A funeral sermon on the death of that pious gentlewoman Mrs. Judith Hamond Late…

So much, which was more requisite to be insisted on, being clear, we shall less need to enlarge upon what follows. As, that,

So much, which was more requisite to be insisted on, being clear, we shall less need to inlarge upon what follows. As, that,

3. This Victory supposes a War. Or, That Life and Death were before in a continual struggle. So we find the Case is. Even this Lower World is full of vitality. Yet Death hath spread it self thorough it and cast over it a dark and dismal shadow every where, according as Sin, which introduced it, is diffused and spread. Death is therefore mentioned as an Enemy, ver. 26. And so we understand it, Natural Death, as an Enemy to Nature; Spiritual, to Grace. In the Body numerous maladies, and round ⟨p. 10⟩about it, multitudes of adverse rancounters, are striving to infer Death; In, and about the Mind and Spirit, worse diseases, and Temptations have the like tendency. Temptations I say, the mention whereof was not to be omitted, as pointing at, the Tempter, the wicked one, who first brought Sin and Death into this World of ours. And who is (though the concealed) the first and most proper seat of the Enmity which gives Death the Denomination of an Enemy; which is so called indefinitely, The last Enemy; that we might not understand it to be our Enemy only, but more an Enemy against God than us, from whom the spiteful Apostate aimed and gloried to pluck away, and bury in Death and Ruin, the whole Race of humane Creatures. In the mean time Nature in all, and Grace in the Regenerate are Counter-striving. In the former the self-preserving Principle is more sensibly vigorous, but less successful; but they who are born of God, are better assisted by their Divine-keeper, in sub-ordination to whom, they are enabled effectually to keep themselves, that the wicked one (mortally) touches them not, 1 Joh. 5. 18. but, as must be supposed, not without continual watching and striving, as in War is usual.