DIRECTIONS FOR THE AGED (AND WEAK).
HAVING before opened the duties of children to God, and to
their parents, I shall give no other particular directions to the
young, but shall next open the special duties of the aged.
_Direct._ I. The old and weak have a louder call from God than
others, to be accurate in examining the state of their souls, and
making their calling and election sure.[125] Whether they are yet
regenerate and sanctified or not, is a most important question
for every man to get resolved; but especially for them that are
nearest to their end. Ask counsel, therefore, of some able, faithful
minister or friend, and set yourselves diligently to try your title to
eternal life, and to cast up your accounts, and see how all things
stand between God and you; and if you should find yourselves in an
unrenewed state, as you love your souls, delay no longer, but
presently be humbled for your so long and sottish neglect of so
necessary and great a work. Go, open your case to some able minister,
and lament your sin, and fly to Christ, and set your hearts on God, as
your felicity, and change your company and course, and rest not any
longer in so dangerous and miserable a case: the more full directions
for your conversion I have given before, in the beginning of the book,
and in divers others; and therefore shall say no more to such, it
being others that I am here especially to direct.
_Direct._ II. Cast back your eyes upon the sins of all your life,
that you may perceive how humble those souls should be, that have
sinned so long as you have done; and may feel what need you have of
Christ, to pardon so long a life of sin. Though you have repented and
been justified long ago, yet you have daily sinned since you were
justified; and though all be forgiven that is repented of, yet must it
be still before your eyes, both to keep you humble, and continue the
exercise of that repentance, and drive you to Christ, and make you
thankful. Yea, your forgiveness and justification are yet short of
perfection, (whatever some may tell you to the contrary,) as well as
your sanctification. For, 1. Your justification is yet given you, but
conditionally as to its continuance, even upon condition of your
perseverance. 2. And the temporal chastisement, and the pains of
death, and the long absence of the body from heaven, and the present
wants of grace, and comfort, and communion with God, are punishments
which are not yet forgiven executively. 3. And the final sentence of
justification at the day of judgment, (which is the perfectest sort,)
is yet to come: and therefore you have still reason enough to review
and repent of all that is past, and still pray for the pardon of all
the sins that ever you committed, which were forgiven you before. So
many years' sinning should have a very serious repentance, and lay you
low before the Lord.
_Direct._ III. Cleave closer now to Christ than ever. Remembering
that you have a life of sin, for him to answer for, and save you from.
And that the time is near, when you shall have more sensible need of
him, than ever you have had. You must shortly be cast upon him as your
Saviour, Advocate, and Judge, to determine the question, what shall
become of you unto all eternity, and to perfect all that ever he hath
done for you, and accomplish all that you have sought and hoped for.
And now your natural life decayeth, it is time to retire to him that
is your Root, and to look to the "life that is hid with Christ in
God," Col. iii. 4; and to him that is preparing you a mansion with
himself; and whose office it is to receive the departing souls of true
believers. Live therefore in the daily thoughts of Christ, and comfort
your souls in the belief of that full supply and safety which you have
in him.
_Direct._ IV. Let the ancient mercies and experiences of God's love,
through all your lives, be still before you, and fresh upon your
minds, that they may kindle your love and thankfulness to God, and may
feed your own delight and comfort, and help you the easier to submit
to future weaknesses and death. Eaten bread must not be forgotten: a
thankful remembrance preserveth all your former mercies still fresh
and green; the sweetness and benefit may remain, though the thing
itself be past and gone. This is the great privilege of an aged
christian; that he hath many years' mercy more to think on, than
others have. Every one of those mercies was sweet to you by itself, at
the time of your receiving it; (except afflictions, and misunderstood
and unobserved mercies;) and then how sweet should all together be! If
unthankfulness have buried any of them, let thankfulness give them now
a resurrection. What delightful work is it for your thoughts, to look
back to your childhood, and remember how mercy brought you up, and
conducted you to every place that you have lived in; and provided for
you, and preserved you, and heard your prayers, and disposed of all
things for your good; how it brought you under the means of grace, and
blessed them to you; and how the Spirit of God began and carried on
the work of grace upon your hearts! I hope you have recorded the
wonders of mercy ever upon your hearts, with which God hath filled up
all your lives. And is it not a pleasant work in old age to ruminate
upon them? If a traveller delight to talk of his travels, and a
soldier or seaman upon his adventures, how sweet should it be to a
christian to peruse all the conduct of mercy through his life, and all
the operations of the Spirit upon his heart. Thankfulness taught men
heretofore, to make their mercies, as it were, attributes of their
God. As "the God that brought them out of the land of Egypt," was the
name of the God of Israel. And, Gen. xlviii. 15, Jacob delighteth
himself in his old age, in such reviews of mercy: "The God which fed
me all my life long unto this day. The angel which redeemed me from
all evil, bless the lads." Yea, such thankful reviews of ancient
mercies, will force an ingenuous soul to a quieter submission to
infirmities, sufferings, and death; and make us say as Job, "Shall we
receive good at the hands of God, and not evil?" and as old Simeon,
"Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace." It is a powerful
rebuke of all discontents, and maketh death itself more welcome, to
think how large a share of mercy we have had already in the world.
_Direct._ V. Draw forth the treasure of wisdom and experience,
which you have been so long in laying up, to instruct the ignorant,
and warn the unexperienced and ungodly that are about you. Job xxxii. 7,
"Days should speak, and multitude of years should teach wisdom."
Tit. ii. 3-5, "The aged women must teach the young women to be sober,
to love their husbands and children, to be discreet, chaste, keepers
at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be
not blasphemed." It is supposed that time and experience hath taught
you more than is known to raw and ignorant youth. Tell them what you
have suffered by the deceits of sin: tell them the method and danger
of temptations: tell them what you lost by delaying your repentance;
and how God recovered you; and how the Spirit wrought upon your souls:
tell them what comforts you have found in God; what safety and
sweetness in a holy life; how sweet the holy Scriptures have been to
you; how prayers have prevailed, how the promises of God have been
fulfilled; and what mercies and great deliverances you have had. Tell
them how good you have found God; and how bad you have found sin; and
how vain you have found the world. Warn them to resist their fleshly
lusts, and to take heed of the insnaring flatteries of sin: acquaint
them truly with the history of public sins, and judgments, and mercies
in the times which you have lived in. God hath made this the duty of
the aged, that the "fathers should tell the wonders of his works and
mercies to their children, that the ages to come may praise the Lord,"
Deut. iv. 10; Psal. lxxviii. 4-6.
_Direct._ VI. The aged must be examples of wisdom, gravity, and
holiness unto the younger. Where should they find any virtues in
eminence, if not in you, that have so much time, and helps, and
experiences? It may well be expected that nothing but savoury, wise,
and holy, come from your mouths; and nothing unbeseeming wisdom and
godliness, be seen in your lives. Such as you would have your children
after you to be, such show yourselves to them in all your
conversation.
_Direct._ VII. Especially it belongeth to you, to repress the
heats, and dividing, contentious, and censorious disposition of the
younger sorts of professors of godliness. They are in the heat of
their blood, and want the knowledge and experience of the aged to
guide their zeal: they have not their senses yet exercised in
discerning good and evil, Heb. v. 12: they are not able to try the
spirits: they are yet but as children, apt to be tossed to and fro,
and "carried up and down with every wind of doctrine, after the craft
and subtlety of deceivers," Eph. iv. 14. The novices are apt to be
puffed up with pride, and "fall into the condemnation of the devil,"
1 Tim. iii. 6. They never saw the issue of errors, and sects, and
parties, and what divisions and contentions tend to, as you have done.
And therefore it belongeth to your gravity and experience to call them
unto unity, charity, and peace, and to keep them from proving
firebrands in the church, and rashly overrunning their understandings
and the truth.
_Direct._ VIII. Of all men you must live in the greatest contempt
of earthly things, and least entangle yourselves in the love or
needless troubles of the world: you are like to need it and use it but
a little while; a little may serve one that is so near his journey's
end: you have had the greatest experience of its vanity: you are so
near the great things of another world, that methinks you should have
no leisure to remember this, or room for any unnecessary thoughts or
speeches of it. As your bodies are less able for worldly employment
than others, so accordingly you are allowed to retire from it more
than others, for your more serious thoughts of the life to come. It is
a sign of the bewitching power of the world, and of the folly and
unreasonableness of sin, to see the aged usually as covetous as the
young; and men that are going out of the world, to love it as fondly,
and scrape for it as eagerly, as if they never looked to leave it. You
should rather give warning to the younger sort, to take heed of
covetousness, and of being insnared by the world, and while they
labour in it faithfully with their hands, to keep their hearts
entirely for God.
_Direct._ IX. You should highly esteem every minute of your time,
and lose none in idleness or unnecessary things; but be always doing
or getting some good; and do what you do with all your might. For you
are sure now that your time will not be long: how little have you left
to make all the rest of your preparation in for eternity! The young
may die quickly, but the old know that their time will be but short.
Though nature decay, yet grace can grow in life and strength; and when
"your outward man perisheth, the inner man may be renewed day by day,"
2 Cor. iv. 16. Time is a most precious commodity to all; but
especially to them that have but a little more to determine the
question in, Whether they must live in heaven or hell for ever. Though
you cannot do your worldly businesses as heretofore, yet you have
variety of holy exercises to be employed in; bodily ease may beseem
you, but idleness is worse in you than in any.
_Direct._ X. When the decay of your strength, or memory, or
parts, doth make you unable to read, or pray, or meditate by
yourselves, so much or so well as heretofore, make the more use of the
more lively gifts and help of others. Be the more in hearing others,
and in joining with them in prayer; that their memory, and zeal, and
utterance may help to lift you up and carry you on.
_Direct._ XI. Take not a decay of nature, and of those gifts and
works which depend thereon, for a decay of grace. Though your memory,
and utterance, and fervour of affection, abate as your natural heat
abateth, yet be not discouraged; but remember, that you may for all
this grow in grace. If you do but grow in holy wisdom and judgment,
and a higher esteem of God and holiness, and a greater disesteem of
all the vanities of the world, and a firmer resolution to cleave to
God and trust on Christ, and never to turn to the world and sin; this
is your growth in grace.
_Direct._ XII. Be patient under all the infirmities and inconveniencies
of old age. Be not discontented at them, repine not, nor grow peevish
and froward to those about you. This is a common temptation which the
aged should carefully resist. You knew at first that you had a body
that must decay: if you would not have had it till a decaying age, why
were you so unwilling to die? If you would, why do you repine? Bless
God for the days of youth, and strength, and health, and ease which
you have had already! and grudge not that corruptible flesh decayeth.
_Direct._ XIII. Understand well that passive obedience is that
which God calleth you to in your age and weakness, and in which you
must serve and honour him in the conclusion of your labour. When you
are unfit for any great or public works, and active obedience hath not
opportunity to exercise itself as heretofore, it is then as acceptable
to God that you honour him by patient suffering. And therefore it is a
great error of them that wish for the death of all that are impotent,
decrepit, and bedrid, as if they were utterly unserviceable to God. I
tell you, it is no small service that they may do, not only by their
prayers, and their secret love to God, but by being examples of faith,
and patience, and heavenly-mindedness, and confidence and joy in God,
to all about them. Grudge not then if God will thus employ you.
_Direct._ XIV. Let your thoughts of death, and preparations for
it, be as serious as if death were just at hand. Though all your life
be little enough to prepare for death, and it be a work that should be
done as soon as you have the use of reason, yet age and weakness call
louder to you, presently to prepare without delay. Do therefore all
that you would fain find done, when your last sickness cometh; that
unreadiness to die may not make death terrible, nor your age
uncomfortable.
_Direct._ XV. Live in the joyful expectation of your change, as
becometh one that is so near to heaven, and looketh to live with
Christ for ever. Let all the high and glorious things, which faith
apprehendeth, now show their power in the love, and joy, and longings
of your soul. There is nothing in which the weak and aged can more
honour Christ and do good to others, than in joyful expectation of
their change, and an earnest desire to be with Christ. This will do
much to convince unbelievers, that the promises are true, and that
heaven is real, and that a holy life is indeed the best, which hath so
happy an end. When they see you highest in your joys, at the time
when others are deepest in distress: and when you rejoice as one that
is entering upon his happiness, when all the happiness of the ungodly
is at an end; this will do more than many sermons, to persuade a
sinner to a holy life. I know that this is not easily attained; but a
thing so sweet and profitable to yourselves, and so useful to the good
of others, and so much tending to the honour of God, should be
laboured after with all your diligence: and then you may expect God's
blessing on your labours. Read to this use the fourth part of my
"Saints' Rest."
[125] In Augustine's speech to the people of Hippo, for Eradius his
succession, he saith, In infantia speratur pueritia, et in pueritia
speratur adolescentia, in adolescentia speratur juventus, in juventute
speratur gravitas, et in gravitate speratur senectus: utrum contingat
incertum est; est tamen quod speretur. Senectus autem aliam ætatem
quam speret, non habet. Vid. Papor. Massor. in vita Cœlesti. fol. 58.