A26975:153
Of national churches their description, institution, use, preservation, danger, maladies and cure, partly applied…
Of national churches their description, institution, use, preservation, danger, maladies and cure, partly applied to England / written by Richard Baxter for promoting peace ... and for the fuller explication of the Treaty for Concord in 1660 and 1661, and of the Kings gracious declaration about ecclesiastical affairs ... and for further explication of his treatise of episcopacy ...
London: printed by T. Snowden for Thomas Parkhurst, 1691
Chapter 4: Particular Churches and Pastors how far essential to a National Church, and what are it…
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 the Independent Separatists and Anabaptists, for want of understanding this, as I said before, cry down National Churches with scorn, and run away from National Concord, into endless Divisions and Sects, while at the same time they pray and wait for National Churches in the Millennium as the Fifth Monarchy. And none of them will deny it to be the Duty of all Kings and Kingdoms to be Christians; and so that Christian Kingdoms are Christ's Institution and Command.
§ 3. But the Sovereign is the Judge, what Pastors and Churches he shall allow and maintain as parts of the National Church or Kingdom. As the College is to judge who is fit to be a Physician, and the Patient who shall be his Physician, and the trusted Physician, what Medicine he shall give: But the King to judge whom he will allow in his Kingdom, and to make Laws forbidding poisonous Drugs and abuses of Physicians.
§ 3. But the Soveraign is the Judge, what Pastors and Churches he shall allow and maintain as parts of the National Church or Kingdom. As the Colledge is to judge who is fit to be a Physicion, and the Patient who shall be his Physicion, and the trusted Physicion, what Medicine he shall give: But the King to judge whom he will allow in his Kingdom, and to make Laws forbidding poisonous Drugs and abuses of Physicions.
Even so the Ordainers are Judges who are fit to be Pastors, and the People whom they will trust their Souls with as their Pastors, and the trusted Pastors to judge what Doctrine to Preach, and whom to receive to Communion, or to Excommunicate; but the King to judge whom he will allow, maintain, or tolerate as Members of the Christian Kingdom or National Church.