A26892:1786
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.
The Name or Profession of a Christian and a Protestant with going to Church, and a heartless lip-service or saying their Prayers, is the cloak of all ungodly Protestants. Others discerning the thinness of this cloak, do think to make themselves a better: and they take up the strictest opinions in Religion, and own those which they account the strictest party, and own that which they esteem the purest and most spiritual worship; The cloak of these men is their opinions, party and way of worship, while their carnal lives detect their Hypocrisy. Some that see through all these pretences, do take up the most excellent cloak of all, and that is, An appearance of serious spirituality in Religion, with a due observation of all the outward parts and means, and a Reformation of life, in works of piety, Justice and charity; I say, An appearance of all these; which if they had indeed, they were sincere, and should be saved: in which the Godly Christian goeth beyond them all.
The Name or Profession of a Christian and a Protestant with going to Church, and a heartless lip-service or saying their Prayers, is the cloak of all ungodly Protestants. Others discerning the thinness of this cloak, do think to make themselves a better: and they take up the strictest opinions in Religion, and own those which they account the strictest party, and own that which they esteem the purest and most spiritual worship; The cloak of these men is their opinions, p•rty and way of worship, while their carnal lives detect their Hypocrisie. Some that see through all these pretenses, do take up the most excellent cloak of all, and that is, An appearance of serious spirituality in Religion, with a due observation of all the outward parts and means, and a Reformation of life, in works of piety, Iustice and charity; I say, An appearance of all these; which if they had indeed, they were sincere, and should be saved: in which the Godly Christian goeth beyond them all.
§. 4. By this it is plain, that among us in England all men that are not Saints are Hypocrites, because that all (except here or there a Jew or Infidel) profess themselves to be Christians; and every true Christian is a Saint. They know that none but Saints or Godly persons shall be saved: And there is few of them that will renounce their hopes of Heaven; and therefore they must pretend to be all godly. And is it not most cursed horrid hypocrisy, for a man to pretend to Religion as the only way to his salvation, and confidently call himself a Christian, while he hateth and derideth the power and practice of that very Religion which he doth profess? Of this see my Treat. of The Vain Religion of the Formal Hypocrite.