A26975:321
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
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.
§ 1. Though those that take it for mutability and backsliding to change their Judgments after that the School, or their Leaders or Interest hath once fixed them, do censure me for changing and repenting, that temptation shall not prevail with me, to deny Learning and Repenting, till I know at what Age we must fix our ne ultra, or who be the Teachers that we must believe as infallible, while we dispute against Humane as well as Papal Infallibility.
§ 1. THough those that take it for mutability and backsliding to change their Judgments after that the School, or their Leaders or Interest hath once fixed them, do censure me for changing and repenting, that temptation shall not prevail with me, to deny Learning and Repenting, till I know at what Age we must fix our ne ultra, or who be the Teachers that we must believe as infallible, while we dispute against Humane as well as Papal Infallibility.
§ 2. I therefore penitently confess that I was long aversly suspicious of National Churches, and National Church-Governors, because I could not see how those that held these could confute Popery: For I thought that by the same reason that Presbyters must have Bishops over them, and Bishops, Arch-Bishops, and they Metropolitans or Patriarchs; these also must have some body over them, to Ordain them, and to Govern them. And because I denied the latter, I denied also the former, and thought Episcopacy would infer Popery.
§ 2. I therefore penitently confess that I was long aversly suspicious of National Churches, and National Church-Goververnours, because I could not see how those that held these could confute Popery: For I thought that by the same reason that Presbyters must have Bishops over them, and Bishops, Arch-Bishops, and they Metropolitans or Patriarchs; these also must have some body over them, to Ordain them, and to Govern them. And because I denied the latter, I denied also the former, and thought Episcopacy would infer Popery.