A26906:1011
The cure of church-divisions, or, Directions for weak Christians to keep them from being…
The cure of church-divisions, or, Directions for weak Christians to keep them from being dividers or troublers of the church with some directions to the pastors how to deal with such Christians / by Richard Baxter.
London: printed for Nevil Symmons, 1670
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.
DIRECT. X.
Remember the common calamity of the Church and of all mankind: What strange disparity there is in mens understandings! and how the Church on earth is a Hospital of diseased souls, and no one man perfectly healed in this life.
Who can say I have made my heart clean? Prov. 20. 9. He that is kept from presumptuous sins, and heartily prayeth and striveth against his known infirmities, and is desirous to know his unknown sins that he may avoid them, hath attained so far as to be justified by Christ, and loved of those who love as Christ doth. Psal. 19. Joh. 3. 19, 20. Seneca could say that to carp at that fault which was every mans fault, is not to reprove an offender, but to reproach humane nature and all mankind: Christians indeed must lament even the vices which are common to depraved nature, but it is with a common lamentation, which falleth on one man no more than on another. Even as we lament mortality, which is the common punishment of mankind. But he that would have punishment inflicted for a fault which is common to all, would have all men punished or is partial.
WHo can say I have made my heart clean? Prov. 20. 9. He that is kept from presumptuous sins, and heartily prayeth and striveth against his known infirmities, and is desirous to know his unknown sins that he may avoid them, hath attained so far as to be justified by Christ, and loved of those who love as Christ doth.