in all objects, cannot I discontinue the faculty of seeing them by closing mine eyes in sleep? But why rather, being entering into that presence where I shall wake continually and never sleep more, do I not interpret my continual waking here, to be a parasceve and a preparation to that? XV. EXPOSTULATION. 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