A90287:105
A review of the true nature of schism, with a vindication of the Congregational…A review of the true nature of schisme, with a vindication of the Congregationall…
A review of the true nature of schism, with a vindication of the Congregational churches in England, from the imputation thereof unjustly charged on them by Mr D. Cawdrey, preacher of the Word at Billing in Northampton-shire. / By John Owen D.D.A review of the true nature of schisme, with a vindication of the Congregationall churches in England, from the imputation thereof unjustly charged on them by Mr D. Cawdrey, preacher of the Word at Billing in Northampton-shire. / By John Owen D.D.
Oxford: printed by Henry Hall printer to the University for Thomas Robinson, 1657
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.
when then any man shall refuse to join with others, or refuse others to join with him, here is a breach of love and union among the members of the Catholic Church; and in the Particular Churches as parts of the Catholic.
when then any man shall refuse to joine with others, or refuse others to joine with him, here is a breach of love and union among the members of the Catholick Church; and in the Particular Churches as parts of the Catholick.
The Reader must pardon me for producing and insisting on these things, seeing I do it with this profession, that I can fix on nothing else so much to the purpose in hand: and yet how little these are so, cannot but be evident upon a sleight view to the meanest capacities. For 1. he tells us there may be a breach of union with respect to the Catholic church, on other considerations: ⟨p. 113⟩not that there may be a breach of the union of the Catholic Church. 2. That there is a bond binding men to the exercise of Ordinances; so there is binding man to all holiness; and yet he denies the vilest profane persons to break that bond or this union. 3. That there may be a breach of union among the members of the Church: but who knows it not, that knows all members of Particular Churches, are also members of this church general. Our enquiry is after the union of the Catholic-Church visible, what it is, how broken, and what the crime or evil is, whereby it is broken, what obligations lie on the members of that Church, as they stand under any other formal consideration; what is the evil they are any of them guilty of, in not answering these obligations, we were not at all enquiring, nor doth it in this place concern us so to do. And in what he afterwards tells us of some proceedings contrary to the practise of the universal Church she intends I suppose all the Churches in the world wherein the members of the universal Church ⟨p. 114⟩have walked or do so; for the universal Church as such, hath no practice as to celebration of ordinances; & if he suppose it hath, let him tell us what it is, and when that practice was. His appeal to the primitive believers, and their small number will not avail him: for although they should be granted to be the then Catholic visible Church (against which he knows what exceptions may be laid from the believers amongst the Jews, such as Cornelius, to whom Christ had not as yet been preached, as the Messiah come, and exhibited) yet as such, they joined not in the celebration of ordinances, but (as yet they were) as a particular congregation; yea though all the Apostles were amongst them, the foundation of all the Churches that afterwards were called.