ventilated they were not judged necessary at the interment there being neither precept nor precedent in Scripture for more than decent buriall with lamentations nor any reason why they should not be made for the godly poore of exemplary lives and deaths as well as the rich whose purses generally procure them Yet upon occasions it was judged very necessary on the Lord's day or in weekly lectures to admonish the living of their mortality direct the sorrowfull Relations in their duty and stir up all to immitate laudable examples and prepare for following those departed in the faith Seing then it is not material whether we have the corps in a coffin before our eyes according to the custome in England or it be coverd with earth as here so that we have but the Deceased's life and death in our minds and memories for our betterment I shall proceed to shew you the agreablenes of this portion of Scripture to the present occasion Vers. 16. Shews where Jacob and his family were viz. but a litle way from Eprath whither they were going How exactly doth God in his providence set the bounds of journeys as wel as habitations the places and times of our lives and deaths And what befel them there Rachel travailed and had hard labor The best of women may have the bitterest pains in child-birth and the saddest remembrance of God's sentence In sorrow thou shalt bring forth child'ren Gen. 3 16. Vers 17. The midwife incourages her in her pains and fears with having another son i. e. besides Joseph she had allready But all in vaine she regards it not as in the like case Phineas wife 1 Sam. 4 20. Earthly comforts signify litle to dieing persons Vers. 18. Rachel who was not satisfied with Joseph alone but desired another son Gen. 30 24. now when she haith him calls him Ben-oni the son of my sorrow It is dangerous not to rest contented with our present injoyments When we desire creature comforts immoderatly God may grant them so that they not only proove comfortles but bitternes to us Numb 11 4 33. and Ps 78 29 30 31. The time when she thus named him was as her soule was in departing whereby her death as all others is set forth to us which the following words for she died declare Souls die not with our bodies They goe to God that gave them to be judged by him Eccles. 12 7. The union of our souls and bodies being life and their parting againe death 1 Kings 17 21 22. therfore dieing Stephen prays Lord Jesus receive my spirit Act. 7 59. But Jacob lost that name should be a continual renovation of his sorrow calls him Benjamin the son of the right hand denoting his affection to him Ps 80 17. It is wisdom to suit names to occasional providences Vers 19. In the Text we have I. Rachel's death II. Burial III. Place of both I. Rachel died Beutiful Rachel Jacob's dearly beloved Rachel dies whilst blear-eyed Leah lives The more we love any creature person or thing the more danger we are in to lose it God often times crossing our inordinate affections for our good in taking away our beloved comforts and sparing those that are despised Rachel that so passionately desired children that she said unto Jacob give me children or else I die Gen. 30 1. now dies by having them Our immoderate desires many times cost us very deare II. And was buried The most beloved alive when they are dead we desire to have buried out of our sight as Abraham said of Sarah Gen. 23 4. A decent burial of the dead is the living Relations duty Yea somtimes memorials of the deceased may be expedient when free from ostentation and superstition as we see in the following verse Jacob sets a pillar upon her grave as a standing monument of his affection and her desert III. In the way to Ephrath which is Beth-lehem Renowned for our Savior's birth called Beth-lehem Ephratah Micah 5 2. and of Judea Math. 2 1 5 6. to distinguish it from that in Galilee and the city of David Luke 2 4 John 7 42. for his birth and education as Zion was for his building and habitation 2 Sam. 5 7 9. c. which is by interpretation a house of bread and so most fitting for Christ's birth who was the Son of David according to the flesh and the true bread of life as he inculcates at least 7 times on one occasion Iohn 6 About a mile as some say that have seen the place short of this Beth-lehem Rachel dies in the way distant from her own and husbands friends in an unsetled condition without habitation We all may know where we were born but none knows where or in what condition they shall die And is there buried If we live the life and die the death of the righteous it matters not much where we are buried nor at what distance from the rest of our friends How delicate soever the body may be the carcas is not curious in what bed of dust it sleeps and the souls of Gods people find as neare a way to heaven from any one place upon earth as other Many superstitious people now adays would think themselves happy to die so neare Beth-lehem that they might be buried there But Jacob well knew that burial places are not of religious consideration but any fit place pointed out by providence might serve well enough for the best of his family Thô he and his son Joseph likewise that died in Egypt would have their body and bones buried in Canaan yet that was to testify their dieing in the faith of God's promis of that land â—o their posterity and to assure them of their return thither and therfore is otherwise of no consideration to us It is but of later times that any were buried in Churches or cities but allways abroad as all scripture and other Histories and laws allso witnes When the opinion of Purgatory and holines of places prevailed at first men would be buried nigh the Churches that they might be remembred in the prayers and oblations of those that met there and afterwards in them because they thought them more sacred which tho opposed by * V. Durantus de ritib. Ecclesiae l. 1. c. 23. Gerhardus de morte §. 78-88 many laws civil and Ecclesiastical and writers ancient and modern by some as an innovation others as superstitious and many as dangerous to the health of the living especially in times and places of infection yet all in vaine the tyrant custom hath so prevailed that it s grown too strong for all contradiction But I have deteyned you too long from that I chiefly designe which is not so much to speake of death and mortality as such a surprising death as this Scripture speaks of clearly to the occasion and to vindicate God's providence therein and shew what improvement we should make thereof D. God takes from us our dearest Relations and creature comforts sometimes suddenly when we least exspect
with this world especially the healthful and those that wallow in pleasure and prosperity that they have neither list nor leisure to think seriously and prepare for the next As if they were priviledged from the like stroke and had a protection from death's arresting them or when it doth could bride it off for some time or make such a covenant with hell as will secure them So great is the security and stupidity of most that they regard not these warnings nor think themselves longer concernd when once the funerals are over Therfore that we may make better use of them 1 Suppose the like or worse may befall thee or thine whilst secure sinners still suppose the best Not to disquiet thy selfe with groundles fears but to prepare for all events of providence which are so never the neerer thee but thou much fitter for them unexspected crosses of all others being the hardliest born Say then what befalls others may befall me allso by this supposition as a prospective bring thy own and thy friends death neer thee think of it frequently and converse with it familiarly that so neither may surprize thee Exempt not thy selfe or thy Relations from that which frequently befalls others How many are the acute diseases that quickly snap mans life asunder How many the casualties and accidents whereby men of all ranks and conditions have perisht in all ages and places unexspectedly * Plin. l. 7. c. 53. de mortibus repentinis Val. Max. l. 9. c. 12. Zuinger Theatrum l. 18. To reckon those recorded by authors and known to our selves would take up our whole time 2. Flatter not thy self that thou and thine shall live long and die leisurely Oh the vain and deceitful hopes that most have of living still on and on they know not how long The younger that have death on their backs think they must of course live to be aged the old that have death before their faces and gray hairs not only here and there upon them but all over them hope still of holding out yea when sicknes is entred and death at the door we still hope that we or ours shall escape with life I have seldom met with one so old that hoped not to rub aut som years longer and never with any to whom their years past and to com did not seem of a different length Looking backwards on many years past they count them but a short time and usually their work therein litle but looking forwards on a few before them reckon them long and what a deale of work they shall doe therein so casily doe we deceive our selves in numbering our days and measuring our work that will not be deceived by others in any accompt that is of concernment 3 Reckon life by days not years seing none know what hour the son of man will com and call for them Thus the best and wisest of men reckoned their lives as Jacob Moses Job David and Solomon Gen. 47. v. 9. Ps 90.14 Job 14.5 Ps 39.5 Eceles 8 15. This right numbering our days would make us apply our hearts to wisdom by improving our present time and opportunities in the day of grace cutting off our vain hopes of future uncertainties and looking on every day as a new gift of God for his work Lam. 3.23 If Horace a heathen could say Omnem crede diem tibi diluxisse supremum much more should a Christian believe and live every day as his last because it may be so and if it be not it is more than any one knows Our Lord having wisely and mercisully conceald both the time and place of our departure from us that our lives might not be spent in continual madnes of mirth and vanity in our former and of fears and melancholy in our later days but might be restrained from sin and quickned to duty not delaying our preparations for death but living in a constant exspectation thereof nor presuming of future time not in our power but rightly improving our present with our Apostle dying daily and as a good man said that of twenty years he had known no morrow This divine arithmetick of numbring our days Moses and David begd of God and much more need have we to make our hearts so sensible of our frailty from these examples that we may get ready to follow and may not be only unwilling to live as many through the troubles of life but willing to die which grace only enables us to when prepared 4 Set these examples before thee so as they may affect thy heart and make it restles till they be duly improved by serious consideration That when others are destroyed from morning to evening or every hour of the day it may not be without any regarding it Job 4.20 Say how soon may this befall me or mine How uncertain is our time here and how certain death and eternity hereafter How doe I loyter whilst time flies and my glas perhaps ending and how litle of that work don which must be don or I am lost for ever Am I fit to look death in the face or a just and holy God in judgment have I not delayed long enough allready and is there not danger in these delays Is my soul and eternal salvation of so litle consequence that my heart should still deceive me in disregarding them Is it not wisdom to doe that first that is of greatest consequence and necessity Is not all my time litle enough for so great a work as preparing for eternity and shall I lose more Have so many of God's servants that have taken so much pains so long time in Religion fasting weeping praying hearing c. confest themselves unready for death what shall I be that have don so litle How dismal will death be to me if no better prepared for it Will Christ stay any more for me then he did for the foolish virgins was it not only they that were ready that entred in with him Or will he when once the door of mercy is shut open it for me alone No no I cannot exspect it and therfore will take his counsel and watch not knowing the day or hour wherein he cometh 5 Make sure to be habitually prepared at least for death by being reconciled to God through Christ Acquaint therfore thy self with him and be at peace and take heed of living in that state wherein thou wouldst be loth to die See to the soundnes of thy repentance towards God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ and the sincerity of thy obedience as ever thou meanest to secure the better part thy soule and thy future happines in eternity And labor after assurance that when this earthly house of thy tabernacle is dissolved thou hast an house eternal in the heavens as ever thou desirest to die comfortably The want of this makes death so dismal to those that are sensible what it is to die How many that live under the Gospel and know no more than the heathen Adrian
with clear circumstances there we may judge of the chief reason or cause though there be several others concurring that we may make better use of examples as Scripture teaches us 1 Cor 10 5-10 Otherwise we must take heed of rushing into God's Secrets which belong not to us and only eye the general ends to make use of his Providences accordingly As where great and crying Sins goe before and the end is demonstration of Justice there we may see that 's the chief cause especially in extraordinary Punishments whereof we have many examples in Scripture And where also such Sinners are threatned there also truth appears in their being Punished as the Egyptians first born Ahaziah Joram Ahab Jezebel c. So when the Sin is clearly visible in the Death a Haman's Agag's and innumerable others that shed Man's Blood and accordingly have their own unexspectedly shed Or when destruction follows at the heels of great Sins as the three thousand Israelites slayn for the molten calf Exod. 32. and while the flesh was between their teeth the wrath of the Lord was kindled against them Numb 11. and Herod immediatly simitten and eaten of worms Acts. 12. And yet when the vindication of Gods laws and ordinances is manifested to be the end its hard to say whether his love to the truth and ordinances of his institution be not the chief reason thô justice be more discernable for we must not judge all those that are simitten and destroyed even by God's immediate hand to perish eternally And therfore it is observable that as God never appeard so terribly as at the giving the law from mount Sinai so his wrath was never so hot nor such severity used as against the first trangsgressors to assert the honor of his laws and make them more regarded afterwards As in the first idolatry after their promulgation Exod. 32 10. At the first burnt-offerings when Nadab and Abihu offered strange fire that is common and not from the altar there went out fire from the Lord and devoured them the punishment suting to their sin Levit. 10. As afterwards Numb 16. when Corah and others descended from Levi endeavoured to make the priesthood common to all the Levites v. 10. and Dathan and Abiram Reubenites and others the politick power of Moses and the seventy elders newly establisht by God Ch. xi common with the rest the earth opened her mouth and swallowed them up v. 32. and fire from the Lord consumed the two hundred and fifty that offered inconse v 35. whose censers God commanded to be used for a sign and memorial thereof v. 38. and 40. and for the peoples murmuring at this dispensation fourteen thousand and seven hundred of them dyed of the plague v. 49. So when God appoynted the punishment for presumtuoussins the first offender the man that punishment sticks on the sabbath day is by God's appoyntment stoned to death Numb 15. Thus God vindicated the honour of his ark with smiting the Philistines and after it's returne above fifty thousand of the men of Beth-shemesh shewing thereby that the ark was the same thô it had been among the uncircumcised and the effects of feare were answerable 1 Sam. c. 5. and c. 6. and after that Vzzah for his rash taking hold of it thô as seems to us for a good end for the oxen shook it so that David was affraid and we may suppose the people much more 2 Sam. 6. And thus allso God vindicated the honor of Christianity at the first planting of the Gospel in smiting Ananias and Sapphira so that great feare came upon all the Church and upon as many as heard these things Acts. 5. But where no notorious crimes preceed and other particular ends than justice appear there sudden death is the Occasion and God's love to his truth and messingers that declare it or servants that profess or suffer for it the chief cause and reason thereof As the widow of Sarepia's son raised to life by Elijah by which he is acknowledged a man of God and the word of the Lord in his mouth truth 1 Kings 17. the Shunammite's son by Elisha whose miracles resembled his master Elijah's 2 Kings 4. So Lazarus's as Christ declares to the messinger his sisters sent to him This sicknes is not unto death thô in its nature and next end it was yet not irrevocably as they feared but for the glory of God that the son of God might be glorified thereby intimating that this of Lazarus should be used as a means of glorifying God and his son in miraculous raising him again to life and therby confirming his office of Messiah and Doctrine of the Gospel as we read it did most eminently Jâ—hn 11. And the noble army of Martyrs whom God brings forth as his Champions for the truth shewing the power of his grace and their sincerity that they doe not serve God for wordly things as the devil slanderd Job but love him their Savior and his truth above their own lives and making their death which their enimies count ignominious honourable to him religion and themselves and using it to quite contrary ends than their persecutors design namely the increase and confirmation of his Church and people I have been the longer upon these extraordinary examples both to cleare the truth in the general and the several kinds of sudden death and allso in the ordinary cases that now follow to be more particularly spoken of For by a parity of reason it will follow that as God makes different use of like providences suting them to different ends and making them occasions and means of different effects in wonderful variety according to his infinite wisdom and power so he hath accordingly particular reasons that are just and weighty for his dispensations thô unknown to us except he discovers them as his justice in extraordinary punishments for enormous offences or his goodnes mercy and other causes when it is otherwise So that where no sins or ends and effects more than common there we are not able nor ought we to judge of God's reason why these rather than others are suddenly taken away either by diseases as apoplexies convulsions and the like or by pains as women in travel or by wars fire water and other accidents these things falling alike to all for if the kinds of death or any temporal punishments were infallible signs of God's hatred and temporal blessings of his love we could never reconcile God's word we are bound to believe with the works of providence which are but the fulfilling of it and the execution of his purposes In such cases therefore when God exercises us as Job who is set forth to us as a pattern of patience in dark providences prayed shew me why thou contendest with me c. 10. and waited for the end of the Lord so should we God many times dealing with us as Christ said to Peter what I do thou knowest not now but thou shalt know hereafter As any one hearing Solomon's
ye or they shall know that I am the Lord. And experience shews us that while things goe on smoothly and evenly as men suppose they should all run along with them and are apt to judge them the effects of humane counsels and actions in the use of such means as conduce thereunto but when any thing happens above or contrary to their thoughts and expectations and is accomplisht by such means and in such a manner as they could not think of or imagin and cannot find out any satisfactory reason for then they looke above and beyond natural causes and acknowledg the finger of God Who frequently deals with us in our lives as Jacob with Joseph's sons crossing his hands contrary to exspectation and in our death allso making one or other that we thought should live drop down dead unexspectedly whereby we are put to a stand and look on as all the people did at Amazah's and consider whence this came and not satisfying our selves concerning any visible cause of this difference are ready to acknowledg an invisible power and providence in both the parts of it viz preservation and government in preserving us and others that were as likely to die and taking away those that were as likely to live So that God's extraordinary providences being the great witnesses of himself to the world it becoms our duty to eye and acknowledge him in them accordingly his wisdom in contriving such a concurrence of causes and circumstances as we never thought on his power in executing what we never feared his mercy in sparing greater sinners his justice in cutting off whom and when he pleases and his dominion over all ruling high and low rich and poor together so that as men see or may see so let them say among all nations that the Lord most high reigneth over all the inhabitants of the earth II. That all men may see more clearly that their times are onely in God's hand Ps 31 15. or in his sole power his constant care and custody and his disposal at his pleasure All its true have or may have a notional knowledg of this from the light of nature and those in the Church most fully from Scripture but this is too weak to make us look beyond the course of natural causes above to him who hath the ordering of them all so as to keep the eye of our souls habitually fixt upon him as we ought He is therefore pleased somtimes to use such providences in great daingers deliverances and deaths so circumstantiated as therein we may acknowledge his hand and thereby gaine such experimental knowledg of him and his dealings with us as will lead us to the owning and acknowledging of him and seconded by grace set up his soverainty in our souls For it is not so much death in it self that affects us because it is common as the remarkablenes of it one way or other which leaves an impression upon us and raises our sluggish minds to consider from what hand such a blow should come Who except som few Relations think themselves concernd at the death of weak infants and sickly persons or aged But when the young are taken away in the flower of their age or the strong that were most likely to live are dead on a sudden and laid in the dust or the great and rich that have all means possible to preserve them are cut down like the gras and wither as the green herb these are so many sensible demonstrations to convince us that our times are not in the hands of second causes or meerly casual and fortuitous seeing these are so frequent but onely in God's who disposes of them as he pleaseth Time indeed strangly wears out the present sense we have of these things but God is pleased so often to give us such pregnant examples hereof as if we duly regard them are not only sufficient to renew the former impressions upon us but afford us stronger convictions of this truth This improvement of such providences would bring us as Moses desired the Israelites to acknowledg God as the cause of our lives and length of our days who gives them at his pleasure and for his pleasure continues them that orders them as he pleases and cuts them off when he pleases and to depend upon him continually for them and with holy Job not to charge God foolishly but whether he gives continues or takes away still to bless the name of the Lord. As we learn this lesson more or less so we shall find it accordingly not only thus useful but also comfortable to us by the assurance God's people have thereby that in all times tryals and changes they are allways in the hands of their tender father that knows their frame and remembers they are dust thô the wicked that will not be instructed are in the hand of God as a Judge whose sentence and execution they shall not escape Considering that if our times were in Satan's or our enimies hands they would swallow us up quick or in our friends power they would not suffer us to depart and be with Christ which is far better or in our own we should in our discontents be weary of them and ready to cry out as Moses Elijah Job Jeremiah and Jonah have don now Lord take away my life rather than patiently wait his pleasure III. That sin may be imbittered and mercy embraced and particularly our first apostacy from God and our Savior and the means of recovery For as God's sentencing man to bodily penalties after his first sin for good to his soul was to humble him for that and all other sins that followd upon it and make him feare his justice by seeing and feeling such effects of it and fly to his grace and mercy through the promised Messiah so his inflicting them must therfore be accordingly accounted a means for these ends conjointly The All-wise God knowing what prodigious blindnes of mind and security of heart followed sin in us is therfore pleased for our awakening to use outward punishments ordinarily these being only visible and so fitter to have influence generally on all men and being allso more feared by the secure world than those inward and spiritual judgments on the soul So that the very heathen who being through their forefathers seperate from the Church are ignorant of the causes and manner of the entrance of these punishments by the fall and much more of Christ and so account death because common to all a debt to nature and the grievous accidents thereof punishments only for actual offences yet by these external judgments they may and should be brought and when extraordinary and general often are to feare God's justice and fly to his mercy in the general tho they cannot make that especial use of them for those higher ends and in subordination to especial grace that Scripture declares and which the Jews who have the Old Testament shewing the fall and clearly testyfying of Christ thô they wilfully reject him
3. c. 24. several have collected examples thereof that all that know them might be affrighted from the like offences This being the end of publique punishments as scripture declares by the effect and use the living should make of them and all or those which remain shall heare and feare and shall do no more any such wickednes Deutr. 13.11 and 19 20. to which both the Greeks and Latins agree * Grotius de I. B. P. L. 2. c. 20. For by the proportion of justice doe alike and have alike as well in punishments as rewards which allways first or last hath place with God who changeth not through defect of knowledg wisdom or power as men doe frequently Not allways in this life nor in the same manner as in his miraculous judgements or in the same measure but the examples shew the desert thereof as in the decimation of an army the General 's putting som few to death to prevent future mutinies shews the rest what they have deserved and what so offending they may exspect for the future God usually reserving the wicked to the day of destruction they shall be brought forth to the day of wrath Job 21.30 and exercising riches of patience and forbearance towards them and upon their humiliation and disciplinary repentance deferring or remitting their temporal punishments even after their denunciation as in Ahab and Nineveh and others generally Jer. 18.7.8 and on the contrary where unfeigned repentance makes way for the prerogative to pardon often punishing his own people in this life more than others but allways in the world to come divine justice will render to every man according to his deeds Rom. 2.2 11. But where no extraordinary sins are manifest these examples serve 2. to caution us and restrain us that we offend not God presumtuously in any kind But that we stand in awe and sin not against him who can every moment bring us to judgement For this is the end why God doth such things that men should feare before him Eccles. 3.14 the neglect whereof becoms the cause of the sudden destruction of secure sinners For the sentence of death being past upon all sinners if the execution of it more speedily upon less offenders and the delaying of it upon greater be so abused by the wicked that therefore their hearts are set in them to doe evil yet Solomon tells us of his own certain knowledge that though a sinner do evil an hundred times and his days be prolonged so as he lives his ful time in the course of nature yet surely I know it shall not be well with the wicked as it shall be with the righteous in their future state neither shall he prolong his days which are as a shadow in regard the days of the wicked are cut off suddenly before the time of their exspectation or at least preparation for death because he feareth not before God in an awful shunning to displease him Eccles. 8 11-13 And Solomon's observation in this kind hath been made by many that those who in their health despise both God's word and warnings when death threatens them cry out oh call time again oh that I might live a litle longer oh that God would but try me once more and make great promises to God and men of their future amendment usually in their own strength which oftentimes com to litle if they recover and if they die declare their unpreparednes for death And yet better some sense of God and feare of his future judgements at the last than not at all but spend their days in mirth and in a moment go down to the grave Job 21.13 The Apostle's therefore admonition is good and holds in all examples in those of like condition not to be high minded but feare for if God spared not them take heed lest he also spare nos thee Rom. 11.20 21 and Hebr. 4.1 And 3 to cure sin in us For these are means whereby we are brought to the seare of the Lord by which men depart from evil Prov. 16.6 Thus God cured the remnant of the Jews of their Idolatry which they were so addicted to formerly and ever after detested above all others Ezech. 23. Where Jâ—dah and Israel are set forth as two spiritual adulteresses being at ease and God saith I will bring a company upon them namely the Assyrians and Chaldeans that shall stone them with stones as the Jews punisht adulters and dispatch them with their swords they shall slay their sons and their daughters c. thus will I cause lewdnes to cease out of he land that all women may be taught not to do after your wickednes that is other cities and nations compared here to women especially where his church should be planted may learne to refraine from Idolatry and if they will not to see what the cure thereof will cost them And David a type of Christ prophecies this should be a means of reforming the visible Church God shall suddenly shoot at them with an arrow suddenly shall they be wounded and all men shall feare and shall declare the works of God for they shall wiseâ—y consider of his doings Ps 64. see allso Is 25.2.3 And as in general so in particular examples this is not to be doubted of as that the sudden death of Eli hath been and is instrumental to cure the fond indulgence of many parents to their children in wickednes and of Absolon their inordinate affection If so be no sins are mentioned or more than ordinary apparent to us in any so taken away then to cure us of those sins we know our selves guilty of before God and more especially those that are relative as good Jacob's too much love and doting upon his Rachel here in the text 4. To awaken us out of our security For which end especially we have security as the fore-runner and speedy destruction that follows it joynd together by our Savior in the types he hath given us of his coming to judgment both of all in general and every one in particular As the destruction of the old world Sodom and Gomorrah and Jerusalem they were eating and drinking marrying and giving in marriage buying and selling planting and building wherby Christ declare how litle they exspected they should be forthwith speedily destroyed and that so also shall his coming be even like to lightning for its suddemnes or a thief in the night for its unexspectednes and then makes this inference watch therefore for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come calling it such an hour as they think not declaring he would honour those that made this use of it but if the evil servant say in his heart my Lord delays his coming c. The Lord of that servant will com in a day when he looks not for him and in an hour that he is not aware of Math. 24. and Luke 17. Nothing more exemplifies this than sudden death which cryes to every one behold the bridegroom cometh go ye out to