A26892:8185
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 4: Directions to Lawyers about their Duty to God.
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.
§. 1. Direct. 1. Take the whole frame of Polity together, and study each part in its proper place, and 1know it in its due relation to the rest: that is, Understand first the Doctrine of Polity and Laws in genere, and next the Universal Polity and Laws of God in specie; and then study Humane Polity and Laws as they stand in their due subordination to the Polity and Laws of God, as the by-Laws of Corporations do to the General Laws of the Land.
- 1Direct. 1.
§. 2. He that understandeth not what Polity and Law is in genere, is unlike to understand what Divine or Humane Polity or Law is in specie: He that knoweth not what Government is, and what a community, and what a politic society is; will hardly know what a Common-wealth or Church is: And he that knoweth not what a Common-wealth is in genere, what is its End, and what its constitutive parts, and what the efficient causes, and what a Law, and Judgement, and Execution is, will study but unhappily the Constitution or Laws of the Kingdom which he liveth in.
§. 2. He that understandeth not what Polity and Law is in genere, is unlike to understand what Divine or Humane Polity or Law is in specie: He that knoweth not what Government is, and what a community, and what a politick society is; will hardly know what a Common-wealth or Church is: And he that knoweth not what a Common-wealth is in genere, what is its End, and what its constitutive parts, and what the efficient causes, and what a Law, and Judgement, and Execution is, will study but unhappily the Constitution or Laws of the Kingdom which he liveth in.
§. 3. 2. And he that understandeth not the Divine Dominium & Imperium as founded in Creation (and refounded in Redemption), and mans subjection to his Absolute Lord, and the Universal Laws which he hath given in Nature and Scripture to the world, can never have any true understanding of the Polity or Laws of any Kingdom in particular: No more than he can well understand the true state of a Corporation, or the power of a Mayor, or Justice, or Constable, who knoweth nothing of the state of the Kingdom, or of the King, or of his Laws. What ridiculous discourses would such a man make of his Local Polity or Laws? He knoweth nothing worth the knowing, who knoweth not that all Kings and States have no power but what is derived from God, and subservient to him; and are all his Officers, much more below him, than their Justices and Officers are to them; and that their Laws are of no force against the Laws of God, whether of Natural or Supernatural Revelation. And therefore it is most easy to see, that he that will be a good Lawyer, must first be a Divine; And that the Atheists that deride or slight Divinity, do but play the fools in all their independent broken studies. A man may be a good Divine, that is no Lawyer, but he can be no good Lawyer, that understandeth not Theology. Therefore let the Government and Laws of God, have the first and chiefest place in your studies, and in all your observation and regard.