A26932:875
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.
11. Still keep up Christian love and familiarity with them, even when they begin to warp and make defection; and lose not your interest in them, while you have any thoughts of attempting their recovery.
12. If they do withdraw into separated meetings, follow them, and be among them, if it may be, continually, enter a mild dissent as to the lawfulness of it; but yet tell them, that you are willing to hear what it is that they have to say, and to be among them for their good, if they will give you leave, for fear lest they run to further evil. And be not easily removed; but hold on, unless they resolvedly exclude you. For 1. You may thereby have the opportunity of a moderate gentle opposing their errors, and so in time may manifest the vanity of their course: 2. And you will prevent much of that impudent reviling, and grosser venting of further Error, which they will do more freely where there is no ⟨p. 473⟩Contradicter. They may say any thing when there is none to gainsay them, and make it seem good in the eyes of the weak. 3. And by this means, if any seducers from abroad come in to confirm them, you will be ready to oppose them: And so at the least you will do much to prevent the increase of their party. It hath been a very great cause of the schisms in England, that Ministers have only (too many) contemned them, & when they have withdrawn into private separated meetings, have talked against them to others, or reproved them in the Pulpit & in the mean time fled away from the faces of them, or been strangers to them, while they have given Seducers opportunity to come among them & be familiar with them without contradiction, and to have the advantages of deceiving them, and even doing what their list. O that the Ministry had been more guiltless of those Errors and Schisms that they talk against! But its easier to chide a sectary in the Pulpit, and to subscribe a Testimony against them, then to play the skilful Physician for their Cure, and do the tenth part of the duty that lieth upon us, to prevent and heal such calamitous distempers. I am not finding fault with Prudent Reprehensions of them in Public, or Testimonies against them: but I think too many of us have cause to fear, lest we do but publicly proclaim our own shame in the guilt of our negligence or imprudent weaknesses; and lest in Condemning them and Testifying against them, we Testify against and Condemn our selves.