A Christian Directory, Part 2: Christian EconomicsBaxter, Richard
Religion
A Christian Directory, Part 2: Christian Economics
Baxter, Richard
Casuistry; Christian sociology
_Direct._ XVII. In the evening return to the worshipping of God,
in the family and in secret, as was directed for the morning. And do
all with seriousness, as in the sight of God, and in the sense of your
necessities; and make it your delight to receive instructions from the
holy Scripture, and praise God, and call upon his name through Christ.
_Direct._ XVIII. If you have any extraordinary impediments one
day to hinder you in your duty to God and man, make it up by diligence
the next; and if you have any extraordinary helps, make use of them,
and let them not overslip you. As, if it be a lecture-day, or a
funeral sermon, or you have opportunity of converse with men of
extraordinary worth; or if it be a day of humiliation or thanksgiving;
it may be expected that you gather a double measure of strength by
such extraordinary helps.
_Direct._ XIX. Before you betake yourselves to sleep, it is
ordinarily a safe and needful course, to take a review of the actions
and mercies of the past day; that you may be specially thankful for
all special mercies, and humbled for your sins, and may renew your
repentance and resolutions for obedience, and may examine yourselves,
whether your souls grow better or worse, and whether sin go down and
grace increase, and whether you are any better prepared for
sufferings and death. But yet waste not too much time in the ordinary
accounts of your life, as those that neglect their duty while they are
examining themselves how they perform it, and perplexing themselves
with the long perusal of their ordinary infirmities. But by a general
(yet sincere) repentance, bewail your unavoidable daily failings, and
have recourse to Christ for a daily pardon and renewed grace; and in
case of extraordinary sins or mercies, be sure to be extraordinarily
humbled or thankful. Some think it best to keep a daily catalogue or
diurnal of their sins and mercies. If you do so, be not too particular
in the enumeration of those that are the matter of every day's return;
for it will be but a temptation to waste your time, and neglect
greater duty, and to make you grow customary and senseless of such
sins and mercies, when the same come to be recited over and over from
day to day. But let the common mercies be more generally recorded, and
the common sins generally confessed (yet neither of them therefore
slighted); and let the extraordinary mercies, and greater sins, have a
more particular observation. And yet remember, that sins and mercies,
which it is not fit that others be acquainted with, are safelier
committed to memory than to writing: and methinks, a well humbled and
a thankful heart should not easily let the memory of them slip.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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