A26892:1267
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 10 › Directions for faithful serving Christ, and doing Good.
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.
Answ. 1. There must be an integrity of causes, or concurrence of all necessaries to make up Obedience, though the want of any one will make a sin: If you will be called Obedient, you must have the matter and form, because the true form is found in no other matter: You must do the thing commanded because of his Authority that commandeth it. If it may be called really and formally Obedience, when you err, yet it is not that obedience which is acceptable: For it is not any kind of obedience, but obedience in the thing commanded that God requireth. 2. But indeed as long as you err sinfully, you are also wanting in the form as well as the matter of your obedience, though you intend Obedience in the particular act. It is not only a wilful opposing, and positive rejecting the Authority of the Commander, which is formal disobedience: but it is any Privation of due subjection to it; when his Authority is not so regarded as it ought to be; and doth not so powerfully and effectually move us to our duty as it ought. Now this formal disobedience is found in your erroneous Conscience: For if Gods Authority had moved you as it should have done, to diligent enquiry and use of all appointed means, and to the avoiding of all the causes of error, you had never erred about your duty. For if the error had been perfectly involuntary and blameless, the thing could not have been your particular duty, which you could not possibly come to know.1
Answ. 1. There must be an integrity of causes, or concurrence of all necessaries to make up Obedience, though the want of any one will make a sin: If you will be called Obedient, you must have the matter and form, because the true form is found in no other matter: You must do the thing commanded because of his Authority that commandeth it. If it may be called really and formally Obedience, when you err, yet it is not that obedience which is acceptable: For it is not any kind of obedience, but obedience in the thing commanded that God requireth. 2. But indeed as long as you err sinfully, you are also wanting in the form as well as the matter of your obedience, though you intend Obedience in the particular act. It is not only a willful opposing, and positive rejecting the Authority of the Commander, which is formal disobedience: but it is any Privation of due subjection to it; when his Authority is not so regarded as it ought to be; and doth not so powerfully and effectually move us to our duty as it ought. Now this formal disobedience is found in your erroneous Conscience: For if Gods Authority had moved you as it should have done, to diligent enquiry and use of all appointed means, and to the avoiding of all the causes of error, you had never erred about your duty. For if the error had been perfectly involuntary and blameless, the thing could not have been your particular duty, which you could not possibly come to know.