A26932:382
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.
Yet I must profess I should scarce have mentioned any of this, nor taken it for so heinous a crime, had it been only cruelty to the persons of these men, though they had dealt much hardlyer with them then they did, and if it had not been greater cruelty to the Church, and if they had but had competent men for their places when they were cast out. But alas the Churches were pestered with such wretches as are our shame and trouble to this day. Abundance of mere Readers, and drunken profane deboist men, were the Ministers of the Churches; so that we have been this many years endeavouring to cleanse the Church of them, and have not fully effected it to this day. And many that had more plausible tongues, did make it their chief business, to bring those that they called Puritans into disgrace, and to keep the people from being such. So that I must needs say, that I knew no place in these times, where a man might not more safely have been drunken every week, (as to their punishment) then to have gone to hear a Sermon if he had none at home. For the common people readily took the hint, and increased their reproach, as the Rulers did their persec•tion; ⟨p. 158⟩so that a man could not in any place of England that I came in, have said to a swearer or a drunkard, O do not sin against God, and wound or hazard your own soul, but he should have been presently •ooted at as a Puritan: He could not have said to an ignorant or careless neighbour, Remember your everlasting state: prepare for death and Judgement: or have talked of any Scripture matters to them, but he was presently jeered as a Puritan or Precisian: and Scripture it self was become a reproach to him that talked of it, and they would cry out, What! we must have talk of Scripture now! you will preach to us! we shall have these Preachers ordered •re long. So that it was become commonly in England a greater reproach to be a man truly living in the fear of God, then to live in open profaneness, and to rail at godliness, and daily scorn it, which was so far from being a matter of danger, that many took it up in expectation of preferment; and the Preachers of the times were well ware that the rising way was to preach against the precise Puritans, and not to live precisely themselves. And thus both Ministry and people grew to that sad pass, that it was no wonder if God would bear no longer with the Land.