My God, my God, if expostulation be too bold a word, do thou mollify it
with another; let it be wonder in myself, let it be but problem to
others; but let me ask, why wouldst thou not suffer those that serve
thee in holy services, to do any office about the dead,[247] nor assist
at their funeral? Thou hadst no counsellor, thou needst none; thou hast
no controller, thou admittedst none. Why do I ask? In ceremonial things
(as that was) any convenient reason is enough; who can be sure to
propose that reason, that moved thee in the institution thereof? I
satisfy myself with this; that in those times the Gentiles were
over-full of an over-reverent respect to the memory of the dead: a great
part of the idolatry of the nations flowed from that; an over-amorous
devotion, an over-zealous celebrating, and over-studious preserving of
the memories, and the pictures of some dead persons; and by _the vain
glory of men, they entered into the world_,[248] and their statues and
pictures contracted an opinion of divinity by age: that which was at
first but a picture of a friend grew a god in time, as the wise man
notes, _They called them gods, which were the work of an ancient
hand_.[249] And some have assigned a certain time, when a picture should
come out of minority, and be at age to be a god in sixty years after it
is made. Those images of men that had life, and some idols of other
things which never had any being, are by one common name called
promiscuously dead; and for that the wise man reprehends the idolater,
_for health he prays to that which is weak, and for life he prays to
that which is dead_.[250] Should we do so? says thy prophet;[251]
_should we go from the living to the dead?_ So much ill then being
occasioned by so much religious compliment exhibited to the dead, thou,
O God (I think), wouldst therefore inhibit thy principal holy servants
from contributing any thing at all to this dangerous intimation of
idolatry; and that the people might say, Surely those dead men are not
so much to be magnified as men mistake, since God will not suffer his
holy officers so much as to touch them, not to see them. But those
dangers being removed, thou, O my God, dost certainly allow that we
should do offices of piety to the dead and that we should draw
instructions to piety from the dead. Is not this, O my God, a holy kind
of raising up seed to my dead brother, if I, by the meditation of his
death produce a better life in myself? It is the blessing upon Reuben,
_Let Reuben live, and not die, and let not his men be few_;[252] let him
propagate many. And it is a malediction, _That that dieth, let it
die_,[253] let it do no good in dying; for _trees without fruit_, thou,
by thy apostle, callest _twice dead_.[254] It is a second death, if none
live the better by me after my death, by the manner of my death.
Therefore may I justly think, that thou madest that a way to convey to
the Egyptians a fear of thee and a fear of death, that _there was not a
house where there was not one dead_;[255] for thereupon the Egyptians
said, _We are all dead men_: the death of others should catechise us to
death. Thy Son Christ Jesus is the _first begotten of the dead_;[256] he
rises first, the eldest brother, and he is my master in this science of
death; but yet, for me, I am a younger brother too, to this man who
died now, and to every man whom I see or hear to die before me, and all
they are ushers to me in this school of death. I take therefore that
which thy servant David's wife said to him, to be said to me, _If thou
save not thy life to-night, to-morrow thou shalt be slain_.[257] If the
death of this man work not upon me now, I shall die worse than if thou
hadst not afforded me this help; for thou hast sent him in this bell to
me, as thou didst send to the angel of Sardis, with commission to
_strengthen the things that remain, and that are ready to die_,[258]
that in this weakness of body I might receive spiritual strength by
these occasions. This is my strength, that whether thou say to me, as
thine angel said to Gideon, _Peace be unto thee, fear not, thou shalt
not die_;[259] or whether thou say, as unto Aaron, _Thou shalt die
there_;[260] yet thou wilt preserve that which is ready to die, my soul,
from the worst death, that of sin. Zimri _died for his sins_, says thy
Spirit, _which he sinned in doing evil; and in his sin which he did to
make Israel sin_;[261] for his sins, his many sins, and then in his sin,
his particular sin. For my sins I shall die whensoever I die, for death
is the wages of sin; but I shall die in my sin, in that particular sin
of resisting thy Spirit, if I apply not thy assistances. Doth it not
call us to a particular consideration that thy blessed Son varies his
form of commination, and aggravates it in the variation, when he says to
the Jews (because they refused the light offered), _You shall die in
your sin_:[262] and then when they proceeded to farther disputations,
and vexations, and temptations, he adds, _You shall die in your
sins_;[263] he multiplies the former expression to a plural. In this
sin, and in all your sins, doth not the resisting of thy particular
helps at last draw upon us the guiltiness of all our former sins? May
not the neglecting of this sound ministered to me in this man's death,
bring me to that misery, so that I, whom the Lord of life loved so as to
die for me, shall die, and a creature of mine own shall be immortal;
that I shall die, and the _worm_ of mine own conscience _shall never
die_?[264]