SECT. I.1 THE COMOVEST OVER DEATH. 351 1. Death has generally many terrible attendants and forerunners when it comes ; terrible to nature and the flesh of the most exalted christians. Here, should I begin to describe the long and dismal train of death, the time would fail me. Shall I mention the sickness and the pain, the sharp anguish of the body, and sometimes the sharper methods of medicine to relieve it, all which prove useless and vain in that day ? Shall f recount the tedious and uneasy hours, the tiresome and. sleepless nights, when the patient longs for the slow return of the morning ; and still when the light breaks, he finds new uneasiness, and wishes for the shadow and darkness again? Shall I speak of the dulness of the natural spirits, and the clogs that hang heavy upon the soul in those hours ; so that the better part of man is bound and oppressed, ansl shut up, and cannot exert itself agreeable to the character of an intellectual being? Besides, all the designs of the mind are interrupted and broken in death; all that the saint intended to do for God, is cut off at once, and his holy purposes are pre- cluded, which often adds to the trouble of a dying chris- tian; Ps. xlvi. 4. " When man returns to4iis earth, in that very day his thoughts perish. Shall I put you in mind of the sighs and sorrows of dearest friends that stand around the bed all in tears, and all despairing ? Shall I speak of the last convulsions of nature, the sharp conflict of the extreme moments, and the struggling and painful efforts of departing life, which none can know fully but those that have felt them, and none of the dead come back to give us an account? Is it possible for us to survey these scenes of misery, and not to believe that the hand of an enemy has been there ? The bodies of the saints are the temples of the Holy Ghost, and the members of Christ ; 1 cor. vi. 15, 19. Death murders these bodies, these members of the Lord, and ruins these temples to the dust, and may well be called their enemy upon this account. Q. Death acts like an enemy, when it makes a separa- tion 'between the 'soul and the body. It divides the nature of man in halves, and tears the two constituent parts of it asunder. Though this becomes an advantage tó the soul of the saint through the covenant and appointment of guráce,
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