A26932:693
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.
The God of Mercy pardon me, and awake me, with the rest of his servants that have been thus sinfully negligent, I confess to my shame, that I seldom hear the Bell toll for one that is dead, but Conscience asketh me What hast thou done for the saving of that soul before it left the body? There is one more gone to Judgement: what didst thou to prepare them for Judgement? and yet I have been slothful and backward to help the rest that do survive. How can you ⟨p. 372⟩choose, when you are laying a Corps in the grave, but think with your selves, Here lieth the body, but where is the soul? and what have I done for it, before it departed? It was part of my charge, what account can I give of it, O Sirs, is it a small matter to you to answer such questions, as these? It may seem so now, but the hour is coming when it will not seem so. If our hearts condemn us. God is greater then our hearts, and will condemn us much more •even with another kind of Condemnation then Conscience doth. The voice of conscience now is a still voice, and the sentence of Conscience is a gentle sentence, in comparison of the voice, and the sentence of God. Alas! Conscience seeth but a very little of our sin and misery, in comparison of what God seeth. What mountains would these things appear to your souls, which now seem mole hills? What beams would these be in your eyes that now seem motes, if you did but see them with a clearer light? (I dare not say, As God seeth them) we can easily make shift to plead the Cause with Conscience, and either bribe it, or bear its sentence: but God is not so easily dealt with, nor his sentence so easily born. Wherefore we receiving (and preaching) a Kingdom that cannot be moved, let us have grace whereby we may serve God acceptably, with reverence, and Godly fear: for our God is a Consuming fire, Heb. 12. ult. But because you shall not say, that I affright my self or you with bug bears, and tell you of dangers and terrors when there are none, I will here add the certainty and sureness of that Condemnation, that is like to befall the negligent Pastors, and particularly that will befall us that are here this day, if we ⟨p. 373⟩shall hereafter be wilful neglecters of this great work; How many will be ready to rise up against us to our Condemnation?