said to his soul, "I will pull down my
barns, and build greater; and will say to my soul, Soul, thou
hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat,
drink, and be merry. But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night
thy soul shall be required of thee; and then whose shall those
things be which thou hast provided? So is he that layeth up
treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God." [Luke 12:18
ff.]

Nevertheless, God has not so utterly forsaken the sons of men
that He will not grant them some measure of comfort in this hope
of the passing of evil and the coming of good things. Though they
are uncertain of the future, yet they hope with certain hope, and
hereby they are meanwhile buoyed up, lest falling into the
further evil of despair, they should break down under their
present evil, and do some worse thing.[43] Hence, even this sort
of hope is the gift of God; not that He would have them lean on
it, but that He would turn their attention to that firm hope,
which is in Him alone. For He is so long-suffering that He
leadeth them to repentance, as it is said in Romans ii, and
suffers none to be straightway deceived by this deceitful hope,
if haply they may "return to the heart," [44] and come to the true
hope.

But Christians have, beside this twofold blessing,[45] the very
greatest future blessings certainly awaiting them; yet only
through death and suffering. Although they, too, rejoice in that
common and uncertain hope that the evil of the present will come
to an end, and that its opposite, the blessing, will increase;
still, that is not their chief concern, but rather this, that
their own particular blessing should increase, which is the truth
as it is in Christ, in which they grow from day to day, and for
which they both live and hope. But beside this they have, as I
have said, the two greatest future blessings in their death. The
first, in that through death the whole tragedy of this world's
ills is brought to a close; as it is written, "Precious in the
sight of the Lord is the death of His saints"; [Ps. 116:15] and
again, "I will lay me down in peace and sleep"; [Ps. 4:8] and
"Though the righteous be prevented with death, yet shall he be at
rest." [Wisd. 4:7] But to the ungodly death is the beginning of
evils; as it is said, "The death of the wicked is very evil,"
[Ps. 34:21] and, "Evil shall catch the unjust man unto
destruction." [46] [Ps. 140:11] Even so Lazarus, who received his
evil thi