A Christian Directory, Part 1: Christian Ethics

by Richard Baxter

Tempt. VI. But, saith the tempter, they are but sins of ignorance, and therefore they are not reigning sins: at least you are not certain that they are sins.

Direct. VI. And indeed do you not know that it is a sin to love the world better than God? and fleshly pleasure better than God's service? and riches better than grace and holiness? and to do more for the body than for the soul, and for earth than for heaven? Are you uncertain whether these are sins? And do you not feel that they are your sins? You cannot pretend ignorance for these. But what causeth your ignorance? Is it because you would fain know, and cannot? Do you read, and hear, and study, and inquire, and pray for knowledge, and yet cannot know? Or is it not because you would not know, or think it not worth the pains to get it; or because you love your sin? And will such wilful ignorance as this excuse you? No; it doth make your sin the greater. It showeth the greater dominion of sin, when it can use thee as the Philistines did Samson, put out thy eyes, and make a drudge of thee; and conquer thy reason, and make thee believe that evil is good and good is evil. Now it hath mastered the principal fortress of thy soul, when thy understanding is mastered by it. He is reconciled indeed to his enemy, who taketh him to be a friend. Do you not know, that God should have your heart, and heaven should have your chiefest care and diligence; and that you should make the word of God your rule, and your delight, and meditation day and night? If you know not these things, it is because you would not know them: and it is a miserable case to be given up to a blinded mind! Take heed, lest at last you commit the horridest sins, and do not know them to be sins. For such there are that mock at godliness, and persecute christians and ministers of Christ, and know not that they do ill; but think they do God service, John xvi. 2. If a man will make himself drunk, and then kill, and steal, and abuse his neighbours, and say, I knew not that I did ill, it shall not excuse him. This is your case. You are drunken with the love of fleshly pleasure and worldly things, and these carry you so away, that you have neither heart nor time to study the Scriptures, and hear, and think what God saith to you, and then say that you did not know.

Tempt. VII. But, saith the tempter, it cannot be a mortal reigning sin, because it is not committed with the whole heart, nor without some struggling and resistance: dost thou not feel the Spirit striving against the flesh? and so it is with the regenerate, Gal. v. 17; Rom. vii. 20-23. The good which thou dost not do, thou wouldst do; and the evil which thou dost, thou wouldst not do; so then it is no more thou that dost it, but sin that dwelleth in thee. In a sensual unregenerate person, there is but one party, there is nothing but flesh; but thou feelest the combat between the flesh and the Spirit within thee.

What resistance of sin may be in the ungodly.

Direct. VII. This is a snare so subtle and dangerous, that you have need of eyes in your head to escape it. Understand therefore, that as to the two texts of Scripture, much abused by the tempter, they speak not at all of mortal reigning sin, but of the unwilling infirmities of such as had subdued all such sin, and walked not after the flesh, but after the Spirit; and whose wills were habitually bent to good; and fain would have been perfect, and not have been guilty of an idle thought, or word, or of any imperfection in their holiest service, but lived up to all that the law requireth: but this they could not do, because the flesh did cast many stops before the will in the performance. But this is nothing to the case of one that liveth in gross sin, and an ungodly life, and hath strivings and convictions, and uneffectual wishes to be better and to turn, but never doth it. This is but sinning against conscience, and resisting the Spirit that would convert you; and it maketh you worthy of many stripes, as being rebellious against the importunities of grace. Sin may be resisted where it is never conquered; it may reign nevertheless for some contradiction. Every one that resisteth the king, doth not depose him from his throne. It is a dangerous deceit to think that every good desire that contradicteth sin, doth conquer it, and is a sign of saving grace. It must be a desire after a state of godliness, and an effectual desire too. There are degrees of power: some may have a less and limited power, and yet be rulers. As the evil spirits that possessed men's bodies, were a legion in one, and but one in others, yet both were possessed; so is it here. Grace is not without resistance in a holy soul; there are some remnants of corruption in the will itself, resisting the good; and yet it followeth not that grace doth not rule. So is it in the sin of the unregenerate. No man in this life is so good as he will be in heaven, or so bad as he will be in hell; therefore none is void of all moral good. And the least good will resist evil, in its degree, as light doth darkness. As in these cases:

1. There is in the unregenerate a remnant of natural knowledge and conscience. Some discoveries of God and his will there are in his works: God hath not left himself without witness. See Acts xiv. 17; xvii. 27; Rom. i. 19, 20; ii. 7-9. This light and law of nature governed the heathens; and this in its measure resisteth sin, and assisteth conscience.

2. When supernatural extrinsic revelation in the Scripture, is added to the light and law of nature, and the ungodly have all the same law as the best; it may do more.

3. Moreover, an ungodly man may live under a most powerful preacher, that will never let him alone in his sins, and may stir up much fear in him, and many good purposes, and almost persuade him to be a true christian; and not only to have some ineffectual wishings and strivings against sin, but to do many things after the preacher, as Herod did after John, and to escape the common pollutions of the world, 2 Pet. ii. 20.

4. Some sharp affliction, added to the rest, may make him seem to others a true penitent: when he is stopped in his course of sin, as Balaam was by the angel, with a drawn sword, and seeth that he cannot go on but in danger of his life; and that God is still meeting him with some cross, and hedging up his way with thorns (for such mercy he showeth to some of the ungodly); this may not only breed resistance of sin, but some reformation. When the Babylonians were planted in Samaria they feared not God, and he sent lions among them; and then they feared him, and sent up some kind of service to him, performed by a base sort of priests; "they feared the Lord, and served their own gods," thinking it was safest to please all, 2 Kings xvii. 25, 32, 33. Affliction maketh bad men likest to the good.

5. Good education and company may do very much: it may help them to much knowledge, and make them professors of strict religion; and constant companions with those that fear sin, and avoid it; and therefore they must needs go far then, as Joash did all the days of Jehoiada, 2 Chron. xxiv. 2. As plants and fruits change with the soil by transplantation, and as the climate maketh some blackmoors and some white; so education and converse have so great a power on the mind, that they come next to grace, and are oft the means of it.