The Sinners Sanctuary, Sermon 29
SERMON XXIX.
Rom. 8.10.
The body is dead because of sin: but the Spirit is life, &c.
IT was the first curse and threatning, wherein God thought fit to comprehend all misery, Thou shalt die the death in that day thou eatest: though the sentence was not presently executed according to the letter, yet from that day …orward man was made mortal; and there seemeth to be much mercy and goodness of God interveening to plead a delay of death it self, that so the promise of life in the second Adam might come to the first and his posterity, and they might be delivered …rom the second death, though not from the first. Alwayes we bear about the markes of sin in our bodies to this day, and in so far the threatning taketh place, that this life that we live in the body, is become nothing else but a dying life: the life that the ungodly shall live out o… the body is a living death; and either of these is worse then simple death or destruction of beeing. The serious contemplation of the miseries of this life, made wise Solomon to praise the dead more then the living, contrary to the custom of men, who rejoyce at the birth of a man-child, and mourn at their death: yea, it pressed him further, to think them which have not at all been, better then both; because they have not seen the evil under the Sun: this world is such a Chaos, such a masse of miseries, that if men understood it before they came into it, they would be far more loath to enter into it, then they are now afraid to go out of it. And truly we want not remembrances and representations of our misery every day, in that children come weeping into the world, as it were bewailing …heir own misfortune, that they were brought forth to be sensible subjects of misery. And what is all our life-time, but a repetition of sighs and groan…, anxiety and satiety? loathing and longing, dividing our spi…its and our time between them. How many deaths must we suffer, before death come? for the absence or losse of any thing much desired, is a sep…ration no lesse g…ievous to the hearts of men, then the pa…ting of soul and body: for affection to temporal pe…ishing things, unites the soul so unto them, that there is no parting without pain, no dissolution of that continuity without much vexation; and yet the soul must suffer many such tortures in one day, because the things are perishing in their own nature, and uncertain. What is sleep, which devours the most part of our time? but the very image and picture of death, a visible and daily representation of the long cessation of the sensitive life in the grave; and yet truly it is the best and most innocent part of our time, though we accuse it often: there is both lesse sin, and lesse misery in it; for it is almost the only leniment and refreshment we get in all our miseries. Iob …ought it to asswage his grief, and ease his body: but it was the extremity of his misery that he could not find it. Now, my beloved, when you find that which is called life, subject to so much misery, that you are constrained often to desire you had never been born; you find it a valley of tears, a house of mourning, from whence all true delight and solid happiness is banished: seing the very Officers and Serjeants of death are continually surrounding us, and walk alongs with us, though unpleasant company, in our greatest contentments, and are putting marks upon your doors, as in the time of the Plague upon houses infected, Lord have mercy upon us, and are continually bearing this motto to our view, and …ounding this direction to our ear…, cito, procul, diu, to get soon out of Sodom that is appointed for destruction, to fly quickly out of our selves to the refuge appointed of God, even one that was dead and is alive, and hath redeemed us by his blood; and to get far off from our selves, and take up dwelling in the blessed Son o… God, through whose flesh there is accesse to the Father; seing all these (I say) are so, why do not we awake our selves upon the sound of the promise of immortality and life, brought to our ears in the Gospel? Mortality hath already seized upon our bodies, but why do ye not catch hold of this opportunity of releasing your souls from the chains and setters of eternal d…ath? Truly, my beloved, all that can be spoken of torments and miseries in this life, I suppose we could imagine all the exquisite torments invented by the most cruel tyrants since the beginning, to be combined in some one kind of torture, and would t…n st…etch our imagination beyond that, as far as that which is compo…ed of all torments, surpasseth the simplest death: yet we do not conceive nor expresse unto you that death to come. Believe it, when the soul is out of the body, it is a most pure activity, all sense, all knowledge: and seing where it is dulled and dampished in the body, it is capable of so much grief or joy, pleasure or pain, we may conclude That being loosed from these stupifying earthly chains, that it is capable of infinit more vexation, or contentation, in a higher an… purer strain.
Therefore we may conclude with the Apostle, that all men by nature are miserable in life, but infinitly more miserable in death: only the man who is in Jesus Christ, in whose spirit Christ dwells, and hath made a temple of his body, for offering up reasonable service in it, that man only is happy in life, but far happier in death: happy that he was born, but infinitly more happy that he was born mortal, born to die ; for if the body be dead because of sin, the spirit is life because of righteousnesse. Men commonly make their accompts, and calculat their time so, as if death were the end of it: truly, it were happinesse in the generality of men, that that computation were true, either that it had never beg…n, or that it might end here; for that which is the greatest dignity and glory of a man his immortal soul, it is truly the greatest misery of sinful men, because it capacitats them for eternal misery. But if we make our accompts right, and take the right period, truly death is but the beginning of our Time, of endlesse and unchangeable endurance either in happinesse or misery: and this life in the body, which is only in the view of the short-sighted sons of men, is but a strait and narrow passage into the infinit ocean of eternity; but so inconsiderable it is, that according as the spirit in this passage is fashioned and formed, so it must continue for ever; for where the tree falleth, there it lyeth. There may be hope that a tree will sprout again, but truly there is no hope that ever the damned soul shall see a spring of joy; and no fear that ever the blessed spirits shall find a winter of grief, such is the evennesse of eternity, that there is no shadow of change in it.
O then, how happy are they in whose souls this life is already begun! which shal then come to its Meridian, when the glory of the flesh falls down like withered hay into the dust: the life as well as the light of the righteou… is progressive, its shining more and more till that day come, the day of Death, on…y worthy to be called the present day, bec…se it brings perfection, it mounts the soul in the highest point of the Orb, and there is no declining from that again. The spirit is now alive in some holy aff…ctions and motions, breathing upwards, wrestling towards that point: the soul is now in pa…t united to the fountain of life, by loving attendance and obedience, and it i… longing to be more cl…ly united: the inward senses are exercis… about spiritual thing…, but the burden of this clayie mansion dot… much dull and damp them, and proves a great Remora to the spiri…: the body indispo…es and weakens the soul much: its life as in an Infant, though a reasonable soul be there, yet overwhelmed with the incapacity of the organs, this body is truly a prison of restraint and confinement to the …oul, and often loathsome and ugly through the filthinesse of sin: But when the spirit is delivered from this necessary burden and impediment, O how lively is that life it then lives! then the life, peace, joy, love and delight of the soul, surmounts all that is possible here, further then the highest exercise of the soul of the wisest men surpasses the bruitish-like apprehensions of an infant: and indeed then, the Christian comes to his full stature, and is a perfect man when he ceaseth to be a man.
How will you not be perswaded, beloved in the Lord, to long after this life, to have Christ fo…med in your hearts, fo… truly the generality have not so much as Christ fashioned in their outward habit; but a…e within da…kn…sse and ea…thinesse, and wickednesse, and without, impiety and pr…fanity: will you not long for this life! for now you are dead while you live, as the Apostle speaks of widows that live in pleasure: The more the soul be satisfied with ea…thly things, it is the deeper bu…ied in the grave of the flesh, and the …urther separated from God: Alas! many o… you know no other li…e then that which you now live in the body, you neither apprehend what this new birth is, nor what the perfect statu…e of it shall be afterwards; but truly while it is thus you are but walking shadows, breathing …l…y, and no more. A godly man used to calculat the years of his nativity from his second birth, his conversion to God in Christ: And truly, this is the true period of the …ight calculation of life, of that life which shall not see death. True life hath but one period, that is, the beginning of it; for end it hath none: I beseech you reckon your years thus, and I fear that you …eckon your selves, many of you, yet dead in sins and trespasses. Is that life, I pray you, To eat, to drink, to sleep, to play, to walk, to work? Is there any thing in all these worthy of a reasonable soul, which must survive the body, and so cease from such things for ever? Think within your selves, do you live any other life then this? What is your life, but a tedious and wearisome repetition of such bruitish actions, which are only te…minat on the body? O then how miserable are you, if you have no other period to reckon from, then your birth day! If there be not a second birth day before your burial, you may make your reckoning To be banished eternally from the life of God.
As for you, Christians, whom God hath quickned by the Spirit of His Son, be much in the exercise of this life, and that will maintain and advance it: let your care be about your spirits, and to hearten you in this study, and to beget in you the hope of eternal life, look much, and lay fast hold on that Life-giving Saviour, who by his righteous life, and accursed death, hath purchased by his own blood, both happinesse to us and holinesse: Consider what debters ye are to Him, who loved not his own life, and spared it not to purchase this life to us. Let our thoughts and affections be occupied about this high purchase of our Saviours, which is freely bestowed on them that will have it, and believe in Him for it: if we be not satisfied with such a low and wretched life, as is in the body, He will give a higher and more enduring life, and only worthy of that name.