A26892:8227
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.
§. 2. Direct. 2. Be sure you have a warrantable Cause and Call. In a bad cause it is a dreadful1 thing to conquer or to be conquered: If you conquer you are a murderer of all that you kill: If you are conquered and dye in the prosecution of your sin, I need not tell you what you may expect. I know we are here upon a difficulty which must be tenderly handled: If we make the sovereign power to be the absolute and only Judge, whether the Soldiers cause and call be good; then it would follow, that it is the duty of all the Christian subjects of the Turk, to fight against Christianity as such, and to destroy all Christians when the Turk commandeth it: And that all the subjects of other Lands, are bound to invade this or other such Christian Kingdoms, and destroy their Kings, when ever their Popish, or malicious Princes or States shall command them: which being intolerable consequences, prove the Antecedent to be intolerable. And yet on the other side, if subjects must be the Judges of their cause and call, the Prince shall not be served nor the common good secured, till the interest of the Subjects will allow them to discern the goodness of the cause. Between these two intolerable consequents, it is hard to meet with a just discovery of the mean: Most run into one of the extremes, which they take to be the less, and think that there is no other avoiding of the other. The grand errors in this and an hundred like cases, come from not distinguishing aright the case de esse, from the case de apparere, or cognoscere, and not first determining the former, as it ought, before the latter be determined. Either the cause which Subjects are commanded to fight in, is really lawful to them, or it is not. (Say not here importunely, who shall judge? For we are now but upon the question de esse.) If it be not lawful in it self, but be mere robbery or murder, then come to the case of Evidence; Either this evil is to the subject discernible by just means, or not: If it be, I am not able for my part to justify him from the sin if he do it, no more than to have justified the three witnesses, Dan. 3. if they had bowed down to the golden ⟨p. 47⟩Calf, or Daniel 6. if he had forborne prayer, or the Apostles if they had forborne preaching, or the Soldiers for apprehending and crucifying Christ, when their Superiors commanded them. For God is first to be obeyed and feared.