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Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
nature_n	contain_v	law_n	moral_a	2,485	5	9.8922	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A26880	Catholick communion defended against both extreams, and unnecessary division confuted in five parts ... / by Richard Baxter ...	Baxter, Richard, 1615-1691.	1684 (1684)	Wing B1206; Wing B1237; Wing B1401; ESTC R22896	218,328	250

the same place their neighbourhood maketh them capable of Personal presential Communion as men that may know and admonish each other and meet by turns and in presence manage their concerns which differenceth single Churches of the lowest order from associated Churches of men that have Communion only by others at distance XV. As Logicians say of other Relations the matter must be capable of the end or it is not capable of the name and form so is it here e. g. It is no Ship that is made of meer Sponge or Paper or that is no bigger than a Spoon it is no Spoon that is as big as a Ship One House is not a Village nor one Village a City nor a City a meer House So twenty or an hundred or a thousand Parishes associate cannot be a single Church of the first or lowest Order being not capable of mutual Knowledge Converse or personal present Communion Nor are two or three Lay-men capable to be such a Church for want of due matter But supposing them capable thô a full and rich Church have advantage for Honour and Strength yet a small and poor one is ejusdem ordinis as truely a Church and so is their Pastor as Hierom saith of Rome and Eugubium so Alexandria and Majuma c. Gregory Neocaesar was equally Bishop of nineteen at first as after of all save nineteen in the City XVI If the Apostles have Successours in their care and Superiority over many Churches it will prove that there should yet be men of eminent worth to take care of many Churches and to instruct and admonish the younger Ministers But it will neither prove 1. That they succeed the Apostles in the extraordinary parts of their Office 2. Nor that they have any forcing power by the Sword 3. Nor that one Church hath power over others by Divine right for the Apostles fixed not their power to any particular Churches but were general Visitors or Overseers of many Yet if the same Man who is fixed in a particular Church have also the visiting admonishing oversight of many as far as was an Ordinary part of the Apostles Office and be called an Archbishop I know no Reason to be against him XVII There be essential and Integral Acts of the Sacred Ministry instituted by Christ These none may take the Power of from any Ministers nor alter the species or integrity of the Office by setting up any such Superious as shall deprive them of that which Christ hath instituted or arrogating the like uncalled But as in worship so in Order and Church Government there are undetermined accidents As to choose the time and place of Synods to preside and moderate and such like And these the Churches by agreement or the Magistrate may assign to some above the rest And if the Magistrate affix Baronies Honours Revenues or his own due Civil forcing Power and make the same Men Magistrates and Ministers whether we think it prudent and well done or not we must honour and obey them XVIII Some call these humane Accidental Orders forms of Church Government and affirm as Bishop Reignolds did and Dr. Stillingfleet in his Irenicon and many excellent men by him cited that no form of Church Government is of Divine Command Which is true of all this second sort of Government which is but Accidental and humane but not at all of the first sort which is Divine and Essential to Christ himself first and to Pastors as such by his appointment so that the essential Government of the Universal Church by Christ and of each particular Church by Pastors specified by him if not of Supervisors of many as succeeding Apostles and Evangelists in their Ordinary work are of unalterable Divine right But the humane forms are alterable Such I account 1. The Presidency and Moderatorship and accidental Government of one Bishop in a single Church over the other Presbyters Deacons c. 2. The accidental Government of a Diocesan as an Archbishop over these lowest Bishops and Churches 3. And the Superiority of Metropolitans and Patriarchs over them so it be but in such Accidentals and within the same Empire not imposing a forreign Jurisdiction These tota specie differ from the Divine Offices XIX All these single Church being parts of the Universal are less noble than the whole and are to do all that they do as members in Union with the Whole and to do all as Acts of Communion with them XX. The General precepts of doing all to Edification Concord Peace Order c. oblige all the Churches to hold such correspondencies as are needful to these Ends And Synods are one special means which should be used as far and oft as the Ends require And if National Metropolitans and Patriarchs order such Synods I am not one that will disobey them But if on these pretences any would make Synods more necessary than they are and use them as Governours by Legislation and Judgement over the Particular Bishops by the use of the Church Keyes and will affixe to them or Metropolitans besides an Agreeing Power and the said Government in Accidentals a proper Church Government by making and unmaking Ministers or Christians excommunicating and absolving as Rulers by the said Keyes it may be a duty to disown such usurpations As the King would disown an Assembly of Princes any where met that would claim a Proper Government of him and his Kingdom Thô it were much to be wisht that all Christian Princes would hold such Assemblies for the Concord and Peace of Christendom XXI The Essentials of Faith Hope and Loving Prac●●ce essentiate the Church objectively And these are all summarily contained in the Baptismal Covenant explained in the Creed Lords Prayer and Decalouge and all with much more even Integrals and needful Accidentals in the Sacred Scriptures which taking in the Law of Nature are Gods Universal Law XXII There is no Church on Earth so sound and Orthodox as to want no Integral part of Christian Religion Proved There is no man on Earth much less any multitude so sound as to want no Integral part But all Churches consist only of Men And therefore if all the Men be so far defective all the Churches are so It is not their Objective Religion Generally and implicitely received that I mean but their Subjective Religion and their explicite reception of the Objective The Scripture is our perfect Objective Religion in it self and as an Object proposed and in general and implicitely we all receive it But as a man may say I believe all that 's in the Scripture and yet be ignorant of the very Essentials in it so a man may explicitely know and believe all the Essentials and more and yet be ignorant of many Integrals All things in Scripture proposed to our Faith Hope and Practice are the Integrals of our Religion But no Christian understandeth all these proposals or words of Scripture Therefore no Christian explicitely believeth them all or practiceth all To hold the contrary

man were not bound to lay any restraint on himself nor suppress sensual inclinations nor deny them proper and natural satisfactions As far as we know to live always in this world and body was the Original state of mankind without any expectations of a more divine and spiritual life p. 98. Briefly p. 272. The Divine Spirit is the principle of Immortality in us which first giveth life to our souls and will at last raise our bodies Ans. His Opinion in this is not without the consent of some very learned and good men And if he had held only that immortality is proper to the spiritual so far as it is immortal blessedness who would contradict him But seeing it is the undistinguisht immortality of the Soul that he speaketh of I shall in this with submission declare my Dissent and Reasons § 35.1 I confess that as I said it is an Allay to his damning Sentence of thousands of God's faithful Servants For it seems by Damnation he meaneth but Death and the loss of Heaven in which the Soul is dead as well as the Body and so he judgeth us not to any other Hell But then all the Infidels Atheists Murderers Perjured Adulterers and Drunkards find the like kindness from him if it will prove such It seems all their Souls are mortal and die as Beasts And so the fear of Hell or any pain after Death is dismist by him to all the World 2. I believe not this because God is the righteous Governor of the World and ruleth by means suited to the end And we find that the fear of a future positive punishment is so natural to the Conscience of man that the World is mostly governed by it And God ruleth not man by meer deceit 3. We see that even the fear of Hell is not sufficient to restrain no not professed Christians and Preachers from Perjury Persecution Sensuality Worldliness and Wickedness What a case then would the World be in were they delivered from those fears Men would be worse than Toads Adders or mad Dogs to one another 4. The Philosophers yea most and almost all the Infidel and Pagan World to this day were convinced of the Immortality of the Soul So that even the Lord Herbert de verit numbereth it with the Notices of 〈◊〉 5. I have in divers books given I think satisfactory proof of the Souls immortality not now to be repeated both Natural and from Revelation And if he preach the contrary I crave his patience with those that scruple taking him for their Pastor 6. But as La●iantius and Arnobius plead against the Platonists for the Souls Mortality by Nature I do confess that there is nothing in Nature that will prove that God cannot annihilate it as he can do any Angel nor that it is immortal without depend●nce on God nor that will prove infallibly that God will annihilare no Soul But all that we pretend to prove by Nature is 1. That there is nothing in the Nature of the Soul that hath a tendency to annihilation or dissolution of it 2. That God who maketh all things suitable to their use seemeth to intimate that he will not dissolve or annihilate it by making it of such a durable Nature 3. And his Government affords us yet stronger moral Arguments 7. As God made Adam's Soul of an immortal Nature so sin changed not his Essence but his Quality and Relation And tho it made him mortal in the dissolution of his humanity or composition and liable to pain it did not turn him into an Animal of another species nor acquit him from all future suffering God having made his Soul naturally durable or immortal man's merits were but to determine whether it should be immortal happiness or immortal misery God was not bound to change man's Essence to shorten his suffering because man vitiated it 8. If one should preach that Christ came to make Humane Souls immortal that were all naturally mortal it would make Faith so hard a Work as would greatly hinder the conversion of the Infidels It would be an hard thing to believe that Christ maketh Saints of another species from all other men as men are from Brutes And if ones Soul be naturally mortal and others by the Spirit immortal it would seem a specifick difference And Philosophers and Mahometans who can say so much for the immortality of the Soul would despise Christians as less Orthodox than they 9. I have elsewhere proved that the Iews held the Souls immortality except the Sadduces He that said Good Master what shall I do to inherit ●t●rnal life spake but their common Opinion as did all they that believed that any rose from the dead 10. It seems by the History of Henoch and Elias that if man had not sinned he should have been so translated For God had said Increase and multiply and the Earth would not have held all Humane Generations 11. Christ expresly saith There shall be a Resurrection to condemnation John 5. and that the wicked shall go to everlasting punishment Matth. 25. and that their worm never dieth nor their fire is quenched c. But if the Soul be not immortal there can be no Resurrection It will not be the same man but another new made And shall a new soul suffer for anothers sin Luke 16. in the case of Dives and Lazarus tells us Christ's mind of this 12. Yet I confess that the Resurrection of the Body was not promised before the Fall nor yet plainly threatned but seemeth to be the common effect of Redemption in its first instance as it was for all Mankind viz. That man being filius mortis Christ would first as a common Saviour restore his Nature and then set him in the way of Tryal for its happiness or misery as God at first made his Nature and then tryed him accordingly But it seems had there been no Saviour the body should have continued dead being but the meer instrument of the sinning soul and the immortal soul be immortally unhappy 13. Therefore in this if the Doctor mean not better than he speaks but thinks indeed that the Spirit only is the Principle of the Souls immortality I differ from him but not with contempt acknowledging that these things are weighty and of difficulty But I am loath to be less Orthodox than Heathens and Infidels or than the vain conceited Rabbins who as Buxtorfe and others tell us do hold that good Israelites go to Heaven and bad Israelites to Hell and all others die like Beasts Did he so hold of good and bad Christians it were too gross or of those that are called by the Gospel and some believe and some refuse The Papists most commonly hold That unbaptized Infants are in some such neutral state shut out of Heaven but under no positive pain But if the Doctor preach so of the Adult and all tho he seem to abate of his severity to the Dissenters he will do no service to the Church 14. The Terms