LIFE OF RICHARD BAXTER. 197 "34. I more than ever lament the unhappiness of the nobility, gentry, and great ones of the world, who live in such temptations to sensuality, curiosity, and wasting oftheir time about a multitude of little things." "35. I ammuch more sensible than heretofore, of the breadth, and length, anddepth, of the radical, universal, odious sin of self- ishness, and therefore have written so much against il; and of the excellencyand necessity of self -denial, and ofa publicmind, andof loving our neighbor as ourselves. "36. I am more and more sensible that most controversies have more need of right stating than of debating; and ifmy skill be in- creased in any thing, it is in that, in'naarowing controversies by ex- plication, and separating the real from the verbal, and proving to many contenders that they differ less than they think they do. "37. I am more solicitous than I have been about my duty to God, and less solicitous about his dealings with me." "38. Though my works were never such as could be any temp-. tation to me to dream of obliging God by proper merit in commu- tative justice,. yet one of the most ready, constant, undoubted evidences of my uprightness and interest in his covenant, is the consciousness of my living devoted to him. I the more easily be- lieve the pardon of my' failings through my Redeemer, while I know that I serve no other master, and that I know no other end, or trade, or business, but that I am employed in his work, and make it the object of my life to live to him in the world, notwith- standing my infirmities. This bent and business of my life, with my longing desires after perfection, in the knowledge and love of God, and in a holy and heavenly mind and life, are the two stand- ing, constant, discernible evidences which most put meout of doubt of my sincerity. And I find that it is constant action and duty that keepeth the first always in sight; and constant wants and weaknesses, and coming short of my desires, do make those desires still the more troublesome, and so the more easily perceived. " 39. Though my habitual judgment, resolution, and scope of life, be still the same, yet I find a great mutability as to the actual apprehensions and degrees of grace ; and consequently find that so mutable a thing as the mind of man would never keep itselfif God were not its keeper. When I have been seriously musing upon the reasons of Christianity, with the concurrent evidences method- ically placed in their just advantages before my eyes, I am so clear in my beliefof the Christian verities, that Satan hath little room for a temptation ; but sometimes, when he bath on a sudden set some temptation before me, when the forèsaid evidences have been out of the way, or less upon my thoughts, he bath, by such sur- prises, amazed me, and weakened my faith in the present act. So
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