A Christian Directory, Part 3: Christian EcclesiasticsBaxter, Richard
Religion
A Christian Directory, Part 3: Christian Ecclesiastics
Baxter, Richard
Casuistry; Christian sociology
3. The right worshipping of God doth powerfully tend to make us in our
measure like him, and so to sanctify and raise the soul, and to heal
it of its sinful distempers and imperfections. What can make us good
so effectually as our knowledge, and love, and communion with him that
is the chiefest good? Nay, what is goodness itself in the creature if
this be not? As nearness to the sun giveth light and heat, so
nearness to God is the way to make us wise and good; for the
contemplation of his perfections is the means to make us like him. The
worshippers of God do not exercise their bare understandings upon him
in barren speculations; but they exercise all their affections towards
him, and all the faculties of their souls, in the most practical and
serious manner, and therefore are likeliest to have the liveliest
impressions of God upon their hearts; and hence it is that the true
worshippers of God are really the wisest and the best of men, when
many that at a distance are employed in mere speculations about his
works and him, remain almost as vain and wicked as before, and
professing themselves wise, are (practically) fools, Rom. i. 21, 22.
4. The right worshipping of God, by bringing the heart into a
cleansed, holy, and obedient frame, doth prepare it to command the
body, and make us upright and regular in all the actions of our lives;
for the fruit will be like the tree; and as men are, so will they do.
He that honoureth not his God, is not like well to honour his parents
or his king: he that is not moved to it by his regard to God, is never
like to be universally and constantly just and faithful unto men.
Experience telleth us that it is the truest worshippers of God that
are truest and most conscionable in their dealings with their
neighbours: this windeth up the spring, and ordereth and strengtheneth
all the causes of a good conversation.
5. The right worshipping of God is the highest and most rational
delight of man. Though to a sick, corrupted soul it be unpleasant, as
food to a sick stomach, yet to a wise and holy soul there is nothing
so solidly and durably contentful. As it is God's damning sentence on
the wicked, to say, "Depart from me," Matt. xxv. 41; vii. 23, so holy
souls would lose their joys, and take themselves to be undone, if God
should bid them, "Depart from me; worship me, and love me, and praise
me no more." They would be weary of the world, were it not for God in
the world; and weary of their lives, if God were not their life.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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