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

Now this Affliction to an holy heart is a very heavy burden. When a poor man is cut short in all his other Comforts, and as it were besieged with all the Calamities of this life; yet while he hath this River of Gods Ordinances free and open, thereby he receives continual supplies from Heaven, the streams thereof make glad the City of God: But when this is stopped, the Soul grows sad, and dry, and barren. Hence holy David in his Exile, never mentioning his temporal losses, yet cries out, Psal. 42. 4. When I remember these things, I pour out my soul in me: for I had gone with the multitude to the house of God. This went nearest to his heart. For when a man is harassed with cares and troubles all the week long, yet he is relieved and refreshed in his approach unto God upon his own Day: But with the decrepit Old man, every day is alike, and his Soul is left destitute of spiritual supplies in an ordinary way. And this Affliction is saddest of all, when by disuse of the means of Grace, the Soul grows stupid and unconcerned in the matter; as without special Grace, we shall be apt to be: So that the misery is great in the want, and greater when insensible ⟨p. 184⟩of the want. No great wonder therefore that when all these miseries meet together, a man cry out with Job, I would not live always. So that Tiberius Caesar had a saying, as Plutarch tells us, that it was a shameful thing for a man that was past sixty, to stretch out his hand to a Physician; reckoning that it was fit he should then be content to dye.

Now this Affliction to an holy heart is a very heavy burden. When a poor man is cut short in all his other Comforts, and as it were besieged with all the Calamities of this life; yet while he hath this River of Gods Ordinances free and open, thereby he receives continual supplies from Heaven, the streams thereof make glad the City of God: But when this is stopt, the Soul grows sad, and dry, and barren. Hence holy David in his Exile, never mentioning his temporal losses, yet cries out, Psal. 42. 4. When I remember these things, I pour out my soul in me: for I had gone with the multitude to the house of God. This went nearest to his heart. For when a man is harras'd with cares and troubles all the week long, yet he is relieved and refreshed in his approach unto God upon his own Day: But with the decrepit Old man, every day is alike, and his Soul is left destitute of spiritual supplies in an ordinary way. And this Affliction is saddest of all, when by disuse of the means of Grace, the Soul grows stupid and unconcern'd in the matter; as without special Grace, we shall be apt to be: So that the misery is great in the want, and greater when insensible