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

Neither of which, as we are taught to apprehend the state of things, can consist with the absolute perfection of his Being.

1. Can we think it agreeable to him, to suffer such a perpetual solecism or incongruity within his Dominion, that when Death, by means of a most Criminal Apostasy, had made so great an inroad into the Nobler part of his Creation, i. e. had broken in amongst Creatures capable of Immortality (who indeed otherwise had not been capable of Sin) and thereby darkened the Glory which shone more brightly in such an Order of Creatures, it ⟨p. 13⟩should be so always! i. e. that such a sort of Creatures should be perpetually continued, to be born, and sin, and die. Sometime, we must think, this course of things should have an end, and not by yielding an everlasting conquest to an Enemy. We can well conceive it most worthy of God, when he had made such Creatures, unto whom liberty was as agreeable, as holiness and felicity to leave them to themselves a-while, as Probationers and Candidates for that state of immortal Life, whereof they were not incapable. It well became a self-sufficient Being, and an absolute Sovereign, to let them understand dependence, and subjection; and that their state was precarious, not his. To let them feel the cost of ungovernableness, and self-will, and the disagreeableness thereof to their condition who were not self-subsistent, and had not their good in their own hands. If, being put upon this trial, they would transgress, and open a way for Death to come in upon them, the real loss could only be their own, and none of his. He had no reason therefore to prevent it, by so unseasonable an interposition, as should prevent the orderly connection between duty, and felicity; i. e. the precedency of the former to the other. All this was a most unexceptionable procedure. But then, when being left to themselves, they as Men, or as Adam, had transgressed, Hos. 6. 7. and done like themselves, i. e. like frail mutable Creatures, in their lapse into Sin and Death, How opportune was it for him, now, to do more illustriously like himself, i. e. by so surprising, unthought of, methods as the Gospel reveal, to recover to himself this Glory out of the Cloud, and make it shine more brightly than ever, in this final Victory over Death, and him that had the