Our souls are dull, and our bodies are dull in this world, but as iron, if it be touched with a loadstone, up it will ; so if we get faith and hope to look forward, what shall be done to us for the time to come ! The Spirit of faith and hope, if it touch the soul, will carry our dull bodies and our dead souls upward.
Therefore let us cherish our faith and hope by often meditation of the blessed estate to come, and think of these two things, of the excellent estate of our bodies and souls then. For if our bodies shall then be glo- rious like the body of Christ, our souls much more ; the inhabitant, which is the special part, the soul shall be much more glorious. L3t us think oft
THE REDEMPTION OF BODIES. 173
of this glory as it is described in the word. It transcends our thoughts. We cannot think high enough of it, and our interest and assurance of it. And daily search ourselves, whether our hope be good or no, that we have found evidence that our title is good to glory. Let us examine ourselves by those signs I named before. Where are our desires ? What work hath the Spirit of God in us ? How do wo use these bodies of ours ? As wo use them now, we must look they shall be used hereafter. Let our tongues bo our glory now, and they shall be glorious tongues afterward to praise God in heaven. Their bodies that have been glorious here shall be glorious in heaven. We may read our estate to come by what we are here. Those that carry themselves basely, and filthily, and dishonourably here, we may know what will become of them hereafter. Let us oft think of the estate to come, and of our interest in it ; and both these together, the excellency of the estate, and our interest in it, without deceiving of our souls, what life will it put into all our carriage ! W^hat will be grievous to us in this world when our souls are thus settled ? Oh, let us spend a few days fruitfully and painfully here amongst men, and do all the good we can ; and use these bodies of ours to all the happy and blessed services we can ! Why ? We shall have glory more than we can imagine.
Let it comfort us in the hour of death, what death soever we die, or are designed to. Now you know the sickness is abroad ; and alas ! those bodies especially are vile bodies that are under the visitation : so that their dearest friends dare not come near them. Yet let this comfort us. They are vile bodies for a time. Put case we die the death that may hinder the comforts of this life. Those that die in much honour and pomp, and have their bodies embalmed, do all what they can with the body, it will come to dust and rottenness. It will be vile in death, or after death, at one time or other ; and those that die never so vile and violent a death for God's sake, those that die of this base death, that they are deprived of much comfort, yet let it comfort them, Christ will transform their vile bodies to be glorious.
They talk much of the philosopher's stone, that it will change metals into gold. Here is the true stone that will change our vile bodies to be glorious. Let us die never so base or violent a death. Let us comfort ourselves in our own death, if it be thus with us, and in the death of our friends ; these vile bodies, when they are most vile in death, they shall be made like the glorious body of Christ. Let us oft think of these things.
NOTE.
{a) P. 167. ' The Emperor Constantino would kiss the very holes of the eyes of those that had their eyes pulled out, tlmt had been martyred.' Cf. Memoir of Con- Btantine, witli vahiahle references, in Dr Smith's Dictionary of Biography and Mythology, sub voce. ^«
THE ART OF CONTENTMENT.
THE ART OF CONTENTaiENT.
NOTE.
"The Art of Contentment ' forms tlio last of the sermons of the ' Saint's Cordials, published in 1G37 and 1G58. It had previously been No. 1 of the first edition, 1629. Tho text of 1C37 is followed in our reprint. In Vol. IV. pp. 75-111 will be found a specimen of tho 'various readings' of tlie editions of 16.37 and 1658 on a com- parison with that of 1G29. These may suffice. The result of a minute collation shews that the edition of 1637 presents a careful revision and enlargement of the anonymous, and, I suspect, surreptitioti s c(\ii\on of 1629. Instead therefore of encum- bering our margins, and distracting the reader with these corrections and improve- ments of the first edition, it has been deemed better to make the edition of 1637 our text in the remainder, leaving it to those curious in such matters to compare the other two therewith, in the vyay 'Judgment's Eeason ' in Vol. IV. is exhibited. The edition of 1637, let it be understood, represents Sibbes's oivn version of his sermons, either from fuller ' Notes,' or from a revision of that of 1629.