Some Quotes from the 17th Century

I got back into reading one of my favorite books tonight, "The Reformed Pastor" by Richard Baxter. It's one of the few books I've read that has such profound statements that I feel the need to keep track of favorite quotes from it. The parts that stood out to me tonight were dealing with the need for an uncompromising recognition of the seriousness of Biblical preaching and the call for believers (especially pastors) to seek the unity of the catholic (not "Catholic") church rather than just of their own "party".

"O sirs, how plainly, how closely, how earnestly, should we deliver a message of such moment as ours, when the everlasting life or everlasting death of our fellow-men is involved in it!"
"You cannot break men's hearts by jesting with them, or telling them a smooth tale, or pronouncing a gaudy oration."

"It is a great and common sin throughout the Christian world, to take up religion in a way of faction; and instead of a love and tender care of the universal Church, to confine that love and respect to a party [e.g. a denomination]."
"If there be some called Lutherans, some Calvinists, some subordinate divisions among these, and so of other parties among us, most of them will pray hard for the prosperity of their party, and rejoice and give thanks when it goes well with them; but if any other party suffer, they little regard it, as if it were no loss at all to the Church."
"The peace of their party they take for the peace of the Church."
"How rare it is to meet with a man that smarteth or bleedeth with the Church's wounds, or sensibly taketh them to heart as his own, or that ever had solicitous thoughts of a cure!"

I think these quotes hit close at some of the requirements for revival in the Maritimes. There must be solid Biblical preaching that seeks to please God rather than men. And we must break out of partisan bigotry that effectively confines the breadth of God's kingdom to our own church or denomination or clique or ethnic group.