Tuesday May the first 1660. Ordered THat the thanks of this House be given to Mr. Baxter for his great pains in carrying on the work of Preaching and Prayer before the House at Saint Margarets Westminster yesterday being set apart by this House for a day of Fasting and Humiliation And that he be desired to Print his Sermon and is to have the same Priviledge in Printing the same that others have had in the like kind And that Mr. Swinfin do give him notice thereof W. Jessop Cler. of the Commons House of Parliament Richard Baxter's Farewel Sermon Prepared to have been Preached to his Hearers AT Kidderminster At his departure but forbidden LONDON Printed for B. Simmons at the Three Golden Cocks on Ludgate-Hill at the West End of St. Pauls 1683. To the Inhabitants of the Burrough and Forreign of Kidderminster in the County of Worcester Dear friends WHile I was lately turning up the rubbish of my old Papers I found this Sermon in the bottom which I had quite forgotten that I kept but thought it had been cast away with many hundred others Much of the last sheet was added to the Sermon after I came from you and I remember that when I intended to send you this Sermon as my farewel I durst not then have so much converse with you for your own sakes lest it should raise more enmity against you and your displeasing circumstances of religious practice should be said to come from my continued Counsels to you I have lately taken my farwel of the World in a Book which I called My Dying Thoughts My pain of Body and debility increasing and my Flesh being grown to me more grievous than all my enemies or outward troubles I remembred the benefit I often received uppon your Prayers and craving the continuance of them till you hear of my dissolution therewith I send this as my special farewel to your selves whom I am bound to remember with more than ordinary Love and Thankfulness while I am Richard Baxter John 16.22 And ye now therefore have sorrow but I will see you again and your heart shall rejoyce and your joy no man taketh from you My dearly beloved in our dearest Lord I Will so far consent to your troubled thoughts of this unwelcome day as to confess that to me as well as you it somewhat resembleth the day of death 1. Death is the separation of the dearest consorts Soul and Body And how near the Union is betwixt us both that of Relation and that of Affection which must admit this day of some kind of dissolution I will rather tell to strangers then to you 2. Death is unwelcom both to Soul and Body of itself though it destroy not the Soul it doth the body So dear Companions part not willingly Your hearts and Mine are here so over forward in the application that words may be well spared where sense hath taken so deep possession 3. Death is the end of humane converse here on earth We must see and talk with our friends here no more And this our separation is like to end that converse between you and me which formerly we have had in the duties of our Relations We must no more go up together as formerly to the house of God I must no more speak to you publickly in his name nor solace my own soul in opening to you the Gospel of Salvation nor in the mention of his Covenant his Grace or Kingdom Those Souls that have not been convinced and Converted are never like to hear more from me for their conviction or conversion I have finished all the instruction reproof exhortation and â—erswasion which ever I must use in order to their salvation I must speak here no more to inform the ignorant to reform the wicked to reduce the erroneous to search the hypocrite to humble the proud to bow the obstinate or to bring the worldly the impenitent and ungodly to the knowledge of the world themselves and God I must speak no more to strengthen the weak to comfort the afflicted nor to build you up in faith and holiness Our day is past our night is come when we cannot work as formerly we have done My opportunities here are at an end 4 Death is the end of earthly comforts And our separation is like to be the end of that comfortable communion which God for many years hath granted us Our publick and private communion hath been sweet to us The Lord hath been our Pastour and hath not suffered us to want He made us lye down in his pleasant pastures and hath led us by the silent streams Psal 23.1 2. He restored our Souls and his very Rod and Staff did comfort us But his smiting scattering time is come These pleasures now are at an end 5. Death is the end of humane labours There is no plowing or sowing no building or planting in the grave And so doth our Separation end the works of our mutual relation in this place 6 Death is the effect of painful sickness and usually of the folly intemperance or oversight of our selves And though our conscience reproach us not with gross unfaithfulness yet are our failings so many and so great as force us to justify the severity of our father and to confess that we deserve this rod. Though we have been censured by the world as being over strict and doing too much for the saving of our own and others Souls yet it is another kind of charge that conscience hath against us How earnestly do we now wish that we had done much more that I had preached more fervently you had heard more diligently and we had all obeyed God more strictly and done more for the Souls of the ignorant careless hardened sinners that were among us It is just with God that so dull a preacher should be put to silence that could ever speak without tears and fervent importunity to impenitent sinners when he knew that it was for no less than the saving of their Souls and foresaw the joys which they would lose and the torment which they must endure if they repented not With what shame sorrow do I now look back upon the cold and lifeless Sermons which I preached and upon those years neglect of the duty of private instructing of your families before we set upon it orderly and constantly Our destruction is of our selves Our undervaluings and neglects have forfeited our opportunities As good Melancthon was wont to say In vulneribus nostris proprias agnoscimus pennas The arrow that woundeth us was feathered from our own wings 7. Death useth to put surviving friends into a dark and mourning habit Their lamentations are the chief part of funeral Solemnities And in this also we have our part The compassion of condolers is greater than we desire For sorrow is apt to grow unruly and exceed its bounds and bring on more sufferings by lamenting one and also to look too much at the instruments and to be more
offended at them than at our sins 8. But Death is the end of all the living The mourners also must come after us And alas how soon It maketh our fall more grievous to us to foresee how many must ere long come down How many hundred Pastors must shortly be separated from their flocks If there were no Epideicmal malady to destroy us our Ministry hath its mortality Your Fathers where are they and the prophets do they live for ever Zech. 1.5 This made us the more importunate with you in our Ministry because we knew that we must preach to you and pray with you and instruct you and watch over you but a little while Though we knew not what instrument death would use we knew our final day was coming when we must preach and exhort and pray our last with you we knew that it behoved us to work while it was day and O that we had done it better because the night was coming when none could work Joh. 9.4.9 And as it is appointed to all men once to die so after death there followeth Judgment And we also have our further judgment to undergo We must expect our hour of temptation We must be judged by men as well as chastened by God We must prepare to bear the reproach and slanders of malicious tongues and the unrighteous censures of those that know us not and of those who think it their interest to condemn us And we must also call our selves to judgment We are like to have unwelcom leisure to review the daies and duties which are past It will then be time for us to call our selves to account of our preaching and studies and other ministerial works and to sentence our labours and our lives And it will be time for you to call your selves to account of your hearing and profiting and to ask How have we used the mercies which are taken from us Yea God himself will judge us according to our works He will not justifie us if we have been unfaithful in our Little and have been such as Satan and his instruments the accusers of the Brethren do report us But if we have been faithful we may expect his double justification 1 By pardon he will justify us from our sins 2. By Plea and righteous sentence he will justify us against the false accusations of our enemies And that 's enough How small a thing should it seem to us to be judged of man who must stand or fall to the final sentence of the Almighty God 10. The separated Soul and Body do retain their Relations and the Soul its inclination to a re-union with its Body And though our nearest obligations may be now dissolved and the exercise of our communion hindered yet I know we shall never forget each other nor shall the bond of Love which doth unite us be ever loosed and made void And so much of our Relation shall still continue as is intimated in those texts 1 Cor. 4.15 16.12.14 Phil. 4.1 c. 11. And the power of Death will not be everlasting A Resurrection and re-union there will be at last But whether in this world I cannot prophesy I am apter to think that most of us must die in the wilderness and that our night must bear some proportion with our day But things unrevealed belong only unto God It sufficeth me to be sure of this that as our kingdom so our comforts are not of this world and that as Christ so his servants under him may say Behold I and the Children which God hath given me Heb. 2.13 and that we shall present you as chast Virgins unto Christ 2 Cor. 11.2 And therefore we have preached taught and warned that we might present you perfect in Christ Jesus Col. 1.28 For what is our hope or joy or Crown of rejoycing are not even ye in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ at his Coming For ye are our glory and our joy 1 Thessalonians 2.19 20. But yet the Resemblance between Death and this our separation holdeth not in all things 1. It is not I nor any Pastour that is the Churches Soul or life This is the honour of Christ the Head Being planted into him you may live though all his Ministers were dead or all your Teachers driven into corners 2. The continuance of your Church-state dependeth not on the continuance of any one single Pastour whatsoever God can provide you others to succeed us that may do his work for you more successfully than we And could I but hope that they should be as able and holy and diligent as I desire how little should I partake with you in this daies sorrows Had I not given you these exceptions malicious tongues would have reported that I made my self your Life or Soul and take the Churches to be all dead when such as I are silenced and cast out But I remember Psal 12. Though what I have said and what you feel may make you think that a funeral Sermon is most seasonable on such a day yet I have rather chosen to preach to you the doctrine of Rejoycing because you sorrow not as men that have no hope and because I must consider what tendeth most to your strength stedfastness And that you may see herein I imitate our Lord I have chosen his words to his troubled Disciples before his departure from them Joh. 16.22 And though I make no question but it will be said with scorn that thus I make my self as Christ that I seditiously encourage you by the expectations of my restitution yet will I not therefore forbear to use my Saviours Consolatory words But will remember to whom and on what occasion he said Every plant which my heavenly Father hath not planted shall be rooted up Let them alone they be blind leaders of the blind and if the blind lead the blind both shall fall into the ditch Math. 15 13.14 The words are Christs Comforts to his Orphane Sorrowful Disciples expressing first their present Condition and that which they were now to tast of and secondly their future state Their present case is a state of sorrow because that Christ must be taken from them Their future case will be a state of joy which is expressed 1. In the futurity of the cause But I will see you again 2. In the promise of the effect and your heart shall rejoice 3. In the duration and invincibâ—lity of it and your joy no man taketh from you or shall take from you He had before likened their sorrows on this occasion to the pains of a woman in her Child-bearing which is but short and endeth in joy And in relation to that similitude the Syriack translateth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 sickness and the Persian translateth it Calamity some expositors limit the cause of their sorrows to the absence of Christ or that death of his which will for a time both shake their faith and astonish their hopes and deprive them of their former
Servants wrongfully is but short and therefore the sorrows of such affliction can be but short though it be foreign Churches of whom I speak I hope it is to such as take their case to be to them as their own While they are breathing out threatnings they are ready to breath out their guilty Souls If a man in a Dropsie or Consumption persecute us we would not be over fearful of him because we see he is a dying man And so little is the distance between the death of one man and another that we may well say all mens lives are in a Consumption and may bear their indignation as we would do the injuries of a dying man How short is the day of the Power of darkness Christ calleth it but an hour Luke 22.53 This is your hour and the power of darkness How quickly was Herod eaten of Worms and many another cut off in the height of their prosperity when they have been raging in the heat of persecution Little thought Ahab that he had been so near his woful day when he had given order that Michaiah should be fed with the Bread and Water of affliction till he returned in peace What persecutions have the death of a Licinius a Julian a Qu. Mary c. shortened While they are raging they are dying while they are condemning the Just they are going to be condemned by their most just avenger How quickly will their Corps be laid in dust and their condemned Souls be put under the Chains of darkness till the judgment of the great and dreadful day He is not only an Unbeliever but irrational or inconsiderate that cannot see their end in the greatest of their glory How easie is it to see these bubbles vanishing and to foresee the sad and speedy period of all their cruelties and triumphs Job 20.4 5 6 7 8. Knowest thou not this of old since man was placed upon Earth that the triumphing of the wiched is short and the joy of the hypocrite but for a moment Though his excellency mount up to the Heavens and his Head reach unto the Clouds yet he shall perish for ever like his own dung They which have seen him shall say where is he He shall fly away as a Dream and shall not be found yea he shall be chased away as a Vision of the night The Eye also which saw him shall see him no more neither shall his place behold him Though pride do compass them about as a Chain and violence cover them as a Garment and they are corrupt and speak oppression or calumny wickedly they speak loftily or from on high Though they set their mouth against the Heavens and their tongue walketh through the Earth yet surely they are set in slippery places God doth cast them down into destruction How are they brought into desolation as in a moment They are utterly consumed with terrors as a Dream from one that awaketh so O Lord in awaking or raising up that is saith the Chaldee Paraphrase in thy day of judging or as all the other Translations in civitate tuâ in thy Kingdom or Government thou shalt despise their Image that is shew them and all the World how despicable that Image of greatness and power and felicity was which they were so proud of If such a bubble of vain glory such an Image of felicity such a Dream of power and greatness be all that the Church of God hath to be afraid of it may be well said as Isa 2.22 Cease ye from Man whose Breath is in his Nostrils For wherein is he to be accounted of Psal 146.4 His Breath goeth forth he returneth to his Earth in that very day his thoughts perish And Isa 50.9 Behold the Lord God will help me who is he that shall condemn me Lo they all shall wax old as a Garment the Moth shall eat them up And Isa 51.7 8. Hearken unto me ye that know righteousness the People in whose heart is my law Fear ye not the reproach of men neither be ye afraid of their revilings For the Moth shall eat them up like a Garment and the Worm shall eat them like Wool But my righteousness shall be for ever and my salvation from generation to generation The sorrows which so short-lived power can inflâ—ct can be but short You read of their Victories and Persecutions in the News-books one year and quickly after of their death Use Hence therefore you may learn how injudicious they are that think Religion is disparaged by such short and small afflictions of Believers and how unexcusable they are who yield unto temptation and venture upon sin and comply with the ungodly and forsake the truth through the fear of so short and momentary sorrows When there is none of them but would endure the prick of a Pin or the scratch of a Briar or the biting of a Flea to gain a Kingdom or the opening of a Vein or the griping of a Purge to save their Lives O how deservedly are ungodly men forsaken of God For how short a pleasure do they forsake him and the everlasting pleasures And how short a trouble do they avoid by running into everlasting trouble If sin had not first subdued reason men would never make it a matter of question whether to escape so small a suffering they should break the Laws of the most righteous God nor would they once put so short a pain or pleasure into the ballance against the endless pain and pleasure Nor would a temptation bring them to deliberate on a matter which should be past deliberation with a man that is in his Wits And yet alas how much do these short concernments prevail through all the World Unbelievers are short sighted they look only or chiefly to things near and present A lease of this empty World for a few years yea an uncertain tenure of it is preferred before the best security for eternal life It s present pleasures which they must have and its present sorrows which they take care to escape As Christ hath taught us to say about these worldly things so the Devil hath taught them to say about everlasting things Care not for to morrow the morrow shall take thought for the things of it self sufficient to the day is the evil thereof Math. 6.34 Therefore when the day of their calamity shall come a despairing Conscience will perpetually torment them and say This is but the sorrow which thou chosest to endure or the misery which thou wouldst venture on to escape a present inconsiderable pain If there be any of you that shall think that present sufferings are considerable things to be put into the scales against eternity or that are tempted to murmuring and impatience under such short afflictions I desire them but to consider 1. that your suffering will be no longer than your sin And if it endure but as long is it any matter of wonder or repining Can you expect to keep your sickness and yet
shall they be exalted For the Lord is our defence and the holy One of Israel is our King Psal 89.15 16 17 18. What gladness was there at a private meeting of a few Christians that met to pray for Peter when they saw him delivered and come among them Act. 12.12.5.14 When the Churches had Rest they were edified and walked in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Ghost Act. 9.31 3. But the great joy will be when Christ returneth in his Glory at the last day what a multitude of sorrows will there be ended And what a multitude of Souls will then be comforted What a multitude of desires and prayers and expectations will then be answered How many thousand that have sowed in tears shall then reap in everlasting joy When the Creature shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the Sons of God Rom. 8.26 27. When all the faith and labour and patience of all the Saints from the beginning of the World shall be rewarded with the Rivers of celestial pleasure and the just shall enter into their Masters joy Mat. 25.21 That you may the better understand the sweetness of all these sorts of joy which Christs return will bring to Saints observe these following ingredients in them 1. It is Christ himself that is the object of their joy He that is the dearly beloved of their Souls that for their sakes was made a man of sorrows It is he who is their hope and help with whom they are in covenant as their only Saviour In whom they have trusted with whom they have deponed their Souls If he should fail them all would fail them and they were of all Men most miserable They would be comfortless if he should not come unto them and were not their comfort The World cannot help and comfort them for it is empty vain a transient shadow It will not for it is malignant and our professed enemy For we know that we are of God and the whole World is in maligno positus set on wickedness or as some think because 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is put for the Devil in the foregoing Verse and the Article here also used is as it were planted into the Devil or put under the Devil to War against Christ and the holy Seed And indeed Satan seemeth in this War against the Church to have somewhat like success as he had against Christ himself As Christ must be a Man of sorrows and scorn and be crucified as a Blasphemer and a Traitour before he rejoice the hearts of his Disciples by his resurrection so the Church was a persecuted scorned handful of Men for the first three hundred years and then it rose by Christian Emperours to some reputation till Satan by another game overcame them by Judas his Successours that for what will you give me by Pride and Worldliness betrayed them into that deplorate state in which they have continued these 900 Years at least So that the Christian name is confined to a sixth part of the World and serious sanctified Believers are persecuted more by the Hypocrites that wear the Livery of Christ than by Heathens and Infidels themselves And when the Church is so low almost like Christ on the Cross and the Grave will not a Resurrection be a joyful change When it crieth out on the Cross My God My God why hast thou forsaken me Will not Christ appearing for its deliverance be a welcome sight It was when Adam had brought a Curse on himself and his Posterity and all the Earth that Redemption by the holy Seed was promised and when Satan had conquered Man that Christ was promised to conquer him It was when the World was destroyed by the deluge that its reparation was promised to Noah It was when Abraham was a Sojourner in a strange Land that the peculiar promises were made to him and his Seed It was when the Israelites were enslaved to extremity that they were delivered And it was when the Scepter was departing from Judah and they and the World were gone from God that Christ the Light of the World was sent And when the Son of Man cometh shall he find faith on the Earth When we see how vast the Heathen and Infidel Kingdoms are and what a poor despised People those are that set their chief hopes on Heaven and how Satan seemeth every where to prevail against them and most by false and Worldly Christians what a trial is this to our Faith and Hope As the Disciples said of a Crucified Christ We trusted it had been he that should have Redeemed Israel we are almost ready in the hour of temptation to say We trusted that Gods Name should have been Hallowed and his Kingdom come and his Will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven And O how seasonable and how joyful will the Churches Resurrection be after such low and sad distress Many a sad Christian under the Sentence of Death is going hence with fear and trouble When a Moment shall transmit them into the joyful presence of their Lord and the possession of that which with weakness and fear they did but believe 2. And Christ will not come or be alone With him will come the New Jerusalem He will put glory on each Member but much more on the whole O how many of our old Companions are now there Not under temptation or any of the tempters power Not under the darkness of ignorance error or unbelief Not under the pains of a languid diseased corruptible Body Not under the fear of Sin or Satan or wicked Men Not under the terror of Death or Hell of an accusing Conscience or the wrath of God O with what joy shall we see and enjoy that glorious Society To be translated thither from such a World as this from such temptations sins such fears and sorrows such perfidious malignant wickedness what will it be but to be taken as from a Goal unto a Kingdom and from the Suburbs of Hell unto the Communion of Blessed Saints and Angels and into the Joy of our Lord. Doct. 6. Your Joy shall no Man take from you The Joy that cometh at Christs return will be a secure everlasting joy Impregnable as Heaven it self Christ and his Church will be Crucified no more Nor any more despised scorned persecuted or falsly accused and condemned Look not then for Christ or his Church in the Grave he is not here he is risen Who can we fear will deprive us of that joy 1. Not our selves And then we need to fear no other Our folly and sin is our Enemies strength They can do nothing against us without our selves The Arrows that wound us are all feathered from our own Wings But our trying time will then be past and confirmation will be the reward of Conquest He that hath kept us in the day of our trial will keep us in our state of rest and triumph How the now fallen Angels came to