Mark What Dying Men Say

Edward Young, The Complaint; or, Night Thoughts (Night the Second, On Time, Death, and Friendship 48-55):

Youth is not rich in time, it may be poor;
Part with it as with money, sparing; pay
No moment, but in purchase of its worth;
And what its worth, ask death-beds; they can tell.
Part with it as with life, reluctant; big
With holy hope of nobler time to come;
Time higher aim’d, still nearer the great mark
Of men and angels; virtue more divine.

Richard Baxter understood that all men are dying, from the moment of our birth. He wrote:

I Preach'd, as never sure to Preach again,
And as a dying man to dying Men!

In a separate work, Of Redemption of Time (The Practical Works of Richard Baxter, Vol. 4, p. 1041), he offers this consideration concerning the preciousness of spending well the time that is given to us:

Quest. 7. Do you mark what dying men say of time, and how they value it (unless they be blocks that are past feeling)? How ordinarily do good and bad then wish that they had spent time better, and cry out, Oh that it were to spend again! Then they are promising, Oh if it were to do again, we would spend that time in heavenly lives and fruitful obedience, which we spent in curiosity, idleness, and superfluous, sensual delights. Then they cry, Oh that God would renew our time, and once more try us how we will spend it! Alas! sirs, why should wise men so much differ in health and sickness? Why should that time be vilified now, which will seem so precious then?

Claudius Salmasius on his deathbed:

O, I have lost a world of time—time, the most precious thing in the world; whereof had I but one year more, it should be spent in David's Psalms and Paul's epistles. O sirs, mind the world less, and God more.

Queen Elizabeth I on her deathbed:

All my possessions for a moment of time.

James Hamilton, The Royal Preacher: Lectures on Ecclesiastes, p. 79:

Alas! For the knowledge which knows no Savior. Alas! for the science which includes no Gospel. The most erudite of lawyers was [John] Selden. Some days before his death he sent for Archbishop [James] Ussher, and said, “I have surveyed most of the learning that is among the sons of men, and my study is filled with books and manuscripts on various subjects, yet at this moment I can recollect nothing in them all on which I an rest my soul, save one from the sacred Scriptures, which lies much on my spirit. It is this: “The grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, teaching us, that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world; looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God, and our Savior Jesus Christ; who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto Himself a peculiar people, zealous of good work!”

Mirror of the Sinful Soul

On July 7, 1530, Marguerite de Navarre (Margaret of Navarre) -- queen consort of King Henry II of Navarre; sister of the King Francis I of France; mother of French Huguenot Jeanne d'Albret; grandmother of the King Henry IV of France -- gave birth to a son, Jean. He died less than six months later, on December 25. The following year, as an expression of her grief, it is thought, Marguerite wrote and published a poem called Miroir de l'âme pécheresse (Mirror of the Sinful Soul) [available to read online in French here and here]. This poem, in which the humbled soul magnifies the grace of God, incurred the wrath of the Sorbonne, which declared the work to be heretical and added it to the Index of Prohibited Books. A French college put on a play mocking Marguerite, which John Calvin described, and Marguerite was personally threatened with death by one Franciscan prior, who called for her to be put in a sack and thrown into the River Seine, but ultimately Francis (to whom Calvin dedicated his Institutes, although he was no friend of the gospel) was so offended by the Sorbonne's actions that he threatened in fact to execute the prior in the same manner by which he desired to put Marguerite to death. To him, Marguerite was the "Pearl of Valois," distinguished for her virtue, and impeachable in her life and conduct. She, however, interceded for the prior, and his life was spared; he was stripped of his ecclesiastical office and sent to the galleys for two years. Marguerite's tenderness to her enemies was uncharacteristic of her age, and reflects the humility found in her poem. The poem was later translated into English prose by princess (later Queen) Elizabeth I, in 1544, at the age of 11 [available to read online here]. The extracts given below come from the translation of Dr. H. White, who translated the first three volumes of J.H. Merle D'Aubigné's History of the Reformation in the Time of Calvin (see Vol. 2, pp. 168-169), and were particularly cited in the Sorbonne's condemnation of the work as teaching assurance of pardon, a Reformed doctrine anathema to the Roman Catholic Church.

Jesus, true fisher thou of souls!
My only Saviour, only advocate!
Since thou God's righteousness hast satisfied,
I fear no more to fail at heaven's gate.
My Spouse bears all my sins, though great they be,
And all his merits places upon me...
Come, Saviour, make thy mercies known...
Jesus for me was crucified:
For me the bitter death endured,
For me eternal life procured.
...
Satan, where is now thy tower?
Sin, all withered is thy power.
Pain or death no more I fear,
While Jesus Christ is with me here.
Of myself no strength have I,
But God, my shield, is ever nigh.
...
Not hell's black depth, nor heaven's vast height,
Nor sin with which I wage continual fight,
Me for a single day can move,
O holy Father, from thy perfect love.
...
How beautiful is death,
That brings to weary me the hour of rest!
Oh! hear my cry and hasten, Lord, to me,
And put an end to all my misery.

Siege of Sancerre

The French Wars of Religion comprise of a series of military conflicts between Roman Catholics and Huguenots from 1562-1598. The fourth war was set off by the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre in August 1572 and lasted until the signing of the July 1573 Edict of Boulogne. This phase of the Wars of Religion is famous for three episodes in which the royalist Catholic forces besieged Huguenot cities at Sommières, La Rochelle and Sancerre.

Sommières capitulated after a siege which lasted from February to April 1573, during which the fortified city's defenders fought ferociously even pouring pots of boiling oil upon the heads of the attackers, and the terms of surrender were generous. Henry Baird writes that "the garrison capitulated on such favorable terms, that the Protestants were rather elated than discouraged" (History of the Rise of the Huguenots of France, Vol. 2, p. 589).

La Rochelle is a seaport and thus was not completely cut off by the massive consolidation of royalist forces, led by Henri, Duke of Anjou, which surrounded it. The conflict began there in November 1572, and the siege itself lasted from February to July 1573. Help was sought from Queen Elizabeth I of England, but she felt bound by an earlier peace treaty with France not to interfere beyond sending a small, ineffective relief convoy. (The famous Huguenot treatise, Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos (Defense of Liberty Against Tyrants), which has an important section on the duty of foreign princes to aid Christian subject being persecuted by their tyrant ruler, was published seven years later.) The city suffered but held out until the siege was lifted following diplomatic negotiations which involved Poland.

The Siege of Sancerre became legendary. Like La Rochelle, the initial phase of the conflict began in November 1572, with a temporarily successful surprise attack launched by the royalist forces led by Honorat de Bueil, seigneur de Racan. Unlike La Rochelle, Sancerre is a fortified landlocked hilltop city. Troops returned in January 1573, and in March, Claude de La Châtre led a second attack with 7,000 men, which was bitterly repulsed. Royalist troops pounded the city's walls with cannon fire, but the Sancerreans fought back with trebuchets, which became known as the "arquebuses of Sancerre," one of the last times this type of weapon was used in a European military campaign. After the failed assault, Châtre instituted a blockade which lasted through the summer. He made the calculated decision to starve the defenders whom he could not take by force. The Huguenot citizens responded bravely, singing psalms throughout the siege. But the effects of the starvation were staggering to contemplate. Resupply was impossible; messengers who were sent from the city to find help were executed. The day-to-day events were recorded by Jean de Léry, the Huguenot minister who had himself survived privation at the Protestant colony of France Antarctique in the 1550's, and lived through the Siege of Sancerre too, teaching his fellow citizens how to eat leather to survive. He wrote Histoire memorable de la ville de Sancerre (1574), the tenth chapter of which Edward Smedley, History of the Reformed Religion in France, Vol. 3, p. 88, has termed a "Cookery Book for the Besieged," because of de Léry's attention to detail and personal efforts at survival learned in Brazil and shared with his fellow Frenchmen. While most of the citizens suffered honorably, subsisting on horses, dogs, rats, mice, leather, parchment, grass and roots, he faithfully and sadly records the unpleasant details surrounding one family's descent into cannibalism. The dramatic effects of hunger led many to compare this siege to that of Jerusalem, and the Siege of Sancerre became a Protestant cause célèbre throughout Europe. Over 600 royalist troops were killed in combat compared to only 84 Sancerreans, but over 500 citizens, many of them children under the age of 12, died of starvation. But the city held out until a diplomatic solution was worked out. The city was ultimately taken by Châtre in August after Henri, Duke of Anjou (later Henri III of France), was elected king of Poland, upon the condition that he ceased hostilities against French Protestants, which led to the signing of the aforementioned Edict of Boulogne. Thus was the siege lifted. A year to the day after the commencement of the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, the last Sancerrean left the city freely, and shortly thereafter Châtre entered in triumph of sorts. One of the most horrific sieges in modern history ended in God's providence with mercy to its heroic citizens, if not the city's fortifications, which were leveled by Châtre. The courage of the Huguenot Sancerreans, and all those who suffered for the name of Jesus and the sake of the Protestant religion in France, must not be forgot.

Tribute to the KJV

The following is smattering of quotes from notable examples of piety and/or scholarship as to the merits of the Authorized, or King James Version of the Bible.

Ashbel Green, Lectures on the Shorter Catechism of the Presbyterian Church in the United States, Vol. 1, pp. 52-53:

The author is not willing to close this extended note, in which he has attempted to correct what he conscientiously believes to be an error in the common English version of the New Testament, without remarking, that he is not among those who believe that version to be very faulty, and of course to need very frequent corrections. On the contrary, he considers it as one of the very best translations that ever was, or ever can be made; and he has never seen any other English version, even of a single book of this part of the sacred volume, which, taken as a whole, he thought equal to the vulgar version. Yet to suppose that this version, the work of fallible men, is absolutely perfect, is an extreme on the other side. Nothing but the original is perfect. If it can be shown that, in a few instances, the eminently learned, and upright, and pious men, who formed the vulgar version, have, through that imperfection which cleaves to every thing human, not given the best rendering of a particular phrase or passage, let this be candidly shown; and if it be satisfactorily shown, a service is certainly rendered to the cause of truth. Whether this has been done, in the present instance, let competent judges decide.

William S. Plumer, Commentary on Romans, p. 20:

Some of the older English versions from quaintness, if not from elegance, do often give the sense in a striking way. But none have, as a whole, been comparable to the authorized English version. Its amazing mastery of our mother tongue, its pure Anglo-Saxon diction and its very careful rendering of the true idea of the author still place it far above all competition.

George Bernard Shaw, The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God, pp. 62-67:

In all these instances the Bible means the translation authorized by King James the First of the best examples in ancient Jewish literature of natural and political history, of poetry, morality, theology, and rhapsody. The translation was extraordinarily well done because to the translators what they were translating was not merely a curious collection of ancient books written by different authors in different stages of culture, but the Word of God divinely revealed through his chosen and expressly inspired scribes. ... In this state of exaltation they made a translation so magnificent that to this day the common human Britisher or citizen of the United States of North America accepts and worships it as a single book by a single author, the book being the Book of Books and the author being God. Its charm, its promise of salvation, its pathos, and its majesty have been raised to transcendence by Handel, who can still make atheists cry and give materialists the thrill of the sublime with his Messiah. Even the ignorant, to whom religion is crude fetishism and magic, prize it as a paper talisman that will exorcize ghosts, prevent witnesses from lying, and, if carried devoutly in a soldier’s pocket, stop bullets. ... As to Bible science, it has over the nineteenth-century materialistic fashion in biology the advantage of being a science of life and not an attempt to substitute physics and chemistry for it; but it is hopelessly pre-evolutionary; its descriptions of the origin of life and morals are obviously fairy tales; its astronomy is terra centric; its notions of the starry universe are childish; its history is epical and legendary: in short, people whose education in these departments is derived from the Bible are so absurdly misinformed as to be unfit for public employment, parental responsibility, or the franchise. As an encyclopedia, therefore, the bible must be shelved with the first edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica as a record of what men once believed, and a measure of how far they have left their obsolete beliefs behind.

The Continuators of Matthew Poole's English Annotations:

After this, King James coming to the crown, being a prince of great learning and judgment, and observing the different usage of some words in his age from the usage of then In King Henry VIII or in Queen Elizabeth's time, and also the several mistakes (though of a minute nature) in those more ancient versions, was pleased to employ divers learned men in making a new translation, which is that which at this day is generally used. With what reverence to former translators, what labor, and care, and pains they accomplished their work, the reader may see at large in their preface prefixed to those copies that are printed in folio, and in their epistle to King James in our Bibles of a lesser form; of which translation (though it may not be with its more minute error) yet I think it may be said that it is hardly exceeded by that of any other church.

Geneva Jiggs & Beza's Ballets

George Wither (1588-1667) was a minor poet and author of what is said to be the "first work in English on literary aspects of the Bible," Preparation to the Psalter (1619), a discussion of the nature of the Psalms and of principles of translation," as well as "a defence of poetry" (David Norton, A History of the Bible as Literature, p. 131). His theological leanings over the course of his colorful life were all over the map from Arminian to Calvinist to Puritan to conforming Anglican to Quaker sympathies. He expressed love for the Psalms and wrote a version of the Psalter (Psalmes of David, 1632), while campaigning against exclusive psalmody and publishing a hymnal (Hymnes and Songs of the Church, 1623). He admitted to having a limited knowledge of Hebrew and the story is told that he took Parliament's side during the English Civil War and, after being captured by Royalist troops who were preparing to execute him, spared him at the request of Sir John Denham who allegedly claimed that they should do so "for the stated reason that at least 'whilest G.W. lived, he [Denham] should not be the worst Poet in England'" (Hannibal Hamlin, Psalm Culture and Early Modern English Literaure, p. 52, citing John Aubrey, Aubrey's Brief Lives, ed. O.L. Dick (Harmondsworth, 1949, rpr. 1982), p. 183).

I cite him here because he takes note -- in the context of his own dissatisfaction with the psalters then in use and expressed desire to improve them -- of a memorable derisive description employed by opponents of the Psalter.

Preparation to the Psalter (1619, 1919), p. 20:

...yet I vnderstand, that fome fectaries and fauourers of the Church of Rome, haue of late yeares difapproouved the tranflation of thefe Pfalmes into the vulgar tongues, & fcoffed at the finging of them in the reformed Churches; in fo much, that they haue in fcorne tearmed them Geneua Iiggs, and Beza's Ballets:

Albert Bailey claims (The Gospel in Hymns, p. 13) that Queen Elizabeth herself scornfully called called them "Geneva jiggs," in part due to their lively melody.

John Cotton defended the melodies used in Puritan Psalters, not claiming perfection, but inviting anyone to compare Psalms sung in Reformed Churches to cathedral chants. In answering the objection that "sinful men, or the man of sin hath an hand in making the melody" used in the Psalter, he writes, Singing of Psalms, A Gospel Ordinance (1647, republished as John Cotton on Psalmody and the Sabbath, 2006, p. 75):

And yet they that had an hand in making the melody of the English Psalms, (whether in Old England or New) were men of a better spirit then Ahab. But I can but marvel, why you should put in the man of sin, as having any hand at all, in making this melody. For neither the man of sin, (by whom I suppose you mean Antichrist) nor any Antichristian Church have had an hand in turning David's Psalms into English songs and tunes, or are wont to make any melody in the singing of them, yea they reject them as Geneva Gigs [Genevah Gigs, in the original]; and they be cathedral priests of an antichristian spirit, that have scoffed at Puritan Ministers, as calling the people to sing one of Hopkins Jigs [Jiggs], and so hop into the pulpit. God keep all anti-Psalmists from the like antichristian spirit. They that have been in antichristian churches can tell you, that Popish Churches are not wont to sing David's Psalms translated into verse in their own country meter, but they only sing the prose of David's Psalms in cathedral notes. Which how far yourself close withal, I leave to yourself to consider.

Time Redeemed

The Scriptures teach that life is a gift whose days are measured and numbered.

Psalm 90

10 The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.

On Queen Elizabeth I's deathbed, her last words were said to be, "All my possessions for a moment of time." But Benjamin Disraeli rightly noted in a speech on September 21, 1865, that "Time is precious, but truth is more precious than time." It is not merely time that is precious, but above all, time redeemed, which is most precious.

Psalm 90

12 So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.

Make the prayer of Moses your prayer then, and likewise, the prayer of Richard Baxter: "Time is precious; Lord give me skill and wisdom to redeem it" (Baxter, MSS (Letters), vol. v, f. 28b, quoted by Gerald R. Cragg, Puritanism in the Period of the Great Persecution, 1660-1688, p. 135).