Comfort against death.

 Comfort against death. If God be the author of reconciliation by Christ, then death, which was the fruit of that sin which is now removed, can be no dreadful apparition. God was in Christ, and is still, conquering his enemies; and this is one enemy which must fall under his sword, and be made his footstool. As God was in Christ reconciling you, he is in death calling for you to enjoy the full-blown felicities of that peace. It is no more than a departure in peace, when God is a God of peace. Old Simeon thought so, Luke ii. 29 ; he speaks, saith one,* like a merchant that had got all his goods on shipboard, and now desires the master of the ship to hoist sail and be gone homeward. Death was before a servant of divine justice ; since justice is satisfied, it is the messenger of divine mercy. It was a jailor to enclose us in the prison of the grave, it is now a conductor to the glories of heaven. Where this peace is in maturity, where God's face shines clearly without disguises, veils, and cloudy interruptions, the name death is terrible, but the reconciled soul is beyond the fears of it. It hath lost its sting, which was God's justice ; Christ satisfying the one, hath disarmed the other of what is hurtful. There is a knot between justification (which is termed reconciliation) and glorification ; death comes between them, but doth not dissolve it: Rom. viii. 30, ' Whom he justifies, them also he glorifies ;' which knot cannot be untied by death, though that between our soul and body is : it sends the body to the grave to endure the sentence against sin denounced in paradise, and the soul to heaven, to enjoy the benefit of the promise. Stephen Charnock

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