ON

SICKNESS, SORROW, AND DEATH.

BY THE

REV. EDWARD BERENS, M. A.

OXFORD,

PRINTED BY W. BAXTER.

SOLD BY J. PARKER; AND C, AND J. RIVINGTON, ST. PAUL'S

CHURCH YARD, AND WATERLOO PLACE, LONDON.

1828.

PREFACE.

As the subjects of the following Sermons have been very frequently treated, so the Sermons themselves have little pretence to originality. I am not aware that. I have adopted a single passage from any author without acknowledgment, but most of the sentiments here expressed are to be found in Sermons already given to the public. The Sermon on the Duties of the Sick and that on Old Age, for instance, were written after reading those of Abp. Secker on the same subjects; and many of the sen

timents in the Sermon on Sorrow for the death of children-(obvious as they are in themselves)as the application of the text which forms its groundwork, were suggested by the excellent funeral discourses of Lucas and Doddridge. And thus, previously to writing the Sermon on the Regulation of Sorrow, I had repeatedly read the treatises of Flavel, Grosvenor, Cecil, and Newnham.

It may possibly be thought, that the Sermons in this little volume have too much resemblance, not only to those of other writers, but to each other. Where there is so much similarity of subject, recurrence of the same ideas, of the same expressions, and of the same quotations from

Scripture, was hardly to be avoided; especially as the Sermons were neither written nor preached in close succession.

The object of them all is to enforce "repentance towards God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ." If by the blessing of God upon them they should be made instrumental in awakening or in strengthening religious impressions in a single individual, or in imparting consolation to the wounded spirit of any person in affliction, my labour will not have been in vain, and I shall have abundant cause for humble thankfulness.

Shrivenham, Jan. 12, 1828.