DEVOTIONS UPON EMERGENT OCCASIONS

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1. Meditation.-Variable, and therefore miserable condition of Man: this minute I was well, and am ill, this minute. am surprized 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 it self, and borne 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 obfuscations, and darkenings of his senses; these blazing stars, sudden fiery

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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 rremediable, 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.

SOUL'S SICKNESS

1. 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 recollect these ashes; the Lord's hand was the wheel, upon which this vessell 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 breath 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, those antidates, those jealousies, those 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 buried 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 heighth, 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 mayst 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 temporall 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 out 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 misspent it, not bin 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.

FRAGMENT

Alas, our greatness is Hydroptick, not solid: we are not firm but puffed, and swollen; we are the lighter and the lesser for such greatness. Alcibiades bragged how he could walk in his own ground; all this was his, and no man a foot within him; and Socrates gave him a little map of the world, and bid him show him his territory there; and there an ant I would have overstrid it. Let no smallness retard thee: if thou beest not a Cedar to help towards a palace, if thou beest not Amber, Bezoar, nor liquid gold, to restore Princes; yet thou art a shrub to shelter a lamb, or to feed a bird, or thou art a plantane to ease a child's smart; or a grass to cure a sick dog. Love an asker better than a giver : which was good Agapetus' counsel to Justinian: Yea, rather, prevent the asking; and do not so much join and concur with misery, as to suffer it to go to that strength, that it shall make thy brother ask, and put him to the danger of a denial.

T. FULLER

DECEIV'D, NOT HURT

HEARING a Passing-bell, I prayed that the sick man

might have, through Christ, a safe voyage to his long home. Afterwards I understood that the party was dead some hours before; and it seems, in some places of London the tolling of the bell is but a preface of course to the ringing it out.

Bells better silent than thus telling lies. What is this but giving a false alarum to men's devotions, to make them to be ready armed with their prayers for the assistance of such, who have already fought the good fight, yea and gotten the conquest? Not to say that men's charity herein may be suspected of superstition in praying for the dead. However, my heart thus poured out was not spilt on the ground. Thy prayers

too late to do him good, came soon enough to speak my good will. What I freely tendered, God fairly took, according to the integrity of my intention. The party, I hope, is in Abraham's, and my prayers, I am sure, are returned into my own bosom.

NOT FULL, NOR FASTING

How foul is my stomach
Funerals neither few nor

Living in a country village where a burial was a rarity, I never thought of death, it was so seldom presented unto me. Coming to London where there is plenty of funerals, (so that coffins crowd one another, and corpses in the grave jostle for elbow room) I slight and neglect death because grown an object so constant and common. to turn all food into bad humours. frequent, work effectually upon me. mortality. Volumes of all sorts and sizes, rich, poor, infants, children, youth, men, old men daily die; I see there is more required to make a good scholar than only the having of many books. Lord, be Thou my schoolmaster, and teach me to number my days that I may apply my heart unto wisdom.

London is a library of

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SIR T. BROWNE

CHRISTIAN MORALS

E charitable before wealth make thee covetous, and love not the glory of the mite. If riches increase, let thy mind hold pace with them; and think it not enough to be liberal, but munificent. Though a cup of cold water from some hand may not be without its reward, yet stick not thou for wine and oil for the wounds of the distressed; and treat the poor, as our Saviour did the multitude, to the reliques of some baskets. Diffuse thy beneficence early, and while thy treasures call thee master; there may be an Atropos of thy fortunes before that of thy life, and thy wealth cut off before