A26892:7761
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. 174. What Books Especially of Theology should one choose, who for want of money or time, can read but few?
Quest. 174. What Books Especially of Theologie should one choose, who for want of money or time, can read but few?
Answ. General. The truth is, 1. It is not the reading of many Books which is necessary to make a man wise or good: But the well reading of a few, could he be sure to have the best. 2. And it is not possible to read over very many on the same subjects, without a great deal of loss of precious time: 3. And yet the Reading of as many as is possible tendeth much to the increase of knowledge, and were the best way, if greater matters were not that way unavoidably to be omitted: Life therefore being short, and work great, and Knowledge being for Love and Practice, and no man having leisure to learn all things, a wise man must be sure to lay hold on that which is most useful and necessary. 4. But some considerable acquaintance with many Books is now become by accident necessary to a Divine. 1. Because unhappily a young Student knoweth not which are the best, till he hath tried them: And when he should take another mans word, he knoweth not whose word it is that he should take: For among grave men, accounted great Scholars, its few that are truly judicious and wise, and he that is not wise himself cannot know who else are so indeed: And every man will commend the Authors that are of his own opinion. And if I commend to you some Authors above others, what do I but commend my own judgement to you, even as if I commended my own Books, and persuaded you to read them: when another man of a different judgement will commend to you Books of a different sort. And how knoweth a raw Student which of us is in the right. 2. Because no one man is so full and perfect as to say all that is said by all others: But though one man excel in one or many respects, another may excel him in some particulars, and say that which he omitteth, or mistaketh in. 3. But especially because many errors and adversaries have many Books necessary to some, for to know what they say, and to know how to confute them, especially the Papists, whose way is upon pretence of Antiquity and Universality, to carry every Controversy into a Wood of Church History, and ancient Writers, that there you may first be lost, and then they may have the finding of you: And if you cannot answer every corrupted or abused Citation of theirs out of Councils and Fathers, they triumph as if they had justified their Church-tyranny. 4. And the very subjects that are to be understood are numerous, and few men write of all. 5.