A26892:2033
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 Pride in common converse.
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.
§. 96. Direct. 15. Look well upon thy self both body and soul, and think whether thou be a person 1fit for Pride. God hath purposely clothed thine immortal soul, in the course attire of corruptible flesh, and placed it in so poor and ruinous a Cottage, that it might be kept from pride: yea, he made this frail and corruptible body, to be a constitutive part of our very persons, that in knowing it, we may know our selves. Some will have a dead mans skull stand by them, in their Studies or Chambers, as an Antidote against pride. But God hath fastened us yet closer to mortality: Death dwelleth2 in our bowels. We are apt to marvel that so noble a soul should be lodged in so mean a body, ⟨image 154⟩made of the earth, to which it must return? A Stone is durable and clean; but my flesh is corruptible, and must turn to loathsome filth and rottenness: A Marble Pillar will stand firm and beautiful from age to age, but I must perish and consume in darkness. The Seats we sit upon, the Pillars we lean to, the Stones we tread upon, will be here, when we are turned to dust. The house that I build, may stand when I am rotten in the Grave: A Tree will live, when he that planted it is dead. Our bodies are of no better materials than the Brutes: Our substance is in a continual flux or waste, and loseth something every day, and if it were not repaired and patched up by daily air and nourishment, it would soon be spent, and our Oil consumed. If you were chained to a dead carcass, which you must still carry about with you, it were not a matter so fit to humble you, as to be united so nearly to so vile a body of your own. We carry a dunghill continually within us: Alas, how silly a piece is the greatest, the strongest and the comeliest of you all? What is that flesh which you so much pamper, but a skin full of corruption? a bag of filth, of flegm or choler or such like excrements? I• the curiousest Dames had but a sight of the flegm in their heads and bowels, the choler about their liver and galls, the worms or fil•h in other parts, they would go near to vomit at such a sight: The Swine or Beast hath as clean an inside: And what if this filth be covered with a whiter skin, or clearer colour than your neighbours have, is there any cause of pride in that? When sickness hath altered and consumed you, then where is that which you called beauty?