A26892:8517
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.
§. 29. Direct. 7. Be not rashly and ignorantly zealous in soliciting and importuning others to your 1private opinions, before you are certain that they are of God. O what abundance of zeal and labour ⟨p. 85⟩hath many a man laid out, to make others of his mind, in the points of Antinomianism, Anabaptism, Separation, Popery, &c. thinking that the saving of their souls had lain upon it: And at last they find, that as they erred themselves, so all their labour was but to scandalize the weak, and lay a stumbling block in their way to Heaven?
§. 29. Direct. 7. Be not rashly and ignorantly zealous in soliciting and importuning others to your 1private opinions, before you are certain that they are of God. O what abundance of zeal and labour ⟨p. 85⟩hath many a man laid out, to make others of his mind, in the points of Antinomi•nism, A•abaptism, Separation, Popery, &c. thinking that the saving of their souls had lain upon it: And at last they find, that as they erred themselves, so all their labour was but to scandalize the weak, and lay a stumbling block in their way to Heaven?
- 1Direct. 7.
§. 30. Direct. 8. Never persuade any man (much less compel him) to any thing unnecessary 1which be taketh to be a sin (whatever you take it for your selves). For if he judge it a sin, it is a sin to him! No man can innocently do that which he thinketh is forbidden him of God. And shall a thing unnecessary be preferred before the saving of a soul? (Yea before the souls of thousands, as by many merciless men it is.) Indeed if there be an Antecedent necessity (as well as a lawfulness in the thing, and such a necessity as is not in your power to take away, then the Doing it will be his sin, and the not doing it his greater sin; and the greater sin is greatliest to be avoided (but by convenient means.)