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

Thus Families, Churches and Kingdoms run on to blindness, ungodliness and confusion: Self-undoing and serving the malice of Satan, for fleshly Lust, is the too common employment of Mankind: All is wise, and good, and sweet which is prescribed us by God, in true Nature or Supernatural revelation: But folly, sin, and misery, mistaking themselves to be Wit, and Honesty, and Prosperity, and raging against that which nominally they pretend to and profess, are the ordinary case and course of the most of men: And when we would plead them out of their deceit and misery, it's well if we are not tempted to imitate them, or be not partly infected with their Disease, or at least reproached and oppressed as their Enemies: Such a Bedlam is most of the World become, where madness goeth for the only Wisdom, and he is the bravest Man that can sin and be damned with reputation and renown, and successfully drive or draw the greatest number with him unto Hell: To which the World hath no small likeness, forsaking God, and being very much forsaken by him.

This is the World which standeth in competition for my Love, with the Spiritual blessed World: Much of God's Mercies and Comforts I have here had: But their sweetness was their taste of Divine Love, and their tendency to heavenly Perfection. What was the end and use of all the Good that ever I saw, or that ever God did for my Soul or Body, but to teach me to Love him, and to long for more? How many weaning ⟨p. 244⟩experiences? How many Thousand bitter or contemning Thoughts have I had of all the glory and pleasures of this World? How many Thousand love tokens from God have called me to believe and taste his Goodness? Where ever I go, and which way soever I look, I see VANITY and VEXATION written upon all things in this World, so far as they stand in competition with God, and would be the end and portion of a fleshly Mind: And I see HOLINESS TO THE LORD written upon every thing, so far as it declareth God and leadeth me to him as my ultimate end. God hath not for nothing engaged me in a War against this World, and commanded me to take and use it as mine Enemy: The emptiness, dangerousness, and bitterness of the World, and the All-sufficiency, Trustiness, and Goodness of God have been the Sum of all the experiences of my life? And shall a worldly backward Heart overcome the teachings of Nature, Scripture, the Spirit of Grace, and all Experience? Far be it from me!