A26906:1127
The cure of church-divisions, or, Directions for weak Christians to keep them from being…
The cure of church-divisions, or, Directions for weak Christians to keep them from being dividers or troublers of the church with some directions to the pastors how to deal with such Christians / by Richard Baxter.
London: printed for Nevil Symmons, 1670
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.
O that the Ministers of Christ were once sensible, not here only but through all the Christian world, what a plague the conjunction of their ignorance and contentiousness, and their dividing selfish zeal hath been to the Churches of Christ? And what they have done against the souls of men, by violence, and by heading parties, and by laying Heaven and Hell upon the opinions, which they never understood! and by departing from ⟨p. 409⟩the primitive simplicity and charity! And how odious a practise it is, of ignorant Ministers, to keep up the reverence of their wisdom, or Orthodoxness or piety, by the secret back-bitings and reproaches of others, whose persons perhaps they never saw; or whom they never once soberly discoursed with face to face; or whose writings perhaps they never read, or thought it not worth their time and labour to understand them; and yet take it to be their piety to revile by hear-say and blind surmises, and judge in a cause which they never impartially heard and understood.
O that the Ministers of Christ were once sensible, not here only but through all the Christian world, what a plague the conjunction of their ignorance and contensiousness, and their dividing selfish zeal hath been to the Churches of Christ? And what they have done against the souls of men, by violence, and by heading parties, and by laying Heaven and Hell upon the opinions, which they never understood! and by departing from ⟨p. 409⟩the primitive simplicity and charity! And how odious a practise it is, of ignorant Ministers, to keep up the reverence of their wisedome, or Orthodoxness or piety, by the secret back-bitings and reproaches of others, whose persons perhaps they never saw; or whom they never once soberly discoursed with face to face; or whose writings perhaps they never read, or thought it not worth their time and labour to understand them; and yet take it to be their piety to revile by hear-say and blind surmises, and judge in a cause which they never impartially heard and understood.