A26975:266
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 7: What is the Confederacy or Concord needful to a National Church.
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.
§ 7. 7. For Magistrates, Pastors and Parents, to profess their endeavour to promote the true Preaching of the Gospel, and the transmitting of it in Purity to Posterity, and to encourage and not unjustly forbid or hinder the publication and practice of it.
§ 8. Negatively, 1. It is not meet that this confederacy so appropriate the Body of the National Church, to any one ⟨p. 29⟩Party or Sect though it should be (or thought to be) sounder or better than the rest, excluding any that have all the necessaries before named, though they have many tolerable errors and imperfections.
§ 9. It is not lawful to make things unnecessary to be taken or used as necessary to the National Church Unity. Nor to make snares and impose them by such needless Laws, to silence or eject any true and tolerable Ministers; much less the soundest; imposing things sinful or needless, or that are unfit to be the Conditions of Unity, and so unavoidably excluding capable Conscionable worthy men for want of complying with those terms, is the commonest cause of Schism in the Christian World, and the effect of Ignorance, Pride and Tyranny, none being more worthy to be excluded than such Schismatical excluders, that make the Laws that should be the bonds of Concord, to be the greatest Engines of Division.