A26892:2436
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.
§. 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.
§. 21. Direct. 10. Get some judicious man to draw you up the titles of a threefold Common-place-Book: 1One part for definitions, distinctions, axioms, and necessary doctrines: Another part for what is useful for ornament and oratory: And another for References as a common Index to all the Books of that Science which you read: For memory will not serve for all.
- 1Direct. 10.
§. 22. Ordinarily Students have not judgement enough to form their own Common-place-Books till they are old in Studies, and have read most of the authors which they would remember: And therefore the young must here have a judicious helper. And when they have done, injudiciousness will be apt to fill it with less necessary things, and to make an unmeet choice of matter, if they have not care and an instructor.
§. 22. Ordinarily Students have not judgement enough to form their own Common-place-Books till they are old in Studies, and have read most of the authors which they would remember: And therefore the young must here have a judicious helper. And when they have done, injudiciousness will be apt to fill it with less necessary things, and to make an unmeet choice of matter, if they have not care and an instructer.