BAXTER'S DYING THGÚGHTS. i 81 Lion : imperfect persons were the penmen ; and imperfect human language is. the conveying, signal, organical part of the matter ; and the method and phrase (though true and blameless) are far short of the heavenly perfection. Else so many commentators had not found so hard a task of it to expound innumerable difficul- ties, and reconcile so many seeming contradictions; nor would in- fidels find matter of so strong temptation, and so much cavil as they do ; norwould Peter have told us of the difficulties of Paul's Epistles, and such occasions of men's wresting thetm to theirown destruction. Heaven will not be made, ¡o perfect spirits, the oc- casion of so many errors, and controversies, and quarrels, as'.the Scriptures are to us imperfect men on earth; yea, heaven is the mdre desirable, because there I shall better understand the Scrip- tures than here I can ever hope tb do. All the hard passages, . now misunderstood, will IA there made plain, and all the seeming contradictions reconciled ; and, which is much more, that God, that Christ, that.New Jerusalem, that glory, and tliat felicity of souls, which are now known but darkly and enigmatically in the glass, will then be known intuitively as we see the face itself whose image only the glassfirst showed us. To leave my Bible, and go to the God and the heaven that is revealed, will be no otherwise a loss to me than to lay by my crutches, or spectacles, when I need them not, or to leave his image for the presence of my friend. Much less do I need to. fear the loss of all other books, or ser- mons, or other verbal informations. Much reading bath oft been a weariness to my flesh ; and the pleasure of my mind is much abated by the great imperfection of the means. Many books must bd' partly read, that Luray know that they are scarce worth the reading; andmany must be read, to enable us to satisfy other men's expectations', and to confute those who abuse the authority of the authors against the, truth ; and many good books must be read, that have little to"add to what we have read in many others before; and many that are blotted with ensnaring errors; which, if we detect not, we leave snares for such as see them not ; and if we detect them, (never so tenderly, if truly,) we are taken to be injurious to the honor of the learned, godly authors, and proudly to overvalue our own conceits. And so lamentable'is the case ofall mankind, by the imperfections of hurl an language, that those words which are invented for cotnmunication of conceptiofis, are so little fitted to their use, as ratherto occasion misunderstand- ings and contentions ; there being scarce a word that bath not many significations, and that needeth not many more words to bring us to the true notice of the speaker's mind,; and when every word is a sigrsum, that hath three relations, (1.) To the matter spoken of. (2.) To the mind of the speaker, as signifying his concelitions of VOL. II. 11
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