A26892:574
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.
§. 5. But if your ears are daily filled with froth and folly, with ribaldry or idle stories, with Oaths and Curses, with furious words, or scorns and jeers against the godly, or with the Sophistry of deceivers, is it likely this should leave a pleasant or wholesome relish on your minds? Is it likely that the effect should not be seen, in your lean or leprous hearts and lives, as well as the effects of an infected or unwholesome air or diet, will be seen upon your diseased bodies? He is ungodly that liketh such company best: And he is proud and presumptuous that will unnecessarily cast himself upon it, in confidence that he shall receive no hurt: And he is careless of himself, that will not cautiously avoid it: And few that long converse with such, come off without some notable loss; except when we live with such, as Lot did in Sodom, grieving for their sin and misery; or as Christ conversed with publicans and sinners, with a holy zeal and diligence to convert and save them, or as those that have not liberty, who bear that which they have not power to avoid.
§. 5. But if your ears are daily filled with froth and folly, with ribaldry or idle stories, with Oaths and Curses, with furious words, or scorns and jears against the godly, or with the Sophistry of deceivers, is it likely this should leave a pleasant or wholsome relish on your minds? Is it likely that the effect should not be seen, in your lean or leprous hearts and lives, as well as the effects of an infected or unwholsome air or diet, will be seen upon your diseased bodies? He is ungodly that liketh such company best: And he is proud and presumptuous that will unnecessarily cast himself upon it, in confidence that he shall receive no hurt: And he is careless of himself, that will not cautelously avoid it: And few that long converse with such, come off without some notable loss; except when we live with such, as Lot did in Sodom, grieving for their sin and misery; or as Christ conversed with publicans and sinners, with a holy zeal and diligence to convert and save them, or as those that have not liberty, who bear that which they have not power to avoid.
§. 6. Among the rest, your danger is not least from that are eager to proselyte you to some party or unsound opinion: that they think they are in the right, and that they do it in love, and that they think it necessary to your salvation, and that Truth or Godliness are the things which they profess, all this makes the danger much the greater to you, if it be not Truth and Godliness indeed, which they propose and plead for. And none are in more danger than the ungrounded and unexperienced, that yet are so wise in their own esteem, as to be confident that they know Truth from Error when they hear it, and are not afraid of any deceit, nor much suspicious of their own understandings. But of this before.