gruity, and suitableness of it to his own case; and lays it up faithfully in the storeroom of his mind, to be digested and approved by his afterthoughts. And it is by this art of applying Scripture, and urging the most suitable instructions and admonitions of it home upon our consciences, that we receive the greatest benefit by it.

(4.) Nothing is of more eminent service in the great duty of meditation; especially in that part of it which consists in heart converse. A man who is unacquainted with himself, is as unfit to converse with his heart as he is with a stranger he never saw, and whose taste and temper he is altogether unacquainted with. He knows not how to get his thoughts about him: and when he has, he knows not how to range and fix them; and hath no more the command of them than a general has of a wild undisciplined army, that has never been exercised, or accustomed to obedience and order. But one, who hath made it the study of his life to be acquainted with himself, is soon disposed to enter into a free and familiar converse with his own heart; and in such a self-conference improves more in true wisdom, and acquires more useful and substantial knowledge than he could do from the most polite and refined conversation in the world. Of such excellent use is Self-knowledge in all the duties of devotion and piety.

CHAP. XII.

SELF-KNOWLEDGE THE BEST PREPARATION FOR DEATH.

12. SELF-KNOWLEDGE will be an habitual preparation for death, and a constant guard against the surprise of it, because it fixes and settles our hopes of future happiness. That which makes the thoughts of death so terrifying to the soul, is its utter uncertainty what will become of it after death. Were this uncertainty to be removed, a thousand things would reconcile us to the thoughts of dying 1.

"Distrust and darkness of a future state,

Is that which makes mankind to dread their fate :
Dying is nothing; but 'tis this we fear,

To be we know not what, we know not where."

Now Self-knowledge, in a good degree, dissipates this gloom, and removes this dreadful doubt; for, as the word of God hath revealed the certainty of a future state of happiness, which the good man shall enter upon after death, and

Illa quoque res morti nos alienat, quod hæc jam novimus, illa ad quæ transituri sumus, nescimus qualia sint. Et horremus ignota. Naturalis præterea tenebrarum metus est, in quas adductura mors creditur. Sen. Epist. 83. It is this makes us averse to death, that it translates us to objects we are unacquainted with; and we tremble at the thoughts of those things that are unknown to us. We are naturally afraid of being in the dark; and death is a leap in the dark.

plainly described the requisite qualifications for it; when by a long and laborious self-acquaintance, he comes distinctly to discern those qualifications in himself, his hopes of heaven soon raise him above the fears of death: and though he may not be able to form any clear or distinct conception of the nature of that happiness, yet in general he is assured that it will be a most exquisite and extensive one, and will contain in it every thing necessary to make it complete; because it will come immediately from God himself: whereas they who know not what they are, must necessarily be ignorant what they shall

2 "When we say that the state of the other world is unknown, the only meaning of it is, that it is a state of such happiness, so far beyond any thing we ever yet experienced, that we cannot form any notion or idea of it: we know that there is such a happiness; we know in some measure wherein this happiness consists; viz. in seeing God and the blessed Jesus, who loved us, and gave himself for us; in praising our Creator and Redeemer; in conversing with saints and angels. But how great, how ravishing and transporting a pleasure this is, we cannot tell, because we never yet felt it.-Now methinks this should not make the thoughts of death uneasy to us, should not make us unwilling to go to heaven; that the happiness of heaven is too great for us to know or to conceive in this world. For men are naturally fond of unknown and untried pleasures; which is so far from being a disparagement to them, that it raises our expectations of them, that they are unknown. In the things of this world, enjoyment usually lessens our esteem and value for them, and we always value that most which we have never tried; and methinks the happiness of the other world should not be the only thing we despise before we try it.—It is some encouragement to us that the happiness of heaven is too big to be known in this world for did we perfectly know it now, it could not be very great." Sherlock on Death, p. 71, 72.

be. A man that is all darkness within can have but a dark prospect forward 3.

O, what would we not give for solid hope in death! Reader, wouldst thou have it, know God, and know thyself.

3 Illi mors gravis incubat,
Qui, notus nimis omnibus,
Ignotus moritur sibi.

Sen. Tha. Thyes.

Who, exposed to other's eyes,
Into his own heart never pries,
Death's to him a strange surprise.