A26892:8662
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.
§. 2. Direct. 2. Be sure that you reprove not that as a sin, which is no sin; either by mistaking the 1Law or the fact. To make duties and sins of our own opinions and inventions, and then to lay out our zeal on these, and censure or reprove all that think as hardly of such things as we; this is to make our selves the objects of the hearers pity, and not to exercise just pity towards others! Such reproofs deserve reproof! For they discover great ignorance, and pride, and self-conceitedness, and very much harden sinners in their way; and make them think that all reproof is but the vanity of fantastical hypocrites: In some cases with a child, or servant, or private friend, or for prevention, we may speak of faults upon hearsay or suspicion: But it must be as of things uncertain: and as a warning rather than a reproof. In ordinary Reproof, you must understand the case before you speak. It is a shame to say after, I thought it had been otherwise: Such an erroneous reproof is worse than none.
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§. 3. Direct. 3. Choose not the smallest sins to reprove, nor the smallest duties to exhort them to. For1 that will make them think that all your zeal is taken up with little matters, and that there is no great necessity of regarding you: and conscience will be but little moved by your speech: when greater things will greatly and more easily affect men.
- 1Direct. 3.
§. 4. Direct. 4. Stop not (with unregenerate men) in the mention of particular sins or duties; but