What They Said

“Lose not your authority by too much familiarity. If you make your children and servants your play-fellows, or equals, and talk to them, and suffer them to talk to you, as your companions, they will quickly grow upon you, and hold their custom ; and though another may govern them, they will scarce ever endure to be governed by you, but will scorn to be subject where they have once been as equal.”

Richard Baxter

“One of the greatest time-wasting sins is idleness, or sloth. The slothful see their time pass away, and their work undone, and can hear of the necessity of redeeming it, and yet they have not hearts to stir. When they are convinced that duty must be done, they are still delaying, and putting it off from day to day, and saying still, I will do it tomorrow, or hereafter. To-morrow is still the sluggard’s working day; and to-day is his idle day.”

Richard Baxter

“Above all pray and labour for a truly humble mind, that is well acquainted with its own defects ; and fear and fly from a proud, overvaluing of your own understanding.”

Richard Baxter

“Use sin as it will use you.  Spare it not, for it will not spare you.  It is your murderer, and the murderer of the world.  Use it therefore as a murderer should be used.  Kill it before it kills you; and then, though it kill your bodies, it shall not be able to kill your souls; and though it bring you to the grave, as it did your Head, it shall not be able to keep you there.”

Richard Baxter

“Let it be the principal part of your care and labor in all their education, to make HOLINESS appear to them the most necessary, honorable, gainful, pleasant, delightful, amiable state of life; and to keep them from apprehending it either as needless, dishonorable, hurtful, or uncomfortable. Especially draw them to the love of it—by representing it as lovely. The whole skill of parents for the pious education of their children, consists in this—to make them conceive of holiness as the most amiable and desirable life—by representing it to them in words and practice—not only as most necessary, but also as most profitable, honorable, and delightful. "Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace." Proverbs 3:17.”

Richard Baxter

“A sermon full of mere words, how neatly so ever it is composed, while it wants the light of evidence, and the life of zeal, is but an image or a well-dressed carcass.”

Richard Baxter

"A foolish physician he is, and most unfaithful friend, that will let a sick man die for fear of troubling him; and cruel wretches are we to our friends, that will rather suffer them to go quietly to hell, than we will anger them, or hazard our reputation with them."   

Richard Baxter

"For I must tell you that self is the most treacherous enemy, and the most insinuating deceiver in the world.  It will be within you when you are not aware of it, and will conquer you when you perceive not yourselves much troubled with it;  and of all other vices is both the hardest to find out, and the hardest to cast out; the hardest to discover, and the hardest to cure.  Be sure therefore in the first place that you have self-denial; and then be sure that you use it and live in the practice of it."

Richard Baxter