My God, my God, wouldst thou call thyself the ancient of days,[194] if
we were not to call ourselves to an account for our days? Wouldst thou
chide us for _standing idle here all the day_,[195] if we were sure to
have more days to make up our harvest? When thou bidst us _take no
thought for to-morrow, for sufficient unto the day_ (to every day) _is
the evil thereof_,[196] is this truly, absolutely, to put off all that
concerns the present life? When thou reprehendest the Galatians by thy
message to them, _That they observed days, and months, and times, and
years_,[197] when thou sendest by the same messenger to forbid the
Colossians all critical days, indicatory days, _Let no man judge you in
respect of a holy day, or of a new moon, or of a sabbath_,[198] dost
thou take away all consideration, all distinction of days? Though thou
remove them from being of the essence of our salvation, thou leavest
them for assistances, and for the exaltation of our devotion, to fix
ourselves, at certain periodical and stationary times, upon the
consideration of those things which thou hast done for us, and the
crisis, the trial, the judgment, how those things have wrought upon us
and disposed us to a spiritual recovery and convalescence. For there is
to every man a day of salvation. _Now is the accepted time, now is the
day of salvation_,[199] and there is _a great day of thy wrath_,[200]
which no man shall be able to stand in; and there are evil days before,
and therefore thou warnest us and armest us, _Take unto you the whole
armour of God, that you may be able to stand in the evil day_.[201] So
far then our days must be critical to us, as that by consideration of
them, we may make a judgment of our spiritual health, for that is the
crisis of our bodily health. Thy beloved servant, St. John, wishes to
Gaius, _that he may prosper in his health, so as his soul
prospers_;[202] for if the soul be lean the marrow of the body is but
water; if the soul wither, the verdure and the good estate of the body
is but an illusion and the goodliest man a fearful ghost. Shall we, O my
God, determine our thoughts, and shall we never determine our
disputations upon our climacterical years, for particular men and
periodical years, for the life of states and kingdoms, and never
consider these in our long life, and our interest in the everlasting
kingdom? We have exercised our curiosity in observing that Adam, the
eldest of the eldest world, died in his climacterical year, and Shem,
the eldest son of the next world, in his; Abraham, the father of the
faithful, in his, and the blessed Virgin Mary, the garden where the
root of faith grew, in hers. But they whose climacterics we observe,
employed their observation upon their critical days, the working of thy
promise of a Messias upon them. And shall we, O my God, make less use of
those days who have more of them? We, who have not only the day of the
prophets, the first days, but the last days, in which thou hast spoken
unto us by thy Son?[203] We are the children of the day,[204] for thou
hast shined in as full a noon upon us as upon the Thessalonians: they
who were of the night (a night which they had superinduced upon
themselves), the Pharisees, pretended, _that if they had been in their
fathers' days_ (those indicatory and judicatory, those critical days),
_they would not have been partakers of the blood of the prophets_;[205]
and shall we who are in the day, these days, not of the prophets, but of
the Son, stone those prophets again, and crucify that Son again, for all
those evident indications and critical judicatures which are afforded
us? Those opposed adversaries of thy Son, the Pharisees, with the
Herodians, watched a critical day; then when the state was incensed
against him, came to tempt him in the dangerous question of
tribute.[206] They left him, and that day was the critical day to the
Sadducees. The same day, says thy Spirit in thy word, the Sadducees came
to him to question him about the resurrection,[207] and them he
silenced; they left him, and this was the critical day for the Scribe,
expert in the law, who thought himself learneder than the Herodian, the
Pharisee, or Sadducee; and he tempted him about the great
commandment,[208] and him Christ left without power of replying. When
all was done, and that they went about to begin their circle of vexation
and temptation again, Christ silences them so, that as they had taken
their critical days, to come in that and in that day, so Christ imposes
a critical day upon them. _From that day forth_, says thy Spirit, _no
man durst ask him any more questions_.[209] This, O my God, my most
blessed God, is a fearful crisis, a fearful indication, when we will
study, and seek, and find, what days are fittest to forsake thee in; to
say, now religion is in a neutrality in the world, and this is my day,
the day of liberty; now I may make new friends by changing my old
religion, and this is my day, the day of advancement. But, O my God,
with thy servant Jacob's holy boldness, who, though thou lamedst him,
would not let thee go till thou hadst given him a blessing;[210] though
thou have laid me upon my hearse, yet thou shalt not depart from me,
from this bed, till thou have given me a crisis, a judgment upon myself
this day. Since _a day is as a thousand years with thee_,[211] let, O
Lord, a day be as a week to me; and in this one, let me consider seven
days, seven critical days, and judge myself that I be not judged by
thee. First, this is the day of thy visitation, thy coming to me; and
would I look to be welcome to thee, and not entertain thee in thy coming
to me? We measure not the visitations of great persons by their apparel,
by their equipage, by the solemnity of their coming, but by their very
coming; and therefore, howsoever thou come, it is a crisis to me, that
thou wouldst not lose me who seekest me by any means. This leads me from
my first day, thy visitation by sickness, to a second, to the light and
testimony of my conscience. There I have an evening and a morning, a sad
guiltiness in my soul, but yet a cheerful rising of thy Sun too; thy
evenings and mornings made days in the creation, and there is no mention
of nights; my sadnesses for sins are evenings, but they determine not
in night, but deliver me over to the day, the day of a conscience
dejected, but then rectified, accused, but then acquitted, by thee, by
him who speaks thy word, and who is thy word, thy Son. From this day,
the crisis and examination of my conscience, breaks out my third day, my
day of preparing and fitting myself for a more especial receiving of thy
Son in his institution of the Sacrament; in which day, though there be
many dark passages and slippery steps to them who will entangle and
endanger themselves in unnecessary disputations, yet there are light
hours enough for any man to go his whole journey intended by thee, to
know that that bread and wine is not more really assimilated to my body,
and to my blood, than the body and blood of thy Son is communicated to
me in that action, and participation of that bread and that wine. And
having, O my God, walked with thee these three days, the day of thy
visitation, the day of my conscience, the day of preparing for this seal
of reconciliation, I am the less afraid of the clouds or storms of my
fourth day, the day of my dissolution and transmigration from hence.
Nothing deserves the name of happiness that makes the remembrance of
death bitter; and, _O death, how bitter is the remembrance of thee, to a
man that lives at rest in his possessions, the man that hath nothing to
vex him, yea unto him that is able to receive meat!_[212] Therefore hast
thou, O my God, made this sickness, in which I am not able to receive
meat, my fasting day, my eve to this great festival, my dissolution. And
this day of death shall deliver me over to my fifth day, the day of my
resurrection; for how long a day soever thou make that day in the grave,
yet there is no day between that and the resurrection. Then we shall all
be invested, reapparelled in our own bodies; but they who have made
just use of their former days be super-invested with glory; whereas the
others, condemned to their old clothes, their sinful bodies, shall have
nothing added but immortality to torment. And this day of awaking me,
and reinvesting my soul in my body, and my body in the body of Christ,
shall present me, body and soul, to my sixth day, the day of judgment,
which is truly, and most literally, the critical, the decretory day;
both because all judgment shall be manifested to me then, and I shall
assist in judging the world then, and because then, that judgment shall
declare to me, and possess me of my seventh day, my everlasting Sabbath
in thy rest, thy glory, thy joy, thy sight, thyself; and where I shall
live as long without reckoning any more days after, as thy Son and thy
Holy Spirit lived with thee, before you three made any days in the
creation.