CXLV expository sermons upon the whole 17th chapter of the Gospel according to St.…

3. It's God only that appoints the time of our being in the world, ¹because even those deaths that seem to be the most casual, and so we would think not at all under Gods providence, yet are expressly attributed to him. All casual murders, they are by the peculiar appointment of God, though men that are instruments did not intend the death of such, that God is the God of death, as well as of life, appeareth Ps. 68.20. To him belong the issues of death; if by issues be meant, the evasions and escapes from death, it asserts this truth, That it's God only who appoints when a man shall die, and when he shall not, some are now taken out of the world, some at another time, and all at the mere pleasure of God. But if you understand it, as some learned men do in this sense, To God belongs the goings out to death, then it's more plain, and indeed this is more consonant to the text, for the Preposition • will persuade this, and the use of the phrase, Jer. 15.1, 2. where some are said to go out to death, and others to captivity: so that the Psalmists meaning will then be, To God belongs salvation, which he will show to his people; but as for the wicked, he hath many ways to bring them to death. Thus you see, to God belongs the whole disposing of us, the continuing or taking us out of the world. To this we may add a parallel place, Psal. 31.15. My times are in thy hand, save me from mine enemies. They cannot destroy me, when and where, or how they please, that as it was with our Saviour, he had his hour, wherein he was to suffer, so that till then, all the power of men and devils could not apprehend him. Thus it is with all men, they have their hour: Even those that by the greatest hap come to their death, are yet said to be delivered to it by God himself, Exod. 21.13. cum Deu. 19.4, 5, 6. If a man cutting of wood have the head of his hatchet fly off, and kill another, God there saith, He delivered that man into his hand.