A27016:980
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.
Judge also by the labour and diligence of the godly, who seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and make it the principal business of their lives: Would they make all this ado for nothing? Or for that which is a matter of no delight?
Judge also by the delights which they voluntarily forsake, when they let go all their sinful pleasures, and renounce all the glory of ⟨p. 314⟩the world; would they make this exchange, if they had not found a more pleasant course, and that which tends to everlasting pleasure?
8. You see also that the truly Godly, when once they have tried a holy life, will never go back again to their former pleasures, but loath the very remembrance of them: It is not all the honours, and riches, and pleasures in the world, that can hire them to forsake a holy life. Sure therefore they find it the most pleasant course; if not in sensible delights, yet at least in easing their consciences, and securing their minds from the terrors that sinful pleasures would produce. If they found that Godliness answered not their expectation, they have leisure enough, and temptations too many, to turn back into the state from whence they came. But how would they abhor such a motion as this?
8. You see also that the truly Godly, when once they have tryed a holy life, will never go back again to their former pleasures, but loath the very remembrance of them: It is not all the honours, and riches, and pleasures in the world, that can hire them to forsake a holy life. Sure therefore they find it the most pleasant course; if not in sensible delights, yet at least in easing their consciences, and securing their minds from the terrours that sinful pleasures would produce. If they found that Godliness answered not their expectation, they have leisure enough, and temptations too many, to turn back into the state from whence they came. But how would they abhorr such a motion as this?