Untimely Death.

But it is not mere dying that is pretended by some as the cause of their impatient mourning, but that the child died young, before he knew good and evil, his right hand from his left, and so lost all his portion. of this world, and they know not of what excellency his portion in the next shall be. If he died young, he lost but little, for he understood but little, and had not capacities of great pleasures or great cares: but yet he died innocent, and before the sweetness of his soul was defloured and ravished from him by the flames and follies of a froward age: he went out from the dining-room before he had fallen into error by the intemperance of his meat, or the deluge of drink: and he hath obtained this favour of God, that his soul hath suffered a less imprisonment, and her load was sooner taken off, that he might with lesser delays go and converse with immortal spirits; and the babe is taken into paradise before he knows good and evil. (For that knowledge threw our great father out, and this ignorance returns the child thither.) But (as concerning thy own particular) remove thy thoughts back to those days in which thy child was not born, and you are now but as then you were, and there is no difference, but that you had a son born; and if you reckon that for evil you are thankful for the blessing; if it be good, it is better that had the blessing for a while than not at all; and yet if he had never been born, this sorrow had never been at

you

all*. But be not more displeased at God for giving you a blessing for a while, than you would have been if he had not given it at all; and reckon that intervening blessing for a gain, but account it not an evil; and if it be a good, turn it not into sorrow and sadness. But if we have great reason to complain of the calamities and evils of our life, then we have the less reason to grieve that those whom we loved have so small a portion of evil assigned to them. And it is no small advantage that our children dying young receive for their condition of a blessed immortality is rendered to them secure, by being snatched from the dangers of an evil choice, and carried to their little cells of felicity, where they can weep no more. And this, the wisest of the Gentiles understood well, when they forbad any offerings or libations to be made for dead infants, as was usual for their own dead; as believing they were entered into a secure possession, to which they went with no other condition, but that they passed into it through the way of mortality, and for a few months wore an uneasy garment. And let weeping parents say, if they do not think, that the evils their little babes have suffered are sufficient: if they be, why are they troubled that they were taken from those many and greater, which in succeeding years are great enough to try all the reason and re

* Itidem si puer parvulus occidat, æqua animo ferendum putant? si verò in cunis, ne querendum quidem : arqui hoc acerbius exegit natura quod dederit. At id quidem in cæteris rebus melius putatur, quam partem quam nullam attingere. Seneca.

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ligion which art and nature and the grace of God hath produced in us, to enable us for such sad contentions? And possibly we may doubt concerning men and women, but we cannot suspect that infants' death can be such an evil, but that it brings to them much more good than it takes from them in this life.

Death unseasonable.

But other can well bear the death of infants: but when they have spent some years of childhood or youth, and are entered into arts and society, when they are hopeful and provided for, when the parents are to reap the comfort of all their fears and cares, then it breaks the spirit to lose them. This is true in many; but this is not love to the dead, but to themselves; for they miss what they had flattered themselves into by hope and opinion: and if it were kindness to the dead, they may consider, that since we hope he is gone to God, and to rest, it as an ill expression of our love to them, that we weep for their good fortune*. For that life is not best which is longest and when they are descended into the grave, it shall not be enquired how long they have lived, but how well and yet this shortening of their days is an evil wholly depending upon opinion. For if men did naturally live but twenty years, then we should be satisfied if they died about sixteen or eighteen; and yet eighteen years now are as long as eighteen years would be then and if a man were but of a day's life,

* Juvenis relinquit vitam quem Dii diligunt. Menand,

it is well if he last till even-song, and then says his Compline* an hour before the time and we are pleased and call not that death immature if he lives till seventy; and yet this age is as short of the old periods before and since the flood, as this youth's age (for whom you mourn) is of the present fulness. Suppose therefore a decree passed upon this person, (as there have been many upon all mankind) and God hath set him a shorter period; and then we may as well bear the immature death of the young man, as the death of the oldest men for they also are immature and unseasonable, in respect of the old periods of many generations. And why are we troubled that he had arts and sciences before he died? or are we troubled that he does not live to make use of them? The first is cause of joy; for they are excellent in order to certain ends: and the second cannot be cause of sorrow; because he hath no need to use them as the case now stands, being provided for with the provisions of an angel, and the manner of eternity. However, the sons and the parents, friends and relatives, are in the world like hours, and minutes to a day. The hour comes and must pass; and some stay but minutes, and they also pass, and shall never return again. But let it be considered, that from the time in which a man is conceived, from that time forward to eternity he shall never cease to be: and let him die young or old, still he hath an immortal soul, and hath laid down his body only for a time, as that which * The last act of worship at night. Spenser.

was the instrument of his trouble and sorrow, and the scene of sicknesses and disease. But he is in a more noble manner of being after death than he can be here and the child may with more reason be allowed to cry for leaving his mother's womb for this world, than a man can for changing this world for another.

Sudden Death or violent.

Others are yet troubled at the manner of their child's or friend's death. He was drowned, or lost his head, or died of the plague; and this is a new spring of sorrow. But no man can give a sensible account, how it shall be worse for a child to die with drowning in half an hour, than to endure a fever of one and twenty days. And if my friend lost his head, so he did not lose his constancy and his religion, he died with huge advantage.

Being Childless.

But by this means I am left without an heir. Well, suppose that thou hast no heir, and I have no inheritance and there are many kings and emperors that have died childless, many royal lines are extinguished and Augustus Caesar was forced to adopt his wife's son to inherit all the Roman greatness. And there are many wise persons that never married: and we read no where that any of the children of the apostles did survive their fathers and all that inherit any thing of Christ's kingdom come to it by