when they are born, and when they marry, and when they die; when they are baptized, or against a solemnity, or for the day of their funeral: but these are but ceremonious washings, and never purify the Soul, if it be stained and hath sullied the whiteness of its baptismal robes. *God intended we should live a holy life; *He contracted with us in Jesus Christ for a holy life: *He made no abatements of the strictest sense of ith, but such as did necessarily comply with human infirmities or possibilities; that is, He understood it in the sense of Repentance, which still is so to renew our duty, that it may be a holy life in the second sense; that is, some great portion of our life to be spent in living as Christians should. *A resolving to repent upon our death-bed is the greatest mockery of God in the world, and the most perfect contradictory to all His excellent designs of mercy and holiness: for therefore He threatened us with Hell if we did not, and He promised Heaven if we did, live a holy life: and a late Repentance promises Heaven to us upon other conditions, even when we have lived wickedly. *It renders a man useless and intolerable to the world; taking off the great curb of Religion, of fear and hope, and permitting all impiety with the greatest impunity and encouragement in the world. *By this means we see so many παίδας πολυχρονίους, as Philo calls them, or, as the prophets, pueros centum annorum, children of almost a hundred years old, upon whose grave we Elian. lib. iv. Var. Hist. cap. 1. h Vide Aug. lib. v. Hom. 4. et Serm. 57. de Tempore; Faustum ad Paulinum Ep. 1. in Bibiloth. Pp. tom. 5. vet. edit.; Concil. Arelat. i. c. 3; Carthag. iv. cap. 7, 8. may write the inscription which was upon the tomb of Similis in Xiphilini, Here he lies who was so many years, but lived but seven. And the course of nature runs counter to the perfect designs of Piety; and *God, Who gave us a life to live to Him, is only served at our death, when we die to all the world; * and we undervalue the great promises made by the Holy Jesus, for which the piety, the strictest unerring piety of ten thousand ages is not a proportionable exchange: yet we think it a hard bargain to get Heaven, if we be forced to part with one lust, or live soberly twenty years; but, like Demetrius Afer, (who having lived a slave all his life-time, yet desiring to descend to his grave in freedom, begged manumission of his lord,) we lived in the bondage of our sin all our days, and hope to die the Lord's freed-men. But above all, this course of a delayed Repentance must of necessity therefore be ineffective and certainly mortal, because it is an entire destruction of the very formality and essential constituent reason of Religion: which I thus demonstrate. When God made man, and propounded to him an immortal and a blessed state, as the end of his hopes and the perfection of his condition, He did not give it him for nothing, but upon certain conditions; which, although they could add nothing to God, yet they were such things which man could value, and they were his best and God had made appetites of pleasure in man, that in them the scene of his Obedience should lie. For when God made instances of man's i In Adrian. Σίμιλις μὲν ἐνταῦθα κεῖται, βιοὺς μὲν ἔτη τόσα, ζήσας δὲ ἔτη ἑπτά. k Vide the Life of Christ, Disc. of Repentance; Rule of Holy Living, ch. iv. sect. of Repentance; and volume of Serm. Serm. 5, 6. Obedience, He 1. either commanded such things to be done which man did naturally desire, or 2. such things which contradict his natural desires, or 3. such which were indifferent. Not the first and the last for it could be no effect of love or duty towards God for a man to eat when he was impatiently hungry, and could not stay from eating; neither was it any contention of obedience or labour of love for a man to look eastward once a day, or turn his back when the north wind blew fierce and loud. Therefore for the trial and instance of obedience, God made His laws so, that they should lay restraint upon man's appetites, so that man might part with something of his own, that he may give to God his will, and deny it to himself for the interest of His service: and Chastity is the denial of a violent desire, and Justice is parting with money that might help to enrich me, and Meekness is a huge contradiction to Pride and Revenge; and the wandering of our eyes, and the greatness of our fancy, and our imaginative opinions, are to be lessened, that we may serve God. There is no other way of serving God; we have nothing else to present unto Him: we do not else give Him any thing or part of ourselves, but when we for His sake part with what we naturally desire; and difficulty is essential to Virtue, and without choice there can be no reward, and in the satisfaction of our natural desires there is no election, we run to them as beasts to the river or the crib. If therefore any man shall teach or practice such a Religion that satisfies all our natural desires in the days of desires and passion, of lust and appetites, and only turns to God when his appetites are gone, and his desires cease; this man hath overthrown the very being of virtues, and the essential constitution of Religion: Religion is no Religion, and virtue is no act of choice, and reward comes by chance and without condition, if we only are religious when we cannot choose; if we part with our money when we cannot keep it; with our lust when we cannot act it; with our desires when they have left us. Death is a certain mortifier; but that mortification is deadly, not useful to the purposes of a spiritual life. When we are compelled to depart from our evil customs, and leave to live that we may begin to live1, then we die to die; that life is the prologue to death, and thenceforth we die eternally. S. Cyril speaks of certain people that chose to worship the Sun, because he was a day-god; for, believing that he was quenched every night in the sea, or that he had no influence upon them that light up candles and lived by the light of fire, they were confident they might be atheists all night, and live as they list. Men who divide their little portion of time between Religion and pleasures, between God and God's enemy, think that God is to rule but in His certain period of time, and that our life is the stage for passion and folly, and the day of death for the work of our life. But as to God both the day and night are alikem, so are the first and last of our days; all are His due, and He will account severely with us for the follies of the first and the evil of the last. The evils and the pains are great which are reserved for those who defer their restitution to God's favour till their 1 Cogimur à suetis animum suspendere rebus, death. And therefore Antisthenes said well, It is not the happy death, but the happy life, that makes man happy. It is in Piety as in fame and reputation; he secures a good name but loosely, that trusts his fame and celebrity only to his ashes; and it is more a civility than the basis of a firm reputation, that men speak honour of their departed relatives: but if their life be virtuous, it forces honour from contempt, and snatches it from the hand of envy, and it shines through the crevices of detraction; and, as it anointed the head of the living, so it embalms the body of the dead. From these premises it follows, that when we discourse of a sick man's repentance, it is intended to be, not a beginning, but the prosecution and consummation of the covenant of Repentance, which Christ stipulated with us in Baptism, and which we needed all our life, and which we began long before this last arrest, and in which we are now to make farther progress, that we may arrive to that integrity and fulness of duty, that our sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord". SECT. VI. Rules for the practice of Repentance in Sickness. 1. Let the sick man consider at what gate this Sickness entered: and if he can discover the particular, let him instantly, passionately, and with great contrition, dash the crime in pieces, lest he descend into his grave in the midst of a sin, and thence remove into Acts iii. 19. |