A53701:42
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.
Our first Enquiry being concerning what sort of Persons our Lord Jesus Christ requireth and admitteth to be the visible Subjects of his Kingdom, we are to be regulated in our Determination by respect unto his Honour, Glory, and the Holiness ⟨p. 22⟩of his Rule. To reckon such persons to be Subject• of Christ, Members of his Body, such as he requires and owns, (for others are not so) who would not be tolerated, at least not approved, in a well governed Kingdom or Commonwealth of the World,1 is highly dishonourable unto him. But it is so come to pass, that let Men be never so notoriously and fl•gitiously wicked, until they become p•sts of the earth, yet are they esteemed to belong to the Church of Christ. And not only so, but it is thought little less than Schism to forbid them the Communion of the Church in all its sacred Privileges. Howbeit, the Scripture doth in general represent the Kingdom or Church of Christ, to consist of persons called Saints, separated from the World, with man• other things of alike nature, as we shall see immediately. And if the Honour of Christ were of such weight with us as it ought to be, if we understood aright the nature and ends of his Kingdom, and that the peculiar Glory of it, above all the Kingdoms in the World, consists in the Holiness of its Subject•, such an Holiness as the world in its wisdom ⟨p. 23⟩knoweth not, we would duly consider whom we avow to belong thereunto. Those who know ought of these things, will not profess that persons openly profane, vicious, sensual, wicked and ignorant, are approved and owned of Christ as the Subjects of his Kingdom,2 or that it is his will that we should receive them into the Communion of the Church But an old opinion of the unlawfulness of separation from a Church, on the account of the mixture of wicked men in it, is made a scare-crow to frighten men from attempting the Reformation of the greatest Evils, and a covert for the composing Churches of such members only.