A Funeral Sermon!

Ezekiel Hopkins, 1633-1690

Ecclesiastes 9:5, "For the living know that they shall die."

LIFE, whether an active spark struck out from the meeting of soul and body together, or whatever sprightful and busy thing else it be, is the highest perfection of corporeal beings, because the nearest resemblance of the divine. The variety of its motions, the multiplicity of its functions, the secret conveyance of its influences through those hidden channels of the organs into the several parts of the body, give it a preeminence above all that the inanimate greatness or luster of other things can attain unto.

Upon this very account, philosophy teaches us, that the least fly, though it be nothing but dust animated by the sun, is yet of greater excellency than the sun itself; and Sampson's bees, than the lion which bred them. These slight and contemptible creatures, which serve for little else than to show the world in how small a room God can enclose the springs and engines of such various motions, have yet a perfection beyond all the large volumes of the heavens, and the light and duration of all the stars in them.

Upon these principles, Solomon, making a comparison, in the verse immediately preceding the text, between lifeless and living things, prefers the meanest of these before the best and noblest of the other: a living dog is better than a dead lion.

Though this be true of all creatures in general, yet the accommodation of it is here more particularly intended unto man; and the design of the Spirit of God is, to show that life has a vast prerogative above death. One would think it strange, that there should need so much solemnity, such a train of preparatives, reasons, and similitudes, to usher in a conclusion so obvious, and undoubted as this is, that it is better to live than to die.

And, yet, if we observe it, the method of the Holy Spirit is much stronger, in confirming so plain a thesis by an abstruse argument. The argument we have in the text: For the living know that they shall die: because we know that we must die, therefore it is better to live. This might seem a somewhat harsh kind of argumentation, were it not, that, as to die is the last period; so to die well and breathe out a holy soul into the arms of a merciful God, is the greatest end of life: this advantage have the living. The dead can die no more; for It is appointed unto men once to die: Hebrews 9:27 nor, if they err in this, can they ever recall or amend it. This is that warfare, as the Wise Man calls it, in which we cannot twice mistake. But it is the privilege of the living, that, knowing the frailty of their lives and the certainty of their dissolution, they may, by repentance and holiness, so prepare themselves for death as to make it only a happy transition from a temporal to an eternal life, and an inlet into endless bliss and joy. So that if we briefly gather up the sum and force of the reason, we may find that it lies thus: it is better to live than to die, because the living know that they shall die; and the knowledge and expectation of our death is the most likely means to engage us to live in such constant holiness and preparation, as that after death we may live in eternal glory and happiness.

The words, though they are thus obscure in their coherence, yet, in themselves and their own proper and genuine sense, are very clear and perspicuous. They contain in them the judgment, which the living pass upon their own mortality; and, as they lie before us, cannot be so much as suspected of any difficulty.

I shall, therefore, waving all other inquiries, make only these two.

Whence it is, that the living attain the sure and infallible knowledge of their own death.

Whence it proceeds, that, though all men generally know that they shall die, yet so few do seriously and in good earnest prepare themselves for it.

I. To the FIRST, I answer:

i. There be MANY THINGS, FROM WHENCE WE MAY COLLECT THE NECESSITY OF DYING.

I shall pretermit divers, and only speak to these following.

1. We may collect it, by those harbingers and forerunners of death, diseases, pains, and natural decays, which are incident to all men.

Man is compounded of the contrary and jarring qualities of heat and cold, drought and moisture; which are always waging an internal war within him. Health is the equal balance of these contrarities; when they are so tempered together, the more active with the more resisting, that neither of them can get the victory over the other. And therefore some suppose, that Adam, who doubtless was created in the highest perfection of natural health and strength, had all these mixed ad pondus, in so even a temper, that none of them could naturally sway him to corruption; and that God then inflicted the death he threatened, when, upon the first transgression, he turned the evenness of his constitution, and thereby brought him into a mortal state. Sickness is nothing else, but a predominant faction in a man's temper, which, as rebellions use to do, raises itself upon the ruin of the whole. As God slackens the reins to some quality in the greater world, when he intends to bring a general calamity and destruction upon it (for thus we read, that he once destroyed the world by a dropsy, in the great deluge; and that he will again destroy it by a fever, in the last conflagration) so likewise in man, who is the lesser world, God does sometimes let loose the reins, and gives some of his natural qualities an unnatural predominancy: and either floods him with dropsies; or burns him with fevers; or numbs him with palsies, lethargies, and epilepsies; and, by other innumerable diseases, so ravageth his health and vigor, his youth and beauty, that he becomes a Spirit, before yet he be a corpse. Yes, those, who have had no such violent assaults as these, yet find their decays grow up together with their years: Solomon has given us an elegant description of them, Ecclesiastes 12 from the second to the seventh verse: dimness of sight, deafness of hearing, weakness and trembling of limbs, sluggishness of spirits, chillness of blood, loss of appetite and desire; and a whole hospital of other incurable diseases are the attendants of old age, which is itself the most incurable of all; that the very length of living, may be argument enough of the necessity of dying. This is that heavy burden, which bows down all on whom it lies; which makes them go stooping to the ground, as if it would bid them contemplate what they are, in the dust, and consider their mortality in that earth into which they must shortly fall. All these are as so many harbingers of death, sent before to bid us prepare, for that the king of terrors cannot be long after.

2. The observation of death's universal empire over all other things, and over all other men, may give us a certain knowledge that we also must shortly die.

If we consider the vicissitudes of natural things, we shall find that death reigns in all of them. The day dies into night, summer into winter: time itself, which destroys all things, yet dies continually, nor can it exist one minute together. Our very life is nothing else but a succession of dying: every day and hour wears away part of it; and, so far as it is already spent, so far are we already dead and buried: so that the longest liver has no more, but that he is longer a dying than others. This, indeed, is only to die successively; but that fatal and final stroke is coming, when we shall no more live nor die. All others have felt it, and therefore David calls death the way of all the earth: 1 Kings 2:2. We need no other proof of this, than to search into the records of the grave: there lie the rich and poor, the noble and ignoble, the wise and foolish, the holy and profane, the rubbish of a thousand generations heaped one upon another; and this truth, that all must die, is written indelibly even in their dust. The whole world is but a great charnel-house: our very graves were once living: we dig through our forefathers, and must shortly become earth ourselves, to bury our posterity; so thick sown are the carcasses of all the ages since the creation, as were enough to dung the whole face of the earth with their flesh, and pave it with their bones. Are not we of the same mold with them? has not God's hand kneaded us out of the same clay, and may not his finger crumble us into the same dust? certainly, the cords of our earthly tabernacle may be as easily unloosed, or cut asunder, as theirs. We read but of two only of all mankind exempted, by a peculiar grace and privilege, from this law of death; and they were Enoch and Elijah: God strangely tacked their temporal and eternal life together; and made their time flow into eternity, without any stop or interruption; like rivers, which glide along into the sea with a free and undisturbed course, while ours must first sink and find a passage under ground.

3. We may certainly know ourselves mortal, by knowing ourselves sinful creatures.

There is a double necessity of death upon the account of sin.

As a Punishment.

As a Purgation of it.

(1) It is necessary, as a Punishment of sin; that that primitive threatening might be fulfilled, Genesis 2:17. In the day that you eat thereof you shall surely die.

Hereby the justice of God stands engaged to inflict death upon every transgressor: and to this it is, that the Apostle ascribes it: Romans 5:12. By sin death entered into the world, and death passed upon all men, because that all have sinned. Death therefore is not so much a debt due to nature, as to the avenging justice of God; and befalls us rather by his ordination and appointment, than by any natural necessity. It is appointed unto men once to die: Hebrews 9:27 and this appears, in that man was at first created in pure nature, yet in a deathless state. It is true, that Adam, even before he fell, had in him the contemperation of the same contrary qualities as now we have; and so, at least, had also the remote principles of death and dissolution: but, probably, either these were so harmoniously mixed, as that there was no tendency to a dissolution; or else he was created with such a privilege, that, by eating of the Tree of Life, or by the command of his own will to which all his inferior faculties were then perfectly subject, he might sway and overrule the jars and discords of an elemental constitution, and continue himself in life, so long as he should continue himself in obedience. So, then, it is not primarily man's nature, but man's sin, and the curse of the Law taking hold upon him, that has brought in this necessity of dying. But yet the justice of God does not inflict it as a punishment upon all; for death, under the strict notion of a punishment, is proper only to wicked men and unbelievers, who are left to bear the curse of the Law in their own persons, and to satisfy offended justice in their own sufferings: as to believers, Christ has undertaken and eluctated for them all that was penal: he has borne the whole curse of the law, being made a curse for us: Galatians 3:13.

(2) So that now, to those, who believe, it is no more a punishment, but only a Purgation.

And, were it not that God has thus altered the quality of it, making it the greatest means of sanctification in the world, thereby turning that which was a curse into a blessing, it might probably be maintained, that faith in the death of Christ would supercede all necessity of dying, and make us not only righteous but immortal. But God has other ends in the inflicting of death, besides the satisfaction of his justice: he makes use of it for the purging of his people from the relics of their corruption; and it is the only Purgatory, which they must ever undergo. Sin has taken a lease of our souls, and holds them by our own lives: it will be in us to the last gasp; and, as the heart is the last which dies, so is that corruption which lodges in it: but, then, die it must: God has so graciously ordered it, that, though death came into the world by sin, yet sin itself shall be abolished out of it by death. And, as sea-water loses its brackishness when percolated through the earth, and becomes sweet and wholesome; so a Christian, when he is strained through the grave, loses all his brackishness, all his dregs and scum, and becomes pure and holy, fit for the enjoyment of a pure and holy God. This is his final victory: this is the deciding stroke between him and all his spiritual enemies: when he has been long struggling, with too little success, against sin and Satan; and is ready to faint and despond, in the conflict; death comes in, sent as an auxiliary from God, and gives him both the day and the triumph: certainly, he cannot but count it a good office done him, to have his earthly house pulled down upon so many of his uncircumcised foes, though it crush him too in the fall. Thus has God brought over death, which was before a formidable enemy, to be of a believer's party: so that, though it had its sting and strength, its very being from sin; yet it proves the most effectual means for the destruction of sin. As worms, when they creep into their holes, leave a slimy dirt about them; so is it with a Christian: when he dies, he leaves his sin, his filth and corruption, all at the grave's mouth: there he leaves them; and his soul, got free from that clog, mounts up into a blessed eternity, where it is forever fixed and perfected in holiness, where there is no object to tempt, nor corruption to betray: no steam of any lust shall there rise to cloud our beatifical vision of God, such as do here too oft darken the eye both of our reason and our faith: we shall no more cast kind glances upon our sins, nor no more know a wavering and hovering desire after them. O blessed necessity! when the soul shall be forever tied up to one all-satisfying good! when it shall, with as natural a proneness and vehement ardor, love and delight in God, as it loves itself, and delights in its own happiness! And why then should we desire to linger here below, and to spin out a miserable life, whereof sin and sorrow will still have the greatest share? Here, the best of us are engaged in perpetual quarrels between sin and grace: the one will not yield, and the other cannot: corruption compels one way, and grace commands another. Haste, therefore, O Christian! out of this scuffle: make haste to Heaven, and there this controversy shall be forever decided. There, we shall no more live in fear of new sins, nor in sorrow for old; but all sorrow and sighing shall cease: all tears shall be wiped from our eyes, and all sin rooted out of our hearts. And, upon this account, death is necessary.

ii. Now though, by these and other such like considerations, we may arrive at a certain knowledge that we shall die; yet THE PARTICULAR CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE TIME AND MANNER OF OUR DEATH ARE KNOWN TO GOD ONLY.

Some have, a little before their decease, given secret presages of these things, as I am informed this Honorable Person did. Whence these proceed, it will not be necessary here to inquire. Possibly, they may be only fortuitous and casual: the event may make those things pass for predictions, which were only spoken at random. Or, if they seem too punctual to be such, the best account, which I can give, is this: that death, being about to unloose those secret and sweet bands, those vital knots which tie our souls and bodies together, we begin to grow more unconfined in our knowledge, as well as our being; and receive intelligences of things after another way, than by the dull conveyance of sense. There is now, that dust and ashes in the eye of the soul, which hinders it from discovering futurities: but, when death is blowing this away, it begins to know after its own manner; and receives at least some obscure and glimmering hints of those objects, which sense could never administer. And hence, possibly, may proceed those strange prophetic speeches, which many have given out concerning their own death. But, whencesoever they are, God does ordinarily reserve the exact knowledge of these things to himself.

I. He only knows the critical and punctual Time of our Death; for he has determined it, to a very moment.

It is God, who turns up our glass; who puts such a measure of sand into it, and no more; and has prefixed that it shall run such a time, and no longer. It is he, who has written our names upon so many days and hours as we shall live, as upon so many leaves of his book; and it is impossible for us to turn over that day or hour, which has not our names written upon it, from all eternity. Now this Book of Life God has written in a hand, which is not legible by us: we know not the tale of days that he has appointed us; but this we know, that we shall fulfill, and cannot exceed them: he has set us our bounds of living, beyond which we cannot pass: the infant, which dies as soon as it sees the light, has filled up its appointed time; as well as he, who lives to decrepit age. And, therefore, though God be said, in Scripture, to cut off some men in the midst of their days; this must not be so understood, as if there were remaining in all the store of time any days that were due to them: but only it denotes, either that God cuts them off in the full strength and vigor of their years, when they might, according to human probability, have lived much longer; or else, comparing the shortness of their life with the length of others, God seems to break it off in the middle before he had finished it. Indeed, most men do themselves shorten their own lives: some, by intemperance, are still shaking their glass to make it run the faster; and others break it at once, by violence; yet all live as long as God had decreed, though not so long as was their duty. I shall not farther dispute whether the term of life be fixed or moveable: Job, methinks, has clearly stated and determined the question, Job 7:1. Is there not an appointed time to man upon earth? are not his days also like the days of a hireling? a hireling has his days of prefixed service; and, when they are expired, he is discharged from his labor: so Job 14:5. His days are determined: the number of his months are with you: you have appointed his bounds that he cannot pass. It is true, however, though God has thus numbered out our days, yet there are means proper to prolong our lives beyond the term that God has fixed in his decree, and such as would prove available if applied: whoever dies might have lived longer, had the right means been used: as Martha said to Christ, John 11:21. Lord, if you had been here my brother had not died; so we may say, if such means and remedies had been applied, death might have been prevented: but, withal, we must observe, that that God, who has prefixed to every one his term of life, has likewise ordained, in his own counsel and purpose, that those means, which are proper to prolong it beyond that term, shall, through some unavoidable mistake or mishap, either not be known or not used. This may be a support unto us, against fears of our own, and grief for the death of others: all our times are in God's hands: he measures out every day to us; and, as he has appointed the bounds over which we shall not pass, so he has appointed that we shall certainly reach them. His providence disposes of the meanest and smallest concernments of man's life, and therefore much more of life itself: and if a hair of our heads cannot, much less then shall we ourselves fall to the ground without our Heavenly Father.

2. As we know not the time, so neither the particular Manner of our Death, whether it shall be sudden, or foreseen; by disease, or casualty: whether the thread of life shall be snapped in pieces by some unexpected accident, or worn and fretted away by some lingering consumption, or burnt asunder by some fiery fever.

In what manner and shape our death will appear to us, we know not: this is a secret of God's own breast. But, whatever the shape be, if we endeavor by a holy life to prepare ourselves for it, it shall not be frightful nor terrible to us.

But, truly, the generality of the world are as little careful to prepare for their death, as if they were privileged persons, and had a protection given them from that arrest. Though they see thousands fall before them, though death mows down their friends and relations round about them; yet they live as secure and confident, as if they were not at all concerned in those examples, and as if God's hand cut off others only to make the more room for them in the world. Who is there so fool-hardy, that, standing near the mark of an archer, and seeing one arrow fly over his head, another light at his feet; one glance by his right, another by his left-hand; will not at length bethink himself of his danger, that by the very next he also may be shot and slain? Man is this mark, at which death is continually shooting: sometimes the arrow flies over our heads; and slays some great person, our superior: sometimes it lights at our feet; when it kills a child or servant, or those who are our inferiors: sometimes it passes by our left-hand; and kills an enemy, at whose death possibly we rejoice; and, anon, it strikes the friend of our right-hand. Though we see all this, though we see our friends and foes, those of all states and ages, drop down dead round about us; yet are we still as frolic and careless, as if this nothing at all concerned us: whereas, possibly, the very next arrow may strike us through the heart, dead upon the place. It is a strange and brutish sottishness, that so many spectacles of mortality cannot move.

We read of that victorious emperor Charles the Vth. that, to engrave the deeper apprehensions of his death, he caused his own funerals to be solemnized, while he was yet living: he laid himself down in his tomb, and had that rare fate of great persons, to be lamented with true tears; at least his own: Hoc videlicet rudimento, as the historian speaks, Carolus vicinæ jam morti proludebat. If it were any help to prepare him to die, at last, really, by dying thus first in emblem, we may almost daily have the same. It will be no great mistake, to account every funeral we attend on, to be our own. Let us imagine ourselves nailed up in the coffin, laid in the grave, covered over with earth, and putrefying to worms and dirt: this is only but a few days to anticipate what shall be. Not a grave opens its mouth, but it plainly speaks thus much, that we are mortal and perishing: not a rotten bone nor dead scull is scattered about it, but it tells us we must shortly take up our abode with them in the same darkness and corruption. And if, upon every such sad occasion, we make not particular application of it to ourselves, we not only lose our friends' lives, but their very deaths too. Yet, herein, are we generally faulty: when God snatches them from us, we usually reflect more upon the loss, than the example; and thereby, as he deprives us of the comfort which we had in their lives, so we deprive ourselves of the instruction and benefit which we might have by their deaths.

There are indeed few, unless it be those who have quite divested themselves of humanity, but will sometimes consider their frail and mortal state; at least, when they see a pattern of it before their eyes: when they see departing pangs, distorted eyes, quivering limbs, the wan and ghastly corpse, the image of death in all its lively terrors; if they have any remainders of natural softness left, it must needs strike them with pensiveness, to think that one day this must be their own case; shortly, all this must be acted over upon themselves. But, no sooner is the dead interred and the grave filled, than all these sage and serious thoughts vanish; and they return again to the same glut of lusts and pleasures as before.

II. Let us therefore consider, which was the SECOND GENERAL propounded, whence it proceeds, that men are so stupidly irrational, that, though they all know they shall die, yet so few seriously prepare themselves for it.

Perhaps, upon inquiry, we shall find the causes of it to lie in these following particulars.

i. MEN ARE GENERALLY SO IMMERSED IN THE BUSINESSES AND PLEASURES OF LIFE, THAT THESE SWALLOW UP ALL SERIOUS THOUGHTS OF DEATH, AND PREPARATIONS FOR IT.

They are employed about other things: like a heap of ants, that are busily toiling to get in their provision, without regarding the foot that is ready to crush them. Such are the impertinent and vain cares of men!

One contrives how he may melt away his days in luxury and pleasure; how he may, by variety and choice of invented delights, imp the wings of time, and make the slow days and hours roll away faster over him. It is not likely these should entertain any sober thoughts of dying, who thus, like prodigals, lavish out their time, as if they could never see the bottom of it, and their stock could never be exhausted. The unconcerning vanities of visits and compliments divide their days; and the only use, which they make of their time, is, to study how they may pass it; until their end comes upon them unthought of, and sour death cuts them off in the midst of all their foolish pleasures.

Some are busily climbing up the steep ascent of honor and dignity; and are so wholly engaged in getting promotions and new titles, that they forget their old style of mortal creatures. They spend their lives in pursuing a puff of wind; an airy fantastic thing, depending merely upon the fond and irrational opinion of the giddy multitude. As counters, which as they are placed, stand for scores, or hundreds, or thousands; but are all of the same value, when huddled together: so, truly, the honors, which the ambitious and gallant spirits of the world do so passionately court, are as fictitious as these; depending merely upon common esteem. When death comes to shuffle and huddle the noble and ignoble together in the grave, what becomes of all the distance and difference that was between them? will the dust and ashes of the one make obeysance then, or pay respect to the dust and ashes of the other?

Others are plotting, with the fool, how they may grow rich, and lay up goods for many years; when yet they know not whether God will not take away their souls this very night; and then what remains to them of all that, which they have scraped together? Such men, methinks, may be well compared to sumpter-horses: they are laden with a rich treasure, and attended with a numerous train of servants; but, at night, when their load is taken off, what remains to them of all their carriage, but only the stripes and weariness of the day?

Vain men! are these the great importing things, which you set your hearts upon? Must the world drink up all your thoughts; and death, that will shortly snatch you from all the enjoyments of it, be forgotten? Yet, so brutish are we become, that, though whatever we hold here be by the death of the former owner, yet we are apt to look upon ourselves as perpetual possessors; and never think that we must part with it to others, as others have done to us. The riches and honors, which are but the dust and smoke of this world, have so blinded our eyes, that we cannot discern the near approaches of death: and, thus, while we, Archimedes like, are busily drawing projects and designs in the dust, and are wholly intent about vainer speculations than his, we mind not the alarm, nor perceive the enemy is upon us, until we are stricken dead through the reins.

ii. MEN DELAY SERIOUS PREPARATIONS FOR DEATH, BECAUSE THEY GENERALLY LOOK UPON IT AS AFAR OFF.

Those, who are young, think they must of course live until they be aged; and the aged think that their decays are not so great and sudden, but that they may well weather out yet a few years more: the healthy think they need not prepare until they be summoned; and those, whom God does summon by diseases and weaknesses, think that yet it is possible they may escape them. And, thus, though it may be God has told us out but a few days or hours, yet we reckon very bountifully of years and ages; as if our times were not in his hands, but our own. Men would need no longer eternity, if God should defer his stroke until they thought themselves old enough to die: while their youth and spirits revel it, and their blood runs dancing through their veins, the thoughts of death are not come in season with them: it is as great a solecism to think of their graves, as of going to bed at noon-day: these cold and phlegmatic considerations are more fit for their declining years, and the winter of their lives; and they resolve that they will then think of dying, when they are choked up with coughs and catarrhs, and can scarce see a death's head but through a pair of spectacles. But what becomes of these resolutions? when age has snowed upon them, and frost-bitten all their former pleasures; yet, even then, they find the dalliances, which pass between their souls and bodies, so sweet, that they are very reluctant they should be broken off: and this prompts them to think (as we are apt to believe what we desire) that as yet they shall not: they hope they have some time more to live, and so drive their death from year to year before them; and never think of dying, so long as they have life enough left to think of anything. This is the truest dotage imaginable: for if it be true, what the naturalists affirm, that no grown person carries to the grave with him the same flesh which he brought into the world, that the revolution of a few years gradually wears away the former body and brings a new one in its stead; it is strangely gross, that they should think of living much longer, who have already outlived several generations of themselves; or that they should not at length prepare for death, who have already buried themselves, it may be eight or nine times over: diseases and natural decays have, for many years, laid close siege to them, routing their guards, battering the walls of their flesh, and forcing the soul to quit the outworks and retire into the heart; yet the mad desire of living makes them hope they shall hold out these ruins of life yet a while longer, though they see many hundred others, better manned and fortified than themselves, taken in upon the first assault.

We scarce so wretchedly mistake about anything, as about old age.

For

1. We reckon it a vast while thither.

What a show do threescore or fourscore years make, at a distance! How numerous do the days and hours appear! But those, who have attained to them, find that they all glide away insensibly from them, and hardly know they have lived so long, but that they have bought so many Almanacs. Certainly, long life is like an evening mist; and seems far greater to us at a distance, than when we are in it. It is strange how the different situating of ourselves will mightily alter the prospect of our years: while we look forward upon them from youth, they all are represented to us long and happy; but when we look back upon them from age, they then appear to have been short and troublesome: a day to come, shows far longer to us than a year that is gone. It is high time for us, to mend our accounts; and to estimate the years that are to come, by those that are already past. Those thirty or forty years, which were judged by you in your childhood an unattainable age, how short do they seem now, when you have outlived them! What remains of them all, but that you are grown bigger than you were; and have the remembrance of some inconsiderable actions, which were done in that time? Why then should we think thirty or forty years yet to come, such a huge gulf as can never be waded through? Remembrance can, with one glance, review what is past; and why should hope and expectation look upon what is to come as boundless and infinite? Are all our winter days spent, and none but our summer in reserve? Are none remaining for us but the fairest and the longest? Surely both hemispheres of our lives have equal horizons; and we shall find, that our past and future years have but just the same measure.

2. Most men presume that they shall live to extreme age.

A vain confidence! as if God would turn the world into a hospital, and fill it with the old and decrepit. We have a proverb, that young men may, but old men must die? whereas observation will inform us, that incomparably fewer die old than young: and those, too, are so worn out with crazy and languishing distempers, so tired with following the funerals of their families, that they detest the age which they formerly desired, and execrate their grey hairs, made such as well by griefs as years. This world is God's nursery for eternity, and he will not cumber it with too many old trunks. Death lies everywhere in ambush for us. The Jews reckon up nine hundred and three diseases; but the casualties, to which we are subject, are certainly innumerable: a the may brain us: a pestilential vapor out of the earth may stifle us: our houses may bury us under their ruins: our very meat and drink may choke us; and the means to preserve life may become the instruments of our death. We read of some, whom a fly or a grape-stone has dispatched; or who have died by plucking of a hair from their breasts, God turning a very hair into a spear to destroy them. Our souls may leak out at some small crack in those hidden pipes of life, the veins. It is a strange folly, that we, who are subject to such various diseases and accidents, should yet dream of dying of no other but old age. Did we but seriously consider by what small pins this frame of man is held together, it would appear no less than a miracle to us, that we live one day or hour to an end.

3. Men think a few of their latest days and thoughts are enough to prepare them for death.

They account it extreme folly to lose the delights of life, by still jarring upon this ungrateful remembrance, that they must shortly die; and therefore delay it until those unwelcome monitors, age and grey-hairs, call loudly upon them; until they can read deep emblems of their graves in their hollow eyes and furrowed brows; and if something must be done for their souls, it shall be only a small courtesy at parting. Thus they devote the flower and spirit of their years to sin and pleasure; and think, when their time runs low, to put off God with the dregs of it, and content him with the Devil's refuse. Alas! the only thing worth living for, is, to die well: it is not to eat, or drink, or sleep, or sport, or talk: it is not to grow rich, or honorable; but to learn how we may, by a severe mortification, die first to the world, and then out of it. And is it not, (as Seneca speaks), a shame, that you should destine to this great business of life, only those relics of your time, which can be employed about nothing else? Is it never time to become new men, until you are ceasing to be; or to reform your lives, until you are ending them? Believe it, the vast concernments of your everlasting state require your freshest strength and spirits: it is not a dying sigh, which will waft your souls over into a blessed eternity: it is not to leave somewhat behind for pious uses; nor, at the last gasp, to recommend yourselves into God's hands, when you have been all your life long in the Devil's: it is not some chimney-prayer nor blanket-devotion, nor the name of God brought up in a cough, that will suffice: Heaven were a cheap prize could it be so lazily obtained. No; repentance is quite another thing: it is to ransack the soul, to rend the heart, to demolish strong-holds, to rout those legions by which we are possessed: in a word, it is to take Heaven by a holy force and violence. And what stupendous folly is it, to defer this great work, (a work, that will strain every nerve of your souls to perform it well) until the sluggishness and infirmities of old age oppress you! Think you, your souls can then vigorously bestir themselves, when they are grown stiff with age; when your faculties are benumbed, and your spirits congealed past the thaw of a fire? Are they then fit for action, when they lie wrapped about with tough and clammy phlegm, and buried under sloth and sleep? Be persuaded, therefore, instantly to break off all delays, and from this very moment to provide in good earnest for your souls; lest, as the blandishments of the flesh and the world make you now think it is too soon, so the sudden surprise of death, and the dreadful sight of a boundless eternity rushing in upon you, make you hereafter cry out, "It is too late, too late!"

iii. MEN GENERALLY PUT OFF SERIOUS THOUGHTS OF DYING, BECAUSE OF THE TERRORS AND INSUPPORTABLE DREAD WHICH SUCH APPREHENSIONS BRING WITH THEM.

And therefore death is called by Job, ch. 18:14. the king of terrors; a king, that comes attended with a thousand phantoms and frightful apparitions. Who can, without a shivering horror, think of the separation of those dear companions, the soul and body, of the debasement and dishonors of the grave; that we must lie in a bed of stench and rottenness, under a coverlet of crawling worms, there moldering away to dust in oblivion? shortly, we shall be no more ourselves: we must change this substantial life; a life, which is really felt, and has real comforts in it: we must change it, to live only in the inscription of a tombstone, or the memory of a friend: our eyes must no more behold this dear and pleasant light: we must no more relish the delights of this world: all our fair-laid projects will be disappointed, and we in a moment snatched away from whatever we enjoyed or designed. Now these are too gloomy meditations for the jovial and frolic world: such melancholy thoughts of dying prove little less than executioners themselves, and leave death but half its work. Human nature abhors them: we find that Christ himself, in whom it was most pure and spotless, not gastered by any of those weak fears or fancies that pervert our reason; yet even he, as man, recoils at that death, which, as God, he was assured to conquer: Luke 22:42.

The fullest assurance of Heaven is scarce sufficient to disarm the terrors of death, or reconcile us to it. Paul, to whom God gave the unexampled sight of Heaven, and discovered the ineffable glories, light, and luster of that blessed place, is yet troubled to think that the eternal possession of these can be no otherwise obtained than by dying. Reluctant he was to descend into Heaven through the grave; and, having been once caught up into paradise, can scarce think of going thither any other way: 2 Corinthians 12:4. We, that are in this tabernacle, says he, do groan, being burdened: not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon; that mortality might be swallowed up of life: 2 Corinthians 5:4. Though his fleshly clothing, like theirs that travel in foul weather, become burdensome with mire and wet, with sin and tears; though he groan under the weighty pressure, and would be glad to be eased and cleansed at any rate: yet nature itself startles, when it sees the rude hand of death stretched out ready to undress him; and, rather than this garment should be taken off, would have it dipped in light and glory upon him.

Thus dreadful is death to us, as men; but, much more, as sinners. It is the guilt which deserves it, and the Hell which follows it, that give death its most hideous shape. We are not so much affrighted at the grim and meager looks of this officer, who is to arrest us, as at the ireful countenance of the Judge, who is to pass sentence upon us. It is not the unfelt rotting in the grave; or those worms, which must shortly feed upon their carcases: but the burning in Hell; and the restless stingings of that tormenting worm, which breeds in a putrid conscience. From these death receives its power and anguish. And therefore the Apostle tells us, that the sting of death is sin: 1 Corinthians 15:56. And, indeed, well may it be the sting of the first death, since it carries in it the venom and poison of the second. No wonder then, if those, who are conscious to themselves of guilt, dare not think of standing before the dreadful tribunal of God: they cannot bear the thoughts of eternal wrath and vengeance, to be forever inflicted by the almighty power of an incensed God. No wonder at all, that they thrust far from them the thoughts of their dying day, because they presage, that that day, whenever it comes, must needs be an evil day to them.

III. I shall add no more; but only make some APPLICATION of what has been spoken.

USE i. If we all certainly know, that we must die, this might teach us so much wisdom, as NOT TO SET OUR AFFECTIONS EAGERLY UPON ANYTHING IN THIS PRESENT WORLD; a world, which we must shortly leave.

Death will, within a while, pluck us from it; and it will prove a violent rending to us, if our affections be inordinately glued unto it. Consider, that all things in this present world are but fading and perishing; but your precious souls are ever living and immortal. Be not unequally yoked: do not join an ever living soul to dying comforts. This were a tyranny, worse than that of Mezentius; who, as the poet tell us, bound the living to dead carcases.

It was a perverse use, which the old heathens made of the necessity of dying, when, in their feasts, their custom was to bring in a skeleton to their guests; thereby exciting them to mirth and voluptuousness, while they could relish such delights, because shortly they must be as much dust and bones as what they saw. This is the common theme of Horace, Anacreon, and all the Epicurean Stye. Like those, 1 Corinthians 15:32. Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we shall die.

How much better improvement does the Apostle make of it, 1 Corinthians 7:29, 30, 31! The time is short: it remains, therefore, that both they, that have wives, be as though 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 passes away. What folly is it, to toil and wear out our lives in the pursuit of those vain things, from which we may be snatched before we can cast another look at them!

Go, Fool, and dote upon your own or others' beauty: but know, withal, that shortly a nest of worms will breed there; and suck corruption and nastiness out of that face, which has been your pride, and the beholders' sin and shame.

Go, Worldling, rake together your wealth, and hoard up your treasures: but know, withal, that, of all your possessions, you shall shortly need no more than will but suffice to bury you. Gold and silver are too heavy lading to be carried into the other world: nothing of them shall go with you, unless it be their rust to witness against you. If there be any difference, whether you live rich or poor, honorably or despised, in pain or in pleasure; yet, certainly, there is none when you come to die. What is it to a dying man, whether his chamber be richly furnished or not? whether he breathe out his soul in a palace or in a cottage? We shall not take pleasure in summing up our estates, and counting how much worth we shall die, and how many hundreds or thousands we shall leave behind us: these things will be then as far from being our care, as they are now from being our concernments.

Let the Voluptuous man pursue his delights and pastimes: but let him know, withal, that he does but thrust away his days to make way for death. That hour is coming, when he will more earnestly wish to gain time, than ever he studied to spend it.

Let the Ambitious court honors and preferments: but, withal, let him know, that it will be no great comfort to him in death, that he falls under a bigger name and title than others. What are they, when they stand upon the highest pinnacle of worldly dignities, but bladders swelled up with the breath of the popular rout? Nothings, set a strut? Chess-men, that, on the board, play the king and nobles; but, in the bag, are of the same materials and rank with others?

Though now it be hard to persuade men of these things, yet powerful and eloquent death will certainly persuade them, better than all the sermons or demonstrations that ever they heard. At high-noon, things cast but a short and little shadow; but, in the declining evening, these shadows are extended to a huge length and vast dimensions. So it is with us: in the high-noon of our age, in the heat and vigorous warmth of our blood, the world seems to cast but little shadow; all things in it appear to us bright and orient: but, when our evening begins to decline and our days to shut in, when our eyes shall swim in night and darkness, then the shadows are extended, and all the bright and glittering things of the world will appear to us nothing but gloominess and horror.

USE ii. Since we all know that we shall die, let this serve TO EXHORT US SERIOUSLY TO PREPARE FOR OUR DEATH.

That our souls are immortal and must live forever, is a dictate of nature itself, if we had not Scripture to confirm it: and those, who have ever ventured to deny it, have rather spoken their wishes than their belief. They are divine sparks kindled only by the breath of God; and the same breath, which kindled them, has likewise pronounced that they shall never die. Shortly they must launch forth into eternity; and know by experience the truth of those impressions, which God has stamped upon them concerning their own endless duration.

It will not be many years nor days hence, before every one of us be in our eternal state. There stands nothing between us and it, but this thin mud-wall of our bodies: a weak fence against so many diseases and casualties, as may every day and hour assault us. What Ahacharsis said of those who sailed, that they were but four inches removed from death, is true of us all: we are but four inches removed from death and eternity. Nay, a wound, that digs not half so deep, may dispatch us. Our souls are in our bodies only as a little air included in a thin bubble; and, when that breaks, oh what or where are we? gone, in an instant, out of all the businesses and pleasures of this present life, into an estate forever unchangeable.

Now what is your care, and what do you chiefly busy your-selves about? Death is approaching you, armed with ten thousand woes and plagues; and is it time for you to trifle away your precious moments, moments on which depends your eternity, in sports, or compliments, or impertinent employments? Is it time for you to muse what garb you will wear; what visit you will make, whether at this house or the next; what recreation shall pass away tomorrow, whether the hawk or the hound; when, all this while, death has you in full chase? While you are contriving your profits and pleasures, your recreations and employments, and sharing out your lives among them, a sudden unseen, and unthought of hand of God snatches you from them all, and all these vain thoughts perish with you. Is this providing for eternity? is this improving your short time, and few minutes for Heaven? Pity it is, that ever a precious and immortal soul should be entrusted to the care and management of such brutes; who, by minding nothing but their sensual ease and delights, their food and fodder, degrade it in this world, and destroy it in the next.

Now, to provide for eternity, I know no better rule, than to do nothing but what you might be contented to be found doing when Christ shall come to judge you: to live so, as if every day were your last, and the very next to eternity. If it be not so, it is more than you or I know. Since we have no assurance of a day or hour longer, it is but reason and wisdom to look upon every one as the last.

Suppose now your chambers darkened, your friends standing round your beds mourning over you, a sad silence filling all the place, nothing heard but your groans, or theirs to answer yours; when your souls, sitting on your lips, shall look over into eternity and flutter to be gone; when they shall, like the flame of an expiring lamp, vibrate and catch at the exhausted body; how would you then spend that small scantling of remaining time? would you be laying up for years? would you be contriving for your vain pleasures? or would you send for your idle and debauched companions, to laugh and jest away that last hour, as well as the rest? No: these designs and this mirth are now dashed: now, the necessities of the soul begin to crowd hard upon you: the sight of a severe Judge and dreadful tribunal, the worryings of an accusing conscience, the fearful review of past sins, and expectation of attending torments, now shake out all such, once so delightful and contenting thoughts; and, now, when your souls are departing out of your bodies, they begin to come into your remembrance.

Hearken to the voice of dying men. What say they? Oh, that God would pardon and accept them! Oh, that he would spare them a little to repent and reform! Or, else, oh, that he would assure them of his favor, and receive them to his mercy! This is the language, and these are the cares of the sick-bed, when death comes near to them, and looks them in the face.

And why is it not your care now, in your health and strength? What assurance have you, that you are not now as near death, as those, who lie thus languishing, and complaining of their folly for neglecting their souls until this last hour? God does not always give warning, but some he strikes suddenly; and, for ought we know, we may be as near our deaths, as those, whom their friends and physicians have given over. However, should God spare you longer, yet the duration of your life is most uncertain; and, to delay our preparations for death upon the uncertain continuance of life, is such stupendous madness and folly, that certainly were there not witchcraft and sorcery used upon us by the Devil, a man, who has the free command of his wits and reason, could never be guilty of it. Night is hastening, and spreading its wings over us: the grave expects us, and bids its other corpses make room: death is grasping us in its cold arms, and ready to carry us to the dreadful tribunal; and, yet, how little of our great work is done! We burn away our precious days, and miserably waste our light and our life: we exhaust our strength, and lavish out our affections upon toys and fond nothings: and that life of ours, which the Psalmist calls a tale, for its shortness, we make a tale for its vanity. We spend it most frivolously, until the days of darkness, which are many, come upon us; and then think to prepare for eternity, when we are fit for nothing else, and least of all for that.

Some sad instances there have been, of those, who, having neglected this great work until the end of their life, have then spent that little remnant of time which they had, in crying out for more. It may be so with you, if your consciences be not awakened sooner, than by the pain and disquiet of your sickbeds: you will then, with horror, cry out, "More time, Lord, more time!" but it will not be granted: the term is fixed: the last hour has struck: the last sand is run: and, as you and your works are then found, so must you go into eternity.

Methinks, this is such a consideration, as must needs prevail with all the world. Our time is but short and momentary: we are but of yesterday, and possibly may not be tomorrow: and God has suspended eternity upon the improvement of this moment; a few hours will determine our everlasting condition; and, according as they are spent, so must our doom be, either eternal happiness or eternal misery. And why should our precious souls be so vile in our eyes, as to lose them for very sloth and carelessness? Why should we hearken to the suggestions of the flesh, or the allurements of the world? Stand off: we are working for eternity: an eternity, that is but a few days hence; a boundless, a bottomless, and endless state, into which we know not how soon we may enter. This is a motive, which cannot but prove effectual, with all, who have their right understandings about them. But many are so strangely besotted by the Devil, that, though they hear these truths, truths which they cannot deny, which they cannot doubt of; yet they live at such a rate of sin and security, as if their eternity were to be expected here, or none to be expected hereafter.

Now if we have carefully prepared ourselves for death, it will be to us a repose, instead of a terror. The Scripture does frequently compare it to sleep, and it is indeed the most natural resemblance that can be given. While we are asleep, we neither see nor hear: all our senses are locked up: we enjoy none of the delights of life; no comfort in our friends, in our riches or estates: all those things are cancelled out of our memories. And what more than this can death do to a believer? and, therefore, they are said to sleep in Jesus: 1 Thessalonians 4:14. It is a sleep, which gives them rest from their labors: a sleep, which opens their eyes, before benighted with ignorance and error: a sleep, which deprives them of the dim and muddy light of this world; but brings them to the vision of that radiant source and fountain of all lights, in whose beams angels do forever rejoice and are for ever cherished.

Why should we then be so terrified at the apprehensions of death? We may truly say, the bitterness of it is past: its sting is taken out. We may safely take this serpent into our bosoms: though it hiss against us, it cannot wound us: yes, instead of wounding us, it is reconciled to us, and become one of our party. And, therefore, when the Apostle is drawing up a Christian's inventory, he reckons death as part of his goods: whether.… life or death, or things present or things to come, all are yours: 1 Corinthians 3:22: and, so, Philippians 1:21. To me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. And well may a Christian count death among his gains, since it is the hand of death, which draws the curtain of the great tabernacle, and lets us in to see God face to face in that palace of inestimable majesty, where we shall have the strong rays of his glory beat full upon us, and be ourselves made strong enough to bear them. Yes, these bodies of ours, which are the only part that can suffer damage, shall have it abundantly recompensed at the resurrection: they are sown in weakness, but shall be raised in power: they are sown in dishonor, but raised in glory: 1 Corinthians 15:43: these frail and dull clods shall then become impassible as angels, subtle as a ray of light, bright as the sun, and nimble as the wings of lightning.

IV. Having thus exhorted you to prepare for death, I know not how farther to enforce it upon you with greater advantage, than by propounding to you THE EXAMPLE OF THIS NOBLE PERSON DECEASED, whose whole life was a more serious preparation for death, than most men's dying thoughts.

He well knew that the Nobility of his extraction would be no excuse to him from the peremptory summons of death. Neither did he make it any excuse to him from an industrious and strict preparation for it. This he testified by the series of his whole life; in which there evidently appeared such an awe of God, and a real sense of true piety and religion, as clearly evinced that he had strong and habituated meditations of that great leveling day, wherein the highest shall stand upon no higher ground than the meanest.

He did not think religion any stain to his Honor, nor minding Heaven to be the employment of those only who have nothing on earth.

Indeed, irreligion and atheism are now reckoned as a piece of good breeding, among the great ones of the world: it is now counted as a sign of a degenerous and low-sunk spirit, to acknowledge even God himself for their superior; Those are cried up as the wits of the time, who can daringly dispute it against whatever is sacred in Christianity; yes, against the being of God himself. It is now become an argument of a judicious and gallant mind, to call into question the most fundamental maxims of our faith; and the authority too of those Holy Oracles, which confirm them. Reason alone is, extolled as the best and most sufficient guide, both in matters of belief and practice; and they appeal to that for their judge, which commonly, by their debauches and intemperancies, they either so corrupt that it will not discern the truth, or else so sot and stupefy that it cannot. And, thus, as the moon shines brightest when it is at the greatest opposition to the sun, these think their reason then shines brightest, when it stands at the greatest opposition to God.

This Noble Person, whose Reason had as fleet a wing and could soar as high a pitch as any of theirs who pretend to nothing above it, yet saw it reason to give his faith the precedency; and always found more acquiescence in a Thus says the Lord, than in the most critical researches, and positive conclusions of his reason. So reverent an esteem had he for those sacred dictates of Scripture, that, though his wit and parts shone forth to admiration in whatever he pleased to employ them about, yet he never presumed to exercise them on that common-place of abusing divine verities: he was not ambitious to commence a wit, by: blasphemy; nor did he pretend to ingenuity, by being impious. But, whereas too many use their wit in jesting at them, he showed his holy wisdom in believing and obeying. Other books he made the ornament of his mind: this, the guide of his life. He knew what others, but did what God spoke.

He was not made a Christian out of Old Heathens; nor owed his virtues to the sage precepts of Plutarch or Epictetus. These are now become the penmen and evangelists of our young gentry. Seneca is with them preferred before Paul, though his chief credit be that he wrote so well that some have mistakingly thought him Paul's disciple. The virtue of this Noble Person acknowledged a more divine original; being formed in him by the same Spirit, that gave him rules to act it. This taught him to outstrip, in true wisdom, temperance, and fortitude, not only whatever those starched moralists did, but whatever they wrote; and, whereas they prescribed but the exercise of Virtue, he sublimed it, and made it Grace.

Next to his absolute subjection to God, was his obedience unto his honorable, and now disconsolate Mother: wherein he was to such a degree punctual, that, as her wisdom commanded nothing but what was fit, so his duty disputed not the fitness of things beyond her command. His demeanor toward her was most submissive: and towards all so obliging, that it was but the same thing to know and admire him.

His Converse gave the world a singular pattern of harmless and inoffensive mirth; of a gentility, not made up of fine clothes and hypocritical courtship; a sweetness and familiarity, that, at once, gained love and preserved respect; a grandeur and nobility, safe in its own worth, nor needing to maintain itself by a jealous and morose distance.

Never did vice, in youth, find a more confirmed goodness. So impregnable was he against the Temptations, which gain an easy access to those of his rank and quality, that they could neither insinuate into him by their allurements, nor force him by their importunities.

Nor did he think it enough to secure his mind from the infection of vice, unless also he secured his Fame from the suspicion of it. Some, indeed, owe their innocence to their dullness and stupidity; and are only not vicious, because not witty enough to be takingly and handsomely wicked. His virtue was of choice; and the severest exercise of it mingled with such charms from his parts and ingenuity, that his very seriousness was more alluring, than those light divertisements in others which entice only because they please.

His apprehension was quick and piercing, his memory faithful and retentive, his fancy spriteful and active; and his judgment overruling them all, neither prejudicated by vulgar opinions, nor easily cozened by varnished and plausible error.

After all this, there can be nothing wanting to make up a most complete and absolute person, but only Industry to quicken his parts, and Time to ripen both to perfection.

His Industry was remarkable, in the assiduousness of his studies: where he spent not his hours in plays or romances, those follies of good wits; but in the disquisition of solid and masculine knowledge: in which he outstripped even those, who were to depend upon learning for their livelihood; and had no other revenue, than what arose out of their fruitful and well-cultivated brains.

And, as for that other, I mean Time, to maturate these growing hopes, that sad Providence which has called us together to this mournful solemnity, has denied it: by a sudden and surprising stroke cutting off his days, and thereby rendering that virtue, those parts, that industry, useless to us in anything but the Example; and I should say unprofitable to him too, but only that, which he never had opportunity to employ in this world, has I doubt not, fitted him for a better.