Gods husbandry

But (my brethren) consider, Have you not other and worse things to be weary of, then crosses, and for which, if for any thing, to be weary of ⟨p. 79⟩life also, as of a burden, which you long to be removed from off your shoulders? Hast thou not pride, passion, worldliness, ambition, lust, envy, vain-glory, blindness, hollowness, deadness of heart, and a thousand more, besides these corruptions within thee, which give thee far juster cause of panting for the period of thy days, and wishing that thy life here might be but short, then the frowardness of a yoke fellow, the stubbornness of a child, the meanness of thine estate, the falseness of thy friends, the power and fury of thine enemies, or any other cross (if any be) worse then these? Ah, we have not sufficiently informed our selves of the loathsomeness of sin, neither are we sufficiently heavy laden with the sense thereof, if the cumbersomeness of this do not cause us, even in the time of our greatest immunity from other miseries, to covet our departure hence. If sicknesses make men cry for death, because they be terrible to the body; how should not the sicknesses of the soul make us much rather to seek for it, seeing we shall not cease to suffer the fits of this disease, till death be sent to sever our souls from our bodies, and both from our corruptions? But death at once with a most happy parricide (as I may term it) kills both it self, our last foe, and sin its mother, our first foe, and sorrow its sister, our daily foe. That one pang which pulls away the soul from the body, doth also pull away sin both from the soul and the body. O most desirable pang, and worthy to be thirsted after, more then any earthly ⟨p. 80⟩thing. Job, when his body was full of botches, could say with much vehemency of passion, Why dyed I not from the womb? why gave I not up the ghost when I came out of the belly? then should I have lien still and been quiet, I should have slept, then had I been at rest. He could in elegance of speech commend death, and say, There the wicked cease from troubling, and there the weary be at rest; there the prisoners rest together, and hear not the voice of the oppressor; yea he saith, that a miserable man would long for it, and dig for it more then for hid treasures, and would rejoice exceedingly, and be glad if he could find it.

But (my brethren) consider, Haue you not other and worse things to be weary of, then crosses, and for which, if for any thing, to be weary of