A53704:455
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 9: The Continuation of a Church-state, and of the Administration of Evangelical Ordinances…
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.
First therefore I shall argue from the removal of all causes, whereon such a Cessation of Churches and Ordinances is pretended. For it is granted on all hands, that they had a Divine Original and Institution, and were observed by all the Disciples of Christ, as things by him ⟨p. 160⟩commanded. If now therefore they cease as unto their force, efficacy and use, it must be on some of these Reasons.
1. Because a limited Time and Season was fixed unto them, which is now expired. So was it with the Church-state and Ordinances of old; they were appointed unto the time of Reformation, Heb. 9.10. They had a certain time prefixed unto their Duration, according to the degrees of whose approach they waxed old, and at length utterly disappeared, chap. 8.13. until that time they were all punctually to be observed, Mal. 4.4. But there were many antecedent Indications of the Will of God concerning their cessation and abolition, whereof the Apostle disputes at large in his Epistle unto the Hebrews. And from a pretended supposition, that such was the state of Evangelical Ordinances, namely, that they had a time prefixed unto their Duration, did the first opposition against them arise. For Montanus, with his Followers, imagined that the appointments of Christ and his Apostles in the Gospel, were to continue in force only unto the coming of the Paraclete, or the Comforter, promised by him. And adding a new Frenzy hereunto, that that Paraclete was then first come in Montanus, they rejected the Institutions of the Gospel, and made new Laws and Rules for themselves. And this continues to be the principal pretence of them by whom the use of Gospel-Ordinances is at present rejected, as that which is of no force or efficacy. Either they have received, or do speedily look for such a Dispensation of the Spirit, or his Gifts, as wherein they are to cease and disappear. But nothing can be more vain than this Pretence.