A26951:461
The life of faith in three parts, the first is a sermon on Heb.…
The life of faith in three parts, the first is a sermon on Heb. 11, 1, formerly preached before His Majesty, and published by his command, with another added for the fuller application : the second is instructions for confirming believers in the Christian faith : the third is directions how to live by faith, or how to exercise it upon all occasions / by Richard Baxter.
London: printed by R.W. for Nevil Simmons, 1670
Part 2 › Chapter 8: The rest of the Directions for strengthening our Faith.
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
Direct. 3. Think how impossible it is that any but God should be the Author of the Christian Religion.
1. No good man could be guilty of so horrid a crime as to forge a volume of delusions, and put Gods Name to it; to cheat the world so blasphemously and hypocritically, and to draw them into a life of trouble to promote it. Much less could so great a number of good men do this, as the success of such a cheat (were it possible) would require. There is no man that can believe it to be a deceit, but must needs believe, as we do of Mahomet, that the Author was one of the worst men that ever lived in the world.
2. No bad man could lay so excellent a design, and frame a Doctrine and Law so holy, so self denying, so merciful, so just, so spiritual, so heavenly, and so concordant in it self▪ nor carry on so high and divine an undertaking for so divine and excellent an end: No bad man could so universally condemn all badness, and prescribe such powerful remedies against it, and so effectually cure and conquer it in so considerable a part of the world.