A26975:249
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 6: Who must be the Lay-Members of National Churches.
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. Where the Essentials of Christianity are Visibly Professed there may be a great difference of Members in Gifts and Soundness. Some may be Eminently Laudable and Useful, and some may be so Faulty as are fit for Rebuke and Punishment, and yet all Members.
§ 3. The Privileges of some that are not Disfranchised or Excommunicate, may yet be suspended while they are under trial. For as nothing but Capital Crimes or Excommunication for Impenitence after due Admonition doth cut them off, so while they have rendered this justly questionable, just Legal Trial must needs suspend their questioned right, till Judgment decide it, whether they be impenitent or not, or their Crime be Capital.
§ 3. The Priviledges of some that are not Disfranchised or Excommunicate, may yet be suspended while they are under trial. For as nothing but Capital Crimes or Excommunication for Impenitence after due Admonition doth cut them off, so while they have rendered this justly questionable, just Legal Tryal must needs suspend their questioned right, till Judgment decide it, whether they be impenitent or not, or their Crime be Capital.
§ 4. In the Jewish State, many heinous Sins were to be punished with Death. As Murder, Blasphemy, Worshipping False Gods, drawing men from the true God, Cursing Parents, Wilful, and Obstinate Gluttony, and Drunkenness, and Debauchery after Parents Patient endeavours to reform them, Adultery, Incest, Sodomy, some Perjuries. And dead men can be no Church Members on Earth: Therefore this Death for Sin was an Excommunication and more. Therefore they that Plead that any such should be tolerated because the Jews were often such and not Excommunicated, is to plead the example of Criminals against the express Letter of the Law, and argue à facto prohibito contra legem prohibentem. And whether Mr. Galaspi and others have proved any more than Church-Suspension against any but those that were to be put to Death, I leave the Reader to consider.