therefore best dresses our bodies for funeral or recovery, for the mercies of restitution or the mercies of the grave.

5. In every sickness, whether it will or will not be so in nature and in the event, yet in thy spirit and preparations resolve upon it, and treat thyself accordingly, as if it were a sickness unto death. For many men support their unequal courages by flattery and false hopes, and because sicker men have recovered, believe that they shall do so; but therefore they neglect to adorn their souls, or set their house in order. Besides the temporal inconveniences that often happen by such persuasions, and putting off the evil day, such as are dying intestate, leaving estates entangled, and some relatives unprovided for; they suffer infinitely in the interest and affairs of their soul, they die carelessly and surprised, their burthens on, and their scruples unremoved, and their cases of conscience not determined, and, like a sheep, without any care taken concerning their precious souls. Some men will never believe that a villain will betray them, though they receive often advices from suspicious persons and likely accidents, till they are entered into the snare; and then they believe it when they feel it, and when they cannot return: But so the treason entered, and the man was betrayed by his own folly, placing the snare in the regions and advantages of opportunity. This evil looks like boldness and a confident spirit, but it is the greatest timorousness and cowardice in the world. They are so fearful to

die, that they dare not look upon it as possible; and think that the making of a will is a mortal sign, and sending for a spiritual man an irrecoverable discase; and they are so afraid lest they should think and bˆ lieve now they must die, that they will not take care that it may not be evil in case they should. So did the eastern slaves drink wine, and wrap their heads in a veil, that they might die without sense or sorrow, and wink hard that they might sleep the easier. In pursuance of this rule let a man consider, that whatsoever must be done in sickness ought to be done in health: only let him observe, that his sickness as a good monitor chastises his neglect of duty, and forces him to live as he always should: and then all these solemnities and dressings for death are nothing else but the part of a religious life, which he ought to have exercised in all his days; and if those circumstances can affright him, let him please his fancy by this truth, that then he does but begin to live. But it will be a huge folly, if he shall think that confession of his sins will kill him, or receiving the holy sacrament will hasten his agony, or the priest shall undo all the hopeful language and promises of his physician. Assure thyself thou canst not die the sooner; but by such addresses thou mayest die much the better.

6. Let the sick person be infinitely careful that ne do not fall into a state of death upon a new account : that is, at no hand commit a deliberate sin, or retain any affection to the old: for in both cases he falls into the evils of a surprise, and the horrors of a sudden

death. For a sudden death is but a sudden joy, if it takes a man in the state and exercises of virtue; and it is only then an evil when it finds a man uu ready. They were sad, departures when Tigillinus, Cornelius Gallus the Prætor, Lewis the son of Gonzaga duke of Mantua, Ladislaus king of Naples, Speusippus, Giachettus of Geneva, and one of the popes, died in the forbidden embraces of abused women; or if Job had cursed, God, and so died; or when a man sits down in despair, and in the accusation and calumny of the Divine Mercy; they make their night sad, and stormy and eternal. When Herod began to sink with the shameful torment of his bowels, and felt the grave open under him, he imprisoned the nobles of his kingdom, and commanded his sister: that they should be a sacrifice to his departing Ghost. This was an egress fit only for such persons who meant to dwell with devils to eternal ages: and that man is hugely in love with sin, who cannot forbear in the week of the assizes, and when himself stood at the bar of scrutiny, and prepared for his final never-to-be-reversed sentence. He dies suddenly to the worse sense and event of sudden death, who so manages his sickness, that even that state shall not be innocent, but that he is surprised in the guilt of a new account. It is a sign of a reprobate spirit, and an habitual prevailing, ruling sin, which exacts obedience when the judgment looks him in the face. At least to go to God with the innocence and fair deportment of thy person in the last scene of thy life;

that when thy soul breaks into the state of separation it may carry the relishes of religion and sobriety to the place of its abode and sentence *.

7. When these things are taken care for, let the sick man so order his affairs, that he have but very little conversation with the world, but wholly (as he can) attend to religion, and antedate his conversation in heaven, always having intercourse with God, and still conversing with the Holy Jesus, kissing his wounds, admiring his goodness, begging his mercy, feeding on him with faith, and drinking his blood. To which purpose it were very fit (if all circumstances were answerable) that the narrative of the passion of Christ be read or discoursed to him at length, or in brief, according to the style of the four Gospels. But in all things let his care and society be as little secular as possible.

* Mahoso him bethoft
Inwardly and oft,

How hard it were to flit

From bed unto the pit,

From pit unto pain

That ne'er shall cease agatu,

the would not do one sin

All the world to win.

Inscript. Marmor. in Eccles. Paroch. de Feversham in agro

Cantiano.

CHAP. IV.

AF THE PRACTICE OF THE GRACES PROPER TO THE STATE OF SICKNESS, WHICH A SICK MAN MAY PRACTICE ALONE.

SECT. I.

Of the Practice of Patience.

Now we suppose the man entering upon his scene of sorrows and passive graces. It may be he went yesterday to a wedding, merry and brisk, and there he felt his sentence, that he must return home and die; for men very commonly enter into the snare singing, and consider not 'whither their fate leads them; nor feared that then the angel was to strike his stroke, till his knees kissed the earth, and his head trembled with the weight of the rod which God Aut into the hand of an exterminating angel. But whatsoever the ingress was, when the man feels his blood boil, or his bones weary, or his flesh diseased with a load of a dispersed and disordered humour, or his head to ache, or his faculties discomposed; then he must consider, that all those discourses he hath heard concerning patience, and resignation, and conformity to Christ's sufferings, and the melancholick lectures of the cross, must all of them now be reduced to practice, and pass from an ineffective contemplation to such an exercise as will really try whether we were true disciples of the cross, or only believed th