A26905:644
The crucifying of the world
The crucifying of the world by the cross of Christ with a preface to the nobles, gentlemen, and all the rich, directing them how they may be richer / by Richard Baxter.
London: printed by R. W. for Nevill Simmons, 1658
The Crucifying of the world, BY The Cross of CHRIST. › Part 1 › Section 22 › Benefit 2: Benefit 2.
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.
Benefit 2.
THE second Benefit is this. If you are truly Crucified to the world, Your minds will be free for God and his service; When the minds of worldlings are like imprisoned hampered things. What a toilsome thing is it for a man to travail in fetters, or to run a race with a burden on his back? But knock off his fetters, and how easily will he go? and take off his burden, and how lightly will he run? Do you not feel your selves that the world is the clog of your souls? and that this is it that hindereth you from duty, and hindereth you in duty, and keepeth you from the attainment of an heavenly conversation? When you should cheerfully go to God in secret, or in your families, the world is ready to pull you back: Either it calleth you away, by putting some other business into your hands; or else it dulleth and diverteth your Affections, so that you have no heart to duty, or no life in it; or else it creepeth into your ⟨p. 207⟩Thoughts in duty, and taketh them off from the work in hand, and makes you do that which you seem not to be doing: And if you shake off these thoughts, and drive them out of your way, they are presently again before you, and meet you at the next Turn. But in that measure as you have Crucified the world, you are freed from these disturbances. The Apostle Peter describeth the miserable estate of Apostates, 2 Pet. 2. 20. to be like a bird or beast that had escaped out of the snare that he was taken in, and after is taken in the same again; Having escaped the pollution of the world, &c. [Greek or Hebrew], they are again entangled therein: as a beast in a snare, that cannot escape or help himself; So 2 Tim. 2. 4. its said, no man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life: [Greek or Hebrew], &c. So that you see that the world is a snare that entangleth mens souls, and holdeth them as in captivity. The table of the wicked becometh a snare to them, and so▪ do all the bodily mercies which they possess.