A26892:8411
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.
4. Sometime persecution is directly for Religion; that is, for matters of professed Faith or Worship: And sometimes it is for a civil or a common cause: Yet still it is for our Obedience to God (or else it is not the persecution which we speak of,) though the Matter of it be some common or civil thing: As if I were persecuted merely for giving to the poor, or helping the sick, or for being Loyal to my Prince and to the Laws, or for doing my duty to my Parents, or because I will not bear false-witness, or tell a lye, or subscribe a falsehood, or any such like: This is truly persecution, whatever the matter of it be, as long as it is truly for Obeying God that we undergo the suffering.
4. Sometime persecution is directly for Religion; that is, for matters of professed Faith or Worship: And sometimes it is for a civil or a common cause: Yet still it is for our Obedience to God (or else it is not the persecution which we speak of,) though the Matter of it be some common or civil thing: As if I were persecuted meerly for giving to the poor, or helping the sick, or for being Loyal to my Prince and to the Laws, or for doing my duty to my Parents, or because I will not bear false-witness, or tell a lye, or subscribe a falshood, or any such like: This is truly persecution, whatever the matter of it be, as long as it is truly for Obeying God that we undergo the suffering.
§. 6. I omit many other less considerable distributions: And also those afflictions which are but improperly called persecutions; (as when a man is punished for a fault in a far greater measure than it deserveth: this is Injustice, but not persecution, (unless it be his Religion and Obedience to God, which is the secret cause of it.)
§. 7. Direct. 2. Understand well the greatness of the sin of Persecution, that you may be kept in a 1