A26860:143
An answer to Mr. Dodwell and Dr. Sherlock, confuting an universal humane church-supremacy aristocratical…An answer to Mr. Dodwell and Dr. Sherlocke, confuting an universal humane church-supremacy aristocratical…
An answer to Mr. Dodwell and Dr. Sherlock, confuting an universal humane church-supremacy aristocratical and monarchical, as church-tyranny and popery : and defending Dr. Isaac Barrow's treatise against it by Richard Baxter ; preparatory to a fuller treatise against such an universal sovereignty as contrary to reason, Christianity, the Protestant profession, and the Church of England, though the corrupters usurp that title.An answer to Mr. Dodwell and Dr. Sherlocke, confuting an universal humane church-supremacy aristocratical and monarchical, as church-tyranny and popery : and defending Dr. Isaac Barrow's treatise against it by Richard Baxter ; preparatory to a fuller treatise against such an universal soveraignty as contrary to reason, Christianity, the Protestant profession, and the Church of England, though the corrupters usurp that title.
London: printed for Thomas Parkhurst, 1682
Chapter 4: My words of Gods Collation of Ministerial Authority, Vindicated from the forgeries and…
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.
1. There is no power but of God. 2. Gods universal Laws are the prime Laws, and the only universal Laws of the Church or world. ⟨p. 29⟩3. In his Laws God hath established or instituted the work and the species of that Ecclesiastical Ministry which he will have to teach and guide his Church to the end of the world. And therein signified his owning of them as sent by him, and promised them his help and blessing. 4. In that Law he hath told us what men they are that he will thus own and bless, and described the Essentials and the Integrals of their Receptive disposition or qualifications. 5. He hath in that Law told us who shall be the triers and judgers of the personal qualifications; and that ordinis gratia, ordinarily their approbation, choice, or consent, shall be a relative part of their Receptive qualification. 6. God himself giveth all the personal qualifications. 7 He is ready to help the approvers and choosers to discern all these, and to judg aright of them. 8. The person being thus made a capable Recipient by personal qualifications and relative (due Approbation, Election and Consent) God's Donation or Law doth give him Right, and oblige him to the office-work. And the Electors, Approvers, and Consenters, are none of the proper efficient Donors or causes of this right and obligation, but only efficient causes of his relative receptive capacity. 9. That therefore the right and obligation is immediately from Gods Law by resultancy, as the established medium of Gods conveyance; but not immediately without any means of his receptively, to make him materiam dispositam. 10. That all this is true both of Sovereign Civil Power, and of Church-power in Bishops and Pastors. 11. That yet besides Approbation and Election, God hath for the public notice and order of the Church, appointed a Regular Ministerial Investiture, by which the Approved shall be solemnly put into possession (as Kings are crowned, and Ministers instituted): and Ordination usually containeth both the approbation, part of the election, and the investiture. 12 But this Investiture being but a Ministerial delivery of possession, proveth not the Investor to be any Donor of the Power to the King, or to the Bishop or Pastor. 13.
1. There is no power but of God. 2. Gods universal Laws are the prime Laws, and the only universal Laws of the Church or world. ⟨p. 29⟩