servants to have faith in the Lord
Jesus, a daily meditation of death, a contempt of the world, a longing desire
after heaven, patience in our sorrows, comfort in our sicknesses, joy in God, a
holy life, and a blessed death; that our souls may rest in hope, and my body
may rise in glory, and both may be beatified in the communion of saints, in the
kingdom of God, and the glories of the Lord Jesus. Amen.
The Blessing.
Now the God of peace, that brought again from
the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of
the everlasting covenant, make you perfect in every good work, to do his will,
working in you that which is pleasing in his sight; to whom be glory, for ever
and ever. Amen.
The Doxology.
To the blessed and only potentate, the King
of kings, and the Lord of lords, who only hath immortality, dwelling in the
light which no man can approach unto, whom no man hath seen, nor can see, be
honour and power everlasting. Amen.
After the sick man is departed, the minister, if
he be present, or the major-domo, or any other fit person, may use the
following prayers in behalf of themselves: -
I.
Almighty God, with whom do live the spirits
of them that depart hence in the Lord, we adore thy majesty, and submit to thy
providence, and revere thy justice, and magnify thy mercies, thy infinite
mercies, that it hath pleased thee to deliver this our brother out of the
miseries of this sinful world. Thy counsels are secret, and thy wisdom is
infinite; with the same hand thou hast crowned him, and smitten us; thou hast
taken him into regions of felicity, and placed him among saints and angels, and
left us to mourn for our sins; and thy displeasure, which thou hast signified
to us by removing him from us to a better, a far better place. Lord, turn thy
anger into mercy, thy chastisements into virtues, thy rod into comforts; and do
thou give to all his nearest relatives comforts from heaven, and a restitution
of blessings equal to those which thou hast taken from them. And we humbly
beseech thee of thy gracious goodness shortly to satisfy the longing desires of
those holy souls who pray, and wait, and long for thy second coming. Accomplish
thou the number of thine elect, and fill up the mansions in heaven which are
prepared for all them that love the coming of the Lord Jesus; that we, with
this our brother, and all others departed this life in the obedience and faith
of the Lord Jesus, may have our perfect consummation and bliss in thy eternal
glory, which never shall have ending. Grant this for Jesus Christ's sake, our
Lord and only Saviour. Amen.
II.
O merciful God, father of our Lord Jesus, who
art the first fruits of the resurrection, and by entering into glory hath
opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers, we humbly beseech thee to raise
us up from the death of sin to the life of righteousness; that being partakers
of the death of Christ, and followers of his holy life, we may be partakers of
his Spirit and of his promises; that when we shall depart this life we may rest
in his arms, and lie in his bosom, as our hope is this our brother doth. O
suffer us not, for any temptation of the world, or any snares of the devil, or
any pains of death, to fall from thee. Lord, let thy Holy Spirit enable us with
his grace to fight a good fight with perseverance, to finish our course with
holiness, and to keep the faith with constancy unto the end, that at the day of
judgment we may stand at the right hand of the throne of God, and hear the
blessed sentence of `Come, ye blessed children of my Father, receive the
kingdom prepared for you from the beginning of the world.' O blessed Jesus,
thou art our judge, and thou art our advocate; even because thou art good and
gracious, never suffer us to fall into the intolerable pains of hell, never to
lie down in sin, and never to have our portion in the everlasting burning.
Mercy, sweet Jesus, mercy. Amen.
A Prayer to be said in the Case of sudden Surprise by Death, as by a mortal
Wound, or evil Accidents in Childbirth, when the Forms and Solemnities of
Preparation cannot be used.
O most gracious Father, Lord of heaven and
earth, Judge of the living and the dead, behold thy servants running to thee
for pity and mercy in behalf of ourselves and this thy servant, whom thou hast
smitten with thy hasty rod and a swift angel; if it be thy will, preserve his
life, that there may be place for his repentance and restitution; O spare him a
little, that he may recover his strength before he go hence and be no more
seen. But if thou hast otherwise decreed, let the miracles of thy compassion
and thy wonderful mercy supply to him the want of the usual measures of time,
and the periods of repentance, and the trimming of his lamp; and let the
greatness of the calamity be accepted by thee as an instrument to procure
pardon for those defects and degrees of unreadiness which may have caused this
accident upon thy servant. Lord, stir up in him a great and effectual
contrition, that the greatness of the sorrow, and hatred against sin, and the
zeal of his love to thee, may in a short time do the work of many days. And
thou, who regardest the heart and the measures of the mind more than the delay
and the measures of time, let it be thy pleasure to rescue the soul of thy
servant from all the evils he hath deserved, and all the evils that he fears:
that in the glorifications of eternity, and the songs which to eternal ages thy
saints and holy angels shall sing to the honour of thy mighty name and
invaluable mercies, it may be reckoned among thy glories that thou hast
redeemed this soul from the dangers of the eternal death, and made him partaker
of the gift of God, eternal life, through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.
If there be time, the prayers in the foregoing
offices may be added, according as they can be fitted to the present
circumstances.
When we have received the last breath of
our friend, and closed his eyes, and composed his body for the grave, then
seasonable is the counsel of the Son of Sirach: `Weep bitterly, and make great
moan, and use lamentation, as he is worthy, and that a day or two, lest thou be
evil spoken of; and then comfort thyself for thy heaviness. But take no grief
to heart; for there is no turning again: thou shalt not do him good, but hurt
thyself.[185] Solemn and appointed
mournings are good expressions of our dearness to the departed soul, and of his
worth, and our value of him; and it hath its praise in nature, and in manners,
and in public customs; but the praise of it is not in the Gospel, that is, it
hath no direct and proper uses in religion. For if the dead did die in the
Lord, then there is joy to him; and it is an ill expression of our affection
and our charity to weep uncomfortably at a change that hath carried my friend
to the state of a huge felicity. But if the man did perish in his folly and his
sins, there is indeed cause to mourn, but no hopes of being comforted; for he
shall never return to light, or to hopes of restitution; therefore, beware lest
thou also come into the same place of torment; and let thy grief sit down, and
rest upon thy own turf, and weep till a shower springs from thy eyes to heal
the wounds of thy spirit; turn thy sorrow into caution, thy grief for him that
is dead to thy care for thyself who art alive, lest thou die and fall like one
of the fools whose life is worse than death, and their death is the
consummation of all felicities. The church in her funerals of the dead used to
sing psalms, and to give thanks for the redemption and delivery of the soul
from the evils and dangers of mortality; and therefore we have no reason to be
angry when God hears our prayers, who call upon him to hasten his coming, and
to fill up his numbers, and to do that which we pretend to give him thanks for.
And St. Chrysostom asks, "To what purpose is it that thou singest, `Return unto
thy rest, O my soul,' etc., if thou dost not believe thy friend to be in rest?
and if thou dost, why dost thou weep impertinently and unreasonable?" Nothing
but our own loss can justly be deplored; and him that is passionate for the
loss of his money or his advantages we esteem foolish and imperfect; and
therefore have no reason to love the immoderate sorrows of those who too
earnestly mourn for their dead, when, in the last resolution of the inquiry, it
is their own evil and present or feared inconveniences they deplore; the best
that can be said of such a grief is, that those mourners love themselves too
well. Something is to be given to custom, something to fame, to nature, and to
civilities, and to the honour of the deceased friends; for that man is esteemed
to die miserable for whom no friend or relative sheds a tear[186] or pays a solemn sigh. I desire to die a
dry death, but am not very desirous to have a dry funeral: some
flowers sprinkled upon my grave would do well and comely; and a soft shower to
turn those flowers into a springing memory, or a fair rehearsal, that I may not
go forth of my doors as my servants carry the entrails of beasts.
But that which is to be faulted in this
particular is when the grief is immoderate and unreasonable; and Paula Romana
deserved to have felt the weight of St. Jerome's severe reproof, when at the
death of every of her children she almost wept herself into her grave. But it
is worse yet, when people by an ambitious and a pompous sorrow, and by
ceremonies invented for the ostentation of their grief, fill heaven and earth
with exclamations, and grow troublesome because their friend is happy, or
themselves want his company. It is certainly a sad thing in nature to see a
friend trembling with a palsy, or scorched with fevers, or dried up like a
potsherd with immoderate heats, and rolling upon his uneasy bed without sleep,
which he cannot be invited with music, or pleasant murmurs, or a decent
stillness; nothing but the servants of cold death, poppy and weariness, can
tempt the eyes to let their curtains down; and then they sleep only to taste of
death, and make an essay of the shades below: and yet we weep not here; the
period and opportunity for tears we choose when our friend is fallen asleep,
when he hath laid his neck upon the lap of his mother, and let his head down to
be raised up to heaven. This grief is ill-placed and indecent. But many times
it is worse; and it hath been observed, that those greater and stormy passions
do so spend the whole stock of grief that they presently admit a comfort and
contrary affection, while a sorrow that is even and temperate goes on to its
period with expectation and the distances of a just time. The Ephesian woman
that the soldier told of in Petronius was the talk of all the town, and the
rarest example of a dear affection to her husband. She descended with the
corpse into the vault, and there, being attended with her maiden, resolved to
weep to death, or die with famine, or a distempered sorrow: from which
resolution nor his, not her friends, nor the reverence of the principal
citizens, who used the entreaties of their charity and their power, could
persuade her. But a soldier that watched seven dead bodies hanging upon trees
just over against this monument crept in, and awhile stared upon the silent and
comely disorders of the sorrow; and having let the wonder awhile breathe out at
each other's eyes, at last he fetched his supper and a bottle of wine with
purpose to eat and drink, and still to feed himself with that sad prettiness.
His pity and first-draught of wine made him bold and curious to try if the maid
would drink; who, having many hours since felt her resolution faint as her
wearied body, took his kindness, and the light returned into her eyes, and
danced like boys in a festival: and fearing lest the pertinaciousness of her
mistress's sorrows should cause her evil to revert, or her shame of approach,
essayed whether she would endure to hear an argument to persuade her to drink
and live. The violent passion had laid all her spirits in wildness and
dissolution, and the maid found them willing to be gathered into order at the
arrest of any new object, being weary of the first, of which, like leeches,
they had sucked their fill, till they fell down and burst. The weeping woman
took her cordial, and was not angry with her maid, and heard the soldier talk;
and he was so pleased with the change, that he who first loved the silence of
the sorrow was more in love with the music of her returning voice, especially
which himself had strung and put in tune: and the man began to talk amorously,
and the woman's weak head and heart were soon possessed with a little wine, and
grew gay, and talked, and fell in love; and that very night, in the morning of
her passion, in the grave of her husband, in the pomps of mourning, and in her
funeral garments, married her new and stranger-guest. For so the wild foragers
of Lybia, being spent with heat, and dissolved by the too fond kissses of the
sun, do melt with their common fires, and die with faintness, and descend with
motions slow and unable to the little brooks that descent from heaven in the
wilderness; and when they drink they return into the vigour of a new life, and
contract strange marriages; and the lioness is courted by a panther, and she
listens to his love, and conceives a monster that all men call unnatural, and
the daughter of an equivocal passion and of a sudden refreshment. And so also
was it in the cave at Ephesus: for by this time the soldier began to think it
was fit he should return to his watch and observe the dead bodies he had in
charge: but when he ascended from his mourning bridal-chamber, he found that
one of the bodies was stolen by the friends of the dead, and that he was fallen
into an evil condition, because, by the laws of Ephesus, his body was to be
fixed in the place of it. The poor man returns to his woman, cries out
bitterly, and in her presence resolves to die to prevent his death, and in
secret to prevent his shame: but now the woman's love was raging like her
former sadness, and grew witty, and she comforted her soldier, and persuaded
him to live, lest by losing him who had brought her from death and a more
grievous sorrow, she should return to her old solemnities of dying, and lose
her honour for a dream, or the reputation of her constancy without the change
and satisfaction of an enjoyed love. The man would fain have lived if it had
been possible, and she found out this way for him; that he should take the body
of her first husband, whose funeral she had so strangely mourned, and put it
upon the gallows in the place of the stolen thief; he did so, and escaped the
present danger to possess a love which might change as violently as her grief
had done. But so have I seen a crowd of disordered people rush violently and in
heaps, till their utmost border was restrained by a wall, or had spent the fury
of the first fluctuation and watery progress, and by and by it returned to the
contrary with the same earnestness, only because it was violent and ungoverned.
A raging passion is this crowd, which, when it is not under discipline and the
conduct of reason, and the proportions of temperate humanity, runs passionately
the way it happens, and by and by as greedily to another side, being swayed by
its own weight, and driven any whither by chance in all its pursuits, having no
rule but to do all it can, and spend itself in haste, and expire with some
shame and much indecency.
When thou hast wept awhile, compose the body to
burial; which that it be done gravely, decently, and charitably, we have the
example of all nations to engage us and of all ages of the world to warrant: so
that it is against common honesty and public fame and reputation not to do this
office.
It is good that the body be kept veiled and
secret, and not exposed to curious eyes, or the dishonours wrought by the
changes of death discerned and stared upon by impertinent persons. When Cyrus
was dying, he called his sons and friends to take their leave, to touch his
hand, to see him the last time, and gave in charge, that when he had put his
veil over his face no man should uncover it: and Epiphanius's body was rescued
from inquisitive eyes by a miracle. Let it be interred after the manner of the
country, and the laws of the place, and the dignity of the person. For so Jacob
was buried with great solemnity, and Joseph's bones were carried into Canaan
after they had been embalmed and kept four hundred years; and devout men
carried St. Stephen to his burial, making great lamentation over him. And Elian
tells that those who were the most excellent persons were buried in purple; and
men of an ordinary courage and fortune had their graves only trimmed with
branches of olive and mourning flowers. But when Marc Anthony gave the body of
Brutus to his freed-man to be buried honestly, he gave also his own mantle to
be thrown into his funeral pile: and the magnificence of the old funeral we may
see largely described by Virgil in the obsequies of Misenus, and by Homer in
the funeral of Patroclus, It was noted for piety in the men of Jabesh-Gilead,
that they showed kindness to their lord, Saul, and buried him; and they did it
honourably. And our blessed Saviour, who was temperate in his expense, and
grave in all the parts of his life and death, as age and sobriety itself, yet
was pleased to admit the cost of Mary's ointment upon his head and feet,
because she did it against his burial; and though she little thought it had
been so nigh, yet because he accepted it for that end he knew he had made her
apology sufficient: by which he remarked it to be a great act of piety, and
honourable, to inter our friends and relatives according to the proportions of
their condition, and so to give a testimony of our hope of their
resurrection.[187] So far is piety; beyond
it may be the ostentation and bragging of a grief, or a design to serve worse
ends. Such was that of Herod, when he made too studied and elaborate a funeral
for Aristobulus whom he had murdered; and of Regulus for his boy,[188] at whose pile he killed dogs,
nightingales, parrots, and little horses; and such also was the expense of some
of the Romans, who, hating their left wealth, gave order by their testament to
have huge portions of it thrown into their fires, bathing their locks, which
were presently to pass through the fire, with Arabian and Egyptian liquors and
balsam of Judea. In this, as in every thing else, as our piety must not pass
into superstition or vain expense, so neither must the excess be turned into
parsimony, and chastised by negligence and impiety to the memory of their
dead.
But nothing of this concerns the dead in real and
effective purposes; nor is it with care to be provided for by themselves: but
it is the duty of the living.[189] For to
them it is all one[190] whether they be
carried forth upon a chariot or a wooden hier; whether they rot in the air or
in the earth; whether they be devoured by fishes or by worms, by birds or by
sepulchral dogs, by water or by fire, or by delay. When Criton asked Socrates
how he would be buried, he told him, I think I shall escape from you, and that
you cannot catch me; but so much of me as you can apprehend, use it as you see
cause for and bury it; but, however, do it according to the laws. There is
nothing in this but opinion and the decency of fame to be served. When it is
esteemed an honour and the manner of blessed people to descend into the graves
of their fathers, there also it is reckoned as a curse to be buried in a
strange land, or that the birds of the air devour them.[191] Some nations used to eat the bodies of their friends,
and esteemed that the most honoured sepulture; but they were barbarous. The
magi never buried any but such as were torn of beasts. The Persians besmeared
their dead with wax, and the Egyptians with gums and with great art did condite
the bodies and laid them in charnel-houses. But Cyrus the elder would none of
all this, but gave command that his body should be interred, not laid in a
coffin of gold or silver, but just into the earth from whence all living
creatures receive birth and nourishment, and whither they must return. Among
Christians the honour which is valued in the behalf of the dead is, that they
be buried in holy ground; that is, in appointed cemeteries in places of
religion, there were the field of God is sown with the seeds of the
resurrection.[192] that their bodies also
may be among the Christians, with whom their hope and their portion is and
shall be for ever. "Quicquid feceris, omnia haec eodem ventura sunt." That we
are sure of: our bodies shall all be restored to our souls hereafter, and in
the interval they shall all be turned into dust, by what way soever you or your
chance shall dress them. Licinus the freed-man slept in a marble tomb,[193] but Cato in a little one, Pompey in
none; and yet they had the best fate among the Romans, and a memory of the
biggest honour. And it may happen that to want a monument may best preserve
their memories, while the succeeding ages shall, by their instances, remember
the changes of the world, and the dishonours of death, and the equality of the
dead: and James the Fourth,[194] king of the
Scots, obtained an epitaph for wanting of a tomb; and King Stephen is
remembered with a sad story, because four hundred years after his death his
bones were thrown into a river that evil men might sell the leaden coffin. It
is all one in the final event of things.[195] Ninus the Assyrian had a monument erected, whose
height was nine furlongs, and the breadth ten, saith Diodorus: but John the
Baptist had more honour when he was humbly laid in the earth between the bodies
of Abdias and Elizeus. And St. Ignatius, who was buried in the bodies of lions,
and St. Polycarp, who was burned to ashes, shall have their bones and their
flesh again with greater comfort than those violent persons who slept among
kings, having usurped their thrones when they were alive, and their sepulchres
when they were dead.
Concerning doing honour to the dead, the
consideration is not long. Anciently the friends of the dead used to make their
funeral orations,[196] and what they spake
of greater commendation was pardoned upon the accounts of friendship; but when
Christianity seized upon the possession of the world, this charge was devolved
upon priests and bishops, and they first kept the custom of the world, and
adorned it with the piety of truth and of religion; but they also so ordered
it, that it should not be cheap; for they made funeral sermons only at the
death of princes or of such holy persons, who shall judge the angels. The
custom descended, and in the channels mingled with the veins of earth through
which it passed; and now-a-days men that die are commended at a price, and the
measures of their legacy is the degree of their virtue. But these things ought
not so to be: the reward of the greatest virtue ought not to be prostitute to
the doles of common persons, but preserved like laurels and coronets, to remark
and encourage the noblest things. Persons of an ordinary life should neither be
praised publicly nor reproached in private; for it is an office and charge of
humanity to speak no evil of the dead (which, I suppose, is meant concerning
things not public and evident;) but then neither should our charity to them
teach us to tell a lie, or to make a great flame from a heap of rushes and
mushrooms, and make orations crammed with the narrative of little observances,
and acts of civil, and necessary, and eternal religion.
But that which is most considerable is, that we
should do something for the dead, something that is real and of proper
advantage. That we perform their will, the laws oblige us, and will see to it;
but that we do all those parts of personal duty which our dead left
unperformed, and to which the laws do not oblige us, is an act of great charity
and perfect kindness: and it may redound to the advantage of our friends also,
that their debts be paid even beyond the inventory of their movables.
Besides this, let us right their causes and
assert their honour. When Marcus Regulus had injured the memory of Herennius
Senecio, Metius Carus asked him what he had to do with his dead? and became his
advocate after death, of whose cause he was parton when he was alive. And David
added this also, that he did kindnesses to Mephibosheth for Jonathan's sake;
and Solomon pleaded his father's cause by the sword against Joab and Shimel.
And certainly it is the noblest thing in the world to do, an act of kindness to
him whom we shall never see, but yet hath deserved it of us, and to whom we
would do it if he were present; and unless we do so our charity is mercenary,
and our friendships are direct merchandise, and our gifts are brocage: but what
we do to the dead or to the living for their sakes is gratitude, and virtue for
virtue's sake, and the noblest portion of humanity.
And yet I remember, that the most excellent
prince Cyrus, in his last exhortation to his sons upon his death-bed, charms
them into peace and union of hearts and designs, by telling them that his soul
would be still alive, and therefore fit to be revered and accounted as awful
and venerable as when he was alive: and what we do to our dead friends is not
done to persons undiscerning as a fallen tree, but to such who better attend to
their relatives, and to greater purposes, though in other manner, than they did
here below. And therefore those wise persons, who in their funeral orations
made their doubt with an ei tis aisfnsiz toiz teteleutnkosi
teri twn enfase gegnomenwn, "If the dead have any perception of what is
done below," which are the words of Isocrates, in the funeral encomium of
Evagoras, did it upon the uncertain opinion of the soul's immortality; but made
no question if they were living they did also understand what could concern
them. The same words Nazianzen uses at the exequies of his sister Gorgonia, and
in the former invective against Julian: but this was upon another reason; even
because it was uncertain what the state of separation was, and whether our dead
perceive anything of us, till we shall meet in the day of judgment. If it was
uncertain then, it is certain since that time we have had no new revelation
concerning it; but it is ten to one but when we die we shall find the state of
affairs wholly differing from all our opinions here, and that no man or sect
hath guessed anything at all of it as it is. here I intend not to dispute, but
to persuade; and therefore, in the general, if it be probable that they know or
feel the benefits done to them, though but by a reflex revelation from God, or
some under-communication from an angel, or the stock of acquired notices here
below, it may the rather endear us to our charities or duties to them
respectively; since our virtues use not to live upon abstractions, or
inducements, but then thrive when they have material arguments, such which are
not too far from sense. However, it be, it is certain they are not dead; and
though we no more see the souls of our dead friends than we did when they were
alive, yet we have reason to believe them to know more things and better; and
if our sleep be an image of death, we may also observe concerning it, that it
is a state of life so separate from communications with the body, that it is
one of the ways of oracle and prophecy[197]
by which the soul best declares her immortality, and the nobleness of her
actions and powers, if she could get free from the body, (as in the state of
separation, or a clear dominion over it,) as in the resurrection. To which also
this consideration may be added, that men a long time live the life of sense
before they use their reason; and till they have furnished their head with
experiments and notices of many things, they cannot at all discourse of
anything: but when they come to use their reason, all their knowledge is
nothing but remembrance; and we know by proportions, by similitudes and
dissimilitueds, by relations and oppositions, by causes and effects, by
comparing things with things; all which are nothing but operations of
understanding upon the stock of former notices, of something we knew before,
nothing but remembrances: all the heads of topics, which are the stock of all
arguments and sciences in the world, are a certain demonstration of this; and
he is the wisest man that remembers most, and joins those remembrances together
to the best purposes of discourses. From whence it may not be improbably
gathered, that in the state of separation, if there be any act of
understanding, that is, if the understanding be alive, it must be relative to
the notices it had in this world; and therefore the acts of it must be
discourses upon all the parts and persons of their conversation and relation,
excepting only such new revelation which may be communicated to it; concerning
which we know nothing. But if by seeing Socrates I think upon Plato, and by
seeing a picture I remember a man, and by beholding two friends I remember my
own and my friend's need; (and he is wisest that draws lines from the same
centre, and most discourses from the same notices;) it cannot be very probable
to believe, since the separate souls understand better if they understand at
all, that from the notices they carried from hence, and what they find there
equal or unequal to those notices, they can better discover the things of their
friends, than we can here by our conjectures and craftiest imaginations and yet
many men here can guess shrewdly at the thoughts and designs of such men with
whom they discourse, or of whom they have heard, or whose characters they
prudently have perceived. I have no other end in this discourse, but that we
may be witnesses of our transient affections and forgetfulness. Dead persons
have religion passed upon them, and a solemn reverence; and if we think a ghost
beholds us, it may be we have upon us the impressions likely to be made by
love, and fear, and religion. However, we are sure that God sees us, and the
world sees us; and if it be matter of duty towards our dead, God will exact it;
if it be matter of kindness, the world will: and as religion is the band of
that, so fame and reputation are the endearment of this.
It remains, that we who are alive should so live,
and by the actions of religion attend the coming of the day of the Lord, that
we neither be surprised nor leave our duties imperfect, nor our sins
uncancelled, nor our persons unreconciled, nor God unappeased; but that, when
we descend to our graves, we may rest in the bosom of the Lord, till the
mansions be prepared where we shall sing and feast eternally. Amen.
To Deum laudamus.
THE END.
[148] Exod. xx. 19.
[149] James, v. 14.
[150] James, v.14.
[151] Gabriel in 4. sent. dist. 23.
[152] James, v.16.
[153] John i.9.
[154] Matt. iii.6.
[155] Acts, xix. 18.
[156] 1 Cor. xi. 31.
[157] Si tacuerit qui percussus est, et non
egerit paenitentiam, nec vulnus suum fratri et magistro voluerit confiteri,
magister qui linguam habet ad curandum, facile ci prodesse non poterit. Si enim
erubeseat aegrotus vulnus medico coniteri, quod ignorat medicina non curat. St.
Hierom. ad caput 10. Ecces. Si enim hoc fecerimus, et revelaverimus peccata
nostra non sol im Deo, sed et his qui possunt mederi vulneribus nostris atque
peccatis, delebuntur peccata nostra. - Orig. Hom. 17 in Lucam.
[158] Plaut. Trinum.
[159] Qui homo culpam admisit in se, nullus
est tam parvi pretis quin pudent, quin purget sese.-Plaut. Aulul, act. iv. sc.
10. 60.
[160] Illi mers gravis incubat, qui notus
nimis omuibus, igortus moritur sihi.-Thyest. 401.
[161] Nune si depositum non inficiatur
amicus, So reddat veterem cum tota aerugine follem, Prodigicsa fides et Thuscis
digna libellis. Juven. Sat. xiii. 62.
[162] Gal. vi.1.
[163] James, v. 14,15.
[164] 1 Cor v.5,12,13; 2 Cor. ii.6.
[165] Homines in remissione peccatorum
ministerium suum exhibent, non just alicujus potestatis exercent: Neque enim in
suo, sed in nomine Patris, Filii, et Spiritus Sancti, peccata dimittuntur: Isti
rogant, Divinitas donat.-St. Amb. de Spir. 8. 1. iii. c. 10.
[166] Summum futuri judieli praejudicium
est, si quis ita deliquert ut a communicatione orationis et conventus et oranis
sancti commercii relegetur.-Tertul. Apol cap. 39. Atque hoc idem innuitur per
summam Apostoli censuram in reos maxini criminis: sit anafera nsranafa, id est, excommunicatus majori
Excommunicatione; Dominus veniet, scil. ad jusicandum eum: ad quod judicium
haec censura Ecclesiae est relativa et in ordine. Tum demum paenas dabit: ad
quas, nise resipiscat, hic consignatur.
[167] Caus. 26. Q. 6 et q.7.
[168] Can.13. Vide etiam Con. Ancyr. cap. 6.
Aurel. 2 cap. 12.
[169] Saevi quoque et implacabiles domini
crudelitatem suam impediunt, si, quando paenitentia fugitivos reduxit,
dedititiis hostibus parcinaus.
[170] 1 Cor. xv. 22.
[171] Rom. viii. 32.
[172] Vide Rule of Holy Loving, chap. iv.
sect. 10; and Hist. of the Life of Jesus, part iii. Disc. 18.
[173] Caus. 26. Q. 7. ab infirmis.
[174] Matt. ix. 6.
[175] Acts. iii. 26.
[176] Est modus gloriandi in conscientia, ut
noveris, fidem tuam cease sinceram, soem tuarm esse certam.-August. Psalm
cxlix.
[177] Ezek. xxxiii.11.
[178] James, iii.2.
[179] 1 John, i. 8.
[180] Rom. v. 8.
[181] 1 Rom. xi. 32.
[182] Rom. vi.23.
[183] Heb. xiii.5.
[184] Vixi, peccavi, paenitui, natuae
cessi.
[185] Ecclus. xxxviii. 17,20.
[186] Expectavimus lacrymas ad ostentationem
doloris paratas: et ergo ambitiosus detonuit, texit superhum pallio caput, et
nanibus inter se usque ad articulorum strepitum contritis, etc. Petron. 17.3.
[187] Nam quid sibi saxa cavata, Quid
pulchra volunt momumenta, Nisi quod res creditur illis Non mortua, sed data
somno? Prud. Hymn in Eceq. Defunct
[188] Cupit omnia ferre Produgus et totos
Melior succendere census, Desertas exosus opes.-Statius, lib. ii. Sylner.
[189] Totus hic locus contemneudus est in
nobis, non negligendus in nostris.-Cicero.
[190] Id cinerem aut manes credis curare
sepultos?
[191] Fugientibus Trojanis minatus est
Hector.
[192] Nam quod requiescere corpus Vacuum
sine mente videmus, Spatium breve restat, ut alti Repetat collgia senus Hinc
maxima cura sepulchris Impenditur.-Prud. Hymn, in exeq. Defunct.
[193] Marmoreo Licinus tumulo jacet, at Cato
parvo, Pompeius nullo: credimus esse Deos?-Varro Atacinus
[194] Fama orbem replet, mortem sors
occulit, at tu Desine scrutari quod tegit ossa solum. Si mihi dent animo non
impar fata speulcrum, Angusta est tumulo terra Britanna meo.
[195] Cernit ibi moestos et mortis honore
carentes Leucaspim, et Lyciae ductorem classis Orontem.-Eneid. vi.
[196] Lustravitque viros, dixitque novissima
verba.-Eceid.
[197] Hue tou anfrwpou
yuch tote shpou feiotath katafainetai, kai tote ti twn nellontwn prooora tote
gur ws eoike naliota eleuferutai.-Cyrus apud Xenoph. lib. viii. Instit.