Richard Baxter, On Maintaining Our Integrity

“Take heed to yourselves, lest your example contradict your doctrine, and lest you lay such stumbling-blocks before the blind, as may be the occasion of their ruin; lest you unsay with your lives, what you say with your tongues; and be the greatest hinderers of the success of your own labours…This is the way to make men think that the Word of God is but an idle tale, and to make preaching seem no better than prating [meaning “talking foolishly for a long time]…It is a palpable error of some ministers, who make such a disproportion between their preaching and their living; who study hard to preach exactly, and study little or not at all to live exactly.” (TheReformed Pastor, pgs. 63-64)