mean from the ornaments of grace? And as the blessedness of the soul (saith the philosopher) consists in the speculation of honest and just things; so the perfection of the body and of the whole man consists in the practice, the exercise, and operations of virtue. 18. But this problem in Christian philosophy is yet more intelligible, and will be reduced to certain experience, if we consider good life in union and concretion with particular, material, and circumstantiate actions of piety: for these have great powers and influences even in nature to restore health and preserve our lives. Witness the sweet sleeps of temperate persons, and their constant appetite; which Timotheus, the son of Conon, observed, when he dieted in Plato's academy with severe and moderated diet: " They that sup with Plato are well the next day." Witness the symmetry of passions in meek men, their freedom from the violence of enraged and passionate indispositions; the admirable harmony and sweetness of content which dwells in the retirements of a holy conscience: to which if we add those joys which they only understand truly who feel them inwardly, the joys of the Holy Ghost, the content and joys which are attending upon the lives of holy persons are most likely to make them long and healthful. For now we live,' saith St. Paul, "if ye stand fast in the Lord." It would prolong St. Paul's life to see his ghostly children persevere in holiness and if we understood the joys of it, it would do much greater advantage to ourselves. But if we consider a spiritual life abstractedly and in itself, piety produces our life, not by a natural VOL. III. 11 Thes. iii. 8. 1 E efficiency, but by divine benediction. God gives a healthy and a long life as a reward and blessing to crown our piety even before the sons of men: 'For such as be blessed of him shall inherit the earth; but they that be cursed of him shall be cut off.'1 So that this whole matter is principally to be referred to the act of God, either by ways of nature, or by instruments of special providence, rewarding piety with a long life. And we shall more fully apprehend this, if, upon the grounds of Scripture, reason, and experience we weigh the contrary. Wickedness is the way to shorten our days.* 19. Sin brought death in first; and yet man lived almost a thousand years. But he sinned more, and then death came nearer to him; for when all the world was first drowned in wickedness, and then in water, God cut him shorter by one half, and five hundred years was his ordinary period. And man sinned still, and had strange imaginations, and built towers in the air; and then about Peleg's time God cut him shorter by one half yet, two hundred and odd years was his determination. And yet the generations of the world returned not unanimously to God; and God cut him off another half yet, and reduced him to one hundred and twenty years; and, by Moses's time, one half of the final remanent portion was pared away, reducing him to threescore years and ten so that, unless it be by special dispensation, men live not beyond that term, or thereabout. But if God had gone on still in the same method, and shortened our days as we multiplied our sins, we should have been but as an ephemeron; man should have lived the life of a fly or a gourd; the 2 Psalm xxxvii. 22. 2 Prov. x. 26. morning should have seen his birth, his life have been the term of a day, and the evening must have provided him with a shroud. But God seeing man's thoughts were only evil continually, he was resolved no longer so to strive with him, nor destroy the kind, but punish individuals only and single persons; and if they sinned, or if they did not obey regularly, their life should be proportionable. This God set down for his rule: 'Evil shall slay the wicked person:'' and, He that keepeth the commandments keepeth his own soul; but he that despiseth his own ways shall die." 20. But that we may speak more exactly in this problem, we must observe, that in Scripture three general causes of natural death are assigned-nature, providence, and chance. By these three I only mean the several manners of divine influence and operation. For God only predetermines; and what is changed in the following events by divine permission, to this God and man in their several manners do co-operate. The saying of David concerning Saul, with admirable philosophy describes the three ways of ending man's life: David said furthermore, as the Lord liveth, the Lord shall smite him, or his day shall come to die, or he shall descend into battle and perish.' 3 The first is special providence: the second means the term of nature: the third is that which in our want of words we call chance or accident, but is in effect nothing else but another manner of the divine providence. That in all these sin does interrupt and retrench our lives, is the undertaking of the following periods: 2 Prov. xix. 16. 1 Psalm xxxiv. 21. 21. First, In nature sin is a cause of dyscrasies and distempers, making our bodies healthless and our days few for although God hath prefixed a period to nature by an universal and antecedent determination, and that naturally every man that lives temperately, and by no supervening accident is interrupted, shall arrive thither; yet because the greatest part of our lives is governed by will and understanding, and there are temptations to intemperance, and to violations of our health, the period of nature is so distinct a thing from the period of our person, that few men attain to that which God had fixed by his first law and preceding purpose; but end their days with folly, and in a period which God appointed them with anger, and a determination secondary, consequent, and aceidental. And therefore, says David, 'health is far from the ungodly, for they regard not thy statutes.' And to this purpose is that saying of Eben-Ezra: " He that is united to God, the foun. tain of life, his soul being improved by grace, communicates to the body an establishment of its radical moisture and natural heat, to make it more healthful, that so it may be more instrumental to the spiritual operations and productions of the soul, and itself be preserved in perfect constitution." Now, how this blessing is contradicted by the impious life of a wicked person is easy to be understood, if we consider, that from drunken surfeits come dissolution of members, head-aches, apoplexies, dangerous falls, fracture of bones, drenchings and dilution of the brain, inflammation of the liver, crudities of the stomach, and thousands more, which Solomon sums up in general terms: Who hath woe? Who hath sorrow? Who hath redness of eyes? They that tarry long at the wine.' I shall not need to instance in the sad and uncleanly consequents of lusts; the wounds and accidental deaths which are occasioned by jealousies, by vanity, by peevishness, vain reputation, and animosities, by melancholy, and the despair of evil consciences: and yet these are abundant argument, that when God so permits a man to run his course of nature, that himself does not intervene by an extraordinary influence, or any special acts of providence, but only gives his ordinary assistance to natural causes, a very great part of men make their natural period shorter, and by sin make their days miserable and few. 22. Secondly, Oftentimes providence intervenes, and makes the way shorter; God, for the iniquity of man, not suffering nature to take her course, but stopping her in the midst of her journey. Against this David prayed, 'O my God, cut me not off in the midst of my days.' But in this there is some variety; for God does it sometimes in mercy, sometimes in judgment. The righteous die, and no man regardeth; not considering that they are taken away from the evil to come." God takes the righteous hastily to his crown, lest temptation snatch it from him by interrupting his hopes and sanctity and this was the case of the old world. For from Adam to the flood by the patriarchs were eleven generations; but by Cain's line there were but eight, so that Cain's posterity were longerlived; because God, intending to bring the flood upon the world, took delight to rescue his elect from the dangers of the present impurity and the 1 Prov. xxiii. 29, 30. 2 Psalm cii. 24. |