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
comforts And others limit the word therefore to the following Crosses or sufferings which they must undergoe for the sake of Christ And accordingly they interpret the cause of their succceding joy But I see no reason but both are included in the Text but principally the first and the other consequently As if he had said When you see me Crucified your hearts and hopes will begin to fail and sorrow to overwhelm your minds and you will be exposed to the fury of the unbelieving World but it will be but for a moment for when you see thaâ— I am risen again your Joy will be revived and my Spirit afterwards and continual encouragements shall greatly increase and perpetuate your Joys which no persecutions or sufferings shall deprive you of but they shall at last be perfected in the heavenly everlasting Joys The cause of their sorrow is first his absence and next their sufferings with him in the World when the bridegroom is taken from them they must fast that is live an afflicted kind of life in various sorrows And the causes of their succeeding Joy are first his Resurrection and next his Spirit which is their comforter and lastly the presence of his Glory at their reception into his glorious Kingdom Their sorrow was to be short as that of a woman in Travail and it was to have a tendency to their Joy And their Joy was to be sure and near I will see you again and great your heart shall rejoice and everlasting your joy no man taketh from you The sense of the Text is contained in these six Doctrinal propositions Doct. 1. Sorrow goeth before joy with Christs Disciples Doct. 2. Christs death and departure was the cause of his Disciples Sorrows Doct. 3. The Sorrows of Christs Disciples are but short It is but Now. Doct. 4. Christ will again visit his Sorrowful Disciples though at the present he seem to be taken from them Doct. 5. When Christ returneth or appeareth to his Disciples their sorrows will be turned into joy Doct. 6. The joy of Christians in the return or reappearing of their Lord is such as no man shall take from them Of these by Gods assistance I shall speak in order and therefore be but short on each Doct. 1. Sorrow goeth before joy with Christs disciples The evening and the morning make their day They must sow in tears before they reap in joy They must have trouble in the World and peace in Christ God will first dwell in the contrite heart to prepare it to dwell with him in glory The pains of travail must go before the joy of the beloved birth Qu. what kind of sorrow is it that goeth before our joy Ans 1. There is a sorrow positively sinful which doth but should not go before our joy Though this be not meant directly in the text yet is it too constant a foregoer of our comforts It is not the joys of Innocency that are our portion but the joys of Restoration And the pains of our disease go before the ease and comfort of our recovery we have our worldly sorrows and our passionate and pievish sorrows like Jonas's for the withering of his gourd According to the degree of our remaining corruption we have our sorrows which must be sorrowed for again Sometimes we are troubled at the providences of God and sometimes at the dealings of men at the words or doings of enemies of friends of all about us we are grieved if we have not what we would have and when we have it it becomes our greater grief nothing well pleaseth us till we so devote our selves to please our God as to be pleased in the pleasing of him 2. And we have our sorrows which are sinful through our weakness imperfection when through the languishing feebleness of our Souls we are overmuch troubled at that which we may lawfully sorrow for with moderation When impatience causeth us to make a greater matter of our afflictions than we ought If God do but try us with wants or Crosses if we lose our friends or if they prove unkind we double the weight of the Cross by our impatiency This cometh from the remnants of unmortified selfishness carnality and overloving earthly things Were they less loved they would be less sorrowed for If we had seen their vanity and mortification had made them nothing to us we should then part with them as with vanity and nothing It 's seldom that God or men afflict us but we therefore afflict our selves much more As the destruction of the wicked so the troubles of the godly is chiefly of themselves 3. There is a mâ—er natural suffering or sorrow which is neither morally good or bad As to be weary with our labour to be pained with our diseases to be sensible of hunger and thirst of cold and heat to be averse to death as death as Christ himself was and at last to undergo it and lie down in the dust There are many sorrows which are the fruits of sin which yet in themselves are neither sin nor duty 4. There are castigatory sorrâ—ws from the hand of God which have a tendency to our cure if we use them according to his appointment Such are all the foresaid natural sufferings considered as Gods means and instruments of our benefit He woundeth the Body to heal the Soul He lanceth the sore to let out the corruption He letteth us blood to cure our Inflamations and Apostemated parts He chasteneth all that he loveth and receiveth and we must be subject to a chastening Father if we will live For he doth it for our profit that we may be partakers of his holiness 5. There are honourable and gainful sufferings from blind malicious wicked men for the cause of Christ and righteousness Such as the Gospel frequently warneth believers to expect These are the sorrows that have the promises of fullest joy Not that the meer suffering in itself is acceptable to God But the Love which is manifested by suffering for him is that which he cannot but accept So that the same measure of sufferings are more or less aceptable as there is more or less Love to God expressed by them and as the honor of Christ is more or less intended in them For to give the body to be burned without Love will profit us nothing But when the cause is Christs and the heart intendeth him as the end of the suffering then Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness sake for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven c. 6. There are penitential and medicinal sufferings for the killing of sin and helping on the work of grace which are made our duty In the former we are to be but submissive patients but in these we must be obedient agents and must inflict them on our selves Such are the sorrows of contrition and true repentance The exercises of fasting abstinence and humiliation The grief of the Soul for Gods displeasure for the hiding of his face
to lament immoderately when we lay the bodies of our friends in the grave because we see not whither the Soul is gone nor in what triumph and joy it is received unto Christ Which if we saw it would moderate our griefs And even so we over-pity our selves our friends in our temporal sufferings because we see not whither they tend and what will follow them We see Job on the dunghil but look not so far as his restoration Jam. 5.11 Behold we count them happy which endure Ye have heard of the patience of Job and have seen the end of the Lord that the Lord is very pitiful and of tender mercy There is no judging by the present but either by staying the end or believing Gods predictions of it Use It is allowable in Christs disciples to grieve in faith and moderately for any of his departure from them They that have had the comfort of communion with him in a life of faith and grace must needs lament any loss of that communion It is sad with such a Soul when Christ seemeth strange or when they pray and seek and seem not to be heard It is sad with a believer when he must say I had once access to the Father by the Son I had helps in prayer and I had the lively operations of the Spirit of grace and some of the joy of the holy Ghost but now alas it is not so And they that have had experience of the fruit and comfort of his Word and Ordinances and Discipline and the Communion of saints may be allowed to lament the loss of this if he take it from them It was no unseemly thing in David when he was driven from the Tabernacle of God to make that lamentation Psal 42 and 43. As the hart panteth after the Water brooks so panteth my Soul after thee O God My Soul thirsteth for God for the living God When shall I come and appear before God My tears have been my meat day and night while they continually say unto me where is thy God O my God my Soul is cast down within me c. And Psal 84.2 3 4. My Soul longeth yea even fainteth for the Courts of the Lord My heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God yea the Sparrow hath found an house and the Swallow a nest c. Blessed are they that dwell in thy house They will be still praising thee For a day in thy Courts is better than a thousand I had rather be a Door-keeper in the house of my God than to dwell in the tents of wickedness It signifieth ill when men can easily let Christ go or lose his word or helps and ordinances When sin provoketh him to hide his face and withdraw his mercies if we can senslesly let them go it is a contempt which provoketh him much more If we are indifferent what he giveth us it is just with him to be indifferent too and to set as little by our helps and happiness as we set by them our selves But we little know the misery which such contempt prepareth for Jer. 6.8 Be thou instructed O Jerusalem lest my Soul depart from thee lest I make thee desolate a Land not Inhabited Hos 9.12 Yea Wo also unto them when I depart from them When God goeth all goeth Grace and Peace Help and Hope and all that is good and comfortable is gone when God is gone wonder not therefore if Holy Souls cry after God and fear the loss of his Grace and Ordinances and if they lament the loss of that which dead-hearted Sensualists are a weary of and would drive away it will be the damning sentence Depart from me all ye workers of iniquity And therefore all that is but like it is terrible to them that have any regard of God or their Salvation Doct. 3. The sorrows of Christs Disciples are but short It is but NOW that they have sorrow And how quickly will this NOW doctrine 3 be gone Reas 1. Life it self is but short and therefore the sorrows of this Life are but short Man that is born of a Woman is of few days and full of trouble He cometh forth like a flower and is cut down he fleeth also as a shadow and continueth not Job 14.1 2. Though our days are evil they are but few Gen. 47.9 As our time maketh haste and posteth away so also do our sorrows which will attain their period together with our Lives As the pleasure of sin so the sufferings of the godly are but for a season Heb. 11.26 Now for a season if need be ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations 1 Pet. 1.6 The pleasures and the pains of so short a life are but like a pleasant or a frightful Dream How quickly shall we awake and all is vanished If we lived as long as they did before the Flood then worldly interest prosperity and adversity would be of greater signification to us and yet they should seem Nothing in comparison of Eternity For where now are all the fleshly pains or pleasures of Adam or Methuselah Much more are they inconsiderable in so short a life as one of ours Happy is the Man whose sorrows are of no longer continuance than this short and transitory life Reas 2. Gods displeasure with his Servants is but short and therefore his corrections are but short Psal 30.5 His anger endureth but for a moment but in his favour is life Isa 54.7 8. For a small moment have I forsaken thee but with great mercies will I gather thee In a little wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee saith the Lord thy Redeemer Isa 26.20 Come my People enter into thy Chambers and shut thy doors about thee hide thy self as it were for a little moment until the indignation be overpast Thus even in Judgment doth he remember mercy and consumeth us not because his compassions fail not Lam. 3. He will not always chide nor will he keep his anger for ever For he knoweth our frame he remembreth that we are dust Psal 103.9.14 His short corrections are purposely fitted to prepare us for endless consolations Reas 3. Our trial also must be but short and therefore so must be our sorrows Though God will not have us receive the Crown without the preparation of a Conflict and a Conquest yet will he not have our Fight and Race too long lest it overmatch our strength and his Grace and we should be overcome Though our Faith and we must be tried in the fire yet God will see that the Furnace be not over hot and that we stay no longer but till our Dross be separated from us God putteth us not into the fire to consume us but to refine us That when we come out we may say It is good for us that we were afflicted Psal 119.71 and then he will save the afflicted People Reas 4. The power of those that afflict Gods