A Christian Directory, Part 1: Christian Ethics

by Richard Baxter

Direct. XI. Highly esteem a just method in divinity, and in all your studies; and labour to get an accurate scheme or skeleton, where at once you may see every part in its proper place. But remember that if it be not sound, it will be a snare; and one error in your scheme or method will be apt to introduce abundance more.[319]

It is a poor and pitiful kind of knowledge, to know many loose parcels, and broken members of truth, without knowing the whole, or the place and the relation which they have to the rest. To know letters and not syllables, or syllables and not words, or words and not sentences, or sentences and not the scope of the discourse, are all but an unprofitable knowledge. He knoweth no science rightly that hath not anatomized it, and carrieth not a true scheme or method of it in his mind. But among the many that are extant, to commend any one to you which I most esteem, or take to be without error, is more than I dare do.

Direct. XII. Still keep the primitive, fundamental verities in your mind, and see every other truth which you learn as springing out of them, and receiving their life and nourishment from them: and still keep in your minds a clear distinction between the truths of several degrees, both of necessity, and certainty, always reducing the less necessary to the more necessary, and the less certain to the more certain, and not contrarily.[320]

If God had made all points of faith, or Scripture revelation, of equal necessity, our baptism would not only have mentioned our belief in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; nor should we ever have seen the ancient creed, nor the ten commandments. And if all points were of equal evidence, and plainness, and certainty to us, we should not have some so much controverted above others: "Some things" in Scripture are "hard to be understood," but not "all things," 2 Pet. iii. 16. To pretend that any truth is more necessary than it is, doth tend to uncharitableness and contention: and to say that any is less necessary than it is, doth tend to the neglect of it, and to the danger of souls. To pretend any point to be more plain and certain than it is, doth but show our pride and ignorance. But to set up uncertain and unnecessary points, and make a religion of them, and reduce things certain or necessary to them, this is the method of turbulent heretics.

Direct. XIII. Take nothing as universally necessary in religion, which was not so taken in the days of the apostles, and primitive church; and take that for the safest way to heaven which the apostles went who certainly are there: value the apostolical purity, simplicity, charity, and unity; and follow not them that by being wise and pious overmuch, corrupt our sacred pattern by their additions, and fill the church with uncharitableness and strife.

If it were not a thing too evident that dominion and riches go for religion with them, and gain for godliness, and honour and money instead of argument, it would be a most stupendous wonder that so many learned men should be found among christians in the world, to hinder the peace and unity of the church, as do it vehemently and implacably in the church of Rome; when so easy a thing, and so reasonable, would unite almost all the christian world, as is the requiring no more as necessary to our union, than what was made necessary in the days of the apostles, and the obtruding nothing as necessary to salvation, which the apostles and primitive church were saved without. This easy, reasonable thing, which no man hath any thing of seeming sense and weight to speak against, would end all the ruinating differences among christians.

Direct. XIV. Be desirous to know all that God would have you know, and be willing to be ignorant of all that God would have you ignorant of; and pry not into unrevealed things; and much less make them the matter of any uncharitable strife.

Abundance of contentious volumes between the Dominicans, and Jesuits, and many others, are stuffed with bold inquiries, wranglings, or determinations of unsearchable mysteries, utterly unknown to those that voluminously debate them, and never revealed in the word or works of God. Keep off with reverence from concealed mysteries. Talk not as boldly of the divine influx, and the priority, posteriority, dependence or reason of God's decrees, as if you were talking of your common affairs. Come with great reverence when you are called of God to search into those high and holy truths, which he hath revealed. But pretend not to know that which is not to be known. For you will but discover your ignorance and arrogance, and know never the more, when you have doted about questions never so long.

Direct. XV. Avoid both extremes, of them that study no more but to know what others have written and held before them, and of them that little regarded the discoveries of others. Learn all of your teachers and authors that they can teach you; but make all your own, and see things in their proper evidence; and improve their discoveries by the utmost of your diligence; abhorring a proud desire of singularity, or to seem wiser than you are.

Most students through slothfulness look no further for knowledge than into their books; and their learning lieth but in knowing what others have written, or said, or held before them; especially where the least differing from the judgment of the party which is uppermost or in reputation, doth tend to hazard a man's honour, or preferments, there men think it dangerous to seem to know more than is commonly known; and therefore think it needless to study to know it. Men are backward to take much pains to know that which tendeth to their ruin to be known, but doth them no harm while they can but keep themselves ignorant of it: which makes the opposed truth have so few entertainers or students among the papists, or any that persecute or reproach it. And others discerning this extreme, do run into the contrary; and under pretence of the loveliness of truth, and the need of liberty of judging, do think the edifying way is first to pull down all that others have built before them, and little regard the judgment of their predecessors, but think they must take nothing on trust from others, but begin all from the very ground themselves. And usually their pride makes them so little regard the most approved authors, that they have not patience to read them till they thoroughly understand them; but reject that which is received, before they understand it, merely because it was the received way: and while they say, that nothing must be taken upon trust, they presently take upon trust themselves that very opinion, and with it the other opinions of those novelists that teach them this. And believing what such say in disgrace of others, withal they believe what they hold in opposition to those that they have disgraced. But it is easy to see how sad a case mankind were in, if every man must be a fabricator of all his knowledge himself, and posterity should be never the better for the discoveries of their ancestors; and the greatest labours of the wisest men, and their highest attainments, must be no profit to any but themselves. Why do they use a teacher, if they must do all themselves? If they believe not their tutors, and take nothing on trust, it seems they must know every truth before they will learn it: and what difference is there between believing a tutor and an author? And is not that more credible which upon long experience is approved by many nations and ages, than that which is recommended to you but by one or few? These students should have made themselves an alphabet or grammar, and not have taken the common ones on trust. It is easier to add to other men's inventions, than to begin and carry on all ourselves. By their course of study, the world would never grow wiser; but every age and person be still beginning, and none proceed beyond their rudiments.