A53704:876
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.) There is great Ambiguity in the latter clause; of separating from them, because they have things repugnant unto the first institution of Churches. For it is one thing, to separate from a Church because it is not of divine institution, that is, not of that kind of Churches which are divinely instituted, and another to do so, because of things practised and imposed in it contrary to divine institution, which is the case in hand.
4. But he after saith, Is not this the primary Reason of separation, because Christ hath appointed unalterable Rules for the Government of his Church, which are not to be observed in Parochial Churches?
I answer no; it is not so, for there may be an omission, at least for a season, in some Churches of some Rules that Christ hath appointed in the Government of his Church, (and we judge his Rules as unto Right unalterable) which may not be a just cause of separation. So the Church of the Jews continued a long time in the omission of the Observance of the feast of Tabernacles. But the principal Reason of the Separation we defend, is the practising and imposing of sundry things in the Worship of the Church, not of divine institution, yea in our judgment contrary thereunto, and the framing of a rule of Government of mens devising, to ⟨p. 342⟩be laid on all the Members of them, This is the primary Cause pleaded herein.