SECT. I.] THE CONQUEST OV$R DEATH. 353 need not recite these things to you, the images of them are too fresh and painful, and sit too heavy upon your re- membrance. S. Death is an enemy to the saint, so far as it hinders him frorn the enjoyment of his perfect heaven, for it keeps one part of hint in the grave for many years or ages. Let us think of the dust of the ancient martyrs, the dust of the apostles, and the holy prophets : Let us look many ages backward to the dust of David, and Abra- ham, and Noah, to the dust of Adam, the first of men : How long have their souls waited in heaven, as it were in a widowed estate? How long has their flesh been mingled with common earth, and lain confined under the bands of death, useless to all the glorious purposes of their forma- tion and their being ? A tedious extent of time ! Four or five thousand years, wherein they have done nothing for God in the body, and in the body received nothing from God ? For death hinders a believer from some of the business ofheaven, and some of the blessedness of it,. 1. From some of the business of heaven : It is only the soul that is then received to glory, and dwells there alone for a season, while death keeps the body prisoner in the grave ; it is only the soul that glorifies its Maker in that upper world, the world of spirits, for the flesh lies silent in the dust : The grave cannot praise thee, (Leath cannot celebrate thee, O Lord ; Isa. xxxviii. 18. The body is redeemed with the blood of Christ, as well as the soul, but death puts fetters upon it, and forbids it to serve its Redeemer. 2. The believer is restrained also by death from some of the blessedness of heaven ; it is only the soul enjoys the delight, and that too only in its abstracted nature, and pure intellectual capacity; it is cut off by death from all that rich variety of pleasure which rises from its commu- nion with so noble a frame as the body of man is. It has no senses to receive the satisfactions that arise from the material part of heaven : It has no eyes to behold the glorified flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ ; no ears to hear his voice; no tongue to converse with its Saviour. And though we are sure there is a holy correspondence between Christ Jesus and separate souls, for we are said " to be present with the Lord, when we are absent from the body ;" 2 Cor. v. g. yet this correspondence cannot be VOL. III. M A
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