A26932:855
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.
I speak all this only of the tolerable differences that are among men, fearing God. And in that case, if the person be sober and understanding, he must needs yield to the affirmative of these Questions: Which if he do (or to any of them) let him subscribe it, or openly aver it: And then let all the standers by be made apprehensive, that none of the great matters that you deal with them about, are questioned, but all yielded unquestionable; (And the affixed Scripture leaves them so:) therefore there is no cause for them to receive the least discouragement in their way.
I speak all this only of the tolerable differences that are among men, fearing God. And in that case, if the person be sober and understanding, he must needs yield to the affirmative of these Questions: Which if he do (or to any of them) let him subscribe it, or openly averr it: And then let all the standers by be made apprehensive, that none of the great matters that you deal with them about, are questioned, but all yielded unquestionable; (And the affixed Scripture leaves them so:) therefore there is no cause for them to receive the least discouragement in their way.
I conceive its past doubt, that differing brethren may well join in recommending the truths that they are agreed in to the ignorant people! Bishop Usher told King James in his Sermon at Wansted on the Churches Unity, that he made this motion even to the Papists Priests themselves that they might join in teaching the people of that barbarous Nation the Common Principles that both were agreed in: A motion too Christian for sullen factious Zeal to entertain. I will repeat his own words, pag. 33. [The danger then of this ignorance being by the Confession of the most judicious Divines of both sides acknowledged to be so great; the woeful estate of the poor Country wherein I live is much to be lamented, where the people generally are suffered to perish for want of knowledge (he meant the Papists) the vulgar superstitions of Popery not doing them half that hurt, that the ignorance of those Common principles of the faith doth, which all true Christians are bound to learn. The consideration whereof hath sometime drawn me to treat with those of the opposite party to move them, that however in other things we did differ one from another, yet we should join together in teaching those main points the knowledge whereof was so necessary to salvation, and of the truth whereof there was no Controversy betwixt us. But what, for the Jealousies which these distractions in matters of Religion have bred among us, and what, for other respects, the motion took small effect: and so betwixt us both, the poor people are kept still in miserable ignorance, neither knowing the grounds of the one Religion nor