A27016:281
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.
But you cannot say so of worldly riches. If you choose to be Lords and Princes on the earth, you cannot have your choice; but if you could, you cannot keep it. If you choose the wealth and credit of the world, and were sure to get it, you were as sure to leave it: For naked you came into the world, and naked you must go out, Job 1. 21. If you choose your ease, and mirth, and pleasure, these will be taken from you: If you choose the satisfying of your fleshly desires, and all the delight and prosperity that the world can afford you, yet all must be taken from you; Yea quickly and easily taken from you. Alas! one stroke of an Apoplexy, or a few fits of a Fever, or the breaking of a small vein, or many hundred of the like effectual means, are ready at the beck of God, to take you from all that you have gathered for your flesh: And then, whose shall all these things be? None of yours, I am sure; nor will they redeem your souls from death or hell. Luke 12. 20. Psalm 49. 7. If you be in honour▪ you abide not in it, but are (as to your body) as the beasts that perish. If you think to perpetuate your houses and your names, this your way is but your •olly, though your posterity go on to approve your sayings, and succeed you in your sins. Psalm 49. 11, 12, 13. The worldly wise man doth perish with the fool: as sheep they […] laid in the grave, Death shall feed on them, and the upright shall have Dominion over them in the morning, ver. 10, 14. They shall soon be cut down like the grass, and whether as the green herb. Psal. 37. 2. I have seen the wicked in great prosperity, and spreading himself like a green bay-tree; yet he passed away, and lo he was not; yea I sought him, but he could not be found. v. 35, 36.
But you cannot say so of worldly riches. If you chuse to be Lords and Princes on the earth, you cannot have your choice; but if you could, you cannot keep it. If you chuse the wealth and credit of the world, and were sure to get it, you were as sure to leave it: For naked you came into the world, and naked you must go out,