BAXTER'S DYING THOUGHTS. 77 morphites, and raised abominable tumults, with woful scandal and odious bloodshed. 3. And O that this age had ndt yet greater instances to prove the matter than any of these ! And, now, should a man be loath to die, for fear of leaving such .troublesome, costly learning and knowledge, as the wisest men can here attain ? 4. But the chief answer is yet behind. No knowledge is lost, but perfected, and changed for much nobler, sweeter, greater knowledge. Let men bb never sò uncertain in particular de modo, whether acquired habits of intellect and memory die with us, as being dependent on the body ; yet, by what manner soever, that a far clearer knowledge we shall have than is here attainable, is not to be doubted of. And the cessation of.our present mode of knowing, is but the cessationof our ignorance and. imperfection ; as our wakening endeth a dreaming knowledge, and our maturity endeth the trifling knowledge of a child ; for so saith the Holy Ghost; I Cor. xlü. 8=-12. Love never faileth, and we can love no more than we know ; but whether there be prophecies they shall fail, (that is, cease;) whether there be tongues they shall cease ; whether there be knowledge, notional and abstractive, such as we have now it shall vanish away : " When I was a child, I spake as a child, understood as a child, I thought as a child ; but when I became a man, I put away childish things: for now we see through a glass (per spe ies) darkly," as men understand a thing by a metaphor, parable, or riddle, "but then face to face ; " even creatures intuitively, as in themselves naked andopen to our sight. "Now, I know, in part ; " (not rem sed aliquid rei; in which sense Sanchez truly saith, ' nihil scitur;') "but then I shall know, even as I am known ; not as God knoweth us ; " for our own knowledge . and his must not be so comparatively likened ; but as holy spirits know us both now and forever, we shall both know and be known by immediate intuition. . If a physician be to describe the parts of a man, and the latent diseases of his patient, he is fain to search hard, and bestowmany thoughts of it, besides his long reading and converse, to make him capableof knowing ; and when all is ,clone, he goeth much upon conjectures, and his knowledge'is mixed with many uncertainties, yea, and mistakes ; but when he openeth the corpse, he seeth all, and his knowledge is more full, more true, and more certain ; be- sides that, it is easily and quickly attained, even by a present look. A countryman knoweth the town, the fields, and rivers, where he dwelleth, yea, and the plants and añimals, with ease and certain clearness, when he that must know the same things by the study of geographical writings and tables, must know them but with a general, and unsatisfactory, and oft a much mistaking kind of
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTcyMjk=