I go on,
III. To inquire into the nature, rule, and measure, of that sorrow, which is to be expressed on the account of the decease of our friends and relatives
That ye sorrow not, says the apostle, even as others which have no hope. All sorrow for them is not denied and condemned; only such as was used by others, οι λοιποι “the rest, ” who were no Christians, but unconverted Gentiles. The apostle’s view is not to encourage and establish a stoical apathy, a stupid indolence, and brutal insensibility; all which are contrary to the make of human nature, and to the practice of the saints, and even of Christ and his apostles. Abraham came to mourn for Sarah, and to weep for her; Joseph made a mourning for his father seven days; the children of Israel wept for Moses in the plains of Moab thirty days; David lamented the death of Saul, Jonathan, and Abner; Christ wept over the grave of Lazarus; devout men that carried Stephen to his burial made great lamentation over him; and our apostle, who gives the instructions in our text, signifies concerning his friend Epaphroditus, who was sick nigh unto death; that if the Lord had not had mercy on him he should have had sorrow upon sorrow: But excessive, immoderate sorrow, and all the extravagant forms of it the Gentiles ran into, are here forbidden. The Jews were not allowed to mourn for their dead after the manner of the Heathens; it was a standing law in Israel, Ye shall not cut yourselves, nor make any baldness between your eyes for the dead (Deuteronomy 14:4); practices, it seems, which were used among the nations of the world: Though these people, as they were always prone to imitate the Gentiles, so they did in their forms of mourning for the dead; for as the Romans had their Praeficae, and the Grecians their ιηλεμισειαι, so they had their תוגגקם “mourning women; ” see Jeremiah 9:17, who by their disheveled hair, naked breasts, and mournful voice, moved upon the affections, produced tears from others, and set them mourning and sorrowing: Such methods as these the apostle would not have Christians give into, and especially such as carried in them rather marks of distraction than of affection; such as covering themselves with mud, dirt, and filth, tearing of their mouths and cheeks, smiting their heads, breasts, and thighs; which kinds of mourning were condemned by the wiser sort of the Heathens themselves; particularly by Cicero, [5342] who pronounces them detestable; of this sort was the mourning of Alexander for his friend Hephestion, who, when he died, cast his armor, gold, silver, and precious garments, into the fire with him; shaved his soldiers, and pulled down the tower and walls of the city of Ecbatana, where he was; upon which the Heathen historian himself observes, [5343] that he επενθει βαρθαεικωῤ, “mourned in a barbarous way, ” or after the manner of the Barbarians, the more savage and uncultivated nations of the world; but these were the extravagancies, and furious transports of men that had no hope; when their friends died, they looked upon them, as entirely lost, as no longer in being; they had no expectation of seeing, meeting, and enjoying them any more, and this drove them into those madnesses and excesses. They had no notion of the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead; they were without hope of that, they looked upon it as a ridiculous principle, and judged it incredible, and so despaired of ever seeing their friends alive again: But we, who believe the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, should not sorrow as they did, and mourn over our friends as though they were lost, and never to be enjoyed more; this is to act contrary to our character as Christians, to the doctrines of Christianity, to the gospel of Christ, in which life and immortality are brought to light, and set in the clearest view before us. Even Seneca the Heathen may shame us out of such a conduct as this; who having some little notion of the immortality of the soul, and its future existence in a separate state, though none of the resurrection of the body, in a consolatory letter to Lucilius, on the account of the death of his friend Flaccus, thus expresses himself; [5344] “The thought of deceased friends is sweet and pleasant to me; for I have enjoyed them as one that was about to lose them; and I have lost them as one that may have them again.” Had this man known and embraced the Christian doctrine of the resurrection, how would he have improved it to the consolation of himself and friends on such an occasion as ours? Let us not sorrow then as such who are without any knowledge of this doctrine, and hope of this blessing. This I take to be the sense of the apostle, who is not to be understood of other Christians who had no hope of the spiritual and eternal welfare of their deceased friends; not but that the sorrow of those who have a good hope of the future well-being of their dear relations, must, and ought to be greatly different from that of others who have no hope at all. But the apostle is speaking of other Gentiles, who were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world (Ephesians 2:12).
I go on,