Selected quad for the lemma: soul_n
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A59653
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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 ...
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Shelton, William, d. 1699.
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1690
(1690)
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Wing S3100; ESTC R38233
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17,524
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37
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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