Selected quad for the lemma: christian_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
christian_n	church_n	particular_a	pastor_n	2,231	5	9.9163	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A26939	How to do good to many, or, The publick good is the Christians life directions and motives to it, intended for an auditory of London citizens, and published for them, for want of leave to preach them / by Richard Baxter.	Baxter, Richard, 1615-1691.	1682 (1682)	Wing B1283; ESTC R5487	40,184	56

How to do Good to Many OR THE PUBLICK GOOD IS THE Christians Life DIRECTIONS and MOTIVES to it Intended for an AUDITORY of London Citizens AND Published for them for want of leave to preach them By RICHARD BAXTER Tit. 2. 14. Who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purifie to himself a People zealous of good Works LONDON Printed for Rob. Gibs at the Ball in Chancery Lane 1682. The Contents GAL. 6. 10. Doct. To do Good to all men is all mens duty to which every Christian especially must apply himself I. Who this All meaneth and in what order p. 4. II. What is the Good that we must do p. 5. III. The Rules for judging and doing good p. 5. IV. What qualifications are necessary hereto 1. To know good from evil p. 6. 2. To love all men p. 8. 3. To love many and the Common good above himself p. 9. 4. To be good himself p. 10. 5. Suitable abilities 6. A large prospect of the world and of time to come 7. Christian fortitude against discouragement 8. To look to God for his reward p. 11. And finally believe the life to come The Impediments of doing good p. 12. V. Particular good works or directions for publick good I. Do as much good as you can to mens bodies in order to the good of Souls p. 15. II. Promote knowledge of necessary truth 1. Set up Reading Schools 2. Give Bibles and good Books p. 16. III. Order Families aright and Educate Children for Christ p. 18. IV. Promote a faithfull Ministry 1. Devote not your Children to the Ministry that are unqualified p. 18. 2. Let honest Rich men buy Presentations The difference between good and bad Pastors p. 19. V. Keep order and Discipline in particular Churches p. 20. VI. Promote Love and Concord with all that deserve to be called Christians p. 21. Who those are p. 22. VII Do your best to keep up sound Religion in the Parish Churches and do nothing to deprave or lose it there p. 24. VIII See that no injuries tempt you into Sedition or unlawful Wars What is lawful Patiently trust God and cut not the Infant of deliverance out of the Womb before his time of birth p. 25. IX Do your best to procure faithful and just Rulers What private men may do The great difference between good Rulers and bad p. 30. X. Know publick sins and dangers to oppose them p. 31. XI Know your duty to your Neighbours and be not strange to them XII Be such as you would make others p. 31. Use of exhortation to do good Cavils refuted Motives to do good to many p. 33. Specially to Magistrates and Ministers p. 35. Consectaries 1. A selfish fleshly life is the state of Hypocrites p. 38. 2. How carefully should we take heed of doing hurt p. 39. 3. It s not enough to leave others to do good by our last Wills 4. Yet dying men should do what good they can by their Wills p. 39. Leaving great Estates to Children who are like to do hurt with them or no good but live in idleness and fulness proved a great sin and the objections answered p. 40. 5. Humbly proposed to Merchants and Rich men 1. Whether our Factories might not be made more useful to promote the Gospel by Chaplains and Factors 2. Whether Armenians Greeks and Mofcovites might not be helpt and how 3. Might not more be dove for the Natives in our Plantations 4. Or at last for the Blacks that are their slaves p. 45. 6. The great opposition to good in all the World by Satan and his Servants the more obligeth all Christs Servants to seek to over do them and to be zealous of good works p. 46. ERRATA Page 1. blot out 1 before Gal. 6. pa. 26. 1. 15 for Cold read Gold pa. 23. 1. 31. for with read within TO THE TRULY CHRISTIAN Merchants and other Citizens OF LONDON AS my Disease and the Restraint of Rulers seem to tell me that my Pulpit work is at an end so also my abode among you or in this World cannot be long What Work I have lived for I have given the World more durable notice than transient words It hath been such as Men in Power were against and it seems will no longer indure What Doctrine it was that I last prepared for you I thought meet to desire the Press thus to tell you not to vindicate my self nor to characterize them who think that it deserves six months imprisonment but to be in your hands a Provocation and Direction for that great Work of a Christian Life which sincerely done will prepare you for that safety joy and glory which London England or Earth will not afford and which men or Devils cannot take from you When through the meritorious righteousness of Christ your holy Love and good Works to him in his Brethren shall make you the joyful Objects of that Sentence Come ye blessed inherit the Kingdom c. This is the life that need not be repented of as spent in vain Dear Friends in this Farewel I return you my most hearty thanks for your extraordinary love and kindness to my self and much more for your love to Christ and to his Servants who have more needed your releif God is not unjust to forget your work and labour of Love You have visited those that others imprisoned and fed those that others brought into want and when some ceased not to preach for our affliction it quenched not your impartial Charity It hath been an unspeakable Mercy unto me almost all my dayes when I received nothing from them to have known so great a number as I have done of serious humble holy charitable Christians In whom I saw that Christ hath an Elect peculiar People quite different from the brutish proud hypocritical malignant unbeleiving World O how sweet hath the familiarity of such been to me whom the ignorant World hath hated most of them are gone to Christ I am following We leave you here to longer tryal It s like you have a bitter Cup to drink But be faithful to the death and Christ will give you the Crown of Life The Word of God is not bound and the Jerusalem above is free where is the general Assembly of the first Born an innumerable company of Angels the Spirits of the just made perfect with Christ their glorified Head The Lord guide bless and preserve you How to do Good to Many OR THE PUBLICK GOOD IS THE CHRISTIANS LIFE c. 1 Gal. 6. 10. As we have therefore opportunity let us do good to all Men especially unto them who are of the houshold of Faith GOOD is an Epithite of the highest signification of any in humane Language Some think the Name GOD is thence derived Greatness and Wisdom are equally his Attributes but Goodness is the completion and sweetest to the Creature Christ appropriateth it to God to be good that is essentially primarily and perfectly and universally communicative

Satan Teacheth them and as selfish Pride and Worldly interest incline them what wonder if such Love have murdered 30000 or 40000 at once in France and 200000 in Ireland and have filled the Christian World with Religious Blood Read but the doleful Histories of Church Contentions for 1300 years the Stories of their Wars and mutual Persecutions the Streams of Blood that have been shed in East and West the inquisitions and bloody Laws still kept up and all this as Good Works and done in Love and you would think that the Sacred Roman Hierarchy did Believe that Christ hath put down the Legal Sacrificing of Beasts that he might instead of it have the blood of men and that he who requireth his Disciples to lay down their lives for him would have a Priesthood kept up to Sacrifice their lives to him that will not wilfully break his Laws And all this is but as Christ foretold us that his Servants should be kill'd as a piece of Service to God No wonder if such men offer God a ludicrous mimical sort of Service and Worship him in vain by heartless lip-labour according to the Traditions of men when they dare Sacrifice Saints to the Lord of Saints and quiet their Consciences by calling them such as they are themselves But to the honour of Goodness and the shame of Sin to shew that they sin against the Light of Nature it self they put the Name of Evil upon Good before they dare openly oppose and persecute it and they put the Names of Good upon Evil before they dare defend and justifie it But alas it is not only the Ungodly that do mischief thinking verily that it is good How many doth the Church suffer by while they prosecute their mistakes who yet do much good in promoting the common truth which Christians are agreed in 2. He that will do Good to all or many must have an unfeigned Love to them Hatred is mischievous and neglect is unprofitable Love is the natural Fountain of Beneficence Love earnestly longeth to do good and delighteth in doing it It maketh many to be as One and to be as ready to help others as each Member of the Body is to help the rest Love maketh anothers wants sufferings and sorrows to be our own And who is not willing to help himself Love is a principle ready active ingenious and constant It studieth to do good and would still do more It is Patient with the infirmities of others which men void of love do aggravate into odiousness and make them their excuse for all their neglects and their pretence for all their Cruelties Could you make all the slanderers backbiters revilers despisers persecuters to love their Neighbours as themselves you may easily Judge what would be the effect and whether they would revile or prosecute or imprison or ruine themselves or study how to make themselves odious or suborne perjured witnesses against themselves 3. Yea he that will do good to many must Love many better than himself and preferre the Common-good much before his own and seek his own in the Common-welfare He that loveth good as good will best Love the best And an honest old Roman would have called him an unworthy beast that preferred his Estate or life before the Common welfare To be ready to do suffer or die for their Country was a vertue which all extolled A narrow-Spirited selfish man will serve others no further than it serveth himself or at least will stand with his own safety or prosperity He will turn as the Weathercock and be for them that are for his worldly interest I confess that God oft useth such for common good But it is by raising such storms as would sink them with the Ship and leaving them no great hope to escape by being false Or by Permiting such Villanies as threaten their own interest A Covetous Father may be against gaming and prodigality in his Children The men of this World are wise in their generation Many that have Abby Lands will be against Popery And even Atheists and Licentious men may be loth to be slaves to Politick Priests and to come under Confession and perhaps the Inquisition And those that have not sinned themselves into madness or gross delusions will be loth to set up a Forieign Jurisdiction and become the Subjects of an unknown Priest if they can help it God often useth vice against vice and if no worldly selfish men were the Countries or the Churches helpers it must suffer or trust to Miracles But yet there is no trust to be put in these men further than their own interest must stand or fall with the Common good If God and Heaven and Conscience be not more powerful with a man than worldly interest trust him not against the stream and tide or when he thinks he can make a better bargain for himself He that will sell Heaven and Christ for the world will sell you for it and sell his Country for it and sell Religion truth and honesty for it And if he scape here the end of Achitophel and Judas he will venture on all that 's out of sight Christ was the grand Benefactor to the world and the most excellent teacher of Love and self-denyal and contempt of the world to all that will follow him in doing good to many 4. He that will do much good must be good himself Make the tree good if you would have good fruit Operari sequitur esse A bad man is an Enemy to the greatest good that he should do Malignity abhorreth serious piety and will such promote it If Elias be a man of Miracles he shall hear Hast thou found me O my Enemy And Michaiah shall hear I hate him for he Prophesieth not good of me but evil Feed him with the Bread and Water of Affliction And a bad Man if by accident he be engaged for a good cause is still suspected by those that know him They cannot trust him as being a slave to lust and to strong Temptations and a secret Enemy to the true interest of his Country Alas the best are hardly to be trusted far as being lyable to miscarry by infirmity how little then is to be hoped for from the wicked 5. He that will do much good in the world must be furnished with considerable abilities Especially prudence and skill in knowing when and to whom and how to do it Without this he will do more harm than good Even good men when they have done much good by some one miscarriage tempted by the remnants of selfishness and Pride and by unskilful rashness have undone all the good they did and done as much hurt as wicked enemies There goeth so much to publick good and so many snares are to be avoided that rash self-conceited half-witted men do seldom do much unless under the conduct of wiser men 6. He that will be a publick blessing to the world must have a very large prospect and see the state of all the world

Concord men will never know where to rest nor ever agree in any ones determination but Christs All men that can get power will be making their own Wills the Rule and Law and others will not think of them as they do and the variety of fallible mutable Church Laws and terms of Concord will be the Engine of perpetual discord as Ulpian told honest Alexander Severus the Laws would be which he thought to have made for sober Concord in fashions of Apparel Those that are united to Christ by faith and have his sanctifying Spirit and are justified by him and shall dwell with him in Heaven are certainly Christians and such as Christ hath commanded us to love as our selves And seeing that it is his Livery by which his Disciples must be known by loving one another and the false Prophets must be known by the fruits of their hurtfulness as Wolves Thornes and Thistles I must profess tho Order and Government have been so amiable to me as to tempt me to favourable thoughts of some Roman power in the Church I am utterly unreconcilable to it when I see that the very complexion of that Hierarchy is malice and bloodiness against Men most seriously and humbly pious that dare not obey them in their sinful usurpations and that their cause is maintained by belying hateing and Murdering true Christians And on the other side too many make Laws of Love and Communion to themselves and confine Christs Church with their little various and perhaps erroneous Sects And all others they Love with pity but only those of their Cabin and singular opinions they love with complacency and communion those that condemn such as Christ justifieth and say that Christians are not his are near of kin to one another tho one sort shew it by Persecution and the other but by Excommunication or Schismatical separation We are all one in Christ Jesus Gal. 4. 28. And therefore I advise all Christians to hate the causes and ways of hatred and Love all the causes and means of Love Frown on them that so extol their singular sentiments as to backbite others and speak evil of what they understand not Especially such as the Pamphleters of this Age whose design is weekly and daily to fight against Christian Love and to stir up all men to the utmost of their power to think odiously of one another and plainly to stir up a thirst after blood Never did Satan Write by the hand of man if he do it not by such as these The Lord of Love and Mercy rebuke them And take heed of them that can find enough in the best that are against their way to prove them dishonest if not intolerable and can see the Mote of a Ceremony or Nonconformity to a Ceremony in their Brothers Eye and not the Beam of Malice or Cruelty in their own Take heed of those that are either for confounding Toleration of all or for dissipating cruelty on pretence of Unity That Land or Church shall never truly prosper where these three sorts are not well distinguished 1. The Approved that are to be encouraged 2. The Tolerable that are to be patiently and lovingly endured 3. The Intolerable that are to be restrained They may as well confound Men and Beasts Wise Men and Mad Men Adult and Infants as confound these three sorts in reference to Religion I add this Note to prevent Objections that tho meekness and gentleness promote peace yet to speak sharply and hatefully of hatred un peaceableness and cruelty and all that tends to destroy Love is an act of Love and not of an uncharitable unpeaceable man VII If you love the common good of England do your best to keep up sound and serious Religion in the publick Parish Churches and be not guilty of any thing that shall bring the chief interest of Religion into private Assemblies of men only tolerated if you can avoid it Indeed in a time of Plagues Epidemical infection tolerated Churches may be the best preservatives of Religion as it was in the first 300 years and in the Arrians Reign and under Popery But where sound and serious Religion is owned by the Magistrate tolerated Churches are but as Hospitals for the sick and must not be the receptacle of all the healthful And doubtless if the Papists can but get the Protestant interest once into prohibited or tolerated Conventicles as they will call them they have more than half overcome it and will not doubt to use it next as they do in France and by one turn more to cast it out The countenance of Authority will go far with the Vulgar against all the scruples that men of Conscience stick at and they will mostly go to the allowed Churches whoever is there Let us therefore lose no possession that we can justly get nor be guilty of disgracing the honest Conformists but do all we can to keep up their Reputation for the good of Souls They see not matters of difference through the same Glass that we do They think us unwarrantably scrupulous We think the matter of their Sin to be very great But we know that before God the degree of guilt is much according to the degree of mens negligence or unwillingness to know the Truth or to obey it And prejudice education and converse maketh great difference on mens apprehensions Charity must not reconcile us to sin but there is no end of uncharitable censuring each other It hath made me admire to hear some mens words against Comprehension as they call it that they would not have Rulers revoke that which they judge to be heynous sin in their impositions unless they will revoke all that they think unlawful lest it should strengthen the Parish Churches and weaken the tolerated or suffering part I will not here open the sin of this policy as it deserves But I wish them to Read a small book called The whole Duty of Nations said to be Mr. Thomas Beverleys VIII If you love the common good take heed lest any injuries tempt you into sedition or unlawful Wars No man that never tried them can easily believe what an Enemy Wars and Tumults are to Religion and to common honesty and sobriety Men are there so serious about their Lives and Bodily safety that they have no room or time for serious Worshipping of God The Lords day is by necessity made a common day And all mens Goods are almost common to the will of Soldiers Either Power seems to authorize them or necessity to allow them to use the Goods of others as their own as if they were uncapable of doing wrong It is their honour that can kill most and how little place there is for Love it is easie to conceive I doubt not but it is lawful to fight for our King or Country in a good Cause As Nature giveth all private men a right of private self-defence and no more so the same Law of Nature which is Gods Law giveth all Nations a Right