I beseech you, enlarge these things in your thoughts. They be things we must all have use of beforehand, against the evil day. It should be comfortable and useful to us all, to hear that our enemy, our greatest enemy, death, is swallowed up in victoiy. And yet there is more comfort in the test.
THE FIFTH SERMON.
And all tears shall be icipecl away from all faces. — Isa. XXV. 8.
Not only death shall be swallowed up in victory, but God ' will wipe away all tears from all eyes.' Religion shall be religion ; good things shall be good things. Nothing shall go under false notions. All tears shall be wiped away. We have now many causes of tears. In the world there is continual raising of clouds, that distil into drops of tears. Had we nothing without us to raise a vapour to be distilled in tears, we are able to raise up mists from our own mists, from our own doubts and conflicts within.
As we should weep for our ova\ sins, so for the sins of others. As we may see in Jeremiah, where the prophet saith, * 0 that my head were a fountain of teai's, that I might weep continually for the sins of my people,' Jer. ix. 1. And indeed good men are easy to weep, as the heathen man observeth (<?). They are easy to lament, not only for their own sins, but the sins and misery of another.
Our blessed Saviour himself, we never read that he laughed. We have heard that he wept, and for his very enemies, ' 0 Jerusalem, Jerusalem,' Mat. xxiii. 37. He shed tears for them that shed his blood. Tears were main evidences of Clirist's sweetness of disposition ; as that he would be- come man, and a curse, and die for us, and that he would make so much of little children, and call all to him that were weary and heavy laden, that he never refused any that came to him. He that wept specially for the
480 THE MARKIAGE FEAST [SeRMON V.
miseries and afflictions, this shewed his gracious and sweet disposition. And that in heaven, he is so full of sympathies in glory, that when Paul persecuted the church, ' Why dost thou persecute me ? ' Acts x. 4 ; so, though he is free from passion in heaven, he is not free from compassion, from sympathy with his church. And so every child of God is ready, not only to gi-ieve for his own sins, and the misery that folio weth them, but the sins and miseries of others. ' Mine eyes gush out with rivers of tears,' saith the prophet David, Ps. cxix. 136, when he saw that men brake the law of God, whom he loved.
A true natural child takes to heart the disgrace of his father. If we be not grieved to see our father disgraced, we are bastards, not sons. They that make sport of sin, what are they ? Alas ! they have not one spark of the spirit of adoption. They are not children, who rejoice at that at which they should grieve.
So St Paul, ' I have told you often, and now tell you weeping, there be many enemies of the cross of Christ,' Philip, iii. 18. When he saw some men preach against, and others enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is damnation, he telleth them of it weeping.
We have cause, therefore, to mourn for the sins of others, and for the miseries of others, whether we respect God, or the church-, or ourselves.
First, the love of God moveth us to iceep when ice see him dishonoured.
Second, if ive love the church, we should mourn for any sins that may prejudice their salvation.
Doth it not pity any* man to see an ox go to slaughter ? to see a man of parts otherwise, by sinning against conscience, going to slaughter ? to see an ordinary swearer, an unclean person, a profane wretch, covering himself with pride as a garment, scorning God, and the world, and all ? Can a Christian look upon this, see flesh and blood, like himself, under the gospel, under a cursed condition unavoidable, without serious repentance, and not be affected with it ? Can a man see a poor ass fall under a burden, and not help to take it up, and yet see man falling to hell, and not be atfected with it ? Thus we see we have cause enough of tears. And as there is cause, so we should be sensible. We ought to take to heart the afflictions of Joseph. He is a dead man that hath not sense in this kind. If we go to the body and state, or anything about a man, there is cause of grief. Hath not every member many diseases ? and is not our lives a kind of hospital, some sick of one thing, some of another ? But as there is cause we should be sensible of it, we are flesh and not stones, therefore it is a sottish opinion, to be stockish and brutish, as if to outface sorrow and grief were a glory.
Use 1. When our Saviour was sent into the world, Christi dolor, dolor maximus, there were no patience without sensihleness. Away, then, with that iron, that flinty philosophy, that thinks it a -vdrtue to be stupid ; f and as the apostle saith, ' without natural affections,' Rom. i. 31. He counteth it the greatest judgment of God upon the soul, yet they would have it a virtue. Why should I smite them any more ? saith God ; they have no sense, no feeling, Isa. i. 5.