A Christian Directory, Part 1: Christian Ethics

by Richard Baxter

And as unsound are they that are religious, only because their education, or their friends, or the laws, or judgment of their rulers, or the custom of the country, hath made it necessary to their reputation: these are hypocrites at the first setting out, and therefore cannot be saved by continuance in such a carnal religiousness as this. I know law, and custom, and education, and friends, when they side with godliness, are a great advantage to it, by affording helps, and removing those impediments that might stick much with carnal minds. But truth is not your own, till it be received in its proper evidence; nor your faith divine, till you believe what you believe, because God is true who doth reveal it; nor are you the children of God, till you love him for himself; nor are you truly religious, till the truth and goodness of religion itself be the principal thing that maketh you religious. It helpeth much to discover a man's sincerity, when he is not only religious among the religious, but among the profane, and the enemies, and scorners, and persecutors of religion: and when a man doth not pray only in a praying family, but among the prayerless, and the deriders of fervent constant prayer: and when a man is heavenly among them that are earthly, and temperate among the intemperate and riotous, and holdeth the truth among those that reproach it and that hold the contrary: when a man is not carried only by a stream of company, or outward advantages, to his religion, nor avoideth sin for want of a temptation, but is religious though against the stream, and innocent when cast (unwillingly) upon temptations; and is godly where godliness is accounted singularity, hypocrisy, faction, humour, disobedience, or heresy; and will rather let go the reputation of his honesty, than his honesty itself.

Direct. II. Take heed of being religious only in opinion, without zeal and holy practice; or only in zealous affection, without a sound, well grounded judgment; but see that judgment, zeal, and practice be conjunct.

Of the first part of this advice, (against a bare opinionative religion,) I have spoken already, in my "Directions for a Sound Conversion." To change your opinions is an easier matter than to change the heart and life. A holding of the truth will save no man, without a love and practice of the truth. This is the meaning of James ii. where he speaketh so much of the unprofitableness of a dead, unaffected belief, that worketh not by love, and commandeth not the soul to practice and obedience. To believe that there is a God, while you neglect him and disobey him, is unlike to please him. To believe that there is a heaven, while you neglect it, and prefer the world before it, will never bring you thither. To believe your duty, and not to perform it, and to believe that sin is evil, and yet to live in it, is to sin with aggravation, and have no excuse, and not the way to be accepted or justified with God. To be of the same belief with holy men, without the same hearts and conversations, will never bring you to the same felicity. "He that knoweth his master's will and doth it not," shall be so far from being accepted for it, that he "shall be beaten with many stripes." To believe that holiness and obedience is the best way, will never save the disobedient and unholy.

And yet if judgment be not your guide, the most zealous affections will but precipitate you; and make you run, though quite out of the way, like the horses when they have cast the coachman or the riders.[48] To ride post when you are quite out of the way, is but laboriously to lose your time, and to prepare for further labour. The Jews that persecuted Christ and his apostles, had the testimony of Paul himself, that they had a "zeal of God, but not according to knowledge," Rom. x. 2. And Paul saith of the deceivers and troublers of the Galatians, (whom he wished even cut off,) that they did zealously affect them, but not well, Gal. iv. 17. And he saith of himself, while he persecuted christians to prison and to death, "I was zealous towards God as ye are all this day," Acts xxii. 3, 4. Was not the papist, St. Dominick, that stirred up the persecution against the christians in France and Savoy, to the murdering of many thousands of them, a very zealous man? And are not the butchers of the Inquisition zealous men? And were not the authors of the third Canon of the General Council at the Lateran, under Pope Innocent the third, very zealous men, who decreed that the pope should depose temporal lords, and give away their dominions, and absolve their subjects, if they would not exterminate the godly, called heretics? Were not the papists' powder-plotters zealous men? Hath not zeal caused many of latter times to rise up against their lawful governors? and many to persecute the church of God, and to deprive the people of their faithful pastors without compassion on the people's souls? Doth not Christ say of such zealots, "The time cometh, when whosoever killeth you, will think he doth God service," John xvi. 2; or offereth a service (acceptable) to God. Therefore Paul saith, "It is good to be zealously affected always in a good matter," Gal. iv. 18; showing you that zeal indeed is good, if sound judgment be its guide. Your first question must be, Whether you are in the right way? and your second, Whether you go apace? It is sad to observe what odious actions are committed in all ages of the world, by the instigation of misguided zeal! And what a shame an imprudent zealot is to his profession! while making himself ridiculous in the eyes of the adversaries, he brings his profession itself into contempt, and maketh the ungodly think that the religious are but a company of transported brain-sick zealots; and thus they are hardened to their perdition. How many things doth unadvised affection provoke well-meaning people to, that afterwards will be their shame and sorrow.

Labour therefore for knowledge, and soundness of understanding; that you may know truth from falsehood, good from evil; and may walk confidently, while you walk safely; and that you become not a shame to your profession, by a furious persecution of that which you must afterwards confess to be an error; by drawing others to that which you would after wish that you had never known yourselves. And yet see that all your knowledge have its efficacy upon your heart and life; and take every truth as an instrument of God, to reveal himself to you, or to draw your heart to him, and conform you to his holy will.

Direct. III. Labour to understand the true method of divinity, and see truths in their several degrees and order; that you take not the last for the first, nor the lesser for the greater. Therefore see that you be well grounded in the catechism; and refuse not to learn some catechism that is sound and full, and keep it in memory while you live.[49]

Method, or right order, exceedingly helpeth understanding, memory, and practice.[50] Truths have a dependence on each other; the lesser branches spring out of the greater, and those out of the stock and root. Some duties are but means to other duties, or subservient to them, and to be measured accordingly; and if it be not understood which is the chief, the other cannot be referred to it. When two things materially good come together, and both cannot be done, the greater must take place, and the lesser is no duty at that time, but a sin, as preferred before the greater. Therefore it is one of the commonest difficulties among cases of conscience, to know which duty is the greater, and to be preferred. Upon this ground, Christ healed on the sabbath day, and pleaded for his disciples rubbing the ears of corn, and for David's eating the shew-bread, and telleth them, that "the sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath, and that God will have mercy, and not sacrifice."

Divinity is a curious, well-composed frame. As it is not enough that you have all the parts of your watch or clock, but you must see that every part be in its proper place, or else it will not go, or answer its end; so it is not enough that you know the several parts of divinity or duty, unless you know them in their true order and place. You may be confounded before you are aware, and led into many dangerous errors, by mistaking the order of several truths; and you may be misguided into heinous sins, by mistaking the degrees and order of duties; as, when duties of piety and charity seem to be competitors; and when you think that the commands of men contradict the commands of God; and when the substance and the circumstances or modes of duty are in question before you as inconsistent; or when the means seemeth to cease to be a means, by crossing of the end: and in abundance of such cases, you cannot easily conceive what a snare it may prove to you, to be ignorant of the methods and ranks of duty.

Object. If that be so, what man can choose but be confounded in his religion; when there be so few that observe any method at all, and few that agree in method, and none that hath published a scheme or method so exact and clear, as to be commonly approved by divines themselves? What then can ignorant christians do?

Answ. Divinity is like a tree that hath one trunk,[51] and thence a few greater arms or boughs, and thence a thousand smaller branches; or like the veins, or nerves, or arteries in the body, that have first one or few trunks divided into more, and those into a few more, and those into more, till they multiply at last into more than can easily be seen or numbered. Now it is easy for any man to begin at the chief trunk, and to discern the first divisions, and the next, though not to comprehend the number and order of all the extreme and smaller branches. So is it in divinity: it is not very hard to begin at the unity of the eternal God-head, and see there a Trinity of Persons, and of primary attributes, and of relations; and to arise to the principal attributes and works of God as in these relations, and to the relations of man to God, and to the great duties of these relations, to discern God's covenants and chiefest laws, and the duty of man in obedience thereto, and the judgment of God in the execution of his sanctions; though yet many particular truths be not understood. And he that beginneth, and proceedeth as he ought, doth know methodically so much as he knoweth; and he is in the right way to the knowledge of more: and the great mercy of God hath laid so great a necessity on us to know these few points that are easily known, and so much less need of knowing the many small particulars, that a mean christian may live uprightly, and holily, and comfortably, that well understandeth his catechism, or the creed, Lord's prayer, and ten commandments; and may find daily work and consolation in the use of these.