A53704:852
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.
If he say, or intend▪ that there are many things in their Parochial Churches, observed, practised and imposed on all their members, in and about the Worship of God, which are not of divine institution, we grant it to be our judgment, and part of our plea in this case. But this is not at all spoken unto.
Wherefore the greatest part of the ensuing discourse on this Head, is spent in perpetual diversions from the state of the case under consideration, with an attempt to take advantage for some reflections, or an appearance of success, from some passages and expressions, belonging nothing at all unto the merit of the cause; a course which I thought so Learned a Person would not have taken, in a case wherein Conscience is so nearly concerned.
Some mistakes occurring in it, have been already rectified; as that wherein he supposeth that my Judgement is for the Democratical Government of the Church; as also what he allegeth in the denial of the gradual declension of the Primitive Churches, from their first original Institution hath been examined.
Some mistakes occurring in it, have been already rectified; as that wherein he supposeth that my Judgement is for the Democratical Government of the Church; as also what he alledgeth in the denyal of the gradual declension of the Primitive Churches, from their first original Institution hath been examined.