your brethren that differ from you in some opinions, as you would do if you were going to receive your doom, and as will then be most acceptable to your Lord! The guilt of sensuality, worldliness, ambition, of uncharitableness, cruelty, and injustice, of losing time, and betraying your souls by negligence, or perfidiousness, and wilful sin, will lie heavier upon a departing soul, than now, in the drunkenness of prosperity, you can think. Christ will never receive such souls in their extremity, unless upon repentance, by faith in his blood, they are washed from this pollution. It is unspeakably terrible to die, without a confidence that Christ will receive us; and little knows the graceless world what sincerity and simplicity in holiness is necessary to the soundness of such a confidence. Let those that know not that they must die, or know of no life hereafter, hold on their chase of a feather, till they find what they lost their lives, and souls,' and labour for. But if thou be a Christian, remember what is thy work: thou wilt not need the favour of man, nor worldly wealth, to prevail with Christ to receive thyspirit. Oh, learn thy last work before thou art put upon the doing of it! The world of spirits, to which we are passing, doth beter know than this world of fleshly, darkened sinners, the great difference between the death of a heavenly believer and of an earthly sensualist. Believe it, it is a thing possible to get that apprehension of the love of Christ, that confidence of his receiving us, and such familiar, pleasant thoughts of our entertainment by him, as shall much overcome the fears of death, and make it a welcome day to us when we shall be admitted into the celestial society: and the difference between one man's death and another's dependeth on the difference between heart and heart, life and life, preparation and unpreparedness. If you ask me, How may so happy a preparation be made? I have told you in this following discourse, and more fully elsewhere formerly. I shall add now these few directions following. 1. Follo the flattering world no further; come off from all expectation of felicity below; enjoy nothing under the sun, but only use ita order to your enjoyment of the real, sure delight; take heed being too much pleased in the creature. Have you houses and lands, and offices, and honours, and friends, that are very plsing to you? Take heed, for that is the killing. snare! Sh your eyes, and wink them all into nothing; and cast by you contrivances, and cares, and fears, and remember you have ather work to do. 2. Live in communion with a suffering Christ: study well the whole life and nature of his sufferings, and the reason of them, and think how desirable it is to be conformed to him. Thus, look to Jesus, that for the joy that was set before him, despised the shame, and endured the cross, and the contradiction of sinners against himself. Dwell upon this example, that the image of a humbled, suffering Christ being deeply imprinted on thy mind, may draw thy heart into a more just relish of à mortified state. Sure he is no good Christian that thinks it not better to live as Christ did, (in holy poverty and sufferings in the world,) than as Croesus, or Cæsar, or any such worldling and selfpleaser lived. Die daily by following Jesus with your cross, and, when you a have a while suffered with him, he will make you perfect, and receive your spirits, and you shall reign with him: it wonderfully prepareth for a comfortable death to live in the fellowship of the sufferings of Christ. He is most likely to die quietly, patiently, and joyfully, that can first to poor, be ncglected, be scorned, be wronged, be slandered, be imprisoned, quietly, patiently, and joyfully. If you were but at Jerusalem, you would, with some love and pleasure, go p Mount Olivet, and think 'Christ went this very way,' You would love to see the place where he was was born, the way which he went when he carried his cross, the holy grave where he was buried, (where there is a temple which pilgrims use to visit, from whence they use to bring the mark as a pleasing badge of holour,) but how much more of Christ is there in our suffering for his cause and truth, and in following him in a mortified, self-delying life, than in following him in the path that he hath trojden upon earth? His enemies saw his cross, his grave; his mother, his This did not heal their sinful souls, and make them person. happy; but the cross that he calleth us to bear is a lfe of suffering for righteousness' sake; in which he commanleth us to rejoice, and be exceedingly glad, because our rewards great in heaven, though all manner of evil be spoken of us falsely by men on earth. (Matt. v. 11, 12.) This is called a king partakers of Christ's sufferings, in which we are commanded to rejoice, "that, when his glory shall be revealed, we may be glad also with exceeding joy." (1 Peter iv. 13.) And as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation abandeth by Christ." (2 Cor. i. 5.) Till we come up to a life of wlling mortification, and pleased, contented suffering with Chist, we are in the lower form of his school, and, as children, shll tremble 6 at that which should not cause our terror; and, through misapprehensions of the case of a departing soul, shall be afraid of that which should be our joy. I am not such an enemy to the esteem of relics, but if one could show me the very stocks that Paul and Silas sat in when they sung psalms in their imprisonment, (Acts. xvi.) I could be contented to be put (for the like cause) into the same stocks, with a special willingness and pleasure, how much more should we be willing to be conformed to our suffering Lord in a spirit and life of true mortification? 3. Hold communion also with his suffering members: desire not to dwell in the tents of wickedness, nor to be planted among them that flourish for time, that they may be destroyed for ever. (Psalm xcii. 6, 7.) I had rather have Bradford's heart and faggot than Bonner's bishopric. It was holy Stephen, and not those that stoned him, that saw heaven opened, and the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of God, (Acts vii. 56,) and that could joyfully say, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." He liveth not by faith (though he may be a hanger-on that keepeth up some profession for fear of being damned) who chooseth not rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season, and esteemeth not the very reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of the world, as having respect to the recompense of reward. (Heb. xi. 25, 26.) can. 4. Live as if heaven were open to your sight, and then doat upon the delights of worldlings if you can. Then love a life of fleshly ease and honour, better than to be with Christ, if you But of this I have spoken at large in other writings. Christian, make it the study and business of thy life to learn to do thy last work well, that work which must be done but once; that so death, which transmits unholy souls into utter darkness and despair, may deliver thy spirit into thy Redeemer's hands, to be received to his glory, according to that blessed promise, John xii. 26. And while I am in the flesh beg the for same mercy Thy brother and companion in tribulation, And in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, London, Jan. 31, 1661, A BELIEVER'S LAST WORK. ACTS vii. 59. Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. THE birth of náture, and the new birth of grace, in their measure resemble the death of saints, which is the birth of glory. It is a bitter-sweet day, a day that is mixed of sorrow and joy, when nature must quit its familiar guest, and yield to any of these changes. Our natural birth is not without the throes, and pain, and groanings of the mother, though it transmit the child into a more large, and lightsone, and desirable habitation. Our spiritual birth is not without its humbling and heartpiercing sorrows; and when we are brought out of darkness into the marvellous light, we leave our old companions in displeasure, whom we forsake, and our flesh repining at the loss of its sensual delights. And our passage into glory is not without those pangs and fears which must needs be the attendants of a pained body, ready to be dissolved, and a soul that is going through so strait a door into a strange, though a most blessed place; and it leaveth our lamenting friends behind, that feel their loss, and would longer have enjoyed our company, and see not (though they believe) the glory of the departed soul. And this is our case that are brought hither this day, by an act of Providence sad to us, though joyous to our departed friend; by a voice that hath called her into glory, and called us into this mourning plight: even us that rejoice in the thoughts of her felicity, and are not so cruel as to wish her again into this corruptible flesh, and calamitous world, from the glorious presence of the Lord; and yet should have kept her longer from it, for our own and others' sakes, if our wisdom had been fit to rule, or our wills to be fulfilled, or if our prayers must have been answered, according to the measure of our failing apprehensions, or precipitant desires. But folly must submit to the incomprehensible wisdom, and the desire of the creature must stoop to the will of the Creator. The interest of Christ must be preferred when he calleth for his own, and our temporary interest must give place: flesh must be silent and not contend, and dust must not dare to question God; he knoweth best when his fruit is ripe, and though he will allow our moderate sorrows, he will not so much damnify his saints as to detain them with us from their joyful rest till we are content to let them go. seen. Thus also did blessed Stephen depart from glory to glory; from a distant sight of the glory of God, and of Jesus standing at his right hand, into the immediate presence and fruition of that glory. But yet he must pass the narrow port; enraged malice must stone him till he die, and he must undergo the pains of martyrdom before he reach to the glory which he had And when he was arrived in safety, he leaveth his brethren scattered in the storm, and devout men make great lamentation at his burial. (Acts viii. 2.) Though it is probable by the ordinary acceptation of the word ropes evλabers, that they were not professed Christians, but devout proselytes, (such as Cornelius and the Ethiopian eunuch were,) that buried and thus lamented Stephen, as knowing him to be an excellent person, cruelly murdered by the raging Jews, yet their example, in a case not culpable, but commendable, may be imitated by believers, upon condition that, with our sense of the excellency of the persons, and of our loss by their removal, we exceed them that had but a darker revelation in our joyful sense of the felicity of the translated souls. The occasion of the death of this holy man was partly that he surpassed others, as being full of faith, and of the Holy Ghost; and partly that he plainly rebuked the blind and furious persecuting zeal of the Jews, and bore a most resolute testimony -of Christ. It is an ill time when men must suffer because they are good, and deserve not suffering, but reward; and they are an unhappy people that have no more grace or wit but to fight against heaven, and set themselves under the strokes of God's severest justice, by persecuting them that are dear to Christ, and faithfully perform their duty. It is no strange thing for the zeal and interest of a faction to make men mad; so mad as implacably to rage against the offspring of heaven, and to hate men because they are faithful to their great Master, and because they are against their faction; so mad as to think that |