A53704:302
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 5: The Sate of the First Churches after the Apostles to the end of the Second Century.
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.
IN Confirmation of the foregoing Argument, we urge the President and Example of the Primitive Churches, that succeeded unto those which were planted by the Apostles themselves, and so may well be judged to have walked in the same way and Order with them. And that which we allege is, That in no approved Writers for the space of 200 years after Christ there is any mention made of any other Organical, visibly professing Church, but that only which is Parochial, or Congregational.
IN Confirmation of the foregoing Argument, we urge the President and Example of the Primitive Churches, that succeeded unto those which were planted by the Apostles themselves, and so may well be judged to have walked in the same way and Order with them. And that which we alledge is, That in no approved Writers for the space of 200 years after Christ there is any mention made of any other Organical, visibly professing Church, but that only which is Parochial, or Congregational.
A Church of any other Form, State, or Order, Papal or Ecumenical, Patriarchal, Metropolitical, Diocesan or Classical, they know not Neither Name nor thing, nor any of them appear in any of their Writings.
A Church of any other Form, State, or Order, Papal or Oecumenical, Patriarchal, Metropolitical, Diocesan or Classical, they know not Neither Name nor thing, nor any of them appear in any of their Writings.
Before I proceed unto the Confirmation of this Assertion by particular Testimonies, I shall premise some things which are needful unto the right understanding of what it is that I intend to prove by them. As