My God, my God, I know (for thou hast said it) that _he that keepeth
Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep_:[214] but shall not that Israel,
over whom thou watchest, sleep? I know (for thou hast said it) that
there are men whose damnation sleepeth not;[215] but shall not they to
whom thou art salvation sleep? or wilt thou take from them that
evidence, and that testimony that they are thy Israel, or thou their
salvation? _Thou givest thy beloved sleep_:[216] shall I lack that seal
of thy love? _You shall lie down, and none shall make you afraid_:[217]
shall I be outlawed from that protection? Jonah slept in one dangerous
storm,[218] and thy blessed Son in another;[219] shall I have no use, no
benefit, no application of those great examples? _Lord, if he sleep, he
shall do well_,[220] say thy Son's disciples to him of Lazarus; and
shall there be no room for that argument in me? or shall I be open to
the contrary? If I sleep not, shall I not be well in their sense? Let me
not, O my God, take this too precisely, too literally; _There is that
neither day nor night seeth sleep with his eyes_,[221] says thy wise
servant Solomon; and whether he speak that of worldly men, or of men
that seek wisdom, whether in justification or condemnation of their
watchfulness, we cannot tell: we can tell that there are men that cannot
sleep till they have done mischief,[222] and then they can; and we can
tell that the rich man cannot sleep, because his abundance will not let
him.[223] The tares were sown when the husbandmen were asleep[224]; and
the elders thought it a probable excuse, a credible lie, that the
watchmen which kept the sepulchre should say, that the body of thy Son
was stolen away when they were asleep.[225] Since thy blessed Son
rebuked his disciples for sleeping, shall I murmur because I do not
sleep? If Samson had slept any longer in Gaza, he had been taken;[226]
and when he did sleep longer with Delilah,[227] he was taken. Sleep is
as often taken for natural death in thy Scriptures, as for natural rest.
Nay, sometimes sleep hath so heavy a sense, as to be taken for sin
itself,[228] as well as for the punishment of sin, death.[229] Much
comfort is not in much sleep, when the most fearful and most irrevocable
malediction is presented by thee in a perpetual sleep. _I will make
their feasts, and I will make them drunk, and they shall sleep a
perpetual sleep, and not wake._[230] I must therefore, O my God, look
farther than into the very act of sleeping before I misinterpret my
waking; for since I find thy whole hand light, shall any finger of that
hand seem heavy? Since the whole sickness is thy physic, shall any
accident in it be my poison by my murmuring? The name of watchmen
belongs to our profession; thy prophets are not only seers, endued with
a power of seeing, able to see, but watchmen evermore in the act of
seeing. And therefore give me leave, O my blessed God, to invert the
words of thy Son's spouse: she said, _I sleep, but my heart
waketh_;[231] I say, I wake, but my heart sleepeth: my body is in a sick
weariness, but my soul in a peaceful rest with thee; and as our eyes in
our health see not the air that is next them, nor the fire, nor the
spheres, nor stop upon any thing till they come to stars, so my eyes
that are open, see nothing of this world, but pass through all that, and
fix themselves upon thy peace, and joy, and glory above. Almost as soon
as thy apostle had said, _Let us not sleep_,[232] lest we should be too
much discomforted if we did, he says again, _Whether we wake or sleep,
let us live together with Christ_.[233] Though then this absence of
sleep may argue the presence of death (the original may exclude the
copy, the life the picture), yet this gentle sleep and rest of my soul
betroths me to thee, to whom I shall be married indissolubly, though by
this way of dissolution.