Though the maintaining of your natural life be one end why God gave you breath, yet it is not the only, or principal end of it. Your breath must be food to others, as well as life to you ; Prov. x. 21. " The lips of the righteous feed many." It will be comfort- able to resign that breath to God at death, which hath been instru- mental to his glory in this life. It was no low encomium Christ gave of the churcti, when he said, Cant. iv. 11. " Thy lips, O my " spouse, drop as the honey-comb, honey and milk are under thy " tongue." Sweet, wholesome, and pleasant words drop from her lips. They drop (saith Christ) as the honey-comb. Some drops ever and anon fall actually, and others hang, at the same time, prepared and ready to fall. Such a prepared and habitual dispo- sition should every Christian continually have. Your words may stick upon men's hearts to their edification and salvation, when you are in your graves. Your tongues may now sow that precious seed, which may spring up to the praise of God, though you may not live to reap the comfort of it in this world, John iv. 36, 37. It is a rich expence of your breath, to bring but one soul to God, and yet God hath used the breath of one, as his instrument, to save, edify, and comfort the souls of thousands, Prov. xi. 30. " The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life, and he that wlnneth " souls is wise." The good Lord make all his people wise in this.
Surely, whether we consider the invaluable worth and precious- ness of souls, the benefits you have had from the breath of others yourselves, the innate property of grace, wherever it is, to diffuse and communicate itself, how short a time you have to breathe, and how comfortable it will be, when you breathe your last, to remem- ber how it hath been employed for God ; all this should open your lips to counsel, reprove, and comfort others, as often as opportu- nity is ministered.
Did Christ spend his blood for our souls, and shall not we spend our breath for them ! Oh ! let our lips dispense knowledge. If you will not spend your breath for God, how will you spend your blood for him ? If you will not speak for him, I doubt you will not die for him. Away with a sullen reservedness, away with unpro- fitable chat ; all subjects of discourse are not fit for a Christian's lips. It is a grave admonition God once gave his people by the pen of a faithful * minister. " You may rue (saith he) the oppor-
552 A TREATISE OF THE SOUL OF MAX,
" tunities you have lost. Here lay a poor wretch with one foot in " hell ; would he not have started back, if he had had light to dis- " cover his danger ? Well, you are now together, something you " must say ; the same breath would serve for a compassionate ad- " monition, as for a complacent impertinency, which will redound " to the advantage of neither. You part, the man dies, and in the " midst of hell cries out against you, one word of yours might have " saved me ; you had me in vour reach, you might have told me " my danger ; you forebore, I hardened ; the Lord reward your " negligence."
Inf. 7. If breath be the tie betwixt soul and body, How are we concerned to improve, and draw forth the precious breath of mini- sters and Christians, whilst it is yet in their nostrils.
The breath of many ministers is judicially stopt already, their breath serves to little other use than to preserve their own lives ; it will be stopt ere long by death, and then those excellent treasures of gifts and graces, wherewith they are richly furnished, will be gone out of your reach, never to be further useful to your souls. You should do by them therefore (as one aptly speaks) as scholars do by some choice book they have borrowed, and must return in a few days to the owner : They diligently read it night and day, and carefully transcribe the most useful and excellent notes they can find in it, that they may make them their own, when the book is called out of their hands.
But alas ! we rather divert, than draw forth these excellencies that are in them. You may yet converse with them, and greatly benefit yourselves by these converses; but (as one speaks) by the stream of your impertinent talk, that season is neglected. After- wards vou see your lack of knowledge, but then the instrument is removed. How must it gall an awakened Jew, to think what dis- course he had with Jesus Christ ! Is it lawful to give tribute to Coesar ? Why do not thy disciples fast 9 Oh ! had I nothing else to enquire of the Lord Jesus ? Would it not have been here pertinent to have asked, What shall I do to be saved ? But he is gone, and I dead in my sins. How many persons have we sent away, that had a word of wisdom in their hearts, having only learnt from them what a clock it is, what weather, or what news ; forgetting to ask our own hearts, what is all this to us ? and to enquire of them things worthy of their wisdom and experience. " Wherefore is " there a price in the hand of a fool, seeing he hath no heart to it ?" Prov. xvii. 16. The expence of one minute's breath in season, may, if God concur with it, be to you the ground of breathing forth praises to God to all eternity.
Inf. 8. Are soul and body tacked together by so frail a thing as
A TREATISE OF THE SOUL OF MAST. 553
a puff of breath ? How vain and groundless then are all those plea- sures men take in their carnal projects and designs in this world f
AVe lay the plot and design of our future earthly felicity in our own thoughts; we mould and contrive a design for a long and pleasant life. The model for raising an estate is already formed in our thoughts, and we have not patience to defer our pleasure till the accomplishment of it, but presently draw a train of pleasing consequents from this chimera, and our thoughts can stoop to no- thing less than sitting down all the remainder of our days in the very lap of delight and pleasure ; forgetting that our breath is all the while in our nostrils, and may expire the next moment : and if it do, the structure of all our expectations and projects comes to nothing in the same moment. " His breath goeth forth, he re- " turneth to his dust: And in that very day his thoughts perish," Psal. cxlvi. 4. The whole frame of his thoughts fall instantly abroad, by drawing out this one pin, his breath. It is good with all our earthly designs to mingle the serious thoughts of the domi- nion of providence, and our own frailty; James iv. 15. " If the Lord will, and we live.'"
It is become a common observation, that as soon as men have ac- complished their earthly designs, and begin to hug and bless them- selves in their own acquisitions, a sudden and unexpected period is put to their lives and pleasures, as you may see Luke xii. 19, 20. Dan. iv. 30.