A Christian Directory, Part 1: Christian Ethics

by Richard Baxter

Direct. III. The main part of this government in the exercise, is in taking special care that no sensitive good be made the ultimate end of our desire, nor sought for itself, nor rested in, nor delighted in too much; but to see that the soul (having first habitually fixed on its proper higher end and happiness) do direct all the actions of every sense (so far as it falls under deliberation and choice) to serve it remotely to those holy ends. For the sense is not sanctified, if it be not used to a holy end; and its object is not sanctified to us, if it be not made serviceable to more holy objects. A mere negative restraint of sense for common ends, is but such as those ends are for which it is done. When the eyes, and ears, and taste, and feeling are all taught by reason to serve God to his glory and our salvation, then, and never till then, they are well governed.

Direct. IV. To this end the constant use of a lively belief of the word of God and the things unseen of the other world, must be the first and principal means by which our reason must govern every sense, both as to their restraint and their right employment. And therefore living by sight and living by faith are opposed in Scripture, 2 Cor. v. 7. For "we walk by faith, not by sight;" that is, sight and sense are not our principal guiding faculty, but subservient to faith; nor the objects of sight the things which we principally or ultimately seek or set by, but the objects of faith; as it is before expounded, 2 Cor. iv. 18, "While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal." Therefore "faith" is described to be the "substance of things hoped for," and "the evidence of things not seen," Heb. xi. 1. Believing is to a christian instead of seeing; because he knoweth by God's testimony, that the things believed are true, though they are unseen. And you know that the objects of sense are all but trifles, to the great astonishing objects of faith. Therefore if faith be lively, it must needs prevail and overrule the senses, because its objects utterly cloud and make nothing of the transitory objects of sense. Therefore the apostle John saith, 1 John v. 4, "Whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world; and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith." And "Moses, by seeing him that is invisible," overcame the desires of Egypt's treasures, and the "fear of the wrath of the king, having respect to the recompence of reward," Heb. xi. 26, 27. Stephen easily bore his cruel death, when "he saw heaven opened, and Christ standing at the right hand of God," Acts vii. 56. I dare appeal to that man that is most sensual, and saith, I am not able to deny my appetite, or rule my senses, whether he would not be able if he did but see at the same time what is done in the other world? If he saw heaven, and hell, the glorified and the damned, and saw the majesty of that God who commandeth him to forbear, would he not then be able to let alone the cup, the dish, the harlot, the sport, which is now so powerful with him? I would not thank the most beastly sensualist among you, to live as temperately (as to the act) as the strictest saint alive, if he did but see the worlds which departed souls now see. It is not possible but it would overpower his sensual desires; yea, and call off those senses to serve him in some inquiry what he should do to be saved. Therefore if believing the unseen world, be instead of seeing it with our eyes, it is most certain that the means to overcome sensuality is faith, and lively belief must rule our senses.

Direct. V. The more this belief of God and glory doth kindle love to them, the more effectual it will be in the government of the senses. Our common proverb saith, Where the love is, there is the eye. How readily doth it follow the heart! Love will not alter the sense itself, but it commandeth the use of all the senses. It will not clear a dim, decayed sight; but it will command it what to look upon. As the stronger love of one dish, or one sport, or one company, will carry you from another which you love more faintly; so the love of God, and heaven, and holiness, will carry you from the captivity of all sensual things.

Direct. VI. It must be well considered how powerful and dangerous things sensible are, and how high and hard a work it is in this our depraved, earthly state, to live by faith upon things unseen, and to rule the sense and be carried above it: that so the soul may be awakened to a sufficient fear and watchfulness, and may fly to Christ for assistance to his faith. It is no small thing for a man in flesh, to live above flesh. The way of the soul's reception and operation, is so much by the senses here, that it is apt to grow too familiar with things sensible, and to be strange to things which it never saw. It is a great work to make a man in flesh to deny the pleasures which he seeth, and tasteth, and feeleth, for such pleasures as he only heareth of; and heareth of as never to be enjoyed till after death, in a world which sense hath no acquaintance with. Oh what a glory it is to faith, that it can perform such a work as this! How hard is it to a weak believer! And the strongest find it work enough. Consider this, that it may awake you to set upon this work with that care that the greatness of it requireth, and you may live by faith above a life of sight and sense; for it is this that your happiness or misery lieth on.

Direct. VII. Sense must not only be kept out of the throne, but from any participation in the government; and we must take heed of receiving it into our counsels, or treating with it, or hearing it plead its cause; and we must see that it get nothing by striving, importunity, or violence, but that it be governed despotically and absolutely, as the horse is governed by the rider. For if the government once be halved between sense and reason, your lives will be half bestial: and when reason ruleth not, faith and grace ruleth not; for faith is to reason as sight to the eye. There are no such beasts in human shape, who lay by all the use of reason, and are governed by sense alone (unless it be idiots or mad-men). But sense should have no part of the government at all. And where it is chief in power, the devil is there the unseen governor. You cannot here excuse yourselves by any plea of necessity or constraint: for though the sense be violent as well as enticing, yet God hath made the reason and will the absolute governors under him; and by all its rebellion and violence, sense cannot depose them, nor force them to one sin, but doth all the mischief by procuring their consent. Which is done sometimes by affecting the fantasy and passions too deeply with the pleasure and alluring sweetness of their objects, that so the higher faculties may be drawn into consent; and sometimes by wearying out the resisting mind and will, and causing them to remit their opposition, and relax the reins, and by a sinful privation of restraint to permit the sense to take its course. A headstrong horse is not so easily ruled, as one of a tender mouth that hath been well ridden; and, therefore, though it be in the power of the rider to rule him, yet sometimes for his own ease he will loose the reins: and a horse that is used thus by a slothful or unskilful rider, to have his will whenever he striveth, will strive whenever he is crossed of his will, and so will be the master. As ill-bred children that are used to have every thing given them which they cry for, will be sure to cry before they will be crossed of their desire. So it is with our sensitive appetite: if you use to satisfy it when it is eager or importunate, you shall be mastered by its eagerness and importunity; and if you use but to regard it overmuch, and delay your commands till sense is heard and taken into counsel, it is two to one but it will prevail, or at least will be very troublesome to you, and prove a traitor in your bosom, and its temptations keep you in continual danger. Therefore be sure that you never loose the reins; but keep sense under a constant government, if you love either your safety or your ease.

Direct. VIII. You may know whether sense, or faith and reason, be the chief in government, by knowing which of their objects is made your chiefest end, and accounted your best, and loved, and delighted in, and sought accordingly. If the objects of sense be thus taken for your best and end, then certainly sense is the chief in government; but if the objects of faith and reason, even God and life eternal, be taken for your best and end, then faith and reason are the ruling power. Though you should use never so great understanding and policy for sensual things, (as riches, and honour, and worldly greatness, or fleshly delights,) this doth not prove that reason is the ruling power; but proveth the more strongly that sense is the conqueror, and that reason is depraved and captivated by it, and truckleth under it, and serveth it as a voluntary slave. And the greater is your learning, wit, and parts, and the nobler your education, the greater is the victory and dominion of sense, that can subdue, and rule, and serve itself by parts so noble.

Deny not sense with the papists.

Direct. IX. Though sense must be thus absolutely ruled, its proper power must neither be disabled, prohibited, nor denied. You must keep your horse strong and able for his work, though not headstrong and unruly; and you must not keep him from the use of his strength, though you grant him not the government. Nor will you deny but that he may be stronger than the rider, though the rider have the ruling power: he hath more of the power called δυναμις, natural power, though the εξουσια be yours. So it is here: 1. No man must destroy his bodily sense; the quickest sense is the best servant to the soul, if it be not headstrong and too impetuous. The body must be stricken so far as to be "kept under and brought into subjection," 1 Cor. ix. 27; but not be disabled from its service to the soul. 2. Nor must we forbid or forbear the exercise of the senses, in subordination to the exercise of the inferior senses, Heb. iv. 14. It is indeed a smaller loss to part with a right hand or a right eye, than with our salvation; but that proveth not that we are put to such straits as to be necessitated to either (unless persecution put us to it). 3. Nor must we deny the certainty of the sensitive apprehension, when it keepeth its place; as the papists do, that affirm it necessary to salvation to believe that the sight, and taste, and smell, and feeling of all men in the world, that take the sacrament, are certainly deceived, in taking that to be bread and wine which is not so. For if all the senses of all men, though never so sound and rational, be certainly deceived in this, we know not when they are not deceived, and there can be no certainty of faith or knowledge: for if you say that the church telleth us that sense is deceived in this, and only in this, I answer, If it be not first granted that sense (as so stated) is certain in its apprehension, there is no certainty then that there is a church, or a man, or a world, or what the church ever said, or any member of it. And if sense be so fallible, the church may be deceived, who by the means of sense doth come to all her knowledge. To deny faith is the property of an infidel; to deny reason is to deny humanity, and is fittest for a mad-man, or a beast (if without reason, reason could be denied); but to deny the certainty of sense itself, and of all the senses of all sound men, and that about the proper objects of sense, this showeth that ambition can make a religion, which shall bring man quite below the beasts, and make him a mushroom, that Rome may have subjects capable of her government; and all this under pretence of honouring faith, and saving souls; making God the destroyer of nature in order to its perfection, and the deceiver of nature in order to its edification.

Direct. X. Sense must not be made the judge of matters that are above it, as the proper objects of faith and reason; nor must we argue negatively from our senses in such cases, which God in nature never brought into their court. We cannot say that there is no God, no heaven, no hell, no angels, no souls of men, because we see them not. We cannot say, I see not the antipodes, nor other kingdoms of the world, and therefore there is no such place: so we say, as well as the papists, that sense is no judge whether the spiritual body of Christ be present in the sacrament, no more than whether an angel be here present. But sense with reason is the judge whether bread and wine be there present, or else human understanding can judge of nothing. Christ would have had Thomas to have believed without seeing and feeling, and blesseth those that neither see him nor feel, and yet believe; but he never blesseth men for believing contrary to the sight, and feeling, and taste, and all that have sound senses and understandings in the world. Their instance of the Virgin's conception of Christ, is nothing contrary to this; for it belongeth not to sense to judge whether a virgin may conceive. Nor will any wise man's reason judge, that the Creator, who in making the world of nothing was the only cause, cannot supply the place of a partial second cause in generation: they might more plausibly argue with Aristotle against the creation itself, that ex nihilo nihil fit; but as it is past doubt, that the infallibility of sense is nothing at all concerned in this, so it is sufficiently proved by christians, that God can create without any pre-existent matter. Reason can see much further than sense by the help of sense; and yet much further by the help of divine revelation by faith. To argue negatively against the conclusions of reason or divine revelation, from the mere negation of sensitive apprehension, is to make a beast of man. We must not be so irrational or impious, as to say, that there is nothing but what we have seen, or felt, or tasted, &c. If we will believe others who have seen them, that there are other parts of the world, we have full reason to believe the sealed testimony of God himself, that there are such superior worlds and powers as he hath told us. We have the use of sense in hearing, or seeing God's revelation; and we have no more in receiving man's report of those countries which we never saw.