The happiness of the church, or, A description of those spiritual prerogatives wherewith Christ…The happines of the church, or, A description of those spirituall prerogatiues vvherewith Christ…

For What

The benefit that they would have the Rocks and the Mountains do them, is to Fall on them, & hide them. Whence we derive three observations. 1. Despair is ever wishing for death: often impatiently snatching at it in this world; but when the last day comes, so greedily longing for it; that to be sure of it, they desire the mountains to dispatch them. Death by the wicked is now most feared; death at the last shall be the thing most wished: They shall desire death, and shall not find it. They that sit in the warm nest of riches, hatching up their brood of lusts, quake at the hearing of death. There are some fear to die, others not so much to die as to be dead. The former are cowardly, the other unbelieving souls. Some fear both, to whom nothing in life then life is more desirable. But when th•s last extremity ⟨p. 42⟩comes, m•ricupiunt, they desire to die. And that death, like a merciless executioner, might not have too many strokes at their lives, they beg help of the Mountains: that they might be throughly dispatched at once, without need of a second blow. Cain at his arraignment for his brother would needs live: God grants it; as if it were too much favour for him to die. But he yields it for a curse; as if he heard his prayers in anger. He lives, but banished from God, carrying his hell in his bosom, and the brand of vengeance in his forehead. God rejects him, the earth repines at him, and men abhor him. Lo now Cain would die: himself now wisheth the death he feared, and no man dares pleasure him with a murder. As Nero in the like case; Nec amic•m, nec mimicum h•beo; I have neither friend nor enemy: or as Sau• found in his Armour-bearer, not