A Christian Directory, Part 2: Christian EconomicsBaxter, Richard
Religion
A Christian Directory, Part 2: Christian Economics
Baxter, Richard
Casuistry; Christian sociology
II. In the naming of these graces, I have named their objects, which
you should observe as distinctly as you can, that they may be
operative. 1. To help your humiliation and repentance, you bring
thither a loaden, miserable soul, to receive a pardon and relief; and
you see before you the sacrificed Son of God, who made his soul an
offering for sin, and became a curse for us to save us who were
accursed. 2. To draw out your desires, you have the most excellent
gifts and the most needful mercies presented to you that this world is
capable of; even the pardon of sin, the love of God, the Spirit of
grace, and the hopes of glory, and Christ himself with whom all this
is given. 3. To exercise your faith, you have Christ here first
represented as crucified before your eyes; and then, with his
benefits, freely given you, and offered to your acceptance, with a
command that you refuse him not. 4. To exercise your delight and
gladness, you have this Saviour and this salvation tendered to you;
and all that your souls can well desire set before you. 5. To exercise
your thankfulness, what could do more than so great a gift, so dearly
purchased, so surely sealed, and so freely offered? 6. To exercise
your love to God in Christ, you have the fullest manifestation of his
attractive love, even offered to your eyes, and taste, and heart,
that a soul on earth can reasonably expect; in such wonderful
condescension, that the greatness and strangeness of it surpasseth a
natural man's belief. 7. To exercise your hopes of life eternal, you
have the price of it here set before you; you have the gift of it here
sealed to you; and you have that Saviour represented to you in his
suffering, who is now there reigning, that you may remember him as
expectants of his glorious coming to judge the world, and glorify you
with himself. 8. To exercise your self-denial and resolution for
suffering, and contempt of the world and fleshly pleasures, you have
before you both the greatest example and obligation, that ever could
be offered to the world; when you see and receive a crucified Christ,
that so strangely denied himself for you, and set so little by the
world and flesh. 9. To exercise your love to brethren, yea, and
enemies, you have his example before your eyes, that loved you to the
death when you were enemies; and you have his holy servants before
your eyes, who are amiable in him through the workings of his Spirit,
and on whom he will have you show your love to himself. 10. And to
excite your resolution for future obedience, you see his double title
to the government of you, as Creator and as Redeemer; and you feel the
obligations of mercy and gratitude; and you are to renew a covenant
with him to that end; even openly where all the church are witnesses.
So that you see here are powerful objects before you to draw out all
these graces, and that they are all but such as the work requireth you
then to exercise.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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