A26917:296
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.
THE CHARACTER OF 1 A Sound Confirmed Christian, 2 And of the Weak C… › The Characters.
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.
3. The Hypocrite or best of the unregenerate, believeth but either with a Humane faith, which resteth but on the Word of Man, or else with a dead opinionative faith, which is overpowered by infidelity, or is like the dreaming thoughts of a man asleep, which stir him not to action: He liveth by sight and not by faith: For he hath not a Faith that will overpower Sense, and sensual objects, Jam. 2.14. Mat. 13.22.
3. The Hypocrite or best of the unregenerate, believeth but either with a Humane faith, which resteth but on the Word of Man, or else with a dead opinionative faith, which is overpowered by infidelity, or is like the dreaming thoughts of a man asleep, which stirre him not to action: He liveth by sight and not by faith: For he hath not a Faith that will overpower Sense, and sensual objects, Jam. 2.14. Mat. 13.22.
II. 1. A Christian indeed not only knoweth why he is a Christian, but seeth those Reasons for his Religion, which disgrace all that the cunningest Atheist or Infidel can say against it: and so far satisfy, confirm and establish him, that emergent difficulties, temptations and objections, do not at all stagger him, or raise any deliberate doubts in him of the truth of the Word of God: He seeth first the natural evidence of those foundation-truths which Nature it self maketh known: (as that there is a God of infinite Being, Power, Wisdom and Goodness, the Creator, the Owner, the Ruler, and the Father, Felicity and End of man; that we owe him all our love and service; that none of our fidelity shall be in vain or unrewarded, and none shall be finally a loser by his duty; that man who is naturally governed by the hopes and fears of another life, is made and liveth for that other Life, where his Soul shall be sentenced by God his Judge to happiness or misery, &c.) And then he discerneth the attestation of God to those supernatural, superadded Revelations of the Gospel, containing the Doctrine of mans Redemption: And he seeth how wonderfully these are built upon the former, and how excellently the Creators and Redeemers Doctrine and Laws agree; and how much