to be rulers of ten cities, before we have improved our ten talents? Or to enter into the joy of our Lord, before we have well done, as good and faithful servants? God will not alter the course of justice, to give you rest before you have labored for the crown of glory, till you have _overcome_.—There is reason enough why our rest should _remain_ till the life to come. Take heed then, Christian Reader, how thou darest to contrive and care for a rest on earth; or to murmur at God for thy trouble, and toil, and wants in the flesh. Doth thy poverty _weary_ thee? Thy sickness? Thy bitter enemies and unkind friends? it should be so here. Doth the abominations of the times, the sins of professors, the hardening of the wicked, all _weary_ thee? It must be so while thou art absent from thy rest. Doth thy sins, and thy naughty distempered heart _weary_ thee? Be thus _wearied_ more and more. But under all this _weariness_, art thou willing to go to God thy _rest_? And to have thy warfare accomplished? and thy race and labor ended? If not, complain more of thy own heart, and get it more weary till rest seem more desirable. [Footnote 230] Romans vii, 24. § 17. I have but one thing more to add, for the close of this chapter, that the souls of believers do enjoy inconceivable blessedness and glory, even while they remain separated from their bodies.—What can be more plain than those words of Paul? _We are always confident, knowing that whilst we are at home_, or rather sojourning _in the body, we are absent from the Lord. (For we walk by faith, not by sight.) We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord._[231] Or those? _I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ, which is far better._[232]—If Paul had not expected to enjoy Christ till the resurrection, why should he be in a strait; or desire to depart? Nay, should he not have been loth to depart upon the very same grounds? For while he was in the flesh, he enjoyed something of Christ. Plain enough is that of Christ to the thief, _To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise_.[233] In the parable of Dives and Lazarus, it seems unlikely Christ would so evidently intimate and suppose the soul's happiness or misery presently after death, if there were no such matter.[234]—Our Lord's argument for the resurrection supposes, that, _God being not the God of the dead, but of the living_,[235] therefore Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, were then living in soul.—If the _blessedness_ of _the dead that die in the Lord_,[236] were only in resting in the grave, then a beast or a stone were as blessed; nay, it were evidently a curse, and not a blessing. For was not life a great mercy? Was it not a greater mercy to serve God and do good; to enjoy all the comforts of life, the fellowship of saints, the comfort of ordinances, and much of Christ in all; than to lie rotting in the grave? Therefore some farther blessedness is there