God can tell how to kill thee, and take thee away from the earth for thy sins.

God can tell how to plague thee in thy death, with great plagues and of long continuance.

What shall I say?  God can tell how to let Satan loose upon thee; when thou liest dying, he can license him then to assault thee with great temptations; he can tell how to make thee possess the guilt of all thy unkindness towards him, and that when thou, as I said, art going out of the world; he can cause that thy life shall be in continual doubt before thee, and not suffer thee to take any comfort day or night; yea, he can drive thee even to a madness with his chastisements for thy folly, and yet all shall be done by him to thee as a father chastiseth his son.

Further, God can tell how to tumble thee from off thy death-bed in a cloud, he can let thee die in the dark; when thou art dying, thou shalt not know whither thou art going, to wit, whether to heaven or to hell.  Yea, he can tell how to let thee seem to come short of life, both in thine own eyes and also in the eyes of them that behold thee.  “Let us therefore fear,” says the apostle—­though not with slavish, yet with filial fear—­“lest, a promise being left us of entering into rest, any of us should seem to come short of it.”

Now all this and much more can God do to his, as a father by his rod and a father by rebukes:  ah, who know but those that are under them, what terrors, fears, distresses, and amazements, God can bring his people into?  He can put them into a furnace, a fire, and no tongue can tell what, so unsearchable and fearful are his fatherly chastisements, and yet never give them the spirit of bondage again to fear.  Therefore, if thou art a son, take heed of sin, lest all these things overtake thee and come upon thee.

Dost thou fear the Lord?  “The mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on them that fear him.”

Child of God, thou that fearest God, here is mercy nigh thee, mercy enough, everlasting mercy upon thee.  This is long-lived mercy.  It will live longer than thy sin; it will live longer than temptation; it will live longer than thy sorrows; it will live longer than thy persecutors.  It is mercy from everlasting to contrive thy salvation, and mercy to everlasting to resist all thy adversaries.  Now what can hell and death do to him that hath this mercy of God upon him?  And this hath the man that feareth the Lord.

Take that other blessed word, and O, thou man that fearest the Lord, hang it like a chain of gold about thy neck:  “As the heaven is high above the earth, so great is his mercy to them that fear him.”  If mercy as big, as high, and as good as heaven itself will be a privilege, the man that feareth God shall have the privilege.

Christ our life.