A second volume of discourses or sermons on several scriptures

Now of what great concernment this Subject of Man's Mortality, is,¹ God by his Providence, since I last spake in this Place, hath sadly evinced; and by a near Instance hath confirmed what I then Preached unto you, of the Frailty and Uncertainty of this present Life. Happy were it for us if either Sermons or Examples might awaken us to a serious Consideration that we our selves also must shortly die, and it may be, as suddenly. Are we not all subjected to the same Attack? Hath not God's Hands kneaded our Bodies out of the same clay, and may not his Fingers crumble them again into the same dust? Certainly the Cords of our Tabernacles may be as easily unloosed and cut asunder as theirs. I have read of a great Emperor, that to engrave upon himself the deeper Apprehensions of his own Frailty and Mortality, caused his own Funerals to be solemnized while he was yet living, laying ⟨p. 24⟩himself down in his Tomb, weeping over himself, as his own Mourner: If there were any advantage in this to prepare him to die at last really, by dying thus first in an Emblem, we may almost daily have the same. There's not a Funeral of any of our Relations or Acquaintance that we are called to give our Attendance upon, but by serious and solemn Reflections upon our selves, we may make it our own: and if by beholding others nailed up in their Coffins, laid down in their cold Graves, covered over with Earth, that they may become a Feast for Worms; if now we reckon our selves among the number of them, we shall not be very much mistaken; for this is only but a few days to anticipate what shall shortly be our state and condition. This Advantage we our selves may make of the Death of others, to look upon it as a resemblance at least of our own. What is the Language of every Grave we see open its mouth to receive into it the dead Body of some Neighbour or Acquaintance, but only this, That we also are mortal and perishing? There's not a broken Skull, or a rotten Bone that lies scattered about ⟨p. 25⟩the Grave, but hath Death and Mortality written upon them, and call loudly upon us to prepare our selves to take up our Abode in the same darkness and corruption with them; and if upon every such sad occasion we do not make a particular Application thereof unto our own selves, we not only lose our Friend's Lives, but their very Deaths also.