A26892:6154
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.
9. Every true Christian believeth all the Essentials of Christianity, with a Divine faith, and not by a mere humane belief of his Teachers, though by their Help and Teaching, his faith is generated and confirmed, and preserved. Therefore no essential Article of Christianity is left to any obliging decision of any Church, but only to a subservient obliging Teaching: As whether there be a God, a Christ, a Heaven, a Hell, an Immortality of souls; whether God be to be believed, loved, feared, obeyed before man? Whether the Scripture be Gods Word, and true? Whether those that contradict it are to be believed therein? Whether Pastors, Assemblies, public Worship, Baptism, Sacrament of the Lords Supper, be Divine institutions? And the same I may say of any known Word of God; No mortals may judge in partem utramli•et, but the Pastors are only Authorized Teachers and helpers of the peoples faith. (And so they be partly to one another.)
9. Every true Christian believeth all the Essentials of Christianity, with a Divine faith, and not by a meer humane belief of his Teachers, though by their Help and Teaching, his faith is generated and confirmed, and preserved. Therefore no essential Article of Christianity is left to any obliging decision of any Church, but only to a subservient obliging Teaching: As whether there be a God, a Christ, a Heaven, a Hell, an Immortality of souls; whether God be to be believed, loved, feared, obeyed before man? Whether the Scripture be Gods Word, and true? Whether those that contradict it are to be believed therein? Whether Pastors, Assemblies, publick Worship, Baptism, Sacrament of the Lords Supper, be Divine institutions? And the same I may say of any known Word of God; No mortals may judge in partem utramli•et, but the Pastors are only Authorized Teachers and helpers of the peoples faith. (And so they be partly to one another.)
10. If the Pope or his Council, were the Infallible, or the Governing Expositors of all Gods Laws, and Scriptures, 1. God would have enabled them to do it by an Universal Commentary which all men should be obliged to believe, or at least not to contradict. For there is no Authority and Obligation given to men (yea, to so many successively) to do that (for the needful decision of Controversies) which they never have Ability given them to do. For that were to oblige them to things impossible. 2. And the Pope and his Council would be the most treacherous miscreants on earth, that in so many hundred years, would never write such an Infallible, nor Governing Commentary, to end the differences of the Christian world. Indeed they have judged (with others) against