BAXTER'S DYING THOUGHTS. 99 toe to gory in the way that my Savior and all his saints have gone before me : all, things work together for the best to me, by pre- paring me for that which is best,,indeed. Both calms and storms are to bring me to this harbor: if I take them but for themselves, and this present life,1 mistake them, and understand them not, but unthankfully vilify them, and lose their end, and life, and sweetness: every word and work'.of God; every day's mercies, and changes, and usages, do look at heaven, and intend eternity. God leadeth me no other way: if I follow him not, I forsake my hope in forsaking him.: if .I follow him, shall I be ,unwilling to be át home, andcome to the end of all this. way ? 6. Surely that is best for me which God bath required me prin- cipally to value, love, and seek, and that as the business of all my life, referring all things else' thereto : that this is my duty, I am fully certain, as is proved elsewhere, and before. Is my business in the world only for the things of this world ? How vain a crea- ture, then, were man ; and how little were the difference between waking and sleeping! Life and death: no wonder if he that believeth that there is po life but this to seek or hope for, do live in uncomfortable despair, and only seek, to palliate his misery with the brutish pleasures of a wicked life, and. if he stick at no'villany which his fleshly lusts incline him to ; especially tyrants and mul- titudes who have nonebut God to fear. It is my certain duty to seek heavenwith all the fervor of my soul, and diligence of my life; and is it not best to find it 2. 7. That must needs be best for me, which' all other things must be forsaken for: it is folly to forsake the better for the worse: but Scripture, reason, and conscience,, tell me, that all this world, when it stands in competition, or opposition, should be forsaken for heaven; yea, for the least hopes of it: a possible everlasting glory should be preferred before a certainly perishing vanity. I am sure this life will shortly be nothing to me; and therefore it is next to nothing now. And must I forsake all for my everlast- ing hopes, and yet be unwilling to pass unto the possession of them ? 8. That is like to be our best which is our maturest state. Nature carrieth all things towards their perfection : our apples, pears, grapes, and every fruit, are best when they are ripe; and though they then hasten to corruption, that is, through the inca- pacityof the corporal materials any longer to retain the vegetative spirit, which is not annihilated at its separation ; and being not made for its own felicity, but for man's, its ripeness is the state in which man useth it, before it doth corrupt of itself, and that its . corruption may be for his nutriment,; and the spirits and best mat- ter of his said food 'doth become his very substance. And Both
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