A26892:918
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.
§. 39. Direct. 8. Be always suspicious of carnal self-love, and watch against it. For that is the1 burrow or fortress of sin; and the common Patron of it; ready to draw you to it, and ready to justify it. We are very prone to be partial in our own cause; as the case of Judah with Tamar, and David when Nathan reproved him in a Parable, show. Our own passions, our own pride, our own censures, or back-bitings, or injurious dealings, our own neglects of duty, seem small excusable, if not justifiable things to us: whereas we could easily see the faultiness of all these in another, especially in an enemy: when yet we should be best acquainted with our selves, and we should most love our selves, and therefore hate our own sins most.
§. 39. Direct. 8. Be alwayes suspicious of carnal self-love, and watch against it. For that is the1 burrow or fortress of sin; and the common Patron of it; ready to draw you to it, and ready to justifie it. We are very prone to be partial in our own cause; as the case of Iudah with Thamar, and David when Nathan reproved him in a Parable, shew. Our own passions, our own pride, our own censures, or back-bitings, or injurious dealings, our own neglects of duty, seem small excusable, if not justifyable things to us: whereas we could easily see the faultiness of all these in another, especially in an enemy: when yet we should be best acquainted with our selves, and we should most love our selves, and therefore hate our own sins most.
- 1Direct. 8.
§. 40. Direct. 9. Bestow your first and chiefest labour to kill sin at the Root: To cleanse the Heart,1 which is the fountain: For out of the heart cometh the evils of the life. Know which are the Master-Roots; and bend your greatest care and industry to mortify those: And that is especially these that follow; 1. Ignorance. 2. Unbelief. 3. Inconsiderateness. 4. Selfishness and Pride. 5. Fleshliness, in pleasing a brutish appetite, lust or fantasy. 6. Senseless, hard-heartedness and sleepiness, in sin.