ungoverned, flattered and abused; and he that considers the troubles of an over-long garment and of a crammed stomach, a trailing gown and a loaden table, may justly understand that all that for which men are so passionate is their hurt and their objection, that which a temperate man would avoid, and a wise man cannot love.

He that is no fool, but can consider wisely, if he be in love with this world, we need not despair but that a witty man might reconcile him with tortures, and make him think charitably of the rack, and be brought to dwell with vipers and dragons, and entertain his guests with the shrieks of mandrakes, cats, and screechowls, with the filing of iron, and the harshness of rending of silk, or to admire the harmony that is made by a herd of evening wolves when they miss their draught of blood in their midnight revels. The groans of a man in a fit of the stone are worse than all these; and the distractions of a troubled conscience are worse than those groans: and yet a careless merry sinner is worse than all that. But if we could from one of the battlements of Heaven espy how many men and women at this time lie fainting and dying for want of bread, how many young men are hewn down by the sword of war, how many poor orphans are now weeping over the graves of their father, by whose life they were enabled to eat; if we could but hear how many mariners and passengers are at this present in a storm, and shriek out because their keel dashes against a rock or bulges under them, how many people there are that weep with want, and are mad with oppression, or are desperate by too quick a sense. of a constant infelicity; in all reason we should be

glad to be out of the noise and participation of so many evils. This is a place of sorrows and tears, of great evils and a constant calamity: let us remove from hence, at least in affections and preparation of mind.

Three Precepts preparatory to a holy Death, to be practised in our whole Life.

1. He that would die well must always look for death, every day knocking at the gates of the gravea; and then the gates of the grave shall never prevail upon him to do him mischief. This was the advice of all the wise and good men of the world, who especially in the days and periods of their joy and festival egressions chose to throw some ashes into their chalices, some sober remembrances of their fatal period. Such was the black shirt of Saladine; the tomb-stone presented to the Emperor of Constantinople on his Coronation-day; the Bishop of Rome's two reeds with flax and a wax-taper; the Egyptian Skeleton served up at feasts; and Trimalcion's banquet in Petronius, in which was brought in the image of a dead man's bones

Propera vivere, et singulos dies singulas vitas puta. Nihil interest inter diem et seculum.

b Si sapis, utaris totis, Coline, diebus;

Extremumque tibi semper adesse putes.-Martial.

of silver, with spondyles exactly turning to every of the guests, and saying to every one, that You and you must die, and look not one upon another, for every one is equally concerned in this sad representment. These in fantastic semblances declare a severe counsel and useful meditation; and it is not easy for a man to be gay in his imagination, or to be drunk with joy or wine, pride or revenge, who considers sadly that he must ere long dwell in a house of darkness and dishonour, and his body must be the inheritance of worms, and his Soul must be what he pleases, even as a man makes it here by his living good or bad. I have read of a young hermit, who, being passionately in love with a young lady, could not by all the arts of Religion and mortification suppress the trouble of that fancy, till at last being told that she was dead, and had been buried about fourteen days, he went secretly to her vault, and with the skirt of his mantle wiped the moisture from the carcass, and still at the return of his temptation laid it before him, saying, Behold, this is the beauty of the woman thou didst so much desire; and so the man found his cure. And if we make death as present to us, our own death, dwelling and dressed in all its pomp of fancy and proper circumstances; if any thing will quench the heats of lust, or the desires of money, or the greedy passionate affections of this world, this must do it. But withal, the frequent use of this meditation, by curing our present inordinations, will make death safe and friendly, and by its very custom will make that the King of terrors shall come to us without his affrighting dresses; and that we shall sit down in the grave as we compose ourselves to sleep, and do the duties of nature and

choice. The old people that live near the Riphæan mountains were taught to converse with death, and to handle it on all sides, and to discourse of it, as of a thing that will certainly come, and ought so to do. Thence their minds and resolutions became capable of death, and they thought it a dishonourable thing with greediness to keep a life, that must go from us to lay aside its thorns and to return again circled with a glory and a diadem.

2. He that would die well, must all the days of his life lay up against the day of death; not only by the general provisions of holiness and a pious life indefinitely, but provisions proper to the necessities of that great day of expense, in which a man is to throw his last cast for an eternity of joys or sorrows: ever remembering, that this alone well performed is not enough to pass us into Paradise, but that alone done foolishly is enough to send us to Hell: and the want of either a holy life or death makes a man to fall short of the mighty price of our high calling. *In order to this rule we are to consider what special graces we shall then need to exercise; and, by the proper arts of the Spirit, by a heap of proportioned arguments, by prayers and a great treasure of devotion laid up in Heaven, provide beforehand a reserve of strength and mercy. Men in the course of their lives walk lazily and incuriously, as if they had both their feet in one shoe; and when they are passively revolved to the time of their dissolution, they have no mercies in store, no patience, no faith, no charity to God, or despite of the world, being without gust or appetite for the land of their inheritance, which Christ with so • Phil. iii. 10-14; 17-21.

b Lucan. i. 458.