Of pilgrimages, saints, relics, and shrines, temples, of their miracles, of praying to angels, to saints, for the dead, purgatory, of the pope's pardons, indulgences, dispensations; of the power of true pastors to forgive sins, with a multitude of such cases, which are commonly handled in our controversial writers against the papists, I must thither refer the reader for a solution, because the handling of all such particular cases would swell my book to a magnitude beyond my intention, and make this part unsuitable to the rest.
[345] 2 Chron. xx. 3; Ezra viii. 21; Jonah iii. 5; Zech. viii. 19; Joel ii. 15. Read Dallæus's "Treatise de Jejuniis."
[346] Isa. lviii. 3, 5-8.
Quest. CII. May we continue in a church, where some one ordinance of Christ is wanting, as discipline, prayer, preaching, or sacraments, though we have all the rest?
Answ. Distinguish, 1. Of ordinances. 2. Of a stated want, and a temporary want. 3. Of one that may have better, and one that cannot.
1. Teaching, prayer, and praise, are ordinances of such necessity that church assemblies have not their proper use without them.
2. The Lord's supper is of a secondary need, and must be used when it may, but a church assembly may attain its ends sometimes without it, in a good degree.
3. Discipline is implicitly exercised when none but the baptized are communicants, and when professed christians voluntarily assemble, and the preaching of the word doth distinguish the precious from the vile; much more when notorious, scandalous sinners are by the laws kept from the sacrament (as our rubric and canons do require).
4. But for the fuller, explicit, and exacter exercise of discipline, it is very desirable for the well-being of the churches; but it is but a stronger fence or hedge, and preservative of sacred order; and both the being of a church, and the profitable use of holy assemblies, may subsist without it; as in Helvetia and other countries it is found.
I conclude then, 1. That he that, consideratis considerandis, is a free man, should choose that place where he hath the fullest opportunities of worshipping God, and edifying his soul.