A27014:190
Sacrilegious desertion of the holy ministry rebuked, and tolerated preaching of the gospel vindicated,…Sacrilegious desertion of the holy ministery rebuked, and tolerated preaching of the gospel vindicated,…
Sacrilegious desertion of the holy ministry rebuked, and tolerated preaching of the gospel vindicated, against the reasonings of a confident questionist, in a book called Toleration not abused; with counsel to the nonconformists, and petition to the pious conformists / by one that is consecrated to the sacred ministry, and is resolved not to be a deserter of it ...Sacrilegious desertion of the holy ministery rebuked, and tolerated preaching of the gospel vindicated, against the reasonings of a confident questionist, in a book called Toleration not abused; with counsil to the nonconformists, and petition to the pious conformists / by one that is consecrated to the sacred ministry, and is resolved not to be a deserter of it ...
London : s.n., 1672
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.
Sect. 8. But the utmost is [Erecting separate Congregations to your selves.]
Answ. 1. You mean, it is sin in us to exercise the Ministry which we are vowed to, and not to be Sacrilegious and cruel to Souls: For can we Preach without Auditors? And can those Auditors be no Congregation? And can that Congregation be out of your hearing, and not be locally separate, as every Parish-Church and Chapel is? Must two Congregations be one, or else be Separatists?
Answ. 1. You mean, it is sin in us to exercise the Ministry which we are vowed to, and not to be Sacrilegious and cruel to Souls: For can we Preach without Auditors? And can those Auditors be no Congregation? And can that Congregation be out of your hearing, and not be locally separate, as every Parish-Church and Chappel is? Must two Congregations be one, or else be Separatists?
I know two Churches so near that the people may hear each other, and yet they are two, and therefore one is separate: And I pray, which of them is it? It may be all in England save Canterbury, or rather ⟨p. 71⟩Glastonbury, are Separatists, for separating from the first Church: As if Pythagoras justly cursed the number of two, because it was the first that durst depart from unity; and all Churches in the World were Separatists except Jerusalem.