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should have changed his abode : for so did Enoch, and so did Elias, and so shall all the world that shall be alive at the day of judgment; they shall not die, but they shall change their place and their abode, their duration and their state, and all this without death.

That death therefore which God threatened to Adam, and which passed upon his posterity, is not the going out of this world, but the manner of going. If he had staid in innocence, he should have gone from hence placidly and fairly, without vexatious and afflictive circumstances; he should not have died by sickness, misfortune, defect, or unwillingness: but when he fell, then he began to die; the same day (so said God :) and that must needs be true, and therefore it must mean, that upon that very day he fell into an evil and dangerous condition, a state of change and affliction then death began, that is, the man began to die by a natural diminution, and aptness to disease and misery. His first state was, and should have been (so long as it lasted) a happy duration; his second was a daily and miserable change: and this was the dying properly.

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This appears in the great instance of damnation, which in the style of Scripture is called eternal death: not because it kills or ends the duration, it hath not so much good in it; but because it is a perpetual infelicity. Change or separation of soul and body is but accidental to death, death may be with or without either but the formality, the curse and the sting of death, that is misery, sorrow, fear, diminution, defect, anguish, dishonour, and whatsoever is miserable and afflictive in nature, that is death. Death is not an action, but a whole state and condition; and this was first brought in upon us by the offence of one man.

But he who restored the law of nature did also restore us to the condition of nature; which, being violated by the introduction of death, Christ then repaired, when he suffered and overcame death for us: that is, he hath taken away the unhappiness of sick

ness, and the sting of death, and the dishonours of the grave, of dissolution and weakness, of decay and change, and hath turned them into acts of favour, into instances of comfort, into opportunities of virtue. Christ hath now knit them into rosaries and coronets, he hath put them into promises and rewards, he hath made them part of the portion of his elect: they are instruments, and earnests, and securities, and passages to the greatest perfection of human nature, and the Divine promises. So that it is possible for us now to be reconciled to sickness; it came in by sin, and therefore is cured when it is turned into virtue and although it may have in it the uneasiness of labour; yet it will not be uneasy as sin, or the restlessness of a discomposed conscience. If therefore we can well

manage our state of sickness, that we may not fall by pain, as we usually do by pleasure, we need not fear; for no evil shall happen to us.

SECTION II.

Of the first Temptation proper to the State of Sickness, Impatience.

MEN that are in health are severe exactors of patience at the hands of them that are sick; and they usually judge it not by terms of relation between God and the suffering man, but between him and the friends that stand by the bed-side. It will be therefore necessary that we truly understand, to what duties and actions the patience of a sick man ought to extend.

1. Sighs and groans, sorrow and prayers, humble complaints and dolorous expressions, are the sad accents of a sick man's language. For it is not to be expected, that a sick man should act a part of patience with a countenance like an orator, or grave like a dramatic person it were well if all men could bear

an exterior decency in their sickness, and regulate their voice, their face, their discourse, and all their circumstances, by the measures and proportions of comeliness and satisfaction to all the standers by. But this would better please them than assist him; the sick man would do more good to others than he would receive to himself.

2. Therefore silence, and still composures, and not complaining, are no parts of a sick man's duty, they are not necessary parts of patience. We find that David roared for the very disquietness of his sickness; and he lay chattering like a swallow; and his throat was dry with calling for help upon his God. That's the proper voice of sickness: and certain it is that the proper voices of sickness are expressly vocal and petitory in the ears of God, and call for pity in the same accent, as the cries and oppressions of widows and orphans do for vengeance upon their persecutors, though they say no collect against them.

For there

is the voice of man, and there is the voice of the disease, and God hears both: and the louder the disease speaks, there is the greater need of mercy and pity, and therefore God will the sooner hear it. Abel's blood had a voice, and cried to God; and humility hath a voice, and cries so loud to God that it pierces the clouds; and so hath every sorrow and every sickness and when a man cries out, and complains but according to the sorrows of his pain, it cannot be any part of a culpable impatience, but an argument for pity.

3. Some men's senses are so subtile, and their perceptions so quick, and their spirits so active, that the same load is double upon them to what it is to another person: and therefore comparing the expressions of the one to the silence of the other, a different judgment cannot be made concerning their patience. Some natures are querulous, and melancholic, and soft, and nice, and tender, and weeping, and expressive; others are sullen, dull, without apprehension, apt to tolerate

and carry burthens: and the crucifixion of our blessed Saviour falling upon a delicate and virgin body, of curious temper, and strict, equal composition, was naturally more full of torment than that of the ruder thieves, whose proportions were coarser and uneven.

4. Nature in some cases hath made cryings out and exclamations to be an entertainment of the spirit, and an abatement or diversion of the pain. So it is in the endurance of some sharp pains: the complaints and shriekings, the sharp groans and the tender accents send forth the afflicted spirits, and force a way, that they may ease their oppression and their load, that when they have spent some of their sorrows by a sally forth, they may return better able to fortify the heart. Nothing of this is a certain sign, much less an action or part of impatience; and when our blessed Saviour suffered his last and sharpest pang of sorrow, "he cried out with a loud voice," and resolved to die, and did so.

SECTION III.

Constituent or integral Parts of Patience.

1. THAT we may secure our patience, we must take care that our complaints be without despair. Despair sins against the reputation of God's goodness, and the efficacy of all our old experience. By despair we destroy the greatest comfort of our sorrows, and turn our sickness into the state of devils and perishing souls. No affliction is greater than despair: for that is it which makes hell-fire, and turns a natural evil into an intolerable; it hinders prayers, and fills up the intervals of sickness with a worse torture; it makes all spiritual arts useless, and the office of spiritual comforters and guides to be impertinent.

Against this, hope is to be opposed: and its proper acts, as it relates to the virtue and exercise of patience,

are, 1st. Praying to God for help and remedy; 2d. Sending for the guides of souls; 3d. Using all holy exercises and acts of grace proper to that state: which whoso does, hath not the impatience of despair; every man that is patient hath hope in God in the day of his sorrows.

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2. Our complaints in sickness must be without Murmur sins against God's providence and government: by it we grow rude, and, like the fallen angels, displeased at God's supremacy; and nothing is more unreasonable: it talks against God, for whose glory all speech was made; it is proud and fantastic, hath better opinions of a sinner than of the Divine justice, and would rather accuse God than himself.

Against this is opposed that part of patience which resigns the man into the hands of God, saying with old Eli, "It is the Lord, let him do what he will;" and "Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven :" and so the admiring God's justice and wisdom, does also dispose the sick person for receiving God's mercy, and secures him the rather in the grace of God. The proper acts of this part of patience are, 1st. To confess our sins and our own demerits: 2d. It increases and exercises humility: 3d. It loves to sing praises to God, even from the lowest abyss of human misery.

3. Our complaints in sickness must be without peevishness. This sins against civility, and that necessary decency which must be used towards the ministers and assistants. By peevishness we increase our own sorrows, and are troublesome to them that stand there to ease ours. It hath in it harshness of nature and ungentleness, wilfulness and fantastic opinions, morosity and incivility.

Against it are opposed obedience, tractability, easiness of persuasion, aptness to take counsel. The acts of this part of patience are, 1st. To obey our physicians: 2d. To treat our persons with respect to

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