Part 123

§ 22. Do we not combine with our most cruel foes in their most malicious designs, while we are loth to die, and go to heaven? What is the Devil's daily business? Is it not to keep our souls from God? And shall we be content with this? Is it not the one half of hell, which we wish to ourselves, while we desire to be absent from heaven? What sport is this to Satan, that his desires and thine, Christian, should so concur? that when he sees he cannot get thee to hell, he can so long keep thee out of heaven, and make thee the earnest petitioner for it thyself? O gratify not the Devil so much to thy own injury!—Do not our daily fears of death make our lives a continual torment? Those lives which might be full of joy, in the daily contemplations of the life to come, and the sweet delightful thoughts of bliss; how do we fill them up with causeless terrors? Thus we consume our own comforts, and prey upon our truest pleasures. When we might lie down, and rise up, and walk abroad, with our hearts full of the joys of God, we continually fill them with perplexing fears. For he that fears dying, must be always fearing; because he hath always reason to expect it. And how can that man's life be comfortable, who lives in continual fear of losing his comforts? Are not these fears of death self-created sufferings? As if God had not inflicted enough upon us, but we must inflict more upon ourselves. Is not death bitter enough to the flesh of itself, but we must double and treble its bitterness? The sufferings laid upon us by God, do all lead to happy issues; the progress, is from tribulation to _patience_, from thence to _experience_, and so to _hope_, and at last to _glory_. But the sufferings we make for ourselves are circular and endless, from sin to suffering, from suffering to sin, and so to suffering again; and not only so, but they multiply in their course; every sin is greater than the former, and so every suffering also: so that, except we think God hath made us to be our own tormentors, we have small reason to nourish our fears of death. And are they not useless, unprofitable fears? As all our care _cannot make one hair white or black_, nor _add one cubit to our stature_; so neither can our fear prevent our sufferings, nor delay our death one hour; willing, or unwilling, we must away. Many a man's fears have hastened his end, but no man's did ever avert it. 'Tis true, a cautious fear, concerning the danger after death, hath profited many, and is very useful to the preventing of that danger; but for a member of Christ, and an heir of heaven, to be afraid of entering his own inheritance, is a sinful, useless fear. And do not our fears of dying ensnare our souls, and add strength to many temptations? What made Peter deny his Lord? What makes apostates in suffering times forsake the truth? Why doth the green blade of unrooted faith wither before the heat of persecution? fear of imprisonment and poverty may do much, but fear of death will do much more. So much fear as we have of death, so much cowardice we usually have in the cause of God: Beside the multitude of unbelieving contrivances, and discontents, at the wise disposals of God, and hard thoughts of most of his providences, which this sin doth make us guilty of.