RICHARD BAXTER'S PREFACE.

READERS,

THAT you may neither misunderstand this book nor me, I owe you this pre-advertisement, that it was preached in a lecture at Kidderminster, in Worcestershire, about seven or eight years ago (1658): that the sad experience of the distempers of weak well meaning people, though not in that place, yet in those times (especially of those who ran after the most gross deceivers, distracted the churches, reviled, afflicted, and busily attempted to pull down the pastors, and actually pulled down the higher powers, whom God forbad them to resist,) was the chief occasion of the preaching of these sermons: and that the special reasons for my publishing them now, are these that follow. 1. Because

I perceive not that yet people are sufficiently humbled for those miscarriages, or have yet well found out their sins, which by many and sore judgments have found them out. 2. Because I perceive that it is too ordinary to speak to weak Christians only by way of comfort, and too rare to show them the evil of their distempers; and that the very terms are used as if they imported nothing, but what is to be loved or tenderly gainsayed: and most that hear themselves called "weak Christians" do take it for a word of honouring pity, and feel in it no humbling matter of reproof; as if the comfort of being a living man did nullify the trouble and pain of

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infancy, of a lethargy, a leprosy, a fever, gout, or stone. The scandals which have dishonoured religion in this age, do tell us that it is not all a preacher's work to convince and convert the infidels and profane ones, but that much of it lieth in detecting hypocrisies, and humbling the weak, and healing their distempers, and saving and raising them from their falls. The thoughts of the case of such Christians as these did tempt Augustine once to doubt whether there were not a purgatory; it seemed so hard to him to believe, either that men who in the rest of their lives were godly and honest, should go to hell, or that men so guilty of particular crimes and scandals (of which their ignorance and error kept them from repenting) could go straight to heaven and no doubt but it was the heinous sins and great distempers of men professing godliness, which caused human reason to invent and entertain this doctrine of purging-pains; but when God hath cast men into many purgatories, and yet they repent not, I fear it threateneth worse than purgatory. 3. Moreover I remembered the request of that learned, pious, peaceable Abp. Usher, which I mentioned in the Preface to my Call to the Unconverted; according to which I had before published, 1. That Call. 2. Directions against miscarrying in the work of Conversion. 3. And this I intended for the third part when I began it, but was hindered from bringing it to the purposed perfection, (the fourth part, being Directions for Peace of Conscience, being extant long before.) 4. But that which since urged me to this publication was, that the last sermon which I preached publicly was at Blackfriars, on this text, Col. ii. 6, 7; and presently after, there came forth a book called Farewell Sermons, among which this of mine was one. Who did it, or to what end I know

not, nor doth it concern me to inquire; but I took it as an injury, both as it was done without my knowledge and against my will, and to the offence of my superiors; and because it was taken by the notary so imperfectly, that much of it was nonsense; especially when some foreigners that lived in Poland, Hungary, and Helvetia, were earnest to buy this with the rest of my writings, I perceived how far the injury was like to go, both against me and many others of my brethren. Therefore finding since, among the relics of my scattered papers, this imperfect piece which I had before written on that text, I was desirous to publish it, as for the benefit of weak Christians, so to right myself, and to cashier that farewell sermon.

If the reader will but peruse these directions impartially, and read them as he doth the prescripts of his physicians, which are not written merely to be read, but must be daily practised, whatever it cost him, as he loveth his life; then I make no doubt, notwithstanding the weakness of the composure, but it may further the cure of his spiritual weaknesses and distempers, and of the consequent troubles and losses of others and himself. I hope I shall not meet with many, besides malignant hypocrites, who will be so impenitent and peevish, as to fly in the face of the reprover and director, and say that I open the nakedness of many servants of Christ, to the reproach and dishonour of religion. I have told you from the word of God, that it is God's way, and must be ours, to lay the just dishonour upon the sinner, that it may not fall upon religion and on God: and that the defending or excusing odious sins, in tenderness of the persons who committed them, is the surest and worst way to bring dishonour (first or last) both upon religion and on them. A Noah, a Lot, a David, a

Solomon, a Peter, &c., shall be dishonoured by God in holy record to all ages, that God may not be more dishonoured by them; and the truly penitent are willing that it should be so, and account their honour a very cheap sacrifice to offer up to the honour of religion, which they have wronged. And till you come to this, you come short of true repentance. He that defendeth his open sin (unless he could deny the fact) doth as bad as say "God liketh it; Christ bid me do it; the Scripture is for it, or not against it; religion taught it me, or doth not forbid it me; the godly allow it, and will do the like." And what can be said more blasphemously against God, or more injuriously against religion, the Scriptures, and the saints? But he that confesseth his sin, doth as good as say, "Lay all the blame on me who do deserve it; and not on God, on Christ, on Scripture, on religion, or on the servants of God: for I learned it not from any of them, nor was encouraged to it by them-none are greater enemies to it than they; if I had hearkened to them, I had done otherwise." It is one of the chief reasons why repentance is so necessary, because it justifieth God and godliness.

And, alas! it is too late to talk of concealing those weaknesses and crimes of Christians, which are so visible before all the world; which have had such public effects upon churches, kingdoms, and states; which have kept almost all the christian churches in a torn and bleeding woful state, for so many hundred years, to this present day; which have separated the churches of the east and west, and defiled both, and have drawn so much blood in christian countries, and keep us yet like distracted persons, gazing strangely at our nearest friends, and running away, by peevish separation, from our brethren, with whom we must live in

heaven; and mistakingly using those as enemies, with whom (if we are Christians, as we profess) we are united in the same Head, and by the same Spirit, which is a Spirit of love. In a word, when our faults are so conspicuous as to harden the infidels, heathens, and ungodly, and to hinder the conversion of the world; and when they sound so loud in the mouths of our common reproaching enemies; and when they have contracted so much malignity as to refuse a cure, by such wars, divisions, church desolations, plagues, and flames as we have seen; it is then too late to say to the preachers of repentance, "Be silent, lest you open the nakedness of Christians, and disgrace religion and the church." We must not be silent, lest we disgrace religion and the church to save the credit of the sinners.

Whoever readeth the holy Scriptures, and ever understood the christian faith, must needs know that nothing in all the world is so much against every one of our errors and misdoings. It is only for want of more religion, that any professors of religion do miscarry : nothing but the doctrine of Christianity and godliness did at first destroy the reign of their sin; and nothing else can subdue the rest, and finish the cure. It is no disgrace to life that so many men's lives are burdensome with sickness, which the dead are not troubled with; nor is it any disgrace to learning, that scholars (for want of more learning) have troubled the world with their contentious disputes; nor is it any disgrace to reason, that men's different reasons (for want of more reason) doth set the world together by the ears. can never magnify you enough as you are Christians and godly, unless we should ascribe more to you than your bounteous Lord hath given you, who hath made you little lower than angels, and crowned you with

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