(1.) He that prepares not for his dying-day, runs the hazard of losing his immortal soid. Though true repentance be never too late, yet late repentance is seldom true, aut pcenitendum aut 'pereundum. The heathen man could say, ' He that is not ready to repent to-day, will be less ready to-morrow ; his understanding will be more dark, his heart more hard, his will more crooked, his affections more dis- tempered, his conscience more benumbed,' &c. Bede tells a story of a certain great man that was admonished in his sickness to repent, who answered, ' That he would not yet, for if he should recover, his com- panions would laugh at him ;' but, growing sicker and sicker, his friends pressed him again to repent, but then he told them it was too late, ' Quia jam judicatus sum et condemnatus ; ' ' For now,' said he, ' I am judged and condemned.' It is the greatest wasdom in the world to do that every day that a man would do on a dying-day, and to be afraid to live in such an estate as a man would be afraid to die in.
' Maximilian the emperor was so delighted with that sentence. Si Deus nobiscum? &c. If God be with us, who shall be against us? that he caused it to be written upon the walls in most rooms of his palace. " As before. — G.
406 A BELIEVEli's LAST DAY [ECCLES. VII. 1.
Ah, souls ! you arc afraid to die in such and such sins ; and will you not be afraid to live in those sins ?
(2.) Ag^ain, The ccrfainff/ of death shotdd bespeak you to prepare for death. When we would atfirui anything to he infallil)ly true, we say, ' As sure as death.' ' It is appointed,' saith the ai)ostle, ' unto men once to die, hut after this the judgment,' Heh. ix. 27. The Greek word that is translated ' It is appointed,' signifieth, it lieth as a man's lot.^ ' Once,' implies two things — [1.] A certainty, it shall once be ; [2.] A singularity, it wall be but once. ' AVliat man lives and shall not see death ?' saith the psalmist, — that is, no man lives and shall not see death. In Job the grave is called ' the house appointed for all the living.' Solomon calls the grave Baiith Gnolam, (ob^)? JlH) — i.e., Domuin secidi, the house of age. The learned translate it ' Long home,' where men must abide for a long time, even till the resurrec- tion. To live without fear of death, is to die living ; to labour not to die, is labour in vain. Death hath for its motto, Nidli cedo, I yield to none. It is decreed that all must die. Every man's death-day is his doom's-day.
The French have a proverb, ' Three things,' say they, ' agree in the world — the priest, the lawyer, and death.' The priest takes the living and the dead, the lawyer right and wrong, and death the weak and strong. But the Jews have a better : ' In Golgotha are to be seen skulls of all sizes;' that is, death comes on the young as well as the old ; the lot is fallen upon all, and therefore all must die. All men are made of one mould and matter,^ ' Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return,' Gen. iii. 19. ' All' have sinned, are fallen short of the glory of God,' Rom. v. 12 ; and therefore death must pass upon all.
(3.) The uncertainty of the time of your death does bespeak you with ojyen mouth to be in a constant readiness and prejjaredness for death. No man knows when he shall die, nor what kind of death he shall die, Avhether a natural or a violent death. Augustus died in a compliment, Tiberius in dissimulation, Galba wnth a sentence, Vespasian with a jest ; Zeuxes died laughing at the picture of an old woman which he drew with his own hand ; Sophocles was choked with the stone in a grape ; Diodorus the logician died for shame that he could not answer a joculary question propounded at the table by Stilpo ; Joannes Masius preaching upon the raising of the woman of Naomi's son from the dead, within three hours after died himself ; Felix, Earl of Wurtemburgh, sitting at supper with many of his friends, some at the table fell into discourse about Luther, and the people's general receiving [of] his doctrine, upon which the Earl swore a great oath, 'that before he died he would ride up to the spurs in the blood of Lutherans ;' but the very same night God stretched out his hand so against him, that he was choked with his own blood.^
Consider, in the last place, That it is a solemn thing to die. Death is a solemn parting of two near friends, soul and body. Remember,
' Heb. ix. 27, airhKenai; Ps. Irxxix. 48; Job xxx. 23 ; Ecoles. xii. o. ' .Adam of Adamah, homo ah lunno.
■' Bibulus, a Roman general, riding in triumph in all bis glory, a tile fell from a house in the street, and beat out his brains.
ECCLES. VII. 1 ] IS HIS BEST DAY. 407
all other preparations are to no purpose, if a man be not prepared .to die. What will it avail a man to prepare this and that for his chil- dren, kindred, or friends, &c. , when he hath made no preparations for his soul, for his eternal well-being ? As death leaves you, so judg- ment shall find you. If death take you before you expect it, and are prepared for it, it will be the more terrible to you ; it will cause your countenance to be changed, your thoughts to be troubled, your loins to be loosed, and your knees to be dashed one against another. '^ Oh the hell of horrors and terrors that attends those souls that have their greatest work to do when they come to die ! therefore, as you love your souls, and as you would be happy in death, and everlastingly blessed after death, prepare and fit for death. 2 Look that you build upon nothing below Christ ; look that you have a real interest in Christ ; look that you die daily to sin, to the world, and to your own righteousness. Look that conscience be always waking, speaking, and tender ; look that Christ be your Lord and Master ; look that all reckonings stand right betwixt the Lord and your souls ; look that you be fruitful, faithful, and watchful, and then your dying-day shall be to you as the day of harvest to the husbandman, as the day of deliverance to the prisoner, as the day of coronation to the king, and as the day of marriage to the bride. Your dying-day shall be a day of triumph and exaltation, a day of freedom and consolation, a day of rest and satisfaction. Then the Lord Jesus shall be as honey in the mouth, ointment in the nostrils, music in the ear, and a jubilee in the heart.