A26892:2434
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.
§. 18. I mean not that you should over-do, and overthrow your brains and bodies, nor forbear such sober exercise as is most necessary to your health: For a sick body is an ill companion for a Student; and much more a crazed brain. But time-wasters are Lovers of pleasure or idleness, more than of knowledge and holiness: And wisdom falleth not into idle sluggish dreaming souls. If you think it not worth your painfullest and closest studies, you must take up with idle ignorance, and go abroad with swelling Titles and empty brains, as the deceivers and the scourges of the Church.
§. 19. Direct. 9. Keep up a Delight in all your studies, and carry them not on in an unwilling weariness: 1And, if it be not by notable error in matter or method, gratify your delight with such things as you are best pleased with, though they bring some smaller inconvenience: because else your weariness may bring much more.
§. 19. Direct. 9. Keep up a Delight in all your studies, and carry them not on in an unwilling weariness: 1And, if it be not by notable error in matter or method, gratifie your delight with such things as you are best pleased with, though they bring some smaller inconvenience: because else your weariness may bring much more.
- 1Direct. 9.
§. 20. I know that a delight in sin and vanity is not to be gratified: and force must be used with a backward mind in cases of necessity and weight. But if it be but in the variety of subjects, and the choice of pleasing studies which are profitable, though simply some other might be fitter, something is to be yielded to delight. But especially the heart must be got to a delight in holy things: And then, time will be improved; the memory will be helped; much will be done; and you will persevere: And it will preserve the mind from temptations to needless recreations, and from the deadly plague of youthful lusts, when your daily labour is a greater pleasure to you.