An exposition with practical observations continued upon the eighth, ninth and tenth chapters of…An exposition with practicall observations continued upon the eighth, ninth and tenth chapters of…

As in heaven, where we shall live for ever, we shall be, as if we had ever been: So on earth, some live so little, that they are as if they never were: That which hath an eternal duration, and shall never end, is as if it had ever begun; and that which is but of a short duration and ends quickly, is as if it had never begun. The reason why the fruit of sin goes for nothing, is, because the pleasure of sin is but for a season, and that a very little season, What fruit have ye of those things, whereof ye are now ashamed? That is, Ye have no fruit, or your fruit was nothing: we may say of all the pleasures of sin, their cradle is their grave, or more near Jobs language, they are carried from the womb to the grave. So he speaks next of himself, I should have been carried from the womb to the grave.

As in heaven, where we shall live for ever, we shall be, as if we had ever been: So on earth, some live so little, that they are as if they never were: That which hath an eternall duration, and shall never end, is as if it had ever begun; and that which is but of a short duration and ends quickly, is as if it had never begun. The reason why the fruit of sinne goes for nothing, is, because the pleasure of sinne is but for a season, and that a very little season, What fruit have ye of those things, whereof ye are now ashamed? That is, Ye have no fruit, or your fruit was nothing: we may say of all the pleasures of sin, their cradle is their grave, or more near Iobs language, they are carried from the womb to the grave. So he speaks next of himself, I should have been carried from the womb to the grave.

I should have passed without noise or notice. There would have been little trouble with me in the world, I should have made but one journey, and that a short one. The speech is proverbial: From the womb to the grave, ¹is the motto of Infant-death. The Septuagint read it as an expostulation, Wherefore was I not carried out from the womb to the grave? It would have been a happiness to me, either not to have been at all, or to have had a being but equivalent (in common account) to a not being. And thus it had been with me, if my first step out of my mothers womb, had been into the womb of that grandmother the earth. Job is often upon the same point, renewing his desires after death: he did so (as hath been touched) at the third Chapter, and at the sixth, and now he is as fierce and fresh upon it as ever.