A26919:520
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.
1. There is nothing but darkness in all thy Thoughts, if God be not in them. Thou knowest nothing, if thou knowest not him; and thou usest not thy knowledge, if thou use it not on him. To know the creature as without God, is to know nothing: No more than to know all the Letters in the Book, and not to know their signification or sense. All things in the world are but insignificant ciphers, and of no other sense or use, if you separate them from God, who is their sense and end. If you leave out God in all your studies, you do but dream and dote, and not understand what you seem to understand. Though you were taken for the learnedst men in the world, and were able to discourse of all the Sciences, and your thoughts had no lower employment daily than the most sublime speculations which the nature of all the creatures doth afford, it is all but folly and impertinent dotage, if it reach not unto God.
2. Yea, your thoughts are erroneous and false, which is more than barely ignorant, if God be not in them. You have false thoughts of the world, of your houses and lands, and friends and pleasures, and whatsoever, is the daily employment of your minds. You take them to be something, when they are ⟨p. 214⟩nothing; you are covetous of the empty purse, and know not that you cast away the treasure: You are thirsty after the empty cup, when you wilfully cast away the drink. You hungrily seek to feed upon a painted feast: You murder the creature by separating it from God who is its life, and then you are enamoured on the carcass, and spend your days and thoughts in its cold embracements. Your thoughts are but vagabonds, straggling abroad the world, and following impertinences, if God be not in them. You are like men that walk up and down in their sleep, or like those that have lost themselves in the dark, who weary themselves in going they know not whither, and have no end, nor certain way.
2. Yea, your thoughts are erroneous and false, which is more than barely ignorant, if God be not in them. You have false thoughts of the world, of your houses and lands, and friends and pleasures, and whatsoever, is the daily employment of your minds. You take them to be something, when they are