A26917:45
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.
1. When the Mind of man hath a larger comprehension of the Truths of God, and the Order and Method and Usefulness of every truth! And a deeper apprehension of the certainty of them, and of the Goodness of the matter expressed in them! When Knowledge and Faith come nearest unto sight or intention, and we have the fullest the truest, and the firmest and most certain apprehension of things revealed and unseen; when the Nature and the Reasons, and the ends and benefits of the Christian Religion are all most clearly, orderly, decently, constantly and powerfully printed on the mind, then is that Mind in a Confirmed state.
1. When the Mind of man hath a larger comprehension of the Truths of God, and the Order and Method and Vsefulness of every truth! And a deeper apprehension of the certainty of them, and of the Goodness of the matter expressed in them! When Knowledg and Faith come nearest unto sight or intention, and we have the fullest the truest, and the firmest and most certain apprehension of things revealed and unseen; when the Nature and the Reasons, and the ends and benefits of the Christian Religion are all most clearly, orderly, decently, constantly and powerfully printed on the mind, then is that Mind in a Confirmed state.
2. When the Will is guided by such a confirmed understanding, and is not brutishly resolved, he knoweth not for what or why! When Light hath fixed it in such Resolutions as are past all notable doubtings, deliberations, waverings, or unwilling backwardness: and a man is in seeking God and his Salvation, and avoiding known sin, as a natural man is about the questions, whether he should preserve his Life? and make provision for it? and whether he should poison, or famish, or torment himself? When the Inclination of the Will to God and Heaven and Holiness, are likest to its natural Inclination to Good as Good, and to its own felicity! And its action is so free as to have Least Indetermination, ⟨p. 14⟩and to be likest to Natural necessary acts, as those are of blessed Spirits in Heaven! When the least intimation from God prevaileth, and the Will doth answer him with readiness, and delight! And when it taketh pleasure to trample upon all opposition; and when all that can be offered to corrupt the heart, and draw it to sin, and loosen it from God, prevaileth but as so much filth and dung would do (