Reformed Covenanter
Cancelled Commissioner
... For the people were bound to believe Christ to be the true Messias; although the High Priest and Elders had condemned him for a deceiver and malefactor. But besides this particular case, there may be several others wherein men may lawfully reject the Authority of the present Church; and those are, when that Authority shall go about to overthrow those things which must be supposed antecedent to the belief of any such Authority: as, 1. The common sense of mankind. 2. The force of a divine Law. 3. The liberty of judgment concerning truth and falsehood. All these must necessarily be supposed before any Authority of a Church; but if any Church goes about to overthrow these, it thereby forfeits its own Authority over men.
1. If it requires things contrary to common sense; as in that instance wherein some of the Jewish Rabbis required submission to their Authority, viz. in believing the right hand to be the left, or the left to be the right, if they determined so; or supposing the Jews to have required the people to deny that they ever saw any Miracle wrought by Christ; or in the Miracle of the Loaves, that what they saw and handled, and tasted, to be bread was true bread; or to say, that the same individual body might be in a thousand places at once, or that things whose nature it is to be in another, can subsist without their proper subject; what Church soever requires such things as these from its members to be believed, gives them just reason to reject its Authority. ...
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reformedcovenanter.wordpress.com
1. If it requires things contrary to common sense; as in that instance wherein some of the Jewish Rabbis required submission to their Authority, viz. in believing the right hand to be the left, or the left to be the right, if they determined so; or supposing the Jews to have required the people to deny that they ever saw any Miracle wrought by Christ; or in the Miracle of the Loaves, that what they saw and handled, and tasted, to be bread was true bread; or to say, that the same individual body might be in a thousand places at once, or that things whose nature it is to be in another, can subsist without their proper subject; what Church soever requires such things as these from its members to be believed, gives them just reason to reject its Authority. ...
For more, see:
Edward Stillingfleet on the apostles and the authority of the Jewish church
It was agreed on both sides, that the Law was from God, and that the Prophets spake by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost; all that was now left was only to find out the true meaning of them, and to…
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