trary, to punish their grievous sins, and to stop their career that they might not make an addition of greater. Whereupon David said, that " bloody and deceitful men," that is, men very wicked and cruel, " shall not live out half their days." [1] And sometimes He shortens them for sins that seem but light; as it happened to the prophet who, being beguiled by another, did eat in the place where God had commanded him that he should not eat. [2] Out of all this I will draw a firm resolution so to order the days of my life that Almighty God shorten them not for my sins; saying with David, " Call me not away back, O Lord, in the midst of my days," [3] by a sudden death, but remember that Thy years are eternal, and have compassion of mine that are few and fleeting.
POINT II.
The second property of death is, that concerning the day, place, and manner it is most secretly hidden from all men, and manifest only to Almighty God.
1. In which I will consider first, that we are not able to know the day nor the hour in which we are to die; neither the place, nor the occasion, nor season in which death may attack us; nor the manner how we are to die, whether it shall be a natural death by sickness, or whether it shall be with a violent death by fire or water, by the hands of men or by beasts, or by lightning, or by the tile of a house that may fall down upon us. This only we know — that death shall come suddenly, or sickness and the occasion of it; and that when a man is most careless, it comes " as a thief in the night" [4] to scale his house and rob him of his wealth. So, says Christ our Lord, shall the Son of Man come to scale your house, which is the body, and to rob and spoil it of its soul and to give judgment on it.
