A26879:237
The catechizing of families a teacher of householders how to teach their householdsThe catechizing of families a teacher of housholders how to teach their housholds
The catechizing of families a teacher of householders how to teach their households : useful also to school-masters and tutors of youth : for those that are past the common small catechisms [sic], and would grow to a more rooted faith, and to the fuller understanding of all that is commonly needful to a safe, holy comfortable and profitable life / written by Richard Baxter ...The catechizing of families a teacher of housholders how to teach their housholds : useful also to school-masters and tutors of youth : for those that are past the common small chatechisms [sic], and would grow to a more rooted faith, and to the fuller understanding of all that is commonly needful to a safe, holy comfortable and profitable life / written by Richard Baxter ...
London: printed for T. Parkhurst, 1683
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
4. Consider again, that the Matter of Fact, and the Divine Institution is since made certain to us by Christs Testimony.
Q. 11. But seeing this Law doth not bind us now, nor the particular Messages of the Prophets were sent to us, is it any of our Concern now to know or believe them? It belonged to those that they were made for, and sent to; But what are they to us?
A. There is not the same necessity to know them, and so to be such that they were all of God, as there is to know and believe the Gospel: But it is greatly our Duty and Concern to believe them; ⟨p. 36⟩1. Because they were preparatory to the Gospel, and bore an antecedent Testimony to it. 2. Because the Gospel it self beareth witness of their Truth▪ which therefore if we believe it, we must believe. 3. Because by the Holy Ghost's direction all now make up our Books of Sacred Records, which is the certain Word of God, though not all of the same Necessity and Evidence.
And here I must tell you a great and needful Truth, which ignorant Christians fearing to confess, by overdoing tempt Men to Infidelity. The Scripture is like a Mans Body, where some parts are but for the preservation of the rest, and may be maimed without death: The Sense is the Soul of the Scripture, and the Letters but the Body, or Vehicle. The Doctrine of the Creed, Lords Prayer, and Decalogue, and Baptism, and Lords Supper, is the Vital part, and Christianity it self. The Old Testament Letter (written as we have it about Ezra's time) is that Vehicle which is as imperfect as the Revelation of those times was: But as after Christ's Incarnation and Ascension, the Spirit was more abundantly given, and the Revelation more perfect and Sealed, so the Doctrine is more full, and the Vehicle or Body, that is, the Words are less imperfect, and more sure to us; so that he that doubteth of the Truth of some Words in the Old Testament, or of some small Circumstantials in the New, hath no reason therefore to doubt of the Christian Religion, of which these Writings are but the Vehicle or Body, sufficient to ascertain us of the Truth of the History and Doctrine. Be sure first that Christ is the very Son of God, and it inferreth the certainty of all his Words, and enforceth our whole Religion.