Wherefore I praised the dead which are already dead more than the living which are yet alive.
Ver. 2. Wherefore I praised the dead.] Because they are out of the reach of wrong doers; and if dead in the Lord, they have "entered into peace, they do rest in their beds, each one walking in his uprightness." Isa 57:2 But if otherwise, men had better do anything, suffer anything here than die; since by death, as by a trap door, they enter into those terrors and torments that shall never either mend or end. Men, like silly fishes, see one another caught and jerked out of the pond of life but they see not, alas! the fire and pan into the which they are cast that die in their sins. Oh it had been better, surely, for such if they had never been born, as Christ said of Judas, than thus to be "brought forth to the murderer" Hos 9:14 - to the old manslayer - to be hurled into hell, there to suffer such things as they shall never be able to avoid or abide.