130 BAXTER'S DYING THOUGHTS. in his love; and if so great ingratitude and neglect ofsovereign goodness were punished withsuch strangeness, and fears, and faint- ings, as I have long with groans lamented I Recipitur ad modum recipientis. But in heaven I shall have none ofthese obstructions ; all old unkindness and ingratitude will be forgiven ; the great Reconciler in whom I am beloved will then have perfected his work; I shall then be wholly separated from the vanity which here deceived me ; my open soul will be prepared to receive the heavenly influx; with open face I shall behold the open face of glorifying love ; I shall joyfully attend his voice, and delightfully relish the celestial provisions. No disease will corrupt my appetite ; no sluggishness . will make me guilty again of my old neglects ; the love of the Father, by the grace of the Son, and the communion of the Holy Spirit, will have got the victory over all my deadness, folly, and disaffection, and my God-displeasing andself-undoingaverseness and enmity will be gone forever. The perfect love, which God doth first effect in me, will be my everlasting receptivity of the fullest love of God. Benevolentlove will'make me good ; that is, a holy lover of God ; and then pleased love will make me his delight, and benevolence will still maintain me in my capacity. Study this heavenly work of love, O my soul ; these are not dead or barren studies ; these are not sad, unpleasant studies ; it is only love, that can relish love and understand it; the will here bath its gust so like to an understanding, as make some philosophers say, voluntas percipit is a proper phrase. What can poor, carnal worldlings know of glorious love, who study it without love? What soundingbrass and tinkling cymbals, a lifelessvoice, are they that preach of God, and Christ, and heavenly glory, without love! But gazing upon the face of love in Christ, and tasting of its gifts, and looking up to its glorious reign, is the way to kindle the sacred fire in thee. Look upwards; if thou wouldest see the light that must lead thee upwards. It is not for nothing that Christ bath taught us to begin our prayers with "Our Father;which art inheav- en ; " it is ' fatherly' love that must win our hearts, and that must comfortthem ; and it is in ' heaven' where this in gloriouslymanifest- ed. As I said before, as the soul is in all the body, but yet under- standethnot in the hand as it doth in the head, and rejoiceth not'in the foot as it doth in the heart ; so God, that is every where, doth not every where glorify his love as he doth it in heaven. Thither, therefore, the mind and eye are even by nature taught to look up as to God, as we look a man in the face when we speak to him, rather than to his feet, though his soul be also there. My sinful heart hath needed sorrow. My careless, rash, pre- sumptuous soul bath needed fears; and I have had some part of
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