enough, enough of these doleful accents of interminated judgments; wherewith, if I would follow the steps of the prophets, I might strike your hearts with just horror.

(2.) See now the no less danger, that arises from Ourselves. No less? yea, much greater: for the highest revenge of all other, that God takes of men, is, when he punishes sin with sin. Let me therefore sadly and seriously tell you, that there is just fear we are running apace into two woeful mischiefs, Atheism and Barbarism. Oh, that I were a false prophet, and did not see too much ground of this fear! The multiplicity of these wild opinions in matter of religion, if there be not a speedy restraint, can have no other issue, but no religion. And, if we should live to see dis couragements put upon learning, and a substraction or diminution of the maintenance of studied divines, and an allowance of or con‐ nivance at unlettered preachers, and no care taken of any but some select souls; ignorance, confusion, and barbarity will be the next news, that we shall hear of from the Church of England.

Brethren, if we see not these causes of fear, we are blind; and if, seeing them, we be not affected with them, we are stupid.

Let this be enough to be spoken of those Grounds, that make a just time of our mourning.

II. Now, that our seasonable mourning may not be to no purpose, let us enquire a little, how this our mourning should be regulated, for the DUE CARRIAGE AND CONDITIONS of it.

1. And, first, for the QUANTITY of it; it must be Proportioned to the Occasion and Cause upon which it is taken up: for to mourn deeply upon sight and trivial causes, were weak and childish; like to those faint hearts, that are ready to swoon away for the scratch of a finger: on the contrary, not to mourn heavily upon a main cause of grief, argues an insensate and benumbed heart.

(1.) If it be for some vehement Affliction of Body, good Heze. kiah is a lawful precedent for us; Like as a crane, or a swallow, so did I chatter: I did mourn as a dove: mine eyes fail with looking upward; Isaiah xxxviii. 14. If it be for some great Public Calamity, Jeremiah tells you what to do; For this, gird you with sackcloth, lament and howl; for the fierce anger of the Lord is not turned back from us; Jer. iv. 8: and God's chosen people are a fit pattern; The elders of the daughter of Zion sit upon the ground, and keep silence: they have cast up dust upon their heads: they have. girded themselves with sackcloth; the virgins of Jerusalem hang down their heads to the ground; Lament. ii. 10: and the Prophet bears them company in their sorrow; Mine eyes do fail with tears; my bowels are troubled; my liver is poured upon the earth, for the destruction of the daughter of my people; Lament. ii. 11.

(2.) If it be for some Personal and grievous Sin, that we have been miscarried into; holy David is a meet example for us; My bones, saith he, waxed old, through my roaring all the day long; for day and night thy hand was heavy upon me; my moisture is turned into the drought of summer; Psalin xxxii. 3, 4 and, elsewhere,

My sore ran in the night, and ceased not; my soul refused to be comforted: I complained; and my spirit was overwhelmed; Psaim lxxvii, 2, 3. Where are those panders of sin, the Romish Casuists; that teach, the least measure of sorrow, even mere attrition, is enough for a penitent? Surely, had the Man after God's own Heart thought so, he had spared many a sigh, and many a sob, and many a tear, that his sins cost him; and so must they do us, if ever we hope to recover true comfort to our souls: and, certainly, could we be rightly apprehensive of the dread Majesty of the Most High God, whom we move to anger with our sin; and could consider the heinousness of sin, whereby we provoke the eyes of his glory; and, lastly, the dreadfulness of that eternal torment, which our sin draws after it; we could not think it easy, to spend too much sor row upon our sins.

(3.) If, from our own private bosom, we shall cast our eyes upon the common Sins of the Times and Places wherein we live, a taste whereof I have given you in this our present discourse; where, oh where, shall we find tears enough to bewail them? Now, sackcloth and ashes, sighs and tears, weeping and wailing, rending of garments, yea rending of hearts too, are all too little to express our just mourning. When good Ezra heard but of that one sin, wherewith both Priests and Levites, and the Rulers and People of Israel were tainted, which was their intermarriage with the heathen, so as the holy seed was vitiated with this mixture, how passionately was he affected! Let himself tell you: When I heard this thing, saith he, I rent my garment and my mantle; and plucked off the hair of my head and of my beard; and sat down astonished, until the evening sacrifice; Ezra ix. 3, 4. What would he have done, think we, if he had seen so many abominations, and heard so many and foul blasphemies of his Israel, as we have been witnesses of in these last times? This for the Quantity.

2. Now, secondly, for the QUALITY of our mourning, we may not think to rest in a Mere Sorrow, in a Pensive kind of Sullenness: Worldly sorrow causeth death; 2 Cor. vii. 10. For by the sorrow of the heart the spirit is broken; Prov. xv. 13: and a broken spirit drieth the bones; Prov. xvii. 22.

And this is one main difference, betwixt the Christian mourner and the Pagan: both equally complain: both are sensible of the causes of their complaint: but the sorrow of the one is simply and absolutely afflictive, as looking no further but to the very object of his grief; the other is mixed with divers holy temperaments, as with a meekness of spirit, with a faithful reliance upon God, yea even with some kind of joy itself; for, when we are bidden to rejoice continually; Phil. iv. 4. even the dismal days of our mourn, ing are not excepted: Not so only, saith the Apostle, but we glory in tribulations; Rom. v. 3. Yea, more than so; My brethren, saith St. James, count it all joy, when ye fall into divers temptations; James i. 2.

3. For the MANNER of our mourning: we cannot but take notice,

that there is a Solemn mourning; and there is a Private and Do mestical.

(1.) The Solemn is by public indiction of authority. That only Power, that can command our persons, may command our humi, lation, and prescribe the circumstances of the performance of it. Nineveh itself had so much divinity, as to know and practice this truth. How strict a proclamation was that of the king of that heathen city; Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock taste any thing: let them not feed, nor drink water; but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, &c. As for the choice and punctuality of the time, whereto this public mourning must be limited, where shou.d it rest, but in the hand of sovereignty; whose wisdom is to be presupposed such, as to pitch upon the meetest seasons for this practice? It is very remarkable that we find recorded in the case of Israel's publie mourning; Neh. viii. 9, 10. Then Nehemiah, which is the Tirshatha, or governor, and Ezra the priest, the scribe, and the Levites, that taught the people, said unto all the people; This day is holy unte the Lord your God: mourn not, nor weep: Go your way, eat the fat, and drink the sweet, and send portions to them for whom nothing is prepared for this day is holy unto our Lord, neither be ye sorry; for the joy of the Lord is your strength.

A consideration, if I may intimate it without presumption, meet to be tendered to our brethren of the neighbour Church, who are wont to cast their public fasts upon the Lord's Day; contrary, no less to the determination of the Councils of the Evangelical Churches, than the practice of the Jewish: for what other is this, but God's Holy-Day? of which we may well take up the words of the Psalmist, This is the day, which the Lord hath made: let us rejoice and be glad in it. As it would therefore be utterly unseasonable to rejoice in a day of mourning, so must it needs be to mourn in a day of rejoicing.

The rites and forms of public mournings may and were wont to vary, according to the usages of several nations and churches. How ceremonious the Jews were in this kind, I need not tell you. Here was rending of garments, girding with sackcloth, muffling of faces, prostration on floors, covering with ashes, howling on the house-tops, cutting and tearing of hair, wringing of hands, and all possible gestures that might express depth of passion: and so much of this is imitable by us, as may in a grave Christian fashion testify our dejection and true sorrow of heart, upon the occasion of public calamities. This solemn humiliation then, being always joined with an afflicting the body by fasting, for deep sorrow doth both take away appetite and disregards nature; so it calls us, for the time, to an absolute forbearance, and neglective forgetfulness of all earthly comforts. In which regard, the Popish mock-fasts, which allow the greatest dainties in the strictest abstinence; and the Turkish, which shut up in an evening gluttony; are no better than hypocritical counterfeits of a religious self-humbling. Those habits then, those discourses or actions, those contentments, which are in

themselves perhaps not lawful only but commendable, must now be avoided, as unseasonable, if not sinful. How heinously did the Aighty take this mis-timed pleasure and jollity, at the hands of his people the Jews! In that day, saith Isaiah, did the Lord God of Iiosts call to weeping and to mourning, and to baldness, and to girding with sackcloth: And, behold joy and gladness; slaying oxen, and killing sheep; eating flesh, and drinking wine: let us eat and drink, for to morrow we shall die. And what was the issue? It was revealed in mine ears by the Lord of Hosts, surely this iniquity shall not be purged from you till ye die, saith the Lord God of Hosts: Isaiah xxii. 12, 13, 14.

(2.) In matter of Private mournings, every man is allowed to be the arbiter of his own time, place, measure, manner of performance: always so, as that he keep within the just bounds of piety, decency, discreet moderation: as Bernard well adviseth in the like kind, so punishing a rebel, that he do not destroy a subject. Neither can I apprehend any reason, if we entertain a wellgrounded sorrow, why we may not express it: not in a hypocritical way of ostentation, as the vain Pharisees taxed by our Saviour; Matt. vi. 16 which disfigured their countenances, and did set a sour face upon a light heart, that they might appear unto men to fast; but in a wise, sober, seemly, unaffected deportment.

To instance in the case of the death of those, to whom we have the dearest relation: there can be no case wherein mourning can be more seasonabie: it is no less than a judgment, that God denounceth against king Jehoiakin; They shall not lament for him, saying, Ah, my Brother; or, Ah, Sister: they shall not lament for, him, saying, Ah, Lord; or, Ah, his glory; Jer. xxii. 18. And it was a hard word, that God spake to Ezekiel; Son of man, behold I take away from thee the desire of thine eyes with a stroke; yet shalt thou neither mourn nor weep, neither shall thy tears run down: forbear to cry; make no mourning for the dead, &c. Ezek. xxiv. 16. Lo, such a wife as it might have been, froward, disobedient, unquiet, it had been no greatly difficult charge to have parted with her: but it seems Ezekiel's was a dear, pleasing, loving consort, even the desire of his eyes, and the comfort of his life; and, therefore, to part with her without tears, must needs be a double grief to his soul.

As, therefore, it is unnatural and inhuman, not to mourn for parents, wives, husbands, brothers, sisters, children, friends; so it cannot be unmeet, to testify our mourning even by our outward habit. I could never see a reason, why it should not be fit to wear blacks upon funeral occasions. Neither piety nor Charity is an enemy to civil ceremonies. This colour and fashion is not indecent, nor justly offensive: so as the mind be free from superstition and over-nice curiosity; such, as Balsaç jeers at in his vain French Lady; who affected to have not her house only, but all the vessels and utensils that belong to it, put into that hue. If you tell me, that the Heathens mourned thus; I must tell you, that all did not so: some natious mourned in white; others, in

blue; others, in purple *; and, if all had done so, they are no ill patterns in matters of mere civilities. Besides, that, in reason, this colour is most proper for sad occasions: for, as white comes nearest to light, and black to darkness; so we know that light and joy, darkness and sorrow, are commonly used to resemble and express each other.

Well may we then outwardly profess our inward mourning for the dead but yet, not beyond a due moderation. It is not for us to mourn, as men without hope; as the Apostle holily adviseth his Thessalonians. Our sorrow must walk in a mid-way, betwixt neg. lect and excess. Sarah was the first, that we find mourned for in Scripture; and Abraham the first mourner: now the Hebrew Doctors observe, that in Genesis xxiii. 2. where Abraham's mourning is specified, the letter, which is in the midst of that original word that signifies his weeping, is, in all their Bibles, written less than all his fellows; which they, who find mountains in every tittle of Moses, interpret to imply the moderate mourning of that holy Pa triarch: surely, he, who was the Father of the Faithful, did, by the power of his faith, mitigate the sorrow for the loss of so dear a partner.

Thus much for the Manner of our mourning.

4. Now, forasmuch as it is the mourner in Sion; not in Babylon, whom we look after; in the fourth place, the inseparable CONCOMITANT of his mourning must be his Holy Devotion; whether it be in matter of suffering, or of sin: in both which, our sorrow is illbestowed, if it do not send us so much the more eagerly to seek after our God.

Thus hath the mourning of all holy souls ever been accom panied. The greatest inourner, that we can read of, was Job; who can say, My skin is black upon me, and my bones are burnt with heat; Job xxx. 30. How doth he lift up his eyes from his dunghill to heaven; and say, I have sinned, what shall I do to thee, O thou preserver of men! Job vii. 20. The distresses of David and the depth of his sorrows, cannot be unknown to any man, that hath but looked into the Book of God: and what are his divine ditties, but the zealous expressions of his faithful recourses to the Throne of Grace? Good Ezra tells you what he did, when he heard of the general infection of his people with their heathen matches: Having rent my garments and my mantle, I fell upon my knees, and spread out my hands unto the Lord my God; and said, O my

God,

am ashamed, and blush to lift up my face to thee, O my God, for our iniquities are increased over our heads, and our trespass is grown up to the heavens; Ezra ix. 5, 6. And Daniel, And Daniel, a no less devout mourner than he, lays forth himself in as holy a passion; I set my face unto the Lord God to seek him by prayer and supplications, with fasting, and sackcloth, and ashes; and I prayed unto the Lord my God, and made my confession, and said; O Lord, the great and dreadful God, keeping the covenant and mercy to them that love him,

Alexand. ab Alexandro. Genial. Dierum 1. iii. c. 7