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

18. And I would ask you also, Whether you are content with the measure of sanctification which you have, or which is to be attained in this life? Are you content to live for ever with no more knowledge or love of God? No more faith or love to Christ? No more sense of the worth of Grace? No more righteousness or peace or joy in the Holy Ghost? No more meekness, humility, or heavenly mindedness? Are you contented rather to live for ever under all the pride and ignorance and passion, and selfishness and lust and worldliness, and all other sins that here beset you, rather than to remove to the place of perfection, and yield that death shall break the vessel and nest of your corruptions? If you care so little for the grace of God, and see so little beauty in his image, and see so little odiousness in sin, that you had rather keep it for ever, than go to God by the passage of death, I blame you not to be afraid to die: But if otherwise; Why do you desire perfection and deliverance, and yet be so loth to come and receive it? When you know that it is not to be had on earth.

19. Moreover, are you contented to remain for ever as unserviceable to God as here you are? Alas! how little do you for him: how much do you to displease him? lay together all the service of your lives, and how small and poor a matter is it? And would you still live at these rates? Will this content you? Me thinks it should not if you have grace in your hearts. Why then do you not desire to depart and to be with Christ? There you shall be perfectly fitted for his service, and therefore perfectly perform it. What other service God will have for us, we cannot yet tell; but Love and Praise we are sure will be the chief, and the rest will be good and holy and honourable, what ever it be. If you are Christians, me thinks the sense of your unprofitableness ⟨p. 271⟩and of your unpleasing frame of heart and life, should be your daily grief! and therefore you should desire the state where you may be more serviceable, and not be so unwilling of it.