A26932:269
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.
7. Another part of our Over-sight lieth in visiting the sick, and helping them to prepare either ⟨p. 89⟩for a fruitful life, or a happy death: Though this be the business of all our life and theirs, yet doth it at such a season require extraordinary care both of them and us. When time is almost gone, and they must be now or never reconciled to God & possessed of his grace: O how doth it concern them to redeem those hours, and lay hold upon eternal life! And when we see that we are like to have but a few days or hours time more to speak to them in order to their endless state, What man that is not an Infidel, or a block, would not be with them, and do all that he can for their salvation in that short space!
7. Another part of our Over-sight lieth in visiting the sick, and helping them to prepare either ⟨p. 89⟩for a fruitful life, or a happy death: Though this be the business of all our life and theirs, yet doth it at such a season require extraordinary care both of them and us. When time is almost gone, and they must be now or never reconciled to God & possessed of his grace: O how doth it concern them to redeem those hours, and lay hold upon eternal life! And when we see that we are like to have but a few daies or hours time more to speak to them in order to their endless state, What man that is not an Infidel, or a block, would not be with them, and do all that he can for their salvation in that short space!
Will it not waken us to compassion to look upon a languishing man, and to think that within a few days his soul will be in heaven or hell? Surely it will much try the faith and seriousness of Ministers or others, to be about dying men! and they will have much opportunity to discern whether they are themselves in good sadness about the matters of the life to come. So great is the change that is made by death, that it should awaken us to the greatest sensibility, to see a man so near it, and should provoke us in the deepest pangs of compassion, to do the office of inferior Angels for the soul before it is departed from the flesh, that it may be ready for the convoy of superior Angels, to transmit it to the prepared glory when it is removed from sin and misery. When a man is almost at his journeys end, and the next step puts him into heaven or hell, its time for us to help him if we can, while there is hope. As Bernard saith, The death of the righteous is bona propter requiem, melior propter novitatem, optima propter securitatem: sed mors peccatorum est