The crucifying of the world

THE last Benefit that I shall mention is this: If you are now Dead to the world, and the world to you, your natural Death will be the less grievous to you when it comes. It will be little o• no trouble to you to leave your houses, or lands, or goods; to leave your eating, and drinking, and recreations; to leave your employments and company in the world; for you were dead to all that is worldly before. Surely so far as the Heart is upon God, and taken off these transitory things, it can be no grief to us to leave them and go to God. It is only the remnants of the unmortified flesh, together with the natural evil of death, that maketh death to seem grievous to Believers: but so far as they are Believers, and dead to the world, the case is otherwise. Death is not near so dreadful to them, as it is to others; except as the quality of some disease, or some extraordinary desertion, may change the case: Or as some desperate wicked ones may be insensible of their misery. How bitter is the sight of approaching death, to them that laid up their treasure on earth; and placed their happiness in the prosperity of their flesh? To such a fool as Christ describeth, Luke 12. that saith to himself, Soul take thy ease, eat, drink and be merry; thou hast enough laid up for many years. How sad must the tidings of death needs be to him that set his heart on earth, and spent his days in providing for the flesh, and never laid up a treasure in heaven, nor made him friends with the Mammon of unrighteousness, nor gave not diligence in the time of his life to make his Calling and Election sure? To a worldly man, that sets not his heart and hopes ⟨p. 219⟩above, the face of death is unspeakably dreadful. But if we could kill the world before us, and be dead to it now, and alive to God, and with Paul, die daily, it would be a powerful means to abate the terrors, and a certain way to take out the sting, that death might be a sanctified passage into life. So much of the Benefits of Mortification.