A93091:441
A treatise of liturgies, power of the keys, and of matter of the visible…A treatise of liturgies, power of the keyes, and of matter of the visible…
A treatise of liturgies, power of the keys, and of matter of the visible church. In answer to the reverend servant of Christ, Mr. John Ball. By Thomas Shepherd, sometimes fellow of Emanuel-College in Cambridge, and late pastor of Cambridge in New-England.A treatise of liturgies, power of the keyes, and of matter of the visible church. In answer to the reverend servant of Christ, Mr. John Ball. By Thomas Shephard, sometimes fellow of Emanuel-Colledge in Cambridge, and late pastour of Cambridge in New-England.
London: printed by E. Cotes for Andrew Crooke, 1652
Title page typeset from the transcription.
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 this be granted in our sense, so that there be no such Catholic church wherein seals are to be dispensed; then it will fall to be the right and privilege of particular Congregations, to have the seals in the administration proper to them; and so the cause is yielded; but because there is so much here spoken of the Catholic visible Church, and so much urged from it, we shall refer the Reader to what is said before, only one thing we shall note about the instance of Athanasius, that a man may be a member of the Catholic visible Church, but of no particular Society.
If this be granted in our sense, so that there be no such Catholick church wherein seals are to be dispensed; then it will fall to be the right and priviledge of particular Congregations, to have the seals in the administration proper to them; and so the cause is yeelded; but because there is so much here spoken of the Catholick visible Church, and so much urged from it, we shall refer the Reader to what is said before, onely one thing we shall note about the instance of Athanasius, that a man may be a member of the Catholick visible Church, but of no particular Society.
Reply. You say it is evidenced, in that a Christian (as Athanasius for an example) may be cut off unjustly from the particular visible Church, wherein he was born, and yet remains a member of the Catholic visible orthodox Church.
Reply. You say it is evidenced, in that a Christian (as Athanasius for an example) may be cut off unjustly from the particular visible Church, wherein he was born, and yet remains a member of the Catholick visible orthodox Church.
Answ. This case proves nothing; for look how such a Christian stands to the Catholic, so he stands to the particular Church: if he be unjustly censured, as he remains before God a member of the Catholic, so also the particular Church, for clavis errans non ligat: and in respect of men, and communion with other Churches in the seals, if they receive him, being satisfied that he is unjustly cast out; they may receive him, not for his general interest in the Catholic church, but in respect of his true membership in the particular Church, that unjustly cast him out: Whereas, if the Churches were not persuaded but that he were justly cast out of the particular, they ought not to admit him to seals, were he as Orthodox as Athanasius himself in doctrine, and as holy in his life.