health so it is not so long in doing: It suffers not the tediousness of a creeping restitution, nor the inconvenience of surgeons and physicians, watchfulness and care, keepings in and suffering trouble, fears of relapse, and the little reliques of a storm. 11. While we hear, or use, or think of these re medies, part of the sickness is gone away, and all of it is passing. And if by such instruments we stand armed, and ready dressed before hand, we shall avoid the mischiefs of amazement and surprise*; while the accidents of sickness are such as were expected, and against which we stood in readiness with our spirits contracted, instructed, and put upon the defensive. 12. But our patience will be the better secured, if we consider that it is not violently tempted by the usual arrests of sickness: for patience is with reason demanded while the sickness is tolerable, that is, so long as the evil is not too great; but if it be also eligible, and have it in some degrees of good, our patience will have in it the less difficulty and the greater necessity. This therefore will be a new stock of consideration: Sickness is in many degrees eligible to many men, and to many purposes... * Nulla mihi nova nunc facies inopináque surgit : SECT. VI. Advantages of Sickness.. 1. I consider one of the great felicities of heaven consists in an immunity from sin: then we shall love God without mixtures of malice, then we shall enjoy without envy; then we shall see fuller vessels running over with glory, and crowned with bigger cir cles; and this we shall behold without spilling from our eyes (those vessels of joy and grief) any sign of anger, trouble, or any repining spirit: our passions shall be pure, our charity without fear, our desire without lust, our possessions all our own; and all in the inheritance of Jesus, in the richest soil of God's eternal kingdom. Now half of this reason which makes heaven so happy by being innocent, is also in the state of sickness, making the sorrows of old age smooth, and the groans of a sick heart apt to be joined to the music of angels: and though they sound harsh to our untuned ears and discomposed organs; yet those accents must needs be in themselves excellent which God loves to hear, and esteems them as prayers, and arguments of pity, instruments of mercy and grace, and preparatives to glory. In sickness the soul begins to dress herself for immortality. And first, she unites the strings of vanity, that made her upper garment cleave to the world and sit uneasy. First, she puts off the light and fantastic summer robe of lust and wanton appetite; and as soon as that Cestus, that lascivious girdle is thrown away, then the reins chastens us, and give us warning in the night; then that which called us formerly to serve the manliness of the body, and the childishness of the soul, keeps us waking, to divide the hours with the intervals of prayer and to number the minutes with our penitential groans; then the flesh sits uneasily, and dwells in sorrow; and then the spirit feels itself at ease, freed from the petulant solicitations of those passions which in health were as busy and as restless as atoms in the sun, always dancing, and always busy, and never sitting down, till a sad night of grief and uneasiness draws the veil, and let them die alone in secret dishonour. 2. Next to this, the soul by the help of sickness knocks off the fetters of pride, and vainer complacencies. Then she draws the curtains, and stops the light from coming in *, and takes the pictures down, those fantastic images of self-love, and gay remembrances of vain opinion, and popular noises. Then the spirit stoops into the sobrieties of humble thoughts, and feels corruption chiding the forwardness of fancy, and allaying the vapours of conceit and factious opinions. For humility is the soul's grave, into which she enters, not to die, but to meditate and inter some of its troublesome appendages. There she sees the dust, and feels the dishonour of the body, and reads the register of all its sad adherences; and then she * Nunc festinatos nimiùm sibi sentit honores, lays by all her vain reflections, beating upon her chrystal and pure mirror from the fancies of strength and beauty, and the little decayed prettinesses of the body. And when in sickness we forget all our knotty discourses of philosophy, and a syllogism makes our head-ach, and we feel our many and loud talkings serving no lasting end of the soul, no purpose that now we must abide by, and that the body is like to descend to the land where all things are forgotten; then she lays aside all her remembrances of applauses, all her ignorant confidences, and cares only to know Christ Jesus and him crucified, to know him plainly, and with much heartiness and simplicity. And I cannot think this to be a contemptible advantage. For ever since man tempted himself by his impatient desires of knowing, and being as God, man thinks it the finest thing in the world to know much, and therefore is hugely apt to esteem himself better than his brethren, if he knows some little impertinences, and them imperfectly, and that with infinite uncertainty. But God hath been pleased with a rare heart to pres vent the inconveniences apt to arise by this passionate longing after knowledge; even by giving to every man a sufficient opinion of his own understanding: And who is there in the world that thinks himself to be a fool, or indeed not fit to govern his brother? There are but few men but they think they are wise enough, and every man believes his own opinion the soundest; and if it were otherwise, men would burst themselves with envy, or else become irrecoverable slaves to the talking and disputing man. But when God intended this permission to be an antidote of envy, and a satisfaction and allay to the troublesome appetites of knowing, and made that this universal opinion by making men in some proportions equal, should be a keeper out, or a great restraint to slavery, and tyranny respectively; man (for so he uses to do) hath turned this into bitterness: For when nature had made so just a distribution of understanding, that every man might think he had enough, he is not content with that, but will think he hath more than his brother: And whereas it might be well employed in restraining slavery he hath used to break off the bands of all obedience, and it ends in pride and schisms, in heresies and tyrannies; and it being a spiritual evil, it grows upon the soul with old age and flattery, with health and the supports of a prosperous fortune. Now, besides the direct operations of the spirit, and a powerful grace, there is in nature left to us no remedy for this evil, but a sharp sickness, or an equal sorrow, and an allay of fortune: And then we are humble enough to ask counsel of a despised priest, and to think that even a common sentence from the mouth of an appointed comforter *; streams forth more refreshment than all our own wiser and more reputed discourses: Then our understandings and our bodies, peeping through their own breaches, see their * ว Ubi jam validis quassatum est viribus ævi . Corpus, et obtusis ceciderunt viribus artus, Claudicat ingenium, delirat linguaque mensque. No. 5. Lucr. 1. 3. |