68 BAXTER'S', DYING THOUGHTS. day : what cares, what fears, what griefs, and what groans, bath this body cost me! Alas! how many hours of my precious time have been spent to maintain it, please it, or repair it ! How corisid- erable a part of all my life hath been spent in necessary sleep and rest ; and howmuch in eating, drinking, dressing, physic ; and how much in laboring, or using means, to procure these and other necessaries ! Manya hundred times I have thought, that it costeth me so dear to live, yea, to live a painful, weary life, that were it not for the work and higher ends of life, I had little reason to be much in lovewith it, or to be loath to leave it. And had not God put into our nature itself a necessary, unavoidable, sensitive love . of the body, and oflife, as he puts into the mother, and into every brute, a love of their yowng ones,', how unclean, and impotent, and troublesome soever, for the propagation and continuance of man on earth ? Had God' but left it to mere reason, without this necessary preëngagement of our natures it would have been a matter of more doubt and difficulty than it. is, whether this life should be loved and desired ; and no small number would daily wish that they had never been born ; a wish that I have had much ado to forbear, evenhvhen I have known that it is sinful, and when the work and pleasure of my life have been such to overcome the evils of it as few have had. 6. Yea,, to depart from such a body, is but to be removed from a foul,, uncleanly, and sordid habitation. I know that the body of man and brutes is the curious, wonderful work of God, and not to be despised, nor injuriously dishonored, but admired and well used ; but yet it it a wonder to our reason, that so noblea spirit should be so meanly housed ; and we may call it "our vile body,',' as the apostle doth; Phil. iii. 21. It is made up of the airy, watery, and earthly parts of our daily food; subacted and actuated by the fiery part, as the instrument of the soul. The greater part of the same food which, with great cost, and pomp, and pleasure, is first upon our tables, and then in our mouths, to-day, is to-mor- row a fetid, loathsome excrement, and cast out into the draught, that the sight and smell ofthat annoy us not, which yesterday was the sumptuous fruit of our abundance, and the glory ofthat which is called great housekeeping, and the pleasure of our eyes and taste. And is not the rest that turneth into blood and flesh, of the same general kind with that which is turned into loathsome filth? The difference is, that it is fitter-for the soul by the fiery spirits, yet longer to operate on and keep from corruption; our blood and flesh are as stinking and loathsome a substance as our filthiest excrements, save that they are longer kept from putre- faction. Why then should it more grieve ,me, that one part of my food; which turneth into flesh, should rot and stink in the
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