A34675:26
A defence of Mr. John Cotton from the imputation of self contradiction, charged on…A defence of Mr. John Cotton from the imputation of selfe contradiction, charged on…
A defence of Mr. John Cotton from the imputation of self contradiction, charged on him by Mr. Dan. Cawdrey written by himself not long before his death ; whereunto is prefixed, an answer to a late treatise of the said Mr. Cawdrey about the nature of schism, by John Owen ...A defence of Mr. John Cotton from the imputation of selfe contradiction, charged on him by Mr. Dan. Cavvdrey written by himselfe not long before his death ; whereunto is prefixed, an answer to a late treatise of the said Mr. Cavvdrey about the nature of schisme, by John Owen ...
Oxford: printed by H. Hall for T. Robinson, 1658
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.
And I tell him here once again (which is a sufficient answer indeed to his whole first Chapter) that I do not deny Presbyterian Churches to be true Churches of Jesus Christ, nor the ministers of them to be true ministers, nor do maintain a nullity in their Ordination as to what is the proper use and end of Ordination, (taking it in the sense, wherein by 1them it is taken,) though I think it neither administered by them in due order, nor to have in it self that force and efficacy, singly considered, which by many of them is ascribed unto it. Thus much of my judgment I have publicly declared long ago, and I thought I might have expected from persons Professing Christianity, ⟨p. 26⟩that they would not voluntarily engage themselves into an opposition against me, and waving my judgment which I had constantly published and preached, have gathered up reports from private and table discourses, most of them false and untrue, all of them uncertain, the occasions and coherences of those discourses from whence they have been raised and taken, being utterly lost, or at present by him wholly omitted. His following excursions about a successive ordination from Rome, wherein he runs cross to the most eminent lights of all the Reformed Churches, and their declared Judgments, with practise in reordaining those who come unto them with that Roman stamp upon them, I shall not further interest my self in, nor think my self concerned so to do, until I see a satisfactory answer given unto Beza and others in this very point; and yet I must here again profess, that I cannot understand that distinction of deriving ordination from the Church of Rome, but not from the Roman Church. Let him but seriously peruse these ensuing ⟨p. 27⟩words of Beza, and tell me whither he have any ground of a particular quarrel against me upon this account.
And I tell him here once againe (which is a sufficient answer indeed to his whole first Chapter) that I doe not deny Presbyterian Churches to be true Churches of Jesus Christ, nor the ministers of them to be true ministers, nor doe maintaine a nullity in their Ordination as to what is the proper use and end of Ordination, (takeing it in the sense, wherin by 1