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…

That's a strange journey indeed. That which pleaseth us in our longest journeys while we live, is a hope of returning to our own homes again. But when we die we take a journey from whence there is no returning. Not return? Shall not man return when he dieth? Is death an everlasting departure, an eternal night? No, Man shall return, but he shall not return to such a life or state as he had before.¹ He is gone for ever out of this world, and out of all worldly interests. Job believed a resurrection, or a returning from the grave by the power of God, and he knew there was no returning by the power of nature, or by the help of any creature: In that reference, we go, whence we shall not return. So David speaks of his dead Infant, I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me, ²2 Sam. 12.25. When once we are shut up in those chambers of death, and made prisoners in the grave, though all the Princes in the world send warrants for our release, we cannot get released. The pertinacy and stiffness of the grave is such as yields to none. We are fast shut up when we are shut up there. Love and the grave will hardly part with that, which they have closed with, and are possessed of. The grave is one of those three things which are never satisfied, or say it is enough, Prov. 30.15. And as it is unsatiable in receiving, so it is as close in keeping, it will part with nothing. A grave is the Parable of a covetous man; he is greedy to get, and watchful to hold: when his money goes into his purse, he saith it shall not return: The grave hath a strong appetite to take down, and as strong a stomach to digest. Till God (as I may so speak) by his mighty power gives the grave a vomit, and makes the earth stomach-sick with eating mans flesh,³ it will not return one morsel. At the resurrection this great Eater shall cast up all again. And as they who take strong vomits, are put into a kind of trembling convulsion, all the powers of the body being shaken; such will the prognostics be of the resurrection; there was an earth-quake when Christ arose, God made the earth shake, and commanded it to give back the prisoner, because it was not possible that he should be holden of it. And when God speaks the word, it will not be possible for the grave to hold us prisoners: till then it will.