A02990:323
A friendly trial of the grounds tending to separation in a plain and modest…A friendly triall of the grounds tending to separation in a plain and modest…
A friendly trial of the grounds tending to separation in a plain and modest dispute touching the lawfulness of a stinted liturgy and set form of prayer, Communion in mixed assemblies, and the primitive subject and first receptacle of the power of the Keys: tending to satisfy the doubtful, recall the wandering, and to strengthen the weak: by John Ball.A friendly triall of the grounds tending to separation in a plain and modest dispute touching the lawfulnesse of a stinted liturgie and set form of prayer, Communion in mixed assemblies, and the primitive subject and first receptacle of the power of the Keyes: tending to satisfie the doubtfull, recall the wandering, and to strengthen the weak: by John Ball.
Cambridge: printed by Roger Daniel printer to the University of Cambridge for Edward Brewster, 1640Cambridge: printed by Roger Daniel printer to the Universitie of Cambridge for Edward Brewster, 1640
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
And if women be debarred by their sex as from ordinary prophesying, 1so from any other dealing wherein they take authority over the man, how can two or three believing women be the church, with power ministerial, ⟨p. 265⟩publicly to bind and loose, remit and retain sins? And if two or three gathered together have the same right and power with two or three hundred, or two or three thousand, let the society without officers be never so great, it cannot be the church that is here meant. For those Divines which hold power and authority of binding and loosing to be delivered by Christ to the whole church, that is, to every particular church collectively, because it pertaineth to them to deny Christian communion to such wicked persons as add contumacy to their disobedience, and to remit the punishment again upon repentance, they generally with one consent maintain, that the execution and judicial exercising of this power pertaineth to that company and assembly of officers or governors in every church which the Apostle calleth a presbytery. 2But our Saviour in that text of Scripture speaketh of the execution and exercise of the power of binding and loosing, which was never committed to the community of the faithful without officers. If the joint consent of orthodox Divines move not, let it be considered, that the exercise of ecclesiastical censures external and authoritative was never committed to the community of the faithful without officers, never exercised by the faithful in any age of the Christian church. Let such as plead for this power bring forth either commission for it or precedent of it, if they be able. The external and authoritative power of binding and loosing, as the greatest power in the church, doth comprehend under it all matters subordinate and of the same nature, ⟨p. 266⟩power to preach the word authoritatively, and to admit unto or put from the sacraments: but the exercise of this inferior power was never committed to a Christian society or church without officers. And if we will not make one text of scripture contrary to another, we cannot think the exercise of that power is here given to the community of the faithful, few or many, without officers, which in all other places is given to the governors, never to the faithful without guides. By the church the whole multitude of believers, whether with officers or without, cannot be understood.