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THE

RULE AND EXERCISES

OF

HOLY DYING.

IN WHICH ARE DESCRIBED

THE MEANS AND INSTRUMENTS OF PREPARING OURSELVES AND OTHERS RESPECTIVELY FOR A BLESSED DEATH;

AND THE REMEDIES AGAINST

THE EVILS AND TEMPTATIONS PROPER TO THE STATE OF SICKNESS:

TOGETHER WITH

PRAYERS AND ACTS OF VIRTUE, TO BE USED BY SICK

AND DYING PERSONS, OR BY OTHERS STANDING IN THEIR ATTENDANCE.

TO WHICH ARE ADDED

RULES FOR THE VISITATION OF THE SICK,

AND

OFFICES PROPER FOR THAT MINISTRY.

Τὸ μὲν τελευτῆσαι πάντων ἡ πεπρωμένη κατέκρινε
Τὸ δὲ καλῶς ἀποθανεῖν, ἴδιον τοῖς σπουδαίοις ἡ Φύσις ἀπένειμε.
Isoc. ad Demonic. p. 13. ed Lange.

ΤΟ

THE RIGHT HONOURABLE

AND NOBLEST LORD,

RICHARD, EARL OF CARBERY,

ETC. ETC.

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

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