The Divine Life, Title page 1 – To the reader
The Divine Life: IN THREE TREATISES; THE FIRST, Of the Knowledge of God. THE SECOND, Of Walking with God. THE THIRD, Of Coversing with God In SOLITUDE.
By RICHARD BAXTER.
LONDON, Printed for Francis Tyton at the three Daggers in Fleetstreet, and Nevil Simmons Bookseller in Kederminster. 1664.
A TREATISE OF THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. AND THE Impression which it must make upon the Heart; and its necessary Effects upon our Lives.
Upon John 17. 3.
By RICHARD BAXTER.
LONDON, Printed for Francis Tyton at the three Daggers in Fleetstreet, and Nevil Simmons Bookseller in Kederminster. 1664.
TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE AND Exemplary Lady ANN COUNTESS OF BALCARRES.
MADAM,
IN hope of the fuller pardon of my delay, I now present you with two other Treatises besides the Sermon (enlarged) which at your desire I preached at your departure hence. I knew of many and great afflictions, which you had undergone in the removal of your dearest friends, which made this subject seem so suitable and seasonable to you at that time: But I knew not that God was about to make so great an addition to your tryals in the same kind, by taking to himself *Charles Earl of Balcarres who dyed of a stone in his heart, of a very strange magnitude.the principal branch of your Noble Family, (by a rare disease; the embleme of the mortal malady now raigning.) I hope this loss also shall promote your gain, by keeping you nearer to your Heavenly Lord, who is so jealous of your affections, and resolved to have them entirely to himself: And then you will still find, that you are not alone, nor deprived of your dearest or most necessary friend, while the Father, the Son, the sanctifying and comforting Spirit is with you. And it should not be hard to reconcile us to the disposals of so sure a friend. Nothing but good can come from God; however the blind may miscall it, who know no Good or Evil, but what is measured by the private standard of their selfish interest, and that as judged of by sense. Eternal Love engaged by Covenant to make us happy, will do nothing but what we shall find at last, will terminate in that blessed end. He envyed you not your Son, as too good for you, or too great a mercy, who hath given you his own Son, and with him the mercy of eternal life. Corporal sufferings with Spiritual blessings, are the ordinary lot of Believers here on earth: As corporal prosperity with spiritual calamity is the lot of the ungodly▪ And I beseech you consider, that God knoweth better than you or I, what an Ocean your son was ready to lanch out into, and how tempestuous and terrible it might have proved, and whether the world that he is saved from, would have afforded him more of safety or seduction, of comfort or calamity? whether the protraction of the life of your Noble husband, to have seen our sins and their effects and consequents, would have afforded him greater joy or sorrow? Undoubtedly as God had a better title to your Husband, and Children, and Friends than you had, so it is much better to be with him, than to be with you, or with the best or greatest upon earth. The heavenly inhabitants fear not our fears, and feel not our afflictions. They are past our dangers, and out of the reach of all our enemies, and delivered from our pains and cares, and have the full possession of all those mercies which we pray and labour for. Can you think your Children and Friends that are with Christ, are not safer and better than those that yet remain with you? Do you think that earth is better than heaven for you your self? I take it for granted you cannot think so, and will not say so; And if it be worse for you, its worse for them. The providence which by hastening their Glorification, doth promote your Sanctification; which helpeth them to the End, and helpeth you in the Way, must needs be good to them and you, however it appear to flesh and unbelief. O Madam, when our Lord hath shewed us (as he will shortly do) what a state it is to which he bringeth the spirits of the just, and how he doth there entertain and use them, we shall then be more competent judges of all those acts of Providence, to which we are now so hardly reconciled! Then we shall censure our censurings of these works of God, and be offended with our offences at them, and call our selves blind unthankful sinners, for calling them so bad as we did in our misjudging unbelief and passion. We shall not wish our selves or friends again on earth, among temptations and pains, and among uncharitable men, malicious enemies, deceitful flatterers, and untrusty friends! When we see that face which we now long to see, and know the things which we long to know, and feel the Love which we long to feel, and are full of the joyes which now we can scarce attain a taste of, and have reacht the End which now we seek, and for which we suffer, we shall no more take it for a judgement to be taken from ungodly men, and from a world of sin, and fear, and sorrow; nor shall we envy the wicked, nor ever 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 rejoyce with them that rejoyce with Christ, and let us prefer the least believing thought of the everlasting joyes, 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 dye or be separated from us, but we shall be alwaies 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 man-like 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 busie pursuit of a shadow; deceiving themselves with a mixture of some counterfeit Religion; playing with God, and working for the world; living in jeast, 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 profest Religion, because it is not the profession, but the serious practice which hath the greatest enmity to their sensual delights; yet wishing to be numbred 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 dye in; like him that wished to be Caesar 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
Dec. 24. 1663. MADAM, Your very much obliged Servant, RICHARD BAXTER.
TO THE READER.
Reader,
THE Embryo of this Book was but one Sermon, preached a little before the ending of my publick Ministry, upon the Text of the third Treatise, (upon the occasion intimated in the Epistle to that truly Honour able Lady) Being obliged to communicate the Notes, and unavoidably gullty 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 perswade 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 shels of hard and barren controversies, or on the froth of complements and affected shews, 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; Lords Prayer, and ten Commandements, contracted in the words of our Baptismal Covenant. Do thus, and thou will be like those examples of the succeeding Church, in uprightness, purity, simplicity, charity, peaceableness and holy communion with God, when the pretended subtilties 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 it self, and because it is my great design in that first part, to give you a sight of all Gods 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.
Decem. 24. 1663.