A27016:445
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.
2. But yet if all this will not satisfy you, I will come yet lower: Who is it that you would have to be Judge or Witness in th• ⟨p. 123⟩case? Is it thy malignant, or worldly, or drunken, and ungodly friend? I am contented that the case be referred even to him, and to as many of them as thou wilt, upon condition that he will but first Try the way that he is to judge of. Let him but make an unfeigned trial of a life of Holy Faith, and Love, and Obedience, and Self-denial, as long as I have done, and we will receive his Testimony: Nay more, let him thus try a life of Holiness, (inwardly and outwardly) but one year, yea or but one month, or day, or hour, and we will take his Testimony: But to be judged by a man in a matter of salvation, that speaks of what he never knew nor tried one hour, but speaks against he knows not what, this is a motion too bad to be made to a very Bedlam.
2. But yet if all this will not satisfie you, I will come yet lower: Who is it that you would have to be Judge or Witness in th• ⟨p. 123⟩case? Is it thy malignant, or worldly, or drunken, and ungodly friend? I am contented that the case be referred even to him, and to as many of them as thou wilt, upon condition that he will but first Try the way that he is to judge of. Let him but make an unfeigned tryal of a life of Holy Faith, and Love, and Obedience, and Self-denyal, as long as I have done, and we will receive his Testimony: Nay more, let him thus try a life of Holiness, (inwardly and outwardly) but one year, yea or but one moneth, or day, or hour, and we will take his Testimony: But to be judged by a man in a matter of salvation, that speaks of what he never knew nor tryed one hour, but speaks against he knows not what, this is a motion too bad to be made to a very Bedlam.
6. If yet you are not resolved which is the Better part and way, to whom do you desire to refer it? Shall Heathens, Jews, and Infidels be Judges? Why if they be, they will give the cause against you. Jews and most of the Heathen world do profess to believe a life to come, where some are happy and some are miserable; and they commonly profess that all men should obey their Maker, and make it their chiefest care and labour in this life, to be happy in the next: Heathens will confess this. And yet I suppose you will easily confess that these men are none of the fittest Judges. The way to Life by Jesus Christ they do not understand: But that the world is vanity, and nothing to be preferred before our happiness in the world to come, this they will commonly acknowledge. And if the lives of the most of them contradict this profession, yet still they are forced to confess the truth: and truth is not the less truth, because they that confess it will not obey it. Nay what greater testimony can you wish to silence your unbelieving thoughts, then the witnesses of the enemies of the truth, who as they condemn themselves by bearing witness to that which they refuse to practise, so shall their witness aggravate your condemnation, if you will live below it. What, are you Christians? and yet refuse to come up in your choice and lives to the doctrine of Heathens and Infidels?