A27004:744
The reasons of the Christian religion the first part, of godliness, proving by natural…
The reasons of the Christian religion the first part, of godliness, proving by natural evidence the being of God ... : the second part, of Christianity, proving by evidence supernatural and natural, the certain truth of the Christian belief ... / by Richard Baxter ... ; also an appendix defending the soul's immortality against the Somatists or Epicureans and other pseudo-philosophers.
London: printed by R. White for Fran. Titon, 1667
Part 1 › Chapter 14: That there is a Life of Retribution after this.
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.
1. If according to the present temper of man, there be no motives, which would ever prove sufficient to resist all the temptations of this life, to keep us in true obedience and love to God, unto the end, without the hopes and fears of Good and Evil after death; then cannot the world be governed according to God's Laws, without such hopes and fears of futurity. But the Antecedent is true: Ergo, so is the consequent.
If God had prescribed man a course of duty in his Laws,1 (as to obey and love him upon terms of fleshly suffering) and had not given man such motives as might rationally prevail for the performance; his Laws had been all in vain. He that hath made Holiness our indispensable duty, hath certainly left us motives and rational helps to perform it. But so many and great are the temptations of this life, and so strong is our sense, and so great are the sufferings of the obedient, that in this our imperfection we could never go through them, without the motives which are fetched from another life. 1. It would weaken the hands of the best, as to their duty, it would embolden them to sin, it would give victory to all strong temptations. Let every Reader but consult with his own soul, and (though it be granted that virtue should be chosen for its own sake, how dear soever it may cost, yet) let him without lying say, what he thinketh he should be and do in case of temptations, if he knew that he had no life to live but this. ⟨p. 130⟩I am not sure,2 but I will freely confess what I think most that now are honest would be and do. First, They would observe how little difference God maketh between the obedient and disobedient in his providence, and how ordinarily his present judgements are not much to be feared. And hence they would think, that he maketh no great matter of it, what they either are or do: and so their very love of Virtue would be much debilitated: Nay, the sufferings of the virtuous would tempt them to think, that it is no very desirable way: