The Practical Works of the REV. Richard Baxter (Volume 2); With a Life of the Author, and a Critical Examination of His Writings (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: PART II. The Temptations whereby the Devil hindereth Men's Conversion: with the proper Remedies against them. The most holy and righteous Governor of the world, hath so restrained satan and all our enemies, and so far given us free-will, that no man can be forced to sin against his will: it is not sin if it be not (positively or privatively) voluntary. All our enemies, in hell or earth, cannot make us miserable without ourselves; nor keep a sinner from true conversion, and salvation, if he do it not himself; no, nor compel him to pne sinful thought, or word, or deed, or omission, but by tempting and enticing him to be willing: all that are graceless, are willfully graceless. None go to hell, but those that choose the way to hell, and would not be persuaded out of it; none miss of heaven, but those that did set so light by it, as to prefer the world and sin before it, and refused the holy way that leadeth to it. And surely man that naturally loveth himself, would never take so mad a course, if his reason were not laid asleep, and his understanding were not wo fully deluded: and this is the business of the tempter, who doth not drag men to sin by violence, but draw and entice them by temptations. . I shall therefore take it for the next part of my work, to open these Temptations, and tell you the remedies. Temptation i. 'The first endeavour of the tempter is, in general, to keep the sinner asleep in sin: so that he shall be as a dead man, that hath no use of any of his faculties; that hath eyes and seeth not, and ears but heareth not, and a heart that understandeth not, nor feeleth any thing that con- cerneth his peace. The light that shineth upon a man asleep, is of no use to him: his work lieth undone: his friends, and wealth/and greatest concernments are all forgotten b...