rejoice that we shall quickly meet them, and live with Christ and them for ever. I have often thought (and mentioned it) how like it was to this our folly, when I have seen a man fetch his beasts home out of a pasture, and when one hath gone through the gate, another hath looked and mourned after him, not knowing that he was presently to follow. Alas! it is want of conversing by faith with the saints above, which maketh us over-grieve for the miss of them here below.

And as to the loathsomeness of the grave and rottenness, it is the fruit of sin, and we always knew that flesh was corruptible. It is made of that which lately stood on our tables, the flesh of sheep, and beasts, and swine, and birds, &c. turned into the flesh of man: and before that, it was grass growing for the food of cattle in the fields. But the soul corrupteth not; and if it change the rags of flesh, for a building in the heavens, why should we repine at this? The soul is the man; and God will change these vile bodies, and make them incorruptible, and spiritual, and immortal, like to the glorious body of Christ. Phil. iii. 19, 20.

IV. But our sorrows seem to be more justifiable, when we mourn for the loss of the pillars, or useful servants of the church. Their death is the loss of souls, yea, of many, and a sign of God's displeasure to a land. But as to this also ;

1. Magistrates, and ministers, and all, are mortal: they have their work and time, and then they must go home. They came not to abide on earth, but to do their message and be gone. When they have faithfully finished their course, they must go to their Master's joy, that he that soweth, and he that reapeth may rejoice together.

2. Thank God for the good he hath done by them, and pray for a succession of more. God will not serve himself here by one generation only as the same rose or other flowers, which you get this year, will not serve you for the next; nor the same fruit or crop of corn, but every year must bring forth its own fruit; so must it be with serviceable men. Elisha must have his time and part, as Elias had; and a David, Solomon, Hezekiah or Josiah, live not here always. Every generation must have its proper servants, work and honour. If some have till evening borne the burden and heat of the day, allow them their rest, and let others work the following day.

3. And God hath the fulness of the Spirit in Christ, to

send forth our successors; and he is the Lord of the church, and knoweth what is best, and what the people are fit to receive. Christ lived on earth to no great age, and he tells his apostles, "That it was expedient for them, that he go away, that the Comforter might come." God will choose his own servants, and their times, and we must submit to his disposal.

4. Paul was permitted at Rome to dwell two whole years in his own hired house, and receive all that came to him; preaching the kingdom of God, and teaching those things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ, with all confidence, no man forbidding him. But I have been permitted above fifty years to preach the same Gospel, though long a law, and bishops, and justices did forbid me (save that for nine or ten years, they confined my vocal preaching to my house). James was cut off near the beginning of his apostleship: Stephen was sooner cut off than he. Some excellent ministers hath God taken away young.

5. Christ is more worthy of their company than we are. Heaven is more worthy of them than earth, than those that hate them and abuse them; "Of whom the world was not worthy;" Heb. xi. 28. The world knoweth not the worth of a saint, or how to use him, or what use to make of him.

6. We know not from what approaching evil, God in mercy taketh them away. We have lately lamented the death of many excellent persons, magistrates and ministers; but the storms that are now assaulting us, tell us, that it was a seasonable and merciful change to them. Christ saith, "If ye loved me, ye would rejoice, because I go to the Father;" John xiv. 28. They mourn not for their own removal: would you wish them here again from heaven? You do not mourn, that Christ, and Abraham, and David, and the apostles are gone to heaven; nor that Lazarus changed his beggary for Abraham's bosom; nor that the martyrs are gone thither. The ancient churches were wont with thankfulness to recite the names of their departed pastors in their liturgies, and to keep days of thanksgiving (which we call holydays) in memorial of their martyrs. They may say as Christ, Weep not for me, but for yourselves and your children :" for those that must endure the storms that are coming upon us, and must be sifted by satan and his ministers, to try whether their faith and constancy will fail. Christ purchased

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them for heaven, and he will have them there. It is his will and prayer, "Father, I will that those whom thou hast given me be with me where I am, that they may see the glory which thou hast given me; John xvii. 24. (a better sight than we see here, when we are laid among malefactors in gaols, or scorned for preaching). "If our hopes were in this life only, we were of all men most miserable :" and do we love, them so little as to wish them with us is so miserable a life? Is vanity and vexation, and the portion of the wicked, better than the Jerusalem above? Our cows, and sheep, and hens, &c. when they have bred up their young ones at great pains and love, must part with them for us to kill and eat, yea, and with their own lives also: and shall we grudge that our friends and we must die to go where God will have us? If God should not take our friends or us, till our wills consented, I doubt we should stay here too long, unless pain constrained us to consent; but God is fittest to choose the time. "Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of all his saints;" Psal. cxvi. "Even the hairs of their head are numbered." It is not then for want of love to them that they are taken away by death. "They rest from their labour and their works follow them." Were we not fools and slow of heart to believe what the Gospel saith of blessed souls, we should know that they ought to suffer with Christ, and then to reign with him, as he suffered, and then entered into his glory.

And, as David said of his child, we shall come to them, but they shall not return to us.

CASE V.

Unkindness and Injury of Friends and Relations. Another case that calls for patience is the unkindness of friends, and their injurious dealing with us. Husband and wife often prove burdens and continual griefs to one another. Parents and children prove worse than strangers. Those that we have obliged by our benefits are ungrateful, and those untrusty whom we have trusted.

1. It must be so; man will be man, uncertain and untrusty. David and Paul say that all men are liars; that is, such as will deceive those that too much trust them. They are all sinful, ignorant, erroneous, mutable and selfish: if interest, change or temptations come, there is no hold of

them, if God do not hold them up. Did you not know man till now?

2. It is God's just rebuke for your too much trust in man, and for your erroneous, overvaluing man: and it is his merciful remedy to drive you home from man to God. This deceit and failing of your friends is part of the curse pronounced, Jer. xvii. 5, 6. "Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the Lord. For he shall be like the heath in the desert," &c. But "blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord, and whose hope the Lord is, for he shall be as a tree planted by the waters," &c.

3. The failing of man doth but tell us what we are ourselves, even untrusty and mutable as other men. It should help to humble us for the badness of our nature, and drive us to seek to Christ for his confirming grace, and not to trust ourselves too far.

4. And it should call us to examine whether we never wronged and deceived others. Have we not put the best side outward, and seemed better to our friends than we are? Have we not been less helpful, friendly and comfortable to them, than we promised, or than we should have been, and deceived their expectations? Have we not by our failings or provoking harshness been their grief? Or worse, have we not pleased them in their sin, and been temptations and snares to their souls?

5. Is there any friend that is nearer to you than yourselves? And is there any that hath hurt you half so much as you have done yourselves? Alas! how little suffer we by friends or foes, in comparison of what we suffer by ourselves!

6. Christ went before us in this kind of suffering, to teach us what to expect from men. Peter denied him with cursing and swearing, and that after warning and contrary protestations; and all his disciples forsook him and fled. And yet he forsook not them, but died for them, and as soon as he was risen, kindly comforteth them, " Go tell my brethren, and tell Peter (saith he), I go to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God."

7. Were your friends so much obliged to you, as you were to God and to your Saviour? or did they ever promise and vow more to you, than you did in your baptism to Christ? And have you faithfully performed all your vows,

and answered all your obligations? Did you ever oblige any by such benefits as God hath bestowed upon you? No, not by the thousandth, thousandth part. And have not you more unthankfully injured God, than ever any friend did injure you? Let this then provoke you to repentance.

If it be an unkind husband or wife; first see that you be innocent, and give no provocation. If you have deceived them by seeming better than you are, or if you be a burden to them, no wonder if they deceive you, and be a burden to you. And next, remember that you had your choice, and that after time of deliberation. If you have by blind love, or passion, or covetousness, or causeless haste deceived yourselves, repent, and make the best of it for the future that you can. Sin will not be without its sting.

9. If you love God and them, why are you not more grieved that they wrong God, and that they hurt themselves, than that they wrong you and deal unkindly by you. They do a thousandfold more wrong to Christ, and more hurt to their own souls, than they can do to you.

10. I fear most of us too little consider that friends overkind, and so over-loved, are oft more dangerous than the unkind, yea, than enemies. To be crossed by them may many ways do us good, but to over-love them, hath more danger and hurt than I will now digress to mention. Corruptedlove is the most sinful and worst affection.

11. And why do you not consider the benefit and comfort, which you have had by your friends, as well as the injuries? What if they now deal unkindly by you? Have they not many years been kind and useful to you? And should that be forgotten? And if you compare them, was not the kindness longer and greater than the unkindness? If Job say, "shall we receive good at the hands of God and not evil," we may much more say so of men.

12. Perhaps God permitteth it, that you may be the less grieved to part with them at death. I have noted it in some of my nearest acquaintance, that have lived in the greatest endearedness, that a little before death some unkindness hath fallen out between them, perhaps else death would have torn their hearts more grievously than that unkindness did. When God would separate Paul and Barnabas for his work, a little dissension became the cause. And when Paul was