A26892:2453
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.
§. 36. There is scarce any error more common among Students, than supposing those Truths to be inconsistent, which indeed have a necessary dependence on each other; and a casting truth away as error, because they cannot reconcile it to some other truth: And there is nothing so much causeth this, as want of a true Method: He that hath no Method considerable, or after much curious labour hath fallen upon a false Method, or a Method that in any one considerable point is out of joint, will deal thus by many certain truths: As an ignorant person that is to set all the scattered parts of a Clock or Watch together, if he misplace one, will be unable rightly to place all the rest; and then when he finds that they fit not the place which he thinks they must be in, he casteth them away, and thinks they are not the right, and is searching for, or making something else to fit that place. False Method rejecteth many a truth.
§. 36. There is scarce any error more common among Students, than supposing those Truths to be inconsistent, which indeed have a necessary dependance on each other; and a casting truth away as error, because they cannot reconcile it to some other truth: And there is nothing so much causeth this, as want of a true Method: He that hath no Method considerable, or after much curious labour hath fallen upon a false Method, or a Method that in any one considerable point is out of joynt, will deal thus by many certain truths: As an ignorant person that is to set all the scattered parts of a Clock or Watch together, if he misplace one, will be unable rightly to place all the rest; and then when he finds that they fit not the place which he thinks they must be in, he casteth them away, and thinks they are not the right, and is searching for, or making something else to fit that place. False Method rejecteth many a truth.
§. 37. And (unless it be in Loving God, or other acts of the superior faculties, about their ultimate end and highest object) there is scarce any thing in morality but hath its extremes. And where they are not discerned, they are seldom well avoided. And usually narrow sighted persons, are fearful only of one extreme, and see no danger but on one side; and therefore are easily carried, by avoiding that, into the contrary.