u, except ye be reprobates." I wish you would lay it to
heart, who have never yet returned to your hearts. If Christ be not formed
in you, (as Gal. iv. 19,) you are as yet among the refuse, dross, and that
which must be burnt with fire. You cannot but be cast away in the day when
he makes up his jewels. Where Christ is he is the hope of glory,--he is an
immortal seed of glory. How can you hope for Christ, who have nothing of
him within you?

Now, the other touchstone of true religion is, the great comfort it
furnishes to the soul, and, of all comforts, the greatest is that which is
a cordial to the heart against the greatest fears and evils. Now,
certainly the matter of greatest fear is death, not so much because of
itself, but chiefly because of that eternity of unchangeable misery that
naturally it transmits them unto. Now, it is only the Christian religion
possessing the heart that arms a man completely against the fear either of
death itself, or the consequents of it. It giveth the most powerful
consolation, that not only overcometh the bitterness and taketh out the
sting of death, but changeth the nature of it so far as to make it the
matter of triumph and gloriation.

There is something here supposed, the worst that can befall a Christian,
it is the death of a part of him, and that the worst and ignoblest part
only, "the body is dead because of sin." Then, that which is opposed by
way of comfort to counter-balance it, is, the life of his better and more
noble part. And, besides, we have the fountains both of that death and
this life,--man's sin the cause of bodily death, Christ's righteousness the
fountain of spiritual life.

Of death many have had sweet meditations, even among those that the light
of the word hath not shined upon, and, indeed, they may make us ashamed
who profess Christianity, and so the hope of the resurrection from the
dead, that they have accounted it only true wisdom and sound philosophy to
meditate often on death, and made it the very principal point of living
well to be always learning to die, and have applied their whole studies
that way, neglecting present things that are in the by, have given
themselves to search out some comfort against death, or from death. Yea,
some have so profited in this, that they have accounted death the greatest
good that can befall man, and persuaded others to think so.(200) Now, what
may we think of ourselves, who scarce apprehend mortality, especially
consi