A27053:473
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
London: printed by Robert White for Nevil Simmons, 1675
Treatise › Chapter 25: Pleasing Accommodations, Buildings, Gardens, Horses, &c.
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.
1. All these are but the baits of Satan to delight you and entangle your desires, and find you work in seeking after them, while you neglect far greater matters. Can you have while to look so much after superfluities and delights in the world, when you have Necessaries yet to look after for your souls? Have you not greater things to mind than these, which these occasion you to neglect?
2. Do you really find that they conduce to your main end, even to make you more holy, or more serviceable to God? Nay do not your own Consciences tell you, that they hinder you and cross those ends? And yet will go against your experience?
3. If you are humble conscionable Christians, you feel cause enough already to lament, that your love to God and delight in him, is no more: And yet are you preparing snares for your souls, to steal away that little remnant of your affections, which you seemed to reserve for God?
4. If you have any spark of Grace in you, you know that the flesh and the world are your dangerous enemies; and you know that the way that the world doth undo men, is by ticing them to over-value it & over-love it; & that those that love it most, are deepest in a state of condemnation; and the less men love it, the less they are hurt or endangered by it. And do you not know that you are liker to over-love a sumptuous house, with gardens, orchards, and such accommodations, than a mean habitation? Why should you be such enemies to your own salvation, as to make temptations for your selves? Have you not temptations enough already? Do you deal with those you have so well, and overcome them so easily and so constantly, as that you have reason to desire more? If Christ your General send you upon a hotter service, you may go on with courage, and expect his help: But if you will so glory in your own strength, as to run into the hotter battle, and call for more and stronger enemies, it's easy to conjecture, how you will come off. If you are Christians, know your selves, you know that in the meanest state, you are too prone to over-love the world, and that under all Gods medicinal afflictions, you cannot be so weaned from it, as you ought! Are you not daily constrained to groan and complain to God under the burden of too much Love of the world, and too much delight in worldly things? If this be not your case, I see not how you can have any sincerity of saving grace. And if it be your case, will you be so sotti, and hypocritical, as to complain daily to God of your sin, & in the mean time to love and cherish it? to groan under your disease, and wilfully eat and drink that which you know doth increase it? What will you think of a man that will pray to God to save him from uncleanness, and yet will dwell no where but in a Brothel-house?