A26892:1680
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.
Answ. 1. Distinguish between Gods Complacence and Benevolence. 2 Between the good that is present, and foreseen good with a present capacity for it.
1. God had a greater Benevolence to Jacob than Esau, and to the Israelites than to other Nations that were perhaps not much worse. And it is not for our Goodness that God decreeth to make us good, or to give us a double proportion of any of those mercies, which he giveth not as Rector, but as Dominus, and Benefactor, as an absolute Owner and free Benefactor. And with this Love of Benevolence he loveth us, when we are his enemies, that is, he purposeth to make us good: But this benevolence is but a secondary Love, and fruit of Complacency, joined with the free unequal distribution of his own.
1. God had a greater Benevolence to Iacob than Esau, and to the Israelites than to other Nations that were perhaps not much worse. And it is not for our Goodness that God decreeth to make us good, or to give us a double proportion of any of those mercies, which he giveth not as Rector, but as Dominus, and Benefactor, as an absolute Owner and free Benefactor. And with this Love of Benevolence he loveth us, when we are his enemies, that is, he purposeth to make us good: But this benevolence is but a secundary Love, and fruit of Complacency, joyned with the free unequal distribution of his own.
2. But for Complacency, which is Love in the first and strictest sense, God so loveth the wicked though Elect, no farther than they are Good and Lovely; that is, 1. As they have the Natural Goodness of Rational Creatures. 2. And as they are capable of all the future service they will do him, and glory they will bring him. 3. And as his Infinite Wisdom knoweth it fit to choose them to that service. Or if the Benevolence of Election do go before his first Complacence in them above others, as being before his foresight that they will serve and love him better, yet still this proper Love called Complacence, goeth not beyond the worth of the thing loved.