A26932:859
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.
1. I must premise, that the chief part of your work to preserve the Church from such, doth consist in the prevention of their fall, seeing when they are once throughly infected; be the error what it will, they are but seldom recovered; but if they be beaten out of the error, which they first fell into; they go to another, and perhaps thence to another; but, through a just excecation, they seldom return to the truth.
2. To which end, it is most desirable that the Minister should be of Parts above the people so far, as to be able to teach them, and awe them, and manifest their weaknesses to themselves, or to all. The truth is (for it cannot be hid) it is much long of the Ministers, that our poor people are run into so many factions! and particularly, the weakness of too many is not the least cause, when a proud Seducer shall have a nimble tongue, and a Minister be dull or ignorant, so that such a one can baffle him, or play upon him in the ears of others, it brings him into contempt, and overthrows the weak: For they commonly judge him to have the best cause, that hath the most confident, plausible, triumphant tongue. But when a Minister is able to open their shame to all, it mightily preserveth the Church from their infection.
3. It is necessary also to this end, that you frequently and throughly possess your people, with the nature, necessity, and daily use of the great unquestionable Principles of Religion, and of the great sin and danger of a perverse zeal about the lower points before the greater are well laid, and let them be made sensible how it is the Principles, and not their ⟨p. 465⟩smaller Controversies that life or death doth depend upon.