SEEM. $L[.1 fJ E DEAMH OP SINNERS IMPROVED. 195 But I proceed to the next general head which I pro- posed ; Secondly. As the death of mankind in general, gives these divine lessons to a saint, so the death of impenitent sinners, which hath something in it very terrible, may be turned to the advantage and profit of believers, these three or four ways : 1. If we are true christians, and persecuted and in- jured here on earth, then the death of the wicked delivers us from our enemies, and releases us from the wrath of our oppressors. In the grave " the wicked cease from troubling, as well as the weary are at rest ;" Job iii. 17. Look back to the distance of three thousandyears, and see the children of Israel on the banks of the red sea., re- joicing in the Lord their deliverer, when an army of Egyptian carcases floated on the waters, or were cast up in heaps upon the shore : These were the cruel oppress- ors of the people of God . They were drowned in the evening, and the morning light discovered the havoc that death had made, and the salvation it wrought for Israel, in the xiv. and xv. of Exodus. See the whole city of Jerusalem, and Hezekiah at the head of them, triumphing in the Lord, when he sent the angel of death, and destroyed the besiegers: " A hun- dred and four -score and five thousand Assyrians lay dead on the border of the city ;" Is. xxxvii. 36. " By terrible things in righteousness God answered the prayer of his saints ;" Ps. lxv. 5. And at the death of Herod, the father and mother of our blessed Lord were glad, fur they returned from their flight ; they came from the land of Egypt, and dwelt in their own land again and the child Jesus was saved from the murderous designs of that cruel Man ; Mat. ii. 19. Such examples of advantage which the saints receive from the death of the men of violence, their impious and bloody enemies are frequent in sacred history : And we may remark in our day, how many a time God hath saved us in Great Britain, when we have been on the borders of destruction, by the death of persecutors at home and abroad. The monarchs of the earth, have been turned down to their graves, one year after another, and the churches of God, in many nations, have found rest and deliverance. o
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