A26880:843
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.
2. Accounting the Ministry, and Worship, and Government so bad, as makes Communion with the Church unlawful, if it be not so.
3. Doing that needlessly which hath the scandalous appearing signification of such a judgment.
3. Doing that needlesly which hath the scandalous appearing signification of such a judgment.
10. I know many of the Parish-Ministers to be men of very laudable abilities and conversations, and to have the consent of the most of the Communicants of the Parish.
11. I am past doubt, that so much of the Liturgy as is used every Lords Day, as the common Worship, is so far sound as to the matter of it, that it hath no more material faultiness than is too often in extemporate Church-praying: And that the disorder and faultiness in the Manner, is no greater than is used also by many in free prayer, with whom we all think it lawful to join. And that prejudice maketh it seem to many much more faulty than it is: The greatest dislike is of the Responses by the People, and the shortness of the Prayers, both which were used in the Ancient Churches, when no sound Christians scrupled it, much less separated for it. Christ approved of the short Prayer of the Publican, [God be merciful to me a sinner]. Repetitions, and the Peoples Acclamations and Responses, were used in the Jewish Church, as is evident in Ezra, and in many Psalms, &c. We all allow the Peoples speaking, even as much as the Minister in singing Psalms: And the Congregation would murmur if the People should be but Hearers while the Minister singeth alone. Of old their singing was like our saying, and not in Rhymes, like ours. Will any pretend to prove that it's lawful for the People to sing God's Praise, and not to say it? But they that dislike it, may be silent.