A Christian Directory, Part 4: Christian PoliticsBaxter, Richard
Religion
A Christian Directory, Part 4: Christian Politics
Baxter, Richard
Casuistry; Christian sociology
_Direct._ XXXIV. Some inconveniences must be expected and
tolerated, and no perfect order or concord expected here on earth. It
is not good reasoning to say, If we suffer these men, they will cause
this or that disorder or inconvenience: but you must also consider
whither you must drive it, if you suffer them not; and what will be
the consequents. He that will follow his conscience to a prison, will
likely follow it to death. And if nothing but death, or prison, or
banishment can restrain them from what they take to be their duty, it
must be considered how many must be so used; and whether (if they were
truly faulty) they deserve so much: and if they do, yet whether the
evils of the toleration or of the punishment are like to be the
greater. Peace and concord will never be perfect, till knowledge and
holiness be perfect.
_Direct._ XXXV. You may go farther in restraining than in
constraining; in forbidding men to preach against approved doctrines
or practices of the church, than in forcing them to preach for them,
or to subscribe or speak their approbation or assent: if they be not
points or practices of great necessity, a man may be fit for the
ministry and church communion, who meddleth not with them, but
preacheth the wholesome truths of the gospel, and lets them alone.
And, because no duty is at all times a duty, a sober man's judgment
will allow him to be silent at many an error, when he dare not
subscribe to or approve the least. But if here any proud and cruel
pastors shall come in with their lesser, selfish incommodities,
and say, if they do not approve of what we say and do, they will
secretly foment a faction against us; I should answer them, that as
good men will foment no faction, so if such proud, impatient,
turbulent men, will endure none that subscribe not to all their
opinions, or differ from them in a circumstance or a ceremony, they
shall raise a greater faction (if they will call it so) against
themselves, and make the people look on them as tyrants and not as
pastors; and they shall see in the end, when they have bought their
wit by dear experience, that they have but torn the church in pieces,
by preventing divisions by carnal means, and that they have lost
themselves, by being over-zealous for themselves; and that doctrine
and love are the instruments of a wise shepherd, that loveth the
flock, and understands his work.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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