Well then, reckon you are as well without these things as with them ; yea, and better too, if they were but clogs and snares upon your affections ; you have really lost nothing if the things wherein your eternal happiness consisteth be yet safe. Many of God's dearest children have been denied such comforts as these, and many have been deprived of them, and yet never the farther from Christ and heaven for that.
Consideration 3. Always remember^ that how soon and unexpected soever your ijarting zcith your relations zvas, yet your lease zvas ex- pired, bejhre you lost them, and you e7iJoyed iltem every moment of' the time that God intended them for you.
A TOKEN roil MOtJllNERS. Ci^O
Before this relation, whose loss you lament, was born, the time c,f your enjoyment and separation was unalterably fixed and limited in heaven b}^ the God of the spirits of all flesh : And although it was a secret to you whilst your friend was with you ; yet now it is a plain and evident thing that this was the time of separation before appoint- ed ; and that the life of your friend could by no means be protracted or abbreviated, but must keep your company just so far, and then part with you.
This position wants no full and clear scripture authority for its foundation : How pregnant and full is that text, Job xxiv. 5,6. " See- " ing his days are determined, the number of his months are with " thee : thou hast appointed him his bounds, which he cannot pass."
The time of our life, as well as the place of your habitation was prefixed before we v^'cre born.
It will greatly conduce to your settlement and peace to be well es- tabhshed in this truth ; that the appointed time was fully come when you and your dear relation parted ; for it will prevent and save a great deal of trouble which comes from our after-reflections.
O if this had been done, or that omitted ; had it not been for such miscarriages and oversights, my dear husband, wife, or child, had been alive at Uiis day ! No, the Lord's time was fullv come, and all things concurred, and fell in together to bring about the pleasure of his will ; let that satisfy you : Had the ablest physicians in the world been there, or had they that were there prescribed another course, as it is now, so it would have been when they had done all. Only it must be precautioned, that the decree of God no way excuses any voluntary, or sinful neglects or miscarriages. God over-rules these things to serve his own ends, but no way approves them ; but it greatly relieves, against all our involuntary and unavoidable over- sights and mistakes about the use of means, or the timing of them ; for it could not be otherwise than now it is.
Objection. But many things are alleged against this position, and that with much seeming countenance from such scriptures as these ; Psal. liv. 25. " Blood-thirsty men shall not live out half their days." Eccl. vii. 18. " Why shouldst thou die before thy time." Psal. cii. 24. " O my God, take me not away in the midst of my days." Isa. xxvii. 10- " I am deprived of the residue of my years." And, Prov. X. 27. " The fear of the Lord prolongeth days, but the years of the '' wicked shall be shortened." It is demanded what tolerable sense we can give these scriptures, whilst we assert an unalterable fixation of the term of death.
Solution. The sense of all these scriptures will be cleared up to full satisfaction, by distinguishing death and the terms of it.
First, We must distinguish death into Natural and Violent. The wicked and blood-thirsty man shall not live out half his days ; i. e. half so long as he might live, according to the course of nature,
630 A TOKEN FOR MOLll\£llS.
ov the vigour and soundness of his natural constitution ; for his wick- edness either drowns nature in an excess of riot and luxury, or ex- poses him to the hand of justice, which cuts him off for his wicked- ness before he hath accomplished half his days.
Again, we must distinguish of the term or limit for death, which is either General, or Special.
The general limits are now seventy or eighty j'cars, Psal. xc. 19. " The days of our years are threescore years and ten, and if by reason " of strength they are fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and *' sorrow." To this short limit the life of man is generally reduced since the flood ; and though there are some few exceptions, yet the general rule is not thereby destroyed.
The special limit is that proportion of time, which God, by his own counsel and will hath allotted to every individual person ; and it is only known to us by the event : This we affirm to be a fixed, and immoveable term ; with it all things shall fall in, and observe the will of God in our dissolution at that time. But because the general limit is known, and this special limit is a secret hid in God's own breast ; therefore man reckons by the former account, and may be said, when he dies at thirty, or forty years old, to be cut off in the midst of his days : For it is so, reckoning by the general account, though he be not cut off till the end of his days^ reckoning by the special limit.
Thus he that is wicked, dies before his time ; (i. g.) the time he might attain to in an ordinary way ; but not before the time God hath appointed : And so in all other objected scriptures.
It is not proper at all, in a subject of this nature, to digress into a controversy : Alas ! the poor mourner, overwhelmed with grief, hatii no pleasure in that; it is not proper for him at this time, and therefore I shall, for the present, wave the controversy, and wind up this consideration with an humble, and serious motion to tlie afflicted, that they will wisely consider the matter. The Lord"'s time was come, your relations lived with you every moment that God intended them for you before you had them.
O parents ! mind this, I beseech you ; the time of your child's continuance in the womb, was fixed to a minute by the Lord ; and when the parturient fulness of that time was come, were you not wil- ling it should be delivered thence into the world ? The tender mo- ther would not have it abide one minute longer in the womb, how well soever she loved it ; and is there not the same reason we should be willing, when God's appointed time is come to have it delivered by death out of this state, which, in respect of the life of heaven, is but as the life of a child in the womb, to its life in the open world.
And let none say the death of children is a premature death. God hath ways to ripen them for heaven, whom he intends to gather thither betimes, the which we know not : in respect of fitness, they die in a, full age, though they be cut off in the bud of their time.
A TOtCEN FOR MOURNETl^. GSl