A27016:1087
A saint or a brute the certain necessity and excellency of holiness, &c. ...…
A saint or a brute the certain necessity and excellency of holiness, &c. ... / by Richard Baxter.
London: printed by R.W. for Francis Tyton, 1662
Title page typeset from the transcription.
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.
Answ. 1. Your resemblance of the Saints in Heaven, must be proportionable in all the parts. You must labour first to be as like them as you can in Holiness, and then in Joy. If you could be as far from sin as they, you need not mourn at all. But because you cannot, you must have moderate, regular sorrows and humiliation, while you have sin. But yet withal you must endeavour to imitate the heavenly Joys, according to the measure of your Grace received.
Answ. 1. Your resemblance of the Saints in Heaven, must be propertionable in all the parts. You must labour first to be as like them as you can in Holiness, and then in Joy. If you could be as far from sin as they, you need not mourn at all. But because you cannot, you must have moderate, regular sorrows and humiliation, while you have sin. But yet withall you must endeavour to imitate the heavenly Joyes, according to the measure of your Grace received.
2. And it is such a regular contrition, consisting in humble thoughts of our selves, and tending to restore us from our falls and sorrows, unto our integrity and joy, which God delighteth in: And it is such mourners as these, and such as suffer for righteousness sake from men, that Christ pronounceth blessed: But the inordinate troubles of the soul, that exclude a holy delight in God, though he pardon, yet he never doth encourage.
6. Consider also, that a great part of your Religion, yea and the most high and excellent part, doth consist in the causes, form and effects of this holy joy and cheerfulness. 1. As to the causes of it, they are such as in themselves are requisite to the very being of the new creature. Faith and Love, which are the Head and Heart of sanctifying grace, are the causes of our spiritual joy. An unwilling, heavy, forced obedience, may proceed from mee• Fears, and this will not prove an upright heart. But when once we Believe Everlasting Glory, and Love Christ as our Saviour, and the Father as our Father and felicity, and Love a holy frame of heart and life, as the image of God and that which pleaseth him, then our obedience will be cheerful and delightful, unless accidentally we trouble our selves by our own mistakes. If you can truly make God and his will and service your Delight, you may be sure you Love him, and are beloved by him, as being past the state of slavish fear.