(4.) There would be no recompense for their greatest losses. Christ requireth us not only to venture, but lose our lives for his sake : Luke xiv. 26, ' If anv man come to me, and hate not his father and mother,
SERMONS UPON 1 CORINTHIANS XV. 19, 133
and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple/ Now if our hopes in Christ be at an end with this life, what encouragement have we to lose our lives for Christ's sake ? Nature will teach us to submit to a lesser evil to obtain a greater good than that evil depriveth us of ; but what will teach us to lose the greatest benefit we are possessed of when nothing cometh of it ? Grace indeed teacheth us to quit this frail life for the hopes which Christ hath given us of an immortal blessed estate ; but if that be not, christians are of all men most miserable, who had better have kept that life which they had till a natural death called them from it, than to have lost it for nothing.
Secondly, Having vindicated the apostle's meaning, I shall prove that it is inconsistent with the righteousness of God's government that his people should be always of all men most miserable. For a time they may be so, but not for ever. Certainly God is righteous'; to deny him to be just is to deny him to be God and the governor of the world. The perfection of his nature includeth his justice ; so doth also theeminency of his office : 'Is God unrighteous, who taketh vengeance? God forbid ; for then how shall God judge the world ? ' Rom. iii. 5, 6 ; that is, he were then incapable of governing mankind. But when is this righteousness manifested? Not always in this world, especially to those who perish in their afiflictions and persecutions, which they endure for his name's sake. No ; ' He hath appointed a day wherein he will judge the world in righteousness,' Acts xvii. 31, and that is at the general resurrection. God now judgeth the world in patience, winketh or conniveth at many faults, endureth the wicked with much long-suffering, but then he will judge the world in righteousness.' None are punished now besides or beyond their deservings ; but all are not punished according to their deservings, nor are the wrongs of his people righted, nor their labour of love recompensed. Therefore we must expect another day and time when that shall be done ; and that is most fully and universally done in the great and general day of judgment, when the dead shall be raised out of their graves, they that have done good to the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil to the resurrection of damnation. And so it serves the apostle's scope to prove a resurrection.
si:rmon II.
If in this life only ice have hope in Christ, ice are of all men most miserable. — 1 Cor. xv. 19.
II. 1 5IUST sliow the validity of the apostle's argument, that there must be a life to come, because otherwise christians would be of all men most miserable. The apostle urgeth it here as a strong proof of the resur- rection, and elsewhere he urgeth it as a demonstration of the general judgment; as when he, speaking of the persecutions of the righteous,
134 SERMONS UrON 1 CORINTHIANS XV. 19.
telleth us, 2 Tlies. i. 5, ' Which is a manifest token of the rigliteous judgment of God,' evSetyfxa, a })lain and certain demonstration. Surely the argument is cogent and. concUisive.
But where lieth the force of it ?
1. I shall argue from the nature of God ; and there —
[1.] I shall begin with his wisdom, which doeth things according to number, weight, and measure, and doth rightly dispose things in their proper places. This wisdom of his will not permit the disjunction of these two things so closely united together as sin and punishment, holiness and happiness. This cannot bo but there will be an appear- ance of deformity and irregularity. If there be such a thing as good and evil, homim et malum morale, as reason will tell us there is ; again, if there be such a thing as pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow, or honum et malum naturale, as sense will tell us there is; then it is very agreeable to the wisdom of God that these things should be rightly placed and sorted. That moral evil, which is sin, sliould be punished with natural evil, which is pain and misery ; and that moral good, which is holiness, should end in joy and happiness; these seem to be such natural relatives, that without great incongruity they cannot be parted. It seemeth uncomely and an uncouth thing to us when it is otherwise : Prov. xxvi. 1, ' As snow in summer, and as rain in harvest, so honour is not seemly for a fool ; ' that is, as snow and rain in harvest and summer come unseasonable and unwelcome, and breed a kind of displeasure in our minds, so we look upon it as a blemish or an un- couth thing when the wicked are exalted. We have compassion on a miserable man, whom we esteem not deserving his misery, but are moved with indignation against one that is happy and successful, but unworthy the happiness he enjoyeth. This is the general sense of mankind, which is a proof and plain document that we perceive an ex- cellent harmony, and natural order between these two things, sin and misery, holiness and happiness ; and this sentiment is some stricture and shadow of the perfection of God's wisdom ; and therefore, though for a time, while both good and bad are upon their trial, the good are not regarded, nor the bad punished, yet the wisdom of God will not permit it to be always so, that the godly should be in an afflicted and distressed condition, and the wicked prosperous.