A26892:6984
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.
1. The keeping a true Fast or Abstinence from food, for forty days, on what account soever, being impossible, or self-murder, is not to be attempted.
1. The keeping a true Fast or Abstinence from food, for fourty dayes, on what account soever, being impossible, or self-murder, is not to be attempted.
2. The Imitation of Christ in his forty days fasting is not to be attempted or pretended to: Because his miraculous works were not done for our imitation. And it is presumption for us to pretend to such a power as is necessary to Miracles, or yet to make any Essays at such an imitation▪ any more than at the raising of the dead.
2. The Imitation of Christ in his fourty dayes fasting is not to be attempted or pretended to: Because his miraculous works were not done for our imitation. And it is presumption for us to pretend to such a power as is necessary to Miracles, or yet to make any Essayes at such an imitation▪ any more than at the raising of the dead.
3. The pretending of a fast when men do but change their diet; Flesh for Fish, Fruit, Sweetmeats, &c. is but hypocritical and ridiculous: Most poor labourers, and temperate Ministers do live all the year on a more flesh-denying diet, and in greater abstinence than many Papists do in Lent, or on their fasting days. And what a ridiculous dispute is it to hear, e. g. a Calvin that never eateth but one small meal a day for many years, to plead against the keeping of the Popish fasts, and their Clergy call him voracious, and carnal, and an Epicure, and plead for fasting as holy mortification, who eat as many meals and as much meat on a Lent day or fasting day, as Calvin did in three feasting days; and drink as much Wine in a Lent, as he in twenty years? Sure I am I know many such on both sides: Some that eat but a small meal a day, and never drink Wine at all, and others that drink Wine daily, and eat of many dishes at a meal, and that to the full, and of the sweetest, as Fish, Fruits, &c. yet rail at the former for not fasting as they do. So delusory are the outward appearances, and so false the pretensions of the carnal sort!