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THE

SAINTS' EVERLASTING REST;

THE DIVINE LIFE; AND DYING THOUGHTS;

ALSO,

A CALL TO THE UNCONVERTED; AND NOW OR NEVER.

BY RICHARD BAXTER.

CAREFULLY REVISED, THE LATIN QUOTATIONS TRANSLATED, AND PRECEDED BY

A MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR.

BLACKIE AND SON, QUEEN STREET, GLASGOW;

SOUTH COLLEGE STREET, EDINBURGH;

AND WARWICK SQUARE, LONDON.

MDCCCXVII.

GLASGOW:

W. G. BLACKIE AND CO., PRINTERS,

VILLAFIELD,

BODL. LIBR. 120CT 19-8 OXFORD

PREFACE.

We cannot help thinking that it indicates an improved state in the mental taste and moral feeling of the public mind, that the demand, during several years past, for reprints of Select Treatises, and even the whole works of approved authors of the puritanic and non-conformist school, has been much on the increase. This is a fact that augurs well for the progress of devotional feeling-extended and profound doctrinal information and, we hope, indicates some advancement in the science of practical piety. There are both depth, length, breadth, and solid substance in the divinity of the old school. There are stamina and soul in their colossal productions. Their old massy form is only a figure of the solid sentiment that pervades many of their folios, and the animus that runs through their pages. Although there are in some of their writings redundancies, digressions, and diverse minor blemishes; though their plan of arrangement is not always the most happy, nor their style of language sometimes the most attractive; yet the student, the pastor, and the Christian, who are in quest of original ideas, the elucidation of Bible principles, substantial information, and scriptural illustration, will seldom rise from their writings disappointed. They are a mine of gold, where the more deeply the reader digs the richer will he find the vein. Many of them were men of giant intellect, and possessed well digested and deep-toned feeling. They united substantial scholarship with vital and practical piety of a very high order. Much of their time was spent in communion with God in the closet, and in an untiring inquiry into the mind of the Spirit, as unfolded in the scriptures. It is this that gives a freshness and fragrance to their works in the esteem of sincere Christians to this day. They wrote as men under the influence of "the powers of the world to come." Nor must it be imagined, that they were men who lived like the recluses or ascetics of an earlier age. They lived in a period of great public excitement. They were men of diffusive benevolence and active enterprise. Their intellect and time were taxed to a very great extent, on questions of great public importance, by the very exigencies of the times. Among a generation of great men, including such contemporaries as Owen and Bates, Usher and Howe, Boyle and Sir Mathew Hale, RICHARD BAXTER ranked high in the scale of intellect and moral worth. And we enture to say, that it indicates a vigorous mental pulse, and a healthful tone of moral feeling, in those who can patiently peruse, and cordially relish, the theological productions of his active mind and prolific pen.

The Practical Works of RICHARD BAXTER, since the time of their publication, have stood, and will continue to stand, first in that department of Theology to which they belong. Characterised by genuine and fervent piety, they exhibit not only a few particular heads of the Christian faith and practice, but Christianity itself in its full extent and compass, handled in a manner suited to the meanest capacities, and pressed home upon the conscience of the reader with inimitable life and fervour. There is a nerve and earnestness, and an unction in them, at once so striking and captivating, that he who studies with any portion of

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