A30189:580
An answer to two treatises of Mr. John Can, the leader of the English…An answer to two treatises of Mr. Iohn Can, the leader of the English…
An answer to two treatises of Mr. John Can, the leader of the English Brownists in Amsterdam the former called, A necessity of separation from the Church of England, proved by the Nonconformists principles : the other, A stay against straying : wherein in opposition to M. John Robinson, he undertakes to prove the unlawfulness of hearing the ministers of the Church of England ... / by the late learned, laborious and faithful servant of Jesus Christ, John Ball.An answer to two treatises of Mr. Iohn Can, the leader of the English Brownists in Amsterdam the former called, A necessitie of separation from the Church of England, proved by the Nonconformists principles : the other, A stay against straying : wherein in opposition to M. Iohn Robinson, he undertakes to prove the unlawfulnesse of hearing the ministers of the Church of England ... / by the late learned, laborious and faithfull servant of Jesus Christ, John Ball.
London: printed by R.B., 1642
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. III.
The reasons upon which our proposition is grounded are these; 1first, All wicked men are forbidden expressly by the Word of God, for meddling with his ordinance or covenant. Now if men to escape temporal punishment are afraid to transgress against the Laws of worldly Princes! much more fearful should they be to break his, who is the King of Kings, and will inflict for it upon their souls and bodies torments eternally 2. That which destroyeth a Church and makes it either to become a false Church or no Church at all, cannot be a true Church, or be true matter whereof it is made: But men visibly wicked and profane, make the Church a Synagogue of Satan, Babylon, Sodom, Egypt, and so be spied out and removed. 3. It is against sense and common reason, that a Church should be constituted of unholy people: For as in a material house the wood and stone must be first prepared, and then laid orderly in the building: So in the spiritual, men and women by the word of God must necessarily be first reformed, before they are any way fit to have any place therein. 4. They which have no right to the holy things of God in the Church, are not to be admitted into it, neither is that Church which is so gathered, rightly constituted. 2But men of wicked conversation have no right to the holy things of God in the Church: ⟨p. 70⟩And therefore that Church which is gathered of such, is not rightly constituted. 5. They cannot perform the services and duties of members, 3for they are spiritually dead; If a Master will who covenant with one to be his servant, which hath in him no natural life, much less, &c. 6. They have not Christ for their head, and therefore cannot be of his body; For as in the natural body there must first be a natural […] of the parts with the head, before there can be day action of natural conjunction,