A26975:500
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 15: The Case of Toleration of Dissenters from the Common Laws and Customs of a National Chu…
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. THIS case about Toleration in and from a National Church hath been oft put to me and oft and largely answered. And to what use such a work will serve I am unable to conjecture, except it be to satisfy the Writers Conscience, and set right the thoughts of them that desire what they cannot obtain; And whether God will ever raise up a Generation, that wearied with Divisions and the direful effects, and forced by some Prince of Piety or Interest, to consent to a healing Peace and Concord, God knoweth and not I.
§ 1. THIS case about Toleration in and from a National Church hath been oft put to me and oft and largely answered. And to what use such a work will serve I am unable to conjecture, except it be to satisfie the Writers Conscience, and set right the thoughts of them that desire what they cannot obtain; And whether God will ever raise up a Generation, that wearied with Divisions and the direful effects, and forced by some Prince of Piety or Interest, to consent to a healing Peace and Concord, God knoweth and not I.
§ 2. But I will once more venture to repeat a Moral Prognostication, That I think it (ex causis) exceeding probable that either England will have Popery settled in Power by a French Conquest in the French Fashion, by the compliance of those of the English Clergy who are for a Foreign Church Jurisdiction: Or else God will constrain the present Governors by the sense of their own interest if not of the interest of Religion and the common good, to open the public Church Doors to that Concord which they have been locked against by the Act of uniformity and such like above thirty years, and the unplacable Enemies of Peace will cast down themselves.
§ 2. But I will once more venture to repeat a Moral Prognostication, That I think it (ex causis) exceeding probable that either England will have Popery setled in Power by a French Conquest in the French Fashion, by the compliance of those of the English Clergy who are for a Foreign Church Jurisdiction: Or else God will constrain the present Governours by the sense of their own interest if not of the interest of Religion and the common good, to open the publick Church Doors to that Concord which they have been lockt against by the Act of uniformity and such like above thirty years, and the unplacable Enemies of Peace will cast down themselves.