A27016:823
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. The sin and misery that once they were in, while they knew not God, will do much to keep humble a gracious soul, as long as they live. Though God so forget our sins as to forgive them, yet we can scarce forgive our selves, or at least can never forget them. Though he see no fin in his servants, as he seeth it in the world, nor so as to hate and condemn them for it; yet they see that once they were as bad as the world, and were children of wrath as well as others; They condemn themselves when God doth justify them; and set their sins before their faces, which God doth cast behind his back. O those dark, those ungrateful, and those perilous days, will never be forgotten by the renewed soul. The thoughts of them shall ever keep us humble. When we look on the wicked miserable world, to think that such were many of us, though mercy have washed, and sanctified, and justified us.
2. The sin and misery that once they were in, while they knew not God, will do much to keep humble a gracious soul, as long as they live. Though God so forget our sins as to forgive them, yet we can scarce forgive our selves, or at least can never forget them. Though he see no fin in his servants, as he seeth it in the world, nor so as to hate and condemn them for it; yet they see that once they were as bad as the world, and were children of wrath as well as others; They condemn themselves when God doth justifie them; and set their sins before their faces, which God doth cast behind his back. O those dark, those ungrateful, and those perilous dayes, will never be forgotten by the renewed soul. The thoughts of them shall ever keep us humble. When we look on the wicked miserable world, to think that such were many of us, though mercy have washed, and sanctified, and justified us.
3. Moreover, God hath so contrived the way of their salvation, that they shall have all by a Redeemer, and by freest Grace, and none shall be justified by the works of the Law, nor by any merit of his own; but Boasting is excluded by the Law of faith, Rom. 3. 19, 27, 28. and we shall have nothing but what we receive besides and contrary to our desert.