A26892:9035
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.
1. The command of the King, or public necessities, may make it lawful, except in a case so rare as is not to be supposed (which therefore I shall not stand to describe). For though it be a very tender business to determine a difference between the public authority or interest, and family relations and interest, when they are contradictory, and unreconcilable, yet here it seemeth to me, that the Prince and public interest may dispose of a man contrary to the will and interest of his Wife: Yea, though it were probable that it would occasion the loss, 1. Of her Chastity, 2. Or her Understanding, 3. Or her life: and though the Conjugal bond do make man and Wife to be as one flesh. For, 1. The King and public interest may oblige a man to hazard his own life, and therefore his Wives. In case of War, he may be sent to Sea or beyond Sea, and so both leave his Wife (as Uriah did) and venture himself. Who ever thought that no Married man might go to foreign Wars without his Wives consent? 2. Because as the whole is more noble than the Part, so he that marrieth obligeth himself to his Wife, but on supposition that he is a member of the Common-wealth, to which he is still more obliged than to her.
1. The command of the King, or publick necessities, may make it lawful, except in a case so rare as is not to be supposed (which therefore I shall not stand to describe). For though it be a very tender business to determine a difference between the publick authority or interest, and family relaons and interest, when they are contradictory, and unreconcileable, yet here it seemeth to me, that the Prince and publick interest may dispose of a man contrary to the will and interest of his Wife: Yea, though it were probable that it would occasion the loss, 1. Of her Chastity, 2. Or her Understanding, 3. Or her life: and though the Conjugal bond do make man and Wife to be as one flesh. For, 1. The King and publick interest may oblige a man to hazard his own life, and therefore his Wives. In case of War, he may be sent to Sea or beyond Sea, and so both leave his Wife (as Uriah did) and venture himself. Who ever thought that no Married man might go to forreign Wars without his Wives consent? 2. Because as the whole is more noble than the Part, so he that marrieth obligeth himself to his Wife, but on supposition that he is a member of the Common-wealth, to which he is still more obliged than to her.