A26932:409
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.
Hence also it comes to pass that men do so magnify their own opinions, and are as censorious of any that differ from them in lesser things, as if it were all one to differ from them and from God; and do expect that all should be conformed to their judgements, ⟨p. 173⟩as if they were the rule of the Churches faith! and while we cry down Papal Infallibility, and determination of Controversies, we would too many of us be Popes our selves, and have all stand to our determination, as if we were infallible. Its true, we have more modesty then expressly to say so: we pretend that it is only the evidence of truth that appeareth in our Reasons that we expect men should yield to, and our zeal is for the truth and not for our selves: But as that must needs be taken for Truth which is ours, so our Reasons must needs be taken for valid; and if they be but freely examined, and found to be infirm and fallacious, and so discovered, as we are exceeding backward to see it our selves, because they are ours, so how angry are we that it should be disclosed to others? and we so espouse the cause of our errors, as if all that were spoken against them were spoken against our persons, and we were heinously injured to have our arguments throughly confuted, by which we injured the truth and the minds of men! so that the matter is come to that pass through our Pride, that if an error or fallacious argument do fall under the Patronage of a Reverend Name (which is no whit rare) we must either give it the victory, and give away the truth, or else become injurious to that name that doth patronize it. For though you meddle not with their persons, yet do they put themselves under all the strokes which you give their arguments; and feel it as sensibly as if you had spoken it of themselves, because they think it will follow in the eyes of man, that weak arguing is a sign of a weak man. If therefore you take it for your duty to shame their errors and false reasonings, by discovering their nakedness, ⟨p. 174⟩they take it as if you shamed their persons; and so their names must be a Garrison or fortress to their mistakes, and their Reverence must defend all their sayings from the light.
Hence also it comes to pass that men do so magnifie their own opinions, and are as censorious of any that differ from them in lesser things, as if it were all one to differ from them and from God; and do expect that all should be conformed to their judgements,