A26892:8206
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 5: The Duty of Physicians.Part 4 › Chapter 5: The Duty of Physicions.
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. Direct. 3. Adventure not unnecessarily on things beyond your skill, but in difficult cases persuade 1your patients to use the help of abler Physicians, if there be any to be had, though it be against your own commodity. So far should you be from envying the greater esteem and practice of abler men, and from all unworthy aspersions or detraction, that you should do your best to persuade all your patients to seek their counsels, when ever the danger of their lives or health requireth it. For their Lives are of greater value than your gain. So abstruse and conjectural is the business of your profession, that it requireth very high accomplishments to be a Physician indeed! If there concur not, 1. A natural strength of Reason and sagacity, 2. And a great deal of study, reading, and acquaintance with the way of excellent men, 3. And considerable experience of your own, to ripen all this; you have cause to be very fearful and cautelous in your practice, lest you sacrifice mens lives to your ignorance and temerity. And one man that hath all these accomplishments, in a high degree, may do2 more good, than a hundred smatterers: And when you are conscious of a defect in any of these, should not reason and conscience command you, to persuade the sick, to seek out to those that are abler than your selves? Should mens lives be hazarded, that you may get by it a little sordid gain? It is so great a doubt whether the ignorant unexperienced sort of Physicians, do cure or hurt more, that it hath brought the vulgar in many Countries, into a contempt of Physicians.
§. 3. Direct. 3. Adventure not unnecessarily on things beyond your skill, but in difficult cases perswade 1your patients to use the help of abler Physicions, if there be any to be had, though it be against your own commodity. So far should you be from envying the greater esteem and practice of abler men, and from all unworthy aspersions or detraction, that you should do your best to perswade all your patients to seek their counsels, when ever the danger of their lives or health requireth it. For their Lives are of greater value than your gain. So abstruse and conjectural is the business of your profession, that it requireth very high accomplishments to be a Physicion indeed! If there concur not, 1. A natural strength of Reason and sagacity, 2. And a great deal of study, reading, and acquaintance with the way of excellent men, 3. And considerable experience of your own, to ripen all this; you have cause to be very fearful and cautelous in your practice, lest you sacrifice mens lives to your ignorance and temerity. And one man that hath all these accomplishments, in a high degree, may do