The following reading is taken from the collected works of Richard Baxter, Volume 9, The Right Method for a Settled Peace of Conscience and Spiritual Comfort to the Pouring Spirit. My dearly beloved fellow Christians, whose souls are taken up with the careful thoughts of attaining and maintaining peace with God, who are vile in your own eyes and value the blood and spirit and word of your Redeemer, and the hope of the saints in their approaching blessedness before all the pomp and vanities of this world, and resolve to give up yourselves to His conduct, who has become the author of eternal salvation to all them that obey Him. For you do I publish the following directions, and to you it is that I direct this preface. The only glorious and infinite God, who made the worlds and upholds them by His word, who is attended with millions of his glorious angels and praised continually by his heavenly hosts, who pulls down the mighty from their seats and scatters the proud in the imagination of their hearts, and makes his enemies lick the dust, to whom the kings and conquerors of this earth are his most silly worms, and the whole world is nothing and lighter than vanity, which he will shortly turn into flames before your eyes. This God has sent me to you with this joyful message, which needs no more but your belief in entertainment, to make it sufficient to raise you from the dust and banish those tears and troubles from your hearts, and help you to live like the sons of God. He commands me to tell you that He takes notice of your sorrows. He stands by when you don't see Him and say He has forsaken you. He minds you with greatest tenderness when you say He has forgotten you. He numbers your sighs. He bottles up your tears. The groans of your heart reach His own. He takes it unkindly that you are so suspicious of Him, and that all He has done for you in the work of redemption and all the gracious workings of His Spirit on your souls and all your own peculiar experiences of His goodness can raise you to know higher apprehensions of His love, Shall not love be acknowledged to be love when it has grown to a miracle, when it surpasses comprehension? Must the Lord set up love and mercy in the work of redemption to be equally admired, with His omnipotency manifested in the creation And call forth a world of this sweet employment, dead and secret, and in public it might be the business of our lives. And yet, shall it be so overlooked or questioned as if you lived without love and mercy in the world? Providence does its part by heaping up mountains of daily mercies, and these it sets before your eyes. The gospel has eminently done its part by clearly describing them and fully assuring them, and this is proclaimed frequently in your ears. And yet, is there so little in your hearts and mouths? Do you see and hear and feel and taste mercy and love? Do you live wholly on it? And yet, do you still doubt of it and think so meanly of it and so hardly acknowledge it? God doesn't take this well, but yet he considers your frailty and takes you not at the worst. He knows that flesh will play its part, and the remnants of corruption will not be idle, and the serpent will be suggesting false thoughts of God, and will be still striving most to obscure that part of his glory which is dearest to him, and especially which is most conjoined with the happiness of man. He knows also that sin will breed sorrows and fears, and that man's understanding is shallow, and that his conceivings of God are exceeding low, and that we are so far from God as creatures, and so much further as sinners, and especially as conscious of the abuse of His grace, that there must needs follow such a strangeness as will dampen duller apprehensions of His love. And such an abatement of our confidence is what will make us draw back and look at God afar off. Seeing, therefore, that at this distance no full apprehension of love can be expected, it is the pleasure of our Redeemer shortly to return with ten thousands of His saints, with a noble army of His martyrs, in the attendance of His angels, and to give you such a convincing demonstration of His love, as shall leave no room for one more doubt. Your comforts are now but a taste. They shall then be a feast. They are now but intermittent. They shall be then continual. How soon now do your conquered fears return, and what an inconstancy and unevenness is there in our peace! But then our peace must needs be perfect and permanent, when we shall please God and enjoy Him in perfection to perpetuity. Certainly, Christians, your comforts should be now more abundant, but that they are not ripe. It is that and not this. That is your harvest. I have told you in another book the mistaken danger of expecting too much here, and the necessity of looking and longing for that rest, if we will have peace indeed. But alas, how hard is this lesson learned. Unbelievers would have happiness, but how fain would they have it in the creature rather than in God. Believers would rather have their happiness in God than in the creature, but how fain would they have it without dying? And no wonder, for when sin brought in death, even grace itself cannot love it, though it may submit to it. But though churlish deaths do stand in our way, why look we not at the soul's admittance into rest and the body's resurrection that must shortly follow? Doubtless that faith, by which we are justified and saved, as it sits down on the Word of Truths, is the present ground of its confident repose. So does it thence look with one eye backward on the cross, and with the other forward on the crown. And if we well observe the Scripture descriptions of that faith, we shall find them as frequently magnifying it, and describing it from the latter as from the former. As it is the duty and glory of faith to look back with thankful acknowledgement to a crucified Christ and his payment of our ransom, so it is the duty and glory of that same justifying faith to look forward with desire and hope to the return of King Jesus and the glorious celebration of the marriage of the Lamb. and the sentential justification and the glorification of a saint. To believe these things unfeignedly, which we never saw, nor ever spoke with man that did see, and to hope for them so really as to let go all present forbidden pleasures, and all worldly hopes and seeming happiness, rather than to hazard the loss of them. This is an imminent part of that faith by which the just live, and which the scripture owns as justifying and saving. For it never distinguishes between justifying faith as to their nature. It is therefore a great mistake of some to look only at that one eye of justifying faith which looks back upon the cross, and a great mistake of them, on the other hand, to look only at that eye of it. which beholds the crown. Both Christ crucified and Christ interceding, and Christ returning to justify and glorify, are the objects even of justifying, saving faith, most strictly so called. The Scripture oft expresses the one only, but then it still implies the other. The Thessanians erroneously, therefore, from Hebrews 11, where the examples and eulogies of faith are set forth, exclude Christ crucified, or to respect to his satisfaction from justifying faith, in place of a mere expectation of glory. And others do as ungrudgingly affirm that it is not to justify an act of faith which Hebrews 11 describes, because they find not the cross of Christ there mentioned. For as believing in Christ's blood comprehends the end, even the expectation of remission and glory merited by that blood, so the believing of that glory does always imply that we believe and expect it as the fruit of Christ's ransom. It is for health and life that we accept and trust upon our physician, and it is for justification and salvation that we accept and trust on Christ. The salvation of our souls is the end of our faith, They that question whether we may believe and obey for our own salvation do question whether we may go to the physician and follow his advice for health and life. Why then do you that are believers so much forget the end of your faith, and that for which it is that you believe? Believing in Christ for present mercies only, be they temporal or spiritual, is not the true believing. They are dangerously mistaken to think the thoughts of heaven to be so accidental to the nature and work of faith. is that they tend only to our comfort and are necessary to salvation itself. It is upon your apprehensions and expectations of that unseen felicity that both your peace and safety depend. How contrary, therefore, is it to the nature of a believer to forget the place of his rest and consolation, and to look for so much of these from the creatures in this our present pilgrimage in prison and, alas, as commonly we do. Thus do we kill our comforts and then complain for lack of them. How should you have any life or constancy of consolations that are so seldom, so slight, so unbelieving and so heartless in your thoughts of heaven? You know what a folly it is to expect any peace which shall not come from Christ as a fountain. And you must learn as well to understand what a folly it is to expect any solid joys or stable peace which is not fetched from heaven as from the end. Oh, the Christians were careful to live with one eye still on Christ crucified and with the other on Christ coming in glory. If the everlasting joys were more in your believing thoughts, spiritual joys would more abound at present in your hearts. It is no more wonder that you are comfortless when heaven is forgotten, or doubtingly remembered, than that you are faint when you don't eat, or cold when you do not stir, or when you have not fire or clothes. But when Christians do not only let fall their expectations of the things unseen, but also heighten their expectations from the creature, then do they most infallibly prepare for their fears and troubles and its strangeness from God, and with both hands draw calamities on their souls. Orber meets with a distressed, complaining soul where one or both of these is not apparent, their low expectations from God hereafter, or their high expectations from the creature now. What does it keep us under such trouble and disquietness but that we will not expect what God has promised, or we will need to expect what He promised not? And then we complain when we miss of those expectations which we foolishly and ungroundedly raise to ourselves. We are grieved for crosses, for losses, for wrongs from our enemies, for unkind or unfaithful dealings of our friends, for sickness, for contempt and disesteem in the world. But who bid you look for any better? Was it prosperity and riches and credit and friends that God called you to believe for, or that you became Christians for, or that you had an absolute promise of in the Word? If you will make promises to yourself, and then your own promises deceive you, whom should you blame for that? Nay, do we not, as it were, necessitate God hereby to embitter all our comforts below, and to make every creature as a scorpion to us, because we will needs make them our petty deities? We have less comfort in them than else we might have, because we must needs have more than we should have. You might have more faithfulness from your friends, more reputation in the world, more sweetness in all your present enjoyments if you have looked for less. Why is it that you can scarce name a creature near you that is not a scourge to you, but because you can scarce name one that is not your idol, or at least which you do not expect more from than you ought? Nay, which is of one of the saddest considerations of this kind that can be imagined. God is famed as scourgeous most even by the highest professors of religion because we have most idolized them and had such excessive expectations from them. One would have thought it next to an impossibility that such men and so many of them could ever have been drawn to do that against the Church. against that gospel ministry and ordinances of God, which at one time seemed dearer to them than their own lives, which has since been done, and which yet we fear. But a believing eye can discern the reason of this sad providence in part. Never men were more idolized, and therefore no wonder were never so afflicted by any. Alas, when we will learn by scripture and providence so to know God, and the creature is to look for more from him and less from them, We have looked for wonders from Scotland, and what has come of it? We looked that war should have even satisfied our desires, and when it had removed all visible impediments, we thought we should have had such a glorious reformation as the world never knew. And now, behold a Babel, and a mingled defamation. What high expectations had we from an assembly? What expectations from a Parliament, and where are they now? Oh, hear the word of the Lord, you low-spirited people. Cease ye from man whose breath is in his nostrils, for wherein is he to be accounted of? Isaiah 2 verse 22. Cursed be the man that trusts in man and makes flesh his arm, and whose heart departs from the Lord, for he shall be like the hearth in the desert, and shall not see when good comes. Blessed is the man that trusts in the Lord and whose hope the Lord is, for he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and so on. Jeremiah 17 5-8 Surely men of low degree are vanity, and men of high degree are a lie. To be laid into balance, they are altogether lighter than vanity. Let me warn you all, Christians, for the time to come, take the creature as a creature. Remember its frailty. Look for no more from it than its part. If you have the nearest, dearest godly friends, expect to feel the sting of their corruptions, as well as to taste the sweetness of their graces. and they must expect a like from you. If you ask me why I speak so much of these things here, it is first, because I find that much of the trouble of ordinary Christians comes from their crosses and the creature, and the frustration of these sinful expectations. And number two, and because I have said so little of it in the following directions, they being intended for the cure of another kind of trouble, therefore I have said thus much here of this. Having premised this advice, I take myself bound to add one thing more, that is, an apology for the publication of this imperfect piece. Whether just or insufficient, other men must judge. I confess I am so apprehensive of the luxurious fertility or licentiousness of the press of late. as being the design of the enemy to bury and overwhelm in a crowd those judicious, pious, excellent writings that before were so commonly read by the people, that I think few men should now print without an apology, much less such as I, who has more lamented the inundation of impertinencies Or more, accuse the ignorance and pride of others that must needs disgorge themselves of all their crudities, as if they were such precious conceptions proceeding from the Holy Ghost, that the world might not, without very great injury, be deprived of. And it were pity that all men should not be made partakers of them. And how come I to go on in the same fault myself? Truly I have no excuse or argument but those of the times, necessity, and providence, which, how far they may justify me, I must leave to the judge. Being in company with a troubled, complaining friend, I perceive that it must be some standing counsel which might be frequently perused that must satisfactorily answer the complaints that I heard. and not a transient speech which would quickly slip away. Being therefore obliged as a pastor and as a friend and as a Christian to tender my best assistance for relief, I was suddenly in a moment of speaking move to promise one sheet of paper which might be useful to that end, which promise when I attempted to perform the one sheet lengthened to thirty. And my one day's intended work was drawn out to just month. I went on far before I had to leave thought to let any eye behold it except the party for whom I wrote it. But at last I perceived an impossibility of contracting, and I was presently possessed with confident apprehensions that a copy of those directions might be useful to many other of my poor neighbors and friends that needed them as much. Upon which apprehension I permitted my pen to run more at large, and to deviate from the case of the party that I wrote for, and to take in the common case of most troubled, doubting souls. By that time that I had finished it, I received letters from several parts from learned and judicious divines. importuning me to print more, having understood my intentions to desist, as having done too much already, even at first. I confess I was not much moved by their importunity till they seconded it with their arguments, whereof one was the experience of the success of former writings, which might assure me it was not displeasing to God. I had many that urged me. I had no one but myself to draw me back. I apprehended that a writing of this nature might be useful to the many weak, perplexed Christians through the land. Two reasons did at first come in against it. The first was that if there were no more written on the subject in Richard Sibb's Bruce Reed and Soul's Conflict, and Josiah Simmons' deserted Soul's Case and Cure, there need no more. especially there being also Dr. John Preston's works and many of William Perkins' to this use, and Mr. John Ball and Ezekiel Coverwell of faith in the numbers of the light. To this my own judgment answered, yet these brief directions might add somewhat that might be useful to the weakest to the method of their proceedings, if not to the mantor. And my brethren stopped my mouth by telling me that others had written before me of heaven and baptism, yet my labors were not lost. Next this, I thought, the crudity and weakness of the writing was such, it should prohibit the publication. It be an unfit to thrust upon the world the hasty, undigested lines that were written for the use of one person. To this my thoughts replied that, number one, For all that, it might be useful to poor women and country people who most commonly prove the troubled spirits for whose sake I wrote it. Had I writ for the use of learned men, I would have tried to make it fitter for their use, and if I could not, I would have suppressed it. It was my pride that nourished this scruple which moved me not to appear so homely to the world, and therefore I cast it by. One thing more, I confess, did much prevail with me to make these papers public, and that is the antinomians' common confident obtrusion of their anti-evangelical doctrines and methods for comforting troubled souls. They are the most torious mountebanks, and the sart and highest pretenders, and most unhappy performers that most of the reformed churches ever knew, and unusually are more ready to receive their doctrines than such weak women or unskillful people that being in trouble are like a sick man in great pain, who is glad to hear what all can say, and to make trial of everything by which he has any hope of ease. I'd not trouble the reader with this apology had I thought so well of this writing as to be a sufficient apology for itself, or had I not taken it for a heinous crime to speak idly in print. For the doctrine here contained it is of a middle strain between, I think, the extremes of some others. I've labored so to build up peace as not thereby to fortify presumption. And perhaps in some points you may see my meaning more plainly which through the obscurity of former writings I was misunderstood in. As for the manner of this writing, I must desire them that expect learning or exactness to turn away their eyes and know that I wrote it not for such as they. I use not to speak anything but plain English to that sex or to that use and in for which I wrote these lines. I wrote to the utmost verge of my paper before I thought to make it public, and so I had no room for marginal quotations nor time to transcribe that copy that I might have room, nor indeed much mind to them if I had both room and time. As all the removes of my life, I have been still led to that place or state which was furthest from my own thoughts. I never design or contrive by myself, so all the writings that I yet have published are such as have been by some sudden unexpected occasion extorted from me, while those that I am most affected have been stifled in the conception, and those I have most laboured in must lie buried in the dust that I may know it is God that is his disposer of all. Experience persuades me to think that God who has compelled me hitherto intends to make this hasty writing a means for the calming of some troubled souls. Which, if he does, I have my end. If I can do nothing to the Church's public peace, either through my own unskillfulness and unworthiness, or through the prevalency of the malady, yet will it be my comfort to further the peace of the poorest Christian. Go to the former also, I shall contribute my best endeavors, and end with this, sending to the press some few sheets to that end, with our worst of sheer agreement. The full accomplishment of both, the subduing of the prince of darkness, confusion and contention. The destroying of that pride, self-esteem, self-seeking and carnal-mindedness which remaining even in the best are the disturbers of all peace. The fuller discovery of the sinfulness of unpeaceable principles, dispositions and practices. The near closure of all true believers. And the hastening of the Church's everlasting peace. These are His daily prayers who as a zealous desirer of the peace of the church and of every faithful soul. Richard Baxter, May 7th, 1653.