Baxter - Houston-Packer Collection BX5200 .B352 1835 v1

132 LIFE OF RICHARD BAXTER. ed this little book; which God hath blessed with unexpected suc- cess beyond all the rest that I have written, except. the ' Saint's Rest.' In a little more than a year, there were about twenty thou- sand of them printed by my own consent, and about ten thousand since ; besides many thousands, by stolen impressions, which poor men stole for lucre's sake. Through God's mercy, I have had in- formation of almost whole households being converted by this small book, which I set so light by ; and, as if all this in England, Scot- land; and Ireland, were not mercy enough tome, God, since I was silenced, hath sent if over on his message to many beyond the seas. For when Mr, Elliot had printed all the Bible in the Indians' lan- guage, he nexttranslated this my Call;to the Unconverted,' as he wrote to us here; and though it washere thought prudent to begin with the ' Practice of Piety,' because of the envy and distaste of the times against me, he had finished it before that advice came to him. Yet God wouldmake some further use of it ; for Mr. Stoop, the pastor of the French church in London, being driven hence by the displeasure of superiors, was pleased to translate it into elegant French, and print it in a very curious letter; and. I hope it will not be unprofitable there, nor in Germany, whère it is printed in Dutch. "* The work is too well known, and too extensively useful at the present day, to need either description or eulogy. I may add, however, to what the author has said in the paragraph just cited, that, it has been translated into most of the languages of Europe; and that the men who, in the spirit and power of Elliot, are now carrying the gospel to every nation, will probably find themselves constrained to imitate his example, till Baxter's Call, " that small book which he set so light by," shall be read in every language of Mankind. 24. "The Crucifying of the World by the Cross of Christ. Witha Preface to the Nobles, Gentlemen, and all the Rich, direct- ing, them bow they may be richer." 4to. published. in 1658. This was originally an assize sermon, preached at Worcester on the request ofhis early friend Mr. Thomas Foley, thenhigh sheriff of the county. In preparing it for the press, he enlarged it into a treatise of about three hundred pages, which deserves a place among his most eloquent and finished productions. 25. "A Treatise of Saving Faith." 4to. published in 1658. In some of his former publications, he had been understood as main- taining "that'saving faith differeth not in kind, but in degree, from common faith." Dr. Barlow; then provost of Queen's College, Oxford, and afterwards bishop of Lincoln, had published, anony- * Narrative, Part I. pp. 114, 115.

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