TWELFTH SEASON
HOW A CHRISTIAN MAY ENCOURAGE
HIS HEART AGAINST DEATH
The twelfth season of looking diligently to our hearts, and keeping them with greatest care, is the time of sickness: ‘When a child of God draws nigh to eternity, when there are but a few sands more in the upper part of his glass to run down, and when Satan busily bestirs himself; of him it may be said, as of the natural serpent, Nunquam nisi moriens producitur in longum; he is never seen at his full length till dying: and now his great design, since he cannot win the soul from God, is to discourage and make it unwilling to go to God, though the gracious soul, with Jacob, should then rouse up itself upon a dying bed, and rejoice that the marriage day of the Lamb is now almost come; though it should then say with dying Austin, Vivere renou ut Christo vivan; I despise life to be with Christ. Or as dying Milius, when one asked him whether he were willing to die? O, said he, illius est nolle mori, qui nolit ire ad Christum; let him be unwilling to die, who is unwilling to go to Christ. But O! what shrinking from death, what lothness to depart, may sometimes, indeed too frequently, be observed in the people of God? How loth are some of them to take death by the cold hand? If such a liberty were indulged to us, not to be dissolved, till we dissolve ourselves; when should we say with St. Paul, I desire to be dissolved? Well then, the last case shall be this,’
Case 12. How the people of God in times of sickness may get their hearts loose from all earthly engagements, and persuade them into a willingness to die.
And there are seven arguments; which I shall urge upon the people of God at such a time as this, to make them cheerfully entertain the messenger of death, and die, as well as live, like saints. And the first is this:
Argument 1. First, The harmlessness of death to the people of God. Though it keeps its dart, it hath lost its sting: a saint (to allude to that, Isa. xi. 8.) may play upon the hole of this asp, and put his hand into the cockatrice’s den. Death is the cockatrice or asp, the grave is his hole or den; a saint need not fear to put his hand boldly into it: it hath left and lost its sting in the sides of Christ, 1 Cor. xv. 55. O death! where is thy sting? Why art thou afraid, O saint, that this sickness may be in thy death, as long as thou knowest, that the death of Christ is the death of death? Indeed, if thou didst die in thy sins, as John viii. 21, if death, as a king, did reign over thee, Rom. v. 14. if it could feed upon thee, as the lion doth upon the prey he hath taken, as Psal. xlix. 14, if hell followed the pale horse, as it is, Rev. vi. 8, then thou mightest well startle and shrink back from it; but when God hath put away thy sins from thee, as far as the east is from the west, Psal. ciii. 12, as long as there is no other evil left in death for thee to encounter with, but bodily pain; as long as the scriptures represent it to thee under such harmless and easy notions as the putting off thy clothes, 2 Cor. v. 2. And lying down to sleep upon thy bed, Isa. lvii. 2, why shouldst thou be afraid? There is as much difference betwixt death to the people of God, and others, as betwixt the unicorn’s horn, when it is upon the head of the fierce beast, and when it is in the apothecary’s shops, where it is made salubrious and medicinal.
Arg. 2. Thy heart may be kept from shrinking back at such a time as this, by considering the necessity of death, in order to the full fruition of God.
Whether thou art willing to die or no, I assure thee there is no other way to obtain the full satisfaction of thy soul, and to complete its happiness; till the hand of death do thee the kind office to draw aside the curtain of the flesh, thy soul cannot see God: This animal life stands betwixt him and thee, 2 Cor. v. 6, Whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord. Thy body must be refined and cast into a new mould, else that new wine of heavenly glory would break it. Paul, in his highest rapture, 2 Cor. xii. 4, when he heard things unutterable, was then but as a stander-by, a looker-on, not admitted into the company as one of them; but as the angels are in our assemblies, so was Paul in that glorious assembly above, and no otherwise; and yet even for this he must, as it were, be taken out of the body, unclothed for a little time, to have a glimpse of that glory, and then put on his clothes again! O then! who would not be willing to die for a full sight and enjoyment of God? Methinks thy soul should look and sigh, like a prisoner, through the grates of this mortality; O that I had wings like a dove! then would I fly away and be at rest: most men need patience to die; but a saint that understands what death admits him to, should rather need patience to live; methinks he should often look out, and listen on a death-bed for his Lord’s coming; and when he receives the news of his approaching change, should say, The voice of my beloved! Behold, he cometh leaping over the mountains, skipping over the hills, Cant. ii. 8.