STATIONES, SIVE PERIODI IN MORBO, AD QUAS REFERUNTUR MEDITATIONES SEQUENTES. 1. INSULTUS Morbi primus. The first alteration, the first grudging of the sickness 2. Post, Actio lasa. The strength and the function of the senses, and other 3. Decubitus sequitur tandem. The patient takes his bed 4. Medicusque vocatur. The physician is sent for 5. Solus adest. The physician comes Page 1 10 10. Lentè et Serpenti satagunt occurrere Morbo. They find the disease to steal on insensibly, and endeavour 11. Nobilibusque trahunt, a cincto corde, venenum, They use cordials, to keep the venom and malignity of 12. Spirante Columba, Supposita pedibus, revocantur ad ima vapores. 55 62 They apply pigeons, to draw the vapours from the head. 69 1. 13. Atque Malum Genium, numeroso stignate, fassus, Page Pellitur ad pectus, Morbique Suburbia, Morbus. The sickness declares the infection and malignity thereof 14. Idque notant Criticis, Medici evenisse diebus. 15. Interea insomnes Noctes ego duco, Diesque. I sleep not day nor night 16. Et properare meum, clamant e turre propinqua Obstrepera Campanæ, aliorum in funere, funus. From the bells of the church adjoining, I am daily remembered of my burial in the funerals of others 17. Nunc lento sonitu dicunt, Morieris. 18. At inde, Mortuus es, sonitu celeri, pulsuque agitato. 20. 21. At last the physicians, after a long and stormy voyage, see Upon these indications of digested matter, they proceed to Atque annuit Ille, Qui per eos clamat, linquas jam Lazare lectum. 22. Sit Morbi Fomes tibi Cura. 23. The physicians consider the root and occasion, the embers, correct that 75 113 122 129 136 They warn me of the fearful danger of relapsing . VA Sickness. I. MEDITATION. ARIABLE, and therefore miserable condition of man! this minute I was well, and am ill this minute. I am surprised with a sudden 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 air, and exercises, and we hew and we polish every stone that goes to that building; and so our health is a long and a regular work: but in a minute a cannon batters all, overthrows all, demolishes all; a sickness unprevented for all our diligence, unsuspected for all our curiosity, nay, undeserved, if we consider only disorder, summons us, seizes us, possesses us, destroys us in an instant. O miserable condition of man! which was not imprinted by God, who, as he is immortal himself, had put a coal, a beam of immortality into us, which we might have blown into a flame, but blew it out by our first sin; we beggared ourselves by hearkening after false riches, and infatuated ourselves by B hearkening after false knowledge. So that now, we do not only die, but die upon the rack, die by the torment of sickness; nor that only, but are preafflicted, superafflicted with these jealousies and suspicions and apprehensions of sickness, before we can call it a sickness; we are not sure we are ill; one hand asks the other by the pulse, and our eye asks our own urine how we do. O multiplied misery! we die, and cannot enjoy death, because we die in this torment of sickness; we are tormented with sickness, and cannot stay till the torment come, but preapprehensions and presages prophesy those torments, which induce that death before either come; and our dissolution is conceived in these first changes, quickened in the sickness itself, and born in death, which bears date from these first changes. Is this the honour which man hath by being a little world, that he hath these earthquakes in himself, sudden shakings; these lightnings, sudden flashes; these thunders, sudden noises; these eclipses, sudden offuscations and darkenings of his senses; these blazing stars, sudden fiery exhalations; these rivers of blood, sudden red waters? Is he a world to himself only therefore, that he hath enough in himself, not only to destroy and execute himself, but to presage that execution upon himself; to assist the sickness, to antedate the sickness, to make the sickness the more irremediable by sad apprehensions, and as if he would make a fire the more vehement, by sprinkling water upon the coals, so to wrap a hot fever in cold melancholy, lest the fever alone should not destroy fast enough, without this contribution, nor perfect the work (which is destruction) except we joined an artificial sickness of our own melancholy, to our natural, our unnatural fever. O perplexed discomposition, O riddling distemper, O miserable condition of man! I I. EXPOSTULATION. F I were but mere dust and ashes, I might speak unto the Lord, for the Lord's hand made me of this dust, and the Lord's hand shall recollect these ashes; the Lord's hand was the wheel, upon which this vessel of clay was framed, and the Lord's hand is the urn in which these ashes shall be preserved. I am the dust and the ashes of the temple of the Holy Ghost, and what marble is so precious? But I am more than dust and ashes: I am my best part, I am my soul. And being so, the breath of God, I may breathe back these pious expostulations to my God: My God, my God, why is not my soul as sensible as my body? Why hath not my soul these apprehensions, these presages, these changes, those antidotes, those jealousies, those suspicions of a sin, as well as my body of a sickness? Why is there not always a pulse in my soul to beat at the approach of a temptation to sin? Why are there not always waters in mine eyes, to testify my spiritual sickness? I stand in the way of temptations, naturally, necessarily; all men do so; for there is a snake in every path, temptations in but I vocation; every go, I run, I fly into the ways of temptation, which I might shun; nay, I break into houses where the plague is; I press into places of temptation, and tempt the devil himself, and solicit and importune them who had rather be left unsolicited by me. I fall sick of sin, and am bedded and bedrid, buried and putrified in the practice of sin, and all this while have no presage, no pulse, no sense of my sickness. O height, O depth of misery, where the first symptom of the sickness is hell, and where I never see the fever of lust, of envy, of ambition, by any other light than the darkness and horror of hell itself, and where the first messenger that speaks to me doth |