Twenty sermons preached at Oxford before His Majesty, and elsewhere

1. First, in this life he is always a dying man: Man that is born of a woman, what is he? He is ever spending upon the stock, he is ever wasting like a Candle, burning still and spending it self as soon as lighted, till it come to its utter consumption: So he is born to be a dying man, death seizeth upon him as soon as ever it findeth sin in him, Gen. 2.1. In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt dye, saith God to Adam, though he lived many years after. How then could this threatening hold true? Yes it did, in regard that presently he fell into a languishing estate, subject and obnoxious to miseries and calamities, the hasteners of it. If a man be condemned to dye, suppose he be reprieved, and kept prisoner three or four years after, yet we account him but a dead man: And if this mans mind shall be taken up with worldly matters, earthly contentments, purchases or the like, would we not account him a Fool or a stupid man, seeing he lightly esteems his condemnation, because the same hour he is not executed? Such is our case, we are while in our natural condition in this life dead men, ever tending toward the Grave, towards corruption, as the gourd of Jonah, so soon as ever it begins to sprout forth, there is a worm within, that bites it and causes it to wither. The day that we are born, there is within us the seed of corruption, and that wastes us away with a secret and incurable consumption, that certainly brings death in the end: So that in our very birth begins our progress unto death, A time, a way we have, but it leads unto death. There is a way from the Tower to Tyburn, but it is a way to death: Until thou comest to be reconciled unto Christ, every hour tends unto thy death; there's not a day that thou canst truly say thou livest in, thou art ever posting on to death, death in this world, and eternal death in the world to come.

1. First, in this life he is always a dying man: Man that is born of a woman, what is he? He is ever spending upon the stock, he is ever wasting like a Candle, burning still and spending it self as soon as lighted, till it come to its utter consumption: So he is born to be a dying man, death seizeth upon him as soon as ever it findeth sin in him, Gen. 2.1. In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt dye, saith God to Adam, though he lived many years after. How then could this threatning hold true? Yes it did, in regard that presently he fell into a languishing estate, subject and obnoxious to miseries and calamities, the hastners of it. If a man be condemn'd to dye, suppose he be reprieved, and kept prisoner three or four years after, yet we account him but a dead man: And if this mans mind shall be taken up with worldly matters, earthly contentments, purchases or the like, would we not account him a Fool or a stupid man, seeing he lightly esteems his condemnation, because the same hour he is not executed? Such is our case, we are while in our natural condition in this life dead men, ever tending toward the Grave, towards corruption, as the gourd of Jonah, so soon as ever it begins to sprout forth, there is a worm within, that bites it and causes it to wither. The day that we are born, there is within us the seed of corruption, and that wasts us away with a secret and incurable consumption, that certainly brings death in the end: So that in our very birth begins our progress unto death, A time, a way we have, but it leads unto death. There is a way from the Tower to Tyburn, but it is a way to death: Until thou comest to be reconciled unto Christ, every hour tends unto thy death; there's not a day that thou canst truly say thou livest in, thou art ever posting on to death, death in this world, and eternal death in the world to come.