A Saint Indeed

And there are seven arguments which I shall urge upon the people of God at such a time as this to make them cheerfully entertain the messengers of death, and dye as well as live like Saints; and the first is this.

1. Argu. First the harmlessness of death to the people of God. T•ough it keep its dart, it hath lost its sting: a Saint (to ⟨p. 173⟩allude to that, Isai. 11. 8.) May play upon the hole of this asp, and put his hand into the Cockatrices den. Death is the Cockatrice, or Asp; the grave is his hole or den: a Saint need not fear to put his hand boldly into it: it hath left and lost its sting in the sides of Christ; 1 Cor. 15. 55. O death! where is thy sting? why art thou afraid? O Saint! that this sickness may be thy death, as long as thou knowest that the death of Christ is the death of death? indeed, if thou didst dye in thy sins as Joh. 8. 21. If death as a King did reign over thee, Rom. 5. 14. if it could •eed upon thee, as the Lyon doth upon the prey he hath taken, as Psal. 49. 14. If hell followed the pale horse as it is, Rev. 6. 8. Then thou mightest well startle and shrink back from it; but when God hath put away thy sins from thee, as far as the East is from the West, Psal. 103. 12. As long as there is no other evil left in death, for thee to encounter with; but bodily pain: as long as the Scriptures represent it to thee under such harmless and easy notions, as the putting off thy clothes,