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BAXTER, Richard Quotes
(1615-1691), English divine
It is as hard a thing to maintain a sound understanding, a tender conscience, a lively, gracious, heavenly spirit, and an upright life in the midst of contention, as to keep your candle lighted in the greatest storms.
Naturally, men are prone to spin themselves a web of opinions out of their own brain, and to have a religion that may be called their own. They are far readier to make themselves a faith, than to receive that which God hath formed to their hands; are far readier to receive a doctrine that tends to their carnal commodity, or honor, or delight, than one that tends to self-denial.
The churchyard is the market place where all things are rated at their true value, and those who are approaching it talk of the world and its vanities with a wisdom unknown before.
Idleness is a constant sin, and labor is a duty. Idleness is the devil's home for temptation and for unprofitable, distracting musings; while labor profiteth others and ourselves.
God takes men's hearty desires and will, instead of the deed, where they have not power to fulfill it; but he never took the bare deed instead of the will.
An ounce of mirth is worth a pound of sorrow.
You little know what you have done, when you have first broke the bounds of modesty; you have set open the door of your fancy to the devil, so that he can, almost at his pleasure ever after, represent the same sinful pleasure to you anew; he hath now access to your fancy to stir up lustful thoughts and desires, so that when you should think of your calling, of your God, or of your soul, your thoughts will be worse than swinish, upon the filth that is not fit to be named. If the devil here get in a foot, he will not easily be got out.
He was the bravest citizen of Rome that did most love and best serve his country; and he the saint among the Jews who most loved Zion.
The more perfect the sight is the more delightful the beautiful object. The more perfect the appetite, the sweeter the food. The more musical the ear, the more pleasant the melody. The more perfect the soul, the more joyous the joys of heaven and the more glorious that glory.
I preached as never sure to preach again, and as a dying man to dying men.
If it were only the exercise of the body, the moving of the lips, the bending of the knee, men would as commonly step to heaven as they go to visit a friend: but to separate our thoughts and affections from the world, to draw forth all our graces, and engage each in its proper object, and to hold them to it till the work prospers in our hands, this, this is the difficulty.
It is one thing to take God and heaven for your portion, as believers do, and another thing to be desirous of it as a reserve, when you can keep the world no longer. It is one thing to submit to heaven, as a lesser evil than hell; and another thing to desire it as a greater good than earth. It is one thing to lay up treasures and hopes in heaven, and seek it first; and another thing to be contented with it in our necessity, and to seek the world before it, and give God what the flesh can spare. Thus differeth the religion of serious Christians and of carnal, worldly hypocrites.
If family religion were duly attended to and properly discharged, I think the preaching of the Word would not be the common instrument of conversion.
Though selfishness hath defiled the whole man, yet sensual pleasure is the chief part of its interest, and, therefore, by the senses it commonly works; and these are the doors and windows by which iniquity entereth into the soul.
He that lives in the kingdom of sense, shall die in the kingdom of sorrow.
Though selfishness hath defiled the whole man, yet sensual pleasure is the chief part of its interest, and therefore by the senses it commonly works, and these are the doors and the windows by which iniquity entereth into the soul.
Use sin as it will use you; spare it not, for it will not spare you; it is your murderer, and the murderer of the world: use it, therefore, as a murderer should be used. Kill it before it kills you. You love not death; love not the cause of death.
Soldiers that carry their lives in their hands, should carry the grace of God in their hearts.
Spend your time in nothing which you know must be repented of; in nothing on which you might not pray for the blessing of God; in nothing which you could not review with a quiet conscience on your dying bed; in nothing which you might not safely and properly be found doing if death should surprise you in the act.
No vassalage is so ignoble, no servitude so miserable, as that of vice; mines and galleys, mills and dungeons, are words of ease compared to the service of sin; therefore, the bringing sinners to repentance is so noble, so tempting a design, that it drew even God himself from heaven to prosecute it.
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