A26932:720
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.
I Am next to answer some of those Objections, which backward minds may cast in our way. And 1. some may object, that this course will take up so much time that a man shall have no time to follow his studies: Most of us are young and raw, and have need of much time to improve our own abilities, which this course will prohibit us. To which I answer: 1. We suppose them whom we persuade to this work, to understand the substance of the Christian Religion, and to be able to teach it others: And the addition of lower and less necessary things, is not to be preferred before this needful communication of the fundamentals. I highly value common knowledge, and would not encourage any to set light by it: But I value the saving of souls before it. That work which is next the end must be done, whatever be undone: Its a very desirable thing for a Physician to be throughly studied in his art; and to be able to see the reason of his experiments, and to resolve such difficult controversies as are before him: But if he had the charge of an Hospital, or lived in a City that had the raging Pestilence, if he would be studying de fermentatica•, de circulatione sanguinis, de vesicule chyli, de instrumentis sanguificationis, and such like excellent useful points, when he should be looking to his patients, and saving mens lives, and should turn them away and let them perish, and tell them that he cannot have while to give them advice, because he ⟨p. 389⟩must follow his own studies, I should take that man for a preposterous student, that preferred the remote means before the end it self of his studies: and indeed I should think him but a civil kind of Murderer. Mens souls may be saved without knowing, whether God did predetermine the creature in all its acts? whether the understanding necessarily determines the will? whether God works Grace in a Physical or Moral way of causation? What free-will is? Whether God have scientiam mediam? Or positive decrees de malo culpae; with a hundred such like, which are the things that you would be studying when you should be saving souls. Get well to heaven, and help your people thither, and you shall know all these things in a moment, and a thousand more which now by all your studies you can never know: and is not this the most expeditious & certain way to knowledge.