The genealogy, age, and death of the patriarchs descended from Adam by Seth to Noah. Enoch pleases God, and, after having begotten Methuselah, is taken up to heaven.
GENERAL REFLECTIONS. on Chap. IV. and V.
CHAP. V. The greatest part of the events happening between the fall of our first parents and the present period, had been (as it were) so many consequences of their sin, and of the sentence pronounced upon them. God seems to have shewn himself to mankind chiefly on the side of his justice. The faithful themselves could hardly avoid being overwhelmed at the sight of so many scourges, and could but darkly discover the promises of grace and immortality through the obscure veil of the prophecy, the seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head. Accordingly religion furnished men but imperfectly, with one of the most powerful motives which it proposes to bring us to God, namely, that He is a rewarder of all them who diligently seek him. God was pleased therefore to give a shining proof of that truth, and, at the same time, to set before the whole church an anticipated image of the victories, which the Messiah was one day to obtain over the enemies of our salvation. And this was the translation of ENOCH.
He was a man of fame, and a prophet: but he had qualities more worthy of emulation than these: he was a man of extraordinary goodness and probity. He walked with God, Moses tells us; and St. Paul says of him, that he pleased God, an expression which is the most beautiful of all eulogies. His eminent piety was crowned with a privilege which God has seldom granted, with an exemption from the law, which condemns to death the whole posterity of Adam. In each of the three great periods of the church, there has been an instance of a man taken up to heaven in body and soul, in order to support the hopes possessed by all true believers, of arriving at the same happiness. Enoch was the first of those examples, before the law; Elijah under the law; and Jesus Christ, our great Leader, under the gospel-dispensation!
God has been pleased to communicate the light in each of these periods after such a manner, that it has appeared gradually, till it came to shine out in its utmost splendor. It was a favourable presage for the faithful of the first world to see a good man vanish away, and be lodged, after sojourning upon the earth, in some better place than a tomb. It was yet a stronger presumption in favour of those who lived in the second period, that the heavens should be opened for the reception of one of their prophets, who was carried up thither in a chariot of fire. But it is a demonstration to Christians, and, as it were, a taking possession of their expected happiness, to see the Author and Finisher of their faith rise triumphant over death and hell, and ascend into those mansions he had purchased for them!
Happy they who imitate righteous Enoch, walking with God, as he did, that, after this short life ended, they may follow their triumphant Redeemer, and enjoy those seats of blessedness which he is gone before to prepare for them! And to incite more and more in our hearts a holy ambition after that future glory, to raise our affections above this transitory scene, to cure us of the false love of life, and all its empty glories; let us contemplate in these patriarchs before us, who lived so many hundred years, in them let us contemplate the vanity of all worldly wishes and pursuits. That they lived, and that they died, is all which is recorded of them! and what can we expect, whose lives, compared to theirs, are indeed a very span! Methuselah lived nine hundred and sixty-nine years, and he died.
Affected by this information, let us endeavour to make our short lives as useful as we can, by all acts of beneficence and charity, by receiving and doing good: if we would avoid being bewitched by pleasure, let us begin to despise it when young: if we would provide against the miseries of age, let us, through divine grace, arm ourselves with an early piety: if we be fond of rank and precedence, let us consider how soon death will level us; and if we be anxious for fame hereafter, let us reflect that we shall be incapable of enjoying it; and that, in a very little time, few will or can know it. Intended as we are for another, even an endless life, let us shun the delusive allurements of this, and fix all our hopes of happiness, of time, and of pleasure there!