A26880:949
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.
8. I am bound to have real compassion on the multitudes who suffer as for Recusancy, and not by silence wrong their Consciences and their Purses. If I shut up the bowels of my compassion, where is the love of God?
9. I am bound to do my best to keep out Popery; which must be by keeping up as much of Religion as is possible in the Parish-Churches (that it be not first thrust into corners, and then out of the Land), and by concord with the Parish-Ministers who are honest: And many such, through God's mercy, there are; tho those that in 1661. brought us into this state, do manifest no repentance.
10. Lastly, I find that our mutual Censures and Separations greatly hinder the success of the whole Ministry against sin, while they seek to bring each other into disesteem, and teach the people to disesteem them all: and some will not hear one sort, and some the other.
The rest of my Reasons, you may gather from the fore recited Reasons of my Practice. § 12. I confess, that ad hominm, the Canons Excommunicating us, may stop the mouths of the severe Canonists, if they accuse us: Would they not have us take their Canons to signify their will, concerning the extent of their Church-Communion? Or, would they have Excommunicate persons come to Church? All that do but own Non-conformity by a word, are ipso facto Excommunicate, till they publicly repent of it as a wicked Error. And their Writers Damn those as Schismatics, that obey them not: And so consequentially all that they call Indifferent, and Impose, are made necessary by some men to Salvation. I hae this at my heart: But yet it is not all the Parish-Ministers that like these Excommunicating Canons. And they are not bound to reject me till the Fact be proved; and I am not bound to do Execution on my self; but I am bound to all Offices for Love and Concord.