e conduce
more to his glory and my good, yet he hath the keys of death,[365] and
he can let me out at that door, that is, deliver me from the manifold
deaths of this world, the _omni die_, and the _tota die_, the every
day's death and every hour's death, by that one death, the final
dissolution of body and soul, the end of all. But then is that the end
of all? Is that dissolution of body and soul the last death that the
body shall suffer (for of spiritual death we speak not now). It is not,
though this be _exitus a morte_: it is _introitus in mortem_; though it
be an issue from manifold deaths of this world, yet it is an entrance
into the death of corruption and putrefaction, and vermiculation, and
incineration, and dispersion in and from the grave, in which every dead
man dies over again. It was a prerogative peculiar to Christ, not to die
this death, not to see corruption. What gave him this privilege? Not
Joseph's great proportion of gums and spices, that might have preserved
his body from corruption and incineration longer than he needed it,
longer than three days, but it would not have done it for ever. What
preserved him then? Did his exemption and freedom from original sin
preserve him from this corruption and incineration? It is true that
original sin hath induced this corruption and incineration upon us; if
we had not sinned in Adam, _mortality had not put on immortality_[366]
(as the apostle speaks), nor _corruption had not put on incorruption_,
but we had had our transmigration from this to the other world without
any mortality, any corruption at all. But yet since Christ took sin upon
him, so far as made him mortal, he had it so far too as might have made
him see this corruption and incineration, though he had no original sin
in himself; what preserved him then? Did the hypostatical union of both
natures, God and man, preserve him from this corruption and
incineration? It is true that this was a most powerful embalming, to be
embalmed with the Divine Nature itself, to be embalmed with eternity,
was able to preserve him from corruption and incineration for ever. And
he was embalmed so, embalmed with the Divine Nature itself, even in his
body as well as in his soul; for the Godhead, the Divine Nature, did not
depart, but remained still united to his dead body in the grave; but yet
for all this powerful embalming, his hypostatical union of both natures,
we see Christ did die; and for all his union which made him