A27009:75
The right method for a settled peace of conscience, and spiritual comfort in 32…
The right method for a settled peace of conscience, and spiritual comfort in 32 directions : written for the use of a troubled friend / and now published by Richard Baxter ...
London: printed for T. Underhil, 1653
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. This will make God appear more Amiable in your eyes; and then you will Love him more readily and abundantly. And Love 1. Is effectually consolatory in the very working: so much Love, usually so much Comfort (I mean this Love of Complacency: for a Love of Desire there may be without comfort.) 2. It will breed persuasions of Gods Love to you again, and so Comfort. 3. It will be an unquestionable evidence of true Grace, and so Comfort.
1. This will make God appear more Amiable in your eyes; and then you will Love him more readily and abundantly. And Love 1. Is effectually consolatory in the very working: so much Love, usually so much Comfort (I mean this Love of Complacency: for a Love of Desire there may be without comfort.) 2. It will breed perswasions of Gods Love to you again, and so Comfort. 3. It will be an unquestionable evidence of true Grace, and so Comfort.
The Affections follow the Understandings conceptions. If you think of God as one that is glad of all advantages against you, and delighteth in his Creatures misery, it is impossible you should Love him. The ⟨p. 19⟩Love of our selves is so deeply rooted in nature, that we cannot lay it by, nor Love any thing that is Absolutely and directly against us. We conceive of the devil as an Absolute Enemy to God and man, and one that seeks our destruction, and therefore we cannot Love him: And the great Cause why troubled souls do Love God no more, is because they represent him to themselves in an ugly, odious shape: To think of God, as one that seeks and delighteth in mans ruin, is to make him as the devil; and then what wonder if in stead of Loving him, and Delighting in him, you tremble at the thoughts of him, and fly from him! As I have observed Children, when they have seen the devil painted on a wall, in an ugly shape, they have partly feared, and partly hated it: If you do so by God in your fancy, it is not putting the Name of [God] on him when you have done, that will reconcile your Affections to him, as long as you strip him of his Divine Nature. Remember the holy Ghost's description of God, 1 Joh 4.16. God is Love. Write these words deep in your Understanding.