A Call to the Unconverted to Turn and Live,

And accept of MERCY, while MERCY may be had;
as ever they will find MERCY, in the Day of their EXTREMITY
from the Living God.

Part 1

by Richard Baxter (1615-1691)

"Say to them, 'As I live,' says the Lord God, 'I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way, and live.  Turn, Turn from your evil ways!  For why should you die, O house of Israel ."  Ezekiel 33:11

 

Table of Contents

A Short Account About the Author

Preface by the Author

Sermon 1: The Certainty of Judgment Apart from Repentance

Sermon 2: The Earnestness of God's Offer of Forgiveness

Sermon 3:  God’s Condescension in His Offer of Forgiveness

Sermon 4:  Man’s Willfulness in His Own Damnation

 

A Short Account About the Author

and the Great Success Which Attended the Book
When First Published.

The following is an account of this book given by Mr. Baxter himself, which was found in his study after his death: 

I published a short treatise on conversion, entitled A Call to the Unconverted, which God has blessed, with unexpected success, beyond all the other books I have written except for The Saint’s Rest.  In a little more than a year, about twenty thousand were printed by my own consent, and about ten thousand since, besides many thousands printed by illegal means.   Through God’s mercy, I have been told of almost whole households converted by this small book, a book I at first took so lightly.  And, as if all this in England, Scotland, and Ireland were not mercy enough to me, God has sent it to many beyond the seas; for after Mr. John Eliot, the missionary to the Algonquin Indians in America, had translated the entire Bible into the Indian language, he next translated my Call to the Unconverted. And yet God would yet make further use of it, for Mr. Stoop, the pastor of the French Church in London, was pleased to translate it into French. I hope it will not be unprofitable there, or in Germany, when it is printed in Dutch.

Mr. Cotton Mather, in his account of his life, gives an account of an Indian prince, who was so well affected with this book, that he sat reading it, with tears in his eyes, till he died.

In his sermon at Mr. Baxter’s funeral, Dr. Bates said,
His books of practical divinity have been effectual for more conversions of sinners to God than any printed in our time.  There is a vigorous pulse in them that keeps the reader awake and attentive. His Call to the Unconverted, how small in book, but how powerful in virtue! Truth speaks in it with such authority and power that it makes the reader to lay his hand upon his heart, and find that he has a soul and a conscience, though he may have lived before as if he had none. He told some friends that six brothers were converted by reading that Call, and that every week he received letters of some converted through his books. This he spoke with most humbled thankfulness, that God was pleased to use him as an instrument for the salvation of souls.

Self-denial and contempt of the world were shining graces in him. I never knew anyone less indulging of himself, and more indifferent to his temporal interest.  His patience was truly Christian, for he was tried by many afflictions. His name was obscured under a cloud of controversy: many scandalous darts were thrown at him. He was accused for his Paraphrase on the New Testament, and condemned, unheard, to a prison, where he remained some years; but he was so far from being moved at this unrighteous prosecution that he joyfully said to a constant friend, “What could I desire more of God, than after having served him to my power, I should be called to suffer for him!”
Death reveals the secrets of the heart when words are spoken with most feeling and the least artificiality. But this excellent saint was the same in his life and death: his last hours were spent in preparing others and himself to appear before God. He said to his friends that visited him,

“You come here to learn to die, but I am not the only person that must go this way: I can assure you, that your whole life, be it ever so long, is little enough to prepare for death. Have a care of this vain, deceitful world and the lusts of the flesh.  Be sure you choose God for your portion, heaven for your home, God’s glory for your purpose, his word for your rule. Then you need never fear but have confidence that we shall meet with comfort.”

Never was a penitent sinner more humble, never was a sincere believer more calm and comfortable. He acknowledged himself to be the vilest dunghill-worm (it was his usual expression) that ever went to heaven; he admired God's divine condescension to man, after saying “Lord, what is man?  What am I?  A vile worm to the great God!” Many times he prayed, “God be merciful to me a sinner!"  He said, “God may justly condemn me for the best duty I ever did; and all my hopes are from the free mercy of God in Christ,” which he often prayed for.

His submission to the will of God during his severe sickness was notable. When extreme pain constrained him earnestly to pray to God for his release by death, he would stop himself, saying, “It is not fit for me to determine,” and then, “when you will, what you will.”  At another time he said that he found great comfort and sweetness in repeating the words of the Lord’s prayer, and was sorry that some good people were prejudiced against the use of it, for all necessary petitions for soul and body were contained in it.
When a friend was comforting him with the remembrance of the good many had received by his preaching and writings, he said, “I was but a pen in God’s hand, and what praise is due to a pen?”  Thus lived and died that blessed saint.  I have given here a sincere short account of him. All our tears are barely sufficient for such an invaluable loss. It is the comfort of his friends that he enjoys a blessed reward in heaven, and has left a precious remembrance on earth. 

I conclude this account with my own deliberate wish: “May I live the remainder of my life as entirely to the glory of God as he lived; and when I shall come to the period of my life, may I die in the same blessed peace in which he died: may I be with him in the kingdom of light and love for ever.”

 

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Preface by the Author

to all unsanctified persons who shall read this book

 

Dear Reader,

The eternal God, who made you for a life everlasting, and has redeemed you by His only Son, when you had lost it and yourselves, being mindful of you in your sin and misery, has put the gospel in writing, and sealed it by His spirit, and commanded His ministers to preach it to the world, freely offering you pardon, and setting heaven before you, so that He might call you from your fleshly pleasures, and from following after this deceitful world, and acquaint you with the life that you were created and redeemed for, before you are dead and beyond help.  The Lord saw how you forget Him and your destiny, and how you make light of eternal things, and do not understand the judgment to come. He sees how bold you are in your sin, and how careless of your souls, and how the works of the ungodly are in your lives, while the belief of Christians is in your mouths.  He sees the dreadful day at hand, when your sorrows will begin and you must lament all this with hopeless cries in torment and desperation; and then the memory of your folly will tear your hearts, unless true conversion now prevents it.

In compassion of your sinful miserable souls, the Lord, who knows your case better than you can know it, has made it the duty of His ministers to speak to you in His name (2 Corinthians 5:19), and to tell you plainly of your sin and misery, and what will be your end, and how sad a change you will shortly see, if you do not change your ways. Having bought you at so dear a rate as the blood of His son Jesus Christ, and made you so free and general a promise of pardon, and grace, and everlasting glory? He commands us to offer all this to you as the gift of God, and to beg of you to consider of the necessity and worth of what He offers.  He sees and pities you, while you are drowned in worldly cares and pleasures, eagerly following childish toys, and wasting that short and precious time on worthless things.  Therefore He commanded us to call after you, and tell you how you are about to lose your souls, and to tell you what greater and better things you might certainly have, if you would hearken to His call:

 "Ho! Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat. Yes, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.  Why do you spend money for what is not bread, and your wages for what does not satisfy? Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good, And let your soul delight itself in abundance.   Incline your ear, and come to Me. Hear, and your soul shall live; And I will make an everlasting covenant with you—the sure mercies of David (Isaiah 55:1-3).

 We who preach believe and obey the voice of God; and come to you with the message of Him who has charged us to lift up our voice like a trumpet (Isaiah 58:1-2, 2 Timothy 4:1-2). But alas! to the grief of our souls and to your own undoing, you stop your ears, you stiffen your necks, you harden your hearts, and send us back to God with groans to tell Him that we have preached his message, but can do no good on you, nor scarcely get a sober hearing.  Oh! that our eyes were a fountain of tears, that we might lament our careless people, who have Christ before them, and pardon, and life, and heaven before them, and yet have no hearts to know or value them – who might have Christ, and grace, and glory, as well as others, if it were not for their willful negligence and contempt!

O that the Lord would fill our hearts with more compassion for these miserable souls, that we might cast ourselves even at their feet, and follow them to their houses, and speak to them with our bitter tears, for long have we preached to many of them in vain: We study plain words to make them understand, and many of them will not understand us; we study serious, piercing words, to make them feel, but they will not feel. If the sweetest things would work with them, we should entice them and win their hearts; if the most dreadful things would work, we should at least frighten them from their wickedness; if truth and certainty would take with them, we should soon convince them; if the God who made them, and the Christ who bought them, might be heard, the case would soon be altered with them; if Scripture might be heard, we should soon prevail; if reason, even the best and strongest reason, might be heard, we do not doubt that we should quickly convince them; if experience might be heard, even their own experience, and the experience of all the world, the matter would be mended; yea, if the conscience within them might be heard, the case would be better with them than it is. But if nothing can be heard, what then shall we do for them? If the dreadful God of heaven is slighted, who then shall be regarded? If the inestimable love and blood of a Redeemer is made light of, what then shall be valued? If heaven has no desirable glory with them, and everlasting joys have no value, if they can joke about hell, and dance around the bottomless pit, and play with the consuming fire, what shall we do for such souls as these?

Once more, in the name of the God of heaven, I shall speak the message to you which He has commanded us, and leave it in these printed words to convert you or to condemn you.  Hear, all you who are the servants of flesh and Satan, who spend your days in looking after prosperity on earth, and drown your consciences in drinking, and gluttony, and idleness, and foolish sports, and know your sin, and yet will sin as if in God's face, and taunt Him do His worst and spare not!  Hear, all you who give no thought to God, and have no heart to holy things, and have no affection for His words or His worship, or in the thoughts or mention of eternal life, and who are careless of your immortal souls, and never give one hour to inquire what state they are in, whether saved or lost, and whether you are ready to appear before the Lord! Hear, all you who, by sinning against the light, have hardened yourselves into unbelief, and do not believe the word of God. He that has an ear to hear, let him hear the gracious and yet the dreadful call of God! His eye is upon you all this time, your sins are known and registered, and you shall surely hear of them again. God keeps the book now, and He will write it all upon your consciences with His terrors. 

O sinners, if only you knew what you are doing, and whom you are offending!  The sun itself is darkness before that Majesty which you daily abuse and carelessly provoke. The sinning angels were not able to stand before Him, and dare such silly worms as you so carelessly offend, and set yourselves against your Maker?  If you had any idea what condition the wretched soul is in who has engaged the living God against Him! The words of His mouth that made you can unmake you; the frown of His face will cut you off and cast you out into utter darkness, and then in a moment you will be in hell. If God is against you, all things are against you: this world that you love so much is but your prison.  The Judge is coming, and your soul is soon to depart.  Yet a little while, and your friend shall say of you, “He is dead,” and you will see come to pass the things that you now will not believe! 

Death will bring an argument so powerful that you will not be able to answer, an argument that will bring down your self-conceit and prove false all your arguments against the words and ways of God.  And then how soon will your mind be changed? Then, be an unbeliever if you can. Then, stand by all your former words, which you were in the habit of uttering against a holy and a heavenly life.  Then, make good that cause before the Lord which you used against the people who feared God. Then, stand by your old opinions and contemptuous thoughts of the diligence of the saints; now make ready now your strongest reasons, and stand up then before the Judge, and plead like a man for your fleshly, worldly, and ungodly life!  But know that you will have One to plead with who will not be outfaced by you, nor so easily put off as your fellow creatures.

O poor soul!  There is nothing but a slender veil of flesh between you and that amazing sight, which will quickly silence you, and change your tone, and make you of another mind! As soon as death has drawn this curtain, you shall that which will quickly leave you speechless, and how quickly will that day and hour come! When you have had but a few more merry hours, and but a few more pleasant sips and morsels, and a little more of the honors and riches of the world, your portion will be spent, and your pleasures ended, and all is then gone which you set your heart upon, of all you sold your Savior and salvation for, and now there is nothing left but the heavy reckoning. As a thief who sits in an alehouse merrily spending the money which he has stolen, when officers of the law are approaching to arrest him, so it is with you. While you are drowned in cares or fleshly pleasures, and making merry with your own shame, death is coming in haste to seize upon you, and carry your soul to such a place and state as now you little know or think of.

Suppose, when you were bold and busy in your sin, that a messenger was coming to apprehend you and take away your life.  Though you did not see him, yet if you knew that he was coming, it would dampen your mirth, and you would be thinking of the haste he makes, and hear when he knocked at your door. Oh, if only you could see what haste death makes, though yet he has not overtaken you! There is no post so swift, no messenger more sure! As sure as the sun will be with you in the morning, though it has many thousands of miles to go in the night, so surely will death be quickly with you; and then where is your sport and pleasure?  Will you then jest and brave it out?  Will you then jeer at those who warned you?  Is it better then to be a believing saint or a sensual worldling? “And then whose shall all these things be" that you have gathered (Luke 12:19-21)?  Do you not observe that days and weeks are quickly gone, and nights and mornings come and speedily succeed each other? You sleep, “but your damnation does not sleep,” you linger, “but your judgment does not linger,” (2 Peter 2:3-5), and then you find that “you are reserved for punishment” (2 Peter 2:8-9).  O that you were wise to understand this, and that you did "consider your latter end" (Deut. 32: 29)!  “He who has an ear to hear, let him hear the call of God in this day of his salvation.”

O careless sinners!  That you did but know the love that you unthankfully neglect, and the preciousness of the blood of Christ which you despise! O that you did but know the riches of the gospel! O that you did but know the certainty, the glory and blessedness of that everlasting life, which now you will neither set your hearts upon, nor be persuaded diligently to seek (Hebrews 6:6, 12:28, Matthew 6:12). If you only knew the endless life with God which you now neglect, how quickly would you cast away your sin, how quickly would you change your mind and life, your course and company, and turn the streams of your affections, and lay your care another way! How resolutely would you resist the temptations that now deceive you and carry you away! How zealously would you stir yourselves up for that most blessed life! How earnestly would you be with God in prayer! How diligent in hearing, and learning, and inquiring!  How serious in meditating on the laws of God (Psalm 1:2)! How fearful of sinning in thought, word, or deed; and how careful to please God and grow in holiness!—O what a changed people you would be! And why should not the certain word of God be believed by you and prevail with you, which opens to you these glorious and eternal things?

Yes, let me tell you that even here on earth, you know little of the difference between the life which you refuse, and the life which you would choose. God's people are conversing with God, when you dare scarcely think of him, and when you are conversing only with earth and flesh.  Their conversation is in heaven, when you are utter strangers to it, and your belly is your God, and you are minding earthly things (Phil. 3:18-20).  They are seeking after the face of God while you seek for nothing higher than this world, and are taken up with shadows and fleeting things of no value. How long and base is your earthly, fleshly, sinful life, in comparison of the noble, spiritual life of true believers!   I would rather have a little of the comforts which the forethoughts of their heavenly inheritance give them, though I had all their scorns and sufferings with it, than to have all your pleasures and treacherous prosperity. I would have none of your secret pangs of conscience, and dark and dreadful thoughts of death and the life to come. 

If I were in your unconverted carnal state, and knew what I know, and believed what I now believe, I believe my life would be a foretaste of hell.  How often should I be thinking of the terrors of the Lord in the dismal day that is coming! Sure death and hell would be still before me: I would think of them by day, and dream of them by night; I would lie down in fear, and rise in fear, and live in fear, lest death should come before I were converted. I would have little faith in any thing I possessed, and little pleasure in any company, and little joy in anything in the world, as long as I knew myself to be under the curse and wrath of God!  I would be afraid of hearing that voice in Luke 12:20: “You fool!  This night your soul be required of you!” And that fearful sentence of Isaiah 48:22 and 57:21 would be written on my conscience: “There is no peace, says my God, to the wicked.”  

O poor sinners! It is a more joyful life than this that you might live, if you were truly willing to listen to Christ, and come to God. You could then draw near to God with boldness and call Him your father, and comfortably trust Him with your souls and bodies. Then, if you consider His promises, you may say, "They are all mine!"  If you consider His curse, you may say, "From this I am delivered!" When you read His Law, you may see what you are saved from!  When you read the gospel, you may see Him who redeemed you, and see the course of His love, holy life and sufferings, and see Him in the work of your salvation. You may see death conquered, and heaven opened, and your resurrection and glorification provided for in the resurrection and glorification of your Lord. If you look on His people, you may say, “They are my brethren and companions.” If you look on the unconverted you may rejoice to think that you are saved from that condition. If you look upon the heavens, the sun, and moon, and stars innumerable, you may think and say, “My Father’s face is infinitely more glorious!  The blessedness that he has promised us is so much higher that flesh and blood cannot behold it.”  Even death,  the king of fears, may be remembered with joy, as being the day of your deliverance from the remnants of sin and sorrow, and the day which you believed, and hoped, and waited for, when you shall see the blessed things which you had heard of. What say you, Sir? Is not this a more delightful life, to be assured of salvation, and ready to die, than to live as the ungodly, who have their hearts overcharged with gluttony and drunkenness and the cares of this life, and so that day comes upon them by surprise?  O look about you then, and think what you do, and cast not away such hopes as these for nothing. The flesh and world can give you no such hopes or comforts!

And, besides all the misery that you bring upon yourselves, you are the troublers of others as long as you are unconverted. You trouble government to rule you by their laws; you trouble ministers by resisting the light and guidance which they offer you. Your sin and misery are the greatest grief and trouble to them in the world.  You disturb the holy peace and order of the churches, and hinder their unity and reformation, and are the shame and trouble of the churches where you intrude, and of the places where you are. 

Ah! Lord, how heavy and sad a case is this, that even here, where the gospel abounds, that our cities and towns should also abound with multitudes of ungodly people, and swarm with so much sensuality! One would have thought after all this light, and all this experience, and all these mercies of God, that the people of this nation should have joined together and turned to the Lord!  And that they would have lamented all their former sins, and desired Him to join with them in public humiliation to confess them openly, and beg pardon of them from the Lord!  One would think, after such reason and Scripture-evidence as they have heard, and after all these means and mercies, that there would not be an ungodly person left among us, nor a worldly person, nor a drunkard, nor an enemy to holiness, to be found in all our land.  Whatever our other disagreements, one would think that, by this time, we should have been all agreed to live a holy and heavenly life, in obedience to God, His word, and ministers, and in love and peace with one another. 

But alas! How far are our people from this course! Most of them, in most places, set their hearts on earthly things, and do not seek first the kingdom of God and its righteousness, but look at holiness as a needless thing: Their families are prayerless, their children are not taught the knowledge of Christ and the covenant of grace, nor brought up in the nurture of the Lord.  How few are the families that fear the Lord, and inquire at His Word how they should live and what they should do, and are willing to be taught and ruled, and heartily look after everlasting life – and how those few are commonly mocked by their neighbors!  When we see some live in drunkenness, and in pride and worldliness, and most of them have little care of their salvation, though the cause is compelling and past all controversy, yet they will hardly be convinced of their condition, much less recovered and reformed!  Alas, when we have done all that we are able to recover them from their sins, we leave the most of them as we find them. And if, according to the law of God, we cast them out of the communion of the church, when they have obstinately rejected all our admonitions, they rage at us as if we were their enemies, and their hearts are filled with malice against us, and they will sooner set themselves against the Lord and His laws, and church, and ministers, than against their deadly sins.  And thus today, when God calls upon us to reform His church, yet multitudes of the people are still unwilling, and have so blinded themselves, and hardened their hearts, that, even in these days of light and grace, they are the obstinate enemies of light and grace, and will not be brought by the calls of God to see their folly, and know what is for their good. O that the people “knew at least in this their day the things which belong unto their peace, before they are hid from their eyes!” (Luke 19:42).

O foolish miserable souls!  Who has bewitched your minds into such madness (Galatians 3:1), and your hearts into such deadness, that you should be such mortal enemies to yourselves, and go on so stubbornly towards damnation, so that neither the word of God, nor the persuasions of His people, can change your minds, or hold your hands, or stop you, until you are past remedy! Well, sinners!  This life will not last always; this patience will not wait on you forever.  Do you think that you can abuse your Maker and Redeemer, and serve his enemies, and debase your souls, and trouble the world, and wrong the church, and reproach the godly, and grieve your ministers, and all this at no cost? You do not know how much this will cost you, but you must shortly know, unless you prevent the everlasting damnation by a sound conversion, and a quick obedience to the call of God. “He who has an ear to hear, let him hear,” while mercy has a voice to call!
One objection I find most common in the mouths of the ungodly is, “We can do nothing without God, we cannot have grace or faith if God will not give it to us; if He would, we would quickly turn."  And thus they think they are excused.  In response, let me now say this: 

1. Though you cannot cure yourselves, you can hurt and poison yourselves.It is God who must sanctify your hearts; but who has corrupted them? Will you willfully take poison, because you cannot cure yourselves? It seems to me that you should the more avoid it, that you should be even more cautious of sinning, if you cannot mend what sin mars!

2. Though you cannot be converted without the special grace of God, you must know that God gives you the means which He has appointed to that end, and the responsibility to respond to the light that He gives.  Can you truly say that you do as much as you are able to do? Are you not able to go by an alehouse door, or to avoid the company that hardens you in sin? Are you not able to hear the Word of God, and think about what you heard, and to consider within yourselves of your own condition and of everlasting things? Are you not able to read good books from day to day, at least on the Lord’s-day, and to converse with those who fear the Lord?  Most of you cannot say that you have done what you are able!

3. Therefore, though you cannot, without grace, turn to God, you must know that you can forfeit His grace and help by your willful sinning or negligence.  If you will not do what you can, it is just with God to deny you that grace by which you might do more.

4. As for God’s decrees, He never decreed to save any but the sanctified, nor to damn any but the unsanctified. God as certainly decrees whether your land this year will be barren or fruitful, and just how long you shall live in the world, as well as whether you will be saved or not.  Yet you would think one to be a fool who would neglect plowing and sowing, and say, “If God has decreed that my ground shall bear corn, it will bear, whether I plough and sow or not. If God has decreed that I shall live, I shall live, whether I eat or not; but if he has not, it is not eating that will keep me alive.” Do you know how to even answer such a man?  If you do, then you know how to answer yourselves; for the case is alike.  God’s decree is as irrefutable about your bodies as your souls.  If you doubt this, then take your risks first on your bodies, before you venture to try them on your soul  See first whether God will keep you alive without food or clothing, and whether He will give you corn without plowing and labor, and whether He will bring you to your journey’s end without a travail or carriage; and, if you speed well in this, then try whether He will bring you to heaven without your diligent use of the means He has provided for your soul.

Well, my friends, I have only three requests, and I am done.

First, that you will seriously read this small book, that it might be a means of winning your souls. If we cannot ask of you so small an effort for your own salvation, as to read such short instructions as these, you have little hope, and will most justly perish.

Second, when you have read over this book, I would ask you to get alone, and ponder a little what you have read, and think, as in the sight of God, whether it be not true; and also, that you will upon your knees beg of the Lord that He will open your eyes to understand the truth, and turn your hearts to the love of God, and beg of Him for that saving grace which you have so long neglected, and seek it afterwards from day to day, until your hearts be changed. 

Third, when by reading, meditation, and prayer, you are acquainted with your sin and misery, do not delay, but immediately forsake your sinful company and ways, and turn to God, and obey His call. As you love your souls, be careful that you do not go on against so loud a call of God, and against your own knowledge and consciences, lest it be worse with you in the day of judgment than with Sodom and Gomorrah.  Inquire of God, as one who is willing to know the truth, and do not be a willful cheater of your own soul. Search the Holy Scriptures daily, and see whether these things are so or not; consider whether it is safer to trust heaven or earth, God or man, the spirit or the flesh; to live in holiness or sin, in a sanctified or an unsanctified state; whether it is safe for you to wait one day longer; and, when you have found out which is best, to resolve accordingly and make your choice without any more delay.  If you will be true to your own souls, and do not love everlasting torments, I beg of you, as from the Lord, that you will but take this reasonable advice.

O what happy towns and countries, and what a happy nation might we have, if we could only persuade our neighbors to respond to such an important call.  If only we could see our people truly heavenly and holy; this would be the unity, the peace, the safety, the glory, of our churches; the happiness of our neighbors, and the comfort of our souls. Then, with what love and joy might we live among each other! Then on your death-bed how boldly might your ministers comfort and encourage your departing souls! And at your burial, how comfortably might they leave you in the grave, expecting to meet your souls in heaven, and to see your bodies raised to that glory!

But if most of you will still go on in a careless, ignorant, fleshly, worldly, or unholy life, and all our desires and labors cannot prevail to keep you from the willful damning of yourselves, then we must imitate our Lord, who delights Himself in those few that are jewels, and in the little flock that shall receive the Kingdom, while others shall reap the misery which they sowed. In nature, excellent things are few. The world does not have many suns or moons, or much gold or silver.  Therefore, if the gate is narrow as the Scriptures say, and there are few that find salvation, yet God will have His glory and pleasure in those few. And when Christ "shall come with His mighty angels in flaming fire, taking vengeance on those who do not know God, and who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ," His coming will be glorified in His saints, and admired in all true believers (2 Thessalonians 1:7-10).  As for the rest, though God knew that, by refusing the sanctifications of His Spirit, they would finally destroy themselves, so we who are His ministers, though these are not gathered with us, do not consider our labor wholly lost.

Reader, when you have read this book, I have done all that I can do with you, but sin is not yet done with you, even those you thought had been forgotten long ago; and Satan is not yet done with you, though now he is out of sight; and God is not yet done with you, because you will not be persuaded to be finished with your deadly sin. I have written you this plea as one who is going to another world, knowing the things I speak of will be clearly seen, and knowing you must shortly be there yourself. If ever you will meet me with comfort in the presence of  the Lord that made us; if ever you will escape the everlasting plagues prepared for those who neglect salvation; and for all who are not sanctified by the Holy Ghost, and do not love the fellowship of the saints, as members of His holy universal congregation; and if ever you hope to see the face of Christ the judge, and the majesty of the Father, with peace and comfort, and to be received into glory when you are turned naked out of this world; I beg you, I charge you, to hear and obey the Call of God, and to turn with determination, that you may live.  But, if you will not, even when you have no good reason except that you do not desire to, I call you to answer it before the Lord, and to bear me witness that I gave you warning, and that you were not condemned for lack of a call to turn and live, but because you would not believe it and obey it.

Your serious Monitor,
Dec. 11, 1657.
RICHARD BAXTER.

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