A26965:326
The nonconformists plea for peace, or, An account of their judgment in certain things…
The nonconformists plea for peace, or, An account of their judgment in certain things in which they are misunderstood written to reconcile and pacify such as by mistaking them hinder love and concord / by Richard Baxter.The nonconformists plea for peace, or, An account of their judgment in certain things in which they are misunderstood written to reconcile and pacifie such as by mistaking them hinder love and concord / by Richard Baxter.
London: printed for Benj. Alsop, 1679
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 we must profess, that if any Preachers or people, shall out of self conceitedness, pretend necessity when there is none, their pretence is no justification of their disorder or disobedience. Magistrates may regulate us in the Circumstances of those duties, which the Law of Nature or the Gospel do Command: But if on such pretence of regulating Circumstances, they will violate or contradict either the Law of Nature, or the Gospel, and destroy the duty it self, or its end, we are not bound in such cases to obey them, but mu•• patiently suffer.
3. And we must profess, that if any Preachers or people, shall out of self conceitedness, pretend necessity when there is none, their pretence is no justification of their disorder or disobedience. Magistrates may regulate us in the Circumstances of those duties, which the Law of Nature or the Gospel do Command: But if on such pretence of regulating Circumstances, they will violate or contradict either the Law of Nature, or the Gospel, and destroy the duty it self, or its end, we are not bound in such cases to obey them, but mu•• pariently suffer.
LXV. 19. If the Church Laws do exclude those Christians that have right, from the Communion of the Church, and their Children from Baptism, and do decree that they shall be excommunicate, and then laid in Gaols, it seemeth to us no Schism in those persons, to have no such Communion with that Church which is denied them by the Laws of the Church; Nor yet to join themselves with another Church: that will receive them. And as we say of the Papists, that they unjustly call those men Schismat•••, whom they first cast out themselves by unjust excommunication, so may we of any others; Especially when either for that which is a duty, or for some small mistake which it is not in the persons power to rectify, no greater than most good Christians are guilty of, the Church Law saith that he shall be excommunicate ipso facto, by which he is cast out antecedently to any sentence, or no place left for his pardon or forbearance by the favour of the Ordinary. He that is so cast