A26892:8510
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.
§. 23. Direct. 1. Mistake not (with the vulgar) the nature of scandal, as if it lay in that offending 1men, which is nothing but grieving or displeasing them; or in making your selves to be of evil report: But remember that Scandal, is that offending men, which tempteth them into sin, from God and Godliness, and maketh them stumble and fall, or occasioneth them to think evil of a holy life. It is a pitiful thing to hear religious persons plead for the sin of man-pleasing, under the name of avoiding scandal: yea, to hear them set up a Usurped dominion over the lives of other men, and all by the advantage of the word [scandal] misunderstood! So that all men must avoid what ever a censorious person will call scandalous, when he meaneth nothing else himself by scandal, than a thing that is of evil report, with such as he: Yea, Pride it self is often pleaded for by this misunderstanding of Scandal; and men are taught to overvalue their reputations, and to strain their consciences to keep up their esteem, and all under pretence of avoiding scandal: And in the mean time they are really scandalous even in that action by which they think they are avoiding it. I need no other instance, than the case of unwarrantable separation. Some will hold communion with none but the re-baptized: Some think an imposed Liturgy is enough to prove communion with such a Church unlawful (at least in the use of it:) And almost every Sect do make their differences a reason for their separating from other Churches. And if any one would hold communion with those that they separate from, they presently say, that it is scandalous to do so, and to join in any worship which they think unlawful: and by scandal they mean no more, but that it is among them of evil report, and is offensive or displeasing to them! Whereas indeed the argument from scandal should move men to use such communion which erroneous, uncharitable, dividing men do hold unlawful. For else by avoiding that communion I shall lay a stumbling block in the way of the weak: I shall tempt him to think that a duty is a sin, and weaken his charity, and draw him into a sinful separation, or the neglect of some Ordinances ⟨p. 84⟩of God, or opportunities of getting good: And it is this Temptation which is indeed the scandal. This is before proved in the instance of Peter, Gal. 2.