A26892:692
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.
Answ. It is as if you should ask, How shall I know, whether my harvest be from the Earth, or Sun, or Rain, or God, or from my labour? I will tell you how. They are all con-causes: If the effect be there, they all concur: If the effect be wanting, some of them were wanting. It's foolish to ask, which is the cause, when the effect is not produced but by the concurrence of them all: If you had asked, which cause did fail, when the effect faileth? there were reason in that question: But there is none in this. The more to blame those foolish Atheists, that think God or the Spirit is not the cause, if they can but find that Reason and Means are in the effect. Your Reason, and Conscience, and Means would fall short of the effect, if the Spirit put not life into all.
§. 19. Obj. But I am exceedingly troubled and confounded with continual doubts about every motion that1 is in my mind, whether it be from the Spirit of God, or not.
- 1Object.