A26932:258
Gildas Salvianus: The Reformed Pastor
Gildas Salvianus, the reformed pastor showing the nature of the pastoral work, especially in private instruction and catechizing : with an open confession of our too open sins : prepared for a day of humiliation kept at Worcester, Decemb. 4, 1655 by the ministers of that county, who subscribed the agreement for catechizing and personal instruction at their entrance upon that work / by their unworthy fellow-servant, Richard Baxter ...Gildas Salvianus, the reformed pastor shewing the nature of the pastoral work, especially in private instruction and catechizing : with an open confession of our too open sins : prepared for a day of humiliation kept at Worcester, Decemb. 4, 1655 by the ministers of that county, who subscribed the agreement for catechizing and personal instruction at their entrance upon that work / by their unworthy fellow-servant, Richard Baxter ...
London: printed by Robert White for Nevil Simmons, 1656
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.
1. Get certain information how each family is ordered, and how God is worshipped in them: that you may know how to proceed in your carefulness for their further good.
1. Get certain information how each family is ordered, and how God is worshippped in them: that you may know how to proceed in your carefulness for their further good.
2. Go now and then among them, when they are like to be most at leisure, and ask the master of the family, Whether he pray with them, or read the Scripture, or what he doth? And labour to convince the neglecters of their sin. And if you can have opportunity, pray with them, before you go, and give them an example, What you would have them do, and how. And get a promise of them that they will be more conscionable therein for the future.
3. If you find any unable to pray in tolerable expressions, through ignorance and disuse, persuade them to study their own wants, and get their hearts affected with them, and so go oft to those neighbours who use to pray, that they may learn: and in the mean time persuade them to use a form of prayer rather then none. Only tell them that it is their sin and shame that they have lived so negligently, as to be now so unacquainted with their own necessities, as not to know how to speak to God in prayer; ⟨p. 85⟩when every beggar can find words to ask an alms; and therefore tell them that this form i• but for necessity, as a crutch to a Cripple, while they cannot do as well without it; but they must not resolve to take up there, but to learn to do better as soon as they can, seeing prayer should come from the feeling of the heart, and be varied both according to our necessities and observations. Yet is it necessary to most unaccustomed ill-bred people, that have not been brought up where prayer hath been used, that they begin at first with the use of a form, because they will else be able to do nothing at all, and in sense of their disability will wholly neglect the duty, though they desire to perform it. For many disused persons can mutter out some honest requests in secret, that be not able before others to speak tolerable sense. And I will not be one of them that had rather the duty were wholly neglected, or else profaned and made contemptible, then encourage them to the use of a form, either recited by memory, or read.