A26919:700
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.
Use. Christians, expect to be conformed to your Lord in this part of his Humiliation also: Are your friends yet fast and friendly to you? For all that expect that many of them at least should prove less friendly: and promise not your selves an unchanged constancy in them: Are they yet useful to you? expect the time when they cannot help you: Are they your comforters and delight, and is their company much of your solace upon earth? Be ready for the time when they may become your sharpest scourges, and most heart-piercing griefs, or at least when you shall say, We have no pleasure in them. Have any of them, or all, already failed you? what ⟨p. 303⟩wonder? Are they not men, and sinners? To whom were they ever so constant as not to fail them? Rebuke your selves for your unwarrantable expectations from them: And learn hereafter to know what man is, and expect that friends should use you as followeth.
Use. CHristians, expect to be conformed to your Lord in this part of his Humiliation also: Are your friends yet fast and friendly to you? For all that expect that many of them at least should prove less friendly: and promise not your selves an unchanged constancy in them: Are they yet useful to you? expect the time when they cannot help you: Are they your comforters and delight, and is their company much of your solace upon earth? Be ready for the time when they may become your sharpest scourges, and most heart-peircing griefs, or at least when you shall say, We have no pleasure in them. Have any of them, or all, already failed you? what ⟨p. 303⟩wonder? Are they not men, and sinners? To whom were they ever so constant as not to fail them? Rebuke your selves for your unwarrantable expectations from them: And learn hereafter to know what man is, and expect that friends should use you as followeth.
1. Some of them that you thought sincere, shall prove perhaps unfaithful and dissemblers, and upon fallings out, or matters of self-interest may seek your ruin. Are you better than David that had an Ahithophel? or than Paul that had a Demas? or than Christ that had a Judas? Some will forsake God: what wonder then if they forsake you? Because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold,