A Christian Directory, Part 1: Christian EthicsBaxter, Richard
Religion
A Christian Directory, Part 1: Christian Ethics
Baxter, Richard
Casuistry; Christian sociology
To have reason is common to all men, even the sleepy and distracted:
to use reason is common to all that have their senses awake, and fit
to serve their minds: to use reason in the greatest matters, is proper
to wise men, that know for what end God made them reasonable.[23]
Inconsiderate men are all ungodly men; for reason not used is as bad
as no reason, and will prove much worse in the day of reckoning. The
truth is, though sinners are exceeding blind and erroneous about the
things of God, yet all God's precepts are so reasonable, and tend so
clearly to our joy and happiness, that if the devil did not win most
souls by silencing reason, and laying it asleep, or drowning its voice
with the noise and crowd of worldly business, hell would not have so
many sad inhabitants. I scarce believe that God will condemn any
sinner that ever lived in the world, that had the use of reason; no,
not the heathens that had but one talent, but he will be able to say
to them, as Luke xix. 22, "Out of thine own mouth will I judge thee,
thou wicked servant. Thou knewest," &c. To serve God and labour
diligently for salvation, and prefer it before all worldly things, is
so reasonable a thing, that every one that repenteth of the contrary
course, doth call it from his heart an impious madness. Reason must
needs be for God that made it. Reason must needs be for that which is
its proper end and use. Sin, as it is in the understanding, is nothing
but unreasonableness; a blindness and error; a loss and corruption of
reason in the matters of God and our salvation. And grace, as in the
understanding, doth but cure this folly and distraction, and make us
reasonable again; it is but the opening of our eyes, and making us
wise in the greatest matters. It is not a more unmanly thing to love
and plead for blindness, madness, and diseases, and to hate both
sight, and health, and wit, than it is to love and plead for sin, and
to hate and vilify a holy life.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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