A93091:444
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.
Reply. Though there be no universal Congregation, nor can be imagined, yet there are and have been many visible Assemblies or Societies, true Churches of Christ, to whom the prerogative of the seals is given, which have not been united and knit together into one Congregation or Society in Church-order. For every Society in Covenant with God, is the true Church of God. For what is it to be the flock, people, or sheep of God, but to be the Church of God? and where there is a Covenant, there is the people of God, &c.
Reply. Though there be no universall Congregation, nor can be imagined, yet there are and have been many visible Assemblies or Societies, true Churches of Christ, to whom the prerogative of the seals is given, which have not been united and knit together into one Congregation or Society in Church-order. For every Society in Covenant with God, is the true Church of God. For what is it to be the flock, people, or sheep of God, but to be the Church of God? and where there is a Covenant, there is the people of God, &c.
Answ. This assertion seems to us very strange to fall from that reverend and learned Author, being a foundation of many inconveniences and absurdities, and tending to overthrow the order of Christ in his visible Churches▪ For,
First, if this be so, that every Society in Covenant with God, be the Church of God, then men may set up as many Forms of ⟨p. 122⟩visible Churches as they please, (if the people be in Covenant with God visibly at least) the Archdeacon with his Commissary, Priests, Churchwardens, &c. being in Covenant with God, are a true Church: So the Diocesan Bishop in his Cathedral with his Clergy, or any such Assembly, are the Church of God; or what other form-soever men will devise, may go for the Church of God, and to them belong the seals, and (you may as well say) discipline, and all Ordinances of God, if they be the true Church.