Devotions upon Emergent Occasions — 23 - Devotion 23

_They warn me of the fearful danger of relapsing.

_ XXIII. MEDITATION.

It is not in man's body, as it is in the city, that when the bell hath rung, to cover your fire, and rake up the embers, you may lie down and sleep without fear.

Though you have by physic and diet raked up the embers of your disease, still there is a fear of a relapse; and the greater danger is in that.

Even in pleasures and in pains, there is a proprietary, a _meum et tuum_, and a man is most affected with that pleasure which is his, his by former enjoying and experience, and most intimidated with those pains which are his, his by a woful sense of them, in former afflictions.

A covetous person, who hath preoccupated all his senses, filled all his capacities with the delight of gathering, wonders how any man can have any taste of any pleasure in any openness or liberality; so also in bodily pains, in a fit of the stone, the patient wonders why any man should call the gout a pain; and he that hath felt neither, but the toothache, is as much afraid of a fit of that as either of the other of either of the other.

Diseases which we never felt in ourselves come but to a compassion of others that have endured them; nay, compassion itself comes to no great degree if we have not felt in some proportion in ourselves that which we lament and condole in another.

But when we have had those torments in their exaltation ourselves, we tremble at relapse.

When we must pant through all those fiery heats, and sail through all those overflowing sweats, when we must watch through all those long nights, and mourn through all those long days (days and nights, so long as that Nature herself shall seem to be perverted, and to have put the longest day, and the longest night, which should be six months asunder, into one natural, unnatural day), when we must stand at the same bar, expect the return of physicians from their consultations, and not be sure of the same verdict, in any good indications, when we must go the same way over again, and not see the same issue, that is a state, a condition, a calamity, in respect of which any other sickness were a convalescence, and any greater, less.

It adds to the affliction, that relapses are (and for the most part justly) imputed to ourselves, as occasioned by some disorder in us; and so we are not only passive but active in our own ruin; we do not only stand under a falling house, but pull it down upon us; and we are not only executed (that implies guiltiness), but we are executioners (that implies dishonour), and executioners of ourselves (and that implies impiety).

And we fall from that comfort which we might have in our first sickness, from that meditation, "Alas, how generally miserable is man, and how subject to diseases" (for in that it is some degree of comfort that we are but in the state common to all), we fall, I say, to this discomfort, and self-accusing, and self-condemning: "Alas, how improvident, and in that how unthankful to God and his instruments, am I in making so ill use of so great benefits, in destroying so soon so long a work, in relapsing, by my disorder, to that from which they had delivered me": and so my meditation is fearfully transferred from the body to the mind, and from the consideration of the sickness to that sin, that sinful carelessness, by which I have occasioned my relapse.

And amongst the many weights that aggravate a relapse, this also is one, that a relapse proceeds with a more violent dispatch, and more irremediably, because it finds the country weakened, and depopulated before.

Upon a sickness, which as yet appears not, we can scarce fix a fear, because we know not what to fear; but as fear is the busiest and irksomest affection, so is a relapse (which is still ready to come) into that which is but newly gone, the nearest object, the most immediate exercise of that affection of fear.

XXIII. EXPOSTULATION.

My God, my God, my God, thou mighty Father, who hast been my physician;

thou glorious Son, who hast been my physic; thou blessed Spirit, who hast prepared and applied all to me, shall I alone be able to overthrow the work of all you, and relapse into those spiritual sicknesses from which infinite mercies have withdrawn me?

Though thou, O my God, have filled my measure with mercy, yet my measure was not so large as that of thy whole people, the nation, the numerous and glorious nation of Israel; and yet how often, how often did they fall into relapses!

And then, where is my assurance?

How easily thou passedst over many other sins in them, and how vehemently thou insistedst in those into which they so often relapsed; those were their murmurings against thee, in thine instruments and ministers, and their turnings upon other gods, and embracing the idolatries of their neighbours.

O my God, how slippery a way, to how irrecoverable a bottom, is murmuring; and how near thyself he comes, that murmurs at him who comes from thee!

The magistrate is the garment in which thou apparelest thyself, and he that shoots at the clothes cannot say he meant no ill to the man: thy people were fearful examples of that, for how often did their murmuring against thy ministers end in a departing from thee!

When they would have other officers, they would have other gods; and still to-day's murmuring was to-morrow's idolatry; as their murmuring induced idolatry, and they relapsed often into both, I have found in myself, O my God (O my God, thou hast found it in me, and thy finding it hast showed it to me) such a transmigration of sin, as makes me afraid of relapsing too.

The soul of sin (for we have made sin immortal, and it must have a soul), the soul of sin is disobedience to thee; and when one sin hath been dead in me, that soul hath passed into another sin.

Our youth dies, and the sins of our youth with it; some sins die a violent death, and some a natural;

poverty, penury, imprisonment, banishment, kill some sins in us, and some die of age; many ways we become unable to do that sin, but still the soul lives and passes into another sin; and that that was licentiousness grows ambition, and that comes to indevotion and spiritual coldness: we have three lives in our state of sin, and where the sins of youth expire, those of our middle years enter, and those of our age after them.

This transmigration of sin found in myself, makes me afraid, O my God, of a relapse; but the occasion of my fear is more pregnant than so, for I have had, I have multiplied relapses already.

Why, O my God, is a relapse so odious to thee?

Not so much their murmuring and their idolatry, as their relapsing into those sins, seems to affect thee in thy disobedient people.

_They limited the holy One of Israel_,[331] as thou complainest of them: that was a murmuring; but before thou chargest them with the fault itself, in the same place thou chargest them with the iterating, the redoubling of that fault before the fault was named; _How oft did they provoke me in the wilderness, and grieve me in the desert?

_ That which brings thee to that exasperation against them, as to say, that thou wouldst break thine own oath rather than leave them unpunished (_They shall not see the land which I sware unto their fathers_) was because _they had tempted thee ten times_,[332] infinitely; upon that thou threatenest with that vehemency, _If you do in any wise go back, know for a certainty God will no more drive out any of these nations from before you; but they shall be snares and traps unto you, and scourges in your sides, and thorns in your eyes, till ye perish_.

[333] No tongue but thine own, O my God, can express thine indignation against a nation relapsing to idolatry.

Idolatry in any nation is deadly, but when the disease is complicated with a relapse (a knowledge and a profession of a former recovery), it is desperate; and thine anger works, not only where the evidence is pregnant and without exception (so thou sayest when it is said, that certain men in a city have withdrawn others to idolatry, and that inquiry is made, and it is found true; the city, and the inhabitants, and the cattle are to be destroyed),[334] but where there is but a suspicion, a rumour, of such a relapse to idolatry, thine anger is awakened, and thine indignation stirred.

In the government of thy servant Joshua, there was a voice, that Reuben and Gad, with those of Manasseh, had built a new altar.

[335] Israel doth not send one to inquire, but the whole congregation gathered to go up to war against them,[336] and there went a prince of every tribe; and they object to them, not so much their present declination to idolatry, as their relapse: _Is the iniquity of Peor too little for us?

_[337] an idolatry formerly committed, and punished with the slaughter of twenty-four thousand delinquents.

At last Reuben and Gad satisfy them, that that altar was not built for idolatry, but built as a pattern of theirs, that they might thereby profess themselves to be of the same profession that they were, and so the army returned without blood.

Even where it comes not so far as to an actual relapse into idolatry, thou, O my God, becomest sensible of it; though thou, who seest the heart all the way, preventest all dangerous effects where there was no ill meaning, however there were occasion of suspicious rumours given to thine Israel of relapsing.

So odious to thee, and so aggravating a weight upon sin is a relapse.

But, O my God, why is it so?

so odious?

It must be so, because he that hath sinned and then repented, hath weighed God and the devil in a balance; he hath heard God and the devil plead, and after hearing given judgment on that side to which he adheres by his subsequent practice;[338] if he return to his sin, he decrees for Satan, he prefers sin before grace, and Satan before God;

and in contempt of God, declares the precedency for his adversary; and a contempt wounds deeper than an injury, a relapse deeper than a blasphemy.

And when thou hast told me that a relapse is more odious to thee, need I ask why it is more dangerous, more pernicious to me?

Is there any other measure of the greatness of my danger, than the greatness of thy displeasure?

How fitly and how fearfully hast thou expressed my case in a storm at sea, if I relapse; _They mount up to heaven, and they go down again to the depth_!

[339] My sickness brought me to thee in repentance, and my relapse hath cast me farther from thee.

_The end of that man shall be worse than the beginning_,[340] says thy Word, thy Son; my beginning was sickness, punishment for sin: but _a worse thing may follow_,[341] says he also, if I sin again; not only death, which is an end worse than sickness, which was the beginning, but hell, which is a beginning worse than that end.

Thy great servant denied thy Son,[342] and he denied him again, but all before repentance;

here was no relapse.

O, if thou hadst ever readmitted Adam into Paradise, how abstinently would he have walked by that tree!

And would not the angels that fell have fixed themselves upon thee, if thou hadst once readmitted them to thy sight?

They never relapsed; if I do, must not my case be as desperate?

Not so desperate; for _as thy majesty, so is thy mercy_,[343] both infinite; and thou, who hast commanded me to pardon my brother seventy-seven times, hast limited thyself to no number.

If death were ill in itself, thou wouldst never have raised any dead man to life again, because that man must necessarily die again.

If thy mercy in pardoning did so far aggravate a relapse, as that there were no more mercy after it, our case were the worse for that former mercy; for who is not under even a necessity of sinning whilst he is here, if we place this necessity in our own infirmity, and not in thy decree?

But I speak not this, O my God, as preparing a way to my relapse out of presumption, but to preclude all accesses of desperation, though out of infirmity I should relapse.

XXIII. PRAYER.

O eternal and most gracious God, who, though thou beest ever infinite, yet enlargest thyself by the number of our prayers, and takest our often petitions to thee to be an addition to thy glory and thy greatness, as ever upon all occasions, so now, O my God, I come to thy majesty with two prayers, two supplications.

I have meditated upon the jealousy which thou hast of thine own honour, and considered that nothing comes nearer a violating of that honour, nearer to the nature of a scorn to thee, than to sue out thy pardon, and receive the seals of reconciliation to thee, and then return to that sin for which I needed and had thy pardon before.

I know that this comes too near to a making thy holy ordinances, thy word, thy sacraments, thy seals, thy grace, instruments of my spiritual fornications.

Since therefore thy correction hath brought me to such a participation of thyself (thyself, O my God, cannot be parted), to such an entire possession of thee, as that I durst deliver myself over to thee this minute, if this minute thou wouldst accept my dissolution, preserve me, O my God, the God of constancy and perseverance, in this state, from all relapses into those sins which have induced thy former judgments upon me.

But because, by too lamentable experience, I know how slippery my customs of sin have made my ways of sin, I presume to add this petition too, that if my infirmity overtake me, thou forsake me not.

Say to my soul, _My son, thou hast sinned, do so no more_;[344] but say also, that though I do, thy spirit of remorse and compunction shall never depart from me.

Thy holy apostle, St. Paul, was shipwrecked thrice,[345] and yet still saved.

Though the rocks and the sands, the heights and the shallows, the prosperity and the adversity of this world, do diversely threaten me, though mine own leaks endanger me, yet, O God, let me never put myself aboard with Hymenæus, nor _make shipwreck of faith and a good conscience_,[346] and then thy long-lived, thy everlasting mercy, will visit me, though that which I most earnestly pray against, should fall upon me, a relapse into those sins which I have truly repented, and thou hast fully pardoned.

FOOTNOTES:

[331] Psalm lxxviii.

41. [332] Numb.

xiv.

22, 23. [333] Josh.

xxiii.

12, 13. [334] Deut.

xiii.

12-16. [335] Josh.

xxii.

11, 12. [336] Josh.

xxii.

11, 12. [337] Josh.

xxii.

17. [338] Tertullian.

[339] Psalm cvii.

26. [340] Matt.

xii.

45. [341] John, v. 14. [342] Mark, xiv.

70. [343] Ecclus.

ii.

18. [344] Ecclus.

i.

21. [345] 2 Cor.

xi.

25. [346] 1 Tim.

i.

19. _DEATH'S DUEL,_

_OR, A CONSOLATION TO THE SOUL

AGAINST THE DYING LIFE AND LIVING

DEATH OF THE BODY.

_ _DELIVERED IN A SERMON AT WHITEHALL, BEFORE

THE KING'S MAJESTY, IN THE BEGINNING

OF LENT, 1630.

_ _BY THAT LATE LEARNED AND REVEREND DIVINE,

JOHN DONNE, DR.

IN DIVINITY, AND DEAN

OF ST.

PAUL'S, LONDON.

_ _BEING HIS LAST SERMON, AND CALLED BY HIS

MAJESTY'S HOUSEHOLD, THE DOCTOR'S OWN

FUNERAL SERMON.

_ _TO THE READER_

_This sermon was, by sacred authority, styled the author's own funeral sermon, most fitly, whether we respect the time or matter.

It was preached not many days before his death, as if, having done this, there remained nothing for him to do but to die; and the matter is of death--the occasion and subject of all funeral sermons.

It hath been observed of this reverend man, that his faculty in preaching continually increased, and that, as he exceeded others at first, so at last he exceeded himself.

This is his last sermon; I will not say it is therefore his best, because all his were excellent.

Yet thus much: a dying man's words, if they concern ourselves, do usually make the deepest impression, as being spoken most feelingly, and with least affectation.

Now, whom doth it concern to learn both the danger and benefit of death?

Death is every man's enemy, and intends hurt to all, though to many he be occasion of greatest good.

This enemy we must all combat dying, whom he living did almost conquer, having discovered the utmost of his power, the utmost of his cruelty.

May we make such use of this and other the like preparatives, that neither death, whensoever it shall come, may seem terrible, nor life tedious, how long soever it shall last.

_ _DEATH'S DUEL_

PSALM LXVIII.

20, _in fine_.

_And unto God the Lord belong the issues of death (i. e. from death).

_ Buildings stand by the benefit of their foundations that sustain and support them, and of their buttresses that comprehend and embrace them, and of their contignations that knit and unite them.

The foundations suffer them not to sink, the buttresses suffer them not to swerve, and the contignation and knitting suffers them not to cleave.

The body of our building is in the former part of this verse.

It is this: _He that is our God is the God of salvation_; _ad salutes_, of salvations in the plural, so it is in the original; the God that gives us spiritual and temporal salvation too.

But of this building, the foundation, the buttresses, the contignations, are in this part of the verse which constitutes our text, and in the three divers acceptations of the words amongst our expositors: _Unto God the Lord belong the issues from death_, for, first, the foundation of this building (that our God is the God of all salvation) is laid in this, that _unto_ this _God the Lord belong the issues of death_; that is, it is in his power to give us an issue and deliverance, even then when we are brought to the jaws and teeth of death, and to the lips of that whirlpool, the grave.

And so in this acceptation, this _exitus mortis_, this issue of death is _liberatio á morte_, a deliverance from death, and this is the most obvious and most ordinary acceptation of these words, and that upon which our translation lays hold, the _issues from death_.

And then, secondly, the buttresses that comprehend and settle this building, that he that is our God is the God of all salvation, are thus raised; _unto God the Lord belong the issues of death_, that is, the disposition and manner of our death; what kind of issue and transmigration we shall have out of this world, whether prepared or sudden, whether violent or natural, whether in our perfect senses or shaken and disordered by sickness, there is no condemnation to be argued out of that, no judgment to be made upon that, for, howsoever they die, _precious in his sight is the death of his saints_, and with him are the issues of death; the ways of our departing out of this life are in his hands.

And so in this sense of the words, this _exitus mortis_, the issues of death, is _liberatio in morte_, a deliverance in death; not that God will deliver us from dying, but that he will have a care of us in the hour of death, of what kind soever our passage be.

And in this sense and acceptation of the words, the natural frame and contexture doth well and pregnantly administer unto us.

And then, lastly, the contignation and knitting of this building, that he that is our God is the God of all salvations, consists in this, _Unto_ this _God the Lord belong the issues of death_;

that is, that this God the Lord having united and knit both natures in one, and being God, having also come into this world in our flesh, he could have no other means to save us, he could have no other issue out of this world, nor return to his former glory, but by death.

And so in this sense, this _exitus mortis_, this issue of death, is _liberatio per mortem_, a deliverance by death, by the death of this God, our Lord Christ Jesus.

And this is Saint Augustine's acceptation of the words, and those many and great persons that have adhered to him.

In all these three lines, then, we shall look upon these words, first, as the God of power, the Almighty Father rescues his servants from the jaws of death;

and then as the God of mercy, the glorious Son rescued us by taking upon himself this issue of death; and then, between these two, as the God of comfort, the Holy Ghost rescues us from all discomfort by his blessed impressions beforehand, that what manner of death soever be ordained for us, yet this _exitus mortis_ shall be _introitus in vitam_, our issue in death shall be an entrance into everlasting life.

And these three considerations: our deliverance _à morte, in morte, per mortem_, from death, in death, and by death, will abundantly do all the offices of the foundations, of the buttresses, of the contignation, of this our building; that he that is our God is the God of all salvation, because _unto_ this _God the Lord belong the issues of death_.

First, then, we consider this _exitus mortis_ to be _liberatio à morte_, that with _God the Lord are the issues of death_; and therefore in all our death, and deadly calamities of this life, we may justly hope of a good issue from him.

In all our periods and transitions in this life, are so many passages from death to death; our very birth and entrance into this life is _exitus à morte_, an issue from death, for in our mother's womb we are dead, so as that we do not know we live, not so much as we do in our sleep, neither is there any grave so close or so putrid a prison, as the womb would be unto us if we stayed in it beyond our time, or died there before our time.

In the grave the worms do not kill us; we breed, and feed, and then kill those worms which we ourselves produced.

In the womb the dead child kills the mother that conceived it, and is a murderer, nay, a parricide, even after it is dead.

And if we be not dead so in the womb, so as that being dead we kill her that gave us our first life, our life of vegetation, yet we are dead so as David's idols are dead.

In the womb we have _eyes and see not, ears and hear not_.

[347] There in the womb we are fitted for works of darkness, all the while deprived of light; and there in the womb we are taught cruelty, by being fed with blood, and may be damned, though we be never born.

Of our very making in the womb, David says, _I am wonderfully and fearfully made_, and _such knowledge is too excellent for me_,[348] for even that _is the Lord's doing, and it is wonderful in our eyes_;[349] ipse fecit nos, _it is he that made us, and not we ourselves_,[350] nor our parents neither.

_Thy hands have made and fashioned me round about_, saith Job, _and_ (as the original word is) _thou hast taken pains about me, and yet_ (says he) _thou dost destroy me_.

Though I be the masterpiece of the greatest master (man is so), yet if thou do no more for me, if thou leave me where thou madest me, destruction will follow.

The womb, which should be the house of life, becomes death itself if God leave us there.

That which God threatens so often, the shutting of a womb, is not so heavy nor so discomfortable a curse in the first as in the latter shutting, nor in the shutting of barrenness as in the shutting of weakness, when _children are come to the birth, and no strength to bring forth_.

[351] It is the exaltation of misery to fall from a near hope of happiness.

And in that vehement imprecation, the prophet expresses the highest of God's anger, _Give them, O Lord, what wilt thou give them?

give them a miscarrying womb.

_ Therefore as soon as we are men (that is, inanimated, quickened in the womb), though we cannot ourselves, our parents have to say in our behalf, _Wretched man that he is, who shall deliver him from this body of death?

_[352] if there be no deliverer.

It must be he that said to Jeremiah, _Before I formed thee I knew thee, and before thou camest out of the womb I sanctified thee_.

We are not sure that there was no kind of ship nor boat to fish in, nor to pass by, till God prescribed Noah that absolute form of the ark.

[353] That word which the Holy Ghost, by Moses, useth for the ark, is common to all kind of boats, _thebah_; and is the same word that Moses useth for the boat that he was exposed in, that his mother laid him in an ark of bulrushes.

But we are sure that Eve had no midwife when she was delivered of Cain, therefore she might well say, _Possedi virum à Domino, I have gotten a man from the Lord_,[354] wholly, entirely from the Lord; it is the Lord that enabled me to conceive, the Lord that infused a quickening soul into that conception, the Lord that brought into the world that which himself had quickened; without all this might Eve say, my body had been but the house of death, and _Domini Domini sunt exitus mortis, To God the Lord belong the issues of death_.

But then this _exitus à morte_ is but _introitus in mortem_; this issue, this deliverance, from that death, the death of the womb, is an entrance, a delivering over to another death, the manifold deaths of this world; we have a winding-sheet in our mother's womb which grows with us from our conception, and we come into the world wound up in that winding-sheet, for we come to seek a grave.

And as prisoners discharged of actions may lie for fees, so when the womb hath discharged us, yet we are bound to it by cords of hestæ, by such a string as that we cannot go thence, nor stay there; we celebrate our own funerals with cries even at our birth; as though our threescore and ten years' life were spent in our mother's labour, and our circle made up in the first point thereof; we beg our baptism with another sacrament, with tears; and we come into a world that lasts many ages, but we last not.

_In domo Patris_, says our Saviour, speaking of heaven, _multæ mansiones_, divers and durable; so that if a man cannot possess a martyr's house (he hath shed no blood for Christ), yet he may have a confessor's, he hath been ready to glorify God in the shedding of his blood.

And if a woman cannot possess a virgin's house (she hath embraced the holy state of marriage), yet she may have a matron's house, she hath brought forth and brought up children in the fear of God.

_In domo Patris, in my Father's house_, in heaven, there _are many mansions_;[355] but here, upon earth, the _Son of man hath not where to lay his head_,[356] saith he himself.

_Nonne terram dedit filiis hominum?

_ How then hath God given this earth to the sons of men?

He hath given them earth for their materials to be made of earth, and he hath given them earth for their grave and sepulchre, to return and resolve to earth, but not for their possession.

_Here we have no continuing city_,[357] nay, no cottage that continues, nay, no persons, no bodies, that continue.

Whatsoever moved Saint Jerome to call the journeys of the Israelites in the wilderness,[358] mansions; the word (the word is _nasang_) signifies but a journey, but a peregrination.

Even the Israel of God hath no mansions, but journeys, pilgrimages in this life.

By what measure did Jacob measure his life to Pharaoh?

_The days of the years of my pilgrimage.

_[359] And though the apostle would not say _morimur_, that whilst we are in the body we are dead, yet he says, _perigrinamur_, whilst we are in the body we are but in a pilgrimage, and we are _absent from the Lord_:[360] he might have said dead, for this whole world is but an universal churchyard, but our common grave, and the life and motion that the greatest persons have in it is but as the shaking of buried bodies in their grave, by an earthquake.

That which we call life is but _hebdomada mortium_, a week of death, seven days, seven periods of our life spent in dying, a dying seven times over; and there is an end.

Our birth dies in infancy, and our infancy dies in youth, and youth and the rest die in age, and age also dies and determines all.

Nor do all these, youth out of infancy, or age out of youth, arise so, as the phoenix out of the ashes of another phoenix formerly dead, but as a wasp or a serpent out of a carrion, or as a snake out of dung.

Our youth is worse than our infancy, and our age worse than our youth.

Our youth is hungry and thirsty after those sins which our infancy knew not; and our age is sorry and angry, that it cannot pursue those sins which our youth did; and besides, all the way, so many deaths, that is, so many deadly calamities accompany every condition and every period of this life, as that death itself would be an ease to them that suffer them.

Upon this sense doth Job wish that God had not given him an issue from the first death, from the womb, _Wherefore thou hast brought me forth out of the womb?

Oh that I had given up the ghost, and no eye seen me!

I

should have been as though I had not been.

_[361] And not only the impatient Israelites in their murmuring (_would to God we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt_),[362] but Elijah himself, when he fled from Jezebel, and went for his life, as that text says, under the juniper tree, requested that he might die, and said, _It is enough now, O Lord, take away my life_.

[363] So Jonah justifies his impatience, nay, his anger, towards God himself: _Now, O Lord, take, I beseech thee, my life from me, for it is better to die than to live_.

[364] And when God asked him, _Dost thou well to be angry for this?

_ he replies, _I do well to be angry, even unto death_.

How much worse a death than death is this life, which so good men would so often change for death!

But if my case be as Saint Paul's case, _quotidiè morior_, that I die daily, that something heavier than death fall upon me every day; if my case be David's case, _tota die mortificamur; all the day long we are killed_, that not only every day, but every hour of the day, something heavier than death fall upon me; though that be true of me, _Conceptus in peccatis, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me_ (there I died one death); though that be true of me, _Natus filius iræ_, I was born not only the child of sin, but the child of wrath, of the wrath of God for sin, which is a heavier death: yet _Domini Domini sunt exitus mortis, with God the Lord are the issues of death_; and after a Job, and a Joseph, and a Jeremiah, and a Daniel, I cannot doubt of a deliverance.

And if no other deliverance conduce more to his glory and my good, yet he hath the keys of death,[365] and he can let me out at that door, that is, deliver me from the manifold deaths of this world, the _omni die_, and the _tota die_, the every day's death and every hour's death, by that one death, the final dissolution of body and soul, the end of all.

But then is that the end of all?

Is that dissolution of body and soul the last death that the body shall suffer (for of spiritual death we speak not now).

It is not, though this be _exitus à morte_: it is _introitus in mortem_; though it be an issue from manifold deaths of this world, yet it is an entrance into the death of corruption and putrefaction, and vermiculation, and incineration, and dispersion in and from the grave, in which every dead man dies over again.

It was a prerogative peculiar to Christ, not to die this death, not to see corruption.

What gave him this privilege?

Not Joseph's great proportion of gums and spices, that might have preserved his body from corruption and incineration longer than he needed it, longer than three days, but it would not have done it for ever.

What preserved him then?

Did his exemption and freedom from original sin preserve him from this corruption and incineration?

It is true that original sin hath induced this corruption and incineration upon us; if we had not sinned in Adam, _mortality had not put on immortality_[366] (as the apostle speaks), nor _corruption had not put on incorruption_, but we had had our transmigration from this to the other world without any mortality, any corruption at all.

But yet since Christ took sin upon him, so far as made him mortal, he had it so far too as might have made him see this corruption and incineration, though he had no original sin in himself; what preserved him then?

Did the hypostatical union of both natures, God and man, preserve him from this corruption and incineration?

It is true that this was a most powerful embalming, to be embalmed with the Divine Nature itself, to be embalmed with eternity, was able to preserve him from corruption and incineration for ever.

And he was embalmed so, embalmed with the Divine Nature itself, even in his body as well as in his soul; for the Godhead, the Divine Nature, did not depart, but remained still united to his dead body in the grave; but yet for all this powerful embalming, his hypostatical union of both natures, we see Christ did die; and for all his union which made him God and man, he became no man (for the union of the body and soul makes the man, and he whose soul and body are separated by death as long as that state lasts, is properly no man).

And therefore as in him the dissolution of body and soul was no dissolution of the hypostatical union, so there is nothing that constrains us to say, that though the flesh of Christ had seen corruption and incineration in the grave, this had not been any dissolution of the hypostatical union, for the Divine nature, the Godhead, might have remained with all the elements and principles of Christ's body, as well as it did with the two constitutive parts of his person, his body and his soul.

This incorruption then was not in Joseph's gums and spices, nor was it in Christ's innocency, and exemption from original sin, nor was it (that is, it is not necessary to say it was) in the hypostatical union.

But this incorruptibleness of his flesh is most conveniently placed in that; _Non dabis, thou wilt not suffer thy Holy One to see corruption_; we look no further for causes or reasons in the mysteries of religion, but to the will and pleasure of God; Christ himself limited his inquisition in that _ita est, even so, Father, for so it seemeth good in thy sight_.

Christ's body did not see corruption, therefore, because God had decreed it should not.

The humble soul (and only the humble soul is the religious soul) rests himself upon God's purposes and the decrees of God which he hath declared and manifested, not such as are conceived and imagined in ourselves, though upon some probability, some verisimilitude; so in our present case Peter proceeds in his sermon at Jerusalem, and so Paul in his at Antioch.

[367] They preached Christ to have been risen without seeing corruption, not only because God had decreed it, but because he had manifested that decree in his prophet, therefore doth Saint Paul cite by special number the second Psalm for that decree, and therefore both Saint Peter and Saint Paul cite for it that place in the sixteenth Psalm;[368] for when God declares his decree and purpose in the express words of his prophet, or when he declares it in the real execution of the decree, then he makes it ours, then he manifests it to us.

And therefore, as the mysteries of our religion are not the objects of our reason, but by faith we rest on God's decree and purpose--(it is so, O God, because it is thy will it should be so)--so God's decrees are ever to be considered in the manifestation thereof.

All manifestation is either in the word of God, or in the execution of the decree; and when these two concur and meet it is the strongest demonstration that can be: when therefore I find those marks of adoption and spiritual filiation which are delivered in the word of God to be upon me; when I find that real execution of his good purpose upon me, as that actually I do live under the obedience and under the conditions which are evidences of adoption and spiritual filiation; then, so long as I see these marks and live so, I may safely comfort myself in a holy certitude and a modest infallibility of my adoption.

Christ determines himself in that, the purpose of God was manifest to him; Saint Peter and Saint Paul determine themselves in those two ways of knowing the purpose of God, the word of God before the execution of the decree in the fulness of time.

It was prophesied before, said they, and it is performed now, Christ is risen without seeing corruption.

Now, this which is so singularly peculiar to him, that his flesh should not see corruption, at his second coming, his coming to judgment, shall extend to all that are then alive; their hestæ shall not see corruption, because, as the apostle says, and says as a secret, as a mystery, _Behold I shew you a mystery, we shall not all sleep_ (that is, not continue in the state of the dead in the grave), _but we shall all be changed in an instant_, we shall have a dissolution, and in the same instant a redintegration, a recompacting of body and soul, and that shall be truly a death and truly a resurrection, but no sleeping in corruption; but for us that die now and sleep in the state of the dead, we must all pass this posthume death, this death after death, nay, this death after burial, this dissolution after dissolution, this death of corruption and putrefaction, of vermiculation and incineration, of dissolution and dispersion in and from the grave, when these bodies that have been the children of royal parents, and the parents of royal children, must say with Job, _Corruption, thou art my father, and to the worm, Thou art my mother and my sister_.

Miserable riddle, when the same worm must be my mother, and my sister and myself!

Miserable incest, when I must be married to my mother and my sister, and be both father and mother to my own mother and sister, beget and bear that worm which is all that miserable penury; when my mouth shall be filled with dust, and the _worm shall feed, and feed sweetly_[369] upon me; when the ambitious man shall have no satisfaction, if the poorest alive tread upon him, nor the poorest receive any contentment in being made equal to princes, for they shall be equal but in dust.

_One dieth at his full strength, being wholly at ease and in quiet; and another dies in the bitterness of his soul, and never eats with pleasure_; but _they lie down alike in the dust, and the worm covers them_.

[370] In Job and in Isaiah,[371] it covers them and is spread under them, _the worm is spread under thee, and the worm covers thee_.

There are the mats and the carpets that lie under, and there are the state and the canopy that hang over the greatest of the sons of men.

Even those bodies that were _the temples of the Holy Ghost_ come to this dilapidation, to ruin, to rubbish, to dust; even the Israel of the Lord, and Jacob himself, hath no other specification, no other denomination, but that _vermis Jacob_, thou worm of Jacob.

Truly the consideration of this posthume death, this death after burial, that after God (with whom are the issues of death) hath delivered me from the death of the womb, by bringing me into the world, and from the manifold deaths of the world, by laying me in the grave, I must die again in an incineration of this flesh, and in a dispersion of that dust.

That that monarch, who spread over many nations alive, must in his dust lie in a corner of that sheet of lead, and there but so long as that lead will last; and that private and retired man, that thought himself his own for ever, and never came forth, must in his dust of the grave be published, and (such are the revolutions of the grave) be mingled with the dust of every highway and of every dunghill, and swallowed in every puddle and pond.

This is the most inglorious and contemptible vilification, the most deadly and peremptory nullification of man, that we can consider.

God seems to have carried the declaration of his power to a great height, when he sets the prophet Ezekiel in the valley of dry bones, and says, _Son of man, can these bones live?

_ as though it had been impossible, and yet they did;

the Lord laid _sinews upon them, and flesh, and breathed into them, and they did live_.

But in that case there were bones to be seen, something visible, of which it might be said, Can this thing live?

But in this death of incineration and dispersion of dust, we see nothing that we call that man's. If we say, Can this dust live?

Perchance it cannot; it may be the mere dust of the earth, which never did live, never shall.

It may be the dust of that man's worm, which did live, but shall no more.

It may be the dust of another man, that concerns not him of whom it was asked.

This death of incineration and dispersion is, to natural reason, the most irrecoverable death of all; and yet _Domini Domini sunt exitus mortis, unto God the Lord belong the issues of death_; and by recompacting this dust into the same body, and remaining the same body with the same soul, he shall in a blessed and glorious resurrection give me such an issue from this death as shall never pass into any other death, but establish me into a life that shall last as long as the Lord of Life himself.

And so have you that that belongs to the first acceptation of these words (_unto God the Lord belong the issues of death_); That though from the womb to the grave, and in the grave itself, we pass from death to death, yet, as Daniel speaks, _the Lord our God is able to deliver us, and he will deliver us_.

And so we pass unto our second accommodation of these words (_unto God the Lord belong the issues of death_); that it belongs to God, and not to man, to pass a judgment upon us at our death, or to conclude a dereliction on God's part upon the manner thereof.

Those indications which the physicians receive, and those presagitions which they give for death or recovery in the patient, they receive and they give out of the grounds and the rules of their art; but we have no such rule or art to give a presagition of spiritual death and damnation upon any such indication as we see in any dying man; we see often enough to be sorry, but not to despair; we may be deceived both ways: we use to comfort ourself in the death of a friend, if it be testified that he went away like a lamb, that is, without any reluctation; but God knows that may be accompanied with a dangerous damp and stupefaction, and insensibility of his present state.

Our blessed Saviour suffered colluctations with death, and a _sadness even in his soul to death_, and an agony even to a bloody sweat in his body, and expostulations with God, and exclamations upon the cross.

He was a devout man who said upon his death-bed, or death-turf (for he was a hermit), _Septuaginta annos Domino servivisti, et mori times?

_ Hast thou served a good master threescore and ten years, and now art thou loth to go into his presence?

Yet Hilarion was loth.

Barlaam was a devout man (a hermit too) that said that day he died, _Cogita te hodie cæpisse servire Domino, et hodie finiturum_, Consider this to be the first day's service that ever thou didst thy Master, to glorify him in a Christianly and a constant death, and if thy first day be thy last day too, how soon dost thou come to receive thy wages!

Yet Barlaam could have been content to have stayed longer forth.

Make no ill conclusions upon any man's lothness to die, for the mercies of God work momentarily in minutes, and many times insensibly to bystanders, or any other than the party departing.

And then upon violent deaths inflicted as upon malefactors, Christ himself hath forbidden us by his own death to make any ill conclusion; for his own death had those impressions in it; he was reputed, he was executed as a malefactor, and no doubt many of them who concurred to his death did believe him to be so.

Of sudden death there are scarce examples be found in the Scriptures upon good men, for death in battle cannot be called sudden death; but God governs not by examples but by rules, and therefore make no ill conclusion upon sudden death nor upon distempers neither, though perchance accompanied with some words of diffidence and distrust in the mercies of God.

The tree lies as it falls, it is true, but it is not the last stroke that fells the tree, nor the last word nor gasp that qualifies the soul.

Still pray we for a peaceable life against violent death, and for time of repentance against sudden death, and for sober and modest assurance against distempered and diffident death, but never make ill conclusions upon persons overtaken with such deaths;

_Domini Domini sunt exitus mortis, to God the Lord belong the issues of death_.

And he received Samson, who went out of this world in such a manner (consider it actively, consider it passively in his own death, and in those whom he slew with himself) as was subject to interpretation hard enough.

Yet the Holy Ghost hath moved Saint Paul to celebrate Samson in his great catalogue,[372] and so doth all the church.

Our critical day is not the very day of our death, but the whole course of our life.

I thank him that prays for me when the bell tolls, but I thank him much more that catechises me, or preaches to me, or instructs me how to live.

_Fac hoc et vive_, there is my security, the mouth of the Lord hath said it, _do this and thou shalt live_.

But though I do it, yet I shall die too, die a bodily, a natural death.

But God never mentions, never seems to consider that death, the bodily, the natural death.

God doth not say, Live well, and thou shalt die well, that is, an easy, a quiet death; but, Live well here, and thou shalt live well for ever.

As the first part of a sentence pieces well with the last, and never respects, never hearkens after the parenthesis that comes between, so doth a good life here flow into an eternal life, without any consideration what manner of death we die.

But whether the gate of my prison be opened with an oiled key (by a gentle and preparing sickness), or the gate be hewn down by a violent death, or the gate be burnt down by a raging and frantic fever, a gate into heaven I shall have, for from the Lord is the cause of my life, and _with God the Lord are the issues of death_.

And further we carry not this second acceptation of the words, as this _issue of death_ is _liberatio in morte_, God's care that the soul be safe, what agonies soever the body suffers in the hour of death.

But pass to our third part and last part: As this issue of death is _liberatio per mortem_, a deliverance by the death of another.

_Sufferentiam Job audiisti, et vidisti finem Domini_, says Saint James (v. 11), _You have heard of the patience of Job_, says he: all this while you have done that, for in every man, calamitous, miserable man, a Job speaks.

Now, _see the end of the Lord_, sayeth that apostle, which is not that end that the Lord proposed to himself (salvation to us), nor the end which he proposes to us (conformity to him), but _see the end of the Lord_, says he, the end that the Lord himself came to, death, and a painful and a shameful death.

But why did he die?

and why die so?

_Quia Domini Domini sunt exitus mortis_ (as Saint Augustine, interpreting this text, answers that question),[373] because to this _God our Lord belonged the issues of death.

Quid apertius diceretur?

_ says he there, what can be more obvious, more manifest than this sense of these words?

In the former part of this verse it is said, He that is _our God is the God of salvation; Deus salvos faciendi_, so he reads it, the God that must save us.

Who can that be, says he, but Jesus?

For therefore that name was given him because he was to save us.

And to this Jesus, says he, this Saviour,[374] _belong the issues of death_; _Nec oportuit eum de hac vita alios exitus habere quam mortis_: being come into this life in our mortal nature, he could not go out of this life any other way but by death.

_Ideo dictum_, says he, therefore it is said, _to God the Lord belonged the issues of death; ut ostenderetur moriendo nos salvos facturum_, to show that his way to save us was to die.

And from this text doth Saint Isidore prove that Christ was truly man (which as many sects of heretics denied, as that he was truly God), because to him, though he were _Dominus Dominus_ (as the text doubles it), God the Lord, yet to _him, to God the Lord belonged the issues of death_; _oportuit eum pati_; more cannot be said than Christ himself says of himself;

_These things Christ ought to suffer_;[375] he had no other way but death: so then this part of our sermon must needs be a passion sermon, since all his life was a continual passion, all our Lent may well be a continual Good Friday.

Christ's painful life took off none of the pains of his death, he felt not the less then for having felt so much before.

Nor will any thing that shall be said before lessen, but rather enlarge the devotion, to that which shall be said of his passion at the time of due solemnization thereof.

Christ bled not a drop the less at the last for having bled at his circumcision before, nor will you a tear the less then if you shed some now.

And therefore be now content to consider with me how _to this God the Lord belonged the issues of death_.

That God, this Lord, the Lord of life, could die, is a strange contemplation; that the Red Sea could be dry, that the sun could stand still, that an oven could be seven times heat and not burn, that lions could be hungry and not bite, is strange, miraculously strange, but super-miraculous that God _could_ die; but that God _would_ die is an exaltation of that.

But even of that also it is a super-exaltation, that God should die, must die, and _non exitus_ (said Saint Augustine), God the Lord had no issue but by death, and _oportuit pati_ (says Christ himself), all this Christ ought to suffer, was bound to suffer; _Deus ultimo Deus_, says David, God is the God of revenges, he would not pass over the son of man unrevenged, unpunished.

But then _Deus ultionum libere egit_ (says that place), the God of revenges works freely, he punishes, he spares whom he will.

And would he not spare himself?

he would not: _Dilectio fortis ut mors, love is strong as death_;[376] stronger, it drew in death, that naturally is not welcome.

_Si possibile_ says Christ, _if it be possible, let this cup pass_, when his love, expressed in a former decree with his Father, had made it impossible.

_Many waters quench not love.

_[377] Christ tried many: he was baptised out of his love, and his love determined not there; he mingled blood with water in his agony, and that determined not his love; he wept pure blood, all his blood at all his eyes, at all his pores, in his flagellation and thorns (_to the Lord our God belonged the issues of blood_), and these expressed, but these did not quench his love.

He would not spare, nay, he could not spare himself.

There was nothing more free, more voluntary, more spontaneous than the death of Christ.

It is true, _libere egit_, he died voluntarily; but yet when we consider the contract that had passed between his Father and him, there was an _oportuit_, a kind of necessity upon him: all this _Christ ought to suffer_.

And when shall we date this obligation, this _oportuit_, this necessity?

When shall we say that began?

Certainly this decree by which Christ was to suffer all this was an eternal decree, and was there any thing before that that was eternal?

Infinite love, eternal love; be pleased to follow this home, and to consider it seriously, that what liberty soever we can conceive in Christ to die or not to die; this necessity of dying, this decree is as eternal as that liberty; and yet how small a matter made he of this necessity and this dying?

His Father calls it but a bruise, and but a bruising of his heel[378] (the serpent shall bruise his heel), and yet that was, that the serpent should practise and compass his death.

Himself calls it but a baptism, as though he were to be the better for it.

I _have a baptism to be baptised with_,[379] and he was in pain till it was accomplished, and yet this baptism was his death.

The Holy Ghost calls it joy (_for the joy which was set before him he endured the cross_),[380] which was not a joy of his reward after his passion, but a joy that filled him even in the midst of his torments, and arose from him; when Christ calls his _calicem_ a cup, and no worse (_Can ye drink of my cup_)[381], he speaks not odiously, not with detestation of it.

Indeed it was a cup, _salus mundo_, a health to all the world.

And _quid retribuam_, says David, _What shall I render to the Lord?

_[382] Answer you with David, _Accipiam calicem, I will take the cup of salvation_;

take it, that cup is salvation, his passion, if not into your present imitation, yet into your present contemplation.

And behold how that Lord that was God, yet could die, would die, must die for our salvation.

That Moses and Elias talked with Christ in the transfiguration, both Saint Matthew and Saint Mark[383] tells us, but what they talked of, only Saint Luke; _Dicebant excessum ejus_, says he, _They talked of his disease, of his death, which was to be accomplished at Jerusalem_.