152 BAXTER'S DYING THOUGHTS. whom I serve: (Acts xxvii. 23.) and O that I could . serve thee better ! For to serve thee is but to receive thy grace, and to use it for my own and others' good, 'and so to glorify thee, and. please thy will, which, being love itself, is best pleased when we receive and do most good. I have not loved thee as infinite goodness, and love itself, and fatherly bounty, should have been loved ; but yet I wouldnot forsake thyfamily; and nothing in this world is more my grief, than that I love thee no more. Forsake not, then, a sinner that would not forsake thee, that looketh every, hour to- wards thee ; that,feeleth it as apiece of helltobe sodark and strange unto thee ; that gropeth, and groaneth, and gaspeth after thee; feeling, to his greatest sorrow, (though thou art every where,) that while he is present in the body, he is absent from the Lord. My Lord, I have nothing to do in this world, but to seekand serve thee. I have nothing to do with a heart and its affections, but to breathe after thee. I have nothing to do with my tongue and pen, but to speak to thee, and for thee, and to publish thy glory and thy will. What have I to do with all my reputation, and interest in my friends, but to increase thy church, and propagate thy holy truth and service? What have Ito do with my remaining time, even these last and languishing hours, but to look up unto thee, and wait for thy grace and thy salvation? O pardon all my car- nal thoughts, and all my unthankful neglects of thy precious grace and love, and all my willful sin against thy truth and thee ; and let the fuller communications of thy forfeited grace now tell me by experience that thou dost forgive me ! Even under the ter- rible Jaw thou didst tell man thy very nature, by proclaim- ing thy name, " The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant iii goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity, and' transgression, and sin ; Exod. xxxiv. 6, 7. And is not the grace of our Lord- Jesus Christ.revealed in the gospel for our more abundant faith and con- solation ? MyGod, I know, as I cannot love thee according to thy loveliness, so I cannot trust thee according to thy faithfulness: I can never be sufficiently confident of thy all-sufficient power, thy wisdom,and thy goodness. When I have said, as Psalm lxxvii. 7, "Will the Lord cast off forever? And will he be favorable no more ? Is hismercy clean gone forever ? Doth his promise fail to generations ? Hath God forgotten to be gracious ? Hath he in anger shut up his tender mercies ? " conscience hath replied, that this is my infirmity: I never wanted comfort, because thou wantedst mercy ; but because I wanted faith and fitness to receive it and perceive it. But hast thou not mercy also to give me, even that fitness, and that faith? My God, all is of thee, and through thee, and all is to thee ; and when I have the felicity, the glory of
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