Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions; Together with Death's Duel
MAJESTY'S HOUSEHOLD, THE DOCTOR'S OWN
FUNERAL SERMON._
_TO THE READER_
_This sermon was, by sacred authority, styled the author's own funeral
sermon, most fitly, whether we respect the time or matter. It was
preached not many days before his death, as if, having done this, there
remained nothing for him to do but to die; and the matter is of
death--the occasion and subject of all funeral sermons. It hath been
observed of this reverend man, that his faculty in preaching continually
increased, and that, as he exceeded others at first, so at last he
exceeded himself. This is his last sermon; I will not say it is
therefore his best, because all his were excellent. Yet thus much: a
dying man's words, if they concern ourselves, do usually make the
deepest impression, as being spoken most feelingly, and with least
affectation. Now, whom doth it concern to learn both the danger and
benefit of death? Death is every man's enemy, and intends hurt to all,
though to many he be occasion of greatest good. This enemy we must all
combat dying, whom he living did almost conquer, having discovered the
utmost of his power, the utmost of his cruelty. May we make such use of
this and other the like preparatives, that neither death, whensoever it
shall come, may seem terrible, nor life tedious, how long soever it
shall last._
_DEATH'S DUEL_
PSALM LXVIII. 20, _in fine_.
_And unto God the Lord belong the issues of death (i.e. from death)._
Buildings stand by the benefit of their foundations that sustain and
support them, and of their buttresses that comprehend and embrace them,
and of their contignations that knit and unite them. The foundations
suffer them not to sink, the buttresses suffer them not to swerve, and
the contignation and knitting suffers them not to cleave. The body of
our building is in the former part of this verse. It is this: _He that
is our God is the God of salvation_; _ad salutes_, of salvations in the
plural, so it is in the original; the God that gives us spiritual and
temporal salvation too. But of this building, the foundation, the
buttresses, the contignations, are in this part of the verse which
constitutes our text, and in the three divers acceptations of the words
amongst our expositors: _Unto God the Lord belong the issues from
death_, for, first, the foundation of this building (that our God is the
God of all salvation) is laid in this, that _unto_ this _God the Lord
belong the issues of death_; that is, it is in his power to give us an
issue and deliverance, even then when we are brought to the jaws and
teeth of death, and to the lips of that whirlpool, the grave. And so in
this acceptation, this _exitus mortis_, this issue of death is
_liberatio á morte_, a deliverance from death, and this is the most
obvious and most ordinary acceptation of these words, and that upon
which our translation lays hold, the _issues from death_. And then,
secondly, the buttresses that comprehend and settle this building, that
he that is our God is the God of all salvation, are thus raised; _unto
God the Lord belong the issues of death_, that is, the disposition and
manner of our death; what kind of issue and transmigration we shall have
out of this world, whether prepared or sudden, whether violent or
natural, whether in our perfect senses or shaken and disordered by
sickness, there is no condemnation to be argued out of that, no judgment
to be made upon that, for, howsoever they die, _precious in his sight is
the death of his saints_, and with him are the issues of death; the ways
of our departing out of this life are in his hands. And so in this sense
of the words, this _exitus mortis_, the issues of death, is _liberatio
in morte_, a deliverance in death; not that God will deliver us from
dying, but that he will have a care of us in the hour of death, of what
kind soever our passage be. And in this sense and acceptation of the
words, the natural frame and contexture doth well and pregnantly
administer unto us. And then, lastly, the contignation and knitting of
this building, that he that is our God is the God of all salvations,
consists in this, _Unto_ this _God the Lord belong the issues of death_;
that is, that this God the Lord having united and knit both natures in
one, and being God, having also come into this world in our flesh, he
could have no other means to save us, he could have no other issue out
of this world, nor return to his former glory, but by death. And so in
this sense, this _exitus mortis_, this issue of death, is _liberatio per
mortem_, a deliverance by death, by the death of this God, our Lord
Christ Jesus. And this is Saint Augustine's acceptation of the words,
and those many and great persons that have adhered to him. In all these
three lines, then, we shall look upon these words, first, as the God of
power, the Almighty Father rescues his servants from the jaws of death;
and then as the God of mercy, the glorious Son rescued us by taking upon
himself this issue of death; and then, between these two, as the God of
comfort, the Holy Ghost rescues us from all discomfort by his blessed
impressions beforehand, that what manner of death soever be ordained for
us, yet this _exitus mortis_ shall be _introitus in vitam_, our issue in
death shall be an entrance into everlasting life. And these three
considerations: our deliverance _à morte, in morte, per mortem_, from
death, in death, and by death, will abundantly do all the offices of the
foundations, of the buttresses, of the contignation, of this our
building; that he that is our God is the God of all salvation, because
_unto_ this _God the Lord belong the issues of death_.
First, then, we consider this _exitus mortis_ to be _liberatio à morte_,
that with _God the Lord are the issues of death_; and therefore in all
our death, and deadly calamities of this life, we may justly hope of a
good issue from him. In all our periods and transitions in this life,
are so many passages from death to death; our very birth and entrance
into this life is _exitus à morte_, an issue from death, for in our
mother's womb we are dead, so as that we do not know we live, not so
much as we do in our sleep, neither is there any grave so close or so
putrid a prison, as the womb would be unto us if we stayed in it beyond
our time, or died there before our time. In the grave the worms do not
kill us; we breed, and feed, and then kill those worms which we
ourselves produced. In the womb the dead child kills the mother that
conceived it, and is a murderer, nay, a parricide, even after it is
dead. And if we be not dead so in the womb, so as that being dead we
kill her that gave us our first life, our life of vegetation, yet we are
dead so as David's idols are dead. In the womb we have _eyes and see
not, ears and hear not_.[347] There in the womb we are fitted for works
of darkness, all the while deprived of light; and there in the womb we
are taught cruelty, by being fed with blood, and may be damned, though
we be never born. Of our very making in the womb, David says, _I am
wonderfully and fearfully made_, and _such knowledge is too excellent
for me_,[348] for even that _is the Lord's doing, and it is wonderful in
our eyes_;[349] ipse fecit nos, _it is he that made us, and not we
ourselves_,[350] nor our parents neither. _Thy hands have made and
fashioned me round about_, saith Job, _and_ (as the original word is)
_thou hast taken pains about me, and yet_ (says he) _thou dost destroy
me_. Though I be the masterpiece of the greatest master (man is so), yet
if thou do no more for me, if thou leave me where thou madest me,
destruction will follow. The womb, which should be the house of life,
becomes death itself if God leave us there. That which God threatens so
often, the shutting of a womb, is not so heavy nor so discomfortable a
curse in the first as in the latter shutting, nor in the shutting of
barrenness as in the shutting of weakness, when _children are come to
the birth, and no strength to bring forth_.[351]
It is the exaltation of misery to fall from a near hope of happiness.
And in that vehement imprecation, the prophet expresses the highest of
God's anger, _Give them, O Lord, what wilt thou give them? give them a
miscarrying womb._ Therefore as soon as we are men (that is, inanimated,
quickened in the womb), though we cannot ourselves, our parents have to
say in our behalf, _Wretched man that he is, who shall deliver him from
this body of death?_[352] if there be no deliverer. It must be he that
said to Jeremiah, _Before I formed thee I knew thee, and before thou
camest out of the womb I sanctified thee_. We are not sure that there
was no kind of ship nor boat to fish in, nor to pass by, till God
prescribed Noah that absolute form of the ark.[353] That word which the
Holy Ghost, by Moses, useth for the ark, is common to all kind of boats,
_thebah_; and is the same word that Moses useth for the boat that he was
exposed in, that his mother laid him in an ark of bulrushes. But we are
sure that Eve had no midwife when she was delivered of Cain, therefore
she might well say, _Possedi virum à Domino, I have gotten a man from
the Lord_,[354] wholly, entirely from the Lord; it is the Lord that
enabled me to conceive, the Lord that infused a quickening soul into
that conception, the Lord that brought into the world that which himself
had quickened; without all this might Eve say, my body had been but the
house of death, and _Domini Domini sunt exitus mortis, To God the Lord
belong the issues of death_. But then this _exitus à morte_ is but
_introitus in mortem_; this issue, this deliverance, from that death,
the death of the womb, is an entrance, a delivering over to another
death, the manifold deaths of this world; we have a winding-sheet in our
mother's womb which grows with us from our conception, and we come into
the world wound up in that winding-sheet, for we come to seek a grave.
And as prisoners discharged of actions may lie for fees, so when the
womb hath discharged us, yet we are bound to it by cords of hestæ, by
such a string as that we cannot go thence, nor stay there; we celebrate
our own funerals with cries even at our birth; as though our threescore
and ten years' life were spent in our mother's labour, and our circle
made up in the first point thereof; we beg our baptism with another
sacrament, with tears; and we come into a world that lasts many ages,
but we last not. _In domo Patris_, says our Saviour, speaking of heaven,
_multæ mansiones_, divers and durable; so that if a man cannot possess a
martyr's house (he hath shed no blood for Christ), yet he may have a
confessor's, he hath been ready to glorify God in the shedding of his
blood. And if a woman cannot possess a virgin's house (she hath embraced
the holy state of marriage), yet she may have a matron's house, she hath
brought forth and brought up children in the fear of God. _In domo
Patris, in my Father's house_, in heaven, there _are many
mansions_;[355] but here, upon earth, the _Son of man hath not where to
lay his head_,[356] saith he himself. _Nonne terram dedit filiis
hominum?_ How then hath God given this earth to the sons of men? He hath
given them earth for their materials to be made of earth, and he hath
given them earth for their grave and sepulchre, to return and resolve to
earth, but not for their possession. _Here we have no continuing
city_,[357] nay, no cottage that continues, nay, no persons, no bodies,
that continue. Whatsoever moved Saint Jerome to call the journeys of the
Israelites in the wilderness,[358] mansions; the word (the word is
_nasang_) signifies but a journey, but a peregrination. Even the Israel
of God hath no mansions, but journeys, pilgrimages in this life. By what