Human nature in its fourfold state ... In several practical discourses

First, They have a trusty good friend before them in the other world; Jesus Christ their best friend, is Lord of that land to which death carries them. When Joseph sent for his father to come down to him to Egypt, telling him, God had made him Lord over all Egypt, Gen. xlv. 9. and when Jacob saw the waggons Joseph had sent to carry him, the spirit of Jacob revived, ver. 27. He frankly resolves to undertake the journey. I think, when the Lord calls a godly man, out of this world, he sends him such glad tidings, and such a kind invitation into the other world; that if he had faith to believe it, his spirit must revive, when he sees the waggon of death, which comes to carry him thither. It is true indeed, he has a weighty trial to undergo; after death the judgment. But the case of the godly is altogether hopeful; for the Lord of the land is their husband, and their husband is their Judge: The Father hath committed all judgment unto the Son, John v. 22. And surely the case of the wife is hopeful, when her own husband is her judge; even such a husband as hates putting away. No husband is so loving and so tender of his spouse, as the Lord Christ is of his. One would think, it would be a very bad land, which a wife would not willingly go to, where her husband is the ruler and judge. Moreover, their Judge is the Advocate, 1 John ii. 1. We have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. And therefore they need not fear their being put back, and falling into condemnation. What can be more favourable? Can they think, that he who pleads their cause, will himself pass sentence against them: Yet further, their Advocate is the Redeemer; they are redeemed with the precious blood of Christ, 1 Pet. i. 18, 19. So when he pleads for them, he is pleading his own cause. Though an advocate may be careless of the interest of one who employs him; surely he will do his utmost to defend his own right, which he hath purchased with his money: and shall not their Advocate defend the purchase of his own blood? But more than all that, their Redeemer is their head, ⟨p. 237⟩and they are his members,