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Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions; Together with Death's Duel

by John Donne · English · Gutenberg #23772 · 419,751 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions; Together with Death's Duel

Author: John Donne


        
Release date: December 8, 2007 [eBook #23772]
                Most recently updated: December 8, 2011

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/23772

Credits: Produced by Stacy Brown, John Hagerson, Juliet Sutherland
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DEVOTIONS UPON EMERGENT OCCASIONS; TOGETHER WITH DEATH'S DUEL ***




Produced by Stacy Brown, John Hagerson, Juliet Sutherland
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
http://www.pgdp.net











JOHN DONNE


DEVOTIONS

UPON EMERGENT OCCASIONS


_Together with_

DEATH'S DUEL


ANN ARBOR PAPERBACKS

_The University of Michigan Press_




First edition as an

ANN ARBOR PAPERBACK 1959

Published in the United States of America by the University of Michigan
and simultaneously in Toronto, Canada, by Ambassador Books, Ltd.


Manufactured in the United States of America




CONTENTS


THE LIFE OF DR. JOHN DONNE     v

DEVOTIONS                      1

DEATH'S DUEL                 161




_THE LIFE OF DR. JOHN DONNE_

(_Taken from the life by Izaak Walton_).


Master John Donne was born in London, in the year 1573, of good and
virtuous parents: and, though his own learning and other multiplied
merits may justly appear sufficient to dignify both himself and his
posterity, yet the reader may be pleased to know that his father was
masculinely and lineally descended from a very ancient family in Wales,
where many of his name now live, that deserve and have great reputation
in that country.

By his mother he was descended of the family of the famous and learned
Sir Thomas More, sometime Lord Chancellor of England: as also, from that
worthy and laborious Judge Rastall, who left posterity the vast Statutes
of the Law of this nation most exactly abridged.

He had his first breeding in his father's house, where a private tutor
had the care of him, until the tenth year of his age; and, in his
eleventh year, was sent to the University of Oxford, having at that time
a good command both of the French and Latin tongue. This, and some other
of his remarkable abilities, made one then give this censure of him:
That this age had brought forth another Picus Mirandula; of whom story
says, that he was rather born than made wise by study.

There he remained for some years in Hart Hall, having, for the
advancement of his studies, tutors of several sciences to attend and
instruct him, till time made him capable, and his learning expressed in
public exercises, declared him worthy, to receive his first degree in
the schools, which he forbore by advice from his friends, who, being for
their religion of the Romish persuasion, were conscionably averse to
some parts of the oath that is always tendered at those times, and not
to be refused by those that expect the titulary honour of their studies.

About the fourteenth year of his age he was transplanted from Oxford to
Cambridge, where, that he might receive nourishment from both soils, he
staid till his seventeenth year; all which time he was a most laborious
student, often changing his studies, but endeavouring to take no degree,
for the reasons formerly mentioned.

About the seventeenth year of his age he was removed to London, and then
admitted into Lincoln's Inn, with an intent to study the law, where he
gave great testimonies of his wit, his learning, and of his improvement
in that profession; which never served him for other use than an
ornament and self-satisfaction.

His father died before his admission into this society; and, being a
merchant, left him his portion in money. (It was £3,000.) His mother,
and those to whose care he was committed, were watchful to improve his
knowledge, and to that end appointed him tutors both in the mathematics,
and in all the other liberal sciences, to attend him. But, with these
arts, they were advised to instil into him particular principles of the
Romish Church; of which those tutors professed, though secretly,
themselves to be members.

They had almost obliged him to their faith; having for their advantage,
besides many opportunities, the example of his dear and pious parents,
which was a most powerful persuasion, and did work much upon him, as he
professeth in his preface to his "Pseudo-Martyr," a book of which the
reader shall have some account in what follows.

He was now entered into the eighteenth year of his age; and at that time
had betrothed himself to no religion that might give him any other
denomination than a Christian. And reason and piety had both persuaded
him that there could be no such sin as schism, if an adherence to some
visible Church were not necessary.

About the nineteenth year of his age, he, being then unresolved what
religion to adhere to, and considering how much it concerned his soul to
choose the most orthodox, did therefore,--though his youth and health
promised him a long life--to rectify all scruples that might concern
that, presently lay aside all study of the law, and of all other
sciences that might give him a denomination; and began seriously to
survey and consider the body of Divinity, as it was then controverted
betwixt the Reformed and the Roman Church. And, as God's blessed
Spirit did then awaken him to the search, and in that industry
did never forsake him--they be his own words (in his preface to
"Pseudo-Martyr")--so he calls the same Holy Spirit to witness this
protestation; that in that disquisition and search he proceeded with
humility and diffidence in himself; and by that which he took to be the
safest way; namely, frequent prayers, and an indifferent affection to
both parties; and, indeed, Truth had too much light about her to be hid
from so sharp an inquirer; and he had too much ingenuity not to
acknowledge he had found her.

Being to undertake this search, he believed the Cardinal Bellarmine to
be the best defender of the Roman cause, and therefore betook himself to
the examination of his reasons. The cause was weighty, and wilful delays
had been inexcusable both towards God and his own conscience: he
therefore proceeded in this search with all moderate haste, and about
the twentieth year of his age did show the then Dean of
Gloucester--whose name my memory hath now lost--all the Cardinal's works
marked with many weighty observations under his own hand; which works
were bequeathed by him, at his death, as a legacy to a most dear friend.

About a year following he resolved to travel: and the Earl of Essex
going first to Cales, and after the Island voyages, the first anno 1596,
the second 1597, he took the advantage of those opportunities, waited
upon his Lordship, and was an eye-witness of those happy and unhappy
employments.

But he returned not back into England till he had staid some years,
first in Italy and then in Spain, where he made many useful observations
of those countries, their laws and manner of government, and returned
perfect in their languages.

The time that he spent in Spain was, at his first going into Italy,
designed for travelling to the Holy Land, and for viewing Jerusalem and
the Sepulchre of our Saviour. But at his being in the furthest parts of
Italy, the disappointment of company, or of a safe convoy, or the
uncertainty of returns of money into those remote parts, denied him
that happiness, which he did often occasionally mention with a
deploration.

Not long after his return into England, that exemplary pattern of
gravity and wisdom, the Lord Ellesmere, then Keeper of the Great Seal,
the Lord Chancellor of England, taking notice of his learning,
languages, and other abilities, and much affecting his person and
behaviour, took him to be his chief secretary; supposing and intending
it to be an introduction to some more weighty employment in the State;
for which, his Lordship did often protest, he thought him very fit.

Nor did his Lordship, in this time of Master Donne's attendance upon
him, account him to be so much his servant as to forget he was his
friend; and, to testify it, did always use him with much courtesy,
appointing him a place at his own table, to which he esteemed his
company and discourse to be a great ornament.

He continued that employment for the space of five years, being daily
useful, and not mercenary to his friend. During which time he--I dare
not say unhappily--fell into such a liking, as,--with her
approbation,--increased into a love, with a young gentlewoman that lived
in that family, who was niece to the Lady Ellesmere, and daughter to Sir
George More, then Chancellor of the Garter and Lieutenant of the Tower.

Sir George had some intimation of it, and, knowing prevention to be a
great part of wisdom, did therefore remove her with much haste from that
to his own house at Lothesley, in the County of Surrey; but too late, by
reason of some faithful promises which were so interchangeably passed,
as never to be violated by either party.

These promises were only known to themselves; and the friends of both
parties used much diligence, and many arguments, to kill or cool their
affections to each other; but in vain, for love is a flattering mischief
that hath denied aged and wise men a foresight of those evils that too
often prove to be the children of that blind father; a passion that
carries us to commit errors with as much ease as whirlwinds move
feathers, and begets in us an unwearied industry to the attainment of
what we desire. And such an industry did, notwithstanding much
watchfulness against it, bring them secretly together,--I forbear to
tell the manner how,--and at last to a marriage too, without the
allowance of those friends whose approbation always was, and ever will
be necessary, to make even a virtuous love become lawful.

And that the knowledge of their marriage might not fall, like an
unexpected tempest, on those that were unwilling to have it so; and that
pre-apprehensions might make it the less enormous when it was known, it
was purposely whispered into the ears of many that it was so, yet by
none that could affirm it. But, to put a period to the jealousies of Sir
George--doubt often begetting more restless thoughts than the certain
knowledge of what we fear--the news was, in favour to Mr. Donne, and
with his allowance, made known to Sir George, by his honourable friend
and neighbour Henry, Earl of Northumberland; but it was to Sir George so
immeasurably unwelcome, and so transported him that, as though his
passion of anger and inconsideration might exceed theirs of love and
error, he presently engaged his sister, the Lady Ellesmere, to join with
him to procure her lord to discharge Mr. Donne of the place he held
under his Lordship. This request was followed with violence; and though
Sir George were remembered that errors might be over punished, and
desired therefore to forbear till second considerations might clear some
scruples, yet he became restless until his suit was granted and the
punishment executed. And though the Lord Chancellor did not, at Mr.
Donne's dismission, give him such a commendation as the great Emperor
Charles the Fifth did of his Secretary Eraso, when he parted with him to
his son and successor, Philip the Second, saying, "That in his Eraso, he
gave to him a greater gift than all his estate, and all the kingdoms
which he then resigned to him;" yet the Lord Chancellor said, "He parted
with a friend, and such a Secretary as was fitter to serve a king than a
subject."

Immediately after his dismission from his service, he sent a sad letter
to his wife to acquaint her with it; and after the subscription of his
name, writ,

    "John Donne, Anne Donne, Un-done;"

and God knows it proved too true; for this bitter physic of Mr. Donne's
dismission, was not enough to purge out all Sir George's choler, for he
was not satisfied till Mr. Donne and his sometime compupil in Cambridge,
that married him, namely, Samuel Brooke, who was after Doctor in
Divinity and Master of Trinity College--and his brother Mr. Christopher
Brooke, sometime Mr. Donne's chamber-fellow in Lincoln's Inn, who gave
Mr. Donne his wife, and witnessed the marriage, were all committed to
three several prisons.

Mr. Donne was first enlarged, who neither gave rest to his body or
brain, nor to any friend in whom he might hope to have an interest,
until he had procured an enlargement for his two imprisoned friends.

He was now at liberty, but his days were still cloudy; and, being past
these troubles, others did still multiply upon him; for his wife was--to
her extreme sorrow--detained from him; and though, with Jacob, he
endured not a hard service for her, yet he lost a good one, and was
forced to make good his title, and to get possession of her by a long
and restless suit in law, which proved troublesome and sadly chargeable
to him, whose youth, and travel, and needless bounty, had brought his
estate into a narrow compass.

It is observed, and most truly, that silence and submission are charming
qualities, and work most upon passionate men; and it proved so with Sir
George; for these, and a general report of Mr. Donne's merits, together
with his winning behaviour,--which, when it would entice, had a strange
kind of elegant irresistible art;--these, and time, had so
dispassionated Sir George, that, as the world had approved his
daughter's choice, so he also could not but see a more than ordinary
merit in his new son; and this at last melted him into so much
remorse--for love and anger are so like agues as to have hot and cold
fits; and love in parents, though it may be quenched, yet is easily
rekindled, and expires not till death denies mankind a natural
heat--that he laboured his son's restoration to his place; using to that
end both his own and his sister's power to her lord; but with no
success; for his answer was, "That though he was unfeignedly sorry for
what he had done, yet it was inconsistent with his place and credit, to
discharge and readmit servants at the request of passionate
petitioners."

Sir George's endeavour for Mr. Donne's readmission was by all means to
be kept secret:--for men do more naturally reluct for errors than submit
to put on those blemishes that attend their visible acknowledgment. But,
however, it was not long before Sir George appeared to be so far
reconciled as to wish their happiness, and not to deny them his paternal
blessing, but yet refused to contribute any means that might conduce to
their livelihood.

Mr. Donne's estate was the greatest part spent in many and chargeable
travels, books, and dear-bought experience: he out of all employment
that might yield a support for himself and wife, who had been curiously
and plentifully educated; both their natures generous, and accustomed to
confer, and not to receive, courtesies, these and other considerations,
but chiefly that his wife was to bear a part in his sufferings,
surrounded him with many sad thoughts, and some apparent apprehensions
of want.

But his sorrows were lessened and his wants prevented by the seasonable
courtesy of their noble kinsman, Sir Francis Wolly, of Pirford in
Surrey, who intreated them to a cohabitation with him; where they
remained with much freedom to themselves, and equal content to Him, for
some years; and as their charge increased--she had yearly a child--so
did his love and bounty.

Mr. Donne and his wife continued with Sir Francis Wolly till his death:
a little before which time Sir Francis was so happy as to make a perfect
reconciliation between Sir George and his forsaken son and daughter; Sir
George conditioning, by bond, to pay to Mr. Donne 800_l._ at a certain
day, as a portion with his wife, or 20_l._ quarterly for their
maintenance, as the interest for it, till the said portion was paid.

Most of those years that he lived with Sir Francis he studied the Civil
and Canon Laws; in which he acquired such a perfection, as was judged to
hold proportion with many, who had made that study the employment of
their whole life.

Sir Francis being dead, and that happy family dissolved, Mr. Donne took
for himself a house in Mitcham--near to Croydon in Surrey--a place noted
for good air and choice company: there his wife and children remained;
and for himself he took lodgings in London, near to Whitehall, whither
his friends and occasions drew him very often, and where he was as often
visited by many of the nobility and others of this nation, who used him
in their counsels of greatest consideration, and with some rewards for
his better subsistence.

Nor did our own nobility only value and favour him, but his acquaintance
and friendship was sought for by most Ambassadors of foreign nations,
and by many other strangers whose learning or business occasioned their
stay in this nation.

Thus it continued with him for about two years, all which time his
family remained constantly at Mitcham; and to which place he often
retired himself, and destined some days to a constant study of some
points of controversy betwixt the English and Roman Church, and
especially those of Supremacy and Allegiance: and to that place and such
studies he could willingly have wedded himself during his life; but the
earnest persuasion of friends became at last to be so powerful, as to
cause the removal of himself and family to London, where Sir Robert
Drewry, a gentleman of a very noble estate, and a more liberal mind,
assigned him and his wife an useful apartment in his own large house in
Drury Lane, and not only rent free, but was also a cherisher of his
studies, and such a friend as sympathized with him and his, in all their
joy and sorrows.

At this time of Mr. Donne's and his wife's living in Sir Robert's house,
the Lord Hay was, by King James, sent upon a glorious embassy to the
then French King, Henry the Fourth; and Sir Robert put on a sudden
resolution to accompany him to the French Court, and to be present at
his audience there. And Sir Robert put on a sudden resolution to solicit
Mr. Donne to be his companion in that journey. And this desire was
suddenly made known to his wife, who was then with child, and otherwise
under so dangerous a habit of body as to her health, that she professed
an unwillingness to allow him any absence from her; saying, "Her
divining soul boded her some ill in his absence;" and therefore desired
him not to leave her. This made Mr. Donne lay aside all thoughts of the
journey, and really to resolve against it. But Sir Robert became
restless in his persuasions for it, and Mr. Donne was so generous as to
think he had sold his liberty when he received so many charitable
kindnesses from him, and told his wife so; who did therefore, with an
unwilling willingness, give a faint consent to the journey, which was
proposed to be but for two months; for about that time they determined
their return. Within a few days after this resolve, the Ambassador, Sir
Robert, and Mr. Donne, left London; and were the twelfth day got all
safe to Paris. Two days after their arrival there, Mr. Donne was left
alone in that room in which Sir Robert, and he, and some other friends
had dined together. To this place Sir Robert returned within half an
hour; and as he left, so he found, Mr. Donne alone; but in such an
ecstasy, and so altered as to his looks, as amazed Sir Robert to behold
him; insomuch that he earnestly desired Mr. Donne to declare what had
befallen him in the short time of his absence. To which Mr. Donne was
not able to make a present answer; but, after a long and perplexed
pause, did at last say, "I have seen a dreadful vision since I saw you:
I have seen my dear wife pass twice by me through this room, with her
hair hanging about her shoulders, and a dead child in her arms: this I
have seen since I saw you." To which Sir Robert replied, "Sure, sir, you
have slept since I saw you; and this is the result of some melancholy
dream, which I desire you to forget, for you are now awake." To which
Mr. Donne's reply was: "I cannot be surer that I now live than that I
have not slept since I saw you: and am as sure that at her second
appearing she stopped and looked me in the face, and vanished." Rest and
sleep had not altered Mr. Donne's opinion the next day: for he then
affirmed this vision with a more deliberate, and so confirmed a
confidence, that he inclined Sir Robert to a faint belief that the
vision was true. It is truly said that desire and doubt have no rest;
and it proved so with Sir Robert; for he immediately sent a servant to
Drewry House, with a charge to hasten back and bring him word whether
Mrs. Donne were alive; and, if alive, in what condition she was as to
her health. The twelfth day the messenger returned with this
account:--That he found and left Mrs. Donne very sad and sick in her
bed; and that, after a long and dangerous labour, she had been delivered
of a dead child. And, upon examination, the abortion proved to be the
same day, and about the very hour, that Mr. Donne affirmed he saw her
pass by him in his chamber.

This is a relation that will beget some wonder, and it well may; for
most of our world are at present possessed with an opinion that visions
and miracles are ceased. And, though it is most certain that two lutes,
being both strung and tuned to an equal pitch, and then one played upon,
the other that is not touched, being laid upon a table at a fit
distance, will--like an echo to a trumpet--warble a faint audible
harmony in answer to the same tune; yet many will not believe there is
any such thing as a sympathy of souls; and I am well pleased that every
reader do enjoy his own opinion. But if the unbelieving will not allow
the believing reader of this story, a liberty to believe that it may be
true, then I wish him to consider many wise men have believed that the
ghost of Julius Cæsar did appear to Brutus, and that both St. Austin,
and Monica his mother, had visions in order to his conversion. And
though these and many others--too many to name--have but the authority
of human story, yet the incredible reader may find in the sacred story
(1 Sam. xxviii. 14) that Samuel did appear to Saul even after his
death--whether really or not, I undertake not to determine. And Bildad,
in the Book of Job, says these words (iv. 13-16): "A spirit passed
before my face; the hair of my head stood up; fear and trembling came
upon me, and made all my bones to shake." Upon which words I will make
no comment, but leave them to be considered by the incredulous reader;
to whom I will also commend this following consideration: That there be
many pious and learned men that believe our merciful God hath assigned
to every man a particular guardian angel to be his constant monitor,
and to attend him in all his dangers, both of body and soul. And the
opinion that every man hath his particular angel may gain some authority
by the relation of St. Peter's miraculous deliverance out of prison
(Acts xii. 7-10; 13-15), not by many, but by one angel. And this belief
may yet gain more credit by the reader's considering, that when Peter
after his enlargement knocked at the door of Mary the mother of John,
and Rhode, the maidservant, being surprised with joy that Peter was
there, did not let him in, but ran in haste and told the disciples, who
were then and there met together, that Peter was at the door; and they,
not believing it, said she was mad: yet, when she again affirmed it,
though they then believed it not, yet they concluded, and said, "It is
his angel."

More observations of this nature, and inferences from them, might be
made to gain the relation a firmer belief; but I forbear, lest I, that
intended to be but a relator, may be thought to be an engaged person for
the proving what was related to me; and yet I think myself bound to
declare that, though it was not told me by Mr. Donne himself, it was
told me--now long since--by a person of honour, and of such intimacy
with him, that he knew more of the secrets of his soul than any person
then living: and I think he told me the truth; for it was told with such
circumstances, and such asseveration, that--to say nothing of my own
thoughts--I verily believe he that told it me did himself believe it to
be true.

I return from my account of the vision, to tell the reader, that both
before Mr. Donne's going into France, at his being there, and after his
return, many of the nobility and others that were powerful at court,
were watchful and solicitous to the King for some secular employment for
him. The King had formerly both known and put a value upon his company,
and had also given him some hopes of a state-employment; being always
much pleased when Mr. Donne attended him, especially at his meals, where
there were usually many deep discourses of general learning, and very
often friendly disputes, or debates of religion, betwixt his Majesty and
those divines, whose places required their attendance on him at those
times: particularly the Dean of the Chapel, who then was Bishop
Montague--the publisher of the learned and eloquent Works of his
Majesty--and the most Reverend Doctor Andrews the late learned Bishop of
Winchester, who was then the King's Almoner.

About this time there grew many disputes, that concerned the Oath of
Supremacy and Allegiance, in which the King had appeared, and engaged
himself by his public writings now extant: and his Majesty discoursing
with Mr. Donne, concerning many of the reasons which are usually urged
against the taking of those Oaths, apprehended such a validity and
clearness in his stating the questions, and his answers to them, that
his Majesty commanded him to bestow some time in drawing the arguments
into a method, and then to write his answers to them; and, having done
that, not to send, but be his own messenger, and bring them to him. To
this he presently and diligently applied himself, and within six weeks
brought them to him under his own handwriting, as they be now printed;
the book bearing the name of "Pseudo-Martyr," printed anno 1610.

When the King had read and considered that book, he persuaded Mr. Donne
to enter into the Ministry; to which, at that time, he was, and
appeared, very unwilling, apprehending it--such was his mistaken
modesty--to be too weighty for his abilities.

Such strifes St. Austin had, when St. Ambrose endeavoured his conversion
to Christianity; with which he confesseth he acquainted his friend
Alipius. Our learned author--a man fit to write after no mean copy--did
the like. And declaring his intentions to his dear friend Dr. King, then
Bishop of London, a man famous in his generation, and no stranger to Mr.
Donne's abilities--for he had been Chaplain to the Lord Chancellor, at
the time of Mr. Donne's being his Lordship's Secretary--that reverend
man did receive the news with much gladness; and, after some expressions
of joy, and a persuasion to be constant in his pious purpose, he
proceeded with all convenient speed to ordain him first Deacon, and then
Priest not long after.

Presently after he entered into his holy profession, the King sent for
him, and made him his Chaplain in Ordinary, and promised to take a
particular care for his preferment.

And, though his long familiarity with scholars and persons of greatest
quality was such, as might have given some men boldness enough to have
preached to any eminent auditory; yet his modesty in this employment was
such, that he could not be persuaded to it, but went usually accompanied
with some one friend to preach privately in some village, not far from
London; his first sermon being preached at Paddington. This he did, till
his Majesty sent and appointed him a day to preach to him at Whitehall;
and, though much were expected from him, both by his Majesty and others,
yet he was so happy--which few are--as to satisfy and exceed their
expectations: preaching the Word so, as shewed his own heart was
possessed with those very thoughts and joys that he laboured to distil
into others: a preacher in earnest; weeping sometimes for his auditory,
sometimes with them; always preaching to himself like an angel from a
cloud, but in none; carrying some, as St. Paul was, to Heaven in holy
raptures, and enticing others by a sacred art and courtship to amend
their lives: here picturing a vice so as to make it ugly to those that
practised it; and a virtue so as to make it beloved, even by those that
loved it not; and all this with a most particular grace and an
unexpressible addition of comeliness.

That summer, in the very same month in which he entered into sacred
Orders, and was made the King's Chaplain, his Majesty then going his
progress, was entreated to receive an entertainment in the University of
Cambridge: and Mr. Donne attending his Majesty at that time, his Majesty
was pleased to recommend him to the University, to be made Doctor in
Divinity; Doctor Harsnett, after Archbishop of York, was then
Vice-Chancellor, who, knowing him to be the author of that learned book
the "Pseudo-Martyr," required no other proof of his abilities, but
proposed it to the University, who presently assented, and expressed a
gladness that they had such an occasion to entitle him to be theirs.

His abilities and industry in his profession were so eminent, and he so
known and so beloved by persons of quality, that within the first year
of his entering into sacred Orders, he had fourteen advowsons of several
benefices presented to him: but they were in the country, and he could
not leave his beloved London, to which place he had a natural
inclination, having received both his birth and education in it, and
there contracted a friendship with many, whose conversation multiplied
the joys of his life; but an employment that might affix him to that
place would be welcome, for he needed it.

Immediately after his return from Cambridge his wife died, leaving him a
man of a narrow, unsettled estate, and--having buried five--the careful
father of seven children then living, to whom he gave a voluntary
assurance never to bring them under the subjection of a step-mother;
which promise he kept most faithfully, burying with his tears all his
earthly joys in his most dear and deserving wife's grave, and betook
himself to a most retired and solitary life.

In this retiredness, which was often from the sight of his dearest
friends, he became crucified to the world, and all those vanities, those
imaginary pleasures, that are daily acted on that restless stage, and
they were as perfectly crucified to him.

His first motion from his house was to preach where his beloved wife lay
buried--in St. Clement's Church, near Temple Bar, London; and his text
was a part of the Prophet Jeremy's Lamentation: "Lo, I am the man that
have seen affliction."

In this time of sadness he was importuned by the grave Benchers of
Lincoln's Inn--who were once the companions and friends of his youth--to
accept of their Lecture, which, by reason of Dr. Gataker's removal from
thence, was then void; of which he accepted, being most glad to renew
his intermitted friendship with those whom he so much loved, and where
he had been a Saul,--though not to persecute Christianity, or to deride
it, yet in his irregular youth to neglect the visible practice of
it,--there to become a Paul, and preach salvation to his beloved
brethren.

About which time the Emperor of Germany died, and the Palsgrave, who had
lately married the Lady Elizabeth, the King's only daughter, was elected
and crowned King of Bohemia, the unhappy beginning of many miseries in
that nation.

King James, whose motto--_Beati pacifici_--did truly speak the very
thoughts of his heart, endeavoured first to prevent, and after to
compose, the discords of that discomposed State; and, amongst other his
endeavours, did then send the Lord Hay, Earl of Doncaster, his
Ambassador to those unsettled Princes; and, by a special command from
his Majesty, Dr. Donne was appointed to assist and attend that
employment to the Princes of the Union, for which the Earl was most
glad, who had always put a great value on him, and taken a great
pleasure in his conversation and discourse: and his friends at Lincoln's
Inn were as glad; for they feared that his immoderate study, and sadness
for his wife's death, would, as Jacob said, "make his days few," and,
respecting his bodily health, "evil" too: and of this there were many
visible signs.

About fourteen months after his departure out of England, he returned to
his friends of Lincoln's Inn, with his sorrows moderated, and his health
improved; and there betook himself to his constant course of preaching.

About a year after his return out of Germany, Dr. Carey was made Bishop
of Exeter, and by his removal, the Deanery of St. Paul's being vacant,
the King sent to Dr. Donne, and appointed him to attend him at dinner
the next day. When his Majesty was sat down, before he had eat any meat,
he said after his pleasant manner, "Dr. Donne, I have invited you to
dinner; and, though you sit not down with me, yet I will carve to you of
a dish that I know you love well; for, knowing you love London, I do
therefore make you Dean of St. Paul's; and, when I have dined, then do
you take your beloved dish home to your study, say grace there to
yourself, and much good may it do you."

Immediately after he came to his Deanery, he employed workmen to repair
and beautify the Chapel; suffering as holy David once vowed, "his eyes
and temples to take no rest till he had first beautified the house of
God."

The next quarter following when his father-in-law, Sir George
More,--whom time had made a lover and admirer of him--came to pay to him
the conditioned sum of twenty pounds, he refused to receive it; and
said--as good Jacob did, when he heard his beloved son Joseph was
alive--"'It is enough;' you have been kind to me and mine: I know your
present condition is such as not to abound, and I hope mine is, or will
be such as not to need it: I will therefore receive no more from you
upon that contract," and in testimony of it freely gave him up his bond.

Immediately after his admission into his Deanery the Vicarage of St.
Dunstan in the West, London, fell to him by the death of Dr. White, the
advowson of it having been given to him long before by his honourable
friend Richard Earl of Dorset, then the patron, and confirmed by his
brother the late deceased Edward, both of them men of much honour.

By these, and another ecclesiastical endowment which fell to him about
the same time, given to him formerly by the Earl of Kent, he was enabled
to become charitable to the poor, and kind to his friends, and to make
such provision for his children, that they were not left scandalous as
relating to their or his profession and quality.

The next Parliament, which was within that present year, he was chosen
Prolocutor to the Convocation, and about that time was appointed by his
Majesty, his most gracious master, to preach very many occasional
sermons, as at St. Paul's Cross, and other places. All which employments
he performed to the admiration of the representative body of the whole
Clergy of this nation.

He was once, and but once, clouded with the King's displeasure, and it
was about this time; which was occasioned by some malicious whisperer,
who had told his Majesty that Dr. Donne had put on the general humour of
the pulpits, and was become busy in insinuating a fear of the King's
inclining to popery, and a dislike of his government; and particularly
for the King's then turning the evening lectures into catechising, and
expounding the Prayer of our Lord, and of the Belief, and Commandments.
His Majesty was the more inclinable to believe this, for that a person
of nobility and great note, betwixt whom and Dr. Donne there had been a
great friendship, was at this very time discarded the court--I shall
forbear his name, unless I had a fairer occasion--and justly committed
to prison; which begot many rumours in the common people, who in this
nation think they are not wise unless they be busy about what they
understand not, and especially about religion.

The King received this news with so much discontent and restlessness
that he would not suffer the sun to set and leave him under this doubt;
but sent for Dr. Donne, and required his answer to the accusation; which
was so clear and satisfactory that the King said, "he was right glad he
rested no longer under the suspicion." When the King had said this, Dr.
Donne kneeled down, and thanked his Majesty, and protested his answer
was faithful, and free from all collusion, and therefore "desired that
he might not rise till, as in like cases, he always had from God, so he
might have from his Majesty, some assurance that he stood clear and fair
in his opinion." At which the King raised him from his knees with his
own hands, and "protested he believed him; and that he knew he was an
honest man, and doubted not but that he loved him truly." And, having
thus dismissed him, he called some Lords of his Council into his
chamber, and said with much earnestness, "My Doctor is an honest man;
and, my Lords, I was never better satisfied with an answer than he hath
now made me; and I always rejoice when I think that by my means he
became a Divine."

He was made Dean in the fiftieth year of his age, and in his
fifty-fourth year a dangerous sickness seized him, which inclined him to
a consumption; but God, as Job thankfully acknowledged, preserved his
spirit, and kept his intellectuals as clear and perfect as when that
sickness first seized his body; but it continued long, and threatened
him with death, which he dreaded not.

Within a few days his distempers abated; and as his strength increased
so did his thankfulness to Almighty God, testified in his most excellent
"Book of Devotions," which he published at his recovery; in which the
reader may see the most secret thoughts that then possessed his soul,
paraphrased and made public: a book that may not unfitly be called a
Sacred Picture of Spiritual Ecstasies, occasioned and applicable to the
emergencies of that sickness; which book, being a composition of
meditations, disquisitions, and prayers, he writ on his sick-bed; herein
imitating the holy Patriarchs, who were wont to build their altars in
that place where they had received their blessings.

This sickness brought him so near to the gates of death, and he saw the
grave so ready to devour him, that he would often say his recovery was
supernatural: but that God that then restored his health continued it to
him till the fifty-ninth year of his life: and then, in August 1630,
being with his eldest daughter, Mrs. Harvey, at Abury Hatch, in Essex,
he there fell into a fever, which, with the help of his constant
infirmity--vapours from the spleen--hastened him into so visible a
consumption that his beholders might say, as St. Paul of himself, "He
dies daily;" and he might say with Job, "My welfare passeth away as a
cloud, the days of my affliction have taken hold of me, and weary nights
are appointed for me."

Reader, this sickness continued long, not only weakening, but wearying
him so much, that my desire is he may now take some rest; and that
before I speak of his death thou wilt not think it an impertinent
digression to look back with me upon some observations of his life,
which, whilst a gentle slumber gives rest to his spirits, may, I hope,
not unfitly, exercise thy consideration.

His marriage was the remarkable error of his life; an error which,
though he had a wit able and very apt to maintain paradoxes, yet he was
very far from justifying it: and though his wife's competent years, and
other reasons, might be justly urged to moderate severe censures, yet he
would occasionally condemn himself for it: and doubtless it had been
attended with an heavy repentance, if God had not blessed them with so
mutual and cordial affections, as in the midst of their sufferings made
their bread of sorrow taste more pleasantly than the banquets of dull
and low-spirited people.

The recreations of his youth were poetry, in which he was so happy as if
nature and all her varieties had been made only to exercise his sharp
wit and high fancy; and in those pieces which were facetiously composed
and carelessly scattered,--most of them being written before the
twentieth year of his age--it may appear by his choice metaphors that
both nature and all the arts joined to assist him with their utmost
skill.

It is a truth, that in his penitential years, viewing some of those
pieces that had been loosely--God knows, too loosely--scattered in his
youth, he wished they had been abortive, or so short-lived that his own
eyes had witnessed their funerals; but, though he was no friend to them,
he was not so fallen out with heavenly poetry, as to forsake that; no,
not in his declining age; witnessed then by many divine sonnets, and
other high, holy, and harmonious composures. Yea, even on his former
sick-bed he wrote this heavenly hymn, expressing the great joy that then
possessed his soul, in the assurance of God's favour to him when he
composed it:--

    "AN HYMN

    "TO GOD THE FATHER

    "Wilt Thou forgive that sin where I begun,
      Which was my sin, though it were done before?
    Wilt Thou forgive that sin through which I run,
      And do run still, though still I do deplore?
    When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done,
                                  For I have more.

    "Wilt Thou forgive that sin, which I have won
      Others to sin, and made my sin their door?
    Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I did shun
      A year or two:--but wallow'd in a score?
    When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done,
                                  For I have more.

    "I have a sin of fear, that when I've spun
      My last thread, I shall perish on the shore;
    But swear by Thyself, that at my death Thy Son
      Shall shine as He shines now, and heretofore;
    And having done that, Thou hast done,
                                  I fear no more."

I have the rather mentioned this hymn, for that he caused it to be set
to a most grave and solemn tune, and to be often sung to the organ by
the choiristers of St. Paul's Church, in his own hearing; especially at
the Evening Service; and at his return from his customary devotions in
that place, did occasionally say to a friend, "the words of this hymn
have restored to me the same thoughts of joy that possessed my soul in
my sickness, when I composed it. And, O the power of church-music! that
harmony added to this hymn has raised the affections of my heart, and
quickened my graces of zeal and gratitude; and I observe that I always
return from paying this public duty of prayer and praise to God, with an
unexpressible tranquillity of mind, and a willingness to leave the
world."

After this manner did the disciples of our Saviour, and the best of
Christians in those ages of the Church nearest to His time, offer their
praises to Almighty God. And the reader of St. Augustine's life may
there find, that towards his dissolution he wept abundantly, that the
enemies of Christianity had broke in upon them, and profaned and ruined
their sanctuaries, and because their public hymns and lauds were lost
out of their Churches. And after this manner have many devout souls
lifted up their hands and offered acceptable sacrifices unto Almighty
God, where Dr. Donne offered his, and now lies buried.

But now [1656], Oh Lord! how is that place become desolate!

Before I proceed further, I think fit to inform the reader, that not
long before his death he caused to be drawn a figure of the Body of
Christ extended upon an anchor, like those which painters draw, when
they would present us with the picture of Christ crucified on the cross:
his varying no otherwise than to affix Him not to a cross, but to an
anchor--the emblem of Hope;--this he caused to be drawn in little, and
then many of those figures thus drawn to be engraven very small in
Heliotropium stones, and set in gold; and of these he sent to many of
his dearest friends, to be used as seals, or rings, and kept as
memorials of him, and of his affection to them.

His dear friends and benefactors, Sir Henry Goodier and Sir Robert
Drewry, could not be of that number; nor could the Lady Magdalen
Herbert, the mother of George Herbert, for they had put off mortality,
and taken possession of the grave before him; but Sir Henry Wotton, and
Dr. Hall, the then--late deceased--Bishop of Norwich, were; and so were
Dr. Duppa, Bishop of Salisbury, and Dr. Henry King, Bishop of
Chichester--lately deceased--men, in whom there was such a commixture of
general learning, of natural eloquence, and Christian humility, that
they deserve a commemoration by a pen equal to their own, which none
have exceeded.

And in this enumeration of his friends, though many must be omitted, yet
that man of primitive piety, Mr. George Herbert, may not; I mean that
George Herbert, who was the author of "The Temple, or Sacred Poems and
Ejaculations." A book, in which by declaring his own spiritual
conflicts, he hath comforted and raised many a dejected and discomposed
soul, and charmed them into sweet and quiet thoughts; a book, by the
frequent reading whereof, and the assistance of that Spirit that seemed
to inspire the author, the reader may attain habits of peace and piety,
and all the gifts of the Holy Ghost and Heaven: and may, by still
reading, still keep those sacred fires burning upon the altar of so pure
a heart, as shall free it from the anxieties of this world, and keep it
fixed upon things that are above. Betwixt this George Herbert and Dr.
Donne, there was a long and dear friendship, made up by such a sympathy
of inclinations that they coveted and joyed to be in each other's
company; and this happy friendship was still maintained by many sacred
endearments; of which that which followeth may be some testimony.

    "TO MR. GEORGE HERBERT;

    "SENT HIM WITH ONE OF MY SEALS OF THE ANCHOR AND CHRIST.

    [Illustration]

    "_A Sheaf of Snakes used
    heretofore to be my Seal,
    which is the Crest of our
    poor family._"

    [Illustration]

    "Qui prius assuetus serpentum falce tabellas
      Signare, hæc nostræ symbola parva domus,
    Adscitus domui Domini----

    "Adopted in God's family, and so
    My old coat lost, into new Arms I go.
    The Cross, my Seal in Baptism, spread below,
    Does by that form into an Anchor grow.
    Crosses grow Anchors, bear as thou shouldst do
    Thy Cross, and that Cross grows an Anchor too.
    But He that makes our Crosses Anchors thus,
    Is Christ, who there is crucified for us.
    Yet with this I may my first Serpents hold;--
    God gives new blessings, and yet leaves the old--
    The Serpent, may, as wise, my pattern be;
    My poison, as he feeds on dust, that's me.
    And, as he rounds the earth to murder, sure
    He is my death; but on the Cross, my cure,
    Crucify nature then; and then implore
    All grace from Him, crucified there before.
    When all is Cross, and that Cross Anchor grown
    This Seal's a Catechism, not a Seal alone.
    Under that little Seal great gifts I send,
    Both works and pray'rs, pawns and fruits of a friend.
    O! may that Saint that rides on our Great Seal,
    To you that bear his name, large bounty deal.

    "John Donne."



    "IN SACRAM ANCHORAM PISCATORIS

    "GEORGE HERBERT.

    "Quod Crux nequibat fixa clavique additi,--
    Tenere Christum scilicet ne ascenderet,
    Tuive Christum--

    "Although the Cross could not here Christ detain,
    When nail'd unto't, but He ascends again;
    Nor yet thy eloquence here keep Him still,
    But only whilst thou speak'st--this Anchor will:
    Nor canst thou be content, unless thou to
    This certain Anchor add a Seal; and so
    The water and the earth both unto thee
    Do owe the symbol of their certainty.
    Let the world reel, we and all ours stand sure,
    This holy cable's from all storms secure.

    "George Herbert."

I return to tell the reader, that, besides these verses to his dear Mr.
Herbert, and that Hymn that I mentioned to be sung in the choir of St.
Paul's Church, he did also shorten and beguile many sad hours by
composing other sacred ditties; and he writ an Hymn on his death-bed,
which bears this title:--

    "AN HYMN TO GOD, MY GOD, IN MY SICKNESS.

    "_March 23, 1630._

    "Since I am coming to that holy room,
      Where, with Thy Choir of Saints, for evermore
    I shall be made Thy music, as I come
      I tune my instrument here at the door,
      And, what I must do then, think here before.

    "Since my Physicians by their loves are grown
      Cosmographers; and I their map, who lie
    Flat on this bed----

    "So, in His purple wrapt, receive my Lord!
      By these His thorns, give me His other Crown
    And, as to other souls I preach'd Thy word,
      Be this my text, my sermon to mine own,
      'That He may raise; therefore the Lord throws down.'"

If these fall under the censure of a soul, whose too much mixture with
earth makes it unfit to judge of these high raptures and illuminations,
let him know, that many holy and devout men have thought the soul of
Prudentius to be most refined, when, not many days before his death, "he
charged it to present his God each morning and evening with a new and
spiritual song;" justified by the example of King David and the good
King Hezekiah, who, upon the renovation of his years paid his thankful
vows to Almighty God in a royal hymn, which he concludes in these words:
"The Lord was ready to save; therefore I will sing my songs to the
stringed instruments all the days of my life in the Temple of my God."

The latter part of his life may be said to be a continued study; for as
he usually preached once a week, if not oftener, so after his sermon he
never gave his eyes rest, till he had chosen out a new text, and that
night cast his sermon into a form, and his text into divisions; and the
next day betook himself to consult the Fathers, and so commit his
meditations to his memory, which was excellent. But upon Saturday he
usually gave himself and his mind a rest from the weary burthen of his
week's meditations, and usually spent that day in visitation of friends,
or some other diversions of his thoughts; and would say, "that he gave
both his body and mind that refreshment, that he might be enabled to do
the work of the day following, not faintly, but with courage and
cheerfulness."

Nor was his age only so industrious, but in the most unsettled days of
his youth, his bed was not able to detain him beyond the hour of four in
a morning; and it was no common business that drew him out of his
chamber till past ten; all which time was employed in study; though he
took great liberty after it. And if this seem strange, it may gain a
belief by the visible fruits of his labours; some of which remain as
testimonies of what is here written: for he left the resultance of 1400
authors, most of them abridged and analysed with his own hand: he left
also six score of his sermons, all written with his own hand, also an
exact and laborious Treatise concerning self-murder, called Biathanatos;
wherein all the laws violated by that act are diligently surveyed, and
judiciously censured: a Treatise written in his younger days, which
alone might declare him then not only perfect in the Civil and Canon
Law, but in many other such studies and arguments, as enter not into the
consideration of many that labour to be thought great clerks, and
pretend to know all things.

Nor were these only found in his study, but all businesses that passed
of any public consequence, either in this or any of our
neighbour-nations, he abbreviated either in Latin, or in the language of
that nation, and kept them by him for useful memorials. So he did the
copies of divers Letters and Cases of Conscience that had concerned his
friends, with his observations and solutions of them; and divers other
businesses of importance, all particularly and methodically digested by
himself.

He did prepare to leave the world before life left him; making his Will
when no faculty of his soul was damped or made defective by pain or
sickness, or he surprised by a sudden apprehension of death: but it was
made with mature deliberation, expressing himself an impartial father,
by making his children's portions equal; and a lover of his friends,
whom he remembered with legacies fitly and discreetly chosen and
bequeathed. I cannot forbear a nomination of some of them; for methinks
they be persons that seem to challenge a recordation in this place; as
namely, to his brother-in-law, Sir Thomas Grimes, he gave that striking
clock, which he had long worn in his pocket; to his dear friend and
executor, Dr. King--late Bishop of Chichester--that Model of Gold of the
Synod of Dort, with which the States presented him at his last being at
the Hague; and the two pictures of Padre Paolo and Fulgentio, men of his
acquaintance when he travelled Italy, and of great note in that nation
for their remarkable learning.--To his ancient friend Dr. Brook--that
married him--Master of Trinity College in Cambridge, he gave the picture
of the Blessed Virgin and Joseph.--To Dr. Winniff who succeeded him in
the Deanery--he gave a picture called the Skeleton.--To the succeeding
Dean, who was not then known, he gave many necessaries of worth, and
useful for his house; and also several pictures and ornaments for the
Chapel, with a desire that they might be registered, and remain as a
legacy to his successors.--To the Earls of Dorset and Carlisle he gave
several pictures; and so he did to many other friends; legacies, given
rather to express his affection, than to make any addition to their
estates: but unto the poor he was full of charity, and unto many others,
who, by his constant and long continued bounty, might entitle themselves
to be his alms-people: for all these he made provision, and so largely,
as, having then six children living, might to some appear more than
proportionable to his estate. I forbear to mention any more, lest the
reader may think I trespass upon his patience: but I will beg his
favour, to present him with the beginning and end of his Will.

     "In the name of the blessed and glorious Trinity. Amen. I John
     Donne, by the mercy of Christ Jesus, and by the calling of the
     Church of England, Priest, being at this time in good health and
     perfect understanding--praised be God therefore--do hereby make my
     last Will and Testament in manner and form following:--

     "First, I give my gracious God an entire sacrifice of body and
     soul, with my most humble thanks for that assurance which His
     Blessed Spirit imprints in me now of the Salvation of the one, and
     the Resurrection of the other; and for that constant and cheerful
     resolution, which the same Spirit hath established in me, to live
     and die in the religion now professed in the Church of England. In
     expectation of that Resurrection, I desire my body may be
     buried--in the most private manner that may be--in that place of
     St. Paul's Church, London, that the now Residentiaries have at my
     request designed for that purpose, &c.--And this my last Will and
     Testament, made in the fear of God,--whose mercy I humbly beg, and
     constantly rely upon in Jesus Christ--and in perfect love and
     charity with all the world--whose pardon I ask, from the lowest of
     my servants, to the highest of my superiors--written all with my
     own hand, and my name subscribed to every page, of which there are
     five in number.

     "Sealed December 13, 1630."

Nor was this blessed sacrifice of charity expressed only at his death,
but in his life also, by a cheerful and frequent visitation of any
friend whose mind was dejected, or his fortune necessitous; he was
inquisitive after the wants of prisoners, and redeemed many from prison,
that lay for their fees or small debts: he was a continual giver to poor
scholars, both of this and foreign nations. Besides what he gave with
his own hand, he usually sent a servant, or a discreet and trusty
friend, to distribute his charity to all the prisons in London, at all
the festival times of the year, especially at the Birth and Resurrection
of our Saviour. He gave an hundred pounds at one time to an old friend,
whom he had known live plentifully, and by a too liberal heart and
carelessness became decayed in his estate; and when the receiving of it
was denied, by the gentleman's saying, "He wanted not;"--for the reader
may note, that as there be some spirits so generous as to labour to
conceal and endure a sad poverty, rather than expose themselves to those
blushes that attend the confession of it; so there be others, to whom
nature and grace have afforded such sweet and compassionate souls, as to
pity and prevent the distresses of mankind;--which I have mentioned
because of Dr. Donne's reply, whose answer was, "I know you want not
what will sustain nature; for a little will do that; but my desire is,
that you, who in the days of your plenty have cheered and raised the
hearts of so many of your dejected friends, would now receive this from
me, and use it as a cordial for the cheering of your own:" and upon
these terms it was received. He was an happy reconciler of many
differences in the families of his friends and kindred,--which he never
undertook faintly; for such undertakings have usually faint effects--and
they had such a faith in his judgment and impartiality, that he never
advised them to any thing in vain. He was, even to her death, a most
dutiful son to his mother, careful to provide for her supportation, of
which she had been destitute, but that God raised him up to prevent her
necessities; who having sucked in the religion of the Roman Church with
the mother's milk, spent her estate in foreign countries, to enjoy a
liberty in it, and died in his house but three months before him.

And to the end it may appear how just a steward he was of his Lord and
Master's revenue, I have thought fit to let the reader know, that after
his entrance into his Deanery, as he numbered his years, he, at the foot
of a private account, to which God and His Angels were only witnesses
with him,--computed first his revenue, then what was given to the poor,
and other pious uses; and lastly, what rested for him and his; and
having done that, he then blessed each year's poor remainder with a
thankful prayer; which, for that they discover a more than common
devotion, the reader shall partake some of them in his own words:--

So all is that remains this year [1624-5]--

"Deo Opt. Max. benigno largitori, á me, at ab iis quibus hæc à me
reservantur, gloria et gratia in æternum. Amen."

TRANSLATED THUS.

To God all Good, all Great, the benevolent Bestower, by me and by them,
for whom, by me, these sums are laid up, be glory and grace ascribed for
ever. Amen.

So that this year, [1626,] God hath blessed me and mine with--

"Multiplicatæ sunt super nos misericordiæ tuæ, Domine."

TRANSLATED THUS.

Thy mercies, Oh Lord! are multiplied upon us.

"Da, Domine, ut quæ ex immensâ bonitate tuâ nobis elargiri dignatus sis,
in quorumcunque manus devenerint, in tuam semper cedant gloriam. Amen."

TRANSLATED THUS.

Grant, Oh Lord! that what out of Thine infinite bounty Thou hast
vouchsafed to lavish upon us, into whosoever hands it may devolve, may
always be improved to thy glory. Amen.

"In fine horum sex annorum manet [1627-8-9]--

"Quid habeo quod non accepi a Domino? Largitur etiam ut quæ largitus est
sua iterum fiant, bono eorum usu; ut quemadmodum nec officiis hujus
mundi, nec loci in quo me posuit dignitati, nec servis, nec egenis, in
toto hujus anni curriculo mihi conscius sum me defuisse; ita et liberi,
quibus quæ supersunt, supersunt, grato animo ea accipiant, et beneficum
authorem recognoscant. Amen."

TRANSLATED THUS.

At the end of these six years remains--

What have I, which I have not received from the Lord? He bestows, also,
to the intent that what He hath bestowed may revert to Him by the proper
use of it: that, as I have not consciously been wanting to myself during
the whole course of the past year, either in discharging my secular
duties, in retaining the dignity of my station, or in my conduct towards
my servants and the poor--so my children for whom remains whatever is
remaining, may receive it with gratitude, and acknowledge the beneficent
Giver. Amen.

     *     *     *     *     *

But I return from my long digression.

We left the Author sick in Essex, where he was forced to spend much of
that winter, by reason of his disability to remove from that place; and
having never, for almost twenty years, omitted his personal attendance
on his Majesty in that month, in which he was to attend and preach to
him; nor having ever been left out of the roll and number of Lent
Preachers, and there being then--in January, 1630--a report brought to
London, or raised there, that Dr. Donne was dead; that report gave him
occasion to write the following letter to a dear friend:--

     "Sir,

     "This advantage you and my other friends have by my frequent
     fevers, that I am so much the oftener at the gates of Heaven; and
     this advantage by the solitude and close imprisonment that they
     reduce me to after, that I am so much the oftener at my prayers, in
     which I shall never leave out your happiness; and I doubt not,
     among His other blessings, God will add some one to you for my
     prayers. A man would almost be content to die--if there were no
     other benefit in death--to hear of so much sorrow, and so much good
     testimony from good men, as I--God be blessed for it--did upon the
     report of my death; yet I perceive it went not through all; for one
     writ to me, that some--and he said of my friends--conceived I was
     not so ill as I pretended, but withdrew myself to live at ease,
     discharged of preaching. It is an unfriendly, and, God knows, an
     ill-grounded interpretation; for I have always been sorrier when I
     could not preach, than any could be they could not hear me. It hath
     been my desire, and God may be pleased to grant it, that I might
     die in the pulpit; if not that, yet that I might take my death in
     the pulpit; that is, die the sooner by occasion of those labours.
     Sir, I hope to see you presently after Candlemas; about which time
     will fall my Lent Sermon at Court, except my Lord Chamberlain
     believe me to be dead, and so leave me out of the roll: but as long
     as I live, and am not speechless, I would not willingly, decline
     that service. I have better leisure to write, than you to read; yet
     I would not willingly oppress you with too much letter. God so
     bless you and your son, as I wish to

    "Your poor friend and Servant
      "In Christ Jesus,
          "J. Donne."


Before that month ended, he was appointed to preach upon his old
constant day, the first Friday in Lent: he had notice of it, and had in
his sickness so prepared for that employment, that as he had long
thirsted for it, so he resolved his weakness should not hinder his
journey; he came therefore to London some few days before his appointed
day of preaching. At his coming thither, many of his friends--who with
sorrow saw his sickness had left him but so much flesh as did only cover
his bones--doubted his strength to perform that task, and did therefore
dissuade him from undertaking it, assuring him, however, it was like to
shorten his life: but he passionately denied their requests, saying "he
would not doubt that that God, who in so many weaknesses had assisted
him with an unexpected strength, would now withdraw it in his last
employment; professing an holy ambition to perform that sacred work."
And when, to the amazement of some beholders, he appeared in the pulpit,
many of them thought he presented himself not to preach mortification by
a living voice, but mortality by a decayed body, and a dying face. And
doubtless many did secretly ask that question in Ezekiel (chap. xxxvii.
3), "Do these bones live? or, can that soul organise that tongue, to
speak so long time as the sand in that glass will move towards its
centre, and measure out an hour of this dying man's unspent life?
Doubtless it cannot." And yet, after some faint pauses in his zealous
prayer, his strong desires enabled his weak body to discharge his memory
of his preconceived meditations, which were of dying; the text being,
"To God the Lord belong the issues from death." Many that then saw his
tears, and heard his faint and hollow voice, professing they thought the
text prophetically chosen, and that Dr. Donne had preached his own
Funeral Sermon.

Being full of joy that God had enabled him to perform this desired duty,
he hastened to his house; out of which he never moved, till, like St.
Stephen, "he was carried by devout men to his grave."

The next day after his sermon, his strength being much wasted, and his
spirits so spent as indisposed him to business or to talk, a friend that
had often been a witness of his free and facetious discourse asked him,
"Why are you sad?" To whom he replied with a countenance so full of
cheerful gravity, as gave testimony of an inward tranquillity of mind,
and of a soul willing to take a farewell of this world, and said:--

     "I am not sad; but most of the night past I have entertained myself
     with many thoughts of several friends that have left me here, and
     are gone to that place from which they shall not return; and that
     within a few days I also shall go hence, and be no more seen. And
     my preparation for this change is become my nightly meditation upon
     my bed, which my infirmities have now made restless to me. But at
     this present time, I was in a serious contemplation of the
     providence and goodness of God to me; to me, who am less than the
     least of His mercies: and looking back upon my life past, I now
     plainly see it was His hand that prevented me from all temporal
     employment; and that it was His will I should never settle nor
     thrive till I entered into the Ministry; in which I have now lived
     almost twenty years--I hope to His glory,--and by which, I most
     humbly thank Him, I have been enabled to requite most of those
     friends which shewed me kindness when my fortune was very low, as
     God knows it was: and--as it hath occasioned the expression of my
     gratitude--I thank God most of them have stood in need of my
     requital. I have lived to be useful and comfortable to my good
     Father-in-law, Sir George More, whose patience God hath been
     pleased to exercise with many temporal crosses; I have maintained
     my own mother, whom it hath pleased God, after a plentiful fortune
     in her younger days, to bring to great decay in her very old age. I
     have quieted the consciences of many, that have groaned under the
     burden of a wounded spirit, whose prayers I hope are available for
     me. I cannot plead innocency of life, especially of my youth; but I
     am to be judged by a merciful God, who is not willing to see what I
     have done amiss. And though of myself I have nothing to present to
     Him but sins and misery, yet I know He looks not upon me now as I
     am of myself, but as I am in my Saviour, and hath given me, even at
     this present time, some testimonies by His Holy Spirit, that I am
     of the number of His Elect: I am therefore full of inexpressible
     joy, and shall die in peace."

I must here look so far back, as to tell the reader that at his first
return out of Essex, to preach his last sermon, his old friend and
physician, Dr. Fox--a man of great worth--came to him to consult his
health; and that after a sight of him, and some queries concerning his
distempers he told him, "That by cordials, and drinking milk twenty days
together, there was a probability of his restoration to health"; but he
passionately denied to drink it. Nevertheless, Dr. Fox, who loved him
most entirely, wearied him with solicitations, till he yielded to take
it for ten days; at the end of which time he told Dr. Fox, "He had drunk
it more to satisfy him, than to recover his health; and that he would
not drink it ten days longer, upon the best moral assurance of having
twenty years added to his life; for he loved it not; and was so far from
fearing Death, which to others is the King of Terrors, that he longed
for the day of his dissolution."

It is observed, that a desire of glory or commendation is rooted in the
very nature of man; and that those of the severest and most mortified
lives, though they may become so humble as to banish self-flattery, and
such weeds as naturally grow there; yet they have not been able to kill
this desire of glory, but that like our radical heat, it will both live
and die with us; and many think it should do so; and we want not sacred
examples to justify the desire of having our memory to outlive our
lives; which I mention, because Dr. Donne, by the persuasion of Dr. Fox,
easily yielded at this very time to have a monument made for him; but
Dr. Fox undertook not to persuade him how, or what monument it should
be; that was left to Dr. Donne himself.

A monument being resolved upon, Dr. Donne sent for a carver to make for
him in wood the figure of an urn, giving him directions for the compass
and height of it; and to bring with it a board, of the just height of
his body. "These being got, then without delay a choice painter was got
to be in readiness to draw his picture, which was taken as
followeth.--Several charcoal fires being first made in his large study,
he brought with him into that place his winding-sheet in his hand, and
having put off all his clothes, had this sheet put on him, and so tied
with knots at his head and feet, and his hands so placed as dead bodies
are usually fitted, to be shrouded and put into their coffin, or grave.
Upon this urn he thus stood, with his eyes shut, and with so much of the
sheet turned aside as might shew his lean, pale, and death-like face,
which was purposely turned towards the East, from whence he expected the
second coming of his and our Saviour Jesus." In this posture he was
drawn at his just height; and when the picture was fully finished, he
caused it to be set by his bedside, where it continued and became his
hourly object till his death, and was then given to his dearest friend
and executor Dr. Henry King, then chief Residentiary of St. Paul's, who
caused him to be thus carved in one entire piece of white marble, as it
now stands in that Church; and by Dr. Donne's own appointment, these
words were to be affixed to it as an epitaph:--

     JOHANNES DONNE

     SAC. THEOL. PROFESS. POST VARIA STUDIA, QUIBUS AB ANNIS TENERRIMIS
     FIDELITER, NEC INFELICITER INCUBUIT; INSTINCTU ET IMPULSU SP.
     SANCTI, MONITU ET HORTATU REGIS JACOBI, ORDINES SACROS AMPLEXUS,
     ANNO SUI JESU, MDCXIV. ET SUÆ ÆTATIS XLII. DECANATU HUJUS ECCLESIÆ
     INDUTUS, XXVII. NOVEMBRIS, MDCXXI. EXUTUS MORTE ULTIMO DIE MARTII,
     MDCXXXI. HIC LICET IN OCCIDUO CINERE, ASPICIT EUM CUJUS NOMEN EST
     ORIENS.

And now, having brought him through the many labyrinths and perplexities
of a various life, even to the gates of death and the grave; my desire
is, he may rest, till I have told my reader that I have seen many
pictures of him, in several habits, and at several ages, and in several
postures: and I now mention this because I have seen one picture of him,
drawn by a curious hand, at his age of eighteen, with his sword, and
what other adornments might then suit with the present fashions of youth
and the giddy gaieties of that age; and his motto then was--

    "How much shall I be changed
    Before I am changed!"

And if that young, and his now dying picture were at this time set
together, every beholder might say, "Lord! how much is Dr. Donne already
changed, before he is changed!" And the view of them might give my
reader occasion to ask himself with some amazement, "Lord! how much may
I also, that am now in health, be changed before I am changed; before
this vile, this changeable body shall put off mortality!" and therefore
to prepare for it.--But this is not writ so much for my reader's
memento, as to tell him, that Dr. Donne would often in his private
discourses, and often publicly in his sermons, mention the many changes
both of his body and mind, especially of his mind from a vertiginous
giddiness; and would as often say, "His great and most blessed change
was from a temporal to a spiritual employment"; in which he was so
happy, that he accounted the former part of his life to be lost; and the
beginning of it to be, from his first entering into Sacred Orders, and
serving his most merciful God at His altar.

Upon Monday, after the drawing this picture, he took his last leave of
his beloved study; and, being sensible of his hourly decay, retired
himself to his bedchamber; and that week sent at several times for many
of his most considerable friends, with whom he took a solemn and
deliberate farewell, commending to their considerations some sentences
useful for the regulation of their lives; and then dismissed them, as
good Jacob did his sons, with a spiritual benediction. The Sunday
following, he appointed his servants, that if there were any business
yet undone, that concerned him or themselves, it should be prepared
against Saturday next; for after that day he would not mix his thoughts
with any thing that concerned this world; nor ever did; but, as Job, so
he "waited for the appointed day of his dissolution."

And now he was so happy as to have nothing to do but to die, to do which
he stood in need of no longer time; for he had studied it long, and to
so happy a perfection, that in a former sickness he called God to
witness (in his "Book of Devotions," written then), "He was that minute
ready to deliver his soul into his Hands, if that minute God would
determine his dissolution." In that sickness he begged of God the
constancy to be preserved in that estate for ever; and his patient
expectation to have his immortal soul disrobed from her garment of
mortality, makes me confident that he now had a modest assurance that
his prayers were then heard, and his petition granted. He lay fifteen
days earnestly expecting his hourly change; and in the last hour of his
last day, as his body melted away, and vapoured into spirit, his soul
having, I verily believe, some revelation of the beatifical vision, he
said, "I were miserable if I might not die"; and after those words,
closed many periods of his faint breath by saying often, "Thy kingdom
come, Thy will be done." His speech, which had long been his ready and
faithful servant, left him not till the last minute of his life, and
then forsook him, not to serve another master--for who speaks like
him,--but died before him; for that it was then become useless to him,
that now conversed with God on earth as Angels are said to do in heaven,
only by thoughts and looks. Being speechless, and seeing heaven by that
illumination by which he saw it, he did, as St. Stephen, "look
stedfastly into it, till he saw the Son of Man standing at the right
hand of God His Father"; and being satisfied with this blessed sight, as
his soul ascended, and his last breath departed from him, he closed his
own eyes, and then disposed his hands and body into such a posture, as
required not the least alteration by those that came to shroud him.

Thus variable, thus virtuous was the life; thus excellent, thus
exemplary was the death of this memorable man.

He was buried in that place of St. Paul's Church, which he had appointed
for that use some years before his death; and by which he passed daily
to pay his public devotions to Almighty God--who was then served twice a
day by a public form of prayer and praises in that place; but he was
not buried privately, though he desired it; for, beside an unnumbered
number of others, many persons of nobility, and of eminence for
learning, who did love and honour him in his life, did show it at his
death, by a voluntary and sad attendance of his body to the grave, where
nothing was so remarkable as a public sorrow.

To which place of his burial some mournful friends repaired, and, as
Alexander the Great did to the grave of the famous Achilles, so they
strewed his with an abundance of curious and costly flowers; which
course they--who were never yet known--continued morning and evening for
many days, not ceasing till the stones that were taken up in that Church
to give his body admission into the cold earth--now his bed of
rest--were again by the mason's art so levelled and firmed as they had
been formerly, and his place of burial undistinguishable to common view.

The next day after his burial some unknown friend, some one of the many
lovers and admirers of his virtue and learning, writ this epitaph with a
coal on the wall over his grave:--

    "Reader! I am to let thee know,
    Donne's body only lies below;
    For, could the grave his soul comprise,
    Earth would be richer than the skies!"

Nor was this all the honour done to his reverend ashes; for, as there be
some persons that will not receive a reward for that for which God
accounts Himself a debtor; persons that dare trust God with their
charity, and without a witness; so there was by some grateful unknown
friend, that thought Dr. Donne's memory ought to be perpetuated, an
hundred marks sent to his faithful friends and executors (Dr. King and
Dr. Montford), towards the making of his monument. It was not for many
years known by whom; but, after the death of Dr. Fox, it was known that
it was he that sent it; and he lived to see as lively a representation
of his dead friend as marble can express: a statue indeed so like Dr.
Donne, that--as his friend Sir Henry Wotton hath expressed himself--"It
seems to breathe faintly, and posterity shall look upon it as a kind of
artificial miracle."

He was of stature moderately tall; of a straight and
equally-proportioned body, to which all his words and actions gave an
unexpressible addition of comeliness.

The melancholy and pleasant humour were in him so contempered, that each
gave advantage to the other, and made his company one of the delights of
mankind.

His fancy was unimitably high, equalled only by his great wit; both
being made useful by a commanding judgment.

His aspect was cheerful, and such as gave a silent testimony of a clear
knowing soul, and of a conscience at peace with itself.

His melting eye showed that he had a soft heart, full of noble
compassion; of too brave a soul to offer injuries, and too much a
Christian not to pardon them in others.

He did much contemplate--especially after he entered into his sacred
calling--the mercies of Almighty God, the immortality of the soul, and
the joys of heaven: and would often say in a kind of sacred
ecstacy--"Blessed be God that He is God, only and divinely like
Himself."

He was by nature highly passionate, but more apt to reluct at the
excesses of it. A great lover of the offices of humanity, and of so
merciful a spirit that he never beheld the miseries of mankind without
pity and relief.

He was earnest and unwearied in the search of knowledge, with which his
vigorous soul is now satisfied, and employed in a continual praise of
that God that first breathed it into his active body: that body which
once was a temple of the Holy Ghost, and is now become a small quantity
of Christian dust:--

But I shall see it re-animated.

I.W.




    DEVOTIONS
    VPON
    Emergent Occasions and seuerall
    steps in my Sicknes.


Digested into

     1. MEDITATIONS _upon our Humane Condition_.

     2. EXPOSTULATIONS, _and Debatements with God_.

     3. PRAYERS, _upon the severall occasions, to him_.

     *     *     *     *     *

By IOHN DONNE, _Deane of S. Pauls_, London.

     *     *     *     *     *

London

Printed by _A. M._ for THOMAS IONES. 1624.




_TO THE MOST EXCELLENT PRINCE_,

PRINCE CHARLES.


_MOST EXCELLENT PRINCE_,

I have had three births; one, natural, when I came into the world; one,
supernatural, when I entered into the ministry; and now, a preternatural
birth, in returning to life, from this sickness. In my second birth,
your Highness' royal father vouchsafed me his hand, not only to sustain
me in it, but to lead me to it. In this last birth, I myself am born a
father: this child of mine, this book, comes into the world, from me,
and with me. And therefore, I presume (as I did the father, to the
Father) to present the son to the Son; this image of my humiliation, to
the lively image of his Majesty, your Highness. It might be enough, that
God hath seen my devotions: but examples of good kings are commandments;
and Hezekiah writ the meditations of his sickness, after his sickness.
Besides, as I have lived to see (not as a witness only, but as a
partaker), the happiness of a part of your royal father's time, so shall
I live (in my way) to see the happiness of the times of your Highness
too, if this child of mine, inanimated by your gracious acceptation, may
so long preserve alive the memory of

Your Highness humblest and devotedest,

JOHN DONNE.




CONTENTS

_The Stations of the Sickness_


                                                               PAGE

1. The first alteration, the first grudging of the sickness       7

2. The strength and the function of the senses, and other
   faculties, change and fail                                    12

3. The patient takes his bed                                     17

4. The physician is sent for                                     23

5. The physician comes                                           30

6. The physician is afraid                                       35

7. The physician desires to have others joined with him          43

8. The king sends his own physician                              50

9. Upon their consultation, they prescribe                       56

10. They find the disease to steal on insensibly, and endeavor
    to meet with it so                                           63

11. They use cordials, to keep the venom and the malignity
    of the disease from the heart                                69

12. They apply pigeons, to draw the vapours from the head        77

13. The sickness declares the infection and malignity thereof
    by spots                                                     83

14. The Physicians observe these accidents to have fallen
    upon the critical days                                       88

15. I sleep not day or night                                     96

16. From the bells of the church adjoining, I am daily
    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
Mephibosheth to David. No man is so little, in respect of the greatest
man, as the greatest in respect of God; for here, in that, we have not
so much as a measure to try it by; proportion is no measure for
infinity. He that hath no more of this world but a grave; he that hath
his grave but lent him till a better man or another man must be buried
in the same grave; he that hath no grave but a dunghill, he that hath no
more earth but that which he carries, but that which he is, he that hath
not that earth which he is, but even in that is another's slave, hath as
much proportion to God, as if all David's worthies, and all the world's
monarchs, and all imagination's giants, were kneaded and incorporated
into one, and as though that one were the survivor of all the sons of
men, to whom God had given the world. And therefore how little soever I
be, as _God calls things that are not, as though they were_, I, who am
as though I were not, may call upon God, and say, My God, my God, why
comes thine anger so fast upon me? Why dost thou melt me, scatter me,
pour me like water upon the ground so instantly? Thou stayedst for the
first world, in Noah's time, one hundred and twenty years; thou stayedst
for a rebellious generation in the wilderness forty years, wilt thou
stay no minute for me? Wilt thou make thy process and thy decree, thy
citation and thy judgment, but one act? Thy summons, thy battle, thy
victory, thy triumph, all but one act; and lead me captive, nay, deliver
me captive to death, as soon as thou declarest me to be enemy, and so
cut me off even with the drawing of thy sword out of the scabbard, and
for that question, How long was he sick? leave no other answer, but that
the hand of death pressed upon him from the first minute? My God, my
God, thou wast not wont to come in whirlwinds, but in soft and gentle
air. Thy first breath breathed a soul into me, and shall thy breath blow
it out? Thy breath in the congregation, thy word in the church, breathes
communion and consolation here, and consummation hereafter; shall thy
breath in this chamber breathe dissolution and destruction, divorce and
separation? Surely it is not thou, it is not thy hand. The devouring
sword, the consuming fire, the winds from the wilderness, the diseases
of the body, all that afflicted Job, were from the hands of Satan; it is
not thou. It is thou, thou my God, who hast led me so continually with
thy hand, from the hand of my nurse, as that I know thou wilt not
correct me, but with thine own hand. My parents would not give me over
to a servant's correction, nor my God to Satan's. I am _fallen into the
hands of God_ with David, and with David I see that his mercies are
great.[7] For by that mercy, I consider in my present state, not the
haste and the despatch of the disease, in dissolving this body, so much
as the much more haste and despatch, which my God shall use, in
re-collecting and re-uniting this dust again at the resurrection. Then I
shall hear his angels proclaim the _Surgite mortui_, Rise, ye dead.
Though I be dead, I shall hear the voice; the sounding of the voice and
the working of the voice shall be all one; and all shall rise there in a
less minute than any one dies here.


II. PRAYER.

O most gracious God, who pursuest and perfectest thine own purposes, and
dost not only remember me, by the first accesses of this sickness, that
I must die, but inform me, by this further proceeding therein, that I
may die now; who hast not only waked me with the first, but called me
up, by casting me further down, and clothed me with thyself, by
stripping me of my self, and by dulling my bodily senses to the meats
and eases of this world, hast whet and sharpened my spiritual senses to
the apprehension of thee; by what steps and degrees soever it shall
please thee to go, in the dissolution of this body, hasten, O Lord, that
pace, and multiply, O my God, those degrees, in the exaltation of my
soul toward thee now, and to thee then. My taste is not gone away, but
gone up to sit at David's table, _to taste, and see, that the Lord is
good_.[8] My stomach is not gone, but gone up, so far upwards toward the
_supper of the Lamb_, with thy saints in heaven, as to the table, to the
communion of thy saints here in earth. My knees are weak, but weak
therefore that I should easily fall to and fix myself long upon my
devotions to thee. _A sound heart is the life of the flesh_;[9] and a
heart visited by thee, and directed to thee, by that visitation is a
sound heart. _There is no soundness in my flesh, because of thine
anger._[10] Interpret thine own work, and call this sickness correction,
and not anger, and there is soundness in my flesh. _There is no rest in
my bones, because of my sin_;[11] transfer my sins, with which thou art
so displeased, upon him with whom thou art so well pleased, Christ
Jesus, and there will be rest in my bones. And, O my God, who madest
thyself a light in a bush, in the midst of these brambles and thorns of
a sharp sickness, appear unto me so that I may see thee, and know thee
to be my God, applying thyself to me, even in these sharp and thorny
passages. Do this, O Lord, for his sake, who was not the less the King
of heaven for thy suffering him to be crowned with thorns in this world.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Matt. xiii. 15.

[2] 2 Kings, iv. 40.

[3] Prov. xiii. 17.

[4] Isaiah, lviii. 8.

[5] 1 Sam. xxiv. 15.

[6] 2 Sam. ix. 8.

[7] 2 Sam. xxiv. 14.

[8] Psalm xxxiv. 8.

[9] Prov. xiv. 30.

[10] Psalm xxxviii. 3.

[11] Psalm xxxviii. 3.




III. DECUBITUS SEQUITUR TANDEM.

_The patient takes his bed._


III. MEDITATION.

We attribute but one privilege and advantage to man's body above other
moving creatures, that he is not, as others, grovelling, but of an
erect, of an upright, form naturally built and disposed to the
contemplation of heaven. Indeed it is a thankful form, and recompenses
that soul, which gives it, with carrying that soul so many feet higher
towards heaven. Other creatures look to the earth; and even that is no
unfit object, no unfit contemplation for man, for thither he must come;
but because man is not to stay there, as other creatures are, man in his
natural form is carried to the contemplation of that place which is his
home, heaven. This is man's prerogative; but what state hath he in this
dignity? A fever can fillip him down, a fever can depose him; a fever
can bring that head, which yesterday carried a crown of gold five feet
towards a crown of glory, as low as his own foot to-day. When God came
to breathe into man the breath of life, he found him flat upon the
ground; when he comes to withdraw that breath from him again, he
prepares him to it by laying him flat upon his bed. Scarce any prison so
close that affords not the prisoner two or three steps. The anchorites
that barked themselves up in hollow trees and immured themselves in
hollow walls, that perverse man that barrelled himself in a tub, all
could stand or sit, and enjoy some change of posture. A sick bed is a
grave, and all that the patient says there is but a varying of his own
epitaph. Every night's bed is a type of the grave; at night we tell our
servants at what hour we will rise, here we cannot tell ourselves at
what day, what week, what month. Here the head lies as low as the foot;
the head of the people as low as they whom those feet trod upon; and
that hand that signed pardons is too weak to beg his own, if he might
have it for lifting up that hand. Strange fetters to the feet, strange
manacles to the hands, when the feet and hands are bound so much the
faster, by how much the cords are slacker; so much the less able to do
their offices, by how much more the sinews and ligaments are the looser.
In the grave I may speak through the stones, in the voice of my friends,
and in the accents of those words which their love may afford my memory;
here I am mine own ghost, and rather affright my beholders than instruct
them; they conceive the worst of me now, and yet fear worse; they give
me for dead now, and yet wonder how I do when they wake at midnight, and
ask how I do to-morrow. Miserable, and (though common to all) inhuman
posture, where I must practise my lying in the grave by lying still, and
not practise my resurrection by rising any more.


III. EXPOSTULATION.

My God and my Jesus, my Lord and my Christ, my strength and my
salvation, I hear thee, and I hearken to thee, when thou rebukest thy
disciples, for rebuking them who brought children to thee; _Suffer
little children to come to me_, sayest thou.[12] Is there a verier child
than I am now? I cannot say, with thy servant Jeremy, _Lord, I am a
child, and cannot speak_; but, O Lord, I am a sucking child, and cannot
eat; a creeping child, and cannot go; how shall I come to thee? Whither
shall I come to thee? To this bed? I have this weak and childish
frowardness too, I cannot sit up, and yet am loth to go to bed. Shall I
find thee in bed? Oh, have I always done so? The bed is not ordinarily
thy scene, thy climate: Lord, dost thou not accuse me, dost thou not
reproach to me my former sins, when thou layest me upon this bed? Is not
this to hang a man at his own door, to lay him sick in his own bed of
wantonness? When thou chidest us by thy prophet for lying in _beds of
ivory_[13], is not thine anger vented; not till thou changest our beds
of ivory into beds of ebony? David swears unto thee, _that he will not
go up into his bed, till he had built thee a house_.[14] To go up into
the bed denotes strength, and promises ease; but when thou sayest, _that
thou wilt cast Jezebel into a bed_, thou makest thine own comment upon
that; thou callest the bed tribulation, great tribulation.[15] How shall
they come to thee whom thou hast nailed to their bed? Thou art in the
congregation, and I in a solitude: when the centurion's servant lay sick
at home,[16] his master was fain to come to Christ; the sick man could
not. Their friend lay sick of the palsy, and the four charitable men
were fain to bring him to Christ; he could not come.[17] Peter's wife's
mother lay sick of a fever, and Christ came to her; she could not come
to him.[18] My friends may carry me home to thee, in their prayers in
the congregation; thou must come home to me in the visitation of thy
Spirit, and in the seal of thy sacrament. But when I am cast into this
bed my slack sinews are iron fetters, and those thin sheets iron doors
upon me; and, _Lord, I have loved the habitation of thine house, and the
place where thine honour dwelleth_.[19] I lie here and say, _Blessed are
they that dwell in thy house_;[20] but I cannot say, _I will come into
thy house_; I may say, _In thy fear will I worship towards thy holy
temple_;[21] but I cannot say in thy holy temple. And, _Lord, the zeal
of thy house eats me up_,[22] as fast as my fever; it is not a
recusancy, for I would come, but it is an excommunication, I must not.
But, Lord, thou art Lord of hosts, and lovest action; why callest thou
me from my calling? _In the grave no man shall praise thee_; in the door
of the grave, this sick bed, no man shall hear me praise thee. Thou hast
not opened my lips that my mouth might show thee thy praise, but that my
mouth might show forth thy praise. But thine apostle's fear takes hold
of me, _that when I have preached to others, I myself should be a
castaway_;[23] and therefore am I cast down, that I might not be cast
away. Thou couldst take me by the head, as thou didst Habbakuk, and
carry me so; by a chariot, as thou didst Elijah,[24] and carry me so;
but thou carriest me thine own private way, the way by which thou
carriedst thy Son, who first lay upon the earth and prayed, and then had
his exaltation, as himself calls his crucifying; and first descended
into hell, and then had his ascension. There is another station (indeed
neither are stations but prostrations) lower than this bed; to-morrow I
may be laid one story lower, upon the floor, the face of the earth; and
next day another story, in the grave, the womb of the earth. As yet God
suspends me between heaven and earth, as a meteor; and I am not in
heaven because an earthly body clogs me, and I am not in the earth
because a heavenly soul sustains me. And it is thine own law, O God,
that _if a man be smitten so by another, as that he keep his bed, though
he die not, he that hurt him must take care of his healing, and
recompense him_[25]. Thy hand strikes me into this bed; and therefore,
if I rise again, thou wilt be my recompense all the days of my life, in
making the memory of this sickness beneficial to me; and if my body fall
yet lower, thou wilt take my soul out of this bath, and present it to
thy Father, washed again, and again, and again, in thine own tears, in
thine own sweat, in thine own blood.


III. PRAYER.

O most mighty and most merciful God, who, though thou have taken me off
of my feet, hast not taken me off of my foundation, which is thyself;
who, though thou have removed me from that upright form in which I could
stand and see thy throne, the heavens, yet hast not removed from me that
light by which I can lie and see thyself; who, though thou have weakened
my bodily knees, that they cannot bow to thee, hast yet left me the
knees of my heart; which are bowed unto thee evermore; as thou hast made
this bed thine altar, make me thy sacrifice; and as thou makest thy Son
Christ Jesus the priest, so make me his deacon, to minister to him in a
cheerful surrender of my body and soul to thy pleasure, by his hands. I
come unto thee, O God, my God, I come unto thee, so as I can come, I
come to thee, by embracing thy coming to me, I come in the confidence,
and in the application of thy servant David's promise, _that thou wilt
make all my bed in my sickness_;[26] all my bed; that which way soever I
turn, I may turn to thee; and as I feel thy hand upon all my body, so I
may find it upon all my bed, and see all my corrections, and all my
refreshings to flow from one and the same, and all from thy hand. As
thou hast made these feathers thorns, in the sharpness of this sickness,
so, Lord, make these thorns feathers again, feathers of thy dove, in the
peace of conscience, and in a holy recourse to thine ark, to the
instruments of true comfort, in thy institutions and in the ordinances
of thy church. Forget my bed, O Lord, as it hath been a bed of sloth,
and worse than sloth; take me not, O Lord, at this advantage, to terrify
my soul with saying, Now I have met thee there where thou hast so often
departed from me; but having burnt up that bed by these vehement heats,
and washed that bed in these abundant sweats, make my bed again, O Lord,
and enable me, according to thy command, _to commune with mine own heart
upon my bed, and be still_[27]; to provide a bed for all my former sins
whilst I lie upon this bed, and a grave for my sins before I come to my
grave; and when I have deposited them in the wounds of thy Son, to rest
in that assurance, that my conscience is discharged from further
anxiety, and my soul from further danger, and my memory from further
calumny. Do this, O Lord, for his sake, who did and suffered so much,
that thou mightest, as well in thy justice as in thy mercy, do it for
me, thy Son, our Saviour, Christ Jesus.

FOOTNOTES:

[12] Matt. xix. 13.

[13] Amos, vi. 4.

[14] Psalm cxxxii. 3.

[15] Rev. ii. 22.

[16] Matt. viii. 6.

[17] Matt. viii. 4.

[18] Matt. viii. 14.

[19] Psalm xxvi. 8.

[20] Psalm lxxxiv. 4.

[21] Psalm v. 7.

[22] Psalm lxix. 9.

[23] 1 Cor. ix. 27.

[24] 2 Kings, ii. 11.

[25] Exodus, xxi. 18.

[26] Psalm xli. 3.

[27] Psalm iv. 4.




IV. MEDICUSQUE VOCATUR.

_The physician is sent for._


IV. MEDITATION.

It is too little to call man a little world; except God, man is a
diminutive to nothing. Man consists of more pieces, more parts, than the
world; than the world doth, nay, than the world is. And if those pieces
were extended, and stretched out in man as they are in the world, man
would be the giant, and the world the dwarf; the world but the map, and
the man the world. If all the veins in our bodies were extended to
rivers, and all the sinews to veins of mines, and all the muscles that
lie upon one another, to hills, and all the bones to quarries of stones,
and all the other pieces to the proportion of those which correspond to
them in the world, the air would be too little for this orb of man to
move in, the firmament would be but enough for this star; for, as the
whole world hath nothing, to which something in man doth not answer, so
hath man many pieces of which the whole world hath no representation.
Enlarge this meditation upon this great world, man, so far as to
consider the immensity of the creatures this world produces; our
creatures are our thoughts, creatures that are born giants; that reach
from east to west, from earth to heaven; that do not only bestride all
the sea and land, but span the sun and firmament at once; my thoughts
reach all, comprehend all. Inexplicable mystery; I their creator am in a
close prison, in a sick bed, any where, and any one of my creatures, my
thoughts, is with the sun, and beyond the sun, overtakes the sun, and
overgoes the sun in one pace, one step, everywhere. And then, as the
other world produces serpents and vipers, malignant and venomous
creatures, and worms and caterpillars, that endeavour to devour that
world which produces them, and monsters compiled and complicated of
divers parents and kinds; so this world, ourselves, produces all these
in us, in producing diseases, and sicknesses of all those sorts:
venomous and infectious diseases, feeding and consuming diseases, and
manifold and entangled diseases made up of many several ones. And can
the other world name so many venomous, so many consuming, so many
monstrous creatures, as we can diseases of all these kinds? O miserable
abundance, O beggarly riches! how much do we lack of having remedies for
every disease, when as yet we have not names for them? But we have a
Hercules against these giants, these monsters; that is, the physician;
he musters up all the forces of the other world to succour this, all
nature to relieve man. We have the physician, but we are not the
physician. Here we shrink in our proportion, sink in our dignity, in
respect of very mean creatures, who are physicians to themselves. The
hart that is pursued and wounded, they say, knows an herb, which being
eaten throws off the arrow: a strange kind of vomit. The dog that
pursues it, though he be subject to sickness, even proverbially, knows
his grass that recovers him. And it may be true, that the drugger is as
near to man as to other creatures; it may be that obvious and present
simples, easy to be had, would cure him; but the apothecary is not so
near him, nor the physician so near him, as they two are to other
creatures; man hath not that innate instinct, to apply those natural
medicines to his present danger, as those inferior creatures have; he is
not his own apothecary, his own physician, as they are. Call back
therefore thy meditation again, and bring it down: what's become of
man's great extent and proportion, when himself shrinks himself and
consumes himself to a handful of dust; what's become of his soaring
thoughts, his compassing thoughts, when himself brings himself to the
ignorance, to the thoughtlessness, of the grave? His diseases are his
own, but the physician is not; he hath them at home, but he must send
for the physician.


IV. EXPOSTULATION.

I have not the righteousness of Job, but I have the desire of Job: _I
would speak to the Almighty, and I would reason with God_.[28] My God,
my God, how soon wouldst thou have me go to the physician, and how far
wouldst thou have me go with the physician? I know thou hast made the
matter, and the man, and the art; and I go not from thee when I go to
the physician. Thou didst not make clothes before there was a shame of
the nakedness of the body, but thou didst make physic before there was
any grudging of any sickness; for thou didst imprint a medicinal virtue
in many simples, even from the beginning; didst thou mean that we should
be sick when thou didst so? when thou madest them? No more than thou
didst mean, that we should sin, when thou madest us: thou foresawest
both, but causedst neither. Thou, Lord, promisest here trees, _whose
fruit shall be for meat, and their leaves for medicine_.[29] It is the
voice of thy Son, _Wilt thou be made whole?_[30] that draws from the
patient a confession that he was ill, and could not make himself well.
And it is thine own voice, _Is there no physician?_[31] that inclines
us, disposes us, to accept thine ordinance. And it is the voice of the
wise man, both for the matter, physic itself, _The Lord hath created
medicines out of the earth, and he that is wise shall not abhor
them_,[32] and for the art, and the person, the physician cutteth off a
long disease. In all these voices thou sendest us to those helps which
thou hast afforded us in that. But wilt not thou avow that voice too,
_He that hath sinned against his Maker, let him fall into the hands of
the physician_;[33] and wilt not thou afford me an understanding of
those words? Thou, who sendest us for a blessing to the physician, dost
not make it a curse to us to go when thou sendest. Is not the curse
rather in this, that only he falls into the hands of the physician, that
casts himself wholly, entirely upon the physician, confides in him,
relies upon him, attends all from him, and neglects that spiritual
physic which thou also hast instituted in thy church. So to fall into
the hands of the physician is a sin, and a punishment of former sins;
so, as Asa fell, who in his disease _sought not to the Lord, but to the
physician_.[34] Reveal therefore to me thy method, O Lord, and see
whether I have followed it; that thou mayest have glory, if I have, and
I pardon, if I have not, and help that I may. Thy method is, _In time of
thy sickness, be not negligent_: wherein wilt thou have my diligence
expressed? _Pray unto the Lord, and he will make thee whole._[35] O
Lord, I do; I pray, and pray thy servant David's prayer, _Have mercy
upon me, O Lord, for I am weak; heal me, O Lord, for my bones are
vexed_:[36] I know that even my weakness is a reason, a motive, to
induce thy mercy, and my sickness an occasion of thy sending health.
When art thou so ready, when is it so seasonable to thee, to
commiserate, as in misery? But is prayer for health in season, as soon
as I am sick? Thy method goes further: _Leave off from sin, and order
thy hands aright, and cleanse thy heart from all wickedness_.[37] Have
I, O Lord, done so? O Lord, I have; by thy grace, I am come to a holy
detestation of my former sin. Is there any more? In thy method there is
more: _Give a sweet savour, and a memorial of fine flour, and make a fat
offering, as not being_.[38] And, Lord, by thy grace, I have done that,
sacrificed a little of that little which thou lentest me, to them for
whom thou lentest it: and now in thy method, and by thy steps, I am come
to that, _Then give place to the physician, for the Lord hath created
him; let him not go from thee, for thou hast need of him_.[39] I send
for the physician, but I will hear him enter with those words of Peter,
_Jesus Christ maketh thee whole_;[40] I long for his presence, but I
look _that the power of the Lord should be present to heal me_.[41]


IV. PRAYER.

O most mighty and most merciful God, who art so the God of health and
strength, as that without thee all health is but the fuel, and all
strength but the bellows of sin; behold me under the vehemence of two
diseases, and under the necessity of two physicians, authorized by thee,
the bodily, and the spiritual physician. I come to both as to thine
ordinance, and bless and glorify thy name that, in both cases, thou hast
afforded help to man by the ministry of man. Even in the new Jerusalem,
in heaven itself, it hath pleased thee to discover a tree, which is _a
tree of life there, but the leaves thereof are for the healing of the
nations_.[42] Life itself is with thee there, for thou art life; and all
kinds of health, wrought upon us here by thine instruments, descend from
thence. _Thou wouldst have healed Babylon, but she is not healed._[43]
Take from me, O Lord, her perverseness, her wilfulness, her
refractoriness, and hear thy Spirit saying in my soul: Heal me, O Lord,
for I would be healed. _Ephraim saw his sickness, and Judah his wound;
then went Ephraim to the Assyrian, and sent to King Jareb, yet could not
he heal you, nor cure you of your wound._[44] Keep me back, O Lord, from
them who misprofess arts of healing the soul, or of the body, by means
not imprinted by thee in the church for the soul, or not in nature for
the body. There is no spiritual health to be had by superstition, nor
bodily by witchcraft; thou, Lord, and only thou, art Lord of both. Thou
in thyself art Lord of both, and thou in thy Son art the physician, the
applier of both. _With his stripes we are healed_,[45] says the prophet
there; there, before he was scourged, we were healed with his stripes;
how much more shall I be healed now, now when that which he hath already
suffered actually is actually and effectually applied to me? Is there
any thing incurable, upon which that balm drops? Any vein so empty as
that that blood cannot fill it? Thou promisest to heal the earth;[46]
but it is when the inhabitants of the earth _pray that thou wouldst heal
it_. Thou promisest to heal their waters, but _their miry places and
standing waters_, thou sayest there, _thou wilt not heal_.[47] My
returning to any sin, if I should return to the ability of sinning over
all my sins again, thou wouldst not pardon. Heal this earth, O my God,
by repentant tears, and heal these waters, these tears, from all
bitterness, from all diffidence, from all dejection, by establishing my
irremovable assurance in thee. _Thy Son went about healing all manner of
sickness._[48] (No disease incurable, none difficult; he healed them in
passing). _Virtue went out of him, and he healed all_,[49] all the
multitude (no person incurable), he healed them _every whit_[50] (as
himself speaks), he left no relics of the disease; and will this
universal physician pass by this hospital, and not visit me? not heal
me? not heal me wholly? Lord, I look not that thou shouldst say by thy
messenger to me, as to Hezekiah, _Behold, I will heal thee, and on the
third day thou shalt go up to the house of the Lord_.[51] I look not
that thou shouldst say to me, as to Moses in Miriam's behalf, when Moses
would have had her healed presently, _If her father had but spit in her
face, should she not have been ashamed seven days? Let her be shut up
seven days, and then return_;[52] but if thou be pleased to multiply
seven days (and seven is infinite) by the number of my sins (and that is
more infinite), if this day must remove me till days shall be no more,
seal to me my spiritual health, in affording me the seals of thy church;
and for my temporal health, prosper thine ordinance, in their hands who
shall assist in this sickness, in that manner, and in that measure, as
may most glorify thee, and most edify those who observe the issues of
thy servants, to their own spiritual benefit.

FOOTNOTES:

[28] Job, xiii. 3.

[29] Ezek. xlvii. 12.

[30] John, v. 6.

[31] Jer. viii. 22.

[32] Ecclus. xxxviii. 4.

[33] Ecclus. xxxviii. 15.

[34] 1 Chron. xvi. 12.

[35] Ecclus. xxxviii. 9.

[36] Psalm vi. 2.

[37] Ecclus. xxxviii. 10.

[38] Ecclus. xxxviii. 11.

[39] Ecclus. xxxviii. 12.

[40] Acts, ix. 34.

[41] Luke, v. 17.

[42] Rev. xxii. 2.

[43] Jer. li. 9.

[44] Hosea, v. 13.

[45] Isaiah, liii. 5.

[46] 2 Chron. vii. 14.

[47] Ezek. xlvii. 11.

[48] Matt. iv. 23.

[49] Luke, vi. 19.

[50] John, vii. 23.

[51] 2 Kings, xx. 5.

[52] Num. xii. 14.




V. SOLUS ADEST.

_The physician comes_


V. MEDITATION.

As sickness is the greatest misery, so the greatest misery of sickness
is solitude; when the infectiousness of the disease deters them who
should assist from coming; even the physician dares scarce come.
Solitude is a torment which is not threatened in hell itself. Mere
vacuity, the first agent, God, the first instrument of God, nature, will
not admit; nothing can be utterly empty, but so near a degree towards
vacuity as solitude, to be but one, they love not. When I am dead, and
my body might infect, they have a remedy, they may bury me; but when I
am but sick, and might infect, they have no remedy but their absence,
and my solitude. It is an excuse to them that are great, and pretend,
and yet are loath to come; it is an inhibition to those who would truly
come, because they may be made instruments, and pestiducts, to the
infection of others, by their coming. And it is an outlawry, an
excommunication upon the patient, and separates him from all offices,
not only of civility but of working charity. A long sickness will weary
friends at last, but a pestilential sickness averts them from the
beginning. God himself would admit a figure of society, as there is a
plurality of persons in God, though there be but one God; and all his
external actions testify a love of society, and communion. In heaven
there are orders of angels, and armies of martyrs, and in that house
many mansions; in earth, families, cities, churches, colleges, all
plural things; and lest either of these should not be company enough
alone, there is an association of both, a communion of saints which
makes the militant and triumphant church one parish; so that Christ was
not out of his diocess when he was upon the earth, nor out of his temple
when he was in our flesh. God, who saw that all that he made was good,
came not so near seeing a defect in any of his works, as when he saw
that it was not good for man to be alone, therefore he made him a
helper; and one that should help him so as to increase the number, and
give him her own, and more society. Angels, who do not propagate nor
multiply, were made at first in an abundant number, and so were stars;
but for the things of this world, their blessing was, Increase; for I
think, I need not ask leave to think, that there is no phoenix;
nothing singular, nothing alone. Men that inhere upon nature only, are
so far from thinking that there is any thing singular in this world, as
that they will scarce think that this world itself is singular, but that
every planet, and every star, is another world like this; they find
reason to conceive not only a plurality in every species in the world,
but a plurality of worlds; so that the abhorrers of solitude are not
solitary, for God, and Nature, and Reason concur against it. Now a man
may counterfeit the plague in a vow, and mistake a disease for religion,
by such a retiring and recluding of himself from all men as to do good
to no man, to converse with no man. God hath two testaments, two wills;
but this is a schedule, and not of his, a codicil, and not of his, not
in the body of his testaments, but interlined and postscribed by others,
that the way to the communion of saints should be by such a solitude as
excludes all doing of good here. That is a disease of the mind, as the
height of an infectious disease of the body is solitude, to be left
alone: for this makes an infectious bed equal, nay, worse than a grave,
that though in both I be equally alone, in my bed I know it, and feel
it, and shall not in my grave: and this too, that in my bed my soul is
still in an infectious body, and shall not in my grave be so.


V. EXPOSTULATION.

O God, my God, thy Son took it not ill at Martha's hands, that when he
said unto her, _Thy brother Lazarus shall rise again_,[53] she
expostulated it so far with him as to reply, _I know that he shall rise
again in the resurrection, at the last day_; for she was miserable by
wanting him then. Take it not ill, O my God, from me, that though thou
have ordained it for a blessing, and for a dignity to thy people, _that
they should dwell alone, and not be reckoned among the nations_[54]
(because they should be above them), and that _they should dwell in
safety alone_[55] (free from the infestation of enemies), yet I take thy
leave to remember thee, that thou hast said too, _Two are better than
one_; and, _Woe be unto him that is alone when he falleth_;[56] and so
when he is fallen, and laid in the bed of sickness too. _Righteousness
is immortal_;[57] I know thy wisdom hath said so; but no man, though
covered with the righteousness of thy Son, is immortal so as not to die;
for he who was righteousness itself did die. I know that the Son of
Righteousness, thy Son, refused not, nay affected, solitariness,
loneness,[58] many, many times; but at all times he was able to command
_more than twelve legions of angels_[59] to his service; and when he did
not so, he was far from being alone: for, _I am not alone_, says he,
_but I, and the Father that sent me_.[60] I cannot fear but that I
shall always be with thee and him; but whether this disease may not
alien and remove my friends, so that _they stand aloof from my sore, and
my kinsmen stand afar off_,[61] I cannot tell. I cannot fear but that
thou wilt reckon with me from this minute, in which, by thy grace, I see
thee; whether this understanding, and this will, and this memory may not
decay, to the discouragement and the ill interpretation of them that see
that heavy change in me, I cannot tell. It was for thy blessed, thy
powerful Son alone, _to tread the wine-press alone, and none of the
people with him_.[62] I am not able to pass this agony alone, not alone
without thee; thou art thy spirit, not alone without thine; spiritual
and temporal physicians are thine, not alone without mine; those whom
the bands of blood or friendship have made mine, are mine; and if thou,
or thine, or mine, abandon me, I am alone, and woe unto me if I be
alone. Elias himself fainted under that apprehension, _Lo, I am left
alone_;[63] and Martha murmured at that, said to Christ, _Lord, dost not
thou care that my sister hath left me to serve alone?_[64] Neither could
Jeremiah enter into his lamentations from a higher ground than to say,
_How doth the city sit solitary that was full of people_.[65] O my God,
it is the leper that thou hast condemned to live alone;[66] have I such
a leprosy in my soul that I must die alone; alone without thee? Shall
this come to such a leprosy in my body that I must die alone; alone
without them that should assist, that should comfort me? But comes not
this expostulation too near a murmuring? Must I be concluded with that,
that Moses _was commanded to come near the Lord alone_;[67] that
solitariness, and dereliction, and abandoning of others, disposes us
best for God, who accompanies us most alone? May I not remember, and
apply too, that though God came not to Jacob till he found him alone,
yet when he found him alone, he wrestled with him, and lamed him;[68]
that when, in the dereliction and forsaking of friends and physicians, a
man is left alone to God, God may so wrestle with this Jacob, with this
conscience, as to put it out of joint, and so appear to him as that he
dares not look upon him face to face, when as by way of reflection, in
the consolation of his temporal or spiritual servants, and ordinances he
durst, if they were there? But a _faithful friend is the physic of life,
and they that fear the Lord shall find him_.[69] Therefore hath the Lord
afforded me both in one person, that physician who is my faithful
friend.


V. PRAYER.

O eternal and most gracious God, who calledst down fire from heaven upon
the sinful cities but once, and openedst the earth to swallow the
murmurers but once, and threwest down the tower of Siloam upon sinners
but once; but for thy works of mercy repeatedst them often, and still
workest by thine own patterns, as thou broughtest man into this world,
by giving him a helper fit for him here; so, whether it be thy will to
continue me long thus, or to dismiss me by death, be pleased to afford
me the helps fit for both conditions, either for my weak stay here, or
my final transmigration from hence. And if thou mayst receive glory by
that way (and by all ways thou mayst receive glory), glorify thyself in
preserving this body from such infections as might withhold those who
would come, or endanger them who do come; and preserve this soul in the
faculties thereof from all such distempers as might shake the assurance
which myself and others have had, that because thou hast loved me thou
wouldst love me to my end, and at my end. Open none of my doors, not of
my heart, not of mine ears, not of my house, to any supplanter that
would enter to undermine me in my religion to thee, in the time of my
weakness, or to defame me, and magnify himself with false rumours of
such a victory and surprisal of me, after I am dead. Be my salvation,
and plead my salvation; work it and declare it; and as thy triumphant
shall be, so let the militant church be assured that thou wast my God,
and I thy servant, to and in my consummation. Bless thou the learning
and the labours of this man whom thou sendest to assist me; and since
thou takest me by the hand, and puttest me into his hands (for I come to
him in thy name, who in thy name comes to me), since I clog not my hopes
in him, no, nor my prayers to thee, with any limited conditions, but
inwrap all in those two petitions, _Thy kingdom come, thy will be done_,
prosper him, and relieve me, in thy way, in thy time, and in thy
measure. Amen.

FOOTNOTES:

[53] John, xi. 23.

[54] Num. xxiii. 9.

[55] Deut. xxxiii. 28.

[56] Eccles. iv. 10.

[57] Wisd. i. 15.

[58] Matt. xiv. 23.

[59] Matt. xxvi. 13.

[60] John, viii. 16.

[61] Psalm xxxviii. 11.

[62] Isaiah, lxiii. 3.

[63] 1 Kings, xiv. 14.

[64] Luke, x. 40.

[65] Lam. i. 1.

[66] Lev. xiii. 46.

[67] Exod. xiv. 2.

[68] Gen. xxxii. 24. 25.

[69] Ecclus. vi. 16.




VI. METUIT.

_The physician is afraid._


VI. MEDITATION.

I observe the physician with the same diligence as he the disease; I see
he fears, and I fear with him; I overtake him, I overrun him, in his
fear, and I go the faster, because he makes his pace slow; I fear the
more, because he disguises his fear, and I see it with the more
sharpness, because he would not have me see it. He knows that his fear
shall not disorder the practice and exercise of his art, but he knows
that my fear may disorder the effect and working of his practice. As the
ill affections of the spleen complicate and mingle themselves with every
infirmity of the body, so doth fear insinuate itself in every action or
passion of the mind; and as wind in the body will counterfeit any
disease, and seem the stone, and seem the gout, so fear will counterfeit
any disease of the mind. It shall seem love, a love of having; and it is
but a fear, a jealous and suspicious fear of losing. It shall seem
valour in despising and undervaluing danger; and it is but fear in an
overvaluing of opinion and estimation, and a fear of losing that. A man
that is not afraid of a lion is afraid of a cat; not afraid of starving,
and yet is afraid of some joint of meat at the table presented to feed
him; not afraid of the sound of drums and trumpets and shot and those
which they seek to drown, the last cries of men, and is afraid of some
particular harmonious instrument; so much afraid as that with any of
these the enemy might drive this man, otherwise valiant enough, out of
the field. I know not what fear is, nor I know not what it is that I
fear now; I fear not the hastening of my death, and yet I do fear the
increase of the disease; I should belie nature if I should deny that I
feared this; and if I should say that I feared death, I should belie
God. My weakness is from nature, who hath but her measure; my strength
is from God, who possesses and distributes infinitely. As then every
cold air is not a damp, every shivering is not a stupefaction; so every
fear is not a fearfulness, every declination is not a running away,
every debating is not a resolving, every wish that it were not thus, is
not a murmuring nor a dejection, though it be thus; but as my
physician's fear puts not him from his practice, neither doth mine put
me from receiving from God, and man, and myself, spiritual and civil and
moral assistances and consolations.


VI. EXPOSTULATION.

My God, my God, I find in thy book that fear is a stifling spirit, a
spirit of suffocation; that _Ishbosheth could not speak, nor reply in
his own defence to Abner, because he was afraid_.[70] It was thy servant
Job's case too, who, before he could say anything to thee, says of thee,
_Let him take his rod away from me, and let not his fear terrify me,
then would I speak with him, and not fear him; but it is not so with
me_.[71] Shall a fear of thee take away my devotion to thee? Dost thou
command me to speak to thee, and command me to fear thee; and do these
destroy one another? There is no perplexity in thee, my God; no
inextricableness in thee, my light and my clearness, my sun and my moon,
that directest me as well in the night of adversity and fear, as in my
day of prosperity and confidence. I must then speak to thee at all
times, but when must I fear thee? At all times too. When didst thou
rebuke any petitioner with the name of importunate? Thou hast proposed
to us a parable of a judge[72] that did justice at last, because the
client was importunate, and troubled him; but thou hast told us plainly,
that thy use in that parable was not that thou wast troubled with our
importunities, but (as thou sayest there) _that we should always pray_.
And to the same purpose thou proposest another,[73] that if I press my
friend, when he is in bed at midnight, to lend me bread, though he will
not rise because I am his friend, yet because of mine importunity he
will. God will do this whensoever thou askest, and never call it
importunity. Pray in thy bed at midnight, and God will not say, I will
hear thee to-morrow upon thy knees, at thy bedside; pray upon thy knees
there then, and God will not say, I will hear thee on Sunday at church;
God is no dilatory God, no froward God; prayer is never unseasonable,
God is never asleep, nor absent. But, O my God, can I do this, and fear
thee; come to thee and speak to thee, in all places, at all hours, and
fear thee? Dare I ask this question? There is more boldness in the
question than in the coming; I may do it though I fear thee; I cannot do
it except I fear thee. So well hast thou provided that we should always
fear thee, as that thou hast provided that we should fear no person but
thee, nothing but thee; no men? No. Whom? _The Lord is my help and my
salvation, whom shall I fear?_[74] Great enemies? Not great enemies, for
no enemies are great to them that fear thee. _Fear not the people of
this land, for they are bread to you_;[75] they shall not only not eat
us, not eat our bread, but they shall be our bread. Why should we fear
them? But for all this metaphorical bread, victory over enemies that
thought to devour us, may we not fear, that we may lack bread literally?
And fear famine, though we fear not enemies? _Young lions do lack and
suffer hunger, but they that seek the Lord shall not want any good
thing._[76] Never? Though it be well with them at one time, may they not
fear that it may be worse? _Wherefore should I fear in the days of
evil?_[77] says thy servant David. Though his own sin had made them
evil, he feared them not. No? not if this evil determine in death? Not
though in a death; not though in a death inflicted by violence, by
malice, by our own desert; _fear not the sentence of death_,[78] if thou
fear God. Thou art, O my God, so far from admitting us that fear thee to
fear others, as that thou makest others to fear us; as _Herod feared
John, because he was a holy and a just man, and observed him_.[79] How
fully then, O my abundant God, how gently, O my sweet, my easy God, dost
thou unentangle me in any scruple arising out of the consideration of
thy fear! Is not this that which thou intendest when thou sayest, _The
secret of the Lord is with them that fear him_;[80] the secret, the
mystery of the right use of fear. Dost thou not mean this when thou
sayest, _we shall understand the fear of the Lord_?[81] Have it, and
have benefit by it; have it, and stand under it; be directed by it, and
not be dejected with it. And dost thou not propose that church for our
example when thou sayest, the church of Judea _walked in the fear of
God_;[82] they had it, but did not sit down lazily, nor fall down
weakly, nor sink under it. There is a fear which weakens men in the
service of God. _Adam was afraid, because he was naked._[83] They who
have put off thee are a prey to all. They may fear, for _Thou wilt laugh
when their fear comes upon them_, as thou hast told them more than
once.[84] And thou wilt make them fear where no cause of fear is, as
thou hast told them more than once too.[85] There is a fear that is a
punishment of former wickednesses, and induces more. Though some said of
thy Son, Christ Jesus, _that he was a good man, yet no man spake openly
for fear of the Jews_. Joseph was his disciple, _but secretly, for fear
of the Jews_.[86] The disciples kept some meetings, but with doors shut
for fear of the Jews. O my God, thou givest us fear for ballast to carry
us steadily in all weathers. But thou wouldst ballast us with such sand
as should have gold in it, with that fear which is thy fear; for _the
fear of the Lord is his treasure_.[87] He that hath that lacks nothing
that man can have, nothing that God does give. Timorous men thou
rebukest: _Why are ye fearful, O ye of little faith?_[88] Such thou
dismissest from thy service with scorn, though of them there went from
Gideon's army twenty-two thousand, and remained but ten thousand.[89]
Such thou sendest farther than so; thither from whence they never
return: _The fearful and the unbelieving, into that burning lake which
is the second death_.[90] There is a fear and there is a hope, which are
equal abominations to thee; for, they were confounded because they
hoped,[91] says thy servant Job; because they had misplaced, miscentred
their hopes, they hoped, and not in thee, and such shall fear, and not
fear thee. But in thy fear, my God, and my fear, my God, and my hope, is
hope, and love, and confidence, and peace, and every limb and ingredient
of happiness enwrapped; for joy includes all, and fear and joy consist
together, nay, constitute one another. _The women departed from the
sepulchre_,[92] the women who were made supernumerary apostles, apostles
to the apostles; mothers of the church, and of the fathers, grandfathers
of the church, the apostles themselves; the women, angels of the
resurrection, went from the sepulchre with fear and joy; they ran, says
the text, and they ran upon those two legs, fear and joy; and both was
the right leg; they joy in thee, O Lord, that fear thee, and fear thee
only, who feel this joy in thee. Nay, thy fear, and thy love are
inseparable; still we are called upon, in infinite places, to fear God,
yet the commandment, which is the root of all is, Thou shalt love the
Lord thy God; he doeth neither that doeth not both; he omits neither,
that does one. Therefore when thy servant David had said that _the fear
of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom_,[93] and his son had repeated it
again,[94] he that collects both calls this fear the root of wisdom;
and, that it may embrace all, he calls it wisdom itself.[95] A wise man,
therefore, is never without it, never without the exercise of it;
therefore thou sentest Moses to thy people, _that they might learn to
fear thee all the days of their lives_,[96] not in heavy and calamitous,
but in good and cheerful days too; for Noah, who had assurance of his
deliverance, yet, _moved with fear, prepared an ark, for the saving of
his house_.[97] _A wise man will fear in everything._[98] And therefore,
though I pretend to no other degree of wisdom, I am abundantly rich in
this, that I lie here possessed with that fear which is thy fear, both
that this sickness is thy immediate correction, and not merely a natural
accident, and therefore fearful, because it is a fearful thing to fall
into thy hands; and that this fear preserves me from all inordinate
fear, arising out of the infirmity of nature, because thy hand being
upon me, thou wilt never let me fall out of thy hand.


VI. PRAYER.

O most mighty God, and merciful God, the God of all true sorrow, and
true joy too, of all fear, and of all hope too, as thou hast given me a
repentance, not to be repented of, so give me, O Lord, a fear, of which
I may not be afraid. Give me tender and supple and conformable
affections, that as I joy with them that joy, and mourn with them that
mourn, so I may fear with them that fear. And since thou hast vouchsafed
to discover to me, in his fear whom thou hast admitted to be my
assistance in this sickness, that there is danger therein, let me not, O
Lord, go about to overcome the sense of that fear, so far as to
pretermit the fitting and preparing of myself for the worst that may be
feared, the passage out of this life. Many of thy blessed martyrs have
passed out of this life without any show of fear; but thy most blessed
Son himself did not so. Thy martyrs were known to be but men, and
therefore it pleased thee to fill them with thy Spirit and thy power, in
that they did more than men; thy Son was declared by thee, and by
himself, to be God; and it was requisite that he should declare himself
to be man also, in the weaknesses of man. Let me not therefore, O my
God, be ashamed of these fears, but let me feel them to determine where
his fear did, in a present submitting of all to thy will. And when thou
shalt have inflamed and thawed my former coldnesses and indevotions with
these heats, and quenched my former heats with these sweats and
inundations, and rectified my former presumptions and negligences with
these fears, be pleased, O Lord, as one made so by thee, to think me fit
for thee; and whether it be thy pleasure to dispose of this body, this
garment, so as to put it to a farther wearing in this world, or to lay
it up in the common wardrobe, the grave, for the next, glorify thyself
in thy choice now, and glorify it then, with that glory, which thy Son,
our Saviour Christ Jesus, hath purchased for them whom thou makest
partakers of his resurrection. Amen.

FOOTNOTES:

[70] 2 Sam. iii. 11.

[71] Job, ix. 34.

[72] Luke, xviii. 1.

[73] Luke, xi. 5.

[74] Psalm xxvii. 1.

[75] Num. xiv. 9.

[76] Psalm xxxv. 70.

[77] Psalm xlix. 5.

[78] Ecclus. xli. 3.

[79] Mark, vi. 20.

[80] Psalm xxv. 14.

[81] Prov. ii. 5.

[82] Acts, ix. 31.

[83] Gen. iii. 10.

[84] Prov. i. 26; x. 24.

[85] Psalm xiv. 5; liii. 5.

[86] John, vii. 13; xix. 38; xxix. 19

[87] Isaiah, xxxiii. 6.

[88] Matt. viii. 26.

[89] Judges, vii. 3.

[90] Rev. xxi. 8.

[91] Job, vi. 20.

[92] Matt. xxviii. 8.

[93] Psalm cxi. 10.

[94] Prov. i. 7.

[95] Ecclus. i. 20, 27.

[96] Deut. iv. 10.

[97] Heb. xi. 7.

[98] Ecclus. xviii. 27.




VII. SOCIOS SIBI JUNGIER INSTAT.

_The physician desires to have others joined with him._


VII. MEDITATION.

There is more fear, therefore more cause. If the physician desire help,
the burden grows great: there is a growth of the disease then; but there
must be an autumn too; but whether an autumn of the disease or me, it is
not my part to choose; but if it be of me, it is of both; my disease
cannot survive me, I may overlive it. Howsoever, his desiring of others
argues his candour, and his ingenuity; if the danger be great, he
justifies his proceedings, and he disguises nothing that calls in
witnesses; and if the danger be not great, he is not ambitious, that is
so ready to divide the thanks and the honour of that work which he begun
alone, with others. It diminishes not the dignity of a monarch that he
derive part of his care upon others; God hath not made many suns, but he
hath made many bodies that receive and give light. The Romans began with
one king; they came to two consuls; they returned in extremities to one
dictator: whether in one or many, the sovereignty is the same in all
states and the danger is not the more, and the providence is the more,
where there are more physicians; as the state is the happier where
businesses are carried by more counsels than can be in one breast, how
large soever. Diseases themselves hold consultations, and conspire how
they may multiply, and join with one another, and exalt one another's
force so; and shall we not call physicians to consultations? Death is in
an old man's door, he appears and tells him so, and death is at a young
man's back, and says nothing; age is a sickness, and youth is an
ambush; and we need so many physicians as may make up a watch, and spy
every inconvenience. There is scarce any thing that hath not killed
somebody; a hair, a feather hath done it; nay, that which is our best
antidote against it hath done it; the best cordial hath been deadly
poison. Men have died of joy, and almost forbidden their friends to weep
for them, when they have seen them die laughing. Even that tyrant,
Dionysius (I think the same that suffered so much after), who could not
die of that sorrow, of that high fall, from a king to a wretched private
man, died of so poor a joy as to be declared by the people at a theatre
that he was a good poet. We say often that a man may live of a little;
but, alas, of how much less may a man die? And therefore the more
assistants the better. Who comes to a day of hearing, in a cause of any
importance, with one advocate? In our funerals we ourselves have no
interest; there we cannot advise, we cannot direct; and though some
nations (the Egyptians in particular) built themselves better tombs than
houses because they were to dwell longer in them, yet amongst ourselves,
the greatest man of style whom we have had, the Conqueror, was left, as
soon as his soul left him, not only without persons to assist at his
grave but without a grave. Who will keep us then we know not; as long as
we can, let us admit as much help as we can; another and another
physician is not another and another indication and symptom of death,
but another and another assistant, and proctor of life: nor do they so
much feed the imagination with apprehension of danger, as the
understanding with comfort. Let not one bring learning, another
diligence, another religion, but every one bring all; and as many
ingredients enter into a receipt, so may many men make the receipt. But
why do I exercise my meditation so long upon this, of having plentiful
help in time of need? Is not my meditation rather to be inclined another
way, to condole and commiserate their distress who have none? How many
are sicker (perchance) than I, and laid in their woful straw at home (if
that corner be a home), and have no more hope of help, though they die,
than of preferment, though they live! Nor do more expect to see a
physician then, than to be an officer after; of whom, the first that
takes knowledge, is the sexton that buries them, who buries them in
oblivion too! For they do but fill up the number of the dead in the
bill, but we shall never hear their names, till we read them in the book
of life with our own. How many are sicker (perchance) than I, and thrown
into hospitals, where (as a fish left upon the sand must stay the tide)
they must stay the physician's hour of visiting, and then can be but
visited! How many are sicker (perchance) than all we, and have not this
hospital to cover them, not this straw to lie in, to die in, but have
their gravestone under them, and breathe out their souls in the ears and
in the eyes of passengers, harder than their bed, the flint of the
street? that taste of no part of our physic, but a sparing diet, to whom
ordinary porridge would be julep enough, the refuse of our servants
bezoar enough, and the offscouring of our kitchen tables cordial enough.
O my soul, when thou art not enough awake to bless thy God enough for
his plentiful mercy in affording thee many helpers, remember how many
lack them, and help them to them or to those other things which they
lack as much as them.


VII. EXPOSTULATION.

My God, my God, thy blessed servant Augustine begged of thee that Moses
might come and tell him what he meant by some places of Genesis: may I
have leave to ask of that Spirit that writ that book, why, when David
expected news from Joab's army,[99] and that the watchman told him that
he saw a man running alone, David concluded out of that circumstance,
that if he came alone, he brought good news?[100] I see the grammar, the
word signifies so, and is so ever accepted, _good news_; but I see not
the logic nor the rhetoric, how David would prove or persuade that his
news was good because he was alone, except a greater company might have
made great impressions of danger, by imploring and importuning present
supplies. Howsoever that be, I am sure that that which thy apostle says
to Timothy, _Only Luke is with me_,[101] Luke, and nobody but Luke, hath
a taste of complaint and sorrow in it: though Luke want no testimony of
ability, of forwardness, of constancy, and perseverance, in assisting
that great building which St. Paul laboured in, yet St. Paul is affected
with that, that there was none but Luke to assist. We take St. Luke to
have been a physician, and it admits the application the better that in
the presence of one good physician we may be glad of more. It was not
only a civil spirit of policy, or order, that moved Moses's
father-in-law to persuade him to divide the burden of government and
judicature with others, and take others to his assistance,[102] but it
was also thy immediate Spirit, O my God, that moved Moses to present
unto thee seventy of the elders of Israel,[103] to receive of that
Spirit, which was upon Moses only before, such a portion as might ease
him in the government of that people; though Moses alone had endowments
above all, thou gavest him other assistants. I consider thy plentiful
goodness, O my God, in employing angels more than one in so many of thy
remarkable works. Of thy Son, thou sayest, _Let all the angels of God
worship him_;[104] if that be in heaven, upon earth he says, _that he
could command twelve legions of angels_;[105] and when heaven and earth
shall be all one, at the last day, thy Son, O God, _the Son of man,
shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him_.[106] The
angels that celebrated his birth to the shepherds,[107] the angels that
celebrated his second birth, his resurrection, to the Maries,[108] were
in the plural, angels associated with angels. In Jacob's ladder,[109]
they who ascended and descended, and maintained the trade between heaven
and earth, between thee and us, they who have the commission, and charge
to guide us in all our ways,[110] they who hastened Lot,[111] and in
him, us, from places of danger and temptation, they who are appointed to
instruct and govern us in the church here,[112] they who are sent to
punish the disobedient and refractory,[113] that they are to be mowers
and harvestmen[114] after we are grown up in one field, the church, at
the day of judgment, they that are to carry our souls whither they
carried Lazarus,[115] they who attended at the several gates of the new
Jerusalem,[116] to admit us there; all these who administer to thy
servants, from the first to their last, are angels, angels in the
plural, in every service angels associated with angels. The power of a
single angel we see in that one, who in one night destroyed almost two
hundred thousand in Sennacherib's army,[117] yet thou often employest
many; as we know the power of salvation is abundantly in any one
evangelist, and yet thou hast afforded us four. Thy Son proclaims of
himself that _the Spirit hath anointed him to preach the Gospel_,[118]
yet he hath given others _for the perfecting of the saints in the work
of the ministry_.[119] Thou hast made him _Bishop of our souls_,[120]
but there are others bishops too. He gave the Holy Ghost,[121] and
others gave it also. Thy way, O my God (and, O my God, thou lovest to
walk in thine own ways, for they are large), thy way from the beginning,
is multiplication of thy helps; and therefore it were a degree of
ingratitude not to accept this mercy of affording me many helps for my
bodily health, as a type and earnest of thy gracious purpose now and
ever to afford me the same assistances. That for thy great help, thy
word, I may seek that not from comers nor conventicles nor schismatical
singularities, but from the association and communion of thy Catholic
church, and those persons whom thou hast always furnished that church
withal: and that I may associate thy word with thy sacrament, thy seal
with thy patent; and in that sacrament associate the sign with the thing
signified, the bread with the body of thy Son, so as I may be sure to
have received both, and to be made thereby (as thy blessed servant
Augustine says) the ark, and the monument, and the tomb of thy most
blessed Son, that he, and all the merits of his death, may, by that
receiving, be buried in me, to my quickening in this world, and my
immortal establishing in the next.


VII. PRAYER.

O eternal and most gracious God, who gavest to thy servants in the
wilderness thy manna, bread so conditioned, qualified so, as that to
every man manna tasted like that which that man liked best, I humbly
beseech thee to make this correction, which I acknowledge to be part of
my daily bread, to taste so to me, not as I would but as thou wouldst
have it taste, and to conform my taste, and make it agreeable to thy
will. Thou wouldst have thy corrections taste of humiliation, but thou
wouldst have them taste of consolation too; taste of danger, but taste
of assurance too. As therefore thou hast imprinted in all thine elements
of which our bodies consist two manifest qualities, so that as thy fire
dries, so it heats too; and as thy water moists, so it cools too; so, O
Lord, in these corrections which are the elements of our regeneration,
by which our souls are made thine, imprint thy two qualities, those two
operations, that, as they scourge us, they may scourge us into the way
to thee; that when they have showed us that we are nothing in ourselves,
they may also show us, that thou art all things unto us. When therefore
in this particular circumstance, O Lord (but none of thy judgments are
circumstances, they are all of all substance of thy good purpose upon
us), when in this particular, that he whom thou hast sent to assist me,
desires assistants to him, thou hast let me see in how few hours thou
canst throw me beyond the help of man, let me by the same light see that
no vehemence of sickness, no temptation of Satan, no guiltiness of sin,
no prison of death, not this first, this sick bed, not the other prison,
the close and dark grave, can remove me from the determined and good
purpose which thou hast sealed concerning me. Let me think no degree of
this thy correction casual, or without signification; but yet when I
have read it in that language, as a correction, let me translate it into
another, and read it as a mercy; and which of these is the original, and
which is the translation; whether thy mercy or thy correction were thy
primary and original intention in this sickness, I cannot conclude,
though death conclude me; for as it must necessarily appear to be a
correction, so I can have no greater argument of thy mercy, than to die
in thee and by that death to be united to him who died for me.

FOOTNOTES:

[99] 2 Sam. xviii. 25.

[100] So all but our translation takes it; even Buxdor and Schindler.

[101] 2 Tim. iv. 11.

[102] Exod. xviii. 13.

[103] Num. xi. 16.

[104] Heb. i. 6.

[105] Matt. xxvi. 53.

[106] Matt. xxv. 31.

[107] Luke, ii. 13, 14.

[108] John, xx. 12.

[109] Gen. xxviii. 12.

[110] Psalm xci. 11.

[111] Gen. xix. 15.

[112] Rev. i. 20.

[113] Rev. viii. 2.

[114] Matt. xiii. 39.

[115] Luke, xvi. 22.

[116] Rev. xxi. 12.

[117] 2 Kings, xix. 35.

[118] Luke, iv. 18.

[119] Eph. iv. 12.

[120] 1 Pet. ii. 25.

[121] John, xx. 22.




VIII. ET REX IPSE SUUM MITTIT.

_The King sends his own physician._


VIII. MEDITATION.

Still when we return to that meditation that man is a world, we find new
discoveries. Let him be a world, and himself will be the land, and
misery the sea. His misery (for misery is his, his own; of the happiness
even of this world, he is but tenant, but of misery the freeholder; of
happiness he is but the farmer, but the usufructuary, but of misery the
lord, the proprietary), his misery, as the sea, swells above all the
hills, and reaches to the remotest parts of this earth, man; who of
himself is but dust, and coagulated and kneaded into earth by tears; his
matter is earth, his form misery. In this world that is mankind, the
highest ground, the eminentest hills, are kings; and have they line and
lead enough to fathom this sea, and say, My misery is but this deep?
Scarce any misery equal to sickness, and they are subject to that
equally with their lowest subject. A glass is not the less brittle,
because a king's face is represented in it; nor a king the less brittle,
because God is represented in him. They have physicians continually
about them, and therefore sickness, or the worst of sicknesses,
continual fear of it. Are they gods? He that called them so cannot
flatter. They are gods, but sick gods; and God is presented to us under
many human affections, as far as infirmities: God is called angry, and
sorry, and weary, and heavy, but never a sick God; for then he might die
like men, as our gods do. The worst that they could say in reproach and
scorn of the gods of the heathen was, that perchance they were asleep;
but gods that are so sick as that they cannot sleep are in an infirmer
condition. A god, and need a physician? A Jupiter, and need an
Æsculapius? that must have rhubarb to purge his choler lest he be too
angry, and agarick to purge his phlegm lest he be too drowsy; that as
Tertullian says of the Egyptian gods, plants and herbs, that "God was
beholden to man for growing in his garden," so we must say of these
gods, their eternity (an eternity of threescore and ten years) is in the
apothecary's shop, and not in the metaphorical deity. But their deity is
better expressed in their humility than in their height; when abounding
and overflowing, as God, in means of doing good, they descend, as God,
to a communication of their abundances with men according to their
necessities, then they are gods. No man is well that understands not,
that values not his being well; that hath not a cheerfulness and a joy
in it; and whosoever hath this joy hath a desire to communicate, to
propagate that which occasions his happiness and his joy to others; for
every man loves witnesses of his happiness, and the best witnesses are
experimental witnesses; they who have tasted of that in themselves which
makes us happy. It consummates therefore, it perfects the happiness of
kings, to confer, to transfer, honour and riches, and (as they can)
health, upon those that need them.


VIII. EXPOSTULATION.

My God, my God, I have a warning from the wise man, that _when a rich
man speaketh every man holdeth his tongue, and, look, what he saith,
they extol it to the clouds; but if a poor man speak, they say, What
fellow is this? And if he stumble, they will help to overthrow
him._[122] Therefore may my words be undervalued and my errors
aggravated, if I offer to speak of kings; but not by thee, O my God,
because I speak of them as they are in thee, and of thee as thou art in
them. Certainly those men prepare a way of speaking negligently or
irreverently of thee, that give themselves that liberty in speaking of
thy vicegerents, kings; for thou who gavest Augustus the empire, gavest
it to Nero too; and as Vespasian had it from thee, so had Julian. Though
kings deface in themselves thy first image in their own soul, thou
givest no man leave to deface thy second image, imprinted indelibly in
their power. But thou knowest, O God, that if I should be slack in
celebrating thy mercies to me exhibited by that royal instrument, my
sovereign, to many other faults that touch upon allegiance I should add
the worst of all, ingratitude, which constitutes an ill man; and faults
which are defects in any particular function are not so great as those
that destroy our humanity. It is not so ill to be an ill subject as to
be an ill man; for he hath an universal illness, ready to flow and pour
out itself into any mould, any form, and to spend itself in any
function. As therefore thy Son did upon the coin, I look upon the king,
and I ask whose image and whose inscription he hath, and he hath thine;
and I give unto thee that which is thine; I recommend his happiness to
thee in all my sacrifices of thanks, for that which he enjoys, and in
all my prayers for the continuance and enlargement of them. But let me
stop, my God, and consider; will not this look like a piece of art and
cunning, to convey into the world an opinion that I were more particular
in his care than other men? and that herein, in a show of humility and
thankfulness, I magnify myself more than there is cause? But let not
that jealousy stop me, O God, but let me go forward in celebrating thy
mercy exhibited by him. This which he doth now, in assisting so my
bodily health, I know is common to me with many: many, many have tasted
of that expression of his graciousness. Where he can give health by his
own hands he doth, and to more than any of his predecessors have done:
therefore hath God reserved one disease for him, that he only might cure
it, though perchance not only by one title and interest, nor only as one
king. To those that need it not, in that kind, and so cannot have it by
his own hand, he sends a donative of health in sending his physician.
The holy king St. Louis, in France, and our Maud, is celebrated for
that, that personally they visited hospitals, and assisted in the cure
even of loathsome diseases. And when that religious Empress Placilla,
the wife of Theodosius, was told that she diminished herself too much in
those personal assistances and might do enough in sending relief, she
said she would send in that capacity as a Christian, as a fellow-member
of the body of thy Son, with them. So thy servant David applies himself
to his people, so he incorporates himself in his people, by calling them
his brethren, his bones, his flesh;[123] and when they fell under thy
hand, even to the pretermitting of himself, he presses upon thee by
prayer for them; _I have sinned, but these sheep, what have they done?
Let thine hand, I pray thee, be against me and against my father's
house_.[124] It is kingly to give; when Araunah gave that great and free
present to David, that place, those instruments for sacrifice, and the
sacrifices themselves, it is said there by thy Spirit, _All these things
did Araunah give, as a king, to the king_.[125] To give is an
approaching to the condition of kings, but to give health, an
approaching to the King of kings, to thee. But this his assisting to my
bodily health, thou knowest, O God, and so do some others of thine
honourable servants know, is but the twilight of that day wherein thou,
through him, hast shined upon me before; but the echo of that voice,
whereby thou, through him, hast spoke to me before, then when he, first
of any man, conceived a hope that I might be of some use in thy church
and descended to an intimation, to a persuasion, almost to a
solicitation, that I would embrace that calling. And thou who hadst put
that desire into his heart, didst also put into mine an obedience to it;
and I, who was sick before of a vertiginous giddiness and irresolution,
and almost spent all my time in consulting how I should spend it, was by
this man of God, and God of men, put into the pool and recovered: when I
asked, perchance, a stone, he gave me bread; when I asked, perchance, a
scorpion, he gave me a fish; when I asked a temporal office, he denied
not, refused not that; but let me see that he had rather I took this.
These things thou, O God, who forgettest nothing, hast not forgot,
though perchance he, because they were benefits, hath; but I am not only
a witness, but an instance, that our Jehoshaphat hath a care to ordain
priests, as well as judges:[126] and not only to send physicians for
temporal but to be the physician for spiritual health.


VIII. PRAYER.

O eternal and most gracious God, who, though thou have reserved thy
treasure of perfect joy and perfect glory to be given by thine own hands
then, when, by seeing thee as thou art in thyself, and knowing thee as
we are known, we shall possess in an instant, and possess for ever, all
that can any way conduce to our happiness, yet here also, in this world,
givest us such earnests of that full payment, as by the value of the
earnest we may give some estimate of the treasure, humbly and thankfully
I acknowledge, that thy blessed Spirit instructs me to make a difference
of thy blessings in this world, by that difference of the instruments by
which it hath pleased thee to derive them unto me. As we see thee here
in a glass, so we receive from thee here by reflection and by
instruments. Even casual things come from thee; and that which we call
fortune here hath another name above. Nature reaches out her hand and
gives us corn, and wine, and oil, and milk; but thou fillest her hand
before, and thou openest her hand that she may rain down her showers
upon us. Industry reaches out her hand to us and gives us fruits of our
labour for ourselves and our posterity; but thy hand guides that hand
when it sows and when it waters, and the increase is from thee. Friends
reach out their hands and prefer us; but thy hand supports that hand
that supports us. Of all these thy instruments have I received thy
blessing, O God; but bless thy name most for the greatest; that, as a
member of the public, and as a partaker of private favours too, by thy
right hand, thy powerful hand set over us, I have had my portion not
only in the hearing, but in the preaching of thy Gospel. Humbly
beseeching thee, that as thou continuest thy wonted goodness upon the
whole world by the wonted means and instruments, the same sun and moon,
the same nature and industry, so to continue the same blessings upon
this state and this church by the same hand, so long as that thy Son,
when he comes in the clouds, may find him, or his son, or his son's sons
ready to give an account and able to stand in that judgment, for their
faithful stewardship and dispensation of thy talents so abundantly
committed to them; and be to him, O God, in all distempers of his body,
in all anxieties of spirit, in all holy sadnesses of soul, such a
physician in thy proportion, who are the greatest in heaven, as he hath
been in soul and body to me, in his proportion, who is the greatest upon
earth.

FOOTNOTES:

[122] Ecclus. xiii. 23.

[123] 2 Sam. xix. 12.

[124] 2 Sam. xxiv. 17.

[125] 2 Sam. xxiv. 22, 23.

[126] 2 Chron. xix. 8.




IX. MEDICAMINA SCRIBUNT.

_Upon their consultation they prescribe._


IX. MEDITATION.

They have seen me and heard me, arraigned me in these fetters and
received the evidence; I have cut up mine own anatomy, dissected myself,
and they are gone to read upon me. O how manifold and perplexed a thing,
nay, how wanton and various a thing, is ruin and destruction! God
presented to David three kinds, war, famine and pestilence; Satan left
out these, and brought in fires from heaven and winds from the
wilderness. If there were no ruin but sickness, we see the masters of
that art can scarce number, not name all sicknesses; every thing that
disorders a faculty, and the function of that, is a sickness; the names
will not serve them which are given from the place affected, the
pleurisy is so; nor from the effect which it works, the falling sickness
is so; they cannot have names enough, from what it does, nor where it
is, but they must extort names from what it is like, what it resembles,
and but in some one thing, or else they would lack names; for the wolf,
and the canker, and the polypus are so; and that question whether there
be more names or things, is as perplexed in sicknesses as in any thing
else; except it be easily resolved upon that side that there are more
sicknesses than names. If ruin were reduced to that one way, that man
could perish no way but by sickness, yet his danger were infinite; and
if sickness were reduced to that one way, that there were no sickness
but a fever, yet the way were infinite still; for it would overload and
oppress any natural, disorder and discompose any artificial, memory, to
deliver the names of several fevers; how intricate a work then have they
who are gone to consult which of these sicknesses mine is, and then
which of these fevers, and then what it would do, and then how it may be
countermined. But even in ill it is a degree of good when the evil will
admit consultation. In many diseases, that which is but an accident, but
a symptom of the main disease, is so violent, that the physician must
attend the cure of that, though he pretermit (so far as to intermit) the
cure of the disease itself. Is it not so in states too? Sometimes the
insolency of those that are great puts the people into commotions; the
great disease, and the greatest danger to the head, is the insolency of
the great ones; and yet they execute martial law, they come to present
executions upon the people, whose commotion was indeed but a symptom,
but an accident of the main disease; but this symptom, grown so violent,
would allow no time for a consultation. Is it not so in the accidents of
the diseases of our mind too? Is it not evidently so in our affections,
in our passions? If a choleric man be ready to strike, must I go about
to purge his choler, or to break the blow? But where there is room for
consultation things are not desperate. They consult, so there is nothing
rashly, inconsiderately done; and then they prescribe, they write, so
there is nothing covertly, disguisedly, unavowedly done. In bodily
diseases it is not always so; sometimes, as soon as the physician's foot
is in the chamber, his knife is in the patient's arm; the disease would
not allow a minute's forbearing of blood, nor prescribing of other
remedies. In states and matter of government it is so too; they are
sometimes surprised with such accidents, as that the magistrate asks not
what may be done by law, but does that which must necessarily be done in
that case. But it is a degree of good in evil, a degree that carries
hope and comfort in it, when we may have recourse to that which is
written, and that the proceedings may be apert, and ingenuous, and
candid, and avowable, for that gives satisfaction and acquiescence. They
who have received my anatomy of myself consult, and end their
consultation in prescribing, and in prescribing physic; proper and
convenient remedy; for if they should come in again and chide me for
some disorder that had occasioned and induced, or that had hastened and
exalted this sickness, or if they should begin to write now rules for my
diet and exercise when I were well, this were to antedate or to postdate
their consultation, not to give physic. It were rather a vexation than a
relief, to tell a condemned prisoner, You might have lived if you had
done this; and if you can get your pardon, you shall do well to take
this or this course hereafter. I am glad they know (I have hid nothing
from them), glad they consult (they hid nothing from one another), glad
they write (they hide nothing from the world), glad that they write and
prescribe physic, that there are remedies for the present case.


IX. EXPOSTULATION.

My God, my God, allow me a just indignation, a holy detestation of the
insolency of that man who, because he was of that high rank, of whom
thou hast said, _They are gods_, thought himself more than equal to
thee; that king of Aragon, Alphonsus, so perfect in the motions of the
heavenly bodies as that he adventured to say, that if he had been of
counsel with thee, in the making of the heavens, the heavens should have
been disposed in a better order than they are. The king Amaziah would
not endure thy prophet to reprehend him, but asked him in anger, _Art
thou made of the king's counsel?_[127] When thy prophet Esaias asks that
question, _Who hath directed the spirit of the Lord, or being his
counsellor, hath taught him?_[128] it is after he had settled and
determined that office upon thy Son, and him only, when he joins with
those great titles, the mighty God and the Prince of peace, this also,
the Counsellor;[129] and after he had settled upon him the spirit of
might and of counsel.[130] So that then thou, O God, though thou have no
counsel from man, yet dost nothing upon man without counsel. In the
making of man there was a consultation; _Let us make man_.[131] In the
preserving of man, _O thou great Preserver of men_,[132] thou proceedest
by counsel; for all thy external works are the works of the whole
Trinity, and their hand is to every action. How much more must I
apprehend that all you blessed and glorious persons of the Trinity are
in consultation now, what you will do with this infirm body, with this
leprous soul, that attends guiltily, but yet comfortably, your
determination upon it. I offer not to counsel them who meet in
consultation for my body now, but I open my infirmities, I anatomize my
body to them. So I do my soul to thee, O my God, in an humble
confession, that there is no vein in me that is not full of the blood of
thy Son, whom I have crucified and crucified again, by multiplying many,
and often repeating the same, sins; that there is no artery in me that
hath not the spirit of error, the spirit of lust, the spirit of
giddiness in it;[133] no bone in me that is not hardened with the custom
of sin and nourished and suppled with the marrow of sin; no sinews, no
ligaments, that do not tie and chain sin and sin together. Yet, O
blessed and glorious Trinity, O holy and whole college, and yet but one
physician, if you take this confession into a consultation, my case is
not desperate, my destruction is not decreed. If your consultation
determine in writing, if you refer me to that which is written, you
intend my recovery: for all the way, O my God (ever constant to thine
own ways), thou hast proceeded openly, intelligibly, manifestly by the
book. From thy first book, the book of life, never shut to thee, but
never thoroughly open to us; from thy second book, the book of nature,
where, though subobscurely and in shadows, thou hast expressed thine own
image; from thy third book, the Scriptures, where thou hadst written all
in the Old, and then lightedst us a candle to read it by, in the New,
Testament; to these thou hadst added the book of just and useful laws,
established by them to whom thou hast committed thy people; to those,
the manuals, the pocket, the bosom books of our own consciences; to
those thy particular books of all our particular sins; and to those, the
books with seven seals, which only _the Lamb which was slain, was found
worthy to open_;[134] which, I hope, it shall not disagree with the
meaning of thy blessed Spirit to interpret the promulgation of their
pardon and righteousness who are washed in the blood of that Lamb; and
if thou refer me to these books, to a new reading, a new trial by these
books, this fever may be but a burning in the hand and I may be saved,
though not by my book, mine own conscience, nor by thy other books, yet
by thy first, the book of life, thy decree for my election, and by thy
last, the book of the Lamb, and the shedding of his blood upon me. If I
be still under consultation, I am not condemned yet; if I be sent to
these books, I shall not be condemned at all; for though there be
something written in some of those books (particularly in the
Scriptures) which some men turn to poison, yet upon these consultations
(these confessions, these takings of our particular cases into thy
consideration) thou intendest all for physic; and even from those
sentences from which a too late repenter will suck desperation, he that
seeks thee early shall receive thy morning dew, thy seasonable mercy,
thy forward consolation.


IX. PRAYER.

O eternal and most gracious God, who art of so pure eyes as that thou
canst not look upon sin, and we of so unpure constitutions as that we
can present no object but sin, and therefore might justly fear that
thou wouldst turn thine eyes for ever from us, as, though we cannot
endure afflictions in ourselves, yet in thee we can; so, though thou
canst not endure sin in us, yet in thy Son thou canst, and he hath taken
upon himself, and presented to thee, all those sins which might
displease thee in us. There is an eye in nature that kills as soon as it
sees, the eye of a serpent; no eye in nature that nourishes us by
looking upon us; but thine eye, O Lord, does so. Look therefore upon me,
O Lord, in this distress and that will recall me from the borders of
this bodily death; look upon me, and that will raise me again from that
spiritual death in which my parents buried me when they begot me in sin,
and in which I have pierced even to the jaws of hell by multiplying such
heaps of actual sins upon that foundation, that root of original sin.
Yet take me again into your consultation, O blessed and glorious
Trinity; and though the Father know that I have defaced his image
received in my creation; though the Son know I have neglected mine
interest in the redemption; yet, O blessed Spirit, as thou art to my
conscience so be to them, a witness that, at this minute, I accept that
which I have so often, so rebelliously refused, thy blessed
inspirations; be thou my witness to them that, at more pores than this
slack body sweats tears, this sad soul weeps blood; and more for the
displeasure of my God, than for the stripes of his displeasure. Take me,
then, O blessed and glorious Trinity, into a reconsultation, and
prescribe me any physic. If it be a long and painful holding of this
soul in sickness, it is physic if I may discern thy hand to give it; and
it is physic if it be a speedy departing of this soul, if I may discern
thy hand to receive it.

FOOTNOTES:

[127] 2 Chron. xxv. 16.

[128] Isaiah, xlii. 13.

[129] Isaiah, ix. 6.

[130] Isaiah, xi. 2.

[131] Gen. i. 26.

[132] Job, vii. 20.

[133] 1 Tim. iv. 1; Hos. iv. 12; Isaiah, xix. 14.

[134] Rev. vii. 1.




X. LENTE ET SERPENTI SATAGUNT OCCURRERE MORBO.

_They find the disease to steal on insensibly, and endeavour to meet
with it so._


X. MEDITATION.

This is nature's nest of boxes: the heavens contain the earth; the
earth, cities; cities, men. And all these are concentric; the common
centre to them all is decay, ruin; only that is eccentric which was
never made; only that place, or garment rather, which we can imagine but
not demonstrate. That light, which is the very emanation of the light of
God, in which the saints shall dwell, with which the saints shall be
apparelled, only that bends not to this centre, to ruin; that which was
not made of nothing is not threatened with this annihilation. All other
things are; even angels, even our souls; they move upon the same poles,
they bend to the same centre; and if they were not made immortal by
preservation, their nature could not keep them from sinking to this
centre, annihilation. In all these (the frame of the heavens, the states
upon earth, and men in them, comprehend all), those are the greatest
mischiefs which are least discerned; the most insensible in their ways
come to be the most sensible in their ends. The heavens have had their
dropsy, they drowned the world; and they shall have their fever, and
burn the world. Of the dropsy, the flood, the world had a foreknowledge
one hundred and twenty years before it came; and so some made provision
against it, and were saved; the fever shall break out in an instant and
consume all; the dropsy did no harm to the heavens from whence it fell,
it did not put out those lights, it did not quench those heats; but the
fever, the fire, shall burn the furnace itself, annihilate those
heavens that breathe it out. Though the dogstar have a pestilent breath,
an infectious exhalation, yet, because we know when it will rise, we
clothe ourselves, and we diet ourselves, and we shadow ourselves to a
sufficient prevention; but comets and blazing stars, whose effects or
significations no man can interrupt or frustrate, no man foresaw: no
almanack tells us when a blazing star will break out, the matter is
carried up in secret; no astrologer tells us when the effects will be
accomplished, for that is a secret of a higher sphere than the other;
and that which is most secret is most dangerous. It is so also here in
the societies of men, in states and commonwealths. Twenty rebellious
drums make not so dangerous a noise as a few whisperers and secret
plotters in corners. The cannon doth not so much hurt against a wall, as
a mine under the wall; nor a thousand enemies that threaten, so much as
a few that take an oath to say nothing. God knew many heavy sins of the
people, in the wilderness and after, but still he charges them with that
one, with murmuring, murmuring in their hearts, secret disobediences,
secret repugnances against his declared will; and these are the most
deadly, the most pernicious. And it is so too with the diseases of the
body; and that is my case. The pulse, the urine, the sweat, all have
sworn to say nothing, to give no indication of any dangerous sickness.
My forces are not enfeebled, I find no decay in my strength; my
provisions are not cut off, I find no abhorring in mine appetite; my
counsels are not corrupted nor infatuated, I find no false apprehensions
to work upon mine understanding; and yet they see that invisibly, and I
feel that insensibly, the disease prevails. The disease hath established
a kingdom, an empire in me, and will have certain _arcana imperii_,
secrets of state, by which it will proceed and not be bound to declare
them. But yet against those secret conspiracies in the state, the
magistrate hath the rack; and against these insensible diseases
physicians have their examiners; and those these employ now.


X. EXPOSTULATION.

My God, my God, I have been told, and told by relation, by her own
brother that did it, by thy servant Nazianzen, that his sister in the
vehemency of her prayer, did use to threaten thee with a holy
importunity, with a pious impudency. I dare not do so, O God; but as thy
servant Augustine wished that Adam had not sinned, therefore that Christ
might not have died, may I not to this one purpose wish that if the
serpent, before the temptation of Eve, did go upright and speak,[135]
that he did so still, because I should the sooner hear him if he spoke,
the sooner see him if he went upright? In his curse I am cursed too; his
creeping undoes me; for howsoever he begin at the heel, and do but
bruise that, yet he, and _death_ in him, _is come into our
windows_;[136] into our eyes and ears, the entrances and inlets of our
soul. He works upon us in secret and we do not discern him; and one
great work of his upon us is to make us so like himself as to sin in
secret, that others may not see us; but his masterpiece is to make us
sin in secret, so as that we may not see ourselves sin. For the first,
the hiding of our sins from other men, he hath induced that which was
his offspring from the beginning, a lie;[137] for man is, in nature, yet
in possession of some such sparks of ingenuity and nobleness, as that,
but to disguise evil, he would not lie. The body, the sin, is the
serpent's; and the garment that covers it, the lie, is his too. These
are his, but the hiding of sin from ourselves is he himself: when we
have the sting of the serpent in us, and do not sting ourselves, the
venom of sin, and no remorse for sin, then, as thy blessed Son said of
Judas, _He is a devil_;[138] not that he had one, but was one; so we are
become devils to ourselves, and we have not only a serpent in our bosom,
but we ourselves are to ourselves that serpent. How far did thy servant
David press upon thy pardon in that petition, _Cleanse thou me from
secret sins_?[139] Can any sin be secret? for a great part of our sins,
though, says thy prophet, we conceive them in the dark, upon our bed,
yet, says he, we do them in the light; there are many sins which we
glory in doing, and would not do if nobody should know them. Thy blessed
servant Augustine confesses that he was ashamed of his shamefacedness
and tenderness of conscience, and that he often belied himself with sins
which he never did, lest he should be unacceptable to his sinful
companions. But if we would conceal them (thy prophet found such a
desire, and such a practice in some, when he said, _Thou hast trusted in
thy wickedness, and thou hast said, None shall see me_[140]), yet can we
conceal them? Thou, O God, canst hear of them by others: the voice of
Abel's blood will tell thee of Cain's murder;[141] the heavens
themselves will tell thee. Heaven shall reveal his iniquity; a small
creature alone shall do it, _A bird of the air shall carry the voice,
and tell the matter_;[142] thou wilt trouble no informer, thou thyself
revealedst Adam's sin to thyself;[143] and the manifestation of sin is
so full to thee, as that thou shalt reveal all to all; _Thou shalt
bring every work to judgment, with every secret thing;[144] and there
is nothing covered that shall not be revealed_.[145] But, O my God,
there is another way of knowing my sins, which thou lovest better than
any of these; to know them by my confession. As physic works, so it
draws the peccant humour to itself, that, when it is gathered together,
the weight of itself may carry that humour away; so thy Spirit returns
to my memory my former sins, that, being so recollected, they may pour
out themselves by confession. _When I kept silence_, says thy servant
David, _day and night thy hand was heavy upon me_; but when I said, _I
will confess my transgressions unto the Lord, thou forgavest the
iniquity of my sin_.[146] Thou interpretest the very purpose of
confession so well, as that thou scarce leavest any new mercy for the
action itself. This mercy thou leavest, that thou armest us thereupon
against relapses into the sins which we have confessed. And that mercy
which thy servant Augustine apprehends when he says to thee, "Thou hast
forgiven me those sins which I have done, and those sins which only by
thy grace I have not done": they were done in our inclination to them,
and even that inclination needs thy mercy, and that mercy he calls a
pardon. And these are most truly secret sins, because they were never
done, and because no other man, nor I myself, but only thou knowest, how
many and how great sins I have escaped by thy grace, which, without
that, I should have multiplied against thee.


X. PRAYER.

O eternal and most gracious God, who as thy Son Christ Jesus, though he
knew all things, yet said he knew not the day of judgment, because he
knew it not so as that he might tell us; so though thou knowest all my
sins, yet thou knowest them not to my comfort, except thou know them by
my telling them to thee. How shall I bring to thy knowledge, by that
way, those sins which I myself know not? If I accuse myself of original
sin, wilt thou ask me if I know what original sin is? I know not enough
of it to satisfy others, but I know enough to condemn myself, and to
solicit thee. If I confess to thee the sins of my youth, wilt thou ask
me if I know what those sins were? I know them not so well as to name
them all, nor am sure to live hours enough to name them all (for I did
them then faster than I can speak them now, when every thing that I did
conduced to some sin), but I know them so well as to know that nothing
but thy mercy is so infinite as they. If the naming of sins of thought,
word and deed, of sins of omission and of action, of sins against thee,
against my neighbour and against myself, of sins unrepented and sins
relapsed into after repentance, of sins of ignorance and sins against
the testimony of my conscience, of sins against thy commandments, sins
against thy Son's Prayer, and sins against our own creed, of sins
against the laws of that church, and sins against the laws of that state
in which thou hast given me my station; if the naming of these sins
reach not home to all mine, I know what will. O Lord, pardon me, me, all
those sins which thy Son Christ Jesus suffered for, who suffered for all
the sins of all the world; for there is no sin amongst all those which
had not been my sin, if thou hadst not been my God, and antedated me a
pardon in thy preventing grace. And since sin, in the nature of it,
retains still so much of the author of it that it is a serpent,
insensibly insinuating itself into my soul, let thy brazen serpent (the
contemplation of thy Son crucified for me) be evermore present to me,
for my recovery against the sting of the first serpent; that so, as I
have a Lion against a lion, the Lion of the tribe of Judah against that
lion that seeks whom he may devour, so I may have a serpent against a
serpent, the wisdom of the serpent against the malice of the serpent,
and both against that lion and serpent, forcible and subtle temptations,
thy dove with thy olive in thy ark, humility and peace and
reconciliation to thee, by the ordinances of thy church. Amen.

FOOTNOTES:

[135] Josephus.

[136] Jer. ix. 21.

[137] John, viii. 44.

[138] John, vi. 70.

[139] Psalm xix. 12.

[140] Isaiah, xlvii. 10.

[141] Gen. iv. 10.

[142] Eccles. x. 20.

[143] Gen. iii. 8.

[144] Eccles. xii. 14.

[145] Matt. x. 26.

[146] Psalm xxxii. 3-5.




XI. NOBILIBUSQUE TRAHUNT, A CINCTO CORDE, VENENUM, SUCCIS ET GEMMIS, ET
QUÆ GENEROSA, MINISTRANT ARS, ET NATURA, INSTILLANT.

_They use cordials, to keep the venom and malignity of the disease from
the heart._


XI. MEDITATION.

Whence can we take a better argument, a clearer demonstration, that all
the greatness of this world is built upon opinion of others and hath in
itself no real being, nor power of subsistence, than from the heart of
man? It is always in action and motion, still busy, still pretending to
do all, to furnish all the powers and faculties with all that they have;
but if an enemy dare rise up against it, it is the soonest endangered,
the soonest defeated of any part. The brain will hold out longer than
it, and the liver longer than that; they will endure a siege; but an
unnatural heat, a rebellious heat, will blow up the heart, like a mine,
in a minute. But howsoever, since the heart hath the birthright and
primogeniture, and that it is nature's eldest son in us, the part which
is first born to life in man, and that the other parts, as younger
brethren, and servants in his family, have a dependance upon it, it is
reason that the principal care be had of it, though it be not the
strongest part, as the eldest is oftentimes not the strongest of the
family. And since the brain, and liver, and heart hold not a triumvirate
in man, a sovereignty equally shed upon them all, for his well-being, as
the four elements do for his very being, but the heart alone is in the
principality, and in the throne, as king, the rest as subjects, though
in eminent place and office, must contribute to that, as children to
their parents, as all persons to all kinds of superiors, though
oftentimes those parents or those superiors be not of stronger parts
than themselves, that serve and obey them that are weaker. Neither doth
this obligation fall upon us, by second dictates of nature, by
consequences and conclusions arising out of nature, or derived from
nature by discourse (as many things bind us even by the law of nature,
and yet not by the primary law of nature; as all laws of propriety in
that which we possess are of the law of nature, which law is, to give
every one his own, and yet in the primary law of nature there was no
propriety, no _meum et tuum_, but an universal community overall; so the
obedience of superiors is of the law of nature, and yet in the primary
law of nature there was no superiority, no magistracy); but this
contribution of assistance of all to the sovereign, of all parts to the
heart, is from the very first dictates of nature, which is, in the first
place, to have care of our own preservation, to look first to
ourselves; for therefore doth the physician intermit the present care of
brain or liver, because there is a possibility that they may subsist,
though there be not a present and a particular care had of them, but
there is no possibility that they can subsist, if the heart perish: and
so, when we seem to begin with others, in such assistances, indeed, we
do begin with ourselves, and we ourselves are principally in our
contemplation; and so all these officious and mutual assistances are but
compliments towards others, and our true end is ourselves. And this is
the reward of the pains of kings; sometimes they need the power of law
to be obeyed; and when they seem to be obeyed voluntarily, they who do
it do it for their own sakes. O how little a thing is all the greatness
of man and through how false glasses doth he make shift to multiply it,
and magnify it to himself! And yet this is also another misery of this
king of man, the heart, which is also applicable to the kings of this
world, great men, that the venom and poison of every pestilential
disease directs itself to the heart, affects that (pernicious
affection), and the malignity of ill men is also directed upon the
greatest and the best; and not only greatness but goodness loses the
vigour of being an antidote or cordial against it. And as the noblest
and most generous cordials that nature or art afford, or can prepare, if
they be often taken and made familiar, become no cordials, nor have any
extraordinary operation, so the greatest cordial of the heart, patience,
if it be much exercised, exalts the venom and the malignity of the
enemy, and the more we suffer the more we are insulted upon. When God
had made this earth of nothing, it was but a little help that he had, to
make other things of this earth: nothing can be nearer nothing than this
earth; and yet how little of this earth is the greatest man! He thinks
he treads upon the earth, that all is under his feet, and the brain
that thinks so is but earth; his highest region, the flesh that covers
that, is but earth, and even the top of that, that wherein so many
Absaloms take so much pride, is but a bush growing upon that turf of
earth. How little of the world is the earth! And yet that is all that
man hath or is. How little of a man is the heart, and yet it is all by
which he is; and this continually subject not only to foreign poisons
conveyed by others, but to intestine poisons bred in ourselves by
pestilential sicknesses. O who, if before he had a being he could have
sense of this misery, would buy a being here upon these conditions?


XI. EXPOSTULATION.

My God, my God, all that thou askest of me is my heart, _My Son, give me
thy heart_.[147] Am I thy Son as long as I have but my heart? Wilt thou
give me an inheritance, a filiation, any thing for my heart? O thou, who
saidst to Satan, _Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is
none like him upon the earth_,[148] shall my fear, shall my zeal, shall
my jealousy, have leave to say to thee, Hast thou considered my heart,
that there is not so perverse a heart upon earth; and wouldst thou have
that, and shall I be thy son, thy eternal Son's coheir, for giving that?
_The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who
can know it?_[149] He that asks that question makes the answer, I the
Lord search the heart. When didst thou search mine? Dost thou think to
find it, as thou madest it, in Adam? Thou hast searched since, and found
all these gradations in the ill of our hearts, _that every imagination
of the thoughts of our hearts is only evil continually_.[150] Dost thou
remember this, and wouldst thou have my heart? O God of all light, I
know thou knowest all, and it is thou[151] that declarest unto man what
is his heart. Without thee, O sovereign Goodness, I could not know how
ill my heart were. Thou hast declared unto me, in thy word, that for all
this deluge of evil that hath surrounded all hearts, yet thou soughtest
and foundest a man after thine own heart;[152] that thou couldst and
wouldst give thy people pastors according to thine own heart;[153] and I
can gather out of thy word so good testimony of the hearts of men as to
find single hearts, docile and apprehensive hearts; hearts that can,
hearts that have learned; wise hearts in one place, and in another in a
great degree wise, perfect hearts; straight hearts, no perverseness
without; and clean hearts, no foulness with

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