A26892:799
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.
Consider then the Acts, and Habits, and disposition of the Understanding. And you will find, 1. That some acts, and the privation of them, are Necessary, Naturally, Originally, and unalterably: and these are not virtues or sinful at all, as having no morality. As to know unwillingly as the Devils do, and to Believe, when it cannot be resisted, though they would; this is no moral Virtue at all, but a natural perfection only. So 1. To be ignorant of that which is no object of knowledge, or which is naturally beyond our knowledge (as of the Essence of God) is no sin at all: 2. Nor to be ignorant of that which was never revealed, when no fault of ours hindered the revelation, is no sin. 3. Nor to be without the present actual knowledge or consideration of one point, at that moment when our thoughts are lawfully diverted (as in greater business) or suspended (as in sleep.) 4. But to be ignorant wilfully is a sin, participatively in the intellect, and originally in the will. 5. And ⟨p. 96⟩to be ignorant for want of Revelation, when our selves are the hinderers of that revelation, or the meritorious cause that we want it, is our sin: Because though that ignorance be immediately necessary and hypothetically, yet originally and remotely it is Free and Voluntary.
Consider then the Acts, and Habits, and disposition of the Understanding. And you will find, 1. That some acts, and the privation of them, are Necessary, Naturally, Originally, and unalterably: and these are not virtues or sinful at all, as having no morality. As to know unwillingly as the Devils do, and to Believe, when it cannot be resisted, though they would; this is no moral Vertue at all, but a natural perfection only. So 1. To be ignorant of that which is no object of knowledge, or which is naturally beyond our knowledge (as of the Essence of God) is no sin at all: 2. Nor to be ignorant of that which was never revealed, when no fault of ours hindred the revelation, is no sin. 3. Nor to be without the present actual knowledge or consideration of one point, at that moment when our thoughts are lawfully diverted (as in greater business) or suspended (as in sleep.) 4. But to be ignorant wilfully is a sin, participatively in the intellect, and originally in the will. 5. And ⟨p. 96⟩to be ignorant for want of Revelation, when our selves are the hinderers of that revelation, or the meritorious cause that we want it, is our sin: Because though that ignorance be immediately necessary and hypthtically, yet originally and remotely it is Free and Voluntary.