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CHAPTER VI.
Directions to the People concerning their internal and private
Duty to their Pastors, and their profiting by the Ministerial
office and gifts.
The Ministerial Office opened in fifteen particulars
The Reasons of it.
The true old Episcopacy.
Special Duties to your own Pastors above others.
Of the Calling, Power, and Succession of Pastors
The best to be preferred .
PAGE
107
108
111
ibid.
112
115
118
The order of Ministerial teaching, and the resolution of faith
How far Human faith conduceth to Divine
120
127
Directions for the discovery of Truth among contenders, and
how to escape Heresy and Deceit. Cautions for avoiding
Deceit in Disputations
134
CHAPTER VIII.
Directions for the Union and Communion of Saints, and for
avoiding Unpeaceableness and Schism
Wherein our Unity consisteth .
What Diversity will be in the Churches. What Schism is?
What Heresy? What Apostacy? Who are Schismatics?
The degrees and progress of it. What Separation is a
Duty?.
Q. Is any one form of Church-government of Divine appoint-
ment? May man make new Church-officers ?.
The benefits of Christian concord; to themselves, and to in-
fidels
.
170
The mischiefs of Schism
175
Whether Papists or Protestants are Schismatics
The aggravations of Division
Two hindrances of our true apprehension of the evil of Schism
Directions against it.
Of imposing defective Liturgies
The testimonies of antiquity against the bloody and cruel way
of curing Schism. Their character of Ithacian Prelates..
CHAPTER IX.
Twenty Directions how to worship God in the Church-as-
semblies.
CHAPTER X.
179
185
186
188
208
Directions about our Communion with holy souls departed,
now with Christ
CHAPTER XI.
Directions about our Communion with the holy angels
215
223
235
ECCLESIASTICAL CASES OF CONSCIENCE.
Q. 1. How to know which is the true Church among all pre-
tenders, that a Christian's conscience may be quiet in his
Relation and Communion
247
Q. 2. Whether we must esteem the Church of Rome a true
Church? and in what sense some Protestant divines affirm
it, and some deny it?
254
Q. 3. Whether we must take the Romish clergy for a true
Q. 4. Whether it be necessary to believe that the Pope is the
Antichrist? .
Q. 5. Whether we must hold that a Papist may be saved?
Q. 6. Whether those that are in the Church of Rome are
bound to separate from it? And whether it be lawful to go
to their mass or other worship?
256
262
263
265
Q. 7. Whether the true calling of the Minister by Ordination
or Election be necessary to the essence of the church? . . 266
Q. 8. Whether sincere faith and godliness be necessary to the
being of the ministry? And whether it be lawful to hear
a wicked man, or take the sacrament from him, or take
him for a minister? . . .
Q. 9. Whether the people are bound to receive or consent
to an ungodly, intolerable, heretical pastor, (yea or one far
less fit and worthy than a competitor) if the magistrate
command it, or the bishop impose him ?.
Q. 10. What if the magistrate command the people to receive
one pastor, and the bishop or ordainers another, which of
them must be obeyed?
Q. 11. Whether an uninterrupted succession either of right
ordination or of conveyance by jurisdiction, be necessary to
the being of the ministry, or of a true church?
Q. 12. Whether there be or ever was such a thing in the world
as one Catholic church, constituted by any head besides or
under Christ?
268
270
275
276
280
Q. 13. Whether there be such a thing as a visible Catholic
church, and what it is?
281
Q. 14. What is it that maketh a visible member of the univer-
sal church, and who are to be accounted such? .
Q. 15. Whether besides the profession of Christianity, either
testimony or evidence of conversion or practical godliness
be necessary to prove a man a member of the universal
visible church?.
Q. 16. What is necessary to a man's reception into member-
ship in a particular church, over and above this aforesaid
title? Whether any other trials, or covenant, or what? . . 285
Q. 17. Wherein doth the ministerial office essentially consist? 287
Q. 18. Whether the people's choice or consent is necessary
to the office of a minister in his first work, as he is to con-
vert infidels and baptize them? And whether this be a
work of office, and what call is necessary to it?.
Q. 19. Wherein consisteth the power and nature of ordina-
tion? And to whom doth it belong? And is it an act of
jurisdiction? And is imposition of hands necessary in it?
Q. 20. Is ordination necessary to make a man a pastor of a
particular church as such? And is he to be made a gene-
ral minister, and a particular church elder or pastor at once,
and at one ordination ?
Q. 21. May a man be oft, or twice ordained?
Q. 22. How many ordainers are necessary to the validity of
ordination by Christ's institution, whether one or more ?
Q. 23. What if one bishop ordain a minister, and three, or
many, or all the rest protest against it, and declare him no
minister or degrade him, is he to be received as a true mi-
nister or not?
Q. 24. Hath a bishop power by Divine right to ordain, de-
grade or govern, excommunicate or absolve in another's
diocese or church, either by his consent or against it? And
doth a minister that officiateth in another's church, act as
a pastor, and their pastor, or as a private man? And doth
his ministerial office cease when a man removeth from his
flock?.
Q. 25. Whether canons be laws, and pastors have a legisla- tive power?
Q. 26. Whether church-canons or pastors' directive deter-
minations of matters pertinent to their office, do bind the
conscience, and what accidents will disoblige the people;
you may gather before in the same case about magistrates'
laws in the Political Directions; as also by an impartial
transferring the case to the precepts of parents and school-
masters to children, without respect to their power of the
rod, (or supposing that they had none such) ?
Q. 27. What are Christ's appointed means of the unity and
concord of the universal church, and consequently of its
preservation, if there be no human universal head and go-
vernor of it upon earth? And if Christ hath instituted
none such, whether prudence and the law of nature oblige
not the church to set up and maintain an universal ecclesias-
tical monarchy or aristocracy; seeing that which is every
man's work, is no man's, and omitted by all?
1.
Q. 28. Who is the judge of controversies in the church?
About the exposition of the Scriptures and doctrinal points
in themselves. 2. About either heresies or wicked prac-
292
295
296
300
302
304
306.
309
tices, as they are charged on the persons accused of them :
that is, 1. Antecedently to our practice, by way of regula-
tion. 2. Or consequently by judicial sentence (and execu-
tion) on offenders ?.
Q. 29. Whether a parent's power over his children, or a pas-
tor's, or many pastors or bishops over the same children as
parts of their flocks, be greater, or more obliging in mat-
ters of religion and public worship? .
311
314
.. 315
....
Q. 30. May an office-teacher or pastor be at once in the stated
relation of a pastor, and a disciple to some other pastor?.
Q. 31. Who hath the power of making church-canons ?
Q. 32. Doth baptism as such enter the baptized into the uni-
versal church; or into a particular church, or both? And
is baptism the particular church-covenant as such?
Q. 33. Whether infants should be baptized, I have answered
long ago in a Treatise on that subject?
Q. What infants should be baptized? And who have right to
sacraments? And whether hypocrites are unequivocally or
equivocally Christians and church-members, I have resolved
in my "Disputation of Right to Sacraments."
316
317
318
Q. 34. Whether an unbaptized person who yet maketh a pub-
lic profession of Christianity be a member of the visible
church? And so of the infants of believers unbaptized? ibid.
Q. 35. Is it certain by the Word of God, that all infants bap-
tized, and dying before actual sin are undoubtedly saved?
Or what infants may we say so of?
319
Q. 36. What is meant by this speech, that believers and their
seed are in the covenant of God; which giveth them right
to baptism?
333
Q. 37. Are believers' children certainly in covenant before
their baptism; and thereby in a state of salvation; or not
till they are baptized? .
Q. 38. Is infants' title to baptism and the covenant benefits
given them by God in his promises upon any proper moral
condition, or only upon the condition of their natural rela-
tion; that they be the seed of the faithful?:.
334
336
Q. 39. What is the true meaning of sponsors, (' patrimi'), or
godfathers, as we call them; and is it lawful to make use
of them?
338
Q. 40. On whose account or right is it that the infant hath
title to baptism and its benefits? Is it on the parent's, an-
cestor's, sponsor's, the church's, the minister's, the magis-
trate's, or his own?
341