have the like tendency Temptations I say the mention whereof was not to be omitted as pointing at the Tempter the wicked one who first brought Sin and Death into this World of ours And who is though the conceal'd the first and most proper seat of the Enmity which gives Death the Denomination of an Enemy which is so called indefinitely The last Enemy that we might not understand it to be our Enemy only but more an Enemy against God than us from whom the spiteful Apostate aim'd and glory'd to pluck away and bury in Death and Ruin the whole Race of humane Creatures In the mean time Nature in all and Grace in the Regenerate are Counter-striving In the former the self-preserving Principle is more sensibly vigorous but less successful but they who are born of God are better assisted by their Divine-keeper in sub-ordination to whom they are enabled effectually to keep themselves that the wicked one mortally touches them not 1 Joh. 5. 18. but as must be supposed not without continual watching and striving as in War is usual 4. Where such a War and striving ends not in victory on the one side they end in victory on the other This is consequent upon what hath been said of the limited Subject here spoken of Death is not universally overcome with some it is left to be conceived therefore as a Conquerour We see how it is with the two Hemispheres of our Globe When in the One the Light is chasing the Darkness of the foregoing Night and we behold the morning gradually spreading it self upon the mountains and it shines brighter and brighter unto perfect day So in the other a feebler light doth more and more retire and yeild till at length it be quite swallow'd up in the victorious darkness of a black and horrid midnight 'T is much after the same rate here with this difference that vicissitudes and alternations cease and whether darkness and the shadow of death or the light of life be finally Victorious they are so as hath been said for ever With the One sort i. e. with the righteous a vital light arises in the midst of darkness A Type of their Spiritual and a Prelude to their Eternal State They have a quickening light within under all Clouds of present ignominy and trouble and an Eternal day awaits them Now Death worketh in them and surrounds them on every side for a while and gains a temporary victory over their bodily Life which while it is doing and their outward man is perishing their inward man is renewed day by day But at length even that vanquished life revives and that more noble life which is hid with Christ in God Col. 3. 3. and of which he says that whosoever lives and believes in him shall never die Joh. 11. 26. becomes perfect for it is pure Life as that is said to be pure which is plenum sui minimum habet alieni full of it self without mixture of any thing alien from it having quite swallow'd up whatsoever was opposite or disagreeable So doth Life in the several kinds and degrees of it flourish with them in a permanent perpetual and most consistent State And as Regal Power is often founded in just Conquest they do even reign in life by Jesus Christ Rom. 5. 17 21. But for the other sort that sorry pitiful dying life they have wherein they are even dead while they live will be swallow'd up in a victorious eternal Death in which there remaines to them a perpetual Night and the blackness of darkness for ever We are next to consider 2. The Reasonableness of the Divine Determination which this saying imports And that is to be collected by reminding who it is that hath so determined He that can effect all his determinations and do all his pleasure The reason of his intendments and performances must be fetch 't from himself and the perfection of his own Nature unto which nothing can be more agreeable When Death let in by Sin hath been reigning doing the part of a King as Rom. 5. 17. over so great a part of Gods Creation it can be little sutable to him who doth all things after the Counsel of his will Eph. 1. 11. to let it reign for ever Sometime it must be swallow'd up in victory Otherwise 1. His own Glory would suffer a perpetual Eclipse 2. The Felicity of his Redeemed should never be compleat Neither of which as we are taught to apprehend the state of things can consist with the absolute perfection of his Being 1. Can we think it agreeable to him to suffer such a perpetual soloecisme or incongruity within his Dominion that when Death by means of a most Criminal Apostasie had made so great an inrode into the Nobler part of his Creation i. e. had broken in amongst Creatures capable of Immortality who indeed otherwise had not been capable of Sin and thereby darkened the Glory which shone more brightly in such an Order of Creatures it should be so alwayes i. e. that such a sort of Creatures should be perpetually continued to be born and sin and die Sometime we must think this course of things should have an end and not by yielding an everlasting conquest to an Enemy We can well conceive it most worthy of God when he had made such Creatures unto whom liberty was as agreeable as holiness and felicity to leave them to themselves a-while as Probationers and Candidates for that state of immortal Life whereof they were not incapable It well became a self-sufficient Being and an absolute Sovereign to let them understand dependance and subjection and that their state was precarious not his To let them feel the cost of ungovernableness and self-will and the disagreeableness thereof to their condition who were not self-subsistent and had not their good in their own hands If being put upon this trial they would transgress and open a way for Death to come in upon them the real loss could only be their own and none of his He had no reason therefore to prevent it by so unseasonable an interposition as should prevent the orderly connection between duty and felicity i. e. the precedency of the former to the other All this was a most unexceptionable procedure But then when being left to themselves they as Men or as Adam had transgrest Hos. 6. 7. and done like themselves i. e. like frail mutable Creatures in their lapse into Sin and Death How opportune was it for him now to do more illustriously like himself i. e. by so surprizing unthought of methods as the Gospel reveal to recover to himself this Glory out of the Cloud and make it shine more brightly than ever in this final Victory over Death and him that had the Power of it So that it shall at last retain no Dominion over any but such as by their own choice during a new state of trial remain'd in an inviolable union with that Prince of Darkness and Death How glorious will
Abstractly considered 't is but a notion As it actually hath taken place it must be the death of this or that Person And as it is finally to be overcome and have an end it must have a limited subject and not be understood of all absolutely and universally for then there would be no such thing as Eternal Death which hath no end And how the subject here supposed is to be limited the series of discourse thorough the Chapter shews they are such as are Christs ver 23. and to whom he is peculiarly the first fruits ibid. Such as shall bear his heavenly Image ver 49. and as elsewhere whose vile bodies shall be made like his glorious One Phil. 3. 21. Such as shall have spiritual incorruptible immortal bodies like his and with him inherit the Kingdom of God and through him obtain this victory ver 50 57. 2. This limitation of death to be overcome to such a subject only connotes the extent of it to the whole of that subject as that is compos'd of an inner and an Outer man 2 Cor. 4. 16. It were frigid and comfortless to suppose if it were supposeable that this glorious Conquest of death should extend no further than the giving us a fair specious outside and that our Mind and Spirit should not partake or be nothing the better for it 'T is plain the Apostles scope thro' this Chapter is more to assert the future subsistence of the Soul than the recomposure of the Body as his Arguments shew though what was necessary to be said concerning the future state of that also is not neglected But what he is now saying in this part of the Chapter concerns not what is common to men but what is peculiar to Good and Holy Men. And therefore as it respects their nobler part must intend More than its meer subsistence in another state which is common to good and bad and signify the perfection of the Holy Divine life which shall be at last entirely victorious and Swallow up Death in its utmost extent and specially as it was opposite to that life Death I mean as it was so heavily incumbent upon the Minds and Spirits of Good Men themselves and was their most intolerable burden extorting from them such groans as that Rom. 7. 24. O wretched man that I am who shall deliver me from this body of death Nor indeed is this death sensible or grievous or ever felt but where the opposite life hath some place Total death knows no grievances makes no complaints They that lye buried in the Earth are in their own Element where no such thing weighs upon them a terrene carnal Mind is no burthen to such Souls as are quite dead in Trespasses and Sins I hope I need not tell you that tho' the Souls of men are Universally immortal in the natural sense they are not so in the moral Morality comprehends the means and end Vertue and Felicity or in terms more agreeable to our Christian Ethicks or that are oftener heard by them that live under the Gospel Holiness and Blessedness These are signify'd by Spiritual Life or life in the spiritually-moral sense And so are Sin and Misery by the opposite death And no man hath reason to think it strange that Life and Death are estimated by such measures or that a temper of Spirit habitually and fixedly good or evil should be signify'd by being alive or dead if we consider how perfect an equivalency there is between them in the moral sense and being naturally alive or dead For wherein do we usually state the notion of Natural Life but in a self-moving power Now let any ordinary Understanding be appeal'd to in the Case and who would not say it were as good not to be able to move at all as to move in so perpetual disorder as never to attain any end such motion should serve for The Ends of a reasonable Creatures motions must be duty to its Maker and felicity to it self If all its motions be such as import constant hostility towards God infelicity and torment to it self this is to be dead not simply and naturally 't is true but respectively and not in some by and lessconsiderable respect but in respect of the principal and most important purposes of Life So that in full equivalency such a one is as dead to all valuable intents and purposes whatsoever Therefore such are only said to be alive in a true and the most proper sense that are alive to God through Jesus Christ Rom. 6. 11. Or that do yeild themselves to God as those that are alive from the dead ver 13. it being the proper business of their life to serve God and enjoy him Others that only live in sinful pleasure are dead while they live 1 Tim. 5. 6. Nor hath such a Notion of life and death been altogether strange even among Heathens when we find it said by One of no mean note That a wicked man is dead as a soul may be said to die and to it 't is a death when 't is too deeply plung'd immerst into the body so as to be sunk down into matter and replete with it Besides much more that might be produc't from others of like import and how agreeable is this passage to that Rom. 8. 6 To be carnally minded is death Upon the whole I cannot indeed conceive that since Death is often taken and that most reasonably in so great a latitude as to admit of comprehending this sense and since in these latter verses the Apostle is speaking of a final deliverance from it as the special priviledge of such as are in union with Christ not of what is common to all men but that victory over death in this respect as it imports aversion from God or indisposition towards him must be within his meaning and that he was far from confining it to bodily death only or from intending in reference to the Soul the meer natural immortality of that alone But that Death in its utmost latitude was now in reference to this sort of men whom his present discourse intends to be entirely swallow'd up in victory Or in a perfect plenitude of victorious life as 2 Cor. 5. 4. So much which was more requisite to be insisted on being clear we shall less need to inlarge upon what follows As that 3. This Victory supposes a War Or That Life and Death were before in a continual struggle So we find the Case is Even this Lower World is full of vitality Yet Death hath spread it self thorough it and cast over it a dark and dismal shadow every where according as Sin which introduc'd it is diffus'd and spread Death is therefore mention'd as an Enemy ver 26. And so we understand it Natural Death as an Enemy to Nature Spiritual to Grace In the Body numerous maladies and round about it multitudes of adverse rancounters are striving to infer Death In and about the Mind and Spirit worse diseases and Temptations
now upon the Confines of that World of perfect Purity Bliss and Joy and having so great an assurance that the intermediate Death we are to go through is no sooner suffered than overcome We should deal closely with our selves in this Do we think this saying a Fable or a Trifle Have these Words no meaning We should labour to come to a point and say If we have no reason to dis-believe them we will believe them absolutely and live as having gain'd our point and overcome already i. e. who are as sure of Victory as of Death Some overcome by dying as others are overcome by it There are who are not hurt by the second Death If Death strike once it thereby puts it out of its own power ever to strike a second time or hurt them more Let us once bring our case to that state as to live in continual defiance of Death let it strike when it will Dependance only on the Grace and Spirit of Christ must give us this confidence not an opinion that we are our selves strong enough to act separately but that knowing our relation to him we are thorough him that loved us more than Conquerours or as that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Rom. 8. 27. may be understood to signifie We are a glorious Triumphant sort of Conquerours We not only Conquer but Triumph too through him that loved us being perswaded that neither Death nor Life shall separate us from his Love So a noted Expositor understands that word observing how great a delight this Apostle takes when he would heighten a matter in the use of that particle 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It is elsewhere said Colos. 3. 3. Ye are dead but your life c. We are dead i. e. in our selves we are a sort of dead or dying Creatures Death hath almost got the possession of us already has partly seised and partly sentenced us to die and irreversibly This the Apostle intimates where he adds what you have heard Ye have a Life bid with Christ in God that Life is safe and out of the reach of Death no Death can ouch that Life They that are born of God have in reference to this Life though the other must be given up a self-preserving principle and power in them 1 Joh. 5. 18. They keep themselves that the Evil One touches them not that is not mortally or with any deadly touch In having a new holy divine Life they have an assuring pledge also of the permanency perpetuity and everlastingness of it If a man have once drank of that water which Christ gives it shall be in him a perpetual fountain a well of water springing up into everlasting life Joh. 4. 14. Are we Christians and with the springings of this life do we not feel a lively joy springing and exulting in our Hearts Add vital Christianity to the rational Nature and loathness to dye is a repugnancy and a reproach to both Christianity so plainly stating our Case Reason should judge upon it And sutable affections arise in us thereupon as they would if our Christianity were vital and the product of the Divine Spirit Then how should we bless God that we are Mortal and that it is not in the Power of all this World to keep us from dying out of it when we know in how glorious a Victory that Death will be swallowed up But it may be said by some We should very little fear death if we did know our interest in Christ if we were not in great uncertainty and had not our hearts hanging in doubt within us about this thing And therefore 3dly This saying should be Monitory to us As it is a Credible as it is a Comfortable so it is a Monitory saying also Death shall be swallowed up in victory This said in reference to some which cannot be meant as to all So great a thing spoken with restriction ought to make them of whom it is not meant look about them With what solicitude should we concern our selves to be at a certainty Am I one of them in reference to whom Death shall be swallowed up in such a Victory It should awaken us to consider Have we made our Interest sure in our Lord Jesus Christ that great Prince and Lord of Life He that hath the Son hath life 'T is Eternal Life that is spoken of in that Context 1 Joh. 5. 11 12. This is the record that God hath given us eternal life and this life is in his Son That is this Eternal Life He that hath the Son hath this Life he that hath not the Son hath not this Life Spiritual Life and Eternal Life are all one all of a piece the same in nature and kind The One will grow up into the other That Life only is here meant that will be Eternal Life To the same sense is that He that believeth in me shall never dye Joh. 11. 26. These are plain words He hath a life in him that is Immortal Sacred and not liable to be touched It was before said They that believe in him if dead shall live ver 25 But not only that but 't is further added they that believe in him shall never dye If dead they shall live If they live they shall never dye What means this that they have a life besides this bodily one which is continued thorough Death Of this line or thred Death makes no intercision But we can never justify it to God or our own understandings to rest in a dubious uncertainty about a matter of so vast Consequence as this Unconcernedness here is the most unaccountable thing in the whole World i e. whether we have only that life in us which will end in the darkness and rottenness of a Grave and an horrid Hell or that which runs into Eternal Life Things will come to this issue very shortly with us that either death must as to us be swallowed up in victory or we be swallowed up of victorious death Nor have we any ways to ascertain our own state but as was said by uniting with the Prince of life i. e. by receiving him in all the Capacities wherein we are to be concern'd with him and by resigning our selves entirely to him For if we must have him that we may have life How can we otherwise have him but by receiving him The Gospel under which we live can only be a savour of life to us as it disposes us hereunto Recollect your selves then How do your Lords Dayes and other Seasons of attending this Gospel pass over with you Have you long expected Life and which is less likely do you meet with continual and total disappointments And doth it cause with you no qualmish thoughts But 't is infinitely a sadder Case if you never feel your selves begin to live and yet are never disappointed because you never attend upon the Gospel-Dispensation with any such design or hope Is the matter thus that If you speak the Truth of your Case you must
say I have a soul dead to all the Actions Motions Sensations Injoyments of a Divine and Spiritual life And shall it be always thus by our own Consent with any of us We have however the rational intellectual Life and can think Do we think 't is fit for us to rest satisfy'd and secure in such a state What satisfy'd in the midst of Death such a Death while we are capable of apprehending at once the horror the danger and the remedibleness of our Case What will this come to It can only be Holy Divine Life that must be Victorious over Death as the warring opposite principle If there be nothing to oppose it what shall Conquer Death is in that Case Total and upon such termes till Life begin to spring in thy Soul thou must reckon it likely to be Eternal Yet let none so mistake as to imagine this Life an Enthusiastical thing that must discover it self in rapturous extatical motions or go for nothing It perfects our Faculties therefore destroyes them not And chiefly consists in a rational Judgment Choice and Love of what is most worthy of us what is fittest to be done by us and what is with fullest satisfaction to be enjoyed with a stedfast most resolved adherence thereunto 4thly This saying ought to be Instructive to us in reference especially to this one thing i. e. That we abstain from rash Censures of Providence That God lets death be regnant in so great a part of his creation so long a time It shall be swallowed up in victory let that solve with us the Phaenomenon It seems indeed an untoward one and might at first be an amazing spectacle even to the Blessed Angels themselves to behold so great a revolt in Heaven and afterwards to take notice of an intelligent world of Creatures beneath them successively thorough one first delinquent drawn in as Complices into a like defection and Death hereby spreading its horrid shadow and extending its power over so great and so noble a part of the Universe Committing such Wasts making such desolations from Age to Age in so great a part of the Creation of God! But there are many alleviating Considerations that should compose our Spirits to a rational quietude and be satisfying and pacifying to our minds with reference to this thing Let me but name some few to you which I shall leave with you for this purpose 1. Do but consider how minute a part of the Creation of God this Globe this point this punctilio rather of our earth is where death has reigned and so long had place 2. Consider how much of life there is in and about this little World of ours When upon one single Mole-Hill you see the brisk motions and efforts of so many hundred Lives you have reason to apprehend there is a great deal of Vitality about this little spot of Earth 3. Consider and Collect how probable it is that as we go higher and higher the nobler and finer parts of Gods Creation must be much more replenished with a nobler and more excellent sort of life It is very unreasonable to think that this Clod of Earth should be so full of Life and that in higher and purer Regions there should not be a richer plenitude of life or of such Inhabitants as live nobler and more excellent Lives than we And 4. For ought we know death never reaches higher than this earth of ours and what is in a nearer vicinity to it And that therefore there be vast and ample Regions incomparably beyond the range of our Eye or Thought where now no Death ever comes after the detrusion of the first revolters from those bright Regions When we are told Eph. 4. 10. our Lord Jesus Christ is ascended far above all heavens as it were a fond attempt to pretend to count them so it were rash Philosophizing to go about to describe them But can we suppose them spacious wild Wasts Or not suppose them replenished with numberless numbers of excellent Creatures that in their confirmed state fear no Death And continually pay a willing joyful Homage to their Great Preserver For every knee must bow to him of things in heaven Phil. 2. 10. And when we are told Eph. 1. 20 21. God hath set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places far above all Principality and Power and Might and Dominion and every Name c. And 1 Pet. 3. 22. That he is on the Right hand of God Angels and Authorities and Powers being made subject to him Tho' we cannot form distinct thoughts what those Dynastics Principalities and Dominions are yet we cannot but suppose those unconceivably vast and ample Regions fully Peopled with immortal Inhabitants that reign in life in a more excellent sense For it being said our Lord ascended far above all Heavens that he might fill all things Eph. 4. 10. This must suppose sutable Recipients And if his influences reach down in such plenty to our minute Earth as ver 11 12 13. how copious are they here 5thly Consider That here where Death has made its inrode tho' the Apostate Spirits surround us and incompass this Earth of ours and go to and fro throwing Death among us every where yet even here is a glorious off-spring continually arising the Redeemers Seed in whom a Divine Life is gradually springing up from Age to Age. So that at length they make a great multitude which no man can number standing before the Throne clothed with white Robes and as Ensigns of Victory having palmes in their hands Rev. 7. 9. Here is life then disseminated through all this death that inwraps our World Which for ought we know is the Center of Death it may be here for ought we can tell and no where else here or hereabouts And yet even here an Holy Divine Life is insinuating and spreading it self even among us over whom death has reigned and there are great numbers that having received abundance of Grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one Jesus Christ Rom. 5. 17. Here 's supposed a Kingdom with a Counter-Kingdom and one Head against another One that brought in Death and Condemnation upon the World but another that brings in righteousness and life And that here even in this lower Region The Redeemer should have so large a Portion we know not how large This very much narrows the confines of Death And let it be further considered 6thly That where Death shall be perpetual it is there but self-procured They only lye under Death that lov'd it All they that hate me love death Prov. 8. 36. They inwrap themselves in death they make a covenant with it That Sin which is Death which carries Death and Hell in it self that they lov'd 'T was so 't is true with the rest that finally perish not but it was not always so The Grace of God made a difference not to be quarrell'd at when striving with many it is victorious with some But