THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD In sudden Death ordinary and extraordinary vindicated and improved.  
In a funeral SERMON for Mrs. MARY REVE, Wife to Mr. NICHOLAS REVE, Merchant.  
First preached to the English Church in ROTTERDAM, January 14. 1685. and since enlarged By JOSEPH HILL. B. D.  
At ROTTERDAM, Printed by REINIER LEERS.  
M.DC.LXXXV.   

TO RICHARD HUNTINGTON Esquire.  
SIR,  
THis Sormon which I preached for your daughter's sake ' out of my respects to her, and supposal of this office for her had she died with you, I now send you enlarged and printed. Not for any solicitations, which is the usual modest excuse, although I wanted not these from some Gentlewomen in her late condition: but because I have not seen this subject, notwithstanding the many occasions thereof, handled by any, though it may be by some, and I not know it. And especially, because God's providence which is as the soul in the world's body, ruling and acting all things in it, is frequently misunderstood by many. Some not only complaining when their expectations are crossed, as Cato did, of its darkness and obscurity, and saying with Brutus, that virtue is but nomen inane, an empty name, when they see such things befall the virtuous: but are even ready with Epicurus to deny it altogether, because of its seeming irregularity. Others reading the many temporal promises in the Old Testament, mostly relating to the Jews, and some to particular persons, as David, or such places of Scripture, as Psalm 91, are apt to judge providence to be so far from fulfilling the word, that it is contrary to it; and being not able to reconcile them, are greatly staggered and perplexed. I have therefore cast in my mite of endeavours to reconcile God's word with his works, in this one branch of sudden death, for satisfaction therein: and from that ordinary in the Text and example taken occasion since, to treat of most of those extraordinary in Scripture, for the better illustrating thereof, and this kind of providence both in general and particular, in infants as well as aged, by reason of the little one we have also lost. The blessing of heaven accompany it for good to those that peruse it, that God may have the glory of his truth and faithfulness in his word, and of equity and righteousness in his works. For yourself, Sir, I am sensible what a full and home blow God hath reached you, in cutting down tree and fruit together: the loss of such a daughter with a grandson is great, but it is the will of your heavenly Father, to which I hope you have learned to submit. You might perhaps have been better satisfied, if she had died by you, rather than at this distance; but though Rebekah like she left her native country, and Father's house, yet not God's, nor without his especial providence, who sets the solitary in families, and fixes the bounds of our habitations. And here she lived beloved, and died lamented, and though she is buried in the dust, yet not in oblivion: all which to her is indeed fruitless, yet may somewhat alleviate your sorrow, that she was amongst those that valued her worth. That this sharp affliction may be sanctified so that you may make the best improvement thereof, and that the blessed Spirit, which is styled the Comforter, may comfort you and all concerned therein, is the prayer of  
SIR, Your Servant in the Lord. J. H.   

GOD'S PROVIDENCE in sudden death vindicated and improved.  GENESIS xxxv. vers. 19 
And Rachel died, and was buried in the way to Ephrath, which is Bethlehem.  
IAcob's life, as most of God's eminent servants, was made up of providences, all in checquer-work: being a mixture of mercies and miseries, for the most part successively, and some times jointly, throughout his pilgrimage. And is more particularly described, than any of the saints of God, in Scripture; he being the root of the future Church, which God more regards, than all the great Kingdoms of the world; that are therefore passed over in silence, whilst poor Jacob with his staff and travels, family and flocks, remain upon record to all generations. That as Abraham and Isaac, so he especially might be a pattern to his posterity: whose servitude, sufferings and increase in Egypt, resembled his in Syria; their being pursued at their coming thence, with all their little ones and great riches, his by Laban; and their passage to, and abode in Canaan, and after going into captivity, his in many things, and going in's old age into Egypt. But not to them only, being now written for the instruction of us Gentiles also, on whom the ends of the world are come: and is as all particular histories, most profitable for all, though general may be more pleasing to many, Rom. 15: 4. 1 Cor. 10: 11. Let us therefore view a little the variety of God's deal with this blessed Patriarch, that in this Chapter lead to the text. Whereby we may see, how God freed him from his fears, that he and all his should be destroyed; by calling him to Bethel, discouraging his enemies, and bringing him safely thither to pay his vows, which the good man had too long neglected, v. 1-7. But though this removal from his own dwelling to God's house, made a comfortable change, yet he soon meets with an alteration, for Deborah a grave and picus matron, his mother's nurse, and his dear friend dies there, and is buried with great lamentation, v. 8. Which the God of all consolations, who usually knits his comforts to his people's crosses, lets him not long proceed in; but  him afresh with the garments of praise, by appearing to him again, changing his name from Jacob to Israel, and making great promises to him and his seed, v. 9-15. But this glorious day of grace is followed with a very dark night of providence, in the death of his most beloved Rachel: which yet was not without the appearance of a bright star in the firmament of the Church, by the birth of a 12th Patriarch, his mother's Benoni, but his father's Benjamin. From all which we may gather, There's no expecting constant prosperity for God's people on earth; mercies without miseries are reserved for heaven.  
Being now come to the paragraf of Rachel's death, which I have chosen as suitable to our Sister's departed, let none stop me with her father's speech to Jacob concerning her, It must not be so done in our country, Gen. 29: 26. For though I will not say, as some do, that the want of funeral sermons makes funeral sorrows so small amongst us: yet this I must and will say, that all are too apt to run into extremes, and either desspise the chastening of the Lord, or faint when they are rebuked of him, Hebr. 12: 5. And therefore whatsoever may tend to remedy this, is not only seasonable, but very needful. I know at the reformation of these Churches, when the generality of Magistrates and Ministers prevailed for this setlement (though Prince William and some others were Lutherans) and this amongst other things of funeral sermons was ventilated; they were not judged necessary at the interment: there being neither precept, nor precedent in Scripture for more, than decent burial with lamentations; nor any reason why they should not be made, for the godly poor of exemplary lives and deaths; as well as the rich, whose purses generally procure them. Yet upon occasions it was judged very necessary on the Lord's day or in weekly lectures, to admonish the living of their mortality, direct the sorrowful Relations in their duty, and stir up all to imitate laudable examples, and prepare for following those departed in the faith. Seeing then it is not material, whether we have the corpse in a coffin before our eyes, according to the custom in England, or it be covered with earth, as here; so that we have but the Deceased's life and death in our minds and memories for our betterment; I shall proceed to show you, the agreableness of this portion of Scripture, to the present occasion.  
Vers. 16. Shows, where Jacob and his family were, viz. but a little way from Eprath, whither they were going. [How exactly doth God in his providence set the bounds of journeys as well as habitations; the places and times of our lives and deaths.] And what befell them there. Rachel travailed and had hard labour. The best of women may have the bitterest pains in childbirth, and the saddest remembrance of God's sentence; In sorrow thou shalt bring forth child'ren. Gen. 3: 16. Vers. 17. The midwife incourages her in her pains and fears, with having another son, i. e. besides Joseph she had already. But all in vain, she regards it not, as in the like case Phineas wife, 1 Sam. 4: 20. [Earthly comforts signify little to dieing persons] Vers. 18. Rachel, who was not satisfied with Joseph alone, but desired another son, Gen. 30: 24. now when she haveth him calls him Ben-oni, the son of my sorrow. It is dangerous not to rest contented with our present enjoyments. When we desire creature comforts immoderately, God may grant them so that they not only prove comfortless, but bitterness to us. Numb. 11: 4, 33. and Ps. 78: 29, 30, 31. The time when she thus named him was, as her soul was in departing; whereby her death, as all others, is set forth to us, which the following words, for she died, declare. Souls die not with our bodies. They go to God that gave them, to be judged by him, Eccles. 12: 7. The union of our souls and bodies being life, and their parting again, death, 1 Kings, 17: 21, 22. therefore dieing Stephen prays, Lord Jesus receive my spirit. Act. 7: 59 But Jacob lost that name should be a continual renovation of his sorrow, calls him Benjamin the son of the right hand, denoting his affection to him. Ps. 80: 17. It is wisdom to suit names to occasional providences.  
Vers. 19 In the Text we have, 

I. Rachel's death.  
II. Burial.  
III. Place of both.    
I. Rachel died. Beautiful Rachel, Jacob's dearly beloved Rachel dies, whilst blear-eyed Leah lives. The more we love any creature, person or thing, the more danger we are in to lose it. God often times crossing our inordinate affections for our good, in taking away our beloved comforts, and sparing those that are despised. Rachel, that so passionately desired children, that she said unto Jacob, give me children, or else I die, Gen. 30: 1. now dies by having them. Our immoderate desires many times cost us very dear.  
II. And was buried. The most beloved alive, when they are dead, we desire to have buried out of our sight. as Abraham said of Sarah, Gen. 23: 4. A decent burial of the dead is the living Relations duty. Yea sometimes memorials of the deceased may be expedient, when free from ostentation and superstition, as we see in the following verse, Jacob sets a pillar upon her grave, as a standing monument of his affection and her desert.  
III. In the way to Ephrath, which is Bedlam. Renowned for our Savior's birth; called Bedlam Ephratah, Micah 5: 2. and of Judea, Math. 2: 1, 5, 6. to distinguish it from that in Galilee; and the city of David, Luke 2: 4 John 7: 42. for his birth and education (as Zion was for his building and habitation, 2 Sam. 5: 7; 9 etc.) which is by interpretation, a house of bread, and so most fitting for Christ's birth, who was the Son of David according to the flesh, and the true bread of life, as he inculcates at least 7 times on one occasion, john. 6 About a mile (as some say that have seen the place) short of this Bedlam, Rachel dies in the way: distant from her own and husband's friends, in an unsettled condition, without habitation. [We all may know where we were born, but none knows where or in what condition they shall die.] And is there buried. [If we live the life and die the death of the righteous, it matters not much where we are buried: nor at what distance from the rest of our friends.] How delicate soever the body may be, the carcase is not curious, in what bed of dust it sleeps; and the souls of God's people, find as near a way to heaven, from any one place upon earth as other. Many superstitious people now adays, would think themselves happy, to die so near Bedlam, that they might be buried there. But Jacob well knew, that burial places are not of religious consideration: but any fit place pointed out by providence, might serve well enough for the best of his family. Tho' he, and his son Joseph likewise that died in Egypt, would have their body and bones buried in Canaan; yet that was to testify their dieing in the faith of God's promise of that land ●o their posterity, and to assure them of their return thither; and therefore is otherwise of no consideration to us. It is but of later times that any were buried in Churches or cities but always abroad; as all scripture, and other Histories, and laws also witness. When the opinion of Purgatory and holiness of places prevailed, at first men would be buried nigh the Churches, that they might be remembered in the prayers and oblations of those that met there, and afterwards in them, because they thought them more sacred; which though opposed by 
* V Durantus de ritib. Ecclesiae, l. 1. c. 23. Gerhardus de morte. §. 78-88.  many laws, civil and Ecclesiastical, and writers ancient and modern; by some, as an innovation, others as superstitious, and many as dangerous to the health of the living, especially in times and places of infection; yet all in vain, the tyrant custom hath so prevailed, that it's grown too strong for all contradiction.  
But I have detained you too long from that I chief design: which is not so much to speak of death and mortality, as such a surprising death as this Scripture speaks of, clearly to the occasion, and to vindicate God's providence therein, and show what improvement we should make thereof,  
D. God takes from us our dearest Relations and creature comforts, sometimes suddenly when we least expect it and want them most.  
That God the Author of life and death, and all other mercies and miseries, doth deprive his best servants, as well as others indifferently, of their greatest earthly comforts, is most apparent by this and other Scriptures, Eccless. 8: 14. 9: 2. And that he doth this sometimes with most embittering circumstances; not only suddenly but unexspectedly also (which makes the providence more grievous especially at present, as the sudden death of younger friends not expected  hardlier borne, than that of aged, having been expected long) and at such times, as these comforts are most wanted (whereby their loss becomes a continued affliction, and matter of constant grief afterwards) is also most evident by this history, and many others I need not mention, seeing the experience of all ages attest it. For what Saint alive then or now so dear to God as Jacob? what Relation so near as a wife? and what wife so beloved of a husband as Rachel? for whom he served a 7 years' apprenteship and how hard soever it was, they seemed to him but a few days for the love he had to her, Gen. 29: 20. Yet notwithstanding God takes away from him this desire of his eyes, with a sudden and unexpected stroke: as he did after from the prophet Ezekiel, c. 24. v. 16. For she had not gone her full time with child: as may be gathered from their removal from Bethel and travelling towards their father Isaac's house in Hebron; which in common prudence they would not have done, if they had expected her coming in labour, before they could have reached thither. And was in a place of no accommodation, being in the way nigh Ephrath, before they could reach it, surprised with her pangs, and must stay there, whether in house or tent is not mentioned; then which, for a woman of her quality and estate, nothing could be less expected. Moreover this being her second child, it might be hoped in reason had she gone her full time, she might with as much or more safety bring forth this than her former son; in regard the first birth is usually the most dangerous, and the fruit of the womb, like that of the trees, is easily gathered when come to maturity. Yet God that hath all persons, times and places in his power, brings her presently here not only to pass through the valley of the shadow of death, as all women do in travail, but also through the gates of death itself, dashing all their hopes of her safety: and good Jacob, though very sorrowful no doubt, is silent at it, not once complaining the least that we read of, because he knew, it was his heavenly father's pleasure. Tho' it was also at such a time, as made his wound the deeper, this befalling him when he had most need of her; for his present solace in his afflictions, from his children's miscarriage and other crosses; and future comfort in his old age, his elder children being ready to marry and leave him; and for the helping him in the education of Joseph, and especially Benjamin now borne to them. For as no earthly comforts are so great as those of man and wife, or more alleviate their troubles from others; so no nurse for a husband like his wife, nor for children like their own mother.  
I have been the larger in these circumstances, because they set out history to the life, and correspond most of them to the occasion (our deceased Sister having come in travail before her time, died of her second son etc.) and to my design, of speaking to such a death as is in the text, suitable to the example before us.  
Reasons of these kind of providences are many; which I shall now proceed to handle: taking it for granted all along amongst Christians, that it is God that doth all these things by his overruling providence, as Scripture every where declares. But shall pass over most of the Efficient causes, that are well known; the Principal; as God's being our sovereign Lord, and therefore may so deal with any of us sinners; and his will and pleasure, which is so to deal with some, as we see; as also because he is infinitely wise, knowing what things most conduce to his glory and our good, and how by his Power to use them, as well as work them, for these ends; and J●st or righteous in all his ways; and Holy in all his works; and Good also, yea very Merciful; his tender mercies are over all his works, Ps. 145: 9 and 17. Every of which, and much more all of them serve to silence us, and teach us submission: though we know not how to reconcile these concurring causes, in many particular occurrences. And the Instrumental causes, as Angels, men, and other creatures, employed by God herein, actively commanding them, or permissively suffering them to execute his pleasure, always powerfully limiting, ordering, and overruling them, so that he is to be eyed and owned in all that befalls us, Job. 1. And shall only speak of the Impulsive causes, wherein the main difficulty lies, and afterwards of the Final  
I. The meritorious cause of these and all other punishments is sin, for which the Justice of God inflicts them. Sin being the transgression of God's law; and death the punishment threatened on all mankind for the same; every death must needs be a punishment; seeing it is the execution of the threatening, and the destruction of the sinner. And much more that which is sudden, this circumstance being an aggravation thereof, as appears by its being as such denounced Deutr. 7: 4. 1 Sam. 2: 31. Is. 29: 5. and 30: 13. Prov. 6: 15. and 29: 1. executed Job. 22: 16 and 36: 14. Ps. 37: 2. Eccles. 7: 17. 1 Thes. 5: 3. bewailed Jer. 4: 20 and 6 26. imprecated Ps. 55: 16 and deprecated as such Ps. 102: 25. The Pelagians indeed of old (as the Socinians of late) denied man's mortality to be the effect of his sin, affirming it to arise from his natural constitution at the first: but were generally opposed therein, and refuted by the Orthodox, as Counsels, Fathers, and Histories both general and of them particularly written by many 
* Alvarez, Latius, Vossius, Jansenius, Norris.  do declare. It having been the constant opinion both of the ancient Jews and Christians, that every kind of death was the punishment of sin, as the learned Grotius de satisfactione, assures us. I confess many of our Divines writing against the Popish opinion of humane satisfaction to divine justice, by sufferings in this life and purgatory afterwards, granting death to be a punishment, per se & naturâ suâ, 
* Dallaeus de poenis.  do yet deny it to be properly so, to those whose sins are pardoned through Christ: distinguishing the afflictions of this life and death also, into chastissements of the righteous and punishments of the wicked. But Scripture is not so nice, calling those that befall the righteous punishments sometimes. Ezra 9: 13. jer. 30: 11. and 46: 28. Lament 3: 39 Amos 3: 2. and sometimes those that befall the wicked chastisements. Levit. 26: 28. Deutr. 11: 2, 3. Ps. 94: 10. jer. 30: 14. Nor do I well understand, how that which is in itself and own nature a punishment, should ever be otherwise: though it come from different causes, I know, and is used for different ends and effects: or how though afflictions may be chastisements to the righteous whilst they live, their death can be so to them; and much les how that of Infants, which make so great a part of mankind, and if of believing parents are charitably judged by most, (and I would be glad to see well proved) are righteous and saved; for the Apostle makes it the effect of Adam's transgression, and therefore properly a punishment, Rom. 5: 12, 13, 14. 1 Cor. 15: 21, 22. And therefore that distinction also used by Dally and others, that death to the righteous is only materially or improperly a punishment not formally; as the cutting or burning a patiented by a Physician differs from the like inflicted out of Justice by a Judge on an offender; seems not consonant to the Apostle's doctrine, seeing death is inflicted by the lawgiver for the breach of his law, whereas a Patient suffers not as a malefactor.  
It is true, that neither death nor any other punishments of the Righteous, are merely vindictive in reference to satisfaction for sin, as the Papists maintain: Christ having fully satisfied for their sins, and procured the pardon of them, which upon their believing is granted them by the covenant of grace; but not so as to free them from the temporal evils of this life; or death and their bodies lying in the dust, these being excepted after the promise of the Messiah, Gen. 3. For God having given man a law, and threatened his transgressing it with death (which implies the temporal of the body, the spiritual of the soul, and the eternal of both) our first parents, comprehending all mankind, having transgressed it; God comes and hold Assizes, summons them to appear before him, charges them with their sin, convinces them of their guiltiness, and then allaying the severity of his Justice with Mercy and free Grace, first promiseth a Messiah, and Salvation and deliverance through him from their Sins, by his satisfaction to Justice for them, so as he had determined, and after agreed with Christ the seed of the Woman, in the Covenant of Redemption: so that though they, and all in them had Sinned and come short of the Glory of God, being Spiritually dead in Tresspasses and Sins, and thereby liable to eternal Death, yet they and all their rightteous Seed should be Saved by the Messiah, from these two kinds of Death, which are the great destructive penalties of Sinners. And then proceeds to Sentence them, what they should all suffer notwithstanding: First the Woman who was first in fault, declaring her peculiar Punishment as to her Sex, besides those common to her with Man; in her sorrowful Conception, bringing forth, and subjection to her Husband; and then the Man, and all mankind in him, both Men and Women, are sentenced to Misery, in this Life mortality, and their Bodies lying in the dust from whence they were taken: The Promise, and its preceding the Sentence implying, that all those t●at embraced God's Mercy through the Messiah should have no other Punishment than these temporal; and all those that rejected it, and so remaining on their first terms with their Creator, commonly called The Covenant of Works, should suffer the Death threatened therein for their Transgressions. The Execution of this Sentence hath continued ever since, and will continue till the Resurrection; that all may feel the bitter fruits of their Apostasy, in these temporal Punishments; for the bettering of God's People, not for their satisfying Justice for their Sins (as the Papists affirm) seeing they neither can, (no mere Man, much less Sinful, being able to satisfy divine Justice for the least offence) nor have need, Christ having done this sufficiently for them; and for the leaving the incorrigible Wicked, that will not be bettered by them, the more inexcusable, in their suffering Eternal Punishment. So that those metaphorical expressions of Pardon of Sins, by God's not seeing or remembering them, blotting them out, covering them, casting them behind his back, and into the bottom of the Sea, etc. denoting the plenariness thereof; and those say of our Divines, remtssa cuspà, remittitur poena, and that Justification takes away all Punishment, etc. must be understood according to the Covenant of Grace, and agreably with the execution of God's sentence upon Sinners. For though remission on of Sin, be nothing else then the remission of its punishment; yet it's that punishment only which is opposite to pardon, such as belongs to the impenitent, and is Eternal; whereas all those whom God justifies, he also glorifies. Insomuch that though the righteous have through Christ the remission of their Sins and eternal Punishment granted them in the Covenant of Grace, together with a sanctified use of their temporal, that they shall all work together for their good; and the sting of Death taken out of their (Sin that brought it in being now thereby turned out again) and victory over the Grave, in the Redemptiom of their bodies from their Captivity under it, at the Resurrection: yet Death is still, in all the degrees of it antecedent in the miseries of this Life, and kinds of it, first and second, or temporal and eternal the wages of Sin, according to the original threatening. And temporal Death a punishment in all, according to the original Sentence: though to the Righteous Eternal Life is the gift of God through Jesus Christ their Lord: who hath abolished Death, or Sin, which is Spiritul Death, and Eternal the consequent thereof, though not their Temporal, and brought Life and Immortality to light by the Gospel, from the first promise of himself, still more clearly, and by himself at last most fully, to whom be Glory. Rom. 6: 23. 2 Tim. 1: 10.  
2. The causes or reasons of the Adjuncts of Death, in the kinds, manner, and other circumstances thereof, as why some die a violent, others a natural Death, these suddenly, those leisurely, one sooner, another later, or at such times or places rather than others, are in the ordinary course of Providence, of which we speak, secret to us, though well known to the alwise God. There being such a stupendious variety herein, that as in living faces, so in dying persons, there's no perfect agreement in all circumstances: each of which are particularly and only known to him, who numbers the hairs of our heads, and so orders and governs every single person and thing, as if it were all he had to do, and so all things, as if he were not employed in any particulars. The Apostle gives us the clearest account hereof, that I know, in few words, saying, God worketh all things after the Council of his own Will, Ephes. 1: 11. where we have counsel directing, will determining, and power working or executing all things: so that as he hath right by Creation, and continual preservation of all his Creatures, to govern them as he pleases; so his understanding being infinite, his will just, and his power almighty, his government in all he doth, must needs be most excellently perfect. But who hath known the mind of the Lord, or been his counsellor, and acquainted with his secrets? for which reason we should with the Apostle humbly adore them, and not vainly inquire after them, presumptuously prying into those things which belong not to us. O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom aed knowledge of God how unsearchable are his Judgements, and his ways past finding out, Rom. 11.33, 34. But though we must not be curious to know what we ought not, we must not be careless to know what we ought: Scripture frequently requiring us to observe God's deal, encouraging us thereto, and condemning the neglect thereof. Let us therefore proceed more particularly, and for the understanding these riddles of God's Providence, plough with his Heifer the Sacred Scriptures; wherein we have a multitude of examples for our instruction, and rules also for our direction, that we may wisely consider his do, as we are commanded.  
These kinds and manner of Death are considerable in reference to God, the persons that Die, and the Living that survive. As they come from God, so they are in themselves Punishments for the breach of his law; but very different in their causes and effects, according to the diversity of the subjects they are inflicted upon, or that are therein concerned; which we must carefully regard, lest we dangerously mistake. For which end we must consider.  
I. That as all God's glorious Attributes whereby he is pleased to display himself are equally in him, so those that relate to his government are always jointly, though unequally exercised in his works in this world, even those that to us seem most opposite, as his Mercy and Justice, which are singly exercised in the world to come. Even the Devils have some Mercy and Patiance mixed with Justice at present: being reserved in chains as malefactors unto Judgement for greater Punishments; who yet feel so great, that they believe and tremble for fear of their future, Judas 6. James 2: 19 And in the greatest severity towards Men, God in wrath remembers some Mercy, even to the worst that he suddenly destroys (besides the remnant that he saves) in warning them before, delaying till their iniquities be full, and mitigating their Punishment in taking them away; none suffering to the utmost here, nor none so much hereafter as they should had they lived longer', to treasure up more Sins against the day of Wrath, as the old World, Sodom and Gomorrah, the Amorites, Amalakites, and many others. But though Justice be very apparently the chief reason of some Punishments, especially those extraordinary, commonly called Judgements, and such as are general: yet for the most part, especially in particular and ordinary cases, God hath many other reasons, and greater than that we imagine. some of which (though unkown at present) are yet well known afterwards. If not here, to be sure hereafter; when we shall see a distinct exercise of those Attributes that here are mixed; so that there will be no Atheists or Unbelievers of God's Justice in Hell; nor no mistakes of God's Judgement and Mercies in Heaven. In the mean time from this manifold Wisdom of God, and the mixture of causes jointly acting in this Life, we may see the fundamental ground of our mistaking Gods deal with us here; and learn to take heed, that we separate not those reasons which appears not to us, from those which seem most apparent, and so divide, where we should only distinguish; which often arises from our narrow conceptions of the great and holy God and his ways, judging of him too often by ourselves, though he hath told us that his thoughts and ways are not ours, but as the Heavens are higher than the Earth, so are his thoughts and ways higher than ours, in Pardoning the Penitent which is the choicest of Mercies, however they be otherwise dealt with in this World. Isa. 55.7, 8, 9 So that though we must take notice of God's Justice in all Punishments, acknowledging our Sins to have deserved greater; yet not only, and as separate from his goodness and Mercy (which may be greater therein, for any thing we know, though not so manifest at present) lest we mistake the Righteous God, in these his judicial dispensations, Lam. 3: 18-26.  
In the next place, let's consider the dieing Persons themselves; and they are either Righteous or Wicked, there being no middle state; and consequently their Death is an entrance into their future Happiness, or Misery. Now in regard we cannot judge of the Spiritual and Eternal condition of those that die suddenly, but by their lives '; for us to conclude either way of them (as is too customary) from the manner of Death, seeing all these externals fall alike to all, is great uncharitableness on the one hand, or gross presumption on the other. To be sure if they belong to God, it is more in Mercy to them than in Justice, as in freeing them from the fear of Death, that King of Terrors, as Job calls it; or future backslidings, and loss of God's Favour, which is worse to God's People than Death itself, his loving kindness to them being better than Life; or taking them away from the evil to come, and many other ways unknown to us. And is more eligible to those prepared, than a lingering, in regard of its end, and for a greater good, as the sudden cutting off an Arm or a Leg to save the Life; so that the Apostle groaned, earnestly desiring it, not for that he would be unclothed or desired only to die, but for its consequents, to be clothed upon, that Mortality might be swallowed up of Life, 2 Cor. 5. v. 4, Though to the wicked or unprepared, this circumstance is a sad aggravation, as I suggested before; and the best of God's Servants in the want of Assurance cry with David to God, O spare me, that I may recover strength, before I go hence: yet to them there is more fear than danger; their great and blessed Physician so mixing the poison of Death with stronger ingredients, that sometimes are cordials to comfort them, and always means to cure them perfectly of all their and Sins Miseries; so that Death in general, of what kind soever is reckoned amongst the privilidges of Believers, in subordination to their future Glory, 1. Cor 3.22.  
As to the surviving, the Death of Relations and Friends in what manner soever, is to be accounted an Afflilction in the general; but very different many ways, according to the qualifications of the Dead and Living, their nearness in Relation, dearness in Affection, kindness, and other circumstances aggravating or extenuating the loss; and according to their future use, both as to Temporal and Spiritual good, and their being Sanctified accordingly, or otherwise not improved. But herein we must not judge by Sense, but by the light of God's Word, weighing them in the balance of the Sanctuary; for Sense is altogether for present enjoyments, and suggests nothing but bitterness and sorrow in their loss; crying out continually, can there be Mercy in such an Affliction as this? can I gather grapes off these thorns, or figs off these thistles? These are like Samson's riddles to Sense, unanswerable, but by Scripture, rectified Reason and Experience are unfolded, so that the Wise, that will observe, shall understand the loving kindness of the Lord. Ps. 107.43. According as the deceased were, or in moral probability might have been, if public Persons, Blessings or Judgements to the Church or State, or if private, helps or hindrances, or comforts or crosses, in regard of Heavenly or Earthly things, more or less to us, so we should account their Death at present, and afterwards according to the Spiritual benefits we reap, or might have reaped thereby. As good Magistrates and Ministers that were, and might have been more useful Instruments of public good, being cut off suddenly, as Josia and Stephen were greatly lamented; and Absolom and the Prophets of Baal that were quite contrary, their being slain was accounted accordingly. And not judge by our affection to them, which is many times inordinate, or theirs to us, which we often prize and rely on too much; for though the cross thereby becomes the heavier to us, yet more necessary for us; so that the Wise and Holy God designing our good, bleeds us in the right vein, to cure us and bring us nearer to himself. As he did Jacob here in Rachel, and afterwards in Joseph; and David even after he had pronounced by Nathan his Sin Pardoned, Punishing him for the same, not only for his Spiritual but Temporal benefit also; by taking away his Child by Bathsheba, which would have been a perpetual reproach both to him and Religion; and his beloved Absolom, whom he so laments, thereby restoring him to his Kingdom, and that to him, and both to Peace.  
But it is high time that we draw down these considerations to our present purpose. And first in the Death of Infants, there's the manifestation of the truth of God's Threaten, and his Justice in executing his Sentence against Mankind for their first Trangression; but whether it's more in Mercy or Judgement to them, we know not, and therefore not the reason why these more than others die so soon, and oftentimes suddenly, but must acquiess in the Pleasure of the Alwise God. If they be such as belong ro the Kingdom of Heaven, it's many ways Mercy, in freeing them from the Sins and Miseries of this Life, and making them sooner Happy with Himself: If not, there's yet some Mercy mixed with Justice, their Punishment being less in the other World. And we have less reason to doubt of Mercy for Infants, who die before they have done any good or evil Personally, than for those that have done much evil; seeing God promised Christ to mankind before he passed the Sentence of Mortality; but especially for those born of Believers that are within the Covenant, and styled Holy in Scripture. For they are not only capable of Happiness, as well as Aged Persons (their Souls being alike, and no such incapacity as here will be in their Bodies hereafter) but also of Adoption, and Justification through Christ, and conformity to Him, which are the absolutely requisite means thereof; though not of actual Believing, I think, notwithstanding the Lutheran, and some others assert it; unnecessarily in my Opinion, because it's only of absolute necessity to those of years, that are partakers of the outward dispensation of the Covenant, but not in itself; in regard that Believing, and the Gospel believed, and outward Ordinances, are not substantial parts of our Righteousness, but only accidental means thereof, according to the capacity of the Subject. Besides this we may observe, God useth not to send any extraordinary Judgements, only for Origiral Sin, and confutes Jonah with this Argument of his Clemency towards Nineveh, that there were more than sixscore thousand Persons therein that could not discern between their right hand and their left; the Parents, for whose Punishment the Children are often taken away, and in general Judgements with them, having now Repent. Though we have examples of their slaughter, not only for their Father's Sin, but for peculiar reasons and ends. As the Egyptians drowning the Isralites male Children; God therein letting forth their Wrath, to Praise him, and try his People, whom he had promised to multiply; making this there last and greatest Trial, (as is usual) before Deliverance, and an occasion of manifesting his Justice and Power in Punishing the Offenders in the same kind; both in destroying their first Born (whereby also he fulfilled his threatening, and forced them to let Israel his first Born goc, laden with their spoils, through hopes they would return) and also by drowning Pharaoh and his host, thereby also fulfilling his Promise to his People. Like as afterwards the Babylonians, who in many things resembled the Egyptians, in their carriage towards the Church, had their cruelty justly retalliated on their own little ones, Ps. 137.8, 9  
But however Infants be cut off, whether by the hand of violence (as the Bethlemitish by Herod, Math. 2. prefigured as the Prophet Jeremiah declared) or by Natural Death, it's a Punishment to their Parents and Relations, the manner only augmenting it. And not only a Punishment, but the greatest for kind, of all Temporals that befall the living, (Children being their greatest earthly Blessings) and greater or less in degree, according to circumstances; as the mourning for an only Son, and bitterness for the first born, justly exceeds that where other Sons, and that for other Chrildrens, by which the sorrow for Sin is set forth, Zach. 12.10. But though this proceeds from Justice for Sins past, yet more from love, when Sanctified to the Parents, both for their greater future good, which in part they shall know hereafter, and happily for the preventing greater evils than they can ever know. Because they neither know how their Children might prove, or how their own hearts might be tempted, or perplexed by them. For though we always hope the best, yet frequently we find the contrary; and no bitterer crosses, then from those we expected greatêst comfort; Children when young, treading on our skirts, but often when elder, piering our Hearts. This Punishment is generally inflicted on Mankind; both Children and Parents, besides their Original Sin common to all, for the breach of the second Commandment in their open or heart Idolatry, as is there denounced (to deter Men that are so much concerned for their Children) as their desert de jure, though God reserves always liberty to himself de facto to dispense his Punishments or favours as he pleases.  
Secondly in the sudden Death of those of riper years; where God doth declare in his Word the causes thereof; or manifest them by the particular ends and effects, especially joined with clear circumstances; there we may judge of the chief reason or cause, though there be several others concurring; that we may make better use of examples, as Scripture teaches us, 1 Cor 10. 5-10. Otherwise we must take heed of rushing into God's Secrets, which belong not to us, and only eye the general ends, to make use of his Providences accordingly. As where great and crying Sins go before, and the end is demonstration of Justice, there we may see that's the chief cause, especially in extraordinary Punishments, whereof we have many examples in Scripture. And where also such Sinners are threatened, there also truth appears in their being Punished, as the Egyptians first born; Ahaziah, Joram, Ahab, Jezebel, etc. So when the Sin is clearly visible in the Death a Haman's Agags, and innumerable others that shed Man's Blood, and accordingly have their own unexspectedly shed. Or when destruction follows at the heels of great Sins, as the three thousand Israelites slain for the molten calf. Exod. 32. and while the flesh was between their teeth, the wrath of the Lord was kindled against them, Numb. 11. and Herod immediately simitten and eaten of worms, Acts. 12. And yet when the vindication of God's laws and ordinances is manifested to be the end, its hard to say, whether his love to the truth and ordinances of his institution be not the chief reason, though justice be more discernible; for we must not judge all those that are simitten and destroyed, even by God's immediate hand, to perish eternally. And therefore it is observable, that as God never appeared so terribly, as at the giving the law from mount Sinai; so his wrath was never so hot, nor such severity used, as against the first trangsgressors, to assert the honour of his laws, and make them more regarded afterwards. As in the first idolatry after their promulgation, Exod. 32: 10. At the first burnt-offerings, when Nadab and Abihu offered strange fire, (that is common and not from the altar) there went out fire from the Lord and devoured them, the punishment suiting to their sin, Levit. 10. As afterwards Numb. 16. when Corah and others descended from Levi endeavoured to make the priesthood common to all the Levites, v. 10. and Dathan and Abiram Reubenites and others the politic power of Moses and the seventy elders, newly established by God (Ch. xi.) common with the rest: the earth opened her mouth and swallowed them up, v. 32. and fire from the Lord consumed the two hundred and fifty that offered inconse v, 35. whose censers God commanded to be used for a sign and memorial thereof. v. 38. and 40. and for the people's murmuring at this dispensation, fourteen thousand and seven hundred of them died of the plague. v. 49. So when God appointed the punishment for presumtuoussins', the first offender, the man that punishment sticks on the sabbath day, is by God's appointment stoned to death, Numb. 15. Thus God vindicated the honour of his ark, with smiting the Philistines; and after its return above fifty thousand of the men of Beth-shemesh, showing thereby that the ark was the same, though it had been among the uncircumcised, and the effects of fear were answerable; 1 Sam. c. 5. and c. 6. and after that, Vzzah for his rash taking hold of it, though as seems to us for a good end, for the oxen shook it, so that David was afraid, and we may suppose the people much more, 2 Sam. 6. And thus also God vindicated the honour of Christianity, at the first planting of the Gospel, in smiting Ananias and Sapphira: so that great fear came upon all the Church and upon as many as heard these things, Acts. 5.  
But where no notorious crimes preceded, and other particular ends than justice appear; there sudden death is the Occasion, and God's love to his truth, and messengers that declare it, or servants that profess or suffer for it, the chief cause and reason thereof. As the widow of Sarepia's son, raised to life by Elijah, by which he is acknowledged a man of God, and the word of the Lord in his mouth, truth, 1 Kings 17. the Shunammite's son by Elisha whose miracles resembled his master Elijah's, 2 Kings 4. So Lazarus', as Christ declares to the messenger his sisters sent to him, This sickness is not unto death (though in its nature and next end it was, yet not irrevocably as they feared) but for the glory of God, that the son of God might be glorified thereby; intimating that this of Lazarus, should be used as a means of glorifying God, and his son in miraculous raising him again to life, and thereby confirming his office of Messiah, and Doctrine of the Gospel, as we read it did most eminently, J●hn. 11. And the noble army of Martyrs, whom God brings forth, as his Champions for the truth: showing the power of his grace and their sincerity, that they do not serve God for worldly things, as the devil slandered Job, but love him, their Saviour, and his truth above their own lives; and making their death, which their enemies count ignominious, honourable to him, religion, and themselves; and using it to quite contrary ends than their persecutors design, namely the increase and confirmation of his Church and people.  
I have been the longer upon these extraordinary examples, both to clear the truth in the general, and the several kinds of sudden death, and also in the ordinary cases, that now follow to be more particularly spoken of. For by a parity of reason, it will follow; that as God makes different use of like providences, suiting them to different ends, and making them occasions and means of different effects, in wonderful variety according to his infinite wisdom and power; so he hath accordingly particular reasons that are just and weighty for his dispensations, though unknown to us, except he discovers them, as his justice in extraordinary punishments for enormous offences, or his goodness, mercy and other causes, when it is otherwise. So that where no sins, or ends and effects more than common, there we are not able, nor ought we to judge of God's reason, why these rather than others are suddenly taken away; either by diseases, as apoplexies, convulsions and the like; or by pains as women in travel, or by wars, fire, water and other accidents, these things falling alike to all; for if the kinds of death, or any temporal punishments were infallible signs of God's hatred and temporal blessings of his love, we could never reconcile God's word, we are bound to believe, with the works of providence, which are but the fulfilling of it, and the execution of his purposes. In such cases therefore when God exercises us, as Job (who is set forth to us as a pattern of patience in dark providences) prayed show me why thou contendest with me (c. 10.) and waited for the end of the Lord, so should we; God many times dealing with us as Christ said to Peter, what I do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter. As any one hearing Solomon's sentence of dividing the child, would have thought it cruelty, if he had gone away without seeing, or after knowing the end and effect: much more may we mistake the Allwise God, if we look on his providence by piece-meals and wait not till we see the issue. For though there be sin in all, and that be the only meritorious cause of death, yet that is original sin, that is alike in all from Adam, all being equally related to him, so that thence comes no distinction of this or that kind of death, but as most conceive from actual transgressions. Which being not discerned in infants, who yet die in great variety both in regard of diseases and violent murders, their death is generally laid on their parents, as the widow of Sarepia cried to Elijah, art thou come unto me to call my sins to remembrance, and to slay my son? I Kings. 17. For the Jews knew well that God visits the iniquities of the fathers on the children, by many Scriptures threatening it, and examples of its being executed: and appears particularly in that fearful imprecation, that Christ's blood might be on them and on their children, the fulfilling whereof the whole nation lie under, to their confusion and the confirmation of Christianity, to this day. But we must take heed of applying this alike to all, for where no extraordinary sins God may, and sometimes doth in sovereignty take away children elder or younger, as Job's, for trial and other ends, more than in justice: lest we judge and speak amiss of God's deal with men, as Job's friends, and many others are accustomed to do. For when men see any misery befall any one out of the common road of providence, having natural conceptions that sin and punishment are related, they presently conclude, that some extraordinary sins either of them or their parents are the procuring cause on their parts, and punitive justice answering to it, on God's part; whereof we have many narratives in Scripture (to which I confine myself) of Barbarians, Jews, and Christians; but I will only mention that in John. 9 at present, which hath occasioned most of the thoughts I have imparted concerning these impulsive causes; considering that there is the same general nature in all evils of punishment, as consisting in the privation of their opposite good. The disciples rightly supposed that the blindness of the man so born was from God justly, & that he punishes children, for their parents sins; but mistook in taking it for granted, that either his parents, or he in his soul before his body was form, had been more than ordinary sinners, or in some kind at least, which was the cause of his blindness, and asked Christ, whether it was: who answered, neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents, that is, as they meant, and their question employed, not greater's sinners than others, or in relation to this as the cause to the effect: But that the works of God should be made manifest in him, which intimates a quite different reason, from what they imagined, not God's punitive justice for either of their sins, but his love to Christ and his doctrine, in the manifesting his power in a miraculous cure, and mercy to the blind man's soul to be the chief causes. Where we may observe, how Christ diverts them, as every where else, from curious inquiries; resolving this affliction, as an insaelicitas or misery into God's sovereignty, that denies or gives his blessings, in kind or degree, to whom, when, and in what manner he pleases, it being lawful for him to do what he will with his own; and denying it to be poena from justice for any greater or particular sins, as they judged (though otherwise both were sinners, and so a sufficient ground in point of justice to deprive either of sight, or any other blessings in life, or all in death, yet this difference proceeded not therefrom) and then directs them by the final cause, to judge of the impulsive or reason of this providence, and to regard the ends and consequences thereof, as that which concerned them; which in this case were extraordinary in respect of the miracle, and ordinary in regard of the spiritual good this affliction occasioned and wrought both for himself and others.  
Les us therefore accordingly now apply ourselves to the final cause or the reasons taken from the end: not in reference to the dead which in ordinary cases is a secret to us, as I have shown, but the living. Which we must understand, not of the finis operantis, or what God designs in particular thereby, which is different in all, and no further known to us, than as manifested by the effects; or in general only as tending to his glory (which if we speak properly is only his end, and all things whatsoever without himself but means jointly considered tending thereto, and which he uses for the same Rom. 11: 36) But the sinis operis in reference to us, as these providences are means fitted by him for such ends, as tend to the common good of the living; which is always superior to particular sufferings. And though sad experience shows us, that for the most part providences have not the effects upon us answerable to their ends; yet that's through our default (as we see also in the ordinances) and if so be these moral means obtain not their primary end as medicinal to better us, yet their secondary, serving at least to justify God, and render those that make small or no use of them, or contrary than they ought wholly inexcusable, and more especially those who have the word to direct them and interpret to them their end and use. For the end God's word declares, always implies the use we should make of every thing, both in the general, and particularly according to their kind and degree. But I shall pass by the general ends of afflictions and death, and only speak of those more peculiar to this kind of death I am upon; nor yet of many that might be drawn from the ends thereof in reference to God, his son and our Saviour, his word, ordinances and graces of his spirit, the good and evil things of this life, our sins, and those concerned nearly and remotely; but of a few that are most comprehensive; suggesting the suitable use of them the end implies, that my future discourse may be more practical; reserving those that are more particular for the Application.  
I Then God thus suddenly and unexspectedly takes away some, that the supremacy of his providence may be more apparent, and himself thereby better known and acknowledged in the world. That this is the general end of God's unexpected deal with men, in mercies and judgements extraordinary, and all other cases above their-thoughts and contrivances, appears by hundred places of Scripture, relating both to his people and heathens, expressed in those phrases, that ye or they may know that I am the Lord, and implied in the effect (which is the end accomplished, for finis in actu positus dicitur effectus) and ye or they shall know that I am the Lord. And experience shows us, that while things go on smoothly and evenly as men suppose they should, all run along with them, and are apt to judge them the effects of humane counsels, and actions in the use of such means as conduce thereunto: but when any thing happens above or contrary to their thoughts and expectations, and is accomplished by such means and in such a manner, as they could not think of or imagine, and cannot find out any satisfactory reason for, than they look above and beyond natural causes, and acknowledge the finger of God. Who frequently deals with us in our lives, as Jacob with Joseph's, sons crossing his hands contrary to expectation, and in our death also, making one or other that we thought should live drop down dead unexspectedly; whereby we are put to a stand and look on, as all the people did at Amazah's and consider whence this came; and not satisfying ourselves concerning any visible cause of this difference, are ready to acknowledge an invisible power and providence in both the parts of it viz: preservation and government, in preserving us and others that were as likely to die, and taking away those that were as likely to live. So that God's extraordinary providences being the great witnesses of himself to the world; it becomes our duty to eye and acknowledge him in them accordingly; his wisdom in contriving such a concurrence of causes and circumstances as we never thought on, his power in executing what we never feared, his mercy in sparing greater sinners, his justice in cutting off whom and when he pleases, and his dominion over all, ruling high and low, rich and poor together, so that as men see or may see, so let them say among all nations, that the Lord most high reigneth over all the inhabitants of the earth.  
II. That all men may see more clearly, that their times are only in God's hand, Ps. 31: 15. or in his sole power, his constant care and custody, and his disposal at his pleasure. All its true have or may have a notional knowledge of this from the light of nature, and those in the Church most fully from Scripture; but this is too weak, to make us look beyond the course of natural causes, above to him who hath the ordering of them all, so as to keep the eye of our souls habitually fixed upon him, as we ought. He is therefore pleased sometimes to use such providences in great daingers, deliverances, and deaths so circumstantiated, as therein we may acknowledge his hand, and thereby gain such experimental knowledge of him and his deal with us, as will lead us to the owning and acknowledging of him, and seconded by grace set up his sovereignty in our souls. For it is not so much death in itself that affects us, because it is common; as the remarkablenes of it one way or other, which leaves an impression upon us, and raises our sluggish minds to consider, from what hand such a blow should come. Who except some few Relations think themselves concerned at the death of weak infants, and sickly persons, or aged? But when the young are taken away in the flower of their age; or the strong that were most likely to live, are dead on a sudden and laid in the dust; or the great and rich that have all means possible to preserve them, are cut down like the grass and whither as the green herb; these are so many sensible demonstrations to convince us, that our times are not in the hands of second causes, or merely casual and fortuitous, seeing these are so frequent, but only in God's, who disposes of them as he pleaseth. Time indeed strangely wears out the present sense we have of these things: but God is pleased so often to give us such pregnant examples hereof, as if we duly regard them, are not only sufficient to renew the former impressions upon us, but afford us stronger convictions of this truth. This improvement of such providences, would bring us as Moses desired the Israelites, to acknowledge God, as the cause of our lives and length of our days, who gives them at his pleasure, and for his pleasure continues them, that orders them as he pleases, and cuts them off when he pleases; and to depend upon him continually for them; and with holy Job not to charge God foolishly, but whether he gives, continueth, or takes away, still to bless the name of the Lord. As we learn this lesson more or less, so we shall find it accordingly not only thus useful, but also comfortable to us: by the assurance God's people have thereby that in all times, trials, and changes they are always in the hands of their tender father, that knows their frame, and remembers they are dust; though the wicked that will not be instructed, are in the hand of God as a Judge, whose sentence and execution they shall not escape. Considering that if our times were in Satan's or our enemy's hands, they would swallow us up quick; or in our friend's power, they would not suffer us to departed, and be with Christ which is far better; or in our own, we should in our discontents be weary of them, and ready to cry out as Moses, Elijah, Job, Jeremiah, and Jonah have done, now Lord take away my life, rather than patiently wait his pleasure.  
III. That sin may be embittered, and mercy embraced: and particularly our first apostasy from God, and our Saviour and the means of recovery. For as God's sentencing man to bodily penalties after his first sin for good to his soul, was to humble him for that, and all other sins that followed upon it, and make him fear his justice by seeing and feeling such effects of it, and fly to his grace and mercy through the promised Messiah: so his inflicting them must therefore be accordingly accounted a means for these ends conjointly. The Alwise God knowing what prodigious blindness of mind and security of heart followed sin in us; is therefore pleased for our awakening to use outward punishments ordinarily, these being only visible, and so fit to have influence generally on all men, and being also more feared by the secure world, than those inward and spiritual judgements on the soul. So that the very heathen, who being through their forefathers separate from the Church, are ignorant of the causes and manner of the entrance of these punishments by the fall, and much more of Christ, and so account death because common to all, a debt to nature, and the grievous accidents thereof punishments only for actual offences: yet by these external judgements they may and should be brought, and when extraordinary and general often are, to fear God's justice and fly to his mercy in the general, though they cannot make that especial use of them, for those higher ends and in subordination to especial grace, that Scripture declares; and which the Jews who have the Old Testament showing the fall and clearly testyfying of Christ (though they wilfully reject him) and we Christians ought and should; and for which God is pleased to use them in his Church. For though we have the law that discovers sin, and condemns sinners to eternal punishments; and the Gospel that tenders us pardon, and eternal salvation; yet so great is our unbelief and the love of our lusts, that we little regard them; till God awaken us, and lets us see and feel experimentally by outward or inward troubles or both, the evil of our sins and how destructive they are to us, and thereby bring us to condemn and loathe them, and ourselves for them, and value his mercy through Christ for pardoning them. For which ends he makes use especially of those, that are most powerful to convince men of, and affect them with his justice, sin's heinousness, the sinner's desert, and need of mercy. Of which kind are those punishments, which are generally inflicted on all apparently according to his threaten: wherein are seen, the greatness of the offence, God's resolution to punish, his power and impartiality in punishing great as well as small, so that none can flatter themselves with hopes of impunity. And those that have the offence legibly written upon them, so that all may read the sin in the punishment, and see God's equity therein; whereby he is justified and the offender condemned, even by himself as well as others, as we find among the very heathen Judges 1. v. 7. And those punishments that are great, and so show the greatness of the offence, justice never proportioning them greater, but mercy mitigating them to less than the offenders deserts. All which kinds of punishment concur in death, as most clearly appears by the scriptures; which declare God's threatening thereof before, and sentencing all it to it after for our apostasy (Gen. c. 2. and c. 3.) as a suitable punishment for our wilful despising of life, virtually promised in the threatening of death; and that which shows us the greatness of our offence, in that it is the greatest of punishments, comprehending all other miseries, as life it deprives us of all other mercies, Rom. 6: 23. And yet more signally do all these appear in the kinds of death we this day celebrate: the mother bringing forth in sorrow, because the woman was first in the transgression, and dying for her having transgressed, and the little infant for that only. So that its better for us to go to this house of mourning than feasting (as Solomon saith Eccles 7: 2.) for that is the end of all men, and therefore will be thine and mine, and the living will lay it to heart: intimating the reason of that being the end of all, from the usefulness thereof to the living, that seriously will consider it, as a spectacle of their own mortality, whereof sin especially original was the moral cause, whatever were the natural, together with the manner thereof in regard of their inward and outward man. How bitter therefore should the remembrance of and sorrow for our first transgression be to us, and all other sins as proceeding from it; especially our wilful and deliberate offences, which are as so many approbations of our first parent's apostasy, whereby we have so often declared, we should have done as they did, had we been in their place; how hardly soever we are apt to think, and many also to speak of them! And how acceptable should Christ be to us, as the only Mediator to bring us back again to God from whom we have fallen, and reconcile us to him, whom we have offended: who by his death hath redeemed their souls from destruction that will embrace him, taken away sin the sting of death, strength from the law to condemn them eternally, sanctified the grave to their bodies by his own lying in it, and by his resurrection given them assurance of their victory over it, in their bodies rising again, and being fashioned like to his glorious body! For it is this our apostasy from God at first, that brought in this sad separation, of all our comfortable relations; both spiritual between God our father and us, and natural between husband and wife, parents and children, kindred and friends, and soul and body at last here, and both from happiness for ever hereafter; and also entailed upon us all miseries, which are more in this life than can be numbered, and greater in that to come than can be expressed. And Christ only that makes up again the union for his people in spiritual relations, his father ours, himself our husband, all his brethren and fisters, and all necessary comforts in natural relations in this life, and soul and body to meet again, and both with happiness for ever; freeing us from eternal miseries, and all those temporal which he procures not to work together for our good.  
4. That such as are taken away by untimely death, may be examples and warnings to the living. 1 To deter them from the like sins, where they were notorious and the cause of their punishment: every example of punitive justice being a fulfilling of the threatening of the law on the Offender, and virtually a threatening for the like offence to others. This course God took especially with his Church in its infancy, training them up, as we do our children, with temporal threats and promises, mercies and judgements: whereas now in its maturity under the Gospel on a better covenant, he uses more especially spiritual promises of grace and salvation, and threaten of spiritual and eternal punishments, and deals with us accordingly, the more powerfully to allure us to holiness, and deter us from wickedness. Yet in regard we are still men of like passions, and no less moved with examples, he declares this to be the end of all such temporal judgements to us Christians, and requires us to make this use of them, 1 Cor. 10.6. The Israelites suddenly destroyed several times in the wilderness, saith the Apostle, were our examples, to the intent we should not lust after evil things, as they also lusted; commanding us to avoid their sins thereafter mentioned, and declaring that (all these things happened to them for ensamples, or types, and are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come. v. 7.— 11. Thus the untimely death of many of the Corinthians for their profanation of the Lord's supper is recorded, that we should beware thereof; 1 Cor. 11. v. 30. So also when the crime is apparent in the punishment; as Paul's being guilty of stoning Stephen in his being stoned by the Jews, and drawn out of the city supposing he had been dead, though he was miraculously revived, or at least restored Acts 14.19, 20. And this use we are to make of those extraordinary examples of God's judgements, that fall out in all ages and nations, for execrable murders, perjury and dreadful imprecations, great persecution and oppression etc. wherein histories abound, and 
† Reinold's God's Revenge of murder Camerarii opere subcisiva centur. 1. c. 86. & contur. 3. c. 3, 33, 34, 36.38. Gorrutius de providentia. l. 3. c. 24.  several have collected examples thereof, that all that know them might be affrighted from the like offences. This being the end of public punishments, as scripture declares by the effect and use the living should make of them; and all or those which remain shall hear and fear, and shall do no more any such wickedness Deutr. 13.11. and 19, 20. to which both the Greeks and Latins agree. 
* Grotius de I. B. & P. L. 2. c. 20.  For by the proportion of justice, do alike and have alike, as well in punishments as rewards; which always first or last hath place with God, who changeth not through defect of knowledge, wisdom, or power as men do frequently. Not always in this life nor in the same manner, as in his miraculous judgements; or in the same measure, but the examples show the desert thereof; as in the decimation of an army, the General's putting some few to death, to prevent future mutinies, shows the rest what they have deserved, and what so offending they may expect for the future. God usually reserving the wicked to the day of destruction, they shall be brought forth to the day of wrath, Job. 21.30. and exercising riches of patience and forbearance towards them, and upon their humiliation and disciplinary repentance, deferring or remitting their temporal punishments, even after their denunciation, as in Ahab and Nineveh, and others generally Jer. 18.7.8. and on the contrary, where unfeigned repentance makes way for the prerogative to pardon, often punishing his own people in this life more than others; but always in the world to come, divine justice will render to every man according to his deeds, Rom. 2.2.— 11.  
But where no extraordinary sins are manifest, these examples serve 2. to caution us and restrain us that we offend not God presumtuously in any kind: But that we stand in awe and sin not against him, who can every moment bring us to judgement. For this is the end why God doth such things, that men should fear before him. Eccles. 3.14. the neglect whereof becomes the cause of the sudden destruction of secure sinners. For the sentence of death being passed upon all sinners, if the execution of it more speedily upon less offenders, and the delaying of it upon greater be so abused by the wicked, that therefore their hearts are set in them to do evil; yet Solomon tells us of his own certain knowledge, that though a sinner do evil an hundred times and his days be prolonged, so as he lives his full time in the course of nature yet surely I know, it shall not be well with the wicked, as it shall be with the righteous in their future state, neither shall he prolong his days which are as a shadow, in regard the days of the wicked are cut off suddenly before the time of their expectation, or at least preparation for death, because he feareth not before God, in an awful shunning to displease him. Eccles. 8. 11-13. And Solomon's observation in this kind hath been made by many, that those who, in their health despise both God's word and warnings, when death threatens them, cry out, oh call time again! oh that I might live a little longer! oh that God would but try me once more! and make great promises to God and men of their future amendment, usually in their own strength which oftentimes come to little if they recover, and if they die, declare their unpreparedness for death. And yet better some sense of God, and fear of his future judgements at the last than not at all, but spend their days in mirth, and in a moment go down to the grave, Job 21.13 The Apostles therefore admonition is good, and holds in all examples in those of like condition, not to be high minded, but fear, for if God spared not them, take heed lest he also spare nos thee Rom. 11.20, 21 and Hebr. 4.1. And 3 to cure sin in us. For these are means whereby we are brought to the sear of the Lord, by which men depart from evil, Prov. 16.6. Thus God cured the remnant of the Jews of their Idolatry, which they were so addicted to formerly, and ever after detested above all others. Ezech. 23. Where J●dah and Israel are set forth as two spiritual adulteresses being at ease, and God saith, I will bring a company upon them, namely the Assyrians and Chaldeans, that shall stone them with stones, as the Jews punished adulters, and dispatch them with their swords, they shall slay their sons and their daughters etc. thus will I cause lewdness to cease out of he land, that all women may be taught not to do after your wickedness, that is other cities and nations compared here to women, especially where his church should be planted may learn to refrain from Idolatry, and if they will not to see what the cure thereof will cost them. And David a type of Christ prophecies, this should be a means of reforming the visible Church, God shall suddenly shoot at them, with an arrow suddenly shall they be wounded, and all men shall fear and shall declare the works of God for they shall wisely consider of his do. Ps. 64. see also Is. 25.2.3. And as in general so in particular examples this is not to be doubted of; as that the sudden death of Eli hath been, and is instrumental to cure, the fond indulgence of many parents to their children in wickedness, and of Absalon, their inordinate affection. If so be no sins are mentioned, or more than ordinary apparent to us in any so taken away; then to cure us of those sins we know ourselves guilty of before God; and more especially those that are relative, as good Jacob's too much love and doting upon his Rachel here in the text. 4. To awaken us out of our security. For which end especially, we have security as the forerunner, and speedy destruction that follows it. joined together by our Saviour, in the types he hath given us of his coming to judgement, both of all in general, and every one in particular, As the destruction of the old world, Sodom and Gomorrah, and Jerusalem; they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, buying and selling, planting and building; whereby Christ declare. how little they expected, they should be forthwith speedily destroyed; and that so also shall his coming be, even like to lightning for its suddemnes, or a thief in the night for its unexspectednes; and then makes this inference watch therefore for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come, calling it such an hour as they think not, declaring he would honour those that made this use of it, but if, the evil servant say in his heart my Lord delays his coming etc. The Lord of that servant will come in a day when he looks not for him, and in an hour that he is not ware of. Math. 24. and Luke 17. Nothing more exemplifies this than sudden death, which cries to every one, behold the bridegroom cometh, go ye out to meet him, to awaken all; for it's said they all slumbered and slept, the wise virgins slumbered and the foolish slept, so that none in the visible church but have need of wakening, Math. 25. For as in nature troubles either feared or felt both awaken us out of our sleep, and keep us from sleeping: so in grace, there being few Christians to be found, that either the fears of death and judgements, by some warnings of them, or some inward or outward troubles have not awakend and kept watching. We are naturally so sensual and immersed in the things of this life, so regardless of God, his word, and our eternal concernments, and so apt to put the evil day far from us: that God is mercifully pleased by examples, as well as precepts and threats to rouse us up to consider our latter end, that we may not run heedlessly on to our eternal destruction. As it is usual with God to forewarn both nations and cities before he smites them, as all histories both sacred and prosane testify, we never reading of judgements but for mercies abused: so also particular persons, there being none of years, but have warning in this kind, and may every where see graves shorter than their own. For as security shakes off the fear of sin and misery, and makes us look on death and judgement at a distance: so the fear of them makes them seem near us, and to reflect upon ourselves and the desert of our sins, and consider our later end, thereby becoming instrumental to make us serious, which is the first step in religion, and to turn our sloth into diligence, our indifferency into earnestness, and our inconstancy into stableness and resolution. Lastly To bring us to repentance. As this is the end of God's threaten, that he may not punish if we will repent: so it's also of his executing them, that others may take warning; all his providences being a fulfilling of some threat or promise in his word. This even the Ninivites understood as appears by their practice upon Jonah's denunciation of their destruction: and thus our Saviour expounds these providences, which are rich in sense as well as the word, howbeit we seldom fully comprehend it. Who preaching in Galilee, was interrupted by some News-mongers from Jerusalem, that told him of the Galileans, whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices, (in Jerusalem, for Pilate had no jurisdiction, but Herod over the Galileans) supposing they were some extraordinary sinners, because they suffered such things, Luke 13. Christ according to his great wisdom, neither taxes Pilat's fact of cruelty (as they might possibly suppose) nor approves it; nor denies those Galileans to be sinners and suffer justly, but only that they were greater sinners than all the rest, showing that they were not to be judged as such, because of their suffering, and adds the like concerning those 18 on whom the tower in Siloam fell and slew, declaring from both these examples, the general use the living should make of the sudden death of others, which is to repent; this being the end of Gods sparing us to give us time and space for repentance, and his taking away others to stir us up to make use of our time accordingly. And the more to awaken them to this duty, shows the more especial use of these to them, in a prophetical commination from the manner of their perishing, making it a type or emblem to the living of their future destruction (as Samuel did by saul's rending his mantle, of God's rending the Kingdom from him) saying, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish. Denoting, that as those Galileans were slain by Pilate the Roman governor and his soldjers, so the Galileans should after by the Roman army: and as the 18 in Jerusalem were slain by the fall of the tower in Siloam, so the dwellers in Jerusalem should be by the fall of their other towers and walls. Which, they not repenting was accordingly accomplished in both. For the Romans first fell upon Galilee, and destroyed great numbers of them, and the rest flying to Jerusalem, at the time of the passover were with other Jews slain in such abundance, that the altar for sacrifices swim'd with blood: and multitudes of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, it being besieged and taken by the Romans, were slain by the battering of their walls, and buried in the ruins of their city. So dangerous is it to neglect repenting from the warnings given us, and especially for those more immediately concerned! So great wisdom and safety is there in true repentance, which will certainly save our souls from eternal, and is the only way to save our persons also and estates from public calamities and temporal destruction! But oh the blindness and stupidity of most part of men, that when God's hand is lifted up, they will not see it! when he hedges up their sinful ways with thorns, will needs run through them! when he smites some on their right hand, and others on their left, regard it not! that can go and come from funerals without a serious thought of their own! Common providences are but little observed by us, and therefore do but little move and affect us: but when we meet with unexpected occurrences, or interruption of the ordinary course of time and nature in the death of any, this is apt to startle us, and make us bethink ourselves more than usually, and where grace sets in with it, becomes a means to better and reform us. Thus God often makes use of the sudden death of some, to bring others first to themselves by consideration, and afterwards to himself by repentance; and especially those in the like condition, when one is taken and another left, some destroyed and others saved, this making both a deeper and lastinger impression; and those more nearly concerned in, or related to the deceased. For as we often think this or that occasioned their death, and these or those things might have prevented it, the thoughts whereof frequently trouble us afterwards: so our former carriage towards them, and theirs to us comes now afresh to our remembrance, feeds our sorrow, and lays the foundation of our repentance. These and those things saith conscience thou shouldst have done, and so and so thou shouldst have carried towards them, and didst not; and this and that thou shouldst not have done, nor carried in this or that manner to them, and didst; thou might have got much good by them, and hast not; and done more good to them, and wouldst not; thou matterdst not what became of their souls, and knowest thou what will become of thine? Then thinks the sinner, what if their case had been mine? where had I now been if I had been so hurried to judgement? my conscience tells me I am not fit to die, I cannot say my sins are pardoned, and my peace made with God whom I have so greatly offended: he hath now warned me to flee from the wrath to come, and should I not take it? shall I still except myself and say this shall not be to me? why should I think to be spared, when others are taken away whose sins mine have exceeded? the time bypast is too much to have wrought the will of the flesh, I am resolved now to make better use of the present and future, so long as God shall spare me, to prepare for death and for eternity. And as these providences are thus merciful means to bring about a blessed change in us, so also to carry it on still further and further. How livelily doth sudden death setforth to us the necessity of repentance in all the kinds of it! As the vanity of the creature, and the necessity of making God our portion; the shortness of our own righteousness, seeing we must appear before a just and holy God, and the necessity of Christ and his righteousness; the evil of sin, whereof we have nothing to expect but shame and sorrow, and the necessity of holiness, all its paths ending in peace, and without which we shall never see God in happiness. And how much the same contributes, to promote these gradually also in us, the constant experience of all God's people abundantly witness.  
5 That all may learn experimentally many particular and necessary lessons they formerly disregarded. The light of nature shows us sundry of them, and the light of scripture more clearly all of them; but unbelief doubts of them, sensuality constantly opposes them, and as men asleep we generally neglect them. God is therefore pleased to use unexpected providences, which draw the curtain, and let in the light so convincingly and sensibly upon us, that without wilful shutting our eyes we cannot withstand it: that so his truth being taught and backed by our own experience, may be more readily embraced and obeyed. For experience is a more sensible argument than notions to convince us of the truth, and less liable to ignorance and mistake for confirming us in it, and more particular and prevalent with us to practise it. Let me therefore name some of those excellent lessons which still hang on this one bough suddenly broken off from us. As 

1 the vanity and frailty of life. Such a death cries to us with the word, all flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field: the wind passeth but over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more. Is. 40.6. Ps 103.16.  
2 The nearnes of death and judgement. If thou willst put these far from thee, this summons will convince thee of thy folly, that this night thy soul may be required of thee Luke 12.19, 20.  
3 The necessity of being prepared for thy dissolution. For the night of death cometh whether thou thinks of it or no, when no man can work; there being no knowledge nor wisdom in the grave whither thou goest; no casting up thy accounts in the dark, nor perfecting them with God in the grave. Joh. 9.4. Eccles. 9.10.  
4 The danger of deferring thy preparation. For in an hour thou thinks not of, may Christ call thee to give an account of thy stewardship, for thou shalt be no longer steward. Math. 24. Luke 16. v. 2.  
5 The preciousness of time to prepare for eternity. For time is short, and were it longer little enough for so great a work, and also uncertain, as thou seest: and therefore not to be lavished out upon thy lusts, seeing thine eternal welfare depends upon it. 1 Cor. 7.29.  
6 The vain hopes of living many years. Since thou knowest not what a day may bring forth, no more than what a woman with child, whether male or female living, or dead as 'tis this day, Prov. 27.1.  
7 The groundless presumption of a lingering death, when thou seest some in a moment go down to the grave, and many die in their full strength. Job. 21. 13, 23.  
8 How quickly the greatest hopes are dashed and expectations disappointed. Here's a child come to the birth, and no streugth to bring forth, but mother and child die together: there's a strong man saith with Agag surely the bitterness of death is past, and the next hour it returns and carries him away, 1 Sam. 15.  
9 Moderation towards the things of this life. For the Lord is at hand, ready to call thee quickly from thy good things, who makes them thy portion, and then whose shall they be? and where wilt thou be? and to take thee, who makes him thy happiness, from the evils of this life, that they no more shall torment thee. Philip, 4.5.  
10 The different nature of earthly enjoyments and heavenly. Earthly promise much and in the trial fail our expectations: But heavenly we find best upon trial, and such as will never fail us nor forsake us Heb. 13.5.  
And lastly, the vast difference between our present and future: state. Here we meet and part presently; there we meet and never part, here's nothing but changes, there's none but a stable eternity. 1 Thes. 4.17.    
These Reasons I hope may suffice for the several sorts of sudden death mentioned on this occasion, to justify God's proceed therein; and to show us the gracious design of these kind of providences, that seem of all others most dismal to us; none so much as these conducing to the general good of mankind, as tending to awaken us out of our security, cure us of our spiritual distempers, and point out to us and quicken us to our duty. Let us see to it, that we make use of them accordingly: and what further improvement may be made of the present providence we shall now speak to by way of inference and application.  
Use 1. Hence learn the uncertain tenure, or manner of holding our nearest Relations, and dearest friends and acquaintance. That seeing them liable continually to be lost, we may be more sensible our enjoying them is but of mere courtesy, and that we are but tenants at will for them, and all our other earthly comforts to God the great Lord of all: having by our sinful apostasy lost our right and title to the enjoyment of them, which he gave us at first by the covenant of works in our creation. For had we continued in our original state of integrity, there would have been none of this sorrowful parting of friends; but we should either have continued happy together on earth, or without suffering death have been, as S. Anstin and others think, after some certain time translated into heaven; and whether all together at last, or successively at such a term of years, it would have been matter of triumphant rejoicing to all. But now having by sin forfeited and lost all our mercies, God hath been graciously pleased in the covenant of grace to alter his dispensation; not to trust us bank-rupts with a new stock in our own hands, but to commit all to Christ, in whom he hath treasured up spiritual life for his people; so that that is now in safe keeping, being hid with Christ in God, Colos. 3.3. And this he hath assured us of by promise, upon our fulfilling the condition of the covenant: but hath reserved temporal life and the comforts thereof in his sovereign pleasure, to give, continue, or take away ●●●n and in what manner he pleases; that we might entirely depend upon him for all. So that if he will any day write a Jacob wiveles, a Job childless, a David friendless, a Jeremiah comfortless; there's no reason to gainsay it, no cause to complain or murmur at it, much less to implead him for it; seeing he takes but his own that he had only lent us for a time, never given or granted us absolutely to enjoy. Is it any injury then when the time is expired to require his own? Doth he make the matrimonial bond natural that husband and wife should die together? Hath he tied children to their parents feet, or fastened them to their houses, as their pictures not to be parted withal or removed? If he lets us have our Relations a while here, and then takes them into the gallery of heaven; is it any detriment to them or us? Are they not so better cared for and bestowed, than they can be by us, what ever we think, and how much soever discontented? Thou wilt be ready to say, But why so soon? Why so unexspectedly? Hath not godliness the promise of this life, as well as that to come? And obedient children of their days being prolonged? Very true, godliness both interests us in God the giver, and in all the promises for every good gift; but for this life and all other temporal mercies only conditionally, so far forth as is good for us; So God will not only givo grace and glory, but will withhold no good thing from them that walk uprightly Ps. 84.11, But what and how must we account good things? Spiritual good things indeed are absolutely good in themselves, and for all, and always; but temporal, though good in themselves, yet neither for all nor always; but relatively only in reference to the persons, for that which is good for some is hurtful for others, as one man's meat we say is another's poison, and in subordivation to greater good, as this life in relation to eternal. Now who is fittest to judge what is best for us and when? The Father or the child? the physician or the patiented? the alwise God or foolish man? We sinned what we thought worse proves for the better to us frequently; and God's time fit than our own, though hardly persuaded thereof at present: so that referring ourselves to him, our uncertainty is our greatest safety; and the condition annexed to temporal blessings so far from a diminution, that it is an inhancing and confirmation of their promises. For thereby we are assured, that God will neither give his children any thing to their real prejudice, nor take ●way any thing that was the best for them: that if he deprives them of temporals it is for their spiritual good, and all the crosses that befall them are better for them than the things they desire. All which not only recommend godliness even in regard of the things of this life: but are the greatest stay and security we can possibly have, to support us under all the variety of changes, that befall us in this evil world.  
2 This serves to wean our hearts from being immoderately set on any of our Relations or creature comforts. Which is the Apostle's inference 1 Cor. 7.29, 30, 31. Brethren, the time is short, it remaineth, both that they that have wives be as though they had none: and they that weep, as though they wept not: and they that rejoice, as though they rejoiced not: and they that use this world as not abusing it: for the fashion of this world passeth away. Our forefathers are passed away before us; the marriage knot loosens daily, and is either cut asunder by a violent, or untied by a natural death at last; Brethren and sisters and a friend sometimes dearer than a brother part, and are no more seen in the flesh; our children that are ourselves only wrapped up in other skins, in whose life ours are ofrens bound up, are frequently snatched out of our arms, and if they crowd us out of the world quickly follow us to our long home. That as Xerxes beholding his great army wept to think, they should all of them shortly be laid in the dust: so may we over our living Relations as well as dead, considering we are liable continually to lose them. Let this then make us sit loser from them, and take off our hearts.  
1 From our inordinate affection to them. It is our wisdom to set our hearts upon nothing, but that which is above the reach of danger & disappointment: and to love nothing much, but what we cannot love excessively. As God that will be our portion for ever, when all these and our own lives fail us: and Christ our Saviour that will make us happy with himself in heaven. If any steal away our hearts from them, and perk up in their place in our thoughts and affections; its mercy that breaks down such idols and grinds them to powder, or turns such comforts into crosses as would carry it in the competition with the blessed God and our dear Saviour. We are so bewitched with these sensible enjoyments, and are so taken up with them; that even good jacob's have need of embittering circumstances to wean them from their Rachel's and joseph's; and holy Davids from their michal's and Absalon's, and all from their over-loved Relations and creature comforts. How immoderately for the most part do we desire them! How eagerly do we pursue them! How ardently do we love them! How highly do we value them! How excessively do we delight in them! How anxiously do we keep them! How passionate are we when crossed in them! How fearful are we of losing them! How loath are we to part with them! How perplexed when we have lost them! And yet all these inordinacies must be cured in us or we cannot be Christ's disciples. Math. 10. v. 37. Luke 14.26. Which ordinary medicines will not do, these distempers are so strongly rooted in us; and therefore the wise Physician of souls is pleased often mercifully to use such severities as are necessary to embitter our earthly comforts and endear himself and our Saviour to us. Who that duly considers how little God's commands, the promises of heaven, the threaten of hell, Christ's calls, and his Ministers plead prevail with men to love him more than father or mother, wife or child as the Gospel requires; but must acknowledge the usefulness of these warnings to us for that end, and the necessity of God's sharpest rods for Physic as well as his word for food for our souls, and consequently the reason why it is the portion of his people to suffer affliction rather than the rest of the generality of the world.  
Secondly From placing our happiness in them. Man in innocency had a mind to know, a will to choose, and affections to delight in God as his happiness: but since sin hath broke down his image in us, such is the wretchedness of our hearts, that usually the better God is to us, the worse we are to him; and the more enjoyment he gives us of earthly friends the more we forget our heavenly father. When we want and desire husbands, wives, children, friends or any earthly comforts that we cannot obtain, we seek God for them, and when he threatens to take them from us, we cry to him to spare us them; but when we enjoy these, even when he denies or takes them away from others, and have most reason to eye and own him in them, depend upon him for them, and use them as encouragements to serve him that gives and continues them to us; we are apt to forget him, set these up in his room, make them our God, and take up with them as our portion; so that he is then little regarded of the most, and less than he ought by the best. When he therefore blows upon these blessings, it is to bring us to set them in their due place, and keep them so in subordination to himself, and make us mind him more for the future, and them less than formerly; lest these streams of creature comforts that should lead us to him, should draw us from him, and drown us in perdition, For now that reason through sin hath lost its sovereignty over us, sense lying so near us usually sways us; and brings the soul not only to comply with the necessities of our present state, in these Relations for the comfort of this life (which is lawful, being God's institution in innocency) but to such a condescension to the body, which only skils sensual things, that for the most part men live a mere animal life without God in the world, not like men capable of enjoying him, much less like Christians. How happy were it then, that as by experience we learn the worth of these things by the want of them, so we would also their worthlesnes in comparison of him, who is our only happiness: thus should we gain more by our parting with them than by our enjoying them, & come to make a happy exchange. These providences duly considered, and rightly used would recall us back again from the creature to God, awaken conscience and make every one turn preacher to himself, that God may have the prevailing choice. Saying, I see husband or wife, parents or children are soon gone, all of them but vanity, miserable comforters are ye all. I said I shall die in my nest, my beloved yoke-fellow shall comfort me, this son will be the staff of my old age, that friend will be my support: but how quickly am I disappointed of one, and may be of all these perishing comforts! I still thought and hoped satisfaction would arise from these things I had a mind to, liked and loved; but find myself continually deceived. I will therefore seek it no more in these houses of clay, where it is not to be found, but in the living God, in whose enjoyment it is only to be had: and then I may hope, contentment with the portion of these he gives me, will also dwell with me, which hath been all along so great a stranger. How have I foolishly forsaken the fountane of living waters of salvation, and been hewing out to myself one broken cistern after another of creature comforts, when I still found as fast as I made them, they will hold no water! I have too long dabbled in these nether springs that only feed the winter brooks, which dry up on a sudden when I most want them: I will betake me to the upper springs of grace, that flow continually, which can only quench the thirsty desires of my soul. Lord, whom have I in heaven but thee, and there is none upon earth I desire in comparison of thee; all these fail me, but thou wilt never fail me, therefore I choose thee for my portion, who wilt be so for ever. Ps. 73.  
And lastly from our dependence upon them for support and comfort. Man fallen from God affects a selfsufficiency, and finding the shortness thereof in himself, in stead of looking above, and returning to him, looks about him, and cries who will show me any good; and fixing on such earthly blessings as he either hath or hopes for, rests on them; so that God is but a cipher, and his blessings the figure with him, till he see his mistake. God indeed hath the name, and profession of our faith; but sad experience shows us, how ready our hearts are to departed from him, and to make the creature our confidence; and if our projects and expectations fail us therein, to sit down in despondency, as if there were no remedy. Even the best of men are apt to over-reckon themselves in their hopes, overact their reliance on creature comforts, and lean too much on these sensible supports: till God lets them see what broken reeds they rely upon, and upon what sandy foundations they build vast hopes, which with the least puff of his displeasure fall to the ground. Then the hearts of foolish Nabals die within them: and holy David's drawn to comfort themselves in their God. Thus the Church forbidden to trust in a friend, or those most nearly allied, and finding the disappointment of such adherence, resolves I will look unto the Lord. Micah. 7.5, 6, 7. Thus the wife depending on her husband, when he is taken from her, and she a desolate widow trusts in God, 1 Tim. 5.5. Thus the child of whom we say as Lamech, this same shall comfort us, being taken away, shows us our folly, in reckoning so long before hand, and on such uncertainties. These providences as well as the word calls to us, and saith, Let not the wise man trust and glory in his wisdom, seeing unexpected events daily confound the wisest; nor the strong man in his strength, which every sickness or small accident destroys; nor the rich man in his riches, which on a sudden take to themselves wings & fly away out of his reach; nor husband and wife, parents and children, friends and acquaintance in one another, which die and perish we see daily: but all in the living God at all times, who it the only rock to be relied on, all these being unstable as water, the Father of mercies, when all these become miseries, and the God of all comfort when these can yield us none at all. Jer. 9.23. Ps. 62.8.2 Cor. 1.3.  
3 This shows us the necessity of being always ready for death, and prepared for the death of ours, that we may not be surprised how suddenly soever either shall happen. The double example this day before us, summons us to this duty: seeing than we have lost the comfort of their lives, let's not lose this benefit of their deaths. If the warnings of God's word hath not awakend us, let these alarms of his providence do it. All grant it necessary to provide for this great change of time with eternity: and yet how woefully is it for the most part neglected! Men are so taken up with this world, especially the healthful, and those that wallow in pleasure and prosperity, that they have neither list nor leisure to think seriously and prepare for the next. As if they were privileged from the like stroke, and had a protection from death's arresting them, or when it doth could bride it off for some time, or make such a covenant with hell, as will secure them. So great is the security and stupidity of most, that they regard not these warnings, nor think themselves longer concerned, when once the funerals are over. Therefore that we may make better use of them. 1 Suppose the like or worse may befall thee or thine, whilst secure sinners still suppose the best. Not to disquiet thyself with groundless fears, but to prepare for all events of providence: which are so never the nearer thee, but thou much fit for them; unexpected crosses of all others being the hardliest born. Say then, what befalls others may befall me also, by this supposition as a prospective bring thy own and thy friend's death near thee, think of it frequently, and converse with it familiarly, that so neither may surprise thee. Exempt not thyself or thy Relations from that which frequently befalls others. How many are the acute diseases that quickly snap man's life asunder! How many the casualties and accidents whereby men of all ranks and conditions have perished in all ages and places unexspectedly! 
* Plin. l. 7. c. 53. de mortibus repentinis. Val. Max. l. 9 c. 12. Zuinger Theatrum. l. 18.  To reckon those recorded by authors, and known to ourselves, would take up our whole time. 2. Flatter not thyself, that thou and thine shall live long and die leisurely. Oh the vain and deceitful hopes that most have of living still on and on they know not how long! The younger that have death on their backs think they must of course live to be aged; the old that have death before their faces, and grey hairs not only here and there upon them, but all over them, hope still of holding out; yea when sickness is entered, and death at the door, we still hope that we or ours shall escape with life. I have seldom met with one so old, that hoped not to rub aut some years longer; and never with any, to whom their years past and to come did not seem of a different length. Looking backwards on many years past, they count them but a short time, and usually their work therein little; but looking forwards on a few before them, reckon them long, and what a deal of work they shall do therein; so easily do we deceive ourselves in numbering our days and measuring our work, that will not be deceived by others in any account that is of concernment. 3 Reckon life by days not years, seeing none know what hour the son of man will come and call for them. Thus the best and wisest of men reckoned their lives, as Jacob, Moses, Job, David and Solomon. Gen. 47. v. 9 Ps. 90.14. Job 14.5. Ps. 39.5 Eceles. 8 15. This right numbering our days would make us apply our hearts to wisdom; by improving our present time and opportunities in the day of grace, cutting off our vain hopes of future uncertainties, and looking on every day as a new gift of God for his work Lam. 3.23. If Horace a heathen could say, Omnem crede diem tibi diluxisse supremum; much more should a Christian believe and live every day as his last; because it may be so, and if it be not, it is more than any one knows. Our Lord having wisely and mercisully concealed both the time and place of our departure from us, that our lives might not be spent in continual madness, of mirth and vanity in our former, and of fears and melancholy in our later days; but might be restrained from sin, and quickened to duty; not delaying our preparations for death, but living in a constant expectation thereof; nor presuming of future time not in our power, but rightly improving our present, with our Apostle dying daily, and as a good man said, that of twenty years he had known no morrow. This divine arithmetic of numbering our days Moses and David begged of God, and much more need have we, to make our hearts so sensible of our frailty from these examples, that we may get ready to follow; and may not be only unwilling to live, as many through the troubles of life, but willing to die, which grace only enables us to when prepared. 4 Set these examples before thee so as they may affect thy heart, and make it restless till they be duly improved by serious consideration. That when others are destroyed from morning to evening, or every hour of the day, it may not be without any regarding it. Job. 4.20. Say, how soon may this befall me or mine! How uncertain is our time here, and how certain death and eternity hereafter! How do I loiter whilst time flies, and my glass perhaps ending and how little of that work done, which must be done, or I am lost for ever! Am I fit to look death in the face, or a just and holy God in judgement? have I not delayed long enough already, and is there not danger in these delays? Is my soul and eternal salvation of so little consequence, that my heart should still deceive me in disregarding them? Is it not wisdom to do that first that is of greatest consequence and necessity? Is not all my time little enough, for so great a work as preparing for eternity, and shall I lose more? Have so many of God's servants that have taken so much pains so long time in Religion fasting, weeping, praying, hearing &c. confessed themselves unready for death, what shall I be that have done so little? How dismal will death be to me, if no better prepared for it? Will Christ stay any more for me then he did for the foolish virgins? was it not only they that were ready that entered in with him? Or will he when once the door of mercy is shut, open it for me alone? No, no, I cannot expect it, and therefore will take his counsel, and watch not knowing the day or hour wherein he cometh. 5 Make sure to be habitually prepared at least for death, by being reconciled to God through Christ. Acquaint therefore thyself with him and be at peace: and take heed of living in that state, wherein thou wouldst be loath to die. See to the soundness of thy repentance towards God, and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, and the sincerity of thy obedience; as ever thou meanest to secure the better part thy soul, and thy future happiness in eternity. And labour after assurance, that when this earthly house of thy tabernacle is dissolved, thou hast an house eternal in the heavens, as ever thou desirest to die comfortably, The want of this makes death so dismal, to those that are sensible what it is to die. How many that live under the Gospel and know no more than the heathen Adrian whither they shall go at their death, is lamentable to consider. Get thyself also as much as possible actually prepared, by keeping up thy assurance, evenning thy accounts daily with God, walking with him as Enoch, having thy conversation in heaven whilst on earth, and thy fellowship with the Father and his son Jesus Christ: so shall death never surprise thee, or affright thee, much less hurt thee; changing only thy place, not thy company, opening the door for thy entrance into life, and being ever with the Lord; which than thou wilt find bejond all thy present faith and hopes, infinitely better than being in this world. Lastly prepare also for thy Relations leaving thee. Our seldom thinking of this before hand, makes it difficult for us to bear. Be sensible of and thankful for God's giving and continuing them to thee, seeing he denies them some, and takes them from others: use them as his left hand blessings, but enjoy them not as thy portion: depend on him for comfort from them, & resign them to him from whom thou receivedst them: do thy duty towards them whilst thou hast them, so shalt thou have comfort when thou losest them.  
4 Let this caution us from rash censuring and judging of these kind of providences: seeing in the text God's taking away unexpectedly a good Rachel from Jacob one of his best servants. 1 Not the just and holy God for them: In denying him and his providence with the Atheists, Who seeing often the vilest of men spared, as Diagoras did a perjured person; and better taken away, as Cotta his friend Drusus, and Ovid his Tibullus, open their mouths against heaven, in denying a God and his providence in the world. Or 2 in judging him unjust and cruel. For he delights not in death as it is the destruction of his creature, but as it is the exercising of judgement and righteousness in the earth. Jer. 9.24. His works are wondrous, that though a wise man as Solomon think to know them, yet shall he not be able Eccles. 8.17. The most inquisitive run but into a labarynth, wherein they lose themselves at last. For how can we possibly be able to judge of his proceed, who are wholly ignorant of the grounds of them? It is God only that knows men's intentions, and his own designs that he hath to accomplish, and all the links in the chain of providence: so that where he manifests not these, we are in the dark, and incompetent judges. Our profoundly learned Contry-man Bradwardine 
* De Causa Dei. L. 1.0.31.  hath a remarhable story to this purpose, of a devout man tempted to blaspheme providence, to whom God sent an angel in humane shape, that commanded him to follow him. And leads him to the house of a good man, who entertained them very kindly that night: from whom he secretly took a cup he valued highly; and going thence to a wicked man's house the second night, who treated them not so well, gives him the cup at their departure. Having been the third night most courteously entertained, in the morning he threw the man's servant off a bridge and drowns him; and coming the fourth night to an honest man that made them hearty welcome, slew his little son that cried, and suffered them not to sleep. Then he acquaints his follower why he did these so strange things, saying he was sent of God to satisfy him. I took the cup (saith he) from the first a good man for his good, because he loved it too much: and gave it the second a bad man, that he might receive his reward at present: I drowned the servant of the third because he had resolved the next day to slay his master, whom I preserved from death, and his servant from committing murder, that he might be less punished in hell: The fourth before he had a son and heir was very charitable, and after grew penurious, therefore I took away the cause of his covetousness, and conveyed his son's soul to paradise So true is that of the Psalmist Thy righteousness is like the great mountains; thy judgements are a great deep. Thy foot steps are not known, and therefore cannot be traced by us poor ignorant mortals Ps. 36.6. and 77.19. Nor 3 must we judge, when we see the righteous and wicked taken alike away, that God's Providence goes blindfold to work (as the Heathen think the fates do) and sweeps away one and another hand over head: for so we shall neither eye God in, nor make a right use of his deal with us. We cannot indeed make or discern the difference, as to us sickness and sword devours one as well as another: but this is fallacia sensus, both scripture and reason teaches us, that there is a very particular direction in all that befalls us from the hand of God. Every disease that happens, every bullet that flies, every wave of the sea, and every casualty have their commission from God, before they can touch or destroy any. If a sparrow falls not on the ground without him, much less a man's life: and if the very hairs of our head are all numbered, much more our days are so & determined, Math. 10.29, 30. Job. 7.1. and 14.5, 14. Prov. 16.33. Nor last must we imagine. that righteousness will exempt us from sudden destruction in common calamities with the wicked. As Abraham seems to judge in his pleading for Sodom, Gen. 18.23, 24, 25. For though God will rather spare the wicked for the righteous sake, as he there declares; and in extraordinary cases where he hath passed his particular promise doth so, as God gave Paul all that sailed with him Acts. 27. and makes a distinction, as Ezek 9.4, 5, 6. Mal. 3.17, 18 yet in ordinary it is not so, but the green and dry tree, denoting as it follows, the righteous and the wicked perish together Ezek, 20.47. and 21.3. And no wonder, for usally the good are infected with, or one way or other guilty of the sins of the times and places where they live, and if they partake in sins its reasonable they also partake in plagues. Rev. 18.4. Or if not, yet being mixed with the wicked, in an ordinary way it cannot be otherwise, as experience shows us in wars, famine, pestilence, inundations, shipwrecks and the like. Especially earth quakes, wherein many cities have been wholly swallowed up, and many with the inhabitants in a great patt destroyed, the histories whereof would fill a volume. Passing those of old, 12 cities of Asia say Pliny and Tacitus, 13 saith Ensebius in our Saviors days in one night: Coloss, Laodicea, & Hierapolis in the year 63.3 in Cyprus in 77.4 in Asia and 2. in Greece in 105.3 in Galatia in 109. Antioch, Nicomedia, and Nice several times. Nicopolis and Caesarea in 128. Smyrna also and Corinth afterwards and 10 in Crete in one year, so 20 in Germany in later times (besides many others, these being sufficient for my purpose) in most of which multitudes of Christians as well as others perished. And as God takes them away as he sees good (Ezeh. 16.50) so when some are extraordinarily delivered, that is also ascribed to his sovereignty, and befalls the wicked as well as the righteous, as scripture shows us. I have overthrown some of you, as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah and ye were as a firebrand plucked out of the burning, yet have ye not returned unto me saith the Lord. Amos. 4.11. So that the experience of all ages verisies Salomon's words, which eaten interpretative not exclusive of providence; and shows how things go ordinarily under its conduct, when he saith all things come alike to all, there is one event to the righteous and to the wick●d, Eccles. 9.2. The same manner of afflictions and death materially befalling the one as the other. By which unseeming providence God secures his people from the rage and malice of Satan and wicked men in this world, which would not be habitable for saints, if they were certainly known; and keeps off the scandal of Religion, none knowing who are sincere or only hypocritical; and men's coming to him for base ends, whereby we should have more professors but worse Christians. It being sufficient for his people's security, that he knows them perfectly, and makes a difference between them and the wicked of the world, in the same providence where we can make none; in his fatherly affection to them therein, in his intention direction and ordering thereof for their good, and in his issuing all in their eternal salvation. 2 As we must not judge amiss of God's proceed, so neither must we rashly judge of those so taken away. Either of the cause (like the Barbarians that judged the Apostle Paul a murderer from the viper fastening on his hand, thinking he would fall down dead suddenly) of which I have spoken in the reasons: or of their eternal state and condition. For if the life be good, no manner of death is bad: and if the life be bad the death is seldom good: no evil of punishment but only of sin abates God's fatherly affection to his children, but rather increases it; or any way lessens their interest in his favour: witness Abel and all the Prophets to Zacharias slain between the Temple and altar, Stephen and all the Apostles and Martyrs, and best of men in all ages. I know but one place of scripture that looks like judging men's eternal state by temporal judgements, and that is of Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities about them suffering the vengeance of eternal fire, Judas. 7. Which yet is not meant of the next world in hell (though being the worst we read of, and not ten righteous amongst them are damned most of them, as Christ that knew intimates, when he saith Math. 11. it shall be more tolerable for them than Corazin at the day of judgement, the degree implying the kind) but only the duration of the judgement in this world, and as an emblem of the day of judgement when God shall bring a diluviam ignis as Irenaus calls it, or rain hell out of heaven upon the world that now is, and of the punishment of the wicked, as the Psalmist alluding thereto tells us this shall be the portion of their cup Ps. 11.6. Learn we then to go no further than scripture, that speaks sparingly of men's eternal state, and never that I know of concludes damnation from God's punishments here, but always from men's sins unrepented of: and let us make no conclusions upon such false grounds, nor presume to ascend Christ's tribunal in condemning any to eternal punishments. Pererius and others are too bold in asserting all the old world that were drowned except infants were damned. For not to mention their number, that world in all probability being as populous as the present, and granting the generality were, even of the sons of God that had corrupted their ways; yet scripture speaking only indefinitely, it is not for us to make it universal that all had, or that nome repent upon the flood's approaching, allbeit God only established covenant with Noah and his family, as afterwards with Abraham and his, as the best in their generations. Nor last must we censure the Relations of any suddenly taken away, as if it were for some extraordinary sins that God so deals with them. Which was the fault of Job's three friends. For the devil whom God ordinarily restrains of his will more than wicked men (in regard of his great malice and power, and his being in termino or condemned, though not fully executed; whereas men are here only in via or probationers in reference to their future judgement) having accused Job falsely, and being by God extraordinarily permitted his pleasure on all he hath, for the trial and exercise of this noble champion: gins with his estate, knowing Job would have valued that less if he had before lost his children; then destroys them also suddenly, sparing the wife that was in his power, who it should seem was none of the best, for his second in this combat. And his friends knowing these things and seeing his bodily sufferings also to be very great (allthô the loss of his children seems his greatest outward affliction, his personal being greater in his inward troubles of spirit than bodily, for though he was greivously sore and pained, yet not heartsick or in danger of death) they in stead of comforting him, add affliction to the afflicted, censure him as unrighteous, and think to prove him so by this argument, That he that is sorely afflicted of God is either an open sinner or secret hypocrite: this Job denies, and disputes it with them, and Elihu moderates, determining God's favour and afflictions to be consistent; which God confirms, and shows his displeasure against the others. Let this example of these good men's censoriousness, keep us from playing the Critics in such cases, and to judge nothing before the time either of God or men rashly, lest he deal with us after our folly: but stay till this dust that blinds us be blown out of our eyes, and then shall we see clearly the reason of all, at the day of the revelation of the righteous judgement of God. Rom. 2.5.  
5 For Application to those especially concerned in the loss of their dear Relations, that they bear it Christianly. I need say the less of this, because many have said so much; though the practice of most is not answerable, and especially those that are surprised. For the suddenness thereof discomposes our minds, makes us inconsiderate, and laying aside the rule both of scripture and reason comply with present sense: quarrelling with God, as Jonah for the loss of his guord, or any thing next us as the cause thereof, as Job's wife with her husband's religion, and the good widow with Elijah for the sudden death of her son, 1 Kings 17. Briefly therefore. 1 Eye God as the author and orderer of all that befalls us. His sovereignty, power, goodness, justice, wisdom etc. in the kind, manner, measure, time and issue of afflictions. David was dumb in silence, opened not his mouth in murmuring or complaining, because God did it. Ps. 39.9. Peter looks only at Christ's enemies, and quarrels, Christ at God and submits to death: the cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it, J●b. 18.11. If Epictetus could say, I have yielded my desires to God; how much more should we that are Christians 2 Be sensible of thy sins, and deserts for them: so wilt thou more willingly accept, and better bear the punishment of them. Wherefore doth a living man complain, a man for the punishment of his sins? Lam. 3.39. I will bear the indignation of the Lord, because I have sinned against him, saith the Church Micah. 7.9. Those complain most that least know themselves and their sins. 3 Compare our sufferings several ways, and we shall see small reason for impatience under them of what kind soever they be. As 1 with our sins. The Church complained, there was no sorrow like hers, yet after acknowledges it is of the Lord's mercies, that we are not consumed, and thou our God hast punished us less than our iniquities deserve. Which is true of the greatest punishments on this side hell. For if we had our desert, in stead of weeping here for wives, or children, and as Rachel will not be comforted because they are not; we might be howling there in despair, in a state for ever uncable of the least comfort. 2 With our enjoyments. Many mercies for one affliction: many spiritual mercies, for one temporal affliction. 3 With the suffering of others. What are any of ours to Job's, and many of God's best servants; whom he often strips not of one only, but of most or all their earthly comforts at once. If all men or especially God's people should bring their miseries together, and lay them in a common heap, none of us should have our share by much. 4 With the good we may gather by them. As to fins, for the discovering them to us; and making us search and try our ways and turn again to the Lord. For the curing them in us: as security, pride, hypocrisy, worldliness, doting on creature comforts, unprofitablnes under the means of grace, etc. And for the preventing sin from us: Which otherwise we should he apt to fall into, if God did not hedge up our way with these thorns So in reference to graces. Afflictions being as fire to refine and purify them: and make for the exercising, improving and quickening of them: as our faith, hope, love, zeal, patience, experience, humility, heavenly-mindednes, prayer etc. And in regard of more communion with God here, and more glory in heaven hereafter. The loss of friends is abundantly made up in more enjoyment of God: which his people experience frequently, who never enjoy him so much, as when they enjoy the creature least, May not Christ say, am I not better than all these? These all die away, but God and Christ remain the same. A good woman when her friends died, would often say; well, however my God lives: at length her husband dying she lamented bitterly, that her child asked her, Mother is your God dead? at which she took up, blaming herself for her impatience. And the Apostle declares, That our light affliction which is but for a moment worketh for us (not meritoriously, but occasionally and instrumentally when sanctified) a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. 2 Cor. 4.17. 4 Let faith and patience have their perfect work in you. Faith in God through Christ and the promises for a holy use, and blessed effect of these sad providences: it being He that teaches you to profit by them, making you partakers of his holiness, and them to yield the peaceable fruit of righteousness. Patience to bear them aright, in a holy submission and compliance with Gods will, in the greatest crosnes of events, when you have rekond comforts, and are arrested with sorrows. If the virtue of patience be as. Seneca faith, a salve for all soars, much more the grace: which though it make not miseries none, yet keeps us from being miserable by them. In our duty it is good to do that of choice, we must do of necessity. Quarrel not therefore with God; for this is but like the wild and ignorant Indians, that shoot their arrows at the sun, when it scorches them, which fall back upon their own heads. Nor repine at his deal; for this will but double the affliction, not remedy it. Say not, I could bear any cross but this. For you do but deceive yourself in this plea for your impatience, being most sensible of the present, having forgot former, and not knowing or much regarding future; as we are always most sensible of the present weather. And were it so as you think, it is not for you to choose your own crosses, no more than your comforts. Check yourselves, and indulge not impatience; which discomposes and unfits you for your duty both towards God and men; as we see in Jonah, whose prayers in that temper are nothing but quarrelling with God. Be not so sinfully selfish as to wish them so much to their loss as to be with you again: who have finished their course, past the fears and pangs of death, left this troublesome world, and got rid of their sins and Satan's temptations, and crowned with righteousness in eternal life. Envy not the early happiness of thy wife, that is gone to a better husband; nor of thy child that is gone to his heavenly Father: But prepare thou to follow; and be with Christ and them in heaven, where there will be no more parting. Now that God by the clouds gathering so thick and black about us threatens us with a dreadful storm, we have reason to count them more than ordinary blessed and happy, that are got safe home to their father's house, and those heavenly mansions, out of the reach of men or devils. God's smoking us out of these houses of clay, by these particular providences also, may and justly should make our eyes water; but not be filled with tears, or our hearts with sorrows too much, either in degree or duration for those gone before us; who might say to us as Christ to the daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for us but for yourselves and your children, that are left behind in the days a coming in a troublesome world.  
And that none should sorrow for this our sister, as others which have no hope, I might show more largely, if I had known her longer. Who though taken from us in an hour we thought not, yet we have reason to believe neither unthought of nor unprepared for by her: not only in regard of the hazardous condition she knew she was to pass thorough, but the tenure of her life, which was virtuous and unblamable, her conversation having been answerable to her pious education. The certainty of death and uncertainty of the time is not more commonly said, than abused by the most; who in stead of being always ready because they know not the time, are less ready at all times; but the godly wise have not so learned Christ, who have been taught by him to watch, because they know not what hour he will come. To speak of that good in her, which she held in common with all other Christians, is needles. In these lose and declining times she kept her integrity: and was at more than ordinary pains, for the enjoyment of the public ordinances, both in season and out of season, as God afforded opportunity. How should her early rising to them, shame most of us for our sloth, if we had any shame in us. She redeemed the time in these evil days for her private devotion, not vainly spending it in pleasure, as too many do, but improving it for eternity, making God's word her companion and counsellor. Her converse and carriage was modest and prudent; guiding both her tongue, and affairs with discretion. Never speaking evil of any, or censoriously judging of others; as the unbridled and licentious tongues of many that run at random; who fear not to speak evil of dignities, and spare not uncharitably to censure all, and often better than themselves, because they are not of their way. In brief, she was a Mary in God's house as well as a Martha in her own. Finally for her eternal salvation she was nether presumtuously confident, as the ignorant; nor fearfully diffident, as the unbelievers: but in a way of duty reposed her soul on God's mercy, and the merits of her Saviour, being wont to say, the feared death, but not to be dead. Who seemed to be heard in that she feared, God removing death as it were out of her sight, by those apoplectical or convulsive fits that seized on her and made her senseless, whereby death became less terrible to her at least, if it was any terror at all. And for a Christian sensible of sin, and future judgement, and eternity, not to be afraid to be dead, is to me an argument of more than ordinary faith in Christ: and more than most of us I fear, if we were put to it, can truly say. For such a one as Epicharmus whom Tully 
* L. 1. Tuscul. Quaest. Emori nolo, sed me esse mortuum nihil aestimo. q. d. mortem horreo, idque natura, verum ubi fuero mortuus, nihil amplius faciam, quia nullus ero. Pagnini Scholia.  mentions, who neither believes the immortality of the soul or a future state, to say so, is no wonder; but for a Christian that believes both; is rare. Let's then comfort ourselves, that she sleeps sweetly in Jesus; and get ready, that at what hour soever he shall call for us, we may not have our work to do, and both fear death and to be dead; but may be fitted to give up our accounts with comfort, and be ever with the Lord.  
FINIS.