A26932:812
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.
Direction 7. When you have either by former discovery of gross ignorance, or by these later enquiries into his spiritual state, discerned an apparent probability that the person is yet in an unconverted state; your next business is, to fall on with all your skill and power, to bring his heart to the sense of his condition: E. G. Truly neighbours, I have no mind, the Lord knows, to make your condition worse then it is, nor to put any causeless fear or trouble into your mind: but I suppose you would take me but for a flattering enemy, and not a faith ⟨p. 441⟩full friend, if I should daub with you, and not tell you the truth: If you sought to a Physician in your sickness, you would have him tell you the truth, though it were the worst: Much more here; For, there the knowledge of your disease may by fears increase it, but here you must know it, or else you can never be recovered from it. I much fear that you are yet a stranger to the new life of all them that Christ will save: For if you were a Christian indeed and truly converted, your very heart would have been set on God and the life to come, and you would have admired the riches of grace in Christ, and you would have made it your business to prepare for Everlasting; and you durst not, you would not, live in any wilful sin, nor in the neglect of such duties! Alas! what have you done? how have you spent your time till now? Did you not know, that you had a soul to save or lose? and that you must live in heaven or hell for ever! and that you had your life and time in this world for that purpose, to prepare for another! Alas! what have you been doing all this while that you are so ignorant, or so unprepared for death if it should now find you? If you had but had as much mind of heaven as of earth, you would have known more of it, and done more of it, and enquired more diligently after it, then you have done! You can learn how to do your business in the world, and why could you not have learned more of the will of God, if you had but minded it. You have neighbours that could learn more, that have had as much to do in the world as you, and as little time? Do you think that heaven ⟨p. 442⟩is not worth your labour? or that its like it can be had without any care or pains? when you cannot have the trifles of this world without? and when God hath bid you, first seek his Kingdom and the righteousness thereof?
Direction 7. When you have either by former discovery of gross ignorance, or by these later enquiries into his spiritual state, discerned an apparent probability that the person is yet in an unconverted state; your next business is, to fall on with all your skill and power, to bring his heart to the sense of his condition: E. G. Truly neighbours, I have no mind, the Lord knows, to make your condition worse then it is, nor to put any causless fear or trouble into your mind: but I suppose you would take me but for a flattering enemy, and not a faith