hall not taste of death? Two only escaped
the common lot, Enoch and Elias; for they pleased God, and God took them:
and, besides, it was for a pledge, that at the last day all shall not die,
but be changed. The true cause of death is sin, and the true nature of it
is penal, to be a punishment of sin: take away this relation to sin, and
death wants the sting. But, in its first appointment, and as it prevails
generally over men, _aculeata_(_201_)_ est mors_, it hath a sting that
pierceth deeper, and woundeth sorer than to the desolation of the body, it
goeth into the innermost parts of the soul, and woundeth that eternally.
The truth is, the death of the body is not either the first death or the
last death: it is rather placed in the middle between two deaths: and it
is the fruit of the first, and the root of the last. There is a death
immediately hath ensued upon sin, and it is the separation of the soul
from God, the Fountain of life and blessedness: and this is the death
often spoken of, "You who were dead in sins and trespasses," &c. Eph. ii.
1. "Being past feeling," and "alienated from the life of God," Eph. iv.
18, 19. And truly this is worse in itself than the death of the body
simply, though not so sensible, because spiritual. The corruption of the
best part in man, in all reason, is worse than the corruption of his worst
part. But this death, which consists especially in the loss of that
blessed communion with God, which made the soul happy, cannot be found
till some new life enter, or else till the last death come, which adds
infinite pain to infinite loss. Now the death of the body succeeds this
soul's death, and that is, the separation of the soul from the body, most
suitable, seeing the soul was turned from the Fountain-spirit to the body,
that the body should by his command return to dust, and be made the most
defiled piece of dust. Now, this were not so grievous, if it were not a
step to the death to come, and a degree of it introductive to it. But that
statute and appointment of heaven hath thus linked it, "after death comes
judgment:" because, the soul in the body would not be sensible of its
separation from God, but was wholly taken up with the body, neglecting and
miskenning(202) that infinite loss of God's favour and face, therefore the
Lord commands it to go out of the body, that it may then be sensible of
its infinite loss of God, when it is separated from the body; that it may
then have leisure to refl