558 THE U5LAWFULEE5S OF SELF-MURDER. can.heal the most deplorable maladies of the flesh ; he can give ease to the acutest pains; he can change thy captive and forlorn estate, into peace, liberty and joy. Remember the history of Job, consider the partiencerof that holy man, and the happy end of his sufferings through the goodness of the Lord. Art thou in the hands of bloody men, the great God has a thousand ways to rescue thee ? He can change the purposes of men and the nature of savage beasts, though they gape to devour thee, though they seem resolved and bent upon cruelty and violence. Remember Daniel in the lion's den. Remember also the deliverance,of St. Paul and St. Peter out of prison. Hecan give thee a dismis- sion from life with his own hand, and prevent thy fears and the rage of men, or he can arm thy soul with divine courage and strength, to bear up under the sharpest agonies, and to glo- rify him even in the fires : And surely the hope of such. a death in the certain favour of God is infinitely to be prefer- red before a death procured to ourselves, and under a divine curse.. V. Pretence. " Distress of soul through surrounding' sor- rows within and without, the departure of God, the agonies of conscience, and the fears of eternal damnation; these things be- come the spring, of many a temptation to self- murder." Saul was under some such sort of distress, when God was departed from him, and the Philistines were coming upon him : He re- fused to eat bread all that day and all night ; and as he stabbed himself the next day, so some suppose he would have starved himself the day before ; 1 Sam. xxviii. 15, 20, 22, 23. Judas was in horrible distress of conscience when he had betrayed our Lord, and then he betakes himself to the halter. " I have sin- ned, says he, and betrayed innocent blood ;" Mat. xxvii. 4, 5. I cannot bear my own thoughts, and Iwill die by my own hands. And when inward and outward troubles meet together, as they often do, Satan takes the advantage to propose this dreadful ex- periment for relief. " I am a poor,reprobate creature, for Gad has, left me," says a person under temptation, " and I am sure I shall never be saved : I cannot bear the anguish of my own mind, I cannot bear to live : And besides, if I des- troy myself now, I shall have fewer sins to answer for than if I lived longer, and thus my guilt and punishment will be less." Answer. But how knowest thou that God has utterly left thee, and that thou shalt never be' saved ? It is not God but Satan who tells thee thou art a reprobate. The God of heaven says no such thing to thee, but he calls thee to look unto him from the ends of the earth, from the borders of hell and despair, that thou mayest be saved; Is. xlv. 22. jilt thou plunge thyself into certain destruction, and ma* thy damnation sure, which is
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