Richard Baxter's dying thoughts upon Phil. I, 23 written for his own life and…

§ 8. Reason assureth me, that were my will now what it should be, and fully obsequious herein to my understanding, to fulfil Gods will would be the fulfilling my own will (for my will should perfectly comply with His) and to please him perfectly would be my perfect pleasure: And it is the unreasonable adhesion to this Body, and sinful selfishness, which maketh any one think otherwise now. I am sure that my Soul shall Live (for it is Life itself) and I am sure that I shall live to ⟨p. 135⟩God, and that I shall fulfil and please his blessed will; and this is (as such) incomparably better than my Felicity (as such:) And yet so far as I am pleased in so doing, it will be my Felicity.

§ 9. I begin now to think, that the strange Love which the Soul hath to this Body (so far as it is not inordinate) is put into us of God, partly to signify to us the great Love which Christ hath to his Mystical Political Body, and to every member of it, even the least: He will gather all his Elect out of the World, and none that come to him shall be shut out, and none that are given him shall be lost: As his Flesh is to them Meat indeed, and his Blood is to them Drink indeed, and he nourisheth them for Life eternal: (His Spirit in them, turning the Sacrament, the Word, and Christ himself in esse objectivo as Believed in, into Spirit and Life to us, as the Soul and our Natural. Spirits turn our food into Flesh, and Blood, and Spirits, which in a dead Body, or any lifeless repository, it would never be;) so as we delight in the ease and prosperity of our Body and each Member, and have pleasure in the pleasant food that nourisheth it, and other pleasant Objects which accommodate it; Christ also delighteth in the welfare of his Church and of all the Faithful, and is pleased when they are fed with good and pleasant Food, and when hereby they prosper: Christ Loveth the Church, not only as a Man must love his Wife, but as we Love our Bodies; And no Man ever hated his own Flesh, Eph. 5. 27, &c. And herein I must allow my Saviour the preeminence, to overgo me in powerful faithful Love! He will save me better from pain and death, than I can save my Body; and will more inseparably hold me to himself: If it please my Soul to dwell in such a House of Clay, and to operate on so mean a thing as Flesh, how