A26919:308
The divine life in three treatises
The divine life in three treatises ... by Richard Baxter.
London: printed for Francis Tyton, 1664
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.
From hence also we must learn, not to repine at the providences ⟨p. 112⟩of God about his Church, which are strange to us, and past our reach, and seem to make against it welfare. Remember that as he may do with his own as he list, so we have no reason to think that he will be lavish or disregardful of his own. The Church is not ours but Gods: and therefore he is fitter then we to be trusted with it.
From hence also we must learn, not to repine at the providences ⟨p. 112⟩of God about his Church, which are strange to us, and past our reach, and seem to make against it wellfare. Remember that as he may do with his own as he list, so we have no reason to think that he will be lavish or disregardful of his own. The Church is not ours but Gods: and therefore he is fitter then we to be trusted with it.
And so in our own distresses by affliction; when flesh repineth, let us remember, that we are his Own, and he may do with us as he please. If we be poor, despised, sick and miserable in the world, let us remember that as it is no injury to the beasts that they are not men, or to the worms that they are not beasts, or to the plants that they have not sense, or to the stars that they are not suns; so it is no wrong to the subjects that they are not Princes, or to the poor that they are not rich, or to the sick that they are not healthful. May not God do with his own, as he list? shall a Beggar grudge that you give not all that he desireth, when you are not bound to give him any thing?
4. Yea hence we must learn to be the more Thankful for all our mercies, because they proceed from the Absolute Lord, that was not obliged to us. He might have made us Idiots, or mad men; he might have made us beasts or toads, without any injury to us; And the Mercies which are consequently from his Promise, are Antecedently from his Propriety and Dominion: For he might have put us into other capacities, and have chosen not to have made those promises. And his promises bind us not to be less thankful but more. As his mercies are not the less mercies but the greater for being promised; because we have now the comfort and use of them in the promise, before we have them.