Selected quad for the lemma: christian_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
christian_n	body_n	church_n	society_n	1,721	5	9.2198	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A59577	The things that make for peace delivered in a sermon preached before the right honourable the Lord Mayor, and the Court of Aldermen, at Guild-Hall-Chappel, upon the 23 of August, 1674 / by John Sharpe, D.D., now Lord Arch-bishop of York.	Sharp, John, 1645-1714.; Hooker, William, Sir, 1612-1697.	1691 (1691)	Wing S3004; ESTC R41707	19,125	33

a great way to the Cure of the sad Divisions that are among us And that I may discourse with more clearness and more evidence I shall deliver what I have to say in this matter by way of Propositions taking my Rise from the first Principle of Church-Society and so regularly ascending The first Proposition I lay down is this That every Christian upon the very account of his being so is a Member of the Church of Christ and is bound to joyn in External Communion with it where it can be had For the clearing of this you may be pleased to consider that the primary Design and Intention of our Saviour in his undertaking for us was not to save particular persons without respect to a Society but to gather to himself a Church out of Mankind to erect and form a Body Politick of which himself was the Head and particular Christians the Members and in this method through Obedience to his Laws and Government to bring men to Salvation And this is no more than what is the Sense and Language of the Holy Scriptures wherein whatever Christ is said to have done or suffered for Mankind he is said to have done for them not as scattered Individuals but as Incorporated into a Church Eph. 5. 25. Thus Christ loved the Church and gave himself for it Act. 20. 28. Christ redeemed the church with his own Blood Eph. 5. 23. Christ is the Saviour of his Body that is to say the Church with many passages of the like importance The plain Consequence from hence is that every person so far as he is a Christian so far he is a Member of the Church and by virtue of that Relation to the Church it is that he hath any Relation to Christ or any Title to the Priviledges of the Gospel And agreeably to this Notion it is very plain that Baptism which is by all acknowledged to be the Ceremony of Initiating us into Christianity is in Scripture declared to be the Rite whereby we are entred and admitted into the Church Thus St. Paul expresly tells us that by one Spirit we are all baptized into one Body 1 Cor. 12. 13. And again that Christ hath sanctisied that is to say Eph. 5. 26. separated his Church by the washing of Water and the Word Now then it being thus evident that every Christian as a Christian is a Member of that Body of Christ which we call the Church there will be little need of taking pains to prove that every such person is obliged to joyn in External Communion with the Church where he can do so for the very nature of this Church-membership doth imply it Without this neither the Ends of Church-Society nor the Benefits accruing to us therefrom can be attained First not the Ends of it The Ends of Church-Society are the more Solemn Worship of God and the publick Profession of our Religion and the mutual Edification one of another Now how these can be in any measure attained without associating together in publick Assemblies and mutual Offices and other Acts of External Communion with one another cannot any ways be imagined And as little in the second place can it be conceived how without this we can be made partakers of the Benefits and Priviledges that Christ hath made over to the Members of his Church For we are to consider that God hath so ordered the matter and without doubt for this very reason to unite us the more firmly in Society that the Priviledges of the Gospel such as Pardon of Sin and the Grace of the Holy Spirit are not ordinarily conveyed to us so immediately by God but that there must intervene the Ministry of Men. God's holy Word and Sacraments are the Chanels in which they are derived to us and those to whom he hath committed the Ministry of Reconciliation and the Power of the Keys are the Hands that must dispence them We have no promise of Spiritual Graces but by these means so that in order to the partaking of them there is an absolute necessity laid upon us of joyning and communicating with the Church It is true indeed God doth not so tie himself up to these means but that he can and will in some cases confer the Benefits of them without them as in case of a General Apostasie of the Church or of Persecution for Religion or of an unjust Excommunication or any other case where Communion with a true visible Church is denied to us But though God doth act extraordinarily in extraordinary cases where these means cannot be had yet this doth not at all diminish much less take away the necessity of making use of them when they can be had From what hath been descoursed on this first Proposition we may by the way gather these two things I only name them First How untrue their Position is that maintain that all our Obligation to Church-Communion doth arise from a voluntary admission of our selves into some particular Congregation and an explicit Promise or Ingagement to joyn with it in Church-Ordinances 2. How wildly and extravagantly they discourse that talk of a Christianity at large without relation to a Church or Communion with any Society of Christians The second Proposition is That every one is bound to joyn in Communion with the established National Church to which he belongs supposing there be nothing in the Terms of its Communion that renders it unlawful for him so to do For if we are bound to maintain Communion with the Catholick Church as I have before proved it is plain that we are bound to maintain Communion with that part of it within whose Verge the Divine Providence has cast us For we cannot communicate with the Catholick Church but by communicating with some Part of it and there is no communicating with any Part of it but that under which we live or where we have our Residence Well but it may be said that there may be several Distinct Churches in the place where we live There may be the fixed Regular Assemblies of the National Church and there may be separate Congregations both which are or pretend to be Parts of the Catholick Church so that it may be all one as to our communicating with that which of these we joyn with supposing we joyn but with one of them and consequently there is no necessity from that Principle that we should hold Communion with the Publick Assemblies of the National Church But as to this I desire it may be considered that That that lays an Obligation upon us to joyn in Communion with the Church to wit our being Members of that one Body of Christ doth also lay an Obligation upon us as much as in us lies to preserve the Vnity of that Body for this both the Fundamental Laws of Society and the express Precepts of Christianity do require of every Member But now to make a Rent in or separate from any Part of the Body of Christ with which