ADVERTISEMENT.

IN the following pages the whole of the Text of Bishop Taylor's treatise is given-without alteration or omissionaccording to the earliest and best editions. Some of the marginal illustrations from the Greek and Latin Classics, &c. have, however, been left out: while, on the other hand, the references to Holy Scripture have been both carefully corrected, and very considerably increased in number.

I

To

The Right Honourable and Nobleft Lord,

RICHARD

EARL OF CARBERY, &c.

MY LORD,

AM treating your Lordship as a Roman Gentleman did Saint Augustine and his mother; I shall entertain you in a charnel-house, and carry your meditations awhile into the chambers of Death, where you shall find the rooms dressed up with melancholic arts, and fit to converse with your most retired thoughts, which begin with a sigh, and proceed in deep consideration, and end in a holy resolution. The sight that S. Augustine most noted in that house of sorrow, was the body of Cæsar clothed with all the dishonours of corruption that you can suppose in a six months' burial. But I know that, without pointing, your first thoughts will remember the change of a greater beauty, which is now dressing for the brightest immortality, and from her bed of darkness calls to you to dress your Soul for that change which shall mingle your bones with that beloved dust, and carry your Soul to the same quire, where you may both sit and sing for ever. My Lord, it is your dear lady's anniversary, and she deserved the biggest honour, and the longest memory, and the fairest monument, and the most solemn mourning: and in

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order to it, give me leave (my Lord) to cover her hearse with these following sheets. This book was intended first to minister to her piety; and she desired all good people should partake of the advantages which are here recorded: she knew how to live rarely well, and she desired to know how to die; and God taught her by an experiment. But since her work is done, and God supplied her with provisions of His own, before I could minister to her, and perfect what she desired, it is necessary to present to your lordship those bundles of cypress which were intended to dress her closet, but come now to dress her hearse. My Lord, both your Lordship and myself have lately seen and felt such sorrows of Death, and such sad departure of dearest friends, that it is more than high time we should think ourselves nearly concerned in the accidents. Death hath come so near to you as to fetch a portion from your very heart; and now you cannot choose but dig your own grave, and place your coffin in your eye, when the Angel hath dressed your scene of sorrow and meditation with so particular and so near an object: and therefore, as it is my duty, I am come to minister to your pious thoughts, and to direct your sorrows, that they may turn into virtues and advantages.

And since I know your Lordship to be so constant and regular in your Devotions, and so tender in the matter of Justice, so ready in the expressions of Charity, and so apprehensive of Religion, and that you are a person whose work of grace is apt, and must every day grow towards those degrees, where when you arrive you shall triumph over imperfection, and choose nothing but what may please God; I could not by any compendium conduct and assist your pious purposes so well, as by that which is the great argument and the great instrument of Holy Living, the consideration and exercises of Death.

My Lord, it is a great art to die well, and to be learnt by men in health, by them that can discourse and consider, by

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those whose understanding and acts of reason are not abated with fear or pains: and as the greatest part of Death is passed by the preceding years of our life, so also in those years are the greatest preparations to it; and he that prepares not for Death before his last sickness, is like him that begins to study philosophy when he is going to dispute publicly in the faculty. All that a sick and dying man can do, is but to exercise those virtues which he before acquired, and to perfect that repentance which was begun more early. And of this (my Lord) my book, I think, is a good testimony; not only because it represents the vanity of a late and sick-bed repentance, but because it contains in it so many precepts and meditations, so many propositions and various duties, such forms of exercise, and the degrees and difficulties of so many graces which are necessary preparatives to a holy Death, that the very learning the duties requires study and skill, time and understanding in ways of godliness: and it were very vain to say so much is necessary, and not to suppose more time to learn them, more skill to practise them, more opportunities to desire them, more abilities both of body and mind, than can be supposed in a sick, amazed, timorous, and weak person; whose natural acts are disabled, whose senses are weak, whose discerning faculties are lessened, whose principles are made intricate and entangled, upon whose eye sits a cloud, and the heart is broken with sickness, and the liver pierced through with sorrows and the strokes of Death. And therefore (my Lord) it is intended by the necessity of affairs, that the precepts of dying well be part of the studies of them that live in health, and the days of discourse and understanding, which in this case hath another degree of necessity superadded; because in other notices an imperfect study may be supplied by a frequent exercise and a renewed experience; here if we practise imperfectly once, we shall never recover the error: for we die but once; and therefore it will be necessary that our skill be more exact, since it is not to be mended by trial,