A26932:512
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.
and yet ⟨p. 250⟩think that no man hath understanding that contradicteth them, and that are confident they are in the right, when they can show nothing but that confidence to make them confident? their will is the reason of their judgements and lives: it satisfies them, and it must satisfy you. O Brethren, what a world of wickedness have we to contend against, in some one soul! and what a number of those worlds? what rooting have their sins? what disadvantage must truth come upon? How strange are they to the Heavenly message that we bring them: and know not what you say when you speak in that only language that they understand? And when you think you have done something, you leave your seed among the fowls of the air; wicked men are at their elbows to rise up and contradict all that you have said. They will cavil, and carp, and slander you, that they may disgrace your message, and deride and scorn them away from Christ, and quickly extinguish the good beginnings that you hoped you had seen. They use indeed weaker reasons then yours, but such as come with more advantage being near them, and familiarly and importunately urged, and such as are fetched from things that they see and feel, and which are befriended by their own flesh. You speak but once to a sinner, for ten times or twenty times that the Messengers of Satan speak to them; moreover, how easily do the cares and businesses of the world devour and choke the seed which you have sown? And if it had no enemy but what is in themselves, how easily will a frozen carnal heart, extinguish those sparks which you have been long in kindling? and for want of fuel and further help, they will go out ⟨p. 251⟩of themselves. What abundance of distempers, and lusts, and passions, do you cast your gracious words amongst? and what entertainment such companions will afford them, you may easily conjecture. And when you think your work doth happily succeed, and have seen men under troubles and complaints, confessing their sins, and promising reformation, and living as new creatures and zealous converts, alas after all this, they may prove unsound and false at the heart, and such as were but superficially changed, and took up new Opinions, and new company, without a new heart: How many are after a notable change, deceived by the profits and honours of the world, and fallen away while they think they stand?