27. It is demanded, what tolerable sense we can give to these Scriptures, whilst we assert an unalterable fixing of the term of death?

The sense of all these Scriptures will be cleared up to our full satisfaction, by distinguishing death and the terms of it.

We must distinguish death into natural and violent. "The wicked and blood-thirsty man shall not live out half his days;" that is, half so long as he might live, according to the course of nature, or the vigour and soundness of his natural constitution; for his wickedness either drowns nature in an excess of riot and luxury, or exposes him to the hand of justice, which cuts him off for his wickedness before he has accomplished half his days.

Again; we must distinguish the term or limit for death, which is either general or special. The general limits are now seventy or eighty years; "the days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they are fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow." To this short limit, the life of man is generally reduced since the flood; and though there are some

few exceptions, yet the general rule is not thereby destroyed. The special limit is, that proportion of time which God by his own counsel and will has alloted to every individual person; and it is only known to us by the event. This we affirm to be a fixed and immovable term. With it all things shall fall in, and observe the will of God in our dissolution at that time. But because the general limit is known, and the special limit is a secret hid in God's own breast, therefore man reckons by the former account, and and may be said, when he dies at thirty or forty years old, to be cut off in the midst of his days; for it is so, reckoning by the general account, though he be not cut off till the end of his days, reckoning by the special limit. Thus he who is wicked dies before his time, the time that he might attain to in an ordinary way; but not before the time God has appointed. And the case is the same in all the other objected Scriptures.

It is not proper at all, in a subject of this nature, to digress into a controversy. Alas! the poor mourner, overwhelmed with grief, has no pleasure in that; it is not proper for him at this time, and therefore I shall for the present waive the con

troversy, and wind up this consideration with an humble and serious motion to the afflicted, that they will wisely consider the matter. The Lord's time was come; your relations lived with you every moment that God intended them for you, before you had them. O! parents, mind this, I beseech you; the time of your child's continuance in the womb was fixed to a minute by the Lord; and when the parturient fulness of that time was come, were you not willing that it should be delivered thence into the world? The tender mother would not have it abide one minute longer in the womb, how well soever she loved it; and is there not the same reason we should be willing, when God's appointed time is come, to have it delivered by death out of this state, which, in respect of the life of heaven, is but as the life of a child in the womb, to its life in the open world?

And let none say the death of children is a premature death. God has ways to ripen them for heaven whom he intends to gather thither betimes, which we know not. In respect of fitness, they die in a full age, though they be cut off in the bud of their time.

He who appointed the seasons of the

year, appointed the seasons of our comfort in our relations and as those seasons cannot be altered, no more can these. All the course of Providence is guided by an unalterable decree; what falls out casually to our apprehension, yet falls out necessarily in respect of God's appointment. O therefore be quieted in it; this must needs be as it is.

4. Has God smitten your darling, and taken away the delight of your eyes with this stroke? Bear this stroke with patience and quiet submission; for how know you, but your trouble might have been greater from the life, than it now is from the death, of your children?

Sad experience made a holy man once say, "It is better to weep for ten dead children, than for one living child." A living child may prove a continual dropping, yea, a continual dying, to the parent's heart. What a sad word was that of David to Abishai," Behold, my son, which came out of my bowels, seeketh my life!" I remember Seneca, in his consolatory epistle to his friend Marullus, brings in his friend thus agravating the death of his child; "O," says Marullus," had my child lived with me, to how great modesty, gravity, and prudence,

might my discipline have formed and moulded him ?" "But," says Seneca, "what is more to be feared is, that he might have been as most others are; for look what children come out even of the worthiest families; such as exercise both their own and others' lusts; in all whose life, there is not a day without the mark of some notorious wickedness upon it."

I know that your tender love to your children will scarcely admit such jealousies of them: they were sweet, lovely, innocent companions; and you doubt not, but by your care of their education, and prayer for them, they might have been the joy of your hearts. Why, doubtless, Esau, when he was little and in his tender age, promised as much comfort to his parents as Jacob did; and I question not, but Isaac and Rebecca, a glorious pair, spent as many prayers, and bestowed as many holy counsels upon him, as they did upon his brother; but when the child grew up to riper years, then he became a sharp affliction to his parents; for it is said in Gen. xxvi. 34, that "when Esau was forty years old, he took to wife Judith, the daughter of Beeri the Hittite, which was a grief of mind to Isaac and Rebecca." The word in the original

E