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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A26975	Of national churches their description, institution, use, preservation, danger, maladies and cure, partly applied to England / written by Richard Baxter for promoting peace ... and for the fuller explication of the Treaty for Concord in 1660 and 1661, and of the Kings gracious declaration about ecclesiastical affairs ... and for further explication of his treatise of episcopacy ...	Baxter, Richard, 1615-1691.	1691 (1691)	Wing B1329; ESTC R13726	59,031	82

honours to the Superior Clergy that they may be a Protection to the Inferior and a relief to the poor and keep up Religion from the contempt and scorn of Worldly men § 12. VIII The King is justly the donor of such honours and great revenues § 13. IX The Parish Ministers according to the true Legal Reformed Church of Englaend are acknowledged true Pastors as to all the essentials of the Pastoral Office Word Sacraments Keys Discipline and Ordinations 14. X. The Inferior Ministers in Tythes and Glebe have mostly a laudable maintenance § 15. XI All the Parish Churches are to distinguish Communicating Members from Non-communicating Inhabitants and to refuse the scandalous and unconfirmed not ready or desiring confirmation And the Offices of Absolution and Burial are fitted to the Faithful were Discipline executed 16. XII Yet our Law for Dissenters Assemblies acknowledgeth them all true Members of the Church of England who agree in the essentials notwithstanding their dissent in divers lesser things as no doubt they are § 17. XIII We use one and the same Translation of Scripture and usually the same version of Psalms Time Place Utensils so far as allowed All these are laudable parts of the Constitution of a National Church 18. XIV To which I may add that we all renounce all humane Universal and Forreign Jurisdiction Civil and Ecclesiastical And all Traditions that pretend to be supplemental and perfecting to the Scripture and all Infallibility of Popes and Councils None of this therefore needeth a Reformation But what then doth § 19. Ans All these things following I. The entrance into the Church by Baptism of Infants is done so lightly and rashly while the Parents are forbidden to speak a word there as Dedicating their Children to God or Covenanting for them but all is laid on such Godfathers as never own the Children nor ever intend to do what they Vow And Baptism is refused if Crossing be refused II. The Bishop only being to Confirm all in many hundred or score Parishes where one of many hundred is not known to him much less examined by him Confirmation is commonly made a deceiving Ceremony and the Transition from the State of Infant Members into the State of Adult Communicants is made so wide that the Church too little differeth from Catechumens that I say not from those without III. The Parishes are many so large that the Incumbent knoweth not his Church-Communicants nor how many hundreds or thousands stay away IV. The Canons though they nullifie not the Incumbents Pastorship yet fetter him by unjust restraint from the due exercise of it V. Faithful able godly men are kept and cast out of the Ministry for not sinning against God or not obeying unnecessary and unfit terms of Ministration VI. And on the same account thousands of the Religious Laity are denied Communion and cast into Prisons and ruined by Fines and till lately forbidden all Publick Worship above four VII The Decretive Power of the Keys of Excommunication and Absolution is in the hands of Lay-men used pro formâ in the Bishops name VIII Patrons have too much power in chusing Parish Pastors for all the Land without the Flocks consent and sufficient caution of the Patrons qualifications IX Bishops are chosen without due consent or election of the Synods or People X. Ordinations are made by Bishops without Synods or any Presbyters but a few whom the Bishop taketh pro formâ XI The Episcopacy of Incumbents being denied by many it is grown a common imagination that none are Ordained by Bishops that are not Ordained by Diocesans XII The Personal ignorance viciousness and disability of a great part of the Ministry is of all the rest the worst and hardest to be reformed XIII The too loose tryal of the Ordained and their necessary qualification much causeth this XIV And the corruption of the Universities is the Seminary and Nursery of our sins and dangers XV. Many dangerous Oaths or Covenants and Professions are hurtfully imposed on the Ministers and People by which Guilt and Divisions are increased XVI And to compleat our dangers an enmity or deep jealousie is setled between the Publick Priests and a great part of the most seriously Religious People of the Land This distance hath long been causing and the causes are still continued The badness of Priests in the time of Popery and their contemptible insufficiency in the beginning of the Reformation tempted many zealous Protestants to too hard thoughts of the generality of them No Party hath been faultless It fell out that the Exiles in Germany who were most zealous in Religion against Popery and all ungodliness followed Geneva and set themselves too much against Bishops and our Liturgy that they might not partake of the sins of Popery But Dr. Ri Cox that had been K. Edw. 6. Tutor and had a great hand in making our Liturgy drew Horn and others to him and forced our Liturgy on them at Frankford and prevailing against them drove them to Geneva thinking that Reformation should receive as much of the antient Forms and Ceremonies as were not true Popery nor forbidden of God that the Papists might not challenge us as Novelists On these terms of difference they came over into England being on both sides generally godly Protestants The Queen Eliz. took part with the Conformists and made them Bishops and Dignitaries and discountenanced the Nonconformists The first Race of these good Bishops loved the godly Nonconforming Preachers and connived at them and encouraged them in their fervent plain Preaching and pious Living But as that Race wore out by death Bishopricks having great honour power and wealth had many seekers and seekers had many friends And he that loveth wealth and honour most is like to seek it most and he that most seeketh is likest to find And the greatest Lovers of the World are the worst men And so Bishops not all at once but by degrees were altered Then the Nonconformists not only refusing to be Bishops but too many declaring their Judgments to be for their fall the Bishops having more power resolved first to cast them down and to do their utmost to root them out And made their Book of Canons and Acts of Uniformity fitted to that use And so the Enmity turned into a ruining War became remediless save that on both sides the godly and moderate lived peaceably lamenting the extreams of the rest Qu. Eliz. and K. James I. having silenced many hundred Dissenters that were of great worth extraordinary piety and the Bishops causing this and in jealousie of the strictest People forbidding them to fast and pray together and some other exercises of piety and in K. Charles I. days carrying it yet higher to greater severity and this setled them in an Enmity to Bishops as the Enemies of serious Piety and the Bishops more sought to root them out of the Land Till Laud carrying it further and seeking a Coalition with those that were for a Foreign Jurisdiction

by himself Moral Prognostication 1st What shall befall Churches on Earth till Conquered by restitution of primitive Purity Simplicity and Charity 2. How the restitution is like to be made if ever and what shall befall them thenceforth to the end in that Golden Age of Love Quarto stitcht His search for the English Schismatick Quarto stitcht His Immortality of the Soul Octavo His Treatise of Justifying Righteousness in two books Octavo His Revolt to a Foreign Jurisdiction in two parts Octavo Joseph Alleine of Conversion in Octavo large Print with Cases of Conscience Alleine of Conversion in Twelves smaller Print with Cases of Conscience Alleine's Sure Guide in Twelves Mr. Steel of Old Age. Vincent of Conversion Touchstone of Grace and Nature Of Conscience The Spirit of Prayer Of Love among Christians Three Funeral Sermons Principles of the Doctrine of Christ Chap. I. What a National Church is § 1. A National Church and a Christian Kingdom constituted of a Christian Soveraign Magistrate and of Christian Subjects worshiping God ordinarily in true Particular Pastoral Churches is the same thing § 2. The ignorance of this hath confounded the Christian World by two extreams On one side a double mischief hath been by this ignorance introduced First That of Popery which first prophaneth the Sacred Office of Kings and Magistrates feigning them to be but a sort of secular Animals that have the care only of mens Bodies and trading and worldly Affairs and not of Souls or of mens everlasting Safety as if this belonged only to Priests whereby they make Kings to be as much baser than Priests as the Body is viler than the Soul and teach the Subjects accordingly to dishonour and contemn them 2. And while they confine Princes to the bounds of their own Dominions they pretend that the whole World must have one Church Soveraign either Monarchical Aristocratical or mixt which yet Humane Nature is utterly uncapable of so that truly Popery is founded on the degrading of Princes and States and overthrowing true National Church-bounds to set up an absurdly pretended Universal Soveraignty instead of it under Sacerdotal Heads § 3. And this mistake hath corrupted the late Innovating Prelatists that would be called the Church of England who have learnt of the Papists to appropriate the name of the Church or at least Church-Government to the Clergy and so think that a National Church must be unified and constituted by a National Sacerdotal Head either single or collective And that a Prince is not sacred enough to be a National Church Head That this novel Opinion is contrary to the Laws and the sense of Lawyers and the Doctrine of the Church of England and the very Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy is so well known as forbids me to lose any time in proving it It 's true that Queen Elizabeth and our Kings and Doctors have justly appropriated the Power of the Word Sacraments and the Keys of Admission to Christian Communion and of Excommunication and Absolution to the Pastoral Office and have proved that Christ did himself institute that Office and not leave it to the will or power of Princes to institute abrogate or alter it But it is as true that Princes are the Governours of those Pastors and may punish them for Male-administration and dispose of the things circasacra undetermined by Christ § 4. By this mischievous Errour also the Clergy have been drawn to tempt Kings and Magistrates to think that they are but Civil Officers and have not much need to be very studious to understand the Scriptures but must leave that to Bishops and Priests and take it on their words By which they have been perverted and let loose to ungodliness and debauchery wasting that time in Luxury and Sports and Idleness which should have been spent in studying of the Word of God and govern by erroneous ungodly Laws because they know not the Law of the Lord Whereas God hath commanded Kings and Rulers to study his Law diligently and keep it alwaies before their eyes and on their hearts and to govern according to it and make it the chief work of their Office to promote the obedience of it § 5. Moses was more the Mediator between God as Legislator and the People than Aaron was and was better acquainted with the Law and the meaning of it than Aaron was It was he that is called King in Jesurun And God instituted a Prophetical Succession of such which the Israelites sinned in changing for Kings A Prophet shall the Lord your God raise up to you like to me him shall you hear tho' it meant Christ remotely and eminently it meant his Successors proximately Joshua was commanded the study of God's Law And David and Solomon are undeniable Instances to prove that Kings were by God appointed to be more wise and holy persons than the Priests And indeed if Kings be not better skill'd in God's Word than most of the Popish Priests are no wonder if they be the Subjects of Priests and be lightly esteemed as unmeet to Govern especially if Mr. Dodwell's Doctrine were true that the Essential work of the Ministry according to my Principles is to transact between God and Man to seal Covenants on behalf of God and to accept of those which are made by Men and to oblige them to perform their part of the Covenant by otherwise authoritatively excluding them from God's part Hence results the whole Power of Ecclesiastical Government And for this no great gifts and abilities are essential All the skill that is requisite essentially is only in general to know the benefits to be performed on God's part and the duties to be performed on Man's and the Nature and Obligation of Covenants in general and the particular Solemnities of Ecclesiastical Covenants And of this how any man can be uncapable who is but capable of understanding the common dealings of the World c. If it be much more knowledge than this that is commanded to Kings and Rulers then are they the more sacred persons and fitter to be Heads of a National Church than such Priests are § 6. Bishops or Pastors may be the constitutive Heads of Particular Churches and yet not of National nor therefore cease as such to be under the Government of Christian Princes nor Princes thereby be made Priests A School-Master a Colledge-Master an Hospital-Governour a Philosopher may be the Head of his particular Society and yet under a Prince that is not of his Art The King is no Physicion and yet Ruleth Physicions not as a chief Physicion but by the General Government of a King The Masters of Sciences and Arts as such govern none but Volunteers and therefore not by the Sword It 's Princes that do that § 7. Though Moses Law as such bind not us nor any further than Christ hath put it into his Law and many things in their Policy are unsuitable to our times and places and more in their way of Worship yet the true nature of

for such Communion But National Provincial or Diocesane Communion is but by distant agreement in the same Profession among persons perhaps many hundred Miles distant that never see each other And the Ministerial Work doth accordingly differ Dr. Hammond maintaineth that in Scripture times there were no Bishops that had any more than a Congregation to whom he Preached and Personally Officiated Chap. VI. Who must be the Lay-Members of National Churches § 1. INfidels and Heathens may be free Members of a Kingdom as a Kingdom and in a Kingdom as Christians may be tolerated when they cannot be cured And may be used as Inferior Officers in such secular affairs as they are capable of But a Christian Kingdom and Church as such consisteth of no Denisons Burgesses or men free and empowered in matters of Religion but only such as are Baptized or openly professed Christians and their Children and are not proved to have nullified that profession by Heresie or such sin as rendreth their profession incredible and invalid And all these Baptized Visible Christians must be taken for such Members § 2. Where the Essentials of Christianity are Visibly Professed there may be a great difference of Members in Gifts and Soundness Some may be Eminently Laudable and Useful and some may be so Faulty as are fit for Rebuke and Punishment and yet all Members § 3. The Priviledges of some that are not Disfranchised or Excommunicate may yet be suspended while they are under trial For as nothing but Capital Crimes or Excommunication for Impenitence after due Admonition doth cut them off so while they have rendered this justly questionable just Legal Tryal must needs suspend their questioned right till Judgment decide it whether they be impenitent or not or their Crime be Capital § 4. In the Jewish State many hainous Sins were to be punished with Death As Murder Blasphemy Worshiping False Gods drawing men from the true God Cursing Parents Willful and Obstinate Gluttony and Drunkenness and Debauchery after Parents Patient endeavours to reform them Adultery Incest Sodomy some Perjuries And dead men can be no Church Members on Earth Therefore this Death for Sin was an Excommunication and more Therefore they that Plead that any such should be tolerated because the Jews were often such and not Excommunicated is to plead the example of Criminals against the express Letter of the Law and argue à facto prohibito contra legem prohibentem And whether Mr. Galaspi and others have proved any more than Church-Suspension against any but those that were to be put to Death I leave the Reader to consider § 5. It is a Controversie whether the Church be in the Common Wealth or Kingdom or the Common Wealth in the Church And the former is by most asserted Ans 1. Under Infidel or Heathen Kings that are out of the Church themselves the Church is in the Common Wealth 2. And under Christian Kings or other Soveraigns the Particular Churches are in the Common Wealth as parts in the whole 3. And as the Common Wealth is taken so largely as to comprehend Pagans in Inferior Magistracy as in the days of the first Christian Emperors there the Church is in the Common Wealth But take the Common Wealth as meerly and truly Christian and it is the same thing with the National Church and one is not in the other being but two Names for one thing § 6. The appropriating the Name of the Church to the Clergy as distinct from the Laity is the Plot or Part of Popish Tyranny and Fallacy Implying falsly that the National Church must be specified and unified by a Priestly Head Monarchical or Aristocratical and that a King is not a person sacred enough to be the Supream Head in his own National Church Nor the people Holy enough to be its Materials As if Lords Commons Citizens and other Lay Christians were no parts of the Church when Great Magistrates are Nobler parts than a multitude of Ignorant Vicious Curates and Priests § 7. From this Cheat they have claimed the sole Power as of Divine Right of making Canons that shall be obliging Laws and of being the sole determiners of Religious Cases Too many Presbyterians and Independants are for this Clergy claim calling only the Ministers work the exercise of Christs Kingly Office But the Frenchified Prelatists much more § 8. Hence is the common sence and abuse of the distinction of Civil and Ecclesiastical Government intimating that Kings are not to Govern the Church not meddle beyond Civil and Secular concerns But of this before § 9. The power of the Sword or force belongeth only to the Magistrate to be used by him as Judge and not as the Clergies Lictor or Executioner the Bishops and Clergy have no forcing Sword power unless the King give it them for which mostly they are unmeet having proper work enough of their own Tho some cases may be excepted Chap. VII What is the Confederacy or Concord needful to a National Church § 1. AFfirmatively 1. A Baptismal Confederacy to be all the true Subjects of one God one Christ and Holy Ghost against the Devil World and Flesh § 2. 2. A Consent to live as Christians in Love to one another and to addict our selves to the good of one another specially to the welfare of the whole Body and to do as we would justly be done by § 3. 3. To be all the Loyal subjects of one Christian Soveraigns Power § 4. 4. To be all for the publick Worshiping of God and our Redeemer in Christian Assemblies guided and ruled by Christian Pastors or Bishops qualified and described by Christ in his Word the instituter of the Pastoral Office and not of any new sort of humane Ministry or uncapable persons that are wanting in any thing essential to the Office § 5. 5. To take the Sacred Scripture for the Word of God and the sufficent Rule of Divine Faith and Holy living And to profess an explicite Belief of the Creed as it was transmitted to us from the Apostolick Churches and to take the Lords Prayer for the summary rule of our desires and hopes and the Decalogue as owned and expounded by Christ for the summary rule of our Obedience with the Sacraments instituted by him § 6. 6. To profess Obedience to true Authority in Parents Magistrates and Pastors and all true Governours so far as they are empowered by God and to obey God above all and no men against him and his Laws And Rulers to profess to obey God and Rule as his Ministers for the Common welfare and to promote the obedience of Gods Laws § 7. 7. For Magistrates Pastors and Parents to profess their endeavour to promote the true Preaching of the Gospel and the transmitting of it in Purity to Posterity and to encourage and not unjustly forbid or hinder the publication and practice of it § 8. Negatively 1. It is not meet that this confederacy so appropriate the Body of the National Church to any one

the Jewish State and not an Universal And this National Form went before that part of the Apostles Work and Power which was to be Universal or Indefinite § 15. IV. The Apostles made no Universal Laws of their own but only promulgated the Laws of Christ which by his Word and Spirit he taught them And to that end he promised and gave them his Spirit to lead them into all Truth and bring all to their remembrance and they were sent to all Nations indefinitely to Convert them and Baptize them and to teach them to observe all things that Christ had commanded them The Cryer is not the Law-maker though he proclaim the Law The Obligations to Infant-baptism and the Lords day alledged by some as Apostolical Laws are from Christ himself as I have proved elsewhere at large the Apostles being Authorized Witnesses and Promulgators And had they done it by the extraordinary promised Spirit it had so been Christs own Law-giving no other having that promise of the Spirit to make a new Word of God or Universal Law by bringing all his Commands to remembrance and leading them into all Truth The determinations Acts 15. were also the delivery of the Law of Christ the Holy Ghost giving them the certain understanding of it And it 's like that as two of the four Cases Fornication and Idol-Communion were of known Morality so the other two strangled and Blood-eating if not so were not of Universal Obligation but only to those Gentiles that lived among the offended Jews The like may be said about the Institution of Deacons and Bishops of single Churches If they did not Institute them as in Christs Name by his Command or Spirit but had Authority from him to do it as Apostles It was under the promise of the Spirits Infallible Guidance and a Temporary Work in which they have no Successors For Christs Church would never be formed nor his Laws and Word setled perfect if we must have Men in all Ages to add to his Church Ordinances and Officers and to make him new Laws and a new Word How big would his Bible be then at the last Why have no new Scriptures as his been so made these 1600 years I hope our Volumes of Councils will not go for such § 16. V. The occasional determination of Questions about mutable Circumstances as long Hair the Vails the Love-feasts the time of Collections for Charity and divers such were not Universal but Local and not of Immutable but occasional Mutable Obligation and were but such as National and Congregational Governors may determine without any Universal Supreme Power The Genus or Rule by which they must be determined Edification Love Concord Peace Decency Order being Gods Laws § 17. VI. There is great difference between what the Apostles did as Segregate or Dis-junct each one in his Province and what they did as an Aristocratical Person or College unitedly They Ordained Elders gave the Holy Ghost setled Churches decided Controversies wrote Books and Epistles singly each one in his Province and met not to write any one Book or Epistle by a Major College-Vote in one Body And though their Books now oblige all the Church that have them yet 1. At the first writing they obliged only the Churches or Persons to whom they were written and only after by parity of Reason bind others that have them And every ordinary Pastor that writeth a Book that is sound Divinity bringeth an Obligation on all that read it to obey it according to the Evidence of truth The Obligation of the Apostles Books and theirs is Extensively Indefinite or Universal to all that read or hear it But the Degree of the Obligation Intensively is greater from the Apostles Writings because of their extraordinary Spirit § 18. VII The decision Acts 15. was not by a General Council nor a Pope No such Council was called But they were sent and appealed to as Men of most infallible fitness to decide that Case and if they did it as a College it was only as a National Church College such as de formâ the Jews Nation had in which relation they were first setled For as Twelve they were only so related others being added to be sent with them to the Centiles And besides and after that we never read that they did any thing but in their separate Provinces and Personal Capacity § 10 VIII And as they never did as an Universal Aristocratical College by Vote make new Universal Laws to the Church much less by any ordinary continued Power so neither did they as such a College exercise Judicial or Executive power but did it in their single Capacities only in their proper Provinces and that was partly by an ordinary power of Reproof and Excommunication which continueth and partly by an extraordinary miraculous power of delivering to Satan for Corporal punishment which power is ceased with them Tho' Papists in a mock-imitation deliver the Excommunicate to the Secular powers to be kill'd as if these were Devils As for the Universal Laws that tell whom to Excommunicate they are Christs own Laws and Rules of Judgment To which if men may add the like no wonder if they make Sin and Heresie as they please and Excommunicate and deliver to Satan their Magistrates whom they will and if he that was an Orthodox Saint this year be burnt without change as an Heretick the next and it be never certain till the end of the World what is Heresie or Sin and what not § 20. IX It being certain then that the Apostles did not as an Aristocratical Supreme power over the Universal Church Exercise Legislation Judgment and Execution much less by any ordinary continued power it followeth that they have no Successors that have such power and all Government being contained in these three parts there is de Jure no Universal Governour § 21. X. The power of Moses and Aaron were of equal extent and both of Divine Institution but Aaron was under Moses Government And Christ gave the Twelve and Seventy at first no larger Provinces or Power And when he added more and sent them to the Gentiles he commanded every Soul to be subject to the Princes power as of God Therefore their power in the Empire was limited and subject to the Imperial Government and so in other Lands They were bound to fear God and Honour the King They might by Doctoral and Nunciative Authority perswade Emperors and deliver Gods Commands and so still may any ordinary Teacher but not by Imperant Judicial and Executive power Govern them unless by self-subjecting they make them their Governors as Pupils do their Tutors and Patients their Physicions Yea they could make no Man a Christian but by Persuasion to voluntary consent and till they were Christians they could not Govern them as Christians And they were not Governors of the World but Monitors and Persuaders § 22. XI Indefinite and were it possible Universal Concord Love and Communion All Christians must endeavour