A26892:7950
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.
§. 7. Memorand. 7. Remember that the people that are seriously Religious, that Love and Worship 1and Obey the Lord, with all their heart, are the best of your subjects, and the honour of your Dominions:2 see therefore that serious Godliness be every where encouraged, and that the profane and ignorant rabble be never encouraged in their enmity and opposition to it: And that true Fanaticism, Hypocrisy and Schism be so prudently discountenanced and supperest, that none may have encouragement to set themselves against Godliness, under the slander or pretension of such names. If Christianity be better than Heathenism, those Christians then are they that must be *countenanced, who go further in Holiness and Charity and Justice than Heathens do, rather than those that go no further (besides Opinions and Formalities) than a Cato a Plato or Socrates have done. If all Religion were a deceit, it were fit to be banished, and Atheism professed, and men confess themselves to be but brutes: But if there be a God, there must be a Religion: And if we must be Religious, we must sure be so in seriousness, and not hypocrisy and jest. It being no such small contemptible matter, to be turned into dissembling complement.
§. 7. Memorand. 7. Remember that the people that are seriously Religious, that Love and Worship 1and Obey the Lord, with all their heart, are the best of your subjects, and the honour of your Dominions:2 see therefore that serious Godliness be every where encouraged, and that the prophane and ignorant rabble be never encouraged in their enmity and opposition to it: And that true Fanaticism, Hypocrisie and Schism be so prudently discountenanced and supprest, that none may have encouragement to set themselves against Godliness, under the slander or pretension of such names. If Christianity be better than Heathenism, those Christians then are they that must be *countenanced, who go further in Holiness and Charity and Justice than Heathens do, rather than those that go no further (besides Opinions and Formalities) than a Cato a Plato or Socrates have done. If all Religion were a deceit, it were fit to be banished, and Atheism professed, and men confess themselves to be but bruits: But if there be a God, there must be a Religion: And if we must be Religious, we must sure be so in seriousness, and not hypocrisie and jeast. It being no such small contemptible matter, to be turned into dissembling complement.