The commonweal more charged by these authors with the worship and ordinances, than the church.
Now if godliness be the worshipping and walking with God in Christ, is not the magistrate and commonweal charged more by this tenet with the worship and ordinances of God, than the church? for the magistrate they charge with the external peace in godliness, and the church but with the internal.
I ask further, what is this internal peace in all godliness? whether intend they internal, within the soul, which only the eye of God can see, opposed to external, or visible, which man also can discern? or else, whether they mean internal, that is spiritual, soul-matters, matters of God’s worship? and then I say, that peace, to wit, of godliness or God’s worship, they had before granted to the civil state.
The authors of these positions never yet saw a true difference between the church of Christ and the world, in point of worship.
Peace. The truth is, as I now perceive, the best and most godly of that judgment declare themselves never to have seen a true difference between the church and the world, and the spiritual and civil state; and howsoever these worthy authors seem to make a kind of separation from the world, and profess that the church must consist of spiritual and living stones, saints, regenerate persons, and so make some peculiar enclosed ordinances, as the supper of the Lord, which none, say they, but godly persons must taste of; yet, by compelling all within their jurisdiction to an outward conformity of the church worship, of the word and prayer, and maintenance of the ministry thereof, they evidently declare that they still lodge and dwell in the confused mixtures of the unclean and clean, of the flock of Christ and herds of the world together—I mean, in spiritual and religious worship.
Truth. For a more full and clear discussion of this scripture, 1 Tim. ii. 1, 2, on which is weakly built such a mighty building, I shall propose and resolve these four queries.
CHAP. LXXXVII.
1 Tim. ii. 1, 2, discussed.
First, what is meant by godliness and honesty in this place?
Secondly, what may the scope of the Holy Spirit of God be in this place?