A26892:7471
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.
Quest. 144. May not the Subscribing of the whole Scriptures serve turn for all the foresaid ends, without Creeds, Catechisms, or Confessions?
Answ. BY Subscribing to the Scriptures you mean either, Generally and Implicitly that All in them is True and Good (though perhaps you know not what is in it.) Or else particularly and explicitly, that every point in it is by you both understood and believed to be true.
In the first sense, it is not sufficient to salvation: For this Implicit faith, hath really no act in it, but a Belief that all that God faith is true: which is only the formal object of faith and is no more than to believe that there is a God (for a Liar is not a God). And this he may do, who never believed in Christ, or a word of Scripture, as not taking it to be Gods Word; yea, that will not believe that God forbiddeth his beastly life. Infidels ordinarily go thus far.
In the first sense, it is not sufficient to salvation: For this Implicite faith, hath really no act in it, but a Belief that all that God faith is true: which is only the formal object of faith and is no more than to believe that there is a God (for a Lyar is not a God). And this he may do, who never believed in Christ, or a word of Scripture, as not taking it to be Gods Word; yea, that will not believe that God forbiddeth his beastly life. Infidels ordinarily go thus far.