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

§ 7. 2. But if he pitch upon a wrong End, it may yet be worse than none; for he will but do hurt, or make work for Repentance: And all the actions of his life must be formally wrong, (how good soever materially) if the End of them be wrong.

§ 8. 2. And if I fetch them not from this End, and believe not in God as a Rewarder of his Servants, in a better Life, what Motives shall I have which in our present difficulties, will be sufficient to cause me to live a holy, yea or a truly honest life? All piety and honesty indeed is good, and Goodness is desirable for it self: But the goodness of a Means is its aptitude for the End; and we have here abundance of impediments, competitors, diversions and temptations, and difficulties of many sorts; and all these must be overcome by him that will live in piety or honesty. And our Natures (we find) are diseased, and greatly indisposed to unquestionable duties; and will they ever discharge them, and conquer all these difficulties and temptations, if the necessary Motive be not believed? Duty to God and Man is accidentally hard and costly to the flesh, though amiable in it self: It may cost us our Estates, our Liberties, our Lives. The world is not so happy ⟨p. 5⟩as commonly to know good men from bad, nor to encourage Piety and Virtue, or to forbear opposing them. And who will let go his present welfare, without some hope of better as a reward? Men use not to serve God for nought; nor that think it will be their loss to serve him.

§ 9. A life of sin will not be avoided upon lower Ends and Motives: Nay, those lower Ends when alone, will be a constant sin themselves: A preferring Vanity to Glory, the Creature to God, and a setting our heart on that which will never make us happy: And when lust and appetite incline men strongly and constantly to their several objects, what shall sufficiently restrain them, except the greater and more durable delights or motives fetched from preponderating things? Lust and Appetite distinguish not between lawful and unlawful. We may see in the brutish Politics of Benedictus Spinosa, in his Tractat. Theolog. Polit. whither the Principles of Infidelity tend. If sin so overspread the Earth, that the whole world is as drowned in wickedness, notwithstanding all the hopes and fears of a life to come, what would it do were there no such hopes and fears?