A27053:650
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 39: Answer to their doubts that fear death.
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.
CHAP. XXXIX. Answer to their doubts that fear death.
But because this is the hardest part of self-denial, and yet most necessary, and the particular subject of my Text, I shall stay upon it yet so much longer as to resolve a question of some doubting Christians, and to give you some Directions for the furtherance of self-denial herein.
BUt because this is the hardest part of self-denial, and yet most necessary, and the particular subject of my Text, I shall stay upon it yet so much longer as to resolve a question of some doubting Christians, and to give you some Directions for the furtherance of selfdenial herein.
Object. If it be a necessary part of self-denial to deny our own lives; I am much afraid that I am no Disciple of Christ, as having no true self-denial? For I find that for all these Reasons I cannot be willing to die, but when you have said all that can be said, death is the most terrible thing in the world to me. Answ. I pray you lay together these following particulars for ⟨p. 274⟩answer to this great and common doubt. 1. Death as death, is naturally dreadful to all, and the best men as men are naturally averse to it and abhor it. No man can desire death as death, nor ought to do it. If it had not been an evil to nature, it had not been fit to be the matter of Gods punishment, and to be Threatened to the world. Threatenings would not do their work if that which is threatened were not naturally evil, or hurtful and dreadful to the subject. To threaten men with a benefit is a contradiction, as much as to promise him a mischief, and more. 2. It is not therefore a simple. Displacency or Averseness to die, that God requireth you to lay by. Self-denial consisteth not in reconciling us to Death as death; For then he might as well persuade us to become Angels, as to deny our selves, and Preachers had as hard a work to do as to persuade men to cease to be men. Death will be an enemy as long as it is death. Even the separated soul hath so natural an inclination to union with its Body, that the separation is part of the penalty to it: And though heaven be their joy, and Christ their life and fullness, yet the separation from the body which they have even with Christ is a penalty; and they have not that perfect measure of Joy and Glory as they shall have when they are joined in the body again. So that separation as such is penal to the soul in blessedness. And even the separated soul of Jesus Christ that was more blessed than ours, was, as separated, in a state of penalty, when his body was in the grave (Of which see my Appendix to the Reformed Pastor, about the Descent into Hell.) 3. That which you have to look after therefore in your souls, is not a love to death, or willingness to death as death, which no man hath or should have; but it is, 1. A Submission to it as a less evil than sin and Hell and the Displeasure of God: and a choosing rather