gs made days in the creation, and there is no mention
of nights; my sadnesses for sins are evenings, but they determine not
in night, but deliver me over to the day, the day of a conscience
dejected, but then rectified, accused, but then acquitted, by thee, by
him who speaks thy word, and who is thy word, thy Son. From this day,
the crisis and examination of my conscience, breaks out my third day, my
day of preparing and fitting myself for a more especial receiving of thy
Son in his institution of the Sacrament; in which day, though there be
many dark passages and slippery steps to them who will entangle and
endanger themselves in unnecessary disputations, yet there are light
hours enough for any man to go his whole journey intended by thee, to
know that that bread and wine is not more really assimilated to my body,
and to my blood, than the body and blood of thy Son is communicated to
me in that action, and participation of that bread and that wine. And
having, O my God, walked with thee these three days, the day of thy
visitation, the day of my conscience, the day of preparing for this seal
of reconciliation, I am the less afraid of the clouds or storms of my
fourth day, the day of my dissolution and transmigration from hence.
Nothing deserves the name of happiness that makes the remembrance of
death bitter; and, _O death, how bitter is the remembrance of thee, to a
man that lives at rest in his possessions, the man that hath nothing to
vex him, yea unto him that is able to receive meat!_[212] Therefore hast
thou, O my God, made this sickness, in which I am not able to receive
meat, my fasting day, my eve to this great festival, my dissolution. And
this day of death shall deliver me over to my fifth day, the day of my
resurrection; for how long a day soever thou make that day in the grave,
yet there is no day between that and the resurrection. Then we shall all
be invested, reapparelled in our own bodies; but they who have made
just use of their former days be super-invested with glory; whereas the
others, condemned to their old clothes, their sinful bodies, shall have
nothing added but immortality to torment. And this day of awaking me,
and reinvesting my soul in my body, and my body in the body of Christ,
shall present me, body and soul, to my sixth day, the day of judgment,
which is truly, and most literally, the critical, the decretory day;
both because all judgment shall be manifested to me then, and I shall
assist