My God, my God, as thy servant James, when he asks that question, _What
is your life?_ provides me my answer, _It is even a vapour, that
appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away_;[171] so, if he
did ask me what is your death, I am provided of my answer, it is a
vapour too; and why should it not be all one to me, whether I live or
die, if life and death be all one, both a vapour? Thou hast made vapour
so indifferent a thing as that thy blessings and thy judgments are
equally expressed by it, and is made by thee the hieroglyphic of both.
Why should not that be always good by which thou hast declared thy
plentiful goodness to us? _A vapour went up from the earth, and watered
the whole face of the ground._[172] And that by which thou hast imputed
a goodness to us, and wherein thou hast accepted our service to thee,
sacrifices; for sacrifices were vapours;[173] and in them it is said,
that a _thick cloud of incense went up to thee_.[174] So it is of that
wherein thou comest to us, the dew of heaven, and of that wherein we
come to thee, both are vapours; and he, in whom we have and are all that
we are or have, temporally or spiritually, thy blessed Son, in the
person of Wisdom, is called so too; _She is_ (that is, he is) _the
vapour of the power of God, and the pure influence from the glory of the
Almighty._[175] Hast thou, thou, O my God, perfumed vapour with thine
own breath, with so many sweet acceptations in thine own word, and shall
this vapour receive an ill and infectious sense? It must; for, since we
have displeased thee with that which is but vapour (for what is sin but
a vapour, but a smoke, though such a smoke as takes away our sight, and
disables us from seeing our danger), it is just that thou punish us with
vapours too. For so thou dost, as the wise man tells us, thou canst
punish us by those things wherein we offend thee; as he hath expressed
it there, _by beasts newly created, breathing vapours_.[176] Therefore
that commination of thine, by thy prophet, _I will show wonders in the
heaven, and in the earth, blood and fire, and pillars of smoke_;[177]
thine apostle, who knew thy meaning best, calls _vapours of smoke_.[178]
One prophet presents thee in thy terribleness so, _There went out a
smoke at his nostrils_,[179] and another the effect of thine anger so,
_The house was filled with smoke_;[180] and he that continues his
prophecy as long as the world can continue, describes the miseries of
the latter times so, _Out of the bottomless pit arose a smoke, that
darkened the sun, and out of that smoke came locusts, who had the power
of scorpions_.[181] Now all smokes begin in fire, and all these will end
so too: the smoke of sin and of thy wrath will end in the fire of hell.
But hast thou afforded us no means to evaporate these smokes, to
withdraw these vapours? When thine angels fell from heaven, thou tookest
into thy care the reparation of that place, and didst it by assuming, by
drawing us thither; when we fell from thee here, in this world, thou
tookest into thy care the reparation of this place too, and didst it by
assuming us another way, by descending down to assume our nature, in thy
Son. So that though our last act be an ascending to glory (we shall
ascend to the place of angels), yet our first act is to go the way of
thy Son, descending, and the way of thy blessed Spirit too, who
descended in the dove. Therefore hast thou been pleased to afford us
this remedy in nature, by this application of a dove to our lower parts,
to make these vapours in our bodies to descend, and to make that a type
to us, that, by the visitation of thy Spirit, the vapours of sin shall
descend, and we tread them under our feet. At the baptism of thy Son,
the Dove descended, and at the exalting of thine apostles to preach, the
same Spirit descended. Let us draw down the vapours of our own pride,
our own wits, our own wills, our own inventions, to the simplicity of
thy sacraments and the obedience of thy word; and these doves, thus
applied, shall make us live.