An expository comment, doctrinal, controversial, and practical upon the whole first chapter to the…An expository comment, doctrinal, controversal, and practical upon the whole first chapter to the…

we attend not to our Church-duties, to our Church-communion, what God doth require of us, as a Society, as a spiritual Company; there would not be that neglecting of the Assemblies, those wicked and ungodly meetings, to be drunk, to be carnally merry and jolly, which are directly contrary to Church-meetings. Nothing doth so resemble Heaven, as the Church Assemblies spiritually performed; and to such meetings God hath promised his more peculiar presence and assistance. But of this more in its time.

In the next place, there is added in the Doctrinal Description, That it is a Company of persons called of God by the preaching of the Word: Wherein are considerable, ⟨p. 53⟩the Efficient Cause, and the Instrumental. The Efficient is God, Called by God. And first, In that they are said to be called by God. This implieth these things:

1. That it's the mere goodness and grace of God that makes a people to be a Church. Therefore they are thus named Ecclesia. The Grecians called their Assemblies so, because of some humane Authority gathering them together; but the people of God are called a Church, because God calls them. So that as there is a difference between a garden and a wilderness; the one is naturally so, but the other is planted by art and industry; nature doth not of it self, especially since mans fall, bring forth gardens and choice flowers, but there is great art and culture required thereunto. Thus it is with the Church, men are made the Church by Gods grace, but they are the world of themselves. The world and the Church are two opposites, God makes the one, and is present in a special manner there, but sin and Satan make and rule in the other. When the Psalmist said, It is he that hath made us, not we our selves, we are the sheep of his pasture. Calvin understands it of their Church making; it was the goodness and power of God that made them so. Hence it is, that it is often compared to, and called the Kingdom of Heaven, because it's original is from Heaven, and their Laws and Ordinances are heavenly. Thus you see, to be made a Church is not by our humane will and power, as men make themselves Cities and Corporations, but by a special grace of God.