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…

Consider that the longer ye be of thinking on death it will be the terribler when it comes, serious and suitable thoughts of death before hand would do much to mitigate the terror of it, but when death comes violently and suddenly on you and finds you settled and sitten down in the world and will needs have you loosed and raised ⟨p. 10⟩it is in that case indeed as the King of terrors, whereas if ye were dying daily and by conversing with death came to have experience as it were of little deaths before hand, that would make death itself when it should come much more easy, if especially ye were dying to your lusts and Idols, mortified to the world and to the things that are in it, death should have in that case but little to do when it came; for it is the cleaving of your hearts to these things and your being glued to them that makes death so terrible, for it will not tryst nor treat, but suddenly and inexorably separate you and them. 4. Consider the longer ye be a beginning to mind your eternal state and to think seriously of dying ye will have the more to do when death comes; O! There is much work about dying even to these who have been thinking on it, how to get faith in Christ right, how to get themselves rolled on the everlasting covenant for salvation, how to be in a patient calm and composed frame to encounter the terrors that accompanies death, how to be weaned from the world and to have their affections heavenly; sure the longer ye putt off ye will have the more to do and will readily be the less able to do it; and is it wisdom think ye, to leave your greatest and most necessary work to your last, weakest, and unfittest time to go about it? Which yet alas is the lamentably foolish, demented, rueful, and soul-ruining practice even of many hearers of the Gospel; there is none of these things but it must be done before death or not at all; what's in the bargain or business then? O what is in it? It's not ten or twenty thousand years happiness or misery but an eternity of happiness or misery in the greatest measure and highest degree that can be imagined; and should such a business be delayed and putt off? And this is even it in the Text by which dying in the Lord is so much commended.

Consider that the longer ye be of thinking on death it will be the terribler when it comes, serious and suteable thoughts of death before hand would doe much to mitigat the terrour of it, but when death comes violently and suddenly on you and finds you setled and sitten downe in the world and will needs have you loosed and raised