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

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?

6. Yea it is these forbidden pleasures which are the great impediments both of our Holiness and our truest pleasures: And one of the Reasons why God forbiddeth them, is because they hinder us from better. And if for our own good we must forsake them when we turn to God, it must be supposed that they should be no reason against our willingness to die, but rather that to be free from the danger of them, we should be the more willing.

7. But the great satisfying Answer of this Objection is, that Death will pass us to far greater pleasures with which all these are not worthy to be compared. But of this more in due place.