A26892:5619
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.
§. 64. 8. These Divisions are the grief of honest spectators, and cause the sorrows of those that are guilty of them. They make all their duties uneasy to them, and turn their Religion into a bitter unpleasant wrangling toil: Like Oxen in the yoke that strive against each other, when they should draw in order and equality. What a grievous life is it to Husband and Wife, or any in the family, if they live in discord? So is it to the members of the Church. When once men take the Kingdom of God to consist of meats, or drinks, or ceremonies, which consisteth in Righteousness, and Peace, and1 Joy in the Holy Ghost, and turn to strive about unedifying questions, they turn from all the sweetness of Religion.
§. 64. 8. These Divisions are the grief of honest spectators, and cause the sorrows of those that are guilty of them. They make all their duties uneasie to them, and turn their Religion into a bitter unpleasant wrangling toil: Like Ox•n in the yoke that strive against each other, when they should draw in order and equality. What a grievous life is it to Husband and Wife, or any in the family, if they live in discord? So is it to the members of the Church. When once men take the Kingdom of God to consist of meats, or drinks, or ceremonies, which consisteth in Righteousness, and Peace, and1 Joy in the Holy Ghost, and turn to strive about unedifying questions, they turn from all the sweetness of Religion.
§. 65. 9. Sects and Divisions lead directly to Apostasy from the faith. Nothing is more in the design of Satan, than to confound men so with variety of Religions, that they may think there is no certainty in any: that so both the ignorant spectators may think all Religion is but fancy and deceit, and the contenders themselves wheel about from Sect to Sect, till they come to the point where they first set out, and to be at last deliberately of no Religion, who at first were of none for want of deliberation. And it is no small success that Satan hath had by this temptation.