to dispaire Where is it It may be in thy heart of all thy complaining and thou maist have it for all these exclaymings against thy self Tell me when thou findest those corruptions whereof and for which thou speakest against thy self Dost thou allow them or not dost thou confesse them and lament them or not I confesse them indeed but with such a finall deal of sorrow Is it such a sorrow as draws thee to God and drives thee out of thy self such as makes thee to fall before him and judge thy self worthy to be damned and submit to his Justice Is it such a sorrow as makes thee confesse and then purpose amendment Such as makes thee cry to him for power and strength such as makes thee rest on him for ability Dost thou determine still still to amend that that still troubleth thee Dost thou still continue to fight with the lusts of thy flesh by the spiritual weapons that God hath ordained for thee I say to thee thy Repentance thy Faith thy New Obedience may be true though it be weak When a man hath a shaking Palsey hand it is a hand A sick weake man that lies crying oh oh that can scarse turn himself between the sheets is a man a living man A poor child that is new born and hath nothing that discovereth reason almost but the shape of a man that poor child is a reasonable creature Faith beginneth with weake apprehensions and faint leanings on Christ Deep godly sorrow and other parts of Repentance may begin many times with little And amendment of life begins sometimes at a low soundation at small sins If it be true and sincere and constant if thou go on and continue in a course of daily renewing thy Repentance and Obedience and Faith and stirring by Gods means to get the increase of these graces and to be upright and sincere in them thou art blessed in them notwithstaading thy weaknesse take comfort in a little and be thankful for it God will give more and the only way to get more is to take comfort in a good measure in what thou hast and the way to take comfort is to labour to increase these graces Let not the weak troubled seebled Christian be troubled in mind as if he had no grace because he hath but a little as if he did not at all keep Christs sayings because he keepeth them but a little He is a scholler in the School that beginneth at Christ-Crosse-row as we call it And he is entred into the Colledge that beginneth but in a low book with the first rudiments of Logick And he is a member of the Family that began to be an Apprentise but yesterday and comes not to a deep knowledge of his Art and Mistery but is glad to do sorry work Beleeve it brethren there may be great conceits of Repentance and beleeving and obeying that may make a man good in his own eyes and be altogether false There may be a small measure of Repentance but if one be humbled in the smalness of that measure and labour and desire and pray and begg for the increase of that measure and take pains to edisie himself in it by the means of God then it is true and upright and shall save him Therefore rejoyce It is not with the Covenant of Grace as it was with that of Works The Covenant of Works the Law required perfection of Obedience to all the things prescribed a man must not only love God but love God perfectly But the Gospel satisfieth it self with accepting truch of endeavour to the thing required If there be Repentance though it be not in the full perfection if thou beleeve though not with the fullest measure of beleeving If thou Obey though not in the highest degree of obedience this Gospel this sweet this favourable gracious Doctrine giveth thee consolation enough Go home therefore comforted in the beginnings and resolved to proceed and know that thou shalt enjoy that which Christ hath promised freedome from damnation thou shalt never see Death THE YOUNG MANS LIBERTY AND LIMITS OR GODS JUDGMENT ON MANS CARRIAGE SERMON XVIII ECCLESIASTES 11.9 Rejoyce oh young man in thy youth and let thy heart chear thee in the dayes of thy youth and walk in the wayes of thine heart and in the sight of thine eyes but know thou that for all these things God will bring thee into Judgement SOlomon in the conclusion of this Chapter is exhorting the sons of men to true Religion and the better to mould and frame them to the same he mindeth them of Death and Judgement without which there cannot be planted in us a right care and fear of God From the seventh verse to the latter end he hath to do with two forts of men First with those that were glued to this life and to the delights and pleasures thereof and he bringeth them in speaking thus Truly the light is sweet and it is a pleasant thing to behold the Sun verse 7. By light there we are to understand the light of the Sun shining on us while we enjoy this mortal life This many men suppose to be a very pleasant thing and they overmuch content themselves in the same These Solomon verse 8. refuteth by three Arguments The first is this that though a man live many yeares yet let him remember the dayes of darkness that is that a time of Death will come a time when our Sun will set and our light wil turn to darkness though we live never so long never so sweetly never so pleasantly though we enjoy the light of the Sun yet we should carefully remember that darkness abideth us Secondly faith Solomon those dayes are many His Argument is thus much Let a man consider with himself though he live many yeares yet notwithstanding the dayes and years of his life cannot be compared with the dayes and years of his Death a man is many more years under the ground in the Grave then above ground walking on the face of the earth Thirdly faith Solomon all that cometh 〈◊〉 vanity That is if a man may enjoy the light of the Sun and the pleasures of this life that makes his heartâ—…ight â—…ome yet all this is vanity there is no full contentment in these things but an emptiness in them all and no man knows how soon he may be bereaved of them Now in the words we have read Solomon hath to deal with the young man and he is altogether given to jollity and merriment he forgetteth God and the dayes of darkness and his latter end Well Solomon giveth him the bridle as it were and suffereth him to follow his own way by an Ironical concession or figurative speech declaring not what young men ought to doe but what their course is and what commonly they do Reâ—…ce 〈◊〉 young man in thy youth and let thy heart chear thee in the dayes of thy youth and walk in the wayes of thine heart and in the sight of thine eyes but
continual readiness that which may furnish us abundantly with meditations in this kind It was a custome in former times for men to make their Sepulchres in their Gardens to mind them of death in the midst of the pleasures of this life This present Work may not unfitly be termed a Garden wherein whosoever takes a dayly walk may gather in the several beds thereof those wholsome flowers and hearbs which being distilled by serious meditation will prove water of life to a fainting spirit in some he shall find instruction in some incitation in others consolalion in all profit Here thou shalt find that Lethall Gourd sprung up by Adam his trausgression that makes all his posterity cry out There is Death in the Pot. There thou mayst gather Hearbs of Grace as a counterpoyson against the malignity of death in a third there is the spiritual Heliotropium opening with joy to the Son of Righteousness the hope of a blessed Resurrection Do the glittering shews of outward things make thee begin to over-fancy them here thou shalt find how little they will avail in death the consideration whereof will make them like that precious stone which being put into the mouth of a dead man loseth its vertue art thou over-burthened with afflictions here thou art supported in the expectation of a far more exceeding weight of glory art thou ready to faint under thy labours here thou shalt find a time of rest and of reaping doth the time seem over-long that thy patience begins to flag here thou hast a promise of thy Saviours speedy coming In a word be thy estate and condition what it will be here thou mayst have both directions to guide thee and comforts to support thee in thy journey on earth till thou arrive at thy Country in Heaven Certainly there is no man can sleight and undervalue so deserving a Work but he shall discover himself either to be ignorant or idle or ill affected especially when so judicious and learned men have thought it a fit concomitant for their several Labours which they have added for the accomplishment of it Therefore take it in good worth improve it for the good of thy Soul that being armed and prepared for death when it shall approach thou mayst have no more to do but to die and mayst end thy dayes in a stedfast assurance That thy sins shall be blotted out when the time of Refreshing shall come from the presence of the LORD Thine in Him who is the Resurrection and the Life H. W. THE TABLE THE Stewards Summons Page 1. TEXT LUKE 16.2 Give an Account of thy Stewardship for thou mayst be no longer Steward The Praise of Mourning Page 17. ECCLESIASTES 7.2 It is better to go to the House of Mourning then to the House of Feasting for that is the end of all men and the living will lay it to his heart Deliverance from the King of Fears Page 33. HEBREWS 2.14 15. 14. For as much then as the Children are partakers of flesh and blood he also himself likewise took part of the same that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death that is the Devil 15. And deliver them who through the fear of death were all their life time subject to bondage The Perfection of Patience Page 47. JAMES 1.4 But let patience have her perfect work that you may be perfect and entire wanting nothing A Restraint of exorbitant Passion Page 61. 2 SAM 12.22 23. 22. And he said while the Child was yet alive I fasted and wept for I said who can tell whether God will be gracious to me that the Child may live 23. But now he is dead wherefore should I fast Can I bring him back again I shall go to him but he shall not return to me The Sting of Death c. Page 73. 1 COR. 15.56 The sting of Death is Sin and the strength of Sin is the Law The Destruction of the Destroyer c. Page 81. 1 COR. 15.16 The last Enemy that shall be destroyed is Death The Worlds Losse and the Righteous Mans Gain Page 91. ISAIAH 57.1 And merciful men are taken away none considering that the righteous is taken away from the evil to come The Good-Mans Epitaph c. Page 107. REVEL 14.13 I heard a voice from Heaven saying unto me Write Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth yea saith the Spirit that they may rest from their labours and their Works do follow them The Christians Center c. Page 117. ROM 14.7 8. 7. For none of us liveth to himself and no man dieth to himself 8. For whether we live we live to the Lord and whether we die we die unto the Lord whether we live therefore or die we are the Lords The Improvement of Time c. Page 129. 1 COR. 7.29 30 31. 29. But this I say Brethren the time is short it remaineth that both they that have wives be as though they had none 30. And they that weep as though they wept not and they that rejoyce as if they rejoiced not and they that buy as though they possessed not 31. And they that use this world as not abusing it for the fashion of this world passeth away Security Surprized c. Page 143. 1 THESSAL 5.3 For when they shall say peace and safety then sudden destruction cometh upon them as travail upon a woman with child and they shall not escape A Christians Victory or Conquest over Deaths Enmity Page 159. 1 COR. 15.26 The last Enemy that shall be destroyed is Death The great Tribunal or Gods Scrutiny of Mans Secrets Page 171. ECCLES 12.14 For God will bring every work into Jungement with every secret thing whether it be good or whether it be evill A Tryall of Sincerity c. Page 181. ISAIAH 26.8 9. 8. Yea in the way of thy judgments O Lord have we waited for thee the desire of our soul is to thy name and to the remembrance of thee 9. With my soul have I desired thee in the night yea with my spirit within me will I seek thee early for when thy judgments are in the earth the Inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness The Expectation of Christs Coming c. Page 195. PHIL. 3.20 21. 20. For our conversation is in Heaven from whence we look for the Saviour the Lord Jesus Christ 21. Who shall change our vile body that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body according to the working whereby he is able to subdue all things unto himself Christs Precept and Promise or Security against Death Page 211. JOHN 8.51 Verily verily I say unto you if a man keep my saying he shall never see Death The Young-mans Liberty and Limits c. Page 223. ECCLESIAST 11.9 Rejoyce O young man in thy youth and let thy heart chear thee in the dayes of thy youth and walk in the wayes of thine heart and in the sight of thine eyes but know thou that for all these
conscience hath so wrought on thee that it hath stung thee for such a sin thou yet approvest thy self in it and thou wilt go on in thy pride still in such and such sins stil thou wilt do so do but know this that stand thou never so much upon thy resolution Death will certainly come and if he find thee in such a sin against thy conscience thou hast reserved in thy self a sting for Death Secondly a man shall know if Death come with a sting by this trial that Solomon giveth us in Ec. 11.9 Rejoyce oh young man in thy youth and let thy heart chear thee in the dayes of thy youth and walk in the wayes of thy heart and sight of thine eyes but know that for all these things God will bring thee to judgment If thou live a voluptuous life Death will certainly come with a sting Dives he lived a voluptuous life had he not a sting for it So others in Scripture did not their plentiful tables and voluptuous courses bring a sting on them A voluptuous life makes a sting for Death When a poor wretch is a dying and shall begin to reflect back on his life what have I done how have I lived so much time I have spent or mispent in apparel in vanity in eating in drinking in swaggering What comfort is this to his soul how can he answer this before God this is the very thing that will sting him at such a day when he can read nothing in his life but barrenness and unfruitfulness nothing that hath honoured God in all his life Certainly my brethren if there be an Epicurious voluptuous life this life will provide a sting for Death Alas you will say Is it so then we may fear that Death will seize on us thus for we confess we have gone on in a voluptuous life gone on in sin that our conscience hath condemned us for how shall we do to pull out this sting I would to God you were thus affected that you were convicted what a fearful thing it will will be if sin remain But wouldest thou have the sting of death pulled out before death come I. How shall I disarme it that I may look death in the face with comfort I. shall give you some wayes and means remember them and practise them First get but a part in Christ and the sting of death is gone thanks be to God saith the Apostle here that hath given us victory through our Lord Jesus Christ It is he that in the Revelation is said to have the keyes of Hell and of death they are under his command and subjection he is victorious over them he hath vanquished them so that if a man have Christ he hath victory and power over Hell and Death I told you in the beginning that that which giveth a sting to Death is the guilt of sin It is so and it is a fearful sting Now that which takes away the guilt of sin is Christ If Christ be mine I have enough to answer the guilt of sin Therefore the Apostle saith Death cannot separate from the love of God in Christ What shall then Indeed nothing it is not the guilt of his sins Christ hath satisfied from them So that if thou wilt have the sting of death out get faith in Christ if thou be not hidden in the clefts of that Rock in the blood of Christ if Christ be not thy Justification and thy righteousness what hast thou to answer the Justice of God you must die and stand before God and how can you stand before God in your sins you cannot without Christ why do you not then study more for Christ Why do you not labour for faith in him It will be your wisdom to labour earnestly to make sure of him if you have him the sting of death is gone Death cannot hurt a person that hath Chriâ—… Get faith in Christ therefore that is the first Secondly 〈…〉 would not have Death terrible and fearful to you labour for sincerity 〈◊〉 â—â—ethren it is a marvellous thing and yet the truth uprightness and sincerity 〈…〉 is an enabling grace All the particular things that we account particulaâ—â—â—â—â—â—wise they have not an inabling vertue in them Some persons have a great dâ—â—â— of learning and wit and many friends much riches and the like yet there cometh an occasion sometimes that puzzleth all these there cometh an occasion sometimes that a mans learning is of no use and natural parts and wit cannot help and riches cannot inable him What time is that The time of death the heart of a man is put to it at such a time and now these shrink nothing can inable a man agaiâ—â— fear so much as sincerity and uprightness When the Prophet Isaiah told 〈◊〉 from God that he must die he flieth to this Lord remember how I have 〈◊〉 fore thee with an upright heart and done that which was good in thy sight When Death cometh to a wicked voluptuous person and telleth him I am here come for thee thou must appear before God what can this man say Lord I have lived before thee a voluptuous proud wretched life I was a scorner of thy Word a contenâ—…er and persecutor of thy people a swearer c. What though perhaps he can say Lord I have heard so many Sermons I have been so much in conference and the like will this inable a man against the fear of Death No nothing but this that he hath a sincere heart that his heart is unmixed that sin is not affected in his soul that there is no sin that he would live in no duty that he wonld not do Lord remember I have walked before thee uprightly I say nothing will inable a man more against fear then sincerity and nothing disgraceth perplexeth the soul in an exigent more then 〈◊〉 It is sincerity that takes away the sting of Death The Apostle in Râ—…m 14. saith he No man liveth to himself but if he live he liveth to the Lord and if he die he dieth to the Lord whether we live or die we are the Lords Here is the comfort we are the Lords saith he How proveth he that We live unto him That is the work of a sincere heart A true Christian liveth not to himself but to Christ Now if thy conscience give thee this testimony I have lived unto Christ then whether I live or die I am the Lords the Apostle concludeth it So right is that of Solomon Riches availeth not in the day of wrath but righteousness delivereth from death Thy righteousness and sincerity delivereth thee not from dying but from death It takes away the sting and power of Death Death shall not be death to thee it is only a passage to thee Therefore remember as to get a part in Christ so to get a perfect and sincere heart and then the sting of death is gone But a hypocritical divided heart a heart and a heart that will
Will not God be offended and displeased Shall I go on in this vanity Would I have the judgement of God find me in this company would I have it seize upon me in this imployment in this business in this action Fear lest God should strike thee in such an act lest Death should seize upon thee in such a place and let that make thee keep a constant watch against the shares that are in those places Fourthly keep good company Company you know is a good means to keep men awake Two are better then one and wo to him that is alone saith Solomon I say good company for there are a company that will infect you Keep not company with a froward person lest thou learn his frowardness So keep not company with drunken and swearing persons these are the Divels instruments to keep a man in carnal security No keep company with those that have a charge given them to exhort one another daily and to consider one another to provoke to love and good works Keep company with the Saints and make use of all opportunities to provoke others and to be provoked by others That is the fourth help Fifthly would you be kept from this sinful security then keep God alwayes in your sight It is a good way for a man that would keep himself awake to fix his eye upon some object Fix your eye upon this main object God Whether shall I depart from thy presence faith David This is that the Lord would have his people to consider to keep them from sin in Jer. 23.23 Am I a God at hand saith the Lord and not a God a far off Do not I fill heaven and earth saith the Lord Can a man hide himself from God in any secret place Think in thy chamber in thy parlour in thy shop in thy house in thy friends house in the street in the Church in every place wheresoever thou art that there God is also If a man had but alwayes some one before him as a witness he would not venture upon many things that he now doth If a malefactour should see the Judge before him if the child had alwayes his fathers eye upon him or the servant had alwayes his Master sitting about him and above him though there are many that are unjust servants yet nevertheless he would serve him at least with eye-service Now set your selves in the eye of God that sees you in the dark hears you in your most secret whisperings knows every action of your life and every circumstance of those actions This will be a means to keep thee from security I will add but one more which is the sixt Consider thy latter end The night is now coming upon us If it were told any of us that this night thou shalt die as it was told the rich man in Luke 12. Thou fool this night shall they take away thy soul I think there is none that heareth me this day but he would certainly keep waking this night But it is not bodily waking we plead for but spiritual waking a waking from sin a waking to repentance And we tell you that Death is now at the door ready to seize upon you We speak not only to you that are aged that are at the brink of the grave but we speak also to you that are young Death may seize upon you and strike you this night be awakened now to repentance I remember what God said to the Church of Sardis Be watchful and strengthen the things that remain That Church was asleep as many of us are at this day God cometh to awaken you now as he did them that that little goodness you have left may be renewed and confirmed You that are quite out of the way of grace and go on in a course of sin sit now down and humble your souls get into a secret corner wherein you may consess those many provocations whereby you have provoked God all your dayes and resolve to amend if the Lord spare you Begin now delay it no longer it may be the last night the everlasting night to you take this warning now therefore be awakened to repentance This is that the Scripture calleth upon so much Eccless 11. Rejoyce O young man in the dayes of thy youth and let thy heart chear thee in thy youth and walk in the wayes of thine heart and in the sight of thine eyes but know thou that for all this thou shalt come to Judgment As if he should say You that are in the middest of your delights that solace your selves in the middest of the abundance of the earth which you enjoy that sport your selves in the pleasures of this would know that there will come a Judgment day see therefore now what will best answer God then Since the end of all things is at hand saith the Apostle let us be sober and watch We know not how neer the end of the world is we know indeed it shall not be yet be cause Antichrist must be destroyed and the Jewes called before that day come but nevertheless certainly thy end is neer thy day thy particular death and that is the time of thy particular Judgment may be sudden It is appointed for all men once to die and after that cometh the Judgment That is the particular Judgment that cometh upon Death so I say this may be the night of thy death and the morning may be the day of thy particular doom Judg your selves now that you may not be Judged of the Lord It was the use that the Apostle made even to good men For this cause saith he many are sick and weak and many sleep that is they are dead what then If we would Judg our selves we should not be judged of the Lord. So say I to you judg your selves now bring your selves as prisoners before the Bar arraign your selves as malefactors before the Judg bring out the particular bills of inditement against your selves whereby you have provoked God yet there is mercy the day of grace and opportunity of repentance and turning unto God yet lasteth therefore do it now I might add many other helps to this purpose but these shall suffice at this present We have an example before our eyes enough to warne us of this Here is an example of Death which should teach us now to awaken our selves and not to live securely as men that dream of a long life for many years Here is a young man dead took away in the prime of his time in the beginning of his dayes his sickness though it held him not long yet it was somewhat violent How know you what a short time you have though you are now young or if you live longer what sickness you may have it may be you may be deprived of your reason and senses therefore now while health and reason and sense while these Warning Sermons are afforded take time and make use of time lest your security make good
Apostle Rom. 8.15 a man is then said to wait for death when he is looking for it at every turn as a Steward waits for his Master when he continually expects his return when upon every voyce he hears or upon every knock at the door he saith oh my Master is come this is he that knocks So a man is said to wait for death when in every action of his life in every motion of his estate in every passage of his courses saith well I must die when though his bones are full of marrow yet I must die when though riches come in like a flood yet I must die when changes appear upon himself or others yet I must die I have no abiding here I am but a sojourner and a stranger as all my fathers were I must not enjoy my Wife for ever Children for ever Friends for ever Lands for ever these comforts for ever my life for ever it is but a lease which may soon expire I am but a steward and I must be called to an account such a one is gone before and I must follow after the writ of Habeas Corpus hath seized on him and for ought I know the next may be for me so when death comes I am ready to answer it as Abraham did his Son Isaac here I am it comes not upon me as a thief in the night when I am asleep and think not of him but as Jonathans arrow to David who stayed in the field and expected when it should be shot and then he rose up and embraced him Yee brethren faith Paul in 1 Thes 5.4 are not in darkness that that day should overtake you as a theif ye are all the children of the light therefore let us not sleep as do others but let us watch and be sober This is the first thing that waiting imports Another thing it imports is a serious preparation for the day of our change for it is not a naked expectation of a change arising from the certainty of death but it is also a religious preparation improving the intrim of time for the best advantage for a mans soul before the day of change doth come which is here implyed in waiting Solomon calls it a remembring Eccles 12.1 Remember thy Creator in the dayes of thy youth whiles the evil dayes come not and the years draw nigh when thou shalt say I have no pleasure in them what is this remembring of the Creator but a care to know him a fear to offend him a study to obey him and when is that to be done Now now remember there must be a present acting of this Moses calls it a numbring of our dayes Psal 90.12 and more then that such a numbring as is joyned with an applying of our hearts to wisedome and the reason is because wisedome it directs to the choyce of such particular actions and works as tend to happiness so should a man after his serious consideration of death apply himself to such wayes and such actions by which he may comfortably close up his life with death it is a great point of wisdome to sute actions with their ends to sit and square the wood before we build the house to learn and discipline a troop before they go to battel to rig and trim and furnish the ship before we launch to sea this is preparation indeed Now this preparation for death consists in two things First in an undoing of that which unsits us to die Brethren he who is not fit to live he is not yet fit to die and that which ever masters the life will be of greatest force in death The Father spake it boldly on good grounds I am not ashamed to live nor afraid to die now that which unfits a man to die is sin it makes him find a bitter enemy of death Oh when this Kng of terrours shall present himself by thy bed side with his arrows in his hands I mean thy sins he will wound thee with infinite amazement and horrour the sting of death is sin faith the Apostle 1 Cor. 15. Thou dost not prepare thy self for death if thou dost not undo thy sins which thou hast done in thy life the which consists First in a narrow search of thy sinfulness both of nature and practice Secondly in a secret humbling of thy soul for them Thirdly in an unfeigned repentance and forsaking of them Fourthly in a constant imploring and obtaining of mercy for them in the blood of Christ If thy soul doth give sin its discharge now death shall give thy soul a discharge hereafter Secondly in the qualifying our persons for the conquest of death there are three things by which we shall be able chearfully to meet and assuredly to conquer death First by having interest in the Lord Jesus the sting of death is sin and the strength of sin is the Law but thanks be to God who hath given us victory through our Lord Jesus Christ If thou hast gotten Christ into thy arms by faith thou carriest thy peace strength and advantage both through life and death For we are â—…ove then conquerors through him that loved us saith the Apostle Rom. 8.37 And to me to live is Christ and to die is gain faith the same Apostle Phil. 11 21. If thou hast a good Christ thou maist be consident of a good death Secondly renewedness of our nature What Saint John spake of he Martyes as some conjecture Blessed and happy is he that hath part in the first 〈◊〉 on such the second death hath no power that say I of a person renewed by the sanctifying quality of Gods Spirit I happy is he he shall have power even over the first death The Spirit and the Bride saith come if a man hath gotten the heavenly Spirit which beautifies the soul with the ornaments of Grace as the Bride is with her ornaments he is a fitted person he may well say to Death come and to Christ come Lord Jesus come quickly Thirdly uprightness of conversation Righteousness delivers form death saith Solomon and the righteous hath hope in his death if a mans work be Christs service if he have a heart enclined to keep a good conscience in all things to keep himself exact to the rule and to walk with God Blessed is that servant which his Master when be cometh shall find so doing that man that hath looked to Gods Word to guide his life may confidently look up to Gods mercy to comfort him in death Remember O Lord saith Hezekiah Isa 39. how I have walked before thee intruâ—…h and with a perfect bea rt Now all this doth the waiting for our change import in the Text to wit a serious expectation of it first by undoing those sins of ours which else for eyer will undo us and by interesting our persons into Christ from whom we must likewise receive the Spirit to change our hearts and uprightness to form a new our conversation But then you will say
ΘΡΗÎΟΙΚΟΣ THE House of Mourning FURNISHED With DIRECTIONS for PREPARATIONS to MEDITATIONS of CONSOLATIONS at the Hour of Death DELIVERED IN LIII SERMONS Preached at the FUNERALS of divers faithfull SERVANTS of CHRIST By Daniel Featly Martin Day John Preston Doctors in Divinity Ri. Houldsworth Richard Sibbs Thomas Taylor Thomas Fuller And other Reverend Divines ECCLES 7.4 The heart of the wise is in the house of Mourning but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth Ambr. de obit frat Non amitti sed praemitti videntur quos sed non absumptura mors sed aeternitatas receptura est Seneca Ep. 77. Iter imperfectum est si in media parte aut citra petitum locum steterit vita non est imperfecta si honesta ubicunqque desieris si benè desieres tota est Newly Corrected and Amended with several ADDITIONS LONDON Printed by G. Dawson and are to be sold by John Williams at the Sign of the Crown in St. Pauls-Chruch-Yard 1660. TO THE CHRISTIAN READER THere is no man that can plead Ignorance to the universal Decree of God concerning the necessity of Mans Mortality It is appointed for all men once to die and every man can say as that wise Woman of Tekoaeh we are all as water spilt upon the ground There is no Age Estate Condition or rank of Men but have been foyled with that invincible Champion Death who riding up and down the World upon his pale Horse above these five thousand years hath with an impartial stroke laid all flat before him some in there Infancy have proved what it is to die before they knew what it was to live others in the strength of Youth some in their old Age rich and poor high and low of all sorts young men may die old men must die even those that are stiled Gods and that by no fawning Sycophant but by God himself their Mortality proves them to be men to themselves though they be as Gods to others and as Epictetus once told the Emperour That to be born and to die was common both to Prince and Beggar The sicknesses and miseries of this World have made the proudest Painims to confess with St. Peter to Cornelius Even I my self also am a mortal man So that experience as well as Scripture concludes what man is he that liveth and shall not see death There are no ingredients in the shop of Nature that are sufficiently cordial to fortifie the heart against this King of terrors or his harbingers the velvet slipper cannot sence the foot from the gout nor the gold ring the finger from a fellon the richest Diadem cannot quit the head-ach nor the purple Robe prevent a Fever Beauty strength riches honour friends nor any nor all can repeal that sentence Dust thou art and to dust thou shalt return Every fit of an Ague and every distemper of this frail constitution being as a light skirmish before the main battel of Death wherein weak man being vanquished is led captive to his long home and when once the lines of Mortality are drawn upon the face of the fairest mortal he becomes a ghastly spectacle how lovely soever before and the conclusion is Bury my dead out of my sight This inevitable necessity however it be confessed and acknowledged of all yet lamentable experience teacheth that in the Christian world most men so live as though they should never die and at length they so die as though they should never live again and when the time of their dissolution cometh their souls are rather chased out by violence then yielded to God in obedience Indeed to a wicked man Death is the beginning of sorrows it is a trap-door to let him down to the everlasting dungeon of Hell but the children of God though they cannot scape the stroke yet they are freed from the sting of death they can play upon the hole of this Aspe without danger and welcome the grimmest approach of this Gyant with a smile being freed from the hurt of him by Him that is the Captain of the Lords Host who hath abolished death and brought life and immortality to light so that the sting of it being plucked out and the suffering sanctified by Christ death is become to every Believer but a dark entry to the glorious Pallace of Heaven Now as it is Gods tender mercy to his Children that their conflict and misery should be temporary but their perfect happiness eternal so it should be their care in this little space of time alotted them whereupon their everlasting condition depends so to provide that they may live happily where they shall live eternally and since we cannot escape death to prepare for it that we may get the sight of this Basilisk before it approach and so avoid the danger of it Wretched is the estate of that man who when these spiritual Philistims the terrors of death make war upon him shall have just cause to say The Lord is departed from me the death of such a one will be like the sleep of a frantick man who when the malignant humor is concocted awakes in a greater rage than he lay down whereas to him that is wise to consider his latter end death is no way dreadful death may kill him but it cannot hurt him it doth free him from temporary misery but cannot hinder him from eternal felicity and as that noble Captain of Thebes who having gotten the victory over his enemies but withal received his mortal wound he made this his grand enquiry whether his weapons were safe or not whether his buckler was not in his enemies hands and when it was replied all was safe he died with a great deal of chearfulness and fortitude So when a Christian is to grapple with death his main care is that his Buckler of Faith and the Helmet of his Salvation his Hope that they be safe to guard his Soul and then he passeth not much what becomes of his outward man he dies in peace and confidence Now that we may be fitted to encounter with this last enemy besides the manifold helps which God hath reached to us in his Word in the passages of his providence in the frequent examples of mortality before us continually and in our own sensible approaches to the gates of death I say besides these and infinite more this ensuing Volumn with so much care and pains compiled by Gods blessing and our endeavours may prove no small furtherance in our Pilgrimage Each Sermon therein being as a several Legasie bequeathed by those upon the occasion of whose deaths they were Preached as by so many Testators who themselves have made a reall experiment of Mortality and left these for our instruction that survive them It is true the dayly examples of Mortality are so many real Lectures that by a kind of dumb Oratory perswade us to expect our end but as they are transient so our thoughts of them vanish therefore it can be no small advantage to have in
but when he doth not use it in the service and for the glory of the Creator God hath given the creature a beeing for himself I have forfeited my beeing when I glorifie not God with it that man forfeiteth his wit his memory his strength his time his life and all that he is or hath when he doth not imploy them in Gods service to Gods glory Now sin is that that makes us deny the service and glory we owe to God sin is that that makes a forfeiture of our lives and all unto him Here is the first thing God hath given the creature a beeing for himself he preserveth the creature in beeing for himselfe when the creature therefore sinneth it forfeiteth its life and beeing to the Creator This makes sin odious Secondly this is it that declareth the wonderful justice and truth of God He said to Adam in the beginning assoon as ever he had fallen he should die and we find it true on him and all his posterity for Adam stood and represented the person of all men before God that one man was all men in him all men were under the sentence of death And we see it is true to this day We find God true in this let this make us beleeve his word in every thing else He hath been as good as his word he hath declared his justice and his truth in the death of all man-kind upon the sin of Adam he will declare it in every thing else in every promise in every threatning in every passage of his word let us give him the glory of his truth as we find it in this Thirdly it is advantagious very much for our selves as a means to prepare us for death the better When a man seriously concludeth Death is the end of all men then if I reckon and account my self amongst men it will be my end too and it may be my end now And we shall see what use Job makes of this All the dayes of my appointed time I will wait till my change shall come I make account a great change shall come such as hath been upon all my fathers before me so it will come upon me I will make account of it and therefore I will wait all my dayes So should we make account every day that this may be the day of my change in every thing you do make account that your change may begin then in that very action and this will be a means to make you wait for your change make you prepare for death It is that that Drusius noteth of Rabbi Eleazer that he gave his counsel and advice that a man should be sure to repent one day before he died He meant not that a man should defer his repentance till it did evidently that Death had seized upon him But because a man may conclude if it be possible I may live to day it is probable I may die to morrow therefore I will repent to day Do it now and do not delay it till to morrow This is that we are to do to account of every day as that which may be the day of our change and so to carry our selves in all our actions and occasions as if we should have no more time to do our work And this is especially to be observed in three things First in matter of sinning be careful to amend sin every day labour to mortifie sin this day as if thou shouldest have no more dayes to mortifie it in take heed of sinning now as if thou shouldest die now Some we see have been taken away in the very act of sin Ananias and Saphirah were taken away in the very act of sinning when they were telling a lie to the Apostle they died Zimri and Cosbie were slain in the very act of uncleannesse Corah and his company they died in the act of murmuring and resisting of God and his ordinances and ministers Let a man now reason with himself these were taken away in their sins it may be my case as well as theirs if I be found in sin That is the first Secondly bring it home to this particular also in another case and that is in redeeming of the opportunities of the time of our life Besides the general time of life there be certain opportunities certain advantages of time that the Scripture calleth seasons be careful to redeem them though you may enjoy your lives yet you may have none of these such as are seasons of glorifying God seasons of doing good seasons of gaining good to a mans self be careful therefore I say to mannage those opportunities and advantages of time so that you may glorifie God Whether you eat or drink or what soever you do do all to the glory of God Which way soever you may most advance Gods glory and pormote his worship which way soever ye may promote the cause of God drawing men to God and incouraging them in the wayes of God which way soever you may be useful employ your self at that time the present time because you must die and you may die now you may have no more opportunities to do it in And so likewise in all advantages wherein men may do good to men Exhort one another while it is called to day and while you have time do good unto all Do all the spiritual good and all the outward good that you can while you have seasons to do good Happy is that servant that his master shall find so doing when he cometh leading a fruitful and profitable life So do good to your own souls while you have time pray while you have time to pray hear the Word while you have time to hear it exercise repentance while you have time to repent perfect the work of mortification while you have time to mortifie your corruptions do your souls all the good you can by the advantages of all the ordinances of all the opportunities that God hath given you This is the end of all men it hath been the end of good and bad before and it shall be the end of good and bad now men must die their houses will be houses of mourning therefore mannage the time in doing all the good you can that God may be glorified men may be benefited and your own souls furthered that is the second thing Lastly in the manner of your conversation consider the time that you have to do every thing in Will a man be found idleing in the market-place when he should be working in the Vineyard Would you be feasting when God would have you mourning you shall see some that have been taken away when they little thought of it Belshazzer he was in his feasts and then cometh the sentence of death against him and other the like examples you may see in the Scripture Consider therefore the particular actions that you doe whether they be such as hold agreement with the state of a dying man So for the manner
shall never again be known in the world or felt by his servants and he preventeth all those evill effects that it would work in the soul for eternity and removeth all the ill effects of it that it hath wrought on their bodies for the present time Death takes away a mans goods for the present Christ abolisheth that he giveth everlasting substance in heaven Death takes away friends Christ abolisheth that he sends us to heaven where we have more friends and better Death brings the body to rottenness and corruption it laieth it in the dust turns it to putrifaction Christ abolisheth that at the Resurrection it shall rise again in glory How that is done the Apostle tells us in the end of this chapter The body shall be laid in the dust a weak and feeble a mortal and natural body but it shall be clothed with immortality This mortal shall put on immortality this corruptible shall put on incorruption then shall be fulfilled that saying Death is swallowed up in victory But this is also limited it shall be destroyed to whom To those that use the remedy those that partake of Christ those that have put on him that is the Resurrection and the life Thus I have laid before your eyes briefly these four things that the Apostle leadeth us to treat of concerning death That it is That it is an enemy That it is the last enemy And that it shall be destroyed Now I desire to apply this and to make use of it First I shall be bold to play the Examiner to search each conscience a little Brethren let the word of God enter into your souls Ye hear that there is a death and that this death is a sore and bitter enemy and ye hear that to some sort of men it is the last enemy that ever they shall encounter with and be freed from all the hurt of it it shall be utterly destroyed Now do so much as discend every one into himself and inquire what care there hath been to prepare for death to make use of the remedy against death what time and paines hath been bestowed to seek to get that that is the only means to escape the Dart of this enemy and that that is the only cause to procure this enfranchisement to the soul from that that else will destroy all A man hath not fitted himself to encounter with his enemy when he looks after wealth and followeth the pleasures and contentments of this life these things will do no good they will be rather a burthen to the heart and vexe the soul and increase the mischief laying more sin upon the soul and giving death darts to pierce the soul with But when is a man fit for death and who may encounter with this enemy with safety I will tell ye That man that takes the greatest care to disarm death of his weapons to arm himself with defensive weapons against death If an enemy come upon a man with good weapons in his hand and find him altogether unweaponed it is hard for a naked unarmed man to deal with him it is hard for a man that never thought of it before to fight with one that is skilful at his weapons Death I told ye is an enemy and an enemy that is skilful in his weapons and the weapon of death it is our own sin Death bringeth nothing with it to hurt a man It findeth with us and in us that whereby to hurt us so many corruptions as are in thy heart so many weapons so many idle words so many bad deeds so many swords to pierce thy heart Death maketh use of those weapons it findeth in our selves and with them he destroyeth and killeth and brings us to perdition Now what have ye done beloved to disarme death what care have ye taken to break sin apieces that it may not be as a sword ready drawn for the hand of death when it cometh as Arrows in a Bow to shoot at you when Death layeth hold on you That man that hath took no care to overcome sin in the power of it and to get himself free from the guilt and punishment of it is unfit for death If death come upon him and find his offences unrepented of unpardoned unsubdued he will so order those offences that he will thrust them into his foul as so many poisoned Darts that will bring sorrow and anguish and vexation and destruction to all eternity Ye may see then whether ye have any fitness to meet with this Enemy whether ye be in case to fight that battel that of necessity ye must for Death as I told ye before is enevitable If ye have not Get alone between God and thy self and there call to mind the corruption of thy nature the sins of thy childhood of thy body of thy mind bring thy soul into his presence confess thy sins with an endeavour to break thy heart for them and to be sorry for them mightily crying to him in the mediation of that blessed Advocate Jesus Christ that died on the Cross to pardon and to wash thy soul in his bloud and to deliver thee from the pollution of thy sins Beg the Spirit of sanctification to bear down those sins and subdue thy corruptions Bestow time to perform these exercises daily carefully present thy self before God thus to renew thy repentance and faith in Christ to make thy peace with God Labour to purge away the filthiness of thy sin and then whensoever Death cometh thou shalt find in thy self sufficient against it thou hast disarmed it But if ye spend your time in pursuing profits and pleasures and follow the vanities of this life and either ye do not think of death or ye think of it no otherwise then a heathen man would have done to no purpose ye think of it to enjoy the world while ye live because ye know not how soon death will end the world and you if you play the Epicures in the thought of Death to annimate you to enjoy the outward benefits of this life to think of it to no purpose but only to talk and discourse now and then as occasion serveth then Death will find your souls laden with innumerable sins that repentance hath not discharged and undoubtedly it will bring eternal perdition Have ye thus disarmed Death But again a mans self must be armed or else he cannot incounter with his enemy What is our Armour against Death to keep off that blow The Apostle in one word sheweth us these Armours when he saith a Breast-plate of faith and love and the hope of salvation a Helmet If a man have got faith to rest on Christ alone for eternal happiness and his soul filled with the hope of glory and salvation through him and then with love to him and his servants for his sake These three vertues will secure a man against all the hurt that death can doe Faith Hope and Charity the Cardinal vertues that Christian religion requires
and commands us to seek these are Armour of proof against all the blows of death he that hath them shall never be hurt of Death because he shall never taste of the second death he hath only to wrestle with the first Death and there is no terrour nor terribleness it that if a mans heart be secure by these Graces Faith whereby we depend on Christ and on him alone for grace and salvation bringing hope whereby we expect and look for salvation of our souls by his blood according to his promise and working charity whereby we love him for his goodness and his servants for his sake If it be charity not only of the lip to speak well but that that produceth wel-doing I say this is that makes us that death cannot separate us from Christ but the further we are from life the neerer we are to him for when this outward tabernacle of our house is dissolved we have a building with God eternal in the heavens and death to such a man is nothing but the opening of the door to let him out of the dungeon of the world and to place him happily in the Pallace of eternal blisse I pray enter into consideration how ye have behaved your selves in the course of your lives whether as Heathens or as Christians A man that takes no care to prepare for death though he come to the Church from Sunday to Sunday and partake of all Gods ordinances yet if the consideration of death be not so imprinted in him that it become a motive to him to labour for Faith and hope and charity and to endeavour to edifie himself in these graces he liveth as a Heathen or an Infidel and when death cometh to him it will do him more hurt then it will an Infidel because by how much God hath given him more means to escape and by neglecting those means as his sin is greater so shall his punishment be Secondly if ye have been careless for to prepare for this enemy Now be ashamed of it and sorrow for it let your hearts now smite ye and ake within you Oh foolish man or woman say I have lived twenty thirty forty fifty years and some more I have laboured against other enemies if men had any thing against me I would be sure to take order I have laboured for the things of this life for riches and friends and give my self leave for to enjoy pleasures and taken pains to doe good to my body but all this while it never came into my heart seriously to think I must die and after that comes Judgement that I must stand before Gods Tribunal and give account of my wayes I have not laboured to beware of Death and of sin nor to kill my corruptions I have not laboured to increase in Faith and hope and charity I have left my self unarmed against the last and worst enemy Oh what folly is this to live in the world many a long day and never to consider that there will be an end of all these dayes and the end of those the beginning of another life and a life that will be infinitely more miserable then this If this beloved have been any of your faults to be carelesly forgetful of your latter end not to consider of your departure hence if the world have so tempted you and pleasures have so enamoured you that you have forgotten your latter end blame your selves it is the greatest of all follies And that I may disgrace this folly and make you ashamed of it Consider a little That this is to be like children The Apostle biddeth us not to be like children in understanding but he that forgetteth Death and is careless to prepare for it is a very child A little one never thinketh he shall ever be a man himself and maintain himself and live in the world by his own labour or by that he shall have from his friends he careth for nothing butmeat and drink and sport and pastime we blame their folly andlaugh at it as rediculous and therefore by our diligence we prevent that ill that might else come upon them Is it not thus with many of you ye live and build houses and raise your names to be glorious and to make a fair shew in the world but to get grace and to get faith and hope and love and repentance none of your thoughts almost run that way scarce any of your thoughts are so bestowed Is not this to be children in understanding Again he is a foolish man that knoweth he shall meet an enemy and will not prepare If a man should hear of twenty or thirty thousand souldiers were gathered against the City and besieged it to destroy it He would not be so foolish and so simple then as to bestow himself in his trade and to follow his business and to give himself to merrimeut but he would get his weapons and he would look about him help to arm the City and to make it strong Why do ye not consider that your soul is as a City Death will come against it and batter you with sickness with pains and at last will certainly take it and if the soul be not prepared will carry it to Hell fire Why will you be so retchless and sensless to eat and drink and labour to grow rich to bury your selves in eatrthly labours and never think how to escape how Death may be kept out that will destroy soul and body I presume you are ashamed of this folly by this time I hope ye will go away with remorse and sorrow for so carelesly neglecting a thing of so great importance to be provided for In the third place therefore I entreat you begin this great work this day Consider if you have not begun the enemy lieth in wait for thee oh man or woman if thou be never so young thou maist meet with him before night if thou be old thou must meet with him ere long Prepare for him betime think what an enemy may encounter thee in the way If a man be to travel though he be not assured to meet with an enemy yet he will strive to get good company and weapon himself he will carry his sword something he will do that if a theef come to rob him he may be able to prevent the danger Beloved think that there is an enemy that way-laies us as we go along in the world one time or other he will be sure to come upon us therefore stir up your selves begin this day to prepare for this enemy How shall I prepare for Death I told you before it is not amiss in a word to repeat it Get Faith in Christ and Hope and Charity and repentance These will be means to prepare and help thee against Death Therefore if hitherto thou have not lament and bewail the sinfulness of thy nature and life Assoon as thou art out of this place get thee into a solitary room fall upon thy knees lament thy
sins the ilness of thy nature and carriage rehearse thy wayes as much as thou canst condemn thy self before God mightily crie for pardon in the meditation of his Son and never leave sobbing and mourning till he hath given thee some answer that he is reconciled And then strive to get faith in Christ call to mind the perfection of his redemption the excellency of his person and merits that thou maist repose thy soul on him that thou maist say though my sins be as the Stars and exceed them yet the merit of my Saviour and his satisfaction to the justice of God it is full in him he is well pleased and reconciled I will stay on him Lord Chiist thou hast done and suffered enough to redeem me and Man-kind thou hast suffered for the propitiation of the world though my sins deserve a thousand damnations yet I trust upon thy mercy according to the Covenent made in thy Word Thus when a man laboureth to cast himself on Christ to lay the burthen of his salvation and to venter his soul on him now he hath beleeved this Breast-plate Death is not able to thrust through And then labour that this faith may work so strongly that it may breed Hope a constant and firm expectation grounded on the promises of the Word that thou shalt be saved and go to Heaven and be admitted into the presence of God when thou shalt be separated from this lower world He that is armed with this hope hath a Helmet Death shall never hurt his head it shall never be able to take away his comfort and peace He shall smile at the approach of death because it can do nothing but help him to his kingdome And then labour for Charity to inflame thee to him again that hath shewed himself so truly loving to men as to seek them when they were lost to redeem them when they were captives and to restore them from that unhappiness that they had cast themselves into Oh that I could love thee and thy people for thy sake thou diddest die for them shall not I be at a little cost and pains to help them out of misery Thus if ye labour to be furnished with these graces then you are armed against Death those will do you more good then if you had gotten millions of millons of gold and silver As you have understanding for the outward man as you have care to provide for that top reserve and comfort life while you are here so have a care for the future world and that boundless continuance of eternity If a man live miserable here death will end it if he be prepared for death he shall live happily for ever but if a man live happily as we account it and die miserably that misery is endless Ye mistake beloved ye account men happy that abound in wealth and honour that have great estates I say ye mistake in accounting men happy that enjoy the good things of this life that can live in prosperity to the last time of their age possessing what they have gotten If such a man be not prepared for death Death makes way for a greater unhappiness after death For the more sin he hath committed the more misery shall betide him his life being nothing but a continued chain of wickedness one link upon another till he settle upon a preparation for Death And in the last place here is a great deal of comfort to those that have laboured to prepare for death though to them Death is an enemy yet it is an enemy that is utterly destroyed The Philosopher said that Death is the terriblest of all terrible things so it is to nature because it doth that that no other evil can do it separateth from all comfort and carrieth us we know not whether Death is terrible to a man that is unarmed for death but to the poor Saints that have bestowed their time in humiliation and supplication and confession that have daily endeavoured to renew their faith and hope and repentance Death hath no manner of terribleness in the world if it be terrible to a Christian at the first it is onely because he hath forgot himself a little he doth not bethink how he is armed If God have fitted his servants for death he hath done most for them if they have not riches yet they are fit for death if they have not an estate amongst men it mattereth not a whit if they be fit for Death if they be miserable here in torments and sickness when others have health it is no matter all these increase their repentance makes them labour for Faith and Hope and Charity whereby they are armed against Death Nothing can save us from the hurt of Death but the Lord Jesus Christ put on by Faith and that furnished with Hope and Charity If God give a man other things and not these graces Death is not destroyed to him But if he deny him other things and give him these graces he doth enough for him Death is destroyed to him His body indeed falleth under the stroke of Death as other mens but his soul is not hurt Death layeth him a rotting as the common sort but the soul goeth to the possession of glory and remaineth with Christ When he is absent from the body he is present with the Lord. Nay when the last day shall come Death shall be utterly swallowed up then the poor and frail and weak body that sleepeth in corruption and mortality shall be raised in honour and in immortal beauty and glory a spiritual body free from all corporal weaknesses that accompany the natural body it shall be made most glorious blessed even as if it were a spirit all the weaknesses that accompany the natural being of the body shall be baken away and it shall enjoy as much perfection as a body can and therefore it is called spiritual Therefore I beseech you rejoyce in the Lord if your souls tell you that you are armed against this death THE WORLDS LOSSE AND THE RIGHTEOUS MANS GAINE SERMON VIII ISAIAH 57.1 And merciful men are taken away none considering that the Righteous is taken away from the evil to come WHen I first began this Verse I did never think that all things would have been so sutable to the finishing of it as now I find they are For there is no circumstance that can be required to make a correspondency between a former and a latter handling but is to be found in the two surveyes I took upon this Text. The occasion of handling it now is the same that was before I began it at a Funeral and now at another Funeral I shall end it The place of handling the same as it was before I began the former part of the Verse in this very street at the other end of it Now I shall finish it at this And the time it is the same and every way answerable to that it was before It was begun in a time of Mortality seared
be greater then I can give warrant for they that die thus die eternally And we had need beseech God with all earnestness of spirit to keep us from such a fearful temptation as this for they that die thus die not in the Lord and therefore cannot be blessed for my Text saith it of no other but of those Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord. This is the first point I come to the Restriction Die in the Lord. It may be construed two wayes the preposition is Ambiguous for the preposition many times in Scripture signifies In Domino or propter Dominum As Rom. 16.1 I commend unto you Phebe our sister that you would receive her in Domino in the Lord that is for the Lords sake as becometh Saints And in the twelfth verse of the same Chapter Salute the beloved Persis which laboured much in the Lord that is laboured much in Gods cause for the Lord. So again Say to Archippus look to the ministery that thou hast received In Domino that is for the Lord for the Lords service for his work I might give you many more instances There is one place most pregnant Eph. 4.1 I Paul a prisoner in Domino so saith the vulgar Latine and so is the Greek interpretation In the Lord. What meaneth Saint Paul A prisoner in the Lord what is that A prisoner for the Lord a prisoner for the Lords cause And thus you may take the word here in the Text Blessed are they that die in Domino that is such as die in causa Domini and thus Judicious Beza to whose judgment I attribute much in translations he readeth it so Blessed are the dead qui moriuutur causa Domini and then in his Annotations propter Dominum And if you take it thus then the Martyrs only are blessed That Martyrs are blessed the Church of God is so far from making a question that they set it down as a Rule Injuriam facit Martyri qui orat pro Martyre A man doth wrong to a Martyr that prayes for a Martyr their blessedness is so sure for He that loseth his life for my sake and the Gospels shall find it saith Christ If he loseth a temporal life he shall find an eternal If he lose a life accompanied with sorrow he shall find another life that is with joy such joy as cannot be conceived such joy as shall never be ended Precious in the eyes of the Lord is the death of his Saints There are two things saith S. Bernard that makes the death of a Saint precious the one is a good life before the other is a good cause for which he dieth A good life will make it a precious death but a good cause will make it a more precious death But that is the most pretious death that hath both a good life before it and a good cause coming next The Matyrs are blessed but they must be such Martyrs as suffer for the Lord be sure of that or else they are not blessed There be some that would be accounted Martyrs a great company of such we have had of late that have died for broaching of reason and some for sowing of sedition some for absolving subjects from the oath of Alleageance some for attempting to blow up Parliament houses Such as these are not Martyrs It is not the punishment it is the cause that makes the Martyr Our blessed Lord himselfe that never did evil was crucified between two evil-doers there was an equal punishment there was not an equal cause It must be the cause that we must look to if we look to be blessed But I cantot stand upon that Here is the first interpretation To die in the Lord is for the Lord. But there is a second and that is more large die in the Lord that is die in the faith of the Lord. Salute Andronicus and Junius my fellow prisoners which were in the Lord before me Saith S. Paul that is that were Beleevers that were in the faith before me And to let pass many other places if there be no resurrection of the dead saith the Apostle then we that are asleep in Christ c. If we beleeve that Jesus died then those that sleep in Jesus shall he bring with him c. and Again He shall descend from heaven with a shout and they that are dead in Christ shall rise first Now what is it to die in Christ in a large sense I will tell you He that would die in Christ first he must die in obedience There are many works of obedience that we are to doe Our last and greatest act of obedience is to resign up this same spirit of ours willingly chearfully into the hands of God that gave it If we have not attained to that strength that some have done that is to live patiently and die willingly yet we should labour to attain to thus much strength to live willingly and to die patiently So as Christ may be magnified in my body saith the Apostle I pass not it makes no matter let it either be by life or by death When we have done the work that God hath set us to do we must be gone and thus must every one say with himself Lord if I have done all the work thou hast appointed me to do call me away at thy pleasure Here is the first In obedience Secondly Die in repentance I remember what Possidonius said of Saint Augustine a little before his death that it was necessary that men when they died they should not go out of the world absque digna competenti resipiscentiâ without a fit competent repentance He himselfe did so for he caused the penitential Plalmes to be written and they were before him as he lay upon his bed and he was continually reading those penitential Psalmes and meditating upon them with many tears he died even in the very act of contrition I do love to see a man chearful upon his death-bed but I do more love to see a man penitent There is a day indeed when God will wipe away all tears from our eyes When that cometh then he will wipe away these tears of repentance too these tears of godly sorrow But the Lord grant he may find me with tears in mine eyes Thirdly Die in faith Indeed if ever Faith had a work to doe it bath then a work to do when all other comforts in the world fail us and freinds go from us then faith to lay hold on the promises I know that my Redeemer liveth and that I shall rise again at the last day and be covered with my skin and shall see God with these same eyes Thus faith And then fourthly Die with Invocation calling upon the name of God Thus have all the Saints of God done continually commending of their souls to God in prayers Saint Paul would have us commend our souls to God in well-doing And it is a necesary thing every morning
we rise and every night we go to bed but especially when we see some harbingers of death sent unto us then to have nothing to do but with our blessed Lord Father into thy hands I commend my spirit And with Saint Steven Lord Jesus receive my spirit And next to this let me put in also Mercy Charity Die forgiving one another Thus our Lord taught us to do when he cried out Father forgive them for they know not what they do And Saint Steven taught us to do so too Lord lay not this sin to their charge And then lastly for I cannot stand upon these things there must be a death in Peace Peace with God Peace with our own consciences and Peace with all the world And now the man that dieth thus dieth with willingness dieth in repentance dieth in faith dieth with invocation dieth in charity dieth in peace this man dieth in the Lord and such a one is blessed They that would thus die in him must live in him A man cannot be said to die in London that never lived in London A man cannot be said to die in the Lord that never lived in the Lord. If thou dost not live in obedience in faith in repentence in invocation in charity in peace thou canst not die in these A man must first live the life of the righteous before he can die the death of the righteous And then again if a man would die thus He must be well acquainted with death grow familiar with him by meditation Many things more I might have said to this purpose but I am loath to transgress the hour I have done with that Give me only leave now to speak in a few words unto the present occasion You have brought here beloved the body of your well-beloved neighbour Mistris S.H. late the Wife of your late reverent Pastour Doctor R.H. to be laid up together with her Husband in hope of a blessed and glorious resurrection It is long since that I did in this Place perform this service at the buriall of his former Wife a woman of whom I may not speak for though I hold my peace the very stone here in the wall will say enough of her and you that know her cannot but assure the truth of it I am intreated to perform now the like duty to the second Wise And I was easily intreated to do it for that name of brother and sister that was usually between us for many years continued may very well challenge of me any duty I am able to perform I am straitned in time and I cannot speak what I would and I do perceive already by this that I have spoken that if I should speak much more my passion would not give me leave Let me tell you one thing amongst many others it is a thing extraordinary and it is for imitation The Vertuous woman in the last of the Proverbs is commended for many things Amongst others this is one She doth her husband good and not evil all the dayes of her life And mark it I pray you It is not all the dayes of his life and yet peradventure some woman might be thought a good woman that doth that but she may perhaps outlive her Husband A vertuoks woman will do him good and not evil all the dayes of her life And for this amongst many other things I do commend this vertuous Gentlewoman I may almost say with the words there in the end of that Chapter Many daughters have done excollently but thou surmountest them all So I may say many women peradventure have done excellently in this kind but I do not know of any one that ever hath done the like to her Husband I pray you hear it Her Husband had a brother that lived in Portugal at the time of his death who was there married he had there three children at least two sons and a daughter This vertuous good Woman would give her self no rest till she had these children out of Portugal she got the two sons hither And what was her care here is another exceslency of hers her chief care was for their souls What did she or rather what did she not to win those children from Popery in which they have been brought up and to bring them to the true service of God She obtained it she got it When she had done that won them to our religion she had not done all one of these had a desire to exercise some Merchandise by Sea She furnished him to the Sea she furnshed him with money for his adventures The other she bound Apprentise here in the City to an honest trade and she hath given them a liberall childes portion I may say so A childs portion that they may thank God and I hope they will have the grace to do it that they had I do not say such a Aunt in law but such a Mother Here was not all She sent for the Mother too she was but sister-in-law to her Husband she sent for the mother she sent for the Daughter they were here She clothed them she fed them some moneths and if she could have won them to our religion she would have maintained the Mother while she had lived she would have brought up the Daughter as her own child But that could not be done it was a work beyond her strength You see here a vertuous Woman that did good to her Husband not all the dayes of his life but all the dayes of her life To the very last day of her life she never did cease to do good to her Husband in his kindred and I think I may say that she was more careful of his kindred then of her own But this is not all This kindness you will say was shewed to her Husbands kindred Hear a little more therefore She knew that there were many Ministers that had a great charge of children and peradventure would be very glad to have some of their children taken off of their hands She hath given to the putting out of five Ministers children to bind them Apprentices fifty pounds She knew that there were some poor persons of the Palatinate here which stood in necessity She hath given to the reliese of them twenty pounds She knew that there were many poor souls that lay in Turkish slavery She hath given for the redeeming of them twenty pounds Nay yet more She considered that her Husband was sometime a poor scholler in the University of Cambridge And she considered too that there are many Ministers Widowes that lived well while their husband lived that are fain to crave reliefe the greater is the shame of some men when they are dead She hath therefore given five hundred pounds to purchase lands and with this land to maintaine partly two Schollers in the University from their first coming thither till they be Masters of Art And then with the residue to maintaine four Widows that have been the Wives of honest preaching Ministers
Zacheus his offer was but half of his goods Lord half of my goods I give to the poor For ought I can perceive and understand above half of her estate she hath given to charitable uses I say no more of her These works of her will praise her in the gates She died in the Country And I am sorry that I had not information as I did desire of her behaviour in her sickness I have it not I can say nothing of it but thus much It was not possible that such a creature that lived thus as we know she did in obedience to God in repentance in faith with invocation of Gods mercy in Charity in Peace but that her death was blessed She that lived in the Lord no question but she died in the Lord and she is blessed for Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord. Good Lord teach us to number our dayes that we may apply our hearts to wisdom and grant that as we grow in years we may grow in knowledge of thy truth in obedience to thy will in faith in thy promises in love toward thee and toward our neighbours for thy sake that when we come to the end of our dayes we may come to the end of our hope the salvation of our souls through Jesus Christ to whom with thee oh Father and thee oh holy Spirit three Persons but one true and immortal and only wise God be given both from us and all thy creatures in heaven and in earth continual praise honour glory dominion and power now and for evermore Let all those that hear the word of God depart from iniquity Now the God of Peace that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus the great Shepheard of the sheep through the bloud of the everlasting Covenant make you perfect to do his will working in you that which is pleasing in his sight through Jesus Christ Amen THE CHRISTIANS CENTER OR HOW TO LIVE TO GOD. SERMON X. ROM 14.7 For none of us liveth to himself and no man dieth to himself for whether we live we live to the Lord and whether we die we die unto the Lord whether we live therefore or die we are the Lords THese words contain an Argument or reason which the Apostle useth to prove that the weak Christian should be born withal and that men should not judge because of the difference of meat amongst them He sheweth that they did not with the neglect of the knowledge of any truth keep themselves ignorant in this particular but it was their weakness The strong should bear with the weak and the weak should not censure the strong the reason is because they agree in one end they propound one general end to themselves that guides them in all their actions they walk in one way and in one path and therefore they should in these things agree together The general end at which they all aymed in their doings is the Lord He that eateth faith he eateth to the Lord he that eateth not to the Lord he eateth not that is still he propoundeth God as his end and the pleasing of God in his actions as the rule of them That he may prove this unto us that they stand thus affected both of them notwithstanding this difference he bringeth in this as the general reason where to every particular of their lives may be reduced All their life is ordered by the Lord they live to the Lord they die to the Lord so that whet her they live or die they are the Lords Therefore all their particular actions are to the Lord. Whether we live we live to the Lord and whether we die we die to the Lord. Now this general reason he propoundeth two wayes First Negatively None of us living to himself and no man dieth to himself Secondly Affirmatively which consisteth of two parts Their duty to God Gods acceptance of them and protection over them Their duty to God if we live we live to the Lord and if we die we die to the Lord. Gods acceptance of them Whether we live or die we are the Lords That which we shall now insist upon is the former part the negative expression and proposal of this general reason none of us liveth to himself and no man dieth to himself Now when the A postle affirmeth this of the beleevers of those times he therein intimateth thus much that it is the course of beleevers in all times It is a duty belonging to all others of which they must make account not to live to themselves but to the Lord. Therefore though he speaks generally here yet there is in his speech a kind of particular universality a generality with a restraint He saith none of us he saith not none in the world live to themselves for there are many in the world live to themselves and not to the Lord but none of us none of those that we rank our selves with that are in the condition of beleevers none of those concerning whom we speak in this question none of us live to our selves Life in general is nothing else but that power whereby we act or move As we read Gen. 2. God breathed into man the breath of life and he became a living soul he gave him the power whereby he acted The acting of this power is the exercise of that life whether the action be of the mind or of the body And so as there is a donble life there are two sorts of actions of life there are natural actions of a natural life and there are spiritual actions of a spiritual life When the Apostle speaks of living he intends both these We live not that is we do not the actions of life whether natural or spiritual to our selves but to the Lord. No man liveth to himselfe By himself he meaneth not only a mans person either soul or body but all those advantages that conduce to the well-being of a man No man of us so ordereth the actions of his life with reference and respect to our selves as the uttermost end we do not make our own well-being or well-fare the uttermost end of our actions none of us live to our selves You have the sense and meaning of the words which being a patterne to other Christians a thing which the Apostle supposeth is or should be in every beleever it giveth us this point of instruction whereupon we shall insist at this time That is No Beleever none that are in Christ should make themselves the end in their actions None should live that is spend their time and strength and endeavour ayming at no higher end then themselves No Christian should so spend his time as to seek himself only in the actions that he doth None of us liveth to himselfe But here it may be objected for the clearing of the point May not a Christian seek himself in the things that he doth When they do good things that which God commandeth that
avoids the corruptions that are in the world through lusts But this looking for the second coming of Christ This Argument John the Baptist used to press upon his hearers the Doctrin of repentance because the king dome of God was at hand This is that upon which Saint Peter groundeth his exhortatoin unto the people Acts 3.18 Repent saith he and be converted that your sins may be blotted out when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord Therefore repent and return unto God do away your sins because there will a time of refreshing come and you had need then to be found in another hue in another state then in your old rotten withered condition and sinful lusts This is the Argument that the Aposte used to the Athenians to bring them from Idolatry to serve the living God because God hath appointed a time to judg the world in righteousness by that man whom ho hath ordained Even for that reason because God hath appointed a time to judg the world in righteousness therefore they should turne from their Idols to serve the living God There is nothing that doth so unbottome the heart nothing so shakes and looseneth a mans hold of sin and unrighteousness as the consideration of Christs coming to Judgment What will it boot me will the soul reason to keep my sins when Christ will come to judg me for my sins What shall I get by going on in a course of sin when I can look for nothing then but a sentence of wrath to be denounced against me This then is that that doth settle a man in a holy conversation in that respect Nay fourthly this is that also which quickneth a man to the practise of all holy duties in his place both in his general and particular Calling It is the very argument which the Apostle Saint Peter useth to stir us up to holiness of conversation Seeing saith he that all these things shall be dissolved what manner of persons ought we to be in all holy conversation and godliness looking for the coming of the day of God wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved and the elements shall melt with fervent heat As if he should have said Look now about the whole world and see what it is that now can comfort you if you be such as go on in a course of sin It may be you will say I fear not much for I have many friends Yea but all these shall die It may be thou hast store of lands but all that shall be burnt with fire It may be thou hast many pleasures but then there shall be nothing but Judgment The coming of the Lord that shall then put an end to all these and turn the course of things the expectation thereof is a special means to take us off from a course of sin and put us on to a course of obedience to make us walk in another kind of fashion while we are in the world Therefore the Apostle Saint Paul when he would â—…ir up Timothy to the work of the Ministry what is the Argument that he useth I charge thee before Christ who shall judg the quick and the dead As if he should say there shall be an appearing before the Lord and therefore if thou wilt give thy account up with joy at that day I charge thee to look to thy Ministry So may I say to every man in his place I charge thee that art a Master of a Family look to the business of thy family to the salvation of the souls of thy people I charge thee that art a father or a mother to look to the salvation of the souls of thy children I charge thee that art a Christian to look to the salvation of thy own soul And how is the charge I charge thee before the Lord Jesus Christ who shall judg the quick and the dead Because there shall come a time when both thou and they shall be present before Christ at his appearing therefore if thou wilt have comfort in them and in thy self and in Christ be careful to do the duty that concerns thy place Looking for the coming of the Lord Jesus So then you see in this respect also there is nothing so forcible an Argument to settle a man in a holy conversation in a heavenly course as this for a man alwayes to look for the second coming of Christ Lastly there is nothing fixeth a man so constantly in a holy course as this Our conversation faith the Apostle is alwayes in heaven We alwayes walk on earth as those that aspire to heaven because we alwayes look for the coming of Christ Wert thou carefnl to serve God yesterday do it to day also it may be Christ may come now and take thee away by death to day and there is no preparation for judgment afterward Little children saith Saint John now abide in him that when he shall appear we may have confidence and not be ashamed before him at his coming What is it that giveth a man boldness and takes away shame from him at the coming of Christ What is the reason that a man hath not that spirit of fear and trembling upon him that shall be upon the hearts of all those that go on in sin when they shall cry to the mountains to fall upon them but this that he hath continued in a holy conversation and constantly walked before the Lord with an upright heart I have finished my course saith the Apostle I have fought a good fight I have kept the faith hence-forth is layd up for me a crown of righteousness which Christ the righteous Judg shall give to me and to all them that love his appearing Still the servants of God have incouraged themselves to persevere in a holy course from the expectation of the coming of Christ that will give them a reward for their constancy in his service It is the Argument that the holy Ghost useth to the Church of Philadelphia Rev. 3.11 Hold fast that thou hast and let no man take thy crown As if he should say There is a time coming when Crowns shall be given but to whome to those that hold out that persevere in a godly course Be thou faithful to the death and thou shalt receive a crown of glory This is that I say that will make a man go on will make him that is good in youth be good in age also because whensoever he dieth he shall receive his Crown This will make a man that he shall not begin in the spirit and end in the flesh this will make him that having put his hand to the plough he will not look back because he no further looks for comfort in the appearance of Christ then he hath had care to walk on constantly in a good course Thus you see the point proved to you that a Christian soul hath a main benefit by his looking for the second coming of Christ
overcoming of all sin and by the vertue of Christ he shall prosper in this I beseech you therefore set your selves awork about this great business to get Repentance and Faith and New Obedience it is much more needful then sleep then meat then attire there is nothing in the world so requisite for thy welfare as these things Scrape thou riches together in the same quantity that Solomon did and ten thousands times more yet thou shalt see Death once within a hundred or half a hundred years Get wisdome yet thou shalt see Death after a few years Take pleasure with as much greediness as he did once when he forgat himself for a space yet thou shalt see death These things that the foolish world hunts after with so much earnestness of desire will not secure thee from the sight of the King of feares Death as Job calleth it But if thou once get Faith and Repentance and new obedience then thou hast obtained that that all the riches and honour and pleasures and learning or whatsoever seemeth desirable in the world will not help their possessors to What will you do brethren Grovel still on the earth and still be mad after back and belly Or will you now begin to think I must die I must shake hands with that dismal enemy pale-faced Death that is able to strike terrour into the strongest heart and amazement into the stoutest soul that is not well confirmed and if this Death find me destitute of true Repentance and Faith and New Obedience it will seize upon me and dragg me before the Judgement seat of God where I shall be Henced away with a malediction and curse and be forced to take my place with the Divel and his Angels in unquenchable flames Oh what shall I do then to secure my self from the great from the strong arme of death I will repent now I will begin Lord draw me help me that I may do it I will beleeve now Lord do thou work Faith that requirest it I will obey Lord inable me to preform such needful duties as thou commandest me Shall this be your practice when you come home Will you thus study to practise Repentance and Faith and Obedience and study to cry and call for it and use all your endeavour Or what will you do will you be as idle and careless as negligent and slothful in making after these graces as before Will you be as greedy of the transitory vanities of this life as in former times Oh abuse not the word of God If thou go out of the Church without a full purpose to apply thy self from hence forward either to begin or to proceed in the practise of the saying of Christ Cursed be thou in thy hearing cursed be that hour that thou hast spent and cursed be thy misbestowed labour thou dissembling hypocrite But if thou labour to practise this of Christ namely to keep his sayings the Doctrine of the Gospel to repent to beleeve and to obey blessed art thou in thy hearing and in thy doing and in thy obedience happy is the time and the place and all things that concur together to draw thee to so needful a work I pray Brethren set not your labour upon gold and silver and money and trash not upon the pleasures and delights and contentments of the world not on any other thing but mainly and principally above all things let your chief care be for Faith and Repentance and Obedience If you strive for these things earnestly and heartily and constantly as sure as the Lord is in heaven he will bestow them upon you and with them the benefit of benefits Freedome from Death And now I shall speak comfort to those few that are in the world that keep these sayings of Christ Let them be of good comfort if their capital enemy the King of fears and the King of Afflictions be held from a possiblity of doing them harm nothing can harme them He that Death cannot hurt paine cannot hurt poverty and disgrace cannot hurt nothing can hurt him You know if the King of an Army be reconciled to a place he will keep his Souldiers from spoyling and burning and destroying that place If Death be put out of power to do thee hurt and God be reconciled in Christ because thou keepest the saying of Christ nothing can hurt thee thou art the happiest man under the Sun Why should the poor sad afflicted grieved mourning lamenting Saints of God envie them that are rich and jolly and merry worldlings any of their pleasures and profits any of those things wherewith they like Idiots make themselves laugh at What hath not God given thee better things then he that thou shouldest murmure and whine and weep for want of them art thou still complaining for want of them Remember what Saint James faith Let the brother of low degree that is abased and dispised in the world rejoyce yea rejoyce with great boasting and glory in his Exaltation This is the exaltation of the Saints Christ writing his sayings in their hearts and inclining them through the operation of his Spirit and the powerful work of his Word to repent and beleeve hath freed them from the danger of Death and interessed them into eternal happiness and that blisse that no tongue can expresse nor no heart conceive This is thy happiness it is not to be rich or to be great for these cannot deliver the owner from the hurt of Death natural nor from the danger of Death eternal But to have Faith and Repentance and Obedience this is riches and exaltation for he that hath them shall not alone escape the Dungeon of eternal darkness but be advanced to the Palace of everlasting felicity The Saint is the happy man the penitent beleever and true practiser of Christian obedience he is the sole and only happy man under the Sun for whatsoever storme he suffereth in this present world he shall certainly escape Death and obtaine Glory Blesse God and bless thy self in God magnifie him rejoyce in him take comfort in thy lot and portion Death that devoureth Kings that destroyeth Emperours that conquers Captaines and men of valour shall not be able to approach thee for thy hurt for thou keepest the saying of the Lord Jesus Christ Rejoyce I say in this magnisie him that is the Authour of it and account thy self happy that thou hast receâ—…ed from him so excellent a gift as to be in some measure inabled to keep his saying Yea if it were so may some Christian heart object then I should esteem my self the happiest man alive â—… but alas where is this Repentance you describe where is this New Obedience in me that still still find my self captive and thral to passion to this and that and the other lust and divers corruptions Where is I say that Repentance when I find so much fin Where is that Faith when I find so much wavering and quaking so much aptness to distrust and almost
there shall be a Judgement For let a man commit secret sins that none knoweth but God and he yet many times he feeleth hellish horrour which is a manifest proose that conscience seeth and apprehendeth God as the supream Judge that will call all men to an account for their sins Thus you hear the reasons why there must be a Judgement The manner of this Judgment consisteth in these particulars First it shall be the last Judgment after which there shall be no other which declareth the terribleness of it In this life while there is life there is hope Let the wicked forsake his wayes and turn to the Lord he will be gracious to him But then the sentence shall not be reverst then there can be no appeal from that Judg and judgment Again it shall be a General Judgment which is the second thing God judgeth in this world and that both in life and in death He judgeth in life by chastising his children for their faults and avenging himself upon his enemies He judgeth every man at death But then there shall be a General Judgment of all 2. Cor. 10. We must all appear before the Judgment seat of Christ In the third Place It shall be a manifest Judgment Sometime the Lord Judgeth men secretly by raising up in them fears and horrours in their hearts causing his curse in theâ—… as water in their bowels and oyl in their bones But then God shall open his wrath against the children of wrath before a world of men and no eye shall pitty them Fourthly it shall be a sudden Judgment Even as the flood came upon the old World when they were sporting themselves and deriding Noah that preached to them of the flood so shall the fire come upon the World that shall pass before the face of Christ when he shall judg the quick and the dead As asnare saith Christ shall it come upon all that dwell upon the earth When the Fowler layeth a snare to take a Bird he giveth not warning to the Bird but surprizeth it suddenly so will Christ Jesus surprize the sons of men suddenly beyond their expectation The Evangelist faith he shall come as a theef in the night A theef knocks not he giveth not warning so Christ Jesus beyond the thoughts of men will be on them suddenly before they are aware by his dreadful Judgement Fifthly it shall be a most righteous Judgment Then God as the Apostle saith Rom. 2. will render to every man according to his deeds He will not regard the face of any He will not be bribed by wealth or reward He will not heare the testimony of the world for the wicked or against the godly but deal impartially and give to every one according to his doings Lastly It shall be an Eternal Judgment So saith the Apostle Heb. 6.2 The meaning is not that God shall sit for ever sifting matters and surveying causes but it is so called from the effect for the conclusion shall be this the Eternal weale and happiness of the godly and the eternal wo and misery of the wicked that shall be plunged by the justice of God into the severest torments The Use of this Doctrine First it serveth as a preservative against temptation for so Solomon hath made it in the Text a preservative and bridle to young men God will bring thee to judgment saith he and let me make it so to you When Sathan tempteth you to sin remember God will call you to Judgement even for those faults for which you may possibly escape the penalty of men yet not withstanding is is impossible for you to avoid the righteous Judgment of God If Sathan would have thee do any thing that the word of God and thy own conscience sheweth thee to be hateful and wicked in the sight of God say to him No no God will bring me to Judgment This is the pollicy of our Adversary when he induceth us to evil he makes sin sweet and pleasant to us but it should be our wisdome to make sin bitter and loathsome even in this meditation God will bring us to Judgment for the same The Apostle saith Resist the divel and he will fly from you But how must we resist him not by arguments of our own making but by arguments of the word of God and amongst other weapons remember to list up this when Sathan would have thee sin say No no God will bring me to Judgment When the Divel solicited Eve and circumvented her she spake in the Serpent to Sathan concerning the Judgment of God We may eat saith she of all the trees of the Garden but not of the tree in the middest of the Garden least we die here she brought an argnment from the judgment of God but here was her weakness she presently let it fall It should be otherwise with us when Sathan tempts us let us say we shall die and be condemned for sin say so and continue in it If any revolt from the truth he professeth he shall die in his sin If any man disquiet the people of God by vexation or oppression he shall die in his sin If any man be a drunkerd or Epicure he shall die in his sin If any man be a whoremonger or adulterer he shall die in his sin If any man be a swearer God hath vowed he will not hold him guiltless he shall die in his sin If any man be an ignorant person disobeying godliness and obeying unrighteousness he shall die in his sin If any man continue in gross wickedness in any wickedness without repentance he shall die in his sin Oh remember this Judgement of God this death that God will inslict on sinners for sin For the wages of sin is death and arm your selves with this when Satan tempteth you if you forget Death and Judgement you are naked and unarmed your spiritual Adversary may hit you on the bare and spoil you as he will The second use is for instruction Will God bring us to Judgment for our sins Oh then let us hast to repentance Beloved this is one of the last things that God will do and this is the greatest thing that Ministers can say God will judge you for your sins The Apostle Saint Paul he moveth the Atheniaus Acts 17.31 to repentance upon this very ground because God hath appointed a day in which he will Judge the world in righteousness And surely if this will not awaken us nothing will nothing can What do we mean beloved to suffer our sins to stand upon the score Where is our wisedome Our grace Are we able to stand before God when he is angry with us Why do we not take off our sins by godly sorrow If a Judge should say to a Malefactour except thou mourn for thy offence thou shalt die and be execnted Doe we not think he would mourn to save his life Behold God faith to you except you mourn for your
before Christ so in judgment If not repent of thy guilt in this kind that thy sins may be done away when the time of refreshing shall come from the presence of Christ And in the mean time set thy self in a contrary course to that thou hast been do as one that would have Death find thee in a good course for as death leaves thee judgment shall find thee If Death find the in a state of repentance in a course of reformation of thy evil wayes judgment shall find thee so too Let Death therefore find thee as a man interest in Christ as a man humbling thy soul abhoring thy self for thy former sins let Death find thee as a man reforming all those evils that are condemned in the Word and in thy conscience Now when I say let Death find the so I mean set about it presently for how soon Death may set upon thee thou knowest not whether to night or no and if this be not now done if thou set not about it now it may be too late thou shalt have no more time therefore do that now and go on constantly after knowing that Death may find thee every moment Therefore it is that God keeps from us upon purpose as it were the certain knowledge of the time of Death that we may be alwayes prepared for Death SINNES STIPEND AND GODS MUNIFICENCE SERMON XXIX ROM 6.23 For the wages of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. THe latter part of this Chapter from the 12 Verse to the end is spent in a grave and powerful dehortation of the faithful from security in sin against which the Apostle useth sundry arguments That which he presseth most is drawn from the several ends to which sin and righteousness doth lead men The end of sin is death verse 21. therefore that is not to be served The end of righteonsness is life everlasting verse 22. therefore that is to be imbraced Because there is now difference in the manner of the proceeding of these two ends Death coming from sin as from the meritorious cause but life from Righteousness another manner of way therefore the Apostle adds this Epilogue and Conclusion in the last Verse plainly shewing and more clearly expressing the manner of them both For the wages saith he of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. In which words we have a description of a twofold service Of sin in the former clause And of God or righteousness in the latter And how both these are rewarded The one with death it payes us well And the other with life which is bestowed by the free gift of God through Christ These are the two parts the two general points that we are to consider First the wages of sin is death saith the Apostle Of sin That is of the depravation and corruption of our nature and so consequently of every sin that being not only it self sin but the matter and mother of all sin when sin hath conceived it bringeth forth death when sin is put forth whereby he signifieth the general depravation and corruption of our nature from whence all sin flowes So it is here The wages The word in the original signifieth properly victuals because victuals was that that the Roman Emperours gave their souldiers as wages in recompence of their service but thence the word extends to signifie any other wages or Salary whatsoever The wages of sin is death by death here is signified and meant both temporal and eternal death especially eternal death for it is opposed to eternal life in the next clause of the sentence therefore that is that that is principally meant The wages of sin is death that is eternal death This for the exposition of the terms The point to be observed from this first part of the Text is this that Death is due to sin as wages to one that earns it To such a one wages is due in strict justice if a man have a hired servant he may bestow a free gift on him if he will if he will not he may choose but his stipend or his wages he must pay him unless he will be unjust for it is the price of his work and so is due to him that he cannot without injustice with-hold it After such a manner is death due to sin the very demerit of the work of sin requires it as being eraned God is as just in inflicting death upon sinners for their sins as any man is in paying his labourer or hired servant their wages for this is the general plain scope of the Apostles words here So in the beginning God appointed Gen. 2.17 where he told Adam concerning the forbidden fruit in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shallt die the death As if he should have said when thou sinnest death must be thy wages The same is repeated Ezck. 18.20 where it is said the soul that sinneth shall die expressing the wages of sin it is death that is the recompence of sin if sin have his due then death must follow So the Apostle had shewed before in this Epistle Rom. 5.12 that by one man sin entred into the world and death by sin so death went over all men for as much as all men had sinned All had sinned therefore all are payed with death And Saint James shews the consequence and connexion between these two the work and the wages he tels us Jam. 1.15 that when sin hath conceived it bringeth forth death All these places are evidences that death by Gods ordinance by his appointment is the due of sin as due to it even as wages is to a hired servant or one that hath earned it What death is it that is due to sin Both temporal and eternal death I say both deaths concerning both which the truth is to be cleared from some doubts It was the Pelagians errour to think that man should have died a natural death though he had never sinned so they thought that the natural temporal bodily death was not the wages of sin Contrary to the Apostle in the place I speak of Rom. 5. where he makes that death that goes over all men which must needs be natural death to enter by sin sin brought in death no sin no death at all But it may be objected when God told Adam in the day that he eat the forbidden fruit he should die the death he meant not temporal death there as the event shewes for such a death was not inflicted upon Adam in the day that he sinned for after he sinned he lived still in the world naturally he continued living many years after I answer not withstanding all this Adam may be said to die a natural death as soon as he sinned because by the guilt of his sin he then presently became subject to it and God straight-way denounced upon him the sentence of death therefore it may
be said he straight-way dyed As a condemned person is called a dead man though he be respited for a time Besides the Messengers and Sergeants of death presently took hold of him and arrested him for sin as hunger and thirst and cold and diseases daily wasting of the natural moysture to the quenching of life Indeed God suffered him that the sentence was not presently executed so to commend his own patience and to give to Adam occasion of salvation the promise of Christ being after made and he called to repentance by that means to attain a better life by Christ then he lost by sin It is objected again Christ redeemed us from all sin and all the punishment thereof but he did not redeem us from bodily death from temporal death for the faithful we see die still even as others do therefore it is concluded by some that temporal death is not the wages of sin for then when we were free from sin by Christ we should be freed from that Our answer to this is that Christ hath freed all his elect not only from eternal but even from temporal death though not from both in the same manner From temporal death first in hope of which the Apostle speaking 1 Cor. 15. saith The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death meaning temporal death at last then it shall be destroyed mortal shall put on immortality as the Apostle speaks but in the mean time it is destroyed in hope though it remain indeed and must be undergone even of the faithful in this life Howbeit to them Christ hath changed the nature of it and now they no longer undergo it as the wages of sin but for other causes As first the exercise of their graces their faith and hope and patience and the rest all these are exercised as in other afflictions so even in the death of Gods Children Secondly the total removal and riddance of the reliques of sin from which they are not freed in this life but when they die then all sin is taken away for as at the first sin brought death into the world so to the faithful now death carries it out again Thirdly their entrance into heaven and to be at home with the Lord from whom we are absent as long as we are at home in these bodies Fourthly to prepare their bodies for renuing at the last day that is done by death for as a decayed Image or statue must first be broken that it may be new cast so these bodies of ours must be broken by death that they may be cast into a new mould of immortality at the general resurrection But here as some sin remains so death remains though we be in Christ yet we are still in that estate wherein it is appointed to all men once to die Thus even temporal death is left to the Children of God to be undergone before they come to heaven It is left to them I say and that justly in respect of the remnants of sin yet they undergo it no other way but for their own good and benefit However temporal death in its own nature to an unbeleever is the wages of sin And as temporal so eternal death for when God told man that in the day he finned he should die the death he meant not only temporal but eternal death he meant that principally as I shewed before in that the Apostle opposeth it to eternal life in the next clause of the sentence Now Christ hath freed all beleevers actually from eternal death But how eternal death should be the wages of sin may be doubted because between the work and the wages there must be some proportion that seems not to be between sin and eternal death for sin is a finite a temporal thing committed in a short time and that death is eternal Now to punisha temporal fault with an eternal punishment it seems that it is to make the punishment to exceed the fault and that is against justice But for an answer to this doubt we must know that however sin considered in the act and as it is a transcient action it is finite yet in other respects it is infinite and that in a threefold consideration First in respect of the object against whom it is committed for being the offence of an infinite Majesty it deserves an infinite punishment for we know oftences are reckoned of for their greatness according as the greatness of the person is against whom they are committed If he that clips the Kings coyn or deface the Kings Arms or counterfeit the broad Seal of England or the Princes privie Seal ought to die as a traytor because this disgrace tends to the person of the Prince much more ought he that violates the law of God die the first and second death too because it tends to the defacing of the Image and the disgracing of the person of God himself who is contemned and dishonoured in every sin Secondly sin is infinite in respect of the subject wherein it is the soul of man Seeing the soul is immortal and of an everlasting substance and that the guilt of sin and the blot together stain the soul as a crimson and skarlet die upon wooll and can no more be severed from the soul then the spots from the Leopard it remains as the soul is eternal and as that is everlasting so sin is infinite in durance and continuance and deserves an infinite wages and punishment which is eternal death Thirdly it is infinite also in respect of the tie between the desire and endeavour of an impenitent sinner for his desire is to walk on still in sin and except God cut off the line of life never to give over sinning but he would run on infinitely committing sin even with greediness And it is reason that as God accepts the will for the deed in godliness so he should punish the will for the deed in wickedness if we sin according to our eternity in our will and purpose to sin God will punish us according to his eternity it is just that they that would never be without sin if they might have their own will should never be without punishment Thus we see eternal death is the wages of sin though sin be committed in a moment though it be a transcient action in it self yet it is just with God to give it the wages of eternal death So you see Death both temporal and eternal is the wages of sin We come to the Use of the point being thus declared First it teacheth us contrary to the Doctrine of the Church of Rome that original lust and concupiscence in the regenerate is a sin for how else should God be just in inflicting temporal death upon infants that are regenerate actual sins they have none and if they have no original sin neither then God should inflict the wages of sin where there were no sin which connot be because there is no
that are such as I have now said think in your consciences what would you die if God should now stop your breath and ascite you by Death presently to appear before his Majesty being thus full of ignorance of security of presumption of unsanctified of vicious of malicious of covetous thoughts could you find in your hearts to say Lord now let us depart Sure we could not but Death must needs be to us as it is said to be to the wicked Rex terrorum the King of terrours if it should come upon us and find us in this case And yet what know we how soon how suddenly we may be overtaken some of us drop away daily some young some old some lie sick longer some lesser time and how soon it will be our turn we cannot tell Our hreath is in our nostrills we are all as grass If the breath of the Lord blow upon us we do suddenly wither as the slower of the field and return again to our first Earth Why will we not labour to be now ready sith it may be alwayes truly said We may now depart either while we are here or in our way home or in our beds or at our meat Who can truly say to himself I am sure I shall not die this hour It may be now thou wilt demand of me What shall I do that I may be ready To insist upon particulars would be too long onely therefore in a word The best preparation for death is a reformed life He that lives religiously cannot but die preparedly And it is a thousand to one if a wicked liver make a gracious end The Scripture makes mention of a double Death and so likewise of a twofold Resurrection the first Death is the death of the body which is the separation of it from the soul The second death is of the soul which is the separation of it from God The first Resurrection is the rising from the Death of sin to a new life the second is that which shall be of the body out of the Grave at the day of Judgment Now what faith the Scripture Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first Resurrection on such the second Death hath no power Wouldest thou then be freed from the second Death hell destruction when thou art dead Now that thou art yet alive labour to have a part in the first Resurrection Note what Saint Paul faith of the wanton widdow that she is dead whilst she lives So he that lives in the pleasures of sin and in the wayes of his own heart and after his own lust he is dead in soul though he be alive in body and if he seek not to come out of this grave eternal death shall be his portion Well then wouldest thou prepare for Death wouldest thou be able alwayes to say Lord now now I am ready labour to know God out of his Word that is eternal life Labour to feel Christ live and raign in thee by his Spirit labour to renounce every sin do not go on in any known sin against conscience renew thy repentance daily and still survey the state of thy soul that wickedness may not get dominion over thee Let Death come when it will though the Lord should so visit thee that thou shouldest drop down suddenly yet it shall not find thee unprepared thou hast a part in the first Resurrection there is no fear of the second Death But if thou wilt cherish thy heart in evil thou wilt go on in thy ignorance in thy careless worship of God in thy prophaning the Sabbath in thy whoredom oppression malice drunkenness excess voluptuousness thou makest ready for hell and it is not thy Lord save me or I cry God mercy c. that shall serve thy turn I will tell thee who thou art like unto even to a man appointed after a year or two to be burned and in the mean space must carry a stick daily to the heap so thou heapest up wrath against thy self and makest thy score so great that when Death comes thou shalt not know how to be prepared And thus have I finished the first general part of my Text touching the disposition of the godly in respect of Death I proceed now in a word to the second the ground rule or warrant of this desire and preparation for death according to the word as if Simeon had said this desire that I have now to end my dayes proceeds not from any carnal discontentment because I am now old and can take no great comfort in worldly things but the ground of it is thy word and Promise thou Lord hast revealed unto thy servant that I should not die before I had seen my Saviour This word is now fulfilled and the sweetness thereof hath given me that encouragement that I do even long to be dissolved and to be united unto thee Or again thus Oh Lord this care that I have had to provide thus for Death and to be alwayes in a readiness it hath not come from my self nature never taught it me but thy Word hath instructed me If I had not proceeded according to thy Word I should never have known how to have prepared my self to the time of dissolution This is the meaning of the words and so the Doctrine is plain viz. that Men ignorant in Gods word can never take comfort in death nor be truly prepared to undergo it This is plain if we consider the Exposition which I have already given of that part of Simeons speech It is a general Rule that of our Saviour Ye err not knowing the Scripture A man ignorant in the Scripture can never rightly perform any spiritual duty Hence was that of David Thy testimonies faith he are my delight and my counsellors If any matter came in hand that concerned his soul straight to the word of God went he to know thence how to do it as a man for his Lease or conveyance goeth to a Counsellor for direction So again he confesses that if Gods Law had not been his delight he should have perished in his afflictions And so no comfort no true quiet in any trouble much more at Death without the guidance and information of the Word The assurance that the sting of Death is plucked out that Gods wrath is appeased that sin is pardoned that Heaven gate is opened whence shall we fetch these but from the Scripture the directions for a holy life which is the best preparation for Death where shall we find them but in the Scripture Here then we see is a Caveat to all that have no will nor desire to be acquainted with the Scripture Divers think they should have done well enough though we had no such Book as we call the word of God To be a Scripture-man is a by-word a reproach a matter of disgrace and sooner will men listen to some idle Pamphlet then to a matter of Scripture Well beguile
and yet there is none of his coming Wilt thou still retain thine integrity right Jobs Wife as she speaks to him wilt thou still retain thy trust to what purpose is it It is in vain to serve the Lord as those wicked ones speak in Malachy Now if Hope will come in and say notwithstanding all these things yet pass by bad report and good report be of Davids mind I will yet be more vile before the Lord that chose me before thee and thy fathers house and I will stand it out notwithstanding all the mockings of men Here is a manifest sign that there is Hope Thus you may seek to find this grace in your selves and you shall find it by many such kind of assaults as these which Faith meeteth withall Now as you are to find it so you are to fight against the hindrances of this Hope And the hindrances of a mans hope are sometimes slavish fear sometimes an impatient spirit and sometimes even Death it self and that is a tedious affront indeed that Hope meeteth withall First Fear a kind of passion and perturbation of the spirit of a man that makes his grief begin before his affliction comes upon him this same Fear hath a great deal of painfulness in it Where the fearful are they are shut our with the unfaithful and without shall be dogs with those that are subject to this fearfulness Now Hope cometh to a man and faith Though I sometime be afraid yet put I my trust in God and therefore I will not fear what man can do unto me I will not be danted with any kind of slavish terrour Hold out thou that faist thou hast faith and be not afraid of the Arrow that flies by day nor of the terrour by night Here is the hindrance of this hope taken away Then there is an impatient spirit that many times possesseth men An impatient spirit and a hopeful heart they are both as contrary as can be You shall have many a man so touchy that he cannot endure any delay he must have things come according to his own mind or he loseth his patience presently Oh but I will patiently wait for the Lord saith hope And here is the opposition that must be made for the maintenance of this hope against all kind of impatiency In patience possesse your souls The last hindrance is death The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death We have many enemies in this world our very life is a warfare but amongst all the fightings and combates we meet with in the world there is none comparable to this last single combate we must undergo with death it self this is a terrible assault that betideth the hopeful faithful man to know that notwithstanding all his faith and all his hope and all his love and all his patience what grace or vertue soever he hath else yet not withstanding he must go down to the grave make his bed in the darkness and lie down in the dust and when he hath fought all that he can yet not withstanding he must down he must yeeld he must take the foyl the fall in the body howsoever the soul escapeth Now here is a kind of dismaidment of hope But I will tell you how it is spoken of the faithful and so of the hopeful The faithful are said to endure as seeing him that is invisible how do they endure by the supply of hope for this hope is it that makes the faithful against all hindrances to fight it out so as that they would not be delivered as it is spoken in the Epistle to the Hebrews And shall death separate us from that we hope for No faith the hopeful man it shall not Yea so far he is from being unwilling to submit himself to this way as knowing it to be the way whereby he cometh to that he hopeth for as that he is very ready and greedy of death it is the way to that I hope for saith he therefore it is sweely spoken of an Ancient and you will acknowledge it to be a sweet sentence of that Father Saint Austin He that desireth to be dissolved according to that of the Apostle and to be with Christ Non patienter moritur He doth not die patiently See here is a faithful a hopeful man and yet doth not die patiently what would the Father say He liveth saith he patiently the very life he liveth putteth him to his patience when he cometh to die he dyeth pleasantly he goeth away with his hope and his hope is full of immortality And no more for that point The next thing I observe is concerning the Object of this hope and this is it that Christ is Object of the Christians hope We have hope in Christ Hear it in the general hear it in the speciall In the general 1. Tim. 1.1 Saint Paul he beginneth his Epistle with Christ our hope Col. 1.27 The riches of the mystery of Gods grace to the Gentiles is Christ in you the hope of glory Here is Christ our hope and Christ your hope in the general In the special hear it in Saint Paul hear it in the prophets and others Saint Paul to me to live is Christ to die is gain Christ is to me in life and death advantage living or dying I am Christs I have hoped in the Lord faith the Prophet David And God is my hope and hath been my help even from my youth This is the general song of the whole Church God is our hope and therefore the Prophet Jacob made an excellent Ejaculation in those blessings he gave his sons when he said Oh Lord I have waited for thy salvation Here was his waiting his hope for the salvation of God from the God of his salvation And so let him slay me if he will saith holy Job yet not withstanding I will still trust in him Thus the faithful have hope and their hope is in Christ No more of it for the enlargement of it It sheweth to us in the first place this Note that A Christians wings do mount him above all means What are his wings his hope Whither slyeth his hope It takes its flight up to heaven to God to the right hand of God to Christ there is his hope So then he that hath this hope being poor he flyeth not to riches for they make themselves wings and fly away from him Being weak he flyeth not to the arm of flesh for in man there is no hope nor no confidence to be put in Princes in the Ballance they are lighter then vanity it self faith the Psalmist Being sick he flyeth not to the Physitian he fleeth to these as the means not to rest in them to make it the main of his aim the scope of his hope he doth not fly thus to them but he goeth to God that commandeth all that worketh above all against all and without all
Why must there be such a waiting for this â—… these grave cloths are too sad for the freshness of our life and would you have us be like the mad-man in the Gospel who lived among the Sepulchres Nay I beseech you let us consider and settle our thoughts a little you shall be stayed with reason there are many strong Arguments reasons why we should thus wait both by expectation 〈◊〉 preparation First it is the main errand of our life God did not send us into the world to sin and to adorn our selves with the creature but to bring him some honour and then to die the factor is not imployed to take his pleasure abroad but to do his Masters work and then to return home Tortullien confesseth he was a great finner and therefore born to repentance therefore doth God give us life and the Master allows the servant a candle to work by that we may repent of our sins and get our hold in Christ and work out our salvation and do the great business of believing to be good and to do good and so by Death to go up to heaven Secondly death is but once and that needs to be well done which can be but once done if there might be another space after death a second edition to correct the faults and escapes of the former then a present and speedy preparation were not altogether so necessary but faith the Apostle It is appointed for all men once to die and after death to come to Judgment Heb. 9.27 no more but once We usually shadow out Death with an hour-glass A fit emblem but that when an hour-glass is run out it may be turned again but this once out can be set up no more thou shalt never live to amend thy errours in dying O then how needful is it before-hand to prepare for Death Thirdly when death hath done with thee then God will begin with thee thou must once die and after this come to judgment Heb. 9.27 To judgment what is that thou must be presented before the holy and just and great God who is the Judge of the quick and the dead and with all that thou art and with all that thou hast done there must appear then before him all the courses of thy life all the bent of thy affections all the secrets of thy heart shall then be pulled in peeces and opened and all thy works and all thy words shall be exhibited scann'd and surveyed and that with severity and righteousness how say you then is it not fit to be preparing for Death to sit thy soul to reforme thy heart and life wilt thou be presented before Gods severe Judgment-seat with Usury in thy bags with bribes and oppression in thy hands with a scum of holiness in thy mind with uncleanness in thy members with drnnkenness in thy mouth with swearing in thy tongue O Lord I tremble to think of it Fourthly the soul when it is once gone by Death can never be recovered any more the tree may be cut and that may grow again the ship may be lost and the wealth laboured up again but if the glass be broken in peeces it cannot be made whole again the soul of man is but one and the loss of that one is the loss of it for ever when death hath closed up thy eyes thou shalt never have opportunity to pray more to weep more to humble thy self more to fast more Never any Prophet or Apostle shall come unto thee in the name of God more after death all the Ordinances cease unto thee for ever and all the space of returning shall cease unto thee for ever thou shalt not lie a few years in flames of wrath and then get leave to come out and take a better course O no if once there then for ever there this life is the time of mercy and space of repentance but when Death shall deliver thee up to be judged by the Lord thou must stand for ever to his sentence therefore as Christ spake Agree with thine adversary while thou art in the way lest the Judge deliver thee to the officer and he cast thee into prison I tell thee thou shalt not depart thence till thou hast paid the last mite Luke 12.58 And get oyle into your lamps before the door be shut Fifthly consider it will be as much as thou canst do to do the work of Death when Death doth come therefore prepare and get all thy other work done before For my Beloved consider three things First Conscience usually is most active at the time of death a man that could withstand and silence it in his life yet when he comes to die he shall here his voyce and perhaps not be able to stand under the bitter indictments and manifold accusations of it then it will spread the book of thy life before thee and then and there thou shall see thy sins as gastly presented as if they were so many wounds newly made Secondly thy patience will be tried with variety of pain interruption of sleep every place will be a thorn to thee and every action a burden Thirdly thy faith may be tried to the utmost if thou lookest to thy Wise her tears may trouble thee if to thy Children their cries may perplex thee if to thy friends they may be discomforters to thee and will Satan let the alone all this while will he let him lie down in comfort who would not scarce let him live an hour in peace oh what a victory would it be if he could at the last make thee cast away thy considence it is true the cannot attain it but he may desperately attempt it Why brethren who knoweth the power of these sharp temptations which may then beset him Verily all the holiness which we have attained already all the duties we have performed already we may then look on them with tears and cry out O why no sooner why no better why no more then all the strength of thy faith will be little enough to support thee Will there then be a change befall even all the sons of men Then to make some Use and Application of what hath been said to our selves First build no Tabernacles here We have here no abiding City And brethren saith the Apostle 1. Cor. 7.29 30 31. The time is short it remains that they that have wives be as if they had none and they that weep as though they wept not and they that rejoyce as though they reioyced not c. Why this thirst for riches there will be a change why this unwearied seeking after the things of this life as if thy soul were to go into a barn or a bag and there tumble it self for ever Thou fool this night may thy soul be taken away and whose possessions shall then thy careful and only gettings be the glass will be broken and all the wine will fly abroad though thou hast with much eagerness grasped the world in
this life yet in death thy hands must open â—…emselves and let it go thou must not hold the world above thy life nor thy life beyond the day of death no we cannot alway have that which we desire we must certainly part with what we most esteem of Secondly what comfort is this to a good soul If we had hope only in this life faith Saint Paul we of all men are most miserable 1 Cor. 15. Death is a happy change to a holy person First it is a change which shall put a period to all his changes in this life his outward condition how oft doth it change sometime by joy and sorrow sometime by comfort and misery by health and sickness by abundance and want but when Death comes all sorrow shall fly away for ever thou shalt never be more troubled with a sick body with a sad estate with common losses but the change of a temporal life shall set thee in a full and settled possession of an heavenly His inward condition how oft doth it change sometime free anon distressed now a sweet view of heaven anon darkned with fear now rejoycing in Christ anon buffeted with Sathan now blessing God for grace anon distracted with the insolent workings of remaining corruptions but when death comes then comes a change of all this it will release thee for ever of sin and Sathan after death sin shall be a burden no more and Sathan shall be a tempter no longer but thou shalt be as happy as thou canst desire and shalt enjoy thy God and thy Christ without fear of trouble in glory in felicity in eternity all the cruel insolencies of tyrants shall come short of thy soul thou shalt be above their malice and beyond thy self Secondly it is a change and no worse then a change just as Joseph changed his garments and went into Pharaoh so thou shalt put off thy body and go into glory put off thy mortality and go into immortality Oh what terrour to wicked men a day of change will befal them Why didst thou say Oh David there is no bands in their death and they are not in changes like other men Verily I should have checked thee hadst thou not recanted it presently thy self Psal 73.4,17,18,19 and reported it to us that they are set in slippery places and are brought into desolation and cast down into destruction in a moment and utterly consumed with terrour Good Lord what a change is that to them they judged with insolent and unrighteous judgment the Children of God now but death will change this the unjust steward shall be called to a an account and he that beat his fellow servant shall be eternally judged by a righteous God and their honour shall sinck in the dust neither shall their riches deliver them from wrath but they shall see him whom they have peirced and persecuted and shall not be able to escape his presence A dismal thing will this be that a man shall have his honour die and the great God put disgrace upon him a dismal change indeed when a man shall see all his power changed into impotency his pleasures into torment and wrath put upon his soul when God shall seperate thee from his presence thou shalt not have a drop of ease nor any friend to assist thee nor any hope of comfort thou shalt be stript of them all in a monent shall a change of all this be O consider this if there be any here that forget God least he tear you in pieces and there be none to help remember and consider your latter end and apply your hearts to wisdome Last of all shall there be a change that shall befal every son of man then Oh that this people were wise as Moses faith that they would remember their latter end all the dayes of our appointed time to wait till our change come What do you think of servants to whom you had committed servile imployments till you came home and if when you come home they were absent and you found one in the street drunk another in a chamber with a strumpet how would you take this Brethren think upon it we are Gods servants or should be two things are imposed upon us one to honour God another to save our own souls if he find us doing the works of the Devil and the flesh and find us in the works of the world how will he take this Come faith God I have lent you a life thus many years I told you what you should be and what you should do and what have you been doing all this life what have your works been what courses have you taken are these the fraits of your wayes to have a life run over with ignorance with prophaness c. Alus when a man at that time shall have nothing to say but Loâ—…d I have lived in such a sin all my dayes I have fulfilled my own desires thou hast for me in this World and I have laboured to get a great estate all my dayes Another may say I have spent my time in 〈◊〉 society c. What will God say to these men are these the endings of thy life the fruits of thy opportunities where is the repentante I called for at thy hands where is that godly sorrow that I called for for the sins of thy life did not I send thee into the world for this end to get Grace to get Faith to make up thy accounts with me thy God and hast thou no regand to it Well thou hast been foolish inconsiderate for the time that is past yet now understand that a day of change will besal thee O let us be perswaded I beseech you be perswaded to it in this our day to know the things that concern our peace whilest it is called to day not to hearden our hearts whilest it is called to day not to deser our repentance thou art not assured of any more time then present Death may meet with thee as thou sittest in thy feat as thou goest out of the Church doer and thou knowest thy heart hath been wicked oh why wilt thou set thy eternal estate upon so small a point as it were the cast of a Die Remember what Daniel said to Nabuohadnezzar let it have acceptance with thee break off thy sine by repentance c. Seeing we must die and appear before the judgment feat of God what manner of persons ought we to be in all holiness of life and conversation as soon as we are we begin to sin and as soon as we are we begin to die let us look upon our account and be faithful to our souls perhaps thy accounts are yet to make oh be sure to let it be the first thing thou doest and give thy self no rest till thou hast done it and when thou hast done this labour to clear it with the bloud of Christ labour by humble confession and hearty repentance to turn unto the Lord go on
up all the sons of Adam shall be swallowed up it self into victory Till then we shall all go 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in our several rank and order take our last walk the way of all flesh and it is happy if we go it as Abraham did here in peace and a special blessing if we be gathered as he was to his Fathers in the Autumne of a good old age In which words we have two Acts of a Tragedy the former acted upon his Stage thou shalt go to thy Fathers the latter under the scaffold and be buried in a good old age None die better then they who have life in their hope and none live better than they who have death in their mind and thought especially if it be in the time of their health and bloom of their beauty and pride of their youth and top of their earthly happiness For this cause Joseph of Arimathes is supposed by many to have set his Sepulchre in his Garden as it were to sawce his sweetest pleasures with the sad thoughts of his Funeral and John surnamed the Almoner began his Sepulchre on the day he was Consecrated Patriark of Alexandria and it was the manner of the ancient Emperours at their Coronation feast to have several sorts of Marble shewed them to the end that they might choose one of them for their Tomb-stone and agreeable hereunto the interlineary gloss yeeldeth a reason why God commanded that the oyle wherewith the Kings were annoynted should be compounded with Cinnamon and other spices quod sit cinericii coloris because it is of the colour of Ashes or rather such mould as is digged out of Graves to put them in mind that very day in which they were made Gods upon earth that they should die like men In which regard we have great cause to Bless the providence of our heavenly Father who in the midst of our Marriage feasts and many occasions of mirth and joy presents us with such sad spectacles as here we see to the end we should not exceed in our mirth or too far set our heart upon the pleasures and comforts of this life which like sticks under a pot after a blaze fall suddenly into ashes Let us learn from all the changes and chances of this mortal life not to sing a requiem to our souls here with the fool in the Gospel because we have wealth laid up for us for many years for if our riches take not their wings and fly away from us we shall be taken away from them we shall be arrested by Gods Bayliff Death and then we must go But thou shalt go Our observations from this Scripture ariseth from two springs 1. The manner 2. The matter The former divides it self into two Rivelets the latter into three In the former to wit the manner I observe 1. That these words were spoken to Abraham in a Dream when the Sun was going down a heavy sleep fell upon him 2. That they were spoken by way of Gracious promise In the latter to wit the matter I observe three blessings bestowed upon Abraham 1. A comfortable death Thou shalt go in peace 2. An honourable burial and be buried with thy Fathers 3. A seasonable time for both in a good old age First of the manner When the Sun was setting a deep sleep and dreadful darkness fell upon Abraham and God shewed him in a dream the misery and thraldome of his postetity in Egypt Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs and shall serve them and they shall afflict them 400. years vers 13. and lest at the sight hereof his heart should utterly have failed him and his bowels dryed up within him like a pot-sheard God cleareth the skie which was clouded with a smoak of a fiery furnass vers 17. and cheareth his heart reviving him with a promise of safety and peace for himself and of deliverance of his posterity also out of their grievous servitude after a certain period of years allotted for the promise of the growth and ripeness of the Amorites sins For dreams in general the great Secretary of Nature discovereth unto us that the Dreams of good men are better than the Dreams of bad and he will have his foelix or happy man to have a singular priviledge above other men even in his sleep And doubtless as a good conscience is a full feast in the day so it is a light banquet in the night for better thoughts and phantesies in the day beget better dreams in the night as the brighter colours in the Window when the Sun shineth cast clearer species intentionales or reflections from them on the Wall God is with his children as well in the night as in the day and he imparts his counsels and discloseth his secrets as well by dreams in the one as by visions in the other That prophesie of Joel I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh and your young men shall see visions and your old men shall dream dreams though it were fulfilled in the day of Penticost as Saint Peter instructeth us yet ought it not to be restrained to that day or the Apostles time only For it hath been verified in all after-ages and holdeth still for profitable and comfortable irradiations of Gods Spirit upon the soul by day and night though not for supernatural and prophetical revelations or not so frequent Dreams therefore as they are not with the Eastern people supertitiously to be observed so neither are they utterly to be neglected as idle and vain nocturnal phantasies The Poet could say 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Jupiter sends Dreams and Ariflotle dreamed not when he wrote his exact discourse of Divination by dreams nor Artemidorus when he published his curious tract intituled 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 judgment of Dreams for the experience of all times proveth that the Dreams of many men especially a little before their death have been very considerable When the window of the senses are shut the soul hath best leisure to look into her self and after sickness hath battered down the walls of the dark prison of the body in which she was close kept more light breaks in upon her and she seeth farther off then she could before and this is the meaning of the Platonicks in that their Apophthegme anima promonet in morte the soul looks out as it were neer death For this particular in my Text God is gracious to many of his children now adayes by Dreams or otherwayes to give them notice of their departure hence To some he maketh known the year to some the moneth to some the very day and hour when they shall go the way of all flesh And as here he fore-shewed Abraham his departure from hence per viam lecteum by the milky way as it were that is by a sweet and pleasant passage of a natural death in the autumn of his life so also in a Dream he
his Aph. Secondly the rule of the Region of darkness or prince of Hell so Hesiod taketh it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Hes op dies Thirdly the state and condition of the dead or death it self so Homer taketh it Il. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 In the Language of Canaan it is either taken for the place of torment of the damned And in hell he lift his eyes being in torments and seeth Abraham afar off and Lazarus in his bosome Secondly for the Grave and that most frequently in the Seventy Interpreters as namely I will go down into Hades to my son that is the Grave and let not his hoary head go down into Hades that is the grave in peace and in death there is no remembrance of thee and who will give thee thanks in Hades that is the Grave and what man is he that liveth and shall not see death and shall he deliver his soul from the hands of Hades that is the Grave and Hades that is the Grave cannot praise thee Death cannot celebrate thee and so it must be here taken For though Hell in regard of the Elect be conquered yet it eternally possesseth the reprobate men and Devils neither shall it be destroyed at the day of judgment or emptied but inlarged rather and replenished with the bodies of all the damned whose fouls are there already But Hades that is the Grave shall lose all her captives and prisoners for the earth and sea shall cast up all their dead We have the parties to be examined let us now hear the Articles upon which they are to be examined First Death is to answer to this Interrogatory where is thy sting these words may be understood two manner of wayes 1 Actively 2 Passively 1 Passively where is thy sting that is the sting thrust out by Death in which sence the sting of Death is no other then the present sence of the desert of death and guilt of conscience and a dreadful expectation of damnation and hell to ensue upon it take away this sting from the death of the body that it is a punishment for sin and an earnest as it were of eternal death and it can hurt no man This sting Christ hath plucked out of the death of all his Saints and of a curse made it a blessing of a torment an ease of a punishment of sin a remedy against all sin of a short and fearful cut to eternal death a fair and safe draw-bridge to eternal life 2 Actively where is thy sting that is the sting which causeth and bringeth Death In this sence the sting of death is sin non quem mors fecit sed quo mors facta est peccato enim morimur non morte peccamus as Saint Austin most accutely and eloquently Sin is said to be the sting of Death as a cup of poison is said to be a potion of death that is a potion bringing death for we die by sin we sin not by death sin is not the off-spring of death but death the off-spring of sin or as the Apostle termeth it the wages of sin And it is just with God to pay the sinner this wages by rendring death to sin and punishing sin with death because sin severeth the soul from God and not only grieveth and despightfully entreateth but without repentance in the end thrusteth the spirit out of doors And what more agreeable to Divine justice then that the soul which willingly severeth her self from God should be unwillingly severed from the body and that the spirit should be expelled of his residence in the flesh which expelleth Gods grace and excludeth his Spirit from a residence in the soul This sting of death is like the Adders two forked or double for it is either original or actual sin original sin is the sting of death in the day thon eatest of the Tree of knowledge thou shalt surely die and as by one man sin came into the World and death by sin and so death passeth upon all men for that all had sinned Secondly actual sin is the sting of death the soul that sinneth it shall die the son shall not bear the iniquity of the father nor the father the iniquity of the son the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him Howbeit if we speak properly original sin as it is a proness to all sin so it maketh us rather obnoxious to death then dead men but actual sin without repentance slayes out-right Adam did not die the day he eat the fruit but that day became mortalis or morti obnoxius guilty of death or liable to it original sin alone maketh us mortes but actual mortuos dead men The Devil like to a Hornet sometimes pricks us onely but leaveth not his sting in us sometime he leaveth his sting in us and that 's far the more dangerous He is pricked only with this sting who sinneth suddenly and presently repenteth but he who the Devil bringeth to a habit or custome in sin in him he leaveth his sting Now we know what the sting is let us enquire where it is The answer is if we speak of the reprobate men or Devils it remaineth in their consciences if we speak of the Elect it is plucked out of their souls and it was put in our Saviours body and there deaded and lost for he that knew no sin was made sin for us to wit by imputing our sin to him and inflicting the punishment thereof upon him That we might be made the righteousness of God in him for the chastisement of our peace was upon him and by his stripes were we healed who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree Athanasius representeth the manner of it by the similitude of a Wasp losing her sting in a Rock Vespa acculeo fodiens petram c. as an angry Wasp thrusteth her sting into a rock cannot pierce or enter far into it but either breaketh her sting or loseth it all so Death assaulting the Lord of life and striving with all her might to sting him hurt not him but disarmed her self of her sting for ever The first interrogatory is answered we know where Deaths sting is let us now consider of the second interrogatory concerning the victory of the Grave O grave where is thy victory If the Grave as she openeth her mouth wide so she could speak she would answer My victories are to be seen in Macpelah Golgotha in all the gulphs of the Sea and Caves and pits of the Earth where the dead have been bestowed since the beginning of the world My victory is in the fire in the water in the earth in all Churnels and Caemitaties or dormitories in the bellies of fish in the maws of beasts in holy shrines Tombs and sepulchers wheresoever corpses have been put and are yet reserved Of all that ever Death arrested and they by order of divine Justice have been
3.11 1 Pet. 3.4 Prov. 31.29 Coherence Division The person judging God Opera Triditatis ad extra suns indivisa Opera Trinitatis ad intra suns divisa cuique persona incommunicabiliter propria Object 2 Cor. 5.10 1. Cor. 6.2 Answ How Christ is said to be the Judg. Rom. 2.16 Joh. 5. Why God hath committed the power of the execution of Judgment to Christ Three properties requisit in a Judg. 1. Knowledg to discern Heb. 4. 2. Power to execute Psal 149. Rev. 15. 3. Justice in the Execution Gen. 18. The Judgment 1. It shall be Types of the last Judgment Luk 17. Rule 1. Reas 2. Reas 3. Act. 1731. Reas 4. 2. In what manner it shall be 1. The summons Job 5.28 Matt. 24.31.1 Cor. 15. 1 Thes 4 16. 2. The Appâ—…arance 2 Cor. 5 10. Rom. 14 12. 1 Cor. 1.7 3. The seperaration 4. The tryal Rev. 20.12 The books that shall be opened at the day of Judgment 5. The Sentence The general things observable in the words 1. The duty 2. The motives The duty exprest 1. Generally 2. Particularly The general duty expressed 1. In the Object 2. In the Acts that are exercised on the Object 3. In the manner of exercising The Object 1. God Simile Simile 2. The name of Cod. The Acts that are exercised on the Object 1. Of the understanding Memory 2. Of the will and affections Desires Desires an argument of a gracions heart Joyned with endeavours Desires without endeavours false The manner of exercising these acts 1. They must come from inward principles 2. They must he sincere Simile Simile 3. They must be pitched on God alone 4 They must be universal 5. They must be constant Simile The particular duties In times of mercy 1. Chearfulness 2. Fruitfulness In times of judgment Simile 1. Perseverance Simile 2. Diligent exercise of our graces Simile 3. Patience 4. Prosiciency The Motives to the duties God seeth and Judgeth all our wayes 1. This alone differenceth the godly from the wicked Division of the words Obser 1. The Saints on earth have a heavenly conversation What it is The priviledges thereof 1. Their names are written in heaven Luk. 10.20 2. They are governed by the law of God 3. They are safety kept 4. They have interest In God Mat. 6 32. Chap 7 11. In Christ Dan 12 1. In the holy Ghost 2 Cor 13 10. In the Angels In the Saints that are in heavenâ—… That are on carte 5 They are Inriched with heavenly treasure Mat 13. Isa 55 1. The traffique of a Christian what How to know whether our conversation be in heaven By our affections Note Obser 2. While the Saints are on earth they are stated in heaven 1. In respect of right and title 2. In respect of present possession John 14. Presumption to hope for heaven without union with Christ first on earth Ezra 2.62 Christ in respect of his bodily presence is only in heaven Transubstantiation Cell 3.1 Obser 3. Expectation of Christs coming to Judgement the best means to work a man to a holy conversation The continual expectation of the Saints is for Christ coming A threefold coming of Christ Proved 2 Tim. 4.8 Heb. 6.8 Vse For tryal How to know whether our expectation of Christ coming be right 1. By the ground of it Heb. 11.1 2. By the companions of it Which are 1. Patience 2. Love Manisested in secret longings Care to walk in Christ 3. delight in the ordinances 3 By the effects and fruits of it The expectation of Christs coming the best means to procure a heavenly Conversation Proved 1. It is the worker of Mortification Collos 3.17 1 Joh. 3.2 3. Guilt of sin causeth the apprehension of death to be terrible 2 Subdues out worldly affections Collos 3 1. 3. Keeps us from sinful actions Act. 3 â—…8 Acts 17 30. 4 Quickness to holiness of life 2 Pet. 3 11 12. 5 Furthers our perseveranâ—…e in godliness 1 Iohn 2.28 Rev 6. Vse For tryal Rev. 6.15 Heb. 2.14 1 Thes 1 10. Division 1 The duty commanded Meaning of the worsd What is meant by the saying of Christ viz. The Doctrine of the Gospel Two parts of the Gospel 1. Shewing out raisery Rom. 3.63 2. The remedy against this misery 1 The Redemer 2. The manner how we are redeemed Rom. 3.24 3. The means how to enjoy the remedy 1. The Conditions of the Covenant of Grace 1 Repentance Mark 1.15 Heb 6. The parts of Repentance Godly sorrow for sin Psal 38. Jam 4.9 Confession of sin Pro 28. Psal 32 4. 1 Joh 1 9. Firme purpose of amendment Joh 5. Petition for pardon in the name if Christ Hos 14.2 Repentance only taught in the Gospel Mans repentance tends to the honour of Gods justice 2 Faith John 6 29. Desinit on of Faith Faith only taught in the Gospel 3. New obedience How differenced from that required under the Law 2. The benefit What it is to see Death What Death is here meant Joh. 6.68 Act 5.20 Acts 11.14 Reas 1. 1 Joh. 2.24 Reas 2. Vse 3. Incitatton to thankfulness Vse 2. Reprehension Vse 3 Exhortation Vse 4. Consolation Obiect Answ Coherence Division of the words 1. The sin of young men 2. The Cure Doct. 1. It is the sin of young men to rejoyce inordinately Gen. 6.11 Isa 22.14 Eccles 12.1 1 Tim 2.22 Tit. 2.6 Job 1. Reas 1. Natural corruption Reas 2. Forgetfulness of Judgement Deut 32 29 Reas 3. Freedome from crosses Jer 31. Reas 4 Want of spiritual joy Vse 1. For Admonion 1. To take notice of their carnal joy Young mens rejoycing proved to be inordinate 1 Because it is not placed there where it should be 2 Because it is placed there where it should not be 3 Because it is excessive in lawful things 4 Because it terminates not in God 2 Of their walking after their own heart Hosea 7. 3 Of their walking after the sight of their eyes Iob 31.1 Ier 9. Heb 11. Vse 2. For Fxhortation 1 To abandon carnal joy Luke 6.26 Iob 20.6,7 Directions how to avoid carnal joy 1 To labour for sorrow for sin 2. Consider the vanity of things 1. Of humane wisdome Eccles 1 13. Eccles 1 15. 1 Cor 1 19. Eccles 9 10. 2 Of worldly honour and cred it Eccles 1 16. John 5 44. John 10 43. Gal. 5 26. 3 Of worldly pleasures Eccles 2 2. Vers 4. 1 Cor 7 19. Luke 8 4. 4 Of riches Jer 5 27. Eccles 5 12. Rev. 18.18 2 Tim. 1.16 Luk. 12.25 5 Of friends and Allies Psal 62 9. Psal 49 7. 3 Labour for spiritual joy Rom 5 1. A twofold ground of spiritual joy 1 The good things exhibied 2 The good things promised The second Exhertation not to walk after their own heart The third Exhortation not to walk after the sight of their eyes Joshu 7 21. 2 Sam 11 1. Vse 3. To old men Doct. 2. God will bring men to judgement for all their sins Masa 3 18. Eccles 12 14. 2 Cor 5 10. 2 Thes 4