A26880:497
Catholic communion defended against both extremes, and unnecessary division confuted in five parts ...…Catholick communion defended against both extreams, and unnecessary division confuted in five parts ...…
Catholic communion defended against both extremes, and unnecessary division confuted in five parts ... / by Richard Baxter ...Catholick communion defended against both extreams, and unnecessary division confuted in five parts ... / by Richard Baxter ...
London: printed for Tho. Parkhurst, 1684
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.
3. And all are obliged to exercise so much Mental and Local Communion as is necessary to edification, and to the exercise of Christian love and peace, besides what is forementioned.
But yet, 1. All Churches on Earth are separate by distance, as to Local Communion.
2. No Two Churches▪ or Men on Earth, are perfectly united as to Mental Communion. There are Multitudes of degrees of differences in this.
2. No Two Churches▪ or Men on Earth, are perfectly united as to Mental C•mmunion. There are Multitudes of degrees of differences in this.
3. There are very many just causes of diversifying Local Communion in the same City, Diocese or other Precincts; and of diversifying individual Pastoral Relation, and single (proper) Church-Communion. Diversity of Languages is a cause that no man can deny. The excessive Magnitude of a Church (that is, the Multitude of Persons) is another. Suppose that I were first and alone made Pastor of a Church in Mexico or Quinsay, and I am not able to do the work of a Pastor for a Thousand Souls; I get the help of Three or Four Presbyters and Deacons; and we all are utterly unable to do the Pastoral work for Four Thousand; may Four Thousand, or Forty Thousand more claim of me the performance of the Pastoral Office? Am I bound to undertake Tenfold more than I am able to perform? Then Men may not only enslave me, but damn me at their pleasure, and pretend their right to Communion with me. If you say I am bound to multiply Presbyters in the same Church to sufficiency: I answer, 1. What if I can neither have Men nor Maintenance? 2. What if I think that when the Multitude is so great that I cannot know them, nor they ever speak with me, or know one another any more than Men of several Countries, that I ought not to undertake a personal oversight of them, but persuade them to associate in Churches capable of such oversight? It's no breach of Charity for one School-Master or Physician to refuse a personal Relation, as School-Master to Five Hundred Schools, or Physician to all the City, or Five Hundred Hospitals (tho he have Apothecaries or others under him). No Man hath right to more of my labour than I am able to perform. If I be a Bishop, and bound to hear and try the Causes of all that ought to come under Church Censure in a whole Diocese, and am certain that I am unable to do this to One of an Hundred, who can claim a right to that or more?