A53704:292
An enquiry into the original, nature, institution, power, order and communion of evangelical churches.…
An enquiry into the original, nature, institution, power, order and communion of evangelical churches. The first part with an answer to the discourse of the unreasonableness of separation written by Dr. Edward Stillingfleet, Dean of Pauls, and in defence of the vindication of non-conformists from the guilt of schism / by John Owen.An enquiry into the original, nature, institution, power, order and communion of evangelical churches. The first part with an answer to the discourse of the unreasonableness of separation written by Dr. Edward Stillingfleet, Dean of Pauls, and in defence of the vindication of non-conformists from the guilt of schisme / by John Owen.
London: printed by J. Richardson for Nath. Ponder, 1681
Title page typeset from the transcription.
Chapter 4: The Especial Nature of the Gospel Church-State appointed by Christ.
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.
These things in the Notion and Practice of them, are plain, easy, and exposed to the Understanding of the meanest of the Disciples of Christ; as it is meet, that all things should be, wherein their daily Practice is concerned. But it is not easily to be expressed, into what horrible Perplexities and Confusions they have been wrested in the Church of Rome, nor how those who depart from the plain obvious sense of the words, and love not the Practice they direct unto, do lead themselves and others into ways and paths that have neither use, nor end. From the corrupt abuse of the holy Institution of our Lord Jesus Christ here intended, so many Powers, Faculties, Courts, Jurisdictions, legal Processes, with Litigious, Vexatious, oppressive Courses of Actions and Trials, whose very names are uncouth, horrid, foreign unto Religion, and unintelligible without Cunning in an artificial ⟨p. 78⟩barbarous Science of the Canon Law, have proceeded, as are enough to fill a sober rational man with astonishment, how it could ever enter into the minds of men to suppose, that they can possibly have any Relation unto this Divine Institution. Those who are not utterly blinded with Interest and Prejudice, wholly ignorant of the Gospel, and the mind of Christ therein, as also Strangers from the Practice of the Duties which it requires, will hardly believe, that in this Context our Lord Jesus Christ designed to set up, and erect an Earthly Domination in, and over his Churches, to be administered by the Rules of the Canon Law, and the Rota at Rome. They must be spiritually mad and ridiculous, who can give the least entertainment unto such an Imagination.
These things in the Notion and Practice of them, are plain, easy, and exposed to the Understanding of the meanest of the Disciples of Christ; as it is meet, that all things should be, wherein their daily Practice is concerned. But it is not easily to be expressed, into what horrible Perplexities and Confusions they have been wrested in the Church of Rome, nor how those who depart from the plain obvious sense of the words, and love not the Practice they direct unto, do lead themselves and others into ways and paths that have neither use, nor end. From the corrupt abuse of the holy Institution of our Lord Jesus Christ here intended, so many Powers, Faculties, Courts, Jurisdictions, legal Processes, with Litigious, Vexatious, oppressive Courses of Actions and Trials, whose very names are uncouth, horrid, foreign unto Religion, and unintelligible without Cunning in an art•ficial