Richard Baxter on Nearly Dying

"All this forementioned time of my ministry was passed under my foredescribed weaknesses, which were so great as made me live and preach in some continual expectation of death, supposing still that I had not long to live. And this I found through all my life to be an unvaluable mercy to me, for...it made me study and preach things necessary, and a little stirred my sluggish heart to speak to sinners with some compassion as a dying man to dying men."(From The Autobiography of Richard Baxter)