Insultus Morbi Primus;
The first
alteration, The first
grudging of, the sicknesse.
VARIABLE, and therfore
miserable condition of Man; this minute I was well, and am ill, this minute. I am surpriz'd with a
sodaine change, and
alteration to worse, and can impute it to no cause, nor call it by any name. We
study Health, and we deliberate upon our
meats, and
drink, and ayre, and exercises, and we hew, and wee
polish every stone, that goes to that building; and so our Health is a long and regular work; But in a minute a
Canon batters all, overthrowes all, demolishes all; a Sicknes unprevented for all our
diligence, unsuspected for all our
curiositie; nay, undeserved, if we consider only disorder, summons us, seizes us, possesses us, destroyes us in an instant. O
miserable condition of Man, which was not imprinted by God, who as hee is
immortall himselfe, had put a coale, a beame of Immortalitie into us, which we might have blowen into a flame, but blew it out, by our first sinne; wee beggard our selves by hearkning after
false riches, a'nd infatuated our selves by hearkning after
false knowledge. So that now, we doe not onely die, but die upon
the Rack, die by the
torment of sicknesse; nor that onely, but are
preafflicted,
super-afflicted with these jelousies and suspitions, and apprehensions of Sicknes, before we can cal it a sicknes; we are not sure we are ill;
one hand askes the other by the pulse, and our eye asks our
urine, how we do. O multiplied
misery I we die, and cannot
enjoy death, because wee die in this torment of sicknes; we art tormented with sickness and cannot stay till the torment come, but preapprehensions and presages,
prophecy those torments, which induce that death before either come; and our
dissolution is conceived in these first changes, quickned in the sicknes it selfe, and borne in death, which beares date from these first changes. Is this the honour which Man hath by being a litle world, That he hath these earthquakes in him selfe, sodaine shakings; these lightnings, sodaine flashes; these thunders, sodaine noises; these
Eclypses, sodain
offuscations, and darknings of his senses; these Blazing stars, sodaine fiery exhalations; these
Rivers of blood, sodaine
red waters? Is he a world to himselfe onely therefore, that he hath inough in himself, not only to destroy, and execute himselfe, but to presage that
execution upon himselfe; to assist the sickness to antidate the sickness to make the sicknes the more irremediable, by sad apprehensions, and as if he would make a fire the more vehement, by sprinkling water upon the coales, so to wrap a hote fever in
cold Melancholy, least the -fever alone should not destroy fast enough, without this contribution, nor perfit the work (which is destruction) except we joynd an artificiall sickness of our owne melancholy, to our natural, our un-naturall fever. O perplex'd
discomposition, O ridling distemper, O
miserable condition of Man!
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Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions