Monthly preparations for the Holy Communion by R.B

A Meditation on the Death of Christ, Preparative to the Sacrament: Penned for his private use.

A Meditation on the Death of Christ, Preparative to the Scrament: Pen'd for his private use.

BUT is he dead? Oh sad! yet joyful news! how strangely is my soul amazed, and diversly moved and troubled by these contrary passions! methinks I could pull up the floodgates of my sorrow, and vent it out in tears; but something bids me hold. Shall I mourn for him that's just now past his state of mourning? He's dead! and what of that? And so are all his griefs, his bloody sweats, his sighs and groans concluded, He hath drunk on the brook in the way; bitter while they were in his mouth, and he was living; but sweet now they have sunk into his belly, and he in Heaven. Sweet to him, because it was his work, & he hath finished it; and sweet to me, because ⟨p. 131⟩it was the portion of sorrow, death, hell, that I must have taken. And canst thou mourn! methinks if thou didst love, thine heart should rather sympathize with his: He is singing, and shalt thou be sighing? He is joying that his work is done, and now is welcomed into Heaven by God his Father, and shouting up by Angels voices, as the great Conqueror of the hearts of men on earth, and that now in triumph he is returned. And will a mournful weed, a wet eye, and a cloudy brow, become thee at these times of Festivals? Shall the Heavenly Angels be joyful, and thou sad? How strangely will this be construed! Will it not be said, thou dost not love him? or thou dost envy his recovered glory that he had left, and now again hath taken? Or that thou canst not endure to see him wear his Princes Crown in Heaven, that for a time he had laid aside to come down to the earth to fetch thee thence to Heaven? But ah! my Lord, thou wilt not sure interpret sorrow thus; thou hast not sure forgot to give a meaning unto tears, to teach a sigh to speak, and then to know its language! ⟨p. 132⟩Hath my Lord forgot so suddenly that he was on earth, and that he sweat, and groaned, and wept, and bled, as well as I do now? What though now all tears, and sorrow, and sighing is done away, and he ceaseth to be any longer subject to our infirmities? yet sure he knows it is not thus with us. I am not yet in Heaven, nor am I yet quite past the vale of sorrow; and it cannot then be strange to him, if he sees sometimes our faces look of a sadder hue than those that are in Heaven. But why should thus my tears be checked, and my throbbing heart be chidden; were it for a thing of nought I might be counted fool or child;