A27035:599
A second true defence of the mere nonconformists against the untrue accusations, reasonings, and…A second true defence of the meer nonconformists against the untrue accusations, reasonings, and…
A second true defence of the mere nonconformists against the untrue accusations, reasonings, and history of Dr. Edward Stillingfleet ... clearly proving that it is (not sin but) duty 1. not wilfully to commit the many sins of conformity, 2. not sacrilegiously to forsake the preaching of the Gospel, 3. not to cease public worshipping of God, 4. to use needful pastoral helps for salvation ... / written by Richard Baxter ... ; with some notes on Mr. Joseph Glanviles Zealous and impartial Protestant, and Dr. L. Moulins character.A second true defence of the meer nonconformists against the untrue accusations, reasonings, and history of Dr. Edward Stillingfleet ... clearly proving that it is (not sin but) duty 1. not wilfully to commit the many sins of conformity, 2. not sacrilegiously to forsake the preaching of the Gospel, 3. not to cease publick worshipping of God, 4. to use needful pastoral helps for salvation ... / written by Richard Baxter ... ; with some notes on Mr. Joseph Glanviles Zealous and impartial Protestant, and Dr. L. Moulins character.
London: printed for Nevil Simons, 1681
AN ANSWER TO Dean STILINGFLEETS, &c. › Chapter 8: What the National Church of England is?
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. To say it must be consent also in the Integrals that is necessary ad esse, is a contradiction: and is to make Integrals Essentials. To say that it must be consent in all Laws of Accidents also, is to make that an essential part which is no part. Our loose confounding Disputers, when they have lost the truth in such contradictions, may say as Mr. Dodwell doth to me, that I Cavil: But will that answer help down all absurdities with reasonable men? It's plain that as the Papists Doctrine of defining Church-Members and Christians, by no Essential Articles of Faith, but by Probable Proposal of more or less doth make their Church invisible, so doth this definition of the Church of England by Doctor Stillingfleet make theirs, and leave us uncertain who is of it. It makes me think what I hear Oliver the Usurper said to a Bishop that now is (as I am credibly told, [Doctor how know you that you are a true Minister of Christ?] who answered him on Mr. Dodwell's Principles, [Because I have received Ordination by uninterrupted successive conveyance from true Bishops, from the Apostles:] Saith he; Are you sure they were all true Bishops and the succession uninterrupted? Doctor will you take your Oath that you are thus a true Minister?] At which when he stuck, [Come, come, Doctor, saith he, there is a surer and a nearer way.]
Certain I am, that if Agreement in the sense of the 39 Articles, or in all Forms and Ceremonies be necessary to constitute a Member of the Church of England, abundance that subscribe are none, that now go for such: But if not, I pray tell us why such as I also are not Members of your Church. Do I more differ from you than ⟨p. 125⟩Doctor Heylin, Mr. Thorndike, Mr. Dodwell, and in a word than the party which adhered to Arch-bishop La•d, differed from the party which adhered to Bishop Abbot, Whitgift, and the Parliaments of those and after-times? If the Church of England as such a one, be constituted by no supreme Church-Government, we are all of it, so far as we consent to the Association, and none as it is one Political body. And what then becomes of its Laws, and all the Treatises of its Church-Policy?