spirits, and is either an entire cause, or a great aggravation of the calamity. To be angry with God, to quarrel with the Divine providence, by repining against an unalterable, a natural, an easy sentence, is an argument of a huge folly, and the parent of a great trouble; a man is base and foolish to no purpose. "Fear keeps men in bondage all their life," saith St. Paul; and patience makes him his own man, and lord of his own interest and person. Therefore possess yourselves in patience, with reason and religion, and you shall die with ease.

If all the parts of this discourse be true, if they be not the phantasms of hypochondriacal persons, and designs upon the interest of men and their persuasions to evil purposes; then there is no reason but that we should really desire death, and account it among the good things of God, and the laborious felicities of man. St. Paul understood it well, when he 'desired to be dissolved:" he well enough knew his own advantages, and pursued them accordingly. But it is certain that he that is afraid of death, I mean, with a violent and transporting fear, with a fear apt to discompose his duty or his patience, that man either loves the world too much, or dares not trust God for the next.

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SECTION IX.

General Rules and Exercises whereby our Sickness may become safe and sanctified.

1. TAKE care that the cause of thy sickness be such, as may not sour it in the principal and original causes of it. It is a sad calamity to pass into the house of mourning through the gates of intemperance, by a drunken meeting, or the surfeits of a loathed and luxurious table: for then a man suffers the pain of his

own folly, and he is like a fool smarting under the whip which his own viciousness twisted for his back; then a man pays the price of his sin, and hath a pure and an unmingled sorrow in his suffering; and it cannot be alleviated by any circumstances, for the whole affair is a mere process of death and sorrow. Sin is in the head, sickness is in the body, and death and an eternity of pains in the tail; and nothing can make this condition tolerable, unless the miracles of the Divine mercy will be pleased to exchange the eternal anger for the temporal. True it is, that in all sufferings the cause of it makes it noble or ignoble, honour or shame, tolerable or intolerable. If we had seen St. Polycarp burning to death, or St. Lawrence roasted upon his gridiron, or St. Ignatius exposed to lions, or St. Sebastian pierced with arrows, or St. Attalus carried about the theatre with scorn unto his death for the cause of Jesus, for religion, for God and a holy conscience; we should have been in love with flames, and have thought that disgrace were a solemnity richer and more magnificent than Mordecai's procession upon the king's horse, and in the robes of majesty for so did these holy men account them; they kissed their stakes and hugged their deaths, and ran violently to torments, and counted whippings and secular disgraces to be the enamel of their persons, and the ointment of their heads, and the embalming their names, and securing them for immortality. But to see Judas pale and trembling, full of anguish, sorrow and despair; to observe the groanings and intolerable agonies of Herod and Antiochus, will tell and demonstrate the causes of patience and impatience to proceed from the causes of the suffering: and it is sin only that makes the cup bitter and deadly. When men by vomiting measure up the drink they took in, and sick and sad do again taste their meat turned into choler by intemperance, the sin and its punishment are mingled so, that shame covers the face, and sorrow puts a veil of darkness upon the heart: and we scarce

pity a vile person that is haled to execution for murder or for treason, but we say he deserves it, and that every man is concerned in it that he should die. If lust brought the sickness or the shame, if we truly suffer the rewards of our evil deeds, we must thank ourselves; that is, we are fallen into an evil condition, and are the sacrifice of the Divine justice. But if we live holy lives, and if we enter well in, we are sure to pass on safe, and to go forth with advantage, if we list ourselves.

2. To this relates, that we should not counterfeit sickness for he that is to be careful of his passage into a sickness, will think himself concerned that he fall not into it through a trap-door: for so it hath sometimes happened, that such counterfeiting to light and evil purposes hath ended in a real sufferance.

It is easy to tell upon what such counterfeiting is to be reproved. But it will be harder to snatch the politics of the world from following that which they call a canonized and authentic precedent: and David's counterfeiting himself mad before the king of Gath, to save his life and liberty, will be sufficient to entice men to serve an end, upon the stock and charges of so small an irregularity, not in the matter of manners, but in the rules and decencies of natural or civil deportment. I cannot certainly tell what degrees of excuse David's action might put on. I add this general caution, that the actions of holy persons in Scripture are not always good precedents to us Christians, who are to walk by a rule and a greater strictness, with more simplicity and heartiness of pursuit. The prophets reproved many things, which the law forbade not, and taught many duties which Moses prescribed not and as the time of Christ's approach came, so the sermons, and revelations too, were more evangelical, and like the patterns which were fully to be exhibited by the Son of God. Amongst which it is certain that Christian simplicity and godly sincerity is to be accounted: and counterh

feiting of sickness is a huge enemy to this: it is an upbraiding the Divine providence, a jesting with fire, a playing with a thunder-bolt, a making the decrees of God to serve the vicious or secular ends of men; it is a tempting of a judgment, a false accusation of God, a forestalling and antedating his anger; it is a cozening of men by making God a party in the fraud and therefore if the cozenage returns upon the man's own head, he enters like a fox into his sickness, and perceives himself catched in a trap, or earthed in the intolerable dangers of the grave.

3. Although we must be infinitely careful to prevent it, that sin does not thrust us into a sickness; yet when we are in the house of sorrow, we should do well to take physic against sin, and suppose that it is the cause of the evil; if not by way of natural causality and proper effect, yet by a moral influence, and by a just demerit. We can easily see when a man hath got a surfeit; intemperance is as plain as the hand-writing upon the wall, and easier to be read : but covetousness may cause a fever as well as drunkenness, and pride can produce a falling-sickness as well as long washings and dilutions of the brain, and intemperate lust: and we find it recorded in Scripture, that the contemptuous and unprepared manner of receiving of the holy Sacraments caused sickness and death; and sacrilege and vow-breach in Ananias and Sapphira made them to descend quick

into their graves. Therefore when sickness is upon

us, let us cast about, and, if we can, let us find out the cause of God's displeasure, that it being removed, we may return into the health and securities of God's loving-kindness. Thus in the three years' famine David enquired of the Lord what was the matter; and God answered, "It is for Saul and his bloody house:" and then David expiated the guilt, and the people were full again of food and blessing. And when Israel was smitten by the Amorites, Joshua cast about, and found out the accursed thing, and cast it

out; and the people after that fought prosperously. And what God in that case said to Joshua, he will also verify to us; "I will not be with you any more, unless you destroy the accursed thing from among you!" But in pursuance of this we are to observe, that although in case of loud and clamorous sins the discovery is easy, and the remedy not difficult; it will often happen, that if we go to inquire into the particular, we shall never find it out; and we may suspect drunkenness, when it may be also a morose delectation in unclean thoughts, or covetousness, or oppression, or a crafty invasion of my neighbour's rights, or my want of charity, or my judging unjustly in my own cause, or my censuring my neighbours, or a secret pride, or a base hypocrisy, or the pursuance of little ends with violence and passion, that may have procured the present messenger of death. Therefore ask no more after any one, but heartily endeavour to reform all "sin no more, lest a worse thing happen." For a single search or accusation may be the design of an imperfect repentance; but no man does heartily return to God but he that decrees against every irregularity and then only we can be restored to health or life, when we have taken away the causes of sickness and accursed death.

4. He that means to have his sickness turn into safety and life, into health and virtue, must make religion the employment of his sickness, and prayer the employment of his religion. For there are certain compendiums or abbreviatures and shortenings of religion, fitted to several states. They that first gave up their names to Christ, and that turned from Paganism to Christianity, had an abbreviature fitted for them; they were to renounce their false worshippings, and give up their belief, and vow their obedience unto Christ; and in the very profession of this they were forgiven in baptism. For God hastens to

1 Josh. 7. 12.