A26892:1358
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 11 › Directions for Loving God as our Father and Felicity.
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.
§. 32. Direct. 11. Insist not so much on your desires after vision, as to undervalue the lower apprehensions 1of Faith: but love God by the way of Faith, as in order to the Love of Intuition.
- 1Direct. 11.
We are exceeding •pt to be over-desirous of sight; and to take nothing as an object fit to affect us, which sense perceiveth not. When we have the surest evidence of the truth of things unseen, it hardly satisfieth us, unless we may see or feel. And hereupon our Love to God is hindered; while we think of him as if he were not, or take the apprehensions of faith, as if they were uncertain, and little differed from a dream. Yea, it proveth the ground of most dangerous temptations to Infidelity it self: While we take that knowledge which we have of God, in the way of Faith, the Love and Communion which is exercised thereby, to be as nothing; we are next tempted to think, that there is no true knowledge of God, and communion with him to be attained: And when we have been searching and striving long▪ and find that we can reach no more, we are tempted to think that the soul o• man is made but as the beasts, for present things, and is uncapable of those higher things which are revealed in the Gospel, and that if there were indeed a life to come, and man were made to enjoy his God, we should get nearer to him than we are, and know him more, and love him better. But is it nothing, O presumptuous soul, to see God in a Glass, in order to a nearer sight? Is it nothing to have the Heavenly Jerusalem described and promised to thee, unless thou see it and possess it? Wilt thou travel to no place, but what thou seest all the way? Wouldst thou have no difference betwixt Earth and Heaven? What canst thou have more in Heaven, than immediate intuition? Wouldst thou have no life of trial, in the obedience of faith, before the life of fruition and reward? Or canst thou think that a life of sight and sense, is fit for trial and preparation, to show who is meet for the rewarding life? Unthankful soul! Compare thy state with that of brutes: Is it nothing for thee to know thy Maker in the Works of his Creation and Providence, and in the revelations of grace, and the belief of promised immortality, unless thou presently see him in his glory? When these thy fllow creatures know him not at all? Compare thy self now, with thy self as heretofore, in the days of thy ignorance and carnality. Hadst thou then any such knowledge of God, as thou now undervaluest? or any such communion with him, as thou now accountest next to none?