A27016:446
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.
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?
6. If yet you are not resolved which is the Better part and way, to whom do you desire to referr 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?