Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions; Together with Death's Duel
measure did Jacob measure his life to Pharaoh? _The days of the years of
my pilgrimage._[359] And though the apostle would not say _morimur_,
that whilst we are in the body we are dead, yet he says, _perigrinamur_,
whilst we are in the body we are but in a pilgrimage, and we are _absent
from the Lord_:[360] he might have said dead, for this whole world is
but an universal churchyard, but our common grave, and the life and
motion that the greatest persons have in it is but as the shaking of
buried bodies in their grave, by an earthquake. That which we call life
is but _hebdomada mortium_, a week of death, seven days, seven periods
of our life spent in dying, a dying seven times over; and there is an
end. Our birth dies in infancy, and our infancy dies in youth, and youth
and the rest die in age, and age also dies and determines all. Nor do
all these, youth out of infancy, or age out of youth, arise so, as the
phoenix out of the ashes of another phoenix formerly dead, but as a
wasp or a serpent out of a carrion, or as a snake out of dung. Our youth
is worse than our infancy, and our age worse than our youth. Our youth
is hungry and thirsty after those sins which our infancy knew not; and
our age is sorry and angry, that it cannot pursue those sins which our
youth did; and besides, all the way, so many deaths, that is, so many
deadly calamities accompany every condition and every period of this
life, as that death itself would be an ease to them that suffer them.
Upon this sense doth Job wish that God had not given him an issue from
the first death, from the womb, _Wherefore thou hast brought me forth
out of the womb? Oh that I had given up the ghost, and no eye seen me! I
should have been as though I had not been._[361] And not only the
impatient Israelites in their murmuring (_would to God we had died by
the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt_),[362] but Elijah himself,
when he fled from Jezebel, and went for his life, as that text says,
under the juniper tree, requested that he might die, and said, _It is
enough now, O Lord, take away my life_.[363] So Jonah justifies his
impatience, nay, his anger, towards God himself: _Now, O Lord, take, I
beseech thee, my life from me, for it is better to die than to
live_.[364] And when God asked him, _Dost thou well to be angry for
this?_ he replies, _I do well to be angry, even unto death_. How much
worse a death than death is this life, which so good men would so often
change for death! But if my case be as Saint Paul's case, _quotidiè
morior_, that I die daily, that something heavier than death fall upon
me every day; if my case be David's case, _tota die mortificamur; all
the day long we are killed_, that not only every day, but every hour of
the day, something heavier than death fall upon me; though that be true
of me, _Conceptus in peccatis, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did
my mother conceive me_ (there I died one death); though that be true of
me, _Natus filius iræ_, I was born not only the child of sin, but the
child of wrath, of the wrath of God for sin, which is a heavier death:
yet _Domini Domini sunt exitus mortis, with God the Lord are the issues
of death_; and after a Job, and a Joseph, and a Jeremiah, and a Daniel,
I cannot doubt of a deliverance. And if no other deliverance conduce
more to his glory and my good, yet he hath the keys of death,[365] and
he can let me out at that door, that is, deliver me from the manifold
deaths of this world, the _omni die_, and the _tota die_, the every
day's death and every hour's death, by that one death, the final
dissolution of body and soul, the end of all. But then is that the end
of all? Is that dissolution of body and soul the last death that the
body shall suffer (for of spiritual death we speak not now). It is not,
though this be _exitus à morte_: it is _introitus in mortem_; though it
be an issue from manifold deaths of this world, yet it is an entrance
into the death of corruption and putrefaction, and vermiculation, and
incineration, and dispersion in and from the grave, in which every dead
man dies over again. It was a prerogative peculiar to Christ, not to die
this death, not to see corruption. What gave him this privilege? Not
Joseph's great proportion of gums and spices, that might have preserved
his body from corruption and incineration longer than he needed it,
longer than three days, but it would not have done it for ever. What
preserved him then? Did his exemption and freedom from original sin
preserve him from this corruption and incineration? It is true that
original sin hath induced this corruption and incineration upon us; if
we had not sinned in Adam, _mortality had not put on immortality_[366]
(as the apostle speaks), nor _corruption had not put on incorruption_,
but we had had our transmigration from this to the other world without
any mortality, any corruption at all. But yet since Christ took sin upon
him, so far as made him mortal, he had it so far too as might have made
him see this corruption and incineration, though he had no original sin
in himself; what preserved him then? Did the hypostatical union of both
natures, God and man, preserve him from this corruption and
incineration? It is true that this was a most powerful embalming, to be
embalmed with the Divine Nature itself, to be embalmed with eternity,
was able to preserve him from corruption and incineration for ever. And
he was embalmed so, embalmed with the Divine Nature itself, even in his
body as well as in his soul; for the Godhead, the Divine Nature, did not
depart, but remained still united to his dead body in the grave; but yet
for all this powerful embalming, his hypostatical union of both natures,
we see Christ did die; and for all his union which made him God and man,
he became no man (for the union of the body and soul makes the man, and
he whose soul and body are separated by death as long as that state
lasts, is properly no man). And therefore as in him the dissolution of
body and soul was no dissolution of the hypostatical union, so there is
nothing that constrains us to say, that though the flesh of Christ had
seen corruption and incineration in the grave, this had not been any
dissolution of the hypostatical union, for the Divine nature, the
Godhead, might have remained with all the elements and principles of
Christ's body, as well as it did with the two constitutive parts of his
person, his body and his soul. This incorruption then was not in
Joseph's gums and spices, nor was it in Christ's innocency, and
exemption from original sin, nor was it (that is, it is not necessary to
say it was) in the hypostatical union. But this incorruptibleness of his
flesh is most conveniently placed in that; _Non dabis, thou wilt not
suffer thy Holy One to see corruption_; we look no further for causes or
reasons in the mysteries of religion, but to the will and pleasure of
God; Christ himself limited his inquisition in that _ita est, even so,
Father, for so it seemeth good in thy sight_. Christ's body did not see
corruption, therefore, because God had decreed it should not. The humble
soul (and only the humble soul is the religious soul) rests himself upon
God's purposes and the decrees of God which he hath declared and
manifested, not such as are conceived and imagined in ourselves, though
upon some probability, some verisimilitude; so in our present case
Peter proceeds in his sermon at Jerusalem, and so Paul in his at
Antioch.[367] They preached Christ to have been risen without seeing
corruption, not only because God had decreed it, but because he had
manifested that decree in his prophet, therefore doth Saint Paul cite by
special number the second Psalm for that decree, and therefore both
Saint Peter and Saint Paul cite for it that place in the sixteenth
Psalm;[368] for when God declares his decree and purpose in the express
words of his prophet, or when he declares it in the real execution of
the decree, then he makes it ours, then he manifests it to us. And
therefore, as the mysteries of our religion are not the objects of our
reason, but by faith we rest on God's decree and purpose--(it is so, O
God, because it is thy will it should be so)--so God's decrees are ever
to be considered in the manifestation thereof. All manifestation is
either in the word of God, or in the execution of the decree; and when
these two concur and meet it is the strongest demonstration that can be:
when therefore I find those marks of adoption and spiritual filiation
which are delivered in the word of God to be upon me; when I find that
real execution of his good purpose upon me, as that actually I do live
under the obedience and under the conditions which are evidences of
adoption and spiritual filiation; then, so long as I see these marks and
live so, I may safely comfort myself in a holy certitude and a modest
infallibility of my adoption. Christ determines himself in that, the
purpose of God was manifest to him; Saint Peter and Saint Paul determine
themselves in those two ways of knowing the purpose of God, the word of
God before the execution of the decree in the fulness of time. It was
prophesied before, said they, and it is performed now, Christ is risen
without seeing corruption. Now, this which is so singularly peculiar to
him, that his flesh should not see corruption, at his second coming, his
coming to judgment, shall extend to all that are then alive; their hestæ
shall not see corruption, because, as the apostle says, and says as a
secret, as a mystery, _Behold I shew you a mystery, we shall not all
sleep_ (that is, not continue in the state of the dead in the grave),
_but we shall all be changed in an instant_, we shall have a
dissolution, and in the same instant a redintegration, a recompacting of
body and soul, and that shall be truly a death and truly a resurrection,
but no sleeping in corruption; but for us that die now and sleep in the
state of the dead, we must all pass this posthume death, this death
after death, nay, this death after burial, this dissolution after
dissolution, this death of corruption and putrefaction, of vermiculation
and incineration, of dissolution and dispersion in and from the grave,
when these bodies that have been the children of royal parents, and the
parents of royal children, must say with Job, _Corruption, thou art my
father, and to the worm, Thou art my mother and my sister_. Miserable
riddle, when the same worm must be my mother, and my sister and myself!
Miserable incest, when I must be married to my mother and my sister, and
be both father and mother to my own mother and sister, beget and bear
that worm which is all that miserable penury; when my mouth shall be
filled with dust, and the _worm shall feed, and feed sweetly_[369] upon
me; when the ambitious man shall have no satisfaction, if the poorest
alive tread upon him, nor the poorest receive any contentment in being
made equal to princes, for they shall be equal but in dust. _One dieth
at his full strength, being wholly at ease and in quiet; and another
dies in the bitterness of his soul, and never eats with pleasure_; but
_they lie down alike in the dust, and the worm covers them_.[370] In
Job and in Isaiah,[371] it covers them and is spread under them, _the
worm is spread under thee, and the worm covers thee_. There are the mats
and the carpets that lie under, and there are the state and the canopy
that hang over the greatest of the sons of men. Even those bodies that
were _the temples of the Holy Ghost_ come to this dilapidation, to ruin,
to rubbish, to dust; even the Israel of the Lord, and Jacob himself,
hath no other specification, no other denomination, but that _vermis
Jacob_, thou worm of Jacob. Truly the consideration of this posthume
death, this death after burial, that after God (with whom are the issues