Gildas Salvianus: The Reformed Pastor

Direct. 5. When you have done what you see Cause in the trial of their knowledge, proceed next to instruct them your selves: And this must be according to their several Capacities. If it be a Professor that understandeth the Fundamentals, fall upon somewhat which you perceive that he most needeth, either explaining further some of the mysteries of the Gospel, or laying the Grounds of some duty which he may doubt of, or showing the necessity of what he neglecteth, or meeting with his sins or mistakes, as may be most convincing and edifying to him. If it be one that is grossly ignorant, give him a plain familiar recital of the sum of the Christian Religion in a few words: for though it be in the Catechism already yet a more familiar way may better help them to understand it. As thus [You must know, that from Everlasting there was one only God that had no beginning, and can have no end, who is not a Body as we are, but a most pure, spiritual Being that knoweth all things, and can do all things, and hath all Goodness and Blessedness in himself. This God is but one, but yet three Persons, the Father, the Son and holy Ghost in an incomprehensible manner, above our reach; yet we have somewhat in our selves and other creatures that may give us some resemblance of it. As in a man, his Power and his understanding and will, be but One soul, and yet they are not one faculty, but differ one from another: Or as in the Sun, the Being or Power, and the Heat and the Light, are not all one; and yet there is but one Sun; so in a more incomprehensible manner it is in God. And you must know that this One God did ⟨p. 434⟩make all the world by his word; the heavens he made to be the place of his Glory, and made a world of holy Angels to serve him, in his Glory: but some of these did by Pride or other sin fall from God and are become Devils that shall be miserable in torments for ever, when he had made the rest of this lower world, he made man, as his noblest creature here, even one man and one woman Adam and Eve, and he made them perfect without any sin or fault, and put them into the garden of Eden, and forbade them to eat but of one tree in the garden, and told them that if they did, they should dye.

Direct. 5. When you have done what you see Cause in the trial of their knowledge, proceed next to instruct them your selves: And this must be according to their several Capacities. If it be a Professor that understandeth the Fundamentals, fall upon somewhat which you perceive that he most needeth, either explaining further some of the mysteries of the Gospel, or laying the Grounds of some duty which he may doubt of, or shewing the necessity of what he neglecteth, or meeting with his sins or mistakes, as may be most convincing and edifying to him. If it be one that is grosly ignorant, give him a plain familiar recital of the sum of the Christian Religion in a few words: for though it be in the Catechism already yet a more familiar way may better help them to understand it. As thus [You must know, that from Everlasting there was one only God that had no beginning, and can have no end, who is not a Body as we are, but a most pure, spiritual Being that knoweth all things, and can do all things, and hath all Goodness and Blessedness in himself. This God is but one, but yet three Persons, the Father, the Son and holy Ghost in an incomprehensible manner, above our reach; yet we have somewhat in our selves and other creatures that may give us some resemblance of it. As in a man, his Power and his understanding and will, be but One soul, and yet they are not one faculty, but differ one from another: Or as in the Sun, the Being or Power, and the Heat and the Light, are not all one; and yet there is but one Sun; so in a more incomprehensible manner it is in God. And you must know that this One God did