death, although produced by sin, possesses its peculiar advantages.
There is also another reason which proves that death, although an evil in itself, can, by the grace of God, produce many blessings. For, first, there is this great blessing, that death puts an end to the numerous miseries of this life. Job thus eloquently complains of the evils of this our present state: " Man born of a woman, living for a short time, is filled with many miseries. Who comes forth like a flower and is destroyed, and flees as a shadow, and never continues in the same state." And Ecclesiastes says: "I praised the dead rather than the living: and I judged him happier than them both, that is not yet born, nor has seen the evils that are under the sun." Ecclesiasticus likewise adds: " Great labor is created for all men, and a heavy yoke is upon the children of Adam, from the day of their coming out of their mother's womb, until the day of their burial into the
