more interested in his gospel, church, and honour than we. Queen Mary's cruelties, and the bishops' bonfires, made religion universally received the more easily when her short reign was ended. We may learn wit of the fool, that seeing great guns and muskets, asked, what they were to do; and the answerer said to kill men :' saith he, 'Do not men die here without killing? In our country they will die of themselves.'

VIII. Be sure that you keep up family religion; especially in the careful education of youth. Keep them from evil company, and from temptations; and especially of idleness, fulness, and baits of lust. Read the Scripture and good books, and call upon God, and sing his praise; and recreate youth with reading the history of the church, and the lives of holy men and martyrs instruct them in catechisms and fundamentals.

IX. Above all, live in love to God and man; and let not selfishness and worldliness prevail against it. Think of God's goodness, as equal to his greatness and wisdom; and take yourselves as members of the same body with all true Christians. Blessed are they that faithfully practise those three grand principles which all profess, viz., 1. To love God as God above all, (and so to obey him.) 2. To love our neighbours as ourselves. 3. And to do as we would be done by. Love is not envious, malignant, censorious; it slandereth not; it persecuteth not; it oppresseth not; it defraudeth not; it striveth not to gain by another's loss get men once to love their neighbours as themselves, and you may easily prognosticate peace, quietness, and concord; happiness to the land; and salvation to the people's souls.

Finally, brethren, live in love, and the God of love and peace shall be among you. The Lord save you from the evils of which I have here, and often warned you. Remember with thankfulness, the many years of abundant mercy which we have enjoyed, (though too much mixed with our sins, and vilified by some.) "Comfort yourselves together, and edify one another, even as also ye do; and I beseech you, brethren, to know tiem which labour among you, and are over you in the Lord, and admonish you, and to esteem them very highly in love, for their work sake, and be at peace among yourselves." (1 Thess v. 11-13.) And the Lord deeply write on all our hearts thse blessed words, "We have known and believed the love that Gd hath to us: God is love, and he that dwelleth in love, dwellth in God, and God in him." (1 John iv. 16.) And remember,

"Seeing all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness, looking for and hasting the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire, shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat; nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness." (2 Peter iii. 11-13.)

I need not lengthen my counsels further to you now, having been called by the will and providence of God to leave behind me a multitude of books, which may remember you of what you heard, and acquaint the world what doctrine I have taught you, and if longer studies shall teach me to retract and amend many failings, in the writings or practice of my unripe, and less unexperienced age, as it will be to myself as pleasing as the cure of bodily disease, I hope it will not seem strange or ungrateful to you; though we must hold fast the truth which we have received, both you and I are much to be blamed, if we grow not in knowledge, both in matter, words, and method: the Lord grant that also we may grow in faith, obedience, patience in hope, love, and desire to be with Christ.

Now the God of peace, that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you perfect in every good work, to do his will, working in you that which is wellpleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen. (Heb. xiii. 20, 21.)

MR. BAXTER'S

DYING THOUGHTS

UPON

PHILIPPIANS i. 23.

WRITTEN FOR HIS OWN USE IN THE LATTER TIMES OF HIS

CORPORAL PAINS AND WEAKNESS.