A26932:300
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.
When these ungodly persons are sick, we have daily bills from them to request the prayers of the Congregation: And if we must pray for them against sickness and temporal death; I know no reason but we should much more earnestly pray for them against sin and eternal death. That we have not their consent, is no dissuasive: For that is their disease, and the very venom and malignity of it; and we do not take it to be sober arguing to say, I may not pray for such a man against his sickness, because he is sick: Or, if he were not sick, I would pray against his sickness. No more is it to say, If he were not impenitent so as to refuse our prayers, I would pray that he might be saved from his impenitency. I confess I do not take my self to have so strict a charge over this sort of men, that renounce my oversight, as I do over the rest that own it; and ⟨p. 102⟩that's the reason why I have called no more of them to public Repentance, because it requireth most commonly more time to examine the matter of fact, or to deal with the person first more privately, that his impenitenc▪ may be discerned, then I can possibly spare from the duties which I owe to my special charge, to whom I am more indebted; and therefore may ordinarily expend no more on the rest (who are to me but as strangers, or men of another Parish, and of no governed particular Church) then I can spare when I have done my main duty to my own Flock. But yet though I cannot use any such discipline on all that sort, nor am so much obliged to do it, yet some of them that are most notoriously and openly wicked, where less proof and shorter debates are requisite, I intend to deal thus with hereafter, having found some success in that kind already. But specially to all those whom we take for Members of that particular Church which we are Pastors of; there is no question but this is our duty. And therefore where the whole Parish are members, Discipline must be exercised on the whole.
When these ungodly persons are sick, we have daily bills from them to request the prayers of the Congregation: And if we must pray for them against sickness and temporal death; I know no reason but we should much more earnestly pray for them against sin and eternal death. That we have not their consent, is no disswasive: For that is their disease, and the very venom and malignity of it; and we do not take it to be sober arguing to say, I may not pray for such a man against his sickness, because he is sick: Or, if he were not sick, I would pray against his sickness. No more is it to say, If he were not impenitent so as to refuse our prayers, I would pray that he might be saved from his impenitency. I confess I do not take my self to have so strict a charge over this sort of men, that renounce my oversight, as I do over the rest that own it; and