Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions; Together with Death's Duel
of death) hath delivered me from the death of the womb, by bringing me
into the world, and from the manifold deaths of the world, by laying me
in the grave, I must die again in an incineration of this flesh, and in
a dispersion of that dust. That that monarch, who spread over many
nations alive, must in his dust lie in a corner of that sheet of lead,
and there but so long as that lead will last; and that private and
retired man, that thought himself his own for ever, and never came
forth, must in his dust of the grave be published, and (such are the
revolutions of the grave) be mingled with the dust of every highway and
of every dunghill, and swallowed in every puddle and pond. This is the
most inglorious and contemptible vilification, the most deadly and
peremptory nullification of man, that we can consider. God seems to have
carried the declaration of his power to a great height, when he sets the
prophet Ezekiel in the valley of dry bones, and says, _Son of man, can
these bones live?_ as though it had been impossible, and yet they did;
the Lord laid _sinews upon them, and flesh, and breathed into them, and
they did live_. But in that case there were bones to be seen, something
visible, of which it might be said, Can this thing live? But in this
death of incineration and dispersion of dust, we see nothing that we
call that man's. If we say, Can this dust live? Perchance it cannot; it
may be the mere dust of the earth, which never did live, never shall. It
may be the dust of that man's worm, which did live, but shall no more.
It may be the dust of another man, that concerns not him of whom it was
asked. This death of incineration and dispersion is, to natural reason,
the most irrecoverable death of all; and yet _Domini Domini sunt exitus
mortis, unto God the Lord belong the issues of death_; and by
recompacting this dust into the same body, and remaining the same body
with the same soul, he shall in a blessed and glorious resurrection give
me such an issue from this death as shall never pass into any other
death, but establish me into a life that shall last as long as the Lord
of Life himself.
And so have you that that belongs to the first acceptation of these
words (_unto God the Lord belong the issues of death_); That though from
the womb to the grave, and in the grave itself, we pass from death to
death, yet, as Daniel speaks, _the Lord our God is able to deliver us,
and he will deliver us_.
And so we pass unto our second accommodation of these words (_unto God
the Lord belong the issues of death_); that it belongs to God, and not
to man, to pass a judgment upon us at our death, or to conclude a
dereliction on God's part upon the manner thereof.
Those indications which the physicians receive, and those presagitions
which they give for death or recovery in the patient, they receive and
they give out of the grounds and the rules of their art; but we have no
such rule or art to give a presagition of spiritual death and damnation
upon any such indication as we see in any dying man; we see often
enough to be sorry, but not to despair; we may be deceived both ways: we
use to comfort ourself in the death of a friend, if it be testified that
he went away like a lamb, that is, without any reluctation; but God
knows that may be accompanied with a dangerous damp and stupefaction,
and insensibility of his present state. Our blessed Saviour suffered
colluctations with death, and a _sadness even in his soul to death_, and
an agony even to a bloody sweat in his body, and expostulations with
God, and exclamations upon the cross. He was a devout man who said upon
his death-bed, or death-turf (for he was a hermit), _Septuaginta annos
Domino servivisti, et mori times?_ Hast thou served a good master
threescore and ten years, and now art thou loth to go into his presence?
Yet Hilarion was loth. Barlaam was a devout man (a hermit too) that said
that day he died, _Cogita te hodie cæpisse servire Domino, et hodie
finiturum_, Consider this to be the first day's service that ever thou
didst thy Master, to glorify him in a Christianly and a constant death,
and if thy first day be thy last day too, how soon dost thou come to
receive thy wages! Yet Barlaam could have been content to have stayed
longer forth. Make no ill conclusions upon any man's lothness to die,
for the mercies of God work momentarily in minutes, and many times
insensibly to bystanders, or any other than the party departing. And
then upon violent deaths inflicted as upon malefactors, Christ himself
hath forbidden us by his own death to make any ill conclusion; for his
own death had those impressions in it; he was reputed, he was executed
as a malefactor, and no doubt many of them who concurred to his death
did believe him to be so. Of sudden death there are scarce examples be
found in the Scriptures upon good men, for death in battle cannot be
called sudden death; but God governs not by examples but by rules, and
therefore make no ill conclusion upon sudden death nor upon distempers
neither, though perchance accompanied with some words of diffidence and
distrust in the mercies of God. The tree lies as it falls, it is true,
but it is not the last stroke that fells the tree, nor the last word nor
gasp that qualifies the soul. Still pray we for a peaceable life against
violent death, and for time of repentance against sudden death, and for
sober and modest assurance against distempered and diffident death, but
never make ill conclusions upon persons overtaken with such deaths;
_Domini Domini sunt exitus mortis, to God the Lord belong the issues of
death_. And he received Samson, who went out of this world in such a
manner (consider it actively, consider it passively in his own death,
and in those whom he slew with himself) as was subject to interpretation
hard enough. Yet the Holy Ghost hath moved Saint Paul to celebrate
Samson in his great catalogue,[372] and so doth all the church. Our
critical day is not the very day of our death, but the whole course of
our life. I thank him that prays for me when the bell tolls, but I thank
him much more that catechises me, or preaches to me, or instructs me how
to live. _Fac hoc et vive_, there is my security, the mouth of the Lord
hath said it, _do this and thou shalt live_. But though I do it, yet I
shall die too, die a bodily, a natural death. But God never mentions,
never seems to consider that death, the bodily, the natural death. God
doth not say, Live well, and thou shalt die well, that is, an easy, a
quiet death; but, Live well here, and thou shalt live well for ever. As
the first part of a sentence pieces well with the last, and never
respects, never hearkens after the parenthesis that comes between, so
doth a good life here flow into an eternal life, without any
consideration what manner of death we die. But whether the gate of my
prison be opened with an oiled key (by a gentle and preparing sickness),
or the gate be hewn down by a violent death, or the gate be burnt down
by a raging and frantic fever, a gate into heaven I shall have, for from
the Lord is the cause of my life, and _with God the Lord are the issues
of death_. And further we carry not this second acceptation of the
words, as this _issue of death_ is _liberatio in morte_, God's care that
the soul be safe, what agonies soever the body suffers in the hour of
death.
But pass to our third part and last part: As this issue of death is
_liberatio per mortem_, a deliverance by the death of another.
_Sufferentiam Job audiisti, et vidisti finem Domini_, says Saint James
(v. 11), _You have heard of the patience of Job_, says he: all this
while you have done that, for in every man, calamitous, miserable man, a
Job speaks. Now, _see the end of the Lord_, sayeth that apostle, which
is not that end that the Lord proposed to himself (salvation to us), nor
the end which he proposes to us (conformity to him), but _see the end of
the Lord_, says he, the end that the Lord himself came to, death, and a
painful and a shameful death. But why did he die? and why die so? _Quia
Domini Domini sunt exitus mortis_ (as Saint Augustine, interpreting this
text, answers that question),[373] because to this _God our Lord
belonged the issues of death. Quid apertius diceretur?_ says he there,
what can be more obvious, more manifest than this sense of these words?
In the former part of this verse it is said, He that is _our God is the
God of salvation; Deus salvos faciendi_, so he reads it, the God that
must save us. Who can that be, says he, but Jesus? For therefore that
name was given him because he was to save us. And to this Jesus, says
he, this Saviour,[374] _belong the issues of death_; _Nec oportuit eum
de hac vita alios exitus habere quam mortis_: being come into this life
in our mortal nature, he could not go out of this life any other way but
by death. _Ideo dictum_, says he, therefore it is said, _to God the Lord
belonged the issues of death; ut ostenderetur moriendo nos salvos
facturum_, to show that his way to save us was to die. And from this
text doth Saint Isidore prove that Christ was truly man (which as many
sects of heretics denied, as that he was truly God), because to him,
though he were _Dominus Dominus_ (as the text doubles it), God the Lord,
yet to _him, to God the Lord belonged the issues of death_; _oportuit
eum pati_; more cannot be said than Christ himself says of himself;
_These things Christ ought to suffer_;[375] he had no other way but
death: so then this part of our sermon must needs be a passion sermon,
since all his life was a continual passion, all our Lent may well be a
continual Good Friday. Christ's painful life took off none of the pains
of his death, he felt not the less then for having felt so much before.
Nor will any thing that shall be said before lessen, but rather enlarge
the devotion, to that which shall be said of his passion at the time of
due solemnization thereof. Christ bled not a drop the less at the last
for having bled at his circumcision before, nor will you a tear the less
then if you shed some now. And therefore be now content to consider with
me how _to this God the Lord belonged the issues of death_. That God,
this Lord, the Lord of life, could die, is a strange contemplation; that
the Red Sea could be dry, that the sun could stand still, that an oven
could be seven times heat and not burn, that lions could be hungry and
not bite, is strange, miraculously strange, but super-miraculous that
God _could_ die; but that God _would_ die is an exaltation of that. But
even of that also it is a super-exaltation, that God should die, must
die, and _non exitus_ (said Saint Augustine), God the Lord had no issue
but by death, and _oportuit pati_ (says Christ himself), all this Christ
ought to suffer, was bound to suffer; _Deus ultimo Deus_, says David,
God is the God of revenges, he would not pass over the son of man
unrevenged, unpunished. But then _Deus ultionum libere egit_ (says that
place), the God of revenges works freely, he punishes, he spares whom he
will. And would he not spare himself? he would not: _Dilectio fortis ut
mors, love is strong as death_;[376] stronger, it drew in death, that
naturally is not welcome. _Si possibile_ says Christ, _if it be
possible, let this cup pass_, when his love, expressed in a former
decree with his Father, had made it impossible. _Many waters quench not
love._[377] Christ tried many: he was baptised out of his love, and his
love determined not there; he mingled blood with water in his agony, and
that determined not his love; he wept pure blood, all his blood at all
his eyes, at all his pores, in his flagellation and thorns (_to the Lord
our God belonged the issues of blood_), and these expressed, but these
did not quench his love. He would not spare, nay, he could not spare