A discourse concerning old-age tending to the instruction, caution and comfort of aged persons…

The Ninth Disadvantage of Old-age ¹is, That it is unfit for Religious Exercises. When we are in years, we are indisposed to Prayer and Fasting, to Hearing or Reading, and in general to all such Spiritual Employments, wherein the Soul and Body must concur. They need these Helps as much as Others, and perhaps desire them as much as Others; ⟨p. 182⟩but the dead weight of a crazy body sinks down the towering of their precious Souls. To will is present with them, but how to perform the same, they find not; and no wonder, having not only a law of sin within them, but a body of death without them. Their senses are grown weak, their faculties weak, their spirits weak: How then should they wrestle with God in Prayer, or continue instant therein? Let the Rider be never so good a Horseman, yet he must travel as his Horse will give him leave: So let the Soul be never so active, it can operate only as the organs of the body will permit it. Instead of taking pains about their Souls, they are forced to prop up their decrepit bodies. Their weaknesses keep them in bed, while the holy zeal of others is burning in Devotion. And as the Old woman in Plautus being asked why she went no faster, answered, because she carried so great a load, to wit of eighty four years on her back; so the load on Old peoples back either hinders them from coming to holy Assemblies, or else causes them to travel thither very slowly; so that they are constrained to live, in a manner, without God in the world.

THe Ninth Disadvantage of Old-age