A26892:8474
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.
§. 58. Direct. 36. Distinguish between, the making of new Laws or articles of belief, and the punishing 1of men for the Laws already made; And think not that we must have new Laws or Canons, every time the old ones are broken: or that any Law can be made which can keep it self from being broken. Perverseness in this error hath brought the Church to the misery which it endureth. God hath made an Universal Law sufficient for the Universal Church, in matters of faith and holy practice; leaving it to men to determine of necessary circumstances which were unfit for an universal Law: And if the sufficiency of Gods Law, were acknowledged in mens practices, the Churches would have had more peace: But when particular Countries have their particular Volumes of Articles, Confessions, Liturgies, and I know not what else to be subscribed to, and none must Preach that will not say or write or swear, [that he believeth all this to be true and good, and nothing in it to be against the Word of God] this Engine wracks the limbs of the Churches all to pieces: And then whats the pretence for this epidemical calamity? Why no better than this [Every Heretic will subscribe to the Scriptures, and take it in his own sense]: And what followeth? Must we needs therefore have new Laws which Heretics will not subscribe to, or which they cannot break? It is the Commendation of Gods Law, as fit to be the means of Unity, that all are so easily agreed to it in terms, and therefore would agree in the sense if they understood it. But they will not do so by the Laws of men: All or many Heretics in the primitive times, would profess assent to the Churches Creed; no doubt in a corrupt and private sense: But the Churches did not therefore make new Creeds; till above 300 years after Christ, they began to put in some particular words to obviate Heretics, which Hilary complained of as the Cause of all their divisions! And what if Heretics will subscribe to all you bid them, and take it in their own corrupted sense? Must you therefore be still making new Laws and Articles, till you meet with some which they cannot mis-understand, or dare not thus abuse? What if men will mis-interpret and break the Laws of the Land? Must they be made new till none can mis-expound or violate them? Sure there is a wiser way than this!
§. 58. Direct. 36. Distinguish between, the making of new Laws or articles of belief, and the punishing 1