Now a man is to
he stripped of all but that which cannot be shaken. Now a man grows
near the borders of eternity. Now he begins to see into the skirts
of the next world. Now death is death, and the grave the grave
indeed. Now he begins to see what it is for soul and body to part,
and what to go and appear before God. Now the dark entry and the
thoughts of what is in the way from a death-bed to the gate of the
holy heaven, come nearer the heart than when health and prosperity
do compass a man about.
Some men are cut off like the tops of the ears of corn, and some are
even nipped by death in the very bud of their spring; but the safety
is when a man is ripe, and shall be gathered to his grave as a shock
of corn to the barn in its season.
DEATH OF THE SINNER.
Death is the axe which God often useth, therewith to take the barren
fig-tree out of the vineyard, out of a profession, and also out of
the world at once. But this axe is now new-ground; it cometh well
edged to the roots of this barren fig-tree. It hath been whetted by
sin, by the law, and by a formal profession, and therefore must and
will make deep gashes, not only in the natural life, but in the
heart and conscience also of this professor. The wages of sin is
death, the sting of death is sin.
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