A26932:365
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 Christ had chosen him but twelve Apostles, who kept near his person, that they might be acquainted with his Doctrine, Life and Miracles: yet how ignorant did they long remain, not knowing so much as that he must dye and be a sacrifice for the sins of the world, and be buried and rise again, and ascend into glory, nor what was the nature of his spiritual Kingdom? so that it puts us hard to it to imagine how ⟨p. 142⟩men so ignorant could be in a state of grace; but that we know that those points were after of absolute necessity to salvation, that were not so then. *How oft doth Christ teach them publicly and apart? Mark 4. 34. and rebuke them for their unbelief and hardness of heart: And yet after all this, so strange were these great mysteries of Redemption to them, and these (now) Articles of our Creed, that Peter himself dissuadeth Christ from suffering and goeth so far in contradicting his gracious thoughts for our Redemption, that he is called Satan, and tantum non excommunicate. And no wonder; for if his counsel had been taken, the world had been lost for ever. And as there was a Judas among them, so the twelve are before Christs face contending for superiority; so early did that Pride begin to work in the best, which afterwards prevailed so far in others, as to bring the Church so low as we have seen. What should we say of their joint forsaking Christ of their failings even after the pourings out of the Spirit! of the dissension and separation between Paul and Barnabas; how strange Peter made of the calling of the Gentiles; of his compliance with the Jews to the endangering the liberties of the Gentiles, Gal. 2. Of the dissimulation of Barnabas; and the common desertion of Paul in his suffering: When he had found one Timothy, ⟨p. 143⟩he saith, he had no man like-minded, that would naturally care for their estate; for all seek their own, and not the things of Jesus Christ, Phil. 2. 20, 21. A sad charge of self-seeking in that glory of the Church for faith and purity. And what charges are against most of the Angels of the seven Asian Churches is expressed,