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

4. Whom would you have to be the Disposer of mens Lives but God? Is any other fit for the undertaking? No other can give life but he! And no other can preserve and continue it but he! If your life had been in any creatures hand, you had been dead long ago: For no creature is able to uphold it self, much less another also. Is any Creature wise enough to order the world and the affairs thereof? Is any Creature powerful enough, to dispose of the world and all things in it? Is any Creature good enough to do it without the communication of its imperfection which would disorder & destroy all? I know you make no doubt of any of these things. No Creature is fit to be God; and therefore none is fit to undertake the work of God; And therefore ⟨p. 245⟩it must be God or none that must have the Disposal of your lives and you.

But I know what it is that self would have! You would have the Disposal of your own lives, or else have God to dispose of them as you would have him, which comes all to one. But how unreasonable is this? Would you alone have the Disposal of your own lives? or would you have all men else in the world also to have the Disposal of theirs? If all should have this Privilege, what a miserable Privilege would it prove? No man then would die, and then either you must forbear marriage, or what would you do with your posterity, when there were no room on earth? And then you could not punish a Malefactor with death! And what a world would it be, if all men were Disposers of themselves, when there would be as many different ends and minds as men? every man would be for himself, and an enemy to others; and the world would run every man on his own head; and a madder confusion than can be imagined, would seize on all. If you would have every man have the dispose of his own life, you would have as many Gods as Men, and so have no God; and you would have as many Kings or Rulers as men, and so have no Ruler? and you would have the world to be no world, when God were to them as no God. And if you would not have it thus with all, what reason have you to desire it for your self? What are you more than all the world, that you should be exempted from the common state of mortals, and be at your own disposal more than they, and be instead of God unto your selves?