Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions; Together with Death's Duel
art all_.[270] Since thou art so, O my God, and affliction is a sea too
deep for us, what is our refuge? Thine ark, thy ship. In all other
afflictions, those means which thou hast ordained in this sea, in
sickness, thy ship is thy physician. _Thou hast made a way in the sea,
and a safe path in the waters, showing that thou canst save from all
dangers, yea, though a man went to sea without art_:[271] yet, where I
find all that, I find this added; _nevertheless thou wouldst not, that
the work of thy wisdom should be idle_.[272] Thou canst save without
means, but thou hast told no man that thou wilt; thou hast told every
man that thou wilt not.[273] When the centurion believed the master of
the ship more than St. Paul, they were all opened to a great danger;
this was a preferring of thy means before thee, the author of the means:
but, my God, though thou beest every where: I have no promise of
appearing to me but in thy ship, thy blessed Son preached out of a
ship:[274] the means is preaching, he did that; and the ship was a type
of the church, he did it there. Thou gavest St. Paul the lives of all
them that sailed with him;[275] if they had not been in the ship with
him, the gift had not extended to them. _As soon as thy Son was come out
of the ship, immediately there met him, out of the tombs, a man with an
unclean spirit, and no man could hold him, no not with chains._[276] Thy
Son needed no use of means; yet there we apprehend the danger to us, if
we leave the ship, the means, in this case the physician. But as they
are ships to us in those seas, so is there a ship to them too in which
they are to stay. Give me leave, O my God, to assist myself with such a
construction of these words of thy servant Paul to the centurion, when
the mariners would have left the ship, _Except these abide in the ship,
you cannot be safe_:[277] except they who are our ships, the physicians,
abide in that which is theirs, and our ship, the truth, and the sincere
and religious worship of thee and thy gospel, we cannot promise
ourselves so good safety; for though we have our ship, the physician, he
hath not his ship, religion; and means are not means but in their
concatenation, as they depend and are chained together. _The ships are
great_, says thy apostle, _but a helm turns them_;[278] the men are
learned, but their religion turns their labours to good, and therefore
it was a heavy curse when _the third part of the ships perished_:[279]
it is a heavy case where either all religion, or true religion, should
forsake many of these ships whom thou hast sent to convey us over these
seas. But, O my God, my God, since I have my ship and they theirs, I
have them and they have thee, why are we yet no nearer land? As soon as
thy Son's disciple had taken him into the ship, _immediately the ship
was at the land whither they went_.[280] Why have not they and I this
dispatch? Every thing is immediately done, which is done when thou
wouldst have it done. Thy purpose terminates every action, and what was
done before that is undone yet. Shall that slacken my hope? thy prophet
from thee hath forbidden it. _It is good that a man should both hope,
and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord._[281] Thou puttest off
many judgments till the last day, and many pass this life without any;
and shall not I endure the putting off thy mercy for a day? And yet, O
my God, thou puttest me not to that, for the assurance of future mercy
is present mercy. But what is my assurance now? what is my seal? It is
but a cloud; that which my physicians call a cloud, in that which gives
them their indication. But a cloud? Thy great seal to all the world, the
rainbow, that secured the world for ever from drowning, was but a
reflection upon a cloud. A cloud itself was a pillar which guided the
church,[282] and the glory of God not only was, but appeared in a
cloud.[283] Let me return, O my God, to the consideration of thy servant
Elijah's proceeding in a time of desperate drought;[284] he bids them
look towards the sea; they look, and see nothing. He bids them again and
again seven times; and at the seventh time they saw a little cloud
rising out of the sea, and presently they had their desire of rain.
Seven days, O my God, have we looked for this cloud, and now we have it;
none of thy indications are frivolous, thou makest thy signs seals, and
thy seals effects, and thy effects consolation and restitution,
wheresoever thou mayst receive glory by that way.
XIX. PRAYER.
O eternal and most gracious God, who though thou passedst over infinite
millions of generations, before thou camest to a creation of this world,
yet when thou beganst, didst never intermit that work, but continuedst
day to day, till thou hadst perfected all the work, and deposed it in
the hands and rest of a sabbath, though thou have been pleased to
glorify thyself in a long exercise of my patience, with an expectation
of thy declaration of thyself in this my sickness, yet since thou hast
now of thy goodness afforded that which affords us some hope, if that be
still the way of thy glory, proceed in that way and perfect that work,
and establish me in a sabbath and rest in thee, by this thy seal of
bodily restitution. Thy priests came up to thee by steps in the temple;
thy angels came down to Jacob by steps upon the ladder; we find no stair
by which thou thyself camest to Adam in paradise, nor to Sodom in thine
anger; for thou, and thou only, art able to do all at once. But O Lord,
I am not weary of thy pace, nor weary of mine own patience. I provoke
thee not with a prayer, not with a wish, not with a hope, to more haste
than consists with thy purpose, nor look that any other thing should
have entered into thy purpose, but thy glory. To hear thy steps coming
towards me is the same comfort as to see thy face present with me;
whether thou do the work of a thousand years in a day, or extend the
work of a day to a thousand years, as long as thou workest, it is light
and comfort. Heaven itself is but an extension of the same joy; and an
extension of this mercy, to proceed at thy leisure, in the way of
restitution, is a manifestation of heaven to me here upon earth. From
that people to whom thou appearedst in signs and in types, the Jews,
thou art departed, because they trusted in them; but from thy church, to
whom thou hast appeared in thyself, in thy Son, thou wilt never depart,
because we cannot trust too much in him. Though thou have afforded me
these signs of restitution, yet if I confide in them, and begin to say,
all was but a natural accident, and nature begins to discharge herself,
and she will perfect the whole work, my hope shall vanish because it is
not in thee. If thou shouldst take thy hand utterly from me, and have
nothing to do with me, nature alone were able to destroy me; but if thou
withdraw thy helping hand, alas, how frivolous are the helps of nature,
how impotent the assistances of art? As therefore the morning dew is a
pawn of the evening fatness, so, O Lord, let this day's comfort be the
earnest of to-morrow's, so far as may conform me entirely to thee, to
what end, and by what way soever thy mercy have appointed me.
FOOTNOTES:
[265] Psalm xlvi. 3.
[266] Psalm xxxiii. 7.
[267] Prov. viii. 29.
[268] Josh. iii. 17.
[269] Ecclus. xliii. 24.
[270] Ecclus. xliii. 27.
[271] Wisd. xiv. 3.
[272] Wisd. xiv. 5.
[273] Acts, xxvii. 11.
[274] Luke, v. 3.
[275] Acts, xxvii. 24.
[276] Mark, v. 2.
[277] Acts, xxvii. 31.
[278] James, iii. 4.
[279] Rev. viii. 9.
[280] John, vi. 21.
[281] Lam. iii. 26.
[282] Exod. xiii. 21.
[283] Exod. xvi. 10.
[284] 1 Kings, xviii. 43.
XX. ID AGUNT.
_Upon these indications of digested matter, they proceed to purge._
XX. MEDITATION.
Though counsel seem rather to consist of spiritual parts than action,
yet action is the spirit and the soul of counsel. Counsels are not
always determined in resolutions, we cannot always say, this was
concluded; actions are always determined in effects, we can say, this
was done. Then have laws their reverence and their majesty, when we see
the judge upon the bench executing them. Then have counsels of war
their impressions and their operations, when we see the seal of an army
set to them. It was an ancient way of celebrating the memory of such as
deserved well of the state, to afford them that kind of statuary
representation, which was then called Hermes, which was the head and
shoulders of a man standing upon a cube, but those shoulders without
arms and hands. Altogether it figured a constant supporter of the state,
by his counsel; but in this hieroglyphic, which they made without hands,
they pass their consideration no farther but that the counsellor should
be without hands, so far as not to reach out his hand to foreign
temptations of bribes, in matters of counsel, and that it was not
necessary that the head should employ his own hand; that the same men
should serve in the execution which assisted in the counsel; but that
there should not belong hands to every head, action to every counsel,
was never intended so much as in figure and representation. For as
matrimony is scarce to be called matrimony where there is a resolution
against the fruits of matrimony, against the having of children,[285] so
counsels are not counsels, but illusions, where there is from the
beginning no purpose to execute the determinations of those counsels.
The arts and sciences are most properly referred to the head; that is
their proper element and sphere; but yet the art of proving, logic, and
the art of persuading, rhetoric, are deduced to the hand, and that
expressed by a hand contracted into a fist, and this by a hand enlarged
and expanded; and evermore the power of man, and the power of God,
himself is expressed so. All things are in his hand; neither is God so
often presented to us, by names that carry our consideration upon
counsel, as upon execution of counsel; he oftener is called the Lord of
Hosts than by all other names, that may be referred to the other
signification. Hereby therefore we take into our meditation the slippery
condition of man, whose happiness in any kind, the defect of any one
thing conducing to that happiness, may ruin; but it must have all the
pieces to make it up. Without counsel, I had not got thus far; without
action and practice, I should go no farther towards health. But what is
the present necessary action? Purging; a withdrawing, a violating of
nature, a farther weakening. O dear price, and O strange way of
addition, to do it by subtraction; of restoring nature, to violate
nature; of providing strength, by increasing weakness. Was I not sick
before? And is it a question of comfort to be asked now, did your physic
make you sick? Was that it that my physic promised, to make me sick?
This is another step upon which we may stand, and see farther into the
misery of man, the time, the season of his misery; it must be done now.
O over-cunning, over-watchful, over-diligent, and over-sociable misery
of man, that seldom comes alone, but then when it may accompany other
miseries, and so put one another into the higher exaltation, and better
heart. I am ground even to an attenuation and must proceed to
evacuation, all ways to exinanition and annihilation.
XX. EXPOSTULATION.
My God, my God, the God of order, but yet not of ambition, who assignest
place to every one, but not contention for place, when shall it be thy
pleasure to put an end to all these quarrels for spiritual precedences?
When shall men leave their uncharitable disputations, which is to take
place, faith or repentance, and which, when we consider faith and works?
The head and the hand too are required to a perfect natural man;