Use 2. Is comfort to believers in the hour of death : John xi. 25, ' He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet he shall live.' When you go down to the grave, you may go down with this assur- ance, that you shall live ; though you look upon your flesh as morsels for the worms, yet you maj' look upon it also as parcels of the resur- rection. God is in covenant with a believer's dust ; the body, that seems most to sufier, shall be raised up again.
Ohs. 2. That life everlasting cannot be obtained but by some change, by flitting and removing out of this present life. Enoch died not, yet, however, he was changed ; God took him : 1 Cor. xv. .50, .51, ' We sliall not all (lie, but we shall all be changed. Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God ; ' that is, as now invested with these qualities.
Use. This may comfort believers against the terrors of death. The only use of death is to put off the old earthly qualities, that we may put on the new and heavenly ; death doth only pluck off the rotten garment. Christ will call the grave to an account : Rev. xx. 13, ' The grave gave up her dead ;' as Joseph left his coat in his mistress's hand and fled away, so we leave the upper garment of the flesh in death's hands, but we fly away ; and Christ, at last, will say. Grave ! where is my Abraham, my Isaac, and my Jacob's dust?
Ohs. 3. That the body is a partaker with the soul in life eternal ; Enoch was tran.slated both body and soul. It is a comfort we can say with Job, ' With these eyes we shall see God,' Job xix. 26, though our body be eaten up with worms. Tliis body, as if he did knock upon his breast, " This corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality,' 1 Cor. xv. 53 ; so Phil. iii. 21, ' Who shall change our vile body,' &c. Look, as the world, when consumed with fire, it is the same world for substance, it shall be only a purging fire ; so this corruptible body is the same body for substance, though God doth away the corruptible properties of it.
Use. This is a great comfort against the difficulties and inconveni- ences of the holy life. The same eyes that have been lifted up to God in prayer, those eyes shall see Ciirist upon his white throne, and those spirits that ai-e now spent and wasted in holy exercises shall be
VeR. 5.] SERMONS UPON HEBREWS XI. 39
recruited. A body wasted in sin is a sad prognostic of the devouring; burning-, but a body wasted in duty shall be restored and repaired a^SLin ; so it is comfort against the inconveniences of the common life. Many indeed have a vile body, because subject to diseases, humbled with pains and aches, racked with the stone and the gout ; this vile diseased body shall be a glorious body. Christ's body was first vile, then glorious ; first scourged, mangled with whips, then crowned with honour and glory ; and he sat down with God. Oh ! let us bear all these ; they will be full of nimbleness, vigour, beauty, and glory, like Christ's glorious body.
Obs. 4. Heaven is but a translation to a better place. When you die, you are but translated. Enoch walked with God here ; but when he was translated, he lived with God in an iminterrui^ted glory. Many times Christ comes into his garden to gather lilies ; and they are cropped here, that they may be transplanted from the winter to the summer gardens, from the church and lower dispensation of the ordinances to paradise, that we may read divinity in the face of the Lamb for ever- more, as scholars that are sent from the grammar-school to the uni- versity.
Use. Let it not be irksome to us to be loosed from the body that we may be present w^ith the Lord and joined to Jesus Christ ; it is but a removal and preferment, therefore it teacheth christians to grow weary of the world. The world is the place of your pilgrimage, the place of sorrow and sin : certainly we have little reason to love the world. (1.) It is Satan's circuit; when God calls Satan to an account, Job i. 7, ' Whence comest thou ? ' Satan answered, ' From walking to and fro in the earth.' (2.) It is sin's house of office, a place of defile- ment : Isa. xxiv. 5, ' The earth is defiled under the inhabitants there- of.' (3.) It is a common inn for all sorts of men, for bastards as well as sons: Ps. cxv. 16, ' The heaven, even the heavens, are the Lord's: but the earth hath he given to the children of men.' Wicked men have a creature-right, it is given to them, they have a right by provi- dence ; nay, here we are not only fellow-commoners with wicked men, but fellow-commoners with beasts ; they have a creature-riglit t<.)0, as well as we. (4.) It is the shambles of the saints : Eev. xviii. 24, ' In her was found the blood of prophets and of saints, and of all that were slain upon earth ; ' there they are grieved, vexed, and slain. Now, who would grieve to be transplanted to a higher and happier region, where nothing that defiles grows, nothing troubleth in those holy, blessed, and quiet mansions ? Death is a preferment.