A26892:6559
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.
8. And if the Magistrate will make Assemblies or Councils of Pastors, to be his Councils, and require them frequently to meet to advise him in the performance of his own trust and work about Religion and the Church, he may accordingly distribute them into Provinces for that use, or order such circumstances as he please.
9. And if a Province of Churches be called one Church, because it is under one Magistrate, or a Nation of Churches called a National Church, because it is under one King, or many Kingdoms or an Empire called one Catholic Church, because they are all under one Emperor, it must be confessed that this question is but de nomine, and not de re.
9. And if a Province of Churches be called one Church, because it is under one Magistrate, or a Nation of Churches called a National Church, because it is under one King, or many Kingdoms or an Empire called one Catholick Church, because they are all under one Emperour, it must be confessed that this question is but de nomine, and not de re.
And further 1. That in sacred things that which is of Divine and primary institution is the famosius analogatum, and not that which is but formed by man. 2. That when such an ambiguous word is used without explication or explicating circumstances, it is to be taken for the famosius analogatum. 3. That in this case the word Church or Church-form is certainly ambiguous and not univocal. 4. That • National, Imperial, or Provincial Church as Headed by a King, Emperor, Magistrate, or any head of mans appointment, is another thing, from a Church of Christs institution: and is but an Accident or adjunct of it; and the Head of the Humane form, if called the Head of the Church of Christ, is but an Accidental Head, and not Constitutive. And if Christs Churches be denominated from such a Head, they are denominated but from an accident, as a man may be denominated clothed or unclothed, clothed gorgeously or sordidly, a neighbour to this man or that, &c. It is no formal denomination of a Church in the first acception, as it signifieth the famosius analogatum; though otherwise many kind of societies may be called Ecclesiae or Coetus: But Divines should not love confusion.