A76157:332
Confirmation and restoration the necessary means of reformation, and reconciliation; for the healing of…Confirmation and restauration the necessary means of reformation, and reconciliation; for the healing of…
Confirmation and restoration the necessary means of reformation, and reconciliation; for the healing of the corruptions and divisions of the churches: submissively, but earnestly tendered to the consideration of the sovereign powers, magistrates, ministers, and people, that they may awake, and be up and doing in the execution of so much, as appeareth to be necessary as they are true to Christ, his Church and Gospel, and to their own and others souls, and to the peace and welfare of the nations; and as they will answer the neglect to Christ, at their peril. / By Richard Baxter, an unworthy minister of Christ, that longeth to see the healing of the churches.Confirmation and restauration the necessary means of reformation, and reconciliation; for the healing of the corruptions and divisions of the churches: submissively, but earnestly tendered to the consideration of the soveraigne powers, magistrates, ministers, and people, that they may awake, and be up and doing in the execution of so much, as appeareth to be necessary as they are true to Christ, his Church and Gospel, and to their own and others souls, and to the peace and wellfare of the nations; and as they will answer the neglect to Christ, at their peril. / By Richard Baxter, an unworthy minister of Christ, that longeth to see the healing of the churches.
London: printed by A.M. for Nevil Simmons book-seller, 1658
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.
And yet in their blindness, Gentlemen, Ministers, and all that plead for common Church-membership, pretend to be charitable to the Peoples Souls, when they are exercising this grievous cruelty. It is just as if in Mercy to the school-boys, you should set them, that cannot read English, in the ⟨p. 181⟩highest form, where they must make Orations in Latin and Greek•, or else be whipped: would they thank you for such advancement. It is as if you should put an ignorant unexercised, cowardly Soldier, or one that is but learning to use his arms, into the front of the Battle, for his honour: or as if you should prefer a Pupil to be a Tutor, or put a freshman in the Doctors chair, or admit a new baptized Novice to be a Pastor of the Church, where the blood of the people shall be required at his hands; or as if to honour him, you should admit any common Mariner to the Pilots place, or any Apothecary to play the Physician to other mens ruin, and his own shame. If you set such Children on horseback, while you pretend their good, you will break their necks. No man is safe out of his own rank and place: If the Husbandman know that every sort of plants and grain, must have their proper soil and season, and the Gardner knoweth that several herbs and flowers, must be variously manured, or else they will not prosper; why should we be less wise in the Work of God? As Country Schools are Seminaries to the Academies, so the state of Catechumens or Expectants is the Seminary to the Church, and the state of Infant Church-membership, ⟨p. 182⟩the Seminary to the state of the Adult, into which they must be seasonably and solemnly transplanted, when they are ripe and ready, and not before. Truly our merciful hastlings do but yoke untamed bullocks, that are fitter to strive and tyre themselves then to plough; and do but saddle such wild, unbroken colts, as are liker to break their own and their riders necks, then to go the journey which they are designed for. In the state of Expectants, these men may profit by Preparing Ordinances, and the season may come, when they may fitly be transplanted: But if we put them inter fideles that are infidels, among Actual Believers, and Adult Church-members that are not such, nor prepared for the station, we bring them under a Discipline which will exasperate them, and turn them to be malignant enemies, and undo them for ever.