A26892:2197
A Christian Directory
A Christian directory, or, A sum of practical theology and cases of conscience directing Christians how to use their knowledge and faith, how to improve all helps and means, and to perform all duties, how to overcome temptations, and to escape or mortify every sin : in four parts ... / by Richard Baxter.A Christian directory, or, A summ of practical theologie and cases of conscience directing Christians how to use their knowledge and faith, how to improve all helps and means, and to perform all duties, how to overcome temptations, and to escape or mortifie every sin : in four parts ... / by Richard Baxter.
London: printed by Robert White for Nevill Simmons, 1673
Title page typeset from the transcription.
Part 1 › Chapter 5 › The Directions contemplative for Redeeming Time.
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
And how unseasonable it is to be playing away time, so near the entrance into the endless world?
And how unseasonable it is to be playing away time, so neer the entrance into the endless world?
§. 18. Direct. 11. Remember also how uncertain that little Time is which you must have. As you1 know it will be short, so you know not how short. You never yet saw the day or hour, in which you were sure to see another. And is it a thing becoming the Reason of a man, to slug or cast away that day or hour, which for ought he knows may be his last? You think that though you are not certain, yet you are likely to have more? But nothing that is hazardous should be admitted in a business of such moment: Yea when the longest life is short; and when so frail a body liable to so many hundred maladies and casualties, and so sinful a soul, do make it probable as well as possible, that the thread thy of life should be cut off ere long, even much before thy natural period; When so many score at younger years, do come to the grave, for one that arriveth at the ripeness of old age; is not then the uncertainty of thy Time, a great aggravation of the sinfulness of thy not-redeeming it. If you were sure you had but one year to live, it would perhaps make you so wise, as to see that you had no Time to spare. And yet do you wast it, when you know not that you shall live another day? Many a one is this week trifling away their Time, who will be dead the next week; who yet would have spent it better if they had thought but to have dyed the next year. O man; what if death come before thou hast made thy necessary preparation? Where art thou then? When Time is uncertain as well as short, hast thou not work enough of weight, to spend it on? If Christ had set thee to attend and follow him in greatest holiness a thousand years, shouldst thou not have gladly done it? And yet canst thou not hold out for so short a life? Canst thou not watch with him one hour? He himself was provoked by the nearness of his death, to a speedy dispatch of the works of his life? And should not we?