The works of George Swinnock, M.A

I Wish that my soul may be the more sound for every visit I bestow on sick bodies.² There is not so much danger of catching their outward diseases, as there is hope of increasing my spiritual health, if I am not wanting to my self. The sick and dying bed is a Pulpit, out of which I may be instructed more fully in many serious truths, though the sick or dying man be speechless. King Joash obtained three famous victories over the Syrians, ²by visiting sick Elisha, and might have gotten a complete conquest over them, if it had not been his own fault. The sight of sick and dying men, may assist me in my conflicts with the three great enemies of my present purity, and future comfort and bliss. It teacheth •e how vain it is to make provision for that flesh which will it self ere long, be provision for worms; Ah how foolish am I to pamper and please that which instead of relieving or refreshing, will in my extremity pierce and pain me! It teacheth me that the world it self is the greatest Cheat and Impostor in the world. That though it laughs and smiles on men, dandling them on her knees, and hugging them in her arms, whilst they are in health, and promising all sorts of comforts and pleasures; yet in their sickness and misery she turns them off, and leaves them, as Absaloms Mule did him, to be •hot through with the ⟨p. 606⟩heart-cutting arrows of eternal death; By discovering the emptiness and falseness of these two seeming ends, the flesh and the world, it helpeth me to overcome my third enemy, and to repel the fiery darts of the Devil. The cup of temptation, which hath so often bewitched me to drink down his deadly poison, had its prevalency from the worldly profit with which the out-side was gilded, or the fleshly pleasure with which the in-side was sweetened. Ah! could I but bid an hearty defiance to the World and the Flesh, and conquer them, I need not fear the wicked one; They are the powerful Advocates, by which Satan pleads, and too often prevails with the soul; By these Hand-maids he wooeth the Mistress. But the sick bed is a Book in which I may read their deceitfulness and treachery, their perfidiousness and fallacies, and thereby learn to avoid them.