be more fitly exprised them in the language of the 27th Hymn Book Com. prayer This parking taken of persondrespect Vesteem is bumibly presented to Cha. C. Trowbridge Ep by his affectionate friend & late Faster Rick. & Pury Detroit April 14th 1833 THE RULE AND EXERCISES OF HOLY DYING. TOGETHER WITH PRAYERS AND ACTS OF VIRTUE, AND RULES FOR THE VISITATION OF THE SICK, AND OFFICES BY JEREMY TAYLOR. Philadelphia: THOMAS WARDLE, No. 13 MINOR STREET. STEREOTYPED BY L. JOHNSON. 1831. Gift 05/02/05 ΤΟ THE RIGHT HONOURABLE AND NOBLEST LORD, RICHARD, EARL OF CARBERRY, &c. MY LORD, I am treating your Lordship, as a Roman gentleman did St. Augustine and his mother; I shall entertain you in a charnel-house, and carry your meditations awhile into the chambers of death, where you shall find the rooms dressed up with melancholic arts, and fit to converse with your most retired thoughts, which begin with a sigh, and proceed in deep consideration, and end in a holy resolution. The sight that St. Augustine most noted in that house of sorrow, was the body of Cæsar, clothed with all the dishonours of corruption, that you can suppose in a six months' burial. But I know, that, without pointing, your first thoughts will remember the change of a greater beauty, which is now dressing for the brightest immortality, and from her bed of darkness calls to you to dress your soul for that change, which shall mingle your bones with that' beloved dust, and carry your soul to the same quire, where you may both sit and sing for ever. My Lord, it is your dear Lady's anniversary, and she deserved the biggest honour, and the longest memory, and the fairest monument, and the most solemn mourning: and in order to it, give me leave, my Lord, to cover her hearse, with these following sheets. This book was intended first to minister to her piety: and she desired all good people should partake of the advantages which are here recorded she knew how to live rarely well, and she desired to know how to die; and God taught her by an experiment. But since her work is done, and God supplied her with provisions of his own, before I could 3 |