A26919:561
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.
8. Our Thoughts may exercise the highest graces of God in man; and also show those graces, as being their effects. How is our Faith, and Love, and Desire, and Trust, and Joy, and Hope to be exercised but by our cogitations? If Grace were not necessary and excellent, it would not be wrought by the spirit of God, and called the Divine nature, and the image of God: And if Grace be excellent, the use and exercise of it is excellent: And therefore our Thoughts by which it is exercised must needs have their excellency too.
8. Our Thoughts may exercise the highest graces of God in man; and also shew those graces, as being their effects. How is our Faith, and Love, and Desire, and Trust, and Joy, and Hope to be exercised but by our cogitations? If Grace were not necessary and excellent, it would not be wrought by the spirit of God, and called the Divine nature, and the image of God: And if Grace be excellent, the use and exercise of it is excellent: And therefore our Thoughts by which it is exercised must needs have their excellency too.
9. Our Thoughts must be the instruments of our improving all holy Truth in Scripture, and all the mercies which we receive, and all the afflictions which we undergo. What good will Reading a Chapter in the Bible do to any one that never Thinketh on it? Our delight in the Law of God must engage us to meditate in it day and night, Psal. 1. 2. What good shall he get by hearing a Sermon that exerciseth not his Thoughts for the receiving and digesting it. Our considering what is said, is the way in which we may expect that God should give us understanding in all things, 2 Tim. 2. 7. What the better will he be for any of the merciful providences of God, who never bethinks him whence they come, or what is the use and end that they are given for? what good will he get by any affliction that never bethinks him, who it is that chastiseth him and for what, and how he must get them removed, and sanctified to his good? A man is but like one of the pillars in the Church, or like the corps which he treadeth on, or at best but like the dog that followeth him thither for company, if he use not his Thoughts about the work which he hath in hand, and cannot say, as