Gildas Salvianus: The Reformed Pastor

Verily, it is the common danger and calamity of the Church, to have unregenerate and unexperienced Pastors: and to have so many men become Preachers, before they are Christians; to be sanctified by dedication to the Altar as Gods Priests, before they are sanctified by hearty dedication to Christ as his Disciples: & so to worship an unknown God, and to preach an unknown Christ, an unknown spirit, an unknown state of holiness and Communion with God and a glory that is unknown, and like to be unknown to them for ever. He is like to be but a heartless Preacher, that hath not the Christ and grace that he preacheth in his heart. O that all our Students in the University would well consider this! What a poor business is it to themselves, to spend their time in knowing some little of the works of God, and some of those names that the divided tongues of the Nations have imposed on them, and not to know the Lord himself, nor exalt him in their hearts, nor to be acquainted with that one renewing work that should make them happy. They do but ⟨p. 265⟩walk in a vain show, and spend their lives like dreaming men, while they busy their wits and tongues about abundance of names and notions, and are strangers to God and the life of Saints. If ever God waken them by saving grace, they will have cogitations and employments so much more serious, then their unsanctified studies and disputations were, that they will confess they did but dream before. A world of business they make themselves about Nothing, while they are wilful strangers to the Primitive, independent necessary Being, who is all in all. Nothing can be rightly known, if God be not known: nor is any study well managed, nor to any great purpose, where God is not studied. We know little of the creature till we know it as it standeth in its Order and respects to God: single letters and syllables uncomposed are non sence. He that over-looketh the Alpha and Omega and seeth not the beginning and end, and him in all, who is the all of all, doth see nothing at all. All creatures are as such broken syllables; they signify nothing as separated from God. Were they separated actually, they would cease to be, and the separation would be an annihilation: And when we separate them in our fancies, we make Nothing of them to our selves. Its one thing to know the creatures as Aristotle, and another thing to know them as a Christian.

Verily, it is the common danger and calamity of the Church, to have unregenerate and unexperienced Pastors: and to have so many men become Preachers, before they are Christians; to be sanctified by dedication to the Altar as Gods Priests, before they are sanctified by hearty dedication to Christ as his Disciples: & so to worship an unknown God, and to preach an unknown Christ, an unknown spirit, an unknown state of holiness and Communion with God and a glory that is unknown, and like to be unknown to them for ever. He is like to be but a heartless Preacher, that hath not the Christ and grace that he preacheth in his heart. O that all our Students in the University would well consider this! What a poor business is it to themselves, to spend their time in knowing some little of the works of God, and some of those names that the divided tongues of the Nations have imposed on them, and not to know the Lord himself, nor exalt him in their hearts, nor to be acquainted with that one renewing work that should make them happy. They do but