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

Direct. 7. If you would live in self-denial, be sure that you keep the mastery of your senses: and do not let them be ungoverned, but shut them up when reason doth require it. It is your Appetite and senses that feed this carnal selfish vice: but reason and faith are both against it. Whenever you consult with sense, you may know what brutish advice you may expect. Ask not therefore what is delightful, nor what is for your carnal ease and peace; but what is necessary to please the Lord, and for your everlasting peace. And if the tempter tell you, [This is the easier and the broader way] tell him that it is not the honester nor the safer way: And the question is not which is the fairest way? but, which is the way to Heaven? It's better go the hardest way to glory, than the smoothest to damnation. ⟨p. 406⟩If you cannot keep under your sensitive appetite, and subdue the eager desires of the flesh, and learn to want as well as to abound, to be empty as well as to be full, you will never attain to self-denial.

Direct. 8. To promote your self-denial, me thinks it should be effectual to understand the great advantage that you have by the Communion and Society which you enter into when you deny your selves. Though a Prince or Lord would be loth to enter into a College, or Monastery where there's no Propriety, and yet withal, no care or want; yet a poor labouring man or a beggar would be glad of such a life. So you that cannot live of your selves, me thinks should be glad of such a Community.

Direct. 8. To promote your self-denial, me thinks it should be effectual to understand the great advantage that you have by the Communion and Society which you enter into when you deny your selves. Though a Prince or Lord would be loth to enter into a Colledge, or Monastery where there's no Propriety, and yet withal, no care or want; yet a poor labouring man or a beggar would be glad of such a life. So you that cannot live of your selves, me thinks should be glad of such a Community.