A Christian Directory, Part 1: Christian Ethics

by Richard Baxter

How apt men are to corrupt and debase all duties of religion, is too visible in the face of the far greatest part of the christian world. Throughout both the eastern and the western churches, the papists, the Greeks, the Armenians, the Abassines, and too many others, (though the essentials of religion through God's mercy are retained, yet,) how much is the face of religion altered from what it was in the days of the apostles! The ancient simplicity of doctrine is turned into abundance of new or private opinions, introduced as necessary articles of religion: and, alas, how many of them false! So that christians, being too proud to accept of the ancient test of christianity, cannot now agree among themselves what a christian is, and who is to be esteemed a christian; and so they deny one another to be christians, and destroy their charity to each other, and divide the church, and make themselves a scorn by their divisions to the infidel world: and thus the primitive unity, charity, and peace is partly destroyed, and partly degenerate into the unity, charity, and peace of several sects among themselves. The primitive simplicity in government and discipline, is with most turned into a forcible secular government, exercised to advance one man above others, and to satisfy his will and lusts, and make him the rule of other men's lives, and to suppress the power and spirituality of religion in the world. The primitive simplicity of worship is turned into such a mask of ceremony, and such a task of formalities and bodily exercise, that if one of the apostolical christians should come among them, he would scarce think that this is the same employment which formerly the church was exercised in, or scarce know religion in this antic dress. So that the amiable, glorious face of christianity, is so spotted and defiled, that it is hidden from the unbelieving world, and they laugh at it as irrational, or think it to be but like their own: and the principal hinderance of the conversion of heathens, Mahometans, and other unbelievers, is the corruption and deformity of the churches that are near them, or should be the instruments of their conversion. And the probablest way to the conversion of those nations, is the true reformation of the churches, both in east and west: which, if they were restored to the ancient spirituality, rationality, and simplicity of doctrine, discipline, and worship; and lived in charity, humility, and holiness, as those whose hearts and conversations are in heaven, with all worldly glory and honour as under their feet; they would then be so illustrious and amiable in the eyes even of heathens and other infidels, that many would flock into the church of Christ, and desire to be such as they: and their light would so shine before these men, that they would see their good works, and glorify their heavenly Father, and embrace their faith.

The commonest way of the degenerating of all religious duties, is into this dead formality, or lifeless image of religion. If the devil can but get you to cast off the spirituality and life of duty, he will give you leave to seem very devout, and make much ado with outward actions, words, and beads; and you shall have so much zeal for a dead religion, or the corpse of worship, as will make you think that it is indeed alive. By all means take heed of this turning the worship of God into lip-service. The commonest cause of it is, a carnality of mind (fleshly men will think best of the most fleshly religion); or else a slothfulness in duty, which will make you sit down with the easiest part. It is the work of a saint, and a diligent saint, to keep the soul itself both regularly and vigorously employed with God. But to say over certain words by rote, and to lift up the hands and eyes, is easy: and hypocrites, that are conscious that they are void of the life and spirituality of worship, do think to make all up with this formality, and quiet their consciences, and delude their souls with a handsome image. Of this I have spoken more largely in a book called, "The Vain Religion of the Formal Hypocrite."

Yet run not here into the contrary extreme, as to think that the body must not worship God as well as the soul, or that the decent and edifying determination of the outward circumstances of religion, and the right ordering of worship, is a needless thing, or sinful; or that a form of prayer in itself, or when imposed, is unlawful: but let the soul and body of religion go together, and the alterable adjuncts be used, as things alterable, while the life of holiness is still kept up.

Direct. XIX. Promise not yourselves long life, or prosperity and great matters in the world, lest it entangle your hearts with transitory things, and engage you in ambitious or covetous designs, and steal away your hearts from God, and destroy all your serious apprehensions of eternity.

Our own experience, and the alterations which the approach of death makes upon the most, doth sensibly prove, that the expectation of a speedy change, and reckoning upon a short life, doth greatly help us in all our preparation, and in all the work of holiness through our lives. Come to a man that lieth on his death-bed, or a prisoner that is to die to-morrow, and try him with discourse of riches, or honours, or temptations to lust, or drunkenness, or excess; and he will think you are mad, or very impertinent, to tell him of such things. If he be but a man of common reason, you shall see that he will more easily vilify such temptations, than any religious persons will do, in their prosperity and health. Oh how serious are we in repenting and perusing our former lives, and casting up our accounts, and asking, What we shall do to be saved, when we see that death is indeed at hand, and time is at an end, and we must away! Every sentence of Scripture hath then some life and power in it; every word of exhortation is savoury to us; every reproof of our negligence and sin is then well taken; every thought of sin, or Christ, or grace, or eternity, goes then to the quick. Then time seems precious; and if you ask a man whether it be better spent in cards and dice, and plays and feastings, and needless recreations and idleness, or in prayer, and holy conference, and reading and meditating on the word of God and the life to come, and the holy use of our lawful labours; how easily will he be satisfied of the truth, and confute the cavils of voluptuous time-wasters! Then his judgment will easilier be in the right, than learning or arguments before could make it.[75] In a word, the expectation of the speedy approach of the soul into the presence of the eternal God, and of our entering into an unchangeable, endless life of joy or torment, hath so much in it to awaken all the powers of the soul, that if ever we will be serious, it will make us serious, in every thought, and speech, and duty. And therefore, as it is a great mercy of God, that this life, which is so short, should be as uncertain, and that frequent dangers and sicknesses call to us to look about us, and be ready for our change; so usually the sickly, that look for death, are most considerate: and it is a great part of the duty of those that are in youth and health, to consider their frailty, and the shortness and uncertainty of their lives, and always live as those that wait for the coming of their Lord. And we have great reason for it, when we are certain it will be ere long; and when we have so many perils and weaknesses to warn us, and when we are never sure to see another hour; and when time is so swift, so quickly gone, so unrecoverable, and nothing when it is past. Common reason requireth such to live in a constant readiness to die.

But if youth or health do once make you reckon of living long,[76] and make you put away the day of your departure, as if it were far off; this will do much to deceive and dull the best, and take away the power of every truth, and the life of every good thought and duty, and all will be apt to dwindle into customariness and form. You will hardly keep the faculties of the soul awake, if you do not still think of death and judgment as near at hand. The greatest certainty of the greatest change, and the greatest joy or misery for ever, will not keep our stupid hearts awake, unless we look at all as near, as well as certain. This is plain in the common difference that we find among all men, between their thoughts of death in health, and when they see indeed that they must presently die. They that in health could think and talk of death with laughter, or lightly, without any awakening of soul, when they come to die are oftentimes as much altered, as if they had never heard before that they are mortal. By which it is plain, that to live in the house of mirth is more dangerous than to live in the house of mourning; and that the expectation of long life is a grievous enemy to the operations of grace, and the safety of the soul.

And it is one of the greatest strengtheners of your temptations to luxury, ambition, worldliness, and almost every sin. When men think that they shall have many years' leisure to repent, they are apt the more boldly to transgress: when they think that they have yet many years to live, it tempteth them to pass away time in idleness, and to loiter in their race, and trifle in all their work, and to overvalue all the pleasures, and honours, and shadows of felicity that are here below. He that hath his life in his house or land, or hath it for inheritance, will set more by it, and bestow more upon it, than if he thought he must go out of it the next year. To a man that thinks of living many years, the favour of great ones, the raising of his estate, and name, and family, and the accommodations and pleasing of his flesh, will seem great matters to him, and will do much with him, and will make self-denial a very hard work.

Therefore, though health be a wonderful great mercy, as enabling him to duty that hath a heart to use it to that end; yet it is by accident a very great danger and snare to the heart itself, to turn it from the way of duty. The best life for the soul, is that which least endangereth it by being over pleasing to the body, and in which the flesh hath the smallest interest, to set up and plead against the Spirit. Not but that the largest stock must be accepted and used for God, when he trusteth us with it; for when he setteth us the hardest work, we may expect his greatest help. But a dwelling as in tents, in a constant unsettledness, in a movable condition, having little, and needing little, never feeling any thing in the creature to tempt us to say, "Soul, take thy rest;" this is to most the safest life, which giveth us the freest advantages for heaven.

Take heed therefore, as you love your souls, of falling into the snare of worldly hopes, and laying designs for rising, and riches, and pleasing yourselves in the thoughts and prosecution of these things, for then you are in the readiest way to perdition; even to idolatrous worldliness, and apostasy of heart from God, and opening a door to every sin that seems but necessary to your worldly ends, and to odious hypocrisy for a cloak to all this, and to quiet your guilty minds with something that is like religion. When once you are saying, with worldly security, as he, Luke xii. 17-19, "I will pull down my barns, and build greater, and there will I bestow all my fruits and goods; and I will say to my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years, take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry;" you are then befooling yourselves, and near being called away as fools by death, ver. 20, 21. And when, without a sense of the uncertainty of your lives, you are saying, as those in James iv. 13, 14, "To-day or to-morrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy, and sell, and get gain, whereas you know not what will be on the morrow;" you forget what your lives are, that they are "a vapour appearing a little while, and then vanishing away," ver. 14. "Boast not thyself therefore of to-morrow, for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth," Prov. xxvii. 1.

Direct. XX. See that your religion be purely divine, and animated all by God, as the beginning, the way, and the end; and that first upon thy soul, and then upon all that thou hast or dost, there be written "HOLINESS TO THE LORD;" and that thou corrupt not all with an inordinate hypocritical respect to man.