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

and requireth greater strength of Faith, obediently to accept it at the Hand of God. And others can tell them, that the violence of temptations, and the terrors of God on a wounded Conscience, and troubled Soul, are yet far harder than all these. And these are the saddest because they make the mind unfit at present to improve them, and to refer them to Holy Ends and Uses. Christ in all his Agony, and even when he cried out on the Cross, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me, had his Intellectuals free and perfect, to know the Nature, the Reason, the uses and end of all his Sufferings: But so have not many poor distressed, troubled, distracted Souls. O how great a part of Christianity is it, to understand and rightly bear the Cross? Most of our care is how to ⟨p. 314⟩escape it, or to be delivered from it, rather than how obediently to bear it.

and requireth greater strength of Faith, obediently to accept it at the Hand of God. And others can tell them, that the violence of temptations, and the terrours of God on a wounded Conscience, and troubled Soul, are yet far harder than all these. And these are the saddest because they make the mind unfit at present to improve them, and to refer them to Holy Ends and Uses. Christ in all his Agony, and even when he cryed out on the Cross, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me, had his Intellectuals free and perfect, to know the Nature, the Reason, the uses and end of all his Sufferings: But so have not many poor distressed, troubled, distracted Souls. O how great a part of Christianity is it, to understand and rightly bear the Cross? Most of our care is how to ⟨p. 314⟩escape it, or to be delivered from it, rather than how obediently to bear it.

§ 10. Experience of a suffering painful state, is a great help to our understanding of the Gospel: It taketh off from me the scandal of Christ's Cross, and helpeth me to perceive the great use and reasons of it, when I am under sufferings. O what need have I of such an example as Christs. All the parts of his suffering are as useful to teach me how to suffer as the Ten Commandments to teach me what to do. That he was put to fly from proud domineering Pharisees, false Teachers and worldly Rulers, and to converse most with the Poor in Wildernesses or obscure various places? That he was hated and persecuted for doing good, and accounted a Sinner for neglecting mens Ceremonies, and Traditions: That he was hardly believed even by them that saw his Miracles: And his own Disciples were so slow in learning; and that in his suffering they all forsook him and fled, and one denied him with Oaths and Curses. All these are instructing Instances; That Christ's natural (though sinless) aversation to Death and Suffering, and his fear, should be so powerful, and the sense of God's punishing Justice so terrible, as to make his Soul sorrowful even to the Death, and cast him into an Agony, where he sweat Water and Blood, and to pray thrice that the bitter Cup if possible might pass from him, which he came into the World to drink; all these also are teaching parts of the Sufferings of Christ; That Rulers, and Priests, and Soldiers, and the Rabble should agree to Scorn him; Cloth him in derision, Spit on him, Buffet him, Scourge him, make him their Jest that came to save them; that they should make a Sinner of him that never sinned, but came to destroy it and save