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THE LIFE OF THE WORLD TO COME.

A

SERMON

ON

LUKE XX. 36.

"Neither can they die any more."

Preached at Hull, Nov. 4th 1804.

BY THE REV.

G. NICHOLSON,

LATE PERPETUAL CURATE OF LITTLE BUDWORTH, CHESHIRE.

London:

Printed by W. Hersee, St. Mary Axe;

AND SOLD BY L. B. SEELEY, FLEET STREET; T. HAMILTON, PATERNOSTER ROW; AND WILLIAMS AND CO. STATIONER'S COURT.

1817.

Price One Shilling.

1

A SERMON.

LUKE, XX 36. Former part.

"Neither can they die any more."

BLESSED, happy, and glorious confirmation of our strongest hopes and desires, is this declaration of the great, the true, and the faithful witness of all witnesses!" It is appointed unto all men once to die. But Christ hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel." He is "the resurrection and the life."

And though

sin hath brought a twofold death into the world, Christ is able and willing to deliver us from the power of both, and that for ever. What rational being in his senses would not wish to live? Self-preservation is said to be the first of nature's laws, both in men, animals, birds, and creeping things: But man is gifted with reflection, with powers and faculties capable of end

less improvements. He can look up to his divine creator, and incessantly pant for immortality. And that inevitable transition from world to world, called death, is accompanied with terrors most alarming, most humiliating, and most gloomy indeed. Even the christian can scarcely divest himself of doubts and fears, occasionally, on this solemn subject: But, the merely natural unconverted man, looks upon death as the final termination of his very existence, and of every thing thereunto appertaining; this makes him, however, only dread it the more, instead of providing against it, should it be otherwise, as scripture, reason, and common sense assure us. But what a blessed consideration to every human mind, is the matter of fact itself, that death comes but once, and it will not be long before we have passed through it, and that it will be only a sublime continuation of life, to the evangelical believer! Our natural, spiritual, and eternal perceptions, hopes, fears, desires, and prospects, are all gratified in these few, but interesting words, "neither can THEY die any more. These words are part

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of an answer of our blessed Lord to the Sadducees, who believed in no resurrection at all, but yet asked him a most impertinent question of vain curiosity; our Lord therefore answered the Sadducees according to their grossly natural unbelieving state, by shewing them the certainty, and the spirituality of the resurrection, and the heavenly state of those, who enter upon eternal life, which state is vastly different from, and much superior to this. But the subject I have proposed to myself at present, is described in this short, but glorious and soul animating declaration; which is prohibitory of any second change, transition, decrease, or apparent dissolution of life, "neither can they die any more.

Now this promise, and assurance of the gospel, belongs to those only, who live the life of the righteous, and therefore have a part among those "blessed and holy ones, who have a part in the first, or, the primary, essential resurrection;" for these only, in scripture language, are said to live in Christ, and Christ in them" here, and to all eternity. Of these it may be said, "to die is gain, and to depart, and be (wholly)

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