A26932:530
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.
I Have done with the Motives which I find in the Text it self: There are many more that might be gathered from the rest of this Exhortation of the Apostle; but we must not stay to take in all. If the Lord will set home but these few upon your hearts, I dare say we shall see reason to mend our pace: and the change will be such on our hearts, and in our Ministry, that our selves and our Congregations will have cause to bless God for it. I know my self unworthy to be your Monitor; but a Monitor you must have; and its better for us to hear of our sin, and duty, from any body, then from no body. Receive the admonition, and you will see no cause in the Monitors unworthiness, to repent of it: but if you reject it, the unworthyest Messenger may bear that witness against you that will confound you. But before I leave this Exhortation, as I have applied it to our general work, so I shall carry it a little further to some of the special parts and modes of our Duty which were before expressed.
I Have done with the Motives which I find in the Text it self: There are many more that might be gathered from the rest of this Exhortation of the Apostle; but we must not stay to take in all. If the Lord will set home but these few upon your hearts, I dare say we shall see reason to mend our pace: and the change will be such on our hearts, and in our Ministery, that our selves and our Congregations will have cause to bless God for it. I know my self unworthy to be your Monitor; but a Monitor you must have; and its better for us to hear of our sin, and duty, from any body, then from no body. Receive the admonition, and you will see no cause in the Monitors unworthyness, to repent of it: but if you reject it, the unworthyest Messenger may bear that witness against you that will confound you. But before I leave this Exhortation, as I have applyed it to our general work, so I shall carry it a little further to some of the special parts and modes of our Duty which were before expressed.
1. And first and above all, See that the work of saving grace be throughly wrought on your own souls. It is a fearful case to be an unsanctified Professor; but much more to be an unsanctified Preacher. Doth it not make you tremble when you open the Bible, lest you should read there the Sentence of your own Condemnation? when you pen your Sermons, little do you think that you are drawing up indictments against