A discourse concerning the Redeemer's dominion over the invisible world, and the entrance thereinto

7. And it is a brighter, and more unsullied testimony, which is left in the minds of Men, concerning such very hopeful persons ⟨p. 128⟩as Die in their Youth. They never were otherwise known, or can be remembered, than as excellent Young Persons. This is the only Idea which remains of them. Had they lived longer to the usual Age of Man, the remembrance of what they were in youth, would have been in a great degree effaced, and worn out, by latter things; perhaps blackened, not by what were less commendable, but more ungrateful to the greater part, especially, if they lived to come into public Stations. Their just zeal, and contestations against the wickedness of the Age, might disoblige many, and create them Enemies, who would make it their business to blast them, and cast upon their name and memory all the reproach they could invent. Whereas the lustre of that Virtue and Piety which had provoked ⟨p. 129⟩no body, appears only, with an amiable look, and leaves behind nothing, of such a person, but a fair, unblemished, alluring and instructive Example; which, they that observed them, might, with less prejudiced minds compare with the useless, vicious, Lives of many that they see to have filled up a room in the World, unto extreme old age, either to no purpose, or to very bad. And how vast is the difference in respect of usefulness to the world, between a pious, young Gentleman, dying in his youth, that lived long in a little time, untainted by youthful Lusts, and Vanities, and Victorious over them; and an accurst Sinner of an hundred years old, Isa. 65.20. One that was an Infant of days, and though an hundred years old, yet still a Child, that had not filled up his days with any thing of ⟨p. 130⟩real value, or profit to himself, or others, (as some very judicious Expositors understand that Text) that (as he aptly speaks) had nothing besides Grey Hairs, ¹and Wrinkles, to make him be thought a long liver; but who might truly be said not to have lived long, but only to have been long in the World. How sweet and fragrant a Memory, doth the one, how rotten and stinking a name, doth the other, leave behind him to survivors!