A26892:8096
A Christian Directory
A Christian directory, or, A sum of practical theology and cases of conscience directing Christians how to use their knowledge and faith, how to improve all helps and means, and to perform all duties, how to overcome temptations, and to escape or mortify every sin : in four parts ... / by Richard Baxter.A Christian directory, or, A summ of practical theologie and cases of conscience directing Christians how to use their knowledge and faith, how to improve all helps and means, and to perform all duties, how to overcome temptations, and to escape or mortifie every sin : in four parts ... / by Richard Baxter.
London: printed by Robert White for Nevill Simmons, 1673
Title page typeset from the transcription.
Part 4 › Chapter 3: Directions for Subjects concerning their duty to their Rulers.
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
Ans. We cannot deny but that carnal, ignorant, worldly, proud, unholy Pastors have been and are1 the great calamity of the Churches: But that is no more disgrace to their Office or to Divinity, than it is to Philosophy or reason that Philosophers have been ignorant, erroneous, divided and contentious; nor then it is to Government that Kings and other Rulers have been imperfect, bad, contentious, and filled the World with wars and bloodshed. Nay I rather think that this is a proof of the excellency of Divinity: As the reason of the foresaid imperfections and faultiness of Philosophers and Rulers, is because that Philosophy and Government are things so excellent that the corrupt imperfect nature of man will not reach so high as to qualify any man to manage them otherwise than with great defectiveness: so also Divinity and the Pastoral office are things so excellent and sublime, that the nature of lapsed man will not reach to a capacity of being perfect in them. So that the faultiness of the nature of man compared with the excellency of the things to be known and practised by Divines, is the cause of all these faults which they complain of: And natures viti•si•y if any thing must be blamed. Certainly the Pastoral office hath men as free from ignorance, worldliness, pride and unquietness, as any Calling in the World. To charge the faults of nature upon that profession, which only discovereth, but never caused them, yea which would heal them i• they are to be healed on earth, judge whether this dealing be not foolish and injurious, and what will be the consequents if such unreasonable persons may be heard. And therefore though Leviathan and his Spawn, among all that is good, bring down Divines, and the zealots for Democracy have gloried of their new forms of Common-wealths, as inconsistent with a Clergy, their glory is their shame to all but Infidels. Let them help us to take down and cure the ignorance, pride, carnality, worldliness, and contentiousness of the Clergy, and we will be thankful to them; but to quarrel with the best of men for the common pravity of nature, and to reproach the most excellent science and function, because depraved nature cannot attain or manage them in perfection, this is but to play the professed enemies of mankind.
Ans. We cannot deny but that carnal, ignorant, worldly, proud, unholy Pastors have been and are