A26892:1417
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.
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.
§. 8. Direct. 7. Corrupt not your Minds and appetites with contrary delights: Addict not your selves to fleshly pleasures: Taste nothing that is forbidden. Sorrow it self is not such an enemy to spiritual Delights, as sensual sinful pleasures are. O leave your beastly and your childish pleasures, and come and feast your souls on God. Isa. 55. 1, 2, 3. Away with the Delights of lust, and pride, and covetousness, and vain sports, and gluttony, and drunkenness, if ever you would have the solid and durable Delights! Think not of joining both together. Bethink your selves; Can it be any thing but the disease and wickedness of thy heart, that can make a play, or a feast, or drunken wanton company, more pleasant to thee than God? What a heart is that which thinketh it a toil to meditate on God, and Heaven, and thinks it a pleasure to think of the baits of pride and covetousness? What a heart is that which thinks that sensuality, wantonness and vanity are the pleasure of their families, which must not be turned out; and that Godliness and Heavenly discourse and exercises would be the sadness and trouble of their families, which must not be brought in lest it ma•r their mirth? That think it an intolerable toil and slavery to Love God, and Holiness, and Heaven, and to be employed for them, and thinks it a delightful thing to Love a whore, or excess of meat or drink or sports? Can you say any thing of a man that is more disgraceful, unless you say he is a Devil? It were not so vile for a child to Delight more in a Dog than in his Parents, or a Husband to delight more in the ugliest Harlot than in his Wife, as it is for a man to delight more in fleshly vanities than in God. Will you be licking up this dung, when you should be solacing your souls in Angelical pleasures, and foretasting the delights of Heaven? O how justly will God thrust away such wretches from his everlasting presence, who so abhor his ways and him? Can they blame him for ⟨p. 165⟩denying them, the things which they hate, or set so light by, as to prefer a lust before it? If they were not haters of God and Holiness, they would never be so averse even to the Delights which they should have with him.
§. 8. Direct. 7. Corrupt not your Minds and appetites with contrary delights: Addict not your selves to fleshly pleasures: Tast nothing that is forbidden. Sorrow it self is not such an enemy to spiritual Delights, as sensual sinful pleasures are. O leave your beastly and your childish pleasures, and come and feast your souls on God.