end of his life, Christ's obedience hath made our
life endless. He suffered death to sting him, and by this hath taken the
sting from it, and now, there is a new statute and appointment of heaven
published in the gospel, "whosoever believeth in him shall not perish, but
have eternal life." Now indeed, this hath so entirely changed the nature
of death, that it hath now the most lovely and desirable aspect on a
Christian, that it is no longer an object of fear, but of desire,
amicable, not terrible unto him. Since there is no way to save the
passenger, but to let the vessel break, he will be content to have the
body splitted, that himself, that is his soul, may escape, for truly a
man's soul is himself, the body is but an earthly tabernacle that must be
taken down, to let the inhabitant win out to come near his Lord. The body
is the prison house that he groans to have opened, that he may enjoy that
liberty of the sons of God. And now to a Christian, death is not properly
an object of patience, but of desire rather, "I desire to be dissolved and
be with Christ," Phil. i. 23. He that hath but advanced little in
Christianity will be content to die, but because there is too much flesh,
he will desire to live. But a Christian that is riper in knowledge and
grace, will rather desire to die, and only be content to live. He will
exercise patience and submission about abiding here, but groanings and
pantings about removing hence, because he knoweth that there is no choice
between that bondage and this liberty.

Sermon XXIX.

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

It was the first curse and threatening wherein God thought fit to
comprehend all misery, "Thou shalt die the death in that day thou eatest."
Though the sentence was not presently executed according to the letter,
yet from that day forward man was made mortal, and there seemeth to be
much mercy and goodness of God intervening to plead a delay of death
itself, that so the promise of life in the second Adam might come to the
first and his posterity, and they might be delivered from the second
death, though not from the first. Always we bear about the marks of sin
in our bodies to this day, and in so far the threatening taketh place,
that this life that we live in the body is become nothing else but a dying
life, the life that the ungodly shall live out of the body is