Thus have I shewn in various instances, how the death of a believer in general is appointed to work for his good, and becomes an advantage to him through the grace of Christ. I proceed to shew how the death of a christian in all the particular circumstances that attend it, has something in it that may be turned to his benefit.

And he

Christ has the keys of death and the grave; he was dead, and is alive, and behold he lives for evermore; Rev. i. 18. knows how to manage all the circumstances of the death of his saints for their profit: He appoints the time when, the manner how, and the place where they shall die, and determines all these things by rules of unsearchable wisdom, under the influence of his faithfulness and his love.

1. The time when we shall die is appointed by Christ: If he calls us away in the days of our youth, he secures us thereby from many a temptation, and many a sin; for our life on earth is subject to daily defilements. He prevents also many a sorrow and distress of mind, many an agony and sharp pain to which our flesh is subject, and saves us from all the languishing weaknesses of old age, and from tasting the dregs of mortality.

When our blessed Lord foresees some huge and heavy sorrows ready to fall upon us, or some mighty temptations approaching towards us, he lays his hand upon us in the midst of life, and hides us in the grave. This has been the sweet hiding place of many a saint of God, from a day of public temptation and overspreading misery.

If he lengthens out our life to many years, we have a fair opportunity of doing much more service for our God, and our Redeemer; and we also enjoy the longer experience of his power, his wisdom, and his faithful mercy, in guiding us through many a dark difficulty, in supporting us under many a heavy burden, and delivering our souls from many a threatening temptation. Oftentimes he sweetens the passage of his aged saints through the dark valley, with nearer and brighter views of the heavenly world: He gives them a strong and earnest expectation of glory, and some sweet foretaste of it, to bear them up under the langours of old age and sickness: The haven of rest becomes sweeter to them, when they have passed through many tedious storms: The hour of release into the world of light, is more exquisitely pleasing, after a tedious imprisonment in the flesh, and long years of darkness.

2. The manner, how we shall die, is appointed also by Christ our Lord, for the benefit of his saints. If death smite us with a sudden and unexpected stroke, then we are surprized into the world of pleasure at once, and, ere we are aware, our

souls find themselves in the midst of the paradise of God, surrounded with joys unspeakable. If our mortal nature decay by slow degrees, we have a precious opportunity for the more lively exercises of faith, we may then converse with death before-hand, and daily grow in preparation for our departure. We see ourselves launching down the stream of time, and if our faith be awake and sprightly, we rejoice in the sensible and hourly approaches of heaven and eternity. We may speak many useful dying sentences for the glory of our Lord, and make happy impressions upon the souls of those we leave behind : We may invite and require, we may allure and charge our dear relatives to follow us in the same path, and to meet us before the throne.

3. Our Lord also designs our benefit, when he appoints the place of our death, whether we shall quit the body at home or abroad; for some of us he sees it best, that our friends should stand round us and close our eyes, and, as it were, see our spirits take their flight into the invisible world, that they may assist and support us with divine words of consolation, or that they themselves may learn, and dare to die, and be animated by our example to encounter the last enemy. Our Lord sees it proper, for others of his saints, to die in the midst of strangers, or perhaps amongst enemies and by a violent death, that he may thereby give a glorious testimony to their faith and piety, as well as to the power of his own gospel. Whether we breathe our last at land or at sea, in our native country, or in a foreign climate, all shall work together for the final welfare of those that love God, and are called and justified, and sanctified according to his holy purpose; Rom. viii. 28.

There are, doubtless, some peculiar and secret reasons, in the grand comprehensive scheme of the counsels and decrees of God, why the death of every saint is appointed at this season, and not at another; why some young buds are cropped ere they blossom on earth, and transplanted to open and unfold themselves, and shine in the garden of God on high, while others are brought home into the heavenly garner, like fruit well grown, or like a shock of corn fully ripe. There is a divine reason why some are hurried away by a violent death, and others are pemitted naturally to dissolve into their dust: Why some must die on this spot of ground, and others on that: for the vast scheme of his counsels has a glorious consistency in it with the covenant of his grace: And indeed, the covenant of grace runs through the whole scheme of divine counsels, and mingles itself with them all. We rejoice in this meditation, while we believe the truth of it. We are persuaded, that we shall know, hereafter, the various and admirable designs of divine providence and love, in all the infinite

variety of the deaths of his saints; and this shall make part of our songs in the upper world, and give a joyful accent to our hallelujahs there.

Let us maintain therefore, a blessed assurance of the wise and gracious designs of our Lord, in all the circumstances of the death of his people. Let us learn to say with that aged saint, and eminent servant of Christ, the Reverend Mr. Baxter, when under many weaknesses of nature, and long and sore agonies of pain, he spake concerning his death, "Lord, when thou wilt, what thou wilt, how thou wilt." Let us insure our souls in his hands for eternity, and not be oversolicitous about the circumstances of our death, about the place, the manner, or the hour when we shall take our leave of life and time.

[If this sermon be too long, it may be divided here.]

Having made it appear, in these several sermons, that death is ours, or shall turn to our advantage, not only when it strikes our friends or strangers, but when it seizes our own flesh also: I desire to conclude this subject of discourse with various inferences, of which some may be called doctrinal, and others practical.

The doctrinal inferences are these:

Inference I. How different is the judgment of sense, from the judgment of faith? The eye of sense looks upon death as a sovereign and cruel tyrant, reigning over all nature and nations, and making dreadful havoc among mankind, as it were, after his own will and pleasure; but faith beholds it as a slave subdued to the power of Christ, and constrained to act under his sovereign influence for the good of all his saints. Sense teaches us to look upon ourselves, as the possession and food of death; but faith assures us, that death is our possession, and a part of our treasure. Death is yours, O christians, for all things are yours.

When sense has the ascendant over us, we take death to be a dark and dismal hour; but in the speech and spirit of faith, we call it a bright and glorious one. Sense esteems it to be the sorest of all afflictions, but faith numbers it among the sweetest of our blessings, because it delivers us from a thousand sins and

sorrows.

It has been reported, that Socrates called "death a birthday into eternal life." A most glorious thought, and a very inviting name! But it is strange, that a heathen philosopher should ever hit upon it, it is so much like the dialect of the gospel, and the language of faith. He had learned to talk more nobly than the sensual world, though he was not favoured with the light of the gospel. It is so much the more shameful for

christians, to talk and live below the character of this philosopher.

O when shall we get above this life of sense? When shall we rise in our ideas and our judgment of things? When shall we attain to the upper regions of christianity, and breathe in a purer air, and see all things in a brighter and better light? When shall we live the life of faith, and learn its divine language? Death is like a thick dark veil, as it appears to the eye of sense; when shall our faith remove the veil, and see the light, the immortality, the glory that lies beyond it? Death, like the river Jordan, seems to overflow its banks, when we approach it, and divides and affrights us from the heavenly Canaan: When shall we climb to the top of Pisgah, that we may look beyond the swelling waves of this Jordan, and take a fair and inviting prospect of the promised land.

II. How glorious and how dreadful is the difference, between the death of a saint and that of a sinner, a soul that is in Christ, and a soul that has no interest in him! The death of every sinner has all that real evil and terror in it, in which it appears to an eye of sense; but a convinced sinner beholds it yet a thousand times more dreadful. When conscience is awakened upon the borders of the grave, it beholds death in its utmost horror, as the curse of the broken law, as the accomplishment of the threatenings of an angry God. A guilty conscience looks on death with all its formidable attendants round it, and espies an endless train of sorrows coming after it. Such a wretch beholds death riding towards him on a pale horse, and hell following at his heels, without all relief or remedy, without a Saviour, and without hope.

But a true christian, when he reads the name of death among the curses of the law, knows that Christ his Saviour and his Surety, has sustained it in that dreadful sense, and put an end to its power and terror. He reads its name now in the promises of the gospel, and calls it a glorious blessing, a release from sin and sorrow, an entrance into everlasting joy. The saint may lie calm and peaceable in the midst of all the attendants of death; like Daniel in the den of lions, for it cannot hurt or destroy him: But when a sinner is thrown to this devourer, it does as it were break all his bones, it tears both his flesh and his spirit as its proper prey; Death feeds upon him, as the scripture expresses it: Ps. xlix. 14. and fills his conscience with immortal anguish. Who can bear the thought of dying in such a state under the dominion of death, without Christ, and without hope.

III. How much does the religion of the New Testament transcend all other religions, both that of the light of nature,

and all the former revelations of grace; for it better instructs us how to die. The religion of the ancient patriarchs, the religion of Moses and the Jews, as well as the religion of the philosophers, all come vastly short of christianity, in the important business of dying.

The philosopher, by the labours of his reason, and by a certain hardiness of spirit, persuades himself not to tremble at the thoughts of death; for it may be, there is no hereafter; or if there be, he would fain hope for an happy one: And thus he ventures into death, with some sort of courage and composure of mind, like a bold man, that is taking an immense leap, in the dark, out of one world into another but he can never know certainly, that there are no terrible things to meet him in

that unseen state.

A few

The religion of the Jews and patriarchs, which God himself revealed to men, enabled many of them to resign their lives with patience and hope, and to walk through the valley of death without much dismay, when the appointed hour was come. of them I confess, have been elevated by a noble faith above the level of that dispensation: Yet some of them seem to make bitter mourning, because of the shadows of darkness that covered the grave, and all the regions beyond it. They were all their life-time subject to bondage through the fear of death; Heb. ii. 14.

It is our Jesus alone, who has brought life and immortality into so glorious a light by the gospel; 2 Tim. i. 10. He dwelt long in heaven before he came into our world, and again he went as a fore-runner into those unseen worlds, and came back again and taught his disciples, what heaven is: And thus we learn to overcome death with all its terrors, by the richer prospect, which he has given us, of the heavenly country that lies beyond the grave: He has taught his followers to rejoice in dying, and to possess the pleasures that are to be derived from death, as it is an entrance into the regions of light and joy. Blessed be God! that we were born in the days of the Messiah, since Christ returned from the dead, and that we were not sent either to the schools of the philosophers, or even to Moses, to teach us how to die.

IV. Learn from these discourses, what a sweet and delightful glory belongs to the covenant of grace, that turns a curse into a blessing. When the broken law, or covenant of works attempts to curse thee with death, O believer, (as Balaam did Israel) the Lord thy God turns the curse into a blessing to thee by this new covenant, because the Lord thy God loveth thee; Deut. xxiii. 5. So afflictions are turned into mercies by the virtue of this covenant, they mortify our sins, they wean us from the