A Christian Directory, Part 2: Christian EconomicsBaxter, Richard
Religion
A Christian Directory, Part 2: Christian Economics
Baxter, Richard
Casuistry; Christian sociology
_Motive_ III. A holy, well-governed family tendeth not only to
the safety of the members, but also to the ease and pleasure of their
lives. To live where God's law is the principal rule, and where you
may be daily taught the mysteries of his kingdom, and have the
Scriptures opened to you, and be led as by the hand in the paths of
life; where the praises of God are daily celebrated, and his name is
called upon, and where all do speak the heavenly language, and where
God, and Christ, and heaven are both their daily work and recreation;
where it is the greatest honour to be most holy and heavenly, and the
greatest contention is, who shall be most humble, and godly, and
obedient to God and their superiors, and where there is no reviling
scorns at godliness, nor any profane and scurrilous talk; what a sweet
and happy life is this! Is it not likest to heaven of any thing upon
earth? But to live where worldliness, and profaneness, and wantonness,
and sensuality bear all the sway, and where God is unknown, and
holiness and all religious exercises are matter of contempt and scorn,
and where he that will not swear and live profanely doth make himself
the hatred and derision of the rest, and where men are known but
by their shape and speaking faculty to be men; nay, where men take not
themselves for men but for brutes, and live as if they had no rational
souls, nor any expectations of another life, nor any higher
employments or delights than the transitory concernments of the flesh;
what a sordid, loathsome, filthy, miserable life is this! made up by a
mixture of beastly and devilish. To live where there is no communion
with God, where the marks of death and damnation are written, as it
were, upon the doors, in the face of their impious, worldly lives, and
where no man understandeth the holy language; and where there is not
the least foretaste of the heavenly, everlasting joys; what is this
but to live as the serpent's seed, to feed on dust, and to be
excommunicated from the face and favour of God, and to be chained up
in the prison of concupiscence and malignity, among his enemies, till
the judgment come that is making haste, and will render to all men
according to their works.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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