A26892:1929
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.
Part 1 › Chapter 4 › Part 5 › Signs of the worst part of PRIDE against GOD.
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.
§. 12. God is to be mans End, though we can add nothing to him: The highest Love supposeth no want in him that we love, but an excellency of Glory, Wisdom and Goodness, to which all our1 faculties offer up themselves in Admiration, Love and Praise: not only for the Delights of these, nor only t•at our persons may herein be happy; but chiefly that God may have his due, and his will may be pleased and fulfilled; and because his Excellencies deserve all this from men and Angels: When2 we love a man of wonderful Learning, and Wisdom, and Meekness, and Charity, and Holiness, and other Goodness, it is not chiefly for our selves, that we love him, that we may receive something from him: •or we feel his Excellency command our Love, though we were sure that we should never receive any thing from him: Nor is the Delight of Loving him our chief end, but a consequent, or the lesser par• of our End: For we feel that we Love him before we think of the Delight. The Admiration, Love and Praise of God our ultimate End, hath no End beside their proper object: For it is it self the final act, even mans Perfection. Amiableness magnetically attracteth Love: If you ask, an Angel why he loveth God, he will say because he is infinitely amiable: And though in such motions nature secretly aimeth at its own perfection and felicity, and lawfully interesceth it self in this final motion, yet the Union being of such as are infinitely unequal, O how little do the glorified Spirits respect themselves in comparison of the blessed glorious God. See what I said of this before, Chap. 3. Direct. 11. & 15.
- 1How God is mans End.
- 2Idem s•nant, sum•e a•ari, & esse finem ultimum: at proculdubio▪ Deus summe amandus est. U•um vero finem Aristoteles declaravit esse, Usum virtutis in vita sancta & integra. Heh. Illust. in A istot.