A26892:466
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.
Answ. Yes no doubt: and it is a great and wonderful mercy: and I'll tell you what it is. 1. The Holy Spirit by immediate inspiration revealed to the Apostles the doctrine of Christ, and caused them infallibly to indite the Scriptures. (But this is not that way of ordinary illumination now.) 2. The Holy Spirit assisteth us in our hearing, reading and studying the Scriptures, that we may come by diligence to the true understanding of it; but doth not give us that understanding, without hearing, reading or study. Faith cometh by hearing, Rom. 10. It blesseth the use of means to us, but blesseth us not in the neglect of means. 3. The Holy Spirit doth open the eyes and heart of a sinner who hath heard and notionally understood the substance of the Gospel, that he may know that piercingly, and effectually, and practically, which before he knew but notionally and uneffectually: so that the knowledge of the same truth, is now become powerful, and as it were of another kind. And this is the Spirits sanctifying of the mind, and principal work of saving illumination: Not by causing us to know any thing of God, or Christ, or Heaven without means: But by opening the heart, that through the means it may take in that knowledge deeply, which others have but notionally, and in a dead opinion; and by making our knowledge clear, and quick, and powerful, to affect the heart, and rule the life. 4. The Holy Spirit sanctifieth all that notional knowledge which men had before their renovation: All their learning and parts are now made subservient to Christ, and to the right End, and turned into their proper channel. 5. And the Holy Ghost doth by sanctifying the heart, possess it with such a Love to God, and Heaven, and Holiness, and Truth, as is a wonderful advantage to us in our studies for the attaining of further knowledge. Experience telleth us, how great a help it is to knowledge, to have a constant love, delight and desire to the thing which we would know. All these ways the Spirit is the •nlightner of believers.
Answ. Yes no doubt: and it is a great and wonderful mercy: and I'l tell you what it is. 1. The Holy Spirit by immediate inspiration revealed to the Apostles the doctrine of Christ, and caused them i••allibly to indite the Scriptures. (But this is not that way of ordinary illumination now.) 2. The Holy Spirit assisteth us in our hearing, reading and studying the Scriptures, that we may come by diligence to the true understanding of it; but doth not give us that understanding, without hearing, reading or study. Faith cometh by hearing,