A SERMON Preached at the FUNERAL OF THAT Truly Pious and Faithful Minister of Jesus Christ Mr. Nich. Thorowgood At Godelman in Surrey By JOHN BVCK Minister of the Gospel LONDON Printed for Tho. Cockerill at the Three Legs in the Poultrey over-against the Stocks-Market 1692. To the REVEREND Mr. Edward Veal Minister of the Gospel in Wapping SIR COULD I be ungrateful your Name had never been prefixed to this Sermon For as you were pleased to command me this last Office of respect to the Deceased of which you gave me an Example but a few Months before on the like sad and sorrowful Occasion that call'd us together as Mourners So 't is but Justice you should allow me the liberty when my dearest Friends go off the Stage so fast to express my Thankfulness for one living whose Friendship is so greatly valuable Any who know me know I truly rejoice in the happy Relation that favours me with the honour of calling you Tutor or Brother Reading and Books have been but part of my small Improvement Your Friendly and Affable Converse in your Family and since has been such as I must blame my own Dulness for if I have not been advantaged thereby We were ever mutually dear one to the other distance and absence have but heightened our Reciprocal Affections that on your part must be owned the result only of a kind generous Disposition but on mine as a just Tribute paid to your real Worth And may it be yet our Emulation which of us shall continue the most Affectionately Cordial May the God of Heaven long lengthen out your days of Service to his Church and Crown therein your Ministerial Labours with the most blessed Success There are none more desirous of it than is SIR Your most Affectionate Brother and Hearty Servant JOHN BUCK PHILIPP I. 23. For I am in a strait between two having a desire to depart and to be with Christ which is far better 'T IS pity any private Christian of Exemplary Zeal for God and Religion should at any time go unlamented to his Grave much more any serious painful and laborious Preacher that like the kind Silk-worm hath spinned out his own Bowels for the Publick good and been others loud Call from Sin and Vanity to the sincere Profession of the Gospel as their highest Advantage and Gain We are greatly stupid if we eye not their death the most gainful to themselves as our own misery and loss the loudest Alarm to a serious preparation for our own Dissolution and Change that must as certainly overtake us as it hath them and the saddest indication of Heaven's severest Displeasure against us in the inundation of the heaviest Calamities that by their powerful Intercessions they might have kept off and prevented if there be any thing of weight in the most sacred complaint The righteous perisheth Isa 57.1 and no man layeth it to heart and merciful men are taken away none considering that the righteous is taken away from the evil to come And who can forbear dropping a sigh or weeping a tear if not a floud for the death of him we have lately followed to the Earth and seen covered up therewith as a much-to-be-lamented loss as a Christian and a Minister and of justice challenging a greater tribute of Respect to his Memory and Ashes than what yet we have paid But leaving at present so Melancholy a Theme the sad Occasion of our Assembling Let us come nearer the Text that plainly tells us Life or Death as they most effectually advance the Honour of Christ should be the chief matter of our Rejoycing and Triumph But as it is hard to determine whether one or the other the one in a painful service in his Church the other in a holy dying Profession of his Truth hath the greatest tendency thereunto so a difficulty oftentimes almost invincible attends the Choice As for the division of the Text it naturally brancheth it self out into these parts 1st 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 St. Paul's sharp Conflict with each For I am in a strait betwixt two q. d. Hemm'd in with Difficulties not knowing which to take nor which to leave under a perplexity of mind not capable of answering Arguments for one or the other A pressure of Spirit not to be expressed as is elsewhere the import of the Phrase Luke 12.50 Acts 18.5 2. One chief Reason thereof His desire of being with Christ in a departure Having a desire to depart and to be with Christ This was what stirred up in him as earnest longings for Death as hopes of further service to his dear Philippians did of Life or caused him to breathe out the most passionate desires of quitting his abode on Earth for that of Heaven the Greek 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Having a desire as it denotes the greatest permanency and constancy thereof not a sick or faint velleity or sudden Passion that soon vanisheth and is gone so 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to depart it imports a dissolution of parts of which we were before composed or the quitting of our Clayie Cottages as persons do their Houses in a Journey or a Ship the Shore in a Voyage 3. His true judgment of that estate Far far 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or much much the better i. e. To himself as his own greatest personal Gain tho not to others the other Reason of his strait in what he next utters V. 24. Nevertheless to abide in the flesh is more needful for you From whence ariseth this Threefold Doctrine Truly holy souls Doct. I when Life and Death are set before them may be in a very great strait as to their choice of either Truly holy souls are immediately with Christ at their departure from the body Doct. II To be with Christ at our death is far better than any bodily continuance on earth Doct. III Truly holy souls when life and death are set before them may be in a very great strait Doct. I as to their choice of either St. Paul was so not willing of a cessation from works nor the delay of his Reward desirous of converting more fouls to Christ and yet longing to be himself with him in a strait whether he should be yet longer surrounded with the most afflictive troubles as are those of this present life of one kind or another or received to a Heavenly Enlargement and Rest And what was his Conflict may be that of others under different Apprehensions or Temptations At one time they are reasoning there is a Serpent every where with his alluring Apple except in the Heavenly Paradise How can I leave this plentiful Estate to the spoils of luxurious Spend-thrifts riepend enough without them for destruction How this dear companion of all my earthly comforts and sorrows How these Children of my delights standing as Olive-plants about my table Psal 128.3 e're I can leave them Holy and Gracious Might I not if longer spared in the world be of farther use and service
end be like his Embrace Piety as your richest gain avoid sin as your highest folly and remember That as aged and stricken in years the hoary head is a crown of glory Prov. 16.31 when found in the way of righteousness so as young you are called upon to Remember your Creator in the days of your youth Eccl. 12.1 The dedication of your youthful parts strength and vigour to him and his service seems greatly intended in that under the Law Deut. 18.4 Chap. 26.2 Mat. 21.15 John 21.7 of the first fruits for Sacrifice The Hosannahs of Children were pleasing to Christ in the Temple St. John of any his youngest Disciple was evidently his most beloved Disciple On you of any are founded the fairest hopes of being the most faithful Instruments of service in Church and State in the room of those deceased You are of any both the joys and fears of indulgent Parents and painful Preachers almost weary of this world they can do no more good in it and you only are those that can turn the old Hellish Proverb A Young Saint and an Old Devil into what looks more like Truth and appears divine be the Doctrine of our final Perseverance in Grace begun acknowledged such a Saint in Youth and a bright Angel for Holiness in Old Age an Angel in Youth and a Seraphim in Glory To be with Christ at our death Doct. III is far better than any bodily continuance on the earth In the prosecution of which I shall only shew 1. How or in what respects it is so 2. The Use 1. How or in what respects it is so And here where shall I begin or where shall I end What a work have I undertaken How unfit am I to discourse of the blissful state of departed souls in Heaven who know so little of Souls or Spirits on Earth Shall I describe a City or Plantation I never saw or viewed but in the History or Map Much less a future Glory which I am sure much more to fail in the description of Methinks I hear it more than whispered Who is this that darkneth counsel Job 38.2 by words without knowledge Stop thou stammering Tongue and frail Mortal thy blackest Pen with which thou art sure but to shade and darken what thou fondly hopest in lively colours to paint out and enliven 2 Cor. 12.4 They were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 words unutterable or unspeakable the blessed Apostle the great St. 1 Cor. 2.9 Paul heard in his highest Rapture Eye hath not seen ear hath not heard nor heart conceived the things which God hath prepared for them that love him And wilt thou attempt to tell us more 't is impossible alas impossible But a dark and blurr'd discovery being better than none be pleased to take it in this two-fold particular only viz. 1st A total removal of all Evil. 2dly The actual possession and enjoyment of all Good 1. A total removal of all Evil as of Sin and Sorrow 1. Of Sin Sin our greatest burthen here Rom. 7.24 the which made us often to utter the Apostolick Complaint Oh wretched man that I am who shall deliver me from the body of this death shall be none then but be destroyed rather as in its Actings and Woundings so in its very Esse or Being Not a vain Thought the sinfulness of which once enkindled in the Almighty A repentance of his ever making man Gen. 6.5 6. Jer. 4.14 and we are bid to dislodge Not a vain Word Our words are so far so that we may call most of them what the Satyrist calls some Pers Sat. 5. Bullaras nugas utpote simile Bullis vento plenis Rev. 3.4 Bubbly toys they are so like a Bubble full of wind not a sinning Principle a sinning Disposition a sinning Inclination is then remaining We are cloathed in White the most lively Emblem of Holiness and have Spirits made perfect Our Sanctification is compleat Heb. 12.23 1 John 3.12 Ephes 4.13 the Divine Image in which we were at first formed most blessedly restored And oh happy blissful State that at once strips us of all our former rotten Rags of Sin and Lust and most richly adorns us with those of a primitive Perfection and Purity How should this be the Mark and Prize we aim at It was that St. Paul did so in and under his greatest Spiritual Attainments Philip. 3.13 14. 2. Of Sorrow Sorrows of one kind or another attend every worldly Condition We come into the World with a Cry and take our farewel of it with a Groan One of any the severest of Sorrows is bemoaning himself under spiritual Desertions the prevalency of Corruption and Buffetings of Satan Another passionately weeping for the death of Relations this day like Jonah's Gourd flourishing the next dead and withered Now the delight of our Eyes and the chief of our Affections Gen. 24.3 but anon a dead Sarah that must be buried out of our sight Another expressing his Poverty and Losses through Plunderings and Persecutions Another his restless days and nights through Pains and Sickness But farewel Sorrow farewel Grief in Heaven as no place for either Then no more Devil to assault and tempt us nor malicious World to afflict and persecute us no more aking Head sick Heart burning Fever grinding Stone painful Cholick trembling Palsie wasted Strength mouldring Carcase no more scoffing Ishmael profane Esau spiteful Canaanite scratching Thorn pricking Brier but an end of sinning and an end of sorrowing and weeping an end of sinning and an end of dying Rev. 20.4 1 Thess 4.17 a dying once and a living with the Lord for ever And not only is it better to be with Christ at our death than to enjoy the longest bodily continuance here as to this two-fold Evil of Sin and Sorrow we are fully delivered from But 2. As to the actual possession and enjoyment of all good 1. A perfection of Knowledge Here it is blemished with much imperfection and ignorance One who had made the sacred Scriptures his chief study confessed Multo plura nescio quam scio He was ignorant of more than he knew And some of the Jewish Rabbies the like in their known Saying Elias cum venerit solvet omnia Elias when he cometh shall give a solution to all things though we cannot But then shall all our present ignorance and imperfection be done away and our knowledge be no longer in part but compleat and perfect not mediate or at the second hand only by discourse study and meditation but immediate and intuitive And that as of God his Divine Being and Perfections 1 Cor. 13.12 so of Christ his Mysterious Incarnation Union of Natures without change of Properties and of the Holy Spirit of Grace how the same in Essence and yet distinct as to Person How Creation Redemption and Sanctification are the proper work of one or the other and yet as works ad extra alike applicable to either And of the most
the clouding or Eclipses of it but is a Life of joy that lasts for ever A Joy that is essentially compleat at death but will be every way so at the Resurrection in the re-union of our Souls to our Bodies Phil. 3.21 Fashioned like unto Christ's most glorious body It being then this despicable Clay shall arise incorruptible and immortal 1 Cor. 15.53 and be alike Partners in glory with our Souls as they have both been so in work and service Eternally in glory for ever with the Lord And oh madness unspeakable to prefer the greatest Comforts and Enjoyments of Life before such the greatest Happiness and Joy at Death Oh what are Riches Honours and worldly Greatness that you should put them into the same Scale Alas but vain and empty dead Comforts dead Enjoyments that speak you as foolish in the hugging of them as was the Egyptian in that of the Carved Image or Statue of his dead Son he hoped with Crown'd Garlands and a profound respect paid to it would have been the total cure of his Sorrow but as the Historian tells us proved rather the life and resurrection thereof They are but sweet Dishes Death with his Voider will soon sweep away leaving you only a cutting Reckoning to pay for the full feast and meal of them you have made They are but Comforts and Enjoyments that are every day on their wing from you were not you so from them Prov. 23.5 And will you then continue to do this haste rather from their tempting Destruction make sure of more satisfactory Delights I mean those of a heavenly State which righteous Souls as the former Doctrine tells you presently partake of at their Death And this last they are most unspeakably happy in beyond any the longest bodily continuance on Earth But to hasten to a more practical improvement of what hath been said As The VSE let it be inferred 1st Oh the dreadful Misery of the Damned For if to be with Christ at our death is so desirable to be banished from him then must needs be dreadful Oh the sad exchange they have made of this Life for what is future Tongue cannot express the least part of their Torment and Sorrow and that from the dismal place they are in set forth to us in all the doleful Expressions of Horrour Isa 30 ult 1 Pet. 3.19 Rev. 20.3 Matt. 13.42 Rev. 19.20 Luke 16.28 Matt. 22.13 2 Pet. 2.4 Jud. 13. as of Tophet a Prison Bottomless Pit Furnace of Fire Lake of Fire Place of Torment Outer-Darkness Chains and Blackness of Darkness Their Eternity Ever Ever being as a thousand Daggers wounding or Scorpions stinging and the Accusations of Conscience still gnawing them like Prometheus his Vulture for their inexcusable folly as in running themselves upon the Misery they might so fairly have avoided so in losing the God the Saviour the Kingdom and Glory they might have gained And shall then the Offers of each be slighted any longer by you Why so foolishly contented to be miserable when wooed to be happy Trifle not away one offer of Grace more lest it be your last 2. Be less dismayed if holy and righteous at the approach of death as to your selves and learn more to moderate your sorrow for that of others you had reason to believe such 1. Be less dismayed if holy and righteous at the approach of death as to your selves It is alas as to you but an enemy unstung and disarmed if in its self the King of Terrors Job 18.14 what but lodgeth your Bodies in a Grave the most sweetly perfumed by the Burial of the Son of God and your Souls with him in endless Happiness and so as Conquerors already over each bids you to Triumph Oh death where is thy sting Oh grave 1 Cor. 15.55 56 57. where is thy victory The sting of death is sin and the strength of sin is the law but thanks be to God who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ 2. Learn more to moderate your sorrow for that of others you have reason to believe such For how should the sence of their Gain swallow up all repinings at your Loss and excite you to as great a willingness of parting with them as any have to the parting with their Children to the remotest ends of the earth for the sake of Temporal Advancements Methinks upon this account sorrow too often usurps the Throne of Joy We should even be weeping at the Birth of an Infant and rejoycing at the Death of a Saint Or if which Nature allows us the eye must drop a tear and the poor pained heart ease it self in sighs and groans it should be for this chiefly That they have gotten so much the start of us as to be at their Kingdom and Rest before us Which as we are called to in the deaths of others so particularly in that of this Worthy Person deceased Concerning whom I may modestly speak That if his Soul be not now with his Redeemer in Heaven there are but few of us who have not reason to despair of getting thither So heavenly truly and spiritual at all times were his words and discourse that we might have thought him unfit for earth long before he left it His Observation of the Lords Day was most exemplary as never tho most mornings the earliest riser sooner from his bed nor later in it even impatient through the whole of it of having his Mind and Ears filled with worldly Concerns or to see any part of it unredeemed And as for his Industry and Painfulness in his Ministerial Work where he last was both in Lectures and Fasts it must be confessed He laboured more abundantly than us all 1 Cor. 15.10 His Affections to you in his coming to you drowned greater Offers as thinking himself more happy in the Affections than the Fleece of his Flock And how painful and acceptable his short-liv'd Labours were among you needs no fuller a proof than his Last Sermon he Preached with Death's cold Dart stricken to his heart and the general Lamentations you express for him Upon the Death of his dearest Relation in very affecting expressions he uttered the deepest sense of his own he was heard thus to express himself The Lord fit those whose turn is next Ah! What would I not do what would I not forgo for Christ and Heaven And where is he now but with him reaping the full Reward of all his Painful Labours Not complaining any longer with his dearest Lord John 1.11 He came to his own but his own received him not Nor bleeding under the unkindnesses of Friends or Enemies But as to his own fulness of Joy and the miseries that seem to threaten you speaking tho dead the same Language the other did Luke 23.28 Daughters of Jerusalem weep not for me but weep for your selves and for your children And surely as his gain you should acquiesce in your loss for can you bring him back
in it than hitherto through remissness or sloth I have been Are not threatned Judgments calling for Intercessors I might be one in the gap to prevent Are not hungry bellies and naked backs calling for Relief It will be at the last day my greatest Honour and Happiness Mat. 25.34 to the 40. to have fed and cloathed them Are not dark secure and comfortless Souls needing Counsels Awakenings and Supports I 'de spare no pains to Awaken Direct and Chear And shall I be of farther use and service to neither Have I finished my whole work Might no Talent be better improved nor in any thing the Honour of my dear Redeemer more advanced Is his Church in her fullest Glory I would rejoice to see her in Am I dying ere Religion is living And soon again as conquered by quite different motives they are breathing out quite contrary desires pleading When Lord shall I be released from this present bondage and misery When from this heavy load of Corruption When from the cruel buffetings of Satan When from the grief I am in for the Afflictions of thy Zion for which I weep Lam. 1.16 mine eye mine eye runneth down with water When from the tempting Flatteries and unkind Persecutions of this vain and foolish world that would allure or affright me from my Reward and Crown When shall I exchange these dead cold and heartless duties for Triumphant Praises and Hallelujahs When for transient visits on earth shall I have a permanent enjoyment of Thee in Heaven Ah! I see a beauty a desirableness in nothing that can be matched with thy All-Glorious Perfections Husband Wife and Children are dear but thou art dearer to me than all how it repents me that I should place so much of affection on them as I have done Come Lord Jesus come quickly Rev. 22.20 Judg. 5.28 Cant. 8.14 Why so slack in thy approaches Why is thy chariot so long in coming Why tarry the wheels thereof Make haste my beloved and be thou like to a Roe or young Hart upon the mountains of spices But a little while and I shall be triumphing in thy blessed Arms and Bosom where I shall sin no more and sorrow no more A Pain a Sigh a Groan more as the happiest I ever felt finisheth my days and compleats my joys And who longs not with me for the approach of this hour Shall I carry none with me to Heaven as unwilling to be happy alone Holy David was in a strait as to the choice of three the greatest evils Famine Pestilence and Sword 2 Sam. 24.14 The Saint is oftentimes so as to two the greatest goods the Work and Service of Life and the Reward and Gain of Death Censure not any for it Vse I 'T is sad when an over-weening affection to any creature-comfort is the reason of it Earthly delights are put into the same balance with heavenly but not where hopes of farther service in the world is so O Grace indeed to be found weighing the Soul-advantages of others in the same scale with our own O Noble Soul that can be willing to be one moment out of Heaven in hopes of being others happy Convoy thither 2. Think Heaven desirable Needs must it be so as what frees us from every pinching strait particularly that of Living or Dying For the Soul there how unwilling soever it was to quit this life is wholly freed from any the least inclination of returning back to it under no more sharp conflicts of leaving creature-comforts but triumphs in God as better than all Truly holy souls are immediately with Christ at their departure Doct. II With him as in a state of Separation from their earthly bodies so without the assuming of any Aereal there is not any more need of this for a heavenly converse with their fellow-Spirits than of Angels one with another With him as not sleeping in the Grave till the Resurrection nor tormented with Purgatory-Flames As the former is an inlet to the greatest Infidelity and Atheism so the latter is greatly derogatory from the Riches of Free-Grace in their forgiveness and pardon as implying a Punishment of a fault remitted a Forgiving the Treason but Executing the Traytor For which may they continue to plead who experience the secular gain thereof as of any the most profitable fire in their Kitchen others as great Masters of Reason as themselves dare not but as fully redeemed by the Blood of Christ from all future pains and misery can heartily laugh at those of an imaginary Purgatory For we are told we have Redemption through his blood Eph. 1.7 the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of his grace And how far a less noble Redemption and Forgiveness would it be than he hath obtained for us were we after this life to be refined for Heaven in Flames according to the Popish notion not differing from those of Hell Luke 23.43 except in duration The Converted Thief enters the very day he suffered into Paradise It is not to be thought that no greater happiness was designed him in the promise of it than the assurance of it after some longer continuance of time Acts 7.59 than the very present day in which it was made Stephen cemmends his Spirit to Christ at his Death Our good works Rev. 14.13 Eccl. 12.7 as meant of their reward are said to follow us The dust to return to the earth as it was and the spirit unto God that gave it And which seems to be the most convincing Argument of it Are or can they be rightly desirous of a Dissolution upon no other account It is not to be supposed Thinking Rational Creatures should be willing to part with Life the greatest of Temporal Blessings for the Redemption of which a man will give skin for skin Job 2.8 and all that he hath for a silent state in the grave or the most insupportable of pains No rather strip them of their hopes of a present happiness at death and very unaccountable are their desires of it They as knowing when the earthly house of this tabernacle is dissolved 2 Cor. 5.1 2. they shall have a building of God an house not made with hands eternal in the heavens are groaning enrnestly desiring to be clothed upon with their house which is from heaven Don't be prejudiced against Religion or a holy life Vse for any the greatest earthly afflictions or sufferings of gracious souls You have little reason to be so their Deaths are so happy if their Lives are so miserable their Exit is Peace their Reward Life Everlasting Psal 37.37 Gal. 6.8 and their present sorrow and affliction the blessed school in which they have been disciplined and trained up for it And will you continue to be so prejudiced Psal 119.67 Live rather their lives as you would dye their deaths It is most foolish without this to wish Numb 23.10 Let me dye the death of the righteous and let my last