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A43796 The providence of God in sudden death ordinary and extraordinary vindicated and improved in a funeral sermon for Mrs. Mary Reve, wife to Mr. Nicholas Reve, merchant : first preached to the English Church in Rotterdam, January 14, 1685, and since enlarged / by Joseph Hill. Hill, Joseph, 1625-1707. 1685 (1685) Wing H2002; ESTC R12820 47,318 58

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meet him to awaken all for it s said they all slumbred and slept the wise virgins slumbred and the foolish slept so that none in the visible church but have need of wakening Math. 25. For as in nature troubles either feared or felt both awaken us out of our sleep and keep us from sleeping so in grace there being few Christians to be found that either the fears of death and judgements by som warnings of them or some inward or outward troubles have not awakend and kept watching We are naturally so sensual and immerst in the things of this life so regardles of God his word and our eternal concernments and so apt to put the evil day far from us that God is mercifully pleased by examples as wel as precepts and threats to rouse us up to consider our latter end that we may not run heedlesly on to our eternal destruction As it is usual with God to forewarne both nations and cities before he smites them as all histories both sacred and prosane testify we never reading of judgements but for mercies abused so allso particular persons there being none of years but have warning in this kind and may every where see graves shorter than their own For as security shakes off the feare of sin and misery and makes us look on death and judgement at a distance so the feare of them makes them seem neer us and to reflect upon our selves and the desert of our sins and consider our later end thereby becomming instrumental to make us serious which is the first step in religion and to turn our sloth into diligence our indifferency into earnestnes and our inconstancy into stablenes and resolution Lastly To bring us to repentance As this is the end of God's threatnings that he may not punish if we will repent so it s allso of his executing them that others may take warning all his providences being a fulfilling of som threat or promis in his word This even the Ninivites understood as appears by their practise upon Jonah's denunciation of their destruction and thus our Savior expounds these providences which are rich in sense as well as the word howbeit we seldom fully comprehend it Who preaching in Galilee was interrupted by some News-mongers from Jerusalem that told him of the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices in Jerusalem for Pilate had no jurisdiction but Herod over the Galileans supposing they were some extraordinary sinners because they suffered such things Luke 13. Christ according to his great wisdom neither taxes Pilat's fact of cruelty as they might possibly suppose nor approves it nor denies those Galileans to be sinners and suffer justly but only that they were greater sinners than all the rest shewing that they were not to be judged as such because of their suffering and adds the like concerning those 18 on whom the tower in Siloam fell and slew declaring from both these examples the general use the living should make of the sudden death of others which is to repent this being the end of Gods sparing us to give us time and space for repentance and his taking away others to stir us up to make use of our time accordingly And the more to awaken them to this duty shews the more especial use of these to them in a prophetical commination from the manner of their perishing making it a type or emblem to the living of their future destruction as Samuel did by Sauls rending his mantle of God's rending the Kingdom from him saying except ye repent ye shall all likewise perish Denoting that as those Galileans were slain by Pilat the Roman governor and his soldjers so the Galileans should after by the Roman army and as the 18 in Jerusalem were slain by the fall of the tower in Siloam so the dwellers in Jerusalem should be by the fall of their other towers and walls Which they not repenting was accordingly accomplisht in both For the Romans first fel upon Galilee and destroyd great numbers of them and the rest flying to Jerusalem at the time of the passover were with other Jews slain in such abundance that the altar for sacrifices swimd with blood and multitudes of the inhabitants of Jerusalem it being besieged and taken by the Romans were slain by the battering of their walls and buried in the ruins of their city So dangerous is it to neglect repenting from the warnings given us and especially for those more immediatly concernd So great wisdom and safety is there in true repentance which will certainly save our souls from eternal and is the only way to save our persons also and estates from publick calamities and temporal destruction But oh the blindnes and stupidity of most part of men that when God's hand is lifted up they will not see it when he hedges up their sinfull ways with thorns will needs run through them when he smites som on their right hand and others on their left regard it not that can go and com from funerals without a serious thought of their own Common providences are but litle observed by us and therfore do but litle move and affect us but when we meet with unexspected occurrences or interruption of the ordinary course of time and nature in the death of any this is apt to startle us and make us bethink our selves more than usually and where grace sets in with it becoms a means to better and reform us Thus God often makes use of the sudden death of som to bring others first to themselves by consideration and afterwards to himself by repentance and especially those in the like condition when one is taken and another left som destroyd and others saved this making both a deeper and lastinger impression and those more neerly concernd in or related to the deceased For as we often think this or that occasiond their death and these or those things might have prevented it the thoughts whereof frequently trouble us afterwards so our former carriage towards them and theirs to us coms now afresh to our remembrance feeds our sorrow and lays the foundation of our repentance These and those things saith conscience thou shouldst have done and so and so thou shouldst have carried towards them and didst not and this and that thou shouldst not have done nor carried in this or that manner to them and didst thou might have got much good by them and hast not and done more good to them and wouldst not thou matterdst not what became of their souls and knowest thou what will becom of thine Then thinks the sinner what if their case had been mine where had I now been if I had been so hurried to judgment my conscience tells me I am not fit to die I cannot say my sins are pardond and my peace made with God whom I have so greatly offended he hath now warnd me to flee from the wrath to com and should I not take it shall I still except my self and say this
and we Christians ought and should and for which God is pleased to use them in his Church For thô we have the law that discovers sin and condemns sinners to eternal punishments and the Gospel that tenders us pardon and eternal salvation yet so great is our unbelief and the love of our lusts that we litle regard them till God awaken us and lets us see and feel experimentally by outward or inward troubles or both the evil of our sins and how destructive they are to us and therby bring us to condemn and loath them and our selves for them and valew his mercy through Christ for pardoning them For which ends he makes use especially of those that are most powerful to convince men of and affect them with his justice sins hainousnes the sinners desert and need of mercy Of which kind are those punishments which are generally inflicted on all apparently according to his threatnings wherein are seen the greatnes of the offence God's resolution to punish his power and impartiality in punishing great as well as small so that none can flatter themselves with hopes of impunity And those that have the offence legibly written upon them so that all may read the sin in the punishment and see God's equity therein whereby he is justified and the offender condemned even by himself as well as others as we find among the very heathen Judges 1. v. 7. And those punishments that are great and so shew the greatnes of the offence justice never proportioning them greater but mercy mitigating them to less than the offenders deserts All which kinds of punishment concur in death as most clearly appears by the scriptures which declare God's threatning thereof before and sentencing all it to it after for our apostacy Gen. c. 2. and c. 3. as a suitable punishment for our wilful despising of life virtually promist in the threatning of death and that which shews us the greatnes of our offence in that it is the greatest of punishments comprehending all other miseries as life it deprives us of all other mercies Rom. 6 23. And yet more signally do all these appeare in the kinds of death we this day celebrate the mother bringing forth in sorrow because the woman was first in the transgression and dying for her having transgrest and the litle infant for that only So that its better for us to goe to this house of mourning than feasting as Solomon saith Eccles 7 2. for that is the end of all men and therefore will be thine and mine and the living will lay it to heart intimating the reason of that being the end of all from the usefulnes thereof to the living that seriously will confider it as a spectacle of their own mortality whereof sin especially original was the moral cause whatever were the natural together with the manner thereof in regard of their inward and outward man How bitter therfore should the remembrance of and sorrow for our first transgression be to us and all other sins as proceding from it especially our wilful and deliberate offences which are as so many approbations of our first parents apostacy whereby we have so often declared we should have done as they did had we been in their place how hardly soever we are apt to think and many allso to speak of them And how acceptable should Christ be to us as the only Mediator to bring us back again to God from whom we have fallen and reconcile us to him whom we have offended who by his death hath redeemed their souls from destruction that will embrace him taken away sin the sting of death strength from the law to condemn them eternally sanctified the grave to their bodies by his own lying in it and by his resurrection given them assurance of their victory over it in their bodies rising again and being fashioned like to his glorious body For it is this our apostacy from God at first that brought in this sad separation of all our comfortable relations both spiritual between God our father and us and natural between husband and wife parents and children kindred and friends and soul and body at last here and both from happines for ever hereafter and also intaild upon us all miseries which are more in this life than can be numbered and greater in that to com than can be exprest And Christ only that makes up again the union for his people in spiritual relations his father ours himself our husband all his brethren and fisters and all necessary comforts in natural relations in this life and soul and body to meet again and both with happines for ever freeing us from eternal miseries and all those temporal which he procures not to work together for our good 4. That such as are taken away by untimely death may be examples and warnings to the living 1 To deter them from the like sins where they were notorious and the cause of their punishment every example of punitive justice being a fulfilling of the threatning of the law on the Offender and vertually a threatning for the like offence to others This course God took especially with his Church in its infancy training them up as we doe our children with temporal threats and promises mercies and judgements whereas now in its maturity under the Gospell on a better covenant he uses more especially spiritual promises of grace and salvation and threatnings of spiritual and eternal punishments and deals with us accordingly the more powerfully to allure us to holines and deter us from wickednes Yet in regard we are still men of like passions and no less moved with examples he declares this to be the end of all such temporal judgements to us Christians and requires us to make this use of them 1 Cor. 10.6 The Israelites suddenly destroyed several times in the wildernes saith the Apostle were our examples to the intent we should not lust after evil things as they allso lusted commanding us to avoid their sins thereafter mentioned and declaring that all these things happened to them for ensamples or types and are written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the world are come v. 7. 11. Thus the untimely death of many of the Corinthians for their profanation of the Lord's supper is recorded that we should beware thereof 1 Cor. 11. v. 30. So allso when the crime is apparent in the punishment as Paul's being guilty of stoning Stephen in his being stoned by the Jews and drawn out of the city supposing he had been dead thô he was miraculously revived or at least restored Acts 14.19 20. And this use we are to make of those extraordinary examples of God's judgments that fall out in all ages and nations for execrable murders perjury and dreadful imprecations great persecution and oppression c. wherein histories abound and † Reinold's God's Revenge of murder Camerarii opere subcisiva centur 1. c. 86. contur 3. c. 3 33 34 36.38 Gorrutius de providentia l.