A26892:8223
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.
CHAP. VII. Directions for Soldiers, about their duty in point of Conscience.
CHAP. VII. Directions for Souldiers, about their duty in point of Conscience.
Though it is likely that few Soldiers will read what I shall write for them, yet for the sake of those few that will, I will do as John Baptist did, and give them some few necessary Directions, and not omit them as some do, as if they were a hopeless sort of men.
THough it is likely that few Souldiers will read what I shall write for them, yet for the sake of those few that will, I will do as Iohn Baptist did, and give them some few necessary Directions, and not omit them as some do, as if they were a hopeless sort of men.
§. 1. Direct. 1. Be careful to make your peace with God, and live in a continual readiness to dye. 1This being the great duty of every rational man, you cannot deny it to be especially yours, whose calling setteth you so frequently in the face of death. Though some Garrison Soldiers are so seldom if ever put to fight, that they live more securely than most other men, yet a Soldier as such being by his place engaged to fight, I must fit my Directions to the ordinary condition and expectation of men in that employment. It is a most irrational and worse than beastly negligence, for any man to live carelessly in an unpreparedness for death, considering how certain it is, and how uncertain the time, and how unconceivably great is the change which it inferreth: But for a Soldier to be unready to dye, who hath such special reason to expect it, and who listeth himself into a state which is so near it, this is to live and fight like beasts, and to be Soldiers before you understand what it is to be a Christian or a Man. First therefore make sure that your souls are regenerate and reconciled unto God by Christ, and that when you dye you have a part in Heaven; and that you are not yet in the state of sin and nature: An unrenewed unsanctified soul is sure to go to Hell, by what death or in what cause soever he dyeth. If such a man be a Soldier, he must be a coward or a mad man: If he will run upon death, when he knoweth not whither it will send him, yea when Hell is certainly the next step, he is worse than mad: But if he know and consider the terribleness of such a change, it must needs make him tremble when he thinks of dying. He can be no good Soldier that dare not dye: And who can expect that he should dare to dye, who must be damned when he dyeth? Reason may command a man to venture upon death; but no reason will allow him to venture upon Hell. I never knew but two sorts of valiant Soldiers: The one was Boys and brutish ignorant sots, who had no sense of the concernments of their souls: and the other (who only were truly valiant) were those that had made such preparations for Eternity, as at least persuaded them that it should go well with them when they dyed.