A53701:31
A guide to church-fellowship and order according to the gospel-institution
A guide to church-fellowship and order according to the gospel-institution wherein these following particulars are distinctly handled, I. The necessity of believers to join themselves in church-order, II. The subject matter of the church, III. The continuation of a church-state, and of the administration of evangelical ordinances of worship, briefly vindicated, IV. What sort of churches the disciples of Christ may and ought to join themselves unto as unto entire communion / by ... John Owen ...A guide to church-fellowship and order according to the gospel-institution wherein these following particulars are distinctly handled, I. The necessity of believers to joyn themselves in church-order, II. The subject matter of the church, III. The continuation of a church-state, and of the administration of evangelical ordinances of worship, briefly vindicated, IV. What sort of churches the disciples of Christ may and ought to joyn themselves unto as unto entire communion / by ... John Owen ...
London: printed for William Marshall, 1692
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
1. THE foundation of this duty, as was before declared▪ doth lye in the law and light of Nature. Man cannot exercise the principal powers and faculties of his Soul, with which he was created, and whereby he is enabled to glorify God, which is the end of him and them, without a consent and conjunction in the Worship of God in Communion and Society, as hath been proved before.
1. THE foundation of this duty, as was before declared▪ doth lye in the law and light of Nature. Man cannot exercise the principal powers and faculties of his Soul, with which he was created, and whereby he is enabled to glorifie God, which is the end of him and them, without a consent and conjunction in the Worship of God in Communion and Society, as hath been proved before.
2. The way whereby this is to be done, God hath declared and revealed from the beginning, by the Constitution of a Church-state, through the addition of Arbitrary Institutions of worship, unto what was required by the Law of Nature. For this gives the true state, and is the formal reason of a Church, namely, a divine Addition of Arbitrary Institutions of worship, unto the necessary Dictates of ⟨p. 17⟩the Law of Nature, unto that end. And the especial nature of any Church-state, doth depend on the especial nature of those Institutions, which is constitutive of the difference between the Church-state of the Old Testament and that of the New.
2. The way whereby this is to be done, God hath declared and revealed from the beginning, by the Constitution of a Church-state, through the addition of Arbitrary Institutions of worship, unto what was r•quired by the Law of Nature. For this gives the true state, and is the formal reason of a Church, namely, a divine Addition of Arbitrary Institutions of worship, unto the necessary Dictates of