There are two things yet remaining necessary to the same end, — at least I find them so ; which, if God will, I shall despatch at this time.
II. There is required, unto this great end, a readiness and willing- ness to part with this body which we carry about us, and to lay it clown in the dust. The soul's natural aversation to let go this body, is that which we call an unwillingness to die ; that hath made some say, like him of old, " Mori nolo," etc., — " I can be content to be dead, but I would not die/'
There are two reasons why the soul hath a natural unwillingness to part with the body : —
1. Because it is, and hath been ever since it had a being, the only instrument of all the operations and actings of its faculties and powers. 1 This sermon was first preached October 10, 1GS0.
THE CHRISTIAN'S WORK OF DYING DAILY. 347
The whole privilege of a being consists in its powers and acts. Now, from the first moment of its beins;, the soul hath had no instrument to act by but the body; and that not only in the outward actions that the body performs, but in all its internal, rational actings, it cannot act without the instrumentality of the body. Therefore we know a hurt in the body, as oftentimes in the head, hath utterly de- prived the soul of the exercise of all its powers and faculties during life. It cannot act rational, internal actings but by the body, and how it can act without the body it knows not. " This hath ingrafted a natural unwillingness in the sonl to let go the body, whereby, from the first instant of its being, it hath constantly acted. This is but one reason of it; there is yet a greater.
2. The other reason is, that strict, near, unparalleled union and relation between the soul and the body. There is a near union be- tween parents and children, a nearer between husband and wife; but they are nothing to this union between the soul and body. There is an ineffable, inconceivable union between the two natures, the divine and the human, in the person of the Son of God ; but this union was eternally indissoluble from the first moment of it : when the body and soul of Christ were separated, yet they continued in their union with the person of the Son of God as much as before, or as now in heaven. But here is a union that is dissoluble between a heavenly spirit and an earthly, sensual body; that is, two essential parts of the same nature. Pray give me leave to speak a little to it. I have considered what it is to die, and examined whence ariseth the difficulty. Now, I say it ariseth from this peculiar constitution of our nature; there being no such thing in all the works of God, in heaven above, or in the earth beneath. The angels are pure, immaterial spirits; they have nothing in them that can die. God can annihilate an angel, — he that made all things out of nothing, can bring all things into nothing; but an angel cannot die, from the principles of his own con- stitution ; — there is nothing in him that can die. A brute creature hath nothing in it that can live when death comes. " The spirit of a beast" Solomon speaks of as that which " goeth downward." It is not the object of almighty power to preserve it, because it is nothing but the act of the body in its temperature and constitution. But now man is " medium participationis;" — he hath an angelical nature from above that cannot die, and a nature from beneath that cannot always live, since the entrance of sin, though it might have done so before. And therefore, in the product of man there was a double act of creation, and but a single act in any other creature's. The creation of angels is not mentioned, unless in that, " Let there be light, and there was light ; " but in all other things there was but one single act for its production. But when God came to make man,
848 the christian's work of dying daily.
there were two distinct acts of creation. " God made man of the dust of the earth." And what then ? " And breathed into him the spirit of life." Here is something that is not in all God's creation beside. And now, upon this dissolution, all the actings of this nature, as it was one person, must cease unto the day of the resurrection. A wonderful change it is, that there shall be no more acting of the entire nature of man until the resurrection; only one part of this nature continues to act itself, according to its own powers. And one end of God's work upon us in the grave is, to free our bodies from all alliance, and relation, and likeness unto the bodies of beasts. So our Saviour tells us, Luke xx. " Do not mistake," saitli he, " { you shall neither marry nor give in marriage,' nor have any one action com- mon to brutes ; but the whole man shall be ladyyiXoi, — ' like unto the angels.' " This is the great privilege of our nature, as the wise man declares, Eccles. iii. 19, where he answers the objection of an epi- cure : " That which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts ; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no pre-eminence above a beast: all go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again." " As far as I can see it is so," saith the man. But what saitli the wise man ? " Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth up- ward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth? " "Alas ! you are mistaken: the difference doth not lie in this outward nature, wherein man and beast have a near alliance one to another; but in the spiritual, heavenly nature, that is from above; — and unless you know that, you will think all are as beasts indeed." This, then, is the foundation of the unalterable aversation in the mind and soul to part with the body, — this strange constitution of our nature, which has nothing like it in the whole work of God, nothing to give us any representation of it, but it is peculiar unto us. And then this dis- solution is but once to be made. They observe of the old heroes, who would freely venture their lives, and cast them away in any great attempt, that when they came to die, when they had killed themselves, or were killed by others, their souls went away with groaning and indignation : they knew not how to bear the dissolu- tion of the union.