A Christian Directory, Part 1: Christian EthicsBaxter, Richard
Religion
A Christian Directory, Part 1: Christian Ethics
Baxter, Richard
Casuistry; Christian sociology
(3.) The sinfulness of the memory is in its retentiveness of evil, or
things hurtful and prohibited; and its looseness and neglect of
better, spiritual, necessary things. If this were only as things
present have the natural advantage to make a deeper impress upon the
fantasy, and things unseen and absent have the disadvantage, it were
then but a natural, innocent infirmity; or if in sickness, age, or
weakness, all kind of memory equally decay. But it is plain, that if
the Bible be open before our eyes, and preaching be in our ears, and
things unseen have the advantage of their infinite greatness, and
excellency, and concernment to us, yet our memories are like walls of
stone to any thing that is spiritual, and like walls of wax, on which
you may write any thing, of that which is secular or evil. Note here,
also, that the faultiness of the memory is only so far sinful as it is
voluntary: it is the will where the sin is as in its throne, or
chiefest subject. Because men love carnal things, and love not
spiritual things, therefore it is that they mind, and understand, and
remember the one, and not the other. So that it is but as imperate,
and participatively, that the memory is capable of sin.
(4.) The sinfulness of the imagination consisteth in its readiness to
think of evil, and of common earthly things, and its unaptness to think
of any thing that is holy and good; and when we do force ourselves to
holy thoughts, they are disorderly, confused, unskilfully managed, with
great averseness.--Here also voluntariness is the life of the sin.
(5.) The sin of the affections, or passions, consisteth in this:--That
they are too easily and violently moved by the sensitive interest and
appetite; and are habitually prone to such carnal, inordinate motions,
running before the understanding and will, (some of them,) and
soliciting and urging them to evil; and resisting and disobeying the
commands of reason and the will: but dull and backward to things
spiritually good, and to execute the right dictates of the mind and
will.
(6.) The sin of the sensitive appetite consisteth in the inordinate rage
or immoderateness to its object, which causeth it to disobey the
commands of reason, and to become the great inciter of rebellion in the
soul; violently urging the mind and will to consent to its desires.
Materially this dependeth much on the temper of the body; but formally
this also is so far sinful as (positively or privately, mediately or
immediately) it is voluntary. To have an appetite simply to the object
of appetite is no sin; but to have a diseased, inordinate, unruly
appetite, is a sin, not primarily in itself considered, but as it is
voluntary, as it is the appetite of a rational free agent, that hath
thus disordered the frame of its own nature.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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