SECTION II.

Of the first Temptation proper to the state of Sickness, Impatience.

MEN, that are in health, are severe exactors of patience at the hands of them that are sick; and they usually judge it not by terms of relation between God and the suffering man, but between him and the friends that stand by the bed-side. It will be therefore necessary, that we truly understand, to what duties and actions the patience of a sick man ought to extend.

1. Sighs and groans, sorrow and prayers, humble complaints and dolorous expressions, are the sad accents of a sick man's language: for it is not to be expected, that a sick man should act a part of patience with a countenance like an orator, or grave like a dramatic person: it were well, if all men could bear an exterior decency in their sickness, and regulate their voice, their face, their discourse, and all their circumstances, by the measures and proportions of comeliness and satisfaction to all the standers by. But this would better please them, than assist him; the sick man would do more good to others, than he would receive to himself.

2. Therefore, silence and still composures, and not com. plaining, are no parts of a sick man's duty; they are not necessary parts of patience. We find, that David roared for the very disquiet of his sickness: and he lay chattering like a swallow, and his throat was dry with calling for help upon his God. That's the proper voice of sickness; and certain it is, that the proper voices of sickness are expressly vocal and petitory in the ears of God, and call for pity in the same accent, as the cries and oppressions of widows and orphans do for vengeance upon their persecutors, though they say no collect against them. For there is the voice of man, and there is the voice of the disease, and God hears both; and the louder the disease speaks, there is the greater need of mercy and pity, and therefore God will the sooner hear it. Abel's blood had a voice, and cried to God; and humility hath a voice, and cries so loud to God, that it pierces the clouds; and so hath every sorrow and every sickness: and when a man cries out, and complains but according to the sorrows of his pain, it can

not be any part of a culpable impatience, but an argument for pity.

3. Some men's senses are so subtile, and their perceptions so quick and full of relish, and their spirits so active, that the same load is double upon them, to what it is to another person: and therefore comparing the expressions of the one to the silence of the other, a different judgment cannot be made concerning their patience. Some natures are querulous, and melancholy, and soft, and nice, and tender, and weeping, and expressive; others are sullen, dull, without apprehension, apt to tolerate and carry burdens and the crucifixion of our blessed Saviour, falling upon a delicate and virgin body, of curious temper, and strict, equal composition, was naturally more full of torment than that of the ruder thieves, whose proportions were coarser and uneven.

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4. In this case, it was no imprudent advice, which Cicero gave: nothing in the world is more amiable than an even temper in our whole life, and in every action: but this unevenness cannot be kept, unless every man follows his own nature, without striving to imitate the circumstances of another. And what is so in the thing itself, ought to be so in our judgments concerning the things. We must not call any one impatient, if he be not silent in a fever, as if he were asleep: or as if he were dull, as Herod's son of Athens.

5. Nature, in some cases, has made cryings out and exclamations to be an entertainment of the spirit, and an abatement or diversion of the pain. For so did the old champions, when they threw their fatal nets, that they might load their enemy with the snares and weights of death; they groaned aloud, and sent forth the anguish of their spirit into the eyes and heart of the man that stood against them: so it is in the endurance of some sharp pains; the complaints and shriekings, the sharp groans, and the tender accents send forth the afflicted spirits, and force away, that they may ease their oppression and their load; that when they have spent some of their sorrows by a sally forth, they may return better able to fortify the heart. Nothing of this is a certain sign, much less an action or part of impatience; and when our blessed Saviour suffered his last and sharpest pang of sorrow, he cried out with a loud voice, and resolved to die, and did so.

SECTION III.

Constituent or integral parts of Patience.

1. That we may secure our patience, we must take care, that our complaints be without despair. Despair sins against the reputation of God's goodness, and the efficacy of all our old experience. By despair we destroy the greatest comfort of our sorrows, and turn our sickness into the state of devils and perishing souls. No affliction is greater than despair for that is it, which makes hell-fire, and turns a natural evil into an intolerable; it hinders prayers, and fills up the intervals of sickness with a worse torture; it makes all spiritual arts useless, and the office of spiritual comforters and guides to be impertinent.

Against this, hope is to be opposed: and its proper acts, as it relates to the virtue and exercise of patience, are, 1. Praying to God for help and remedy; 2. Sending for the guides of souls; 3. Using all holy exercises and acts of grace proper to that state: which whoso does, hath not the impatience of despair; every man that is patient, hath hope in God in the day of his sorrows.

2. Our complaints in sickness must be without murmur. Murmur sins against God's providence and government: by it we grow rude, and, like the falling angels, displeased at God's supremacy; and nothing is more unreasonable: it talks against God, for whose glory all speech was made; it is proud and fantastic, hath better opinions of a sinner than of the Divine justice, and would rather accuse God than himself.

Against this is opposed that part of patience, which resigns the man into the hands of God, saying, with old Eli, "It is the Lord, let him do what he will;" and, "Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven :" and so the admiring God's justice and wisdom, does also dispose the sick person for receiving God's mercy, and secures him the rather in the grace of God. The proper acts of this part of patience are, 1. To confess our sins and our own demerits: 2. It increases and exercises humility: 3. It loves to sing praises to God, even from the lowest abyss of human misery.

3. Our complaints in sickness must be without peevishness. This sins against civility, and that necessary decency, which must be used towards the ministers, and as

sistants. By peevishness we increase our own sorrows, and are troublesome to them that stand there to ease ours. It hath in it harshness of nature and ungentleness, wilfulness and fantastic opinions, morosity and incivility.

Against it are opposed obedience, tractability, easiness of persuasion, aptness to take counsel. The acts of this part of patience are, 1. To obey our physicians; 2. To treat our persons with respect to our present necessities; 3. Not to be ungentle and uneasy to the ministers and nurses that attend us; but to take their diligent and kind offices as sweetly as we can, and to bear their indiscretions or unhandsome accidents contentedly and without disquietness within, or evil language or angry words without; 4. Not to use unlawful means for our recovery.

If we secure these particulars, we are not lightly to be judged of by noises and postures, by colours and images of things, by paleness, or tossings from side to side. For it were a hard thing, that those persons, who are loaden with the greatest of human calamities, should be strictly tied to ceremonies and forms of things. He is patient, that calls upon God; that hopes for health or heaven; that believes God is wise and just in sending him afflictions; that confesses his sins; and accuses himself, and justifies God; that expects God will turn this into good; that is civil to his physicians and his servants; that converses with the guides of souls, the ministers of religion; and, in all things, submits to God's will, and would use no indirect means for his recovery; but had rather be sick and die, than enter at all' into God's displeasure.

SECTION IV.

Remedies against Impatience, by way of Consideration. As it happens concerning death, so it is in sickness, which is death's handmaid. It hath the fate to suffer calumny and reproach, and hath a name worse than its nature.

1. For there is no sickness so great but children endure it, and have natural strengths to bear them out quite through the calamity, what period soever nature hath allotted it. Indeed they make no reflections upon their sufferings, and complain of sickness with an uneasy sigh or a natural groan, but consider not, what the sorrows of sickness mean; and so bear it by a direct sufferance, and as a pillar bears the weight of a roof. But then why cannot

we bear it so too? For this which we call a reflection upon, or a considering of our sickness, is nothing but a perfect instrument of trouble, and consequently a temptation to impatience. It serves no end of nature: it may be avoided, and we may consider it only as an expression of God's anger, and an emissary or procurator of repentance. But all other considering it, except where it serves the pur poses of medicine and art, is nothing but, under the colour of reason, an unreasonable device to heighten the sickness and increase the torment. But then, as children want this act of reflex perception or reasonable sense, whereby their sickness becomes less pungent and dolorous; so also do they want the helps of reason, whereby they should be able to support it. For certain it is, reason was as well given us to harden our spirits, and stiffen them in passions and sad accidents, as to make us bending and apt for action: and if in men God hath heightened the faculties of apprehension, he hath increased the auxiliaries of reasonable strengths; that God's rod and God's staff might go together, and the beam of God's countenance may as well refresh us with its light, as scorch us with its heat. But poor children that endure so much, have not inward supports and refreshments to bear them through it: they never heard the sayings of old men, nor have been taught the principles of severe philosophy, nor are assisted with the results of a long experience, nor know they how to turn a sickness into virtue, and a fever into a reward; nor have they any sense of favours, the remembrance of which may alleviate their burden; and yet nature hath in them teeth and nails enough to scratch, and fight against the sickness; and by such aids, as God is pleased to give them, they wade through the storm, and murmur not. And besides this, yet, although infants have not such brisk perceptions upon the stock of reason, they have a more tender feeling upon the accounts of sense, and their flesh is as uneasy by their natural softness and weak shoulders, as ours by our too forward apprehensions. Therefore bear up: either you or I, or some man wiser, and many a woman weaker than us both, or the very children, have endured worse evil than this, that is upon thee now.

That sorrow is hugely tolerable, which gives its smart but by instants and smallest proportions of time. No man at once feels the sickness of a week, or of a whole day;