Mankind shall be cursed and commanded to depart from God The same Lord Jesus who is here said to take holy Men to be for ever with himself in the next Epistle to these Thessalonians has his coming described in other terms The Lord Jesus 2 Thess 1. 7 8. shall be revealed from Heaven with his mighty Angels in flaming Fire taking vengeance on them that know not God and that obey not the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ There is everlasting Death as well as everlasting Life and they who trifle away their time in this World without performing the Conditions upon which eternal Happiness is promised will find it to their astonishment true when though they call Rev. 6. 16. for the Rocks and Mountains to hide them yet the great Day of God's Wrath will come and they shall not be able to stand Wherefore happy they of whom these words speak who when they are called to meet the Lord in the Air shall never depart from him Which according to the tenor of the Scripture cannot be the Portion of all Men therefore there can be no difficulty or doubt in restraining my Third Observation to holy Men. Thirdly After Death all the holy People of God shall for ever be with the Lord. I confess these words do not assure us that immediately after Death our Souls shall be translated to Glory and Happiness but only tell what shall befal us after the Resurrection It is now 1600 Years and upwards since this Epistle was written and yet the end of the World is not come And when it will come none of us knows How long soever it may be it is but a small space of Time in comparison of Eternity and therefore it being otherwise certain that our Souls do not sleep in the interval between the Death and the Resurrection of the Body I consider it now without any distinction and express it indefinitely of the future State Then holy Men shall ever be with the Lord. So has our Blessed Saviour assured us If any John 12. 26. Man serve me let him follow me and where I am there shall also my Servant be Again In John 14. 2 3. my Father's house are many Mansions if it were not so I would have told you I go to prepare a Place for you And if I go and prepare a Place for you I will come again and receive you to my self that where I am there ye may be also And the same assurance we have from other Texts in other Phrases Now what it is to be with the Lord is not easy for us in this present State fully to say But sure we are it describes a very great and happy State And we may in the consideration of it join some other Texts compared together with those I have named out of the Gospel of St. John We are willing rather to 2 Cor. 5. 8. be absent from the Body and to be present with the Lord. Now we see through a Glass darkly 1 Cor. 13. 12. but then Face to Face His Servants shall serve Rev. 23. 3 4. Psal 16. 11. him and they shall see his Face In thy presence is fulness of Joy at thy right Hand are Pleasures for evermore And one place more particularly describes the Glory of our Bodies Who shall Phil. 3. 21. change our vile Body that it may be fashioned like to his glorious Body So then to be with the Lord is not to be advanced only to a proximity of Place but there is an Affinity a nearness of State a resemblance and a participation also of that Glory and Happiness in which our Lord is Now let us consider a little Holy Men shall ever be with the Lord that is they shall be exalted to Honour and Glory as our Lord is Not in the same degree for of that we are not capable but in our Measures and according to our Capacities This it is to be where Christ our Lord is To be honoured of his Father and our Father If any Man serve me him will my Father honour John 12. 26. The honour that our Lord Jesus did to our Nature in becoming Man shall then redound to our Persons we shall be taken up to be with God He who is set down in the Throne of his Glory will ennoble and raise us so that even our Bodies that are sown and laid in the Grave in dishonour shall be raised in Glory The difference 1 Cor. 15. between Beauty and Deformity is esteemed considerable in this Life but the reflections that will beam upon us in that glorious State shall beyond what we can now conceive dignify our Persons That which now turns to Dust and Ashes shall be transfigured and the Righteous shall shine forth as the Sun in the Mat. 13. 43. Kingdom of their Father God has now honoured Man by making him an excellent Creature fit to govern the rest of the Creation if he could but govern himself but we are now in a very low form of excellence in comparison of the Honour and Dignity which our Lord Jesus will put upon us when he calls us as the Blessed of his Father to inherit a Kingdom prepared Mat. 25. 34. for us Therefore is that which we shall be possessed of called Glory a Crown of Glory a Kingdom an Eternal weight of Glory In comparison of which all the Sceptres and Crowns of this lower World are Trifles and Toys and not worth looking after But again To be with the Lord is to be delivered from all the Encumbrances and Necessities and Perplexities of this present Life to be raised to fulness of Joy and Pleasures for evermore To be secured from all Wants and Weaknesses from Sins and Sorrows and Fears from the Devil and Hell and Death from whatsoever would disturb and dissatisfy To be with the Lord is to have the Lord for our God and to dwell with us and the consequence of God's dwelling with us is as is descrbed God shall wipe Rev. 21. 4. away all Tears from our Eyes and there shall be nor more Death neither Sorrow nor Crying neither shall there be any more Pain for the former things are past away The Imperfections of this State shall pass away and the Necessities of it too We shall no more hunger nor thirst no more be sollicitous what will become of us no more amused and frighted with Wars or rumours of Wars no more in danger of Plots and Conspiracies under no discontent for decay of Trade or loss of Friends under no pains of Body nor trouble of Mind beyond the reach of Sickness and Diseases and effectually secured from all distrubing Accidents Yea and beyond all this which is but the absence of Misery to be with the Lord is to be in our Father's house in those pleasant Mansions where Peace and Joy dwell and triumph where the Eyes of our Understanding shall be inlightned and inabled to take a full view of the
A SERMON AT THE FUNERAL OF Mr. CHRISTOPHER GLASCOCK The late Eminent School-master Of Felsted in Essex Preached there Jan. 22. 1689 90. By WILLIAM SHELTON Rector of St. James in Colchester LONDON Printed for N. Renew at the King's Arms and I. Robinson at the Golden Lion in St. Pauls Church-yard MDCXC To the Right honble DANIEL Earl of NOTTINGHAM Lord Finch of Daventry Principal Secretary of State and one of his Majesties most Honourable Privy-Council MY LORD THAT good Man whose Memory these Papers endeavour to preserve was so well known and so much in your Lordship's Favour that were not the Character they give him so disproportionate to his Merit I should not doubt of a candid acceptance of them Perhaps it was one Instance of his Modesty in his valnation of himself that he would design me to this Service who he knew would rather under-rate than flatter him I humbly present what I have done to you Lordship's Patronage who finding leisure amidst those Public Cares whereby you serve their Majesties and oblige our Church and Nation to consult the future flourishing Condition of that long famous School by taking care for a fit Successor that may deliver Posterity from suffering loss by the death of Mr. Glascock will also vouchsafe to be a Patron as of the Concerns of the succeeding so of the Concerns of the succeeding so also of the Name and Memory of the dead Schoolmaster And for his sake will pardon this presumptious Address of his Friend May it please your Lordship Colchester April 4. 1690. Your Lordship 's most Humble and most Obedient Servant WILLIAM SHELTON A SERMON At the FUNERAL of Mr. CHRISTOPHER GLASCOCK 1 THESS iv 17. And so shall we ever be with the Lord. WHEN Friends take leave of each other their parting is more or less solemn as they apprehend the length of Time before they shall meet and embrace again Therefore is the separation which Death makes between Friends of greater consideration because there will be no return of those that are departed and gone before us We shall to them but they 2 Sam. 12. 23. shall not return to us Yet even this parting is not altogether hopeless and they who think so do not well understand the Doctrine of the Christian Religion Such there were amongst the Thessalonians Men not sufficiently instructed in the Doctrine of the Resurrection To whom therefore St. Paul applies himself in the 13th verse of this Chapter But I would not have you to be ignorant Brethren concerning them which are asleep that ye sorrow not even as others which have no hope It seems there were some in that Chruch not well informed about the State of the Dead and what was to follow after Death Therefore in the next Verses he establishes the Doctrine of the Resurrection Ver. 14. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him Ver. 15. For this we say unto you by the Word of the Lord that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep Ver. 16. For the Lord himself shall descend from Heaven with a Shout with the Voice of the Archangel and with the Trump of God and the Dead in Christ shall rise first The World will last to a certain period of Time and then the End of all things will be at Hand when all the Negotiations and Correspondencies of this Life shall cease The Son of Man will come from Heaven in Power and great Glory when they who shall be then alive shall be changed in a moment in the twinkling of an 1. Cor. 15. 52. Eye They shall not go so leisurely through a long stage of Death as they whose Bodies are committed to the Grave and resolved into their first Dust but they shall be as effectually changed from a mortal and corruptible State as they who after a long corruption are raised out of the Grave Yet shall they not prevent or get the start of them who have been long dead For then shall the Trump of God sound then shall the Voice of the Archangel alarm and put Life and Motion into dry bones and summon together all that have been dead from the beginning of the World and all that shall be then found alive to attend the Lord Jesus who shall come to judg the Quick and the Dead And when all are together caught up in the Clouds to meet the Lord in the Air as the beginning of this Verse speaks then shall every Man be judged according to his Works They who have done Evil shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the Presence of the 2 Thess 1. 9. Lord and from the Glory of his Power And when workers of iniquity are so commanded to Luke 13. 27. depart from him then they who have done good shall have the Reward of their Labours in his presence where there is fullness of Joy And this is the account given of their Happiness and Glory in these words And so shall we ever be with the Lord. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I do not love nor use to be nice or curious in making particular Observations from particular Words But because according to the number of the Greek words four things are here plainly either supposed or expressed I determine my self to that number We shall be We shall ever be We shall ever be with the Lord. And with relation to the former words of the Verse We shall so ever be with the Lord. So that these Four Heads of Discourse shall comprehend what I have to say to these words 1. It is here manifestly supposed There is a future State We shall be after death 2. The duration of this State is Eternal We shall ever be 3. The state in which we shall thus for ever continue is described so far as concerns holy Men by being with the Lord and elsewhere by being present with the Lord. 4. This shall be after the Quick and Dead are united in one Body to meet our Lord Jesus at his second coming so as we then meet so shall we ever be with the Lord. First We do not perish when we die We remain in being when the Union of Soul and Body is dissolved the Soul remains and the Body shall in due time be reunited We die that we may live again There is a Future State a Being and a Life after Death Though it be no sufficient excuse for Ignorance yet it may suggest this pious Meditation to us to bewail the wanton abuse of Knowledg or the means of Knowledg if we consider that in this Age of Light and Improvement there are Men who to outward appearance seem to profess Atheism with greater and more avowed confidence than other Men dared to do in former Ages of Ignorance and Superstition There was one or two suspected of old among the Athenians but they were scorned and reproached as unworthy
of the Reason that was planted in them There may at other times have been some Fools who have said in their Psal 14. 1. hearts There is no God But I question whether till this Age prodigious for Wickedness and Debauchery there have been any such number of Men as of late days so profligately bold as to make it the ordinary entertainment of Life to ridicule Religion and laugh at the Notion of a Deity and explode the Existence of Spirits and the Immortality of the Soul as idle nonsense That there have been such who have so seemed to be Atheists I nothing doubt But whether any considering Man did really and unfeignedly and confidently believe that there is no God and that there will be no future State this I confess I very much doubt And there is the greater reason to think there never were such because some of those whose vicious Inclinations have led them first to wish and then to desire and then to hope and it may be to think that nothing remained after this Life when it has pleased God to bring them to a better Mind they have acknowledged that they did not find it an easy thing quite to extinguish the Notion of a Deity out of their Minds Whatever some Men may have thought thus much is certain That no Man can demonstrate this Negative that there is no State after this And then this is also certain if it be but possible if it may but reasonably be suspected that we do not perish when we die it is perfect madness and inexcusable folly to live as if there were no after-State and to lay no foundation for an happy Eternity As for us who believe what we profess it lies as the very foundation of all our Religion The Being of God is supposed in all the Exercises of our Devotion And the Immortality of the Soul and the Resurrection of the Dead and eternal Judgment are Doctrines that do so much uphold all the other Articles of our Christian Faith that otherwise our Preaching would be vain and your Faith would be vain Nor does 1 Cor. 15. 14. our Religion in these things impose upon our Understandings and teach us to believe without Reason for this has been the common sense of Mankind The Doctrine of the Resurrection was indeed new and strange to the Heathen Philosophers and they seemed to look upon 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as a kind of a God or Goddess which the Apostles preached together with Jesus He seemeth to be a setter forth of strange Acts 17. 18. Gods because he preached unto them Jesus and the Resurrection But our continuance in a future State was so incorporated in the belief of the Heathen Philosophers and Poets yea of their Orators and Historians too that we may well say it is a Doctrine agreeable to the Reason of Mankind Some Men may have expressed this Belief upon insufficient or doubtful Motives as the preexistence of Souls and the imagined appearances of departed Spirits But that the Soul of Man is of a separate Nature and capable of Existence separate from the Body that it is of that quickness and Activity as not to sleep or die or turn to corruption with the Body has been generally and firmly believed And together with the more rude and imperfect Notices that Heathens by the Light of Nature have had of these things our Christian Religion both confirms us in the Truth of it and directs us rightly to understand the importance of this Truth and also reveals further that our Bodies as well as Souls shall receive Life from him who is the Fountain of Life Post mortem nihil est ipsaque mors nihil Senec Troas May be a good Verse but it is a very bad Sentence To believe that nothing remains afterDeath is an error which if nothing else can correct yet at length the experience of a future State when it shall be too late will teach Men that it had been safer and wiser to have believed it while they had time to make preparation for it This is the first Observation I make from these words We shall be after death We are not then dismist and resolved into our first Nothing Our Existence continues and our Life continues And that it may appear how much we are concerned to live with relation to that future State that we may not neglect it because of its futurity as if it were not worthy of our present care we are further instructed from these words that there is nothing in this our momentary Pilgrimage that deserves a setled Thought or a fixed Affection in comparison of that long and never-ending State For so we here read that we shall ever be Whence I consider Secondly The future State is an Everlasting State Nothing is long that has an End We linger out in this World some sixty or some eighty and some very few near an Hundred Years and the greater number drop off sooner even in the Bud or Blossom But if we could live a Thousand Years twice told when it is once past it will be but as yesterday when we compare it with a long Eternity That is a Duration that swallows up our Thoughts and by the unboundedness of it makes us poor and short in our conceptions of it We see an end of all Perfection All that we converse with is finite and it is difficult for our narrow Souls to comprehend what it is to live for ever Hereafter we shall better understand what we now believe but we believe it because we are so taught As by our Reason That that which cannot be corrupted or subject to Decay must remain incorruptible so by our Religion we have Life and Immortality brought to light through 2 Tim. 1. 10. the Gospel We are now immeasurably sollicitous about an Inch of Time whereas St. Paul by the shortness of our time would perswade us to be more indifferent about the Affairs of this Life This I say Brethren the time is short It 1 Cor. 7. 29. remaineth that both they that have Wives be as tho they had none and they that weep as though they wept not and they that rejoice as though they rejoiced not and they that buy as though they possessed not and they that use this World as not abusing it for the fashion of this World passeth away But when shall we be suitably affected towards a future State Are we loth to venture the Concerns of a few days and shall we put eternal Salvation to the venture It would be an easier thing for Men of corrupt Minds to live and much easier to die if Happiness and Misery both died with us But we are now in a tendency to another Life and as our Preparations now are so will our State then be My Text indeed speaks of nothing but a joyous Eternity We shall ever be with the Lord. But all those that live for ever shall not find this true A great part of
He is our Lord and as such he has in his holy Gospel given us incomparable Precepts for a good Life and to encourage our Obedience he has confirmed and explained these Precepts by his own most excellent Example If we follow him in the Temper of our Minds and in the Holiness of our Lives he will take us up to be with himself else if we expect the Reward without doing our Work if we presume upon the fulfilling the Promise when we will not obey the Command if we trust we shall be Happy in Heaven though we will not be Holy upon Earth we deceive our selves and ruin our selves by that deceit Nothing impure shall enter that Holy Place We shall never be fit to be admitted into the presence of an Holy Saviour to see the Face of an Holy God unless we our selves be also Holy The exccllency of an Holy Life makes it very reasonable but the hopes of Happiness makes it very necessary All workers of Iniquity shall be commanded to depart from God Without Holiness no Man shall see the Lord. If we be Heb. 12. 14. ashamed of Christ and his Commandments here he will be ashamed of us then and will send us to our proper place wherefore as we desire the End we must use the Means we must live soberly righteously and godly in this Tirus 2. 12. present World for that is the only way of being for ever with the Lord for the time to come 3. From hence appears the reasonableness of the exhortation in the next Verse Wherefore Vers 18. comfort one another with these words And of that before I would not have you ignorant Vers 13. concerning them which are asleep that ye sorrow not even as others which have no hope Our Holy and Religious Friends whom Death takes from us are not lost they are gone before us to a better Place and to better Company And by what we read in this 17th Verse we know where to find them if we follow them after such a manner as that we may overtake them They are taken from us and according as we needed or delighted in their Company our loss may be the greater in their absence But if they were our Friends it does not become us to grudg them their Happiness They are now with the Lord in the presence of God and of Jesus Christ whither we shall e're long be taken if we be followers of them who through Faith and Patience inherit the Promises I have been the less prolix in my Discourse upon these words that I might have some time to spare to pay those Respects which are so justly due to the memory of that Reverend and Worthy Man whose Funerals we now solemnize Upon which occasion I must take liberty to bewail the misfortune of this great and Worthy Auditory that this Lot is fallen upon me who in divers respects am less fit for this Service than many worthier Men of this Neighbourhood Not only because of my own Defects of which I desire always to be duly conscious nor together with that Consideration because of the straits of Time only which gave me less leisure to recover my self from an hurry of Thoughts but also because of the distance in which I have lived from him which gave me less opportunity of making those Remarks upon his daily Conversation which would have helped forward the Character that ought to be given of him But when I have promised my self that you who conversed with him oftner will supply the Defects that you find in this Account from your more frequent and daily Observations of what was eminent and praise-worthy in him I take leave to proceed when I have first said That I have known him not much less than 40 Years And besides divers Correspondencies by Letters I have had the happiness of frequent conversing with him and therefore may be thought in some measure fit to say something of him In which I may be excused from giving a large account of the former part of his Life before he was fixed in this Place or before I had any knowledg of him For though he was born in this County and Neighbourhood and educated in this School from whence he removed to Katherine-Hall in Cambridg and from thence to a private Town in this County Chipping-Ongar where he began his Employment of a School-master and where he gained such a reputation for his Abilities in that Employment that he was after a few Years continuance there sollicited to remove to Ipswich In which Town of note he was understood to be so perfect a Master in his Art that the then Lord of Warwick courted him hither Yet these things being so long ago that there are few alive that can give any perfect account of them and he being setled here in the Year 1649 or thereabouts I am sure before the middle of 1650 he has lived here long enough to make good the Truth of all I shall say concerning him Which I reduce to these Heads I consider him As a Man As a Neighbour As a Friend As a School-master As a Divine As a sincere honest Man and good Christian 1. As a Man I only remark the strength and vivacity of his old Age. God blessed him with an able Body fit for his able Mind He was not pondus inutile terrae He did not out-live his Serviceableness His Strength and Health continued with him so as he was not wanting to his Employment even almost to the last days of his Life Which I do not note as properly his Vertue for then it would be imputable as the Fault of those who decay sooner but his Felicity it was and the Felicity of those who were recommended to his Care that they did not waste a great deal of their precious Time under an old decayed Schoolmaster who was not able to fulfil the Ends for which they were sent to him But when he was of a great Age about 76 as he esteemed himself born for Service so he was able to pursue the Ends for which he came into the World as long as he continued in it 2. What a Neighbour he was you of this Place do very well know How useful and friendly how ready to make Peace and to do all good Offices that lay in his Power Of this I may be allowed to say the less because Envy it self cannot charge his Memory in this Matter He never was a self-designing Man He was of no sowr or morose Disposition Never inclined to make or increase Quarrels or Contentions Nor could he be content to cloyster up himself and to live so retired as to deny others the advantage of his Conversation but hearty and free and open-spirited and as willing to do Kindnesses as others are to receive them What an excellent Companion he was all the Country knows as well as this Town Nor do I know one Man this day in Essex of more general Acquaintance and whose Company was more