N03999:213
Captives bound in chains, made free by Christ their surety
Captives bound in chains, made free by Christ their surety: or, The misery of graceless sinners, and their recovery by Christ their Saviour. By T. Doolittel [sic]. ; [Three lines from Isaiah]
Boston: printed by Rogers & Fowle for J. Edwards, 1742
Title page typeset from the transcription.
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
6. Death doth not deliver Satan's Captives from their thraldom and their bondage, but doth straiten their Bonds, and strengthen their chains and puts them into an impossibility of Redemption for ever. If a slave be no way delivered while he liveth, yet he is freed when he dies; death will bring him a release, and give him a discharge; Job 3.17, 18, 19. There the wicked cease from troubling; and there the weary be at rest. There the prisoners rest together, they hear not the voice of the oppressor. The small and great are there, and the servant is free from his master. When the King of Babylon had taken Zedekiah captive, and bound him in fetters, he put him in prison till the day of his death, and then he was his prisoner no longer, Jer. 52.12. But these are Captives till they die, and which is worse, are Captives after death. The others might say, and comfort themselves therewith. Well, this is hard, but it is not lasting; this is bitter, but it will ⟨p. 165⟩have an end; though it last as long as life shall last, yet death will come, and then we shall be released; but these may say, It is bad while we live, and it will be worse when we die: if we are not delivered while we live, death will not, death cannot deliver us. Therefore this is worse than any other bondage.
6. Death doth not deliver Satan's Captives from their thraldom and their bondage, but doth straiten their Bonds, and strengthen their chains and puts them into an impossibility of Redemption for ever. If a slave be no way delivered while he liveth, yet he is freed when he dies; death will bring him a release, and give him a discharge; Job 3.17, 18, 19. There the wicked cease from troubling; and there the weary be at rest. There the prisoners rest together, they hear not the voice of the oppressor. The small and great are there, and the servant is free from his master. When the King of Babylon had taken Zedikiah captive, and bound him in fetters, he put him in prison till the day of his death, and then he was his prisoner no longer, Jer. 52.12. But these are Captives till they die, and which is worse, are Captives after death. The others might say, and comfort themselves therewith. Well, this is hard, but it is not lasting; this is bitter, but it will