Five disputations of church-government and worship

The course that the Prelates take to elude this argument is by giving us a false definition of a particular Church. That we may not therefore have any unprofitable strife about words, ⟨p. 55⟩I shall signify my own meaning. By a Particular Church I mean an Associated or combined company of Christians, for Communion in Public Worship, and Furtherance of each other in the way to heaven, under the Guidance of Christs Church Officers, (one Elder or more;) such as are undivided, or Churches of the first order commonly called Ecclesiae Primae, as to existence, and which contain not divers Political Churches in them. A family I mean not: for that's not a Political Church, having no Pastor. An accidental company of Christians I mean not. For those are no Association, and so no Political Church: Nor do I mean a National, or Diocesan or Classical Church, or any the like; which are composed of many particular Churches of the first order, conjunct. It is not of Necessity that they alway or most usually meet in one Congregation: because its possible they may want a capacious convenient room, and its possible they may be under persecution, so that they may be forced to meet secretly in small companies; or there may be some aged weak people or children that cannot travail to the chief place of Meeting; and so may have some Chapels of ease, or smaller meeting. But still it must be a number neither so big, nor so small as to be uncapable of the ends of Association, which enter the definition; how ever weakness, age or other accidents may hinder some members from that full usefulness as to the main end, which other members have. So that they which are so many, or live at such a distance as to be uncapable of the ends, are not such a Church, nor are capable of so being: For the number will alter the species. In a word, it cannot, I think, be proved that in the Primitive times, there was any one fixed Bishop that Governed and Oversaw any more then one such particular political Church, as was not composed of divers lesser political Churches: nor that their Churches which any fixed Bishop oversaw were more then could hold Communion in Worship in one public place, for so many of them as could ordinarily hear at once (for all the families cannot usually come at once:) they were not greater then some of our English Parishes are, nor usually the tenth part so great.

The course that the Prelates take to elude this argument is by giving us a false definition of a particular Church. That we may not therefore have any unprofitable strife about words,