VOL. I. Y
838 CHRIST IS BEST.
determined whether Paul should live or die, but he would not without Paul's choice. That which is good, is not good to us, but upon choice and advice. When God hath given us abilities to discourse and examine things, he will have us make use of them, and therefore the apostle useth reasons on both sides, it is better to die for me, it is better to live for you, &c.
Wicked men have their deliberations, and their straits too ; but it is with the rich man in the gospel, what they shall do, how they may pull down their barns, and build bigger, &c., Luke xii. 18. Their main strait is at the hour of death ; live they cannot, die they dare not. There is so much guilt of sin upon their consciences, they know not which way to turn them- selves. Oh, what fearful straits will sin bring men into ! But the apostle was straitened in an higher nature than this, whether it were better for the glory of God (which he aimed at above all) for him to go to heaven and enjoy happiness in his o\vn person, or to abide still, for the comfort of God's saints, on earth.
The ground of this difficulty and strait was his present desire.
I have a desire. Desires are the immediate issue of the soul, the motion and stu'ring of the same to something that likes it. When there is any- thing set before the soul having a magnetical force, as the loadstone, to draw out the motions thereof, we call that desire, though for the present it enjoys it not.
1. St Paul's desire was, spiritual; not after happiness, so much as holi- ness. ' 0 miserable man that I am,' saith he, ' who shall deliver me from this body of death?' Rom. vii. 24. His desire of death was to be freed from the hochj of sin, more than to be taken out of the flesh ; and his desire of holiness, to have Christ's image stamped on his soul, was more than of eternal happiness. Nature cannot do this. It is a work above the flesh, for that will not hear of departing, but rather bids God and Christ depart from it.
2. This desire came from a taste of sweetness in communion tvith Christ; and those desires that most ravish the soul in apprehension of heavenly things are ever the most holy. St Paul knew what a sweet communion Christ was.
3. It was a constant desire. He doth not say I desu'e, but I have a de- sire, I carry the same about me, and that carries me to a love of Christ and his members.
4. It was efficacious, not a naked velleity, not a wish of the sluggard, I •would, and I would, but a strong desire, carrying him even through death itself to Christ. Desires thus qualified are blessed desires. As where we see vapours arise, there are springs usually below them, so where these desires are, there is always a spring of gi'ace ui that soul. Nothing characteriseth a Christian so much as holy and blessed desires, for there is no hj-pocrisy in them.
I desire to dcjmrt. There must be a parting and a departing ; there must be a parting in this world with all outward excellencies, from the sweet en- joyment of the creatures ; there must be a parting between soul and body, between friend and friend, and whatever is near and dear unto us. AH shall determine in death.
And there must be a departing also. Here we cannot stay long ; away we must ; we are for another place. Oh that we could make use of these common truths ! How far are we from making a right use of the mysteries of salvation, when we cannot make use of common truths which we have daily experience of I Holy Moses, considering the suddenness of his de-
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parture hence, begged of God to teach him to number his days, that he might apply his heart unto wisdom, Ps. xc. 12.
Death is but a departing («), which word is taken from loosing fi'om the shore, or removing of a ship to another coast. We must all be unloosened from our houses of clay, and be carried to another place, to heaven. Paul labours to sweeten so harsh a thing as death, by comfortable expressions of it. It is but a sleep, a going home, a laying aside our earthly tabernacle, to teach us this point of heavenly wisdom, that we should look on death as it is now in the gospel, not as it was in the law and by natm'e ; for so it is a passage to hell, and lets us in to all miseries whatsoever.
Some things are desirable for themselves, as happiness and holiness; some things are desirable not for themselves, but as they make way to better things, being sour, and bitter to nature themselves ; as physic is desired not for itself, but for health. We desire health for itself, and physic for health, so to be u-illi Christ is a thing desnable of itself; but because we cannot come to Christ but by the dark passage of death, saith Paul, I desire to de- part, that so my death may be a passage to Christ ; so that death was the object of St Paul's desire so far as it made way for better things.