A treatise of self-denial. By Richard Baxter, pastor of the church at KidderminsterA treatise of self-denial. By Richard Baxter, pastor of the church at Kederminster

And if the People be selfish, they will rebel against their faithfullest Guides, and kick against their Doctrine and reproofs, and fly from Discipline, which seems to their distempered minds to be against them. Let but one most notorious, lamentable instance suffice. The greater part of our Parishioners in most places of the Land are lamentably ignorant and careless in the matters of their Salvation, and all that we can do is too little to bring them to understand the matters of absolute Necessity: and yet almost all of them are so much wiser in their own conceits than the ablest of their Teachers, that if we do not humour them, and be not Ruled by them in our Doctrine and Administrations, about Sacraments, Prayers, Burial, and the rest, yea if we obey them not in gestures and forms, they turn their backs upon Officers, and Ordinances, and the Church it self, and pour out their reproach upon their Teachers, as if we were ignorant in comparison of them (even of them that know not so much as children of seven or eight year old should know.) See here the wonderful, bewitched power of a selfish disposition.

And if the People be selfish, they will rebel against their faithfullest Guides, and kick against their Doctrine and reproofs, and fly from Discipline, which seems to their distempered minds to be against them. Let but one most notorious, lamentable instance suffice. The greater part of our Parishioners in most places of the Land are lamentably ignorant and careless in the matters of their Salvation, and all that we can do is too little to bring them to understand the matters of absolute Necessity: and yet almost all of them are so much wiser in their own conceits than the ablest of their Teachers, that if we do not humor them, and be not Ruled by them in our Doctrine and Administrations, about Sacraments, Prayers, Burial, and the rest, yea if we obey them not in gestures and forms, they turn their backs upon Officers, and Ordinances, and the Church it self, and pour out their reproach upon their Teachers, as if we were ignorant in comparison of them (even of them that know not so much as children of seven or eight year old should know.) See here the wonderful, bewitched power of a selfish disposition.

And in matters of the Commonwealth, what is it more than this! nay what is it besides this, that maketh Princes become Tyrants, and Rulers keep under the Ordinances and interest of Christ, or fearfully neglect them, and look after the Church in the last place, when they have no business of their own to call them off, and to begin to build Gods House when they have first built their own, not imitating Nehemiah's labourers that had