when thou camest to man's estate?

Or when thou

didst begin to be old? We die every day; we are in deaths often, and yet vain man would persuade himself he shall live for ever.

Wherefore do men labour so much in gathering riches, and in purchasing lands, and make so little preparation for death? Is it not because they persuade themselves that their lives shall be long? This false conceit makes them believe, that they shall have time for their pleasures, lusts, vanities, and worldly businesses; and that they shall have time enough also before they die, to make their account ready, and to make their peace with God.

This vain persuasion is not grounded upon any reason, or true foundation, but only upon self-love, which as it naturally hates the thoughts of death, so it will not believe that it will come as soon to his house as to another man's: most men are loth to believe that which may be an occasion of so great pain and grief to them as this would be.

6. Meditate on the manifold miseries of this life. So many are the calamities and miseries of man's body and mind, that it deserves rather the name of death than life. Were your eyes opened to see your own case, you would always lament and bewail your state, as men condemned by God Almighty to endure such miseries. Consider first the external miseries of the body: who is able to count them? What pains and toils do men take to get food, whereby to sustain their lives, either by the sweat of their brows, or of their brains! The beasts of the earth and birds of the air are fed without any labour or pain; but man is constrained to labour day and night, and to turmoil by sea and land, to

get his living. And as the spider labours day and night in spinning her web, wasting even her own bowels, and consuming herself to bring it to an end, which serves only for a net to catch flies in, even so all man's travail serves to no other end, but only to catch flies, to procure trifles, and things of little value.

Who is able to reckon up the infinite diversities of diseases, to which the body of man is subject? Physicians in their books write of abundance of diseases, and remedies for the same; and yet their science is enlarged continually by the addition of new and strange diseases, of which the physicians of old were altogether ignorant.

And even those persons that have been free from these miseries, yet have not been exempt from other calamities and mischances. How many thousand men has the sea swallowed up! How many has the sword devoured! How many has the fire consumed! How many have been killed by the falling down of houses, walls, and towers! How many with the strokes and stings of venomous beasts! How many women die in travail of their children, and dearly purchase their children's lives with their own painful death! The very brute beasts that were made to serve us, rebel against us; and among all other creatures, man is most cruelly bent against man.

What abundance of engines, artillery, weapons, and ammunition have men devised for their own defence, and to destroy others! Insomuch that when they are not molested with the air and the elements, men become wolves and devils to one another. But if I should run through all the miseries and calamities that are incident to all the ages and conditions

of this life, men might yet find themselves in a far worse case. And here we should never make an end, if we should set forth the little satisfaction that is to be found in each of these, and that eager desire that every one has to change his condition with the state of others.

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7. Meditate on death itself, which succeeds after other miseries. Who is able to declare the manifold miseries included in this misery alone? At present consider what a holy father saith, by way of exclamation against death :-" O death, how bitter is the remembrance of thee! How suddenly dost thou steal upon us! How secret are thy paths and ways! How doubtful is thy hour! How universal is thy dominion! The mighty cannot escape thy hands; the wise cannot hide themselves from thee, and in thy presence the strong lose their strength. Thou accountest no man rich, for no man can ransom his life of thee for money; thou goest everywhere, thou searchest everywhere, there is no place where thou art not. Thou witherest the herbs, thou drinkest up the winds, thou corruptest the air, thou changest the ages, thou alterest the world, thou refrainest not to sup up the sea. All things do increase and diminish, but thou continuest always at one stay. Thou art the hammer that always striketh ; thou art the sword that never blunteth; thou art the snare whereinto every one falleth; thou art the prison whereinto every one entereth; thou art the sea wherein all do perish; thou art the pain that every one suffereth, and the tribute that every one payeth. O cruel death, why hast thou no pity on us, but stealest suddenly upon us, to snatch us away in our best times, and interrupt us in our best affairs? Thou robbest as much from us in one

Thou

hour, as we have gained in many years. cuttest off the succession of kindreds and families; thou leavest princes and kingdoms without any heirs; thou fillest the world with widows and orphans; thou breakest off the studies of great clerks; thou overthrowest good wits in their ripest age; thou joinest the end with the beginning, without giving place to the middle. If devotion hath made us wings, why are we slothful? Let us soar aloft, and take that flight which our Lord tracked out to us in the day of his ascension. Remember that the quintessence of all wisdom is the meditation of death. It is a business we should learn all our life-time, to exercise it once: the faults therein committed are irreparable, and the loss without recovery."

SECTION XXXVII.

OF RETURNING TO FAMILY WORSHIP IN THE EVENING.

in the morning.

LET every Christian return to the worshipping of God in the family, and in secret, in the evening as Under the law a lamb was offered up morning and evening, day by day continually, Exod. xxix. 38. Of this the Hebrew doctors say, that the continual sacrifice of the morning made atonement for the iniquities that were done in the night. And the evening sacrifice made atonement for the iniquities that were done in the day.

This should teach us daily to renew the application of the sacrifice of Christ, typified by the Lamb, once offered to the Father for us. Receive him,

feed upon him, and make daily application to him; every morning and evening make a humble confession of your sins, with much holy contrition and godly sorrow, and then present Christ and all his merits unto God, and sprinkle thy conscience afresh with his blood. Renew your hold of him, and embrace him more strongly let your faith be daily exercised upon Christ.

The Lord met with the people, and spoke with them in the place where the lamb was offered continually, Exod. xxix. 42: so, if we daily, morning and evening, by a true and lively faith, renew the application of Christ's sacrifice to our souls, we may be sure that Christ will meet with us there, and speak with us there. Oh, how we wrong ourselves when we withdraw, and do not give Christ a meeting, when we absent ourselves morning or evening; and neglect those holy duties wherein we should meet Jesus Christ, and hear him speaking to us peace and pardon, reconciliation and salvation! What sweet comfort is to be found in all states, when thus we draw near to the Lord in these holy duties! When we meet him, and hear his sweet expressions of love by his Spirit to our souls, it should make us loh to depart, even hard to be pulled away from the door of the tabernacle, unwilling to end these exercises, or turn our thoughts another way, were it not that other things must be done. Therefore, sanctify yourselves every one, and come to this daily burnt offering morning and evening continually, that you may meet the Lord, and hear him talk with you words of peace and love. Many complain that Christ is strange unto them, they cannot see him, nor hear any word of comfort from him; but the fault is in themselves,