A Christian Directory, Part 1: Christian EthicsBaxter, Richard
Religion
A Christian Directory, Part 1: Christian Ethics
Baxter, Richard
Casuistry; Christian sociology
But as the goodness is of chief regard in the object, so the
discerning of the truth about good and evil, is the chiefest office of
the understanding. And therefore its disesteem of God, and glory, and
grace, and its misesteem of the fleshly pleasure, and worldly
prosperity, wealth, and honour, is the principal malady of the mind.
(2.) The diseases of the will, are in its inclination, and its acts.
1. An inordinate inclination to the pleasing of the fleshly appetite
and fantasy, and to all carnal baits and temporal things, that tend to
please it, and inordinate acts of desire accordingly. 2. An irrational
backwardness to God, and grace, and spiritual good, and a refusal or
nolition in act accordingly. These are in the will, 1. Because it is
become much subject to the sensitive appetite, and hath debased
itself, and contracted, by its sinful acts, a sensual inclination, the
flesh having the dominion in a corrupted soul. 2. Because the
intellect being also corrupted, ofttimes misleadeth it, by overvaluing
transient things. 3. Because the will is become destitute (in its
corrupted state) of the power of divine love, or an inclination to God
and holy things, which should countermand the seduction of carnal
objects. 4. And the understanding is much destitute of the light that
should lead them higher. 5. Because the rage of the corrupted appetite
is still seducing it. Mark therefore, for the right understanding of
this, our greatest malady:
1. That the will never desireth evil, as evil, but as a carnal or a
seeming good. 2. Nor doth it hate good as good, but as a seeming evil,
because God and grace do seem to be his enemies, and to hurt him, by
hindering him of the good of carnal pleasure which he now preferreth.
3. Nay, at the same time that he loveth evil as it pleaseth the flesh,
he hath naturally, as a man, some averseness to it, so far as he
apprehendeth it to be evil: and when he hateth God and holiness as
evil, for hindering him of his carnal pleasure, he naturally loveth
them, so far as he apprehendeth them to be good. So that there is some
love to God and good, and some hatred to evil, in the ungodly; for
while man is man, he will have naturally an inclination to good as
good, and against evil as evil. 4. But the apprehension of sensitive
good is the strongest in him, and the apprehension of spiritual good
is weakest; and therefore the will receiving a greater impress from
the carnal appetite and mind, than from the weak apprehensions of
spiritual good, is more inclined to that which indeed is worst; and so
things carnal have got the dominion, or chief commanding interest, in
the soul. 5. Note also, that sin receiveth its formality, or moral
evil, first in the will, and not in the intellect or sensitive
appetite: for it is not sin till it be positively or privately,
immediately or mediately, voluntary. But the first motions to sin are
not in the will, but in the sensitive appetite; though there, at
first, it be not formally sin. 6.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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