A53704:446
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.
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. 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 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.
3. Such a Church-state was constituted and appointed under the Old Testament, founded in and on an especial Covenant between God and the People, Exod. 24. Unto this Church every one that would please God, and walk before him, was bound to join himself, by the ways and means that he had appointed for that end; namely, by Circumcision, and their laying hold on the Covenant of God, Exod. 12.48. Isa. 56.4. And this joining unto the Church, is called joining unto the Lord, Isa. 56.6. Jerem. 50.5. as being the means thereof; without which it could not be done. Herein was the Tabernacle of God with men, and he dwelt among them.
3. Such a Church-state was constituted and appointed under the Old Testament, founded in and on an especial Covenant between God and the People, Exod. 24. Unto this Church every one that would please God, and walk before him, was bound to joyn himself, by the ways and means that he had appointed for that end; namely, by Circumcision, and their laying hold on the Covenant of God,