A26892:1160
A Christian Directory
A Christian directory, or, A sum of practical theology and cases of conscience directing Christians how to use their knowledge and faith, how to improve all helps and means, and to perform all duties, how to overcome temptations, and to escape or mortify every sin : in four parts ... / by Richard Baxter.A Christian directory, or, A summ of practical theologie and cases of conscience directing Christians how to use their knowledge and faith, how to improve all helps and means, and to perform all duties, how to overcome temptations, and to escape or mortifie every sin : in four parts ... / by Richard Baxter.
London: printed by Robert White for Nevill Simmons, 1673
Title page typeset from the transcription.
Part 1 › Chapter 3 › Direction 9 › Tit. 3. Temptations to draw us off from duty.
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.
§. 24. Direct. 12. O keep up a lively sense of your necessities: Remember still that Time is1 short, and death is near, and you are too unready. Keep acquaintance with your hearts and lives, and every day will tell you of your necessities: which are greatest when they are least perceived.
- 1Direct. 12.
§. 25. Tempt. 13. The Tempter gets much by ascribing the success of holy means to our own endeavour, 1or to chance or something else, and making us overlook that present benefit, which would greatly encourage us: As when we are delivered from sickness or danger upon prayer, he tells you, so you might have been delivered if you had never prayed? Was it not by the Physicians •are and skill, and by such an excellent medicine? If you prosper in any business, was it not by your own contrivance and diligence?
- 1Tempt. 13.
§. 26. Direct. 13. This separating God and means, when God worketh by means, is the folly of1 Atheists: When God heareth thy prayer in sickness or other danger, he showeth it by directing the Physician or thy self to the fittest means, and blessing that means; and he is as really the cause and prayer the first means, as if he wrought thy deliverance by a Miracle. Do not many use the same Physician, and Medicine, and labour, and diligence, who yet miscarry? Just observation of the answers of prayer might do much to cure this. All our industry may say as Peter and John,