Bishop Jeremy Taylor.

CONSIDERATIONS PREPARATORY TO DEATH.

(Holy Dying, Introduction.)

It is a great art to die well, and to be learnt by men in health, by them that can discourse and consider, by those whose understanding and acts of reason are not abated by fears or pains: and as the greatest part of death is passed by the preceding years of our life, so also in those years are the greatest preparations to it; and he that prepares not for death before his last sickness, is like him that begins to study philosophy when he is going to dispute publicly in the faculty. that a sick and dying man can do is but to exercise those virtues which he before acquired, and to perfect that repentance which was begun more early.

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This book contains so many precepts and meditations, so many propositions and various duties, such forms of exercise, and the degrees and difficulties of so many graces, which are necessary pre

parations to a holy death, that the very learning the duties requires study and skill, time and understanding in the ways of godliness; and it were very vain to say so much is necessary, and not to suppose more time to learn them, more skill to practise them, more opportunities to desire them, more abilities both of body and mind than can be supposed in a sick, amazed, timorous, and weak person; whose natural acts are disabled, whose senses are weak, whose discerning faculties are lessened, whose principles are made intricate and entangled, upon whose eye sits a cloud, and the heart is broken with sickness, and the liver pierced through with the sorrows and strokes of death.

It is therefore intended by the necessity of affairs, that the precepts of dying well be part of the studies of them that live in health, and the days of discourse and understanding.

We die but once, and therefore it will be necessary that our skill be more exact, since it is not to be mended by trial; but the actions must be for ever left imperfect, unless the habit be contracted with study and contemplation beforehand. And indeed it were vain, if I should intend this

book to be read and studied by dying persons: and they were vainer that should need to be instructed in those graces which they are then to exercise and finish. For a sick-bed is only a school of severe exercise, in which the spirit of a man is tried, and his graces are rehearsed.

Old persons should sadly consider that their advantages in that state are very few, but their inconveniences are not few; their vices (if they have lived wicked) are habitual, the occasions of the virtues many, the possibilities of some are past and shall never return; and perhaps the day of their repentance is past, as we see it true in very many; or it is expiring and towards the sun-set, as it is in all: and therefore, although in these to recover is very possible, yet we may also remember that, in the matter of virtue and repentance, possibility is a great way off from performance; and how few do repent, of whom it is only possible that they may? And that many things more are required to reduce their possibility to act; a great grace, an assiduous ministry, an effective calling, mighty assistances, excellent counsel, great industry, a watchful diligence, a well-disposed mind, passionate desires, deep ap

prehensions of danger, quick perceptions of duty, and time, and God's blessing, that to will and to do may by Him be wrought to great purposes and with great speed.

It is therefore hugely necessary that these persons who have lost their time and their blessed opportunities, should have the diligence of youth, and the zeal of new converts, and take account of every hour that is left them, and pray perpetually, and be advised prudently, and study the interest of their souls, carefully, with diligence, and with fear; and their old age, which in effect is nothing but a continual death-bed, dressed with some more order and advantages, may be a state of hope and labour, and acceptance, through the infinite mercies of God in Jesus Christ.

Concerning sinners really under the arrest of death, God hath made no death-bed covenant, the Scripture hath recorded no promises, given no instructions, and I have none to give, but only the same which are to be given to all men that are alive, because they are so, and because it is uncertain when they shall be otherwise.

The sick man's exercise of grace formerly acquired, his perfecting repentance begun in the days of health, the prayers and counsels of the holy man that ministers, the giving the holy sacrament, the ministry and assistance of angels, and the mercies of God, the peace of conscience, and the peace of the Church, are all the assistances and preparatives that can help to dress his lamp. But if a man shall go to buy oil when the Bridegroom comes, if his lamp be not first furnished, and then trimmed, that in this life, this, upon death-bed, his station shall be without-doors, his portion with unbelievers.

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I consider, that it is not well that men should pretend any thing will do a man good when he dies; and yet the same ministries and ten times more assistances were used for forty or fifty years together ineffectually. If all his lifetime the man belonged to death and the dominion of sin, and from thence could not be recovered by sermons, and counsels, and perpetual precepts, and frequent sacraments, by confessions and absolutions, by prayers and advocations, by external ministries and internal acts, it is but too certain that his lamp cannot then be furnished.