498 BAXTER'S FAREWELL SERMON. end ofearthly comforts, and our separation is like to be the end of that comfortable communion, which God for many years hath granted us. Our public and private communion bath been sweet to us. The Lord bath been our pastor, and bath not suffered us to want.' He'made us lie down in his pleasant pastures, and hath led us by the silent streams ; Psalm xxiii. 1, 2. He restored our souls, and his, very rod and staff did comfort us; but his smiting and scattering time is come. These pleasures new are at an end. 5. Death is the eñd of human labors ;' there is no ploughing or sowing, no building or planting in the grave. And so doth our separation end the works of our mutual relation in this place. 6. Death is the :efect of painful sickness, and usually of the folly, intemperance, or oversight of ourselves. And, though our con- science reproach us not with gross unfaithfulness, yet are our fail- ings so many, and so .great, as force us to justify the severity of our Father, and to confess that we deserve this. rod. Though we have been censured by the world, as being over-Strict, and 'doing too much for the saving of our own and others'. souls, yet it is an- other kind of charge thatconscience bath against us. Hoiv'earnestly do we now wish that we had done much more ; that I had preach- ed more fervently, and you had beardMore diligently, and we had all obeyed God more strictly, and done more for the souls of 'the ignorant, careless, hardened sinners that were among us ! It is just with God that, dull a preacher should be put to silence, that could Over speak without tears and fervent importunity to im- penitent sinners, when hé knew that it was for no less than the saving of their souls, and foresaw the joys which they would, lose, and the torment which they must endure, if they,:repented not. With what shame and sorrow do I now look back upon the cold and lifeless sermons which I preached ; and upon 'those years' neg.: lect of the duty 'of private instructing of your families, before we set upon it orderly and constantly. Our destruction is of our- selves! Our undervaluings and neglects have forfeited our op- portunities. As good Melancthon was wont to say, ° Ln vulnerebus nostris proprias agnoscimiupennas,' The arrow that woundeth us was feathered from our own wings. 7. Death useth to put surviv- ing friends into a dark and mourning habit. Their lamentations are the chief part of funeral solemnities. And in this also we have our part. The 'compassion of condolers is greater than we desire ; for sorrow is apt to grow unruly, and exceed it's bound's, and bring On more sufferings' by lamenting one, and also to look too much at the instruments, and to be more offended at them than at our sins. 8. But death is the end of all the living. The mourners also must come after us, and, alas ! how soon ! It maketh our fall more grievous to us to foresee how many must ere long come
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