SECT. III.] THE CONQUEST OVER DEATH. 365 weakly constitution, and the anguish of acute diseases. He constrains death to give the weary saint release from all the miseries of the present state, and to hide him from the fury of the oppressor. The grave is God's hiding place from the storms and tumults of the world ; there the weary are at rest, and the wicked cease from trou- bling : and instead of consigning us over to the full ma- lice of the devil, death is made a means to convey us away from all his assaults, and translate us into that country, where he has no power to enter. And when the soul is dismissed into the bosomof a reconciled God, by the ministry of death, the body is put to rest in the grave; the grave, which is sanctified into a bed of rest for all the followers of Christ, since their Lord and Mas- ter has lain there. In the gospel of Christ, the 'name of death is altered into sleep. Christ, who has subdued it, seems to have given it this new name, that it might not have a frightful sound in the ears of his beloved. Though it was some- times called sleep in the Old Testament, yet that chiefly regarded the silence, and darkness, and inactivity of that state ; whereas in the New Testament, and in the xiith of Daniel, it is called sleep, to denote that there is an awaking-time. The ancient christians, upon thisaccount, called the church -yard, where they buried the dead, xoi¡.cmz'mpiov, a sleeping place. And though the grave may be Galled the prison of death, yet death is not lord of the prison ; he can detain the captives there but during the pleasure of Christ, for he who is " alive for evermore, has the keys of death and hell," that is of the separate state ; Rev. i. 18. Now this is the true reason why christians have spoken so many kind things of death, which is the king of terrors to a natural man. They call it a release from pain and sin, a messenger of peace, the desired hour, and the happy moment. All this is spoken while they behold it with an eye of faith in the hands of Christ, who has sub- dued it to himself, and constrained it to serve the designs of hi- love to them. 3. 'When it has done all Christ's work, it shall be ut= terly destroyed. After the resurrection, there shall be no more dying. The saints shall rise immortal, and dwell in heaven fur ever, in the complete enjoyment
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