John Wesley's Extract of The Rule and Exercises of Holy Living and Dying by Jeremy Taylor

Author:Jeremy Taylor [Taylor, Jeremy]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Asbury Seedbed Publishing
Published: 2018-09-09T16:00:00+00:00

PART II

THE RULE AND EXERCISES OF HOLY DYING

I.

A GENERAL PREPARATION TOWARD A HOLY AND BLESSED DEATH, BY WAY OF CONSIDERATION

Section I

Consideration of the Vanity and Shortness of Man’s Life

A man is a bubble (said the Greek proverb), which Lucian represents with advantages, to this purpose, saying all the world is a storm, and men rise up in their several generations like bubbles descending from God and the dew of heaven, from a tear and drop of man, from nature and providence. And some of these instantly sink into the deluge of their first parent, and are hidden in a sheet of water, having had no other business in the world, but to be born, that they might be able to die. Others float up and down two or three turns, and suddenly disappear, and give their place to others. And they who live the longest upon the face of the waters are in perpetual motion, restless and uneasy, and being crushed with a great drop of a cloud, sink into flatness and a froth; the change not being great, it being hardly possible it should be more a nothing than it was before.

So is every man: he is born in vanity and sin; he comes into the world like morning mushrooms, soon thrusting up their heads into the air, and conversing with their kindred of the same production, and as soon they turn into dust and forgetfulness; some of them without any other interest in the affairs of the world, but that they made their parents a little glad, and very sorrowful. Others ride longer in the storm; it may be until seven years of vanity are expired, and then peradventure the sun shines hot upon their heads, and they fall into the shades below, into the darkness of the grave.

But if the bubble stands the shock of a bigger drop, and outlives the chances of a child, then the young man dances like a bubble, empty and gay, and shines like the image of a rainbow, which has no substance, and whose very imagery and colors are fantastical; and so he dances out of the gaiety of his youth, and is all the while in a storm, and endures, only because he is not knocked on the head by a drop of bigger rain, or crushed by the pressure of a load of indigested meat, or quenched by the disorder of an ill-placed humor. And to preserve a man alive in the midst of so many chances and hostilities, is as great a miracle as to create him; to preserve him from rushing into nothing, were equally the issues of an Almighty power.

Therefore the wise men of the world have contended who shall best fit man’s condition with words, signifying his vanity and short abode. Homer calls a man a leaf, the smallest, the weakest piece of a short-lived, unsteady plant. Pindar calls him the dream of a shadow; another, the dream of the shadow of smoke. But St.

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