A26892:8162
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.
4. You must note that Laws are made for the Government of Societies as such universally; and so are fitted to the Common Case, for the Common Good. And it is not possible but that a Law which prescribeth a duty which by accident is so to the most, should meet with some particular subject to whom the case is so circumstantiated as that the same act would be to him a sin: And to the same man it may be ordinarily a duty, and in an extraordinary case a sin. Thence it is that in some cases (as Lent Fasts, Marriages, &c.) Rulers oft authorize some persons to grant dispensations in certain cases; And hence it is said, that Necessity hath no Law.
Hereupon I conclude as followeth.
1. It is no sin to break a Law which is no Law, as being against God, or not authorized by him (as of a Usurper, &c.) See R. Hooker Conclus. Lib 8.
2. It is no Law so far as it is no signification of the true Will of the Ruler, what ever the words be: Therefore so far it is no sin to break it.