Here the passionate must learn patience and meekness from the most patient and meek, who endured without murmuring the greatest reproach and ignominy, yea, even death. Here the unmannered are taught modesty; the proud, humility; the discontented, contentment; the avaricious, benevolence; the insatiably rich, voluntary poverty; those who live after their lusts, the forsaking of all carnal desires; the irreligious, piety; and the wavering and inconstant, steadfastness unto the end in all these things.
All this can be learned here, not so much by words as by deeds, from those who not only commenced the above virtues, but continued in them unto the end, yea, confirmed them through their death, and sealed them with their blood.
TO THE YOUNG, THE MIDDLE-AGED, AND THE OLD.
Besides, persons of every age may enter this school of practice in virtue; the young, the middle-aged and the old, all shall be led to true godliness by the living examples of those who went before them.
The young people who live after their lusts, and have not come to the light, will see here, that many of their equals, yea, who were only fourteen, fifteen, eighteen, twenty years old, or even younger, had at that age already forsaken the vanities of the world and the lusts of youth; nay, some so early that they had not yet come to know them, much less to practice, them; but that, on the contrary, as soon as they reached their understanding, they remembered their Creator and Savior, bowed their youthful members under his yoke, accepted his commandments, obeyed him with all their heart, and surrendered themselves willingly to him, so that they, for his sake, did not spare their lives unto death. Ecc. 12:1; Prov. 23:26.
The middle-aged, who, like the firmly-rooted oaks of Bashan, are so deeply engrossed in, and joined to, earthly affairs and household cares, that it is next to an impossibility to detach them therefrom because of their inseparable desire for the goods of this world; will see here people in the flower and prime of life, who might have gained much, but sought it not, because they would not miss the heavenly gain. These had a contented heart; they were clothed with coats of skins, only against cold and nakedness; they lived in huts or plain cottages, to be sheltered from rain, wind, hail and snow; they ate bread to satisfy their hunger, and drank water to quench their thirst; more they had not.[15]
There they shall see that these contented people surrendered to God the strength of their bodies, their station in life, and whatever they had; so that they, having become members of his church, esteemed it greater riches to suffer with the same the reproach of Christ, nay death itself, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season.
The aged, who have neglected their youth and middle life, and are now come to the eleventh hour,[16] and yet are still not working in the Lord’s vineyard, may here behold persons whose hoary head is a crown of glory, since they are found in the way of righteousness; who devoted their feeble powers, the short span of their life, yea their last breath, to the service and praise of their God and Savior, watching and waiting for the hour of their departure and the day of their redemption, that they might become an acceptable offering to the Lord. They longed for the clock to strike twelve, so as to be admitted by the Lord and be seated at his glad feast.
When two of our last martyrs, Jan Claess of Alckmaer, and Lucas Lamberts of Beveren, an old man of eighty-seven years, received their sentence of death, at Amsterdam, Holland, in the forenoon of a certain day in the year 1544, Jan Claess said to the old man, Lucas Lamberts: “My dear brother, fear now neither fire nor sword. O what a glad feast shall be prepared for us, before the clock strikes twelve.” See II Book, year 1544.
All this and infinitely more the worldly-minded, ignorant and unbelieving are taught here. O that each of them would consider this well!