A26975:501
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.
§ 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.
For I am past doubt of what my dear friend Judge Hale said to me, that [It must be a new Act of Uniformity that must heal this Church.]
§ 3. And should we treat of such a subject as Concord and Toleration, with whom should it be? If it be not with fit persons, we have found that it will be in vain and worse. It's God that must make peace between the Wolf or Lion, and the Lamb, and not such as I.