The point lies very plain before us in the scriptures. That is a remarkable expression we have in Job xvi. 22. " When a few years *' are come, I shall go the way whence I shall not return."" In the Hebrew it is, * " When the years of number, or my numbered " years are come ; years so numbered, that they are circumscribed '' m a very short period of time."" When those few years are past, then I must go to my long home, my everlasting abode, never more to return to this world : " The way whence I shall not re- '' turn;" elsewhere called " the way of all flesh,'"* Josh, xxiii. 15. and " the way of all the earth," 1 Kings ii. 2.
" There is no man that hath power over the spirit to retain the " spirit ; neither hath he power in the day of death, and there is " no discharge in that war," Eccl. viii. 8. By spirit understand the natural spirit, or breath of life, which, as I shewed before, connects or ties the soul and body together. This spirit no man can retain in the day of death. We can (as one speaks) as xcell stop the chariot of the sun xvhen posting to night, and chase away the shadows of the evening, as escape this hour qfdarlcness that is coming upon us\. A man may escape the wars by pleading privilege of years, or weakness of body, or the king's protection, or by sending another in his room ; but in this war the press is so strict, that it admits no dispensation ; young or old, weak or strong, willing or unwilling, all is one, into the field we must go, and look that last and most dreadful enemy in the face. It is in vain to think of sending
• Anrd nunieri, (i. e.) qui numerati sunt adeo ut brevissima periodo circumscripti, f No diligence avoids, no happiness tames, and no power overcomes death, says Seneca.
(5 A TJREATISE OF THE SOUL OF MA\^
another in our room, for no man dieth by proxy ? or to think of compounding with death, as those self-deluded fools did, Isa. xxviii. 15. who thought they had been discharged of the debt by seeino- the serjeant : No, there is no discharge in that war. Nihil prodest ora coiichidere, et vitamfagienUm reti7iere, saith Hierom on that text; Let us shut our mouths never so close, struggle ao-ainst death never so hard, there is no more retaining the spirit, than a woman can retain the fruit of her w^omb, when the full time of her deliverance is come. Suppose a man were sitting upon a throne of majesty surrounded with armed guards, or in the midst of a college of expert and learned physicians, death will pass all these guards to deliver thee the fatal message : Neither can arts help thee, when nature itself gives thee up.
The lav/ of mortality binds all, good and bad, young and old, the most useful and desirable saints, whom the world can worst spare, as well as useless and undesirable sinners, Rom. viii. 10. " And if Christ (or though Christ) be in you, the body is dead " because of sin."" Peter himself must put off his tabernacle, for they are but tabernacles, frail and moveable frames, not built for continuance ; these will drop off from our souls, as the shells fall off from the bird in the nest ; be our earthly tabernacles never so strong or pleasant, we must depose them, and that shortly ; our lease in them will quickly expire, we have but a short term. James iv. 14. like a thin mist in the morning, which the sun pre- sently dissipates ; this is a metaphor chosen from the air : You have one from the land, where the swift post runs. Job ix. 25. So doth our life from stage to stage, till its journey be finished ; and a third from the v/aters, there sail the swift ships. Job ix. 26. which weighing anchor, and putting into the sea, continually lessen the land, till at last they have quite lost sight of it : from the fire, Psal. Iviii. 4. The lives of men are as soon extinct as a blaze made with dry thorns, which is almost as soon out as in. Thus you see how the Spirit of God hath borrowed metaphors from all the ele- ments of nature, to shadow forth the brevity and frailty of that life we now live in these tabernacles ; so that we may say as one did before us, Nesc'io an dicenda sit vita mortalis, an vitalis mors ; I know not which to call it, a mortal life, or a living death.
The continuance of these our tabernacles or bodies is short, whether we consider them ahsoliitehj, or comparatively.
1. Absolutely. If they should stand seventy or eighty years, which is the longest duration, Psal. xc. 10. how soon will that time run out ? What are years that are past but as a dream that is vanished, or as the waters that are past away ? it i^ in Jluxu con- tinuo : there is no stopping its swift course, or calling back a mo- ment that is past. Death set out in its journey towards us the
A TREATISE OF THE SOTTL OF MAN. 7
same hour we were born, and how near is it come this day to many of us ? It hath us in chase, and will quickly fetch us up, and over- take us ; but few stand so long as the utmost date.
2. Comparatively > Let us compare our time in these taberna- cles, (1.) either with eternity, or with him who inhabits it, and it shrinks up into nothing; Psal. xxxix. 5. " Mine age is nothing *' unto thee." So vast is the disproportion, that it seems not only little, but nothing at all. Or (2.) with the duration of the bodies of men in the first ages of the world, when they lived many hundred years in these fleshly tabernacles. The length of their lives was the benefit of the world, because religion was then acra7^o'raga5oroi/, a thing handed down from father to son ; but certainly it would be no benefit to us that are in Christ, to be so long suspended the fruition of God in the everlasting rest.
The grounds and reasons of this necessity that lies upon all, to put off their earthly tabernacle so soon, are
1. The law of God, or his appointment.
2. The providence of God ordering it suitably to this appoint- ment.
1. The law or appointment of God which came in force imme- diately upon the fall; Gen. ii. 17. " In the day that thou eatest " thereof, thou shalt surely die." And accordingly it took place vipon all mankind immediately upon the first transgression, Rom. V. 12. Death entered by sin. The threatening was not his imme- diate, actual, personal death in the day that he should eat, but a state of mortality to commence from that time to him and his pos- terity ; hence it is said, Heb. ix. 27. " It is appointed to all men " once to die."
2. The providence of God ordering and framing the body of man suitably to this his appointment ; * a frail, weak creature, having the seeds of death in his constitution : Thousands of dis- eases and infirmities are bred in his nature, and the smallest pore in his body is a door large enough to let in death. Hence his body is compared to a piece of cloth which moths have fretted, Psal. xxxix. 11. it is become a sorry rotten thing which cannot long hang together. And indeed it is a wonder it continues so long as it doth.