A26892:7161
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.
As I am not willing to thrust any man into extremes, nor to trouble men with calling those sins which God hath not forbidden; So I have reason to advise men to go in doubtful cases on the safer side; much more to dissuade them from undoubted sin, and especially from great and multiplied sins: And therefore I must thus decide the question.
As I am not willing to thrust any man into extreams, nor to trouble men with calling those sins which God hath not forbidden; So I have reason to advise men to go in doubtful cases on the safer side; much more to disswade them from undoubted sin, and especially from great and multiplyed sins: And therefore I must thus decide the question.
1. It is not absolutely unlawful to personate another man, nor doth the second Commandment forbid such living Images in this extent. I pass by the instance of the Woman of Tekoah, 2 Sam. 14. because the bare history proveth not the lawfulness. But Pauls speaking as of himself and Apollos the things which concerned others, was approvable: And as Christ frequently taught by Parables, so his Parables were a description of good and evil, by the way of feigned History, as if such and such things had been done by such persons as never were. And this fiction is no falsehood; For the hearer knoweth that it is not meant as an Historical Narrative, but a Parable; And it is but an Image in words, or a painted doctrine. And if a person and action may be feigned by words, I know not where it is forbidden to feign them by personal representation. Therefore to personate another is not simply a sin.
1. It is not absolutely unlawful to personate another man, nor doth the second Commandment forbid such living Images in this extent. I pass by the instance of the Woman of Tekoah, 2 Sam. 14. because the bare history proveth not the lawfulness. But Pauls speaking as of himself and Apollos the things which concerned others, was approvable: And as Christ frequently taught by Parables, so his Parables were a description of good and evil, by the way of feigned History, as if such and such things had been done by such persons as never were. And this fiction is no falshood; For the hearer knoweth that it is not meant as an Historical Narrative, but a Parable; And it is but an Image in words, or a painted doctrine. And if a person and action may be feigned by words, I know not where it is forbidden to feign them by personal representation. Therefore to personate another is not simply a sin.