Imatges de pàgina
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thee, created heaven, air, sea, earth, and all things; and yet am dishonoured by thee, and held most vile and base; and yet, for all this, have not ceased to do thee good, and bestowed upon thee innumerable benefits; for thy sake, being God, I was content to make myself a servant; was buffeted, spit upon, and condemned to a punishment of slaves; and to redeem thee from death, suffered the death of the cross. It is heaven I intended for thee, and from thence sent thee the Holy Ghost. I invited thee unto the kingdom of heaven; offered myself to be thy head, thy spouse, thy food, thy drink, thy shepherd; I chose thee for the heir of heaven, and drew thee out of darkness into light."

To such excess of love, what have we to answer, but to stand astonished and confounded, that we have been so ungrateful, and given occasion, to the devil, of one of the greatest scorns and injuries, which could be put upon our Redeemer? when he shall say unto him, "Thou createdst man; for him wast born in poverty, lived in labour, and died in pain and torment; I have done nothing for him, but sought to damn him into a thousand hells; and yet, for all this, it is I whom he strives to please, and not thee. Thou dost prepare for him a crown of eternal glory, I desire to torment him in hell; and yet he had rather serve me without interest, than thee for thy promise of so great a reward. I should have been ashamed to have created and redeemed a wretch, so ungrateful unto him, from whom he hath received so great benefits. But, since he loves me better than thee, let him be mine, unto whom he hath so often given up himself.”

We are not only to give an account of these general benefits, but of those which are more particular: of the good examples which we have seen, of the instructions we have heard, of the inspiration which hath been sent us. Let us tremble, that we are so careless of that, for which all the care in the world is not sufficient. Now is the time of benefiting ourselves: if we shall now despise it, in what case shall we be? Let us not mispend the time of this life, since so severe an account will be demanded of all the benefits which we have received. Let us take heed what use we make of this temporal life; let us not lose it, since we are to answer for every part of it. This time is bestowed upon us, wherein to gain heaven; and a most strict account will be demanded of

us, if we despise it. It is not ours for which we are to answer; we are not the lords of time; let us not, therefore, dispose of it for our own pleasure, but for the service of God, whose it is.

THE PRAYER.

O God, every way most perfect and good! which art so scrupulous in thy justice, and so indulgent in thy mercy; rigorous with thyself, that thou mightest be merciful unto us: O God, infinitely good, infinitely holy, infinitely just and perfect! we magnify thee, we praise thee, we glorify thee; we give thanks unto thee, heavenly Father, for all the blessings thou hast bestowed upon us.

CHAP. X.

The End of all Time.

AFTER We have finished the time of this life, the end of all time is to succeed, which is to give a period unto all which we leave behind us. Let man, therefore, know, that those things which he leaves behind, for his memory after death, are as vain as those he enjoyed in his life. Let him raise proud mausoleums; let him erect statues of marble; let him build populous cities; let him leave a numerous kindred; let him stamp his name in brass, and fix his memory with a thousand nails; all must have an end. His cities shall sink, his statues fall, his family perish, his memory be defaced; and all shall end, because all time must end. Not only our pleasures and delights are to end in death, but our memories, at the farthest, are to end with time: and since all are to conclude, all are to be despised as vain and perishing.

If the death of a monarch or prince of some corner of the world, prognosticated by an eclipse or comet, cause a fear and amazement in the beholders; what shall the death of the whole world, and with it all things temporal, and of time itself, foretold by angels, with prodigious apparitions and dreadful noise, produce in us? Time shall end, and the

a Apoc. c. 10.

world shall die; and that, if we may so say, a most horrible and disastrous death. How much the whole world, and the whole race of mankind, exceeds one particular person, by so much shall the universal end surpass in terror the particular end of this life.

Let us look upon the strange manner of the end of the world, which, being so terrible, gives us to understand the vanity and deceit of all things in it. As it is usual in wars to skirmish, and to make inroads before the day of battle; so before that dreadful day, wherein the army of vengeance and of all punishments are to encounter with the army sin, the Lord shall, from divers parts, send forth several calamities, as plagues, famine, earthquakes, wars, inundations, droughts; which shall be forerunners of that great day of battle; which shall, like light horsemen, scour the campania. And if those miseries do now so much afflict us, what shall they then do, when God shall add unto them his utmost force and power; when all creatures shall arm against sinners, and the zeal of the Divine justice shall be their captaingeneral? Which the wise man declares in these words: "His zeal shall take up arms, and shall arm the creatures, to revenge him of his enemies: he shall put on justice as a breast-plate, and righteous judgment as a helmet; and he shall take equity as a buckler, and shall sharpen his wrath as a lance, and the circuit of the earth shall fight for him; thunderbolts shall be sent from the clouds, as a well-shooting bow, and shall not fail to hit the mark; and hail shall be sent, full of stormy wrath; the waters of the sea shall threaten them, the rivers shall combat furiously; a most stormy wind shall rise against them, and shall divide them as a whirlwind "."

Very dreadful are these words, although they contain but the war, which three of the elements are to make against sinners. But not only fire, air, and water, but earth also, and heaven, shall fall upon them, and confound them; for all creatures shall express their fury in that day, and shall rise against man. And if the clouds shall discharge thunderbolts and stones upon their heads, the heavens shall shoot no less balls than stars, which shall fall from thence. If hail, no bigger than little stones, falling but from the clouds, destroy

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the fields, and sometimes kill the lesser sort of cattle; what shall pieces of stars do, falling from the firmament or upper region?

As in man, who is called the lesser world, when he is to die, the humours, which are as the elements, are troubled and out of order; his eyes, which are as the sun and moon, are darkened; his other senses, which are as the lesser stars, fall away; his reason, which is as the celestial virtues, is off the hinges; so in the death of the greater world, before it dissolve and expire, the sun shall be turned into darkness, the moon into blood, the stars shall fall, and the whole world shall tremble with a horrid noise. If the sun, moon, and other celestial bodies, which are held incorruptible, shall suffer such changes, what shall be done with those frail and corruptible elements of earth, air, and water? If this inferior world doth depend upon the heavens, those celestial bodies being altered and broken in pieces, in what estate must the lower elements remain, when the virtues of heaven shall falter, and the wandering stars shall lose their way, and fail to observe their order?

How shall the air be troubled with violent and sudden whirlwinds, dark tempests, horrible thunders, and furious flashings of lightning! How shall the earth tremble with dreadful earthquakes, opening herself with a thousand mouths, and casting forth, as it were, whole volcanoes of fire and sulphur; and not content to overthrow the loftiest towers, shall swallow up high mountains, and bury cities in her entrails? How shall the sea then rage, mounting her proud waves above the clouds, as if they meant to overwhelm the whole earth? The roaring of the ocean shall astonish those who are far distant from the sea, and inhabit in the midst of the firm land. Therefore it is said, that there shall be in the earth afflictions of nations, for the confusion of the noise of the sea.

What shall men do in this general perturbation of nature ? They shall remain amazed and pale as death. What comfort shall they have? They shall stand gazing one upon another, and every one shall conceive a new fear, by beholding in his neighbour's face the image of his own death. What fear and horror shall then possess them, when they shall hourly expect the success and dire effects portended by those monstrous

prodigies? All commerce shall then cease; the marketplaces shall be unpeopled, and the tribunals remain solitary and silent; none shall then be ambitious of honours, none shall seek after pastimes and new-invented pleasures; nor shall the covetous wretch then busy himself with the care of his treasures; none shall frequent the palaces of kings and princes, but, through fear, shall forget even to eat and drink; all their care shall be employed how to escape those deluges, earthquakes, and lightning; seeking for places of security, which they shall not meet with. Who will remember the sumptuous buildings he hath reared, the beauty he hath once doted upon?

If we shall forget what we ourselves most valued and gloried in, how shall we remember that of others? What remembrance shall there then be of the acts of the great Alexander? of the learning of Aristotle? of the wisdom of Solomon? and of the endowments of the most renowned men of the world? Their fame shall remain from thenceforward for ever buried, and shall die with the world for a whole eternity.

The mariners, when in some furious tempest they are upon point of sinking, how are they amazed at the rage of the watery element! How grieved and afflicted with ruin, which threatens them! What prayers and vows do they send up to heaven! How disinterested are they of all worldly matters, since they fling their wealth and riches into the sea, for which they have run such hazard! In what condition shall be, then, the inhabitants of the earth; when not only the sea, with his raging, but heaven and earth, with a thousand prodigies, shall affright them? When the sun shall put on a robe of mourning, and amaze them with the horror of his darkness; when the moon shall look like blood, the stars fall, and the earth shall shake them with its unquiet trembling; when the whirlwinds shall throw them off their legs, and frequent and thick flashes of lightning dazzle their. sight, and confound their understanding; what shall sinners then do, for whose sake all these fearful wonders shall happen?

Let us, by the particular changes which have happened, judge how dreadful the conjunction of so many and so great calamities, in the end of the world, altogether will be. But all the alterations past of the elements were no more than

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