A brief instruction in the worship of God, and discipline of the churches of…

Explication.

The Church, whose nature is here inquired after, is not the Catholic ⟨p. 90⟩Church of elect Believers of all ages and seasons from the beginning of the World unto the end thereof, nor of any one age, nor the universality of professors of the Gospel; but a particular Church wherein by the appointment of Christ, all the Ordinances of the Worship of God are to be observed and attended unto according to his Will. For although it be required of them, of whom a particular Church is constituted, that they be true Believers, seeing that unless a man be born again, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God, and so on that account they be members of the Church Catholic; as also that they make visible profession of faith and obedience unto Jesus Christ, yet moreover it is the will, command and appointment of Christ, that they should be joined together in particular societies, or Churches, for the due observation of the Ordinances of the Gospel, which can alone be done in such Assemblies. For as the members of the Catholic Church, are not known unto one another merely on the account of that faith and union with Christ which makes them so, ⟨p. 91⟩whence the whole society of them is, as such, invisible to the World and themselves, visible only on the account of their profession, and therefore cannot merely as such, observe the Ordinances of the Gospel, which observation is their profession; so the visible Professors that are in the World in any age, cannot at any time assemble together, which from the nature of the thing it self, and the institution of Christ, is indispensably necessary for the celebration of sundry parts of that worship which he requires in his Church; and therefore particular Churches are themselves an Ordinance of the New Testament, as the National Church of the Jews, was of old. For when God of old erected his Worship, and enjoined the solemn observation of it, he also appointed a Church as his institution for the due celebration of it. That was, the people of Israel solemnly taken into a Church relation with him by covenant, wherein they took upon themselves to observe all the laws, and ordinances, and institutions of his worship,