A26892:1639
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.
105. And I think it is this spirit of Adoption and Love which is called The Divine Nature in us, as it inclineth us to Love God and Holiness for it self, as Nature is inclined to self-love and to food and other necessaries. Not that the specific essential Nature, that is, substance or form of the soul is changed, and man Deified; and he become a God that was before a man; But his humane Soul or Nature is elevated or more perfected (as a sick man by health, or a blind man by his sight) by the spirit of God inclining him habitually to God himself, as in and for himself. (And this is all which the publisher of Sir H. Vanes notions of the two Covenants and two Natures, can soundly me•n, and seemeth to grope after).
105. And I think it is this spirit of Adoption and Love which is called The Divine Nature in us, as it inclineth us to Love God and Holiness for it self, as Nature is inclined to self-love and to food and other necessaries. Not that the specifick essential Nature, that is, substance or form of the soul is changed, and man Deified; and he become a God that was before a man; But his humane Soul or Nature is elevated or more perfected (as a sick man by health, or a blind man by his sight) by the spirit of God inclining him habitually to God himself, as in and for himself. (And this is all which the publisher of Sir H. Vanes notions of the two Covenants and two Natures, can soundly me•n, and seemeth to grope after).
106. By all this you see that as the Love of God hath a double self-love in us to deal with, so it dealeth variously with each: 1. Sensual inordinate self-love it destroyeth: both as it consisteth in the inordinate Love of sensual pleasure, and in the inordinate love of self or life: 2. Lawful and just self-love it increaseth and improveth to our further good, but subjecteth it to the highest purest Love of God.