Richard Baxter's dying thoughts upon Phil. I, 23 written for his own life and…

4. And do we not willingly interrupt and lay by these Pleasures, every Night when we betake our selves to sleep? It's possible indeed a Man may then have pleasant Dreams: But I think few go to sleep for the pleasure of Dreaming: Either no Dreams, or vain, or troublesome Dreams are much more common. And to say that Rest and Ease is my pleasure, is but to say that my daily labour and cares are so much greater than my waking pleasure, that I am glad to lay by both together: For what is Ease but deliverance from weariness and pain? For in deep and dreamless sleep there is little positive sense of the Pleasure of Rest itself. But indeed it is more from Natures necessitated inclination to this self-easing and repairing means, than from the positive pleasure of it, that we desire sleep. And if we ⟨p. 86⟩can thus be contented every Night to die as it were to all our waking pleasures, why should we be unwilling to die to them at once.

4. And do we not willingly interrupt and lay by these Pleasures, every Night when we betake our selves to sleep? It's possible indeed a Man may then have pleasant Dreams: But I think few go to sleep for the pleasure of Dreaming: Either no Dreams, or vain, or troublesom Dreams are much more common. And to say that Rest and Ease is my pleasure, is but to say that my daily labour and cares are so much greater than my waking pleasure, that I am glad to lay by both together: For what is Ease but deliverance from weariness and pain? For in deep and dreamless sleep there is little positive sense of the Pleasure of Rest itself. But indeed it is more from Natures necessitated inclination to this self-easing and repairing means, than from the positive pleasure of it, that we desire sleep. And if we ⟨p. 86⟩can thus be contented every Night to die as it were to all our waking pleasures, why should we be unwilling to die to them at once.

5. If it be the inordinate pleasures forbidden of God, which you are loath to leave, those must be left before you die, or else it had been better for you never to have been born? Yea every wise and godly Man doth cast them off with detestation: You must be against Holiness on that account as well as against Death? And indeed the same Cause which maketh men unwilling to live a Holy life, hath a great hand in making them unwilling to die; even because they are loth to leave the pleasure of sin: If the wicked be converted, he must be gluttonous and drunken no more, he must live in Pride, Vainglory, Worldliness and sensual pleasures no more; and therefore he draweth back from a Holy life, as if it were from Death itself. And so he is the lother to die, because he must have no more of the pleasures of his Riches, Pomp, and Honours, his Sports, and Lust, and pleased Appetite; no more for ever; but what's this to them that have mortified the Flesh with the affections and lusts thereof?