CHAPTER XXXIX – An answer to doubts raised by the fear of death
At least, methinks I might reason thus with any man of you, good or bad: either death is indeed terrrible, or not. If it be not, why do you so fear it when it comes? If it be, why do you not as well fear it before it comes, even in your youth and health; for you are sure then that you must die, as if it were upon you. A wonderful thing it is that man's heart should be so unreasonably insensible, and that there should be so great a difference in the affections of most in regard of death. It is no matter of doubt or controversy whether they shall die.
He is a block, and not a man, that knoweth it not as certainly now as he shall do in his sickness; and yet, in health, these wretches will not be awakened so much to fear it as may restrain them from sin, and help them to prepare for it. It is troublesome, precise talk with them, to talk of making ready to die: either they slight it, or love not to hear or think of it. And yet the same men, when death is coming, and they see they must away, are even amazed with fear and horror; and I cannot blame them, unless they were in a better case. But this I must blame them for, as most unreasonable: that they can make such a lamentable complaint when death and hell are near at hand, and yet make so light of it all their lifetime.
CHAPTER XXXIX
Answer to their Doubts that fear Death BUT because this is the hardest part of self-denial, and yet most necessary, and the particular subject of my text, I shall stay upon it yet so much longer as to resolve a question of some doubting
Christians, and to give you some directions for the furtherance of self-denial herein.
Object. 'If it be a necessary part of self-denial to deny our own lives, I am much afraid that I am no disciple of Christ, as having no true selfdenial, for I find that for all these reasons I cannot be willing to die; but when you have said all that can be said, death is the most terrible thing in the world to me.' Answ. I pray you lay together these following particulars for answer to this great and common doubt. 1.
Death, as death, is naturally dreadful to all; and the best men, as men, are naturally averse to it, and abhor it. No man can desire death, as death, nor ought to do it. If it had not been an evil to nature, it had not been fit to be the matter of God's punishment, and to be threatened to the world. Threatenings would not do their work, if that which is threatened were not naturally evil, or hurtful and dreadful to the subject. To threaten men with a benefit is a contradiction, as much as to promise him a mischief, and more. 2. It is not therefore a simple displacency, or averseness to die, that God requireth you to lay by. Self-denial consisteth not in reconciling us to death, as death; for then he might as well persuade us to become angels as to deny ourselves, and preachers had as hard a work to do, as to persuade men to cease to be men. Death will be an enemy as long as it is death. Even the separated soul hath so natural an inclination to union with its body, that the separation is part of the penalty to it; and though heaven be their joy, and Christ their life and fulness, yet the separation from the body which they have even with Christ, is a penalty, and they have not that perfect measure of joy and glory, as they shall have when they are joined to the body again: so that separation, as such, is penal to the soul in blessedness. And even the separated soul of Jesus Christ, that was more blessed than ours, was, as separated, in a state of penalty, when his body was in the grave (of which, see my Appendix to the Reformed Pastor, about the
descent into hell). 3. That which you have to look after, therefore, in your souls, is not a love to death, or willingness of death as death, which no man hath or should have; but it is, 1. A submission to it, as a less evil than sin and hell, and the displeasure of God, and a choosing rather to die than wilfully to sin and forsake the Lord. 2.
And a love to that glory in the fruition of God which death is the passage to. Seeing we cannot obtain the end of our faith and patience by any easier passage than death, you must rather be content to go this straight and grievous way than miss of the state of eternal blessedness. Let death be never so odious and dreadful to you, if you had but rather die than forsake Christ by sin, or miss of everlasting life with God, you have that true self-denial, even of life itself, which is required in my text. 4. And yet even a gracious soul may be so much unprepared, as to desire to stay yet longer on earth, though he be absent from the Lord while he is present in the body, that so a better preparation may be made. And also the love of God may make a man desire to stay yet longer for the service of the church, or to be, with Paul, in a strait between two; Phil. 1:21–23. 5. Have you not such pleasant apprehensions of the New Jerusalem, and the coming of Christ in glory, and the blessed state of the saints in heaven, as that you could most gladly enter into that blessed state by any other way than death; and had you not rather die than miss of that felicity?
At least, when you know that die you must, had you not rather die sooner, even a violent death by persecution, than miss of your eternal life by saving your lives a little longer? 6. And for your unwillingness to die, as death is the last enemy to be conquered by Christ at the resurrection, so the fears of death, and the power of it, is the last evil that we shall be troubled with: and you must not expect to be fully freed from these fears in this life, for death will be death,