204 Twenty Directions for denjiug Life. undoing it but to make it up again. As in the,new birth he broke your hearts and falfe hopes, that he Might heal your hearts, and give you founder hopes inftead of them : fo at deathhe breaketh your flefh and worldly hopes , not to undo you, and leave it in corruption, but to raife it again another manner of body then now it is, and give it a part in the Nei- fednefs whichyou hoped for. If in good fadnefs you believe the Refurreftion,what caufe is there for fo much fear-of death? You can be content that your Roles die, and your fweeteft Flowers fall and perifh and the green and beauteous com plexion of theearth, be turned into a bleak and withered hue, becaufe you expect a kind of Refurreftion in the Spring. You can boldly lie down at night to fleep, though fleep be a kind of death to the body, and more to the foul ; and all becaufe you (hall rife again in the morning.. And if every nights fleep (orone at, leaft) were a gentle death, if you were fure to rife again thenext morning, you would make no great matter of it. Were it as common to mento die every night, and, rife again in the morning, as it is to fleep every night and rife in the morning, death would not feem fuch a dreadful thing. Thofe poor men that have the falling ficknefs, do once in a day or in a few daies, lie as dead men, and have as much pain as many that die : Andyet becaufe they ufe to be up and well again in a little time, they can go merrily about their bu- finefs, the reft of the day, and little fear their approaching fall. Howmuch more fhould the belief of a Refurretlion un- so life, confirm us againft the fears of death ? And why fhould we not as quietly commit our bodies to the duff, when we have thepromife of the God of heaven, that the Earth fhall deliver up her dead, and that this body that is fawn in coroption, (hall be railed in incorruption It is fow difhonour, it is railed inglory : it isfolVn in weaknefs it is .raifed in power : it is Town anatural body, it is railed a fpiritsal body] So great and won- derful the change will be, as now is unconceivable 1 we have now.a droffy lumpof flefh , an aggregation of the Elements toa feedof life, whichout ofthem forms it felf a body, by theDivine influx. Like theSilk-worm which in the winter is 14ta feed which in the Summer d.oth move and attraft that raptor.
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