A26892:1790
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.
§. 7. Direct. 2. See that your chief study be about the Heart, that there Gods Image may be planted, 1and his interest advanced and the interest of the world and flesh subdued, and the Love of every sin cast out, and the Love of Holiness succeed: and that you content not your selves with seeming to do go•d in outward acts, when you are bad your selves, and strangers to the great internal duties. The first and2 great work of a Christian is about his heart. There it is that God dwelleth by his spirit, in his Saints; And there it is that sin and Satan reign in the ungodly. The great duties and the great sins are those of the heart. There is the root of Good and Evil: The tongue and life are but the fruits, and expressions of that which dwelleth within. The inward habit of sin is as a second nature: And a sinful nature is worse than a sinful act. Keep your hearts with all diligence: for from thence are the issues of life. Prov. 4. 23. Make the tree good, and the fruit will be good: But the viperous generation that are evil, cannot speak good: for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh Math. 12. 33, 34. Till the spirit have regenerated the soul, all outward Religion will be but a dead and pitiful thing: Though there is something which God hath appointed an unregenerate man to do in order to his own conversion, yet no such antecedent act will prove that the person is justified or reconciled to God, till he be converted. To make up a Religion of doing or saying something that is good, while the heart is void of the spirit of Christ, and sanctifying grace, is the Hypocrites Religion. Rom. 8. 9.
§. 7. Direct. 2. See that your chief study be about the Heart, that there Gods Image may be planted, 1and his interest advanced and the interest of the world and flesh subdued, and the Love of every sin cast out, and the Love of Holiness succeed: and that you content not your selves with seeming to do god in outward acts, when you are bad your selves, and strangers to the great internal duties. The first and