Selected quad for the lemma: duty_n
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A26920
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The duty of heavenly meditation reviewed by Richard Baxter at the invitation of Mr. Giles Firmin's exceptions in his book entituled, The real Christian.
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Baxter, Richard, 1615-1691.
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1671
(1671)
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Wing B1255; ESTC R3049
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15,342
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36
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same Book neither will yours Or may I doubt lest you did for want of leisure confound the several parts of my Writing And take that which I wrote of the common necessity of a Heavenly mind or of Meditation of Heaven to be written also to prove or urge the same necessity of the Length or Method No I must not be so injurious to you For though you are not obliged to read my writings till you understand them yet I know you cannot forget that you are obliged to understand them if they are intelligible before you deliberately oppose them Therefore I have no way left but to conclude that you are not intelligible to me 5. What I have said all this while of the Method I say also of the Time of Meditation which is part of your exception It is a duty to spend so much Time in Meditation as is best to Edification to attain its End But to them that have Ability and opportunity at least a quarter or half an hour if not more is best to Edification to attain the End Therefore to such it is a duty to spend so much time herein I will give you no Text of Scripture for the Conclusion nor for the Minor The nature of the thing and common experience proveth it Christs Sermons recited in Scripture seem to be very short You may call for a Text now to prove it a duty that a Sermon or Prayer should be an hour or a quarter of an hour long It is enough that I prove it from the Aptitude of the Means to its end Experience telleth us that very few words and short time serve not to inform mens understandings And after that the Will and Affections must have time to be duly excited and resolved And more time is necessary yet to drive the nail to the head and to settle the soul against the force of all objections that may be produced to the contrary And yet more time to settle it in the right way of Practice In a word If short and seldome Preaching to others be all that is any Preachers duty murmur not that you are silenced but write to Ministers to spare the Bishops the labour and odium and to silence themselves as to their long unnecessary Sermons If you say that Preaching is more of Divine Institution than Meditation I deny it There is here no magis or minus If God have instituted both it cannot be said that he hath instituted one more than the other Though it may be said that one which ever it is be of greater necessity than the other And though I confess that he that Preacheth to himself may omit and abbreviate much which must be distinctly expressed to others yet that doth but shew that Preaching must ordinarily be longer than such set meditations but not that these also must not have that Time which Method and the Ends require when it may be so done Do you not think it as presumptuous to define the Time of a mans Conference about Scripture with his Children and Servants daily as to define the time of his Meditation I suppose you will judge the case much like Suppose then that I should say to a Master of a Family Besides your little occasional reflections you that have Ability and Opportunity may do well yea must take it for your duty oft times even once a day if no greater duty hinder you to set some time apart to speak Methodically and seriously to your Families first by way of explication and then of Application to convince them and resolve them and to drive all home to Practice c. Would you call for a Text to prove this a duty I would give you then Deut. 6.7 8 9. Deut. 11.18 19 20. for the Major Ye shall teach them your Children speaking of them when thou sittest in thy house c. With Gen. 18.19 1 Cor. 14. 26 40. And the Minor I would prove by the Light of Nature and experience The case is the same in the main as to the exhorting of our selves Truly Brother if your soul be not much more Heavenly than mine it needeth a considerable time of holy exercise to habituate it to converse above and to bring it to the benefits of Meditation which we must desire As I cannot get met heat with walking no nor running neither by the violence of the motion alone unless I continue some considerable time no more can I in Prayer and Meditation though my lazy humour too oft inclineth me to sit down and content my self with a short Cogitation or wish Like the Prayers of those that wash them and button their Doublets and interpose other talk and yet pray on And the warmth which I have once got is quickly abated if I give over the duty and be short and seldome in it Short and seldome thoughts of Heaven will not serve with so bad a heart as mine to keep up the Habit much less to exercise a Heavenly mind in that degree as all true Christians must confess desirable And I suppose God hath therefore appointed us such variety of Ordinances and helpes and such long and frequent use of them in their several turnes and times which prophane men count but unnecessary preciseness that so our hearts may be habituated to a holy and Heavenly frame by the frequent and much use of holy and Heavenly exercises For surely we add nothing unto God nor do we change him by our words or hours of Religious exercise But we wait for his grace in the use of those means which tend to prepare us both for Grace and Glory And by the same reasonings as you will shift off or shuffle this Meditation into some cursory thoughts on the by the world would do so by Prayer Preaching Holy Conferences Sacraments and all Religion But that several men must allow several proportions of Time for this duty and that all cannot allow it the same Time again I say I will not suspect you to suppose and affirme me to deny 6. Another thing that you oft mention is that I say Other thoughts should not be intermixt And without giving you a Text for the Conclusion the same kind of arguing will prove this as proved the rest Adding Eccles. 9.10 and such like If a man have Ability and Opportunity will not attending wholly to the work in hand best Edifie him and further the success If not intermix other thoughts also with your greatest studies your Prayers your Preaching and do all diviso vel prae-occupato animo Let the People when you are preaching to them talk in the Church to one another Reprove them not for thinking of other things Or give them a Text of Scripture for the Conclusion saying you may not think or talk of other matters at Sermon time If you say that Meditation is not to be a set duty as Preaching is and therefore may lawfully be interrupted I answer If it be a duty commanded of the same God it must in its
THE DUTY OF HEAVENLY MEDITATION Reviewed by RICHARD BAXTER At the Invitation of Mr. GILES FIRMIN'S EXCEPTIONS In his Book Entituled The Real Christian. LONDON Printed for Nevil Simmons at the Sign of the three Crowns near Holborn Conduit 1671. Dear and much honoured Brother I Have lately perused your judicious Treatise called The Real Christian in which you seek to deliver the Church from the danger of the Errors of Mr. Daniel Rogers Mr. Hooker Mr. Shephard and Mr. Perkins And I think Mr. Shephard's Sound Believer needeth more Medication to make it sound than you have yet used Among the rest I find you have endeavoured in the End to save the Church also from the trouble and danger of my Directions for Heavenly Meditation in my Saints Rest. And though my own opinion be that seeing we have formerly had some converse by Writing it would have been better to have attempted to convince me by Letters of my Errors before you had warned the World to take heed of them that you might have heard first what I had to say for my self yet I confess those are punctilio's not to be stood upon in this age in which no great exactness of foresight prudence or justice is to be expected Nor have I a desire to abridge you of your liberty of speaking as publikely as you have a list But taking your writings as I find them I shall take the boldness to tell you I. How far my judgement doth concurr with yours which shall be answered by my endeavours II. How farr I am unsatisfied in your Writings on this point I. I am glad 1. That you are tender of the peace of troubled tender Christians and would have Ministers take heed lest they should break the bruised reed 2. I am glad that you would have Ministers accurate in their words and writings and not by heedless unwarrantable expressions wrong the Church 3. I am glad that you are sensible that extreams are to be avoided and that over-doing in doctrines of piety and pretending to go beyond the Church of God even farther than God would have us is one way of injuring truth and piety 4. I am glad that you are for keeping close to that rule of Truth and duty and against making a Religion or any part of it to our selves 5. I am glad that you are for a free and faithful opening and disowning the Errors and failings of the most esteemed Divines that weak Christians may not be injured by the reverence of their names And that you are not of the pernicious opinion of a multitude of Professours of Religiousness in this age who think that none of their faults or weaknesses should be opened lest it give matter to their Adversaries to reproach them and that all that is said against them is said against Religion and that to call them to Repentance is to disgrace Religion and to strengthen the hands of wickedness I am glad that you see the horrid blindness and wickedness of this conceit and how odious a thing it is to preferr our selfish personal reputation before the honour of Christ and true Religion or else to think that it is an honour to Christ and Religion to justifie our sins I am glad that you have the wisdome of a Christian rather to disown the Errors of the Godlyest Divines than to leave it to angry contentious Adversaries to open them in another manner and to other ends and uses And that you think not as our selfish blind ones do that we may dance naked unseen and undisgraced if we are but in the net of self-flattery and that angry Adversaries will see none of our errours or faults unless we tell them of them by our Repentance In all this you and I are of a mind 6. And in particular I am afraid as well as you of screwing weak ones too high in this duty of meditation on the Glory of Heaven And therefore lest I should injure the weak or any others 1. In the Book it self The Saints Rest I have given the Reader these warnings Pag. 703. Ed. 9. Yet be cautious in understanding this I know this will not prove every mans duty some have not themselves and their time at command and therefore cannot set their hours such are most servants and many Children of poor and carnal Parents and many are so poor that the necessities of their families will deny them this freedome I do not think it the duty of such to leave their labours for this work just at certain set times no nor for prayer or other necessary worship No such duty is a duty at all times Affirmatives bind not semper ad semper When two duties come together and cannot both be performed it were then a sin to perform the lesser Of two duties we must choose the greater i. e. consideratis considerandis though of two sins we must choose neither I think such persons were best to be watchful to redeem time as much as they can and take their vacant opportunities as they fall and especially to joyne Meditation and Prayer as much as they can with the very labours of their Callings There is no such enmity between labouring and Meditating or Praying in the Spirit but that both may conveniently be done together Yet I say as Paul in another case If thou canst be free use it rather Those that have more spare time from worldly necessâ—ries and are Masters to dispose of themselves and their time c. And pag. 704 Just how oft it should be I cannot determine because mens several conditions may vary it But in general That it be frequent the Scripture requireth when it mentioneth meditating continually or day and night Psal. 1.2 119.97 148.19 Circumstances of our conditions may much vary the circumstances of our duty It may be one mans duty to hear or pray ofter than another and so it may be in this of Meditation But for those that can conveniently omit other business I advise that it be once a day at least So also pag. 707. 709. And being afraid lest I should injure unable persons in many books since I have over and over lest it should be overlookt repeated I feared ad nauseam Lectoris these Cauâ—ions As Method for Peace of Consc. p. 12. studying and serious meditating be not duties for the deeply Melancholy You must let those alone till you are better able to perform them lest by attempting those duties which you cannot perform you utterly disable your self from all c. And I thus conclude my Treat of The Divine Life But now I have given you these few Directions for the improvement of your solitude for converse with God lest I should occasion the hurt of those that are unfit for the Lesson I have given I must conclude with this caution which I have formerly also published that it is not Melancholy or Weak headed persons who are not able to bear such exercises for whom I have written these Directions