BAXTER'S DYING THOUGHTS. 69 grave, than that all the rest should daily stink in the draught? Yea, while it is within me, were it not covered, from my sight, what a loathsome mass would my intestines appear ! If I sawwhat is in the guts, the mesentery, the ventricles of the brain, what filth, what bilious or mucous matter, and, perhaps, crawling worms, that are in the most proud or comely person, I should think that the cover of a dewier skin, and the borrowed ornaments of ap- parel, make no great difference between such a body and a carcass; ,(which may be also covered with an adorned coffin and monu- ment, to deceive such spectators as see but outsides ;) the change is not so great of corruptible flesh, replete with such fetid excre- ments, into corrupted flesh, as some fools imagine. 7. Yet more : to depart from, such a body is but to be loosed from:the bondage of corruption, and from a clog and prison .of the soul. I say not that God put a preexistent soul into this, prison penally, for former faults ; I must say np more than I can prove, or than I know ; but that bodywhich was an apt servant to inno- cent man's soul, is become as a prison to him now ; what altera- tion sin made upon the nature of the body, as, whether it be more terrene and gross than else it would have been, I have no reason to assert; of earth or dust it was at first, and to dust it is sentenced to return. But no doubt buf it bath its part in that dispositive deprivation which is the fruit of sin. We find that the soul, as sensitive, is so imprisoned, or shut up, in flesh, that sometimes it is more than one door that must be opened before the object and the faculty can meet. In' the eye, indeed, the soul seemeth to have a window to. look out at, and to be almost itself visible to others; and yet there are many interposing tunicles, and a suffu- sion, or winking, can make the clearest sight to be as useless for the time as if it were none ; and if sense be thus shut up from its object, no wonder if reason also be under difficulties from corpo- real impediments; and if the soul that is yoked with such a body can go no faster than its heavy pace. 8. Yet further: to depart from such, a body; is'bui to be sepa- rated from an accidental enemy, and one of our greatest and most hurtful enemies ; though still we say, that it is not by any default in the work of our Creator, but by the effects of sin, that it is such; what could Satan, or any other enemy of our souls, have done against us without our flesh ? What is it but the interest of this body, that standeth in competition against the interest of our souls and God ? What elsedo the profane sell their heavenly in- heritance for, as Esau his birthright ? Noman loveth evil, as evil, but as some way a real or seeming good; and what good is it but that which seemeth good for the body ? What else is the, bait of ambition, covetousness, and sensuality, but the interest and pleas-
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