A26932:727
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.
Answ 1. This is the mere plea of the flesh for its own interest: The sluggard saith, there is a Lyon in the way. He will not plough because of the cold. There is no duty of moment and self-denial, but if you consult with flesh and blood, it will give you as wise reasons as these against it. Who would ever have been burnt at a stake for Christ, if this reasoning had been good? Yea or who would ever have been a Christian?
Answ 1. This is the meer plea of the flesh for its own interest: The sluggard saith, there is a Lyon in the way. He will not plough because of the cold. There is no duty of moment and self-denyal, but if you consult with flesh and blood, it will give you as wise reasons as these against it. Who would ever have been burnt at a stake for Christ, if this reasoning had been good? Yea or who would ever have been a Christian?
2. We may take time for necessary Recreation for all this? An hour or half, an hours walk before meat, is as much Recreation as is of necessity for the health of most of the weaker sort of students. I have reason to know somewhat of this by long experience. Though I have a body that hath languished under great weaknesses many years, and my diseases have been such as require as much exercise as almost any in the world, and I have found exercise the principal means of my preservation till now, and therefore ⟨p. 392⟩have as great reason to plead for it as any man that I know alive, yet I have found that the foresaid proportion hath been blessed to my preservation (though I know that much more had been like to have tended to my greater health.) And I do not know one Minister of an hundred, that needeth so much as my self. Yea I know abundance of Ministers that scarce ever use any exercise at all (though I commend it not in them) I doubt not but it is our duty to use so much exercise as is of necessity for the preservation of our health, so far as our work requireth: else we should for one days work lose the opportunity of many: But this may be done, and yet the works that we are engaged in, be done too. On those two days a week that you set apart for this work, what hinders but you may take an hour or two to walk for the exercise of your bodies? Much more on other days.