3. When the keepers of the house shall tremble and the strong Men shall bow themselves Is it Nimbleness and Agility Use it not to be swift to shed innocent blood to execute evil offices with wicked Men but to be quick in the measures of thy duty to God thy Neighbour and thy Self I will run the way of thy Commandments satih the Psalmist when thou hast enlarged my Heart Because the same evil days come when the Almond Tree shall flourish and the Grashopper shall become a burden And in the withered stalk of Old Age thy joynts shall deny their Offices Is it Beauty Use not this as a snare to thy own or thy neighbours Soul to become a Trap in the hand of the unclean Spirit but further to set off the virtues of the mind as an Emerauld in pure Gold or as Solomon terms Words fitly spoken Prov. xxv 11. As Aples of Gold in Pictures of Silver Because these evil days also come upon thee when these that look out at the Windows wax dim The most sparkling Eyes shall become Dull and Lifeless They shall move no more in the Head or entice into the works of Darkness but in a little their Imperial Seat shall become the Windows of a Lizard or a loathsom Toad Such is the End and Exit that all the powers of the Body do make at Death and in the house of the Grave So likeways it is with all the natural endowments of the Mind as existing in Conjunction with the Body as I have already said and as acting upon temporal Beeings and Objects Profound searches and nimble Wit and Facetious Humour and all evanish Psal cxlvi v. 4. When his Breath goeth out and he returneth to his Dust in that very day his thoughts perish So III. It is with all the great Acts and Conquests of a Mans Life We have heard of the House which Solomon built 1 King 10. v. 4 5. And of the Ascent by which he went up to the House of God admired by the Southern Queen for the Temple it was ordered by a Greater Architect We have heard of the great Babel which Nebuchadnezzar built and of the Tower and Cities of Nimrod Of the Conquests of Alexander and of the great Atchievements of all both Roman Emperors and Hero's And whatever may be the fullest Extent of Mens Acquests or the most beautiful Ornaments of their Habitations from all these doth Death make a total and final Separation even from all the Enjoyments of this Life And which is yet of far greater Importance The Second Serious Thought which I offer to you That they are concluded under an Irreversible State and Condition of Felicity or Misery in another World As the Tree fallcth so it lyeth and as Death leaveth so Judgment findeth This is the Import of all that Doctrine which our Blessed Lord Saviour delivered when he was in the World and of all these Parables by which he represented the State of another Life As in that of the Sheep and the Goats Mat. 25. How plain are the Words And he said to these upon his Right Hand Come ye Blessed of my Father inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the Foundation of the World Again to those upon the left Hand Depart from Me ye Cursed into Everlasting Fire prepared for the Devil and his Angels And in the Conclusion of all and these went into Everlast Punishment but the Righteous into Life Eternal So in that Parable of Dives and Lazarus Luk 15. There is made mention of a great Gulf betwixt the two and declared to be Impassible so that the one cannot come to the other Pray for what is all this but to tell us of an Irreversible State as of Bless and Glory to the One so of Misery and Sorrow to the Other and that without End or Period And as this was the Doctrine of the Blessed Jesus so of all his Servants the Apostles in their time and under the Trust put into their Hands Rom 2.6 Who will render to every Man according to his Works and so forward in the 7 8 9 10 Verses To them who by patient Continuance in Well-doing seek for Glory and Honour and Immortality Eternal Life But unto them that are Contentious and do not obey the Truth but obey Unrighteousness Indignation and Wrath Tribulation and Anguish upon every Soul of Man that doth Evil of the Jew first and also of the Gentile But Glory Honour and Peace c. And now if it be so whence hath arisen the new Doctrine of some of our late Discanters upon the State of another Life who quite Annihilat the Punishments of the Wicked to the great Encouragement and Increase of Atheism and Irreligion Nay though there were no revealed Religion owned amongst Men as these New and Dark Tapers would have it who take the Boldness to set themselves in the Light of the Sun which is a Supposition so contrary to all the Motives of Credibility the History of our Saviours Life Death Resurrection and Doctrine doth give us the plain Analogy and Proportion betwixt Him and all the Types and Prophecies which have been concerning him throwout the whole Jewish Dispensation the Confession of Enemies both Jews and Heathens and the Acknowledgment of Devils themselves That a Man may alsewel deny every thing that he hath not seen though never so convincingly instructed Which were a Practice so absurd that the whole Learned World should run to his Condemnation Far less ground of Certainty do Men acquiesce in and rest upon in other Matters which concern not Religion No Body denies a Hector and an Achilles a Pompey and an Alexander And it is much they deny not a Julius Caesar because an Augustus is made mention of in the New Testament But I say supposing all this only absit Blasphemia yet if we own the Beeing of a God which none amongst all the new sprung spawn of Deists or Demi-Atheists hath yet denied then we must own Him among all the rest of His excellent Attributes to be purely Just and Righteous But how shall He be so if He have not reserved Rewards and Punishments for another Life while in this we see prosperous Villany set before our Eyes throughout all the Ages of the World and the most excellent Virtues groaning under the heaviest Oppressions So that we may easily stumble upon the stumbling Block of the holy Prophet Ps 73. passim throughout the same I was envious at the Foolish when I saw the Prosperity of the Wicked They have no Bands in their Death neither are they in trouble as other Men. And further is he led unto the very brink of Atheism In vain have I cleansed my Heart and washed my hands in Iunocency for I am Plagued and Chastned every Morning But immediately he pulls in the Roynes amd gives himself the Check from the 15. Vers and downward When I sought to know this it was too Painful for me Until I went into the Sanctuary of God
and in the High Ways of the Countrey Or doth either the Urgency of our Affairs or the duty we owe to our friends settle us in any Society seldom or never do we dismiss or part from one another without some Notice or Memorial of Death given from the Fate of our Friends or Neighbours Or take we History in our hand whether Sacred or Prophane and scarce have we Celebrated the Birth and but a little Traced the Life when we are surprised with the Death of the greatest Hero's in the World How Familiar is Death made to us Day by Day in the common Occurrents of our Life and yet how little are we acquainted with the Shibboleth and Language of it or with the Work of the Grave For 1. So little Impression doth it make upon the Minds of Men to Day they are in the House of Mourning and either are or or ought to be deeply Affected with the Stupendous Changes that Death maketh upon the Persons and Families of their Friends and to Morrow their Discourses are as much Larded as ever with Foolish and Prophane Nauseating and truly defileing Jests and Entertainments Others are proud of having a Roman Spirit ascribed to them and therefore talk of Death with as much Superciliousness and Indifferency as these Sadducees against whom the Holy Apostle reasons in the forcited 1 Cor. 15.32 And of whom the Holy Prophet Esay taketh notice in his days Isai 22.13 the common Jargon of whose Communications was Let us eat drink and be merry for to morrow we must die Plutar. Let Epaminondas his Fortitude have all the Praise that the Grecian Ethicks did then deserve who being wounded at the Battle of Mantinea with a Dart or Spear the feathered end of which being broke off stuck in his Body and being told that so soon as it were plucked out he behoved to die took no other notice of the direful Advertisement than to ask first if his Shield were Safe and next if his Army was Victorious and being answered to both in the affirmative thought then fit to tell his Friends that he had lived long enough since he died unvanquished and then bid pluck out the Dart and with it breathed out his last But forgive me to prefer the digested Seriousness of the wise Solomon Eccles 12. who understood the Consequents and weighed the Work of Death in a deeper Recollection of Mind and therefore thought fit to pen a whole serious Chapter upon the different steps of its Approach though in a Natural way And the more ponderous account that Job's Friend makes of it Job 18.14 when he calls it the King of Terrors How great a Stranger and yet how familiar soever a Comerad it be found to the most of Men how little soever they seem to understand the Language of Death and the Work of the Grave so little impression doth it take upon the Minds of Men. II. So little Change doth it work upon their Lives they are alse False and Treacherous they are alse Proud and Vain they are alse Unjust and Unrighteous they are alse Intemperat and Unclean they are alse much sunk in Dotage upon the World they are alse much Strangers to the things of another Life as ever This is too too obvious in the Practice of many Profligats who in the time of their witnessing the Severity of Justice upon the Persons if not of their Accomplices yet of their Neighbours and Acquainrances can have the Hardiness or rather Stupidity to perpetrat the very Crimes for which they die So Picking and Stealing are commonly enough to be found at the Executions of Theeves and Robbers Or at the out-breaking of accidental Fires when the Lives and Goods of some are consumed in Merciless Flames the Hellish Hands of others are busied in carrying away what remains And when these Wicked and Ungodly Men Men Cruel and Unjust come themselves within View of Death seldom do we find them inclined to restore what they have unjustly taken How great Strangers must these needs be to the right Improvement of the Approaches of Death or to the Work of the Grave made Plainly evident in our two former Condescendences however familiar Death be made to them in the common Occurrents of their Lives O Tempora O Mores And thence it is that III. When they come to die they are either shaken with Fears or sunk in Confusion of Mind and no wonder for Death to them is die Executioner of a double Sentence at once strikeing off their Present Beeings and their future Hopes Their Life hath been bad and their Conscience is no better GOD is at Enmity with them and the Pit must needs stand open for them Thence come Horrors and deep Concussions of Mind the exact Reverse of Saint Paul his Prospect of Death Philipp 1.21 To me to live is Christ and to die is Gain But their Life being but a total Alienation from the Life of Christ their Death must necessarly lead them to these Fears and Confusions we speak of For a Wounded Spirit who can bear And it was an excellent Observation of Tacitus upon the Horrors that Tiberius the Emperor professed he dayly endured for his Bloody Cruelty Tandem said he Facinora Flagitia in Supplicium vertuntur At length Mens Sins become their Punishments Witnessing how little these Men have been acquainted with Death or busied about the Work of the Grave May we ask What can make Men Serious It seems nothing from without them can Should Almighty God order a Dreadful Spectre in all the Formidable Shapes in which we can fancy or represent Death to hang about a Mans Body from his Cradle to his Grave at least from his Riper Years when he becometh capable of Rational and Solid Fear We may presume after a short times Familiarity it should become but like the common Scar-Crow which is set up to fright Birds from the early or tender Seed which in a little sit down upon it without Fear This hath been the common Disease of Mankind from the beginning of the World to this day Hence was it that by all the terrible Appearances that GOD made in his Theocracy and immediat Government he took over die Jews they were not frighted unto their Duty or at least kept in it for any considerable time So was it with all the Miracles that the Blessed Jesus did in his Theophania or Divine Appearance amongst Men Notwithstanding of all which His very Disciples and Apostles were not inviolably knit to him or the Work which he came to do in the World You know that one betrayed another denyed and all forsook him upon the first Approach of a Tryal but the Truth is these were Men not yet arrived at these Measures of Grace and Divine Illumination they attained to at the Descent of the Holy Ghost upon them after the Resurrection of our Lord so that nothing from without is like to work upon the Spirits of Men. How just is that Answer which Abraham gave to Dives
Funeral Sermon AT THE Interrment of the very Great and Noble CHARLES LATE Earl of Southeske Who Died at His Castle of Leuchars in the Shire of Fife upon the 9th of August And was Interr'd at His Burial-place near His House of Kinnaird in the Shire of Angus upon the 4th of October 1699. By R. S. D.D. CHRYSOST in x. MATTH Offeramus Deo pro munere quod pro debito tenemur reddere PHILIPP i. 23. Having a desire to depart to be with Christ which is far better AUGUSTIN de Civit Dei Mala Mors putanda non est quam bona vita praecessit EDINBURGH Printed by James Watson in Craig's-Closs M. DC.XC.IX TO The right Honourable truely Virtuous and truely Noble MARY Countess Dowager of Southeske MADAM I Know nothing can offer it self with more Advantage for Acceptance at your Hands than what bears the Name of Him who is gone that other part of your Self whom it hath pleased Almighty God to Call sometime before you to the Blessedness of another Life Whose Image in Writing or the just account of His signal Virtues must do Him and all Men of the like Endowments more Honour than the most beautiful Stroaks of a skilful Pincil Whatever Sweetness was in His Nature shining thorow every Line of His Countenance what Sageness what Honour what Authority yet to know Him better and have a fuller scheme of the Capacities of His Soul expanded and laid open the Philosopher * Plato would have found his Experiment to good purpose in Him who thus expressed the Trial he took of a Man Loquere ut te videam i. e. Speak that I may See thee Whose Words never missed to set forth a clear and wel-digested Mind I have said but what is just of His Virtues in the short following Narrative and I conceive all this may contribut to stir again your wonted Sorrows for the Loss of Him against which I have often laboured to fortify you but I hope the Grace of God with the measures of Natural Prudence you are endowed with shall secure agninst the Alarm of these few Lines And I shall further excuse them on this head because I know that a generouâ— and affectionat Regret hath its own Sweetness in it only make it Christian and all is safe And do His Memory so much Honour and the Christian Laws so much Justice as to imitat His Excellent Virtues and add your own to them which I will not flatter you to name And I am hopeful you will go very near to compleat the Chain which is the earnest Prayer alsewel as the humble Request of MADAM Your most affectionat Well-wisher and most obedient humble Servant R. S. Christian Reader I Set before thee what I hope thou art careful every Morning to take a view of that the August Roman may not out-do the serious Christian Severus Imp. who caused make his Coffin and set it by him to mind him of his End and Exit out of the World which the Business of our Life is but too ready to make us forget I only add this That none of the Advantages of this World can secure thee against it else neither That nor This Great Man had died Farewel JOB xxx 23. For I know that Thou wilt bring me to Death and to the House appointed for all Living THESE Words exhibit and set forth to us a Truth carefully to be Remembered and seriously Pondered as by all the Individuals of Mankind so by every particular Person in this Great and Noble Audience as containing a Mene Tekel and irreversible Sentence of our being necessarly and inevitably separated from all the Kingdoms of the World and the Glory thereof They are spoken to us by the Excellent Job as bottomed upon a two-fold Certainty 1. The Infallible Forsight of his own particular Fate For I know Thou wilt bring me to Death Words obliging us to a Serious Pause and a very Inquisitive Recollection What a Me is this and by whom are these Words uttered Not by one of the Common Rout of Mankind at a venture whose Pretensions commonly are but very small to the Indulgences and Dispensations of Heaven but by a great and singular Friend of the most High Characterised by Him in the first Chapter of this Book of Job and 8th Verse in these Words spoken to the most exact Check and inveterat Destroyer of Mankind the Devil Hast thou considered My Servant Job that there is none like him in the Earth a perfect and an upright Man one that feareth God and esheweth evil And in the view and prospect of Death what Favour think we might he justly have expected was Enoch translated and did not see Death had Elijah a fiery Chariot to carry him to the Regions of Blessedness and might not Job have looked for some extraordinary way of being brought into the same Courts Nay but I know Thou wilt bring me to Death And since he hath said so let us make ready for it the more wretched Sinners of Mankind But 2. These Words are uttered not only upon the Forsight of his own particular Fate but upon the Inevitable Destiny and Fate of all Mankind And therefore doth he here term Death which is a Metonymie of the Effect for the Cause the House appointed for all Living The blessed Apostle expresseth it thus 1 Cor. 15.22 In Adam all die speaking of the Great Argument of the Resurrection Perfected and truely Instructed by the Death and Resurrection of the Blessed Jesus And when Men that are Vain upon the Antiquity of their Pedegree and Extract begin to Enumerat their Ancestors It 's to tell the World that so many more Mortals lived once upon the Earth And though never so Great and never so Wise though never so Rich and never so Potent yet behoved they to yeild to the Common Fate of Mankind And with one of them very lively to express their Conviction in that Matter who upon the Death of a Dear Child and the surprising Advertisement given of it made no other Account of it than this Scio me genuisse mortalem I know I did beget a Mortal To which we shall only add the Statutum est Heb. 9.27 It is appointed for Men once to Die Or if we need to say further upon that Point let the Experience of all Ages and our own daily Experience end the Inquiry And now how deeply is it to be regreted that however Death be the most familiar Comerad of Humane Life yet of all Others it is least Acquainted with it Though he that bears the Passing Bell in any tolerable Populous Place as he opens the Morning so he shuts up the Evening with it Besides the Noise of his Fatal Monitor at the Common Funeral Hours and Appointments and more Plentifully in these Times wherein God hath shewed his Anger against Us by breaking the Staff of Bread and with it the Common Stock of Health and gives Death so frequently in all the Streets of our Cities
Luk. 15.29 When he was asking of him that he would send one from the Dead to his five Brethren upon the Earth who were in hazard of coming to the same Place of Torment They have Moses and the Prophets said he let them hear them But replyed the rich Glutton if one went unto them from the Dead they will repent To which again was made that most Righteous Return If they hear not Moses and the Prophets neither will they he perswaded though one rose from the Dead So that nothing from without us is like to make Men Serious All the Funeral Parads on Earth all the Paleness that sits upon the Faces of our dead Friends and all the Solitude it leaves upon their Families serve but a little to amuse the Minds of Natural Men and e're we are aware the Impressions are gone But a right and Habitual Seriousness is the Effect of a great deal more Recollection than the Generality of Men alloweth themselves and of a great deal more Application to Almighty God than is ordinarly found with them Thence indeed comes the Work of God upon the Heart And except you think you cannot learn except you ask you cannot receive Except you seek you cannot find Except you knock it cannot be opened to you And were I able to awaken you out of your Securities and quicken your Meditations and set you forward in your Applications to Almighty God by suggesting to you any such Rouzing Considerations as this Subject may afford us I have my End and you have yours I hope in coming to this Audience There be therefore these two Serious Thoughts I would have you to weigh with me in order to this End and as arising genuinely enough from this important Subject I. Death maketh a total and final Separation betwixt us and all our Temporal Enjoyments as First From all the Stations in which we are placed Indeed by the way it is by different Stations and due Subordinations that the Societies in Heaven and Earth are governed And if any pretend by another Method to subsist it is Heteroclite and Singular and must necessarly terminat in the deepest Confusions But let us reflect all the Beauty of Order and all the Measures of a true and Temporal Felicity upon these Stations of Men and the Peaceful Effects of them throughout the World Yet as to the Men themselves it is perhaps fit enough to tell them at least to bring them to Remembrance at all Occasions of this Nature that they must drop from their Benches and as the Holy Psalmist speaking of the Highest of them Psal lxxxii v. 6 7. I have said Ye are Gods And all of you the Sons of the most High but ye shall die like Men and fall like one of the Princes And since it is so behave your selves as these that live in a continual Prospect of Death and not as such who have nothing but Worldly Projects before their Eyes Pray do not either desire these Stations while you have them not nor cajol your selves in them while you have them merely upon these following Heads with Worldly and Carnal Men as 1. To Deck your selves with Plumes of Glory to be admired of your Fellow Creatures Thus do the Vain affect the Heights of the World and whom in this place I shall only call to Mind of that Advertisement of our Blessed Lord and Saviour Matth. vi v. 2. Given with Respect unto the right Distribution of Charity When thou doest thine Alms do not sound a Trumpet before thee as the Hypocrites do in the Synagogues and in the Streets that they may have Glory of Men. Verily I say unto you they have their Reward And no other indeed can I promise them in another World But upon the contrary when they are by Death which hasteth upon them stript of all their Plumes of Glory and covered with the Beggers Mantle of common Grass they shall be brought to the Blush before the Throne of God where they have nothing to cover the Vileness and Nakedness of their Crimes and Faults and from thence to the lowest and loathsomest Pit of Miseries Neither 2. Use these your Stations Majori fastu incedere to step with a loftier paw or to exercise an higher hand over the same thy fellow Creatures For so do the Proud affect their Stations But remember Thou must ly by the side of him whom sometime thou thought unworthy to stand before thee And therefore Walk softly and Speak with an humble Voice and remember the Regions of endless Darkness and the Place of remediless Torments for the Vain and the Proud are there And 3. Use not your Stations to this purpose to act Revenge upon thine Enemy by so doing thou may prompt Revenge in him to thine own Dishonour if he chance to Survive thee to set his Foot with Indignation upon thy Breast while thou lyest upon thy Back in the Dust and so may bring him with thy self into the very same place of Torment Nor Use your Stations for no other end than to enhaunse a Naboth's Vineyard or a poor Man's Ewe-lamb Thy Possessions shall not avail thee when for an inch of the Earth thou finds thou hast lost a spann of Heaven even all the Regions of Blessedness Nor shall thy Pleasures relish with thee in the midst of these Flames thy Lusts have kindled upon thee Remember how narrow thy Lodgings are in the Grave and how scant thy Provisions are among the Damned This is the first serious Thought I have offered thee That Death shall make a total and final Separation betwixt us and all our temporal Enjoyments As from all the Stations in which we are placed so II. From all the Natural Endowments in Body or Mind with which we are blessed I speak of these as they consist in conjunction with one another in this perishing and imperfect Life For after Death the Souls of the Blessed shall be infinitely better endued when brought nearer unto God and in fellowship with the Spirits of just Men made perfect Here we see but in part and know but in part but but there we shall see as we are seen and know as we are known So after the Resurrection our Bodies shall have infinitely more perfect powers 1 Cor. xv 42. Sowen in Corruption raised in Incorruption Sowen in Weakness raised in Power Sowen a Natural raised a Spiritual body Only here as the powers of the body and faculty of the Soul exist in Conjunction with one another in this perishing and imperfect state at least in so far as they ad upon temporal beeings and objects they are quite broken of and cut short for which reason in like manner as I have already said we are to take special care not to use them to unrighteous ends In the body is it strength Use it not to Oppress but to rescue and defend the Weak as Moses would have done Exod. ii 13. betwixt the two contending Israelites Because Solomon's evil days haste upon thee Eccles xii
then understood I their end And so furth But in the 24 Vers Thou shalt guide me with thy Counsel and afterward receive me to Glory And in the 27 Vers Lo they that are far from Thee shall Parish They that is All they An Indefinite being equivalent to an Universal And since not all of them Perish but some of them Prosper in this Life we must necessarly conclude that Punishments are reserved for them in an other Except you say in the next place with the fore-mentioned Deists and Disciples of Epicurus that Almighty God exerciseth no Providence nor regardeth what is done upon the Earth If so what account shall we make of the Misgivings of the best laid Designs and Projects amongst Men and the success of those things that having less Counsel and Contrivance in them pass commonly under the Name of Accidents What Accounts can we make of many Instances in Prophane History If these disingenuous Creatures will not admit Sacred History to the benefit of Common Credit and Repute least they read their own Condemnation in the midst of it What Account can we make of the disappointment of Brennus and the Gauls in their designed surprize of the Capitol of Rome by the keckling of the Geese in Juno's Temple What Account can we make of Sardanapalus his burning himself with his own Women in a Pile of Wood who loved so much to live in the Flames of his Lusts What Account shall we make of St. Augustin his Digression which he thought not of in a Sermon against the Manichees by which Firmus a Manichee was happily Converted What shall we make at another time of his mistaking his Way by which he escaped the bloody Hands of the Donatists who lay in wait for him Or if they will carry any regatd only to the History of the Old Testiment so anciently and closly asserted by the then Learned and most Celebrated Nation of the Jews and so firmly adhered to till this very Day And what a Providence do you think was the saving of Moses in the Ark of Bulrushes Exod. ii And what a Providence that Pharaoh's Daughter should own and inhaunse him and what a Providence that his Mother was allowed to Nurse him and what a Providence that he should refuse when he came to riper Years to be called the Son of Pharaoh's Daughter that he might step up to a far more Glorious Trust thorow a Thicket of interwoven Dangers and Contradictions to be the Deliverer of the People of God What a Providence was it that Joseph was sold into Egypt and by the way of a Prison was sent to Pharaoh's Court for the safety of these very Brethren that sold him Nay what a Providence that David escaped out of the City of Keilah where he thought himself so secure when afterwards he was made to understand the Keilits would certainly have delivered him up Or if these be interpreted Accidents still and this be all the account that can be made of the singular Providences which every considering Person is able to find out in the Tract of his own Life Let us again mind these Atheâ—sts in Masquerad of the essential and inseparable Attributs of that God whom they still own in His Beeing If that God be Omniscient and infinitely Wise which they must agree to He must needs see all the wicked Actions of ungodly Men. And then if He be alse Just as He is Wise He must alse necessarly Punish them or then acquiesce in a very great Disorder in the Oeconomy of that World which He made But not to trouble the World more with that Sect of Men let us only bid them reflect upon the Quiet of their own Minds when they do that which is Good And the Resentments of a natural Conscience upon perpetrated Wickedness And remember who said Hic murus abeneus esto Nil conscire sibi And again Integer vitae scelerisque purus Non eget Mauri jaculis nec arcu c. Horat But if otherways Cur hos Evasisse putes quos diri conscia facti Mens habet attonitos c. Inven Nay these bitter Resentments of a Natural Conscience are but the Fore-runers of that Worme that never dieth in the Regions of the Damned And indeed as we have already said they pass into an irreversible and Irremediless State of Misery And if so In the next place To what purpose are all the Soul Masses that are offered up in the Church of Rome for such as pass into the State of the Dead to shorten or totally to remove their Sorrows And that according to the offerings of Charity that are made for them at least Sums of Money which are cast into the Treasury of the Church If our Saviour had meaned any such State of Life from which Redemption could have been so Purchased how should Dives have been concluded under this irreversible Condition while he lest such vast Substance behind him which might have been happily employed to so good purpose But Abraham insinuats no such thing in his Answers to Dives in the fore-cited Parable And now Christians if these things be True as I think there is enough said to evince the Truth of them That Death makes a total and sinal Separation betwixt us and all the Enjoyments of this World and concludes us under an irreversible State and Condition in an other Life How serious ought we to be improving the Advertisement my Text gives us It is the Custom of Children only to throw away Pearls for Peeble-stones and real Gold for the more glistering Counterfeit but Wise Men part with the lesser always for the greater Advantages And what Comparison is there betwixt Time and Eternity betwixt the pleasures of Sin that last but for a Season and the never ending Joyes Felicities of another Life Nay betwixt the Lusts and Passions that really toss Men amidst the Diseases they bring upon their Bodies and the resentments they break up in their Minds and Spirits and these equal and continual Satisfactions of the Blessed in the presence of God and the Societies of just Men made Perfect And to this blessed State and Conditions we are hopeful â—ur truely Great our truely Noble our truely Virtuous Friend is gone Whose Dust lyeth now before us to be returned to that Dust of the Earth out of which it was taken Not do I say this out of any Complement to His Friends and Memory but from very considerable Evidences and Grounds of Charity And therefore shall presume to set before you for your Christian Imitation some of these excellent Virtues which did most luculently shine forth in his Lise And by which there was a considerable Obedience given to some of the most important of the Gospel Precepts And this I take to be the chief Design of Funeral Discourses upon our dead Friends to make their Light so shine before Men that others seing their Good Works at least hearing of them may Glorify their Father which is in Heaven We find