Direct. XXVIII. Spend much more time in doing your duty, than in trying your estate. Be not so much in asking, How shall I know that I shall be saved? as in asking, What shall I do to be saved? Study the duty of this day of your visitation, and set yourselves to it with all your might. Seek first the things that are above, and mortify your fleshly lusts; give up yourselves to a holy, heavenly life, and do all the good that you are able in the world: seek after God as revealed in and by our Redeemer: and in thus doing, 1. Grace will become more notable and discernible. 2. Conscience will be less accusing and condemning, and will easilier believe the reconciledness of God. 3. You may be sure that such labour shall never be lost; and in well-doing you may trust your souls with God. 4. Thus those that are not able in an argumentative way to try their state to any full satisfaction, may get that comfort by feeling and experience, which others get by ratiocination. For the very exercise of love to God and man, and of a heavenly mind and holy life, hath a sensible pleasure in itself, and delighteth the person who is so employed: as if a man were to take the comfort of his learning or wisdom, one way is by the discerning his learning and wisdom, and thence inferring his own felicity; but another way is by exercising that learning and wisdom which he hath, in reading and meditating on some excellent books, and making discoveries of some mysterious excellencies in arts and sciences, which delight him more by the very acting, than a bare conclusion of his own learning in the general would do. What delight had the inventors of the sea-chart and magnetic attraction, and of printing, and of guns, in their inventions! What pleasure had Galileo in his telescopes, in finding out the inequalities and shady parts of the moon, the Medicean planets, the adjuncts of Saturn, the changes of Venus, the stars of the via lactea, &c.! Even so a serious, holy person, hath more sensible pleasures in the right exercise of faith, and love, and holiness, in prayer, and meditation, and converse with God, and with the heavenly hosts, than the bare discerning of sincerity can afford. Therefore though it be a great, important duty to examine ourselves, and judge ourselves before God judge us, and keep close aquaintance with our own hearts and affairs, yet is it the addition of the daily practice of a heavenly life, which must be our chiefest business and delight. And he that is faithful in them both, shall know by experience the excellences of christianity and holiness, and in his way on earth, have both a prospect of heaven, and a foretaste of the everlasting rest and pleasures.

A
MORAL PROGNOSTICATION.

FIRST,
WHAT SHALL BEFALL THE CHURCHES ON EARTH, TILL THEIR CONCORD,
BY THE RESTITUTION OF THEIR PRIMITIVE PURITY, SIMPLICITY, AND CHARITY:
SECONDLY,
HOW THAT RESTITUTION IS LIKELY TO BE MADE, (IF EVER,) AND WHAT SHALL BEFALL
THEM THENCEFORTH UNTO THE END, IN THAT GOLDEN AGE OF LOVE.
WRITTEN BY
RICHARD BAXTER;
WHEN BY THE KING'S COMMISSION, WE (IN VAIN) TREATED FOR CONCORD, 1661.
AND NOW PUBLISHED, NOT TO INSTRUCT THE PROUD THAT SCORN TO LEARN; NOR TO MAKE THEM WISE,
WHO WILL NOT BE MADE WISE: BUT TO INSTRUCT THE SONS OF LOVE AND PEACE, IN THEIR DUTIES AND EXPECTATIONS.
TO TELL POSTERITY, THAT
THE THINGS WHICH BEFALL THEM WERE FORETOLD;
AND THAT THE EVIL MIGHT HAVE BEEN PREVENTED, AND BLESSED PEACE ON EARTH ATTAINED,
IF MEN HAD BEEN BUT WILLING; AND HAD NOT SHUT THEIR EYES AND HARDENED THEIR HEARTS
AGAINST THE BEAMS OF LIGHT AND LOVE.

TO THE READER.

Reader,

It is many years since this Prognostication was written (1661, except the thirteen last lines); but it was cast by, lest it should offend the guilty. But the author now thinketh, that the monitory usefulness may overweigh the inconveniences of men's displeasure; at least, to posterity, if not for the present age; of which he is taking his farewell. His suppositions are such as cannot be denied: viz.

1. Eccles. i. 9, "The thing that hath been, is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun."