A27048:154
A treatise of death, the last enemy to be destroyed showing wherein its enmity…A treatise of death, the last enemy to be destroyed shewing wherein its enmity…
A treatise of death, the last enemy to be destroyed showing wherein its enmity consisteth and how it is destroyed : part of it was preached at the funerals [sic] of Elizabeth, the late wife of Mr. Joseph Baker ... / by Rich. Baxter ; with some few passages of the life of the said Mrs. Baker observed.A treatise of death, the last enemy to be destroyed shewing wherein its enmity consisteth and how it is destroyed : part of it was preached at the funerals [sic] of Elizabeth, the late wife of Mr. Joseph Baker ... / by Rich. Baxter ; with some few passages of the life of the said Mrs. Baker observed.
London: printed by R.W. for Nev. Simmons, 1660
Sermon › Section 9 › Application 7 › Direction 9: DIRECTION IX.
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.
and so as that God himself in them, shall be the chiefest object of that love. It is there that our friends being freed from all their imperfections, do neither tempt us to a carnal Love, nor have any thing in them to discourage the love that is spiritual and pure. We have here our passionate ⟨p. 151⟩friends, our self-conceited friends, our unkind, unthankful selfish friends; our mutable and unfaithful friends; our contentious friends that are like to enemies: and who have used us more hardly then our friends? But when we come to God, we shall have friends that are like God, that are wholly good, and are participatively turned into Love; and having left behind them all that was unclean and noisome, and troublesome to themselves, they have also cast off all that could be troublesome to us. Our love will be there without suspicions, without interruptions, unkindnesses and discontents, without disappointments, frustrations and dissatisfactions: For God himself will fully satisfy us; and we shall love his goodness and glory in his Saints, as well as immediately in himself. Our friends are now lost at the ⟨p. 152⟩turning of a straw: the change of their interest, their company, their opinions, the slanders of back-biters, and mis-representations of malicious men, can cool their Love, and kill their friendship. But Heaven is a place of constant Love: The Love of Saints, as all things else, is there eternal: And yet it declineth not with age. It is a world of Love that we are hasting to: It is a life of love that we must there live, and a work of love, and perfect love that we must be there employed in for ever. If here we have a pure, a dear, a faithful friend, that is without false-heartedness and deceit, that loveth us as his own soul, how quickly is he snatched away by death? and leaves us melted into tears, and mourning over his earthly relicts, and looking upward with grieved hearts, as the Disciples did after ⟨p. 153⟩their ascending Lord, Acts 1. 9, 10, 11. We are left almost as lifeless by such friends, as the body is left by the departed soul: We have nothing but grief to tell us that we live, and that our souls are not departed with them: we are left in greater lamentation, then if we had never known a faithful friend. And alas, how quickly are they gone, when once God sees them ripe for heaven? when Drones and Dullards live much longer.