A26892:8723
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.
§. 9. Direct. 8. Remember always that God is present, and none of your secrets can be hid from him. 1What the better are you to deceive your neighbour, or your master, and to hide it from their knowledge, as long as your Maker and Judge seeth all? When it is him that you most wrong, and with him that you have most to do, and he that will be the most terrible avenger? What blinded Atheists are you, who dare do that in the presence of the most righteous God, which you durst not do if men beheld you.
§. 9. Direct. 8. Remember alwayes that God is present, and none of your secrets can be hid from him. 1What the better are you to deceive your neighbour, or your master, and to hide it from their knowledge, as long as your Maker and Judge seeth all? When it is him that you most wrong, and with him that you have most to do, and he that will be the most terrible avenger? What blinded Atheists are you, who dare do that in the presence of the most righteous God, which you durst not do if men beheld you.
- 1Direct. 8.
§. 10. Direct. 9. Forget not how dear all that must cost you, which you gain unlawfully. The reckoning1 time is yet to come. Either you will truly Repent, or not: If you do, it must cost you remorse and sorrow, and shameful confession, and restitution of all that you have got amiss: And is it not better forbear to swallow that morsel, which must come up again with heart-breaking grief and shame. But if you Repent not, unfeignedly, it will be your damnation: It will be opened in Judgement to your perpetual confusion, and you must pay dear for all your gain, in Hell. Never look upon the gain therefore, without the shame and damnation which must follow. If Achan had foreseen the stones, and Gehezi the Leprosy, and Ahab the mortal arrow, and Jezebel the licking of her blood by Dogs, and Judas the hanging or precipitation, and Ananias and Sapphira the sudden death, or any of them the after misery, it might have kept them from their pernicious gain. Usually even in this life, a curse attendeth that which is ill gotten, and bringeth fire among all the rest.