couragement in the world. By this means we see so many maidas moxuxęovicus, as Philo calls them, or, as the prophet pueros centum annorum, children of almost a hundred years old, upon whose grave we may write the inscription which was upon the tomb of Similis in Xiphilin. "Here he lies, who was so many years, but lived but seven. And the course of nature runs counter to the perfect design of piety and God, who gave us a life to live to him, is only served at our death, when we die to all the world: and we undervalue the great promises made by the holy Jesus, for which the piety, the strictest unerring piety, of ten thousand ages is not a proportionable exchange: yet we think it a hard bargain to get heaven, if we be forced to part with one lust, or to live soberly twenty years; but, like Demetrius Afer (who, having lived a slave all his life-time, yet desir ing to descend to his grave in freedom, begged manumis sion of his Lord,) we lived in the bondage of our sin all our days, and hope to die the Lord's freed-men. But above all, this course of a delayed repentance must of necessity therefore be ineffective and certainly mortal, because it is an entire destruction of the very formality and essential constituent reason of religion: which I thus demonstrate.

When God made man, and propounded to him an immortal and a blessed state, as the end of his hopes and the perfection of his condition, he did not give it him for nothing, but upon certain conditions: which, although they could add nothing to God, yet they were such things, which man could value, and they were his best: and God had made appetites of pleasure in man, that in them the scene of his obedience should lie. For when God made instances of man's obedience, he, 1. either commanded such things to be done, which man did naturally desire; or, 2. such things which contradict his natural desires; or, 3. such which were indifferent. Not the first and the last: for it could be no effect of love or duty towards God, for a man to eat, when he was impatiently hungry, and could not stay from eating; neither was it any contention of obedience or labour of love for a man to look eastward once a day, or turn his back when the north wind blew fierce and loud. Therefore for the trial and instance of obedience, God made his laws so, that they should lay restraint upon man's appetites, so that man might part with something of his own, that he may give to God his will, and deny

it to himself for the interest of his service; and chastity is the denial of a violent desire; and justice is parting with money that might help to enrich me; and meekness is a huge contradiction to pride and revenge; and the wandering of our eyes, and the greatness of our fancy, and our imaginative opinions, are to be lessened, that we may serve God. There is no other way of serving God, we have nothing else to present unto him: we do not else give him any thing or part of ourselves, but when we, for his sake, part with what we naturally desire; and difficulty is essential to virtue, and without choice there can be no reward, and in the satisfaction of our natural desires there is no election; we run to them, as beasts to the river or the crib. If, therefore, any man shall teach or practise such a religion, that satisfies all our natural desires in the days of desire and passion, of lust and appetites, and only turns to God when his appetites are gone, and his desires cease; this man hath overthrown the very being of virtues, and the essential constitution of religion; religion is no religion, and virtue is no act of choice, and reward comes by chance and without condition, if we only are religious when we cannot choose; if we part with our money, when we cannot keep it; with our lust when we cannot act it; with our desires when they have left us. Death is a certain mortifier; but that mortification is deadly, not useful to the purposes of a spiritual life. When we are compelled to depart from our evil customs, and leave to live, that we may begin to live, then we die to die; that life is the prologue to death, and thenceforth we die eternally.

St. Cyril speaks of certain people, that chose to worship the sun, because he was a day-god: for believing that he was quenched every night in the sea, or that he had no influence upon them that light up candles, and lived by the light of fire, they were confident they might be Atheists all night, and live as they list. Men who divide their little portion of time between religion and pleasures, between God and God's enemy, think, that God is to rule but in his certain period of time, and that our life is the stage for passion and folly, and the day of death for the work of our life. But as to God both the day and night are alike, so are the first and last of our days: all are his due, and he will account severely with us for the follies of the first and the evil of the last. The evils and the pains

are great, which are reserved for those who defer their res titution to God's favour till their death. And therefore Antisthenes said well, "It is not the happy death, but the happy life, that makes man happy." It is in piety, as in fame and reputation; he secures a good name but loosely, that trusts his fame and celebrity only to his ashes; and it is more a civility than the basis of a firm reputation, that men speak honour of their departed relatives; but if their life be virtuous, it forces honour from contempt, and snatches it from the hand of envy, and it shines through the crevices of detraction: and as it anointed the head of the living, so it embalms the body of the dead. From these premises it follows, that when we discourse of a sick inan's repentance, it is intended to be, not a beginning, but the prosecution and consummation of the covenant of repentance, which Christ stipulated with us in baptism, and which we needed all our life, and which we began long before this last arrest, and in which we are now to make farther progress, that we may arrive to that integrity and fulness of duty, "that our sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord."*

SECTION VI.

Rules for the Practice of Repentance in Sickness.

1. Let the sick man consider, at what gate his sickness entered; and if he can discover the particular, let him instantly, passionately, and with great contrition dash the crime in pieces, lest he descend into his grave in the midst of a sin, and thence remove into an ocean of eternal sorrow. But if he only suffers the common fate of man, and knows not the particular inlet, he is to be governed by the following measures.

Inquire into the repentance of thy former life particularly; whether it were of a great and perfect grief, and productive of fixed resolutions of holy living, and reductive of these to act; how many days and nights we have spent in sorrow or care, in habitual and actual pursuances of virtue; what instrument we have chosen and used for the eradication of sin; how we have judged ourselves, and how punished; and, in sum, whether we have by the grace of repentance, changed our life from

*Acts iii. 19.

criminal to virtuous, from one habit to another; and whether we have paid for the pleasure of our sin by smart or sorrow, by the effusion of alms, or pernoctations or abodes in prayers, so as the spirit hath been served in our repentance as earnestly and as greatly, as our appetites have been provided for, in the days of our shame and folly.

3. Supply the imperfections of thy repentance by a geeneral or universal sorrow for the sins, not only since the = last communion or absolution, but of thy whole life; for all sins known or unknown, repented and unrepented, of ignorance or infirmity, which thou knowest, or which others - have accused thee of; thy clamorous and thy whispering sins, the sins of scandal and the sins of a secret conscience, of the flesh and of the spirit; for it would be but a sad arrest to thy soul wandering in strange and unusual regions, to see a scroll of uncancelled sins represented and charged upon thee for want of care and notices, and that thy repentance shall become invalid, because of its imperfections.

4. To this purpose it is usually advised by spiritual persons, that the sick man make a universal confession, or a renovation and repetition of all the particular confessions and accusations of his whole life; that now, at the foot of his account he may represent the sum total to God and his conscience, and make provisions for their remedy and pardon, according to his present possibilities.

5. Now is the time to make reflex acts of repentance: that as, by a general repentance, we supply the want of the just extension of parts; so, by this, we may supply the proper measures of the intention of degrees. In our health, we can consider concerning our own acts, whether they be real or hypocritical, essential or imaginary, sincere or upon interest, integral or imperfect, commensurate or defective. And although it is a good caution of securities, after all our care and diligence still to suspect ourselves and our own deceptions, and for ever to beg of God par don and acceptance in the union of Christ's passion and intercession; yet, in proper speaking, reflex acts of repent. ance, being a suppletory after the imperfection of the direct, are then most fit to be used, when we cannot proceed in and prosecute the direct actions. To repent because we cannot repent, and to grieve because we cannot grieve, was a device invented to serve the turn of the mother of Peter Gratian: but it was used by her, and so ad2 P 2

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vised to be, in her sickness, and last actions of repentance. For, in our perfect health and understanding, if we do not understand our first act, we cannot discern our second; and if we be not sorry for our sins, we cannot be sorry for want of sorrows; it is a contradiction to say we can; be cause want of sorrow to which we are obliged, is certainly a great sin; and if we can grieve for that, then also for the rest; if not for all, then not for this. But in the days of weakness the case is otherwise; for then our actions are imperfect, our discourse weak, our internal actions not discernible, our fears great, our work to be abbreviated, and our defects to be supplied by spiritual arts; and therefore it is proper and proportionate to our state, and to our ne cessity, to beg of God pardon for the imperfections of our repentance, acceptance of our weaker sorrows, supplies out of the treasures of grace and mercy. And thus repenting of the evil and unhandsome adherences of our repentance, in the whole integrity of the duty it will become a repentance not to be repented of.

6. Now is the time, beyond which the sick man must, at no hand, defer to make restitution of all his unjust possessions, or other men's rights, and satisfactions for all injuries and violences, according to his obligation and possibilities; for although many circumstances might impede the acting it in our lifetime, and it was permitted to be deferred in many cases, because by it justice was not hindered, and oftentimes piety and equity were provided for; yet because this is the last scene of our life, he that does not act it, so far as he can, or put it into certain conditions and order of effecting, can never do it again, and therefore then to defer it is to omit it, and leaves the repentance defective in an integral and constituent part.

7. Let the sick man be diligent and watchful, that the principle of his repentance be contrition, or sorrow for sins, commenced upon the love of God. For although sorrow for

sins upon any motive may lead us to God by many intermedial passages, and is the threshold of returning sinners; yet it is not good nor effective upon our death-bed; because repentance is not then to begin, but must then be finished and completed; and it is to be a supply and preparation of all the imperfections of that duty, and therefore it must by that time be arrived to contrition; that is, it must have grown from fear to love, from the passions of a servant to