A26892:2347
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.
§. 27. Direct. 13. Let not your holy thoughts be so seldom as to keep you strange to the matter of 1your meditations, nor so short as to be gone before you have made any thing of it. Now and then a cursory thought, will not acquaint the soul with God, nor bring it to a habit and temperament of holiness. Whereas that which you think on frequently and seriously, as your business and delight, will become the nutriment and nature of your souls: As the air which we daily breathe in, and the food which we daily live upon, doth to our bodies. And you will find that as use will breed skill and strength, so it will cause such acquaintance and familiarity, as will very much tend to the fruit and comfort of the work. Whereas they that only cast now and then a look at God and holiness, or are seldom and short in holy thoughts, do lose so quickly the little which they get, that it makes no great alteration on them.
- 1Direct. 13.
§. 28. Direct. 14. Yet do not over-do in point of violence or length; but carry on the work sincerely 1according to the abilities of your minds and bodies; lest going beyond your strength, you craze your brains, and discompose your minds, and disable your selves to do any thing at all. Though we cannot estimatively love God too much, yet is it possible to think of him with too much passion, or too long at once: Because it may be more than the Spirits and brain can bear: And if once they be overstrained, if they break not, like a Lute-string screwed too high, they will be like a leg that is out of joint, that can pain you, but not bear you. While the soul •ideth on so lame or dull a Horse, as the body is, it must not go the pace which it desireth, but which the body can bear; or else it may quickly be dismounted, or like one that rideth on a tired Horse: It is not the Horse that goeth at first with chafing heat, and violence, which will travel best: But you must put on in the pace that you are able to hold out. You little know how lamentable and distressed a case you will be in, or how great an advantage the Tempter hath, if once he do but tire you by over-doing!