A Christian Directory, Part 1: Christian Ethics

by Richard Baxter

(2.) The diseases of the will, are in its inclination, and its acts. 1. An inordinate inclination to the pleasing of the fleshly appetite and fantasy, and to all carnal baits and temporal things, that tend to please it, and inordinate acts of desire accordingly. 2. An irrational backwardness to God, and grace, and spiritual good, and a refusal or nolition in act accordingly. These are in the will, 1. Because it is become much subject to the sensitive appetite, and hath debased itself, and contracted, by its sinful acts, a sensual inclination, the flesh having the dominion in a corrupted soul. 2. Because the intellect being also corrupted, ofttimes misleadeth it, by overvaluing transient things. 3. Because the will is become destitute (in its corrupted state) of the power of divine love, or an inclination to God and holy things, which should countermand the seduction of carnal objects. 4. And the understanding is much destitute of the light that should lead them higher. 5. Because the rage of the corrupted appetite is still seducing it. Mark therefore, for the right understanding of this, our greatest malady:

1. That the will never desireth evil, as evil, but as a carnal or a seeming good. 2. Nor doth it hate good as good, but as a seeming evil, because God and grace do seem to be his enemies, and to hurt him, by hindering him of the good of carnal pleasure which he now preferreth. 3. Nay, at the same time that he loveth evil as it pleaseth the flesh, he hath naturally, as a man, some averseness to it, so far as he apprehendeth it to be evil: and when he hateth God and holiness as evil, for hindering him of his carnal pleasure, he naturally loveth them, so far as he apprehendeth them to be good. So that there is some love to God and good, and some hatred to evil, in the ungodly; for while man is man, he will have naturally an inclination to good as good, and against evil as evil. 4. But the apprehension of sensitive good is the strongest in him, and the apprehension of spiritual good is weakest; and therefore the will receiving a greater impress from the carnal appetite and mind, than from the weak apprehensions of spiritual good, is more inclined to that which indeed is worst; and so things carnal have got the dominion, or chief commanding interest, in the soul. 5. Note also, that sin receiveth its formality, or moral evil, first in the will, and not in the intellect or sensitive appetite: for it is not sin till it be positively or privately, immediately or mediately, voluntary. But the first motions to sin are not in the will, but in the sensitive appetite; though there, at first, it be not formally sin. 6. Note, that neither intellect, object, appetite, or sense, necessitate naturally the will to sin, but it remaineth the first in the sin and guilt.

It is a matter of great difficulty to understand how sin first entered into the innocent soul; and it is of great importance, because an error here is of dangerous consequence. Two sorts seem to me to make God so much the necessitating cause of Adam's first sin, (and so of all sin,) as that it was as naturally impossible for Adam to have forborne it, according to their doctrine, as to have conquered God: 1. Those that assert the Dominican, immediate, physical, pre-determining pre-motion (which no created power can resist). 2. And those that say the will acts as necessitated by the intellect in all its acts (and so is necessitated in all its omissions); and that the intellect is necessitated by objects (as, no doubt it is, unless as its acts are sub imperio voluntatis); and all those objects are caused and disposed of by God. But it is certain that God is not the cause of sin; and therefore this certainty overruleth the case against these tenets.

At present it seemeth to me, that sin entered in this method: 1. Sense perceiveth the forbidden thing. 2. The appetite desireth it. 3. The imagination thinketh on its desirableness yet further. 4. The intellect conceiveth of it (truly) as good, by a simple apprehension. 5. The will accordingly willeth it by a simple complacency or volition. Thus far there was no sin. But, 6. The will here adhered to it too much, and took in it an excess of complacency, when it had power to do otherwise: and here sin begun. 7. And so when the cogitations should have been called off; 8. And the intellect should have minded God, and his command, and proceeded from a simple apprehension to the comparing act, and said, The favour of God is better, and his will should rule, it omitted all these acts, because the will omitted to command them; yea, and hindered them. 9. And so the intellect was next guilty of a non-renuo,—I will not forbid or hinder it (and the will accordingly). 10. And next of a positive deception, and the will of consent unto the sin, and so it being "finished, brought forth death."

If you say, the will's first sinful adhesion in the sixth instance, could not be, unless the intellect first directed it so to do; I deny that, because the will is the first principle in men's actions quoad exercitium, though the intellect be the first as to specification. And therefore the will could suspend its exercise and its excitation of the mind. In all this I go upon common principles: but I leave it to further inquiry; 1. How far the sensitive appetite may move the locomotive faculty without the will's command, while the will doth not forbid? And whether reason be not given man, as the rider to the horse, not to enable him to move, but to rule his motion: so that as the horse can go if the rider hinder not, so the sensitive appetite can cause the actions of eating, drinking, thinking, speaking sensually, if reason do but drop asleep, or not hinder. 2. And so whether in the first sin (and ordinarily) the sensitive appetite, fantasy, and passion be not the active mover, and the rational powers first guilty only by omitting their restraining government, which they were able to have exercised? 3. And so, whether sin be not (ordinarily) a brutish motion, or a voluntary unmanning of ourselves, the rational powers in the beginning being guilty only of omission or privation of restraint; but afterwards brought over to subserve the sensitive appetite actively? 4. And so, whether the will, which is the principium actus quoad exercitium, were not the first in the omission? The intellect having before said, This must be further considered, the will commanded not that further consideration, when it could and should?

However, if it be too hard for us to trace our own souls in all their motions, it is certain that the will of man is the first subject of moral good and evil; and uncertainties must not make us deny that which is certain.

The reader who understandeth the importance and consequence of these points, I am sure, will pardon me for this interposition of these difficult controverted points (which I purposely avoid where I judge them not very needful in order to the defence or clearing of the plainer common truths): and as for others, I must bear their censure.

The degree of sinfulness in the will lieth in a stiffness and obstinacy, a tenaciousness of deceitful temporal good, and an eagerness after it; and stubborn averseness to spiritual good, as it is against that temporal fleshly good. This is the will's disease.[99]

(3.) The sinfulness of the memory is in its retentiveness of evil, or things hurtful and prohibited; and its looseness and neglect of better, spiritual, necessary things. If this were only as things present have the natural advantage to make a deeper impress upon the fantasy, and things unseen and absent have the disadvantage, it were then but a natural, innocent infirmity; or if in sickness, age, or weakness, all kind of memory equally decay. But it is plain, that if the Bible be open before our eyes, and preaching be in our ears, and things unseen have the advantage of their infinite greatness, and excellency, and concernment to us, yet our memories are like walls of stone to any thing that is spiritual, and like walls of wax, on which you may write any thing, of that which is secular or evil. Note here, also, that the faultiness of the memory is only so far sinful as it is voluntary: it is the will where the sin is as in its throne, or chiefest subject. Because men love carnal things, and love not spiritual things, therefore it is that they mind, and understand, and remember the one, and not the other. So that it is but as imperate, and participatively, that the memory is capable of sin.

(4.) The sinfulness of the imagination consisteth in its readiness to think of evil, and of common earthly things, and its unaptness to think of any thing that is holy and good; and when we do force ourselves to holy thoughts, they are disorderly, confused, unskilfully managed, with great averseness.—Here also voluntariness is the life of the sin.