And now to draw to the end of your conflict, for your final comfort I put you in mind of a most comfortable thing, that if you be put to death in this cause of the Catholic faith, your death is martyrdom, and your foil [defeat] victory. And therefore, seeing that die we must, let us embrace … this happy occasion … To pass over our mortal end with the reward of immortality, neither let us fear to be killed, who by killing are sure to be crowned. Death of itself to the good is not so odious, but that for infinite motives, we have rather cause to wish it, than to eschew it, and rather to desire it, than to fear it. “Sweet,” says St. Chrysostom, “is the end to the laborers; willingly does the traveler question about his Inn; often casts [calculates] the hireling when his year will come out [when his contract will be up]. The husbandman always looks for the time of his harvest; the merchant is still busy about his bills to know the day of payment; and the woman great with child is ever musing upon the time of her delivery. No less comfort it is to God’s servants, to think of their decease, seeing that there is their heart, where they have hoarded their treasure.” … Death is looked for without fear, yea desired with delight, accepted with devotion. To us, it kills our most dangerous and domestic enemy. It breaks the locks, unlooses chains, and opens the door to let us out of a loathsome prison. It unloads us of a cumbersome burden which oppresses our soul. Who would not willingly be out of the sway of Fortune, rid of the infinite hazards and perils, of daily casualties?

… Who, therefore, would not rejoice quickly to die, seeing that death is the passage from this world to the next, from all the present grievances, to all possible happiness? Well may the brute beasts fear death, whose end of life is the conclusion of their being. Well may the epicure tremble, who with his life, looks to lose his felicity. Well may the infidels, heretics, or unrepentant sinners quake, whose death is the beginning of their damnation. Such as here have their heaven, and have made their prison their paradise; those whose belly was their god, and their appetites their guides, may with reason rue their death, seeing they have no portion in the land of the living. They have sown in sin, and what can they look to reap but misery? Vanities were their traffic, and grief will be their gain. Detestable was their life, and damnable will be their decease.

… [I]f after life there is no more difference of persons than there is in the ashes of velvet and coarse canvas, or of diverse woods burned up in one fire, then surely it is folly to care for these bodies or to desire their long continuance, which in the end must be resolved into earth and dust, and cannot here live without a multitude of cumbers [burdens]. The like we find almost in every other thing, and therefore surely all miseries of our life well perused, we may think it a great benefit of God that whereas there is but one way to come into this world, yet are there very many to go out of the same. What can there be in life, either durable or very delightsome, when life itself is so frail and tickle [unreliable] a thing? Our life (says the scripture) is like the print of a cloud in the air, like a mist dissolved by the sun, like the passing of a shadow, like a flower that soon fades, like a dry leaf carried with every wind, like a vapor that soon vanishes out of sight. St. Chrysostom calls it one while a heavy sleep fed with false and imaginary dreams; another while he calls it a comedy or rather, in our days, a tragedy of transitory shows and disguised persons. Sometimes he likens it to a bird’s nest made of straw and dung, that the winter soon dissolves. St. Gregory Nazianzen calls it a child’s game that builds houses of sand on the shore, where every wave washes them away, yea, and as Pindar says, it is no more but the dream of a shadow. It passes away like one that rides in post; like a ship in the sea that leaves no print of the passage; like a bird in the air of whose way there remains no remembrance; like an arrow that flies to the mark, whose tract the air suddenly closes up.

Whatsoever we do—sit we, stand we, sleep we, wake we—our ship, says St. Basil, always sails towards our last home, and the stream of our life keeps on an inflexible course. Every day we die, and hourly lose some part of our life, and even then when we grow we decrease. We have lost our infancy, our childhood, our youth, and all till this present day. What time soever passes, perishes, and this very day, death secretly by minutes purloins from us. …

The good pilot, when he guides his ship, he sits at the stern in the hinder part thereof, and so the provident Christian to direct his life, must always sit at the end of the same, that the mindfulness of death being his stern, he may fear it the less and provide for it the better. This is the door whereby we must go out of bondage, and therefore, as the prisoner that stands upon his delivery takes greatest comfort in sitting upon the threshold, that when the door is opened, he may the sooner get out, so ought we always to have our mind fixed upon the last step of our life, over which we are sure that pass we must, though how or when we know not.

First, then, we consider this exitus mortis to be liberatio à morte [the issues or outcome of death to be a deliverance in death], that with God the Lord are the issues of death; and, therefore, in all our death and deadly calamities of this life, we may justly hope of a good issue from him. In all our periods and transitions in this life are so many passages from death to death. Our very birth and entrance into this life is exitus à morte, an issue from death, for in our mother’s womb we are dead, so as that we do not know we live, not so much as we do in our sleep, neither is there any grave so close or so putrid a prison as the womb would be unto us if we stayed in it beyond our time, or died there before our time. In the grave, the worms do not kill us; we breed, and feed, and then kill those worms which we ourselves produced. In the womb, the dead child kills the mother that conceived it, and is a murderer, nay, a parricide, even after it is dead. And if we be not dead so in the womb, so as that being dead we kill her that gave us our first life, our life of vegetation, yet we are dead so as David’s idols are dead. In the womb we have eyes and see not, ears and hear not. There in the womb we are fitted for works of darkness, all the while deprived of light; and there in the womb we are taught cruelty, by being fed with blood, and may be damned, though we be never born. Of our very making in the womb, David says, “I am wonderfully and fearfully made, and such knowledge is too excellent for me, for even that is the Lord’s doing, and it is wonderful in our eyes; ipse fecit nos, it is he that made us, and not we ourselves, nor our parents neither.” “Thy hands have made and fashioned me round about,” says Job, and (as the original word is) “thou hast taken pains about me, and yet (says he) thou dost destroy me.” Though I be the masterpiece of the greatest master (man is so), yet if thou do no more for me, if thou leave me where thou made me, destruction will follow. The womb, which should be the house of life, becomes death itself if God leave us there. That which God threatens so often, the shutting of a womb, is not so heavy nor so discomfortable a curse in the first as in the latter shutting, nor in the shutting of barrenness as in the shutting of weakness, when children are come to the birth, and no strength to bring forth.

… We are sure that Eve had no midwife when she was delivered of Cain, therefore she might well say, Possedi virum à Domino, I have gotten a man from the Lord, wholly, entirely from the Lord; it is the Lord that enabled me to conceive, the Lord that infused a quickening soul into that conception, the Lord that brought into the world that which himself had quickened. Without all this might Eve say, my body had been but the house of death, and Domini Domini sunt exitus mortis, To God the Lord belong the issues of death. But then this exitus à morte is but introitus in mortem; this issue, this deliverance, from that death, the death of the womb, is an entrance, a delivering over to another death, the manifold deaths of this world; we have a winding-sheet in our mother’s womb which grows with us from our conception, and we come into the world wound up in that winding-sheet, for we come to seek a grave. And as prisoners discharged of actions may lie for fees, so when the womb hath discharged us, yet we are bound to it by cords of Hestia [the umbilical cord], by such a string as that we cannot go thence, nor stay there. We celebrate our own funerals with cries even at our birth, as though our threescore and ten years’ life were spent in our mother’s labor, and our circle made up in the first point thereof. We beg our baptism with another sacrament, with tears; and we come into a world that lasts many ages, but we last not. … How then hath God given this earth to the sons of men? He hath given them earth for their materials to be made of earth, and he hath given them earth for their grave and sepulcher, to return and resolve to earth, but not for their possession. … [F]or this whole world is but an universal churchyard, but our common grave, and the life and motion that the greatest persons have in it is but as the shaking of buried bodies in their grave by an earthquake. That which we call life is but hebdomada mortium, a week of death, seven days, seven periods of our life spent in dying, a dying seven times over. And there is an end. Our birth dies in infancy, and our infancy dies in youth, and youth and the rest die in age, and age also dies and determines all. Nor do all these, youth out of infancy, or age out of youth, arise so as the phoenix out of the ashes of another phoenix formerly dead, but as a wasp or a serpent out of a carrion, or as a snake out of dung. Our youth is worse than our infancy, and our age worse than our youth. Our youth is hungry and thirsty after those sins which our infancy knew not; and our age is sorry and angry that it cannot pursue those sins which our youth did; and besides, all the way, so many deaths, that is, so many deadly calamities accompany every condition and every period of this life, as that death itself would be an ease to them that suffer them. …

Truly the consideration of this posthume death, this death after burial, that after God (with whom are the issues of death) hath delivered me from the death of the womb, by bringing me into the world, and from the manifold deaths of the world, by laying me in the grave, I must die again in an incineration of this flesh, and in a dispersion of that dust. That that monarch, who spread over many nations alive, must in his dust lie in a corner of that sheet of lead, and there but so long as that lead will last; and that private and retired man, that thought himself his own forever, and never came forth, must in his dust of the grave be published, and (such are the revolutions of the grave) be mingled with the dust of every highway and of every dunghill, and swallowed in every puddle and pond. This is the most inglorious and contemptible vilification, the most deadly and peremptory nullification of man, that we can consider. … But in this death of incineration and dispersion of dust, we see nothing that we call that man’s. If we say, “Can this dust live?” perchance it cannot; it may be the mere dust of the earth, which never did live, never shall. It may be the dust of that man’s worm, which did live, but shall no more. It may be the dust of another man, that concerns not him of whom it was asked. This death of incineration and dispersion is, to natural reason, the most irrecoverable death of all. And yet Domini Domini sunt exitus mortis, unto God the Lord belong the issues of death; and by recompacting this dust into the same body, and remaining the same body with the same soul, he shall in a blessed and glorious resurrection give me such an issue from this death as shall never pass into any other death, but establish me into a life that shall last as long as the Lord of Life himself. …

But whether the gate of my prison be opened with an oiled key (by a gentle and preparing sickness), or the gate be hewn down by a violent death, or the gate be burnt down by a raging and frantic fever, a gate into heaven I shall have, for from the Lord is the cause of my life, and with God the Lord are the issues of death. And further we carry not this second acceptation of the words, as this issue of death is liberatio in morte, God’s care that the soul be safe, what agonies soever the body suffers in the hour of death.

• O Blessed body! Whither art thou thrown?
• No lodging for thee, but a cold hard stone?
• So many hearts on earth, and yet not one
• Receive thee?

• Sure there is room within our hearts, good store;
• For they can lodge transgressions by the score:
• Thousands of toys dwell there, yet out of door
• They leave thee.

• But that which shows them large, shows them unfit.
• Whatever sin did this pure rock commit,
• Which holds thee now? Who hath indicted it
• Of murder?

• Where our hard hearts have took up stones to brain thee,
• And missing this, most falsely did arraign thee;
• Only these stones in quiet entertain thee,
• And order.

• And as of old, the Law by heav’nly art
• Was writ in stone; so thou, which also art
• The letter of the word, find’st no fit heart
• To hold thee.

• Yet do we still persist as we began,
• And so should perish, but that nothing can,
• Though it be cold, hard, foul, from loving man
• Withhold thee.

• Not in rich furniture, or fine array,
• Nor in a wedge of gold,
• Thou, who for me was sold,
• To me does now thyself convey;
• For so thou should’st without me still have been,
• Leaving within me sin.

• But by the way of nourishment and strength
• Thou creep’st into my breast;
• Making thy way my rest,
• And thy small quantities my length;
• Which spread their forces into every part,
• Meeting sin’s force and art.

• Yet can these not get over to my soul,
• Leaping the wall that parts
• Our souls and fleshy hearts;
• But as th’outworks, they may control
• My rebel-flesh, and carrying thy name,
• Affright both sin and shame.

• Only thy grace, which with these elements comes,
• Knoweth the ready way,
• And hath the privy key,
• Op’ning the soul’s most subtle rooms;
• While those to spirits refined, at door attend
• Dispatches from their friend.

• Give me my captive soul, or take
• My body also thither.
• Another lift like this will make
• Them both to be together.

• Before that sin turn’d flesh to stone,
• And all our lump to leaven;
• A fervent sigh might well have blown
• Our innocent earth to heaven.

• For sure when Adam did not know
• To sin, or sin to smother;
• He might to heav’n from Paradise go,
• As from one room t’another.

• Thou hast restor’d us to this ease
• By this thy heav’nly blood;
• Which I can go to, when I please,
• And leave th’earth to their food.

• Death, thou wast once an uncouth hideous thing,
• Nothing but bones,
• The sad effect of sadder groans:
• Thy mouth was open, but thou couldst not sing.

• For we considered thee as at some six
• Or ten years hence,
• After the loss of life and sense,
• Flesh being turned to dust, and bones to sticks.

• We looked on this side of thee, shooting short;
• Where we did find
• The shells of fledge souls left behind,
• Dry dust, which sheds no tears, but may extort.

• But since our Savior’s death did put some blood
• Into thy face,
• Thou art grown fair and full of grace,
• Much in request, much sought for as a good.

• For we do now behold thee gay and glad,
• As at Doomsday;
• When souls shall wear their new array,
• And all thy bones with beauty shall be clad.

• Therefore, we can go die as sleep, and trust
• Half that we have
• Unto an honest faithful grave;
• Making our pillows either down, or dust.

• My soul to heaven would haste and fly,
• And there make suit, that I may die
• Because from heaven she is detained,
• Lives in a body sometimes pained,
• And in her glory cannot be,
• So long, as here she stays in me.

• But that thy will she doth respect,
• And looks to what thou hast elect,
• And will contented be to stay,
• That here thy will, she might obey:
• She wisheth rather to please thee,
• Than in her glory for to be.

• Eternal Reason, Glorious Majesty,
• Compared to whom what can be said to be?
• Whose attributes are Thee, who art alone
• Cause of all various things, and yet but one;
• Whose essence can no more be searched by man
• Than heaven, thy throne, be grasped with a span.
• Yet if this great creation was designed
• To several ends, fitted for every kind,
• Sure man, the world’s epitome, must be
• Formed to the best, that is to study thee.
• And as our dignity, ’tis duty, too,
• Which is summed up in this: to know and do.
• These comely rows of creatures spell thy name,
• Whereby we grope to find from whence we came,
• By thy own chain of causes brought to think
• There must be one, then find that highest link.
• Thus, all created excellence we see
• Is a resemblance, faint and dark, of thee.
• Such shadows are produced by the moon-beams
• Of trees and houses in the running streams.
• Yet by impressions born with us we find
• How good, great, just thou art, how unconfined.
• Here we are swallowed up and gladly dwell,
• Safely adoring what we cannot tell.
• All we know is: thou are supremely good,
• And dost delight to be so understood—
• A spicy mountain on the universe,
• On which thy richest odors do disperse.
• But as the sea to fill a vessel heaves
• More greedily than any cask receives,
• Besieging round to find some gap in it,
• Which will a new infusion admit,
• So dost thou covet that thou mayst dispense
• Upon the empty world thy influence;
• Lov’st to disburse thyself in kindness. Thus
• The King of Kings waits to be gracious.
• On this account, O God, enlarge my heart
• To entertain what thou wouldst fain impart.
• Nor let that soul, by several titles thine,
• And most capacious formed for things divine,
• So nobly meant, that when it most doth miss,
• ’Tis in mistaken pantings after bliss.
• Degrade itself, in sordid things delight,
• Or by prophaner mixtures lose its right.
• Oh! that with fixed unbroken thoughts it may
• Admire the light which does obscure the day.
• And since ’tis angels’ work it hath to do,
• May its composure be like angels too.
• When shall these clogs of sense and fancy break,
• That I may hear the God within me speak?
• When with a silent and retired art
• Shall I with all this empty hurry part?
• To the still voice above, my soul advance;
• My light and joy placed in his countenance?
• By whose dispense my soul to such frame brought,
• May tame each treach’rous, fix each scatt’ring thought.
• With such distinctions, all things here behold,
• And so to separate each dross from gold,
• That nothing my free soul may satisfy,
• But t’imitate, enjoy, and study thee.

• Lord, when the sense of thy sweet grace
• Sends up my soul to seek thy face.
• Thy blessed eyes breed such desire,
• I die in love’s delicious fire.
• O Love, I am thy sacrifice.
• Be still triumphant, blessed eyes.
• Still shine on me, fair suns! that I
• Still may behold, though still I die.

• Second Part:
• Though still I die, I live again;
• Still longing so to be still slain.
• So gainful is such loss of breath,
• I die even in desire of death.
• Still live in me this longing strife
• Of living death and dying life.
• For while thou sweetly slayest me,
• Dead to myself, I live in Thee.