A Christian Directory, Part 3: Christian Ecclesiastics

by Richard Baxter

I have purposely given such particular directions in part ii. on this subject, and written so many books about it,[174] and said so much also in the Cases of Conscience, that I shall here only cast in a few common directions, lest the reader think I make a balk.

Direct. I. Let your preparations in secret and in your family on the beginning of the Lord's days, be such as conduce to fit you for the public worship.[175] Run not to church as ungodly people do, with a carnal heart, that never sought God before you went, nor considered what you go about; as if all your religion were to make up the number of the auditors; and you thought God must not be worshipped and obeyed at home, but only in the church. God may in mercy meet with an unprepared heart, and open his eyes and heart, and save him; but he hath made no promise of it to any such. He that goeth to worship that God at church, whom he forgetteth and despiseth in his heart and house, may expect to be despised by him. O consider what it is for a sinner that must shortly die, to go with the servants of God to worship him; to pray for his salvation, and to hear what God hath to say to him by his minister, for the life of his immortal soul!

Direct. II. Enter not into the holy assembly either superstitiously or unreverently. Not as if the bending of the knee, and mumbling over a few words with a careless, ignorant mind, and spending an hour there as carelessly, would save your souls: nor yet as if the relation which the worship, the worshippers, and the dedicated place have unto God, deserved not a special honour and regard. Though God be ever with us, every where; yet every time, and place, and person, and business is not equally related to God. And holiness is no unfit attribution, for that company or that place, which is related to God, though but by the lawful separation and dedication of man. To be uncovered in those countries where uncovering signifieth reverence, is very well becoming a reverent soul; except when the danger of cold forbids it. It is an unhappy effect of our contentions, that many that seem most reverent and holy, in their high regard of holy things, do yet carry themselves with more unreverent deportment, than those that themselves account profane. God is the God of soul and body, and must be worshipped by both; and while they are united, the actions of one are helpful to the other, as well as due and decent.

Direct. III. If you can, come at the beginning, that you may show your attendance upon God, and your esteem of all his worship. Especially in our assemblies, where so great a part of the duty, (as confession, praises, reading the Scriptures,) are all at the beginning. And it is meet that you thereby show that you prefer public worship before private, and that needless businesses keep you not away.

Direct. IV. If you are free, and can do it lawfully, choose the most able, holy teacher that you can have, and be not indifferent whom you hear. For oh how great is the difference; and how bad are our hearts; and how great our necessity of the clearest doctrine, and the liveliest helps! Nor be you indifferent what manner of people you join with, nor what manner of worship is there performed; but in all choose the best when you are free. But where you are not free, or can have no better, refuse not to make use of weaker teachers, or to communicate with faulty congregations in a defective, faulty manner of worship, sobeit you are not compelled to sin. And think not that all the faults of the prayers, or communicants, are imputed to all that join with them in that worship. For then we should join with none in all the world.

Direct. V. When the minister is weak, be the more watchful against prejudice and sluggishness of heart, lest you lose all. Mark that word of God which he readeth to you, and reverence, and love, and lay up that. It was the law, read and meditated on, which David saith the godly do delight in.[176] The sacred Scriptures are not so obscure and useless as the papists do pretend, but convert the soul, and are able to make us wise unto salvation. Christ went ordinarily to the synagogues, where even bad men did read Moses and the prophets every sabbath day. There are thousands that cannot read themselves, who must come to the assembly to hear that word read, which they cannot read or hear at home. Every sentence of Scripture hath a divine excellency, and therefore had we nothing but the reading of it, and that by a bad man, a holy soul may profit by it.

Direct. VI. Mind not so much the case of others present as yourselves; and think not so much how bad such and such a one is, and unworthy to be there, as how bad you are yourselves, and unworthy of communion with the people of the Lord, and what a mercy it is that you have admittance, and are not cast out from those holy opportunities.

Direct. VII. Take heed of a peevish, quarrelsome humour, that disposeth you to carp at all that is said and done, and to find fault with every mode and circumstance, and to affect a causeless singularity, as thinking that your own ways, and words, and orders, are far more excellent than other men's: think ill of nothing out of a quarrelsome disposition, but only as evidence constraineth you to dissent. And then remember that we are all imperfect, and faulty men must needs perform a faulty worship, if any, for it cannot be better than the agent.

Direct. VIII. When you meet with a word in a sermon or prayer, which you do not like, let it not stop you, and hinder your fervent and peaceable proceeding in the rest; as if you must not join in that which is good, if there be any faulty mixture in it. But go on in that which you approve, and thank God that pardoneth the infirmities of others as well as your own.

Direct. IX. Conform yourselves to all the lawful gestures and customs of the church with which you join. You come not hither proudly to show the congregation, that you are wiser in the circumstances of worship than they, nor needlessly to differ from them, much less to harden men into a scorn of strictness, by seeing you place religion in singularities in lawful and indifferent things. But you come to exercise love, peace, and concord, and with one mind and mouth to glorify God. Stand when the church standeth; sit when the church sitteth; kneel when the church kneeleth, in cases where God doth not forbid it.