A26919:767
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.
But if you value them and love them for themselves, they are now more lovely when they are more perfect; and they are now fitter for your content and joy, when they have themselves unchangeable content and joy, than they could be in their sin and sorrows.
But if you valued and loved them but for your selves only, it is just with God to take them from you, to teach you to value men to righter ends, and upon better considerations: and both to prefer God before your selves, and better to understand the nature of true friendship, and better to know that your own felicity is not in the hands of any creature, but of God alone.
10. Did you improve your friends while you had them? or did you only Love them, while you made but little use of them for your souls? If you used them not, it was just with God for all your Love to take them from you. They were given you as your candle, not only to Love it, but to work by the Light of it: And as your garments; not only to Love them, but to wear them; and as your meat, not only to Love it, but to feed upon it. Did you receive their counsel, and hearken to their reproofs, and pray with them, and confer with them upon those holy truths that tended to elevate your minds to ⟨p. 331⟩God, and to inflame your breasts, with sacred Love? If not, be it now known to you, that God gave you not such helps and mercies only to talk of, or look upon and Love, but also to improve for the benefit of your souls.
10. Did you improve your friends while you had them? or did you only Love them, while you made but little use of them for your souls? If you used them not, it was just with God for all your Love to take them from you. They were given you as your candle, not only to Love it, but to work by the Light of it: And as your garments; not only to Love them, but to wear them; and as your meat, not only to Love it, but to feed upon it. Did you receive their counsel, and hearken to their reproofs, and pray with them, and conser with them upon those holy truths that tended to elevate your minds to