:

communication: 2. he that refuses to give the holy sacrament to one indisposed to receive it, does a charity by denying it, &c. 3. the church introduced times and manners of abstention, and expressions of sorrow, and canonical punishments, before it would admit the delinquent to the Lord's table: 4. these have not a divine authority, but there is a divine power that verifies them, and makes them formidable: 5. there is however a power with the ministry, to lengthen or shorten times of separation, and to make conditions heavier or lighter, &c. 6. the taking off the punishment is the pardoning of the sin this explained: 7. if the penitent be bound by the positive censures of the church, he is to be reconciled by the conditions of its laws, if he can perform them; if he cannot, he can no longer be prejudiced by the censures of the church, which had no relation but to the people, with whom the dying man is no longer to converse: 8. if the penitent be not bound by public sentence, the minister is to make his repentance as great, and his heart as contrite as he can, &c.: 9. he ought not to give the communion to a sick person, if he retains affection to any sin, and refuses to disavow it, &c.: 10. it is his office to invite sick and dying persons to the holy sacrament, &c. 11. when the sacrament is to be administered, let the exhortation be made proper to the mystery, but fitted to the man : 12. the manner of the sick man's reception of the holy sacrament differs nothing from the ordinary solemnity, except in the abatement of accidental circumstances, as fasting, kneeling, &c. 13. let it not be administered to dying persons, when they have no use of reason to make the duty acceptable, &c.

SECT. V.-Of ministering to the sick person by the spiritual man, as he is the physician of souls.-1. In all cases of confession, &c., he is to apportion to every kind of sin such spiritual remedies as are apt to mortify and cure the sin: 2. the proper temptations of sick men, for which a remedy is not yet provided, are unreasonable fears and unreasonable confidences.

Considerations against unreasonable fears of not having our sins pardoned.-Many good men, of tender consciences, turn their caution into scruples, &c. He that asks of the by-standers, or of the minister, whether they think he shall be saved or damned, is to be answered with words of pity and reproof: this topic enlarged on. If he wants some degree of comfort, or a greater degree of hope, let him be refreshed by considering, that Christ came into the world to save sinners; that God delights not in the confusion and death of a sinner; that in heaven there is joy over a penitent; that Christ is a perpetual advocate with his Father for our pardon, &c. &c.: to which let then be added the following exercise against despair at the time of death.

SECT. VI.-Considerations against presumption. - Many particulars have already been enumerated, to provoke a drowsy conscience to a scrutiny and suspicion of itself, &c. but if in repentance the man grows too big in spirit, let his forwardness be allayed by the following representations: that the growths in grace are long, difficult, uncertain, of many parts and great variety; that an infant grace is soon dashed; that he who puts on his armour ought not to boast as he who puts it off; that a man cannot think too humbly of himself; that a wise man, in a point of great importance, will always think the worst; that humility and modesty are great instruments to obtain mercy; that a man's heart is infinitely deceitful; that it is certain we have sinned, but our repentance and pardon is not so, &c. &c.

The main parts of the ecclesiastical ministry being done, it only remains that the minister pray over him, remind him to do good actions as he is capable, to call on God for pardon, &c. Whatever is besides this concerns the standers-by: this explained.

SECT. VII.-Offices to be said by the minister, in his visitation of the sick.-Prayer to be said by the priest secretly;

the psalm; prayers; prayer of St. Eustatius; prayer from the Euchologion of the Greek church; prayers for the standers-by; prayer; ejaculations in behalf of all present; the blessing; the doxology; prayers to be used after the sick man is departed; a prayer in case of a sudden surprise by death, &c.

SECT. VIII-A peroration concerning the contingences and treatings of our departed friends after death, in order to their burial, &c. in which is introduced the story of the Ephesian matron.

THE

RULE AND EXERCISES

F

HOLY DYING,

&c.

CHAP. I.

A GENERAL PREPARATION TOWARDS A HOLY AND BLESSED DEATH, BY WAY OF CONSIDERATION.

SECT. I.-Consideration of the vanity and shortness of

man's life.

A MAN is a bubble, said the Greek proverb, which Lucian represents with advantages and its proper circumstances, to this purpose; saying, All the world is a storm, and men rise up in their several generations, like bubbles descending a Jove Pluvio, from God and the dew of heaven, from a tear and drop of rain, from nature and providence and some of these instantly sink into the deluge of their first parent, and are hidden in a sheet of water, having had no other business in the world, but to be born, that they might be able to die : others float up and down two or three turns, and suddenly disappear, and give their place to others: and they that live longest on the face of the waters, are in perpetual motion, restless and uneasy; and, being crushed with the great drop of a cloud, sink into flatness and a froth; the change not being great, it being hardly possible it should be more a nothing than it was before. So is every man; he is born in vanity and sin; he comes into the world like morning mushrooms, soon thrusting up their heads into the air, and conversing with their kindred of the same production, and as soon they turn into dust and forgetfulness: some of them without any other interest in the affairs of the

world, but that they made their parents a little glad and very sorrowful: others ride longer in the storm; it may be until seven years of vanity be expired, and then peradventure the sun shines hot on their heads, and they fall into the shades below, into the cover of death and darkness of the grave to hide them. But if the bubble stands the shock of a bigger drop, and outlives the chances of a child, of a careless nurse, of drowning in a pail of water, of being overlaid by a sleepy servant, or such little accidents, then the young man dances like a bubble, empty and gay, and shines like a dove's neck, or the image of a rainbow, which hath no substance, and whose very imagery and colors are fantastical; and so he dances out the gaiety of his youth, and is all the while in a storm, and endures, only because he is not knocked on the head by a drop of bigger rain, or crushed by the pressure of a load of indigested meat, or quenched by the disorder of an ill-placed humor: and to preserve a man alive in the midst of so many chances and hostilities, is as great a miracle as to create him; to preserve him from rushing into nothing, and at first to draw him up from nothing, were equally the issues of an almighty power. And therefore the wise men of the world have contended, who shall best fit man's condition with words signifying his vanity and short abode. Homer calls a man 66 a leaf," the smallest, the weakest piece of a short-lived, unsteady plant. Pindar calls him "the dream of a shadow :" another, "the dream of the shadow of smoke." But St. James spake by a more excellent spirit, saying, 'Our life is but a vapor,'* namely, drawn from the earth by a celestial influence; made of smoke, or the lighter parts of water, tossed with every wind, moved by the motion of a superior body, without virtue in itself, lifted up on high, or left below, according as it pleases the sun, its foster-father. But it is lighter yet. It is but appearing; a fantastic vapor, an apparition, nothing real: it is not so much as a mist, not the matter of a shower, nor substantial enough to make a cloud ; but it is like Cassiopeia's chair, or Pelops' shoulder, or the circles of heaven, patróμeva, for which you cannot have a word that can signify a verier nothing. And yet the expression is

* James iv. 14.