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A27053 A treatise of self-denial. By Richard Baxter, pastor of the church at Kederminster Baxter, Richard, 1615-1691. 1675 (1675) Wing B1431; ESTC R218685 325,551 530

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not as certainly now as he shall do in his sickness And yet in health these wretches will not be awakened so much to fear it as may restrain them from sin and help them to prepare for it It 's troublesome precise talk with them to talk of making ready to die Either they slight it or love not to hear or think of it And yet the same men when death is coming and they see they must away are even amazed with fear and horror And I cannot blame them unless they were in a better case But this I must blame them for as most unreasonable that they can make such a lamentable complaint when death and Hell are near hand and yet make so light of it all their life time 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 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 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 Threatned to the world Threatnings would not do their work if that which is threatned 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 perswade us to become Angels as to deny our selves and Preachers had as hard a work to do as to perswade 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 fulness 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 joyned 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 to die than wilfully to sin and forsake the Lord. 2. And a Love to that glory in the fruition of God which death is the passage to Seeing we cannot obtain the end of our faith and patience by any easier passage than death you must rather be content to go this strait and grievous way than miss of the state of eternal blessedness Let death be never so odious and dreadful to you if you had but rather die than forsake Christ by sin or miss of everlasting life with God you have that true self-denial even of life it self which is required in my Text. 4. And yet even a gracious soul may be so much unprepared as to desire to stay yet longer on earth though he be absent from the Lord while he is present in the body that so a better preparation may be made And also the love of God may make a man desire to stay yet longer for the service of the Church or to be with Paul in a strait between two Phil. 1. 21 22 23. 5. Have you not such pleasant apprehensions of the New Jerusalem and the coming of Christ in glory and the blessed state of the Saints in heaven as that you could most gladly enter into that blessed state by any other way than death And had you not rather die than miss of that felicity At least when you know that die you must had you not rather die sooner even a violent death by persecution than miss of your eternal life by saving your lives a little longer 6. And for your unwillingness to die as death is the last enemy to be conquered by Christ at the Resurrection so the fears of death and the power of it is the last evil that we shall be troubled with and you must not expect to be fully freed from these fears in this life for death will be death and man will be man But yet let me tell you that before you die God may very much abate your fears and very ordinarily doth so with his servants 1. By giving them that grace that is suited to a dying state and 2. By the help of sickness and pain it self And that is one great reason why sickness shall usually go before death that pain and misery may make the flesh even a weary of it self and make the soul a weary of its companion and both a weary of this miserable life And now I shall briefly name some few Directions which if you will practise you will more easily submit to death CHAP. XL. Directions to be willing to die Direct 1. BY all means endeavour the strengthening of your Belief of the Reality of eternal life and the truth of the promise of Christ concerning it For if you Believe it not you cannot die for it nor chearfully submit to a natural death through the hopes of it This is the sum or principal work of the Christian faith to Believe the everlasting life as procured for us by the love of the Father the Obedience Death Resurrection and Intercession of the Son and the Sanctification of the Holy Ghost It is the unsoundness or the weakness of this Belief that is the principal cause of our unwillingness to die Direct 2. By all means endeavour to get and maintain the Assurance of your Title to this Promise and Felicity Get sound evidence and keep it clear Expunge all blots without delay Take heed of such sin as woundeth Conscience and wasteth comfort and grieveth the spirit of
destroy the Church and Common-wealth and be a cruel enemy to mankind and to our Country and to rebel against the Powers that are ordained of God and thereby to receive damnation to our selves Rom. 13. 1 2 3. Heb. 13. 17. But yet this I must say that if a worthy person stand in competition with us self-denial requireth us to prefer them before our selves and to refuse honours and dignities when the good of the publick doth not call us to deny our selves more in the accepting them CHAP. LV. Q. Whether it be a denying our Relations Quest 5. WHether Self-denial consist in denying of Natural or Contracted Relations as of Father and Mother to Sons and Daughters of Brothers and Sisters Husband and Wife Master and Servant Prince and People Pastor and Flock Answ You might as wisely imagine that self-denial lieth in hating or denying any of Gods Works even the frame of nature or in denying food and rayment to our bodies or in denying our own lives so as to cut our throats For the same Law of Nature that made me a man and requireth me to preserve my life did make me a son and require me to love and honour my parents And it is in the Decalogue the first Commandment with promise as the Apostle calleth it Ephes 6. 2. It is frequently and expresly commanded in Scripture that children love honour obey their parents and terrible curses are pronounced on the breakers of these Commands Eph. 6. 1. 4. 5. 22 5. Colos 3. 20 21 22. 4. 1. Exod. 21. 17. Levit. 20. 9. Deuteron 21. 18 19. 27. 16. Prov. 30. 17. Mat. 15. 4. 19. 19. And if children were not bound to parents then parents should not be bound to educate children and then they would be exposed to misery and perish One would think that there should never such a Sect have risen up that should be worse than the very brutes who by the instinct of nature love their young ones and their dams But the Spirit foretold us that which is come to pass that in the last and perilous times there should be men that are disobedient to parents without natural affection 2 Tim. 3. 3. And for contracted Relations they are the express institution of God so frequently owned by him in Scripture and the duties of them so frequently commanded that I will not trouble you with the recital of the passages And as for the Adversaries objections they are frivolous The meaning of the Apostles words that we know no man after the flesh I have told you before The words of Christ to his Mother Joh. 2. 4. Woman what have I to do with thee which they alledge are nothing for their wicked cause they being no more but Christ's due Reprehension of his Mothers mistake who would prescribe him the time and manner of doing Miracles and have him do them in a way of ostentation which things did not belong to her but to the Spirit of God and the Lord himself And whereas they alledge that Text Luke 14. 26. that father mother brother sisters c. are to be hated for Christ I answer Even as our own lives are to be hated which are also numbred with them that is They must be all forsaken rather than Christ should be forsaken and therefore loved less than he and but for his sake If therefore this Text require you not at all to cut your own throats or some way kill your selves then it doth not require you to withdraw your due affections from Natural or Contracted Relations I must crave the Readers pardon that I trouble him with confuting such unnatural opinions and desire him to believe that it is not before I am urged to it by the arguments of some deluded souls that are not unlikely to do hurt by them with some CHAP. LVI Q. Or Relieving Strangers before Kindred Quest 6. WHether self-denial require that we should relieve godly strangers before our natural Kindred especially that are ungodly Or that we love them better Answ 1. Where our Natural Kindred are as holy and as needy as others there is a double obligation on us both natural and spiritual to love and relieve them 2. Where they are as Holy as others but less needy there may lie a double obligation on us to love them and yet not to give to them 3. If they be more needy or as needy as others though withal they be ungodly we are not thereby excused from natural affections or charitable relief 4. We must distinguish between children or such kindred as nature casteth upon our care for provision and such kindred as are by nature cast upon others If parents were not obliged to relieve and provide for their own children they would be exposed to misery and man should be more unnatural than brutes So that even when by ungodliness they are less amiable than others yet God hath bound men to provide for them more 5. Natural love and spiritual are much different you may have a stronger Natural Love to an ungodly child than to a Godly stranger but you must have a spiritual Love to that Godly stranger more than to your child And that spiritual Love must be at least as to the Rational and Estimative part much greater than the other Natural Love And yet you may be bound to Give more where you are not bound to Love more For it is not Love only that is the cause of giving but we are Gods Stewards and must dispose of what we have as he prescribeth us and his standing Law of Nature for the preservation of mankind is that parents take care of their children as such 6. The will and service of God being it that should dispose of all that we have we must in all such doubts look to these two things for our direction First to the particular Precepts of the Word and there we find the fore-said duty of parents expressed and withal the duty of relieving all that are needy to our power Secondly to the General Precept and there we find that we must honour God with our substance and lay out all our talents to his service And so the duty lieth plain before us If you have a child that is wicked yet as prents provide him his daily bread and leave him enough for daily bread when you die But more he should not have from me but the rest had I ten thousand pound a year I would lay out that way that my conscience told me may be most serviceable to God For 1. I am not bound to strengthen an enemy of Christ and enable him to do the greater mischief 2. Nor to cast away the mercies of God 3. If the Law required the parents to cause such a Rebellious son to be put to death Deut. 21. 18. then surely to provide him daily bread is now as much as a parent is obliged to And if it be an express Command that he that will not labour shall not eat 2 Thes 3. 10.