you prefer not any other pleasure in your esteem and choice and seeking If so you shew that you truly believe and trust to the faithfulness of God's Word though yet you reach not what you seek Desire is the first-fruit of Faith and Love and holy joy is the flower and perfection 2. Cannot you say that it is this Word that maketh you hope that there is for man a better life and that you shall not perish like the Beasts And that your fears and sorrows are somewhat abated by the promises of God 3. Cannot you say that you perceive a pleasing goodness in the Word of God which maketh it welcome and acceptable to you By what I have mentioned you may find 1. That the Word hath not been in vain unto you when it hath caused such effects 2. And that the same spirit is in you which wrote the Word or else you would not love and desire it and take it for suitable food and pleasure yea your heritage and joy 3. And you may hence perceive that you are not without the love of God himself though you see him not and have not such sensible conceptions of him as you have of men and things which you have seen For if you love truth and goodness and holiness in Gods Word because it is such you sure love best the greatest truth goodness and holiness and that is God 4. And hence you may perceive that though our nature love not death and a weak faith will not overcome all fears when we think of coming into an unseen world yet really you are lovers of Heaven in that you are lovers of that which constituteth Heaven and is its desirableness to man even holiness and Gods Love and glorious presence and our perpetual joy herein If you desire this you desire Heaven though the fear of death do make you doubt of it 5. And hence you may find that you are not Worldly Hypocrites else it is not Gods Promises and Law that you would take for your heritage and joy but worldly prosperity and fleshly pleasure and God and Heaven should have but the leavings of the flesh for fear of an after reckoning at death 6. And though your joy be small you may know that it is of the right kind when it is chiefly sought in God's Love and Promises and you would not let go the word of God and lose your part in it for all the vanities of this World III. Hence also you may learn why all true Christians so much value the Testimonies or Word of God Why they so much read it think of it talk of it and hear of it and are loath that Papists should corrupt it or conceal it in an unknown Tongue or that any should deny them the necessary use of it or silence the Ministers that preach it to them who would willingly be deprived of his heritage or heart rejoycing IV. Yea indeed hence we see how much we should set by it and use it how dear it should be to us How strictly we should obey it With what delight we should read it and meditate in it How diligent we should be to confirm our belief of it and how we should fetch our hope and comfort from it in life and at our death V. And You may see hence that it is no wonder that the Devil and all his Servants in the World are Enemies to the Word of God because they are Enemies to our heritage and joy And there are few better signs while many pretend to be for Christ to know who are really for him and who are against him and his greatest Enemies than to judge of men as they further or hinder Love or Hate the Word of God as to its proper use as the heritage and joy of holy souls VI. But the chief part of my application is to commend this wise and holy choice and solid comfort to you all and to beseech you presently to imitate David and turn away from all inconsistent pleasures If you live in sorrow or deceit and die in desperation it is not for want of an offer from God of better things Have you lived hitherto as thus resolved If you have the Lord confirm you and be sure such hopes shall not deceive you If you have not what will you now choose and do If you live not to some end you live not like men according to reason If you have chosen what end to live for and seek what is it Consider I be-beseech you of these things following before it be too late 1. What will you take for your heritage or your best if not the future promised joyes and what will you take for your security but Gods Word What is it that you place your chiefest hopes in shall health and wealth and pleasure to the flesh and honour among men be taken for your heritage Dare you under your hands make a Covenant for these to quit all your hopes of the life to come if not which is that you prefer and which would you quit if one must be hazarded or lost which hath the nearest and highest place in your hearts which seek you first and make all other things give place to O Sirs it is a shame to our stupid hearts that we have need to be so oft told by Preachers that we must dye and that our flesh must shortly lie neglected in dust and darkness till the resurrection and that we and all the deceitful trifles of this World are ready to part for ever It is a shame that we must be oft told that which every Fool and Child at the use of reason may know how poor and how short an heritage or pleasure all those have who have no better than this World can give them What say you Will you die in Hope or in Despair If Unbelief make you hope that there is no Hell yet Hope of Heaven you can have none unless you trust the Word of God The light of Nature indeed is such a natural Word or Revelation as may tell us much of a future life of retribution but Gods supernatural revelation is so much clearer that we cannot expect that he will see by a lesser who wilfully rejects a greater light sure all men would live for ever if they could and all would be for ever happy you would not sure die like Dogs without any hope of a better life hereafter if you could have good security for such hopes And what better security is there to be found by mortal men than the Promises of God confirmed by Christs Blood and Miracles and by the Seal of his holy Spirit In a word without all doubt Either Heaven must be your Heritage or you must have none that is worthy of a serious thought and enough to keep a man from wishing that he had never been born or been a Brute that had not reason to know the matter of his griefs and fears And either Gods Word seconding the light of Nature must
A True Believer's CHOICE AND PLEASURE Instanced in The Exemplary LIFE OF Mrs MARY COXE The Late Wife of Doctor THOMAS COXE Preached for her Funeral By RICHARD BAXTER Prov. 10.7 The memory of the just shall be blessed but the name of the wicked shall rot LONDON Printed by R.E. in the Year 1680. To my Worthy and much Honoured FRIEND Dr. THOMAS COXE SIR THough your great Kindness and Care of the health of me and mine much oblige me to you and your Personal Worth much more and your worthy Children command my great Respect and Love yet none of these should have moved me to say a word of all that I have said of your deceased Wife which I had not verily believed to be true And it was Gods Grace in her which much more commanded it than all my debt to you and yours She was so Exemplary as that I think it my Duty for the good of others to make this Publication of her Character and of this Sermon But one great Defect is here to be notified to the Reader That almost all her secret way of Duty and particular Converse is omitted which you that were still with her could have described For I thought meet to say no more than I either knew my self or was obvious and known to many The words which I heard but yesterday from the mouth of your Brother in discourse were such as I doubt can be said of few that in so many Years from the hour of her Marriage to her Death she was never known to do one disobliging action or speak one disobliging word of or to any one of her Husbands Kindred or Relations Had it seemed meet to you or to your worthy and ingenious Son and your pious Daughter the true image of her Mother to have been the Describer of the Soul and Life of this Exemplary Saint how much more fully could you have done it than I that was so much less acquainted with her She is gone home and you and I are at the door The Lord give us so to live by Faith on the Promise and Love of God and the things unseen that thence we may daily fetch our ruling Motives and stablishing Consolations and not from a transitory deceitful world and following Christ and his Saints under the Cross may with them possess the incorruptible Crown and be found at his Call among those that love his appearing and be for ever with the Lord. Amen Amen Novemb. 19. 1679. ERRATA PAge 8. line 1. for Angel read Angels p. 16. l. 12. for suffient r. sufficient p. 27. l. 13. r. in which p. 34. l. 21. r. sent for p. 38. l. 11. for It is r. Is it p. 43. l. 6. for on r. of l. 7. for of r. on p. 58. l. 4. for causeth r. cureth p. 61. l. 12. for will r. would p. 62. l. 14. for received r. refused A True Believer's CHOICE and PLEASURE c. PSAL. 119.111 Thy Testimonies have I taken for an heritage for ever for they are the rejoycing of my heart A Text that speaketh of Rejoycing and that in an heritage and an heritage for ever may seem unsuitable to a mournful Funeral But it was chosen by our deceased friend and not without justifiable reason That which was a day of Sorrow to us was a day of Rest and Joy to her and it was meet that she should foresee that Joy and tasting it in the first-fruits should commend that to us which she had found so sweet and would bring us to the felicity which she hath now obtained If the damned sensualist Luk. 16. would have had one sent from another world in hope to save his unbelieving Brethren no wonder if a holy person were desirous that others should partake of her pleasure and inheritance and like the Lepers that found the Siege of Samaâ—ia raised would not feast and rejoyce alone She chose this no doubt as that which was most lively imprinted on her own heart with a just desire that it might be imprinted also on the hearts of others that so we may not only rejoyce with her that now rejoyceth in the heavenly possession but as Paul saith Gal. 6.4 Every man may prove his own works and so may have rejoycing in himself alone and not only in another Let us therefore by God's assistance so improve these words as may conduce to this desired end By God's Testimonies here is meant that supernaturally revealed Law and Promise which was possessed by the Church of the Jews as God's peculiar people supposing the Law of Nature and the common mercies which God had given to all the rest of faln mankind Both the Precepts and Promises are here included the Types and their signification of the thing typified I have taken them signifieth I have believed them implying that God revealed them and I have Accepted them implying that God had Offered them and I have chosen them implying the preferring them before all competitors and I have trusted them as signifying their special use for the guiding stablishing quieting and saving of the soul For an heritage signifieth 1. As that which I trust to as my security for an heavenly Inheritance 2. And as that which now is my best portion while I am in the way including the things connoted 3. And as that which I prefer before all Wealth and worldly Heritage Alexander and Caesar had larger Dominions than David but neither of them was King of God's peculiar People that had possession of his Oracles nor had the Promises which he had that Christ should be his Son and Successor on his Throne The word for ever relateth both to the Inheritance as everlasting and also to David's choice as immutably hereupon determined They are said to be the Rejoycing of the heart aptitudinally in themselves which caused him to choose them and actually because he had chosen believed loved and obeyed them So that this is the sum of the sense worldly men make choice of a worldly Inheritance and hopes and on this they trust and in this they seek their chiefest pleasure But I though blessed largely with thy bounty have suffered many afflictions in the world But thy Word hath been my Guide and thy Promises still fulfilled to me and experience hath confirmed my Faith and Resolution to lay all my Hope upon thy Word or Covenant both for this life and that to come and from it I seek and fetch my comfort It hath been my joy in all my sorrows and in it to the last will I rejoyce This is the sense of the Text from which we are all taught Doct. That God's Covenant or Testimonies are the true Believers Heritage for ever and as such are trusted and chosen by him and therefore among all the allurements and the crosses of this world are the support and rejoycing of his heart In the handling this I shall shew you I. What it is in God's Testimonies which make them fit to be our Heritage and our Joy II.
them And how like she was to Job who prayed and sacrificed for his Children when they were merry and feasting together fearing lest they should forget God and sin against him XVII This kind of life which I have described was her calling and trade and in a manner her only business in the World It was not now and then in a good mood like a Feast or Recreation but as she knew that one thing is needful so she chose that better part which never was nor will be taken from her She so lived as if she had but this one thing to mind and do in the world to please God by obeying him and to cleave to Christ and to do good and to be saved Nothing else seemed to be much in her mind thoughts care and business her life seemed to be but this one thing But I must confess that poor and tempted Persons that are under many worldly wants crosses and employments cannot be expected to reach her measure in this Though one thing be their best and portion they may be tost with many troublesome cares and businesses But God gave her both mind opportunity and help to live in as even a course of constant holiness in a Family as Monks can pretend to or hope for in their Community or solitude Religion was her very life XVIII In this life she had also a Constant peace of Conscience bewailing her imperfections but not living in melancholy despair hard thoughts of God or an uncomfortable sort of Religion I have oft heard her speak of her lamented weakness of Faith Love and heavenly desires and joy but never that I remember one doubting word of her own sincerity and salvation But her ordinary speech was lamenting that we were all so weak in our belief of the Word of God and the unseen World and what execellent Persons we should be if herein we had a stronger Faith that were liker unto sight and how much it should be the business of all believers to pray and labour for an increased powerful belief hereof as that which would set all right in us XIX Her patience under her bodily infirmities also was exemplary Her weakness made her so lyable to dangerous Coughs while she was in London air that by this she was constrained to live much from home And most of all her life she was tormented with a frequent head-ach But in her patience in all this She did possess her Soul and patience furthered experience and experience hope and she learnt more the quiet fruits of righteousness by being much exercised herein XX. And as by this She daily learned to dye so the expectation and preparation for death was her continual work and state She lived and heard and prayed and wrote her Letters to her Children as at the brink of the Grave and the Door of Eternity Not that her Diseases did seem to us to be very mortal or threaten this sudden change But she knew the brevity of mans life and that Death is ready to remove us all and what a moment it is till that certain hour And as she lived holily and in peace with God and man so she dyed with ease and little likelyhood of the ordinary miseries of Fear or Pain A little soreness and swelling of her Leg and pain towards the Hip turned to two swooning fits and in the third or fourth having been in quiet discourse with her Husband she as quietly sunk and dyed away desiring that I should be sent to pray with her she was dead before I came without any signs of nature striving And she had said to her Daughter after her former fits she did not think that one could have dyed so easily as she had almost done A death thus expected and thus prepared for is not to be called sudden Thus God can make death easie to some of us that are apt to over-fear the antecedent pain And now what can be more almost desired in this World than such a life and such a death Our dear Friend is at home with Christ and Gods will which is Goodness and Love it self is so fulfilled even that will which must dispose of all things and in which only we must seek our rest And having described this true Copy of the Text I may boldly speak of it to several sorts I. I may again ask both Quakers and Scorners Whether the Holy Spirit do not dwell and work in such among us as our dear Friend now deceased was II. I may ask Vnbelievers and Sadduces Whether these operations of the spirit of God on Believers be not a sign that God owneth the Gospel by which he thus worketh And that Christ liveth and reigneth who can thus still send a sanctifying Spirit into Believers Souls And whether it be not blasphemy to think and say either that these excellent endowments of Souls are not of God or that he giveth them all in vain and that Believers are all deceived by God and labour and hope all their days for that which hath no being and that the better God maketh them the more deluded vain and frustrate he maketh them and ruleth and amendeth the world by falshood III. I may ask the Papists with what Face they can say as they use to do That they never heard of a Protestant Saint And whether we may not be as Religious in the places that God hath set us in as if we turned Recluses Monks or Nuns and shut up our selves from doing any good in the world IV. I may ask the Malignant that call all serious Godliness Hypocrisie whether such a life as this doth savour of dissimulation And whether such Seriousness and Hypocrisie are not contraries and Hypocrisie be not a Profession without that Seriousness which is sincerity And whether they that in Baptism solemnly vow to take God for their God and Christ for their Lord and Saviour and the Holy Ghost for Christs Advocate and Witness and their Sanctifier and Comforter and to renounce the Flesh the World and the Devil and when they have done perform none of this which they vowed but live to the Flesh and World which they renounced and take a holy life as needless yea and hate it I say whether these be not the impudent Hypocrites that vow and profess that holiness which they abhor rather than they that with all their deligence perform the holy Vow which they have made And if Wives promise Fidelity to their Husbands Servants to their Masters and Subjects to their Princes are they the Hypocrites that are serious and keep their promise Or they that were never serious in it but scorn the keeping of it V. And as to those malignant persons that take this strict and serious diligence for mens souls to be but scrupulosity or the Character of some over-zealous Bigots or Puritans who are most inclined to Schism and to be troublesom or dangerous to States I ask them 1. What is there in all the description which I have here truly given