Holy Living

Untimely Death.

But it is not mere dying that is pretended by some as the cause of their impatient mourning: but that the child died young, before he knew good and evil, his right hand from his left, and so lost all his portion of this world, and they know not of what excellency his portion in the next shall be. If he died young, he lost but little, for he understood but little, and had not capacities of great pleasures or great cares; but yet he died innocent and before the sweetness of his soul was deflowered and ravished from him by the flames and follies of a forward age; he went out from the dining-room before he had fallen into error by the intemperance of his meat, or the deluge of drink; and he hath obtained this favor of God, that his soul hath suffered a less imprisonment, and her load was sooner taken off, that he might, with lesser delays, go and converse with immortal spirits — and the babe is taken into paradise before he knows good and evil (for that knowledge threw our great father out, and this ignorance returns the child thither). But (as concerning thy own particular) remove thy thoughts back to those days in which thy child was not born, and you are now but as then you was, and there is no difference, but that you had a son born; and if you reckon that for evil, you are unthankful for the blessing; if it be good, it is better that you had the blessing for awhile, than not at all; and yet, if he had never been born, this sorrow had not been at all.¹⁴⁹¹⁴⁹Itidem si puer parvulus occidat, aequo animo ferendum putant; si vero in cunis, ne querendum quidem; atqui hoc acerbius exegit natura quod dederat. At id quidem in caeteris rebus melius putatur, aliquam partem quaim nummam attingere.—Senec. But be no more displeased at God for giving you a blessing for awhile, than you would have been if he had not given it at all; and reckon that intervening blessing for a gain, but account it not an evil; and if it be a good, turn it not into sorrow and sadness. But if we have great reason to complain of the calamities and evils of our life, then we have the less reason to grieve that those whom we loved have so small a portion of evil assigned to them. And it is no small advantage that our children dying young receive; for their condition of a blessed immortality is rendered to them secure by being snatched from the dangers of an evil choice, and carried to their little cells of felicity, where they can weep no more. And this the wisest of the Gentiles understood well, when they forbade any offerings of libations to be made for dead infants, as was usual for their other dead; as believing they were entered into a secure possession, to which they went with no other condition but that they passed into it through the way of mortality, and, for a few months, wore an uneasy garment. And let weeping parents say if they do not think that the evils their little babes have suffered are sufficient. If they be, why are they troubled that they were taken from those many and greater which in succeeding years are great enough to try all the reason and religion which art, and nature, and the grace of God have produced in us, to enable us for such sad contentions? And, possibly, we may doubt concerning men and women, but we cannot suspect that to infants death can be such an evil, but that it brings to them much more good than it takes from them in this life.