A saint or a brute the certain necessity and excellency of holiness, &c. ...…

Name: A saint or a brute the certain necessity and excellency of holiness, &c. ...…
Author: Richard Baxter

A saint or a brute the certain necessity and excellency of holiness, &c. ... / by Richard Baxter.

Richard Baxter 1615–1691London: printed by R.W. for Francis Tyton, 1662

[17], 23, 384 [i.e. 374] p. · 179k words · Wing B1382 · ESTC R6046

Title page typeset from the transcription.

Part 2 › Chapter 3: Full proof (in twenty Queries) from Reason it self that there is a Life to come, and H…Part 2 › Chapter 3: Full proof (in twentie Queries) from Reason it self that there is a Life to come, and H…

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.

[ Earlier:496–511 of 1,121

:496p. 140

3. Nor could any man be effectually induced to love Virtue for it self, according to the doctrine of the Brutists: For Virtue it self is made no Virtue by them, but a deformity of the mind, while they overthrow the End, and Object, and Law that it is measured and informed by (as I shall more fully open to you anon). It is therefore most certain that no Nation is or can be Governed as beseemeth man, without Proposed punishments and Rewards.

3. Nor could any man be effectually induced to love Vertue for it self, according to the doctrine of the Brutists: For Vertue it self is made no Vertue by them, but a deformity of the mind, while they overthrow the End, and Object, and Law that it is measured and informed by (as I shall more fully open to you anon). It is therefore most certain that no Nation is or can be Governed as beseemeth man, without Proposed punishments and Rewards.

:497p. 140–141

And if so, then these must be either temporal punishments and benefits, or such as are to be had in the Life to come. That Temporal punishments and benefits cannot be Motives sufficient for any tolerable (much less perfect or sufficient) Government, is a most evident Truth: For 1. de facto we see by experience, that no people live like men that be not Governed by the Belief of another life. The Nations that believe it not, are Savages almost all; living naked and bestially, and knowing nothing of virtue or vice., but as they feel the commodity or discommodity to their flesh: They eat the flesh of men, for the most part, and live as brutishly as they believe. And if you say that in China it is not so, I answer, one part of them there believe the Immortality o• ⟨p. 141⟩the soul, and most of them take it as probable, and so the Nation hath the Government which it hath, from everlasting Motives.

And if so, then these must be either temporal punishments and benefits, or such as are to be had in the Life to come. That Temporal punishments and benefits cannot be Motives sufficient for any tolerable (much less perfect or sufficient) Government, is a most evident Truth: For 1. de facto we see by experience, that no people live like men that be not Governed by the Belief of another life. The Nations that believe it not, are Savages almost all; living naked and bestially, and knowing nothing of vertue or vice., but as they feel the commodity or discommodity to their flesh: They eat the flesh of men, for the most part, and live as brutishly as they believe. And if you say that in China it is not so, I answer, one part of them there believe the Immortality o

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