 15. Interer insomnes noctes egoducor diesque. I sleep not day nor night. 15. Meditation. Natural men have conceived a twofold use of sleep, that it is a refreshing of the body in this life, that it is a preparing of the soul for the next, that it is a feast and it is the grace at that feast, that it is our recreation and cheers us, and it is our catechism and instructs us. We lie down in a hope that we shall rise the stronger, and we lie down in a knowledge that we may rise no more. Sleep is an opiate which gives us rest, but such an opiate as perchance being under it, we shall wake no more. But though natural men who have induced secondary and figurative considerations have found out this second, this emblematic use of sleep, that it should be a representation of death, God who wrought and perfected his work before nature began, for nature was but his apprentice, to learn in the first seven days, and now is his foreman and works next under him. God, I say, intended sleep only for the refreshing of man by bodily rest, and not for a figure of death, for he intended not death itself then. But man having induced death upon himself, God hath taken man's creature, death, into his hand, and mended it. And whereas it hath in itself a fearful form and aspect, so that man is afraid of his own creature, God presents it to him in a familiar, in an assiduous, in an agreeable, and acceptable form, in sleep, so that when he awakes from sleep and says to himself, shall I be no otherwise when I am dead than I was even now when I was asleep. He may be ashamed of his waking dreams, and of his melancholy fancying out a horrid and an affrightful figure of that death which is so like sleep. As then we need sleep to live out our three score and ten years, so we need death to live that life which we cannot outlive. And as death being our enemy, God allows us to defend ourselves against it, for we vital ourselves against death twice every day as often as we eat. So God having so sweetened death unto us as he hath in sleep, we put ourselves into our enemy's hands once every day. So far as sleep is death, and sleep is as much death as meat is life. This then is the misery of my sickness, that death, as it is produced from me and as my own creature, is now before mine eyes. But in that form in which God hath mollified it to us and made it acceptable, in sleep, I cannot see it. How many prisoners who have even hollowed themselves their graves upon that earth on which they have lain long under heavy fetters, yet at this hour are asleep, though they be yet working upon their own graves by their own weight. He that hath seen his friend die to-day, or knows he shall see it to-morrow, yet will sink into a sleep between. I cannot. And, oh, if I be entering now into eternity, where there shall be no more distinction of hours, why is it all my business now to tell clocks? Why is none of the heaviness of my heart dispensed into mine eyelids, that they might fall as my heart's death? And why, since I have lost my delight in all objects, cannot I discontinue the faculty of seeing them by closing mine eyes in sleep? But why rather, being entering into that presence where I shall wake continually and never sleep more, do I not interpret my continual waking here to be a parisive and a preparation to that fifteen ex-bostulation? My God, my God, I know for Thou hast said it, that he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep, Psalm 121.4, but shall not that Israel over whom Thou watchest sleep? I know for Thou hast said it, that there are men whose damnation sleepeth not, to Peter 2.3, but shall not they to whom Thou art salvation sleep? Or wilt Thou take from them that evidence and that testimony that they are Thy Israel, or Thou their salvation? Thou givest Thy beloved sleep, Psalm 127.2, shall I lack that seal of Thy love? You shall lie down, and none shall make you afraid, Leviticus 266, shall I be out, Lord, from that protection? Jonah slept in one dangerous storm, Jonah 1.5, and I blessed Son in another, Matthew 8.24. Shall I have no use, no benefit, no application of those great examples? Lord, if he sleep, he shall do well, John 11.12, say Thy Son's disciples to him of Lazarus, and shall there be no room for that argument in me? Or shall I be open to the contrary? If I sleep not, shall I not be well in their sense? Let me not, oh my God, take this too precisely, too literally. There is that neither day nor night seeth sleep with his eyes, Ecclesiastes 8.16, says Thy wise servant Solomon, and whether he speak that of worldly men, or of men that seek wisdom, whether in justification or condemnation of their watchfulness, we cannot tell. We can tell that there are men that cannot sleep till they have done mischief, Proverbs 4.16, and then they can. And we can tell that the rich man cannot sleep, because his abundance will not let him. Ecclesiastes 5.12. The tears were sown when the husband men were asleep, Matthew 8.25 and 28.13, and the elders thought it a probable excuse, a credible lie, that the watchmen which kept the sepulchre should say that the body of thy son was stolen away while they were asleep. Matthew 26.40. Since thy blessed son rebuked his disciples for sleeping, shall I murmur because I do not sleep? If Samson had slept any longer in Gaza he had been taken, Judges 16.3, and when he did sleep longer with Delilah, Judges 16.19, he was taken. Sleep is as often taken for natural death in the scriptures, as for natural rest. Nay, sometimes sleep had so heavy a sense as to be taken for sin itself, Ephesians 5.14, as well as for the punishment of sin, death, 1 Thessalonians 5.6. Much comfort is not in much sleep, when the most fearful and most irrevocable malediction is presented by thee in a perpetual sleep. I will make their feasts, and I will make them drunk, and they shall sleep a perpetual sleep, and not wake. Jeremiah 51.57 I must therefore, O my God, look farther than into the very act of sleeping before I misinterpret my waking. For since I find thy whole hand light, shall any finger of that hand seem heavy? Since the whole sickness is thy physic, shall any accident in it be my poison by my murmuring? The name of watchmen belongs to our profession. Thy prophets are not only seers, endued with the power of seeing, able to see, but watchmen ever more in the act of seeing. And therefore give me leave, O my blessed God, to invert the words of thy son's spouse. She said, I sleep, but my heart wakeeth. Canticles, a song of Solomon 5.2. I say, I wake, but my heart sleepeth. My body is in a sick weariness, but my soul is in a peaceful rest with thee. And as our eyes in our health see not the air that is next to them, nor the fire, nor the spheres, nor stop upon anything till they come to stars. So my eyes that are open, see nothing of this world, but pass through all that, and fix themselves upon thy peace, and joy, and glory above. Almost as soon as thy apostle had said, Let us not sleep, won Thessalonians 5.6, lest we should be too much discomforted if we did. He says again, whether we wake or sleep, let us live together with Christ, 1 Thessalonians 5.10. Though then this absence of sleep may argue the presence of death, the original may exclude the copy, the life, the picture. Yet this gentle sleep and rest of my soul betrothes me to thee, to whom I shall be married indissolubly, though by this way of dissolution. 15. Prayer. O eternal and most gracious God, who art able to make, and dust make, the sick bed of thy servants, chapels of ease to them, and the dreams of thy servants, prayers and meditations upon thee, let not this continual watchfulness of mine, this inability to sleep which thou hast laid upon me, be any disquiet or discomfort to me, but rather an argument that thou wouldst not have me sleep in thy presence. What it may indicate or signify concerning the state of my body, let them consider to whom that consideration belongs. Do thou, who only art the physician of my soul, tell her that thou wilt afford her such defensives, as that she shall wake ever towards thee, and yet ever sleep in thee, and that, through all this sickness, thou wilt either preserve mine understanding from all decays and distractions which these watchings might occasion, or that thou wilt reckon and account with me from before those violences, and not call any peace of my sickness a sin. It is a heavy and indelible sin that I brought into the world with me. It is a heavy and innumerable multitude of sins which I have heaped up since. I have sinned behind thy back, if that can be done, by wilful abstaining from thy congregations and omitting thy service, and I have sinned before thy face in my hypocrisies in prayer, in my ostentation, and amingling a respect of myself in preaching thy word. I have sinned in my fasting by repining when a penurious fortune hath kept me low, and I have sinned even in that fullness when I have been at thy table, by a negligent examination, by a wilful prevarication in receiving that heavenly food and physique. But, as I know, O my gracious God, that for all those sins committed since, yet thou wilt consider me, as I was in thy purpose, when thou rotest my name in the book of life in my election. So into what deviations soever I stray and wonder by occasion of this sickness, O God, return thou to that minute wherein thou wast pleased with me, and consider me in that condition. End of Devotion 15 Devotion 16 From Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit the LibriVox.org. Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions by John Dunn Devotion 16 At Pro-Prarare Mayam Comet Aturi Pro-Pinkwa of Speri Campane Alliorum in Funere, Funes From the bells of the Church adjoining, I am daily remembered of my burial in the funerals of others. 16. Meditation We have a convenient author, footnote, Mengius, in footnote, who writ a discourse of bells when he was a prisoner in Turkey. How would he have enlarged himself if he had been my fellow prisoner in this sick bed, so near to that steeple which never ceases, no more than the harmony of the spheres, but is more heard? When the Turks took Constantinople, they melted the bells into ordnance. I have heard both bells and ordnance, but never been so much affected with those as with these bells. I have layed near a steeple, footnote, and twerp, in footnote, in which there is said to be more than 30 bells, and near another, where there is one so big as that the clapper is said to weigh more than 600 pounds, footnote, rowan, in footnote, yet never so affected as here. Here the bells can scare solemnize the funeral of any person. But that I knew him, or knew that he was my neighbor, we dwelt in houses near to one another before, but now he has gone into that house, into which I must follow him. There is a way of correcting the children of great persons, that other children are corrected in their behalf and in their names, and this works upon them who indeed had more deserved it. And when these bells tell me that now one and now another is buried, must not I acknowledge that they have the correction due to me and pay the debt which I owe? There is a story of a bell in a monastery, footnote, Rocha, in footnote, which when any of the house was sick to death, rung always voluntarily, and they knew the inevitableness of the danger by that. It rung once when no man was sick, but the next day one of the house fell from the steeple and died, and the bell held the reputation of a prophet still. If these bells that warn to a funeral now were appropriated to none, may not I, by the hour of the funeral, supply? How many men that stand at an execution, if they would ask, for what dies that man, should hear their own faults condemned, and see themselves executed by attorney? We scarce hear of any man preferred, but we think of ourselves that we might very well have been that man. Why might not I have been that man that is carried to his grave now? Could I fit myself to stand, or sit in any man's place, and not to lie in any man's grave? I may lack much of the good parts of the meanest, but I lack nothing of the mortality of the weakest. They may have acquired better abilities than I, but I was born to as many infirmities as they. To be an incumbent by lying down in a grave, to be a doctor by teaching mortification, by example, by dying, though I may have seniors, others may be older than I, yet I have proceeded to pace in a good university, and gone a great way in a little time, by the furtherance of a vehement fever. And whomesoever these bells bring to the ground today, if he and I had been compared yesterday, perchance I should have been thought likelier to come to this preferment, than he. God has kept the power of death in his own hands, lest any man should bribe death. If man knew the gain of death, the ease of death, he would solicit. He would provoke death to assist him by any hand which he might use. But as when men see many of their own professions preferred, it ministers a hope that may light upon them. So when these hourly bells tell me of so many funerals of men like me, it presents, if not a desire that it may, yet a comfort whomever mine shall come. 16. Expostulation My God, my God, I do not expostulate with thee, but with them who dare do that. Who dare expostulate with thee? When in the voice of thy church thou giveest allowance to this ceremony of bells at funerals. Is it enough to refuse it, because it was in use among the Gentiles? So were funerals, too. Is it because some abuses may have crept in amongst Christians? Is that enough, that their ringing hath been said to drive away evil spirits? Truly, that is so far true, as that the evil spirit is vehemently vexed in their ringing. Therefore, because that action brings the congregation together and unites God and his people to the destruction of that kingdom which the evil spirit usurps, in the first institution of thy church in this world, in the foundation of thy militant church amongst the Jews. Now, didst the point the calling of the assembly in to be by trumpet? Numbers 10, 2. And when they were in, then thou gaveest them the sound of bells in the garment of thy priest. Exodus 18, 33 through 34. In the triumphant church, thou employest both, too, but in an inverted order, we enter into the triumphant church by the sound of bells, for we enter when we die, and then we receive our further edification, or consummation, by the sound of trumpets at the resurrection. The sound of thy trumpets thou did impart to secular and civil uses, too, but the sound of bells only to sacred. Lord, let us not break the communion of saints in that which was intended for the advancement of it. Let not that pull us asunder from one another, which was intended for the assembling of us in the militant, and associating of us to the triumphant church, but he, for whose funeral these bells ring now, was at home at his journey's end yesterday. Why ring they now? A man, that is a world, is all the things in the world. He is an army, and when an army marches, the van may lodge to-night, where the rear comes not till tomorrow. A man extends to his act, and to his example, to that which he does, and that which he teaches. To do those things that concern him. So do these bells. That which rung yesterday was to convey him out of the world in his van, in his soul. That which rung today was to bring him in his rear, in his body, to the church. And this continuing of ringing, after his entering, is to bring him to me in the application. Where I lie I could hear the psalm, and to join with the congregation in it, but I could not hear the sermon, and these latter bells are a repetition sermon to me. But, oh my God, my God, do I that have this fever need other remembrances of my mortality? Is not mine own hollow voice, voice enough to pronounce that to me? Need I look upon a death's head in a ring, that have won in my face? Or go for death to my neighbor's house, that have him in my bosom? We cannot, we cannot, oh my God, take in too many helps for religious duties. I know I cannot have any better image of thee than thy son, nor any better image of him than his gospel. Yet must not I with thanks confess to thee, that some historical pictures of his have sometimes put me upon better meditations than otherwise I should have fallen upon? I know they church needed not to have taken in, from Jew or Gentile, any supplies for the exultation of thy glory, or our devotion. Of absolute necessity I know she needed not. But yet we owe thee our thanks, that thou has given her leave to do so, and that as in making us Christians, thou didst not destroy that which we were before, natural men. So, in the exalting of our religious devotions now we are Christians. Thou hast been pleased to continue to us those assistances which did work upon the affections of natural men before, for thou lovest the good man as thou lovest the good Christian, and though grace be merely from me, thou dost not plant grace but in good natures. 16. Prayer. O eternal and most gracious God, who, having consecrated our living bodies to thine own spirit, and made us temples of the Holy Ghost, dost also require our respect to be given to these temples, even when the priest is gone out of them. To these bodies, when the soul is departed from them, I bless and glorify thy name. That as thou take us care in our life of every hair of our head, so dost thou also of every grain of ashes after our death. 16. Neither dost thou only do good to us all in life and death, but also wouldst have us do good to one another, as in a holy life, so in those things which accompany our death. In that contemplation I make account that I hear this dead brother of ours, who is now carried out to his burial, to speak to me, and to preach my funeral sermon in the voice of these bells. In him, O God, thou hast accomplished to me even the request of dives to Abraham. Thou hast sent one from the dead to speak unto me. He speaks to me aloud from that steeple. He whispers to me at these curtains, and he speaks thy words. Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth. 14. Let this prayer therefore, O my God, be as my last gasp, my expiring, my dying in thee, that if this be the hour of my trans-migration, I may die the death of a sinner, drowned in my sins, in the blood of thy son, and if I live longer, yet I may now die the death of the righteous, die to sin, which death is a resurrection to a new life. Thou killest, and thou giveest life. Whichsoever comes, it comes from thee. Which waysoever it comes, let me come to thee. 17. Meditation 18. Perchance he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill, is that he knows not it tolls for him. And perchance I may think myself so much better than I am, as that they who are about me and see my state may have caused it to toll for me, and I know not that. The church is Catholic, universal, so are all her actions. All that she does belongs to all. When she baptizes a child, that action concerns me. For that child is thereby connected to that body, which is my head too, and engrafted into that body whereof I am a member. And when she buries a man, that action concerns me. All mankind is of one author, and is one volume. When one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language, and every chapter must be so translated. God employs several translators. Some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice. But God's hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall lie open to one another. As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come, so this bell calls us all, but how much more me who am brought so near the door by this sickness. There was a contention, as far as a suit, in which both piety and dignity, religion, and estimation were mingled, which of the religious orders should ring to prayers first in the morning, and it was determined that they should ring first that rose earliest. If we understand to write the dignity of this bell that tolls for our evening prayer, we would be glad to make it ours by rising early in that application that it might be ours as well as his whose indeed it is. The bell doth toll for him that thinks it doth, and though it intermits again, yet from that minute that that occasion wrought upon him he is united to God. Who casts not up his eye to the sun when it rises? But who takes off his eye from a comet when that breaks out? Who bends not his ear to any bell which upon any occasion rings? But who can remove it from that bell which is passing a piece of himself out of this world? No man is an island entire of itself. Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manner of thy friends or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee. Neither can we call this a begging of misery or a borrowing of misery, as though we were not miserable enough of ourselves but must fetch in more from the next house in taking upon us the misery of our neighbors. Truly it were an excusable covetousness if we did, for affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it. No man hath affliction enough that is not matured and ripened by it, and made fit for God by that affliction. If a man carry treasure in bullion, or in a wedge of gold, and have none coined into current money, his treasure will not defray him as he travels. Tribulation is treasure in the nature of it, but it is not current money in the use of it, except we get nearer and nearer our home, heaven, by it. Another man may be sick too, and sick to death, and this affliction may lie in his bowels as gold in a mine, and be of no use to him. But this bell that tells me of his affliction digs out and applies that gold to me. If by this consideration of another's danger I take mine own into contemplation, and so secure myself by making my recourse to my God, who is our only security. 17. Expostulation My God, my God, is this one of thy ways of drying light out of darkness, to make him for whom this bell tolls, now in this dimness of his sight, to become a superintendent, an overseer, a bishop, to as many as hear his voice in this bell, and to give us a confirmation in this action? Is this one of thy ways, to raise strength out of weakness, to make him who cannot rise from his bed nor stir in his bed, come home to me, and in this sound give me the strength of healthy and vigorous instructions? Oh, my God, my God, what thunder is not a well-tuned symbol, what hoarseness, what harshness is not a clear organ, if thou be pleased to set thy voice to it? And what organ is not well played on, if thy hand be upon it? Thy voice, thy hand, is in this sound, and in this one sound I hear this whole concert. I hear thy Jacob call unto his sons and say, gather yourselves together, that I may tell you what shall befall you in the last days, Genesis 49.1. He says, that which I am now, you must be then. I hear thy Moses telling me, and all within the compass of this sound, this is the blessing therewith I bless you before my death, Deuteronomy 33.1, this that before your death you would consider your own in mine. I hear thy prophet saying to Hezekiah, set thy house in order, for thou shalt die and not live, 2 Kings 20.1. He makes use of his family, and calls this a setting of his house in order, to compose us to the meditation of death. I hear thy apostle saying, I think it meet to put you in remembrance, knowing that shortly I must go out of this tabernacle, 2 Peter 113. This is the publishing of his will, and this bell is our legacy, the applying of his present condition to our use. I hear that which makes all sounds music, and all music perfect. I hear thy son himself saying, let not your hearts be troubled, John 14.1. Only I hear this change, that whereas thy son says there, I go to prepare a place for you, this man in his sound says, I send to prepare you for a place, for a grave. But oh my God, my God, since heaven is glory and joy, why do not glorious and joyful things lead us, induce us to heaven? Thy legacies in thy first will, in the Old Testament, were plenty and victory, wine and oil, milk and honey, alliances of friends, ruin of enemies, peaceful hearts and cheerful countenances, and by these galleries thou broadest them into thy bedchamber, by these glories and joys, to the glories and joys of heaven. Why hast thou changed thine old way, and carried us by the ways of discipline and mortification, by the ways of mourning and lamentation, by the ways of miserable ends, and miserable anticipations of those miseries, in appropriating the exemplar miseries of others to ourselves, and usurping upon their miseries as our own, to our prejudice? Is the glory of heaven no perfecter in itself, but that it needs a foil of depression and ingloriousness in this world to set it off? Is the joy of heaven no perfecter in itself, but that it needs the sourness of this life to give it a taste? Is that joy and that glory, but a comparative glory and a comparative joy, not such in itself, but such in comparison of the joylessness and the ingloriousness of this world? I know, my God, it is far, far otherwise, as thou thyself, who art all, art made of no substances, so the joys and glory which are with thee, are made of none of these circumstances, essential joy and glory essential. But why, then, my God, wilt thou not begin them here? Pardon, O God, this unthankful rashness. I that ask why thou dost not, find even now in myself that thou dost. Such joy, such glory, as that I conclude upon myself, upon all, they that find not joys in their sorrows, glory in their dejections in this world, are in a fearful danger of missing both in the next. 17. Prayer. O eternal and most gracious God, who has been pleased to speak to us not only in the voice of nature who speaks in our hearts, and of thy word which speaks to our ears, but in the speech of speechless creatures, in Balaam's ass, in the speech of unbelieving men, in the confession of Pilate, in the speech of the devil himself, in the recognition and attestation of thy Son, I humbly accept thy voice in the sound of this sad and funeral bell. And first I bless thy glorious name, that in this sound and voice I can hear thy instructions in another man's to consider mine own condition, and to know that this bell which tolls for another before it come to ring out may take me in too. As death is the wages of sin it is due to me, as death is the end of sickness it belongs to me, and though so disobedient a servant as I may be afraid to die, yet to so merciful a master as thou, I cannot be afraid to come, and therefore into thy hands, O my God, I commend my spirit, a surrender which I know thou wilt accept, whether I live or die. For thy servant David made it, Psalm 31-5, when he put himself into thy protection for his life, and thy blessed son made it when he delivered up his soul at his death, declare thou thy will upon me, O Lord, for life or death in thy time. Receive my surrender of myself now, into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit. And being thus, O my God, prepared by thy correction, mellowed by thy chastisement, and conformed to thy will by thy spirit, having received thy pardon for my soul, and asking no reprieve for my body, I am bold, O Lord, to bend my prayers to thee for his assistance, the voice of whose bell hath called me to this devotion. Lay hold upon his soul, O God, till that soul have thoroughly considered his account, and how few minutes, so ever it have, to remain in that body, let the power of thy Holy Spirit recompense the shortness of time, and perfect his account before he pass away. Present his sin so to him, as that he may know that thou forgivest, and not doubt of thy forgiveness, let him stop upon the infiniteness of those sins, but dwell upon the infiniteness of thy mercy. Let him discern his own demerits, but wrap himself up in the merits of thy Son, Christ Jesus. Breathe inward comforts to his heart, and afford him the power of giving such outward testimonies thereof, as all that are about him may derive comforts from thence, and have this edification, even in this dissolution, that though the body may be going the way of all flesh, yet that soul is going the way of all saints. When thy Son cried out upon the cross, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? He spake not so much in his own person, as in the person of the church, and of his afflicted members, who in deep distresses might fear thy forsaking. This patient, almost blessed God, is one of them. In his behalf, and in his name, hear thy Son crying to thee, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me, and forsake him not? But with thy left hand lay his body in the grave, if that be thy determination upon him, and with thy right hand receive his soul into thy kingdom, and unite him and us in one communion of saints. Amen. DEVOTIONS APON EMERGENT OCCASIONS By John Dunn, Devotion 18 AT INDE MORTUUS EIS, SONITU CELERY, GUSUKE AGITADO THE BELL RINGS OUT AND TELLS ME IN HIM THAT I AM DEAD. 18. MEDITATION The bell rings out, the pulse thereof is changed, the tolling was a faint and intermitting pulse upon one side, this stronger and argues more in better life. His soul has gone out, and as a man who had a lease of one thousand years after the expiration of a short one, or an inheritance after the life of a man in a consumption, he has now entered into the possession of his better estate. His soul is gone wither. Whose side come in, or whose side go out? Nobody, yet everybody is sure he had one, and half none. If I will ask mere philosophers what the soul is, I shall find amongst them that will tell me it is nothing but the temperament and harmony and just an equal composition of the elements in the body which produces all those faculties which we ascribe to the soul, and so in itself is nothing, no separable substance that overlives the body. They see the soul as nothing else in other creatures, and they affect an impious humility to think as low of man. But if my soul were no more than the soul of a beast, I could not think so. That soul that can reflect upon itself, consider itself, is more than so. If I will ask, not mere philosophers, but mixed men, philosophical divines, how the soul, being a separate substance, enters into man, I shall find that some will tell me that it is by generation and procreation from parents, because they think it hard to charge the soul with the guiltiness of original sin if the soul were infused into a body in which it must necessarily grow foul, and contract original sin whether it will or no. And I shall find some that will tell me that it is by immediate infusion from God, because they think it hard to maintain an immortality in such a soul as should be begotten and derived with the body from mortal parents. If I will ask, not a few men, but almost whole bodies, whole churches, what becomes of the souls of the righteous at the departing thereof from the body, I shall be told by some that they attend an expiation, a purification in a place of torment, by some that they attend the fruition of the sight of God in a place of rest, but yet but of expectation, by some that they pass into an immediate possession of the presence of God. St. Augustine studied the nature of the soul as much as anything but the salvation of the soul, and he sent an express messenger to St. Hierome to consult of some things concerning the soul, but he satisfies himself with this. Let the departure of my soul to salvation be evident to my faith, and I care less how dark the entrance of my soul into my body be to my reason. It is the going out more than the coming in that concerns us. This soul the spell tells me is gone out wither. Who shall tell me that? I know not who it is, much less what he was, the condition of the man and the course of his life, which should tell me whether he is gone, I know not. I was not there in his sickness, nor at his death. I saw not his way, nor his end, nor can ask them who did, thereby to conclude or argue whether he is gone. But yet I have one nearer me than all these, my own charity. I ask that, and that tells me he is gone to everlasting rest and joy and glory. I owe him a good opinion. It is but thankful charity in me because I received benefit and instruction from him when his bell told, and I, being made the fitter to pray by that disposition wherein I was assisted by his occasion, did pray for him, and I pray not without faith, so I do charitably, so I do faithfully believe that that soul is gone to everlasting rest and joy and glory. But for the body, how poor a wretched thing is that! We cannot express it so fast as it grows worse and worse. That body, which scares three minutes since, was such a house as that that soul, which made but one step from thence to heaven, will scarce thoroughly content to leave that for heaven. That body hath lost the name of a dwelling house, because none dwells in it, and is making haste to lose the name of a body and dissolve into putrification. Who would not be affected to see a clear and sweet river in the morning grow a kennel of muddy land water by noon and condemned to the saltiness of the sea by night, and how lame a picture, how faint a representation is that of the precipitation of man's body to dissolution. Now all the parts built up and knit by a lovely soul, now but a statue of clay, and now these limbs melted off as if that clay were but snow, and now the whole house is but a handful of sand, so much dust, and but a peck of rubbish, so much bone. If he who, as this bell tells me is gone now, were some excellent artificer, who comes to him for a cloak or for a garment now? Or for counsel if he were a lawyer, if a magistrate for justice? Man before he hath his immortal soul hath a soul of sense, and a soul of vegetation before that. This immortal soul did not forbid other souls to be in us before, but when this soul departs it carries all with it. No more vegetation, no more sense. Such a mother-in-law is the earth in respect of our natural mother. In her womb we grew, and when she was delivered of us we were planted in some place, in some calling in the world. In the womb of the earth we diminish, and when she is delivered of us our grave opened for another. We are not transplanted but transported, our dust blown away with profane dust, with every wind. 18. Expostulation My God, my God, if expostulation be too bold a word, do thou mollify it with another. Let it be wonder in myself, let it be but problem to others. But let me ask, why wouldst thou not suffer those that serve thee in holy services, to do any office about the dead, Leviticus 21.1, or assist at their funeral? Thou hast no counselor, thou needst none. Thou hast no controller, thou admitst none. Why do I ask, in ceremonial things, as that was, any convenient reason is enough. Who can be sure to propose that reason that moved thee in the institution thereof? I satisfy myself with this, that in those times the Gentiles were over-full of an over-reverent respect to the memory of the dead. A great part of the idolatry of the nations flowed from that, an over-amorous devotion, an overzealous celebrating, and over studious preserving of the memories, and the pictures of some dead persons. And by the vain glory of men they entered into the world, wisdom 1414. And their statues and pictures contracted an opinion of divinity by age, that which was at first but a picture of a friend grew a God in time, as the wise men notes, they called them gods which were the work of an ancient hand, wisdom 1310. And some have assigned a certain time when a picture should come out of minority and be at age to be a God in 60 years after it is made. Those images of men that had life, and some idols of other things which never had any being, are by one common name called promiscuously dead. And for that the wise men reprehends the idolatry for health he prays to that which is weak, and for life he prays to that which is dead, wisdom 1318. Should we do so, says thy prophet, Isaiah 1819. Should we go from the living to the dead? So much ill then being occasioned by so much religious compliment exhibited to the dead, thou, O God, I think, wouldst therefore inhibit thy principal holy servants from contributing anything at all to this dangerous intimation of idolatry, and that the people might say, surely these dead men are not so much to be magnified as men mistake, since God will not suffer his holy officers so much as to touch them, not to see them. But these dangers being removed, thou, O my God, dost certainly allow that we should do offices of piety to the dead, and that we should draw instructions to piety from the dead. Is not this, O my God, a holy kind of raising up seed to thy dead brother, if I, by the meditation of his death, produce a better life in myself? It is the blessing upon Rubin, let Rubin live and not die, and let not his men be few, Deuteronomy 336, let him propagate many. And it is a melodiction, that that dyeth let it die, Zechariah 119, let it do no good in dying, for trees without fruit, thou by thy apostle, call twice dead, Jude 12. It is a second death, if none live the better by me after my death, by the manner of my death. Therefore may I justly think that thou made us that a way to convey to the Egyptians a fear of thee and a fear of death, that there was not a house where there was not one dead, Exodus 12.30. For thereupon the Egyptians said, We are all dead men. The death of others should cataclyse us to death. Thy Son Christ Jesus is the first begotten of the dead, Revelation 1.5. He rises first, the eldest brother, and he is my master in the science of death. But yet for me I am a younger brother, too, to this man who died now, and to every man whom I see or hear to die before me, and all they are ushers to me in the school of death. I take therefore that which thy servant David's wife said to him, to be said to me, If thou save not thy life tonight, tomorrow thou shalt be slain, 1 Samuel 19.11. If the death of this man work not upon me now, I shall die worse than if thou hadst not afforded me this help. For thou hast sent him in this bell to me, as thou didst send to the angel of Sardis, with commission to strengthen the things that remain, and that they are ready to die, Revelation 3.2, that in this weakness of body I might receive spiritual strength by those occasions. This is my string, that whether thou say to me, as thine angel said to Gideon, Peace be unto thee, Fear not, thou shalt not die, Judges 6.23, or whether thou say as unto Aaron, Thou shalt die there, Numbers 20.26, yet thou wilt preserve that which is ready to die, my soul from the worst death that of sin. Zimri died for his sins, says thy spirit, which he sinned in doing evil, and in his sin which he did to make Israel sin, First King 1619, for his sins his many sins, and then in his sin his particular sin. For my sins I shall die whensoever I die, for death is the wages of sin, but I shall die in my sin in that particular sin of resisting thy spirit, if I apply not thy assistances. Doth it not call us to a particular consideration, that thy blessed son varies his form of combination, and aggravates it in the variation, when he says to the Jews, because they refused the light offered, you shall die in your sin, John 8.21, and then when they proceeded to further disputations and vexations and temptations, he adds, you shall die in your sins, John 8.24. He multiplies the former expression to a plural. In this sin and in all your sins, doth not the resisting of thy particular helps at last draw upon us the guiltiness of all our former sins, may not the neglecting of this sound ministered to me in this man's death bring to me that misery so that I, whom the Lord of life loved so as to die for me, shall die, and a creature of mine own shall be immortal, that I shall die, and the worm of mine own conscience shall never die, Isaiah 66.24. 18. Prayer O eternal and most gracious God, I have a new occasion of thanks and a new occasion of prayer to thee from the ringing of this bell. Thou toldest me in the other voice that I was mortal and approaching to death. In this I may hear thee say, that I am dead in an irremediable, in an irrecoverable state for bodily health. If that be thy language in this voice, how infinitely am I bound to thy heavenly majesty for speaking so plainly unto me. For even that voice that I must die now is not the voice of a judge that speaks by way of condemnation, but of a physician that presents health in that. Thou presentest me death as a cure of my disease, not as the exaltation of it. If I mistake thy voice therein, if I overrun my pace and prevent thy hand, and imagine death more instant upon me than thou hast bid him be, yet the voice belongs to me. I am dead, I was born dead, and from the first laying of these mud walls in my conception they have moldered away, and the whole course of life is but an active death. Whether this voice instruct me that I am a dead man now, or remember me that I have been a dead man all this while, I humbly thank thee for speaking in this voice to my soul, and I humbly beseech thee also to accept my prayers in his behalf, by whose occasion this voice, this sound, is come to me. For though he be by death transplanted to thee, and so in possession of inexpressible happiness there, yet here upon earth thou hast given us such a portion of heaven as that though men dispute whether thy saints in heaven do know what we in earth are particular do stand in need of, yet without all disputation, we upon earth do know what thy saints in heaven lack yet for the consummation of their happiness, and therefore thou hast afforded us the dignity that we may pray for them. That therefore this soul now newly departed to thy kingdom may quickly return to a joyful reunion to that body which it hath left, and that we with it may soon enjoy the full consummation of all in body and soul, I humbly beg at thy hand, O our most merciful God, for thy son Christ Jesus' sake. That that blessed son of thine may have the consummation of his dignity by entering into his last office, the office of a judge, and may have society of human bodies in heaven, as well as he hath had ever of souls, and that as thou hateest sin itself, thy hate to sin may be expressed in the abolishing of all instruments of sin, the allurements of this world and the world itself, and all the temporary revenges of sin, the stings of sickness and of death, and all the castles and prisons and monuments of sin in the grave. That time may be swallowed up in eternity, and hope swallowed in possession, and ends swallowed in infiniteness, and all men ordained to salvation in body and soul be one entire and everlasting sacrifice to thee, where thou mayest receive delight from them, and they glory from thee forevermore. Amen. 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. Nineteen Meditation All this while the physicians themselves have been patients, patiently attending when they should see any land in this sea, any earth, any cloud, any indication of concoction in these waters. Any disorder of mine, any predermition of theirs, exalts the disease, accelerates the rages of it. No diligence accelerates the concoction, the maturity of the disease. They must stay till the season of the sickness come, until it be ripened of itself, and then they may put to their hand to gather it before it fall off, but they cannot hasten the ripening. Why should we look for it in a disease which is the disorder, the discord, the irregularity, the commotion and rebellion of the body? It were scarce a disease if it could be ordered and made obedient to our times. Why should we look for that in disorder, in a disease, when we cannot have it in nature, who is so regular and so pregnant, so forward to bring her work to perfection and to light? Yet we cannot awake the July flowers in January, nor retard the flowers of the spring to autumn. We cannot bid the fruits come in May, nor the leaves to stick on in December. A woman that is weak cannot put off her ninth month to a tenth for her delivery, and say she will stay till she be stronger, nor a queen cannot hasten it to a seventh, that she may be ready for some other pleasure. Nature, if we look for durable and vigorous effects, will not admit preventions, nor anticipations, nor obligations upon her, for they are pre-contracts, and she will be left to her liberty. Nature would not be spurred, nor forced to mend her pace, nor power, the power of man, greatness, loves not that kind of violence neither. There are of them that will give, that will do justice, that will pardon, but they have their own seasons for all these, and he that knows not them shall starve before that gift come, and ruin before the justice, and die before the pardon save him. Some tree bears no fruit, except much dung be laid about it, and justice comes not from some till they are richly maneuvered. Some trees require much visiting, much watering, much labor, and some men give not their fruits, but upon importunity. Some trees require incision, and pruning, and lopping. Some men must be intimidated and syndicated with commissions, before they will deliver the fruits of justice. Some trees require the early and the often access of the sun. Some men open not, but upon the favors and letters of court mediation. Some trees must be housed and kept within doors. Some men lock up not only their liberality, but their justice, and their compassion, till the solicitation of a wife, or a son, or a friend, or a servant turn the key. Reward is the season of one man, and importunity of another. Fear the season of one man, and favor of another. Friendship the season of one man, and natural affection of another. And he that knows not their seasons, nor cannot stay them, must lose the fruits. As nature will not, so power and greatness will not be put to change their seasons. And shall we look for this indulgence in a disease, or think to shake it off before it be ripe? All this while, therefore, we are but upon a defensive war, and that is but a doubtful state. Especially where they who are besieged do know the best of their defenses, and do not know the worst of their enemy's power, when they cannot mend their works within, and the enemy can increase his numbers without. Oh, how many far more miserable, and far more worthy to be less miserable than I, are besieged with this sickness, and lack their sentinels, their physicians to watch, and lack their munition, their cordials to defend, and perish before the enemy's weakness might invite them to sally, before the disease show any declination, or admit any way of working upon itself. In me the siege is so far slackened, as that we may come to fight, and so die in the field, if I die, and not in a prison. 19. Expostulation My God, my God, Thou art a direct God. May I not say a literal God, a God that would be understood literally, and according to the plain sense of all that Thou sayest. But Thou art also, Lord, I intend it to thy glory, and let no profane misinterpreter abuse it to thy diminution. Thou art a figurative, a metaphorical God too. A God in whose words there is such a height of figures, such voyages, such peregrinations to fetch remote and precious metaphors, such extensions, such spreadings, such curtains of allegories, such third heavens of hyperboles, so harmonious allocutions, so retired and so reserved expressions, so commanding persuasions, so persuading commandments, such sinews even in thy milk, and such things in thy words, as all profane authors seem of the seed of the serpents that creeps, Thou art the dove that flies. O, what words but thine can express the inexpressible texture and composition of thy word, in which to one man, that argument that binds his faith to believe that to be the word of God, is the reverent simplicity of the word, and to another the majesty of the word, and in which two men equally pious may meet, and one wonder that all should not understand it, and the other as much that any man should. So, Lord, thou givest us the same earth to labor on and to lie in, a house and a grave of the same earth. So, Lord, thou givest us the same word for our satisfaction and for our inquisition, for our instruction, and for our admiration, too. For there are places that thy servants Hiram and Augustine would scarce believe, when they grew warm by mutual letters, of one another, that they understood them, and yet both Hiram and Augustine call upon persons whom they knew to be far weaker than they thought one another, old women and young maids, to read the scriptures without confining them to these or those places. Neither art thou thus a figurative, a metaphorical God in thy word only, but in thy works, too. The style of thy works, the phrase of thine actions, is metaphorical. The institution of thy whole worship in the old law was a continual allegory. Types and figures overspread all, and figures flowed into figures, and poured themselves out into farther figures. Circumcision carried a figure of baptism, and baptism carries a figure of that purity which we shall have in perfection in the new Jerusalem. Neither did thou speak and work in this language only in the time of thy prophets, but since thou spocused in thy Son it is so, too. How often, how much more often, doth thy Son call himself away, and a light, and a gate, and a vine, and bread, than the Son of God, or of man? How much often, or doth he exhibit a metaphorical Christ, than a real alliteral? This hath occasioned thine ancient servants, whose delight it was to write after thy copy, to proceed the same way in their expositions of the scriptures, and in their composing both of public liturgies and of private prayers to thee, to make their accesses to thee in such a kind of language as thou wast pleased to speak to them, in a figurative, in a metaphorical language, in which manner I am bold to call the comfort which I receive now in this sickness, in the indication of the concoction and maturity thereof, in certain clouds and residences, which the physicians observe, a discovering of land from sea after a long and tempestuous voyage. But wherefore, O my God, hast thou presented to us the afflictions and calamities of this life in the name of waters, so often in the name of waters and deep waters and seas of waters? Must we look to be drowned? Are they bottomless? Are they boundless? That is not the dialect of thy language. Thou hast given a remedy against the deepest water by water, against the inundation of sin by baptism, and the first life that thou gave us to any creatures was in waters. Therefore thou dost not threaten us with an irremediableness when our affliction is a sea. It is so if we consider ourselves. So thou callest Genezareth, which was but a lake, and not salt, a sea. So thou callest the Mediterranean Sea, still the Great Sea, because the inhabitants saw no other sea. They that dwelt there thought a lake a sea, and the others thought a little sea the greatest, and we that know not the afflictions of others call our own the heaviest. But, O my God, that is truly great that overflows the channel, that is really a great affliction which is above my strength. But thou, O God, art my strength, and then what can be above it? Mountains shake with the swelling of thy sea, Psalm 46-3. Secular mountains, men strong in power. Spiritual mountains, men strong in grace, are shaken with afflictions. But thou layest up thy sea in storehouses, Psalm 33-7. Even thy corrections are of thy treasure, and thou wilt not waste thy corrections. When they have done their service to humble thy patient, thou wilt call them in again, for thou giveest the sea thy decree, that the waters should not pass thy commandment, Proverbs 8-29. All our waters shall run into Jordan, and thy servants pass Jordan dry foot, Joshua 3-17. They shall run into the red sea, the sea of thy son's blood, and the red sea, that red sea, drowns none of thine. But they that sail on the sea tell of the danger thereof, Sirac 43-24. I that am yet in this affliction, O thee the glory of speaking of it. But as the wise man bids me, I say, I may speak much and come short, wherefore in some thou art all, Sirac 43-27. Since thou art so, O my God, an affliction is a sea too deep for us, what is our refuge? Thine ark, thy ship. In all other afflictions, those means which thou hast ordained in this sea, in sickness, thy ship is thy physician. Thou hast made a way in the sea, and a safe path in the waters, showing that thou canst save them all dangers, yea, though a man went to sea without art, Wisdom 14-3. Yet where I find all that I find this added, nevertheless thou wouldst not that the work of thy wisdom should be idle, Wisdom 14-5. Thou canst save without means, but thou hast told no man that thou wilt. Thou has told every man that thou wilt not, Acts 27-11. When the Centurion believed the master of the ship more than Saint Paul, they were all opened to a great danger. This was a preferring of thy means before thee, the author of the means. But, my God, though thou beest everywhere, I have no promise of appearing to me, but in thy ship thy blessed son preached out of a ship, Luke 5-3. The means is preaching, he did that, and the ship was a type of the church, he did it there. Thou gave us Saint Paul the lives of all them that sailed with him, Acts 27-24. If they had not been in the ship with him, the gift had not extended to them. As soon as thy son was come out of the ship, immediately there met him out of the tombs, a man with an unclean spirit, and no man could hold him, no not with chains, Mark 5-2. Thy son needed no use of means, yet there we apprehend the danger to us, if we leave the ship, the means, in this case the physician. But as they are ships to us in those seas, so is there a ship to them too in which they are to stay. Give me leave, oh my God, to assist myself with such a construction of these words of thy servant Paul to the Centurion, when the mariners would have left the ship. Except these abide in the ship, you cannot be safe, Acts 27-31. Except they who are our ships, the physicians, abide in that which is theirs, and our ship, the truth, and the sincere and religious worship of thee and thy gospel, we cannot promise ourselves so good safety. For though we have our ship, the physician, he hath not his ship, religion. And means are not means, but in their concatenation, as they depend and are changed together. The ships are great, says thy apostle, but a helm turns them, James 3-4. The men are learned, but their religion turns their labors to good, and therefore it was a heavy curse when the third part of the ships perished, Revelation 8-9, it is a heavy case where either all religion or true religion should forsake many of these ships whom thou hast sent to convey us over these seas. But, oh my God, my God, since I have my ship and they theirs, I have them and they have thee, why are we yet no nearer land? As soon as thy son's disciple had taken him into the ship, immediately the ship was at the land whither they went, John 6-21. Why have not they and I this dispatch? Everything is immediately done, which is done when thou wouldst have it done. Thy purpose terminates every action, and what was done before, that is undone yet. Shall that slacken my hope? Thy profit from thee hath forbidden it. It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord. Lamentations 3-26. Thou putest off many judgments till the last day, and many pass this life without any. And shall not I endure the putting off of thy mercy for a day? And yet, oh my God, thou putest me not to that, for the assurance of future mercy is present mercy. But what is my assurance now? What is my seal? It is but a cloud, that which my physicians call a cloud, in that which gives them their indication. But a cloud, thy great seal to all the worlds, the rainbow that secured the world forever from drowning, was but a reflection upon a cloud. A cloud itself was a pillar which guided the church, Exodus 13-21, and the glory of God not only was, but appeared in a cloud, Exodus 14-10. Let me return, oh my God, to the consideration of thy servant Elijah's proceeding in a time of desperate drought, 1 Kings 18-43. He bids them look towards the sea, they look and see nothing. He bids them again and again seven times, and the seventh time they saw a little cloud rising out of the sea, and presently they had their desire of rain. Seven days, oh my God, have we looked for this cloud, and now we have it. None of thy indications are frivolous, thou makest thy signs seals, and thy seals effects, and thy effects consolation and restitution, wheresoever thou mayest receive glory by that way. 19. Prayer. O eternal and most gracious God, who though thou passest over infinite millions of generations before thou cameest to a creation of this world, yet when thou beganst didst never intermit that work, but continuedst day to day till thou hadst perfected all the work, and opposed it in the hands and rest of a Sabbath, though thou have been pleased to glorify thyself in a long exercise of thy patience, with an expectation of thy declaration of thyself in this my sickness. Yet since thou hast now of thy goodness afforded that which affords us some hope, if that be still the way of thy glory, proceed in that way and perfect that work, and establish me in a Sabbath and rest in thee by this thysil of bodily restitution. Thy priests came up to thee by steps in the temple. Thy angels came down to Jacob by steps upon the ladder. We find no stair by which thou thyself cameest to Adam in paradise, nor to Sodom in thy anger. For thou and thou only art able to do all at once. But, O Lord, I am not weary of thy pace, nor weary of mine own patience. I provoke thee not with a prayer, not with a wish, not with a hope, to more haste than consists with thy purpose, nor look that any other thing should have entered into thy purpose but thy glory. To hear thy steps coming towards me is the same comfort as to see thy face present with me. Whether thou do the work of a thousand years in a day, or extend the work of a day to a thousand years, as long as thou workest, it is light and comfort. Heaven itself is but an extension of the same joy, and an extension of this mercy, to proceed at thy leisure in the way of restitution, is a manifestation of heaven to me here upon earth. From that people to whom thou appeared in signs and in types, the Jews, thou art departed, because they trusted in them. But from thy church, to whom thou hast appeared in thyself, in thy son, thou wilt never depart, because we cannot trust too much in him. Though thou have afforded me these signs of restitution, yet if I confide in them and begin to say, all was but a natural accident, and nature begins to discharge herself, and she will perfect the whole work, my hope shall vanish because it is not in thee. If thou shouldst take thy hand utterly from me and have nothing to do with me, nature alone were able to destroy me. But if thou withdraw thy helping hand, alas, how frivolous are the helps of nature, how impotent the assistance is of art. As therefore the morning dew is upon of the evening fatness, so, O Lord, let this day's comfort be the earnest of tomorrows, so far as may conform me entirely to thee, to what end, and by what way, so ever thy mercy have appointed me. End of Devotion 19 Devotion 20 from Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions by John Dunn. Devotion 20 Eid aghunt. Upon these indications of digested matter, they proceed to purge. 20 Meditation Though councils seem rather to consist of spiritual parts than action, yet action is the spirit and the soul of council. Councils are not always determined in resolutions. We cannot always say this was concluded. Actions are always determined in effects. We can say this was done. Then have laws their reverence and their majesty when we see the judge upon the bench executing them. Then have councils of war their impressions and their operations when we see the seal of an army set to them. It was an ancient way of celebrating the memory of such as deserved well of the state to afford them that kind of statutory representation, which was then called Hermes, which was the head and shoulders of a man standing upon a cube, but those shoulders without arms and hands. All together it figured a constant supporter of the state by his council. But in this hieroglyphic which they made without hands, they passed their consideration no farther but that the councilor should be without hands, so far as not to reach out his hand to foreign temptations of bribes in matters of council, and that it was not necessary that the head should employ his own hand, that the same men should serve in the execution which assisted in the council. But that there should not be long hands to every head, action to every council, was never intended so much as in figure and representation. For as matrimony is scarce to be called matrimony where there is a resolution against the fruits of matrimony against the having of children, footnote, august, and footnote. So councils are not councils, but illusions, where there is from the beginning no purpose to execute the determinations of those councils. The arts and sciences are most properly referred to the head, that is their proper element and sphere, but yet the art of proving, logic, and the art of persuading, rhetoric, are deduced to the hand, and that expressed by a hand contracted into a fist, and this by a hand enlarged and expanded, and ever more the power of man and the power of God himself is expressed so. All things are in his hand, neither is God so often presented to us by names that carry our consideration upon council as upon execution of council. He oftener is called the Lord of Hosts than by all other names that may be referred to the other signification. Hereby, therefore, we take into our meditation the slippery condition of man, whose happiness in any kind, the defect of any one thing conducing to that happiness, may ruin. But it must have all the pieces to make it up. Without council I had not got thus far, without action and practice, I should go no farther towards hell. But what is the present necessary action? Purging, a withdrawing, a violating of nature, a farther weakening. O dear price, an O strange way of addition to do it by subtraction, a restoring nature to violate nature, of providing strength by increasing weakness. Was I not sick before? And is it a question of comfort to be asked now, did your physique make you sick? Was that it that my physique promised to make me sick? This is another step upon which we may stand and see farther into the misery of man, the time, the season of his misery. It must be done now. O over cunning, over watchful, over vigilant, and over sociable misery of man, that seldom comes alone, but when it may accompany other miseries, and so put one another into the higher exaltation and better heart. I am ground even to an attenuation and must proceed to evacuation, always to exonition and annihilation. 20. Expostulation My God, my God, the God of order, but yet not of ambition, who assignest place to everyone, but not contention for place, when shall it be thy pleasure to put an end to all these quarrels for spiritual precedences? When shall men leave their uncharitable disputations, which is to take place, faith or repentance, and which when we consider faith and works? The head and the hand, too, are required to a perfect natural man, counsel and action, too, to a perfect civil man, faith and works, too, to him that is perfectly spiritual. But because it is easily said, I believe, and because it doth not easily lie in proof, nor is easily demonstrable by any evidence taken from my heart, for who sees that, who searches those roles, whether I do believe or know, is it not therefore, oh my God, that thou dost so frequently, so earnestly, refer us to the hand, to the observation of actions? There is a little suspicion, a little imputation, laid upon overtedious and delatory counsels. Many good occasions slip away in long consultations, and it may be a degree of sloth to be too long in mending nets, though that must be done. He that observeth the wind shall not sow, and he that regardeth the clouds shall not reap Ecclesiastes 11.4. That is, he that is too delatory, too superstitious in these observations, and studies but the excuse of his own idleness in them. But that which the same wise and royal servant of thine says in another place, all accept and ask no comment upon it, he becomeeth poor that dealeth with a slack hand, for the hand of the diligent maketh rich, Proverbs 10.4. All evil imputed to the absence, all good attributed to the presence of the hand. I know, my God, and I bless thy name for knowing it, for all good knowledge is from thee, that thou considerest the heart, but thou takeest not off thine eye till thou come to the hand. Nay, my God, doth not thy spirit intimate, that thou beginnest where we begin, at least that thou allowest us to begin there, when thou orderest thine own answer to thine own question, who shall ascend unto the hill of the Lord? Thus he that hath clean hands and a pure heart, Psalm 24.3. Dost thou not at least send us first to the hand, and is not the work of their hands, that declaration of their holy zeal, in the present execution of manifest idolaters, called a consecration of themselves, Exodus 32.29, by thy holy spirit? Their hands are called all themselves, for even counsel itself goes under that name in thy word, who knowest best how to give right names. Because the counsel of the priests assisted David, 1 Samuel 22.17, Saul says the hand of the priest is with David, and that which is often said by Moses, is very often repeated by thy other prophets. These and these things the Lord spake, Leviticus 8.36, and the Lord said, and the Lord commanded, not by the counsels, not by the voice, but by the hand of Moses, and by the hand of the prophets. Ever more we are referred to our evidence of others, and of ourselves, to the hand, to action, to works. There is something before it, believing, and there is something after it, suffering. But in the most eminent and obvious, and conspicuous place stands doing. Why then, oh my God, my blessed God, in the ways of my spiritual strength, come I so slow to action. I was whipped by thy rod before I came to consultation, to consider my state, and shall I go no farther? As he that would describe a circle in paper, if he have brought that circle within one inch of finishing, yet if he remove his compass, he cannot make it up a perfect circle, except he fall to work again, to find out the same center. So, through setting that foot of my compass upon thee, I have gone so far as to the consideration of myself, yet if I depart from thee, my center, all is imperfect. This proceeding to action, therefore, is a returning to thee, and a working upon myself by thy physique, by thy purgative physique, a free and entire evacuation of my soul by confession. The working of purgative physique is violent and contrary to nature. Oh, Lord, I decline not this potion of confession, however it may be contrary to a natural man. To take physique and not according to the right method is dangerous. Footnote, Galen, and footnote. Oh, Lord, I decline not that method in this physique, in things that burden my conscience, to make my confession to him, into whose hands thou hast put the power of absolution. I know that physique may be made so pleasant as that it may easily be taken, but not so pleasant as the virtue and nature of the medicine be extinguished, footnote, Galen, and footnote. I know I am not submitted to such a confession as is a rack and torture of the conscience, but I know I am not exempt from all. If it were merely problematical, left merely indifferent whether we should take this physique, use this confession, or know. A great physician acknowledges this to have been his practice, to minister to many things which he was not sure would do good, but never any other thing but such as he was sure would do no harm. Footnote, Galen, and footnote. The use of this spiritual physique can certainly do no harm, and the Church hath always thought that it might, and doubtless many humble souls have found, that it hath done them good. I will therefore take the cup of salvation and call upon thy name, Psalm 116, 13. I will find this cup of compunction as full as I have formerly filled the cups of worldly confections, that so I may escape the cup of malediction and irrevocable destruction that depends upon that. And since thy blessed and glorious Son being offered in the way to his execution a cup of stupification, Mark 1523, to take away the sense of his pain, a charity afforded to the condemned persons ordinarily in those places and times, refused that ease and embraced the whole torment, I take not this cup, but this vessel of mine own sins into my contemplation, and I pour them out here according to the motions of thy Holy Spirit, and anywhere according to the ordinances of thy Holy Church. 20. Prayer O eternal and most gracious God, who having married man and woman together and made them one flesh, wouldst have them also to become one soul, so as they might maintain a sympathy in their affections, and have a conformity to one another in the accidents of this world good or bad. So having married this soul and this body in me, I humbly beseech thee that my soul may look and make her use of thy merciful proceedings towards my bodily restitution, and go the same way to a spiritual. I am come by thy goodness to the use of thine ordinary means for my body, to wash away those peck and humours that endangered it. I have, O Lord, a river in my body, but a sea in my soul, and a sea swollen into the depth of a deluge above the sea. Thou hast raised up certain hills in me here too for, by which I might have stood safe from these inundations of sin. Even our natural faculties are a hill, and might preserve us from some sin. Education, study, observation, example, are hills too, and might preserve us from some. Thy Church and thy Word and thy sacraments and thine ordinances are hills above these. Thy spirit of remorse and compunction and repentance for former sin are hills too. And to the top of all these hills thou hast brought me here too for. But this deluge, this inundation, is God above all my hills, and I have sinned and sinned and multiplied sin to sin, after all these thy assistances against sin, and where is their water enough to wash away this deluge. There is a red sea greater than this ocean, and there is a little spring through which this ocean may pour itself into that red sea. Let thy spirit of true contrition and sorrow pass all my sins through these eyes into the wounds of thy Son, and I shall be clean, and my soul so much better purged than my body, as it is ordained for better and a longer life. End of Devotion 20 Devotion 21 From Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions by John Dunn Devotion 21 God prospers their practice, and he, by them, calls Lazarus out of his tomb, me out of my bed. 21 Meditation If man had been left alone in this world at first, shall I think that he would not have fallen? If there had been no woman, would not man have served to have been his own tempter? When I see him now subject to infinite weaknesses, fall into infinite sin without any foreign temptations, shall I think he would have had none if he had been alone? God saw that man needed a helper if he should be well, but to make woman ill, the devil saw that there needed no third. When God and we were alone in Adam, that was not enough. When the devil and we were alone in Eve, it was enough. Oh, what a giant is man when he fights against himself, and what a dwarf when he needs or exercises his own assistance for himself. I cannot rise out of my bed till the physician enable me, nay, I cannot tell that I am able to rise till he tell me so. I do nothing, I know nothing of myself. How little and how impotent a piece of the world is any man alone, and how much less a piece of himself is that man, so little as that when it falls out, as it falls out in some cases, that more misery and more oppression should be in ease to a man, he cannot give himself that miserable addition of more misery. A man that is pressed to death and might be eased by more weights cannot lay those more weights upon himself. He can sin alone and suffer alone, but not repent, not be absolved without another. Another tells me I may rise, and I do so. But is every rising a preferment, or is every present preferment a station? I am readyer to fall to the earth, now I am up, than I was when I lay in the bed. O perverse way, irregular motion of man, even rising itself is the way to ruin. How many men are raised, and then do not fill the place they are raised to? No corner of any place can be empty, there can be no vacuity. If that man do not fill the place, other men will. Complaints of his insufficiency will fill it. Nay, such an abhorring is there in nature of vacuity, that if there be but an imagination of not filling in any man, that which is but imagination, neither will fill it, that is, rumor and voice, and that it will be given out upon no ground but imagination, and no man knows whose imagination, that he is corrupt in his place, or insufficient in his place, and another prepared to succeed him in his place. A man rises sometimes and stands not, because he doth not or is not believed to fill his place, and sometimes he stands not because he overfills his place. He may bring so much virtue, so much justice, so much integrity to the place, as shall spoil the place, burden the place. His integrity may be a libel upon his predecessor, and cast an infamy upon him, and a burden upon his successor to proceed by example, and to bring the place itself to an undervalue and the market to an uncertainty. I am up, and I seem to stand, and I go round, and I am a new argument of the new philosophy, that the earth moves round. Why may I not believe that the whole earth moves in a round motion, though that seemed to me to stand, when as I seem to stand to my company, and yet am carried in a giddy and circular motion as I stand? Man hath no center but misery, there and only there is he fixed, and sure to find himself. How little so ever he be raised, he moves and moves in a circle giddily, and as in the heavens there are but a few circles that go about the whole world, but many epicycles, and other lesser circles, but yet circles, so of those men who are raised and put into circles, few of them move from place to place, and pass through many and beneficial places, but fall into little circles, and within a step or two are at their end, and not so well as they were in the center from which they were raised. Everything serves to exemplify, to illustrate man's misery, but I need go no farther than myself, for a long time I was not able to rise, at last I must be raised by others, and now I am up, I am ready to sink lower than before. 21. Expostulation My God, my God, how large a glass of the next world is this! As we have an art to cast from one glass to another, and so to carry the species a great way off, so hast thou that way much more. We shall have a resurrection in heaven, the knowledge of that thou castest by another glass upon us here. We feel that we have a resurrection from sin, and that by another glass too. We see we have a resurrection of the body from the miseries and calamities of this life. This resurrection of my body shows me the resurrection of my soul, and both here severally, of both together hereafter. Since thy martyrs under the altar press thee with their solicitation for the resurrection of the body to glory, thou wouldst pardon me if I should press thee by prayer for the accomplishing of this resurrection, which thou hast begun in me to health. But, oh my God, I do not ask where I might ask amiss, nor beg that which perchance might be worse for me. I have a bed of sin, delight in sin is a bed. I have a grave of sin, senselessness of sin is a grave, and where Lazarus had been four days, I have been fifty years in this putrification. Why dost thou not call me as thou didst him with a loud voice, John 1143, since my soul is as dead as his body was? I need thy thunder, oh my God, thy music will not serve me. Thou hast called thy servants, who are to work upon us in thine ordinance, by all these loud names, winds, and chariots, and falls of waters. Where thou wouldst be heard, thou wilt be heard. When thy son concurred with thee to the making of man, there is but a speaking, but a saying. There, oh blessed and glorious trinity, was none to hear but you three, and you easily hear one another, because you say the same things. But when thy son came to the work of redemption, thou spokeest, John 1228, and they that heard it took it for thunder, and thy son himself cried with a loud voice upon the crossed, vice, Matthew 27, 46, and 50, as he who was to prepare his coming, John Baptist, was the voice of a crier and not of a whisperer. Still, if it be thy voice, it is a loud voice. These words, says thy Moses, thou spokeest with a great voice, and thou addest no more, Deuteronomy 522, says he there. That which thou hast said is evident, and it is evident that none can speak so loud, none can bind us to hear him as we must thee. The Most High uttered his voice. What was his voice? The Lord thundered from heaven, 2 Samuel 2214. It might be heard. But this voice, thy voice, is also a mighty voice, Psalm 6833. Not only mighty in power it may be heard, nor mighty in obligation it should be heard, but mighty in operation it will be heard. And therefore hast thou bestowed a whole psalm, Psalm 29, upon us, to lead us to the consideration of thy voice. It is such a voice as that thy son says, the dead shall hear it, John 525, and that is my state. And why, O God, dost thou not speak to me in that effectual loudness? Saint John heard a voice, and he turned about to see the voice, Revelation 112. Sometimes we are too curious of the instrument by what man God speaks, but thou speakest floutest when thou speakest to the heart. There was silence, and I heard a voice, says one to the servant Job, Job 416. I hearken after thy voice in thine ordinances, and I seek not a whispering in conventacles. But yet, O my God, speak louder, that so, though I do hear thee now, then I may hear nothing but thee. My sins cry aloud, Cain's murder did so. My afflictions cry aloud. The floods have lifted up their voice, and waters are afflictions. But thou, O Lord, art mightier than the voice of many waters, Psalm 93, 3 and 4. Then many temporal, many spiritual afflictions, than any of either kind. And why dost thou not speak to me in that voice? What is man, and where to serveth he? What is his good, and what is his evil? Surak 18.8. My bed of sin is not evil, not desperately evil, for thou dost call me out of it, but my rising out of it is not good, not perfectly good, if thou call not louder, and hold me now I am up. O my God, I am afraid of a fearful application of those words, when a man hath done, then he begineth, Surak 5.7. When this body is unable to sin, his sinful memory sins over his old sins again, and that which thou wouldst have us to remember for compunction we remember with delight. Bring him to me in his bed, that I may kill him, 1 Samuel 19.15, says Saul of David. Thou hast not said so, that is not thy voice. Joash's own servants slew him when he was sick in his bed, 2 Chronicles 24.25. Thou hast not suffered that, that my servants should so much as neglect me, or be weary of me in my sickness. Thou threatenest, that as a shepherd takes out of the mouth of the lion two legs or a piece of an ear, so shall the children of Israel that dwell in Samaria in the corner of a bed, and in Damascus in a couch be taken away, Amos 3.12. And even they that are secure from danger shall perish. How much more might I, who was in the bed of death, die? But thou hast not so dealt with me. As they brought out sick persons in beds, that thy servant Peter's shadow might overshadow them, Acts 5.15, thou hast, oh my God, overshadowed me, refreshed me. But when wilt thou do more? When wilt thou do all? When wilt thou speak in thy loud voice? When wilt thou bid me take up my bed and walk, Matthew 9.6? As my bed is my afflictions, when shall I bear them, so as to subdue them? As my bed is my afflictions, when shall I bear them, so as not to murmur at them? When shall I take up my bed and walk? Not lie down upon it, as it is my pleasure, not sink under it, as it is my correction? But, oh my God, my God, the God of all flesh and of all spirit, to let me be content with that in my fainting spirit, which thou declarest in this decayed flesh, that as this body is content to sit still, that it may learn to stand, and to learn by standing to walk, and by walking to travel. So my soul, by obeying this voice of rising, may by a farther and farther growth of thy grace proceed so, and be so established, as may remove all suspicions, all jealousies between D and me, and may speak and hear in such a voice, as that still I may be acceptable to thee, and satisfied from thee. 21. Prayer O eternal and most gracious God, who hast made little things to signify great, and conveyed the infinite merits of thy Son in the water of baptism, and in the bread and wine of thy other sacrament unto us, receive the sacrifice of my humble thanks, that thou hast not only afforded me the ability to rise out of this bed of weariness and discomfort, but hast also made this bodily rising by thy grace and earnest of a second resurrection from sin, and of a third to everlasting glory. Thy Son himself, always infinite in himself and incapable of addition, was yet pleased to grow in the virgin's womb, and to grow in stature in the sight of men. Thy good purposes upon me, I know, have the determination and perfection in thy holy will upon me. There thy graces, and there I am altogether, but manifest them so unto me in thy seasons and in thy measures and degrees, that I may not only have that comfort of knowing thee to be infinitely good, but that also of finding thee to be every day better and better to me, and that as thou gavest St. Paul the messenger of Satan, to humble him so for my humiliation, thou mayest give me thyself in this knowledge, that what grace soever thou afford me to-day, yet I should perish to-morrow if I had not had to-morrow's grace too. Therefore I beg of thee my daily bread, and as thou gavest me the bread of sorrow for many days, and since the bread of hope for some, and this day the bread of possessing, in rising by that strength, which thou, the God of all strength, hast infused into me, so, O Lord, continue to me the bread of life, the spiritual bread of life in a faithful assurance in thee, the sacramental bread of life in a worthy receiving of thee, and the more real bread of life in an everlasting union to thee. I know, O Lord, that when thou hast created angels, and they saw thee produce fowl, and fish, and beasts, and worms, they did not improtune thee, and say, Shall we have no better creatures than these, no better companions than these, but stay thy leisure, and then headman delivered over to them, not much inferior in nature to themselves. No more do I, O God, now that by thy first mercy I am able to rise, improtune thee for present confirmation of health, nor now that by thy mercy I am brought to see that thy correction hath brought medicinally upon me, presume I upon that spiritual strength I have. But as I acknowledge that my bodily strength is subject to every puff of wind, so is my spiritual strength to every blast of vanity. Keep me, therefore, still, O my gracious God, in such a proportion of both strengths as I may still have something to thank thee for, which I have received, and still something to pray for and ask at thy hand. DEVOTIONS UPON EMERGENT ACCASIONS BY JOHN DUNN DEVOTION 22 SIT MORBIE FOMIS TIBIKURA The physicians consider the root and occasion, the embers and coals, in fuel of the disease, and seek to purge or correct that. 22. MEDITATION How ruinous a farm hath man taken in taking himself! How ready is the house every day to fall down, and how is all the ground overspread with weeds, all the body with diseases? Where not only every turf, but every stone bears weeds. Not only every muscle of the flesh, but every bone of the body hath some infirmity. Every little flint upon the face of the soil hath some infectious weed. Every tooth in our head such a pain as a constant man is afraid of, and yet ashamed of that fear, of that sense of the pain. How dear and how often a rent doth man pay for his farm! He pays twice a day in double meals, and how little time he hath to raise his rent. How many holidays to call him from his labor? Every day is half holiday, half spent in sleep. What reparations and subsidies and contributions he is put to besides his rent? What medicines besides his diet, and what inmates he is feigned to take in besides his own family? What infectious diseases from other men? Adam might have had paradise for dressing and keeping it, and then his rent was not improved to such a labor as would have made his grouse sweat, and yet he gave it over. How far greater a rent do we pay for this farm, this body, who pay ourselves, who pay the farm itself, and cannot live upon it? Neither is our labor at an end when we have cut down some weed as soon as it sprung up, corrected some violent and dangerous accident of a disease which would have destroyed speedily, nor when we have pulled up that weed from the very root, recovered entirely and soundly from that particular disease. But the whole ground is of an ill nature, the whole soil ill disposed. There are inclinations, there is a propenseness to diseases in the body, out of which, without any other disorder, diseases will grow, and so we are put to a continual labor upon this farm, to a continual study of the whole complexion and constitution of our body. In the distempers and diseases of soils, sourness, dryness, weeping, any kind of barrenness, the remedy and the physique is, for a great part, sometimes in themselves. Sometimes the very situation relieves them. The hanger of a hill will purge and vent his own malignant moisture, and the burning of the upper turf of some ground, as health from cauterizing, puts a new and a vigorous youth into that soil, and there rises a kind of phoenix out of the ashes, a fruitfulness out of that which was barren before, and by that which is the barrenest of all ashes. And where the ground cannot give itself physics, yet it receives physics from other grounds, from other soils, which are not the worst for having contributed that help to them from marl in other hills, or from slimy sand in other shores, grounds help themselves, or hurt not other grounds from whence they receive help. But I have taken a farm at this hard rent, and upon those heavy covenants, that it can afford itself no help, no part of my body, if it were cut off, could cure another part, in some cases it might preserve a sound part, but in no case recover an infected. And if my body may have had any physics, any medicine from another body, one man from the flesh of another man, as by mummy or any such composition, it must be from a man that is dead, and not as in other soils, which are never the worst for contributing their marl or their fat slime to my ground. There is nothing in the same man to help man, nothing in mankind to help one another, in this sort by way of physics, but that he who ministers the health is in as ill case as he that receives it would have been, if he had not had it, for he from whose body the physics comes is dead. When therefore I took this farm, undertook this body, I undertook to drain not a marsh, but a moat, where there was not water mingled to offend, but all was watered. I undertook to perfume dung, where no one part but all was equally unsavory. I undertook to make such a thing wholesome as was not poisoned by any manifest quality, intense heat or cold, but poisoned in the whole substance and in the specific form of it. To cure the sharp accidents of diseases is a great work. To cure the disease itself is greater. But to cure the body, the root, the occasion of diseases, is a work reserved for the great physician, which he doth never any other way but by glorifying these bodies in the next world. 22. Expostulation My God, my God, what am I put to when I am put to consider and put off the root, the fuel, the occasion of my sickness? What Hippocrates, what Galen, could show me that in my body? It lies deeper than so, it lies in my soul. And deeper than so, for we may well consider the body before the soul came before inanimation to be without sin, and the soul before it came to the body before that infection to be without sin. Sin is the root and the fuel of all sickness, and yet that which destroys body and soul is in neither but in both together. It is the union of the body and soul, and, oh my God, could I prevent that, or can I dissolve that? The root and the fuel of my sickness is my sin, my actual sin. But even that sin hath another root, another fuel, original sin. And can I divest that? Wilt thou bid me to separate the leaven that a lump of dough hath received, or the salt that the water hath contracted from the sea? Dost thou look that I should so look to the fuel or embers of sin that I never take fire? The whole world is a pile of faggots upon which we are laid, and, as though there were no other, we are the bellows. Ignorance blows the fire. He that touched any unclean thing, though he knew it not, became unclean, Leviticus 5, 2, and a sacrifice was required, therefore a sin imputed, though it were done in ignorance, Num. 1524. Ignorance blows this coal, but then knowledge much more, for there are that know thy judgments, and yet not only do, but have pleasure in others that do against them, Romans 132. Nature blows this coal. By nature we are children of wrath, Ephesians 2, 3. And the law blows it. Thy Apostle Saint Paul found that sin took occasion by the law, that therefore because it is forbidden we do some things. If we break the law, we sin. Sin is the transgression of the law, 1 John 3, 4. And sin itself becomes a law in our members, Romans 723. Our fathers have imprinted the seed, infused a spring of sin in us. As a fountain cast without her waters, we cast out our wickedness, but we have done worse than our fathers, Jeremiah 6, 7, and 726. We are open to infinite temptations, and yet, as though we lacked, we are tempted of our own lusts, James 114, and not satisfied with that, as though we were not powerful enough or cunning enough to demolish or undermine ourselves, when we ourselves have no pleasure in the sin, we sin for others' sakes. When Adam sinned for Eve's sake, Genesis 3, 6, and Solomon to gratify his wives, 1 Kings 11, 3, it was an exorious sin. When the judges sinned for Jezebel's sake, 1 Kings 21, and Joab to obey David, 2 Samuel 11, 16 through 21, it was an ambitious sin. When Pilate sinned to humor the people, Luke 23, 23, and Herod to give farther contentment to the Jews, Acts 12, 3, it was a popular sin. Anything serves to occasion sin at home in my bosom or abroad in my mark and aim, that which I am and that which I am not, that which I would be proves coals and embers and fuel and bellows to sin. And dost thou put me, O my God, to discharge myself of myself before I can be well? When thou bidst me to put off the old man, Ephesians 4, 22, dost thou mean not only my bad habits of actual sin, but the oldest of all original sin? When thou bidst me purge out the leaven, 1 Corinthians 5, 7, dost thou mean not only the sourness of my own ill-contracted customs, but the innate tincture of sin imprinted by nature? How shall I do that which thou requirest, and not falsify that which thou hast said, that sin is gone over all? But, O my God, I press thee not with thine own text, without thine own comment. I know that in the state of my body, which is more discernible than that of my soul, thou dost effigiate my soul to me, and though no anatomist can say in dissecting a body, here lay the coal, the fuel, the occasion of all bodily diseases, but yet a man may have such a knowledge of his own constitution and bodily inclination to diseases, as that he may prevent his danger in a great part. So, though we cannot assign the place of original sin nor the nature of it, so exactly as of actual, or by any diligence divest it, yet having washed it in the water of thy baptism, we have not only so cleansed it that we may the better look upon it and discern it, but so weakened it that how so ever it may retain the former nature, it doth not retain the former force, and though it may have the same name, it hath not the same venom. 22. Prayer O eternal and most gracious God, the God of security and the enemy of security too, who wouldst have us always sure of thy love, and yet wouldst have us always doing something for it, let me always so apprehend thee as present with me, and yet so follow after thee, as though I had not apprehended thee. Thou enlargedst Hezekiah's lease for fifteen years, thou renew'dst Lazarus's lease for a time which we know not, but thou didst never so put out any of those fires that thou didst not rake up the embers, and wrap up a future mortality in that body, which thou hadst then so reprieved. Thou precedest no otherwise in our souls, O our good but fearful God, thou pardonest no sin so as that that sinner can sin no more. Thou makest no man so acceptable as that thou makest him impeccable. Though therefore it were a diminuation of the largeness and derogatory to the fullness of thy mercy, to look back upon the sins which in a true repentance I have buried in the wounds of thy son, with a jealous or suspicious eye, as though they were now my sins when I had so transferred them upon thy son, as though they could now be raised to life again to condemn me to death, when they are dead in him who is the fountain of life, yet were it an irregular anticipation and an insolent presumption to think that thy present mercy extended to all my future sins, or that there were no embers, no coals, no future sins left in me. Temper therefore thy mercy so to my soul, O my God, that I may neither decline to any faintness of spirit in suspecting thy mercy now to be less hardy, less sincere than it used to be, to those who are perfectly reconciled to thee, nor presume so of it as either to think this present mercy and antidote against all poisons, and so expose myself to temptations upon confidence that this thy mercy shall preserve me, or that when I do cast myself into new sins I may have new mercy at any time because thou didst so easily afford me this. End of Devotion 22