A26967:118
Now or never the holy, serious, diligent believer justified, encouraged, excited and directed, and…
Now or never the holy, serious, diligent believer justified, encouraged, excited and directed, and the opposers and neglecters convinced by the light of Scripture and reason / by Richard Baxter ...
London : s.n., 1662
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.
Believe it, Sirs, it is the deceitfulness of prosperity that keeps up the reputation of a slothful life, and makes holy diligence seem unnecessary. When affliction comes, awakened reason is ashamed of this, and seeth it as an odious thing.
Believe it, Sirs, it is the deceitfulness of prosperity that keeps up the reputation of a slathful life, and makes holy diligence seem unnecessary. When affliction comes, awakened reason is ashamed of this, and seeth it as an odious thing.
BY this time you may see, what difference there is, between the judgement of God, and of the world; and what to think of the understandings of those men, (be they high or low, learned or unlearned) that hate or oppose this holy diligence. God bids us love, and seek and serve him, with all our heart, and soul, and might: And these men call them Zealots, and Precisians, and Puritans that endeavour it; though, alas, they fall exceeding short, when they have done their best. It is one of the most wonderful monstrosities and deformities that ever befell the nature of man, that men, that learned men, that men that in other things are wise, should seriously think that the utmost diligence to obey the Lord and save our souls, is needless; and that ever they should take it for a crime, and make it a matter of reproach: That the serious▪ diligent obeying of Gods Laws, should be the matter of the common ⟨p. 60⟩disdain and hatred of the world; that no men are more generally abhorred, and tossed up and down by impatient men; that great and small, the Rulers and the vulgar rabble, in most places of the earth cannot endure them: To think how the first man that ever was born into the world, did hate his own brother till he had proceeded to murder him, because he served God better then himself, [Because his own works were evil, and his brothers righteous,] 1 Joh. 3. 12. And how constantly this horrid unnatural madness, hath succeeded and raged in the world from Cain until this day! It is not in vain that the Holy Ghost addeth, in the next words,