104 BAXTER'S DYING THOUGHTS. as we delight in the ease and prosperity of our body, and each member, and have pleasure in the pleasant food that nourisheth it, and other pleasant objects which accommodate it ; Christ also de- lighteth in the welfare of his church, and of all the faithful, and is pleased when they are fed with good and .pleasant food, and when hereby they prosper: Christ loveth the church, not only as a. man must love his wife, but as we love our bodies ; and no man ever hated his own flesh ; Eph. v. 27, 4c. And herein I must allow my Savior the preeminence, to overgo me in powerful, faith- ful love : he will save me better from pain and death than I can save' my body ; atid will more inseparably hold me tó himself. If it please my soul to dwell in such a house of clay, and to operate on so mean n thing as .flesh, how greatly will itplease my glorified Lord to dwell with his glorified body, the triumphant church, and to cherish and bless each member of it ! It would be a. kind of death to Christ to be separated from his body,' and to have it die. Whether Augustine, and the rest of the fathers, were in the right or no, who thought, that as our bodies do not only shed their hairs, but, by sickness and waste, lose much of their very flesh ; so Christ's militant body doth not only lose hypocrites,'but also some living, justified members ; yet, certain it is that confirmed mem- bers, and most certain, that glorified members, shall not be lost : heaven is not a place forChrist or tis to suffer such loss in. And will Christ love me better, than I love my. body? Will he be-more loath to lose me than.I am to lose a member, ortazlie? Will he not take incomparably greater pleasure in animating and actuating me forever, than my soul doth in animating and actuating this body ? O, then, let me long to bewith him! And though Lam naturally loath to be absent from the body, let tne, be, by his Spirit, more unwilling to be absent from the Lord;, and though I would not be unclothed, had not sin made it necessary, let me not groan to be clothed upon with my heavenly habitation, and to become the de- light of my Redeemer, and to be perfectly loved by love itself. 10.. And even this blessed receptivity of my soul, in. terminat- ing the love and delight of my glorified Head, must needs be a. felicity to me., The insensible creatures are but beautified by the sun's communication of its light and heat; but the sensitives have also the pleasure of it. Shall my soul be senseless? Will it be a clod or stone ? Shall that, which is now the form of man, be then . more lifeless, senseless, or uncapable,than the form of brutes is now ? Doubtless, it will be a living, perceiving, sensible recipient ofthe felicitating love of God, and my.Redeemer; I shall be loved as a living spirit, and not as ä dead and senseless thing, that Both cat comfortably perceive it. iI. And ,if I roust rejoice with my-fellow-servants thatrejoiee,..
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