Mount Pisgah, or, A prospect of heaven being an exposition on the fourth chapter…Movnt Pisgah, or, A prospect of heaven being an exposition on the fourth chapter…

The first word of Comfort is this, ¹namely, That our precious Relations, over whose departure we stand mourning and weeping, are but fallen asleep; I would not have you ignorant, Brethren, concerning them which are asleep. We may say of departed Saints, as our Saviour said concerning the Damsel, Math. 9.24. They are not dead but sleep: the same phrase he also used to his Disciples concerning Lazarus, ²our Friend Lazarus sleepeth. A notion which the Disciples at first understood not, because their understandings were not yet enlightened; they dreamed of a natural sleep saith the Text; of taking Rest in sleep. And yet, as men in their sleep do sometimes dream true, so did they in this dream of theirs, speak truer than they were aware of; they said, Lord, if he sleeps, he shall do well; it is true indeed, the Saints of God do but sleep, when they lye down in the Grave; that, which we call death (in such) is not death indeed; It is but the Image of Death, the shadow and metaphor of death, deaths younger Brother; a mere sleep, and no more. The Holy Ghost, who best knoweth what things be, hath phrased it so, and that, not so little as twenty times in Scripture, to show, that it was not a sudden expression, incautelously dropped from the Pen of any one of the Secretaries of Holy Writ; but the true, proper, ⟨p. 3⟩and genuine notion of death suggested to them by the infallible dictate of the Spirit of God; they do but sleep; and if they sleep, they shall do well: their sleep shall be sweet unto them; as sweet as once the Prophets was, Jer. 31.26.

The first word of Comfort is this, ¹namely, That our pretious Relations, over whose departure we stand mourning and weeping, are but fallen asleep; I would not have you ignorant, Brethren, concerning them which are asleep. We may say of departed Saints, as our Saviour said concerning the Damsel,