nor fear, nor imperfection, which is the ground of jealousy. We shall perfectly love them because they shall be perfectly good; and they shall perfectly love us because we shall be perfectly good; and one shall stand admiring the graces of God in another, and that will maintain a perpetuity of love. Therefore it is want of faith that makes us unwilling to yield our souls unto God at the point of death. It is a going to our fathers.

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But then we must take heed what fathers we imitate here, Heb. xiii. 7. Take heed who are our patterns while we live; for if we do not imitate them here, we cannot live with them in heaven when we are dead. Therefore it is a very necessary item in Heb. xiii. 7, Look to them that rule over you, that speak the word; whose faith follow, considering the end of their labour.' Let us look before what kind of men those have been that we desire to live with in heaven, and mark the end of their conversation; for such as wo delight in, and frame our carriage to here, such we shall live with hereafter. We must not think to live with Nero, and die with Paul; to live Epicures, and die Christians; to live dissembling and falsely in our places, and to die comfortably, and to go to the blessed souls at the hour of death, and at the resurrection. No. God will gather our souls with wicked men, if we fashion our carriage to wicked men. Such as we delight in, and live with, and set as patterns before us, with such we shall live for ever hereafter. 'He was gathered to his fathers.'

One sign of a man that shall be gathered to believing fathers, to his good forefathers, besides imitation, is this, to delight in the congregations of just men here. A man may know he shall go to the congregation of perfect souls in heaven, if he delight in the congregations of God's saints here; for surely he that hath a confidence to be in the proper heaven, heaven that is so blessed, he will have a care while he lives, as much as he can, to be and delight in the heaven upon earth. Now the chief heaven upon earth is the church of God. O how amiable is thy dwelling-place, O Lord,' Ps. lxxxiv. 1, where many souls meet together to join in speaking to God, and in hearing God speak to them. Those therefore that delight not in the congregations, that delight not in the service of God, what hope have they to be gathered to the congregation of the faithful when they are gone. So much for that, 'He was gathered to his fathers.'

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And he saw corruption.' It is an Hebraism for he felt corruption,' he had experience of corruption.' All other senses are attributed to sight. That being the principal of all the senses, they have their term from it, because sight is the most excellent, the most capacious and quick sense. Therefore, I say, the actions of all the other senses are attributed to it, as we say, see how he speaks, and so here, he saw corruption,' that is, he had experience of it; because sight is a convincing sense. He could not properly see when he was dead but the meaning is, he had experience of corruption.' The truth is this, in a word, that,

Obs. 6. The best and greatest men in the world, when they are gone, they are subject to corruption.

David was a king and a prophet, a man after God's own heart.' Yet this could not keep David's body from corruption.

'Reason 1. The reason is, we are but dead men here. This is not the life that Christ hath purchased for us. We are going to death. Our natural life is but cursus ad mortem, a continual going to death. We are alive now, but, k k

VOL. VI.

alas! our life is nothing but a continual dying; every day cuts off a part of our life. It is a statute that all must die.

Reason 2. And it is our perfection to die. We cannot otherwise see God and enjoy our crown. Death indeed is nothing but misery. But when we die we go to live. The best must see corruption.'

Use 1. Therefore this should be an argument to support the soul; when we think of the rottenness in the grave, and of that place, and time of horror, when we shall be no more here upon earth. It is no otherwise with us than it hath been with the best in the world. They all saw 'corruption' in their time.

Use 2. Again, considering we have but corruptible bodies here, bodies that must see corruption; let us take care for the better part. He is a madman, that having two houses, one free-hold, the other a rotten tenement, ready to fall about his ears, that shall take delight in that and neglect his own inheritance, which is a goodly thing. It is for want of wit; and it is as much want of grace, when we, having a double life, the life of grace, that ends in glory, the life of the soul, the life of God, as St Paul saith; and then the life of the body, which is communicated from the soul to the body, which is corruptible;-our bodies are but 'tabernacles of clay, whose foundation is in the dust,'-for us to take care of this vile body, as the apostle calls it, Philip. iii. 21, Who shall change our vile body, and make it like to his glorious body, according to his mighty power;' to take care of this vile body and to neglect our precious souls. It is the care of most (such is the carnal breeding of men, and they follow those that bred them in this brutishness, as if they had no souls; as if there were no life after this), their care is, what they shall eat, and what they shall drink, and -put on,' Mat. vi. 25; what to commend themselves by in the outward man to the view of others; all their care is for their outward man. Alas! what is it but a corruptible vile body? It is but the case of the soul. They forget the jewel and look all to the casket, which is a base body, take it at the best while we are here.

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Use 3. And take heed we be not ensnared with the bodies of others. This is the corruption' of men, to gaze in this kind. You see wise Solomon and others were much troubled with temptations in this kind. Consider that body that thou doatest on now, and which is made by the devil a snare to thee, what will it be ere long? So noisome that thou wilt not endure the presence of it. It is but a flower, and it is fading, fresh in the morning and dead at night. All flesh is but grass. It is a corruptible body. If thou wilt needs love, be acquainted with such as have excellent spirits that shall live eternally. Oh, there is an object of love indeed! That is the true love and acquaintance that is spiritual. Many things may be lovely in the outward person, but see that there be a heavenly spirit, that is mounting up, that savours of good things; a spirit that hath life begun in it, that shall be for ever happy in heaven. Unless there be this, there cannot be a fit ground for the love of any wise man.

To end all, you see here a short story of a good life and a blessed death. Let us make this blessed man of God exemplary to us in both. Let our whole life be nothing but a service of God, and let us consider the generation wherein we are to take and do all the good we can in our time. And then consider what death will be. When we come to die, it will be a sweet sleep to us, and our resurrection will be a refreshing. 'Our flesh shall rest in hope,' as David saith, we shall be gathered to our fathers;' we shall 'see corruption,' indeed. But mark what David saith, Ps. xvi. 9, 10,

My flesh shall rest in hope, because thou wilt not suffer thy holy one to see corruption. Then this is the upshot of all. Though we see corruption' when we are dead; yet, with the eye of faith, we see a rising again from corruption.' We see death but as a pot to refine us in.. Even as it is with silver, when there is much corruption and heterogeneal matter mingled with it, the fire refines it, but it is not lost. So the grave refines the body, and fits it for a glorious resurrection. 'The flesh rests in hope' all the while, though the body see corruption. Because our head saw no corruption. If the head be above water, what if the body be down? Our head saw no corruption; that is, Christ, for he rose out of the grave before his body was putrified; for his body had a subsistence, and was gloriously united to the second person in Trinity; and, being united to the Lord of life, it saw no corruption. For that did not lie upon Christ as our Saviour to be corrupt, but to die, to be made a curse for us,' Gal. iii. 18, and then especially, I say, by reason of the near union of it to the God of life.

Well, then, what is David's argument of comfort? In Ps. xvi. 9, 10, 'My flesh shall rest in hope; because thou wilt not suffer thine holy one to see corruption.' Because Christ rose from the grave himself, the holy one of God, our flesh may rest in hope, though we see corruption. Because the same divine power that raised Christ our head out of the grave, that his body saw no corruption, will raise our bodies to be like his glorious body. Our blessed Saviour, that overcame death in his own person, by his power he will overcome death for all his mystical body, that is, his church. It shall be perfect in heaven, soul and body together, as he himself is glorious now in heaven. That we may say with David, notwithstanding our bodies see corruption, as his did, yet our flesh shall rest in hope, because God's holy one saw no corruption.

NOTES.

(a) P. 490.- This I observe from the very language or phrase.' The phrase is, ὑπηρετήσας τῇ τοῦ Θεοῦ βουλῇ having served the counsel of God, as Sibbes suggests. Cf. ver. 22.

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(b) P. 492.—“David in his generation served the will, or counsel, of God," as the word is.' See note a above.

(c) P. 493.- Man, take him in his nature, is like a tree. The poet could say to that purpose.' This comparison is frequent in the Classics and in all languages. By the poet is probably intended Homer, and the reference to the famous passage II. 146

Τυδείδη μεγάθυμε, τίη γενεὴν ἐρεείνεις ;

Οἴη περ φύλλων γενεὴ, τοιήδε καὶ ἀνδρῶν·

Φύλλα τὰ μέν τ' ἄνεμος χαμάδις χέει, ἄλλα δέ θ' ὕλη
Τηλεθόωσα φύει, ἔαρος δ' ἐπιγίγνεται ὡςῃ·

Ως ἀνδρῶν γενεὴ, ἡ μὲν φύει, ἡ δ' ἀπολήγει.

Thus translated by Cowper :

'Why asks Diomede of my descent?

For as the leaves, such is the race of men.

The wind shakes down the leaves, the budding grove

Soon teems with others, and in spring they grow.

So pass mankind. One generation meets

Its destined period, and a new succeeds.'

The Elizabethan poets furnish many splendid examples of the metaphor; c.g., Ben Jonson, Massinger, and their compeers.

(d) P. 495.-'In regard of the ills, we may say with Saint Austin, "Lord, to what times are we reserved." One of his lamentations during his passionate controversies with the Donatists, and when Hippo was besieged by the Vandals, during which calamity this illustrious father expired.

(e) P. 498. As the civil law saith, infringit obedientiam,' &c. Still a law-maxim. (f) P. 507.- As Lactantius saith, "that is no religion that we leave behind when we come to the church-door." Cf. for the thought, his De Falsa Religione repeatedly. G.

LYDIA'S CONVERSION.

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