4. It will be a deeply affecting sight : your eyes will now so af- fect your hearts as they were never affected before. The first view of God will snatch away your hearts to him, as a greater flame doth the less. Love will not now distil from the heart, as waters from a cold still, but gush out as from a sluice or floodgate pulled up. The soul will not move after God so deadly and slowly as it doth now, but be as the chariots of Ammi-nadib, Cant. vi. 12. We may say of the frames of our hearts there, compared with what they are here, as it is said, Deut. xii. 8, 9- " You shall not love, or delight in God, as you do this day."" If the perfection of that state would admit shame or sorrow, how should we blush and mourn in heaven, to think how cold our love, and how low our delights in God were on earth ! 1 John iv. 16. " God is love; and he that dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God.'' Look, as iron put into the fire becomes all fiery, so the soul dwelling in the God of love, be- comes all love, all 'delight, all joy. O what transports must that soul feel, that abides under the line of love ! feels the perpendicular beams of electing, creating, redeeming, preserving love, beating powerfully upon it, and melting it into love ! See some of their transports, Rev. v. 13, 14.
5. It will be an everlasting vision of God, 1 Thess. v. 17. " So <' shall we be ever with the Lord," [ever with the Lord.] Who can find words to open the due sense of these few words ! Vaca- himus et vidibinms, videhimus et amabimus, amaUmus et laudabi- mus in fine sinefine^ saith blessed Austin. This is the everlasting sabbath, which hath no night, Rev. xxii. 4, 5. The eternal hap- piness purchased for the saints by the invaluable blood of Christ. If one hour's enjoyment of God, in the way of faith, be so sweet, and no price can be put upon it, nothing on earth taken in exchange for it ; what must a whole eternity, in the immediate and full visions of that blessed face in heaven be !
Well then, if such sights as these immediately succeed the sight you have on earth, either by sense of things natural, or by reason of things intellectual, or by faith of things spiritual, who that believes
A TREATISE OF THE SOUL OF MAN. 123
the truth, and expects the fulfilling of such promises as these, would not be willing to have his eyes closed by death as soon as God shall please ? I have read of a holy man that had sweet com- munion with God in prayer, who in the close of his duty cried out claudimmi, oculi met, clandimini^ ^-c. Be shttt, O mine eyes^ he shut ; you shall never see any thing on earth like that I have now seen. Ah ! little do the friends of dead believers think what visions of God, what ravishing sights of Christ the souls of their friends have, when they are closing their eyes with tears.
Arg. 8. The consideration of' the evil days that are to come should make the people of God willing to accept c)f an hiding place in the grave y as a special favour from God.
It is accounted an act of favour by God, Isa. Ivii. 1, 2. to be taken away from the evil to come. There are two kinds of evils to come, the evil of sin^ and the evil of sufferings. Sins to come are terrible to gracious hearts, when temptations shall be at their height and strength. Oh what warping and shrinking, what dis- sembling, yea, down-right denying the known truths and ways of God, may you see every where ! Many consciences will then be wounded and wasted : Many scandals and rocks of offence will be rolled into the way of godliness : Christ will be exposed and put to open shame. Should we only be spectators of such tragedies as these, it were enough to overwhelm a gracious and tender heart. But what upright heart is there without fears and jealousies of being brought under the guilt of these evils in itself, as well as the shame and grief for them in others ? Oh ! it were a thousand times better for you to die in the purity and integrity of your consciences, than to protract a miserable hfe without them. Oh ! think what a world it is you are like to leave behind you, in respect of that to come !
And as there are many evils of sin to come, so there are many evils of sufferings coming on : " The days of visitation are coming " on, the days of recompence are come, and Israel shall know it,"* Hos. ix. 7. All the sufferings you have yet met with, have been in books and histories : You never saw the martyrdom of the saints, but in the pictures and stories; but you will find it quite another thing to be the subjects of these cruelties, than to be the mere readers or relaters of them. It is one thing to see the painted lion on a sign- post, and another to meet the living lion roaring upon you. Ah ! little do we imagine how the hearts of men are convulsed, what fears, what faintings invade their spirits, when they are to meet the King of terrors, in the frightful formalities of a violent death.
The consideration of these things will discover to you the rea- son of that strange wish of Job, chap. xiv. 18. " Oh that thou " wouldst liide me m the grave ; that thou wouldst keep me in
124 A theatise of the soul of man.
" secret till thy wrath be past ! And it deserves a serious thought, that when the Holy Ghost had, in Rev. xiv. 9, 10, 11, 12. des- cribed the miserable plight of those poor souls, who being overcome by their own fears and the love of this world, should plunge them- selves first into deep guilt, by compliance with Antichrist, and receiving his mark ; then into hell ujwn earth, the remorse and horror of their own consciences, which gives them no rest, day nor nio-ht ; he immediately subjoins, ver. 13. " Blessed are the dead " that die in the Lord ; yea, from henceforth, saith the Spirit,'' kc. Oh ! it is a special blessing and favour to be hid out of the way of those temptations and torments, in a seasonable and quiet grave.
Ars;. 9. Your fixed aversation and umcUUngjuss to die, will jn-o- voke God to imhitter your lives icith much more afflictions than you have yet felt, or would feel, if your hearts were more mortified and weaned in this point.
You cannot think of your own deaths with pleasure, no, nor yet with patience. Well, take heed, lest this draw down such trouble upon you, as shall make you at last to say with Job, chap. x. 1, " My' soul is weary of my life ;" an expression much like that, 2 Sam. i. 9. " Anguish is come upon me, because my life is whole in me." IMy soul is hardened, or become cruel against my life, as the Chaldee renders it.
There is a twofold weariness of life ; one from an excellency of spii-it, a noble principle, the ardent love of Jesus Christ, Phil. i. 23. " I desire to be dissolved, and to be with Christ." Another from the mere pressures of affliction and anguish of spirit, under heavy and successive strokes from the hand of God and men. Is it not more excellent and desirable to groan for death under a pressure of love to Christ, than of affliction from Christ ?