A26892:1591
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.
73. This is much of the sense of the Controversy between the Epicureans and the sober Philosophers (as is to be seen in Cicero, &c.) The sober Philosophers said that Virtue was to be loved for it self, more than for Pleasure: Because if Pleasure as such, be better than virtue as such, than all sensual Pleasure would be better than Virtue as such. The Epicureans said, that not all pleasure but the pleasure of Virtue, was the chief good (as Torquatus his words in Cicero show). And if it had been first proved, that a mans self is his just ultimate end, as the finis cui, or the personal end, than it would be a hard question whether the Epicureans were not in the right as to the finis cujus, or the Real end, (which indeed is but a medium to the personal, cui.) But when it is most certain that no mans person is to be his own ultimate end, as cui, but God, and then the Universe, and societies of the world as beforesaid, it is then easy to prove that the sober Philosophers were in the right, and that no mans Pleasure is his ultimate end, finis cujus: Because no mans Pleasure is either such a demonstration of the Divine perfection as Virtue is as such; nor yet doth it so much conduce to the common good of societies or mankind, and so to the pleasing and glorifying of God. And this way Cicero might easily have made good his cause against the Epicureans.
73. This is much of the sense of the Controversie between the Epicureans and the sober Philosophers (as is to be seen in Cicero, &c.) The sober Philosophers said that Virtue was to be loved for it self, more than for Pleasure: Because if Pleasure as such, be better than vertue as such, than all sensual Pleasure would be better than Vertue as such. The Epicureans said, that not all pleasure but the pleasure of Vertue, was the chief good (as Torquatus his words in Cicero shew). And if it had been first proved, that a mans self is his just ultimate end, as the finis cui, or the personal end, than it would be a hard question whether the Epicureans were not in the right as to the finis cujus, or the Real end, (which indeed is but a medium to the personal, cui.) But when it is most certain that no mans person is to be his own ultimate end, as cui, but God, and then the Universe, and societies of the world as beforesaid, it is then easie to prove that the sober Philosophers were in the right, and that no mans Pleasure is his ultimate end, finis cujus: Because no mans Pleasure is either such a demonstration of the Divine perfection as Vertue is as such; nor yet doth it so much conduce to the common good of societies or mankind, and so to the pleasing and glorifying of God. And this way Cicero might easily have made good his cause against the Epicureans.