A Christian Directory, Part 3: Christian Ecclesiastics — John Shaqi
A Christian Directory, Part 3: Christian EcclesiasticsBaxter, Richard
Religion
A Christian Directory, Part 3: Christian Ecclesiastics
Baxter, Richard
Casuistry; Christian sociology
_Direct._ XI. Understand well how far Christ hath given a law and a
rule for worship to his church in the holy Scriptures, and so far see
that you take it as a perfect rule, and swerve not from it by adding
or diminishing. This is a matter of great importance by reason of the
danger of erring on either side. 1. If you think that the Scripture
containeth not any law or rule of worship at all, or not so much as
indeed it doth, you will deny a principal part of the office of
Christ, as the King and Teacher of the church, and will accuse his
laws of insufficiency, and be tempted to worship him with a human kind
of worship, and to think yourselves at liberty to worship him
according to your own imaginations, or change his worship according to
the fashion of the age or the country where you are. And on the other
side, if you think that the Scripture is a law and rule of worship,
more particular than Christ intended it, you will involve yourselves
and others in endless scruples and controversies, and find fault with
that which is lawful and a duty, because you find it not particularly
in the Scripture: and therefore it is exceeding needful to understand
how far it is intended to be herein our law and rule, and how far not:
to handle this fully would be a digression, but I shall briefly answer
it.
1. No doubt but Christ is the only universal Head and Lawgiver to his
church.[26] And that legislation is the first and principal part of
government: and therefore if he had made no laws for his church, he
were not the full governor of it. And therefore he that arrogateth
this power to himself to be lawgiver to the church universal (as such)
doth usurp the kingly office of Christ, and committeth treason against
his government; (unless he can prove that Christ hath delegated to him
this chief part of his government, which none can do;) there being no
universal lawgiver to the church but Christ, (whether pope or
council,) no law that is made by any mere man can be universally
obligatory. Therefore seeing the making of all universal laws doth
belong only to Christ, we may be sure that he hath perfectly done it;
and hath left nothing out of his laws that was fit to be there, nor
nothing at liberty that was fit to be determined and commanded.
Therefore whatsoever is of equal use or consideration to the universal
church, as it is to any one part of it, and to all times as it is to
any time of the church, should not be made a law by man to any part of
the church, if Christ have not made it a law to the whole: because
else they accuse him of being defective in his laws, and because all
his subjects are equally dependent on him as their King and Judge. And
no man must step into his throne pretending to amend his work which he
hath done amiss, or to make up any wants which the chief Lawgiver
should have made up.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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