A26917:242
Directions for weak distempered Christians, to grow up to a confirmed state of grace…
Directions for weak distempered Christians, to grow up to a confirmed state of grace with motives opening the lamentable effects of their weaknesses and distempers / by Richard Baxter.
London: printed for Nevil Simmons, 1669
Title page typeset from the transcription.
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.
DIRECT. XVII. Redeem your Time, and highly value every minute; and spare for no labour in the work of your salvation: Dream not of an easy, idle, sluggish life, as sufficient to your high and glorious ends: Nor rest not in a customary and outside way of duty, without regard to the Life and the success.
DIRECT. XVII. Redeem your Time, and highly value every minute; and spare for no labour in the work of your salvation: Dream not of an easie, idle, sluggish life, as sufficient to your high and glorious ends: Nor rest not in a customary and outside way of duty, without regard to the Life and the success.
IF any thing in all the World require all our power and time, it is that for which all our ⟨p. 149⟩powers and time are given us; and which we are sure will a thousand fold recompense us for all: O what a sottish kind of stupidity is it, for a man to trifle in the way to eternity, that hath an endless life of joy or sorrow, depending on the preparations of so short a life. How little doth he know the worth of his Soul, the Joys of Heaven, the terrors of Hell, the malicious diligence of Satan, or the difficulty of Salvation, that can idle and play away whole hours of time; and pray as if he prayed not, and seem to be Religious when he is not in good earnest! and bestireth not himself so much to escape Hell fire, and to obtain everlasting Joys with Christ, as he would do to escape a temporal death or misery, or to obtain some dignity or riches in the World, 1 Cor. 7.29, 30. O therefore as ever you care what becometh of your Souls, and as ever you will have comfort in the review of your present life, make not a jest of Heaven and Hell: Trifle not in your race and warfare; Dally not with God and Conscience; Play not, and dream not away your Time, Know the worth of an hours Time, for the sake of your work, and of your Souls, as it is commonly known by dying men. But of this I have spoke already in my NOW or NEVER, and a Saint or a Brute, and in the third part of the Saints Rest.