A36322:207
The mourner directory, guiding him to the middle way betwixt the two extremes, defect,…The mourner directory, guiding him to the middle way betwixt the two extreams, defect,…
The mourner directory, guiding him to the middle way betwixt the two extremes, defect, excess of sorrow for his dead to which is added, The mourners soliloquy / by Thomas Doolittle ...The mourner directory, guiding him to the middle way betwixt the two extreams, defect, excess of sorrow for his dead to which is added, The mourners soliloquy / by Thomas Doolittle ...
London: printed by J.A. for Tho. Cockeril, 1693
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
Why have we been looking so long in the Grave, in which as such we can see nothing but death, and cry out, as the Men to Elisha concerning their deadly Pottage, O thou Man of God, there is death in the Pot, 2 Kings 4.40. So we, there is death in the Grave. But when Elisha said, Then bring Meal, and ⟨p. 142⟩he cast it into the Pot, and he said, pour out for the people that they may eat; and there was no harm in the Pot. So we should have looked upon the Grave as a place where Christ before had been laid, and as a Bed for the Bodies of Believers to sleep in till the Lord shall come, and we should have seen no such great harm in the Grave to fill us with excessive sorrow.
Concerning this representation of death by sleeping, four things may be premised as to this manner of Scripture expression.
1. Tho Beasts do die, yet their death in Scripture (that I know of) is never called a Sleep; for they die to live no more. Death puts an end to their Life without a Resurrection to it any more. They are only in this World, and not to have Life in that World that Men are hastening too. They are not capable here of Moral Government, of Sin or Grace, and so shall not be raised to undergo Eternal Punishments, or to receive Eternal Rewards hereafter. Tho they do sleep while they live, yet their death is not a sleep, because they shall die, but never wake.