Selected quad for the lemma: death_n
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A26929
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Richard Baxter's farewel sermon prepared to have been preached to his hearers at Kidderminster at his departure, but forbidden.; Farewel sermon prepared to have been preached to his hearers at Kidderminster at his departure but forbidden
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Baxter, Richard, 1615-1691.
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1683
(1683)
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Wing B1266; ESTC R4900
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39,816
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48
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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