thee." You must part with your dear husbands, how well soever you love them; you must bid adieu to the wife of your bosom, how nearly soever your affections be linked, and heart delighted in her. Your children and you must be separated, though they be to you as your own soul.

But though these vanish away, blessed be God, there is something that abides. Though "all flesh be as grass, and all the goodliness of it as the flower of the field; though the grass withereth, and the flower thereof fadeth, because the Spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it; yet the word of our God shall stand for ever." There is so much of support contained in this one consideration, that could but your faith fix here, to realize, and apply it, I might lay down my pen at this period, and say, The work is done, there needs no more.

CONSIDERATION 9. The hope of the resurrection should powerfully restrain all excesses of sorrow in those that do profess it.

Let them only mourn without measure, who mourn without hope. The husbandman doth not mourn when he casts his seed-corn into the earth, because he sows in hope: commits it to the ground with an expectation to receive it again with improvement. Why, thus stands the case here, and just so the apostle states it" But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not even as others which have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died, and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him."

As if he should say, Look not upon the dead as a lost generation: think not that death hath annihilated and utterly destroyed them. O no, they are not dead but only asleep; and if they sleep, they shall awake again. You do not use to make out cries and lamentations for your children and friends when you find them asleep upon their beds. Why, death is but a longer sleep, out of which they shall as surely awake as ever they did in the morning in this world.

I have often wondered at that golden sentence in Seneca-" My thoughts of the dead," saith he, " are not as others are: I have fair and pleasant apprehensions of them; for I enjoyed them as one that reckoned I must part with them; and I part with them as one that makes account to have them."

He speaks, no doubt, of that enjoyment of them, which his pleasant contemplations of their virtuous actions could give him; for he was wholly unacquainted with the comfortable and heart-supporting doctrine of the resurrection. Had he known the advantages which result from thence, at what a rate may we think he would have spoken of the dead and of their state: but this you profess to believe, and yet sink at a strange rate. O suffer not Heathenism to outvie Christianity. Let not Pagans challenge the greatest believers, to outdo them in a quiet and cheerful behaviour under afflictions.

I beseech thee, reader, if thy deceased friend have left thee any solid ground of hope that he died interested in Christ and the covenant, that thou

!

wilt directly ponder these admirable supports which the doctrine of the resurrection affords.

1. That the same body which was so pleasant a spectacle to thee, shall be restored again; yea, the same numerically, as well as the same specifically : so that it shall not only be what it was, but the who it was. "These eyes shall behold him, and not another." The very same body you laid, or are now about to lay in the grave, shall be restored again: thou shalt find thy own husband, wife or child, or friend again: I say, the self-same, and not another.

2. And farther, this is supporting, that as you shall see the same person that was so dear to you; so you shall know them to be the same that were once endeared to you on earth in so near a tie of relation.

Indeed you shall know them no more in any carnal relation; death dissolved that bond: but you shall know them to be such, as once were your dear relations in this world; and be able to single them out among that great multitude, and say, This was my father, mother, husband, wife, or child: this was the person, for whom I made supplication, who was an instrument of good to me, or to whose salvation God then made me instrumental.

For we may allow in that state all that knowledge which is cumulative and perfective, whatsoever may enlarge and heighten our felicity and satisfaction, as this must needs be allowed to do. Luther's judgment in this point being asked by his friends at supper, the evening before he died, replied thus"What," said he, "befel Adam? He never saw Eve, but was in a deep sleep when God formed her, yet when he awaked and saw her, he asked not, what she was, nor whence she came? But saith, she was flesh of his flesh, and bone of his bone. Now, how knew he that? He being full of the Holy Ghost, and endued with the knowledge of God, spake thus." After the same manner, we also shall be in the other life, renewed by Christ, and shall know our parents, our wives, and children.

And this, among other things, was that with which Augustine comforted the lady Italica, after the death of her husband, telling her, "That she should know him in the world to come, among the glorified saints." Yea, and a greater than either of these, I mean Paul, comforted himself, that the Thessalonians, whom he had converted to Christ, should be "his joy and crown of rejoicing in the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ at his coming." Which must needs imply his distinct knowledge of them in that day, which must be many hundred years after death had separated them from each other. Whether this knowledge shall be by the glorified eyes discerning any lineaments or property of individuality remaining upon the glorified bodies of our relations: or whether it shall be by immediate revelation as Adam knew his wife; or, as Peter, James, and John knew Moses and Elias in the mount: as it is difficult to determine, so it is needless to puzzle ourselves about it.

It is the concurrent judgment of sound divines, and it wants not countenance from Scripture and reason, that such a knowledge of them shall be in heaven: and then the sadness of this parting, will be abundantly recompensed by the joy of that meeting. Especially considering,

3. That at our next meeting they shall be unspeakably more desirable, sweet, and excellent than ever they were in this world. They had a desirableness in them here, but they were not altogether lovely, and in every respect desirable: they had their infirmities, both natural and moral; but all these are removed in heaven, and forever done away: no natural infirmities hang about glorified bodies; nor sinful ones upon perfect spirits of the just. Oh! what lovely creatures will they appear to you then, "when that which is sown now in dishonour, shall be raised in honour?" And then, to crown all,

4. You shall have an everlasting enjoyment of them in heaven, never to part again. The children of the resurrection can die no more. You shall kiss their pale lips, and cold cheeks no more: you shall never fear another parting pull, but be together with the Lord for ever. And this the apostle thought an effectual cordial in this case, when he exhorted the Thessalonians "to comfort one another with these words."

CONSIDERATION 10. The present felicity into which all that die in Christ are presently admitted, should abundantly comfort Christians over the death of such, as either carried a lively hope out of the world with them, or have left good grounds of such a hope behind them.