A26892:797
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.
§. 3. 1. The Parts or faculties to be cleansed and cured, are both the Superior and Inferior. 1. The Understanding (though not the first in the sin) must be first in the cure: For all that is done upon the Lower faculties must be by the Governing power of the will: And all that is done upon the will (ac cording to the order of humane nature) must be done by the Understanding: But the Understanding hath its own diseases which must be known and cured. Its malady in general is Ignorance: which is not only a privation of actual knowledge, but an undisposedness also of the understanding to know the truth. A man may be deprived of some actual knowledge that hath no disease in his mind that causeeth1 it: as in case that either the object be absent and out of reach, or that there be no sufficient Revelation of it, or that the mind be taken up wholly upon some other thing, or in case a man shut out the thoughts of such an object, or refuse the evidence (which is the act of the will) even as a man that is not blind, may yet not see a particular object, 1. In case it be out of his natural reach: 2. Or if it be night, and he want extrinsic light; 3. Or in case he be wholly taken up with the observation of other things, 4. Or in case he wilfully either shut or turn away his eyes.
§. 3. 1. The Parts or faculties to be cleansed and cured, are both the Superiour and Inferiour. 1. The Understanding (though not the first in the sin) must be first in the cure: For all that is done upon the Lower faculties must be by the Governing power of the will: And all that is done upon the will (ac cording to the order of humane nature) must be done by the Understanding: But the Understanding hath its own diseases which must be known and cured. Its malady in general is Ignorance: which is not only a privation of actual knowledge, but an undisposedness also of the understanding to know the truth. A man may be deprived of some actual knowledge that hath no disease in his mind that causeeth1 it: as in case that either the object be absent and out of reach, or that there be no sufficient Revelation of it, or that the mind be taken up wholly upon some other thing, or in case a man shut out the thoughts of such an object, or refuse the evidence (which is the act of the will) even as a man that is not blind, may yet not see a particular object, 1. In case it be out of his natural reach: 2. Or if it be night, and he want extrinsick light; 3. Or in case he be wholly taken up with the observation of other things, 4. Or in case he wilfully either shut or turn away his eyes.