A26917:372
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. But the seeming Christian seeketh and taketh up his chief contentment in some carnal thing: If he be so poor and miserable as to have nothing in possession that can much delight him, he will hope for better days hereafter, and that hope shall be his chief delight: or if he have no such hope he will be without delight, and show his love to the world and flesh, by mourning for that which he cannot have, as others do in rejoicing in what they do possess; and he will, in such a desperate case of misery, be such to the world as the weak Christian is to God, who hath a mourning and desiring love, when he cannot reach to an enjoying and delighting Love. His carnal mind most savoureth the things of the flesh, and therefore in them he findeth or seeketh his chief delights. Though yet he may have also a delight in his superficial kind of Religion, his hearing, and reading & praying & in his ill-grounded hopes of life eternal: But all this is but subordinate to his chiefest earthly pleasure. Isai. 58.2. Yet they seek me daily, and delight to know my ways, as a nation that did righteousness, and forsook not the ordinances of their God: they ask of me the ordinances of justice; they take delight in approaching unto God. And yet all this was subjected to a covetous oppressing mind. Mat. 13.20. He that received the seed into stony places, the same is he that heareth the word, and anon with joy receiveth it, yet hath he not root in himself, but dureth for a while, for when tribulation ⟨p. 66⟩or persecution ariseth because of the word, by and by he is offended. Whereby it appeareth that his love to the word, was subjected to his love to the world.
3. But the seeming Christian seeketh and taketh up his chief contentment in some carnal thing: If he be so poor and miserable as to have nothing in possession that can much delight him, he will hope for better dayes hereafter, and that hope shall be his chief delight: or if he have no such hope he will be without delight, and shew his love to the world and flesh, by mourning for that which he cannot have, as others do in rejoycing in what they do possess; and he will, in such a desperate case of misery, be such to the world as the weak Christian is to God, who hath a mourning and desiring love, when he cannot reach to an enjoying and delighting Love. His carnal mind most savoureth the things of the flesh, and therefore in them he findeth or seeketh his chief delights. Though yet he may have also a delight in his superficiall kind of Religion, his hearing, and reading & praying & in his ill-grounded hopes of life eternal: But all this is but subordinate to his chiefest earthly pleasure.