A Christian Directory, Part 3: Christian EcclesiasticsBaxter, Richard
Religion
A Christian Directory, Part 3: Christian Ecclesiastics
Baxter, Richard
Casuistry; Christian sociology
_Direct._ XIV. Take the measure of your accidental duties more from
the good or hurt of the church, or of many, than from the immediate
good or hurt that cometh to yourself. You are not to take that for the
station of your duty, which you feel to be most to the commodity of
your souls; but that in which you may do God most service. If the
service of God for the good of many, require you to stay with a weaker
minister, and defective administrations, you will find in the end that
this was not only the place of your duty, but also of your benefit:
for your life is in God's hands, and all your comforts; and that is
the best way to your peace and happiness, in which you are most
pleasing unto God, and have his promise of most acceptance and grace.
I know the least advantage to the soul must be preferred before all
earthly riches; but not before the public good. Yea, that way will
prove most advantageous to us, in which we exercise most obedience.
_Direct._ XV. Take heed of suffering prejudice and fancy to go for
reason, and raise in your minds unjustifiable distastes of any way or
mode of worship. It is wonderful to see what fancy and prejudice can
do! Get once a hard opinion of a thing, and your judgments will make
light of all that is said for it, and will see nothing that should
reconcile you to it. Partiality will carry you away from equity and
truth. Abundance of things appear now false and evil, to men that once
imagine them to be so, which would seem harmless, if not laudable, if
they were tried by a mind that is clear from prejudice.
_Direct._ XVI. Judge not of doctrines and worship by persons, but
rather of persons by their doctrine and worship (together with their
lives). The world is all prone to be carried by respect to persons. I
confess where any thing is to be taken upon trust, we must rather
trust the intelligent, experienced, honest, and credible, than the
ignorant and incredible; but where the word of God must be our rule,
it is perverse to judge of things by the persons that hold them or
oppose them: sometimes a bad man may be in the right, and a good man
in the wrong. Try the way of the worst men before you reject it (in
disputable things). And try the opinions and way of the best and
wisest before you venture to receive them.
_Direct._ XVII. Enslave not yourselves to any party of men, so as to
be over-desirous to please them, nor over-fearful of their censure.
Have a respect to all the rest of the world as well as them. Most men
that once engage themselves in a party, do think their honour and
interest is involved with them, and that they stand or fall with the
favour of their party, and therefore make them (before they are
aware) the masters of their consciences.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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