A26892:8519
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.
§. 31. Direct. 9. Remember the charge which you have of the souls of one another: Though you1 be not Magistrates or Pastors: (For their care of souls is so unquestionable and so great, that scandal in them is like Parents murdering their own Children:) Yet no private man must say as Cain, Am I my brothers keeper. Every man is bound to do his best for the saving of his Neighbour: Much more to forbear infecting, seducing, scandalizing and destroying him.
- 1Direct. 9.
§. 32. Direct. 10. Keep up a special tenderness of the weak: So doth God himself, and so must1 we. He gathereth the Lambs with his arms, &c. Isa. 40. 11. If his Infants cry, he doth not therefore knock out their brains, or turn them out of doors! Nor doth he say, they are not his Children, for every ignorance or peevish passion which they are guilty of: Christ doth not turn men out of his School, because they want knowledge! For why then will he have little Children come? and what do they come for but to learn? He doth not hate his new born babes; but feedeth and nurseth them with a special tenderness: And he hath commanded and communicated the like tenderness to his Ministers; who must not be weak with the weak, and froward with the froward; but in meekness and patience must bear with the weak, and endure their bitterest censures and requitals: For the servant of the Lord must not strive, but be gentle to all men, apt to teach; patient; in meekness instructing those that oppose themselves, &c. 2 Tim. 2. 24, 25. And if they are long learning before they come to the Knowledge of the truth, they are not therefore to be cast off: He that can read, Rom. 14