ect upon itself, and find its own surpassing
misery: and then indeed,--infinite pain and infinite loss
conjoined,--eternal banishment from the presence of that blessed Spirit,
and eternal torment within itself. These two concurring, what posture do
you think such a soul will be into? There are some earnest of this in this
life. When God reveals his terror, and sets men's sins in order before
their face, O! how intolerable is it, and more insupportable than many
deaths. They that have been acquainted with it, have declared it. The
terrors of God are like poisonable arrows sunk into Job's spirit, and
drinking up all the moisture of them. Such a spirit as is wounded with one
of these darts shot from heaven, who can bear it? Not the most patient and
most magnanimous spirit, that can sustain all other infirmities, Prov.
xviii. 14. Now, my beloved, if it be so now, while the soul is in the
body, drowned in it, what will be the case of the soul separated from the
body, when it shall be all one sense, to reflect and consider itself?

This is the sting of death indeed, worse than a thousand deaths to a soul
that apprehends it; and the less it is apprehended, the worse it is;
because it is the more certain, and must shortly be found, when there is
no brazen serpent to heal that sting. Now, what comfort have you provided
against this day? What way do you think to take out this sting? Truly,
there is no balm for it, no physician for it, but one; and that the
Christian only is acquainted with. He in whom Christ is, he hath this
sovereign antidote against the poison of death, he hath the very sting of
it taken out by Christ, death itself killed, and of a mortal enemy made
the kindest friend. And so he may triumph with the apostle, "O death,
where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? Thanks be to God in
Jesus Christ, who giveth us the victory," 1 Cor. xv. 55. The ground of his
triumph, and that which a Christian hath to oppose to all the sorrows and
pains and fears of death mustered against him, is threefold; one, that
death is not real; a second, that it is not total, even that which is; and
then, that it is not perpetual. This last is contained in the next verse,
the second expressed in this verse, and the first may be understood or
implied in it. That the nature of death is so far changed, that of a
punishment it is become a medicine, of a punishment for sin it is turned
into the last purgative of the soul from sin; and thus