Quaker's Catechism-Richard Baxter

where the tares of ungodly men are such as cannot be pulled up and cast out of the church without danger of pulling up and casting out some of the wheat even the weakest true believers with them there god would have us let both grow together till the time of harvest but these proud men will stand at a further distance and will dislike god's gracious dealing with sinners and their eye is evil because he is good and they will not grow in the same field or church where such tares do but will transplant themselves and remove from the field because god will not pluck up the tares especially if any ministerial neglect of discipline be conjoined as too commonly it is and instead of blaming their own pride and misunderstandings of god's merciful dealings with sinners they lay the blame on the corruption of the church and call it a field of tares and not of wheat in one word it is most evident that spiritual pride doth turn most men from us to you and that this is the very sin that undoes such a multitude of professors of religiousness and which hath let in all god's judgments upon us and the sin which he is now witnessing against from heaven as none more like to Christ than the humble, that are mean in their own eyes and compassionate to others, so none are more like to the devil than the proud, that think highly of themselves and contemptuously of others.

And the better the thing is that they are proud of, the worse is their pride in this respect, that it is the setting up of God's precious mercies against him, and the building of Satan's house with Christ's materials.

the pharisee's liturgy is of too frequent use in the separated congregations i thank thee o god that i am not as other men are c nor even as this publican he that maketh us to differ from other men and expecteth thanks for his difference in grace doth yet abhor a proud ostentation of it and a diminutive esteem of his smallest mercies unto others and all proud desires that they should be thrust below us further than he hath appointed it is the good of sinners and the honour of god that is the end of discipline and not that we might personally be extolled and judged of above what is meet i beseech you take this plain admonition in good part from a desirer of your recovery and salvation richard baxter

An answer to a young unsettled friend,

who before inclining strongly to Anabaptistry, at last fell in with the Quakers, and desired my thoughts of them and their ways, which seemed to him agreeable to the Scriptures.

i have perused your request and am glad that you are not so confirmed in your misery but that you will yet ask advice of your friend i pray god you be so ingenious and happy as to take it it is a very sad thing to me and should be so much more to you to think that after so much pains as you have taken in duty and so much zeal as you have professed for god you should yet be so unacquainted with the will and word of god and christ should have so little interest in your heart as that such horrid unchristian doctrines and practices should be so easily entertained by you and so far approved of i marvel why you took it for so great a work of grace to convert you from profaneness and will now take it for a greater work to convert you to it again or to much worse was it not the same ordinances that you despised before conversion which you now much more despise was it not the same ministers that thou you scorned whom ye now reproach with far greater bitterness if you do as those whom you plead for do Is it not the same Christians whom you then derided and now revile at, and condemn as children of the devil? O miserable man, is all your hearing and praying come to this? Dare you meet the messengers of Christ in the face, and tell them they are liars and deceivers? Dare you cast out the holy worship of Christ as false worship, and seek to draw people into the contempt of it? dare you damn those churches and millions of saints that christ hath bought with his precious blood dare you seek to draw men to hate their teachers whom christ hath set over them and to hate his people as if they were the children of the devil and to hate his worship and holy ways alas that ever a man in his wits should look upon such abominations as amiable and much more that any man should be so mad as to do this under the name and profession of a christian that you can imagine that the furious opposition to the whole army of christ his offices churches and ordinances can yet be a work that christ accepteth that you should no better know christ's work from satan's nor know that it is the dragon whose warfare these men do manage i must needs profess that it is a very grievous thing in mine eyes that after all our pains with men's souls and after the rejoicings which we had in their seeming conversion and zealous lives we should yet see so much ignorance levity and giddiness of professors as that they are ready to entertain the most horrid abominations that the devil can no sooner bait his hook but they greedily catch at it and swallow it without chewing yea nothing seems too gross for them but so it seems novelty all goes down i am afraid if they go a little further they will believe him that shall say the devil is god and to be worshipped and obeyed shall i freely tell you whence all this comes even from the hellish pride of the heart you see it not its like in yourself or in them but i shall endeavour to make you see it both in yourselves and in them for yourselves you confess to me that you have long thought that infant baptism was an error and that now you think the quakers are in the right and yet you neither did once read any of those books which we have written to prove infant baptism to be a duty nor did once seriously and impartially lay open your doubts to your teacher nor ask his advice as if you were even then too good to inquire and would venture your soul to save you a little labour yet are you now confident that you are in the right and he and all of his mind are in the wrong you know you are a young man and have had little opportunity to be acquainted with the word of god in comparison of what your teacher hath had if you presume that you are so much more beloved of god than he that god will reveal that to you without seeking and study which upon the greatest diligence he will not reveal to him what can this conceit proceed from but pride god commandeth study and meditating day and night in his laws your teacher hath spent twenty if not an hundred hours in such meditation where you have spent one he hath spent twenty if not an hundred hours in prayer to god for his spirit of truth and grace where you have spent one his prayers are as earnest as yours his life is much more holy and heavenly than yours his office is to teach and therefore god is as it were more engaged to be his teacher and to make known his truth to him than to you is it not then apparent pride for you to be confident that you are so much wiser than he and that you are so much the more lovely in god's eyes that he will admit you more in to the knowledge of his mysteries than those that have better used his own appointed means to know them and for you in ignorance to run about with the shell on your head exclaiming to the world of the ignorance of your late teachers i say not that you do so but the quakers whom you approve of do so and much more i pray you tell me did you ever study well what paul meant one timothy three five where he requireth that he that is ordained should not be a novice lest being lifted up with pride he fall into the condemnation of the devil the word translated a novice signifieth a new plant a late convert or new or young christian you see here that such are in most danger of being lifted up with pride and why so but because one they have not yet knowledge enough to acquaint them with their ignorance and great weaknesses two nor have they yet grown to a just degree of humility and other establishing persevering graces you see also that to fall into pride is to fall into the condemnation of the devil you know sure that it is no wrong to you to say that you are but a novice or raw christian for it is but a few years since you came out of utter ignorance and carnality and therefore that you have reason to be very watchful against this sin yea by the evidence that you give in against yourselves you might see that you are too far ensnared in it already and for the quakers you are blind if you see not their horrible pride you'll perhaps think it strange that pride should be the very master sin in them that go in so poor a garb and cry out against pride so zealously as they do and go up and down the world as if they were sent from heaven to persuade men to wear no lace nor cuffs or points and that down so many ministers for being called masters but alas do you not know that pride of inward qualifications commonly called spiritual pride is the most killing and abominable the better the thing is that you are proud of the worse is your pride oh what a brave thing doth it seem in these men's eyes that they should seem to be possessed with such an excellent spirit as can trample upon worldly glory and can boisterously condemn all that are not of their sect and that can despise dignities and be equal with the greatest yea that only they should have this admirable spirit and all others are the children of the devil and under their feet though other men should never so much slight them yet do they wonderfully please themselves with these high thoughts of themselves for pride is first an overvaluing of a man's self and thinking of himself above what is meet and then a desire that others should do so by him too if yet you see not the pride of these men i will show it you in these four particular evidences and that so plainly that if you know the difference between the language of heaven and of hell you may easily perceive the devils speaking by their mouths one they affirm themselves to be perfect without sin yea some of them say they are christ and god and is it possible that any man in this life that is not mad with spiritual pride can indeed believe that he hath no sin what that he transgresseth no law that he doth love god in the highest degree that he is bound to do that he never hath a thought or word that is sinful nor sinfully loseth one minute of his time yea and this when in the eyes and ears of the wisest they foam out their own shame as the raging sea doth cast out the dirt