A26975:268
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.
§ 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.
§ 10. The present Orthodox Protestant Nonconformists, are as truly Members of the Church of England, justly so called, as any Diocesans or Conformists in the Land, and if they be not better confuted than hitherto they have been, they may truly be said to be the soundest, most judicious, and most conscionable, and the most peaceable Members of this Church. And to deny such Nonconformists to be true and honourable parts of the Church of England, is but such an effect of Ignorant Arrogance and Slanders as is the shame of the speaker, and implieth some dishonourable definition of the said Church. And they that make their mutable Forms and Ceremonies essential to the Church, make a Ceremony of the Church it self, and cannot answer the Papists that challenge us to prove its antiquity: Our Liturgy is not so old as Luther's time.
§ 10. The present Orthodox Protestant Nonconformists, are as truely Members of the Church of England, justly so called, as any Diocesans or Conformists in the Land, and if they be not better confuted than hitherto they have been, they may truely be said to be the soundest, most judicious, and most conscionable, and the most peaceable Members of this Church. And to deny such Nonconformists to be true and honourable parts of the Church of England, is but such an effect of Ignorant Arrogance and Slanders as is the shame of the speaker, and implieth some dishonourable definition of the said Church. And they that make their mutable Forms and Ceremonies essential to the Church, make a Ceremony of the Church it self, and cannot answer the Papists that challenge us to prove its antiquity: Our Liturgy is not so old as Luthers time.