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SERMON III.

How much it Concerns us to be well Prepared for Death.

NUM. XXIII. Part of the 10th Verse.

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Let me dye the Death of the Righteous, and let my Laft End be like His.

Nomy foregoing Discourse I proposed to confider these Three Things.

I. What the great Difference is betwixt the Death of the Wicked, and the Death of the Righteous, that should make the One appear Dreadful, and the Other very Defirable.

IIdly, If the Death of the Righteous be so very Defirable, it highly concerns every one of us to take Care in time to Prepare for it.

And IIIly, How we may best Prepare ourselves for that Happy Death.

The First of these, The Difference betwixt the Death of the Wicked, and the Death of the Righteous, I have already spoken to: And now come in the

II.

IId Place to confider, that, if the Death of the Righteous be so very Defirable, it highly concerns every one of us to take Care in Time to Prepare for it.

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There is nothing more unaccountable in all Morality, than Men's strange Thoughtlessness and Inconfideration of their Latter End. The Wiseman tells us, The Living Ecclef. Know that they shall Dye : All Men Living ix. 5. Know it. Reason tells us, that it is Natural to All; And Revelation tells us, That it is Appointed to All Men to Dye. Our constant Observation of what befals Others, and the Sense of our own Decays, and Weakness, and Infirmities growing upon us, do all tell us so. The Grave threatningly tells us so every Time it opens its Mouth; And we find that neither Greatness, nor HoF3 nours,

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nours, nor Riches, nor Wisdom, can exempt Men from it. Neither Crowns nor Scepters can make Men Immortal: The Greatest Monarchs upon Earth, after they have Lived like Gods, must come to Dye like Men. We fee Pf. lxxxii. that Wife Men also Dye, as well as the Igno rant and Foolish; and Good Men alfo, Dye

Pf. xlix.

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as well as Others; and None do so much John viii. as think of escaping. Abraham is Dead, 52,53. and the Prophets are Dead: All the whole Generations from Adam, the numerous Pro geny of fo many thousand Years, are all Dead and gone. So that David when he was Dying, only tells his Son, that he was

Kings ii. going the Way of all the Earth.

2.

One Generation goeth off the Stage, to make Room for another that is coming on. We know not how foon our own Turn may be: We are still Changing, and conftantly going on towards our Great Change; never continuing in one Stay. In the midst of Life we are in Death; Always in the Way of it, and Always hasting towards it. And Every Day, Every Hour, may put us in mind of it. The Paffing-Bells and Funerals that we fo often Hear and See, are so many Mementos to us of our own Mortality, and bid us Prepare to Follow. But though we do so well Know that we must Dye, and as furely Dye Pf. xci. as now we Live; Though we fee a Thousand fall before us, and Ten Thousand at our Right-hand, yet (by whatever Infatuation

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it is) No Man layeth it much to Heart; Very Few in Comparison do well and feriously confider it, as a Cafe that will foon be their own, and what they ought therefore above all things to be providing for.

There is nothing certainly that more concerns us, and yet there is nothing that we lefs care to think of. If it is Friends or Relations that we are following to the Grave, we look Solemn and Serious for the Time, but the Impression soon wears off; This World foon gets Ground of the Other, and drives it fo out of our Thoughts, that perhaps we think no more of our own Departure, till the next Funeral Solemnity: And the more frequent they are, they still every time less and less affect us. As we find, They that minifter to the Sick, and whose Business it is to attend Death-beds and Funerals, are little or nothing concerned at them.

This is what I know not well how to account for, unless it be thus-That we are ready to make our Estimate of Dangers, not so much by the Greatness, as by the Nearness of them. It was Aristotle's Observation long since, that the Evils that are Near us, hanging over our Heads, are mightily feared; Arift. but if they are at a Distance, they are little Rhet.lib.2. Heeded by us. And he instances in this very Cafe, the Cafe of Death [ἴσασι γὰρ παντὲς ὅτι ἀποθανῶνται· ἀλλ ̓ ὅτι ἐκ ἐγγὺς, ἐδὲν φροντίζεσιν.] All Men know (says he) that

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they fhall Dye, but because Death is not near, they nothing regard it though it be in itself (as he elsewhere calls it) the τῶν φοβερῶν φοβερώτατον, of all Terrors the most Terrible. And his Observation is still confirmed by Experience: Men are very apt in their own Fancies to put far from them the Evil Day; and then, though many Years before have foon pass'd away and are gone, yet the Years that they promise themselves to come, are such a Vast While, that they need not yet trouble themselves with the Thoughts of it. And Men generally do indeed so little Think of it, that it is become a Proverbial Saying amongst us, to express what a Man least of all apprehends or thinks of, that he Thinks no more of it than of his Dying Day.

So easily can Men put aside the Thoughts of their Latter End. And if they so little care to Think of it, what good Preparation or Provision is like to be made for it? Yet is it a Matter of much the greatest Concernment of any thing in the World to every One of us, to be well Prepared for Death: There is so very much depends upon it1. The Happiness of our Life.

2. The Happiness of a Comfortable Death;

and

3. Our Eternal Happiness in the World to come all Depend upon it: And 4thly, We have but this One Opportunity