the Lord; wholly, entirely from the Lord: it is the Lord that hath enabled me to conceive, the Lord hath infused a quickening soul into that conception, the Lord hath brought into the world that which himself had quickened; without all this might Eve say, my body had been but the house of death, and Domini Domini sunt exitus mortis, To God the Lord belong the issues of death.

But then this exitus à morte, is but introitus in mortem; this issue, this deliverance from that death, the death of the womb, is an entrance, a delivering over to another death, the manifold deaths of this world. We have a winding-sheet in our mother's womb, that grows with us from our conception, and we come into the world wound up in that winding-sheet; for we come to seek a grave. And, as prisoners, discharged of actions, may lie for fees, so when the womb hath discharged us, yet we are bound to it by cords of flesh, by such a string, as that we cannot go thence, nor stay there. We celebrate our own funeral with cries, even at our birth, as though our threescore and ten years of life were spent in our mother's labour, and our circle made up in the first point thereof. We beg one baptism with another, a sacrament of tears; and we come into a world that lasts many ages, but we last not. In domo Patris, (says our blessed Saviour, speaking of heaven) multæ mansiones', There are many, and mansions, divers and durable; so that if a man cannot possess a martyr's house, (he hath shed no blood for Christ) yet he may have a confessor's; he hath been ready to glorify God, in the shedding of his blood. And if a woman cannot possess a virgin's house, (she hath embraced the holy state of marriage) yet she may have a matron's house; she hath brought forth, and brought up children in the fear of God. In domo Patris, In my Father's house, in heaven, there are many mansions, but here upon earth, The Son of man hath not where to lay his head, says he himself. No? terram dedit filiis hominum. How then hath God given this earth to the sons of men? He hath given them earth for their materials, to be made of earth; and he hath given them earth for their grave and sepulture, to return and resolve to earth; but not for their possession. Here we have no continuing city"; nay, no

15 John xiv. 2.

16 Matt. viii. 20.

17 Heb. xiii. 14.

cottage that continues; nay, no we, no persons, no bodies that continue. Whatsoever moved St. Hierome to call the journeys of the Israelites in the wilderness, mansions, the word1", (the word is nasang") signifies but a journey, but a peregrination: even the Israel of God hath no mansions, but journeys, pilgrimages in this life. By that measure did Jacob measure his life to Pharaoh, The days of the years of my pilgrimage". And though the apostle would not say, Morimur, That whilst we are in the body, we are dead, yet he says, Peregrinamur, Whilst we are in the body, we are but in a pilgrimage, and we are absent from the Lord". He might have said dead; for this whole world is but an universal churchyard, but one common grave; and the life and motion, that the greatest persons have in it, is but as the shaking of buried bodies in their graves by an earthquake. That which we call life, is but hebdomada mortium, a week of deaths, seven days, seven periods of our life spent in dying; a dying seven times over, and there is an end. Our birth dies in infancy, and our infancy dies in youth, and youth, and the rest die in age; and age also dies, and determines all. Nor do all these, youth out of infancy, or age out of youth, arise so, as a phoenix out of the ashes of another phoenix formerly dead, but as a wasp, or a serpent out of carrion, or as a snake out of dung; our youth is worse than our infancy, and our age worse than our youth; our youth is hungry and thirsty after those sins which our infancy knew not, and our age is sorry and angry that it cannot pursue those sins which our youth did. And besides, all the way so many deaths, that is, so many deadly calamities accompany every condition, and every period of this life, as that death itself would be an ease to them that suffer them. Upon this sense does Job wish that God had not given him an issue from the first death, from the womb; Wherefore hast thou brought me forth out of the womb? O that I had given up the ghost, and no eye had seen me; I should have been, as though I had not been 22.

18 Exod. xvii. 1.

19

yo, vulsit, evellit-castra movit, (ab evellendis tentorii paxillis); hence yo, iter.—ED.

20 Gen. xLvii. 9.

21 2 Cor. v. 6.

22 Job x. 18, 19.

And not only the impatient Israelites in their murmuring, (Would to God we had died by the hand of the Lord, in the land of Egypt 23,) but Elijah himself, when he fled from Jezebel, and went for his life, as that text says, under the juniper-tree, requested that he might die, and said, It is enough, now O Lord take away my life. So Jonah justifies his impatience, nay his anger towards God himself; Now O Lord take I beseech thee my life from me, for it is better for me to die, than to live 25. And when God asked him, Dost thou well to be angry for this? and after, (about the gourd) Dost thou well to be angry for that? he replies, I do well to be angry even unto death.

How much worse

a death, than death, is this life, which so good men would so often change for death. But if my case be St. Paul's case, Quotidie morior 26, That I die daily, that something heavier than death fall upon me every day; if my case be David's case, Tota die mortificamur27, All the day long we are killed, that not only every day, but every hour of the day, something heavier than death falls upon me: though that be true of me, Conceptus in peccatis, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me 2, (there I died one death) though that be true of me, Natus filius iræ, I was born, not only the child of sin, but the child of the wrath of God for sin, which is a heavier death, yet Domini Domini sunt exitus mortis, With God the Lord are the issues of death; and after a Job, and a Joseph, and a Jeremy, and a Daniel, I cannot doubt of a deliverance; and if no other deliverance conduce more to his glory, and my good, yet, He hath the keys of death", and he can let me out at that door, that is, deliver me from the manifold deaths of this world, the omni die, and the tota die, the every day's death, and every hour's death, by that one death, the final dissolution of body and soul, the end of all.

But then, is that the end of all? Is that dissolution of body and soul, the last death that the body shall suffer? (for of spiritual deaths we speak not now ;) it is not. Though this be exitus à morte, it is introitus in mortem; though it be an issue from the manifold deaths of this world, yet it is an entrance into the death

23 Exod. xvi. 3. 24 1 Kings xix. 4.

27 Psalm XLiv. 22.

25 Jonal iv. 3. 28 Psalm Li. 5.

26 61 Cor. xv. 3. 29 Rev. i. 18.

of corruption, and putrefaction, and vermiculation, and incineration, and dispersion, in, and from the grave, in which every dead. man dies over again. It was a prerogative peculiar to Christ, not to die this death, not to see corruption. What gave him this privilege? Not Joseph's great proportions of gums and spices, that might have preserved his body from corruption and incineration, longer than he needed it, longer than three days; but yet would not have done it for ever. What preserved him then? Did his exemption, and freedom from original sin, preserve him from this corruption and incineration? It is true, that original sin hath induced this corruption and incineration upon us. If we had not sinned in Adam, mortality had not put on immortality, (as the apostle speaks) nor corruption had not put on incorruption, but we had had our transmigration from this to the other world, without any mortality, any corruption at all. But yet since Christ took sin upon him, so far as made him mortal, he had it so far too, as might have made him see this corruption and incineration, though he had no original sin in himself. What preserved him then? Did the hypostatical union of both natures, God and man, preserve his flesh from this corruption, this incineration? it is true, that this was a most powerful embalming to be embalmed with the divine nature itself, to be embalmed with eternity, was able to preserve him from corruption and incineration for ever and he was embalmed so, embalmed with the divine nature, even in his body, as well as in his soul; for the Godhead, the divine nature, did not depart, but remain still united to his dead body in the grave. But yet for all this powerful embalming, this hypostatical union of both natures, we see, Christ did die; and for all this union which made him God and man, he became no man, for the union of body and soul makes the man, and he, whose soul and body are separated by death, (as long as that state lasts) is, (properly) no man. And therefore as in him, the dissolution of body and soul was no dissolution of the hypostatical union, so is there nothing that constrains us to say, that though the flesh of Christ had seen corruption and incineration in the grave, this had been any dissolving of the hypostatical union; for the divine nature, the Godhead, might have remained

30 1 Cor. xv. 53.

with all the elements and principles of Christ's body, as well as it did with the two constitutive parts of his person, his body and soul. This incorruption then was not in Joseph's gums and spices; nor was it in Christ's-innocency and exemption from original sin; nor was it, (that is, it is not necessary to say it was) in the hypostatical union. But this incorruptibleness of his flesh, is most conveniently placed in that, Non dabis, Thou wilt not suffer thy Holy One to see corruption. We look no further for causes or reasons in the mysteries of our religion, but to the will and pleasure of God. Christ himself limited his inquisition in that; Ita est, Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight. Christ's body did not see corruption, therefore, because God had decreed that it should not. The humble soul, (and only the humble soul is the religious soul) rests himself upon God's purposes, and his decrees; but then, it is upon those purposes, and decrees of God, which he hath declared and manifested; not such as are conceived and imagined in ourselves, though upon some probability, some verisimilitude. So, in our present case, Peter proceeded in his sermon at Jerusalem, and so Paul in his at Antioch; they preached Christ to be risen without having seen corruption, not only because God had decreed it, but because he had manifested that decree in his prophet. Therefore does St. Paul cite by special number the second Psalm for that decree, and therefore both St. Peter and St. Paul cite that place in the sixteenth Psalm; for, when God declares his decree and purpose in the express word of his prophet, or when he declares it in the real execution of the decree, then he makes it ours, then he manifests it to us. And therefore as the mysteries of our religion are not the objects of our reason, but by faith we rest in God's decree and purpose, (it is so, O God, because it is thy will it should be so) so God's decrees are ever to be considered in the manifestation thereof. All manifestation is either in the Word of God, or in the execution of the decree; and when these two concur and meet, it is the strongest demonstration that can be: when therefore I find those marks of adoption, and spiritual filiation, which are delivered in the Word of God, to be upon me; when I find that 32 Matt. xi. 26. 83 Acts ii. 31; xiii. 35.

31 Psalm xvi. 10.