Thursday, January 14, 2016

(In order to understand the following preacher, please read the blog for January 12, 2016.  Also be sure to read January 13, 2016 for more of his writings.)


     It is of the Lord's great mercy that he did not cut you off in your unconverted state, and that you have yet life and time, and that there is a remedy provided for you in the blood of Christ, and that pardon and sanctification and everlasting life are offered to you as well as to others:  God hath not left sinful man to utter destruction, as he hath done the devils; nor hath he made any exception in the offer of pardon and everlasting life against you any more than against any other.  If you had yet but a bleeding heart for sin, could come to Christ believingly for recovery, and resign yourselves to him as your Saviour and Lord, and would be a new man for the time to come, the Lord would have mercy on you in the pardon of your sins, and the everlasting salvation of your soul.....          
                                                                                                                                          Richard Baxter

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     It is a palpable error of some ministers, who make such a disproportion between their preaching and their living—who study hard to preach exactly, and study little or not at all to live exactly.  All the week long is little enough to study how to speak two hours; and yet one hour seems too much to study how to live all the week.  They are loath to misplace a word in their sermons, or to be guilty of any notable infirmity—and I blame them not, for the matter is holy and weighty—but they make nothing of misplacing affections, words, and actions, in the course of their lives.  O how curiously have I heard some men preach; and how carelessly have I seen them live.  They have been so accurate as to the composition of their sermons.....And yet, when it came  to matter of practice, and they were once out of church, how incurious were the men, and how little did they regard what they said or did, provided it were not so palpably gross as to dishonor them.  They that preached precisely, would not live precisely.  What a difference was there between their pulpit speeches, and their familiar discourse.
                                                                                                                                            Richard Baxter





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