A26892:1531
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.
13. In sensitive self-love therefore SELF, that is, Life, is both the Material and Formal object: We love our selves even because we are ourselves: We love this individual person, and loath annihilation or dissolution.
14. Though the will (or higher faculties) are Naturally inclined also to Love our selves, and our own felicity; yet they exercise this inclination with a certain Liberty: And though the Act of simple Complacency or Volition towards our own Being and Felicity be so Free as yet to be Necessary; yet the Comparate Act (by which comparing several Goods, we choose one and refuse another) may be so Free as not to be necessary; that is, A man may will his own Annihilation rather than some greater evil (of which anon); Not as good in it self, and therefore not willed for it self, but as a Means to a greater good; and so he may Less Nill it than a greater evil.
14. Though the will (or higher faculties) are Naturally inclined also to Love our selves, and our own felicity; yet they exercise this inclination with a certain Liberty: And though the Act of simple Complacencie or Volition towards our own Being and Felicity be so Free as yet to be Necessary; yet the Comparate Act (by which comparing several Goods, we choose one and refuse another) may be so Free as not to be necessary; that is, A man may will his own Annihilation rather than some greater evil (of which anon); Not as good in it self, and therefore not willed for it self, but as a Means to a greater good; and so he may Less Nill it than a greater evil.
15. Also a tolerable Pain may on the same account be willed, or less nilled, and so consented to for the avoiding of a greater evil; But Intolerable pain cannot possibly be willed, or consented to, or not nilled, because it taketh away the exercise of Reason and Free-will: But what is to be called Intolerable, I determine not, it being variously measurable according to the patients strength.