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Sect. 5. Youth cannot protect us from the stroke of Death.

A young man may die, but an old man must;
This may die quickly, that cannot live long:
Often are graves fill'd full with youthfull dust.
Though youth be jocund, lustie, merrie, strong,
Yet is it subject unto Death-bed-pains;
'T is mortall bloud that runnes along their veins.
In all appearance old mens halting feet are
Mov'd to the grave-ward with the greatest speed,
(Like that disciples which did outrunne Peter)
But sometimes younger men step in indeed:
And peradventure twentie years or more
Sooner then those that looked in before.
Graves gape for ev'rie sort: The butcher's seen
Often to kill the youngest of the flock.
Some long to pluck those apples that are green:
Death crops the branches and forbears the stock.
Children are wrapp'd up in their winding-sheets,
And aged parents mourn about the streets.

Jobs children di'd before himself: for after
The death of ten he liv'd to get ten other.
We sigh out, Ah my sonne! or, Ah my daughter!
As oft as, Ah my father, or my mother!
The first that ever di'd resign'd his breath
Nine hundred yeares before his fathers death.
Yea, many times, Deaths gripings are so cruel,
Before the groning mothers child-birth-pain
Is past, the infant's buri'd; like a jewel
But shewn and presently shut up again,
Perhaps within a minute after birth
Is forthwith sent to cradle in the earth.
Perhaps he is not born at all, yet dies,
And dies a verie thriftie Death: to save
Fun'rall expenses he in's mother lies
Entombed, both lodg'd in a single grave:
And with him lies in one poore narrow room
His swadling-clouts, nurse, mother, cradle, tomb.

Meditation 1.

Some sinnes there be (as holy writ doth teach)
That interrupt the current of our dayes:
He that's found gultie of them cannot reach
That length of life which he that's free enjoyes.
Sinne (you know) and Death are twins,
Or Death is Sinnes progeny.
Many of us if we die
In our youth may thank our sinnes.
One sinne is disobedience to that pair
Which did beget us. If I shall despise
My parents lawfull precepts, if my care
Be not to do what's pleasing in their eyes,
If I willingly neglect
Any thing which I do know
Is a duty that I ow,
I may Death betimes expect.
Another sinne is unprepar'd receiving
That blessed Supper which doth feed and heal,
And in and to a soul that is believing
A full release of sinnes doth freely seal:
Where that body and that bloud
Is presented on the table,
Which are infinitely able
To do hungri'st sinners good.

If I come hither an unworthie guest;
Or if before my heart I do not prove;
Or if I come as to a common feast;
Or come without Thanks, Knowledge, Faith, and Love:
If I carrie any crime
Thither with me unlamented,
Or go ere I have repented,
Death may take me hence betime.
Another is Bloud-thirstinesse: when we
To do a mischief are so strongly bent
That we sleep not unlesse our projects be
Contrived to insnare the innocent:
When we are so like the Devil,
Everie way satanicall,
That tongue, brains, heart, hands, and all
Are imploy'd in what is evil.
These sinnes and others like them do procure
Untimely Deaths. Lord, purifie my heart
From everie sinne; but chiefly, Lord, secure
My soul from these, that I may not depart
Hence too soon. Lord, my desire
Is not to live long; but I
Onely pray that I may die
In thy favour not thine ire.

Meditation 2.

There is a sinne that seldome doth escape
A rich mans heir, (yet 't is a foul transgression)
For parents Death with open mouth to gape,
That their estates may come to his possession.
He gapes that his friends may sleep:
Parentalia are rites
Verie welcome: he delights
At a fathers grave to weep.
Poore hare-brain'd fool! Perhaps thou may'st go first:
This night thy younger soul may be requir'd;
Thy Death may frustrate that ungodly thirst:
Whose then is that estate thou hast desir'd?
If these gallants were not blind,
Sure they could not choose but see
That a thousand children be
Dead, their parents left behind.
Of any kind of sinne (to speak the truth)
That Satan can beget upon the soul,
Most commonly man's guilti'st in his youth:
Our youthfull nature is beyond controll.
Some examples are afforded,
In whose historie appears
Loosenesse in our yonger years:
These the Scriptures have recorded.

The verie first that e'r suck'd mothers teat,
Because his works were naught, his brothers good,
Did boil his choler to so strong a heat
That he must slake it in his brothers bloud.
How much rancour did he show
So much harmlesse bloud to spill,
And a quarter-part to kill
Of all mankind at a blow?
Unnaturall, accursed, gracelesse Cham
Never did grieve, nor sigh, nor blush, but he
Laugh'd at and mock'd his drunken fathers shame.
(A sober fathers curse his portion be.)
Prophane Esau did make sale
Of's birthright for's bellie-full;
As 'mongst us there's many a gull
That sells heaven for pots of ale.
And Absalom was most deform'd within;
His head-piece had more hair then wit by ods:
His beautie went no deeper then his skinne;
He fear'd not mans law nor regarded Gods.
In him David had a sonne
Beastly and ambitious too:
He did wrong his bed, and do
What he could to steal his throne.

Incestuous Amnon dotes upon his sister,
And in his own bloud cools his lawlesse fires.
That brother should have sinn'd that had but kiss'd her,
If mov'd unto it by unchast desires:
But he makes a rape upon her,
And so furious is his lust
That it cannot hold but must
Rob a virgin of her honour.
And I could tell you of a number more
Most sinfull, vitious, vile, exorbitant,
Whose courses are upon the Scriptures score,
As if their youth had sealed them a grant
To be neither wise nor holy,
But to runne into excesse
Of all kind of wickednesse,
And do homage unto follie.
The sage Gymnosophists, who first did give
The wilder Indians good and wholesome laws:
The Magi, by whom Persia learn'd to live
In order: the Chaldei, whose wise laws
The Assyrians justly rul'd
And did guide in everie thing:
Numa, Romes devoutest King,
Who the elder Romanes school'd:

That famous Solon, whom th'Athenians ow
For all their statutes: and Lycurgus, he
Whose wisdome taught the Spartanes how to know
What to omit and do: and more there be
That have publish'd wholesome laws
To curb all indeed; but yet
Chiefly 't was to put a bit
In mens wild and youthfull jaws.
It is a signe that colt is wild that needs
So strong a bridle. Ground that doth require
So much manuring sure is full of weeds.
It is because she wallows in the mire
That we need to wash a sow.
Men in youth must needs be bad,
To curb whom those laws were made
Which we told you of but now.
'T was a commanded custome that the Jews
Should once in ev'rie two and fiftie weeks
Visit their temple; no man might refuse
To worship there. Each fourth year the Greeks
Their Olympian sacrifice
Orderly performed: and
Th'Egyptians us'd to stand
Lifting up devoutest eyes

Unto their Idole ev'ry seventh yeare
Within th'appointed temple. And 't is said
Once in ten years the Romanes did appear
To sacrifice: then was Apollo paid
His great Hecatomb, and then
Unto Delphos many went
With their gifts, for thither sent
Presents ev'rie sort of men.
And of the Samnites authours do relate,
That th'ancient'st of them did most solemnly
Once in five years their Lustra celebrate:
But 't is delivered by Antiquitie
That the youth of all these nations
Strictly all commanded were
To these places to repair
Oftner to make their oblations.
What doth this intimate, but that the crimes
Of youth are great and frequent, and their vices
Exorbitant, that they so many times
Have need to purge them by such sacrifices?
By experience we do find
What bad courses men do follow
In their youth, and how they wallow
In base lusts of ev'rie kind.

And if you ask these brainlesse hot-spurres why
They dedicate themselves to such lewd courses;
They yet are young, these gallants still replie,
And youth must have its swing: but no remorse is
Wrought at all in any heart
For this lewdnesse; there remains
Not a thought within their brains,
That the youngest may depart.
Lord, take possession of my heart betimes:
My youth is fittest for thy service; take it
Unto thy self: make white those crimson crimes
That fain would soil it: let me never make it
A pretense (as many do)
To be lewd, but think that I
In the height of youth may die,
May die and be damned too.

Meditation 3.

Parents methinks betime should strive to make
Their children good, that heaven may receive them.
If God should send an early Death to take
Them from the earth, it cannot choose but grieve them,
And fill full with bitter woe
Any parents heart to see
That their children wicked be,
And Death come and find them so.

Those fruitfull couples whom the Lord hath blest
With children, should take greatest care to breed them
Religiously: In this more love's express'd,
Then in their care to cloth them or to feed them,
Or what else they can bestow
For their life or livelyhood,
And to do their children good
In the things that are below.
You must instruct your children in their way:
That's double, Civil and Religious too:
They must be taught Gods precepts to obey,
And to their neighbours give what is their due.
If you do not strive to set them,
By that rule which God hath given,
In the way that leads to heaven,
You did wrong them to beget them.
There's such a powre and force in education,
That justly we may call 't a second nature:
Nature finds matter, nurture gives the fashion,
And turns a man into another creature.
If a youth in's manners halt,
On his parents we do lay
All the blame, and use to say,
That his breeding is in fault.

The heathen, who did see but by that light
Which purblind nature lent them, ever caught
At all occasions they conceived might
Be helps to have their youth in goodnesse taught.
In their bodies would they find
(For no where but in the book
Of the creatures did they look)
Lessons to instruct the mind.
It is observ'd that Socrates let passe
No wayes nor means at all that might conduce
To their amendment: often to a glasse
He brought them, and that shadow had its use.
By his means their faces bred them:
For however their complexion
Did appear, by that reflexion
From 't a lecture would he reade them.
That fair ones must take heed they did not soil
That comely outside with deformititie
Within: to have an inside foul would spoil
The choicest beautie: that their symmetry,
Just proportion of parts,
And their comlinesse of face
Was not worth a jote, if grace
Did not beautifie their hearts.

And that deformed ones should have a care,
That vertuous endowments, of the soul
Might recompense those blemishes that were
By nature plac'd to make the bodie foul:
That the mind and nothing else
Makes us either foul or fair.
Out-side beauties nothing are
To a mind where vertue dwells.
Of any age their youth is fitt'st to take
The print of vice or vertue: 't is a clean
Unwritten table, where a man may make
What characters he will. If e'r you mean
To make straight a crooked tree,
You must do 't while 't is a twig:
When your children are grown big
They will not reformed be.
Sometimes (if need require) you shall do well
To use the rod: if duly you correct them,
'T may be a means to whip their souls from hell:
From many sinnes may prudent stripes protect them.
No such physick as the rod:
There's health in a loving scourge,
It will childrens manners purge,
And will make them fit for God.

But whensoe'r you fasten any blows,
Let sinnes against the holy name of God
Be first corrected: for a child that knows
To give his due to heav'n, on him the rod
Will prevail with little labour
To correct him how to live
Civilly, and how to give
What he ows unto his neighbour.
And yet you must be moderate in strokes:
You may not make a trade of chastisements.
A parent that corrects too much provokes
His child to wrath; so pious documents
Will be cast away in vain.
Too much mercie is not fit,
Neither too much rigour; yet
Mercie's better of the twain.
That high and great Jehovah, whom we find
Adorn'd with mercie, goodnesse, justice, wrath,
Is evermore to mercie most inclin'd:
Of all the rest that most employment hath.
He that suffered near mount Sion,
(And whatever he did hallow
By his practice we should follow)
Was a Lamb as well's a Lion.

And e'r you strike observe their dispositions:
Those foure complexions in mans grosser part
Are but a few; the finer part's conditions
Are many more. Some at a look will start;
Others will but make a mock
At the lash it self, and never
Will expresse the least endevour
To amend with many a knock.
The Nat'ralists can tell you of a stone
Extremely hard, which bloud or milk will soften:
But with the strongest hammer there is none
Can do it, though he beat it ne'r so often.
The sea yields a certain weed,
Which, if gently grip'd, will flie;
Roughly, will yield presently:
Rigour such stout natures need.
Some childrens dispositions are like nettles:
The gentl'er you do handle them they sting
The more; fair means in them no vertue settles:
Some are like thorns; the harder you do wring
The more deeply will they pierce.
Mark their natures, and you shall
By due chastisements recall
Both the gentle and the fierce.

But it must be 'bove all your chiefest care
To shine before your children by the light
Of good example: for examples are
Of most prevailing natures. What the sight
Can be master of appears
To be more convincing farre
Then all other truths that are
Onely objects of the ears.
A high perfection did the heathen deem it
To imitate their Jove: were it but in
His close adulteries, they did esteem it
A commendable passage not a sinne.
In a wrong way, or a right,
Samplers lead, I know not how:
If King Alexander bow
Not a courtier stands upright.
If Cyrus nose be bad, or if a scarre
Chance to disfigure his imperiall face;
If Plato's learned shoulders be too square;
One's subjects, th'others scholars, are so base
As to draw 't into a fashion:
And if Aristotle stammer,
All his boyes will lisp and hammer
Out their words in imitation.

If cruel Dionysius tyrannize,
Each man grows fierce: and if Antiochus
Be lustfull, he is not accounted wise
That will not be effeminate: and thus
Ptolemeus Philadelph
Loving letters, by example
Egypt underfoot did trample
Ignorance as did himself.
With scholars (like himself) Augustus fill'd
The Romane Empire: and Tiberius he
Stor'd it with such as were exactly skill'd
In fair dissimulation, and could be
Leaders in the hatefull train
Of those monsters who by heart
Had learn'd perfectly the art
To dissemble, lie, and feigne.
Good Constantine's example fill'd the land
With Christians like himself, and Julian's did
Beget a troup of Atheists: such command
Examples have. In holy writ we reade
That examples either way,
For God or against him, for
Great Jehovah's worship or
Baalim's, did the people sway.

If Israel's or Judah's King were good,
The people presently destroy'd their groves:
Scarce in the land a graven image stood:
High places owls did rest in: each man loves
(At the least in shew) that Jealous
God that in the desert fed them,
And from Egypt's bondage led them;
For him onely are they zealous.
If Israel's or Judah's King were bad,
So were the people: Altars straight were rear'd
To senselesse Idoles; not a house but had
Their graven Images; and no man fear'd
Unto Baal to bend his knee.
Men live by similitude
More then law; and most conclude
Upon what their Princes be.
If Nebuchadnezzar the mightie King
Be pleas'd to fall down to a golden image,
Thither with speed do their devotions bring
People of ev'rie kingdome, tongue, and linage.
Three excepted, all adore him:
There's not one enough precise
To refuse; it doth suffice
That the King did so before him.

Thou art a King if thou a parent art,
Each family's a pettie kingdome, and
The parents Monarch: 't were a kingly part
To make thy little subjects understand
How in vertue to excell
By thy practice; that's a skill
'Bove all other: children will
No way else be taught so well.
Look how the primum mobile doth move,
Accordingly do move the other spheres:
As in a Jack the wheel that is above
With its first mover just proportion bears.
In a familie 't is so:
Look what way the parents take,
That the rest their rule will make,
Chiefly there the children go.
Not any godly precept so exact is,
Which you shall teach your children to obey;
But that, if you shall thwart it by your practice,
Thus will your junior houshold-members say,
At least they will whisper thus,
If vertue be good, then why
Do not you live vertuously?
If not, why d' ye presse 't on us?

If by these wayes you strive to educate,
Whom God hath blest with fruitfull progenies,
Your children well, their early Death or late
Shall not a jote augment your miseries.
A childs death is not a rod
To afflict a parents heart.
He that dies well doth depart
Hence that he may live with God.
Lord, if thou make my wife a fruitfull vine,
Make it withall my chiefest care to dresse
The branches well; the glorie shall be thine,
And if they die my grief shall be the lesse.
A childs death's a precious savour
In thy nostrils that was here
Taught to live, Lord, in thy fear;
For he dieth in thy favour.

Meditation 4.

If youth it self may drop into the grave,
When children die methinks they should bequeath
Surviving parents comforts. Sure they have
No cause (were not affection strong) to grieve
Overmuch, as many do:
For Death is impartiall,
By his stroke all ages fall,
Both the old'st and youngest too.

Think duly on 't. Why should your eyes runne o'r
For what you have no way to remedie?
If you should heav'n eternally implore,
It would not send them back. But you'll replie,
'Cause there's no way to be found
That may help us to recover
Them again, our eyes runne over,
And our tears do so abound.
Nor ever will your highest floud of sorrow
Transport them back into the world again:
Your selves may follow them before to morrow.
Those deep-fetch'd sighs are smok'd out all in vain,
So are all those drops you mourn
Shed in vain; hap'ly you may
Soon go after them, but they
Are too happie to return.
Is it your love that doth produce such grones?
How easily alas is love mistaken!
Methinks you cannot love and grieve at once;
To love were to rejoyce that they have shaken
Hands with miserie to dwell
In a world of blisse above;
Grief at this is farre from love,
It seems not to wish them well.

Or is 't because that they are dead you weep?
I do not think that when they were begotten,
You dream'd them death-free, or had hopes to keep
Them here for ever; that they would be rotten
In their graves you could not choose
But consider: for a span
To be quickly ended, can
Never go for any news.
Nor with good reason can you lay the blame
On Death at all, but on your selves that did
Beget them mortall: for the very same
Matter wherewith they were begot and fed,
Fits them for an alteration
By the hand of Death. If you
Grudge that Death hath ta'n his due,
You may blame their generation.
Or do you grieve because they di'd so soon?
If wayes be foul, and journeys perillous,
Who taketh up his lodging e'r 't be noon
Is best at ease. 'T is like God loveth those
Whom he takes betime away:
Sad experience lets us know
That the happi'st here below
Have a miserable stay.

Or is your onely child deceas'd, that passion
Doth domineer so? here I could allow
Methinks your tears a free immoderation,
But that (on better ground then Jephtha's vow)
I remember what was done
By that parent, who is penn'd
Down for great Jehovah's friend,
In case of his onely sonne.
Ev'n when 't was dead a miracle did fill
His Sarahs womb, but it was fill'd but once.
Isaac was all: Yet Abraham must kill
This all himself God did it for the nonce
That he might his graces prove,
Yet the man made no deny all,
But did by so strange a triall
Manifest his faith and love.
This case must needs strike nearer to the heart
Then yours; yet he doth presently submit.
Love (I confesse) is very loth to part
With what it loves, but grace doth put a bit
Into natures mouth that she
May not grumble nor repine
At what's a decree Divine,
But subscribe it chearfully.

Just like the Autumn-sap of fruitfull trees
So love descends; and it is ardent when
Dispersed, but by infinite degrees
More ardent when it is contracted: men
That have but an onely sonne,
If Death take him hence, their losse
Is a great one; but this crosse
Must be born. Thy will be done,
Is what your selves do pray for every day:
And when this will of God's declared, you
Greatly offend if you do murmure. May
Not God, and Sinne, and Nature claim their due?
Very ill you do behave you
If you give not heav'n leave
Thankfully for to bereave
You again of what it gave you.
Lord, if thou please to stock my table round
About with children, yet I will be glad:
Nor shall my sorrow overmuch abound,
Though I do see them in their grave-clothes clad;
For the sooner are they blest:
And within the shortest space
Whom thou help'st to winne a race,
They the sooner are at rest.

Meditation 5.

VVe do not die by chance nor yet by fortune,
But how and when the Lord will have us die:
He numbers all our dayes; we cannot shorten
Nor lengthen them a minute: Destiny
Neither spinnes nor cuts the thread.
God a certain period sets:
No man shorter falls, or gets
Further, then the bounds decreed.
If God vouchsafe to number out the hairs
That do adorn and cloth our sinfull heads;
Who doubteth that his providence forbears
To count our dayes? If not a sparrow treads
On the earth's face thus or thus,
But his providence awaketh
For to note it, sure he taketh
Greater care by farre of us.
If any godlesse wits so curious be
To talk of Hezekiah's fifteen years,
His sentence God did change, not his decree,
The answer is: yet Esay's tongue appears
To speak not a jote the lesse
Truth; 't was with a supposition:
God doth threaten with condition
Either tacit or expresse.

When Pestilence, that lothsome, dreadfull hag,
Bepatch'd with botches, wanders up and down,
And into ev'ry houshold drops the plague,
Scarce any Turk in an infected town
But will wife and friend afford
Daily visits and imbraces:
They flie no contagious places,
Nor fear either bed or bord.
Their reason is, Gods providence doth write
Their fortunes on their foreheads; neither can
Their day of life be longer, nor their night
Of Death come sooner then God wills it: Man
Must yield's ghost when God will have it.
For health and life, if God will
Save it, 't is not plague can kill:
If not, 't is not they can save it.
Such block-heads have not brains enough to think
That as the time, so God withall decrees
The means of life; as physick, meat and drink,
Clothes, recreations, and what else he sees
Needfull. They themselves destroy,
And are to their safety strangers,
That runne into mortall dangers,
And not shun them when they may.

Howe'r imploy'd, Lord, grant I may have leisure
Religiously to meditate that thou
My dayes dost number, and my life dost measure,
And make me think, Lord, that this very now,
That this twinkling of an eye
Is the period thou hast set:
Lord, grant I may ne'r forget
That this moment I may die.
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