God,' Prov. xxviii. 9 ; he turns away his face from them, he cannot endure
them. And for his ears, ' He will not hear the prayers of the wicked.'
And for feeling, he is wearied with their sins, ' as a cart is with sheaves,'
Amos ii. 13. Nay, he is wearied with their very good actions, as it is Isa.
i. 8, scq. Whatsoever wicked men perform, it is abominable to God ; he
cannot behold them ; he cannot endure them ; he is burdened with their
sins ; and those also that have the Spirit of God in them, as far as they
see the foulness of their sins, they loathe them.
But herein a wicked man agrees with a dead body : a dead body is not loathsome to itself. So take a carnal man, he pranks up him- self; he thinks himself a jolly man ; especially when he is set out in his flowers, — those things that he begs of the creatures, — he sees not his loathsomeness ; he thinks himself a brave man in the w'orld, in the place he lives in ; and he hath base conceits of others, of God, and all things of God. Dead men are not loathsome to themselves, because they want senses. As in a prison, the noisome savour is not ofiensive to them, because they are all acquainted with it ; it hath seized upon and possessed their senses. So wicked men the}^ smell no ill savour and scent, one from another, because they are all dead persons. One dead man is not loathsome to another ; as a company of prisoners they are not ofi'ended with the noisome- ness of one another.
4. Again, ice sever dead persons from the rest. So, indeed, a dead soul, as he is severed from God, so, de jure, he should be severed from the com- pany of others. There should be a separation ; and as soon as the life of grace is begun, there will be a separation between the living and the dead. ' Let the dead follow the dead, and bury the dead,' saith our Saviour in the gospel, Mat. viii. 22.
5. Where bodily death is it deprives of all senses. There is no use of any, either of the eye or tongue, &c. It makes them speechless. So he that is spiritually a dead man, he can speak nothing that is savoury and good of spiritual things. If he doth, he is out of his element. If he speak of good things, he speaks with the spirit of another man. If he speak of the writings of other men, it is with the spirit of the writer. He cannot speak to God in praise, or to others in experience of the work of grace, because he hath a dead soul. Put him to his own arguments, to talk of vanity, to swear, or to talk of the times, you shall have him in his theme ; but to talk of God and divine things, unless it be to swear by them and to scorn good things, he cannot. He is speechless there ; it is not his tbeme. And as he is speechless, so he hath no sjiiritual eyes to see God in his tvorks. There is nothing that we see with our bodily eyes, but our souls should
* Qu. ' savour ' ? — Ed.
THE DEAD MAN. 403
have an eye to see somewhat of God in it ; his mercy and goodness and power, &c. And so he hath no relish to taste of God in his creatures and mercies. "When a man tastes of the creatures, he should have a spiritual taste of God and of the mercy in him. Oh how sweet is God ! A wicked man hath no taste of God. And he cannot hear what the Spirit saith in the word. He hears the voice of man, hut not of the Spirit when the trumpet of the word sounds never so loud in his ears. These things ought not to be over much pressed. Much curiosity must not be used in them, but because the Holy Ghost raiseth the proportion from these things, some- thing must be said of them.
6. As there is no sense nor moving to outward things, so no outward thing can move a dead body. Offer him colours to the eye, food to the taste, or anything to the feeling, nothing moves him. So a dead soul, as it cannot move to good, so it is moved Vt^ith nothing. That that affects a child of God, and makes him tremble and quake, it affects not a carnal man at all.
7. And as in bodily death, the longer it is dead, the more noisome and offensive it is every day more than other, so sin it makes the soul more loathsome and noisome daily, till they have filled up the measure of their sins, till the earth can bear them no longer. We say of a dead body it is heavy; so dead souls, I am sure, they are heavy, heavy to God, and to Christ that died for sin, and heavy in themselves. They sink to earthly things in their affections, and thereby they sink lower and lower to hell, and never leave sinking till they be there. As the life of grace is like the sun when it riseth, it grows still till it come to full perfection, till it come to the life of glory, so, on the contrary, this death is a death that is more and more increased in the loathsomeness and noisomeness of it every way ; so that the longer a carnal man lives, the more guilt he contracts. ' A child of a hun- dred years old,' Isaiah Ixv. 20, as the prophet saith, the longer he lives, the more vengeance is stored for him ; ' he treasures vengeance up against the day;of vengeance,' Rom. ii. 5, and it is a curse for a man in his natural estate to live long, for he grows more and more abominable every way. These things help to understand the Scripture, and therefore so far we may well think of them.