I have read of an Italian poet, who brings in a proper youno- man, rich and potent, discoursing with death in the habit of a mower, with his scythe in his hand, cutting down the life of man, ' For all flesh is grass/ Isa. xl. 6. And wilt thou not spare any man's person, saith the young man? I spare none, saith death ; man's life is but a day, a short day, a winter's day. Ofttimes the sun goes down upon a man before it be well up. Your day is short, your work is great, your journey long, and therefore you should rise early, and set forward towards heaven betimes, as that man doth that hath a long journey to go in a winter's day.2
The life of man is absolutely short : ' Behold, thou hast made my days as an hand's-breadth,' Ps. xxxix. 5. The life of man is compara- tively short, and that if you compare man's life now to what he might have reached had he continued in innocency. Sin brought in death ; death is a fall, that came in by a fall. Or if you compare man's life now to what they did reach to before the flood : then several lived six, seven, eight, nine hundred years, Gen. i. 9 ; or if you compare men's days with the days of God, ' Mine age is as nothing before thee/ Ps. xxxix. 5 ; or if you compare the days of man to the days of eternity.3
Ah ! young men, young men ! can you seriously consider of the brevity of man's life, and trifle away your time, the offers of grace, your precious souls, and eternity ? &c. Surely you cannot, surely you dare not, if you do but in good earnest ponder upon the shortness of man's life. It is recorded of Philip, king of Macedon, that he gave a pension to one to come to him every day at dinner, and to cry to him, Memento te esse mortalem, Remember thou art but mortal.4
Ah ! young men and old had need be often put in mind of their mortality; they are too apt to forget that day, yea, to put far from them the thoughts of that day. I have read of three that could not endure to hear that bitter word death mentioned in their ears ; and surely this age is full of such monsters.
And as the life of man is very short, so it is very uncertain : now well, now sick ; alive this hour, and dead the next. Death doth not always give warning beforehand ; sometimes he gives the mortal blow suddenly ; he comes behind with his dart, and strikes a man at the heart, before he saith, 'Have I found thee, O mine enemy?' 1 Kings xxi. 30. Eutychus fell down dead suddenly, Acts xx. 9 ;5 death sud- denly arrested David's sons and Job's sons ; Augustus died in a com- pliment, Galba with a sentence, Vespasian with a jest;6 Zeuxis died
1 Pares nascuntur, pares morivntur, in the womb and in the tomb they are all alike, Job xxi. 23, 24. It is an allegorical description of the highest prosperity.
2 Death's motto is, Nulli cedo, I yield to none.
3 The heathen could say that the whole life of man shonld be nothing else but medi- tatio mortis, a meditation of death. [That rare little Puritan book by the Earl of Man- chester, ' Almondo, or Contemplatio Mortis et Immortalitatis' (5th edition, 1642), illus- trates and unfolds above very suggestively — G ]
4 Cf. Sibbes's Works, vol. ii. pp. 433, 435.— G.
5 Petrarch telleth of one who, being invited to dinner the next day. answered, Ego a mnltis annis crastinvm non habiti, I have not had a morrow for this many years.
6 See Bacon"s Essays. On Death. — G.
190 APPLES OF GOLD. [1 KlNGS XIV. 13.
laughing at the picture of an old woman which he drew with his own hand ; Sophocles was choked with the stone in a grape ; Diodorus the logician died for shame that he could not answer a joculary question propounded at the table by Stilpo ; Joannes Measius, preaching upon the raising of the woman of Nain's son from the dead, within three hours after died himself.
Ah ! young men and women, have you not cause, great cause, to be good betimes ? for death is sudden in his approaches. Nothing more sure than death, and nothing more uncertain than life. Therefore know the Lord betimes, turn from your sins betimes ; lay hold on the Lord, and make peace with him betimes, that you may never say, as CaBsar Borgias said when he was sick to death, ' When I lived,' said he, ' I provided for everything but death ; now I must die, and am unpro- vided to die/ &c.x
Reason (12). Because it is ten to one, nay, a hundred to ten, if ever they are converted, if they are not converted when they are young.
God usually begins with such betimes that he hath had thoughts of love and mercy towards them from everlasting.2 The instances cited to prove the doctrine confirms this argument ; and if you look abroad in the world, you shall hardly find one saint among a thousand but dates his conversion from the time of his youth. It was the young ones that got through the wilderness into Canaan, Num. xxvi.3 If the tree do not bud and blossom, and bring forth fruit in the spring, it is com- monly dead all the year after. If, in the spring and morning of your days, you do not bring forth fruit to God, it is an hundred to one that ever you bring forth fruit to him when the evil days of old age shall ' overtake you, wherein you shall say you have no pleasure,' Eccles. xii. 1. For, as the son of Sirach observes, if thou hast gathered no- thing in thy youth, what canst thou find in thy age ?4 It is rare, very rare, that God sows and reaps in old age. Usually God sows the seed of grace in youth, that yields the harvest of joy in age.
Though true repentance be never too late, yet late repentance is seldom true. Millions are now in hell, who have pleased themselves with the thoughts of after-repentance. The Lord hath made a promise to late repentance, but where hath he made a promise of late repentance ? Yea, what can be more just and equal, that such should seek and not find, who might have found but would not seek ; and that he should shut his ears against their late prayers, who have stopped their ears against his early calls ? Prov. i. 24-32. The ancient warriors would not accept an old man into their army, as being unfit for service ; and dost thou think that God will accept of thy dry bones, when Satan hath sucked out all the marrow ? What lord, what master, will take such into their service, who have all their days served their enemies ? and will God ? will God ? The Circassians, a kind of mongrel Christians, are said to divide their life betwixt sin and devotion, dedicating their
1 Much earlier than Borgia, being recorded of the dying emperor Septimus Severus as follows : ' Omnia fui. nihil expedit.' — G.
» Hosea xi. 1, ' When Israel was a child, then I loved him,' &c.
3 An Hebrew doctor observes, that of those six hundred thousand that went out of Efjypt, there were but two persons that entered Canaan.
4 Ecclesiasticus xxv. 3 ; the first quotation by Brooks thus far from the Apocrypha.— G.
1 Kings XIV. 13.] apples of gold. 191
youth to rapine, and their old age to repentance.1 If this be thy case, I would not be in thy case for ten thousand worlds.