ilities than I, but I was born
to as many infirmities as they. To be an incumbent by lying down in a
grave, to be a doctor by teaching mortification by example, by dying,
though I may have seniors, others may be older than I, yet I have
proceeded apace in a good university, and gone a great way in a little
time, by the furtherance of a vehement fever, and whomsoever these bells
bring to the ground to-day, if he and I had been compared yesterday,
perchance I should have been thought likelier to come to this
preferment then than he. God hath kept the power of death in his own
hands, lest any man should bribe death. If man knew the gain of death,
the ease of death, he would solicit, he would provoke death to assist
him by any hand which he might use. But as when men see many of their
own professions preferred, it ministers a hope that that may light upon
them; so when these hourly bells tell me of so many funerals of men like
me, it presents, if not a desire that it may, yet a comfort whensoever
mine shall come.

XVI. EXPOSTULATION.

My God, my God, I do not expostulate with thee, but with them who dare
do that; who dare expostulate with thee, when in the voice of thy church
thou givest allowance to this ceremony of bells at funerals. Is it
enough to refuse it, because it was in use among the Gentiles? so were
funerals too. Is it because some abuses may have crept in amongst
Christians? Is that enough, that their ringing hath been said to drive
away evil spirits? Truly, that is so far true, as that the evil spirit
is vehemently vexed in their ringing, therefore, because that action
brings the congregation together, and unites God and his people, to the
destruction of that kingdom which the evil spirit usurps. In the first
institution of thy church in this world, in the foundation of thy
militant church amongst the Jews, thou didst appoint the calling of the
assembly in to be by trumpet;[238] and when they were in, then thou
gavest them the sound of bells in the garment of thy priest.[239] In the
triumphant church, thou employest both too, but in an inverted order;
we enter into the triumphant church by the sound of bells (for we enter
when we die); and then we receive our further edification, or
consummation, by the sound of trumpets at the resurrection. The sound of
thy trumpets thou didst impart to secular and civil uses too, but the
sound of bells only to sacred. Lord, let not us break the communion of
saints in tha