A treatise of self-denial. By Richard Baxter, pastor of the church at KidderminsterA treatise of self-denial. By Richard Baxter, pastor of the church at Kederminster

The wicked will deride this in their ignorance, as if we made God partial; but it's no such matter: The Papists cannot endure it, but suppose Peter, David, and Noah, were quite without the Love of God, and so were again unsanctified men: but this is their error. It was not from the Power of reigning self-love, and the Habitual absence of the Love of God, that these men (or any Saints) did sin: but from a particular act of mortified self-love by a surprise upon the neglect of the actual exercise of ⟨p. 92⟩the Love of God. But all the sins of unsanctified men, or at least their common sins, are from the Habitual reign of self-love, and the Habitual absence of the Love of God: And therefore the sins of the Saints are, as the Schoolmen speak of the graces of the ungodly, unformed: they be not Mortal sins in the sense aforesaid, because they be not naturalized, informed, animated, by the malignity and venom of the Mortal End and Principle, which is Habitual reigning self-love: But those of the wicked are sins informed by this inordinate self-love as an habitual reigning sin; and therefore being animated by its malignity are mortal: Yet say not that this makes God partial, and not to hate the same sin in one as he doth in another. For two things must be taken in: 1. Where the heart is sanctified, such sins are strangers: perhaps one Godly man of ten or twenty may be guilty of one of them, as Noah was of drunkenness once in all his life (since his conversion:) For it will not stand with grace to live in them. For such as a mans Love, and Inclination, and nature is, such will be the drift of his Life. And would not you have God make a difference between those that sin once, and those that live in it? 2. Besides, will not any honest man make a great difference of the same acts according as they come from different hearts? you will not take a passionate word from a Father, Husband, or Wife, so ill as the same word from a malicious enemy. If an unthrifty Son should spend you twenty shillings wastefully, you will not prosecute him as you would do a thief or an enemy that takes it from you violently. Wilful murder and casual man-slaughter, have not the same punishment by the Law of the Land.

The wicked will deride this in their ignorance, as if we made God partial; but it's no such matter: The Papists cannot endure it, but suppose Peter, David, and Noah, were quite without the Love of God, and so were again unsanctified men: but this is their error. It was not from the Power of reigning self-love, and the Habitual absence of the Love of God, that these men (or any Saints) did sin: but from a particular act of mortified self-love by a surprize upon the neglect of the actual exercise of