A letter written out of the country to a person of quality in the…A letter written out of the countrey to a person of quality in the…

Again, when p. 17. He would confute that great mistake, the making the notion of a Church barely to relate to Acts of Worship: (A mistake whereof I never knew any man guilty) He surely runs into as great an opposite mistake, in making the notion of a Church to be no more than of a society of men united together, for their Order and Government, according to the Rules of the Christian Religion. Now Faith and Worship are quite excluded the notion of a Church: And Order and Government, and the Rules of the Christian Religion, but as they refer to these, only included. Whence it will come to pass, that we can have no notion of one Catholic Church, from which yet he argues at the bottom of the same page.

Again, when p. 17. He would confute that great mistake, the making the notion of a Church barely to relate to Acts of Worship: (A mistake whereof I never knew any man guilty) He surely runs into as great an opposite mistake, in making the notion of a Church to be no more than of a society of men united together, for their Order and Government, according to the Rules of the Christian Religion. Now Faith and Worship are quite excluded the notion of a Church: And Order and Government, and the Rules of the Christian Religion, but as they refer to these, only included. Whence it will come to pass, that we can have no notion of one Catholick Church, from which yet he argues at the bottom of the same page.

Nor, though I dislike the thing, do I understand the strength of the Doctors Argument, against making the notion of the Church barely to relate to Acts of Worship; viz. That if this held true, the Church must be dissolved as soon as the Congregation is broken up. For will it not also follow as well, that if the notion of a Church relate only to Order and Government, every time any meeting for Affairs of Order and Government is broken up, the Church is dissolved? And that an Assembly of the States in any Kingdom or Nation cannot break up, without a dissolution of the Government? A Parliament (at least) not Adjourn or be Prorogued without being dissolved? And whereas he adds, But if they retain the nature of a Church, when they do not meet together for worship, then there is some other Bond that unites them, and whatever that is, it Constitutes the Church. Is it not possible there may be such a Bond for Worship, as well as for Government? an Obligation to meet at stated times for that purpose, when they are not met? And then (if this were all that were to be said to the contrary) why might not that Bond as well serve to Constitute the Church?