Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions Part 6

IV. MEDITATION.

It is too little to call man a little world; except G.o.d, man is a diminutive to nothing. Man consists of more pieces, more parts, than the world; than the world doth, nay, than the world is. And if those pieces were extended, and stretched out in man as they are in the world, man would be the giant, and the world the dwarf; the world but the map, and the man the world. If all the veins in our bodies were extended to rivers, and all the sinews to veins of mines, and all the muscles that lie upon one another, to hills, and all the bones to quarries of stones, and all the other pieces to the proportion of those which correspond to them in the world, the air would be too little for this...o...b..of man to move in, the firmament would be but enough for this star; for, as the whole world hath nothing, to which something in man doth not answer, so hath man many pieces of which the whole world hath no representation.

Enlarge this meditation upon this great world, man, so far as to consider the immensity of the creatures this world produces; our creatures are our thoughts, creatures that are born giants; that reach from east to west, from earth to heaven; that do not only bestride all the sea and land, but span the sun and firmament at once; my thoughts reach all, comprehend all. Inexplicable mystery; I their creator am in a close prison, in a sick bed, any where, and any one of my creatures, my thoughts, is with the sun, and beyond the sun, overtakes the sun, and overgoes the sun in one pace, one step, everywhere. And then, as the other world produces serpents and vipers, malignant and venomous creatures, and worms and caterpillars, that endeavour to devour that world which produces them, and monsters compiled and complicated of divers parents and kinds; so this world, ourselves, produces all these in us, in producing diseases, and sicknesses of all those sorts: venomous and infectious diseases, feeding and consuming diseases, and manifold and entangled diseases made up of many several ones. And can the other world name so many venomous, so many consuming, so many monstrous creatures, as we can diseases of all these kinds? O miserable abundance, O beggarly riches! how much do we lack of having remedies for every disease, when as yet we have not names for them? But we have a Hercules against these giants, these monsters; that is, the physician; he musters up all the forces of the other world to succour this, all nature to relieve man. We have the physician, but we are not the physician. Here we shrink in our proportion, sink in our dignity, in respect of very mean creatures, who are physicians to themselves. The hart that is pursued and wounded, they say, knows an herb, which being eaten throws off the arrow: a strange kind of vomit. The dog that pursues it, though he be subject to sickness, even proverbially, knows his gra.s.s that recovers him. And it may be true, that the drugger is as near to man as to other creatures; it may be that obvious and present simples, easy to be had, would cure him; but the apothecary is not so near him, nor the physician so near him, as they two are to other creatures; man hath not that innate instinct, to apply those natural medicines to his present danger, as those inferior creatures have; he is not his own apothecary, his own physician, as they are. Call back therefore thy meditation again, and bring it down: what's become of man's great extent and proportion, when himself shrinks himself and consumes himself to a handful of dust; what's become of his soaring thoughts, his compa.s.sing thoughts, when himself brings himself to the ignorance, to the thoughtlessness, of the grave? His diseases are his own, but the physician is not; he hath them at home, but he must send for the physician.

IV. EXPOSTULATION.

I have not the righteousness of Job, but I have the desire of Job: _I would speak to the Almighty, and I would reason with G.o.d_.[28] My G.o.d, my G.o.d, how soon wouldst thou have me go to the physician, and how far wouldst thou have me go with the physician? I know thou hast made the matter, and the man, and the art; and I go not from thee when I go to the physician. Thou didst not make clothes before there was a shame of the nakedness of the body, but thou didst make physic before there was any grudging of any sickness; for thou didst imprint a medicinal virtue in many simples, even from the beginning; didst thou mean that we should be sick when thou didst so? when thou madest them? No more than thou didst mean, that we should sin, when thou madest us: thou foresawest both, but causedst neither. Thou, Lord, promisest here trees, _whose fruit shall be for meat, and their leaves for medicine_.[29] It is the voice of thy Son, _Wilt thou be made whole?_[30] that draws from the patient a confession that he was ill, and could not make himself well.

And it is thine own voice, _Is there no physician?_[31] that inclines us, disposes us, to accept thine ordinance. And it is the voice of the wise man, both for the matter, physic itself, _The Lord hath created medicines out of the earth, and he that is wise shall not abhor them_,[32] and for the art, and the person, the physician cutteth off a long disease. In all these voices thou sendest us to those helps which thou hast afforded us in that. But wilt not thou avow that voice too, _He that hath sinned against his Maker, let him fall into the hands of the physician_;[33] and wilt not thou afford me an understanding of those words? Thou, who sendest us for a blessing to the physician, dost not make it a curse to us to go when thou sendest. Is not the curse rather in this, that only he falls into the hands of the physician, that casts himself wholly, entirely upon the physician, confides in him, relies upon him, attends all from him, and neglects that spiritual physic which thou also hast inst.i.tuted in thy church. So to fall into the hands of the physician is a sin, and a punishment of former sins; so, as Asa fell, who in his disease _sought not to the Lord, but to the physician_.[34] Reveal therefore to me thy method, O Lord, and see whether I have followed it; that thou mayest have glory, if I have, and I pardon, if I have not, and help that I may. Thy method is, _In time of thy sickness, be not negligent_: wherein wilt thou have my diligence expressed? _Pray unto the Lord, and he will make thee whole._[35] O Lord, I do; I pray, and pray thy servant David's prayer, _Have mercy upon me, O Lord, for I am weak; heal me, O Lord, for my bones are vexed_:[36] I know that even my weakness is a reason, a motive, to induce thy mercy, and my sickness an occasion of thy sending health.

When art thou so ready, when is it so seasonable to thee, to commiserate, as in misery? But is prayer for health in season, as soon as I am sick? Thy method goes further: _Leave off from sin, and order thy hands aright, and cleanse thy heart from all wickedness_.[37] Have I, O Lord, done so? O Lord, I have; by thy grace, I am come to a holy detestation of my former sin. Is there any more? In thy method there is more: _Give a sweet savour, and a memorial of fine flour, and make a fat offering, as not being_.[38] And, Lord, by thy grace, I have done that, sacrificed a little of that little which thou lentest me, to them for whom thou lentest it: and now in thy method, and by thy steps, I am come to that, _Then give place to the physician, for the Lord hath created him; let him not go from thee, for thou hast need of him_.[39] I send for the physician, but I will hear him enter with those words of Peter, _Jesus Christ maketh thee whole_;[40] I long for his presence, but I look _that the power of the Lord should be present to heal me_.[41]

IV. PRAYER.

O most mighty and most merciful G.o.d, who art so the G.o.d of health and strength, as that without thee all health is but the fuel, and all strength but the bellows of sin; behold me under the vehemence of two diseases, and under the necessity of two physicians, authorized by thee, the bodily, and the spiritual physician. I come to both as to thine ordinance, and bless and glorify thy name that, in both cases, thou hast afforded help to man by the ministry of man. Even in the new Jerusalem, in heaven itself, it hath pleased thee to discover a tree, which is _a tree of life there, but the leaves thereof are for the healing of the nations_.[42] Life itself is with thee there, for thou art life; and all kinds of health, wrought upon us here by thine instruments, descend from thence. _Thou wouldst have healed Babylon, but she is not healed._[43]

Take from me, O Lord, her perverseness, her wilfulness, her refractoriness, and hear thy Spirit saying in my soul: Heal me, O Lord, for I would be healed. _Ephraim saw his sickness, and Judah his wound; then went Ephraim to the a.s.syrian, and sent to King Jareb, yet could not he heal you, nor cure you of your wound._[44] Keep me back, O Lord, from them who misprofess arts of healing the soul, or of the body, by means not imprinted by thee in the church for the soul, or not in nature for the body. There is no spiritual health to be had by superst.i.tion, nor bodily by witchcraft; thou, Lord, and only thou, art Lord of both. Thou in thyself art Lord of both, and thou in thy Son art the physician, the applier of both. _With his stripes we are healed_,[45] says the prophet there; there, before he was scourged, we were healed with his stripes; how much more shall I be healed now, now when that which he hath already suffered actually is actually and effectually applied to me? Is there any thing incurable, upon which that balm drops? Any vein so empty as that that blood cannot fill it? Thou promisest to heal the earth;[46]

but it is when the inhabitants of the earth _pray that thou wouldst heal it_. Thou promisest to heal their waters, but _their miry places and standing waters_, thou sayest there, _thou wilt not heal_.[47] My returning to any sin, if I should return to the ability of sinning over all my sins again, thou wouldst not pardon. Heal this earth, O my G.o.d, by repentant tears, and heal these waters, these tears, from all bitterness, from all diffidence, from all dejection, by establishing my irremovable a.s.surance in thee. _Thy Son went about healing all manner of sickness._[48] (No disease incurable, none difficult; he healed them in pa.s.sing). _Virtue went out of him, and he healed all_,[49] all the mult.i.tude (no person incurable), he healed them _every whit_[50] (as himself speaks), he left no relics of the disease; and will this universal physician pa.s.s by this hospital, and not visit me? not heal me? not heal me wholly? Lord, I look not that thou shouldst say by thy messenger to me, as to Hezekiah, _Behold, I will heal thee, and on the third day thou shalt go up to the house of the Lord_.[51] I look not that thou shouldst say to me, as to Moses in Miriam's behalf, when Moses would have had her healed presently, _If her father had but spit in her face, should she not have been ashamed seven days? Let her be shut up seven days, and then return_;[52] but if thou be pleased to multiply seven days (and seven is infinite) by the number of my sins (and that is more infinite), if this day must remove me till days shall be no more, seal to me my spiritual health, in affording me the seals of thy church; and for my temporal health, prosper thine ordinance, in their hands who shall a.s.sist in this sickness, in that manner, and in that measure, as may most glorify thee, and most edify those who observe the issues of thy servants, to their own spiritual benefit.

FOOTNOTES:

[28] Job, xiii. 3.

[29] Ezek. xlvii. 12.

[30] John, v. 6.

[31] Jer. viii. 22.

[32] Ecclus. x.x.xviii. 4.

[33] Ecclus. x.x.xviii. 15.

[34] 1 Chron. xvi. 12.

[35] Ecclus. x.x.xviii. 9.

[36] Psalm vi. 2.

[37] Ecclus. x.x.xviii. 10.

[38] Ecclus. x.x.xviii. 11.

[39] Ecclus. x.x.xviii. 12.

[40] Acts, ix. 34.

[41] Luke, v. 17.

[42] Rev. xxii. 2.

[43] Jer. li. 9.

[44] Hosea, v. 13.

[45] Isaiah, liii. 5.

[46] 2 Chron. vii. 14.

[47] Ezek. xlvii. 11.

[48] Matt. iv. 23.

[49] Luke, vi. 19.

[50] John, vii. 23.

[51] 2 Kings, xx. 5.

[52] Num. xii. 14.

V. SOLUS ADEST.

_The physician comes_

V. MEDITATION.

As sickness is the greatest misery, so the greatest misery of sickness is solitude; when the infectiousness of the disease deters them who should a.s.sist from coming; even the physician dares scarce come.

Solitude is a torment which is not threatened in h.e.l.l itself. Mere vacuity, the first agent, G.o.d, the first instrument of G.o.d, nature, will not admit; nothing can be utterly empty, but so near a degree towards vacuity as solitude, to be but one, they love not. When I am dead, and my body might infect, they have a remedy, they may bury me; but when I am but sick, and might infect, they have no remedy but their absence, and my solitude. It is an excuse to them that are great, and pretend, and yet are loath to come; it is an inhibition to those who would truly come, because they may be made instruments, and pestiducts, to the infection of others, by their coming. And it is an outlawry, an excommunication upon the patient, and separates him from all offices, not only of civility but of working charity. A long sickness will weary friends at last, but a pestilential sickness averts them from the beginning. G.o.d himself would admit a figure of society, as there is a plurality of persons in G.o.d, though there be but one G.o.d; and all his external actions testify a love of society, and communion. In heaven there are orders of angels, and armies of martyrs, and in that house many mansions; in earth, families, cities, churches, colleges, all plural things; and lest either of these should not be company enough alone, there is an a.s.sociation of both, a communion of saints which makes the militant and triumphant church one parish; so that Christ was not out of his diocess when he was upon the earth, nor out of his temple when he was in our flesh. G.o.d, who saw that all that he made was good, came not so near seeing a defect in any of his works, as when he saw that it was not good for man to be alone, therefore he made him a helper; and one that should help him so as to increase the number, and give him her own, and more society. Angels, who do not propagate nor multiply, were made at first in an abundant number, and so were stars; but for the things of this world, their blessing was, Increase; for I think, I need not ask leave to think, that there is no phoenix; nothing singular, nothing alone. Men that inhere upon nature only, are so far from thinking that there is any thing singular in this world, as that they will scarce think that this world itself is singular, but that every planet, and every star, is another world like this; they find reason to conceive not only a plurality in every species in the world, but a plurality of worlds; so that the abhorrers of solitude are not solitary, for G.o.d, and Nature, and Reason concur against it. Now a man may counterfeit the plague in a vow, and mistake a disease for religion, by such a retiring and recluding of himself from all men as to do good to no man, to converse with no man. G.o.d hath two testaments, two wills; but this is a schedule, and not of his, a codicil, and not of his, not in the body of his testaments, but interlined and postscribed by others, that the way to the communion of saints should be by such a solitude as excludes all doing of good here. That is a disease of the mind, as the height of an infectious disease of the body is solitude, to be left alone: for this makes an infectious bed equal, nay, worse than a grave, that though in both I be equally alone, in my bed I know it, and feel it, and shall not in my grave: and this too, that in my bed my soul is still in an infectious body, and shall not in my grave be so.

V. EXPOSTULATION.

O G.o.d, my G.o.d, thy Son took it not ill at Martha's hands, that when he said unto her, _Thy brother Lazarus shall rise again_,[53] she expostulated it so far with him as to reply, _I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection, at the last day_; for she was miserable by wanting him then. Take it not ill, O my G.o.d, from me, that though thou have ordained it for a blessing, and for a dignity to thy people, _that they should dwell alone, and not be reckoned among the nations_[54]

(because they should be above them), and that _they should dwell in safety alone_[55] (free from the infestation of enemies), yet I take thy leave to remember thee, that thou hast said too, _Two are better than one_; and, _Woe be unto him that is alone when he falleth_;[56] and so when he is fallen, and laid in the bed of sickness too. _Righteousness is immortal_;[57] I know thy wisdom hath said so; but no man, though covered with the righteousness of thy Son, is immortal so as not to die; for he who was righteousness itself did die. I know that the Son of Righteousness, thy Son, refused not, nay affected, solitariness, loneness,[58] many, many times; but at all times he was able to command _more than twelve legions of angels_[59] to his service; and when he did not so, he was far from being alone: for, _I am not alone_, says he, _but I, and the Father that sent me_.[60] I cannot fear but that I shall always be with thee and him; but whether this disease may not alien and remove my friends, so that _they stand aloof from my sore, and my kinsmen stand afar off_,[61] I cannot tell. I cannot fear but that thou wilt reckon with me from this minute, in which, by thy grace, I see thee; whether this understanding, and this will, and this memory may not decay, to the discouragement and the ill interpretation of them that see that heavy change in me, I cannot tell. It was for thy blessed, thy powerful Son alone, _to tread the wine-press alone, and none of the people with him_.[62] I am not able to pa.s.s this agony alone, not alone without thee; thou art thy spirit, not alone without thine; spiritual and temporal physicians are thine, not alone without mine; those whom the bands of blood or friendship have made mine, are mine; and if thou, or thine, or mine, abandon me, I am alone, and woe unto me if I be alone. Elias himself fainted under that apprehension, _Lo, I am left alone_;[63] and Martha murmured at that, said to Christ, _Lord, dost not thou care that my sister hath left me to serve alone?_[64] Neither could Jeremiah enter into his lamentations from a higher ground than to say, _How doth the city sit solitary that was full of people_.[65] O my G.o.d, it is the leper that thou hast condemned to live alone;[66] have I such a leprosy in my soul that I must die alone; alone without thee? Shall this come to such a leprosy in my body that I must die alone; alone without them that should a.s.sist, that should comfort me? But comes not this expostulation too near a murmuring? Must I be concluded with that, that Moses _was commanded to come near the Lord alone_;[67] that solitariness, and dereliction, and abandoning of others, disposes us best for G.o.d, who accompanies us most alone? May I not remember, and apply too, that though G.o.d came not to Jacob till he found him alone, yet when he found him alone, he wrestled with him, and lamed him;[68]

that when, in the dereliction and forsaking of friends and physicians, a man is left alone to G.o.d, G.o.d may so wrestle with this Jacob, with this conscience, as to put it out of joint, and so appear to him as that he dares not look upon him face to face, when as by way of reflection, in the consolation of his temporal or spiritual servants, and ordinances he durst, if they were there? But a _faithful friend is the physic of life, and they that fear the Lord shall find him_.[69] Therefore hath the Lord afforded me both in one person, that physician who is my faithful friend.

V. PRAYER.

O eternal and most gracious G.o.d, who calledst down fire from heaven upon the sinful cities but once, and openedst the earth to swallow the murmurers but once, and threwest down the tower of Siloam upon sinners but once; but for thy works of mercy repeatedst them often, and still workest by thine own patterns, as thou broughtest man into this world, by giving him a helper fit for him here; so, whether it be thy will to continue me long thus, or to dismiss me by death, be pleased to afford me the helps fit for both conditions, either for my weak stay here, or my final transmigration from hence. And if thou mayst receive glory by that way (and by all ways thou mayst receive glory), glorify thyself in preserving this body from such infections as might withhold those who would come, or endanger them who do come; and preserve this soul in the faculties thereof from all such distempers as might shake the a.s.surance which myself and others have had, that because thou hast loved me thou wouldst love me to my end, and at my end. Open none of my doors, not of my heart, not of mine ears, not of my house, to any supplanter that would enter to undermine me in my religion to thee, in the time of my weakness, or to defame me, and magnify himself with false rumours of such a victory and surprisal of me, after I am dead. Be my salvation, and plead my salvation; work it and declare it; and as thy triumphant shall be, so let the militant church be a.s.sured that thou wast my G.o.d, and I thy servant, to and in my consummation. Bless thou the learning and the labours of this man whom thou sendest to a.s.sist me; and since thou takest me by the hand, and puttest me into his hands (for I come to him in thy name, who in thy name comes to me), since I clog not my hopes in him, no, nor my prayers to thee, with any limited conditions, but inwrap all in those two pet.i.tions, _Thy kingdom come, thy will be done_, prosper him, and relieve me, in thy way, in thy time, and in thy measure. Amen.

FOOTNOTES: