BAXTER'S FAREWELL .4ER TOV. 499 down ! How, many hundred pastors must shortly be separated from their flocks !' If there were no epidemical malady to destroy us, our ministry bath its mortality. Your fathers, where are they ? and the prophets, do they live forever? Zech. i. 5. This made us the more importunate with you in our ministry, because we knew that we must preach, to you, and Pray with you, and in- struct you, and watch over you but a little while. Though we knefv not what instrument death would use, we knew our final day was coming, when we must preach, and exhort, and pray our last with you. We knew that it behoved us to work while it was day (and, O, that we had done it better,!) because the'night was cäm- ing, when none could work ;'John ix. 4. 9. And as it is appoint- ed to all men once, to die, so after death there followed) judgmént. And we also have our further judgment to undergo. We must expect our hour of temptation. We must be judged by men, as well as chastened by God. We must prepare to bear the reproach and slanders of malicious tongues, and the unrighteous censures of those that know us not, and of those who think it their interest to condemn us., And we must also call oùrselves to judgment. We are like to have unwelcome leisure, to review the days and duties which are past. .It Will ,then be time for us to call ourselves to ac- count of our preaching and studies, and other ministerial works, and to sentence our labors and our lives; and it will be time for you to call yourselves to account of your 'hearing and profiting, and to ask, 'How have we used the mercies which are taken from us ? Yea, God himself will judge us according to our works. He will not justify ùs, if We. bave been unfaithful in our little, and have been such as Satan and his instruments, the accusers of the brethren, do report us. But if we have been faithful, we may ex-. pect his double justification. 1. By pardon hé will justify us from our sins. 2. By plea and righteous sentence, he will justify us against the false accusations of our ehemies; and that is enough. How small a thing should it seem to us to be judged of man, who must stand or fall to the final sentence of the Almighty God ! 10.. The separated soul and body do retain theirrelations, and the soul its inclination to a reunion with its body. And though otirnear- est obligations may be now dissolved, and the exercise of our com- munion hindered, yet I knowwe shall never forget each other, nor shall the bond of love which doth unite usbe ever loosed and made void. And so much ofour relation shall still continue, as intimated in those texts, 1 Cor. iv. 15, 16. xii. 14. Phil. iv. 1, &c. 11. And the,power of death will not 'be everlasting: a resurrection and reunion there will be at last, but whether in this world, I cannot prophesy. I atn apter tò think ,that most of us must die in the wilderness, and that our night must bear some proportion with our
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