12. Argument 11. That which contains a virtual renunciation of our church-state is not allowed.
Argument 11. That which contains a virtual renunciation of our church-state is not allowed.
A rgument 11 Owen:
Argument 11: That which contains a virtual renunciation of our churchstate, and of the lawfulness of our ministry and ordinances therein, is not to be admitted or allowed.
But this also is done in the practice inquired into: for it is a professed conjunction with them in Church-communion and worship by whom our church-state and ordinances are condemned as null: And this judgment they make of what we do, affirming that we are gross dissemblers, if after such a conjunction with them, we return anymore unto our own assemblies. In this condemnation we do outwardly and visibly join.
Baxter:
§27. If your church-state be essentiated [defined as essential] by a covenant, to be subject to nothing else in worship (even the accidents which God bids men determine by his general rules of edification, order, decency, love, peace, church-custom, etc.), then I commend the generality of
nonconforming ministers that they set up no such church-state: And they do well to renounce all that you do ill to invent and impose while you talk against imposition and adding to God's Word such human forms.
But yet it's an error to hold that if any unjustly condemn other churches, it is a renunciation of that condemned church-state to have communion with them that condemn. Who would have thought the two separating extremes had so agreed in their principles? This is just the very core of the evil of the book of the contrary party which I here answer. Alas! how few Churches on earth have not peevishly condemned one another: it may be for Easter-day, for the choice of a bishop, as the Donatists (striving whose bishop was the right one): The case of the [early Church groups, the] Novatians, Audians,
Luciferians and even of most in East and West are sad instances: And will such censoriousness unChurch them and forbid us communion with them?
This is plain revenge and to curse them that curse us and abuse them that abuse us. I like Calvin's spirit better than this, who said, "Though Luther should call me a devil, I would call him the excellent servant of God." 1 Too many Lutherans now renounce communion with the Calvinists, who yet renounce not communion with them. 2
1. John Calvin, Letters of John Calvin, ed. Jules Bonnet (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1900), letter 122, to Bullinger (1544), https://archive.org/details/letters01calv/page/433/mode/2up?view=theater .
2. At 'On Lutheranism' (RBO) see https://reformedbooksonline.com/on-lutheranism/#worship , https://reformedbooksonline.com/on-lutheranism/#marriages , https://reformedbooksonline.com/onlutheranism/#supper and https://reformedbooksonline.com/on-lutheranism/#maybeadmitted .