A Christian Directory, Part 4: Christian PoliticsBaxter, Richard
Religion
A Christian Directory, Part 4: Christian Politics
Baxter, Richard
Casuistry; Christian sociology
8. Lastly, Even silence and omissions also may be scandalous, and draw
another into error and sin. If by silence you seem to consent to false
doctrine, or to wicked works, when you have opportunity to control
them, hereby you draw others to consent also to the sin: or if you
omit those public or private duties, which others may be witnesses of,
you tempt them to the like omission, and to think they are no duties,
but indifferent things: for in evil they will easily rest in your
judgment, and say that you are wiser than they; but they are not so
ductile and flexible to good.
5. Scandals also are distinguishable by the effects; which are such as
these:
1. Some scandals do tempt men to actual infidelity, and to deny or
doubt of the truth of the gospel.
2. Some scandals would draw men but into some particular error, and
from some particular truth, while he holds the rest.
3. Some scandals draw men to dislike and distaste the way of
godliness; and some to dislike the servants of God.
4. Some scandals tend to confound men, and bring them to utter
uncertainties in religion.
5. Some tend to terrify men from the way of godliness.
6. Some only stop them for a time, and discourage or hinder them in
their way.
7. Some tend to draw them to some particular sin.
8. And some to draw them from some particular duty.
9. And some tend to break and weaken their spirits, by grief or
perplexity of mind.
10. And as the word is taken in the Old Testament, the snares that
malicious men lay to entrap others in their lives, or liberties, or
estates, or names, are called scandals. And all these ways a man may
sinfully scandalize another.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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