Numbers 33:38

And Aaron the priest went up into mount Hor at the commandment of the LORD, and died there, in the fortieth year after the children of Israel were come out of the land of Egypt, in the first [day] of the fifth month.

Ver. 38. And died there in the fortieth year.]

“ Nec te tua plurima Pentheu

Labentem texit pietas. ”

The righteous die as well as the wicked, yea, the righteous oft before the wicked: Wκυμοροι οι θεοφιλεις . God sends his servants to bed when they have done their work, as here he did Aaron; and as within these few days he hath done, to mine unspeakable loss and grief, my dearest brother and most faithful friend, Mr Thomas Jackson, that able and active instrument of God's glory, while he lived, in the work of the ministry at Gloucester; the sad report of whose death, received whilst I was writing these things, made the pen, almost, fall out of my fingers, not for my own sake so much as for my country, whereof he was, I may truly say, the bulwark and the beauty, as Ambrose is said to have been "the walls of Italy": a Aμβροσιον οιδα μονον Eπισκοπον αξιως καλουμενον, said Theodosius; Ambrose, whilst alive, was the only minister, to speak of, that I knew in the whole country. And dilexi virum, qui cum corpore solveretur, magis de ecclesiarum statu, quam de suis periculis angebatur, said the same emperor of the same Ambrose; I could not but love the man, for that when he died, his care was more for the churches' welfare than for his own. I can safely say the same of the man in speech, without offence to any be it spoken; and I greatly fear lest, as the death of Ambrose forebode the ruin of Italy, so that it bodes no good to us, that God pulls such props and pillars out of our building. But this by way of digression, to satisfy my great grief for so dear a friend deceased, as David did for his brother Jonathan, and made him an epitaph. 2Sa 1:17

a Paulin. Nolan., in Vita Ambros.