And so the life of good magistrates, it is for the benefit of the church. It were better for them to be in heaven. But as it is said of David, Acts xiii. 36, ' He served God in his own generation.' So every magistrate hath his generation, time, allotted, a generation to stand up in the church and state, and to serve God in, and then God takes him away.
And then om- own life is ours, while we live in order to a better life (for all must be understood in order to happiness), which is the only life. This present life is nothing but a shadow, yet we have a world of advantage in this life, to get assurance of a better. This life, indeed, is but a little spot of time between two eternities, before and after, but it is of great conse-
10 A christian's portion ; or,
qucncG, and it is given us to get a better life in, that glory ma}' be begun in grace, and that wo may have a further and ' further entrance into the kingdom of heaven here,' as Peter saith, 2 Peter i. 11.
Again, life is ours, because the time we live here is a seed time. This life is given us to do a great many of good things in, the crop and harvest of which is reserved for the world to come ; and when we have done the work that God hath given us to do, we are gathered to our fathers.
And life is a special benefit, because by the advantage of life we further our reckonings after death. A good Christian, the longer he lives, the larger good accounts he hath, the more he soweth to the Spirit. It is therefore a blessed thing for a godly man to live long, for a good man to be an old man. All his sins are wiped away ; they shall never be laid to his charge. He may say, he hath lived long, and sinned a long time, yet his sins are forgiven, and all his good deeds shall be upon the file,* and be set on the score, even to ' a cup of cold water,' Mat. x. 42, and he shall be rewarded. There is not a sigh, not a tear but it is registered. The longer a man liveth, if he should live Methuselah his days, the richer he should be in good works ; and the richer he is in good works, the more he shall have his part and share in glory after. The longer he lives, the happier the times are in which he lives ; for a good man makes the times happy, and it is happier for himself. The more rich he is in good works, the more rich he shall be in glory after, the heavier his crown, and his reward shall be in heaven. The richer shall be his harvest, the larger his seed-time hath been.
Use. These things being so, ive shoidd bless God, and be very thankful that he yields to us this lij'e ; for besides an advantage of doing good, it is a pre- parative to a better. This life is, as it were, the seminary f of heaven. Heaven indeed is the true paradise of all the plants of God, but they must have a seminary to be planted in first ; and therefore the church is called the kingdom of heaven, because we are first planted here. Therefore we should bless God for this life, and not wish ourselves dead out of murmur- ing, but in subjection yield ourselves when God will. Oh, this life is a blessed time. It is our seed time. The longer we live the more oppor- tunity we have to do good, to grow in grace, and to do good to others, and to enlarge our own accounts and reckonings to the end. The next thing to speak of is death.
' Or death.'
He doth well to join these two together, for if life be not ours for good, death will never be ours. He that doth not make a good use of life, never hath death to be his comfort ; but instead of an entrance into heaven, it shall be a trap-door to hell. But if life be ours, and we have made a blessed improvement of it, then death also shall be ours. And ' blessed are they that die in the Lord,' Rev. xiv. 13.
It is a strange thing that death should be ours, that is a destroying hostile thing to nature ; the king of fear as the Scripture calls it, Job xviii. 14 ; and that terrible of all terribles, as the philosopher saith, (<?) ' the last enemy,' as Paul saith, 1 Cor. xv. 26. Death is ours many ways. It is a piece of our jointure, for these words contain the jointure of the church. The church is Christ's spouse. ' All things are Christ's,' and therefore all things are the spouse's ; and among other particular gifts given to the church, death is one.
But this death in the gospel is turned to another thing. It is a harmless * Cf. Note h, Vol. I., page 289.— G. f That is, ' seed-plot.'— G.
A CHBISTIAN's CIIARTEK. 11
death. The sting is pulled out. It hath lost all his venom in Christ. That which is malignant and hurtful in death is taken away. What is the poison and sting of death ? It is sin. Now that is forgiven in Christ. But that is not enough for God's bounty, that death should not hurt us. No ; it is ours, it tends to our benefit many wa3's.