Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions; Together with Death's Duel
inseparable; still we are called upon, in infinite places, to fear God,
yet the commandment, which is the root of all is, Thou shalt love the
Lord thy God; he doeth neither that doeth not both; he omits neither,
that does one. Therefore when thy servant David had said that _the fear
of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom_,[93] and his son had repeated it
again,[94] he that collects both calls this fear the root of wisdom;
and, that it may embrace all, he calls it wisdom itself.[95] A wise man,
therefore, is never without it, never without the exercise of it;
therefore thou sentest Moses to thy people, _that they might learn to
fear thee all the days of their lives_,[96] not in heavy and calamitous,
but in good and cheerful days too; for Noah, who had assurance of his
deliverance, yet, _moved with fear, prepared an ark, for the saving of
his house_.[97] _A wise man will fear in everything._[98] And therefore,
though I pretend to no other degree of wisdom, I am abundantly rich in
this, that I lie here possessed with that fear which is thy fear, both
that this sickness is thy immediate correction, and not merely a natural
accident, and therefore fearful, because it is a fearful thing to fall
into thy hands; and that this fear preserves me from all inordinate
fear, arising out of the infirmity of nature, because thy hand being
upon me, thou wilt never let me fall out of thy hand.
VI. PRAYER.
O most mighty God, and merciful God, the God of all true sorrow, and
true joy too, of all fear, and of all hope too, as thou hast given me a
repentance, not to be repented of, so give me, O Lord, a fear, of which
I may not be afraid. Give me tender and supple and conformable
affections, that as I joy with them that joy, and mourn with them that
mourn, so I may fear with them that fear. And since thou hast vouchsafed
to discover to me, in his fear whom thou hast admitted to be my
assistance in this sickness, that there is danger therein, let me not, O
Lord, go about to overcome the sense of that fear, so far as to
pretermit the fitting and preparing of myself for the worst that may be
feared, the passage out of this life. Many of thy blessed martyrs have
passed out of this life without any show of fear; but thy most blessed
Son himself did not so. Thy martyrs were known to be but men, and
therefore it pleased thee to fill them with thy Spirit and thy power, in
that they did more than men; thy Son was declared by thee, and by
himself, to be God; and it was requisite that he should declare himself
to be man also, in the weaknesses of man. Let me not therefore, O my
God, be ashamed of these fears, but let me feel them to determine where
his fear did, in a present submitting of all to thy will. And when thou
shalt have inflamed and thawed my former coldnesses and indevotions with
these heats, and quenched my former heats with these sweats and
inundations, and rectified my former presumptions and negligences with
these fears, be pleased, O Lord, as one made so by thee, to think me fit
for thee; and whether it be thy pleasure to dispose of this body, this
garment, so as to put it to a farther wearing in this world, or to lay
it up in the common wardrobe, the grave, for the next, glorify thyself
in thy choice now, and glorify it then, with that glory, which thy Son,
our Saviour Christ Jesus, hath purchased for them whom thou makest
partakers of his resurrection. Amen.
FOOTNOTES:
[70] 2 Sam. iii. 11.
[71] Job, ix. 34.
[72] Luke, xviii. 1.
[73] Luke, xi. 5.
[74] Psalm xxvii. 1.
[75] Num. xiv. 9.
[76] Psalm xxxv. 70.
[77] Psalm xlix. 5.
[78] Ecclus. xli. 3.
[79] Mark, vi. 20.
[80] Psalm xxv. 14.
[81] Prov. ii. 5.
[82] Acts, ix. 31.
[83] Gen. iii. 10.
[84] Prov. i. 26; x. 24.
[85] Psalm xiv. 5; liii. 5.
[86] John, vii. 13; xix. 38; xxix. 19
[87] Isaiah, xxxiii. 6.
[88] Matt. viii. 26.
[89] Judges, vii. 3.
[90] Rev. xxi. 8.
[91] Job, vi. 20.
[92] Matt. xxviii. 8.
[93] Psalm cxi. 10.
[94] Prov. i. 7.
[95] Ecclus. i. 20, 27.
[96] Deut. iv. 10.
[97] Heb. xi. 7.
[98] Ecclus. xviii. 27.
VII. SOCIOS SIBI JUNGIER INSTAT.
_The physician desires to have others joined with him._
VII. MEDITATION.
There is more fear, therefore more cause. If the physician desire help,
the burden grows great: there is a growth of the disease then; but there
must be an autumn too; but whether an autumn of the disease or me, it is
not my part to choose; but if it be of me, it is of both; my disease
cannot survive me, I may overlive it. Howsoever, his desiring of others
argues his candour, and his ingenuity; if the danger be great, he
justifies his proceedings, and he disguises nothing that calls in
witnesses; and if the danger be not great, he is not ambitious, that is
so ready to divide the thanks and the honour of that work which he begun
alone, with others. It diminishes not the dignity of a monarch that he
derive part of his care upon others; God hath not made many suns, but he
hath made many bodies that receive and give light. The Romans began with
one king; they came to two consuls; they returned in extremities to one
dictator: whether in one or many, the sovereignty is the same in all
states and the danger is not the more, and the providence is the more,
where there are more physicians; as the state is the happier where
businesses are carried by more counsels than can be in one breast, how
large soever. Diseases themselves hold consultations, and conspire how
they may multiply, and join with one another, and exalt one another's
force so; and shall we not call physicians to consultations? Death is in
an old man's door, he appears and tells him so, and death is at a young
man's back, and says nothing; age is a sickness, and youth is an
ambush; and we need so many physicians as may make up a watch, and spy
every inconvenience. There is scarce any thing that hath not killed
somebody; a hair, a feather hath done it; nay, that which is our best
antidote against it hath done it; the best cordial hath been deadly
poison. Men have died of joy, and almost forbidden their friends to weep
for them, when they have seen them die laughing. Even that tyrant,
Dionysius (I think the same that suffered so much after), who could not
die of that sorrow, of that high fall, from a king to a wretched private
man, died of so poor a joy as to be declared by the people at a theatre
that he was a good poet. We say often that a man may live of a little;
but, alas, of how much less may a man die? And therefore the more
assistants the better. Who comes to a day of hearing, in a cause of any
importance, with one advocate? In our funerals we ourselves have no
interest; there we cannot advise, we cannot direct; and though some
nations (the Egyptians in particular) built themselves better tombs than
houses because they were to dwell longer in them, yet amongst ourselves,
the greatest man of style whom we have had, the Conqueror, was left, as
soon as his soul left him, not only without persons to assist at his
grave but without a grave. Who will keep us then we know not; as long as
we can, let us admit as much help as we can; another and another
physician is not another and another indication and symptom of death,
but another and another assistant, and proctor of life: nor do they so
much feed the imagination with apprehension of danger, as the
understanding with comfort. Let not one bring learning, another
diligence, another religion, but every one bring all; and as many
ingredients enter into a receipt, so may many men make the receipt. But
why do I exercise my meditation so long upon this, of having plentiful
help in time of need? Is not my meditation rather to be inclined another
way, to condole and commiserate their distress who have none? How many
are sicker (perchance) than I, and laid in their woful straw at home (if
that corner be a home), and have no more hope of help, though they die,
than of preferment, though they live! Nor do more expect to see a
physician then, than to be an officer after; of whom, the first that
takes knowledge, is the sexton that buries them, who buries them in
oblivion too! For they do but fill up the number of the dead in the
bill, but we shall never hear their names, till we read them in the book
of life with our own. How many are sicker (perchance) than I, and thrown
into hospitals, where (as a fish left upon the sand must stay the tide)
they must stay the physician's hour of visiting, and then can be but
visited! How many are sicker (perchance) than all we, and have not this
hospital to cover them, not this straw to lie in, to die in, but have
their gravestone under them, and breathe out their souls in the ears and
in the eyes of passengers, harder than their bed, the flint of the
street? that taste of no part of our physic, but a sparing diet, to whom
ordinary porridge would be julep enough, the refuse of our servants
bezoar enough, and the offscouring of our kitchen tables cordial enough.
O my soul, when thou art not enough awake to bless thy God enough for
his plentiful mercy in affording thee many helpers, remember how many
lack them, and help them to them or to those other things which they
lack as much as them.
VII. EXPOSTULATION.
My God, my God, thy blessed servant Augustine begged of thee that Moses
might come and tell him what he meant by some places of Genesis: may I
have leave to ask of that Spirit that writ that book, why, when David
expected news from Joab's army,[99] and that the watchman told him that
he saw a man running alone, David concluded out of that circumstance,
that if he came alone, he brought good news?[100] I see the grammar, the
word signifies so, and is so ever accepted, _good news_; but I see not
the logic nor the rhetoric, how David would prove or persuade that his
news was good because he was alone, except a greater company might have
made great impressions of danger, by imploring and importuning present
supplies. Howsoever that be, I am sure that that which thy apostle says
to Timothy, _Only Luke is with me_,[101] Luke, and nobody but Luke, hath
a taste of complaint and sorrow in it: though Luke want no testimony of
ability, of forwardness, of constancy, and perseverance, in assisting
that great building which St. Paul laboured in, yet St. Paul is affected
with that, that there was none but Luke to assist. We take St. Luke to
have been a physician, and it admits the application the better that in
the presence of one good physician we may be glad of more. It was not
only a civil spirit of policy, or order, that moved Moses's
father-in-law to persuade him to divide the burden of government and
judicature with others, and take others to his assistance,[102] but it
was also thy immediate Spirit, O my God, that moved Moses to present
unto thee seventy of the elders of Israel,[103] to receive of that
Spirit, which was upon Moses only before, such a portion as might ease
him in the government of that people; though Moses alone had endowments
above all, thou gavest him other assistants. I consider thy plentiful
goodness, O my God, in employing angels more than one in so many of thy
remarkable works. Of thy Son, thou sayest, _Let all the angels of God
worship him_;[104] if that be in heaven, upon earth he says, _that he
could command twelve legions of angels_;[105] and when heaven and earth
shall be all one, at the last day, thy Son, O God, _the Son of man,
shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him_.[106] The
angels that celebrated his birth to the shepherds,[107] the angels that
celebrated his second birth, his resurrection, to the Maries,[108] were
in the plural, angels associated with angels. In Jacob's ladder,[109]
they who ascended and descended, and maintained the trade between heaven