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.

PAGE

175

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?

PAGE

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-

PAGE

292

295

296

300

302

304

306.

309

ibid.

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? .

PAGE

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

ibid.

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