A26932:617
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.
4. AND this is not a contemptible Benefit, that by this course you will come to be familiar with your people, when you have had the opportunity of familiar conference. And the want of this with us, that have very numerous Parishes, is a great impediment to the success of our labours. By distance and unacquaintedness, slanderers and deceivers have opportunity to possess them with false conceits of you, which prejudice their minds against your doctrine: and by this distance and strangeness abundance of mistakes between Ministers and people are fomented. Besides that, familiarity it self doth tend to beget those affections, which may open their ears to further teaching. And when we are familiar with them, they will be more encouraged to open their doubts and seek resolution, and deal freely with us. But when a minister knoweth not his people, or is as strange to them as if he did not know them, it must be a great hindrance to his doing them any good.
5. Besides, by the means of these private Instructions, we shall come to be the better acquainted with each persons spiritual state, and so the better know how to watch over them, and carry our selves towards them ever after. We may know the better how to preach to them when we know their temper, and their chief objections, and so what they have ⟨p. 318⟩most need to hear. We shall the better know wherein to be jealous of them with a pious jealousy, and what temptations to help them most against. We shall the better know how to lament for them and to rejoice with them, and to pray for them to God. For as he that will pray rightly for himself, will know his own sores and wants, and the diseases of his own heart; so he that will pray rightly for others, should know theirs as far as he may, and as is meet. If a man have the charge but of sheep or cattle, he cannot so well discharge his trust if he know them not, and their state and qualities. So is it with the Master that will well teach his Scholars, and Parents that will rightly educate their children: And so with us.