A second volume of discourses or sermons on several scriptures

But Oh, why should not men always keep alive vigorous thoughts and meditations of Death! Are they not always alike mortal? Are they not as much subject to the Arrest of Death at other times as when they see Examples of Mortality before their Eyes? The Law stands still in force, unrepealed in Heaven, That it is appointed unto all Men once to die. Indeed it fares with such as these, as ordinarily it doth with Malefactors, that fear not the Penalty of the Law till they see it executed upon others. Let us therefore act rationally as Men, and as long as we are in danger, be kept by that danger prepared to entertain that which we know is irreversibly appointed unto us.

But now, besides this general Appointment of God, That all shall die, there is a particular Appointment, that reacheth to every particular Circumstance of Man's Death; the time when, the manner how we shall die: These are unalterably determined in God's secret Counsel. To speak a little briefly to this.

¹First, God hath punctually and exactly determined the time of our Death to a very moment. The great God, in whose hands our Lives, our Breath, and all our Ways are, he turns up our Glass, and puts such a measure of Sand into it, and no more; it is he that prefixes it to run to such a length of Time, and then determines it shall run no longer: It is he who is Lord of all Time, that writes our Names upon so many Days and Hours as we shall live, as upon so many Leaves of his Book; and it is impossible for us to live one Day or Hour that hath not our Name written upon it by him from all Eternity. It is God that sets every one the Bounds of their living, as well as the Bounds of their habitations; ²beyond which they shall not be able to pass. The Embryo that dies before ⟨p. 29⟩