Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions; Together with Death's Duel
saw it come in, or who saw it go out? Nobody; yet everybody is sure he
had one, and hath none. If I will ask mere philosophers what the soul
is, I shall find amongst them that will tell me, it is nothing but the
temperament and harmony, and just and equal composition of the elements
in the body, which produces all those faculties which we ascribe to the
soul; and so in itself is nothing, no separable substance that overlives
the body. They see the soul is nothing else in other creatures, and they
affect an impious humility to think as low of man. But if my soul were
no more than the soul of a beast, I could not think so; that soul that
can reflect upon itself, consider itself, is more than so. If I will
ask, not mere philosophers, but mixed men, philosophical divines, how
the soul, being a separate substance, enters into man, I shall find some
that will tell me, that it is by generation and procreation from
parents, because they think it hard to charge the soul with the
guiltiness of original sin if the soul were infused into a body in which
it must necessarily grow foul, and contract original sin whether it
will or no; and I shall find some that will tell me, that it is by
immediate infusion from God, because they think it hard to maintain an
immortality in such a soul, as should be begotten and derived with the
body from mortal parents. If I will ask, not a few men, but almost whole
bodies, whole churches, what becomes of the souls of the righteous at
the departing thereof from the body, I shall be told by some, that they
attend an expiation, a purification in a place of torment; by some, that
they attend the fruition of the sight of God in a place of rest, but yet
but of expectation; by some, that they pass to an immediate possession
of the presence of God. St. Augustine studied the nature of the soul as
much as any thing, but the salvation of the soul; and he sent an express
messenger to St. Hierome, to consult of some things concerning the soul;
but he satisfies himself with this: "Let the departure of my soul to
salvation be evident to my faith, and I care the less how dark the
entrance of my soul into my body be to my reason." It is the going out,
more than the coming in, that concerns us. This soul this bell tells me
is gone out, whither? Who shall tell me that? I know not who it is, much
less what he was, the condition of the man, and the course of his life,
which should tell me whither he is gone, I know not. I was not there in
his sickness, nor at his death; I saw not his way nor his end, nor can
ask them who did, thereby to conclude or argue whither he is gone. But
yet I have one nearer me than all these, mine own charity; I ask that,
and that tells me he is gone to everlasting rest, and joy, and glory. I
owe him a good opinion; it is but thankful charity in me, because I
received benefit and instruction from him when his bell tolled; and I,
being made the fitter to pray by that disposition, wherein I was
assisted by his occasion, did pray for him; and I pray not without
faith; so I do charitably, so I do faithfully believe, that that soul is
gone to everlasting rest, and joy, and glory. But for the body, how poor
a wretched thing is that? we cannot express it so fast, as it grows
worse and worse. That body, which scarce three minutes since was such a
house, as that that soul, which made but one step from thence to heaven,
was scarce thoroughly content to leave that for heaven; that body hath
lost the name of a dwelling-house, because none dwells in it, and is
making haste to lose the name of a body, and dissolve to putrefaction.
Who would not be affected to see a clear and sweet river in the morning,
grow a kennel of muddy land-water by noon, and condemned to the saltness
of the sea by night? and how lame a picture, how faint a representation
is that, of the precipitation of man's body to dissolution? Now all the
parts built up, and knit by a lovely soul, now but a statue of clay, and
now these limbs melted off, as if that clay were but snow; and now the
whole house is but a handful of sand, so much dust, and but a peck of
rubbish, so much bone. If he who, as this bell tells me, is gone now,
were some excellent artificer, who comes to him for a cloak or for a
garment now? or for counsel, if he were a lawyer? if a magistrate, for
justice? Man, before he hath his immortal soul, hath a soul of sense,
and a soul of vegetation before that: this immortal soul did not forbid
other souls to be in us before, but when this soul departs, it carries
all with it; no more vegetation, no more sense. Such a mother-in-law is
the earth, in respect of our natural mother; in her womb we grew, and
when she was delivered of us, we were planted in some place, in some
calling in the world; in the womb of the earth we diminish, and when she
is delivered of us, our grave opened for another; we are not
transplanted, but transported, our dust blown away with profane dust,
with every wind.
XVIII. EXPOSTULATION.
My God, my God, if expostulation be too bold a word, do thou mollify it
with another; let it be wonder in myself, let it be but problem to
others; but let me ask, why wouldst thou not suffer those that serve
thee in holy services, to do any office about the dead,[247] nor assist
at their funeral? Thou hadst no counsellor, thou needst none; thou hast
no controller, thou admittedst none. Why do I ask? In ceremonial things
(as that was) any convenient reason is enough; who can be sure to
propose that reason, that moved thee in the institution thereof? I
satisfy myself with this; that in those times the Gentiles were
over-full of an over-reverent respect to the memory of the dead: a great
part of the idolatry of the nations flowed from that; an over-amorous
devotion, an over-zealous celebrating, and over-studious preserving of
the memories, and the pictures of some dead persons; and by _the vain
glory of men, they entered into the world_,[248] and their statues and
pictures contracted an opinion of divinity by age: that which was at
first but a picture of a friend grew a god in time, as the wise man
notes, _They called them gods, which were the work of an ancient
hand_.[249] And some have assigned a certain time, when a picture should
come out of minority, and be at age to be a god in sixty years after it
is made. Those images of men that had life, and some idols of other
things which never had any being, are by one common name called
promiscuously dead; and for that the wise man reprehends the idolater,
_for health he prays to that which is weak, and for life he prays to
that which is dead_.[250] Should we do so? says thy prophet;[251]
_should we go from the living to the dead?_ So much ill then being
occasioned by so much religious compliment exhibited to the dead, thou,
O God (I think), wouldst therefore inhibit thy principal holy servants
from contributing any thing at all to this dangerous intimation of
idolatry; and that the people might say, Surely those dead men are not
so much to be magnified as men mistake, since God will not suffer his
holy officers so much as to touch them, not to see them. But those
dangers being removed, thou, O my God, dost certainly allow that we
should do offices of piety to the dead and that we should draw
instructions to piety from the dead. Is not this, O my God, a holy kind
of raising up seed to my dead brother, if I, by the meditation of his
death produce a better life in myself? It is the blessing upon Reuben,
_Let Reuben live, and not die, and let not his men be few_;[252] let him
propagate many. And it is a malediction, _That that dieth, let it
die_,[253] let it do no good in dying; for _trees without fruit_, thou,
by thy apostle, callest _twice dead_.[254] It is a second death, if none
live the better by me after my death, by the manner of my death.
Therefore may I justly think, that thou madest that a way to convey to
the Egyptians a fear of thee and a fear of death, that _there was not a
house where there was not one dead_;[255] for thereupon the Egyptians
said, _We are all dead men_: the death of others should catechise us to
death. Thy Son Christ Jesus is the _first begotten of the dead_;[256] he
rises first, the eldest brother, and he is my master in this science of
death; but yet, for me, I am a younger brother too, to this man who
died now, and to every man whom I see or hear to die before me, and all
they are ushers to me in this school of death. I take therefore that
which thy servant David's wife said to him, to be said to me, _If thou
save not thy life to-night, to-morrow thou shalt be slain_.[257] If the
death of this man work not upon me now, I shall die worse than if thou
hadst not afforded me this help; for thou hast sent him in this bell to
me, as thou didst send to the angel of Sardis, with commission to
_strengthen the things that remain, and that are ready to die_,[258]
that in this weakness of body I might receive spiritual strength by
these occasions. This is my strength, that whether thou say to me, as
thine angel said to Gideon, _Peace be unto thee, fear not, thou shalt
not die_;[259] or whether thou say, as unto Aaron, _Thou shalt die
there_;[260] yet thou wilt preserve that which is ready to die, my soul,
from the worst death, that of sin. Zimri _died for his sins_, says thy
Spirit, _which he sinned in doing evil; and in his sin which he did to
make Israel sin_;[261] for his sins, his many sins, and then in his sin,
his particular sin. For my sins I shall die whensoever I die, for death
is the wages of sin; but I shall die in my sin, in that particular sin
of resisting thy Spirit, if I apply not thy assistances. Doth it not
call us to a particular consideration that thy blessed Son varies his
form of commination, and aggravates it in the variation, when he says to
the Jews (because they refused the light offered), _You shall die in
your sin_:[262] and then when they proceeded to farther disputations,
and vexations, and temptations, he adds, _You shall die in your
sins_;[263] he multiplies the former expression to a plural. In this
sin, and in all your sins, doth not the resisting of thy particular
helps at last draw upon us the guiltiness of all our former sins? May
not the neglecting of this sound ministered to me in this man's death,
bring me to that misery, so that I, whom the Lord of life loved so as to
die for me, shall die, and a creature of mine own shall be immortal;
that I shall die, and the _worm_ of mine own conscience _shall never
die_?[264]
XVIII. PRAYER.
O eternal and most gracious God, I have a new occasion of thanks, and a
new occasion of prayer to thee from the ringing of this bell. Thou
toldest me in the other voice that I was mortal and approaching to
death; in this I may hear thee say that I am dead in an irremediable, in
an irrecoverable state for bodily health. If that be thy language in
this voice, how infinitely am I bound to thy heavenly Majesty for
speaking so plainly unto me? for even that voice, that I must die now,
is not the voice of a judge that speaks by way of condemnation, but of a
physician that presents health in that. Thou presentest me death as the
cure of my disease, not as the exaltation of it; if I mistake thy voice
herein, if I overrun thy pace, and prevent thy hand, and imagine death
more instant upon me than thou hast bid him be, yet the voice belongs to
me; I am dead, I was born dead, and from the first laying of these mud
walls in my conception, they have mouldered away, and the whole course
of life is but an active death. Whether this voice instruct me that I am
a dead man now, or remember me that I have been a dead man all this
while. I humbly thank thee for speaking in this voice to my soul; and I
humbly beseech thee also to accept my prayers in his behalf, by whose