A26932:501
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.
SECT. IX.
AND now Brethren what remaineth, but that we all cry guilty, of too much of these forementioned sins! and humble our souls in the lamentation of our miscarriages before the Lord! Is this Taking heed to our selves and to all the Flock? Is this like the pattern that is given us here in the Text? If we should prove now stout-hearted and unhumbled men, and snuff at these Confessions as tending to our disgrace, how sad a symptom would it be to our selves and to the Church? The Ministry hath been oft threatened here, and is still maligned by many sorts of adversaries; Though all this may show their impious malice, yet may it also intimate to us Gods just indignation. Believe it Brethren, the Ministry of England is not the least or last in the sin of the Land; It is they that have encouraged the common profaneness; It is they that have led the people into divisions, and are now so backward to bring them out. And as sin hath been found in them, so Judgements have been found and laid upon them. Its time therefore for us to take our part of that Humiliation which we have been calling ou• people to so long. If we have our wits about us, we may perceive that God hath been offended with us and that the voice that called this Nation to Repentance, did speak to us as well as others. He therefore that hath ears let him hear the voice of railing enemies of all sorts, the voice of them that cry, down ⟨p. 245⟩with us, even to the ground, all calling us to try our ways and to reform. He that hath eyes let him see the precepts of Repentance written in so many admirable deliverances and preservations, and written in so many lines of blood. By fire and sword hath God been calling even us to Humiliation; And as Judgement hath begun at the house of God, so if Humiliation begin not there too, it will be a sad prognostic to us and to the Land. What! shall we deny, or excuse, or extenuate our sins, while we call our people to such free Confessions? Is it not better to give glory to God by a full and humble Confession, then in tenderness of our own glory to seek for fig leaves to cover our nakedness; and to put God to it, to build his glory which we denied him, upon the ruins of our own which we preferred before him? and to distrain for that by a yet sorer Judgement, which we denied voluntarily to surrender to him?