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…

But I pass from this, and come to a second Observation, which Calvin on the place takes notice of. He calls it a Church (saith he) though it were so greatly polluted; though both for Doctrine and practice, there were such great disorders, yet for all that he doth not unchurch it, he owneth them still for the people of God, though they were greatly to be reformed, as to the Church administrations; neither are his exhortations to the godly to separate and leave the Church-communions, though thus defiled; he giveth no command to such a thing, but rather exhorts them all in their places to amend and reform, To purge out the old leaven that was amongst them. Therefore to forsake polluted Assemblies, and leave them hopeless, seemeth to be a great neglect of our duty; we are rather to stay, that by our abode and presence, we may rectify things that are crooked. The Doctrine is,

But I pass from this, and come to a second Observation, which Calvin on the place takes notice of. He calls it a Church (saith he) though it were so greatly polluted; though both for Doctrine and practice, there were such great disorders, yet for all that he doth not unchurch it, he owneth them still for the people of God, though they were greatly to be reformed, as to the Church administrations; neither are his exhortations to the godly to separate and leave the Church-communions, though thus defiled; he giveth no command to such a thing, but rather exhorts them all in their places to amend and reform, To purge out the old leaven that was amongst them. Therefore to forsake polluted Assemblies, and leave them hopeless, seemeth to be a great neglect of our duty; we are rather to stay, that by our abode and presence, we may rectifie things that are crooked. The Doctrine is,

That a Church may be a true Church of God, although it be defiled with ¹many corruptions several ways.

That a Church may be a true Church of God, although it be defiled with ¹