76 THE CHARACTER OF THOSE weary thee ? thy sickness, thy bitter enemies, and unkind friends ? It should be so here. Do the abo- minations of the times, the sins of professors, the hardening of the wicked, all weary thee ? It must be so, while thou art absent from thy rest. Do thy sins, and thy naughty distempered heart, weary thee? Be thus wearied more and more. But under all this weariness art thou willing to go to God thy rest? and to have thy warfare accomplished? and thy race and labour ended ? If not, complain more of thy own heart, and get it more weary, till rest seem more desirable. 17. I have but one thing more to add, for the close of this chapter, that the souls of believers do enjoy inconceivable blessedness and glory, even while they remain separated from their bodies. What can be more plain than those words of Paul, We are always confident, knowing that whilst we are at home, or rather sojourning, in the body, we are absent from the Lord, (for we walk by, fäith, not by sight.) We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and be present with the Lord ?(d) Or those, I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ, which is far better ?(e) If Paul had not expected to enjoy Christ till the resur- rection, why should he be in a strait, or desire to depart ? Nay, should he not have been loth to de- part upon the very same grounds? for while he was in the flesh, he enjoyed something of Christ. _Plain enough is that of Christ to the thief; "To -day shalt thou be with me in paradise. "(f) In the parable of Dives and Lazarus, it seems unlikely Christ would so evidently intimate and suppose the soul's happiness or misery presently after death, if there were no such matter.(g) Our Lord's argument for the resurrec- tion supposes, that, God being not the God of the dead, but of the livin4,,(h) therefore Abraham, Isaac, and Ja- cob, were then living in soul. If the blessedness of the dead that die in the Lord,(i) were only in resting in (d) 2 Cor. v. 6, 8. (f) Luke xxiii. 43. (h) Matt. xxii. 32. (e) Phil. i. 23. (g) Luke xvi. 19, 31. (i) Rev. xiv. 13.
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