365 / 652
SECT.
I.]
THE
CONQUEST OVER
DEATH.
--
355
struggling
with all
the
difficulties,
the hardships,
and the
dangers
that
attend a christian
in his
travels through
this
wilderness, and
not
see
their
faces
again
in
the
flesh,
nor
converse
with
them
in
the
manner
we
were wont to do,
till
the heavens
be no
more.
Upon
this
account
also
death
is
a worse enemy
to those
that
survive,
for they sustain the
biggest loss:
It
deprives
them
of their dear
and delightful relatives
without any
recompence, for
the world
grows
so
much the more
un-
desirable
to
a
saint
by
the
death
of
every friend.
Chil-
dren are torn
away from
the embraces
of their
_parents,
and the
wife is
seized from
the
bosom.
This
is,
as
it
were,
tearing
the
flesh
asunder
of
those
whose
hearts are
joined;
this
gives
occasion to
bitter
sorrows, to
long
and
heavy
complaints. How suddenly are
we
sometimes
deprived
of
the desires
of
the
eyes,
and
the
comforts
of
life,
the
ornaments
and
the
supports of our earthly
state?
And
we
have
lost
all
their
love,
and their counsel,
and
their
care;
all
their
sweet sympathy
of joys
and sorrows,
all
their agreeable
conversation
and
heavenly advice.
What
a tedious
way
have
we
to
walk
through without
such
a guide
or
helper
?
We
have Iost
the benefit
of
their
watchful
eye,
their
holy
jealousy
for our
souls,
their
fervent and daily prayers. But there are records in
heaven, where
all
the prayers
of
the
saints are
kept; and
God
often turns over
his
register, and,
in
distant suc-
cessive
years,
pours
down
blessings
upon the posterity,
and multiplies
his
graces amongst them,
in
answer to
the
requests that
were offered
up
on
earth
by
the saints
that
are
now
with
God.
5.
The
last reason
I
shall
mention
to
prove death an
enemy to
the
saints,
is
the
terror that it
fills
the mind
with long beforehand.
There
are but
few
that,
in
their
best estate
on
earth are got quite above these terrors,
and
there are none
can
say,
I
have been always free
from
them
:
so
that
in
the younger
days
of
their christianity
at
least,. all have been afraid
of
death
;
and
these
fears
are enemies to
our
peace.
Some
spend
all
their
lives
in
this
bondage
of
fear,
and
that
upon different accounts.
A
christian
of
weaker faith cries
out
within himself,
"
How
shall
I
pass
that
awful
moment
that
sets my
soul
naked
before the eyes
of a
holy
God,
when
I
know
not
whether I
am
cloathed with the righteousness
of
his Son
A