A Christian Directory, Part 3: Christian Ecclesiastics. Baxter Richard
IV. Take heed of pride, which will make you dote upon your own conceits, and cause you to slight the weightiest reasons that are brought by others, for your conviction. And if once you have espoused an error, it will engage all your wit, and zeal, and diligence to maintain it; it will make you uncharitable and furious against all that cross you in your way; and so make you either persecutors, (if you stand on the higher ground,) or sect leaders, or church dividers, and turbulent and censorious, if you are on the lower ground. There is very great reason in Paul's advice for the choice of a bishop, 1 Tim. iii. 6, "Not a novice; lest being lifted up with pride he fall into the condemnation of the devil." It is no more wonder to see a proud man erroneous, and in the confidence of his own understanding, to rage against all that tell him he is mistaken, than to hear a drunken man boasting of his wit, to the increase of his shame.
Direct. V. Take heed of slothfulness, and impatience in searching after truth, and think not to find it in difficult cases, without both hard and patient studies, and ripeness of understanding to enable you therein; and suspect all opinions which are the offspring of idleness and ease, whatever divine illumination they may pretend (except as you take them from others upon trust (in a slothful way) who attained them by diligent studies). For God that hath called men to labour, doth use to give his blessing to the laborious. And he that hath said by his Spirit, 1 Tim. iv. 15, "Meditate upon these things; give thyself wholly to them, that thy profiting may appear to all," doth accordingly cause those men to profit, who seek it in this laborious way of his appointment; and he that hath said, "The desire of the slothful killeth him," doth not use to bless the slothful with his teachings. He that will say to him in judgment, "Thou wicked and slothful servant," will not encourage the slothfulness which he condemneth.121 "My son, if thou wilt receive my words, and hide my commandments with thee; so that thou incline thine ear unto wisdom, and apply thine heart to understanding; yea, if thou criest after knowledge, and liftest up thy voice for understanding; if thou seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as for hid treasures; then shalt thou understand the fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge of God: for the Lord giveth wisdom," Prov. ii. 1-6. Mark here to whom God giveth wisdom: all the godly are taught of God; but mark here how it is that he teacheth them. Not while they scorn at studies and universities, and look that their knowledge should cost them nothing, or that the Spirit should be instead of serious studies, or that their understandings should discern what is true or false at the first appearance; but while they think no pains or patience too great to learn the truth in the school of Christ.
Direct. VI. Keep out passion from your disputes, and in the management of all your controversies in religion. For though passion be useful both antecedently to the resolution of the will, and consequently to the effectual execution of its resolutions, yet it is commonly a very great seducer of the understanding, and strangely blindeth and perverteth the judgment;122 so that a passionate man is seldom so far from the truth, as when he is most confident he is defending it. When passion hath done boiling, and the heart is cooled, and leaveth the judgment to do its work without any clamour or disturbance, it is strange to see how things will appear to you to be quite of another tendency and reason, than in your passion you esteemed them.
Direct. VII. Keep up a sense of the evil and danger of both extremes; and be not so wholly intent upon the avoiding of one extreme, as to be fearless of the other. The narrow minds of unexperienced men are hardly brought to look on both sides them, and to be duly sensible of the danger of both extremes; but while they are taken up only with the hating and opposing one sort of errors, they forget those on the other side. And usually the sin or error which we observe not, is more dangerous to us than that which we do observe (if the wind of temptation set that way).
Direct. VIII. When you detect any ancient error or corruption, inquire into its original; and see whether reformation consist not rather in a restitution of the primitive state, than in an extirpation of the whole. Even in popery itself there are many errors and ill customs, which are but the corruption of some weighty truth, and the degenerating of some duty of God's appointment; and to reduce all, in such cases, to the primitive verity, is the way of wise and true reformation; and not to throw away that which is God's, because it is fallen into the dirt of human depravation. But in cases where all is bad, there all must be rejected.
Direct. IX. Pretend not to truth and orthodoxness against christian love and peace; and so follow truth, as that you lose not love and peace by it; "as much as in you lieth, live peaceably with all men," Rom. xii. 18. Charity is the end of truth, 1 Cor. xiii. and it is a mad use of means, to use them against the end. Make sure of the sincerity of your charity, and hold it fast; and then no error that you hold will be destructive to you: but if you know more than others, and use your knowledge to the weakening of your love, you are but (as our first parents) deceived and destroyed by a desire of fleshly, uneffectual knowledge. Such "knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth," 1 Cor. viii. 1. To contend for truth, to the loss of love in yourselves, and the destruction of it among others, is but to choke yourselves with excellent food, and to imitate that orthodox, catholic physician, that gloried that he killed his patients secundem artem, by the most accurate method and excellent rules of art that men could die by.
Direct. X. Pretend no truth against the power and practice of godliness.123 For this also is its proper end; if it be not truth that is according to godliness, it is no truth worthy our seeking or contending for. And if it be contrary to godliness in itself, it is no truth at all; therefore if it be used against godliness, it is used contrary to the ends of truth. Those men that suppress or hinder the means of knowledge, and holiness, and concord, and edification, under pretence of securing, defending, or propagating the orthodox belief, will find one day, that God will give them as little thanks for their blind, preposterous zeal for truth, as a tender father would do to a physician, that killed his children because they distasted or spit out his medicines. It is usually a pitiful defence of truth that is made by the enemies of godliness.
Direct. I. Begin at the greatest, most evident, certain, and necessary truths, and so proceed orderly to the knowledge of the less, by the help of these:124 as you climb by the body of the tree unto the branches. If you begin at those truths, which spring out of greater common truths, and know not the premises, while you plead for the conclusion, you abuse your reason, and lose the truth and your labour both: for there is no way to the branches but by ascending from the stock. The principles well laid, must be your help to all your following knowledge.
Direct. II. The two first things which you are to learn are, what man is, and what God is: the nature and relation of the two parties, is the first thing to be known in order to the knowledge of the covenant itself, and all following transactions between God and man.125 One error here will introduce abundance. A thousand other points of natural philosophy you may safely be ignorant of; but if you know not what man is, what reason is, what natural free-will is, and what the inferior sensitive faculties are, as to their uses, it will lay you open to innumerable errors. In the nature of man, you must see the foundation of his relations unto God: and if you know not those great relations, the duties of which must take up all our lives, you may easily foresee the consequents of such ignorance or error. So if you know not what God is, and what his relations to us are, so far as is necessary to our living in the duties of those relations, the consequents of your ignorance will be sad. If learned men be but perverted in their apprehensions of some one attribute of God, (as those that think his goodness is nothing but his benignity, or proneness to do good, or that he is a necessary agent, doing good ad ultimum posse, &c.) what abundance of horrid and impious consequents will follow!
Direct. III. Having soundly understood both these and other principles of religion, try all the subsequent truths hereby, and receive nothing as truth that is certainly inconsistent with any of these principles.126 Even principles that are not of sense, may be disputed till they are well received; and with those that have not received them: but afterwards they are not to be called in question; for then you would never proceed nor build higher, if you will stand questioning all
Prov. xxiv. 30; xxi. 25; Matt. xxv. 26.
Quæ duæ virtutes in disputatore primæ sunt, eas ambas in Hubero deprehendi, patientiam adversarium prolixe sua explicantem audiendi, et lenitatem etiam aspere dicta perferendi, inq. Scultetus post. disp. Curric. p. 33.
1 Tim. vi. 3; Tit. i. 1; 1 Tim. iv. 7, 8; vi. 5, 6, 11; 2 Pet. i. 3; iii. 11.
See chap. ii. direct. 3.
Ut Deum noris, etsi ignores et locum et faciem, sic animum tibi tuum notum esse oportet, etiam si ignores et locum et formam. Cicero 1. Tuscul.
Nulla erga Deos pietas est, nisi honesta de numine deorum ac mente opinio sit. Cicero pro Planc.