A26932:534
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.
None but a Christian can read one line of his Physics so as to understand it rightly. It is a high and excellent study, and of greater use then many do well understand; but its the smallest part of it that Aristotle can teach us. When man was made perfect, and placed in a perfect world, where all things were in perfect ⟨p. 266⟩order, and very good, the whole Creation was then mans book in which he was to read the nature and will of his great Creator; Every creature had the Name of God so legibly engraven on it, that man might run and read it. He could not open his eyes, but he might see some image of God: but no where so fully and lively as in himself. And therefore it was his work to study the whole volume of Nature; but first and most to study himself. And if man had held on in this prescribed work he would have continued and increased in the knowledge of God and himself; but when he would needs know and love the creature and himself, in a way of separation from God, he lost the knowledge of all, both of the creature himself and God, so far as it could beatify, and was worth the name of knowledge, and instead of it he hath got the unhappy knowledge which he affected, even the empty notions, and fantastic knowledge of the creature and himself as thus separated: And thus he that lived to the Creator and upon him, doth now live to, and as upon the (other) creatures and himself; and thus, Every man at his best estate (the Learned as well as the illiterate) is altogether vanity: Surely every man walketh in a Vain Show: surely they are disquieted in vain, Psal. 39. 5, 6. And it must be well observed, that as God laid not by the Relation of a Creator by becoming our Redeemer, nor the Right of his Propriety and Government of us in that Relation, but the, work of Redemption standeth in some subordination to that of Creation, and the Law of the Redeemer to the Law of the Creator: so also the duties that we owed God as Creator are not ceased; but the duties that ⟨p. 267⟩we own to the Redeemer, as such, are subordinate thereto. It is the work of Christ to bring us back to God, whom we fell from, and to restore us to our perfection of Holiness and Obedience; and as he is the way to the Father, so faith in him, is the way to our former employment and enjoyment of God. I hope you perceive what all this driveth at, viz.