Some Thoughts

II. The true rules of an upright life are these that follow:

1. He that will walk uprightly must be absolutely devoted and subjected to God: he must have a God, and the true God, and but one God; not notionally only, but in sincerity and reality: he must have a God whose word shall be an absolute law to him; a God that shall command himself, his time, his estate, and all that he hath, or that he can do; a God whose will must be his will, and [who] may do with him what he please; and who is more to him than all the world; whose love will satisfy him as better than life, and whose approbation is his sufficient encouragement and reward.
2. His hope must be set upon heaven as the only felicity of his soul: he must look for his reward and the end of all his labours and patience in another world; and not with the hypocrite, dream of a felicity that is made up first of worldly things, and then of heaven, when he can keep the world no longer. He that cannot, that doth not in heart, quit all the world for a heavenly treasure, and venture his all upon the promise of better things hereafter, and forsaking all, take Christ and everlasting happiness for his portion, cannot be upright in heart or life.
3. He must have an infallible teacher (which is only Christ) and the encouragement of pardoning grace when he faileth, that he sink not by despair; and therefore he must live by faith on a Mediator. And he must have the fixed principle of a nature renewed by the Spirit of Christ.
4. He that will walk uprightly must have a certain, just, infallible rule; and must hold to that, and must try all by it; and this is only the word of God. The teachings of men must be valued as helps to understand this word; and the judgments of our teachers, and those that are wiser than ourselves, must be of great authority with us in subordination to the Scripture. But neither the learned, nor the godly, nor the great, must be our rule in co-ordination with the word of God.

Richard Baxter, A Christian Directory (Practical Works, Vol. 1), (Ligonier, PA: Soli Deo Gloria Publications, 1990), p. 738.

Good stuff.