not then condemn us, we may have comfort and confidence towards God.

I believe there are fome very pious and good fouls, who have lived very difconfolate, and full of doubtings, and been under a cloud the greatest part of their lives, who yet upon the approach of death, and juft as they were leaving the world, have broken forth, as the fun fometimes doth just before his setting. I know it is not always thus; there are, I doubt not, fome good men who go out of this world with little or no comfort; and yet fo foon as they step into another world, are encompaffed with joy unspeakable and full of glory and though the comfort of fuch perfons be not fo early and forward, yet it cannot chufe but be extremely welcome: and it must needs put a doubting and trembling foul into a ftrange kind of extafy and ravishment, to be thus unexpectedly surprised with happiness.

:

Secondly, Since this is fo great and evident a teftimony of the truth and goodness of religion, is it not a ftrange thing, and to be wondered at, that true religion and virtue fhould be fo little practifed, and impiety and vice should fo generally prevail in the world, against so many bars and obftacles, and againft fuch invincible objections to the contrary? Not only against our inward judgment and confcience, but against the general fenfe and experience of men in all ages, the conftant declarations and teftimonies of dying men, both good and bad, when they are moft ferious, and their words are thought to be of greatest credit and weight; against the best and fobereft reason of mankind, and their true intereft and happiness; against the health of mens bodies, and, which is the most dear and valuable thing in the world, the peace and quiet of their minds; and that not only in the time of life and health, but in the hour of death, when men ftand most in need of comfort and fupport: In a word, against the grain of human nature, and in defpite of mens natural fears of divine vengeance, and to the defeating of all our hopes of a bleffed immortality in another world, and against the inflexible nature and reafon of things, by no art or en deavour of man, by no colours of wit, or fubtilty of difcourfe, by no practice or cuftom to the contrary, by

no

no confpiracy or combination of men, ever to be changed or altered? So that we may fay with David, Have all the workers of iniquity no knowledge, no confideration of themselves, no tenderness and regard to their prefent and future intereft? Nay, if there were no life after this, fetting afide the cafe of extreme fuffering and perfecution, religion and virtue are certainly to be chofen, not only for our contentment in life, but for our comfort in death: And, if there be a ftate of happiness or mifery remaining for men after death, as most affuredly there is, much' more in order to the attaining of that endless happiness, and the avoiding of that eternal and intolerable misery ; O that men were wife, that they understood this, and would confider their latter end!

SERMON CLXXXVIII.

The usefulness of confidering our latter end.

PSALM XC. 12.

So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our: hearts unto wisdom.

THE title of this pfalm tells us who was the author of it. It is called, A prayer of Mofes, the man of God; or, as the Chaldee paraphrafe more exprefly, The prayer which Mofes, the prophet of the Lord, prayed, when the people of the houfe of Ifrael finned in the wilderness. Upon which provocation of theirs, God, in great difpleasure, threatened, and was immutably refolved, that they fhould all perish in the wilderness, and that none of the men that came out of Egypt, Caleb and Joshua only excepted, fhould enter into the promised land, but should all die in the space of forty

years.

VOL. VIII.

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Upon

Upon this occafion, Mofes made this pfalm or prayer to God, being a devout meditation upon the fhortnefs and frailty of human life, which was now brought into a much narrower compafs than in former ages. But the. cafe of that people was different from that of the rest of mankind, being limited and confined to forty years. They might die fooner than that time; but that was the utmost bound of their lives, which none were to exceed; which feems to be the ground and reafon of the petition which Mofes puts up to God in the text, So teach us, &c.

For I do not think that Mofes does here beg of God, to reveal to every one of them the precife end and term of his life; that might feem to favour of too much pre fumption or curiofity: But fince they knew that, according to the ordinary courfe of nature, the life of man was then reduced to threefcore and ten, or fourfcore years; and fince God, by a peremptory sentence, had pronounced, that, two perfons only excepted, all that vaft number which came out of Egypt, and even Moses himself, should die within the compafs of forty years; it was a very pious and proper request, which Mofes here puts up for himfelf and the rest of that people, that God would give them wisdom to make a right ufe of the notice which they had of their end, fince it might happen at any time, but could not reach beyond forty years, reckoning from the time of their coming out of Egypt.

To know the determinate time of our life, or to know certainly that our life fhall not exceed fuch a term, (which was the cafe of the Ifraelites in the wilderness) is a very awakening thing, and does commonly rouze men more than the general confideration of our own frailty and mor tality, And yet, to a wife and confiderate man, it ought, in reafon, to be the fame: For that which will certainly. be, ought to be reckoned upon and provided for; and if it be uncertain when it will be, whether at fome distance, or the next moment, we ought prefently to take care about it, and to be always in a readiness for it, left we should be furprized and overtaken.

And then this prayer is as proper for us, as it was for Mofes and the Ifraelites, though we are not juft under

the

the fame circumstances that they were. They were un• der a peremptory fentence of death within forty years, and none of them knew how much fooner they might be taken away: And this is not much different from our cafe; for we are liable to death at any time, every day, every moment; and how few of us in this congregation can reasonably either hope or expect to have our lives prolonged beyond the term of forty years? Nay, it is very probable, that not one of us in an hundred will hold out fo long. And then this prayer may be as fit for us, as it was for Mofes and the Ifraelites, that God would teach us fo to number our days; that is, to make fuch an account of the fhortnefs and uncertainty of our lives, and so to confider and lay to heart our latter end, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom; that is, that we may manage and conduct this frail, and fhort, and uncertain life, in the best manner, and to the wifeft purposes.

And this confideration of our latter end was always efteemed, by the wifeft men, a principal part and main point of wisdom. Socrates, who was, by the general confent of wife men (a more infallible oracle than that of Apollo) efteemed the wifeft of all the philofophers, gives us this definition of philofophy, that it is the meditation or study of death; to intimate to us, that this is true wisdom, to be much in the thought of our latter end, and in a constant readiness and preparation for it. And this a greater than Socrates had long before him obferved to be a chief point of wisdom, I mean Mofes, the man of God, that divine perfon, and prince of the antient Prophets, not only in this pfalm, but alfo in his laft d wine fong, a little before his death; in which he makes this the fum of all his wifhes for the people of Ifrael, that God would endow them with this high point of witdom, Deut. xxxii. 29. O that they were wife, that they underfood this, that they would confider their latter end ! This is true wisdom and philofophy, to confider our latter end.

And this, by God's affiftance, fhall be the argument which I intend to handle from thefe words; namely, to thew what influence and effect the ferious confideration of our latter end, and of the shortnefs and uncertainty of

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this

this prefent life, ought, in reafon, to have upon us. And of this I fhall give you an account in these following particulars :

I. The meditation of our latter end should make us to take into confideration our whole lives, and our whole duration, that we may refolve and act accordingly. And this is a main point of wisdom, to understand ourselves, and the nature of our beings, of what we confift, and for what duration we are defigned; whether we confift only of matter, a little better fashioned and moulded, and made up into a more curious and complicated engine, confifting of many fecret and hidden fprings and wheels, and fitted for greater variety of motions, and for more fine and fubtile operations, than the bodies of those other creatures which we efteem below us: Or, whether we be endowed with a fpiritual principle, wholly diftinct from matter, and capable not only of fenfe, but of acts of reafon, and of the impreffions of religion, from the apprehenfion of a Deity, and a fuperior being that is of itself, and made us and all other things. In a word, whether we shall die like beafts; or whether there be an immortal spirit within us, which hath no dependence upon matter and the bodily and visible parts of ourselves, but is a much better and more enduring fubftance, which hath no principle of corruption in itself, but fhall furvive thefe perifhing bodies, and, when they are mouldered into duft, fhall fubfift in a happy or miserable condition, according as we have behaved ourfelves in this world.

For these are two very different hypotheses and schemes of things, and ought to affect us very differently, and to infpire us with different refolutions, and to put us upon a quite contrary method and conduct of our lives.

For, on the one hand, if we be well affured, that we fhall be utterly extinguished by death, like the beafts that perish, then we have nothing to take care of but our bodies, because we are nothing else; then we need not to extend our thoughts, our hopes, or fears beyond this. world, and this prefent life; because we have nothing to do, but to pleafe ourselves with prefent enjoyments, and to live fo with other men, as may make most for our temporal quiet, and fatisfaction, and fecurity.

But