A26975:315
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 9: That Christ hath Instituted no true Ecclesiastical Government in Man, of any larger ext…
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. The true way therefore to put down Popery, is for the Prince and Magistrates to claim their proper Power (yet not to usurp the Priesthood) and to study, love, and practise the Law of God, and take their Power and Laws to be only and merely subservient to the Power and Laws of God: And to strive to understand these so clearly, as to be able to judge sound Preachers from unsound, and to know whom to countenance, whom to tolerate, and whom to suppress. It is Kings that have set up Popes, by putting down themselves, and Popes have set in to pull them down, to set up themselves: And it is Kings that must pull down Popes by reassuming their own Power and Work; and that must be by becoming fit for it.
§ 3. The true way therefore to put down Popery, is for the Prince and Magistrates to claim their proper Power (yet not to usurp the Priesthood) and to study, love, and practise the Law of God, and take their Power and Laws to be only and meerly subservient to the Power and Laws of God: And to strive to understand these so clearly, as to be able to judge sound Preachers from unsound, and to know whom to countenance, whom to tolerate, and whom to suppress. It is Kings that have set up Popes, by putting down themselves, and Popes have set in to pull them down, to set up themselves: And it is Kings that must pull down Popes by reassuming their own Power and Work; and that must be by becoming fit for it.
§ 4. That Prince who granteth that his Office is but for the Body, and for Secular Ends, and the Priests only for the Soul, inviteth all his Subjects to honour every Priest before him, and ⟨p. 40⟩to account him base as worldly things are to be accounted as dung in comparison of the things of the Spirit and Eternity: Yea every good Christian who is commanded to exhort each other daily, and to comfort one another with the remembrance that we shall be for ever with the Lord, would be far more honourable than a King; as the Soul is above the Body, and Heaven better than Earth.