A26917:333
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.
2. The weak Christian also hath the same End and Hope and Motive; and preferreth his hopes of the life to come before all the wealth and pleasures of this life: But yet his thoughts of Heaven are much more strange and dull: He hath so much doubting and fear yet mixed with his faith and hope, that he looketh before him to his everlasting state, with backwardness and trouble, and with small desire and delight: He hath so much hope of Heaven, as to abate his fears of hell, and make him think of eternity with more quietness, than he could do if he found himself unregenerate: But not so much as to make his thoughts of Heaven so free and sweet and frequent, nor his desires after it so strong, as the confirmed Christians are. And therefore his duties and his speech of Heaven, and his endeavours to obtain it, are all more languid and unconstant: And he is much ⟨p. 34⟩proner to fall in love with earth, and to entertain the motions of reconciliation to the world, and to have his heart too much set upon some place, or person or thing below, and to be either delighted too much in the possession of it, or afflicted and troubled too much with the loss of it. Earthly things are too much the Motives of his life, and the reasons of his joys and griefs: Though he hath the true belief of a life to come, and it prevaileth in the main against the world, yet it is but little that he useth it to the commanding and raising and comforting his soul, in comparison of what a strong believer doth: Mat. 16.22, 23.
2. The weak Christian also hath the same End and Hope and Motive; and preferreth his hopes of the life to come before all the wealth and pleasures of this life: But yet his thoughts of Heaven are much more strange and dull: He hath so much doubting and fear yet mixed with his faith and hope, that he looketh before him to his everlasting state, with backwardness and trouble, and with small desire and delight: He hath so much hope of Heaven, as to abate his fears of hell, and make him think of eternity with more quietness, than he could do if he found himself unregenerate: But not so much as to make his thoughts of Heaven so free and sweet and frequent, nor his desires after it so strong, as the confirmed Christians are. And therefore his duties and his speech of Heaven, and his endeavours to obtain it, are all more languid and unconstant: And he is much