A26951:586
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
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.
He taketh not God for God indeed, who taketh him not as his ultimate end: Nay, he debaseth God, who placing his felicity in any thing else, doth cleave to God but as the means to such a felicity. But to make God our felicity is lawful and necessary; but not to dream that this is the highest respect that we must have to God, to be our felicity. To love him, and to be beloved by him; to please him, and to be pleased in him, is our ultimate end; which though it be complex, and contain our own felicity, yet doth it, as infinitely supereminent, contain the complacency of God, and God as the object of our Love, considered in his own infinite perfections: For he is the Alpha and Omega, the first and the last; and of him, and through him, and to him are all things, Rom. 11.36. It is the highest and noblest work of faith, to make our own Original to be our End, and to set our love entirely upon God; and to see that we our selves are but worms and vanity; capable of no higher honour, than to be means to please and glorify God; and must not take down God so, as to love him only for our selves. And he only who thus denieth himself for God, doth rightly improve self-love, and seek the only exaltation and felicity, by carrying up himself to God, and adhering to the eternal good, 1 Cor. 10.31. Luke 14.33. Mat. 16.25. Mark 8.35.
He taketh not God for God indeed, who taketh him not as his ultimate end: Nay, he debaseth God, who placing his felicity in any thing else, doth cleave to God but as the means to such a felicity. But to make God our felicity is lawful and necessary; but not to dream that this is the highest respect that we must have to God, to be our felicity. To love him, and to be beloved by him; to please him, and to be pleased in him, is our ultimate end; which though it be complex, and contain our own felicity, yet doth it, as infinitely supereminent, contain the complacency of God, and God as the object of our Love, considered in his own infinite perfections: For he is the Alpha and Omega, the first and the last; and of him, and through him, and to him are all things,