thy hand, all the arrows that stick in me from thy quiver; when I shall see that because I have given myself to my corrupt nature, thou hast changed thine; and because I am all evil towards thee, therefore thou hast given over being good towards me; when it comes to this height, that the fever is not in the humours, but in the spirit; that mine enemy is not an imaginary enemy, Fortune, nor a transitory enemy, malice in great persons; but a real, and an irresistible and an inexorable and an everlasting enemy, the Lord of Hosts himself, the Almighty God himself- the Almighty God himself only knows that weight of this affliction; and except he put in the pondus gloriae, that exceeding weight of an eternal glory with his own hand into the other scale, we are weighed down, we are swallowed up, irreparably, irrevocably, irremediably.

Eighty Sermons, pp. 665–66.

SLEEP

"THE sun must not set upon mine anger"; much less will I let the sun set upon the anger of God towards me, or sleep in an unrepented sin. Every night's sleep is a nunc dimittis; then the Lord lets his servant depart in peace. Thy lying down is a valediction, a parting, a taking leave, (shall I say so?) a shaking hands with God-let these hands be clean. Enter into thy grave, thy metaphorical, thy quotidian grave, thy bed, as thou entered'st into the Church at first, by water, by baptism; re-baptise thyself every night in Job's "snow water," in holy tears that may cool inordinate lusts of thy heart.... Sleep with clean hands, either kept clean all day by integrity, or washed at night by repentance; and whensoever thou

wakest, though all Job's messengers thunder about thee, and all Job's friends multiply misinterpretations against thee, yet Job's protestations shall be thy protestations, what end soever God have in this proceeding. "It is not for any injustice in my hands."

Eighty Sermons, p. 129.

THE SICK SOUL

He shall suspect his religion, suspect his repentance, suspect the comforts of the Minister, suspect the efficacy of the Sacrament, suspect the mercy of God himself. Every fit of an ague is an earthquake that swallows him, every fainting of the knee is a step to Hell, every lying down at night is a funeral, and every quaking is a rising at judgment; every bell that distinguishes times is a passing-bell, and every passingbell his own; every singing in the ear is an angel's trumpet; at every dimness of the candle he hears that voice, "Fool, this night they will fetch away thy soul," and in every judgment denounced against sin, he hears an ito maledicte upon himself, "Go thou accursed into hell fire."

Fifty Sermons, p. 169.

THE DEATH-BED

WHEN I lie under the hands of that enemy that hath reserved himself to the last, to my last bed, then when I shall be able to stir no limb in any other measure than a fever or a paisy shall shake them; when everlasting darkness shall have an inchoation in the present dimness of mine eyes, and the everlasting gnashing in the present chattering of my teeth, and the everlasting worm in the present gnawing of the agonies

of my body, and anguishes of my mind; when the last enemy shall watch my remediless body and my disconsolable soul, there, there, where not the physician in his way, perchance not the priest in his, shall be able to give any assistance; and when he hath sported himself with my misery upon that stage, my deathbed, shall shift the scene, and throw me from that bed into the grave, and there triumph over me, God knows how many generations, till the Redeemer, my Redeemer, the Redeemer of all me, body as well as soul, come again... in that consideration, in that apprehension, he is the powerfulest, the fearfulest enemy; and yet even there this enemy abolebitur, he shall be destroyed.

DUST

Eighty Sermons, p. 149.

It comes equally to us all, and makes us all equal when it comes. The ashes of an oak in the chimney are no epitaph of that oak, to tell me how high or how large that was; it tells me not what flocks it sheltered while it stood, nor what men it hurt when it fell. The dust of great persons' graves is speechless too; it says nothing, it distinguishes nothing. As soon the dust of a wretch whom thou wouldest not, as of a Prince whom thou couldest not look upon, will trouble thine eyes, if the wind blow it thither; and when a whirlwind hath blown the dust of the churchyard into the Church, and the man sweeps out the dust of the Church into the churchyard, who will undertake to sift those dusts again, and to pronounce, This is the patrician, this is the noble flour, and this the yeomanly, this the plebeian bran. Ibid., p. 148.

ETERNITY

A STATE but of one day, because no night shall overtake or determine it, but such a day as is not of a thousand thousand years, which is the longest measure in the scriptures, but of a thousand millions of millions of generations. . . . A day that hath no pridie nor postridie; yesterday doth not usher it in, nor to-morrow shall not drive it out. Methusalem, with all his hundreds of years, was but a mushroom of a night's growth to this day; and all the four Monarchies, with all their thousands of years, and all the powerful Kings, and all the beautiful Queens of this world, were but as a bed of flowers, some gathered at six, some at seven, some at eight all in one morning in respect of this day. In all the two thousand years of nature before the law given by Moses, and the two thousand years of law, before the Gospel given by Christ, and the two thousand years of Grace which are running now (of which last hour we have heard three quarters strike, more than fifteen hundred of this last two thousand spent) in all this six thousand, and in all those which God may be pleased to add, in domo patris, in this house of his Father's, there was never heard quarter-clock to strike, never seen minute-glass to turn.

Eighty Sermons, pp. 747-48.

VERMICULATION

FOR us that die now, and sleep in the state of the dead, we must all pass this posthume death, this death after death, nay, this death after burial, this dissolution after dissolution, this death of corruption and putrefaction, of vermiculation and incineration,

of dissolution and dispersion in and from the grave. When these bodies that have been the children of royal parents, and the parents of royal children, must say with Job, "Corruption, thou art my father," and to the worm, "Thou art my mother and sister.". Miserable riddle, when the same worm must be my mother and my sister and myself. Miserable incest, when I must be married to mine own mother and my sister; and be both father and mother to mine own mother and sister; beget and bear that worm which is all that miserable penury; when my mouth shall be filled with dust, and the worm shall feed, and feed sweetly upon me; when the ambitious man shall have no satisfaction if the poorest alive tread upon him, nor the poorest receive any contentment in being made equal to princes, for they shall be equal but in dust. One dieth at his full strength, being wholly at ease and in quiet, and another dies in the bitterness of his soul, and never eats with pleasure; but they lie down alike in the dust, and the worm covers them. In Job and in Esay it covers them, and is spread under them. The worm is spread under thee, and the worm covers thee. There's the mats and the carpet that lie under; and there's the state and the canopy that hangs over the greatest of the sons of men. Even those bodies that were the temple of the Holy Ghost come to this dilapidation, to ruin, to rubbish, to dust: even the Israel of the Lord and Jacob himself had no other specification, no other denomination but that, Vermis Jacob, thou worm Jacob. Truly the consideration of this posthume death, this death after burial - that after God, with whom are the issues of death, hath delivered me from the death of the womb by bringing me into the world, and from the manifold deaths