The saints sacrifice

¹How unmeet, how shameful, how odious a thing is it that dead men should be here on the face of the earth, which is the land of the living? That there are such, is too true. ^lShe that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth. ^mSardis had a name that she lived, but was dead. ⁿThe dead bury their dead. ^oAll natural men are dead in sins. Much more they that unto their natural corruption add profaneness, uncleanness, all manner of riotousness. These are as dead and putrefied carrions that infect the air round about them. To prevent noisome savours which might arise from dead corps, we use to bury them under the ground. Though Sarah was a dear wife to Abraham, yet when she was dead, he ^ptook order to bury her corps o•• of his sight. ^qNote the care that was taken to bury Gog with his multitude, because the stinking savour was so great, as it caused them that passed by to stop their noses. Assuredly, if the spiritual sense of our ⟨p. 125⟩souls were as quick in spiritual matters, as the senses of our body are in earthly things, we should feel a more noisome and loathsome savour to arise from such as in relation to spiritual life, are dead, then from such as are dead in relation to natural life. God, that is most sensible of this spiritual stanch, is oft moved to sweep the land of the living with the broom of his judgements, and to remove noisome dead persons, especially when by their multitude they •ause the stanch to be too too intolerable. ^rI will sweep Babel with the besom of destruction, saith the Lord of hosts. Thus the Lord swept away the stinking carrions of