Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Surely, if it belong to princes to do fine and ordain what order and policy should be observed in the church, what forms and fashions should be used, for the orderly and right managing of the exercises of God’s worship, how scandals and misorders are to be shunned, how the church may be most edified, and the spiritual good of the saints best helped and advanced, by wholesome and profitable laws, concerning things which pertain to religion, then must princes take also upon them a great part of that charge of pastors, to watch for the souls of men, and must liberate them from being liable to a reckoning for the same.
In the main and substantial respects, the convocations of councils pertaineth to the ministers of the church, that is, as councils are ecclesiastical meetings, for putting order to ecclesiastical matters, they ought to be assembled by the spiritual power of the ministers, whose part it is to espy and note all the misorders and abuses in the church, which must be righted; but because councils are such meetings as must have a certain place designed for them in the dominions and territories of princes, needing further, for their safe assembling, a certification of their princely protection; and, finally, it being expedient for the better success of councils, that Christian princes be present therein, either personal or by their commissioners, that they may understand the councils, conclusions, and decrees, and assenting unto the same, ratify and establish them by their regal and royal authority, because of these circumstances it is, that the consent and authority of Christian princes is, and ought to be, sought and expected for the assembling of synods.
For this belongeth to common law and equity, that unto extraordinary evils, extraordinary remedies must also be applied.” We acknowledge that it belongeth to princes “to reform things in the church, as often as the ecclesiastical persons shall, either through ignorance, disorder of the affection of covetousness, or ambition, defile the Lord’s sanctuary.” At such extraordinary times, princes, by their coactive temporal power, ought to procure and cause a reformation of abuses, and the avoiding of misorders in the church, though with the discontent of the clergy, for which end and purpose they may not only enjoin and command the profession of that faith, and the practice of that religion which God’s word appointeth, but also prescribe such an order and policy in the circumstances of divine worship as they in their judgment of Christian discretion, observing and following the rules of the word, shall judge and try to be convenient for the present time and case, and all this under the commination of such temporal losses, pains, or punishments as they shall deprehend to be reasonable.
Do they not put this clause in the very definition of ecclesiastical rites, that they be profitably ordained; considering, that otherwise they are but intolerable misorders and abuses?
But it may be you wil thinke me herein either to much opinionated of the voiage, or conceited of the Commanders, that labouring thus earnestly to aduance the opinion of them both, haue not so much as touched any part of the misorders, weaknes and wants that haue bene amongst vs, whereof they that returned did plentifully report.
Word Of The Day