A26892:1693
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.
§. 3. By all this you may perceive, that those troubled Christians which doubt not of the truth of the Word of God, but only of their own sincerity, and consequently of their Justification and Salvation, do ignorantly complain that they have not faith, or that they cannot believe: For it is no act of unbelief at all, for me to doubt whether my own heart be sincere: This is my ignorance of my self, but it is not any degree of unbelief: For Gods Word doth no where say that I am sincere: and therefore I may doubt of this, without doubting of Gods Word at all. And let all troubled Christians know, that they have no more unbelief in them, than they have doubting or unbelief of the truth of the Word of God: Even that despair it self, which hath none of this in it, hath no unbelief in it (i• there be any such): I thought it needful thus far to tell you what unbelief is, before I come to give you Directions against it: And though the mere doubting of our own sincerity be no unbelief at all, yet real unbelief of the very truth of the Holy Scriptures, is so common and dangerous a sin, and some degree of it is latent in the best, that I think we can no way so much further the work of Grace, as by destroying this: The weakness of our faith in the truth of Scriptures, and the remnant of our unbelief of it, is the principal cause of all the languishings of our Love and Obedience and every Grace; and to strengthen faith, is to strengthen all. What I have fuller written in my Saints Rest, Part 2. and my Treatise against Infidelity I here suppose.
§. 3. By all this you may perceive, that those troubled Christians which doubt not of the truth of the Word of God, but only of their own sincerity, and consequently of their Justification and Salvation, do ignorantly complain that they have not faith, or that they cannot believe: For it is no act of unbelief at all, for me to doubt whether my own heart be sincere: This is my ignorance of my self, but it is not any degree of unbelief: For Gods Word doth no where say that I am sincere: and therefore I may doubt of this, without doubting of Gods Word at all. And let all troubled Christians know, that they have no more unbelief in them, than they have doubting or unbelief of the truth of the Word of God: Even that despair it self, which hath none of this in it, hath no unbelief in it (i• there be any such): I thought it needful thus far to tell you what unbelief is, before I come to give you Directions against it: And though the meer doubting of our own sincerity be no unbelief at all, yet real unbelief of the very truth of the Holy Scriptures, is so common and dangerous a sin, and some degree of it is latent in the best, that I think we can no way so much further the work of Grace, as by destroying this: The weakness of our faith in the truth of Scriptures, and the remnant of our unbelief of it, is the principal cause of all the languishings of our Love and Obedience and every Grace; and to strengthen faith, is to strengthen all. What I have ullier written in my Saints Rest, Part 2. and my Treatise against Infidelity I here suppose.