A Christian Directory, Part 3: Christian EcclesiasticsBaxter, Richard
Religion
A Christian Directory, Part 3: Christian Ecclesiastics
Baxter, Richard
Casuistry; Christian sociology
_Direct._ III. Understand how it is that Christ doth authorize and
send forth his ministers, lest wolves and deceivers should either
obtrude themselves upon you as your lawful pastors, or should alienate
you from those that God hath set over you, by puzzling you in subtle
questioning or disputing against their call. Not only Paul's warnings,
Acts xx. 30, and 2 Tim. iii. 6, but lamentable experience, telleth us
what an eager desire there is in proud and self-conceited men, to
obtrude themselves as teachers and pastors on the churches, to creep
into houses and lead people captive, and draw away disciples after
them, and say (and perhaps think) that others are deceivers, and none
are the true teachers indeed but they. And the first part of the art
and work of wolves, is to separate you from your pastors, and catch up
the stragglers that are thus separated. The malice, and slanders, and
lies, and railing of hirelings and deceivers, and all the powers of
hell, are principally poured out on the faithful pastors and leaders
of the flocks. The principal work of the Jesuits against you, is to
make you believe that your pastors are no true pastors, but uncalled
private persons, and mere usurpers: and the reason must be, because
they have not an ordination of bishops successively from the apostles
without interruption.[107] I confess if our interruptions had been
half as lamentable as theirs, (by their schisms, and variety of popes
at once; and popes accused, or condemned by general councils, for
heretics; and their variety of ways of electing popes, and their
incapacities by simony, usurpation, &c.) I should think at least that
our ancestors had cause to have questioned the calling of some that
were then over them. But I will help you in a few words to discern the
juggling of these deceivers, by showing you the truth concerning the
way of Christ's giving his commission to the ministers that are truly
called, and the needlessness of the proof of an uninterrupted
succession of regular ordination, to your reception of your pastors
and their ministrations.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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