A27004:918
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
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.
§. 18. It is just with God to lay more misery on a sinner, than on one that never deserved ill: and to lay more on him for his sin, than he would choose himself before annihilation.
Whether God may without injustice inflict more misery on the innocent, than he would himself prefer before annihilation, some make a question, and deny it. For my part, I see no great difficulty in the question.
But it is nothing to that which I am proving; it is not ⟨p. 167⟩God's usage of the innocent but of the guilty which we are speaking of:1 and that he may make them more miserable who deserve it, than his bounty made them before any guilt, or than a just man would choose to be rather than be annihilated, I see no reason at all to doubt. Penalty is involuntary: and no man ever said that it was unjust to lay more upon a malefactor than he himself was willing of, and would choose before a condition, which without his fault he might have been put into.
- 1Facinorum mala flagellantur à conscientia cui pluramum torn entorum est, eo quod perpetua illam sollicitudo urget ac verberat. Sen. ep. 97. Conscientia aliud agere non patitur, ac subinde respicere ad se cogit. Dat poenas qui metuit. Sen. •p. 105.