A93091:471
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. It is not essential to the Church to meet together in one place ordinarily, nor is the Society broken off by persecution, when their meeting together in one place be interrupted.
Reply. It is not essentiall to the Church to meet together in one place ordinarily, nor is the Society broken off by persecution, when their meeting together in one place be interrupted.
Answ. It is true; one Church or Society by persecution or otherwise, may meet in several companies; neither do we say, that place, or meeting in one place, is properly essential to the Church, yet it is necessary both necessitate praecepti & medii, to be able at least so to do: for though it be not necessary to the unity of the Society ⟨p. 128⟩thus to meet together, yet it is necessary to the communion thereof in all Ordinances. It is not necessary to the unity of a Classical Presbytery to meet ordinarily in one place, but unto the communion thereof it is necessary. When the Papists to maintain their private Masses, say, That place is but accidental to the ordinance: And that Christians are not bound to the circumstance of place (as Hardin objects) any more, then to observe days, months, times, condemned as beggarly Elements by the Apostle, Gal. 4. As also, that all the faithful are united together by the Sacrament, though they meet not in the same place, as the Ancients note: How doth learned Chamier answer them? he tells1 them, That although this or that particular place is not necessary, yet a place indefinitely taken is: And that the Sacrament is restrained to be administered in a place, because it cannot be administered but conventu fidelium; and this conventus must be in some place: And he adds, That although all the faithful have communion in the Sacrament, though they meet not in one and the same place; yet this (he saith) is to be understood of spiritual, not sacramental communion; Nunquam enim auditum, qui Hierosolymis erant, sacramentaliter communicasse cum iis qui Alexandriae: and therefore he thought communion in one place together necessary to Church-communion, as we do.