A Christian Directory, Part 3: Christian EcclesiasticsBaxter, Richard
Religion
A Christian Directory, Part 3: Christian Ecclesiastics
Baxter, Richard
Casuistry; Christian sociology
II. We are next therefore to inquire whether any contradicting
additions make null that which else would be no nullity. And this is
the great difficulty. For as we accuse not their religion for having
too little, but too much, so this is our chief doubt about their
ministry.
And, 1. It is doubted, as to the office itself, whether a mass priest
be a true minister, as having another work to do, even to make his
Maker, and to give Christ's real flesh with his hands to the people;
and to preach the unsound doctrines of their church; and these seem to
be essential parts of his function.
The case is very bad and sad; but that which I said about the heresies
or errors which may consist with christianity, when they overthrow it
but by an undiscerned consequence, must be here also considered. The
prime part of their office is that (as to the essentials) which Christ
ordained: this they receive, and to this they sew a filthy rag of
man's devising; but if they knew this to be inconsistent with
christianity or the essentials of the ministry, we may well presume
(of many of them) they would not receive it. Therefore as an error
which consequentially contradicteth some essential article of faith,
nullifieth not his christianity who first and fastest holdeth the
faith, and would cast away the error if he saw the contradiction, (as
Davenant, Morton, and Hall have showed, Epist. Conciliat.) so is it to
be said as to practical error in the present case. They are their
grievous errors and sins, but, for aught I see, do not nullify their
office to the church. As a mass priest, he is no minister of Christ
(as an anabaptist is not as a re-baptizer, nor a separatist as a
separater, nor an antinomian, or any erroneous person, as a preacher
of that error); but as a christian pastor ordained to preach the
gospel, baptize, administer the Lord's supper, pray, praise God, guide
the church, he may be.
The same answer serveth to the objection as it extendeth to the
erroneous doctrines which they preach, which are but by consequence
against the essentials of religion.
2. But it is a greater doubt, Whether any power of the ministry can be
conveyed by antichrist, or from him? and whether God will own any of
antichrist's administrations? Therefore seeing they profess themselves
to have no office but what they receive from the pope, and Christ
disowning his usurpation, the same man cannot be the minister of
Christ and antichrist; as the same man cannot be an officer in the
king's army and his enemies'.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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