makes the rod to be medicinal, and, like the rod of God in the hand of Aaron, to shoot forth buds and leaves and almonds, hopes and mercies, and eternal recompenses, in the day of restitution. This is so great a good to us, if it be well conducted in all the channels of its intention and design, that if we had put off the objections of the flesh, with abstractions, contempts, and separations, so as we ought to do, it were as earnestly to be prayed for as any gay blessing that crowns our cups with joy and our heads with garlands and forgetfulness. But this was it which I said, that this may, nay, that it ought to be chosen, at least by an after-election: for so said St. Paul, "If we judge ourselves, we shall not be condemned of the Lord:" that is, if we judge ourselves worthy of the sickness, if we acknowledge and confess God's justice in smiting us, if we take the rod of God in our own hands, and are willing to imprint it in the flesh, we are workers together with God in the infliction; and then the sickness, beginning and being managed in the virtue of repentance, and patience, and resignation, and charity, will end in peace, and pardon, and justification, and consignation to glory. That I have spoken truth, I have brought God's spirit speaking in scripture for a witness. But if this be true, there are not many states of life that have advantages which can outweigh this great instrument of security to our final condition. Moses died at the mouth of the Lord," said the story; he died "with the kisses of the Lord's mouth," so the Chaldee phrase it was the greatest act of kindness that God did to His servant Moses; He kissed him, and he died.-But I have some things to observe for the better finishing this consideration. para 1. All these advantages and lessenings of evils in the state of sickness are only upon the stock of virtue and religion. There is nothing can make sickness in any sense eligible, or in many senses tolerable, but only the grace of Gody: that only turns sickness into easiness and felicity, which also turns it into virtue. For whosoever goes about to comfort a vicious person when he lies sick upon his bed, can only discourse of the necessities of nature, of the unavoidableness of the suffering, of the accidental vexations and increase of torments by impatience, of the fellowship of all the sons of Adam, and such other little considerations; which indeed, if sadly reflected upon and found to stand alone, teach him nothing but the degree of his calamity and the evil of his condition, and teach him such a patience, and minister to him such a comfort, which can only make him to observe decent gestures in his sickness, and to converse with his friends and standersby so as may do them comfort, and ease their funeral and civil com Deut. xxxiv. 5. y Hæc clementia non paratur arte: Sed norunt cui serviunt leones.[Mart., lib. i. ep. 105.] Si latus aut renes morbo tententur acuto, Quære fugam morbi. Vis recte vivere ? quis non? Si virtus hoc una potest dare, fortis omissis Hoc age deliciis.-Hor., ep. i. 6. [lin. 28.] plaints; but do him no true advantage, for all that may be spoken to a beast when he is crowned with hair-laces, and bound with fillets to the altar, to bleed to death to appease the anger of the Deity, and to ease the burden of his relatives. And indeed what comfort can he receive, whose sickness, as it looks back, is an effect of God's indignation and fierce vengeance, and if it goes forward and enters into the gates of the grave, is the beginning of a sorrow that shall never have an ending? But when the sickness is a messenger sent from a chastising Father; when it first turns into degrees of innocence, and then into virtues, and thence into pardon; this is no misery, but such a method of the divine economy and dispensation as resolves to bring us to heaven without any new impositions, but merely upon the stock and charges of nature. 2. Let it be observed that these advantages which spring from sickness, are not in all instances of virtue, nor to all persons. Sickness is the proper scene for patience and resignation, for all the passive graces of a Christian, for faith and hope, and for some single acts of the love of God. But sickness is not a fit station for a penitent, and it can serve the ends of the grace of repentance but accidentally. Sickness may begin a repentance", if God continues life, and if we co-operate with the divine grace; or sickness may help to alleviate the wrath of God, and to facilitate the pardon, if all the other parts of this duty be performed in our healthful state, so that it may serve at the entrance in, or at the going out; but sickness at no hand is a good stage to represent all the substantial parts of this duty. It invites to it; it makes it appear necessary; it takes off the fancies of vanity; it attempers the spirit; it cures hypocrisy; it tames the fumes of pride; it is the school of patience; and by taking us from off the brisker relishes of the world, it makes us with more gust to taste the things of the Spirit; and all this only when God fits the circumstances of the sickness so as to consist with acts of reason, consideration, choice, and a present and reflecting mind: which then God sends, when He means that the sickness of the body should be the cure of the soul. But let no man so rely upon it as by design to trust the beginning, the progress, and the consummation, of our piety to such an estate which for ever leaves it unperfect; and though to some persons it adds degrees, and ministers opportunities, and exercises single acts with great advantage, in passive graces; yet it is never an entire or sufficient instrument for the change of our condition from the state of death to the liberty and life of the sons of God. 3. It were good if we would transact the affairs of our souls with nobleness and ingenuity, and that we would by an early and forward religion prevent the necessary arts of the divine providence. It is true that God cures some by incision, by fire and torments; but these are ever the more obstinate and more unrelenting natures. God's providence is not so afflictive and full of trouble, as that it z Nec tamen putaverant ad rem pertinere ubi inciperent, quod placuerat ut fieret. hath placed sickness and infirmity amongst things simply necessary a and in most persons it is but a sickly and an effeminate virtue which is imprinted upon our spirits with fears, and the sorrows of a fever, or a peevish consumption. It is but a miserable remedy to be beholden to a sickness for our health; and though it be better to suffer the loss of a finger than that the arm and the whole body should putrefy, yet even then also it is a trouble and an evil to lose a finger, He that mends with sickness, pares the nails of the beast when they have already torn off part of the flesh; but he that would have a sickness become a clear and an entire blessing, a thing indeed to be reckoned among the good things of God and the evil things of the world, must lead a holy life, and judge himself with an early sentence, and so order the affairs of his soul that, in the usual method of God's saving us, there may be nothing left to be done but that such virtues should be exercised which God intends to crown: and then, as when the Athenians upon a day of battle with longing and uncertain souls sitting in their common hall, expecting what would be the sentence of the day, at last received a messenger, who only had breath enough left him to say, "We are conquerors," and so died; so shall the sick person, who hath "fought a good fight and kept the faith," and only waits for his dissolution and his sentence, breathe forth his spirit with the accents of a conqueror, and his sickness and his death shall only make the mercy and the virtue more illustrious. But for the sickness itself; if all the calumnies were true concerning it with which it is aspersed, yet it is far to be preferred before the most pleasant sin, and before a great secular business and a temporal care and some men wake as much in the foldings of the softest beds, as others on the cross: and sometimes the very weight of sorrow and the weariness of a sickness presses the spirit into slumbers and the images of rest, when the intemperate or the lustful person rolls upon his uneasy thorns, and sleep is departed from his eyes. Certain it is, some sickness is a blessing. Indeed blindness were a most accursed thing, if no man were ever blind but he whose eyes were pulled out with tortures or burning basins: and if sickness were always a testimony of God's anger, and a violence to a man's whole condition, then it were a huge calamity; but because God sends it to His servants, to His children, to little infants, to apostles and saints, with designs of mercy, to preserve their innocence, to overcome temptation, to try their virtue, to fit them for rewards, it is certain that sickness never is an evil but by our own faults, and if we will do our duty we shall be sure to turn it into a blessing. If the sickness be great, it may end in death, and the greater it is, the a Neque tam aversa unquam videbitur ab opere suo providentia, ut debilitas inter optima inventa sit. b Detestabilis erit cæcitas, si nemo oculos perdiderit, nisi cui eruendi sunt. -[Sen. De provid., cap. 5. tom.i. p. 322.] Memineris..maximos dolores morte finiri, parvos multa habere intervalla requietis, mediocrium nos esse dominos.-Ĉic. [De fin., lib. i. cap. 15. tom. ii. p. 93.] sooner and if it be very little, it hath great intervals of rest: if it be between both, we may be masters of it, and by serving the ends of Providence serve also the perfective end of human nature, and enter into the possession of everlasting mercies. The sum is this: He that is afraid of pain is afraid of his own nature; and if his fear be violent, it is a sign his patience is none at all; and an impatient person is not ready dressed for heaven. None but suffering, humble, and patient persons can go to heaven; and when God hath given us the whole stage of our life to exercise all the active virtues of religion, it is necessary in the state of virtues that some portion and period of our lives be assigned to passive graces; for patience, for christian fortitude, for resignation, or conformity to the divine will. But as the violent fear of sickness makes us impatient, so it will make our death without comfort and without religion; and we shall go off from our stage of actions and sufferings with an unhandsome exit, because we were willing to receive the kindness of God when He expressed it as we listed, but we would not suffer Him to be kind and gracious to us in His own method, nor were willing to exercise and improve our virtues at the charge of a sharp fever, or a lingering consumption. "Woe be to the man that hath lost patience; for what will he do when the Lord shall visit him d?" SECTION VII. The second temptation proper to the state of sickness, fear of death, with its remedies. THERE is nothing which can make sickness unsanctified, but the same also will give us cause to fear death. If therefore we so order our affairs and spirits that we do not fear death, our sickness may easily become our advantage; and we can then receive counsel, and consider, and do those acts of virtue which are in that state the proper services of God; and such which men in bondage and fear are not capable of doing, or of advices how they should, when they come to the appointed days of mourning. And indeed if men would but place their design of being happy in the nobleness, courage, and perfect resolutions of doing handsome things, and passing through our unavoidable necessities, in the contempt and despite of the things of this world, and in holy living, and the perfective desires of our natures, the longings and pursuances after heaven; it is certain they could not be made miserable by chance and change, by sickness and death. But we are so softened and made effeminate with deli d Ecclus. ii. 14. cate thoughts, and meditations of ease, and brutish satisfactions, that if our death comes before we have seized upon a great fortune, or enjoy the promises of the fortune-tellers, we esteem ourselves to be robbed of our goods, to be mocked, and miserable. Hence it comes that men are impatient of the thoughts of death: hence come those arts of protraction and delaying the significations of old age: thinking to deceive the world, men cozen themselves, and by representing themselves youthful, they certainly continue their vanity till Proserpina pull the peruke from their heads. We cannot deceive God and nature: for a coffin is a coffin, though it be covered with a pompous veil; and the minutes of our time strike on, and are counted by angels, till the period comes which must cause the passing bell to give warning to all the neighbours, that thou art dead, and they must be so and nothing can excuse or retard this. And if our death could be put off a little longer, what advantage can it be in thy accounts of nature or felicity? They that three thousand years agone died unwillingly, and stopped death two days, or stayed it a week, what is their gain? where is that week? And poor-spirited men use arts of protraction, and make their persons pitiable, but their condition contemptible; being like the poor sinners at Noah's flood: the waters drove them out of their lower rooms; then they crept up to the roof, having lasted half a day longer, and then they knew not how to get down: some crept upon the top branch of a tree, and some climbed up to a mountain, and stayed, it may be, three days longer; but all that while they endured a worse torment than death: they lived with amazement, and were distracted with the ruins of mankind, and the horror of a universal deluge. Remedies against the fear of death by way of consideration. 1. God having in this world placed us in a sea, and troubled the sea with a continual storm, hath appointed the church for a ship, and religion to be the stern; but there is no haven or port but death. Death is that harbour whither God hath designed every one, that there he may find rest from the troubles of the world. How many of the noblest Romans have taken death for sanctuary, and f e Mentiris juvenem tinctis, Lentine, capillis, Personam capiti detrahet illa tuo.-Mart., lib. iii. [ep. 43.] Audit iter, numeratque dies, spatioque viarum Metitur vitam, torquetur morte futura.-[Claud. in Rufin. ii. 137.] θνήσκειν ὁ μέλλων τοῦ χρόνου κέρδος φέροι. Soph. [Εl. 1485.] Nihil est miserius dubitatione venien illud quod restat, aut quale.-Sen. [ep. ci. tom. ii. p. 500.] tium, quorsum evadant, quantum sit *[al. ' peste,' 'pace.'] |