to what he had before. Therefore I would have you to recollect yourself, and (if the violence of your disease left you at any time the use of your reason), bethink yourself what opinion you then had of intemperance, wasting of time, unlawful lust, or any of those sins that formerly pleased you in your health; whether they did not appear to you in your sickness very vain, foolish, vexing things, such as you wished never to have been committed; and, on the other side, what opinion you had in your sickness touching piety towards God, hearing of his Word, calling upon his Name, redeeming of time, modesty, temperance: whether those actions of your life past, that savoured of these, were not comfortable and contenting to you in your sickness; whether your purposes and promises, and resolutions of your sick-bed, were not full of such thoughts as these,-If it please God to recover me, I will never be such a fool as I have been; I will never drink to excess, mispend my time; I will never keep such evil company as I have done; I will be more devout towards God, more obedient to his Word, more observant of good counsel, and the like. And, if you find it to be so, I

must desire you to remember, that affliction is the school of wisdom; it rectifies men's judgments and I must again desire you to keep your judgment right still, and let not the recovery of your health become the loss of your wits; but in your health retain that wisdom your sickness taught you, and practise what you then promised: "Remember he is the wisest man, that provides for his latter end *.”

VII. Remember, by your former sickness, how pitiful and inconsiderable a thing the body of man is; how soon is the strength of it turned to faintness and weakness, the beauty of it to ugliness and deformity, the consistency of it to putrefaction and rottenness; and then remember, how foolish a thing it is to be proud of such a carcase; to spend all, or the greatest part of our time in trimming and adorning it; in studying new fashions, and new postures, and new devices to set it out; in spending our time and provisions in pampering it; in pleasing the appetite: and yet this is the chief business of most young men of this age. Learn, therefore, humility and lowli

*Deut. xxxii. 29.

ness learn to furnish thy noble and immortal part, thy soul, with religion, grace, knowledge, virtue, goodness; for that will retain it to eternity. How miserable is that man's condition, that whilst sickness hath made his body a deformed, weak, loathsome thing, sin hath made his soul as ugly and deformed. The grave will heal or cover the deformity of the former; but the soul will carry its ulcers and deformity (without repentance) into the next world. Learn and remember, therefore, to have thy greatest care for thy noblest part: furnish it with piety, grace, knowledge, the fear and love of God, faith in Christ. And as for thy body, use it decently, soberly, and comely, that it may be a fit instrument for thy soul to use in this life; but be not proud of it, nor make it thy chiefest care and business to adorn, much less defile it.

VIII. Remember to avoid intemperance and sinful lusts. It is true, sickness and diseases, and finally death, are, by the laws and constitutions of our nature, incident to all mankind; but intemperance, excess of eating and drinking, drunkenness, whoring, uncleanness, and disorder, bring more diseases, es

pecially upon young men, and destroy more young, strong, healthy men, than the plague, or other natural or accidental distempers: they weaken the brain, corrupt the blood, decay and distemper the spirit, disorder and putrefy the humours, and make the body a very bag full of putrefaction. Some diseases

are, as it were, specifical, and appropriate to these vices: other diseases are commonly occasioned by them, by their inflammation and putrefaction of the blood and humours. And all diseases, even those that are epidemical, natural, or casual, yet are rendered by those vices far more sharp, lasting, malignant, and incurable, by that stock of corrupted matter they lodge in the body to feed those diseases, and that impotency that these vices bring upon nature to resist them. Therefore, if you ever expect to have as well a sound body as a sound mind, carefully avoid intemperance and debauchery. The most temperate and sober persons are subject to sickness, weakness, and diseases; but the intemperate can never be long without them.

And thus I have done with the prospect of your disease; and at least many of these

profitable uses you may gather from the remembrance of it.

I shall now, in the second 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 your disease before-mentioned. 2. It was a deliverance by the immediate power and mercy of that God that sent you the visitation.

Una eademque manus, vulnus opemque tuTit*. If you had been delivered by the immediate efficacy of means, yet you are blind if you see not that the efficacy of means depends upon the providence of God: it is he that provides it, and that makes means effectual. But in this deliverance, God hath pleased to hedge up, as it were, your way from attributing it to means; and hath given you an indication that it was done by his own immediate power, and that he delivered you above and

* The hand that gave the wound, administered the cure.