Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions; Together with Death's Duel
counsel and action too, to a perfect civil man; faith and works too, to
him that is perfectly spiritual. But because it is easily said, I
believe, and because it doth not easily lie in proof, nor is easily
demonstrable by any evidence taken from my heart (for who sees that, who
searches those rolls?) whether I do believe or no, is it not therefore,
O my God, that thou dost so frequently, so earnestly, refer us to the
hand, to the observation of actions? There is a little suspicion, a
little imputation laid upon over-tedious and dilatory counsels. Many
good occasions slip away in long consultations; and it may be a degree
of sloth, to be too long in mending nets, though that must be done. _He
that observeth the wind shall not sow, and he that regardeth the clouds
shall not reap_;[286] that is, he that is too dilatory, too
superstitious in these observations, and studies but the excuse of his
own idleness in them; but that which the same wise and royal servant of
thine says in another place, all accept, and ask no comment upon it, _He
becometh poor that dealeth with a slack hand, but the hand of the
diligent maketh rich_;[287] all evil imputed to the absence, all good
attributed to the presence of the hand. I know, my God (and I bless thy
name for knowing it, for all good knowledge is from thee), that thou
considerest the heart; but thou takest not off thine eye till thou come
to the hand. Nay, my God, doth not thy Spirit intimate that thou
beginnest where we begin (at least, that thou allowest us to begin
there), when thou orderest thine own answer to thine own question, _Who
shall ascend into the hill of the Lord_? thus, _He that hath clean
hands, and a pure heart_?[288] Dost thou not (at least) send us first to
the hand? And is not the work of their hands that declaration of their
holy zeal, in the present execution of manifest idolators, called a
consecration of themselves,[289] by thy Holy Spirit? Their hands are
called all themselves; for even counsel itself goes under that name in
thy word, who knowest best how to give right names: because the counsel
of the priests assisted David,[290] Saul says the hand of the priest is
with David. And that which is often said by Moses, is very often
repeated by thy other prophets, _These and these things the Lord
spake_,[291] and _the Lord said_, and _the Lord commanded_, not by the
counsels, not by the voice, but by the _hand of Moses_, and by the _hand
of the prophets_. Evermore we are referred for our evidence of others,
and of ourselves, to the hand, to action, to works. There is something
before it, believing; and there is something after it, suffering; but in
the most eminent, and obvious, and conspicuous place stands doing. Why
then, O my God, my blessed God, in the ways of my spiritual strength,
come I so slow to action? I was whipped by thy rod, before I came to
consultation, to consider my state; and shall I go no farther? As he
that would describe a circle in paper, if he have brought that circle
within one inch of finishing, yet if he remove his compass he cannot
make it up a perfect circle except he fall to work again, to find out
the same centre, so, though setting that foot of my compass upon thee, I
have gone so far as to the consideration of myself, yet if I depart from
thee, my centre, all is imperfect. This proceeding to action, therefore,
is a returning to thee, and a working upon myself by thy physic, by thy
purgative physic, a free and entire evacuation of my soul by confession.
The working of purgative physic is violent and contrary to nature. O
Lord, I decline not this potion of confession, however it may be
contrary to a natural man. To take physic, and not according to the
right method, is dangerous.[292] O Lord, I decline not that method in
this physic, in things that burthen my conscience, to make my confession
to him, into whose hands thou hast put the power of absolution. I know
that "physic may be made so pleasant as that it may easily be taken; but
not so pleasant as the virtue and nature of the medicine be
extinguished."[293] I know I am not submitted to such a confession as is
a rack and torture of the conscience; but I know I am not exempt from
all. If it were merely problematical, left merely indifferent whether we
should take this physic, use this confession, or no, a great physician
acknowledges this to have been his practice, to minister to many things
which he was not sure would do good, but never any other thing but such
as he was sure would do no harm.[294] The use of this spiritual physic
can certainly do no harm; and the church hath always thought that it
might, and, doubtless, many humble souls have found, that it hath done
them good. _I will therefore take the cup of salvation, and call upon
thy name._[295] I will find this cup of compunction as full as I have
formerly filled the cups of worldly confections, that so I may escape
the cup of malediction and irrecoverable destruction that depends upon
that. And since thy blessed and glorious Son, being offered, in the way
to his execution, a cup of stupefaction,[296] to take away the sense of
his pain (a charity afforded to condemned persons ordinarily in those
places and times), refused that ease, and embraced the whole torment, I
take not this cup, but this vessel of mine own sins into my
contemplation, and I pour them out here according to the motions of thy
Holy Spirit, and any where according to the ordinances of thy holy
church.
XX. PRAYER.
O eternal and most gracious God, who having married man and woman
together, and made them one flesh, wouldst have them also to become one
soul, so as that they might maintain a sympathy in their affections, and
have a conformity to one another in the accidents of this world, good or
bad; so having married this soul and this body in me, I humbly beseech
thee that my soul may look and make her use of thy merciful proceedings
towards my bodily restitution, and go the same way to a spiritual. I am
come, by thy goodness, to the use of thine ordinary means for my body,
to wash away those peccant humours that endangered it. I have, O Lord, a
river in my body, but a sea in my soul, and a sea swollen into the depth
of a deluge, above the sea. Thou hast raised up certain hills in me
heretofore, by which I might have stood safe from these inundations of
sin. Even our natural faculties are a hill, and might preserve us from
some sin. Education, study, observation, example, are hills too, and
might preserve us from some. Thy church, and thy word, and thy
sacraments, and thine ordinances are hills above these; thy spirit of
remorse, and compunction, and repentance for former sin, are hills too;
and to the top of all these hills thou hast brought me heretofore; but
this deluge, this inundation, is got above all my hills; and I have
sinned and sinned, and multiplied sin to sin, after all these thy
assistances against sin, and where is there water enough to wash away
this deluge? There is a red sea, greater than this ocean, and there is a
little spring, through which this ocean may pour itself into that red
sea. Let thy spirit of true contrition and sorrow pass all my sins,
through these eyes, into the wounds of thy Son, and I shall be clean,
and my soul so much better purged than my body, as it is ordained for
better and a longer life.
FOOTNOTES:
[285] August.
[286] Eccles. xi. 4.
[287] Prov. x. 4.
[288] Psalm xxiv. 3.
[289] Exod. xxxii. 29.
[290] 1 Sam. xxii. 17.
[291] Lev. viii. 36.
[292] Galen.
[293] Galen.
[294] Galen.
[295] Psalm cxvi. 13.
[296] Mark, xv. 23.
XXI. -------------- ATQUE ANNUIT ILLE,
QUI, PER EOS, CLAMAT, LINQUAS JAM, LAZARE, LECTUM.
_God prospers their practice, and he, by them, calls Lazarus out of his
tomb, me out of my bed._
XXI. MEDITATION.
If man had been left alone in this world at first, shall I think that he
would not have fallen? If there had been no woman, would not man have
served to have been his own tempter? When I see him now subject to
infinite weaknesses, fall into infinite sin without any foreign
temptations, shall I think he would have had none, if he had been alone?
God saw that man needed a helper, if he should be well; but to make
woman ill, the devil saw that there needed no third. When God and we
were alone in Adam, that was not enough; when the devil and we were
alone in Eve, it was enough. O what a giant is man when he fights
against himself, and what a dwarf when he needs or exercises his own
assistance for himself? I cannot rise out of my bed till the physician
enable me, nay, I cannot tell that I am able to rise till he tell me so.
I do nothing, I know nothing of myself; how little and how impotent a
piece of the world is any man alone? And how much less a piece of
himself is that man? So little as that when it falls out (as it falls
out in some cases) that more misery and more oppression would be an ease
to a man, he cannot give himself that miserable addition of more misery.
A man that is pressed to death, and might be eased by more weights,
cannot lay those more weights upon himself: he can sin alone, and suffer
alone, but not repent, not be absolved, without another. Another tells
me, I may rise; and I do so. But is every raising a preferment? or is
every present preferment a station? I am readier to fall to the earth,
now I am up, than I was when I lay in the bed. O perverse way, irregular
motion of man; even rising itself is the way to ruin! How many men are
raised, and then do not fill the place they are raised to? No corner of
any place can be empty; there can be no vacuity. If that man do not fill
the place, other men will; complaints of his insufficiency will fill it;
nay, such an abhorring is there in nature of vacuity, that if there be
but an imagination of not filling, in any man, that which is but
imagination, neither will fill it, that is, rumour and voice, and it
will be given out (upon no ground but imagination, and no man knows
whose imagination), that he is corrupt in his place, or insufficient in
his place, and another prepared to succeed him in his place. A man rises
sometimes and stands not, because he doth not or is not believed to fill
his place; and sometimes he stands not because he overfills his place.
He may bring so much virtue, so much justice, so much integrity to the
place, as shall spoil the place, burthen the place; his integrity may be
a libel upon his predecessor and cast an infamy upon him, and a burthen
upon his successor to proceed by example, and to bring the place itself
to an undervalue and the market to an uncertainty. I am up, and I seem
to stand, and I go round, and I am a new argument of the new philosophy,
that the earth moves round; why may I not believe that the whole earth
moves, in a round motion, though that seem to me to stand, when as I
seem to stand to my company, and yet am carried in a giddy and circular
motion as I stand? Man hath no centre but misery; there, and only there,
he is fixed, and sure to find himself. How little soever he be raised,
he moves, and moves in a circle giddily; and as in the heavens there are
but a few circles that go about the whole world, but many epicycles, and
other lesser circles, but yet circles; so of those men which are raised
and put into circles, few of them move from place to place, and pass
through many and beneficial places, but fall into little circles, and,
within a step or two, are at their end, and not so well as they were in
the centre, from which they were raised. Every thing serves to
exemplify, to illustrate man's misery. But I need go no farther than
myself: for a long time I was not able to rise; at last I must be raised
by others; and now I am up, I am ready to sink lower than before.
XXI. EXPOSTULATION.