is, even in his fee ning strongest age and constitution of health; even then a pestilential air, fome evil humour in his blood, fone obitruction, it may be, of a little vein or artery, a little meat ili digested, and a thousand final Occurrences may, upon a sudden, without any confide rable warning, plunge a man into a desperate and mortal ficknels, and bring a man to the grave. Remember this terrible ficknets feized upon you uddenly, pulled down your ftrength quickly, and brought you to the very briuk of the grave: and though God hath recovered you, you know not how foon you may be brought into the like condition.

4. Remember therefore, that you make and keep your peace with God, and walk in his fear in the days of health, elpecially after fo great a deliverance; and that for very many realons. 1. You know not whether you may not be overtaken with fudden death, and then it will be im pollible for you to begin that work. 2. If you have fick. nels to give you warning of the approach of death, yet you know not whether that fickneis may not fuddenly take away your fenfes, memory, understanding, whereby you may be disabled to make your peace with God, or to exercile any ferious thoughts concerning it. 3. But if that fickness give you fair warning, and take not away your underítanding, yet your own experience cannot chufe but let you know, that pain, and weakneťš, and distraction of mind, and impatience, and unquietness, are the common attendants of a fick bed, and render that season, at least, very difficult, then to begin that greatest, and folemnest, and most important business of a man's lite. 4. But if your ficknefs be not fo fharp, but that it leaves you patience, and attention of mind for that great bufinefs, how do you know whether your heart thall be inclined to it? Repentance and converfion to God is his gift, though it must be our endeavour: and though the merciful God never refuseth a repenting, returning offender; yet, how can a man that, all the time of his health, hath neglected almighty God, refused his invitations, and served his lufts and his fin, expect reafonably, that God, in the time of fickness, when the man can ferve his fins no longer, will give him the of repentance?

grace

What

your

Whatever you do therefore, be fure you make peace with God, and keep it in the days of your health, especially after fo great a deliverance from so desperate a fickness.

:

5. Remember that your condition is never fo low, but that God hath power to deliver you, and therefore trust in him but remember withal, that your condition is never fafe and fecure, but you are within the reach of his power to bring you down. You are now, by the mercy. of God, recovered from a terrible fickness; think not with yourself that your turn is now ferved, and that you shall have no more need of him, and therefore that you may live as you lift, and never regard your duty to him deceive not yourself herein, remember that this fickness, within two or three days, brought you upon your knees, even from a feeming state of health: the cafe is the fame fill, nay much worse, if this affliction make you not better; almighty God called you to love, and serve, and obey him, by the ftill voice of his word, by the perfuafion of your friends, by the advices and reproofs of your father; and when these were not fo effectual, as I know you now with they had been, he fent a meffenger that fpake louder, that would be heard, even this terrible ficknefs; and most certainly, if you have heard the voice of this rod, as I am hopeful you have, and thereupon entirely turn to your duty to God in all fincerity and obedience, it is the happiest providence that ever befel you; and you will, upon found conviction, conclude with the prophet, "It was good for me that I was afflicted." But on the other fide, if, notwithstanding this voice of the rod you fhall after your recovery turn again to folly, and vanity, and excefs, and harden yourself against this meffenger; know for certain, you are within the reach of the divine justice and power: "and if you walk con66 trary to him, he will walk contrary to you, and punish you yet seven times for your fins," Levit. xxvi. 24. T therefore give you that counsel, that our Lord gave to him that he had fealed. "Behold thou art made whole, go thy way and fin no more, left a worse thing befal "thee." There is no contefting with almighty God, he is ready and easy to be reconciled to the worst of men, upon bumiliation and true repentance, but he is not to

66

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be maltered or conquered by obstinacy and oppofition: "Who hath hardened himself against him and profpe "red" Job ix. 4.

6. I would have you remember, that fickness, as well as death, doth undeceive mankind, and fhews them where their true wisdom lies: when a young man, especially, is in the full career of his vanity and pleature, he thinks that religion, and the fear of God, and walking according to his word, and the ferious practice of duties of religion towards God, prayer unto him, making our peace with him, are pitiful, low, foolith, and inconfiderable matters; and that those that practise them, are a fort of brain-fick, melancholy, unintelligent perfons, that want wit or breeding, and underiiand not themselves or the world; that they are mere empty fancies and imaginations, whimfies, Puritanism, and I know not what elfe: but on the other fide, they think they are the brave men that live fpendidly, deny themselves no pleature, can drink, and roar, and whore, and debauch, and wear the newest fashions; it may be, this gallant or wife man comes to be taken with a fit of ficknefs, that tells him he muft die, death is at the door, his glass is almost out, and but a few fands left in it: and then the man becomes quite of another judgment, he cries out of his former foolishness, he finds his pleatures, and intemperance, and excels, are not only perfect follies, but madnels, vexa tion, torment; and religion, and prayer to God, and devotion, and peace with God, they are now in request ; and now nothing but declamations against thofe couries, which in his health, he valued as the only wildom; and nothing but promifes of amendment, and reformation of life, and devotion to God; fo fickness hath undeceived the man, and given him a true and rectified judgment concerning wildom and folly, quite contrary to what he had before. Therefore I would have you to recollect yourfelf, and if the violence of your disease left you at any time the ufe of your reason, bethink your elf, what opi nion you then had of intemperance, wafting of time, unlawful luft, or any of thofe fins that formerly pleased you in your health, whether they did not appear to you in your fickness, very vain, foolith, vexing things, fuch as you wifhed never to have been committed; and on

the

the other fide, what opinion you had in your fickness touching piety towards God, hearing of his word, calling upon his name, redeeming of time, modefty, temperance: whether those actions of your life past, that favoured of thefe, were not comfortable, and contenting to you in your fickness; whether your purposes, and promifes, and refolutions of your fick-bed, were not full of fuch thoughts as thefe: If it please God to recover me, I will never be fuch a fool as I have been; I will never drink to excess, mifpend my time; I will never keep fuch evil company as I have done; I will be more devout towards God, more obedient to his word, more obfervant of good counfel; and the like: and if you find it to be fo, I must desire you to remember, that affliction is the school of wisdom, it rectifies mens judgments: and I muft again defire you to keep your judgment right still, and let not the recovery' of your health become the lofs of your wits; but in your health retain that wisdom your fickness taught you, and practise what you then promised: "Remember he is the "wifest man that provides for his latter end," Deut. xxxii. 29.

7. Remember by your former fickness, how pitiful an inconfiderable thing the body of man is; how foon is the ftrength of it turned to faintnefs, and weaknels, the beauty of it to uglinefs and deformity, the confiftency of it to putrefaction and rottennefs? and then remember how foolish a thing it is, to be proud of fuch a carcafe, to fpend all, or the greatest part of our time in trimming and adorning it; in itudying new fafhions, and new devices to fet it out: in fpending our time and provifions in pampering it, in pleafing the appetite; and yet this is the chief business of moit young men of this age: learn therefore humility and lowlinefs; learn to furnish thy noble and immortal part, thy foul, with religion, grace, knowlege, virtue, goodness, for that will retain it to eternity. How milerable is that man's condition, that, whillt ficknefs hath made his body a deformed, weak, loathiom thing, fin hath made his foul as ugly and deformed: the grave will heal or cover the deformity of the former, but the foul will carry its ulcers and deformity, without repentance, into the next world: learn and remember therefore, to have thy greatest care for thy noblett part,

furnish

furnish it with piety, grace, knowlege, the fear and love of God, faith in Christ: and as for thy body, use it decenly, foberly and comely, that it may be a fit instrument for thy foul to ufe in this life, but be not proud of it, nor make it thy chiefest care and business to adorn, much lefs defile it.

8. Remember to avoid intemperance and finful lufts: it is true, fickness and diseases, and finally death, are, by the laws and conftitutions of our nature, incident to all mankind; but intemperance, excess of eating and drinking, drunkenness, whoring, uncleannefs, and diforder, bring more difeafes, especially upon young men, and destroy more young, ftrong, healthy men, than the plague, or other natural or accidental diftempers: they weaken the brain, corrupt the blood, decay and diftemper the fpirit, disorder and putrefy the humours, and make the body a very bag full of putrefaction: fome diseases are, as it were, fpecifical, and appropriate to thefe vices; other diseases are commonly occafioned by them, by their inflamation and putrefaction of the blood and humours: and all diseases, even thofe that are epidemical, natural, or casual, yet are rendered by thofe vices far more tharp, lafting, malignant, and incurable, by that ftock of corrupted matter they lodge in the body to feed thofe difeafes, and that impotency that these vices bring upon nature to resist them: therefore if you ever expect to have, as well a found body, as a found mind, carefully avoid intemperance and debauchery: the most temperate and fober persons are subject to sickness, weakness, and difeases, but the intemperate can never be long without them.

And thus I have done with the profpect of your disease, and at least many of thofe profitable ufes you may gather from the remembrance of it.

II. I fhall now, in the fecond place, put you in remembrance of your deliverance; touching which you must remember, 1. That it was a great, eminent, and extraordinary deliverance; you need no other evidence of it, than by looking back upon the greatness and severity of yor difeafe before-mentioned. 2. It was a deliverance by the immediate power and mercy of that God that fent you the vifitation.

Una eademque manus vulnus opemque tulit. If y

you had

been