A Christian Directory, Part 3: Christian EcclesiasticsBaxter, Richard
Religion
A Christian Directory, Part 3: Christian Ecclesiastics
Baxter, Richard
Casuistry; Christian sociology
celebrating their public prayers, and praises, and sacraments in an
unknown tongue, and their seldom preaching, and then teaching the
people to take up with a multitude of toyish ceremonies, instead of
knowledge and rational worship. Certainly that which is an enemy to
knowledge, is an enemy to all holiness and true obedience, and to the
ends of worship, and therefore is no acceptable worshipping of God.
(4.) Affect not that pretended worship which is of itself destructive
of true holiness: such as is the preaching of false doctrine, not
according to godliness, and the opposition and reproaching of a holy
life and worship, in the misapplication of true doctrine; and then
teaching poor souls to satisfy themselves with their mass, and mass
ceremonies, and an image of worship, instead of serious holiness,
which is opposed: Prov. xxiv. 24, "He that saith to the wicked, Thou
art righteous, him shall the people curse, nations shall abhor him."
And if this be done as a worship of God, you may hence judge how
acceptable it will be: Isa. v. 20, "Woe unto them that call evil good,
and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness;
that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!" To make people
believe that holiness is but hypocrisy, or a needless thing, or that
the image of holiness is holiness itself, or that there is no great
difference between the godly and ungodly, doth all tend to men's
perdition, and to damn men by deceiving them, and to root out holiness
from the earth. See Ezek. xxii. 26; xliv. 23; Jer. xv. 19. "If thou
take forth the precious from the vile, thou shalt be as my mouth,"
Mal. iii. 18; Psal. i.; xv. (5.) Affect not a dead and heartless way
of worship, which tendeth not to convince and waken the ungodly, nor
to make men serious as those that have to do with God.
_Direct._ VIII. Let the manner of your worshipping God be suited to
the matter that you have in hand. Remember that you are speaking
either to or of the eternal God; that you are employed about the
everlasting salvation of your own or others' souls; that all is high
and holy that you have to do: see then that the manner be answerable
hereunto.
_Direct._ IX. Offer God nothing as a part of worship which is a lie;
much less so gross a lie as to be disproved by the common senses and
reason of all the world. God needeth not our lie unto his glory.[24]
What worship then do papists offer him in their mass, who take it for
an article of their faith, that there is no bread or wine left after
the consecration, it being all transubstantiate into the very body and
blood of Christ? And when the certainty of all men's senses is
renounced, then all certainty of faith and all religion is renounced;
for all presuppose the certainty of sense.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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