Directions for Young Christians, Part 3

Laboring for Understanding
by Richard Baxter

Labour to understand the true method of divinity, and see truths in their several degrees and order; that you take not the last for the first, nor the lesser for the greater. Therefore see that you be well grounded in the catechism; and refuse not to learn some catechism that is sound and full, and keep it in memory while you live. 
  
Method, or right order, exceedingly helpeth understanding, memory, and practice. Truths have a dependence on each other; the lesser branches spring out of the greater, and those out of the stock and root. Some duties are but means to other duties, or subservient to them, and to be measured accordingly; and if it be not understood which is the chief, the other cannot be referred to it. When two things materially good come together, and both cannot be done, the greater must take place, and the lesser is no duty at that time, but a sin, as preferred before the greater. Therefore it is one of the commonest difficulties among cases of conscience, to know which duty is the greater, and to be preferred. Upon this ground, Christ healed on the Sabbath day, and pleaded for His disciples rubbing the ears of corn, and for David’s eating the shew-bread, and telleth them, that “the sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath” (Mark 2:27) and that God “will have mercy, and not
sacrifice” (Matt. 12:7).

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Taken with gratitude from Scripture Studies.com

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