Reformed Pastor - Baxter - I - Dedication and Introductory Note

Required reading
Reformed Pastor by Richard Baxter (we'll be reading from the 1862 edition available from Amazon or free on the internet, here for example) - Read the Dedication and Introductory Note.

My summary
Today we begin Baxter's 'The Reformed Pastor'.

Baxter dedicates his book to the ministers in Britain and Ireland and outlines reasons for his book.

Initially Baxter defends why he is so ready to criticise the ministry when some would rather that he not have published the book at all or at least restricted it from the common people by publishing it in Latin, not English.

Then in the dedication Baxter gives three main points he wishes to propound to ministers:
(i) Ministers should be catechizing and instructing individually all that are committed to their care;
(ii) Ministers should practice Church discipline;
(iii) Ministers should unite and associate for the furtherance of each other in the work of the Lord.

Then the  Introductory Note explains what Baxter's work will entail and that it is based on Acts 20:28.

What grabbed me
I liked how Baxter drew out the seriousness of the ministry: 'Yet if you had betaken yourselves to another calling, and would sin to yourselves only, and would perish alone, we should not have so much necessity of molesting you, as now we have: but, if you will enter into the office of the ministry, which is for the necessary preservation of us all, so that by letting you alone in your sin, we must give up the church to loss and hazard, blame us not, if we talk to you more freely than you would have us to do. If your own body were sick, and you will despise the remedy, or if your own house were on fire, and you will be singing or quarrelling in the streets, I could possibly bear it, and let you alone, (which yet, in charity, I should not easily do,) but, if you will undertake to be the physician of an hospital, or to a whole town that is infected with the plague, or will undertake to quench all the fires that shall be kindled in the town, there is no bearing with your remissness, how much soever it may displease you. Take it how you will you must be told of it; and if it will not serve, you must be told of it yet more plainly ; and, if that will not serve, if you be rejected as well as reprehended, you may thank yourselves. I speak all this to none but the guilty.'

Letting sin in the ministry abound has great consequences.  When we try to rectify sins in the minister, we are trying to do so for the good of the whole church.

May the book club be ready to be admonished by Baxter so that great good will abound in our churches.

Next week's reading
Commence Chapter 1 by reading Section 1 (The nature of this oversight).

Now it's your turn
Please post your own notes and thoughts in the comments section below.