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right and untroubled cloud, and a sweet smell to join with the incense of the Altar, where the eternal Priest offers a never-ceasing sacrifice. When sickness, which is the condition of our nature, is called for with purposes of redemption; when we are sent to death to secure eternal life; when GOD strikes us that He may spare us, it shows that we have done things which He essentially hates, and therefore we must be smitten with the rod of GOD: but in the midst of judgment, GOD remembers mercy,1 and makes the rod to be medicinal, and, like the rod of GOD in the hand of Aaron, to shoot forth buds, and leaves, and almonds, hopes, and mercies, and eternal recompenses, in the day of restitution. This may, nay, ought to, be chosen, at least by an after-election: for so said S. Paul, If we judge ourselves, we shall not be condemned of the LORD:3 that is, if we judge ourselves worthy of the sickness, if we acknowledge and confess GOD's justice in smiting us, if we take the rod of GOD in our own hands, and are willing to imprint it in the flesh, we are workers together with GOD in the infliction; and then the sickness, beginning and being managed in the virtue of repentance, and patience, and resignation, and charity, will end in peace, and pardon, and justification, and consignation to glory. But I have some things to observe for the better finishing this consideration.

1. All these advantages and lessenings of evils in the state of sickness are only upon the stock of virtue and religion. There is nothing can make sickness in any sense eligible, or in many senses tolerable, but only the grace of GOD: that only turns sickness into easiness and felicity, which also turns it into virtue. For whosoever goes about to comfort a vicious person when he lies sick upon his bed, can only discourse of the necessities of nature, of the unavoidableness of the suffering, of the accidental vexations and increase of torments by impatience, of the fellowship of all the sons of Adam, and such other little considerations; which indeed, if sadly reflected upon, and

1 Hab. iii. 2.
* 1 Cor. xi. 31.

2 Numb. xvii. 8.

4 2 Cor. vi. 1.

found to stand alone, teach him nothing but the degree of his calamity, and the evil of his condition, and teach him such a patience, and minister to him such a comfort, which can only make him to observe decent gestures in his sickness, and to converse with his friends and standers by so as may do them comfort, but do him no true advantage. And indeed what comfort can he receive, whose sickness, as it looks back, is an effect of God's indignation and fierce vengeance; and if it goes forward and enters into the gates of the grave, is the beginning of a sorrow that shall never have an ending? But when the sickness is a messenger sent from a chastising FATHER; when it first turns into degrees of innocence, and then into virtues, and thence into pardon; this is no misery, but such a method of the Divine dispensation, as resolves to bring us to heaven without any new impositions, but merely upon the stock and charges of

nature.

2. It were good if we would transact the affairs of our souls with nobleness and ingenuity, and that we would by an early and forward religion prevent the necessary arts of the Divine Providence. It is true that GOD cures some by incision, by fire, and torments; but these are ever the more obstinate and more unrelenting natures. GOD's providence is not so afflictive and full of trouble, as that it hath placed sickness and infirmity amongst things simply necessary; and in most persons it is but a sickly and an effeminate virtue which is imprinted upon our spirits with fears, and the sorrows of a fever, or a peevish consumption. It is but a miserable remedy to be beholden to a sickness for our health: and though it be better to suffer the loss of a finger than that the arm and the whole body should putrefy, yet even then also it is a trouble and an evil to lose a finger. He that mends with sickness, pares the nails of the beast when they have already torn off part of the flesh; but he that would have a sickness become a clear and an entire blessing, a thing indeed to be reckoned among the good things of GOD and the evil things of the world, must lead a holy life, and judge himself with

an early sentence, and so order the affairs of his soul, that in the usual method of GOD's saving us there may be nothing left to be done, but that such virtues should be exercised which GOD intends to crown.

But for the sickness itself; if all the calumnies were true concerning it with which it is aspersed, yet it is far to be preferred before the most pleasant sin, and before a great secular business and a temporal care and some men wake as much in the foldings of the softest beds, as others on the cross; and sometimes the very weight of sorrow and the weariness of a sickness presses the spirit into slumbers and the images of rest, when the intemperate or the lustful person rolls upon his uneasy thorns, and sleep is departed from his eyes. Certain it is, some sickness is a blessing. If sickness were always a testimony of GOD's anger, and a violence to a man's whole condition, then it were a huge calamity: but because GOD sends it to His servants, to His children, to little infants, to Apostles and saints, with designs of mercy, to preserve their innocence, to overcome temptation, to try their virtue, to fit them for rewards; it is certain that sickness never is an evil but by our own faults; and if we will do our duty, we shall be sure to turn it into a blessing. If the sickness be great, it may end in death, and the greater it is, the sooner; and if it be very little, it hath great intervals of rest if it be between both, we may be masters of it, and by serving the ends of Providence serve also the perfective end of human nature, and enter into the possession of everlasting mercies.

The sum is this: He that is afraid of pain, is afraid of his own nature; and if his fear be violent, it is a sign his patience is none at all; and an impatient person is not ready dressed for heaven. None but suffering, humble, and patient persons can go to heaven and when God hath given us the whole stage of our life to exercise all the active virtues of religion, it is necessary in the state of virtues that some portion and period of our lives be assigned to passive graces; for patience, for Christian fortitude, for resignation or conformity to the Divine will.

But

as the violent fear of sickness makes us impatient, so it will make our death without comfort and without religion: and we shall go off from our stage of actions and sufferings with an unhandsome exit, because we were willing to receive the kindness of GOD when He expressed it as we listed; but we would not suffer Him to be kind and gracious to us in His own method, nor were willing to exercise and improve our virtues at the charge of a sharp fever, or a lingering consumption. Woe be to the man that hath lost patience; for what will he do when the LORD shall visit him?

Meditations

FROM

DEAN COMBER.

On First Collect for Support under the Affliction.

O Lord, look down from Heaven, behold, visit, and relieve this Thy serbant. To say the introduction of this Collect, is found very anciently in the Offices of the Greek or Latin Church, is somewhat for the honour thereof; but we must look higher, and then we shall see that GOD Himself instructed the Jews in

Moses' time to pray so: "Look down from Thy holy habitation from heaven," &c. (Deut. xxvi. 15.) And that the use of this form continued for many ages in the Jewish Church, may be known from that prayer in Isaiah, where the people in their distress "Look say: down from heaven, and behold from the habitation of Thy holiness, and of Thy glory." (Isa. lxiii. 15.) Yea, Solomon was assured, that when any sickness was upon that people, if they called upon GOD, "He would hear them in heaven His dwelling place." (1 Kings viii. 37-39; ix. 3.) So that the Church had just reason to transcribe this piece of sacred devotion into the Office of Visitation. It may be the sick man may with some trouble consider, that though GOD be his FATHER, yet He is very glorious, and very distant from us, dwelling in heaven, while we are upon this earth grieved with many miseries, and far

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