THE FLIGHT OF TIME, Discerned By the dim shadow of Jobs Dial, JOB 9.25. Explained In certain familiar and profitable meditations well conducing to the wise numbering of our days in the sad time of this mortality. As it was delivered to his charge at Bloxham in Oxford-shire by the Pastor thereof. R. M. PSAL. 90.12. Lord, So teach us to number our Days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. LONDON, Printed by George Miller, for Edward Langham at Banbery. 1634. TO THE HONOURABLE M rs. FRANCES FIENNES wife to the Right Worshipful Mr. JAMES FIENNES Esquire (Son and heir apparent to the Lord Viscount Say and Seal) and one of the daughters of EDWARD Viscount WIMBLETON. Grace and Peace, etc. Virtuously Noble, there's nothing in this small module presented to your Religious view but what you know, nor any thing which can be too well learned: the Priests lips are as well to settle and rivet knowledge in the heart, as to tender it to the ear: and the most intelligent must be, for knowledge, as the Suppliant in the Gospel was for Faith, and cry, and say with tears, Lord I know, help thou my want of knowledge. Both must endeavour the procuring such practical and saving knowledge, by the power whereof the judgement may be rightly informed, and the will and affections framed for the well ordering of the life and conversation. Your known care and study in this holy practice inviteth and emboldeneth towards your Godly acceptance these familiar and ever seasonable meditations: the rather for that the party whose late death occasioned the present task, was in her life-time an afflicted object of your much exercised and voluntary compassion, many months your chargeable and much tendered patiented: too late, for her body, in respect of the desperatenes of her malady (the care being yours, but the cure God's peculiar) but not too soon for her soul, which received no small confessed physic from your counsel, prayers and example. She lived a daughter of job, her days being short and painful: and dying a daughter of Abraham in faith and patience, left nothing fit to acknowledge her debt to you then this part of her funeral solemnity; which therefore I am bold to present in her name to your noble desert. Christians care and pains in doing good to all, especially Faith's household, hath sufficient reward with God: who notwithstanding must be glorified by men in the view of his graces shining in his eminent servants: which who so dare perform with flattery, let him look unto it: for my part herein sincerity is conduct, as far as my heart and I be best together acquainted. If you, or any for your sake, reap any price of labour in reading this publish; I know, God shall not want his praise. Prosper still, with your noble consort, as your souls prosper, to your continuing rich in good works (the King's highway to your kingdom.) Be blessed with Booz and Ruth their blessing, to do worthily and be famous: and let your famous worthiness (as it doth) shine long through your humility here, till both your graces be late crowned above in Glory, Your Honour's unworthy neighbour ever well-wishing you in Christ jesus ROGER MATTHEW. THE FLIGHT OF TIME, Discerned by the dim shadow of jobs Dial, job 9.25. JOB 9.25. Now my days are swifter than a Post; they flee away, they see no good. THese words are a part of the ruthful complaint of afflicted job: who, having taken to consideration God's justice and power in his afflicting the sons of men, commending the one to be impeachable and no way to be reproved, especially vers. 2. the other to be impregnable and no way to be resisted, particularly vers. 19 draws towards a conclusion well suiting with his own present condition, and his friends partial censure of the same, viz. that the effects of God's justice and power in trying men by afflictions are not (simply) sound arguments of God's displeasure: sith a Verse 22. the Lord brings to destruction both the perfect and the wicked. So that, whether b Vers. 23. he pluck away the innocent suddenly, or forbear & seem to c Vers. 24. give the earth, by way of long possession, to the wicked; notwithstanding, so past finding out shall his judgements be to us, (whether for trial or for terror) that no man shall discover his intentions: yea he covereth the faces of judges, saith the Text: the best discerners may as well find out the furrow of a ship in the Sea, or track the flight of an Eagle in the air, as sound God's insearchables in this kind; job desires to know the man's name and place that dare arrogate the contrary to himself, d Vers. 24. Who, and where is he? This settled, that misery is no sound argument of God's anger, the Patriarch sticks not (in this verse read unto you) to declare the heavy hand of the Lord upon himself in a threefold degree of that infirmity and wretchedness, whereunto, as all mortality is subject, so himself was at this present severely subdued. Now my days are swifter than a post, etc. Which words note unto us three remarkables of jobs and all humane frailty: First, the shortness, Secondly, the swiftness, Thirdly, the sadness of the same. 1. The shortness appears in the small fragments of it, being but Days. Large extents are measured by long dimensions, furlongs, miles, leagues: short by feet, spans, inches: Days, ye know, are no long durances, and how can life eeked and pieced out by Days be of any long continuance? 2. The swiftness is discovered two ways. First, by a comparison to a messenger of state, which, notwithstanding his important haste, rideth not so fast to his appointed boundary. Secondly, by a similitude (as all metaphors in substance, are) in a word borrowed from the Fowler, of quicker dispatch than any horse or dromedary, they flee: amplified by a term of increasing distance, away. Swifter than a post, they flee away. 3. The sadness glimmers forth in the absence of comfort and prosperity, delivered under the term Good; and it's partly expressed by the strongest negative, partly confirmed by the surest witness (that of the eye) they see no good. The porch thus opened, let's enter into materials: and first to the first condition of Jobs frailty, and in him, of all mankind in general, viz. Days and small pittances of humane life, teaching us this useful observation, Doct. 1 That Man's natural life is but short, short days are all the limbs of man's time, (like a short line consisting but of pricks) the whole body of his time cannot be long. When jacob had well near all his years together, he sums the total into a e Gen. 47.9 few days. David could gripe all his days into the compass of a f Ps. 39 5. Span. As nature nurtured the heathen in the cutted state of this mortality by a bladder and a bubble, both swelled, with a puff, and shrunk with a prick: by a breath whose being, or vanishing, who can say which is sooner, longer? So grace advertiseth Christians by most significant comparisons expressing their short abode in this g Ps. 146. ● their dust. The Apostle james would scarce vouchsafe it any comparison. h jam. 4. 1● What's your life, saith he? twiting us with our false conceit of long life by a holy flout: if it be, saith he, of any subsistence at all, it's but like a vapour that appeareth for a little time, and then vanishes away. What saith David to our days? They are saith he, i 1 Chron. 29, 15. as a shadow, and there's no abiding. And what is Hezekiahs' opinion? A● k Es. 38.12 A shepherd's tent, of no long stay. l job 7.6. A weaver's shuttle is of no long race: m 2 Cor. 5.1 a pilgrim's tabernacle soon flitted. So vain a thing is man. How long is wax in melting? n Ps. 22.14 So is life in the midst of its fortress. How durable is the state of o Es. 40.7. grass? p Ps. 90.5. We fade away suddenly like the grass. What's a tale's grace? Shortness, q Ps. 90.9. Our years pass away as a tale that is told, a thing gone and passed. Yea, as if these comparisons were yet defective, the Prophet addeth a slighter manner of similitude, resembling man's life to a r Ps. 73.20 dream, and that when its past, when a man awaketh; a thing gone before you can collect what it was, and when it was, it was but a thing (or rather a just nothing) of mere imagination. But how is it that man's life is thus scantled? Reason 1. The principal cause is God. s Ps. 39.5. Thou hast made my days as it were a span in length, saith David. 2. The provoking cause is sin. That's a sudden waster. t Gen. 2.17. The same day thou eatest, etc. thou shalt surely die: God hath sealed it with an oath, surely. 3. The working cause, the consuming effects of sin, sorrow and misery both inward and outward: a house of u job 4.19. clay so strongly beleaguered cannot hold out a long siege. 4. The material cause, x Gen. 3.19. dust; he was appointed no long standing whose y job 4.19. foundation was laid in dust. 5. The procreating cause of mankind necessitateth a very short stay: z job 14.1. Man that is borne of a woman hath but a short time. If he stand to his pedigree it cannot be, that she that hath no fee simple nor lease of one hour, can make over any long entale of time to her posterity. The truth of our short abode thus confirmed rather by way of meditation upon a thing much useful, then for proof of a point so plain: what better application shall we make then Use 1 First, by way of check to rain back the outrunners of time in this luxuriant age of dingthrifts of time, wasteful lavishers of their small allowance? how many lay about them, as if all their exhibition this way were flung them by talents, and therefore spend it with like profuseness as giddy youngsters newly leapt into their lands, squandring away by pounds, the coming in whereof they never knew by pence? such licentious merchants of time trade in every country so wastefully, as if they had more time than can be spent whiles good; so prodigal of days, months, years, some upon doing nothing, others upon nothing to the purpose, many upon what's contrary to what they should do, till they turn stark bankrupt both for time and grace. Alas it's but wind they feed upon when they think they fat their senses with a conceit of living as long as such and such a long liver of their progeny, forgetting * Gen. 11. ●8. Harans case and thousands more that die before their parents. Foolish men, that neither with all their wealth can purchase one minute of time, nor with all their strength procure an hour of health, nor with all their wit differ death, much less prevent judgement, yet will never season their thoughts with any meditation of weakness▪ death, or judgement. Well, the evil day is never the more distant for their putting it off: sickness may come at an instant: weakness will come; death must come: the longer the shadow of life seems to be, the nearer their sun is to setting; their glass is running: their hour is at hand when they shall make audit before the impartial judge for all these flatteries of themselves, and for their intentions wherefore they thus deceived themselves, for all the duties they have omitted, for all the evils they have committed, all the instructions they have neglected, all the promises they have despised, all the threatenings they have slighted, all the talents of youth, health, strength, wit, etc. they have hidden, and for all the creatures, means, and times they have presumptuously abused. If any will surfeit upon hopes of long joy and contentment in licentiousness, and resolve (upon that ground) still to turn God's grace of time yet afforded, and means of conversion yet proffered into wantonness of sinning, let him with his sweet conceits take this sorrow sop amids, that his delights cannot be long and certain whose life is but short and uncertain. God will shortly put an end to his pleasures and person, death groans for him, that sergeant is within one span of his bosom, his judge gins to laugh as fast at his destruction as he laughs at his instructions: time is at hand when his dullest sense shall feel, to his woe, what his faith now will not believe, that the joys of this first life which he fancied to be eternal are but few and short, but the miseries of the second death, which he never dreamt of, shall be numberless, measureless, easeless, remeadilesse, and utterly endless. In the second place, this serves to reprove a general fault in all whom the Lord pleases to afflict any whit more than ordinary: it being the guise of impatient man to feed his melancholy distempers and to waste his spirits with meditations upon the length of his afflictions, amongst whom a years health is shorter than they can have while to feel: but a months or week's sickness is long, and long, and longer than they can bear. If the Lord would glorify himself in their faith, in their assurance of eternal joys for temporal & short pains, he shall not do it: if he will gain glory by their patience in any tedious durance, he comes to the wrong house; they had rather he lost his honour than they their ease: No, no, benefits be of the shorter size though they last months and years; crosses of a day must be long though life itself be short. What conceive we of those exquisite tortures which remain the unrepentant idolater, the impenitent blasphemer, the resolved offenders of all sorts in eternal and inextricable wreck and misery without any ease or date? And what intolerable impatience to murmur at the shorter when we deserve both these? Mend this fault, and do God more honour, the truth more credit, and ourselves more ease by musing upon mercies, by comparing eternals with temporals, by considering the shortness of thy life, and so confess and praise the Lord for thy short afflictions, unless thou wilt in foolish peremptoriness say, a job 1 5 9 thou wast the first man that was borne, and waste made before the hills, suffered'st ever since, and resolvest to suffer for ever after thy departure hence. Thirdly, have we but short days here to spend? What shall we do better than to strive with God in prayer, and ourselves in practice. First with God, in commending our requests to him in these days of our flesh after our Saviour's example; he alone is the meats-man of our days, b job 7.1. setting forth an appointed time to man upon the earth. Pray him in David's words, with David's spirit, to c Ps. 85.47 remember how short our time is, and to remove all hindrances of mispending, and improve all his own offered means and furtherances for the well-spending our short abode here: and for ourselves, let's often season all outward passages with thoughts of our approaching end, mix them with our marriages, trade, purchases, journeys, all field en and domestic labours, especially with our recreations and delights: take heed of engrossing and gripping after more time or temporal things than the Lord affords; bethink how frail thyself art, how short thy time, of what manner thy abode: thy days, as David told thee, are but of a d 1 Cron. 29.15. pilgrim: thy mansion is not thy home, thy house but an Inn; thy family and neighbours are but fellow-passengers; if thy corruptions within, or Satan and the world without bear thee in hand with enough laid up for many years, give them all the lie with the tongue of this Text: and be sure that though thou must converse in the world, yet to keep thyself free from the e 2 Pet 1.4 corruptions of the world, as Saint Paul styles them, It's hard, Bernard. but much discourse of temporal things will gnaw the conscience, as the rivers fret their banks: but holy circumspection and moderation will ease that difficulty: the blind want, though versed all in the earth, still preserves its velvet coat fair from the filth of the earth; thou hast thy eyes about thee, nor needst thou delve so deep: so converse thou in earthly matters that thy conscience be not defiled, and beware thou suffer not the earth so to bury thy soul before thy body die, but that thou mayst use thy eyes to descry death peeping over thy shoulder whiles thou lookest upon thy worldly matters, or (if farther off) to ken it in its full gallop and flight to overtake thee, and that's the second part of this task, viz. the swiftness of man's life in the Post, hast or rather flying of the same. My days are swifter than a Post: they flee away: from whence who cannot spell forth this lesson. Doct. 2 Man's life is swift as well as short. Our days seem wing-footed: job seems doubtful whether they run or flee. The swiftest rider is too slow to make expressure; the fowls wings best Emblems forth life's quick dispatch: and that when it makes to the prey: and that of the f job 9.26. Eagle, not only for swiftness but strength, which no humane obstacle of either youth, wit, wealth, honour, or physic can stay or hinder from its appointed goal. The proverb drops too short that saith Time and Tide stay not: Tides creep on but slowly and have their interstices, stay somewhat when they have their stints, challenge their returns: Time is neither so, nor so. The Prophet speaks more home. Our time, yea the g Ps. 90.80. strength of it, is soon cut off, we flee, yea we flee away, and that without either h 1 Chron. 29.15. abiding saith David, i job 7.9. returning as job hath it. The Holy Ghost is ample for comparisons, as before: resembling man's sliding state to things ever upon the road of haste. To a k Es 40 7. flower that fades apace. To l Ps. 12.14 water that runs apace. To a m job 9.26 ship that sails apace. To a Post and an Eagle, as ye see, that rides and flees apace. There's no keeping pace with time but upon the wings of the n job 7.7. Wind that whirls apace. But how comes this to pass, that man in his best estate though in honour, is thus altogether a flying vanity and abideth not? Reason 1. If nature's reason may carry it, the subject and foundation of time runs (as it were) all on wheels: the heavenly Orbs, (of swifter motion then of any flying bullet from the strongest Ordnance) whirl the times about: amongst which, the uncessant circuits of the Sun and Moon are appointed (by him that o Es. 40.22. sits upon the circle of the earth, and meeteth out Heaven by the span) to measure forth these earthly years, p Vers. 12. months, and days, till all time be swallowed up into eternity and these heavens be no more: How then can our days be slow? 2. Do not sin, and sinners make quick work in the world? How speedily do men break into it? Even q Ps. 58.3. from the womb; With what eager pursuit do men follow sin? Even (like jehues' furious march) swiftly: r Pro. 6.18 their feet are swift in running to mischief; some faster, some slower, all too fast. How would wickedness tyrannize might it in this heat have while to root and spread, and seed according to the lust of sinful men? And who shall hinder swift sinners from bringing upon themselves swift destruction? 3. Neither is experience so senseless of the reason (a part post, as they say) by a touch of afterwit, that perceives every minute of time so flight that it prevents the quickest catch, gives the heedfullest attention the slip, and outstrips the speediest chase. The time to come is but only in conceit, the time is fled in instants: who can say of any time present, now it is, sith it outruns thy thought? Use 1 This shreds off the superfluous desires of many men, malcontented with their present states: who, like infants after youth, and youth after riper age, are ever liquering after future times. Oh, were such a quarter day come, or such a year or time expired, they were made. Why? what hadst gotten by this catch if thou couldst finger some thread of time before the Sun can spin it? First thou shouldst get but a wild foul, a shadow, a puffed, whose hasty vanishing would more vex, than its approach did please. Secondly is the thing, for which thou so over-reachest, good or evil? If thou hast such a greedy worm under thy tongue for that which is evil, that like s Gen. 85.30 Esau for the pottage, or Eli's sons for the flesh, thou wilt needs have it. t 1 Sam. 2.16. Now, or (in a sort) wilt take it by force: harken what the next verse telleth thee, u Vers. 17. Therefore thy sin is very great before the Lord. But admit the thing be good for which thou wouldst so fain steal upon the time to come; assure thyself, it would come so raw (as jacobs' abortive blessing did) that thou wouldst not relish the bitterness that would accompany the taste of it, for plucking Gods appointed season (which only ripeneth all) to thy brittle lusts: beside, so weak (generally) do such men prove in the well-ordering of time so overgrip●e, that, when it's come, they are as unable to use it as to hold it. Use 2 Secondly, this aggravates the vexation of a worse sort of men, whose anxiety is most, for that their youth slips away so fast, and their age comes on so close, that they fear lest they shall not have all their sports in, all their cups in, all their pleasures and profits in time enough. Oh, that they could realize that x Ps. 49. 1●… inward thought of some that their houses shall continue for ever! Oh, that they could cause the shadow of their life's dial to stand still two or three Methuselaes' ages, or go back to Adam's time and take them along to eternity of pastime! No, no, time is irrevocable for the past, unstayable for the present: their shadow is declining, their glass running, their sun setting apace: God's pursuivant death is more than in poste-hast, even like the Eagle towards its prey: their pleasures swift as the Sun, and fly apace; Gods wrath swift and comes apace: swift death, swift damnation treads upon the heels of all impenitent hastening of evil works, and putting off of the evil day. Use 3 How much better to hasten with the time to a profitable instruction to redeem the time past, and improve the present. If misspending of the time passed be sufficient, as that y 1 Pet. 4.3 Apostle saith; what shall we better set about then the z Eph. 5.16 redeeming it being suffered by us (for want of due care and watchfulness) to be carried captive by Satan to the servitude of sin: labour we by prayer and repentance and new obedience, to make our evil days good days, and so to rescue and recover our time into its liberty again: And for our present allowance of time, if a Reu. 12.12. Satan so much the more bestirs himself for evil by how much shorter time he knoweth he hath: how much more should we bustle for good, knowing how many hundred times shorter ours is in these cabins of clay? O, then be we thrifty of our time being short and precipitate also: and the faster we discern our Sun to set, the more haste like honest labourers and wise travellers let's make to dispatch our work and journey: go we along with the day, and let a day have a day's work, a week a weeks, etc. and proceed as fast in service as our days in passage, spend this special intrustment no faster than it comes in: its best wisdom to take our days before us, not neglecting if young to remember our Creator b Eccle. 12. ●. in the days of our youth. It cannot be denied but that its possible for an old sinner to repent and turn: howbeit, he is likeliest to be richest, as in wealth, so in grace, that gins betimes: besides how unlikely that a man should be able to catch repentance at pleasure in age and sickness, who hath beaten back the Lords proffered grace in youth and health; the Lord is likely to be well requited for all his favours, to have all the blade and flower of a man's age cast to his utter foes, and the refuse and stumps reserved for him: and it's very likely we shall fight a goodly field when for very impotency we are ready to be turned forth of th'camp. Oh, then learn better, while we have strength, and memory to number our days more wisely, and with Vespasian the Heathen prince pluck ourselves by the ear for every lost day, and redeem the next. What a feast will it be to a man's conscience, when he hath spent according to his exhibition of time; and having a price put into his b Pro. 17.16. hand, hath not wanted a heart to use it? Resolve upon it, howsoever thou hast failed in thy former beginnings this way, thy constant proceed in well employing thy short time will quit the cost, and bring in comfort in sickness, distress, temptation, death when world of preferments, profits, and pastimes shall stand but as vexations before thy conscience. As that man's state upon his death's couch is miserable whose conscience (than most of all) will embolden disputes against him, what he hath done with time, why he melted the fat of it to ennimble the wheels of his lusts for quicker dispatch of sin: objecteth why done so much evil so little good: and now after so much sin contracted, so little grace gleaned, what will now become of him, when his time and he are both at last cast? So, on the contrary, how happy he, whose walk can show him, and his conscience witness with him, that ever since he knew what time meant, and perceived how fast it passed, hath been no loser by the use of good opportunities, but as he felt them slipping away, so he laid on better holt, casting how to employ the smallest mites of time some about his honest vocation, other some in hearing, reading, meditating, conferring, and especially praying: some for his own particular, some for his family, some for others, all for the working and achieving some true good for himself and as many as he can: with what courage shall he look temptation and death in th'face, and, after all his painful days works in courses of piety, shut up the windows of his life towards a blissful rest in happy immortality? The second comfort belongs to all God's children under any affliction: their days pass apace, their sorrows cannot stay long; pain shall not long vex, foes shall persecute but a while: The c 2 Cor. 4.17. Apostle sums up the afflictions of this life into a moment. What speak we of those nibbling crosses of the body? The kill-cow of all, sin shall make no long havoc in their souls, not long bane their peace, nor shipwreck their security: pluck they up their hearts, these storms will over, these sad days will have a night of joy: the time flies towards us when we shall have no time nor heart to grieve the Lord, no time to provoke him to grieve us: the d 1 Sam 31 4. sword that pierced saul's breast was nothing to the weapon wherewith our Lord jesus Christ hath wounded Satan's head: his spirits, and sins vitals are bleeding forth apace: mean time, all that Satan and sin can do to us, is but to make us more heedful and watchful in our ways; all that death can do is but to turn the key and open the door before us to a heavenly mansion. Comfort one another in these words, that the time hies apace, even swifter than a Post, that Satan and sin shall have no more to do with us; heaven misseth us as much as we earn for it, God will shortly call for us, the Angels shall carry us, Christ jesus shall entertain us, his Spirit shall welcome us, his e Ps 17.15 image shall satisfy us. Let this mitigate the sadness of humane life, (especially of the Saints) being the Third and last consideration from the Text. They see no good. The word good is of easy explication by noting how the word evil (its contrary) is in Scripture distinguished. There's one evil in the root, as it were, partaking of that f 1 job. 5.18. Evil one Satan and that's the evil of sin, in relation whereunto it's said of wicked times, g Ephes. 5.16. the days are evil. There's another evil in the branches, and that's the effect and fruit of sin, viz. misery; in which respect days of sorrow are termed h Eccles. 12 1. Evil days. So (according to the rule of Opposites) the word Good hath a double sense drawn upon it: First as it participateth of the Good God in holiness and righteousness: so Godly works are styled i 1 Tim. 6.18. good works: Secondly, as it partakes of God's bounty in the prosperity & comfort of the creature: in which respect k Ps. 34.12 prosperous days are called Good, and this is the proper sense of the word in this Text; jobs days saw no Good, that is, much misery: much loss in state, much fear in his children, much pain in his body, much discouragement from his friends, much horror in his soul: all which as job suffered by way of trial, so all are sufferable by demerit: which takes us out a Doct. 3 Third profitable, though hard, lesson, viz. Our short swift time is subject to great and sore affliction. Short and sweet were some mitigation, but our days are as sour as short. Swift and pleasant were some qualification, but they are knotty and sad as well as swift. All our days are not fair, long, summer days, but many gloomy, short, winter nippy days among. jobs whole story to the last Chapter, what is't but a ruthful martyrology of affliction. jacobs' story well concurred with his confession, that his days were l Gen. 49.7 few and evil: The Patriarch David had his stint this way, being exercised with m Ps. 71.20 great and sore troubles: and if the righteous are recompensed upon earth with troubles for number n Ps. 34.19 many, for measure o job 2.13. great, p Pro. 11.31. how much more, saith Solomon, the wicked and the sinner? Speak experience; of what condition is the vanishing vapour of our life? When we have made a hard escape from stifling in the womb, what's infamy, but a brak of discontents? what's childhood, but a school of restraint from without, a very bridewell of frowardness within? What's youth, but a pitched field of passions and distempers? What's age, but a mere hospital of infirmities? Our whole life worse than a tragedy, (for that gins with some mixture of delight) wherein the first act is crying; the second grieving: groaning is the last Catastrophe. No marvel then if job calculate man's time to be not only short, but q job 14.1. full of misery. Reason 1 For why? The Lord hath so appointed it, as David and Hezekiah upon their sick beds acknowledge. God hath laid this heavy yoke upon all the sons of Adam either for punishment or for trial, and there's no escaping a thing decreed. Were it any way avoideable, wisdom might descry some prevention. Were these storms only upon the land or upon the sea alone, the advantage of ease might be taken by the place; were they only without doors, one might house himself within: but be he where he can be, he cannot avoid what he is borne to. Man is borne saith job to trouble, r job 5.7. as the sparks fly upwards. Reason 2 Affliction is sins native brood; if this hang on, the other will not fall off: its sin that makes man's time narrow as a well for breadth, deep as hell for bitterness, why else doth s Ps. 18.4. David and jonah t jonah 2.2 complain of hellish sorrows? whosoever therefore follows sin becomes afflictions prey, neither have the law; and the Prophets noted any other chase for afflictions hunting but only the sinner. If no man can say, he hath cleansed his heart from sin, no man shall be able to rid his soul or body from sorrow. Truth is, sin hath no fit means whereby to execute its own ends then this. What aimeth sin at? Death and destruction. What breaks and battereth down more forcibly than affliction? Man made mortal must down, iniquity is the axe, miseries the ordinary several strokes that lay the sinner along. Use 1 Do all suffer or deserve to feel these storms that pass the sea of this mortality? Then this must first resolve what to trust to here. This world is not a meadow full of flowers, but a wilderness of brakes and briers; now, this affliction catches at us; now, an other, at sins suit, arrests us; now a foe dogs us, anon a sickness lays us up: waking, sleeping, dreaming: cares, atches, fears, crasinesses and distempers, as thick as u job 1.14.16.17, 18. jobs ill messengers, haunt us; Dream of what ease and comfort thou wilt after thy state and condition so and so altered to thy mind, how thou shalt live as merrily as the day is long to (as your proverb runs) after thy yoke-fellow obtained to thy mind, after all thy reversions outlived, all thy purchases compassed, preferments achieved, children placed; deceive not thyself: even after all those, thou wilt float upon a sea of sin, and therefore no less than a sea of waves, and rocks and shelves and storms and pirates shall annoy and continually endanger thee. Art God's tree? thou must be pruned; art God's tilth? thou must be bowelled up with plough and harrow, else thou wilt be fruitless: art God's child, chastised thou must be or graceless. Art God's enemy? he notes thy pranks, and is providing sour sauce for thy pleasant morsels: His hand is taking holt of vengeance, he is furbushing his * Deut. 32 41. glittering sword, that his arrows may drink the blood, & his sword eat the flesh of them that hate him. Finally, be thou good or bad, set not to thy heart any descant of pleasant ditty, whiles all the tune of thy life runs upon discords of iniquity; if any comforts appear, they are but as the gleams of a March day beaten with storms as fast as they glimmer forth; and therefore as thou dost not unslate thy house when the shower is past, but keepest it to award another: so, put not away faith and patience and watchfulness at the departure of any cross, but taking a short farewell, reserve thyself to welcome the same again or worse, sith this is not the haven but the Ocean. 2. Neither may we omit one duty in respect of our deceased friend, sorrow indeed becomes us considering what strange havoc sin and death make of creatures so excellent: howbeit in respect of the deceased, what strange matter is befallen them? What more usual, more natural then for a man to die. Yesterday, saith the Philosopher, I saw a pitcher break, and to day I see a man die: the matter is no more strange that's befallen thy wife, thy child, thy brother, thy friend: he is but gone the way of all the earth; But what's the alteration, what hath the x Ios. 23.14 party let fall to th'ground? any more but nerves and sinews, as the verse hath it? aught else but a weak, crazy, putrefying body there to be perfumed against the resurrection? What's the loss but a loss of much sin, a loss of many sorrows, of more dangers: and why should these divisions be such thoughts of heart? What would we desire more in our friend's behalf then the Lord hath done for them in their happy translation if they lived and died in him? Would we pull them back again and hold tug y 2 Sam. 18 33. as David for his Absolom against the Lord himself for them? No. What then? would you have them smart longer, suffer longer? Would you have the moth of anguish fret the garment of their flesh longer, affliction grind their very bones longer? Would you have Satan's blows to assail them still, sins poison to endanger them for ever? Mend this fault of over-grieving at friends departure: so mourn, as Abraham for deceased Sarah, and to rise from our friend's corpse, as z Gen▪ 23.3 he did from hers. View we our own condition in the glass of their mortality; there's no long time of division 'twixt them and us: we must shortly cut over the same ferry and meet them on the other side of th'shore: death's boat was not appointed to carry all at once: the ferry not made to land all at one tide: stay the return of the water for our turn: and taking but a short leave of the deceased, joying at their safe arrival, using survivers better, preparing to part with all, pray for a prosperous gale. In the mean, husband we out uncertain, short, and swift time well: dispatch our works and wills against the tides return: and sith we have many talents committed to our traffic, and barks of our own to furnish, let's play the wise merchants, not to load our little vessels with all ordinary lumber and trumpery which every seller saith is good (more like to shipwreck us by the way then pleasure us at the shore) but take up that which David prefers before a Ps. 19.10. much fine gold, bart for that which b job 28.18. coral & pearls are not to be named with; nor c Pro. 3.15 Rubies or any other desirables are to be compared unto: buy the d Pro 23.23. Truth: purchase that hid treasure commended by our e Luk. 13 44. Master, if the selling of all we have will reach it, and so ballast our small vessels with the choicest wares, that an ever blessed thirst may welcome our arrival. There our faith will leave us, not our charity: let that grace work by this virtue now, for the best improving of all comforts, for what's our wit or state to procure, continue, use, or miss the least of them? and for the bearing of all crosses of this life, for what's our strength or natural armour to prevent, withstand, remove, or award the easiest of them? Lay holt of the promises by faith in our Redeemers life, f job 19.25 as job, in his extremities; wrestle it out by prayer, as g Gen. 32 26 jacob, in his anxieties: commit ourselves to our h 1 Pet. 4.18. faithful Creator, get i Rom. 15.4 comfort in his word, k Rom. 14.17. joy in his spirit, and l Dan. 12.1. Prince Michael to stand up for us amongst the children of his people, and then although it be true, m joh. 16.33. In the world ye shall have tribulation, yet it is as true, Christ hath overcome the world, in him ye shall have peace. FINIS.