A26917:143
Directions for weak distempered Christians, to grow up to a confirmed state of grace…
Directions for weak distempered Christians, to grow up to a confirmed state of grace with motives opening the lamentable effects of their weaknesses and distempers / by Richard Baxter.
London: printed for Nevil Simmons, 1669
Title page typeset from the transcription.
Directions 1: DIRECTIONS TO THE CONVERTED, For their establishment, growth, and perseverance.
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. Consider this as the highest Motive of all? God doth not only magnify you and boast of you; but also he hath made you the living Images of his blessed self, his Son Jesus Christ, his Spirit and his holy Word; and so he hath exposed himself, his Son, his Spirit, and his Word, to be censured by the World, according to your lives.
The express Image of the Fathers person is the Son, Heb. 1.3. The Son is declared to the World by the Holy Ghost: The Holy Ghost hath indited the Holy Scriptures, which therefore bear the Image of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. This holy Word, both Law and Promise is written on your hearts, and put into your inner parts, by the s•me spirit, 2 Cor. 3.3. Heb. 8.13. and 10.16. So that as God hath imprinted his holy nature in the Scripture, so hath he made this word the Seal, to imprint again his Image on your hearts. And you know that common eyes can better discern the Image in the Wax than on the Seal. Though I know that the hardness of the Wax, or something lying between, or the imperfect application, may cause an imperfection in the Image ⟨p. 80⟩on the Wax, when yet the Image on the Seal is perfect: And therefore the World hath no just cause to censure God, or Christ, or the Spirit, or the Word, to be imperfect because that you are so: But yet they will do it, and their temptation is great. O Sirs, how would your Prince take it of you, or how would your poorest friend take it of you, if you should hang forth a deformed picture of them to the view of all that shall pass by: and should represent them as blind, or leprous, or lame, wanting a leg or an arm or an eye? Would they not say that you unworthily exposed them to scorn? So if you will take on you to be the living Images of God, of Christ, of the Spirit, and the Word; and yet will be blind, and worldly, and passionate, and proud, and untruly, and obstinate, or lazy and negligent, and little differing from those that bear the Image of the Devil; what do you but Proclaim that the Image of God, and of Satan and the World do little differ! and that God is thus unrighteous and unholy as you are.