A26892:5916
A Christian Directory
A Christian directory, or, A sum of practical theology and cases of conscience directing Christians how to use their knowledge and faith, how to improve all helps and means, and to perform all duties, how to overcome temptations, and to escape or mortify every sin : in four parts ... / by Richard Baxter.A Christian directory, or, A summ of practical theologie and cases of conscience directing Christians how to use their knowledge and faith, how to improve all helps and means, and to perform all duties, how to overcome temptations, and to escape or mortifie every sin : in four parts ... / by Richard Baxter.
London: printed by Robert White for Nevill Simmons, 1673
Title page typeset from the transcription.
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. The Magistrate is authorized by God to Govern Ministers and Churches, according to the orders and Laws of Christ (and not against them:) But not to ordain or degrade, nor to make Ministers or unmake them, nor to deprive the Church of the Liberty settled on it by the Laws of Christ.
2. The Bishops or Ordainers are authorized by Christ, to judge of the fitness of the person to the office in general, and solemnly to invest him in it, but not to deprive the people of their freedom, and exercise of the natural care of their own salvation, or of any Liberty given them by Christ.
3. The peoples Liberty in choosing, or consenting to their own Pastors to whom they must commit the •are of their souls, is partly founded in nature, (it being they that must have the benefit or loss, and no man being authorized to damn or hazard mens souls, at least against their wills): And partly settled by Scripture, and continued in the Church above a thousand years after Christ, at least in very1 many parts of it. See Blondels Full proof de jure plebis in regim. Eccles. Hildebertus Caenoman. (alias Turonensis) even in his time showeth that though the Clergy were to lead and the people to follow, yet no man was to be made a Bishop, or put upon the people without their own consent: Epist. 12. Bibl. Pet. To. 3. p. 179. Filesacus will direct you to more such testimonies: But the thing is past Controversy. I need not cite to the learned the commonly cited testimony of Cyprian, Plebs maximam habet potestatem indignos recusandi, &c. And indeed in the nature of the thing it cannot be: For though you may drench a mad mans body by force, when you give him physic, you cannot so drench mens souls, nor cure them against their wills.