THE DEATH OF Gods Moses's CONSIDERED Being the substance of a SERMON Preached at the Funeral of Mr. Francis Johnson Minister of the Gospel sometimes Fellow of All-souls and afterwards Master of University Colledge in Oxford Who died in London October the 9th 1677. By J. Ll. He being dead yet speaketh Heb. 11.4 LONDON Printed for and are to be sold by Thomas Parkhurst at the Bible and Three-Crowns over against the Great Conduit at the lower end of Cheapside 1678. THE EPISTLE TO THE READER READER THis Sermon when Preached was not in the least designed for thy view but by a true friend of the deceased Person much against my inclination is violenced out of my hands into the Press The triteness of the Apology will likely enough make it less believed but sure I am wheresover how often soever it hath been false here it is very true If I deserve not thy belief and so I am denied it I cannot help it Though the discourse doth not assuredly the subject and the worthy Minister deceased abundantly deserves to be known and published In it thou wilt find somewhat more and possibly somewhat less than was Preached Som will judge here is too much and some it may be too little Censure as thou pleasest or rather as thou oughtest Labour with me to imitate his vertues who is gone and if this Sermon shall prove instrumental to the reformation and preparing of any for the serious hour of death I shall be very thankful and I pray God it may I earnestly beg young Ministers their favourable interpretation as well as conscientious consideration of the last use I presume onely humbly to advise my Juniors nor them neither as though I thought not some so as to years much my Seniors otherwise Nor is my advice intended for any more or further than it is for my self if none else have any need of it I am glad of it and hope they will pardon me that I have used the Plural if I ought to have used the Singular Number What any full fraught with humor that yet want ability to be Criticks who have more Brow than Brain and more Forehead than Head more Supercilious Confidence than Modesty and Understanding shall say or think of it I am not at all solicitous THE DEATH OF GOD'S MOSES'S CONSIDERED Joshua 1.2 Moses my Servant is dead YOu may possibly wonder why I chose such a Text concerning so great and so publick a person as Moses was to speak of and from him whose death is the sad occasion of our coming here this day but when you know and remember how great and publick a person he also hath been in former days though of late years buried in obscurity and of what Magnitude this Star that is fallen was who in his last Winter stormy nights of trouble and persecution was indeed inveloped in the clouds as if quite set and for ever disappeared yet in fairer times gave as great a light in his lesser Sphere and shone as much in his more confined Orb as did Moses in his greater When you have thought of this you will need no Rhetorick to perswade you to abate your marvel but readily think the Text enough adapted to the Providence and sure it cannot be much amiss to ground his Euneral Sermon who as if repute and estimation were some great afflictions and to be likely to be valued according to his deserts were to be in danger studiously concealed himself and his great worth from being known and honour'd to ground it I say upon him who was hid in an ark of Bulrushes Joshua to whom God here speaks is supposed to have writ as this Book which goes under his name so the later end of the former from the mention of the death of Moses When God spoke these words to Joshua whether when the thirty days of mourning for Moses were expired as some think or whether after the elapsing of a longer time as seems probable from the last clause of the 6. v. of the 34. of Deut. is uncertain The words are the great God's little and short yet full and comprehensive account of the great man Moses and in them we have two parts 1. His Life My servant 2. His Death is dead He wore out and bestowed all his life in the Service of his God and so died His obedience was not interrupted by any chasin of idleness or apostacy but as he lived Gods servant he took care to die so He would not die without living nor live without dying his As to his name Moses called by the Egyptians Hermes by Manetho Osarseph by the Grecians with a small alteration of the Hebrew as some think Museus Whether he was first named by Pharaoh's daughter being an Egyptian in that language Monies which signifies the same with Moses whether it be derived from Mo water and Hyse Kept or as seems most likely from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he drew because he was drawn from the water side with a prophetick intimation how he should draw the Israelites out of Egypt and how much he should rule the Element of Water in their behalf and draw them through it as he was drawn from it Which name or at least the thing signified by it Orpheus seems to allude to in that verse which is upon a good reason understood of him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or whether Pharaoh's daughter being instructed by Moses his mother and sister that he was an Hebrew learnt this name from them and so gave it him Whether he had any other name given him before upon his Circumcision and whether that was Joachim as Clemens Alexandrinus thinks possibly from Numerius the Philosopher who says he was so called or whether he was called Melchi that is my King after his reception into heaven as the same Clemens Alexandrinus fancies and many such like questions of him are uncertain not worth our while to dispute but this is certain that a great man he was so great that some of the Jewish Rabbies because it is said Deut. 34.7 That when he died his eyes were not dim nor his natural force abated say that therefore he was an Angel and did not properly die and others of them that with his rod he wan'd off the Angel of death insomuch that had not God himself taken away his soul with a kiss he could not have died So great was he in the Jews esteem that they would not look upon him as man and therefore was he privately buried and for ever hid that they might not worship him as God as some conjecture who from the Apocryphal writings conclude that was the cause of the dispute between Michael and the Divel about the body of Moses Jude v. 9. and it is not improbable A servant of God he was and a very great and eminent one and yet die he must and though he was so great and there was no Prophet in Israel like to him yet He that is the least Minister in the Kingdom
proceed now to the Applicatory And 1. Learn from hence to bewail the loss of your Moseses heartily lament the death of your Ministers and be truly troubled as well you may at their departure The days of mourning for Gods Moseses are religiously to be observed and not speedily to expend but extend as you feel the want of them I need use no Arguments to work upon your grief at the extinction of the lights of Heaven you may well cloath your souls with blackness and sorrow when they depart and leave you in the dark Yet consider 1. Who they are and 2. The time of their deaths and you will dissolve into tears of your selves 1. Who they are they are Gods Embassadours that treat with you for your fouls and whose business is to perswade you to be at peace with him against whom its utterly in vain to war and to be reconciled to him with whom there is no contesting Many private Israelites might better be spared than one Moses The loss of a Minister is to appearance the loss of as many souls as might have been converted by him Mourn therefore that they die for their decease may be the death of thy soul 2. The time of their death when they can least be spared and are most dearly missed That Moses should die at such a time when the Israelites were advanced very near the land of Canaan and just entring into their rest that he should so long lead them and now leave them when their hopes and joys were even consummated was no doubt of it self a very fore and pungent addition to their sorrow and that our Moses should now die just at his resurrection into publick employment should be so to ours 2. Enquire into your lives whether you have not one way or other less or more procured their removal and lament and bewail your selves as far as you have been the unhappy causes of their death and do this 1. You who are more neerly concerned by natural relation to him who is now gone It happens but too often that even Ministers have Domestick concauses of their grief and consequently of their sicknesses and death the extravagance of a Wife and the Headiness of Children are somtimes their greatest and most mortal ails but usually where relations live most squablingly when one of them is dead the remaining if there be any grace any good nature any sense of Religion or morality if the conscience be not quite seared and the heart incurably hardened if it be not every jot of it adamant there will then be some relenting remembrances and some penitent reflections upon former miscarriages Bear with me you know I do not use to flatter Are here any that need this advice if there be I charge you if you have been guilty of any disobedience any undutiful demeanours or of propagating any calumniating aspersions of this deceased Minister make hast to be sorry and sleep in penitential tears and the more because your reformation in one sense is utterly impossible be expeditious and weep heartily for your selves if God perhaps will forgive you 2. You who are more remotely and yet neer enough concerned by a religious relation as you have at any time been hearers of this departed Minister take you this advice also Who knows but because you did not return to God when he last preached to you he is dead and shall preach no more obstinate and unreforming hearers are in too true and too sad a sense the murderers of their preachers they are more affected more afflicted with your sins than their own diseases And will you by your iniquities murder the Embassadors of Heaven will nothing serve you nothing satiate you but the blood of Ministers can you love those your vices that have layd them bleeding at your feet O mourn mourn drench your selves with tears and let it be for a perpetual lamentation not so much that your Moseses die as that you have killed them If this doth not call for sorrow I know not what doth 3. Vse As you ever loved Gods Ministers as you honour the remembrance of them be carefull to imitate the holiness of their lives and practically repeat their Sermons in your heavenly conversations let them always eccho and continually reverberate in your ears praise their vertues by your own and by an unwearied practice of applaud their Sermons Was he a good man the viler wretch art thou who livest so bad Did he preach did he pray well the worse art thou who livest so ill Dost thou commend him and yet wilt thou swear or curse or take the name of God in vain Hast thou a respect for his memory come let us see it shew it by thy works what sin wilt thou leave what religious duty wilt thou engage in for his sake in vain art thou so lavish of thy commendations if thou dost not lessen the number of thy sins My friends I am come to speak for and from him who is in his settled state of happiness no doubt who not long ago spoke to you from Almighty God and whom you shall never hear again unless at the day of Judgement when he shall publickly accuse those who praised his preaching but would not live it And my request from him is that you would speedily repent and return to God and oh that his death may be a means to convert those that his life and labours mist to do Will you do it or will you not if you could hear him call you out of another World would you deny and will you because you are treated in a more familiar and less startling way It would be some allay to the sorrows of this day if the death of this Moses might be so far improved as to augment his own joy and the Angels with him in the Regions above by the conversion of some Sinners and our own here that we may not only weep for sorrow that he is dead but weep also for joy that by his means the Sinner lives Vse 4. Learn from hence to prepare for your own deaths if God cuts down the fruitful trees the barren that cumber the ground cannot long stand And to keep to the work of this day all the arguments I shall use to perswade you to provide for death is consider how terrible it will be to you if you do not Death is the King of Terrors it brings to a terrible God to a terrible Bar to a terrible work it plucks asunder and divides between the two constituent principles of man draws a screen of darkness between him and all the light the goods the glories of this world and fixeth an unmoveable non ultra to all his temporal employments which is very sad and doleful tidings to the impenitent and unprovided sinner who hath no hopes no happiness beyond the confines of time That death is terrible most that ever past into another World are serious witnesses and who of us all fears not greatly this frightful and
children of Israel we find him but once guilty of any thing like a passionate word and that was when they did abundantly deserve it at least upon Gods account and sure it could not be a sinful though it were an angry expression to call them Rebels Num. 20.2 3 4 5 10. v. who were so indeed and so plainly and notoriously rebelled against their God when they repined and murmured not against Moses and Aaron only but against him too and against him most and therefore though I know some Commentators think this one of Moses his faults for which he was excluded Canaan yet with submission I cannot think so So patient was Moses thus was the Original and just like him was our Copy Fancy a man the best of meer men who formerly was followed with continual affluences of the things of this world through the whirl of Providence brought to a condition next to poor and indigent that was the desired company of the greater and more refined sort forced to converse with the poorer and more ordinary and who governed the highest rank of men in their advances in the superior liberal Arts and Sciences and chiefest Professions compelled more indeed to divert a greater noise than by want and necessity to sit amidst the cries and clamors of children and instruct them in the Rudiments of Reading and in a word not to enumerate for it would be much too tedious and too sorrowful fancy one once encompassed with all the afflictions of Job and amongst the rest that worst than all the dins of a foolish woman perfectly endued with Jobs patience too that bears all with as great an unmovedness of mind as if in the highest Apex of prosperity and then will you but begin to think equally of his patience In short none but Moses Job and Mr. Johnson would bear what he did And thus I have done with the description of Moses and of his second We now come to shew you 3. The Reasons why Gods Moseses his Ministers die and they are these 1. They have the same causes of death with others These spiritual men have bodies that contain humors fermentable into distempers as well as others and dwell in houses of clay that are tottering and decaying as others do They are not secured by their studies nor by their employment nor by their piety from the miseries of humane nature but rather the more exposed to them as I shall shew you under the next head These Angels of Churches assume lodge in and inform material vehicles compounded of divisible parts and easie separable Elements that lie open to the wind and weather sicknesses pains and casualities and often need repair and Physick which if they miss of or prove ineffectual they take their flight and leave us they are not yet immortal but must die to be so So these Stars that shine in our firmament will not always keep above our Horizon but will at length take time to set and disappear These men of God are men penetrable by the arrows of the King of terrours not priviledged nor exempted from the common fate of mortality neither their more elevated degrees of grace their more exemplary holiness nor their continued though still ripening preparedness for heaven can perpetuate their lives on earth Their zeal for holiness their warmest affections though the flames there kindled rise never so high towards God will not preserve them from colds those small introductions to all distempers nor the coolest of their spirits in opposition to the heats of passion from burning and malignant Fevers nor the most vigorous activeness for Religion from the Gout or Palsie and though their hard hearts are never so broken they may yet meet with the painful agonies of the Stone nor groans nor sighs for sin nor prayers nor praises are any Antidotes against an infectious Air though sometimes preternaturally through the Divine Goodness they correct its malignancy Though our graces are lively and though our corruptions are mortified yet we must die 2. They have more causes of dying than others they lye more in the road of diseases dangers and death their constant studies weary their flesh and tire their spirits out of their bodies their cares and fears which powerfully wast the life are greater and more consuming than those of other employments because terminated upon the souls of men and concerned about Heaven and Hell everlasting happiness and everlasting misery Their anxious cares are that all under their charge may reach the former and their continuall fears least they fall into the latter I doubt not but when we come into another world it will be found that more Ministers have dyed of their people than of diseases the unkind and undutifull carriages the irraclamable lives and the unchristian demeanors of their hearers of their communicants these are the things that kill and destroy them The single thought that some who constantly attend their ministry are like to be damned and all their pains and labours utterly lost upon them this this breaks their sleeps and their hearts too and sends them groaning against you into another world Besides they have ordinarily more enemies than others upon every little stir and disorder every fear and jealousy every ill news and disappointment in the state they are presently sought for harassed and sometimes murdered too Every storm blows at these lights and would sain extinguish them against them are mainly levelled the plots and contrivances of Earth and Hell The Divel and his agents his diligent and industrious substitutes cheifly desiring their ruine It is no wonder then that they whom all strike at whom every one wounds and whom every thing conspires to drive out of this world at length depart and leave us 3. God in great love calls them away from the miseries of this world to secure them from the evils to come Is 57.1 He will not always suffer his Ministers to be affronted his Embassadors to be abused nor his Representatives to be rudely treated by wicked and impenitent people but mercifully recall them and usually he send in their room some severe calamity to scourge the world this therefore is no wonder that God inflicts evils upon those who think the death of his Minister none and though it may be esteemed a fanaticall fancy yet it is very certain that there is no such sure prognostick of an approaching judgment as a considerable mortality of Preachers Possibly God bids them now dye in their beds that they may not hereafter be butchered and massacred by violent cruel hands However he gives them a quietus est sends death to sing requiems to their souls kindly removs them from their cares their fears and all their pains studies to receive the reward of their pious labours Ministers dye because death is better than life thereby God fixes an eternall period to all their griefs and sorrows and renders them for ever impassible And thus I have done with the doctrinal Part I