A37205:84
The power of Congregational churches asserted and vindicated in answer to a treatise of…
The power of Congregational churches asserted and vindicated in answer to a treatise of Mr. J. Paget entitled The defence of church-government exercised in classes and synods / by John Davenport.The power of Congregational churches asserted and vindicated in answer to a treatise of Mr. J. Paget intituled The defence of church-government exercised in classes and synods / by John Davenport.
London: printed for Rich. Chiswell and to be sold by John Usher of Boston, 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.
2. Not profession of the Doctrine of Faith, though accompanied with freedom from scandalous sins. For general profession cannot appropriate a man particularly to any one Church, without particular engagement to that particular body. 2. Nor doth it bring any one under the power of this or that Church, which it hath over its own Members, and other Churches have not. 3. If that were sufficient; a man should become a member of any particular Church whether it will or no.
2. Not profession of the Doctrine of Faith, though accompanied with freedom from scandalous sins. For general profession cannot appropriate a man particularly to any one Church, without particular ingagement to that particular body. 2. Nor doth it bring any one under the power of this or that Church, which it hath over its own Members, and other Churches have not. 3. If that were sufficient; a man should become a member of any particular Church whether it will or no.
Coral∣lary. 3 Then a Member of one particular Congregation, ⟨p. 44⟩is not, thereby, a Member of all visible Congregations on earth. For, though a Church-covenant be common to all Churches, in its general nature; yet there is a special combination, which gives a peculiar being to one Congregational-Church and its members, distinct from all others. Else, how could one Church have that power over its own Members, which another hath not? And in all voluntary covenants, the only difference between them is, the peculiar interest which one hath in another, by a particular engagement that passeth between party and party. Covenants of Corporations, of Marriages, of Service, and the like, are, in general, common to all that are in those and the like relations; Yet, in particular appropriation, bind them only to this or that individual. No man can claim a memberlike right in all Corporations, because he is in covenant with one, upon this plea, that Corporation-covenants are common to all Societies: nor can an Husband plead, that he hath a conjugal right in all Wives, because conjugal-covenant is common to all married persons. The same holds in Churches, which are distinguished one from another by their respective Covenants. Other absurdities that