The blessedness of the death of these that die in the Lord and more…The blessednesse of the death of these that die in the Lord and more…

the meditation that is without affecting of the heart, is like the chewing of meat that is presently spit out again and not swallowed down and digested; or to the looking only on what is profitable without making any further use of it: Such, I say, is all our preaching, hearing, speaking, and thinking of death, when they do not affect the heart. 4ly, Study to be practical in your ⟨p. 105⟩meditation, that is, to have it tending to some profitable use in your practice as its end; when ye have found out such a thing to be wrong, presently to set about the amending of it; when ye have found out some thing spiritually profitable, resolutely to go about it and all the means to attain it. 5ly and lastly, Seek to be much in prayer to God, and in dependence on him for direction in this particular, go about meditation on death as a duty commanded by God, with prayer to him and with dependence on him for his assistance and his blessing on it, many look not on the meditation of death in particular as a peculiar duty, and therefore its so much slighted: When we commend it to you as a duty, we mean these three things; 1. That ye should look upon it as required of God, and as being useful and profitable as well as any other duty: 2ly, That ye should go about it as in his presence, ordinarily folk take a greater latitude in meditation then in prayer, but ye would remember and consider that he is witness to your meditation as well as to your prayers, that he is the great subject of it, that it is laid on by his command, that suitable meditation is and must be wrought by his Spirit, and that ye will and must count to him for your wanderings in it, as well as in prayer. 3ly, That ye should take in all, at least, the general circumstances of it pointed at before, that ye should take time to it, and betake yourselves to it of set purpose, and even now and then when possibly ye might have some other thing to do that is not necessary for the time; and that ye should by prayer seek Gods guiding in this particular duty as well as in any other duty, as Moses doeth Psal. 90. Teach us to number our days: Be not frighted from it by the apprehended difficulty of it, for as meditation in the general is hard and difficult, so is the particular meditation of death even a subject that we are naturally very averse from, therefore David Prays, Psal. 39. ⟨p. 106⟩