Selected quad for the lemma: death_n
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A44681
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A funeral sermon on the decease of that worthy gentlewoman Mrs. Margaret Baxter, who died the 28th of June, 1681 by John Howe.
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Howe, John, 1630-1705.
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1681
(1681)
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Wing H3030; ESTC R26809
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27,363
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48
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the first Fruits of the Spirit that blessed Spirit of Adoption and groan for the Adoption the season of your being more solemnly own'd for Sons viz. the redemption of the Body Rom. 8.23 Which though it ultimately refer to the Resurrection may be allowed to have an incompleat meaning in reference to Death too For I see not but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 may admit such a construction as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Heb. 9.15 i. e. that redemption of the Body may mean redemption from it wherein it is burthensome a grievance and penalty here as well as there The redemption of Transgressions doth truly mean liberation from the penalty of them From which penal Evil of and by the Body so materially at least it is we are not perfectly freed as our blessedness is not perfect till Mortality be swallowed up of Life and all the adopted the many Sons be all brought to glory together How happy in the mean time is your case when Death becomes the matter of your rational well-grounded hope You have many Hopes wherein you are liable to disappointment You will then have one sure Hope and that will be worth them all none can prevent you of this Hope Many other things you justly hope for are hindred by ill minded Men of their accomplishment But all the wit and power of your most spiteful Enemies can never hinder you from dying And how are you fenc'd against all the intervening Troubles of Life Nihil metuit qui optat mori You have nothing to fear if you desire to die nothing but what at least Death will shortly put an end to Make this your aim To have Life for the matter of your Patience and Death of your Desire 2 ly On the other part also labour to be upon good terms with the Lord secure it that he be yours Your way to that is short and expedite The same by which we become his Ezek. 16.8 I entred into Covenant with thee and thou becamest mine Solemnly and unfeignedly accept him and surrender your selves Without this who can expect but to hear from him at last Depart from me I know you not Know of your selves demand an account Are you sincerely willing to be his and to take him for yours without limitation or reserves Matters are then agreed between him and you And who can break or disanul the Agreement Who can come between him and you I often think of the high transport wherewith those words are uttered The excellent knowledg of Christ Jesus my Lord Phil. 3.8 This is Christian Religion not in a System but as it is a vital principle and habit in the Soul inclining us making us propense towards our blessed Lord addicting and subduing us to him uniting us with him Whereby we come to know by inward sensations to feel the transfusions of his spiritful Light and Influence and our Souls thereby caught and bound up in the bundle of Life So we have Christ form'd within His Holy Truths Doctrines Precepts Promises inwrought into the temper of our Spirits And as it follows in that Context Phil. 3. to have him according to the States wherein he successively was by correspondent impressions represented in us So as that we come to bear the Image of him crucified and dying first then reviving and rising and afterwards ascending and glorifi'd To know him and the power of his Resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings being made conformable to his Death If by any means we might attain unto the Resurrection of the Dead Vers. 10 11. Let us not be at rest till we find it thus in some measure with us If we feel our selves after this manner internally and initially conform'd to him this will be both a Preparative and a Pledg of our future perfect conformity both internal and external It will fit us to be ever with the Lord and assure us we shall and can be no where else That he and we shall not to eternity dwell asunder We shall neither fear to be externally conform'd to him in his Death to quit and lay down the Body as he did nor despair of attaining with him the Resurrection from the Dead and of being present with him in Glory Or that he shall recover for us out of the Dust our vile abject Bodies the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Body of our Humiliation wherein we were humbled as he was in his as it follows in that Phil. 3. vers 21. and make it like his own glorious Body 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 conform and agreeable by that power by which he is able even to subdue all things to himself In the mean time as this present state admits converse much with him every day Be not strangers to him often recognize and renew your Engagements to him Revolve in your Thoughts his Interest in you and yours in him And the nearer relation which there is between him and you than that between you and this Body Recount with your selves the permanency and lastingness of that Relation That whereas this Body as now it is a terrestrial Body will not be yours long He is to be your God for ever and ever That though Death must shortly separate you from this Body Neither Life nor Death Principalities nor Powers things present nor things to come shall ever separate you from the Love of God which is in Christ our Jesus our Lord. While this Body is a Body of Death to you he is your Life your Hope and your exceeding Joy your better more laudable and more excellent Self more intimate to you than you can be to your self as hath been anciently and often said And for the obtaining whose presence absence from the Body is a very small matter A great Prince in an Epistle to that Philosopher tells him I seem to my self not to be a Man as the saying is while I am absent from Iamblichus or while I am not conversant with him That we can better endure our Lord's absence is surely a thing it self not to be endured We should labour our acquaintance with him such as is fit to be between so great a Majesty and such mean Creatures as we should grow daily Yea and endeavour to make the Thoughts more familiar to our selves of spiritual Beings in the general For we are to serve and converse with him in a glorious community of such Creatures An innumerable company of Angels The General Assembly and the Church of the First Born and the Spirits of just Men made perfect Heb. 12.23 In a Region where an earthly Body remaining such can have no place Why do we make the Thoughts of a Spirit out of a Body so strange to our selves We meet with hundreds of Spirits in Bodies and moving Bodies to and fro in the Streets every day and are not startled at it Is a Body so much nearer a-kin to us than a Spirit that we must have so mean a thing to come between to mediate and reconcile us to it
Why are we afraid of what we are so nearly allyed unto Can we not endure to see or think of a Man at liberty suppose it were a Friend or a Brother if we our selves were in Prison The more easy you make the apprehension to your selves of a disembody'd Spirit i. e. free I mean of any terrestrial Body the better we shall relish the Thoughts of him who is the Head of that glorious Society you are to be gathered unto For the Lord is that Spirit the Eminent Almighty and All-governing Spirit to be ever beheld too in his glorified Body as an eternal Monument of his Undertaking for us and an assuring endearment of his Relation to us The better your Minds will comply with the preconceived Idea we are to entertain our selves with of the Constitution Order Employment and Delights of that vast Collection of Heavenly Associates we shall dwell with for ever And the more will you still incline to be absent from this Body that among them you may be ever present with the Lord. And if you thus cherish this pleasant Inclination think how grateful it will be when it comes to be satisfied How natural is that Rest that ends in the Center to which a thing is carried by a natural motion How pleasantly doth the departed Soul of that good Gentlewoman whose decease we lament solace it self in the presence of her Glorious Lord I shall say little concerning her You will have her just Memorial more at large e're long I had indeed the opportunity by an occasional abode some days under the same Roof several Years before she came into that Relation wherein she finish'd her Course to observe her strangely vivid and great Wit and very sober Conversation But the turn and bent of her Spirit towards God and Heaven more remarkably appear'd a considerable time after Which when it did she shew'd how much more she studied the Interest of her Soul than the Body and how much more she valued mental and spiritual Excellencies than worldly Advantages in the choice of her Consort whom she accepted to be the Companion and Guide of her Life She gave proof herein of the real greatness of her Spirit and how much she disdain'd to be guided by their vulgar Measures that have not Wit and Reason and Religion enough to value the Accomplishments of the Mind and inner Man And to understand that Knowledg Holiness an heavenly Heart entire devotedness to the Redeemer a willingness to spend and be spent in the Service of God are better and more valuable things than so many Hundreds or Thousands a Year And that no external Circumstances can so far dignify a Drunkard an Atheist a profane Wretch as that compared with one that bears such Characters he should deserve to be simply reckon'd the better Man And that meer sober carnality and ungodliness suffice not to cast the Ballance Or that have so little of these Qualifications for the making a true Judgment as to think that Calling dishonourable and a diminution to a Man that refers immediately to the Soul and the unseen World and that relates and sets him nearest to God She knew how to make her estimate of the Honour of a Family and a Pedigree as things valuable in their kind without allowing her self so much vanity as to reckon they were things of the most excellent kind and to which nothing personal could be equal And well understood of the personal Endowments of the Body and the Mind which were to have the preference Her Life might teach all those especially of her own Sex that a Life's time in the Body is for some other purposes than to indulge and trim and adorn the Body which is most minded by them who as that shows have in the mean time most neglected and God knows most depraved and deformed Souls I hope her Example more fully and publickly represented will more generally teach In the mean time this Instance of our common Mortality should teach us all We see this state of Life in the Body is not that we were finally made for Yet how few seriously look beyond it And it is amazing to think how little the Deaths of others signify to the making us mind our own We behave our selves as if Death were a thing only to be undergone by some few Persons here and there and that the most should 'scape and as if we took it for granted we should be of the exempted number How soon are Impressions from such occasions talk'd and trifled and laugh'd and jested away Shall we now learn more to study and understand our own Natures To contemplate our selves and our Duty thereupon That we are a mortal immortal sort of Creatures That we are sojourners only in a Body which we must shortly leave to Dust and Worms That we are Creatures united with Bodies but separable from them Let each of us think I am one that can live in a Body and can live out of a Body While I live in one that Body is not mine I dwell not in mine own That the Body must be for the the Lord as he will then be for the Body That we shall dwell comfortless and miserable in the Body if we dwell in it solitary and alone and have not with us a better Inhabitant That our Bodies are to be Mansions for a Deity Houses for Religion Temples of the Holy Ghost O the venerable thoughts we should have of these Bodies upon this account How careful should we be not to debase them not to alienate them If any Man corrupt the Temple of God him will he destroy 1 Cor. 3.16 Will a Man rob God break and violate his House how horrid a Burglary Shall we agree to resign these Bodies and this bodily Life Our meeting will have been to good purpose might this be the united sense of this dissolving Assembly Lord here we surrender and disclaim otherwise than for and under thee all right and title to these Bodies and Lives of ours We present our Bodies holy acceptable living yet living Sacrifices as our reasonable Service Let us do so and remember we are hereafter not to live to our selves nor to die at length to our selves but living and dying to be the Lord's FINIS Advertisement THere is lately printed A brief Exposition of the Lord's Prayer and the Ten Commandments To which is added The Doctrine of the Sacraments By Isaac Barrow D. D. and late Master of Trinity-College in Cambridg And now since his death publish'd by Dr. Tillotson Dean of Canterbury Printed for Brabazon Aylmer at the three Pigeons over against the Royal Exchange in Cornhil In Octavo Psal. 16. Vers. 2. Vers. 3. Vers. 4. 2 Kin. 4. Heb. 11.1 Ambros. de bono mortis 2 Cor. 4.16 * Epict. Socrat. Anaxarch * Julian Ep. ad Iamblic †〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉