Richard Baxter's farewell sermon prepared to have been preached to his hearers at Kidderminster…Richard Baxter's farewel sermon prepared to have been preached to his hearers at Kidderminster…

6. There are penitential and medicinal sufferings, for the killing of sin, and helping on the work of grace, which are made our duty. In the former we are to be but submissive patients; but in these we must be obedient agents, and must inflict them on our selves. Such are the sorrows of contrition and true repentance. The exercises of fasting, abstinence and humiliation. The grief of the Soul for Gods displeasure, for the hiding of his face, and the abatement of his graces in us. And all the works of mortifying self-denial (and forbearing all forbidden pleasures) which God doth call his servants to: Though in the Primitive and Principal part of Holiness, there is nothing but what is sweet and pleasant to a Soul, so far as it is holy: (As the Love of God and the Love of others, and worshipping God and doing good, and joy, and thanks, and praise, and obedience, &c.) Yet the Medicinal parts of grace, or holiness, have something necessarily in them that is bitter, even to nature as nature, and not only as corrupt, such as are contrition, self-denial, mortification, abstinence, as aforesaid.

6. There are penitential and medicinal sufferings, for the killing of sin, and helping on the work of grace, which are made our duty. In the former we are to be but submissive patients; but in these we must be obedient agents, and must inflict them on our selves. Such are the sorrows of contrition and true repentance. The exercises of fasting, abstinence and humiliation. The grief of the Soul for Gods displeasure, for the hiding of his face, and the abatement of his graces in us. And all the works of mortifying self-denyal (and forbearing all forbidden pleasures) which God doth call his servants to: Though in the Primitive and Principal part of Holyness, there is nothing but what is sweet and pleasant to a Soul, so far as it is holy: (As the Love of God and the Love of others, and worshipping God and doing good, and joy, and thanks, and praise, and obedience, &c.) Yet the Medicinal parts of grace, or holiness, have something necessarily in them that is bitter, even to nature as nature, and not only as corrupt, such as are contrition, self-denyal, mortification, abstinence, as aforesaid.