and by going to the place of separate Spirits has taken possession of it as his own Kingdom in right of his Conquest over the Devil And the Resurrection he has assured us of will free us from our shame For then Death will be swallowed up of Victory and we shall appear in the World and live like our selves again This will be the day of our Triumph and Joy when that which is sown in dishonour and weakness shall rise in glory and power And because we go out of this World with the expectation of a Resurrection we may appear before the Inhabitants of the invisible World without any dread or shame because we shall there live in hope under the protection of a mercifull Redeemer 4. This may inform us of the Difference between this Life and that we shall then live We shall live in the same Bodies indeed but not in Bodies that carry such marks of dishonour and shame in them as now they do nor such a Life as now we live For the great difference between them is this That now our Bodies are frail and brittle and we carry the great valuable Treasure of Life in Earthen Vessels that are subject to decay and which erelong will be broke to pieces and lose the Treasure that is put into them But then they will be purified to a Heavenly frame and no longer subject to those innumerable Chances that beat upon and at last break them down Here it is only that little scantling of Life which Sin and the Divine Wrath have left us that we enjoy but there we shall have that full portion that God in our Creation set before us and what through the Redemption of his Son we are restored to the Hopes of Here we live subject to a thousand Miseries and Infirmities and are put to daily trouble to repair the decays of a corruptible Nature and at last after all the supports and refreshments of Meat and Drink or the Remedies of Physick our Spirits run off and the Grave becomes our Habitation But then we shall have a Life unless by our own folly we treasure up so much Wrath as will not suffer us to live and we our selves carry Misery along with us a Life I say that no Sorrow shall embitter no Wants weary and disquiet with Labour and Solicitude and which will be able to sustain it self for ever without any of those Succours and Remedies that our present Necessities call for There will be none of that thoughtfulness for to morrow which now often breaks our Rest and embitters our Lives no sweating for Bread to maintain Life nor any of those Anxieties which here the fears of losing what we have do perplex us with For there the Reason of all this will be taken away because we shall then enter upon a World replenish'd with all that Humane Nature can desire and the Life we shall live will have none of those Exigences that suppose imperfection in us That which makes this Life so full of vexation and sorrow is the Curse that is come upon our selves and that which is come upon the Earth for our sakes For it was but fit that the Earth should be changed when Sin had alter'd the Nature of us that were to live upon it And since a Mortal and Corruptible Creature must live a Life of Sorrow and Labour it was requisite the Earth should be despoiled of that fertility that gave innocent Man an easie Maintenance and be Cursed to bear Briars and Thorns for a Creature that was to fetch his Food out of it with Sweat and Sorrow Now what wonder is it that the Life of Man which is not to be sustain'd but by his own Labour should begin to be over-run with Cares and Solicitudes when that fertility which fed him with Ease began to leave the Earth and instead of the Fruits of Paradise he saw Briars and Thorns spring up all about him 'T is Natural when our Bread fails and we see a scarcity of Provision begin to appear to have our Cares heightned and our Heads fill'd with Thoughtfulness So that our Solicitudes and Anguish for the things to sustain Life are but like the scramblings of Children when they are afraid the things they value should all be snatch'd from them For when the Earth began to fail Man of that plentifull and easie Provision with which in Innocency he was fed it is no wonder that like Men afraid lest the whole World should fail us our Desires grew impatient and made us restless and thoughtfull But now in the other World when we live again we shall not want the things that are needfull to us now and all that we shall need to make that Life perfectly Happy will be abundantly provided for us Then the Curse that took away our Blessings will it self be taken away And the New Heavens and New Earth that God will then create will no more be an occasion to us of those vexatious Solicitudes that the Poverty of this World begets in us than any Exigencies in our Nature will We shall rise with Bodies renewed i.e. Freed from all the ill Consequences of our first Apostasie and we shall live in a World renew'd too i.e. Freed from the Effects of that Curse that brought forth Briars and Thorns in it I mean which is the Cause of all the Miseries and Sorrows of this Life For they who shall be accounted worthy to obtain that World and the Resurrection from the Dead can die no more for they are equal unto the Angels Matt. 26.36 What that means we cannot tell because it is little that we know as yet of the state and condition of the other World But this it teaches us That we shall be Immortal and live just such a Life as they do Not such a Life of Labour and Toil and Misery as now we do because the Curse that is the cause of it will then be taken off 5. Let us consider how much Reason we have to prepare our selves for another Life Life is so valuable a thing to us that we judge it worth all the tiresome Journeys we take and the irksome Labour we are at to lay up something for the sustaining of it 'T is for the sake of Life that we even chuse to Drudge our Bodies in continual Toil and to expose Life it self to very great Dangers For had we none of those wants that put us to pain and create Thoughtfulness in us could we live without Labour and Industry we should chuse to sit still and to enjoy Life with ease And if we are content to undergo so many Hardships for a Life that is Mortal if we believe there is a Necessity upon us to follow our Callings and to be intent upon our worldly Interests that we may provide those Necessaries of Life without which we shall certainly die and which when we have them will not long preserve the Lives we labour for With how much greater care ought we to lay up
despised and detested for it by all that glorious Assembly They shall awake to shame i.e. They shall wish themselves out of sight of all the World when they see with what vise Bodies Bodies that upbraid them with their own guilt and bear the marks of those Vices they have indulged to What confusion will it give the unclean person to behold the filthy Scarrs and nasty Ulcers that his sin has given him With what a dejected Look will the intemperate Man appear with all that fire in his Eyes and Face that will betray his Lust With what a sad damp upon their Spirits will those Men look who shall come forth with Tongues swoll'n and blister'd with all those Oaths and dreadfull Blasphemies wherewith they have rudely assaulted the Name of God! And if this be the case of bad Men if it be upon this Reason That a Resurrection is no comfortable Doctrine to them surely it behoves hoves us to take great care how we use our Bodies now That we don't make them so vile and corrupt that we neither can nor can with credit live in them again That we don't abuse them by Rioting and Drunkenness by Excesses and Debaucheries by those Sensualities and Wickednesses which will so exasperate our Appetites as to make them an everlasting torment and shame to us Alas Men know not how much mischief they do themselves by indulging to Sensuality and Worldliness For there Spirits are thereby made so fleshly that they cannot rejoyce in the Company of pure and naked Spirits nor live without their Bodies in any kind of ease And yet the Bodies they desire to live in are so wretchedly corrupted that when they are embodied in them again they cannot live in them again without a great deal of shame and vexation if they can live in them at all 'T is therefore the Apostle's Exhortation not to yield our members weapons of unrighteousness to serve sin but to yield our selves unto God as those that are alive from the dead and our members as instruments of righteousness unto God Rom. 6.13 i.e. Not to yield our Tongues instruments of Rancour and Spight Malice or Envy by giving vent to those Evil Passions in Railings and Cursings nor our Eyes the instruments of Wantonness by conveying impure Flames into the Soul nor our Hands the instruments of Revenge by executing the bloody Commands of that furious Passion and the like but all of them the Instruments of Piety to God and Charity to our Neighbours And there is a great deal of reason for this because we must rise again and when we rise our Bodies will be such as we now make them If we make them Instruments of Sin the Corruption wherewith such a course of life does over-charge them will not suffer them to live when they are risen but will bring upon them a worse Death than that which Adam's Transgression has subjected us to And there is no way to receive them pure and glorious from the Grave but by purifying them now from all filth and corruption by conquering those Lusts that will otherwise destroy us and taming those Appetites that will otherwise be our Everlasting torment If ye through the spirit do mortifie the deeds of the body ye shall live Rom. 8.13 i.e. If we set our selves with indignation against our fleshly Lusts and resolve no longer to please our Bodies we take an assured course to live But if we live after the flesh we shall die For so long as we live to our Bodies and make provision for our Flesh to fulfill the Lusts thereof we cherish and indulge that which at first brought us into a mortal condition And there is no way to exchange a corruptible for an incorruptible Body but by ceasing to humour our bodily Inclinations and gratifie our sensual Appetites For by doing this we raise our Souls from a Bed of Corruption and God as the reward of our Vertue will at the last make our Bodies immortal too 3. If the Resurrection will restore us our Bodies in so glorious a condition again let us consider how proper a Remedy the hopes of this is to those Fears of Death that now haunt us Death is terrible indeed and that which makes it so frightfull to us is because it robs us of our Bodies and turns them into Dust It closes our Senses and suffers us no more to see the Glories of a World that we have been so long acquainted with nor to taste the sweets that are in bodily Enjoyments The dead know not any thing saith the Wise-man neither have they any more reward for the memory of them is forgotten Also their love and their hatred and their envy is now perished i.e. They are neither in a capacity to do themselves or others either good or harm neither have they any more portion for ever in any thing that is done under the Sun Eccles 9.5 6. i.e. They have no profit from any of those usefull Arts and Inventions that are owing to the ingenuity of Men here in this World They receive no benefit from the Riches and Pleasures the Pomps and Splendours that this World is stored with There is no desire no knowledge nor wisdom in the Grave whither thou goest v. 10. No prosecuting of any usefull study nor reaping the benefit of other Men's labours And if it was to be thus with us for ever Death would be a most uncomfortable prospect But although Death does deprive us of all this yet we have little reason to stand astonish'd at the thoughts of dying when we know we shall not only receive our Bodies again but receive them freed from Corruption For this will be a sufficient compensation for all that we can lose by dying because we shall receive all we lose far more perfect than now we enjoy it If we did well consider the thing it would upon another account appear a very foolish thing to lament our condition because it is mortal and to terrifie our selves with the thoughts of leaving a World where we have indeed a great many delightfull Entertainments for our Senses For whether we be pleased with it or no we must die And it is not very wisely done to let the thoughts of that which we cannot help be troublesome and disquieting to us Upon this account we ought surely so to manage our selves as we would do if we were in a strange Country where though we meet with very delightfull prospects to tempt us to love it yet we don 't upon the account thereof think it fit so to fix our Thoughts and Affections there as to make it a hard matter to us to leave it again But though this be a Consideration that should make a wise Man neither afraid nor unwilling to die yet we are not altogether so wise but we need other Considerations that are capable of satisfying our desires of life and of removing that which is the cause that Death is so terrible to us And of this nature is the
thoughts of a Resurrection For this is a Doctrine that tells us we shall recover all the Life and Sense that we lose by dying and instead of the Glories of a corruptible World be entertain'd with such glorious Sight and charming Hallelujahs as our Eyes and Ears never saw nor heard in this life 4. Let us consider the folly of being fond of them as now they are One of the greatest temptations that we are subject to in this life does arise from the great Love of and concern we have for our Bodies For though we have Souls as well as Bodies and our Souls are of infinite more value and worth in themselves as they are the Breath of God and that part of us which makes us Men and of infinitely the nearest concern to us as they are that part of us that makes us capable of Everlasting Happiness or Misery Yet when the Interests of these two Parts of us do thwart each other and both cannot be attended to at the same time we seem to set much less by our Souls than our Bodies And though we profess to believe that our Bodies deserve not half the care that our Souls do yet we make the Interests of our Souls to give place to those of our Bodies Our Souls seem to lie at a further distance from us and are not so much within our ken as our Bodies are We don't so soon feel what they want nor are we so sensible what we are like to suffer by neglecting them as when we lose an oportunity of providing for our Flesh Although Knowledge and Vertue be as necessary for the Soul as Food is for the Body and our better part does languish and decay for want of them as much as our fleshly part does for want of the Necessaries of this life yet we don't feel the pain of a Soul that languishes for want of its proper nourishment so much as we do the weakness of a starved Body And therefore whatever the Soul suffers we think our selves under so indispensible an Obligation to take care of our Bodies that we afford little time for the improving of the Soul There is no Argument more common whereby we excuse our selves from the Exercises of Religion which are designed to nourish the Spiritual life of the Soul than the urgency and great necessity of our Secular concerns i.e. Those Affairs by which the Body is to be provided for And when this Necessity is pleaded Conscience must be satisfied and the Soul must not complain of its being almost famish'd But this fondness for our Bodies is the occasion of much worse Evils than the bare neglect of the Soul For it is the occasion of all that Injustice and Oppression that want of Faith and Truth that Theft and Rapine that is committed in the World For why do Men cheat and cozen but for the sake of their Bodies Why do they lye for a little advantage or invade their Neighbour's property and take away by force and violence that which is another Man's but only that they may be in a better condition to feed and pamper their Bodies to indulge and gratifie their fleshly Lusts Did not Men love their Bodies too much there would be none of these mischievous Vices in the World And yet the Bodies we so much doat upon and for whose sakes we do so much mischief to our selves and others are Bodies that must die and perish Bodies that are now subject to innumerable Infirmities and carry so much Imperfection in them as ought to make us ashamed of them or at least to carry very indifferently toward them But what a shamefull thing is it so to love a Lump of mortal Flesh when there is a time coming that unless by our Sensualities we disappoint our selves we shall receive them raised from their Beds of Corruption and cloathed with Immortality and Glory Did we only consider that ere-long they must be laid in the Dust and that then all our thoughts and projects for things relating to this life will be at an end it would check that extravagant love we have of them But how much more when we consider that we shall receive them again so spiritualized that they will no more need the things that now we endeavour to please them with Let us look forward to that time when unless we spoil them now they shall be improved to such a perfection and it will surely put us out of countenance to think of our folly in doating on them now so much when there is so little in them as deserves our love Our Bodies are 't is true a part of us and we cannot but love that which is so near to us Neither does Religion charge a due care of them as a sin But it does tell us and our own Reason tells us that it is an unaccountable folly to be so doatingly fond of corruptible Dust as to pamper and deck these Earthly Bodies as if they were now in their best and most glorious Condition And to be guilty of such Sins now for the sake of them as will deprive us for ever of them again when we should receive them Immortal When they come out of their Graves free from those extravagant Appetites and unruly Lusts that now prompt us to such methods of pleasing them as carry a great deal of danger in them as they will do if we receive the Wisdom that Religion teaches us they will then be highly worthy of our Value and Esteem And then it will be a proper time to begin to love them when there is nothing cleaves to them that we ought to be ashamed of 5. How meanly ought we to think of those pleasures that here in this World we are capable of The only reason why we affect them is because they are gratefull to our Bodies And it is certain that God has had that regard to our Bodies as to furnish a World with all that is delightfull to sense to be our Entertainment But yet we make too much use of this Argument when we fly to it as a Reason why we may lawfully and without offence use this World as generally we do The pleasures of this life are for the making Life chearfull and comfortable and where lies the fault then if in a World of so much trouble and vexation where we are doom'd to labour and misery we endeavour to make a life of labour and sorrow as easie to us as we can This is the Argument by which sensual Men reason themselves into an unmeasurable fondness for every thing whereby Sense is gratify'd and the Body delighted 'T is this gives reputation to the sportings and frollicks of Wit even when they pass the bounds of Innocency and unmannerly break in upon the most sacred things For a Jest is so luscious a thing that it goes down glibly and often carries with it very horrid Prophanations 'T is this does reconcile Men to Company and Drinking and the washing away of Cares and the
not Adam's sin alone but our own too are the Reason why we die and consequently that our Justification is not from Adam's Offence only but from those many that we are guilty of By one Man sin enter'd into the World and Death by sin and so Death passed upon all Men for that all have sinned v. 12. i.e. All Men die as well as Adam because all have sinned as well as he For untill the Law sin was in the World And again Death reigned from Adam to Moses even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression v. 13 14. i.e. All that lived between Adam and Moses died though they did not Transgress a positive Law as Adam did but only sinn'd against the Law of Nature But if we look a little narrowly into the Apostle's discourse the contrary will be evident For when he instanceth in a time when there was no Law that condemn'd Men to die for their own Offences his design is to prove that the Sin and Judgment that pass'd upon Adam does reach to all Men For what account else shall we give saith he of the Death of those that died before the Law of Moses was given They sinn'd 't is true but that could not be the Reason why they died because they were not under any Law that threatned them with Death if they sinned and therefore since they died it could be by vertue of no other Law but that by which Adam was Judg'd and Condemn'd He does say indeed that Death pass'd upon all Men for that all have sinned Yet Sin is not imputed where there is no Law which was the case of all that lived between Adam and Moses The summ then of the Apostle's discourse is this That Adam's Sin and the Judgment that was pass'd upon him is the Reason why all Men die but we are not to think that Men die only for Adam's Sin in such a sense as if themselves were not Sinners For though all have sinned yet all die because of Adam's Sin Obj. But if this be the meaning of the Apostle how comes it to pass that he tells us afterwards that the free gift is of many offences unto Justification Ans To which I reply That though by the undertaking of our gracious Mediatour we are justified from our own particular Offences i.e. Are put into such a state that we have no reason to fear being condemned when we come to answer for our own Actions if with sincerity we conform our Lives according to the Rules of the Gospel though we be guilty of many Errours and Mistakes Yet it is plain from what he discoursed before that it is Adam's Offence alone is the reason why we die because it is for Adam's Offence alone that we are born Mortal and are under a Sentence of Condemnation But by being justified from Adam's Sin and Condemnation we by sincerely submitting to the Law of Grace are acquitted of all those particular Sins that in our Natural state we are guilty of Because Adam's Sin being the Root and Original cause of our own particular Offences by being discharged from the Punishment that Adam's Sin brought upon Mankind we upon our embracing the Law of Grace are accepted by God to a liberty of working out our own Salvation notwithstanding our own Sins The many Offences that the Apostle here speaks of are those that in their Natural state Men are guilty of For of these alone he spoke in the foregoing Verses when for the proving it was for Adam's Transgression that we all die he instanced in those that lived between Adam and Moses who were not under the Government of any other Law but that of Nature and therefore did not die for their own particular Offences And of these he tells us the free gift is to Justification as well as of Adam's Sin because by being discharged from the Punishment of Adam's Transgression we shall not be condemned for those that no positive Law does threaten with Death But as for those Sins that in our Christian i.e. our Justified state we are guilty of we must be justified or condemned for them by the Sentence of our Mediatour according to the very Voice of the Law that he has given us to live by 2. Then Justification puts us into a possibility of living again after Death for ever For since it is the taking off from us the Curse that is come upon our Nature for the publick Transgression of our first Parents it takes away that which is the Cause why we die and which if it was not taken away would for ever hold us in a state of Death The Reason why we die is because God has doom'd us to it and that which is the Reason why we die would be a Reason too why we should never live again if God in Mercy had not pitied our Condition and absolved us from the Guilt for which we are condemned to die For as it is upon the account of God's Wrath that we die if we had for ever lain under that Wrath we must for ever have continued in a state of Death i.e. according to the Sentence God had pass'd upon us we had forfeited the Immortality of that Life that consists in the vital Union of the Soul and Body So that the import of the Sentence of Death we fell under was nothing less than an Eternal separation of the Soul and Body A Doom that adjudged the Body to Dust for ever and the Soul to live without its Body under the Dominion of that Evil Spirit that seduced us and the dreadfull Marks of the Divine displeasure for ever And as this is the meaning of that Judgment to Condemnation that is come upon all Men so the meaning of that free gift that is come upon all Men to Justification of Life is the hopes of rising again to that Immortality we lost For by Justifying us God acquits us from the Punishment he had condemn'd us to and by withdrawing that Wrath from us which sentenced us to an Eternal Dissolution of the Soul and Body he puts us into a hopefull condition of living again for ever As when he condemn'd us his Justice laid us under an obligation of satisfying his Wrath by a perpetual separation of our Souls from our Bodies So when he justifies us his Mercy re-instates us in his Favour and by discharging us from the Curse we are fallen under gives us an Assurance that Death shall not be Eternal but that there will come a time when our Bodies shall come out of their Graves and our Souls and Bodies shall happily by united again So that 3. Justification is an Act of mere Mercy and Goodness It is mere Grace and Favour that spares the Life of a Criminal when he is condemn'd to die For in such a case he can have no hopes of living unless he who has the Power of Life and Death does by reversing the Sentence save him from the Punishment Whereas a Law that allows