A41335:275
Weighty questions discussed I. Whether imposition of hands in separating a person to the…
Weighty questions discussed I. Whether imposition of hands in separating a person to the work of the ministry be necessary?, II. Whether it be essential to the right constitution of a particular church, that the teaching elders and the members meet always in one place? : whereunto is added a prediction of Mr. Daniel Rogers, minister in Essex, long before the beheading King Charles I and Arch-Bishop Laud, foretelling that they should not dye a natural death / by Giles Firmin ...Weighty questions discussed I. Whether imposition of hands in separating a person to the work of the ministry be necessry?, II. Whether it be essential to the right constitution of a particular church, that the teaching elders and the members meet alwayes in one place? : whereunto is added a prediction of Mr. Daniel Rogers, minister in Essex, long before the beheading King Charles I and Arch-Bishop Laud, foretelling that they should not dye a natural death / by Giles Firmin ...
London : Printed for the author, 1692
A Weighty Question DISCUSSED. › Question 2: Second Question.
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.
If then the meeting in one place had been so essential to a Church as the Dr. ⟨p. 28⟩makes it, we should have seen it here. Surely the Apostles, with whom our Lord had been speaking concerning the things pertaining to his Kingdom, 1 Act. 3. so lately, would not do any thing contra-essential to a Church. Yea, here was matter ready prepared for several particular Churches, meeting in several distinct places, for Divine Worship, had the Lord pleased to have declared that it was his Will, that meeting in every such distinct place, should make a particular Church, and so have given a Pattern, how all particular Churches should be Constituted: Here wanted nothing, I say, but the Declaration of his Will.
We have heard in the time of our Persecution, that several thousands of the Scots met in one Field, to Administer and partake of the Lords Supper. Tho' it was not a House, it was a Place, yet we do not read that ever the Apostles did so much as once call all the Church together into one place, to Administer the Lords Supper, that they might leave one Example at least, that in every Church there must be but One Table, or one Altar as some call it; which they might easily have done, had one place in their Judgment [men guided by the Spirit] been so essential to a Church as some make it now.
Many thousands of particular Churches make up One Body of Christ: Why then so many particular Congregations [where the Members of one Congregation are known to the others] as there may be Elders sufficient to carry on all Church-work, may not make one particular Church, I know not. It is certain, that where only one Pastor, with a Parochial Congregation make a Church, all the Ends of Churches cannot be attained; not only Reason, but Experience also hath sufficiently proved it.