A27016:931
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.
When I have heard such people talking and laughing, as if they had been the merryest people in the world, I have sometimes hearkened to their discourse, to hear what talk it was that made them so merry; and it hath been nothing but impertinency and folly, like a mans talking in his sleep; enough to make a mans head ache to hear them: I should be quickly tired with their delights: The blowing of the wind, or the falling of the rain, or as Solomon saith, the crackling of thorns in the fire, hath as much in it to please my ear, and much less to displease it, then such mens discourse.
When I have heard such people talking and laughing, as if they had been the merryest people in the world, I have sometimes hearkened to their discourse, to hear what talk it was that made them so merry; and it hath been nothing but impertinency and folly, like a mans talking in his sleep; enough to make a mans head ake to hear them: I should be quickly tired with their delights: The blowing of the wind, or the falling of the rain, or as Solomon saith, the crackling of thorns in the fire, hath as much in it to please my ear, and much less to displease it, then such mens discourse.
Go to a company of merry fellows, as you take them, and to a company of serious, godly, prudent people, and secretly write down all the words that you hear from both companies; and read them over together when you come home, and tell me which is the pleasanter discourse. What a hodge-podge of non-sense, impertinency, levity, immodesty, worldliness, pride, and folly shall you find in one; and what savoury, necessary, edifying, encouraging and comforting speeches will you find you have gathered from the other!
Go to a company of merry fellows, as you take them, and to a company of serious, godly, prudent people, and secretly write down all the words that you hear from both companies; and read them over together when you come home, and tell me which is the pleasanter discourse. What a hodg-podge of non-sense, impertinency, levity, immodesty, worldliness, pride, and folly shall you find in one; and what savoury, necessary, edifying, encouraging and comforting speeches will you find you have gathered from the other!