Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions; Together with Death's Duel
remembered of my burial in the funerals of others 102
17. Now, this bell tolling softly for another, says to me,
Thou must die 107
18. The bell rings out, and tells me in him, that I am dead 114
19. At last the physicians, after a long and stormy voyage,
see land: They have so good signs of the concoction of
the disease, as that they may safely proceed to purge 122
20. Upon these indications of digested matter, they proceed
to purge 131
21. God prospers their practice, and he, by them, calls
Lazarus out of his tomb, me out of my bed 138
22. The physicians consider the root and occasion, the
embers, and coals, and fuel of the disease, and seek
to purge or correct that 145
23. They warn me of the fearful danger of relapsing 152
_DEVOTIONS_
I
INSULTUS MORBI PRIMUS.
_The first Alteration, the first Grudging, of the Sickness._
I. MEDITATION.
Variable, and therefore miserable condition of man! this minute I was
well, and am ill, this minute. I am surprised with a sudden change, and
alteration to worse, and can impute it to no cause, nor call it by any
name. We study health, and we deliberate upon our meats, and drink, and
air, and exercises, and we hew and we polish every stone that goes to
that building; and so our health is a long and a regular work: but in a
minute a cannon batters all, overthrows all, demolishes all; a sickness
unprevented for all our diligence, unsuspected for all our curiosity;
nay, undeserved, if we consider only disorder, summons us, seizes us,
possesses us, destroys us in an instant. O miserable condition of man!
which was not imprinted by God, who, as he is immortal himself, had put
a coal, a beam of immortality into us, which we might have blown into a
flame, but blew it out by our first sin; we beggared ourselves by
hearkening after false riches, and infatuated ourselves by hearkening
after false knowledge. So that now, we do not only die, but die upon the
rack, die by the torment of sickness; nor that only, but are
pre-afflicted, super-afflicted with these jealousies and suspicions and
apprehensions of sickness, before we can call it a sickness: we are not
sure we are ill; one hand asks the other by the pulse, and our eye asks
our own urine how we do. O multiplied misery! we die, and cannot enjoy
death, because we die in this torment of sickness; we are tormented with
sickness, and cannot stay till the torment come, but pre-apprehensions
and presages prophesy those torments which induce that death before
either come; and our dissolution is conceived in these first changes,
quickened in the sickness itself, and born in death, which bears date
from these first changes. Is this the honour which man hath by being a
little world, that he hath these earthquakes in himself, sudden
shakings; these lightnings, sudden flashes; these thunders, sudden
noises; these eclipses, sudden offuscations and darkening of his senses;
these blazing stars, sudden fiery exhalations; these rivers of blood,
sudden red waters? Is he a world to himself only therefore, that he hath
enough in himself, not only to destroy and execute himself, but to
presage that execution upon himself; to assist the sickness, to antedate
the sickness, to make the sickness the more irremediable by sad
apprehensions, and, as if he would make a fire the more vehement by
sprinkling water upon the coals, so to wrap a hot fever in cold
melancholy, lest the fever alone should not destroy fast enough without
this contribution, nor perfect the work (which is destruction) except we
joined an artificial sickness of our own melancholy, to our natural, our
unnatural fever. O perplexed discomposition, O riddling distemper, O
miserable condition of man!
I. EXPOSTULATION.
If I were but mere dust and ashes I might speak unto the Lord, for the
Lord's hand made me of this dust, and the Lord's hand shall re-collect
these ashes; the Lord's hand was the wheel upon which this vessel of
clay was framed, and the Lord's hand is the urn in which these ashes
shall be preserved. I am the dust and the ashes of the temple of the
Holy Ghost, and what marble is so precious? But I am more than dust and
ashes: I am my best part, I am my soul. And being so, the breath of God,
I may breathe back these pious expostulations to my God: My God, my God,
why is not my soul as sensible as my body? Why hath not my soul these
apprehensions, these presages, these changes, these antidates, these
jealousies, these suspicions of a sin, as well as my body of a sickness?
Why is there not always a pulse in my soul to beat at the approach of a
temptation to sin? Why are there not always waters in mine eyes, to
testify my spiritual sickness? I stand in the way of temptations,
naturally, necessarily; all men do so; for there is a snake in every
path, temptations in every vocation; but I go, I run, I fly into the
ways of temptation which I might shun; nay, I break into houses where
the plague is; I press into places of temptation, and tempt the devil
himself, and solicit and importune them who had rather be left
unsolicited by me. I fall sick of sin, and am bedded and bedrid, buried
and putrified in the practice of sin, and all this while have no
presage, no pulse, no sense of my sickness. O height, O depth of misery,
where the first symptom of the sickness is hell, and where I never see
the fever of lust, of envy, of ambition, by any other light than the
darkness and horror of hell itself, and where the first messenger that
speaks to me doth not say, "Thou mayest die," no, nor "Thou must die,"
but "Thou art dead;" and where the first notice that my soul hath of her
sickness is irrecoverableness, irremediableness: but, O my God, Job did
not charge thee foolishly in his temporal afflictions, nor may I in my
spiritual. Thou hast imprinted a pulse in our soul, but we do not
examine it; a voice in our conscience, but we do not hearken unto it. We
talk it out, we jest it out, we drink it out, we sleep it out; and when
we wake, we do not say with Jacob, _Surely the Lord is in this place,
and I knew it not_: but though we might know it, we do not, we will not.
But will God pretend to make a watch, and leave out the spring? to make
so many various wheels in the faculties of the soul, and in the organs
of the body, and leave out grace, that should move them? or will God
make a spring, and not wind it up? Infuse his first grace, and not
second it with more, without which we can no more use his first grace
when we have it, than we could dispose ourselves by nature to have it?
But alas, that is not our case; we are all prodigal sons, and not
disinherited; we have received our portion, and mispent it, not been
denied it. We are God's tenants here, and yet here, he, our landlord,
pays us rents; not yearly, nor quarterly, but hourly, and quarterly;
every minute he renews his mercy, but we _will not understand, lest that
we should be converted, and he should heal us_.[1]
I. PRAYER.
O eternal and most gracious God, who, considered in thyself, art a
circle, first and last, and altogether; but, considered in thy working
upon us, art a direct line, and leadest us from our beginning, through
all our ways, to our end, enable me by thy grace to look forward to mine
end, and to look backward too, to the considerations of thy mercies
afforded me from the beginning; that so by that practice of considering
thy mercy, in my beginning in this world, when thou plantedst me in the
Christian church, and thy mercy in the beginning in the other world,
when thou writest me in the book of life, in my election, I may come to
a holy consideration of thy mercy in the beginning of all my actions
here: that in all the beginnings, in all the accesses and approaches, of
spiritual sicknesses of sin, I may hear and hearken to that voice, _O
thou man of God, there is death in the pot_,[2] and so refrain from that
which I was so hungerly, so greedily flying to. _A faithful ambassador
is health_,[3] says thy wise servant Solomon. Thy voice received in the
beginning of a sickness, of a sin, is true health. If I can see that
light betimes, and hear that voice early, _Then shall my light break
forth as the morning, and my health shall spring forth speedily_.[4]
Deliver me therefore, O my God, from these vain imaginations; that it is
an over-curious thing, a dangerous thing, to come to that tenderness,
that rawness, that scrupulousness, to fear every concupiscence, every
offer of sin, that this suspicious and jealous diligence will turn to an
inordinate dejection of spirit, and a diffidence in thy care and
providence; but keep me still established, both in a constant
assurance, that thou wilt speak to me at the beginning of every such
sickness, at the approach of every such sin; and that, if I take
knowledge of that voice then, and fly to thee, thou wilt preserve me
from falling, or raise me again, when by natural infirmity I am fallen.
Do this, O Lord, for his sake, who knows our natural infirmities, for he
had them, and knows the weight of our sins, for he paid a dear price for
them, thy Son, our Saviour, Christ Jesus. Amen.
II. POST ACTIO LÆSA.
_The Strength and the function of the senses, and other faculties,
change and fail._
II. MEDITATION.
The heavens are not the less constant, because they move continually,
because they move continually one and the same way. The earth is not the
more constant, because it lies still continually, because continually it
changes and melts in all the parts thereof. Man, who is the noblest part
of the earth, melts so away, as if he were a statue, not of earth, but
of snow. We see his own envy melts him, he grows lean with that; he will
say, another's beauty melts him; but he feels that a fever doth not melt
him like snow, but pour him out like lead, like iron, like brass melted
in a furnace; it doth not only melt him, but calcine him, reduce him to
atoms, and to ashes; not to water, but to lime. And how quickly? Sooner
than thou canst receive an answer, sooner than thou canst conceive the
question; earth is the centre of my body, heaven is the centre of my
soul; these two are the natural places of these two; but those go not
to these two in an equal pace: my body falls down without pushing; my
soul does not go up without pulling; ascension is my soul's pace and
measure, but precipitation my body's. And even angels, whose home is
heaven, and who are winged too, yet had a ladder to go to heaven by
steps. The sun which goes so many miles in a minute, the stars of the
firmament which go so very many more, go not so fast as my body to the
earth. In the same instant that I feel the first attempt of the disease,
I feel the victory; in the twinkling of an eye I can scarce see;
instantly the taste is insipid and fatuous; instantly the appetite is
dull and desireless; instantly the knees are sinking and strengthless;
and in an instant, sleep, which is the picture, the copy of death, is
taken away, that the original, death itself, may succeed, and that so I
might have death to the life. It was part of Adam's punishment, _In the
sweat of thy brows thou shalt eat thy bread_: it is multiplied to me, I
have earned bread in the sweat of my brows, in the labour of my calling,
and I have it; and I sweat again and again, from the brow to the sole of
the foot, but I eat no bread, I taste no sustenance: miserable
distribution of mankind, where one half lacks meat, and the other
stomach!
II. EXPOSTULATION.
David professes himself a dead dog to his king Saul,[5] and so doth
Mephibosheth to his king David,[6] and yet David speaks to Saul, and