: : 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 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 Memineris ergò maximos dolores morte finiri; parvos habere multa intervalla requietis; mediocrium nos esse dominos.-Cicero. : 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° ? SECT. VII. The second Temptation proper to the state of Sickness, 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 • Ecclus. ii. 14. 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 delicate 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 P. 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 3000 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 P Mentiris juvenem tinctis, Lentine, capillis; Personam capiti detrahet illa tuo.-Martial, 1. iii. Ep. 43. 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 have esteemed it less than shame or a mean dishonour? and Cæsar was cruel to Domitius, captain of Corfinium, when he had taken the town from him, that he refused to sign his petition of death. Death would have hid his head with honour, but that cruel mercy reserved him to the shame of surviving his disgrace. The Holy Scripture, giving an account of the reasons of the Divine Providence taking godly men from this world, and shutting them up in a hasty grave, says, that they are taken from the evils to come a: and concerning ourselves it is certain, if we Isa. lvii. 1. had ten years agoner taken seizure of our portion of dust, Death had not taken us from good things, but from infinite evils, such which the sun hath seldom seen. Did not Priamus weep oftener than Troilus? and happy had he been, if he had died when his sons were living, and his kingdom safe, and houses full, and his city unburnt. It was a long life that made him miserable, and an early death only could have secured his fortune. And it hath happened many times, that persons of a fair life and a clear reputation, of a good fortune and an honourable name, have been tempted in their age to folly and vanity, have fallen under the disgrace of dotage, or into an unfortunate marriage, or have besotted themselves with drinking, or outlived their fortunes, or become tedious to their friends, or are afflicted with lingering and vexatious diseases, or lived to see their excellent parts buried, and cannot understand the wise discourses and productions of their younger years. In all these cases, and infinite more, do not all the world say that it had been better this man had died sooner? But so have ↳ known passionate women to shriek aloud when their nearest relatives were dying, and that horrid shriek hath stayed the spirit of the man awhile to wonder at the folly, and represent the inconvenience; and the dying person hath lived one day longer full of pain, * That is, before having witnessed the martyrdom of Charles the First, in A.D. 1649, and suffered all the attendant evils in Church and State. The 'Holy Dying' was not published until October, 1651; and it was probably in 1642, nine years before, that Dr. Jeremy Taylor for his learning and loyalty was driven' from his living of Uppingham in Rutlandshire, 'his house plundered, his estate seized, and his family driven out of doors.' (See the Epistle Dedicatory' at the beginning of this book, and the Rev. R. A. Willmott's Biography of Bp. Taylor, pp. 135, 142, 104-106.)-ED. |