A26932:79
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.
There is one Richard Farnworth called a Quaker, that hath lately published a Pamphlet against our Agreement for Catechizing; and the substance of it is this: because we confess that by neglecting that work of the Lord, we have sinned, and do beg pardon of our miscarriages, and say that by Nature we are children of wrath, and prone to do evil, &c. therefore he vvill prove us deceivers and no Ministers of Christ, as from our own Confession. As if they that are Dead by Nature, may not be made alive by Grace! And as if Are is not as proper a term as Were, when we speak of the state of all mankind in their natural condition, wherein the most do still abide! And as if the confessing our sin would prove us to ⟨image 29⟩be ungodly! O shameless men! God saith, He that confesseth and forsaketh his sin shall have mercy. And the Quaker maketh it a matter of his reproach. John saith, If we confess, he is faithful and just to forgive: And the Quaker maketh it a sign that we are not forgiven. God will not forgive us, if we refuse to confess: And the Quaker makes us unpardoned, because we do it. What would this wretch have said to David, Ezra, Nehemiah, Daniel, &c. if he had lived in their days, who made such full confessions of their sins! God hit them not in the teeth with them; but the Quakers will! Christ did forgive even Peters denial of him! but it seems the Quaker would have condemned him for the penitent lamenting of it: Is Paul damned for confessing himself the chief of sinners (of whom I am ⟨image 30⟩chief, (1 Tim. 1. 15.) and that formerly he was a persecutor, blasphemer, &c. Or because he saith, Eph. 3. 8. Unto me, who am less then the least of Saints. Or for crying out, O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death! What I would that I do not, and what I hate that do I. I find a Law, that when I would do good, evil is present with me, &c. Rom. 7. 24. 15. 21. Or is Isaiah a wicked man, and no Prophet of God, for saying, Woe is me, I am undone, because I am a man of unclean lips, &c. Isa. 6. 5. Or Jacob, for saying,