Gildas Salvianus: The Reformed Pastor

And as their present necessity should move us to take that opportunity for their good, so should the advantage that sickness and the fore-sight of death affordeth. There are few of the stoutest hearts but will hear us on their death-bed, that scorned us before. They will then let fall their fury, and be as tame as Lambs, that were before as intractable as wasps or mad men. A man may speak to them then, that could not before. I find not one of ten of the most obstinate scornful wretches in the Parish, but when they come to dye, will humble themselves, confess their fault, and seem penitent, and promise if they should recover, to do so no more. If the very Meditations of death be so effectual in the time of health that it is saith August, quasi Clavis carnit omnes motus superbiae ligno crucis affigens (l. 2. de Doct. Christ.) much more when it comes in as it were at the window, and looks men in the face. Cyprian saith to those in health, Qui se quotidie recordatur moriturum esse, contemnit praesentia, & ad futura festinat: much more qui sentit se statim ⟨p. 91⟩moriturum. Nil it a revocat à peccato, saith Austin, quam frequens mortis meditatio. O how resolvedly will the worst of them seem to cast away their sins, and promise a reformation, and cry out of their folly, and of the vanity of this world, when they see that death is in good sadness with them, and away they must without delay! Perhaps you will say, that these forced changes are not cordial, and therefore we have no great hope of doing them any saving good. I confess that it is very common to be frighted into uneffectual purposes, but not so common to be at such a season converted to fixed resolutions. And as Austin saith, Non potest male mori, qui bene vixerit; & vix bene moritur qui male vixit. Yet vix and nunquam be not all one: It should make both them and us the more diligent in the time of health, because it is vix; but yet we should bestir us at the last, in the use of the last remedies, because it is not nunquam.

And it will not be unuseful to our selves to read such Lectures of our own mortality: It is better to go into the house of mourning, then into the house of feasting: for it tendeth to make the heart better, when we see the end of all the living, and what it is that the world will do for those that sell their salvation for it. When we see that it will be our own case, and there is no escape;