A26892:820
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.
§. 10. 3. The sinfulness of the memory is in its Retentiveness of Evil, or things hurtful and prohibited: and its Looseness and Neglect of better, spiritual, necessary things. If this were only as things present have the natural advantage to make a deeper impress upon the fantasy, and things unseen, and absent have the disadvantage, it were then but a natural innocent infirmity: or if in sickness, age, or weakness, all kind of memory equally decay. But it is plain that if the Bible be open before our eyes, and preaching be in our ears, and things unseen have the advantage of their infinite greatness, and excellency, and concernment to us, yet our Memories are like walls of stone to any thing that is spiritual, and like walls of wax, on which you may write any thing, of that which is secular or evil. Note here also that the faultiness of the memory is only so far sinful as it is Voluntary: It is the will where the sin is as in its Throne or chiefest subject: Because men Love carnal things, and Love not spiritual things, therefore it is that they mind, and understand, and remember the one, and not the other. So that it is but as Imperate, and Participatively that the memory is capable of sin.
§. 10. 3. The sinfulness of the memory is in its Retentiveness of Evil, or things hurtful and prohited: and its Looseness and Neglect of better, spiritual, necessary things. If this were only as things present have the natural advantage to make a deeper impress upon the fantasie, and things unseen, and absent have the disadvantage, it were then but a natural innocent infirmity: or if in sickness, age, or weakness, all kind of memory equally decay. But it is plain that if the Bible be open before our eyes, and preaching be in our ears, and things unseen have the advantage of their infinite greatness, and excellency, and concernment to us, yet our Memories are like walls of stone to any thing that is spiritual, and like walls of wax, on which you may write any thing, of that which is secular or evil. Note here also that the faultiness of the memory is only so farr sinful as it is Voluntary: It is the will where the sin is as in its Throne or chiefest subject: Because men Love carnal things, and Love not spiritual things, therefore it is that they mind, and understand, and remember the one, and not the other. So that it is but as Imperate, and Participatively that the memory is capable of sin.