The Whole Duty of Mourning and Preparing Ourselves for Death, Part 1 · Chapter 9
CHAP. IX. The Christians Map of the World, wherein the Vanity of it is shown in the shortness of Mans Life, and that this World is not a Place of any long Continuance: Considered Practically.
THe Apostle tells ye: Heb. 13.14 that here we have no continuing City, but we seek one to come: this will seem to look to be a hard Verse to the Rich, that they must not tarry here to enjoy their Riches, though they have Honestly and Laboriously heaped it up; but must with Sorrow and Grief be taken from it; but because Sorrow, I know, is a Passion loves no Prefacing, I will forthwith spread my Mantle and divide these Waters; and then there will appear on one side, Earths Inhospitality, we have here no continuing City: at the other Heavens All-sufficiency; but we seek one to come:
II. The World appears here, as with a Clinched Fist, readier to give a Blow then a Benifit, a very withered Jeroboham, whose Hand is shortned that it cannot help, not help us to a continuing City, for here we have none; but the other is the open Hand of Heaven, fuller of Assistances and Blessings than all Rhetorick can delineat; but in this Verse is the Christians Map of the World, consisting likewise of that Pair of Globes Caelestial, and Teristrial: Globes, not Cosmographical, but Theological; one of them not so much discovering the Rarities of the Earth, and Florishing Cities of the World, as demonstrating the Vanity and Emptiness thereof, and that there is no Continuing City in it: the other not so much Teaching us the Motion of the Stars, and walking unto Heaven with a Staff, as how we may one day shine among those Lights, and really inhabit that same Glorious City, which is some Happiness here, but to hope, for what we Expect hereafter.
III. The first of these, methinks, the lower, or Terrestrial Globe, deals with us here, some what like Satan with our Saviour, Mat. 4. Setting us, as on a Pinacle of the Temple, and shews us all a fair Prospect of the Earth, yet with a Lrue, not his False Glass, not as a Lure, but as a Caution, not in the Language of the Tempter, telling us of Kingdoms and the Glory thereof, but in the Apostles Doctrine, 1 John. 2.17. the World passeth away and the glory thereof; passeth it must, and that one day in the total, pass to nothing, as now in the parts, to no Continuing City; By which defect and indigence of the World, we are the Plaintiffs here Condoling; we the General Race of Adam, we Mortals, because we Sinners: the next is our wants, what we are Scanted of, and that's a Place of residence, a Continuing City, we have none, lastly, the Scene of all these Miseries, where we are thus streightned, and that's here, in this same Dirty Prison Earth.
IV. But what? have we no Continuing City? by your Favour, Holy Apostle, did not the Creator, so soon as he had built this Great House the World, and furnisht it, bring in Man his Tennant there, and Sole Possessor? Can we Complain of Wants? did not all Creatures then wear Mans Livery, a name of Servitude, and the very Wheeles of Time it self appointed to attend him unto Immortality? can they then whose is the whole Earth want Cities? whose Chariot is Immortality; whose Lackquies Time was; can they want Continuance? and yet it is here, that we have no Continuance.
V. Indeed this World was thus Man's Royal Mannour once, and all Creatures were Tennants to him, and Paradise was to have been his Continuing City, and all this too, Leased out to him, paying but the Rent, obedience, for as many Lives as he should have Posterity: but the edge of his Ambition cut off his entayl'd Happiness, he would be Paramount, Chief Landlord; he, so breaking the Conditions, forfeited his everlasting Tenure that now he is but a Tennant at Will to an offended Landlord, and scarce an Equal sharer in the Vivacity of his Brother Animals; but this Misery and Mortality of Man, is a Condition not Imprinted by the Almighty, who, as he is himself Immortal, had put a Coal, a Beam of Immortality into us, which we might have blown into a Flame, but blew it out by our first Sin; we beggered our selves by hearkning after false Riches, and therefore now are driven to our wants, to these Complaints, that here we have no Continuance,
VI. We infatuated our selves by listning after false Knowledge: for that Tree of Knowledge bereft us of the Tree of Life, it taught us to know Evil only: and left us doubly like the beasts that perish: Psal. 49.12. both for Infatuation and Corruption: like the Beasts indeed for Praecipitation unto Death, but not for the Protraction of their Life; most of 'em running Man out of Breath, if we may believe the Naturalists, as especially in this particular, the Crow Nine times Numbring out his Age, the Stagg fourtimes exceding hers, the Raven again trebling his: the Phaenix as long L…v'd as all of them.
VII. These and others Sport and Chant away whole Centuries of Years, while Man sits sighing over his poor Handfull, Psal. 39.5. thou hast made my days but as a span long, nay rather a short Span; mine age is nothing unto thee, says David, there to God, that might say here unto the Beasts, mine Age is nothing unto these: and yet it would Savour: but of Learned Heathenism, to Chide at Nature, and call her Step-mother to Man, and natural to others; but the Philosopher himself takes off that Cavil, affirming one day of a Life of Reason, above an Age of non-intelligence, beyond-all their longaevity of Sense: but Divinity turns this seeming Discontent into a Comfort, informing us that this Life properly belongs to things of Sense, all its chief Blandishments, Treasure, or Pleasure, being but Sensual, and no otherwise than Imaginarily Good; much good may it do them, than with the length of this Life, that are to enjoy no other, while Nobler Souls of Reason and Religion, trampling on this, hasten to a better Life among their Brother-Angels, in their own Country, Heaven; there to Measure real Felicities no more by Time, but by Eternity.
VIII. No longer then let this be a Complaint, but Condolation, that we have here no continuing City: thus having brought you acquainted with the Plantiffs, as well as with your selves, Consider now their wants, We have not a Continuing City: Now Cities have their period and dissolution, both Occasional and Natural: some of them, like goodly Troy, and better: Jerusalem, those Phoenix Cities of the World, in Successive Ages, buried in Fiery Tombes, rak'd in their own Ashes: others, too many of 'em, like old Rome and Carthage, sack'd and demolished by the Bloody Hand of War; so that you see, the Imperial Cities of the Four great Monarchies, nay, those Monarchies themselves, all as well as Babylon, now sit in the Dust: Isa. 47. and 'twas but Flattery in Livius the Historian, who called Rome, the Eternal City, after so many downfalls, and scarce a Feather now of that proud Eagle left.
IX. It was not also her a Fiction in the Poets describing of old Saturn, their God of Time, how he devoured his Children, though of Stone, I am sure the Moral is real, and Termes him a devourer; for whatsoever Time brings forth, Time destroyes; this I need say no more of, every Languishing Body, every Nodding Structure is a demonstration; Witness our own Metropolitan City which was in 1666 laid in Ashes, and had not Pious Care, and Dilligent Industry have raised this our Phoenix and Mother-City, we had wanted Earthly Habitations for our Bodies, and Ecclesiastical Tabernacles for the Good of our Souls: and Happy are they who Build such Tabernacles here, that they are not chid by that fame Prophet Haggai. 1.4. Is this a time for you to dwell in ceiled houses, and let my houses lie wast? &c.
X. Yet alas! how Wanton now adays, is the Worlds invention for Superfluous Building, Temples are too Old Fashion'd, the Zealous Father St. Bernard may still Sigh: Men Build as though they should Continue for Ever, and Glut as though to dye to Morrow, which indeed they may rather fear, such a Woe being denounced against them, as the Prophet mentions: Isa. 5.8, 9, 10. Wo unto them that joyn house to house, that lay field to field, till there be no place, that they may be placed alone in the midst of the Earth, &c. but to avert it, imitate that Ecclesiastical Centurion: Luke 7.5. whom the Jews respected, for loving their Nation, and building them a Synagogue. And, if thou needs wilt Build, let St. Chrysostom be a little thy Surveyour wouldst thou erect Beauteous and Splendid Edifices? I forbid thee not, saith he, yet found them not on Earth, 'tis but an Heap of Sand, but Situate in those Calm Regions that are above the Breath of Danger, Build in Heaven: for here is no Continuing City.
XI. But Cities are here put for the Inhabitants, and our want of peaceful residence, shadowed under their discontinuance; for if we Reflect on the Pilgrimage of Abraham: Gen. 12.1. where he is called from his own Countrey and his Fathers House, to divide a Life between Variety of strange Lands and Dangers; So that indeed we Read of no other settled Possession that he had but Machpelah: Gen. 23.17. his only Purchase a place of Burial, thus it was with the Father of the Faithful, he had no Continuing City.
XII. Nor was it any thing better with the Children; few and evil have been the daies of my Pilgrimage, says old Israel: Gen. 47.9. long and evil the daies of our Pilgrimage, murmured the Children of Israel in the Wilderness: Exod. 14. that Journey, was a true Type of the Saints way to Heaven, who Wandred up and down, says the Apostle: Heb. 11.37. destitute and afflicted. Militant is the Churches Name, she is an Host upon Continual Marches and Removes; our Habitations here, so often Varied by occasions, either of some Loss, Disfavour, Sickness, or of Death, (I need give no Examples) that, like the Travelling Common-wealth of Israel, we have rather so many several Stations, than appropriate Mansions.