48 LIFE OF RICHARD BAXTER, see itself and all things. And he 'seemed mad to me, who ques- tioned whether there were a,God." "All the suppositions of the atheists have ever since been so visibly foolish and shameful tomy apprehension, that I scarce find a capacity in myself of doubting of them ; and whenever the tempter hatli joined any thing of these with the rest of his temptations, the rest have been the easier over- come, because of the overwhelming evidences of a Deity which are always before the eyes of my soul. "2. And it helped me much to discern that this God must needs be related to us as our Owner, our Governor, and our Bene- factor, in that he is related to us as our Creator; and that therefore we are related to him as his own, his subjects, and his beneficiaries; which as they all proceed by undeniable resultancy from our crea- tion and nature, so thence do our duties arise which belong to us in those relations, by as undeniable resultancy ; and that no show of, reason can be brought by any infidel in the world to excuse the rational creature from loving his Maker, with all his heart, and soul, and might, and devoting himself and . all his faculties to him from whom he did receive them, and making him his ultimate end who is his first efficient Cause. So that godliness is a duty so undenia- bly required in the law of nature, and so discernible by reason itself, that nothing but unreasonableness can contradict it. " 3. And then it seemed utterly improbable to me that this God should see us to be losers by our love and duty to him, and that our duty should be made our snare, or make us the more misera- ble by how much the more faithfully we perform it.- And I saw that the very possibility of a life to come would make it the dutyof a reasonable creature to seek it, though with the loss of all below. "4. And I saw, by undeniable experience, a strange, universal enmity between theheavenly and the earthlymind, the godly and the wicked." "And I saw that the wicked and haters of godli- ness are so commonly the greatest, and most powerful, and nume- rous, as well as cruel, that ordinarily there is no living according to the precepts of nature and undeniable reason, without being made the derision and contempt of men." " 5. And then I saw thatthere is no other religion in the world, which can stand in competition with Christianity. Heathenism and Mohametanism are kept up by tyranny, and blush to stand at the bas of reason ; and Judaism is but Christianity in the egg or bud ; and mere Deism, which is the most plausible competitor, is so turned out of almost the whole world, as if nature made its own confession, that without a Mediator it cannot come to God. "6. And I perceived that all other religions leave the people in their worldly, sensual, and ungodly state." " And the nations where Christianity is not, are drowned in ignorance and earthly mindedness, so as to be the shame of nature.
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