; that since the body had
enticed the soul, and suggested unto it such unnatural and rebellious
motions of withdrawing from the blessed Fountain of life, to satisfy its
pleasure, the body should be under a sentence of deprivement and
forfeiture of that great benefit and privilege of life it had by the
soul's indwelling, and condemned to return to its first base original,
"the dust," and to be made a feast of worms, to lodge in the grave, and be
a subject of the greatest corruption and rottenness, because it became the
instrument, yea, the incitement of the soul to sin against that God that
had from heaven breathed a spirit into it, and exalted it above all the
dust or clay in the world. Now, my beloved, do we not get many
remembrances of our sins? Is not every day presenting our primitive
departure from God, our first separation from the Fountain of life by sin,
to our view, and in such sad and woful effects pointing out the
heinousness of sin? Do you not see men's bodies every day dissolved, the
tabernacle of earth taken down, and the soul constrained to remove out of
it? But what influence hath it upon us, what do the multiplied funerals
work upon us? It may be, sorrow for our friends, but little or no
apprehension of our own mortality, and base impression of sin, that
separates our souls from God. Who is made sadly to reflect upon his
original, or to mind seriously that statute and appointment of heaven, "In
that day thou shalt die?" It is strange that all of us fear death, and few
are afraid of sin, that carries death in its bosom,--that we are so
unwilling to reap corruption in our bodies, and yet we are so earnest and
laborious in sowing to the flesh. Be not deceived, for you are daily
reaping what you have sown. And, O! that it were all the harvest; but
death is only the putting in of the sickle of vengeance, the first cut of
it: but, O! to think on what follows, would certainly restrain men, and
cool them in their fervent pursuits after sin!

Sermon XXVIII.

Verse 10.--"And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of
sin: but the Spirit is life because of righteousness."

"The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law," saith our
apostle, 1 Cor. xv. 56. These two concur to make man mortal, and these two
are the bitter ingredients of death. Sin procured it, and the law
appointed it, and God hath seen to the exact execution of that law in all
ages; for what man liveth and s