A Christian Directory, Part 2: Christian EconomicsBaxter, Richard
Religion
A Christian Directory, Part 2: Christian Economics
Baxter, Richard
Casuistry; Christian sociology
_Direct._ I. Above all, be sure that you choose not for mere
fleshly ease and sensuality, and take not that for the best place for
you, where you may have most of your own carnal will and pleasure. I
know that fleshly, graceless servants, will hear this direction with
as ill a will, as a dog when he is forbidden his meat or carrion. I
know I speak against their very nature, and therefore against their
very hearts, and therefore they will think I speak against their
interest and good; and therefore I may persuade them to this course a
hundred times, before they will believe me, or obey my counsel. All
ungodly, fleshly servants, do make these the only signs of a good
place, or desirable service for them: 1. If they may do what work they
will, and avoid that which they dislike; if they may do that which is
easy, and not that which is hard; and that which is an honour to them,
and not that which seemeth inferior and base. 2. If they may work when
they will, and give over when they will. 3. If they may rise when they
will, and go to bed when they will. 4. If they may eat and drink what
they will, and fare well to the pleasing of their appetites. 5. If
they may speak when they will, and what they have a mind to speak. 6.
If they may have leave when they will to sport, and play, and be
wanton and vain, and waste their time, which they call being merry. 7.
If they may wear the best apparel and go fine. 8. If their masters
will be liberal to them, to maintain all this, and will give them what
they would have. 9. If their masters and fellow-servants carry it
respectfully to them, and praise them, and make somebody of them, and
do not dishonour them, nor give them any displeasing words. 10. And if
they are not troubled with the precepts of godliness, nor set to learn
the Scripture, or catechized, nor called to account about the state of
their souls, or the ground of their hopes for the life to come, nor
troubled with much praying, or repeating sermons, or religious
exercise or discourse, or any thing that tendeth to their salvation;
nor be restrained from any sin, which they have a mind to, nor
reproved for it when they have done it. These are an ungodly, carnal
person's conditions, or signs of a good service. Which is, in a word,
to have their own wills and fleshly desires, and not to be crossed by
their masters' wills, or the will of God: which in effect is, to have
the greatest helps to do the devil's will, and to be damned.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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