A26892:8135
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.
Part 4 › Chapter 3: Directions for Subjects concerning their duty to their Rulers.
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. Abuse not Learning it self to lift you up with self-conceitedness against Governors! Learned men may be ignorant of Polity; or at least unexperienced, and almost as unfit to judge, as of matters of War or Navigation.
3. Abuse not Learning it self to lift you up with self-conceitedness against Governours! Learned men may be ignorant of Polity; or at least unexperienced, and almost as unfit to judge, as of matters of Warr or Navigation.
4. Take heed of giving the Magistrates power to the Clergy, and setting up Secular Coercive power1 under the name of the power of the Keys: And it had been happy for the Church if God had persuaded Magistrates in all ages to have kept the Sword in their own hands, and not have put it into the Clergies hands, to fulfil their wills by: For, 1. By this means the Clergy had escaped the odium of usurpation and domineering, by which atheistical Politicians, would make Religion odious to Magistrates for their sakes. 2. And by this means greater unity had been preserved in the Church, while one faction is not armed with the Sword to tread down the rest: For if Divines contend only by dint of Argument, when they have talked themselves and others aweary they will have done: But when they go to it with dint of Sword, it so ill becometh them, that it seldom doth good, but the party often that trusteth least to their Reason, must destroy the other, and make their cause good by Iron arguments. 3. And then the Romish Clergy had not been armed against Princes to the terrible concussions of the Christian world, which Histories at large relate; if Princes had not first lent them the Sword which they turned against them. 4. And then Church Discipline would have been better understood, and have been more effectual; which is corrupted and turned to another thing and so cast out, when the Sword is used instead of the Keys, under pretence of making it effectual: None but Consenters are capable of Church-communion: No man can be a Christian, nor Godly, nor saved against his will: And therefore Consenters and Volunteers only are capable of Church-discipline: As a Sword will not make a Sermon effectual, no more will it make Discipline effectual; which is but the management of Gods Word to work upon the conscience. So far as men are to be driven by the Sword to the use of means, or restrained from offering injury to Religion, the Magistrate himself is fittest to do it. It is noted by Historians as the dishonour of Cyril of Alexandria (though a famous Bishop) that he was the first Bishop that like a Magistrate used the Sword there, and used violence against Heretics and dissenters.