A53704:728
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.
(1.) Where it is not, there is no Evangelical Communion at all. whatever Acts of Worship or Church Order men may agree in the Practise of, if the Foundation of that Agreement be not laid in a joint Communion in Faith and Love, they are neither accepted with God, nor profitable unto the Souls of men. For
(2.) These are the things, namely, Faith and Love, which enliven all joint Duties of Church Order and Worship, are the Life and Soul of it; and how they should be only improperly that, which they alone make other things to be properly, I cannot understand.
(3.) Where there is no defect in these things, namely, in Faith and Love, the Charge of Schism on dissenting in things of lesser Moment, is altogether unreasonable. It is to be desired, that an overweening of our Differences, make us not overlook the things wherein we are agreed. This is one of the greatest Evils that attend this Controversy. Men are forced by their Interest, to lay more weight on a few outward Rites and Ceremonies, which the World and the Church might well have spared, had they not come into the Minds of some Men, none know how, than upon the most important Graces and Duties of the Gospel. Hence Communion in Faith and Love, is scarce esteemed worth taking up in the streets, in comparison of Uniformity in Rites and Ceremonies. Let Men be as void of, and remote from true Gospel Faith and Love as is imaginable; yet if they comply quietly with, and have a little Zeal for those outward things, they are to be approved of, as very orderly Members of the Church. And whatever Evidences on the other hand, any can or do give of their Communion in Faith and Love, with all that are of that Communion, yet if they cannot in Conscience comply in the Observance of those outward things mentioned, they are to be judged Schismatics, and Breakers of the Churches Unity; whereas no part of the Churches Unity doth or ever did consist in them.