A26932:538
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. VI.
2. MY second particular Exhortation is this: Content not your selves to have the main work of grace, but be also very careful that your graces be kept in life and action, and that you preach to your selves the Sermons that you stud•, before you preach them to others. If you did this for your own sakes, it would be no lost labour; but I am speaking to you upon the public account, and that you would do it for the sake of the Church. When your minds are in a heavenly holy frame, your people are like to partake of the fruits of it. Your prayers, and praises, and doctrine will be heavenly and sweet to them! They will likely feel when you have been much with God: That which is on your hearts most, is like to ⟨p. 274⟩be most in their ears: I confess I must speak it by lamentable experience, that I publish to my Flock the distempers of my soul: when I let my heart grow cold, my preaching is cold; and when it is confused, my preaching will be so; and so I can observe too, oft in the best of my hearers, that when I have a while grown cold in preaching, they have cooled accordingly; and the next Prayers that I have heard from them hath been too like my preaching. We are the Nurses of Christs little ones. If we forbear our food, we shall famish them; they will quickly find it in the want of Milk; and we may quickly see it again on them, in the lean and dull discharge of their several duties: If we let our Love go down; we are not so like to raise up theirs: If we abate our holy care and fear, it will appear in our Doctrine: If the matter show it not, the manner will. If we feed on unwholesome food, either errors, or fruitless controversies, our hearers are like to fare the worse for it. Whereas if we could abound in Faith, and Love, and Zeal, how would it over-flow to the refreshing of our Congregations, and how would it appear in the increase of the same graces in others! O Brethren, watch therefore over your own hearts: keep out lusts and passions, and worldly inclinations; Keep up the life of Faith and Love; Be much at home: and be much with God. If it be not your daily serious business to study your own hearts, and subdue corruptions, and live as upon God, if you make it not your very work which you constantly attend, all will go amiss, and you will starve your auditors; or if you have but an affected fervency, you cannot expect such a blessing to attend it;