A26975:162
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 5: Of Pastors or the Bishops of National Churches, that they are to be of Three ranks.
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.
§ 2. The Independent Separatists therefore show gross Ignorance, when they make a mere Community unorganized to be a Church in sensu Politico, and then must have a Lay-man that was of the Universal Church before, to be by the Peoples Votes chosen a Member of that Church while it hath no Pastor, and then chosen their Pastor after. Whereas a mere Community is no more a Political Church without a Pastor, than a Community is a Kingdom that hath no King (individual or collective, existent or virtual.) Or than this can be a School without a Schoolmaster, or a Family without a Head of it.
§ 2. The Independent Separatists therefore shew gross Ignorance, when they make a meer Community unorganized to be a Church in sensu Politico, and then must have a Lay-man that was of the Universal Church before, to be by the Peoples Votes chosen a Member of that Church while it hath no Pastor, and then chosen their Pastor after. Whereas a meer Community is no more a Political Church without a Pastor, than a Community is a Kingdom that hath no King (individual or collective, existent or virtual.) Or than this can be a School without a Schoolmaster, or a Family without a Head of it.
§ 3. As Nature first formeth by the Soul and Spirits ex materia seminis, the heart and prime organical parts, and by them formeth all the rest, and last of all formeth the Stomach and Intestines to be the Organs of future nutrition, and then putteth in the nutriment, (which in the Chicken is the Yolk of the Egg, the bodily stamina being first made of the white) and ⟨p. 15⟩then closeth up the before enclosed stomach upon that food; so Christ did first by his Calband Spirit make some prime organical General or Indefinite Ministers, and by them make others, fixed in particular Churches and Offices, and by them edify and feed, and perfect the Body by their Official Ministration, and fit the people to digest the received food for their continued nutrition.
§ 3. As Nature first formeth by the Soul and Spirits ex materia seminis, the heart and prime organical parts, and by them formeth all the rest, and last of all formeth the Stomach and Intestines to be the Organs of future nutrition, and then putteth in the nutriment, (which in the Chicken is the Yelk of the Egg, the bodily stamina being first made of the white) and