Practical Works of Richard Baxter Author:Richard Baxter Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE PREFACE. I Cannot but expect that so slender a discourse, on so weighty a subject, should seem to some judicious men unnecessary ; and that I owe them sat... more »isfaction concerning the reasons of this attempt. I confess I have many a time privately wished, and sometimes publicly expressed my desires, that some of the ablest teachers in the church would purposely undertake this weighty task of drawing out the chiefest arguments, for the defence of the christian cause and truth of Scripture, which lie scattered so wide in the writings of the ancients, and might afford much light to shame the cause of unbelievers. I know Marsilius Ficinus, Lodovicus Vives, the Lord du Plessis, especially Grotius, and others have done much already this way; but yet, I think, a fuller improvement may be made of their arguments, at least to the advantage of those that we have now to do with. The account that I can give of the publication of this discourse is only this. I find myself most effectually excited to action, cateris paribus, by the nearest objects; but especially when they are the greatest as well as the nearest. It hath long grieved me to see how the stream of errors, that beareth down this present age, doth plainly lead to thegulph of infidelity. While I only heard and read of infidels in the remote parts of the world, I was either of their judgment that thought it best not once to name, much less confute, so vile a sin, or at least 1 was not awakened to the sight, because the enemy was no nearer; but when I perceived such a formidable approach, I thought it time to look about us. It is many years since I observed the tendency of the prevailing giddiness, unruliness, and levity of these times. When, through the great ignorance, looseness, or ungodly violence of too many ecclesiastics, the o...« less