if we have any sense of gratitude let us labour after the counsel of the Apostle to abound in the work of the Lord Phil. i. 11. let us endeavour that we may be filled with all the fruits of righteousness which are by Jesus Christ to the praise and glory of God Let us give all diligence to add to our faith vertue and to vertue knowledge 2 Pet. i. 5 6 7. and to knowledge temperance and to temperance patience and to patience godliness and to godliness brotherly kindness and to brotherly kindness charity for so an entrance shall be ministred unto us abundantly into the everlasting Kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ Never object the greatness never urge the difficulty and hardness of the work required of you but consider he that hath commanded you to do it will enable you to go through with and your labor shall not be in vain in the Lord. O didst thou think of this it would inspire a new courage into thee it would invigorate thy fainty resolutions and carry thee through the greatest impediments and obstacles that are in thy way truly the reason why we do so little for God why we are so careless and cold and unconcerned in what we do is because our thoughts of the recompence of the reward are so seldome and slightly II. The serious meditation of this would support and uphold us under the greatest tryals and afflictions that God should at any time exercise us with this made Job stand upright under that great pressure of calamities that was laid upon him He knew that his redeemer lived and that he should stand at the latter day upon the Earth Job xix though saith he Vers 25. after my skin worms destroy this body yet in my flesh shall I see God Vers 26. whom I shall see for my self Vers 27. and mine eyes shall behold and not another though my reins be consumed within me This upheld David Thou wilt shew me the path of life in thy presence is fulness of joy Psal xvi 11. and at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore I had fainted saith he unless I had believed to have seen the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living that is not only here in this life as the most understand it but in that other world which is truly and properly Terra viventium Psal xxvii 13. the land of the living Whatever your troubles are this is sufficient to comfort you under them that there is a state of happiness to be enjoyed hereafter by all such who are followers of those who through faith and patience have inherited the promise yet a little while and all your sufferings shall be at an end for no sooner shall you lay down your Earthly Tabernacle but God shall receive you into his Kingdom where there is neither sin nor sorrow but perfect peace and joy such peace that passeth all understanding such joy that is unspeakable and full of glory Eye hath not seen ear hath not heard neither hath it entred into the heart of man to conceive the things which God hath prepared for them that love him 1 Cor. ii 9. Can we believe these things and yet repine and murmur under any of the divine dispensations as though God had dealt hardly with us Oh how unreasonable is this since our afflictions are the way to glory for through many tribulations must we enter into the Kingdom of Heaven Acts xiv 22. since they fit and prepare us for our glory and make us meet to be partakers of it 2 Cor. iv 17. Let us rather rejoyce in our trials forasmuch as the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us forasmuch as they work out for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory This would be more becoming the faith of a Christian and much more conduce to the credit and reputation of that excellent Religion that we do profess IV. The serious meditation of this glorious change to be wrought upon our bodies would make death much less dreadful and terrible unto us death as it is an extinction of life as it is a dissolution of the frame and structure of our bodies is a frightful thing and full of horror nature starts back and cannot endure to look at it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Chrysost Hom. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. but did we seriously consider that when we die to this present life it is that we may live a much better life and that when God pulls down our earthly house it is for the erecting a more stately and magnificent fabrick for us we should soon be satisfied and composed in our minds and be so far from fearing it that we should with submission to the will of God desire it for in this saith the Apostle we groan earnestly desiring to be cloathed upon with our house which is from Heaven if so be that being cloathed we should not be found naked 2 Cor. v. 2 3. THE END
that it is a corruptible perishing dying thing and hath that within it self which if there were no danger from without would not fail at last to destroy it ye that are of the strongest and most athletick constitution must at last yield to the necessity of Nature Heb. ix 27. for it is appointed for all men once to die this is the Decree and Ordinance of God a Law that shall never be either repealed or altered Eccl. xii 2. The time is coming when the Sun and Moon and Stars shall be darkned and the Clouds return after the Rain Verse 3. When the Keepers of the House shall tremble and the strong Men bow themselves and the Grinders cease because they are few Verse 6. and those that look out of the Window be darkned When the silver Cord shall be loosed and the golden Bowl broken when the Pitcher shall be broken at the Fountain and the Wheel be broken at the Cistern Vehse 7. then shall the Dust return to the Earth as it was and the Spirit to God that gave it Thus you see by what hath been said wherein the vileness of the body doth consist S. Paul comprises all in a little room 2 Cor. v. 1. when he calls it our Earthly House of this Tabernacle by which words he intimates unto us that it is a poor mean Cottage so strait and narrow that the Soul is as it were crowded and thrust up in it and cannot inlarge nor stretch forth it self to its just dimensions so dark that it can see nothing but through the chinks and holes thereof and that only that lyes in a strait line before it so weak and ruinous that it is ever and anon ready to drop down on our heads 〈◊〉 11. I come now to the second thing designed and that is to enquire how we come to have such vile bodies The followers of Pythagoras and Plato who held the prae existence of Souls tell us that they are adjudged and condemned to this condition for their ill demeanour in that higher state that the Soul growing impure in it self forthwith loses its vital congruity with the more thin and subtile vehicle of Aether or Air and requires one of a more gross consistency as being more suitable to the moral turpitude and impurity she hath contracted through her sinful Apostasie and turning aside from God But these are the conjectures of men in the dark let us see what account the Holy Scriptures will give us in this matter There we read that Man when he came first out of the hands of God was an excellent Creature and the Masterpiece of the whole visible Creation the Image of God was resplendent in him and the Divine Glory rested upon him his Soul was full of light and purity and his body that was framed out of the uncorrupted Earth was wrought into a delicacy and fineness correspondent to it so that it was as a Crystal Case through whose transparent sides might in a sort be seen the sparkling lustre of that Jewel that was inclosed therein the humors were equally mixt and every part most exactly fitted and proportioned there was no defect nor deformity in him This was the state of Man whilst innocent but alass he sinned and no sooner had he sinned but immediately he found the sad effects thereof within himself the light and joy which was ere while within him was now turned into darkness and sadness his hope and confidence into fear and a dread of the Divine displeasure He who before did familiarly converse with God now flies his presence and would if possible hide his guilty head from him Now it was that death according to the threatning got within him and planted there the principles of corruption now the body became as it 's here called a vile body a necessitous indigent body a passive suffering body a weak and frail body a perishing and corruptible body it was sin that was the true cause of all this misery and infelicity of ours it was sin that spoil'd the harmony that broke the peace that stirred up the humors that discomposed the spirits that clouded the glory and majesty of the body and reduced it to that mean and contracted size that now it is of Through sin it is that we became liable to so many changes to perils from above the malignant influences of the stars and the poysonous blasts of the air to perils from below the deadly productions of the earth which nourish for a while but lay the seeds of death within us to perils and dangers from every thing round about us and with which we do converse It was sin that cast us out of the Paradise of God that drave us from under the shade of the Tree of Life that shut us up in our prisons and seal'd us up in our vile bodies as in a grave had we never sinned we had never been thus restrained by our bodies thus oppressed and burthened with our bodies thus wearied and tired with our bodies had we continued in the condition wherein we were at first created they would have been no more a burthen to us than are feathers to the birds whereby they fly from place to place Thus having clear'd unto you the second particular how we came to have such vile bodies I proceed according to the method proposed to improve the point and that I shall do by way of Information by way of Reproof and by way of Exhortation I. By way of Information and it will inform us of two things 1. Of the great evil of sin in that it hath marr'd and spoil'd one of the most beautiful pieces of the Creation Perhaps we cannot or at least will not see the evil of sin in its own nature and as it is considered in it self O see it in its effects and consequents you may know how corrupt and impure the fountain is by the muddy and polluted streams that flow immediately from it you may know how bad the tree is by the bitter and unwholsome fruits it produceth There is no evil in the world no vanity in the creature no disorder within your selves that doth not owe its original to the sin of man all your deformities all your imperfections all your decays and weaknesses all your pains and griefs and maladies are the effects of sin O think of this whenever you are tired and wearied with a dull and heavy body whenever you are afflicted and troubled with a sickly distempered body and indeavour to work your hearts to a perfect abhorrency and detestation of that which hath been the Author and Occasion of so much mischief to you All men cannot see the disorders and confusions that sin hath wrought upon the Soul to this there is required the special illumination of the Spirit whose peculiar work it is to convince the world of sin but we may all see the fearful work it hath made upon our bodies O take heed of it fly from it as
assaulted with sickness with pains and aches and distempers such which shall never decay myriads of Ages shall not make the flower of our youth to fall or fade nor bring the least wrinkle or deformity upon us there shall be an everlasting spring our greenness and verdure shall never be turned we shall have incorruptible bodies that is we shall never die for where there is no sin there can be no death there shall be none of the causes of death neither natural within us nor accidental from without us There shall be no Serpent in that Paradise of God no Tempter no forbidden fruit there shall be no infectious Air there shall be no death in the land of the living Again our bodies shall be raised in power they shall have a wonderful strength and vigor whereby they may be inabled to bear that exceeding weight of glory We shall have glorious bodies God shall refine them and make them like the purest sky they shall shine like the brightness of the firmament Dan. xii 3. and as the stars for ever and ever Then shall the Righteous shine forth as the Sun in the Kingdom of their Father Mat. xiii 43. as our Saviour tells us adding immediately who hath ears to hear let him hear Fulgtbit anima luce divinae sapientiae ex quâ luce râ—spiendescentia quaedam in ipâ—a quoque câ—pâ—ra transfundetâ—r Now besides what Scripture hath said it is clear and evident to our very reason that there shall be such a change wrought upon the body whether we consider the exalted state of the Soul which is to be united to it or the nature of the place where it is to have its constant residence and abode even the Heaven of Heavens the Court and Palace of the great King where there is no Earth nor Water nor any other of the Elements of this lower World neither any of the Creatures that live in them but pure light of unconceivable brightness now since we are to be in such a place our bodies must have such qualities as shall be correspondent and suitable to the purity of it for otherwise we should not be capable of living in it the grossness and heaviness of our bodies would incline and sway us down to this dull Earth again we should soon be weary of that strange place and groan and sigh to be delivered from it as the pure and holy Souls of good men do from this Now consider seriously with your selves what the advantages of this glorious change shall be it is a thing agreed upon by learned men and approved by experience that the frame and temper of our minds doth much depend upon the prevailing humors of our body nothing is more plain than this the mutability and changeableness of the disposition of our minds may convince us of it how are we at some times prest down with the weight of the body being almost stifled and suffocated with the noysome vapors that do ascend from it insomuch that we can neither think nor act with that force and vigor that is proper to the Soul and Spirit of man we become in a manner meer lumps of clay and 't is an hard matter to discern any thing in us that may distinguish us from the very brute creatures and yet we the very same persons when the cloud is removed when the fog that benighted us is dispersed and scattered what an alteration do we find how serene and clear are our minds how free are our thoughts how nimble and active is the Soul and how quick and lively in all its motions and operations Now think with your selves if a good temper of body can so much promote the pleasure and happiness of our minds whilst we are here what an exalted condition shall we be in when our bodies are become wholly spiritual when there shall be no gross or earthly alloy in our constitution when the clouds arising from these lower regions shall never interpose or come between the Soul and its glorious object But so much may suffice to be spoken concerning the first particular viz. What this change shall be and wherein it doth consist II. I come now to the second thing intended and that is to shew what assurance we have of it or what grounds and reasons there are to persuade our selves that thus it shall be and this I shall dispatch in a few words we have as great assurance as the thing is capable of and it lies in these four particulars First in the promise of God who in his Word hath declared that whomsoever he leads by his Counsels he will bring at last to his glory besides my Text there are divers other passages of Scripture which I have occasionally mentioned already and therefore shall not trouble you with a needless repetition of them only give me leave to shew you what reason you have to acquiesce and rest satisfied in these promises and that both upon the account of his power and of his truth and faithfulness upon the account of his power he is Omnipotent he is Almighty he can do whatever he pleases men may promise and not be able to perform but we cannot conceive any such thing concerning God without doing him the greatest injury imaginable he that made the world of nothing and framed these bodies of ours out of the dust how easie a thing is it for him to change these vile bodies of ours and transform them into the likeness of that of our glorious Redeemer Again we have reason to depend and rely without scruple upon the promise of God if we consider his truth and faithfulness he cannot lye nor deceive his creatures those are weaknesses and imperfections utterly inconsistent with the holy nature of God and therefore the Scripture pronounces them blessed who trust in God in a right manner because it is impossible they should be deceived or disappointed Psal 146.5 6. Happy is he who hath the God of Jacob for his help In omnibus Deum frielem invenim is in ultimo deficiet faliet August whose hope is in the Lord his God which made Heaven and Earth and all that therein is which keepeth truth for ever Now this God who is just in all his Actions and true and faithful in all his sayings hath told us that he will glorifie these vile bodies of ours 1 Tit. 2. In hope of Eternal Life which God that cannot lye hath promised unto us II. Our assurance lyes in the resurrection and glorification of Christ which was not only an Example and Pattern of ours but is also the Cause because he is risen we shall rise also because he is glorified we may be sure we shall be glorified together with him This appears from the relation we bear unto him he is our head we are the members of his body now if the head be glorious so shall we his members be also we are his servants and followers and therefore may conclude he will in his