ΤΟ The Right Honourable AND NOBLEST LORD, RICHARD, EARL of CARBERT, &c. MY LORD, I AM treating your Lordship as a Roman Gentleman did Saint Auguftin and his Mother; Ifhall entertain you in a Charnel-houfe,and carry your Meditation a while into the Chambers of Death, where you fhall find the rooms dreffed up with melancholick Arts, and fit to converfe with your most retired thoughts, which begin with a figh,and proceed in deep confideration, and end in a holy Refolution. The fight that St. Auguftin most noted in that house of forrow, was the body of Cæfar cloathed with all the dishonours of corruption that you can fuppofe in a fix months burial. But I know that, without pointing, your first thoughts will remember the change of a greater beauty, which is now dreffing for the brightest immortality, and from her bed of darkness calls to you to drefs your Soul for that change which shall mingle your bones with that beloved duft, and carry your Soul to the fame Choire, A 3 where where you may both fit and fing for ever. My Lord, it is your dear Lady's Anniversary, and fhe deferved the biggest honour, and the longest memory, and the fairest monument, and the most folemn Mourning: and in order to it, give me leave (My Lord) to cover her Hearfe with thefe following Sheets. This Book was intended first to minister to her Piety; and fhe defired all good People fhould partake of the advantages which are here recorded: She knew how to live rarely well, and fhe defired to know how to die; and God taught her by an experiment. But fince her work is done, and God fupplied her with Provifions of his own, before I could minister to her, and perfect what the defired, it is neceffary to prefent to your Lordship thofe bundles of Cypress which were intended to drefs her Clofet, but come now to dress her Hearse. My Lord, both your Lordship and my felf have lately feen and felt fuch forrows of Death, and fuch fad departure of dearest Friends, that it is more than high time we should think our felves nearly concerned in the accidents. Death hath come fo near to you, as to fetch a portion from your very heart; and now you cannot chufe but dig your own Grave, and place your Coffin in your eye, when the Angel hath dressed your scene of forrow and Meditation with fo particular and fo near an object: And therefore, as it is my duty, I am come to minister to your pious thoughts, and to direct your forrows, that they may turn into vertues and advantages. And fince I know your Lordship to be fo conftant and regu lar in your Devotions, and fo tender in the matter of Justice, fo ready in the expreffions of Charity, and so apprehenfive of Religion, and that you are a person whose work of Grace is apt, and must every day grow toward thofe degrees, where when you arrive, you shall triumph over imperfection, and chufe nothing but what may please God; I could not by any Compendium conduct and affift your pious purposes fo well, as by that which is the great argument and the great inftrument of Holy Living, the confideration and Exercifes of Death. My My Lord, it is a great Art to die well, and to be learn'd by Men in health, by them that can difcourfe and confider, by hose whofe understanding and acts of reafon are not abated with fear or pains: and as the greatest part of Death is paffed by the preceeding years of our Life, fo alfo in thofe years are the greatest preparations to it; and he that prepares not for death before his last sickness, is like him that begins to study Philofophy when he is going to difpute publickly in the Faculty. All that a fick and dying man can doe is but to exercife those vertues which he before acquired, and to perfect that repentance which was begun more early. And of this, (My Lord) my Book, I think, is a good teftimony; not only because it reprefents the vanity of a late and fick-bed repentance, but becaufe it contains in it fo many precepts and meditations, fo many propofitions and various duties, fuch forms of exercise, and the degrees and difficulties of fo many Graces which are neceffary preparatives to a holy Death, that the very learning the duties requires ftudy and skill, time and understanding in the ways of Godliness: and it were very vain to say fo much is neceffary, and not to fuppofe more time to learn them, more skill to practtife them, more opportunities to defire them, more abilities both of body and mind than can be fuppofed in a fick, amazed, timorous, and weak perfon; whofe natural acts are difabled, whofe fenfes are weak, whose difcerning faculties are leffened, whose principles are made intricate and intangled, upon whofe eyes fits a cloud, and the heart is broken with fickness, and the liver pierced through with forrows, and the strokes of Death. And therefore (My Lord) it is intended by the neceffity of affairs, that the precepts of dying well be part of the studies of them that live in health, and the days of difcourfe and understanding, which in this cafe bath another degree of neceffity fuperad ded; because in other notices, an imperfect study may fupplied by a frequent exercife and a renewed experience; here if we practife imperfectly once, we shall never recover the errour: for we die but once; and therefore it will be A 4 be necef neceffary that our skill be more exact, fince it is not to be mended by trial, but the actions must be for ever left imper fect, unless the habit be contracted with study and contemplation before-hand. And indeed I were vain, if I should intend this Book to be read and ftudied by dying perfons: And they were vainer that should need to be inftructed in those graces which they are then to exercise and to finish. For a fick-bed is only a School of fevere exercife, in which the fpirit of a man is tried, and his graces are rehearsed: and the Affiftances which I have in the following pages given to thofe vertues which are proper to the state of Sickness, are fuch as fuppofe a Man in the state of Grace, or they confirm a good man, or they Support the weak, or add degrees, or minifter comfort, prevent an evil, or cure the little mischiefs which are incident to tempted persons in their weakness. That is the fumm of the prefent Defign as it relates to Dying perfons. And therefore I have not inferted any advices proper to Old age, but fuch as are common to it and the state of fickness. For I fuppofe very old age to be a longer fickness; it is labour and forrow when it goes beyond the common period of nature: but if it be on this fide that period, and be healthful, in the same degree it is fo, I reckon it in the accounts of life, and therefore it can have no diftinct confideration. But I do not think it is a ftation of advantage to begin the change of an evil life in: it is a middle ftate between life and death-bed: and therefore although it hath more of hopes than this, and lefs than that; yet as it partakes of either state, so it is to be regulated by the advices of that ftate, and judged by its fentences. Only this: I defire that all old perfons would fadly confider that their advantages in that ftate are very few, but their inconveniences are not few, their bodies are without ftrength, their prejudices long and mighty, their vices (if they have lived wicked) are habitual, the occafions of the vertues not many, the poffibilities of fome (in the matter of which they Stand very guilty) are past, and shall never return again, Such |