may take this measure with you in all your duties; If they increase a reverence of God, they are from grace; if they do not, they are from gifts, and no way sanctify the soul wherein they are.

(2.) It will support us under all our sufferings. The soul that is accustomed to this exercise of faith, will not be greatly moved in any of its sufferings. The Lord knows we are all moved and shaken, and ready to be so sometimes very unhandsomely and unduly, as the leaves of the forest; but it will keep us from being greatly moved. I shall not be greatly moved,' saith the psalmist. And elsewhere it is enjoined, 'Let them that suffer according to the will of God, commit the keeping of their souls to God, as unto a faithful Creator.' This will support you under all your sufferings. It is the very case and state in Psal. xxxi. from whence I have taken my principal testimony. Have mercy upon me, O Lord, for I am in trouble; mine eye is consumed with grief, yea, my soul and my belly. For my life is spent with grief, and my years with sighing; my strength faileth because of mine iniquity, and my bones are consumed,' &c. for I have heard the slander of many, fear was on every side, while they took counsel together against me; they devised to take away my life.' What course doth he then take in all these distresses, sufferings, and persecutions? Why, saith he, I said, Thou art my God, my times are in thy hands.' He makes a resignation of himself to the sovereignty of God, and so was at peace.

I have shewed you now, how you may exercise this duty; and I do reckon myself to be near my account, and speak as one that is sensible of it; would I could prevail with you to bring it more or less into actual exercise, before you give rest to your eyes, or slumber to your eye-lids.

Use 3. In the next place, Who are they that do or can perform this duty as they ought, to live in this exercise of faith?

I am certain that they do not do so, who live as if they were to live here for ever. But this is an evident proof of that distemper and confusion which is come upon the mind and soul of man. Truly if a man of sobriety and reputation did come to such kind of men, who live in their sensuality and wickedness, as the world is full of them, and tell them,

Sirs! what do you do? I am persuaded that there is a death to come, and an eternal state of blessedness, or woe, near approaching; the way wherein you are will certainly ingulf you in eternal destruction:-They would say to him, This is your opinion. Yet one would think a wise man should prevail with them, to do something according to his opinion. But it is not so. They have convictions in their minds, they must die; they will not only say, It is mine, or your opinion, but they themselves are convinced of a future state, and profess it. But will they do any thing from an influence of this conviction? Nothing at all, no more than if they were brute beasts. These are not able to come to the exercise of their duty.

Nor those who walk at all peradventure. They know they must die; but they are apt to think they have other things to do before they die; and it will be time enough hereafter, at one season or another, to be preparing to die. The apostle did 'die daily' indeed; but they have something else to do. When death knocks at their neighbour's door, and they hear such a one is dead; and it comes to their own families, and takes away this or that person; then they have some thoughts for a little while, but they quickly wear off, and they return to their common frame of spirit again. Yet a little more slumber, a little more sleep, a little more folding of the arms to sleep,' a little more secure converse in the world, attending unto our affairs; but death will come as an armed man, and they shall not be able to escape.

There are therefore two things required of every one that would be found in the exercise of this duty.

(1.) That he lay the foundation of it in some comfortable persuasion of an interest in Christ, which alone will enable him to die safely; and having obtained that, he may labour after that which will enable him to die comfortably and cheerfully. Some men die safely, but upon many considerations, not now to be mentioned, they do not appear to die comfortably. And some men die very comfortably to all outward appearance, that do not die safely. This therefore is necessary, that there be this foundation laid, some comfortable persuasion of our interest in Christ, that we may die safely, or else it is to no purpose to expect to die comfortably.

(2.) Many think at last, a few words will do it, and there is an end; but let me assure you, not only upon principles of Scripture truth, but of nature, there is no man can do it, that hath not a view into the glory of spiritual and eternal things, outbalancing all his soul parts withal in this world. I hear men willing to die, and I find others do, but it is to go contrary to the principles of nature. No man under heaven (it implies a contradiction) can part with that which appears good to him, unless it be upon motives of a greater good; he must 'part with it, but he cannot willingly and cheerfully part with it. If you would be thus able willingly and cheerfully to resign a departing soul unto God, labour to have a view of those better things which are infinitely more great and glorious, which your souls shall come to the enjoyment of upon this departure.

The calls of God are great upon us, both public and private, and special to this congregation; God expects a special compliance with his calls from us, or else we shall yet be exercised with farther tokens of his displeasure.

SERMON XLV.*

THAT which I have been treating upon from these words, is to declare the ways and duties whereby a believer may come to die, not only safely, which all believers shall; but also cheerfully and comfortably, so as to have a free and abundant entrance into the kingdom of God in glory.

I have spoken but to one thing, which is the exercise of faith in the resignation of a departing soul, entering into the invisible world, into the sovereign hand and pleasure of God, to be disposed of according to the tenour of the everlasting

covenant.

There are two things yet remaining, necessary to the same end, at least I find them so; which (if God will) I shall dispatch at this time.

II. There is required unto this great end, a readiness and willingness to part with this body which we carry about us, and to lay it down in the dust. The soul's natural aversation to let go this body, is that which we call an unwillingness to die; that hath made some say, like him of old, ' mori nolo,' &c. I can be content to be dead, but I would not die.'

There are two reasons why the soul hath a natural unwillingness to part with the body.

1. Because it is, and hath been ever since it had a being, the only instrument of all the operations and actings of its faculties and powers. The whole privilege of a being consists in its powers and acts. Now from the first moment of its being, the soul hath had no instrument to act by, but the body, and that not only in the outward actions that the body performs, but in all its internal, rational actings, it cannot act without the instrumentality of the body. Therefore we know a hurt in the body, as oftentimes in the head, hath utterly deprived the soul of the exercise of all its powers and faculties during life. It cannot act rational, internal actings but by the body; and how it can act without the body, it knows not. This hath ingrafted a natural unwillingness in the soul to let go the body, whereby from the first * This sermon was preached October 10, 1680.

instant of its being, it hath constantly acted. That is but one reason of it, there is yet a greater.

2. The other reason is, that strict, near, unparalleled union, and relation between the soul and the body. There is a near union between parents and children, a nearer between husband and wife; but they are nothing to this union between the soul and body. There is an ineffable, inconceivable union between the two natures, the divine and the human, in the person of the Son of God; but this union was eternally indissoluble from the first moment of it, when the body and soul of Christ were separated, yet they continued in their union with the person of the Son of God, as much as before, or as now in heaven. But here is a union that is dissoluble between a heavenly spirit, and an earthly, sensual body, that is, two essential parts of the same nature. Pray give me leave to speak a little to it. I have considered what it is to die, and examined whence ariseth the difficulty. Now, I say, it ariseth from this peculiar constitution of our nature, there being no such thing in all the works of God, in heaven above, or in the earth beneath. The angels are pure, immaterial spirits, they have nothing in them that can die. God can annihilate an angel; he that made all things out of nothing, can bring all things into nothing; but an angel cannot die from the principles of his own constitution; there is nothing in him that can die. A brute creature hath nothing in it that can live, when death comes. The spirit of a beast Solomon speaks of, as that which 'goeth downward.' It is not the object of Almighty power to preserve it, because it is nothing but the act of the body in its temperature and constitution. But now man is 'medium participationis,' he hath an angelical nature from above that cannot die, and a nature from beneath that cannot always live, since the entrance of sin, though it might have done so before. And therefore in the product of man, there was a double act of creation, and but a single act in any other creatures. The creation of angels is not mentioned, unless. in that, 'Let there be light, and there was light;' but in all other things there was but one single act for its production. But when God came to make man, there were two distinct acts of creation. God made man of the dust of the earth.' And what then? And breathed into him the spirit of life.'