A93091:453
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.
Answ▪ We grant all this here expressed for the substance, however some reasons spoken unto before intermixed we pass over, and to your question we frame a ready answer from your own words. For, first, you grant, that if such members have renounced that Society wherein they did partake of the seals, they are not to be reputed members of it; and this is generally the case of all approved Christians among us, who though they do not so renounce the Churches that bare them, and gave them suck, as no true Churches; yet seeing they were grown so corrupt many ways, as they could neither enjoy some needful Ordinances, nor partake in those they had without sin, they have therefore renounced and forsaken all further communion with them, and membership in them; and so by your own grant, neither themselves, nor the Churches here can take them as members of your Churches, to receive them under that respect.
Answ▪ We grant all this here expressed for the substance, however some reasons spoken unto before intermixed we passe over, and to your question we frame a ready answer from your own words. For, first, you grant, that if such members have renounced that Society wherein they did partake of the seals, they are not to be reputed members of it; and this is generally the case of all approved Christians among us, who though they doe not so renounce the Churches that bare them, and gave them suck, as no true Churches; yet seeing they were grown so corrupt many ways, as they could neither enjoy some needfull Ordinances, nor partake in those they had without sin, they have therefore renounced and forsaken all further communion with them, and membership in them; and so by your own grant, neither themselves, nor the Churches here can take them as members of your Churches, to receive them under that respect.
Secondly, if any yet have not so far renounced those Churches they belonged unto, yet they are not orderly recommended unto us, which also you grant ought to be, and indeed otherwise we may oft receive persons justly excommunicate, or such as are no members of Churches any where, or otherwise under great offence, as frequent examples amongst our selves do show, though the Church may think well of such as offer themselves. What else follows in this Paragraph, is the same in substance, and much of it in words also, that we have answered before; and therefore we pass it over; and that of the Jewish Church we shall speak to after. As for that you desire leave to set down, and us to examine what may be objected against that we affirmed, That the distinct Churches named in the New Testament were Congregational Societies; we shall consider as followeth: