A treatise of the nature of a minister in all its offices to which is annexed an answer to Doctor Forbes concerning the necessity of bishops to ordain, which is an answer to a question, proposed in these late unhappy times, to the author, What is a minister?

CHAP. XIII. What the Character left in Baptism is; and this Character defined.

THe Character or Relict of Baptism, by which a Christian is constituted a member of the Catholick Church, is a spiritual power, by which the baptized man is interessed with right, both to receive and do what belongs to a member of Christs Church.

First, It is a power: Powers are either active, or passive; active, to do, as fire to burn; passive, to suffer, or receive, as wood hath a passive power to receive the ignifying nature of fire, which gold hath not. This relict of Baptism doth both these, both enable a man to demand and receive Confirmation; to joyn with the Christian Congregation in devo••ions and prayers; to demand and receive absolution, the Communion, with all other things which a Christian man doth in his severall duties and occasions. But we must here distinguish betwixt natural powers, and moral; the first are faculties in man, by which he is enabled by that internall principle, to act what the power directs him to, and no man obtains any such, but by a reall change and alteration in himself to some absolute quality, as a power to walk, to speak, or the like, that he had not before. But in moral powers, as the right to an Estate or to an Office, these may come to a man without any such alteration: As the father dyes, the son is immediately invested with the power of his fathers Estate, and yet the son is the same in all absolute things, hath no such change in himself. Again, a man is chose a Generall, a King, he h••••h in himself no such change, no such alteration, but is the same he was before in all absolute things. In moral powers we are not to expect an alteration in the party who receives them, to any ab∣solute reality: so that although in a baptized person, who re∣ceives

these mighty powers, we can discover no alteration, yet these powers are in him, by the force of this moral form, which enables him to act or receive such or such things.

Next let us consider that it is a spiritual power: that Attribute is given it in regard of its object, and end, because the power aims at spirituall blessings, and is conversant about spirituall means, to obtain this end: for as it is called morall, because it considers not naturall actions, but such as concern a mans man∣ners, his doing well or ill in relation to God, and that Christi∣an Community in which he lives; so it is spirituall, in respect of the spirituall conversation it hath with God, and those men of whose society it is.

And now we seeing the genus in this definition, let us exa∣mine the difference, a power by which he is interessed with right: here is apparent that which was implyed before, that it is not a naturall but a morall power: naturall powers enable a man to do, as the power to move, to speak; but the morall power gives him not ability, but authority and right to move or speak thus; or now he hath interest and right to do it, to receive and do (this power is both active and passive, as before) what be∣longs to a member of Christs Church. This gives him interest in no civill right, nor Office in the Church, but only a right as a member, that is, such a right as by Christs Laws appertain to him: If a sinner, in such a degree, he is shut out of the Commu∣nion; if a penitent, he may require absolution, and by his being baptized, he is made capable of these, which otherwise before, and without Baptism, he was not.