A26932:469
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.
2. And as for the making your selves uncapable to do them good: I answer, That reason is as valid against plain preaching, reproof, or any other duty which wicked men will hate us for. God will bless his own Ordinances to do good, or else he would not have appointed them. If you admonish, and publicly rebuke the scandalous, and call men to repentance, and cast out the obstinate, you may do good to many that you reprove; and possibly to the excommunicate: I am sure it is Gods means; And it is his last means, when Reproofs will do no good: It is therefore perverse to neglect the last means lest we frustrate the foregoing means, when as the last is not to be used but upon supposition that the former were all frustrate before. However, those within and those without may receive good by it, if the offender do receive none; and God will have the honour, when his Church is manifestly differenced from the ⟨p. 221⟩world, and the heirs of heaven and hell are not totally confounded, nor the world made to think that Christ and Satan do but contend for superiority, and that they have the like inclination to holiness or to sin.
2. And as for the making your selves uncapable to do them good: I answer, That reason is as valid against plain preaching, reproof, or any other duty which wicked men will hate us for. God will bless his own Ordinances to do good, or else he would not have appointed them. If you admonish, and publikely rebuke the scandalous, and call men to repentance, and cast out the obstinate, you may do good to many that you reprove; and possibly to the excommunicate: I am sure it is Gods means; And it is his last means, when Reproofs will do no good: It is therefore perverse to neglect the last means lest we frustrate the foregoing means, when as the last is not to be used but upon supposition that the former were all frustrate before. However, those within and those without may receive good by it, if the offendor do receive none; and God will have the honour, when his Church is manifestly differenced from the ⟨p. 221⟩world, and the heirs of heaven and hell are not totally confounded, nor the world made to think that Christ and Satan do but contend for superiority, and that they have the like inclination to holiness or to sin.