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A26912 A defence of the principles of love, which are necessary to the unity and concord of Christians and are delivered in a book called The cure of church-divisions ... / by Richard Baxter ... Baxter, Richard, 1615-1691. 1671 (1671) Wing B1239; ESTC R263 150,048 304

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not int●ressed in their discipline or is no stated member is not only lawful but for the ends sake is a duty when our never communicating with them is scandalous and offensive to our Rulers and tendeth to make people think that we hold that to be unlawful which we do not and when our actual Communion is apt and needful to shew our judgement and to cherish love and Christian Concord On which account as I would statedly communicate with the Greek Church if I were among them and had no better and would sometimes communicate with them in their Prayers and Sacraments if I did but pass through the Countrey as a stranger or if I could have better even so would I do with a Parish Church if as faulty as you can justly charge it with the foresaid limitations or with a Church of Anabaptists or Independents if they did not use their meetings to destroy either Piety or Love This is my judgement This is the summ of all that I plead for as to Communion If the Excepter deny not this he talketh not at all to me If any that have passionately reviled my Book and me do say We thought you had gone further and pleaded for more I answer them that we should not speak untruths and revile things before we understand them and then come off with I thought you had said more It is this with other Love-killing distempers that I strive to Cure And again I tell you that it is 1. Ignorance 2. Pride or overvaluing our own understandings 3. And Uncharitableness generated of these two which is the Cause of our CRUELTIES and our unlawful SEPARATIONS and which breed and feed our threatning Divisions among the parties on both extreams And it s the death of these three that must be our Cure CAP. 3. Some Objections or Questions about Separation answered AS to that party who think Anabaptists and Independents unfit for their communion I am not now dealing with them and therefore am not to answer their Objections Only on the by I shall here mind them 1. That it is not such as the old German Anabaptists who denyed Magistracy to Christians c. that I speak of But such as only deny Infant Baptism And that many of them are truly Godly sober men and therefore capable of communion And that the ancient Churches left it to men liberty at what time they would have their Children baptized 2. That many Independents are downright against Separation Mr. Iacob hath notably written against it Therefore those that are but meer Independents refuse not communion with the Parish Churches And why should you refuse communion with them 3. That many that separate secundum quid or pro tempore from some part of Worship only and for a season yet separate not simply from the Churches as no Churches nor would do all as they do in othe● circumstances For instance when they come not to the publick Assemblies yet they will not refuse you if you will come to theirs Go to their meetings and see if they so far separate as to forbid you Nor perhaps to their Sacraments if you will submit to their way as you expect they should do by yours Now seeing we are all agreed that the Magistrate doth not make Ministers Churches or Sacraments but only encourage protect and rule them I desire you but to be so impartial as to consider that 1. You count not your selves Separatists because you never go to one of their Meetings in their houses or other places Why then should you call them Separatists only for not coming to yours 2. But if they are guilty of Separation for holding either that your Churches and Ministry are Null or that Communion with you is unlawful by Gods Law enquire how far you also are Separatists if you say the same without proof by any others Though their lawfulness by the Law of the Land I justifie not no nor the regularity of their Church Assemblies 4. And I would here note how partial most men are They that think an Independent or Anabaptist yea or a Presbyterian intolerable at home in their several Churches yet if they would but come to their communion they would receive them as tolerable members And they that think it unlawful to hold communion with the Prelatists and give the reason partly from their unfitness yet would receive them in many Churches if they did but change their Opinions and desire communion with them in their way But it is those that judge Parish communion where there are godly Ministers unlawful that I am here to speak to And their principal doubts are such as many good and sober persons need an answer to QUEST I. Quest. 1. DOth not the second Commandment and Gods oft expressed jealousie in the matters of his Worship make it a sin to communicate in the ●●turgi● Answ 1. The meaning of the second Commandment mistaken by many is directly to forbid Corporal or Interpretative Idolatry and worshipping God by Images as if he were like ● Creature And scandalousl● symbolizing with the Idolaters or Worshippers of false Gods by doing that which in outward appearance is the Worshipping of a false God though the mind be pretended to be kept free Now the Worshipping of the true God in the words of the Liturgie hath none of this nor will any but a sinful C●nsurer think that it is the worshipping of a false God Nor is every use of the same places words or other things indifferent a symbolizing with Idolatry But the saying those words or the using those Acts or Ceremonies by which their false Religion in specie is notified as by a tessera or badge to the world Or using the Symbols of their Religion as differing from the true Even as the use of Baptism and the Lords Supper the Creed and the constant use of our Church-Worship are the Symbols of the Christian Religion So their Sacraments Incense Sacrificings and Worshipping Conventions were the Symbols of Worshipping false Gods which therefore Christians may not use But they that say that all false Worship of the true God is Idolatry add to Gods word and teach doctrines which are but the forgeries of their own brain Though more than Idolatry be forbidden by Consequence in the second Commandment that proveth it not to be Idolatry because it s there so forbidden 2. I have after distinguished of false Worship and told you that if by false you mean forbidden or not commanded or sinful we all worship God falsly in the Manner every day and in some part of the matter very oft Our disorders confusion tautologies unfit expressions are all forbidden and so false worship And if God prohibit any disorder which is in the Liturgie he prohibits the same in extemporate prayers in which some good Christians are as failing as the Liturgie And as the words of the Liturgie are not commanded in the Scripture so neither are the words of our extemporate or studied Sermons or Prayers 3.
remedy that the formal Hypocrites will either apply or endure That men would become Christians O that the truth of faith and the power of true Christian belief might be seen in the hearts and lives of those that knowingly put the neck in Christs yoak So far Eldersfield See also Dr. Patrick of Baptisme Dr. Hammonds words I have recited after my Treat of Confirmation They are very worthy of consideration But to leave this digression 2. My second reason why I dissent from them that will have other Tearms of Church-entrance than Baptisme and a stricter exaction of a Title to membership than a professed Affent and Consent to the tearms of that Covenant is because if in our very Church-title and Constitution we forsake the Scriptural and primitive tearms we are liable to the exceptions of all dissenters and cannot justifie our selves against their accusations nor well answer them that say It is long of us and not of them that they communicate not with us 3. Because we shall unavoidably injure many of Christs members and keep those out whom he will own and would have us own to the great injury of him and them 4. Because we shall lessen and weaken the Church of Christ which is already so small and so be injurious to it 5. Because we shall be alwaies at uncertainty on what tearms to go For if once we leave Gods prescribed tearms we shall never know where to fix But every Pastor will examine as he please and form such Covenant-tearms as are agreeable to the measure of his own private judgement and Charity And even among Congregational men we see already that the tearms of mens Titles do vary as the Pastors or Congregations differ in point of strictness 6. And this layeth a certain foundation for perpetual dissentions and divisions when there are no certain tearms of Concord And there is no Union when we depart from Christs authority And it is not in vain that Christ himself prescribed a form of Baptizing And if all his Churches since the Apostles daies have brought us down that Creed or those Articles of Faith and form of Baptizing used universally among them New waies and various waies even as various as mens degrees of prudence and charity will never be the tearms of the Churches Unity 7. And I am very much the more confirm'd against this extream by my long experience Having made it much of my work to know the minds and lives of all the people of the great Parish where I lived and since that having conversed with many of the inferior rank both for estate and profession of piety I have found that there is much more good in a great number of those that are not noted openly for special Professors of Religiousness than I did before believe For no man is usually noted now for Religious in this stricter sense 1. Whose knowledge hath not some readiness of expression in conference and in prayer 2. And who doth not come to private meetings and associate himself with the stricter and forwarder sort of Professors But there are abundance of things which may hinder some serious weak Christians from both these Dulness of natural parts and want of good education and use and teaching and company may keep mens parts and utterance very low And some young Christians for want of former use at their first true Conversion cannot speak sense in the very fundamentals which yet they have a saving sense and knowledge of but are like Infants and their prayers have little better expressions than Abba Father and the unutterable groans of the spirit And some never had the opportunity of profitable company And some are hindered from such converse by bashfulness And some by poverty and business or distance And some by the restraint of Parents Husbands Masters c. And some by ill company and scandall may have a prejudice against those Religious people who are neerest to them who yet may be real lovers of Christ. Having found in many called common people more knowledge though not beter utterance than I expected and more trust in Christ and more desire to be better and love to those that are better and more willingness to be taught crowding in publick or private when they have a full opportunity and affectionately hearing the closest preaching I am grown the more fearful of wronging Christ his Church and them by numbering such with those that are without when they are Baptized persons that never were proved to have apostatized nor to have lived impenitently in any sin so gross as the back-bitings proud-censoriousness and divisions of too many Religiouser people are 8. To which may be added the sad experience of this age of the dreadful miscarriages of the more noted sort of Professors turning Infidels Ranters Quakers Socinians Antinomians and too many scandalous in life and such as have destroyed Order Government Unity Reformation when there was scarce an enemie able to hurt it much besides themselves Which is no dishonour to the Profession of Holyness much less to Christ and Holyness it self But it seemeth to me a notable rebuke of our common over-valuing the meer Parts and utterance and extemporate performances of the people and of Ministers flattering such Professors and over-looking all of Christ which is in many that have had no such helps for gifts and utterance as they 2. The second Point in which the New-England Synod agreed was the stated Consociation of Churches and use of Synods And herein saith the Defence p. 99. there appeared no Dissent or dissatisfaction in the Synod Where they adde also as to the point of Separation We never said nor thought that there should be a withdrawing from other Churches upon differences errors or offences of an inferiour and dubious nature yea though continued in We are far enough from hastyness or harshness in that matter being professed adversaries to a spirit of sinful and rigid separation And that Apostolical man Mr. Iohn Eliot hath printed a draught for stated Synods for Counsel and Concord which is their proper use which will go far enough to satisfie moderate men in that point and saith more for such Synods than ever I said 2. Having said thus much of the Iudgement of Congregational men in New-England against Separation I shall adde somewhat of the second Assertion That it concerneth the Congregational Party as much in point of Interest to be against it as any sort of men whatsoever 1. Because their Churches have no other bond of Concord here but voluntary Consent And if that break they are dissolved 2. Because their members being usually neither so low as to be ignorant of matters of Controversie nor so high as to be able solidly to Resolve them are most like to be quarrelsome and fall into divisions And honest people that have a zeal of God and for Truth and Unity and not knowledge enough to guide it steadily are likey to contend and trouble one another than either they that are