N17286:500
The saints everlasting rest
The saints everlasting rest: or, A treatise of the blessed state of the saints in their enjoyment of God in glory: extracted from the works of Mr. Richard Baxter, by John Wesley, M.A. late fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford.
Philadelphia: printed by Prichard & Hall, 1790
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.
2. And when the necessity of your superiors doth call for your advice, yet do it with all possible humility, modesty, and meekness. Let them discern your reverence and submission in the humble manner of your addresses to them. Let them perceive that you do it not out of a mere teaching humour, or proud self-conceitedness. If a wife should tell her husband of sin in a masterly railing language; or if a servant reprove his master, or a child his father in a saucy way, what good could be expected from such reproof? But if they should meekly and humbly open to him his sin and danger, and entreat him to bear with them in what GOD commandeth, and if they could by tears testify their sense of his case: what father, or master, or husband could take this ill?
Object. But some may say, this will make all as preachers, and cause all to break over the bounds of their callings.
I answer, 1. This is not taking a pastoral charge of souls, nor making an office or calling of it, as preachers do.
2. And in the way of our callings, every good christian is a teacher, and hath a charge of his neighbour's soul. Let it be only the voice of a Cain to say, Am I my brother's keeper? I would one of these men, that are so loth that private men should teach them, to tell me, what if a man fall down in a swoon in the streets, though it be your father or superior, would you not take him up presently, and use all means to recover him? Or would you let him lie and die, and say, it is the work of the physician, and not mine: I will not invade the physician's calling. In two cases every man is a physician; first, in case of necessity, and when a physician cannot be had: and secondly, in case the hurt be so small, that every man can do as