MEDITATION XII.
ON THE GREAT DECEITS AND GREAT DANGERS OCCASIONED BY THE FORGETFULNESS OF DEATH, AND THEIR REMEDY.
This meditation I will ground upon the speech of our Saviour Christ concerning a rich man, whose fields having yielded him plenty of fruits, he thought within himself to enlarge his granaries or barns, to gather and to keep them; and speaking to his soul, said to it, " Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thy rest, eat, drink, make good cheer. But God said to him, Thou fool! this night do they require thy soul of thee; and whose shall those things be which thou hast provided?" [1] In the person of this rich man (so forgetful of his death) are represented to us those that have the like forgetfulness, especially when they are rich, healthful and young, which I am to apply to myself in the following form:
POINT I.
1. First, I am to consider three great deceits which the forgetfulness of death brings with it, by reason of which our Lord God calls this rich man? fool."
i. The first deceit is, to promise to myself many years of life and to bethink me what I shall do with them, as if this depended only on my will, and not upon God's, who, perhaps, has determined to take from us our life the very same night or day in which we thought it should have been longest; and herewith he defeats our imaginations, and discovers how much they went astray, on which I will reprehend myself with the words of the apostle St. James, saying to myself, " How darest thou say, To-morrow" I " will go into such a
- ↑ Luc xii. 19.
