PART VII.
THE WORSHIP AND VENERATION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY.
ALSO THE CARE AND PREPARATION FOR DYING WELL AND HAPPILY.
FOR SATURDAY.
The WORSHIP of the Virgin Mary, and the care for a happy death, we have reserved for the Seventh Part, and to the seventh day, that is, the Sabbath. For throughout the six days, that is, the space of our life, we are drawing towards the day of rest, or the repose of the life eternal. For the Sabbath of the law was a type of that rest which is awaited by the faithful after this life.[1] Therefore as, after the six days' labour, the Jews on the seventh day were free from work, so, when this life's labours are ended, we, by death, shall keep holiday, and shall spend a festal and a solemn Sabbath. Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord. From henceforth now, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours.[2]
Moreover, the Church has specially dedicated the Sabbath-day to the honour of the Virgin Mother of God; and it is the common practice of pious persons on that day to venerate the Virgin Mother with particular offices of devotion, that they may so much the more successfully attain to a happy repose, by her in whose tabernacle the Lord has reposed.
Think it not strange, then, good reader, to see the Mother of life here proposed to thy consideration simultaneously with death, since it is so fully appropriate that the Mother of Mercy, our life and our hope, who has brought forth to us the Author of life, should be recommended to the dying to be their Patroness against death. By our first parent we have contracted the debt of death, but by the second (who is more
