A26892:1588
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.
70. Therefore sincerity much consisteth in the Love of self-holiness; but not as for self alone; but as carrying self and all to God.
71. As the Sun-beams do without any interception reach the eye, and by them without interception our sight ascendeth and extendeth to the Sun; so Gods communicated Goodness and Glorious Revelation extend through, and by all inferior mediums to our understandings, and our wills; And our Knowledge and Love ascendeth and extendeth through all, and by all again to God. And as it were unnatural for the eye illuminated by the Sun, to see it self only, or to see the mediate creatures, and not to see the Light and Sun by which it seeth (nay, it doth least see it self); so is it unnatural for the soul to understand and Love it self alone (which it little understandeth and should Love with self-denial) and the Creatures only; and not to Love God by whom we know and Love the creature.
71. As the Sun-beams do without any interception reach the eye, and by them without interception our sight ascendeth and extendeth to the Sun; so Gods communicated Goodness and Glorious Revelation extend through, and by all inferiour mediums to our understandings, and our wills; And our Knowledge and Love ascendeth and extendeth through all, and by all again to God. And as it were unnatural for the eye illuminated by the Sun, to see it self only, or to see the mediate creatures, and not to see the Light and Sun by which it seeth (nay, it doth least see it self); so is it unnatural for the soul to understand and Love it self alone (which it little understandeth and should Love with self-denyal) and the Creatures only; and not to Love God by whom we know and Love the creature.
72. It is possible to Love God and Holiness and Heaven, as a conceited state and means of our sensual felicity, and escape of pain and misery: But to Love God as the true felicity of the Intellectual nature, and as our spiritual Rest, and yet to Love him only or chiefly for our selves, and not rather for Himself as our highest end, implieth a contradiction. The same I say of Holiness, as Loved only for our selves. The evidence whereof is plain, in that it is Essential to God, to be not only better than our selves and every creature, but also to be the Ultimate End of all things, to which they should tend in all their perfections. And it is Essential to Holiness to be the souls devotion of it self to God as God, and not only to God as our felicity. Therefore to Love God only or chiefly for our selves, is to make him only a means to our felicity, and not our chief End; and it is to make our selves Better, and so more Amiable than God, that is, to be Gods our selves.