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

And it seemeth to be his will, that the permitted Ignorance and Confusions of this World, should help us the more to value, and desire that World of Light, Love and Order, which he calleth us to prefer and hope for.

And if I am any way useful to the World, it is undeserved Mercy that hath made me so; for which I must be thankful: But How long I shall be so is not my business to determine, but my Lords. My many sweet and beautiful Flowers arise and appear in their beauty and sweetness, but for one Summers time, and they murmur not that they flourish for so short a space. The ⟨p. 114⟩Beasts, and Birds, and Fishes, which I feed on, do live till I will have them die: And as God will be served and pleased by wonderful variety at once (of Animals, and Vegetables, &c.) So will he by many successive▪ Generations: If one Flower fall or die, it sufficeth that others shall Summer after Summer arise from the same root: And if my Pears, Apples, Plums, &c. fall or serve me when they are ripe, it sufficeth that (not they, but) others the next Year shall do the same; God will have other Generations to succeed us: Let us think him that we have had our time: And could we overcome the Grand (too little observed) Crime of SELFISHNESS, and could Love others as our selves, and God as God above all the World, it would comfort us at Death, that others shall survive us, and the World shall continue, and God will be still God, and be glorified in his works: And Love will say, I shall live in my successors, and I shall more than Live in the Life of the World; and yet most of all in the eternal Life and Glory of God.

And God, (who made us not gods but poor Creatures as it pleased him) doth know best our measures: And he will not try us with too long a Life of Temptations, lest we should grow too familiar where we should be Strangers, and utterly Strangers to our home: No wonder if that World was ready for a deluge, by a deluge of sin, in which men lived to Six, Seven, Eight and Nine hundred Years of Age: Had our Great Sensualists any hope of so long a life, they were like to be like incarnate Devils, and there would be no dwelling near them for the Holy Seed? If Angels were among them, they would like the Sodomites seek furiously to abuse them.