A53701:50
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.
2. SUCH as being in the fellowship of the Church, are to be admonished of any scandalous Sin, which if they repent not of,1 they are to be cast out of the Church, are not mere Members for the Original Constitution of a Church. This is the state of them who abide Obstinate in any known Sin, 2whereby they have given Offence unto others, without a professed Repentance thereof, although they have not lived in it habitually.
2. SUCH as being in the fellowship of the Church, are to be admonished of any scandalous Sin, which if they repent not of,1 they are to be cast out of the Church, are not meer Members for the Original Constitution of a Church. This is the state of them who abide Obstinate in any known Sin, 2whereby they have given Offence unto others, without a professed Repentance thereof, although they have not lived in it habitually.
3. THEY are to be such as visibly answer the Description given of Gospel Churches in the Scripture, so as the Titles assigned therein unto the Members of such Churches, may on good grounds be appropriated unto them. To comp••• Churches of such Persons as do not visibly answer the character given of what they were of old, and what they were always to be by virtue of the Law of Christ o Gospel-constitution, is not Church Edification, but Destruction. And those who look on the things spoken of all Church Members of old, as that they were Saints by calling, lively stones in the house of God, justified and sanctified, separate from the World, &c. as those which were in them, and did indeed belong unto them, but even deride the necessity of the same things in present Church Members, or the Application of them unto those who are so are themselves no small part of that woeful Degeneracy which Christian Religion is fallen under. Let it then be considered what is spoken of the Church of the Jews in their Dedication unto God, as unto their Typical Holiness, with the Application of it unto Christian Churches in real Holiness,