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desire to be partakers of their pleasures. Till then, let us congratulate our departed friends the felicity which they have attained, and which we desire; and let us rejoice with them that rejoice with Christ, and let us prefer the least believing thought of the everlasting joys, before all the defiled transitory pleasures of the deluded, dreaming, miserable world. And let us prefer such converse as we can here attain, with God in Christ, and with the heavenly society, before all the pomp and friendship of the world. We have no friend that is so able to supply all our wants, so sufficient to content us, so ready to relieve us, so willing to entertain us, so unwearied in hearing us, and conversing with us, as our blessed Lord. This is a Friend that will never prove untrusty; nor be changed by any change of interest, opinion, or fortune; nor give us cause to suspect his love: a Friend that we are sure will not forsake us, nor turn our enemy, nor abuse us for his own advantage, nor will ever die or be separated from us, but we shall be always with him, and see his glory, and be filled and transported with his love, and sing his praise to all eternity. With whom then should we so delightfully converse on earth? And till we can reach that sweet, delightful converse, whom should we seek with more ambition, or observe with greater devotedness and respect? O that we were less carnal and more spiritual, and lived less by sense, and more by faith; that we knew better the difference between God and man, between visible temporals, and invisible eternals! We should then have other thoughts and desires, and resolutions, and converse, and employments, and pleasures, than too many have!

Madam, it displeaseth me that it is no more elaborate a Treatise, to which the present opportunity inviteth me to prefix your name; but your own desire of the third, must be my excuse for all: But pardon the manner, and I dare commend the matter to you, as more worthy your serious contemplation, and your daily most delightful practice, than any other that was ever proposed unto mortal man. This is the manlike noble life: the life which the rational soul was made for: to which, if our faculties be not by sanctifying grace restored, they fall below their proper dignity and use, and are worse than lost, like a prince or learned man that is employed only in sweeping dog-kennels,

or tending swine. To walk in holiness with the Most Holy God, is the improvement and advancement of the nature of man, towards its designed equality with angels. When earthliness and sensuality degrade humanity into (a voluntary, and therefore sinful) brutishness: this is the life which affordeth the soul a solid and durable pleasure and content: when carnal minds evaporate into air, and bubble into froth and vanity, wasted in a dream, and the violent, busy pursuit of a shadow; deceiving themselves with a mixture of some counterfeit religion; playing with God, and working for the world; living in jest, and dying, and despairing, and suffering in earnest; with unwearied labour building on the sand, and sinking at death for want of a foundation; hating the serious practice of their own professed religion, because it is not the profession, but the serious practice which hath the greatest enmity to their sensual delights; yet wishing to be numbered with those hereafter, whom they hated here. This holy walking with the Most Holy God, is the only life which is best at last, and sweet in the review; which the godly live in, and most of the ungodly could wish to die in; like him that wished to be Cæsar in life, and Socrates at death: Yea, this is the life which hath no end; which we are here but learning, and beginning to practise, and which we must hereafter live (in another manner and degree) with God for ever. O wondrous mercy! which thus ennobleth even the state of mortality! and honoureth earth with so much participation of, and communion with Heaven! That by God, and with God, we may walk in holy peace and safety unto God, and there be blessed in his perfect sight and love for ever! Madam, the greatest service I can do you for all your favours, is to pray that God will more acquaint you with himself, and lead you by this blessed way to that more blessed end; that when you see all worldly glory in the dust, you may bless him for ever, who taught you to make a wiser choice: Which are the prayers of

Madam,

Your very much obliged Servant,

Dec. 24, 1662.

RICHARD BAXTER.

TO THE READER.

READER,

THE embryo of this book was but one Sermon, preached a little before the ending of my public ministry, upon the text of the third Treatise, (upon the occasion intimated in the Epistle to that truly Honourable Lady). Being obliged to communicate the Notes, and unavoidably guilty of some delays, I made a compensation by enlargement; and (having reasons for the publication of them, with which I shall not trouble you,) to make them more suitable to the designed end, I prefixed the two former Treatises: The first I had preached to my ancient flock of the second I had preached but one sermon. If many of the materials in the second be the same as in the first, you must understand that my design required that it should be so: they being the same attributes of God, which the first part endeavoureth to imprint upon the mind; and which the second and third endeavour to improve into a constant course of holy affection and conversation. As it is the same food which the first concoction chylifieth, which the perfecting concoctions do work over again, and turn into blood, and spirits, and flesh so far am I in such points from gratifying thy sickly desire of variety, and avoiding the displeasing of thee by the rehearsals of the same, that it is my very business with thee to persuade thee, to live continually upon these same attributes and relations of God, as upon thy daily air and bread; and to forsake that lean, consuming company, who feed on the shells of hard and barren controversies, or on the froth of compliments and affected shows, and run after novelty instead of substantial solid nutriment: And to tell thee, that the primitive, pure, simple Christianity, consisted in the daily serious use of the great materials of the Creed, Lord's Prayer, and Ten Commandments, contracted in the

words of our baptismal covenant. Do thus, and thou wilt be like those examples of the succeeding church, in uprightness, purity, simplicity, charity, peaceableness, and holy communion with God, when the pretended subtleties and sublimities of wanton, uncharitable, contentious wits, will serve but to strangle or delude their souls. I have purposely been very brief on the several attributes and relations of God, in the first Treatise, because the copious handling of them would have made a very great volume of itself, and because it is my great design in that first part, to give you a sight of all God's attributes and relations conjunct, and in their order; that looking on them, not one by one, but all together in their proper places, the whole. image of God, may by them, be rightly imprinted on your minds; the method being the first thing, and the necessary impressions on the soul the second, which I there desire you to observe and employ your minds about, if you desire to profit, and receive what I intend you.

Dec. 24, 1663.

R. B.

THE DIVINE LIFE.

PART I.

THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD.

AND

THE IMPRESSION WHICH IT MUST MAKE UPON THE HEART; AND

ITS NECESSARY EFFECTS UPON OUR LIVES.

JOHN xvii. 3.

And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.

CHAPTER I.

GOD is the Principal Efficient, the Supreme Directive, and the Ultimate Final Cause of Man: "For of him, and THROUGH him, and to him, are all things, and to him shall be the glory for ever." (Rom. xi. 36.) The new life, or nature in the saints is his image. (Col. iii. 10.) The principle of it is called the Divine Nature. (2 Pet. 1. 4.) The exercise of that principle (including the principle itself) is called the Life of God, (Ephes. iv. 18,) from which the Gentiles are said to be alienated by their ignorance. Therefore it is called Holiness, which is a separation to God from common use; and "God's dwelling in us," and "ours in him;" (1 John iv. 12, 13;) of whom we are said to be born and regenerate. (1 John iv. 7; John iii. 5.) And our perfection in glory, is our living with God, and enjoying him for ever. GODLINESS then is the comprehensive name of all true religion. Jesus Christ himself came but to restore corrupted man to the love, and obedience, and fruition of his Creator, and at

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