If the Church chose unluckily, the
injury has been to itself alone.
It seems strange that such men as Baxter should not see that the use of
the ring, the surplice and the like, are indifferent according to his
own confession, yea, mere trifles, in comparison with the peace of the
Church; but that it is no trifle, that men should refuse obedience to
lawful authority in matters indifferent, and prefer the sin of schism to
offending their taste and fancy. The Church did not, upon the whole,
contend for a trifle, nor for an indifferent matter, but for a principle
on which all order in society must depend. Still this is true only,
provided the Church enacts no ordinances that are not necessary or at
least plainly conducive to order or (generally) to the ends for which it
is a Church. Besides, the point which the King had required them to
consider was not what ordinances it was right to obey, but what it was
expedient to enact or not to enact.
Ib. p. 269.
That the Pastors of the respective parishes may be allowed not only
publicly to preach, but personally to catechize or otherwise instruct
the several families, admitting none to the Lord's Table that have not
personally owned their Baptismal covenant by a credible profession of
faith and obedience; and to admonish and exhort the scandalous, in
order to their repentance: to hear the witnesses and the accused
party, and to appoint fit times and places for these things, and to
deny such persons the communion of the Church in the holy Eucharist,
that remain impenitent, or that wilfully refuse to come to their
Pastors to be instructed, or to answer such probable accusations; and
to continue such exclusion of them till they have made a credible
profession of repentance, and then to receive them again to the
communion of the Church;--provided there be place for due appeals to
superior power.
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