A27016:205
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.
3. But furthermore consider, that if the One thing needful have been neglected, whatever else you have been doing, or whatever you have got, (unless as preparatory to this) you have not only lost your labour, but you have all this while been busily undoing your selves, and labouring for your own perdition.
3. But furthermore consider, that if the One thing needfull have been neglected, whatever else you have been doing, or whatever you have got, (unless as preparatory to this) you have not only lost your labour, but you have all this while been busily undoing your selves, and labouring for your own perdition.
If it were but the loss of your Time and Labour, you would then die but as brutes, and be as if you had never been: and to those that have brutified themselves, this will seem more tolerable, then to live in holiness to God: But alas, you have done much worse then this; You have not only been digging your own graves, but barring up against your selves the doors of heaven, and kindling the unquenchable fire to torment you; Mar. 9. 44.
I beseech you give me a considerate hearing, you ambitious Gentlemen, you covetous worldlings, and you that serve your lusts and pleasures! Do you think you had been doing the the work of wise men, if you had all this while been burning your own fingers, or cutting your own flesh, or setting your own or your neighbours houses on fire? What would you have us call that man that would live in such employments as ⟨p. 30⟩these, and yet would be accounted wise or honourable? Do I need to tell thee, as Nathan did David, that [Thou art the man?] Do I need in so plain a case to tell you, that you have been doing worse, (I speak not rashly) a thousand times worse, against your souls, then this would have been which is supposed to be only against your bodies! Alas self-destroyers, what do you mean? Did God send you hither on no better an errand than to kindle and blow the fire of his wrath, and fall into it when you have kindled it? Have you no better work in the world to do, then to prepare your selves a place in hell? and with a great deal of care, and cost, and stir, to labour for damnation, as if you were afraid of losing it?