The works of George Swinnock, M.A

Fifthly, If thou wouldst exercise thy self to godliness, Think often of thy dying day, and of what price and value godliness will be to thee at such a time; There are few thoughts more terrible or more profitable then of death. Hence it is, that God commands man so often to remember his latter end, because the meditation of it is so gainful to him. The first day man was made, he was called to think of his last day; God minded him of death in the Tree of Knowledge, and the threatening annexed to the Prohibition, that he might thereby keep him from sin. Satan could not prevail with Eve, to taste of that killing fruit, till he had prevailed with her to distrust that threatening of death, ye shall not surely dye, Gen. 3. 4. After the fall, God reneweth this meditation, by turning the conditional, into an absolute commination; Dust thou art, and to Dust thou shalt return; and though the Holy Ghost omitteth many particulars about Gods carriage with the long-lived Patriarchs, and their holy conversation before him, yet he is exact in registering their deaths; And he died, and he died, of every one, Gen. 5. to quicken us to fear God, because we are but dying frail men. There is hardly any thing about which we deal, but God gives us by it a Memento of Death. Our Clothes are all fetched out of Deaths ⟨p. 746⟩wardrobe, our food out of deaths shambles; The Sun is an emblem of life's posting, the night of the chambers of darkness; the year hath its autumn, the day its night. Our candles should mind us of the wasting of our days, the evening of the shadow of death; our undressing, of our putting off our earthly tabernacles, and our lying down in our beds, of our lying down in our graves.

Fifthly, If thou wouldst exercise thy self to godliness, Think often of thy dying day, and of what price and value godliness will be to thee at such a time; There are few thoughts more terrible or more profitable then of death. Hence it is, that God commands man so often to remember his latter end, because the meditation of it is so gainful to him. The first day man was made, he was called to think of his last day; God minded him of death in the Tree of Knowledge, and the threatning annexed to the Prohibition, that he might thereby keep him from sin. Satan could not prevail with Eve, to taste of that killing fruit, till he had prevailed with her to distrust that threatning of death, ye shall not surely dye,